“Which means a pro job, you think?”
Krug nodded again. “A hit some smart professional fixed up to look like an amateur job. Taylor was probably muscling in on somebody’s territory.”
Timms thought it over. “The girl must’ve believed she was only setting up for a bust. Otherwise she’d have protected herself, wouldn’t she? Instead, she went out bright and early the day after Taylor was wasted and bought that Yamaha for cash.”
“Yeah, no panic,” Krug agreed. “Probably didn’t take off for Vegas till the word got around. Maybe when the Evening Outlook hit the stands? She sees the headlines, finds out Taylor’s in the morgue instead of the slammer. Probably scared her shitless. So she went flying off to Mama. No help there, though, so what’s she gonna do, a crazy kid like that? Come back here, that’s all she can do.”
“To a one-room pad with a bike for company.” Timms shook his head. “Not a very pretty picture, is it? No help to be had anywhere.”
“Worse than that, sir,” Casey said. “No protection, either. No one to turn to, the law or her friends. Johnson would have spread his story about seeing her approached. Can’t have taken much imagination for them to connect Taylor’s death with that brand-new Yamaha. And they’re all dumb enough to believe in official murder.”
“So she was an outcast in the group. Then Myrick dismissed her.” Timms squinted at Casey. “You think she’s our vandal?”
Casey hesitated, aware of deep water ahead if they pursued the subject. “It’s possible, Lieutenant. But nobody found any keys. Depends on how crazy she was, I guess.” And a lot of other things, he added to himself. The dates on the calendar he was constructing in his mind didn’t fit right. “She showed up at the meetings at least three times we know of before she was finally kicked out. And possibly she called on Myrick in between times, trying to square herself.”
“Meaning she had plenty of chances for access?”
“She still couldn’t get into the files without keys, Lieutenant.” Casey hesitated again. “And there’s the man Mrs. Foster saw to be considered, too.”
“Not without confirmation.” Timms rubbed his end-of-the-day whiskers. “In all that stuff about your crippled lady’s purse getting snatched, seems to me I remember something about Myrick keeping keys to those files upstairs. Which means somebody determined enough could probably find ’em, right? All that girl had to do was fake she was leaving, slam the front door, then sneak upstairs till Myrick had left.”
“Except Monday night he didn’t,” Krug added, “and he caught her in the act.”
“So she killed him and ran home—And then what, Al?”
“Our pro was laying for her.”
“Almost two weeks after he wasted Taylor?” Timms shook his head. “If he was planning to kill her, too, he’d have done it right away.” Clearly dissatisfied, he stared into space. “But it was a one-and-one job, all right. A single assailant. Somebody she let in the door, which might mean she wasn’t scared of him.”
“So maybe one of our juveys, then?”
“Have to consider it as a possibility, Al.”
And they were back where they had started, pounding on the group again. A tangential track, Casey was convinced, but orders were orders, every angle had to be pursued.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Stop worrying.” Surely the two sweetest words in contemporary English? In my lexicon anyway, Adrian thought. Relieved and elated by the police lieutenant’s advice, she decided to call her sister, tell her the whole nightmare now that it was almost over. But she’d be hours on the phone, she knew; Ellen would not accept any sketches and wait for the full story in a follow-up letter. Which meant a fortune in long-distance tolls, even direct-dialing. And the cheaper rate didn’t begin for an hour yet. The hell with it, she told herself, call anyway. Then she changed her mind again.
She played with Marmalade until the kitten tired and curled up at her feet. “Some companion you are,” Adrian told him disgustedly. She tried to read, but in her restlessness, found she could not concentrate. Nothing on television appealed to her either. So maybe a movie, she thought. Well, why not, hadn’t he told her not to worry? She would call Ellen before eight the next morning, and the hell with expense. By tomorrow she’d be more able to talk sensibly, too. Yes, a movie would be perfect. A sandwich and a cup of coffee first, then she’d be on her way to the drive-in theater. What she needed now was diversion.
Something forgotten kept boring like a worm at the back of Casey’s mind. Something he had heard or perhaps read in a report. But he was so tired and hungry and bored by the endless interrogations that his mind felt crushed, incapable of functioning.
When night tour came on, Krug suggested that they knock off for dinner. Casey could start the reports when they got back. With any luck at all, they could be out of there in a couple of hours. Casey declined in favor of a vending-machine sandwich and a foul cup of coffee. If only he could remember that niggling thing. He realized he had also forgotten to call the night-shift locksmith he’d been trying to reach all afternoon.
After Krug left, he dialed the number the Marina del Rey locksmith had given him, and this time there was an answer. The night-shift man sounded irritable and sleepy, but after a good deal of persuasion he irascibly agreed to check his workbook for the night of July 27.
Casey listened to footsteps at the other end of the line, a rustling sound which he guessed to be paper, a muttered curse. Then the locksmith said, “Okay, here we go,” and began to list the calls from his work sheets. All seemed legitimate to Casey—until they arrived at the eighth one, a customer named Brown who had called from the airport. “One of those big shots,” the locksmith added. “Claimed he was too busy at conferences to meet me, so I got sixty different notes here how to pick up the keys.”
With a stir of excitement, Casey said, “You mean you never actually saw this Brown?”
“That’s right. He left the keys he wanted copied and the money to pay me at the hotel desk.”
“How many keys?”
“Well, lessee. I got three standard brass blanks here, two aluminum and one special. That’s three door keys, two for a car, and something small, like a drawer key.”
Miss Crewes’s description of her keys matched exactly.
“Way I figure it,” the locksmith was saying, “the stupid jerk probably lost his, took the wife’s maybe and got stuck here on business.”
“You’re probably right. What I’m interested in, though, is your end. You duplicated the keys, paid yourself with the money he left—And then what?”
“Same deal. I put his new set and the old set and his change in an envelope, and left it with the desk clerk.”
“Was this Brown registered there?”
“Could be, I don’t know. Listen, I got to get washed up for work—”
“Just give me the name and address of the airport hotel.” Casey sighed when he heard it. The biggest and busiest in the LA International area, naturally. One of those hostelries specializing in conference rooms and services for busy company men whose lives were spent leapfrogging around the country from meeting to meeting.
On the off chance he might be able to obtain the information he needed the easy way, by telephone, Casey dialed the hotel asking for whoever was in charge at the desk at night.
“That’ll be Mr. Clay, the assistant manager,” said the switchboard operator. “He doesn’t come on duty for half an hour yet.”
Casey scribbled Clay in his notebook and thanked her. No, no message, he said. In half an hour he would talk to Mr. Clay in person.
Before he left, a reply came in from San Francisco. Attn Det/3 Kellog message follows: Subject Wm Myrick registered owner 75 Cad conv, and there was a license number appended. Casey checked Communications and was told there was nothing from Sacramento yet; possibly not until tomorrow would they receive anything as cumberso
me as a print-out of all locally registered Citroёn sedans.
Tomorrow. And meanwhile, Casey thought morbidly, he’s out there floating around somewhere. A mysterious visitor with keys to the Palisades house. A professional killer. Or a lunatic.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The subterranean garage was well-lit, and at this early-evening hour seemed less spooky than usual. Fighting the timidity which had plagued her since her purse had been snatched a month before, Adrian stepped out of the elevator after a careful look around. Dinnertime for the snatch-and-grab crowd, she told herself. Even muggers have to eat. When she returned, she decided, she would leave her car parked out on the street and use the front entrance to the apartment building. All other precautions—looking in the back seat for anyone hidden there before getting into the car, locking the doors securely once she was inside—were old established New York habits.
Just beyond the exit a car was parked illegally, blocking the one-way alley. But there was someone sitting behind the wheel. Talk about women drivers, Adrian fumed, who but a man would just squat there, oblivious of anyone trying to get by? She flicked her lights up, then down again, and the blue Citroёn started moving down the alley. Someone’s driver or waiting husband. Certainly nobody’s illicit amour, she decided nastily as her headlights through his back window illumined the driver’s bald spot and jug-handle ears. At the mount of the alley he turned right. Adrian turned left and continued to Seventh Street, where she turned south toward Olympic Boulevard. The drive-in theater was eastward, at Olympic and Bundy—always a double feature, a weekly change of bill; going there had been the sum total of her social life for over six months now.
Why is it everyone who travels out to the Coast seems to drop off the face of the earth? Ellen had written plaintively. One letter and four postcards of your palm-tree paradise, and that’s that. You really must be having a busy, wonderful time!
In her consuming loneliness—the sort of isolation she had never before experienced—Adrian had read those words many times, savoring the irony like a sore tooth. No way to explain her curious daylight relationship with Stephen Myrick without worrying her overprotective sister. All business, as the police lieutenant had said. But even business partners occasionally have dinner together. More fool you. Oh, shit, quit thinking about it. But she couldn’t stop.
Would you believe, she imagined a letter to her sister, this time I drew the whole ball of wax? Served her right for not investigating first. But, my God, who’d have imagined anyone with scientific pretensions playing therapist by day and spiritualist by night? Any serious reviewer in possession of such juicily schizophrenic behavior would have destroyed us both, and the book, too. So much for my career and so-called scholarly reputation. Only the cruellest kind of fate saved me.
An unconscious shudder shook her. August, not April, is the cruellest month. Stop thinking, think about the movie. Obviously, from the ad in the newspaper, it was one of those sex-and-violence fantasies so dear to the heart of America. Adrian knew she would be bored. But getting out would restore her perspective. Already the claustrophobic sense of being trapped in a nightmare was leaving her.
Remembering that Olympic joined the freeway somewhere near Seventh—a junction to be avoided—Adrian turned east on Santa Monica Boulevard, and a mile or so on, became aware of the Citroёn trailing her. The same blue color as the car which had blocked the alley. She kept watching in the rear-view mirror, trying to see if it was the same man as before, but lights shining on the windshield obscured the driver. Coincidence, she told herself. But how many blue Citroёns can there be in this vicinity?
Turning south again on Twenty-sixth, Adrian proceeded to Olympic, which was a surface street there. The Citroёn was still behind her, and ahead the traffic light shone green. Without signaling, she turned left. The Citroёn turned behind her.
It’s that nut, Burns. Or William Myrick. A pair of nuts. She should have asked the police lieutenant if they had discovered any connection. Oh, don’t be such a fool, she told herself, it’s probably one of those joy riders out looking for kicks. Of course it is. A pickup artist on wheels. Modern version of the old-fashioned masher.
She was certain she was right, but the uneasy stirrings of apprehension would not be suppressed. And as she sped along Olympic, watching the Citroёn hanging behind her, a wild urge to push her car as fast as it would go gripped Adrian. Panic. And the old sickening sense of helplessness. For the rest of her life never to be able to run, doomed to crawl…
Stop that. Look ahead there: a block away, the long wall of the drive-in theater. On the immense screen towering over the wall surrounding the arenalike drive-in, Technicolor images flickered, distorted from this view. Crowd in there, Adrian reassured herself. Safety in numbers. She could ask them to call the police from the box office if the Citroёn followed her in.
Whirling into the drive-in entrance, she stopped with a screech, ignoring the man in the ticket office, who beckoned to her to move ahead. In her rear-view mirror the Citroёn was a white blaze of headlights, a flash of blue, then it disappeared down Olympic. Adrian expelled her held breath with a deep sigh. My God, she thought ruefully, all that sound and fury over nothing. You are a case, Ms. Crewes. What would Gloria Steinem say if she could see you now? You have definitely not come a long way, baby.
TWENTY-NINE
“Where the hell did you run off to?” Krug’s rasping voice came ear-splitting through the receiver. “Christ, I leave for two minutes—”
“Save it, Al. I’ve got a lead on those keys.” Rapidly Casey filled him in. “Clay, the assistant manager here, doesn’t remember any Brown. But it can’t be a coincidence. He picked the biggest and busiest hotel around. The perfect place to stay anonymous.”
“Too bad you didn’t do the same.”
“Al, you’re not listening. This is a legitimate—”
“Would you believe there’s some brass around here that’s beginning to wonder if you’ve started your own private police force going? Get your ass in here.” Krug added furiously, “And I mean pronto,” then he hung up.
Casey made it back in record time, and adrenals pumping, stiffened with righteous rage, took the stairs up to the bureau three at a time. But except for Smithers, who was catching tonight, the squad room was empty.
“Beats me,” he said when Casey asked what was going on. “Some guy named Argyle just phoned in a complaint about somebody trying to get in an apartment. Al and the lieutenant took off like a pair of striped-ass apes.”
Casey dived for the nearest phone. A professional killer. Or a lunatic. Ah God, he thought, we’ve really bitched it this time. But maybe she’s all right. Thick-fingered, he dialed Adrian Crewes’s number, heard it ring only once, then the receiver was picked up. Loud and clear, Krug said, “Yeah—who’s this?”
“Me, Al. What’s happening?”
“Don’t ask me, sport, you know as much as I do. Hang on, the lieutenant wants to talk to you.”
“Looks like we might just have that confirmation of your old lady’s mysterious stranger,” Timms said. “All we can get out of the neighbor who saw him trying to get in here is a general description. A glimpse was all she got on her way in her own door, she says. She kept hearing him fooling with the lock here, so she got nervous and called the manager. He didn’t waste any time getting hold of us.”
A faceless shadow. Brown. Burns. Double, possible triple murderer with a clear obsession. And thwarted now.
“…safe enough to presume she’s out someplace,” Timms was saying. “Her car’s gone, and there’s no purse lying around.”
“Is the cat there, sir?”
“Yeah, I spotted it when the manager let us in.”
“He’s after her briefcase, Lieutenant. Something in her notes he’s afraid of. He tried to get at it yesterday, but she had it with her.”
“Those goddamn tapes again.” Timms’s sigh was a hiss
. “Okay, if you’re right, it means he’s been watching this place. Saw her leave, maybe, and hotfooted it up here. Which means somebody else might’ve seen him…”
They were back in ten minutes, and the lieutenant immediately assigned two night-tour men to the apartment house—one to watch the front entrance, the other to keep a surveillance on the subterranean garage until Adrian Crewes arrived. She was to be taken into protective custody and on no account released again until Timms gave the order. Three plainclothes patrolmen from a downstairs detail would be borrowed for a quick sweep of the neighborhood around the apartment house with the hope of finding someone who might have noticed a man watching the building.
While the orders went out rapid-fire, Casey kept poring over his notebook, trying to coax his memory. Something seen or heard. A dim connection, but it felt real. He’d almost had it when Al and the lieutenant had roared in like two bulls into a bullring…
“For my dough, it’s the hit man,” Krug was saying, “and one of those kids knows him. All that crap about vandalism is him making sure nobody fingered him.”
“Good enough guess,” Timms conceded. “So his entry into the Crewes apartment was a double check she didn’t hear anything on one of the tapes and make a note of it? Sounds logical.” He looked at Casey. “Fits your theory about the briefcase, too.”
“But it doesn’t fit that voice I heard on the tape, sir.”
“Ah, for Chrissake,” Krug growled, “he’s a pro and he’s tricky, we know that. He gets us thinking it’s a nut, what’s he got to lose?”
Something precious, Casey’s intuition told him. Something an unbalanced, obsessive mind will go to any lengths to protect. An idea?
“…Still don’t have anything to get our teeth into,” Timms was complaining. “A shadow, that’s all we’ve got so far.”
Rouse the Demon: A Krug & Kellog Thriller (The Krug & Kellog Thriller Series Book 3) Page 14