Case Pending

by Dell Shannon

  “You see, Papa, I kept telling you it was all right, they’ll find out we didn’t have nothing to do with it, and Uncle will say too, he’s not that bad, try to pull us into it! Thanks, Lieutenant, that was real nice of you, say that to this other cop—now don’t take on so, Papa—”

  They got Ramirez calmed down a little. Mendoza, suddenly struck with a not very hopeful idea, but you never knew and no harm to try, took Teresa down to Prints to look at the doll.

  “No, I never seen nothing like that before… Why? Is it something to do with—? But how could it be?”

  “Now there you’ve asked me something,” he sighed. “Yes, it is something to do with it—that I can tell you now, at least I’m ninety-eight percent sure. But what, that’s another question.”

  “It’s—I don’t like it,” said Teresa, shuddering. “All pulled apart like that.”

  “Yes… I suppose you haven’t got anything for me yet,” he said to Carter.

  “We’ve got a lot of dandy prints, Lieutenant—whether they’ll tell us anything—” and Carter shrugged. “Let’s see, you gave us the names of five of our own men handled it, well, I’ve got a couple of the boys checking records now, to eliminate those. At a guess, we’ve got two or three different people besides—I think. Tell you more when I know which to eliminate. We’ll see if the strangers match anything in the other records, and have a look at the psychos on file first, way you suggested. You can have her back any time, by the way—we’re finished with her.”

  “Thanks very much.” Mendoza folded the paper round the doll and carried it back upstairs with him. He spent another five minutes on additional reassurances to Ramirez and the priest, got rid of them, unwrapped the doll on his desk, and said, “Now we’ll just see if we can match up that little clue you were so superior about.”

  “What? Oh, that,” as Mendoza tenderly slid the dainty strip of pink lace from its envelope. “Today’s great thought, I’d forgotten—my God,” said Hackett suddenly, “look at the time, I’ll be late for that damned inquest, and it’s old Curly too, he’ll give me hell—have fun, amigo,” and he snatched up his hat and ran.

  * * *

  The two women looked at it in silence for a minute and came out with twin reactions.

  “Well!” said Mrs. Demarest. “What kind of a mother would go and let a child treat an expensive doll that way! Breaking things up just out of mischief, it’s a thing I always saw my children got a good spanking for—just leads to trouble later on.”

  “A sinful waste—wicked,” agreed Mrs. Breen, looking horrified. “A downright destructive youngster, must be, whoever’s had it. I never saw anythin’ like—”

  “I’ve begun to think that might be an understatement—about who’s had it,” said Mendoza. “But is it the doll Carol bought?”

  “Yes, suh, it is,” said Mrs. Breen promptly, “or one just like it, because if I got to swear, well, of course I couldn’t do no such thing. I just had the one in stock, not figurin’ I could sell more’n that, you know, an’ I couldn’t guess how many of ’em the factory might of made, an’ they’d be all just alike, except some was dressed in blue and some in pink like this here. But it’s just exactly like the one Carol bought—or ’twas when it was new.”

  “Would there be some kind of a serial number on it, I wonder?” suggested Mrs. Demarest. “The factory maybe could tell what store they’d sold it to. Little cheap things, there wouldn’t be, but a thing that was going to sell for twenty dollars—”

  “Yes, it’s possible. I haven’t looked, the thing’s in such a state I don’t want to handle it more than necessary, and if there is a number the factory’ll know where to look for it. That we’ll find out. Now look at this.” He brought out the three-inch strip of lace. “I’ll swear to you this came off some part of the clothes, but it’s not possible to fit it on anywhere.”

  They bent over it, over the doll, looking. “It’s just like the lace on the underwear,” agreed Mrs. Breen. “Same exact color. I reckon the factory could tell you for sure, ’bout that—but there’s not an awful lot o’ the lace left on, an’ if it got torn off different times, well, there wouldn’t be no fitting this piece where it was.”

  “I can’t get over the way it’s been—” Mrs. Demarest raised troubled eyes to him. “Can you tell us about it, Lieutenant, how you came to find it?”

  Mendoza leaned back and lit a cigarette. “I’ll tell you what I know—you tell me what it means! Carol bought this thing the night she was killed. That morning, a Mrs. Marion Lindstrom tried to persuade you,” stabbing the cigarette at Mrs. Breen, “to sell it to her, and, when you refused, was insistent that you find out whether you could get her one like it, and left her name and address—”

  “Real uppity she was,” nodded Mrs. Breen, “as if I could, if I wanted.”

  “So. Carol was killed and the doll stolen. No evidence either way, as to whether the killer or someone else took it. Now, Mrs. Lindstrom lived just two blocks up from here, across Hunter Avenue—and the next day, though it lacked a week to the end of the month and her rent was paid to then, she moved—unexpectedly and hurriedly. We can conjecture it was pure chance she ended up where she did, in a place called Graham Court, down the wrong side of Main. She’d have to take what was available right that day, if she was anxious to move at once—and what was available, of course, within the limits of what she could pay. All right. Time goes on, and last Friday night another girl is killed, within two blocks of this Graham Court. Killed the same way, and as was the case with Carol, there is absolutely nothing in her private life which gave anyone reason to kill her. She wasn’t as bright a girl as Carol, she had very bad taste and not too much education, but she was an honest girl and well enough liked—and I don’t suppose she wanted to die, you know.”

  “Ah, poor thing,” said Mrs. Demarest.

  “She was on her way home from a roller-skating rink, alone because her boy friend’s father, who disapproved of her, had come and hauled the boy home with him. Fortunately they’re out of it on evidence. This time the handbag was taken, found a couple of blocks away, but as far as we can tell nothing was stolen. Now, take a look at me,” said Mendoza, sitting up. “I’m visited by a hunch—it’s the same killer—and I’ve got no evidence whatever, that means anything, to back me up. Not until you told me about this doll. Then I’ve got Mrs. Lindstrom’s name, and then I find out she’s living in the same neighborhood this time too, and where does that get me? If I checked back on all the people living around there, I might find half a dozen others who’d moved there from this general neighborhood in the last six months. One of those things… But, where d’you think I found this little piece of lace? On the floor of that skating rink. There’s some vague evidence about a boy or a young man who’s been in the habit of sneaking into the rink by an unused door, and who—so the dead girl complained to several people—stared at her in a ‘funny way.’ I think he’s the one, but that’s mostly another hunch and I know nothing else about him, I’ve got no line on him at all. Except that maybe he dropped this little strip there one time—and that doesn’t say it came from the doll. I say to myself, I’m woolgathering, all this doesn’t mean one damned thing. And then this morning somebody leaves that doll carefully propped against the door of the precinct station down there—three blocks away from Graham Court.”

  “Well, that is queer,” said Mrs. Demarest interestedly. “But this Mrs. Lindstrom, she wouldn’t be the one—”

  “There’s not much to go on there either—yet. Her husband deserted her about a month before Carol was killed. There’s a thirteen-year-old boy. All I know about him right now is that he’s a big, strong boy—shot up early—big as a man, and probably strong enough to have done—what was done. I don’t know if he did, or why he might have. I’m getting what I can about him, but”—he shrugged—“you can see I’ve got no real evidence to warrant a full-scale investigation.”

>   “I don’t know ’bout your rules for that kind o’ thing,” said Mrs. Breen, “but it shorely is queer, all that. Don’t seem hardly possible, though, that a boy thirteen—and why’d she want a doll so bad, her with only a boy?”

  Mendoza sighed and stood up. “I haven’t even got an excuse to go and ask her that—and she’d only tell me it was for her favorite niece back east, anyway. I’m hoping the factory can identify this definitely, and in that case I’ll want you both to make formal statements about it. Thanks very much, I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

  57 “What a gift!”

  58 Latin, meaning no boundary or demarcation—no limit (here, to the time when the doll could have been left on the steps).

  59 As recently as 1945, the California Civil Code, §60, provided, “All marriages of white persons with negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void.” “Negro” was defined as one-eighth African ancestry (other states still had “one-drop” laws making a person with any quantity of African ancestry deemed to be a “Negro”). The law banning interracial marriage was struck down in 1948 by the California Supreme Court in the landmark case Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal.2d 711, 198 P.2d 17. “Passing” for white has never been in itself illegal in California; however, many racial minorities were prohibited from various activities, and so “passing” might result in a violation of the law. For example, a California statute (repealed in 1872) provided that “No black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be permitted to give evidence in favor of, or against, any white person. Every person who shall have one-eighth part or more of Negro blood shall be deemed a mulatto, and every person who shall have one half of Indian blood shall be deemed an Indian.”

  60 “I give up!”

  61 “Don’t [choke/suffocate] yourself, friend—it’s ok, understand?”

  Thirteen

  The phone call had come through, Sue said when she eventually got Morgan at the office after lunch, about eleven o’clock. It was the woman again, again sounding as if she were reading the message, refusing to answer questions, say anything else.

  “I tried to—I thought if I could appeal to her, remind her of what she said before, what we—but she just gave a little gasp and said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t, Mis’ Morgan,’ and hung up. Dick—”

  “Yes,” he said, making meaningless scribbles on the note pad in front of him. Henry was there at his desk across the room, Stack right alongside under the other window; Morgan couldn’t say much directly. “Go on.”

  And what it came to was—right back to Graham Court. Seven o’clock, Smith’s message said, at Graham Court, the address and apartment number carefully read out. Morgan might as well come to him, ran the message (insolently phrased, sounding the opposite in the woman’s soft voice), and he needn’t think account of things going haywire last night he’d stopped meaning anything he’d said. He’d be waiting alone for Morgan at seven, and this had better be the pay-off, or else.

  “All right,” said Morgan steadily, “I’ve got that. Seven, that’s early. I’d better not try to make it home first. Mean?—just more bluster, is all—don’t worry, hon. You’d better expect me when you see me, O.K.?”

  He put down the phone and went back to his open case book there on the desk, pretending to check notes, add a word here and there, but not really seeing anything on the page.

  Two things said themselves over in his mind. The apartment. And, Alone. (Smith, of course, unknowing that he had any prior knowledge of the apartment, any other reason to be there.) It added up—for Morgan, and also to a couple of things that were no concern of Morgan’s but interesting: that alone suggested that Smith had seen to it that neither the woman nor the boy had any idea how much money he was expecting, and that and the revealing of his home address suggested that very likely he was planning to decamp with the money, maybe at once.

  What it added up to for Morgan the murderer was safety—maybe. Depending on where Mendoza’s men were. He thought he might get some information on that point when he saw Mendoza an hour from now, with this stuff from the school.

  From the time on Saturday night when the cold fact had penetrated his mind that the only real lasting safety was Smith dead, circumstances had been forcing on Morgan certain changes of his original plan he didn’t much like. He looked at this one from all the angles; it was better than the street holdup in a way, and it would, of course, have to do.

  You were always seeing something like that in the paper. A man shot himself, hanged himself, slashed his wrists in the bathtub: no known reason, no prior threat.

  The tricky factor was the timing. If Mendoza’s men were inside, it couldn’t be done at all: they’d be too close, and not unlikely in a position to know at which floor Morgan stopped. But if they were outside, then—which way, before or after the Lindstroms? Before, he thought. Quick and quiet up to the third floor, and no backchat with Smith: as soon as the door was shut behind him in Smith’s place, and Smith away from it. And no fooling around with any attempt to muffle the shot, a suicide wouldn’t bother and there wouldn’t be time. Gun in his hand: prints. Thirty seconds? There had to be a good chance he’d have time to be outside the door again, at least, before anyone else got there. There was a narrower chance that he could get halfway down the stairs before that. People exclaimed, talked a little, wondered, before they went to see. The ideal thing would be Morgan standing in the second-floor hall, just ready to knock on the Lindstroms’ door, when doors opened and people came out saying, “Was that a shot?”

  But Morgan halfway down (which was also halfway up) would do. I’d just got to the Lindstroms’ door when—I knew it was a shot up here, I started up to see—

  That was all he needed to say; none of his business, nothing to link him to an unexplained suicide.

  Sue, of course no question here of passing it off as accident. It couldn’t be helped. He’d got past worrying about the side effects; he was feeling now the way she’d said, Let’s for God’s sake get it done and over, any way at all.

  Because, if he’d be honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he could do it—that all this would come to any action in the end.

  He had to do it, the only possible solution. He’d seen that clear on Saturday night.

  Which of course was the point. If you got yourself wound up to a place where you were ready to do murder, you ought to do it right then while, so to speak, the spring was tight. He hadn’t; he’d had three nights and nearly three days to think about it, and now he didn’t know if, when the chips were down, he could really bring himself—

  He touched the gun under his coat; he’d been carrying it because he was afraid Sue would find it if he left it around the house. He thought angrily, uneasily, Ethics be damned: what loss is that hood? He’d decided this, he was just being a damned coward, to think—

  You got a little cowardly when you were thirty-eight, with a wife and child and a mortgage on the house and debts and a job that paid just forty-two hundred a year.

  And once he’d thought, if he could feel he was to blame for getting into this mess—But of course he was, they both were, they’d known at the time it was a silly and dangerous thing to do.

  Which brought him back to the woman, because he supposed—if you looked at it from all sides—and remarkable as it might seem, she wouldn’t want to lose her husband, whatever kind he was.

  People, thought Morgan tiredly: people.

  The agencies’ bright brisk assurances: we like to find just the right child for the individual parents: patience! The endless forms. The investigators: questions, questions. Time going by, and both of them afraid, never, and Sue—

  And then, that woman. Just by chance sitting next to Sue in the lounge of a department-store restroom. “Such a lovely baby, Dick, I couldn’t help saying—only a month old, and darling, she hasn’t even named her, wasn’t that interested—she—” Later they both thought, less
lack of interest in the baby than preoccupation with the husband. Oh, obviously that curious mixture of obsession (that couldn’t really be called love), dependence, and fear…

  He was awful mad when he heard about the baby, he didn’t want another kid, they take a lot of time and all, you know. And I can’t go out to work now, with it to look out for. He’s—my husband, he’s back east, he’s—well, he’s sick, see, awful sick, in the hospital, and can’t work. I’d just as soon—anyways, I guess it’d be better off with folks like you…

  Yes, silly: dangerous. All that you forgot, confronted with the warm round armful that would be Janet Ann Morgan. A little sense you tried to use, you got the woman to sign a statement saying she was relinquishing the child voluntarily, and you told Dr. Fordyce that Sue was nervous, didn’t trust the agency’s medical tests, wanted his report too. And Dr. Fordyce, very probably, could make a pretty shrewd guess at the truth, but he was an old friend and he figured, maybe, that it wasn’t up to him to be an officious busybody. And all the tests saying just what Janny had been telling everybody since—such a lovely baby.

  And now, Smith. Robertson, the woman said: Smith, Brown, Green, what the hell if it was O’Kelly or Bernstein or Gonzales… There he was, and he was the danger: it would all come to nothing if he were out of it, the woman was a nonentity with no force in her. So that left it right up to Morgan, and this was the only way he could see open to him.

  When he came round to that point again, he got up and shut the case book. On his way over to Police Headquarters, he told himself that from another angle, it was safer really—if you came to murder—to do it cold, thinking. If you had to, if you could, if you could face the issue and take the only decision…