Dragnet

by Richard Deming

  We looked up from the message, and both of us stared blankly at the captain. He grinned a little sourly.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” he asked. “Same name, same age, same birthplace, same description. If he turns out to have the same fingerprints, I’m going to resign and take up truck farming.”

  “You’ll have a partner,” I told him. “How do you figure this, Captain?”

  “I don’t,” Captain Hertel said. “I don’t even want to think about it until those mugs and prints come in tomorrow.”

  We left it at that. Frank and I didn’t want to think about it, either.

  Frank and I left word that we wanted to be called at home the next day as soon as the mugs and prints from St. Louis came in. I got the call at 12:30 p.m. and arrived at the Police Building at 1:00. Frank, having a longer drive, arrived fifteen minutes later. He found me in the captain’s office examining the mugs.

  There were two sets. A regular front and profile, and stand-up mugs. I handed them to Frank.

  After looking them over, Frank let out a whistle. “How do you figure a thing like this? Might be our suspect’s twin.”

  “The only thing different about the two is their prints,” Captain Hertel said. “I checked them myself as soon as they came in, before I sent them to Latent Prints. You could see the difference with the naked eye.”

  He sounded relieved, which was an indication of how far off center the whole screwy situation had thrown us. There has never been a case on record of two different people having identical fingerprints. But these two men were so identical in every respect, the captain had half suspected the impossible would happen, and even their prints would match.

  I grinned at him. “No truck farm then, huh, Skipper?”

  He grinned back. “Not this trip. I’m waiting for a kickback from Latent Prints now. Asked them to check the St. Louis suspect’s prints against the wallet and seat-adjustment knob.” The phone rang before he finished speaking. He picked it up and said, “Hertel.” After listening for a moment, he grunted, said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

  “Latent Prints?” I asked.

  The captain nodded. “Made him on both prints.”

  I felt a sense of relief flow over me. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to think you might have been instrumental in sending an innocent man to the lethal chamber or prison. “How about the one we’ve got?” I asked.

  Captain Hertel grinned. ‘That’s a chore for you,” he said. “Chief Brown thinks you ought to break the good news yourself. I’ll have Whiteman brought over from the County Jail.”

  Frank and I waited in the squad room until George Whiteman was brought in. He looked at us sullenly.

  “Sit down, Mr. Whiteman,” I said. “We’ve got a little shock for you.”

  He took a seat at one of the tables, and I handed him both sets of mug shots. After a brief glance at them, he looked up at me again.

  “Who do you think that is?” I asked.

  “Me,” he said shortly. “What about it?”

  “Look again,” I said. “Can you positively identify the pictures?”

  With a mixture of suspicion and puzzlement he gave them a more careful examination. “Of course it’s me,” he said finally. “What kind of game you playing?”

  “Read the data below the pictures on the card containing the head shots.”

  He studied the indicated card. “George Whiteman,” he muttered. “Height, weight, and so on. Birthplace, Columbia, Missouri. Birthdate—Hey, I wasn’t born April twenty-fifth!”

  “He was,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “The man in those pictures. George Whiteman. Same age as you, same name, same home town, same appearance. Only he’s in custody in St. Louis, waiting for us to go pick him up.”

  His eyes widened to half-dollar size. He stared at the picture again, read the vital statistics in detail, and finally looked up at me with his mouth hanging open. “You mean—you mean—”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “He’s the real Courteous Killer. We made him on his fingerprints. Sorry we had to break it to you in such a roundabout way, but there’s a reason.”

  He still couldn’t quite believe it. “Wh—what’s that?”

  I pointed to the mug shots. “You positively identified that man as yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Why, sure,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? He looks just like me.”

  “That’s the way we feel, Mr. Whiteman,” I told him. “You can hardly blame us for making the same mistake you did.”

  We continued to talk to George Whiteman for some time. He had no explanation for the remarkable resemblance between himself and the St. Louis suspect. He assumed that being from the same town and bearing the same name, they were probably distantly related, which might account for the similarity of appearance. However, in his youth he had known no other George Whiteman in Columbia, nor ever heard of one.

  Afterward we took him up to Chief Brown’s office. In the name of the department, the chief apologized for the mistake. He assured the unfortunate double of the Courteous Killer that full newspaper publicity would be given the error in order to clear Whiteman’s name.

  Meantime, Captain Hertel had phoned the new development to the district attorney, and a representative of that office came over to the Police Building. Whiteman was taken before the Superior Court and released from custody.

  * * * *

  2:16 p.m. Frank and I went back to Captain Hertel’s office. The captain phoned the St. Louis chief of detectives long-distance and informed him that we had made the suspect on his fingerprints, and that he was definitely the man we wanted. He asked what arrangements could be made to pick up the suspect.

  The chief of detectives told him that George Whiteman had refused to waive extradition. However, because of the seriousness of the crimes charged against him in California, he didn’t contemplate any difficulty from the Missouri end. He suggested that if the State of California would petition for extradition immediately, we could probably have the man as soon as the papers were in order.

  Captain Hertel phoned the district attorney to relay on this information. This set the wheels in motion.

  There is very little red tape connected with an extradition proceeding in a criminal case when the state holding the suspect in custody is as anxious to get rid of him as the petitioning state is to get him. Within twenty-four hours the district attorney’s office had prepared a request for extradition and had sent it, along with a statement of facts concerning the case, to the governor of California.

  Twenty-four hours after that, it was back in the district attorney’s hands, signed by the governor. That afternoon we held a conference with Captain Hertel and Chief Brown.

  “These just came over from the district attorney’s office,” Chief Brown said, indicating the extradition papers on the desk before him. “We may as well send someone after the suspect at once and wind the case up.”

  When none of us said anything, the chief said to Captain Hertel, “Friday and Smith have been in on this case from the first. They may as well finish it.”

  “I was going to suggest sending them,” the captain said. He turned to us. “I think we’ve got this guy cold because of the fingerprint makes, but we want to make sure of a conviction. We want to tag him with every bit of evidence we have. It would be nice if he still had in his possession the shoes he wore the night he killed that Marine.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “We’ll check with the St. Louis police and see if we can bring back every pair of shoes he owns.”

  “Bring back any guns the St. Louis police found in his possession, too. We’ll want to make ballistic comparisons.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Hertel said, “A tie-in on the watch the Marine jerked from his killer’s wrist would help, too. Better take it along and see if you can get a make on that in St. Louis.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “One other thing. Even more important than the evidence.”

  “What�
��s that?” I asked.

  “Hang on to the suspect.”

  * * * *

  On Monday, October 14th, at 8:45 a.m., Frank and I caught TWA Flight Number 24 from International Airport. We landed at Kansas City at 3:17 p.m. Missouri time. Train connections to Jefferson City got us to the state capitol too late to find the governor’s office open that day. We put up at a hotel overnight and were at the governor’s office when it opened on Tuesday morning.

  An hour later we were on a train for St. Louis with the signature of the governor of the State of Missouri on our extradition order.

  * * * *

  4:56 P.M. We arrived by taxi at St. Louis Police Headquarters on Twelfth Street. We took the elevator upstairs and found the chief of detectives’ office. Chief of Detectives Stanley Helton was expecting us.

  The St. Louis chief of detectives was a tall, heavy-set man of about sixty with a square, rocklike face and a clipped manner of speaking. After giving us cordial handshakes, he asked us to sit down. His manner struck me as unusually solemn, and I wondered if he was always that way. But his first words suggested there was an immediate reason for his solemnity.

  “Afraid you men have wasted a trip,” he said. “We tried to phone you at Jefferson City, but you’d already left by train.”

  “What do you mean, sir?” I asked.

  “We’ve been holding Whiteman in the city jail. This morning we started to transfer him to the detention jail in this building, so he’d be all set to go when you arrived.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “En route he escaped.”

  Frank and I looked at each other.

  “We’re still not quite sure how he managed it,” the chief of detectives said. “He was handcuffed to a police officer in the back seat of a police car. Another officer was on his other side, though not handcuffed to him, and a third was driving. We knew the suspect was dangerous, and we weren’t taking any chances.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Somehow he managed to knock out the officer on his left. We think with a judo chop to the Adam’s apple. We’re not certain, because the blow damaged the officer’s vocal cords, and he isn’t yet able to talk.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Whiteman seems to be faster than a streak of lightning because he managed to get hold of the unconscious officer’s gun before the officer he was handcuffed to could get his out. He cracked the second officer over the head and knocked him unconscious, too.”

  I said, “I see.”

  “Then, at gunpoint, he forced the driver to cross MacArthur Bridge over to East St. Louis. That’s across the river on the Illinois side, you know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Couple of miles beyond East St. Louis on Route Forty, he had the driver pull over to the side of the road. Forced him to unlock the cuffs and haul the unconscious men out of the car. Left the three officers there. The police car was found abandoned a mile farther on. We figure he pulled some motorist over by using his siren, and commandeered the car at gunpoint. The Illinois police have set up roadblocks all the way to the Indiana border, but haven’t netted him yet.”

  Frank asked, “What time did all this happen, sir?”

  “Ten o’clock this morning. We started a search for the squad car twenty minutes later, when it didn’t show on schedule and couldn’t be contacted by radio. But it was past noon before it was located over in Illinois. That gave him a two-hour start, and he’s had five more hours to get wherever he’s going since then.”

  I said, “Something I don’t understand. Wasn’t the conscious officer able to get to a phone quicker than that, sir?”

  Chief Helton stared at me. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “What?”

  He scowled. “Even if we catch this guy, you’ve wasted a trip. There won’t be any extradition now.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Before he drove off, Whiteman had the driver drag the two unconscious officers into a ditch alongside the road. So no passing motorist would see them and stop to investigate, we suppose. Gave him more time to make a getaway.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then he made sure the driver wouldn’t get to a phone.”

  “How was that?” I asked.

  “He put a bullet in him. The officer lived long enough to make a statement, but died on the way to the hospital.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  5:31 p.m. We talked to the officers who had originally arrested George Whiteman, and were allowed to examine the file on the case. The suspect had been apprehended just before midnight on Tuesday, October 8th. He had been caught in the act during a lovers’ lane robbery on Forest Park’s Art Hill, a favorite parking place for petters. The St. Louis police had no package on him showing a previous record.

  The property section had two pairs of shoes that had been found in Whiteman’s room after his arrest. We asked that they be released to us, and were granted the request.

  The gun in the suspect’s possession at the time of his arrest was a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. As no other weapons were found either on his person or in the room he had at the time, apparently he had disposed of the gun he took from me the night of the kidnapping.

  The St. Louis police did not want to release the .38 to us, as they now wanted the suspect prosecuted for murder in the neighboring State of Illinois in the event that he was apprehended. To policemen everywhere a cop-killing is the supreme crime, and it was understandable that the rewards offered in California now meant nothing to the St. Louis police. Their prime concern was the suspect’s apprehension and conviction for the murder of a St. Louis police officer.

  Even though the gun taken from the suspect at the time of his arrest had not been used in the killing, we didn’t argue with them. If a Los Angeles policeman had been killed, we would have wanted to hold onto every possible bit of evidence. However, the lab did furnish us with a couple of bullets fired from the gun, so that we could take them back to Los Angeles for comparison with the bullets that had wounded Nancy Meere and killed Viola Carr.

  When we had collected all the information available from the police department, Frank and I left the building to look for a place to spend the night. The nearest hotel was the Jefferson, which was only a couple of blocks north on Twelfth from Police Headquarters. As all we had to carry was a small overnight bag apiece plus the package containing the suspect’s two pairs of shoes, we walked to the hotel.

  By the time we had settled ourselves in our hotel room and had had some dinner, it was 7:00 p.m. As we left the dining room, Frank said, “Not much we can do except catch a plane back in the morning, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “At least we accomplished a little,” Frank said. “If either of those shoes match the plaster casts, or the bullets match the ones that killed Viola Carr and wounded the Meere girl, we’ve got that much more evidence against him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Captain told us to get that stuff.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But we muffed his most important instruction.”

  “Huh?”

  “He told us to hang onto the suspect.”

  Frank’s mention of evidence reminded me that there was one item we hadn’t checked. The watch with the inscription on its back reading, To Gig from Min—1944. We had brought along the watch in the hope that by questioning the suspect we might learn the location of the woman who had bought it in North Hollywood.

  On a hunch I led Frank to the small room off the lobby where there were twin banks of phone booths. I riffled the pages of a phone book.

  “You know somebody in this town?” Frank asked.

  I ran an index finger down a page in the “W” section, and stopped near the bottom of the page. “Not yet,” I said. “But I plan to.”

  “Huh?”

  “There’s a Minerva Warden listed in South St. Louis. Just might be the same Minerva Warden who bought that watch.”

  We returned to Police Headquarters and
had another conference with the same officers we had talked to before. We explained about the watch and that there was a possibility the local Minerva Warden was the same one who bought it in 1944. We suggested that a St. Louis police officer go with us to interview the woman.

  A Homicide sergeant named James Slade was assigned to accompany us.

  We decided against phoning Minerva Warden in advance. If she was the woman we were looking for, and was still on intimate terms with the suspect, it was possible he had been in contact with her since his escape. It was even remotely possible that he had doubled back to St. Louis and was hiding at her place.

  If he was, we didn’t want to give any advance notice that police officers were on their way.

  The address listed in the phone book was 5322 South Thirty-seventh Street, which was down in the Carondolet section. We arrived shortly after 8:00 p.m.

  Fifty-three-twenty-two South Thirty-seventh was a four-family flat with a separate outside entrance to each flat. Minerva Warden’s nameplate was on the mailbox of the right-hand downstairs one. There was a light on in the front room.

  When Sergeant Slade pushed the bell button, a plump, brisk-mannered woman in her early forties opened the door. Her graying hair was drawn straight back in a tight pompadour, and she wore light-gray horned-rimmed glasses. Her severely tailored suit was gray in color, too. She wore no make-up aside from a touch of nearly pink lipstick.

  I glanced at Slade, who indicated with a gesture that he wanted us to handle the matter.

  “Miss Warden?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  I showed her my I.D. “We’re police officers from Los Angeles, Miss Warden. My name’s Friday. This is my partner, Frank Smith, and this is Sergeant Slade of the St. Louis police. We’re in St. Louis on a case both Los Angeles and St. Louis have an interest in.”

  “I see.” The words were brisk and uncommitting, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Her tone was that of a teacher who over the years has been required to deal authoritatively with so many children that a sort of impersonal patience has become second nature. She waited for me to go on.