by Dell Shannon
The essential question, of course, was where the hell the woman had been between eight and ten on Friday night. And without much doubt they would know that if they knew who she'd phoned from the Brown Derby, but that was past praying for. Nobody she knew—and he hadn't missed many—had seen her or talked to her on Friday. Or, of course, said they hadn't. But all her female friends—acquaintances—the same kind: there hadn't been enough real feeling there for any animosity, had there?
But she had gone somewhere, alone or with someone, and had at least two more drinks. And where the hell her car had got to ....
Hackett and Higgins came in at two-thirty and announced that they'd finally run Bobby Porter to earth and had him stashed in jail. Hackett was still typing a report on that when Palliser and Landers came in and laid the new case in front of Mendoza. There wasn't, of course, anywhere to go on it, much to do, until and unless Linda Carr regained consciousness and told them what had happened to her. Landers said, "We want to talk to the girls on the same shift with her. Hear about the discarded boy friend. But on the face of it, it looks as if she was snatched off that bus-stop bench that night. All I say is, I don't think it was at random."
"I never said it was," said Palliser.
"You will both make detectives yet." Mendoza was shuffling the cards in his long strong hands, cigarette in mouth-corner. "If she'd just been snatched, mauled and raped, and left in the street, I'd say it was the random thing. But keeping her prisoner for a month—¡ay de mi!—I think it had to be a personal motive. No, there's not much we can do unless she can tell us about it. Have you checked the hospital?"
"She's still unconscious," said Landers.
"Jase and Hich," said Higgins through a yawn, "got interested in that Reynolds thing at the inquest and are going back over all Nick's reports. I think they're working it from scratch."
And then Lake came down the hall and said that Mr. Jackman was here, and stood back to let him pass into Mendoza's office.
* * *
Hackett and Higgins sat in on it.
"I don't think I've grasped this—this ghastly thing yet," said Jackman. "My sister didn't feel up to coming in—she has a slight heart condition, and you can guess how upset she is. God! Mother and Dad—they wanted to be independent as long as they could, and they got along all right, with our help, of course. And of course we checked up on them frequently. They were both well and fairly active, there was a market in walking distance, and Dad liked to have a garden. It was on account of this wedding, all of us away, that it wasn't discovered before—one of us always phoned them every day." He took off his glasses to polish them. He was a big man going bald, in a slightly shabby gray suit.
"When did you see them last?" asked Mendoza.
"It was a week ago today. I usually drove them to church—we all attend St. Mary's on Melrose—but we were leaving early Monday, busy packing and so on, and we skipped church on Sunday. Helen—my sister—had seen them on Saturday."
"Then we'll want to talk to her eventually. Had they recently mentioned any trouble or disturbance, Mr. Jackman? Prowlers, threatening phone calls?"
"Good Lord, no, why?"
"Had they said anything to you about running into any prejudice against your church?"
He stared. "In this day and age?" Mendoza told him about the message on the mirror, and he was incredulous. "Medieval," he said. And then, "But why—Mother and Dad?"
"Exactly," said Mendoza dryly. "Any number of Catholics around. We hope our laboratory will pick up something useful—fingerprints for choice. I suppose all of the family has been in the house at one time or another. They'll want your prints to compare. And I'd like you to look over the house and see if anything's missing."
"Yes, certainly. The—the bodies—"
"There'll be an autopsy, that's mandatory. We'll let you know when you can claim them."
"Yes."
"Tell me about their habits. When did they usually have an evening meal?"
"Well, since Dad retired they never had much for lunch. A sandwich. Then they'd have dinner about five o'clock."
"That pins it down to about five on Monday, then."
Mrs. Guttierez had been providential. "Let me see if the lab is finished with the house," said Mendoza, "and you can look it over. I'm sorry to ask you, Mr. Jackman—it's not in a very pleasant condition—but it has to be done."
"Yes, all right," said Jackman shortly. "They owned that house since nineteen forty. I grew up there—Helen and I. God, this is .... "
Mendoza got S.I.D. and Horder answered. ."Oh, yeah, it's all yours, Lieutenant. We left it sealed. We've picked up the hell of a lot of prints, some made in the blood. Also footprints. He walked in some of the blood, and the house being shut up and the bodies not found for four days, they'd dried as clear as a good moulage. We got some dandy pictures. It's a size nine, medium width, and it was a moccasin-type rubber sole."
"That's progress. So you'll want the family's prints for comparison?"
"I don't think we need 'em. When we've got prints in the blood, that identifies X pretty damn plain. The writing on the mirror, by the way, was black spray paint, the kind used on wrought iron. I can hunt down the brand for you if it's necessary."
"The wonders of science. Good. If you should come across a match for the prints in our files I trust you'll let us know."
"Oh, the dishes. There was a casserole of some kind with tunafish and mushrooms in it, and canned peas, and tapioca pudding."
"That doesn't matter now, but thanks. We can go to the house now if you'd like, Mr. Jackman." Mendoza put the phone down.
"I suppose I'd better get it over," said Jackman thinly.
It was still trying to make up its mind to rain again, chill and gray. Mendoza disliked being driven, but in case Jackman passed out on them they thought they'd better all go; they took Hackett's new Monte Carlo, and they were so used to the thing by now that it never occurred to them that Jackman might find it garish.
He didn't pass out on them. He looked around, looked at the lettering on the mirror and shook his head. The kitchen had looked only a little worse when the bodies were still there; there seemed an impossible amount of the dark brown that had been blood, and while the lab men had taken most of the spoiled food for analysis, they had left their chalk marks where the bodies had been, generous amounts of fingerprint powder all over everything.
Jackman just said, "God," again. "I'll have to get this cleaned up somehow—before Helen sees it."
"If you'd just have a quick look for anything missing."
Mendoza doubted very much that the killer had stolen anything here, but they had to know. Jackman started through the house; they heard him opening and shutting drawers, and presently he came to them in the living room and said heavily, "There's nothing gone that I can see. Of course there wasn't anything very valuable to steal. You—are finished in the house? I've got a key, of course. I suppose—I can hire somebody to come in and clean."
When they came out, Mendoza said, "Un momento, Art. I'll be three minutes." It was a dark afternoon, and there were lights in the house next door. He went up to the porch and rang the bell. In a moment little Mrs. Burroughs came to the door, and said, "Oh, it's you."
"Just one question for you, Mrs. Burroughs. What time were you at the market on Monday afternoon?"
She said, ‘'Why—" and a man came up behind her, a round-shouldered middle-sized man in shabby clothes. "This is my husband, he's off today. It's the police officer I told you about, Harry."
He nodded at Mendoza. He looked tired, not just at the moment but as if it was a permanent state, and he was defeated by life in general. Mendoza reflected that driving a city bus was not likely to be a euphoric career.
"Awful thing next door," he said.
"What happened," she told Mendoza, "I was starting to get dinner, and I remembered I was out of coffee. There was time before Harry got home, it's only a block up to the market. I left about half-past four and as long as I w
as there I went on and did a little shopping, it was about twenty of six when I got back."
"That's exactly the answer I expected," said Mendoza.
"Thanks so much."
* * *
Tonight Bob Schenke was holding down the night watch alone; it was Piggott's night off. Friday night was usually quiet, and he had an interesting book; he was annoyed when he got a call at nine-fifteen.
It was a block of stores out on Wilshire, five store-fronts in the same building, and Patrolman Paulsen was in front of the end one, with a little crowd of people around him. He came to meet Schenke and said, "There are two bodies, sir, and it looks funny—"
"What?" said Schenke. Well, sometimes things came along fast and furious, but it was rather surprising, the first week of cold weather when the pace usually slowed down.
"One of them's the cleaning woman, and the other one I'd guess is the store owner. Those are the cleaning people," said Paulsen, who was rather a new rookie. "They clean all these places here every Friday night. They've got a van out back. It's the Service-Kleen Company. When the rest of them were finished, they came to get this woman—girl. Consuela Rivera. She was cleaning in the music store there. And they found her then. Say they didn't hear a thing, but the building looks pretty solid."
Schenke said, "I'll take a look."
The five stores, or shops, housed a tax service, a woman's dress shop, an answering service, a health-food store, and the music store. SANFORD-NEWTON Music, said the sign on the window. The front door was open. "They did that from inside, sir. They came in the back from the alley."
"Damn," said Schenke. Stupid civilians. He went in. The music store was long and fairly narrow. The lights were all on. At the right side in front was a cramped office space closed off with wood-and-glass partitions, and in the doorway of it was crumpled the body of a man. He was a thin man about forty-five, in neat sports clothes; he had a little black moustache. He was lying half propped up against a tall steel filing case just outside the office door. His jacket was pulled up under him and the corner of a billfold showed in that hip pocket. Schenke prodded it out delicately and opened it on a driver's license for Richard L. Sanford of an address on Poinsettia in Hollywood. He walked up the store, past racks of records and tapes, counters and shelves bearing sound equipment, tape recorders, stereo components, and past a door at the back labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, came to a store-room and the two rest rooms side by side. There was a back door onto an alley, standing ajar.
The second body was just outside the door of the women's rest room. It was the body of a very pretty young woman, and most of her clothes had been torn off, were lying scattered around. She was lying on her back with her legs spread apart and knees slightly flexed. Schenke read the story almost at a glance. He looked out the back door. The narrow alley, with a white van parked a little way down, was between the block of stores and the backs of apartment buildings on the next street. He looked at the girl again. She had a mass of black wavy hair, a warm olive skin. Pity, he thought. About twenty-five.
He went back outside and called in to the lab. Nearly every bureau at LAPD worked round the clock; the felons kept weird hours. Duke was there, said they'd be up. Schenke went over to the silent little crowd huddled together.
"O.K., somebody tell it from the start."
Therewas a man and three women; the women all looked older than the girl; the man was tall and thin, in a white jumpsuit.
"Yes, sir," he said. "I'm Clarence Stiggs. We're from Service-Kleen, we hit this block every Friday night—you know how cleaning services do? Well, the jobs are all bunched together like—one office building or line of stores like this. We been cleaning here about three years. We do these places, and then we go on to another bunch of stores on Beverly. Tomorrow night we—but I guess that don't matter." He swallowed nervously. The women, looking scared, herded together silently.
"Go on," said Schenke.
They usually landed here, Stiggs said, about six-thirty. They met at the Service-Kleen office on Melrose, and all the crews—dozens of crews, he said, it was a big business—took the vans to the jobs. Here, each of them cleaned one place. It didn't take very long, about two hours. They dusted, vacuumed carpets, cleaned the bathrooms, put up new toilet paper and paper towels. By about eight-fifteen they'd be finished, meet at the van out back. But Consuela hadn't showed, and after a while he went in the music store looking for her. He found her. He called the police from there.
Schenke nodded. "None of you heard anything? Heard her cry out—any sound?"
"No, sir. If I'd heard her scream or anything I'd have gone to see what the matter was, naturally. But I was up in the tax office, other end. And some of the time we was running vacuums."
"O.K.," said Schenke. "You'll all have to come in to make statements. Tomorrow if you can make it. The Robbery-Homicide office at headquarters. Do you know Miss Rivera's address?"
One of the women volunteered, "It's Mrs. It's Boyd Street."
"O.K. You can go now, but don't forget the statements." They dispersed reluctantly, heading down the side street for the alley. The lab truck slid up to the curb behind the squad car, and Duke's lanky figure got out of it.
"What have you got?"
"Open and shut," said Schenke. "But likely, unless you can give us something concrete, we'll never know who or make a legal charge."
He thought he knew exactly what had happened here, even before he called Sanford's wife to break the news—if there was a wife. The store owner here late, maybe working on the books. The killer either having spotted the girl before, working here (those apartment back yards) or just coming along the alley while she was working at the back. Coming in and attacking her. And the girl making some sort of noise, loud enough to reach Sanford, not loud enough to reach the other stores. The killer knocking the girl right out. Running up front—Sanford had probably called out—to deal with Sanford, who was in the doorway of the office. The lights wouldn't have been on then—he'd bet the stupid civilians had done that. And knocking Sanford down, unaware he'd killed him against that sharp-cornered filing case. Going back to rape the girl.
He didn't need to spell that out to the lab men Duke and Parry. They'd seen a lot of homicides and rapes too. But at the sight of the girl, Duke stopped and said gravely, "Whee!"
"Yes, she's stacked, but she's also dead," said Schenke, slightly shocked.
"I didn't mean that kind of whee," said Duke. He looked at Parry. "Have we got everything we need?"
"I'll go look. I expect so. You and Scarne have been on the kick long enough."
"You," said Duke to Schenke, "go back and write the report. We'll call the morgue wagon—in about three hours. They can't have this one for a long, long time."
"You're going in for necrophilia?"
"Oh, my, what long words you use, Grandma. No, we're going to print the body. Such a nice naked body."
"What the hell?" said Schenke, "You can't get prints off—"
"Oh, yes, we can," said Duke. "Now. A smart lab cop in Florida figured out a way, just a little while back. Pretty simple in a way. You have to use a fiberglass filament brush, lifting tape naturally, and Kromekote cards—14O by 178 millimeter—it's kind of like photographic printing paper—"
"I'll take your word for it," said Schenke hastily.
"I'll go and write the report. After breaking the bad news."
* * *
The report was waiting for them on Saturday, with Landers off, Lake off and Farrell sitting on the switchboard. "No rest for the wicked," said Mendoza. The autopsy report on Leta Reynolds was in, but didn't tell them anything they didn't know.
Palliser called the hospital. Linda Carr was still unconscious, but they thought she was responding better. There was nowhere to go on the female heister. The Bullock's job was tacitly filed away.
Hackett had seen enough homicides to read between the lines of Schenke's report; Mendoza passing it over to him, he passed it on to Higgins. "Bob got hold of his wife, I s
ee." Before she had broken down, she had told Schenke that Sanford had stayed at the store late to work on the books. He and his partner, Frank Newton, owned two music stores; Newton ran the other one. Just a coincidence Sanford was there when the rapist walked in on the girl.
Higgins laid the report down and swore roundly.
"All the legwork, hunting the rapists out of records! And try to pin one down legally!"
Farrell buzzed Mendoza. "Say," he said, "I meant to say I saw that shot of you in the Times. Evidently some other people did too. I've got a Dr. Adam Fuller on the line who wants to talk to you. He's the editor of some magazine called The Cat Fancy, which strikes me as sounding backward, and he wants you to write an article about saving that cat in the fire."
"No," said Mendoza. "I'm not here. I'm investigating the murder of a Times reporter. I wish to God I was."
"Well, all right," said Farrell. "But if you want to know, I think it was sort of heroic at that. I like cats myself." He sounded embarrassed, and rang off abruptly.
"¡Por mi vida!" said Mendoza.
"Look," said Hackett reasonably, "the legwork's always to do, George. If it wasn't rapists, it'd be heisters. We're waiting on the lab, on the Jackman thing. We might as well start the damn routine on the new one."
The phone rang and Mendoza picked it up. "Mrs. Robsen," said Farrell noncommittally.
"I just wanted to let you know," said Cathy Robsen, "that the funeral's set for Monday. The chapel at Rose Hills. I—sort of got together with the lawyer on it."
"Thanks for letting us know, Mrs. Robsen."
"It doesn't matter," she said, "if none of you can make it. They're not there. I just thought I'd let you know."
"Yes, thanks." Mendoza relayed that. "Damn it, I'll have to go."
"It's raining again," said Higgins, looking out the window as drops began to hit the glass. "Damnation."