Columbo: Grassy Knoll

by William Harrington

  “I don’t think so. I worked with them until the police closed the office yesterday. Looks like they’re all right. The hardware’s okay. All that happened was, the disks were erased. I tried a piece of software that sometimes can bring the lost data back, but these disks were too much erased. Wiped.”

  “So you think you can make those two computers do what they did before?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. We’ll let you back in the office. Put ’em back together, so they can do what they used to do.”

  “I can reinstall the programs. In fact. I’ve already reinstalled the word processor. What’s lost is the data.”

  “Suppose I had some new data for them to work with. Can they do it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Tell me how to protect that data, so it won’t be erased the way Mr. Drury’s original data was.”

  “Is this data on diskettes?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “You copy those,” said Geraldo urgently. “Make backup disks. Don’t bring the only copy. Make two backups. Don’t take chances.”

  Columbo turned to Martha Zimmer. “The police computer center can do that, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Now, Geraldo. Where did the virus come from, do you think?”

  “In on the telephone line, I think.”

  “Can ya cut that line off?”

  “You bet. Lieutenant. Pull the telephone plug.” Columbo nodded and smiled. “Well…” he said. “We may be gettin’ somewhere with this thing. As soon as the professor’s classes are over, we’re going to open that vault.”

  “Don’t you need a court order?” Martha asked.

  “What for? It’s the professor’s vault. He’s got the key. I want you with me on this, Martha. I might need an officer with a sidearm.”

  Fourteen

  1

  Professor Trabue admired the Peugeot. He called it a classic car and said he wished he owned it.

  “It gets a lot of attention,” said Columbo. “I’ve had it a lotta years, and it’s got a lotta miles on it. I always say, if you take good care of somethin’, it’ll take good care of you.”

  “Like your service revolver,” said Martha sarcastically from the back seat.

  The Innes Vault Company occupied a one-story steel-and-glass building that sat behind four tall, well-tended palms. A small fountain played in the lawn between the parking lot and the building. Someone had dumped in a box of detergent, and foam skittered across the parking lot and into the street, on gusts of wind.

  Going inside, Columbo and the professor carried leather satchels.

  Inside, the building was all brushed aluminum and polished wood, fluorescent light and marble floors. A glass wall separated the reception area from the vaults and the cubicles where people could open their boxes.

  Professor Trabue identified himself to the receptionist by showing his key. He signed a card, and she compared his signature on that card to the signatures on a second card. Columbo noticed two signatures on the second card: the professor’s and that of Paul Drury. Seeing Drury’s name, the receptionist picked up her telephone and called the manager. He came out through a glass door in the glass wall.

  “Ordinarily, when a box was rented in the name of a deceased—” he started to say, but Professor Trabue interrupted him curtly.

  “The box was rented in my name. I pay the rent. I allowed Mr. Drury access to it because I wanted him to have access to certain research materials I have stored here, but this deposit box is mine, not his.”

  “And these two people are—?”

  “Lieutenant Columbo, sir. Los Angeles Police, homicide squad,” said Columbo, showing his shield. “And this is Detective Martha Zimmer.” The manager escorted the three of them through the glass door, which was unlocked by electric signal from inside a cage somewhere in the building, and led them to a tiny office. After a minute or so, the manager pushed a wheeled cart into the office. He inserted his key into one of the two slots in the box, and the professor used his key in the other. The manager withdrew and closed the door.

  The box sitting on the cart was as big as a side drawer on a desk. The professor lifted the lid. Inside were stacked rank after rank of computer diskettes. On top of those stacks were manila envelopes, fat with their contents.

  “Treasure of the Sierra Madre!” Martha whispered.

  “An excellent simile,” said the professor. “Like the gold dust, it could all blow away in the wind.” He ran his hand over the stack of diskettes. “Recovering information from these requires technological expertise.”

  “We got that,” said Columbo. “Let’s look at the pictures.”

  The manila envelopes contained maybe fifty photographs. About twenty of them had to do with the Kennedy assassination. The others were graphic pictures of the victims of diseases and accidents, some of them of bodies on the autopsy table, pictures of lungs ravaged by tobacco smoke, pictures of prominent politicians conspicuously in their cups, pictures of two others in flagrante delicto, pictures that were unidentifiable without information from the diskettes, and so on. One photograph was a nude of a prominent female member of Congress, taken apparently with a long telephoto lens. Another was a sexually explicit photo of a pair of famous popular singers, both male.

  “These pictures were entrusted into my custody,” said Professor Trabue of the sexually scandalous pictures. “And I propose to burn them.”

  “Martha and I couldn’t say if you did or didn’t, sir,” said Columbo. “We were looking at somethin’ else when you showed those pictures.”

  “Here are the Dallas photographs Drury was so fascinated with,” said the professor. “Both the originals and the computer-enhanced versions.” The original photographs were unremarkable. They had been enlarged from 35mm negatives probably and were grainy and not perfectly focused. They showed, chiefly, a crowd on a sloping lawn, some in the shade of trees, others in the sunlight. The photos had been taken from such a distance that it was impossible to tell if the people in the crowd were smiling or scowling. Some seemed to be in white shirtsleeves. Others were in dark clothes. To anyone but cognoscenti of the whole drama of the Kennedy assassination, it was just a crowd on a slope, watching the street between them and the camera. To someone very familiar with the assassination scene, it was apparent that the two pictures had been taken from the triangular park between Elm and Main streets and that the sloping lawn was what would become known to history as the Grassy Knoll.

  Motorcycles were on the street in the first picture. In the second, an old open Cadillac was passing by, men riding on the running boards. In some odd way the crowd looked different, though the figures were so small and indistinct it was impossible to tell exactly what the difference was.

  “Didn’t the guy take a picture of the presidential limousine?” Columbo asked.

  “Maybe what the man saw was so shocking that for a moment he couldn’t take a picture,” suggested Professor Trabue. “Maybe he was winding his film. Anyway, people sent Drury all kinds of pictures, their snapshots from that day. The ones showing the President had probably been turned over to the authorities a long time ago. These pictures were the leftovers, sent along to Drury maybe in the hope of getting his autograph on a thank-you letter.”

  “Did Mr. Drury work his computer thing on all of them?” asked Columbo.

  “No. But he had studied enough to know that this was the crowd on the Grassy Knoll. A lot of witnesses said they heard shots fired from the Grassy Knoll. That’s why he had these enhanced.”

  “Okay. I’d like a look at the computer-enhanced versions,” said Martha.

  The professor handed over two glossy eight-by-ten prints, each representing a postage-stamp-size segment of the original prints. These were strange. They had an odd look, as if they were photographs heavily retouched by an artist. The explanation of computer enhancement was dramatically displayed in these pictures. The computer had located the dots representing each grain of si
lver left on the negative by the developing process—that is to say, grains changed by the impact of light from the camera lens—and it had applied laws of mathematical probability to put additional grains where none actually existed. The process had changed a few of the tiny, vague, anonymous people on the film to real people with features and expressions, postures, clothes… and reality.

  “Could this thing work wrong?” Columbo asked. “I mean, could this process make somebody look like somebody he wasn’t?”

  “The process depends on probability and isn’t perfect,” said the professor. “But the answer to your question is no. The process could not create a false image. When it fails, it creates a vague image. These two men in the enhanced picture must have looked very much the way they are shown.”

  “Fascinatin’…” muttered Columbo.

  The first computer-enhanced photograph portrayed two men standing near a tree on the Grassy Knoll. Both looked young. They wore white shirts, one with his shirtsleeves rolled back. That they were together was evidenced by the fact that one stood with his arm over the other’s shoulder. The one seemed to be speaking to the other, quietly into his ear. Between them, held by the man who was listening, was a rifle: an object clearly identifiable as a rifle. They stood close together, so close that maybe they were shielding the rifle from the people standing around them. It looked as though that would not have been difficult. The crowd’s attention was intently focused on whatever was in front of them: in this case, clearly the motorcade carrying not just the President of the United States but also his fascinating wife.

  The second photograph was different. The people in the enhanced fragment were obviously mesmerized by something. All their heads were turned to their right, staring toward the Triple Underpass where Elm Street passed under the railroad tracks. In their conspicuous agitation, none of them seemed to notice that the man with the rifle was striding up the slope toward the picket fence. The rifle was clutched close to his side, the muzzle pointing at the ground.

  The man who had stood beside him in the first picture did not appear in this one.

  “So much for Lee Harvey Oswald,” said Martha.

  “No,” said the professor. “The shots that killed the President were almost certainly fired by Oswald. At least one of them was. The Grassy Knoll is at the wrong angle. But if there were other shots fired, maybe from the Grassy Knoll, as some witnesses insist, there you see two men with a rifle.”

  “Two men in the first picture,” said Columbo. “What happened to the other man between the time the first and second pictures were taken?”

  Professor Trabue shook his head. “Every square centimeter of that photograph was computer enhanced. He was not on the knoll when the second picture was taken. In other words, between the time when the motorcycles went by and the time when the limousine carrying the wounded President went by, the second man left the scene. A matter of half a minute maybe.”

  “Could he have been behind one of those trees?” Martha asked, looking at the original, non-enhanced picture.

  The professor shrugged. “I suppose. But clearly the other man is scramming, carrying his rifle.”

  “No way to tell if he actually fired a shot,” said Martha.

  Professor Trabue shook his head. “I’ll tell you what makes me think he didn’t. If he had, wouldn’t someone have been looking toward him? Wouldn’t someone have heard the shot and turned to look at him?”

  “Well, there was a lotta confusion there,” said Columbo. “Noise. I read somewhere that the motorcycles were backfiring. A rifle makes less noise than a revolver… it coulda been one way or the other.”

  “Do you have any idea who the two men are, Professor?” Martha asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you think Mr. Drury knew?”

  “If he did, he didn’t tell me.”

  “Well… this stuff should be taken out of here and hauled to headquarters,” said Columbo.

  “Everything should be copied,” said Professor Trabue.

  “That’s exactly what we got in mind. I hope the satchels are big enough for everything. I guess if we got diskettes left over, I can get some of ’em in my raincoat pockets.”

  2

  “What you got in the satchels, Columbo?” asked Captain Sczciegel.

  Columbo was glad for the opportunity to put down the two heavy satchels. He had played the gallant and insisted he would carry both, so Martha, the new mother, would not have to carry heavy weight; and as they walked through the halls at headquarters he was flushed and breathing heavily.

  “That’s evidence, sir,” he said. “Evidence. It’s got to be duplicated, then locked up.”

  “In the Drury case?”

  “Yes, sir. In the Drury case.”

  “Lieutenant, let the uniformed boys take care of that.” The captain took the time to glance at his watch. “There’s time for you to get out to the pistol range and requalify. I want you to do it! That’s an order.”

  “Sir, I… ah, I’d have to go home and get my revolver. I… ah, wouldn’t want to try to qualify with a strange pistol.”

  “Lieutenant Columbo, I will pretend I didn’t hear you say your service revolver is at home. I— You did find it, didn’t you? The last time we spoke on this subject you said you weren’t sure where it was. You’re supposed to carry it, Columbo!”

  “Well, uh… the fact is, sir. I’m always afraid I’ll lose it. I got a certain… that my wife calls untidiness about me.”

  “Columbo. Now. They have plenty of perfectly good pistols at the range. Just go out there and requalify. I’m gettin’ flak about this. Go qualify, Columbo! Martha. You go with him. Don’t let him find any excuses.”

  3

  Columbo glanced around. This was going to be worse, much worse, than firing across a creek at some tin cans. This was a regular range, with lines of targets at twenty-five feet, fifty feet, and fifty yards. You had to qualify by shooting at man-size silhouettes at fifty feet. He figured he’d be lucky if he could hit the hillside behind the targets, much less the targets.

  “Lieutenant, uh… Columbo. Yes, sir. All right, sir. Whenever you’re ready. Just step up there and punch a few holes in the target, and it’s done. I’ll sign off on you and send the paper downtown.” Sergeant Brittigan was a big, ruddy-faced man in the image of the old-time Irish cop. The fact was, he had been severely wounded in the line of duty and was serving as sergeant of the pistol range until he could retire on full pension. He carried himself with a stiff military bearing, and his uniform had been retailored to fit him like the uniform of a Marine drill sergeant—which in fact he had once been.

  Columbo puffed on a cigar. The wind whipped his raincoat around him. “Problem is. Sergeant, I don’t have my service revolver with me. It’s, uh… well, it looked like a crack had developed in the cylinder. I’m gonna have to send that gun back to Colt to have the cylinder replaced.”

  “No problem. Lieutenant. We’ve got all kinds of fine weapons available here.”

  “I thought there was some kinda rule that a man had to qualify with his own sidearm.”

  “Lieutenant Columbo, you can qualify with any weapon you want to fire.”

  Columbo looked out across the range. Half a dozen uniformed officers, wearing big earmuffs, were firing at targets fifty feet away. Splinters flew from one of the target frames: dramatic evidence that the officer had missed wildly.

  “Well, I figure I oughta qualify with my own revolver. Maybe I should just wait till it’s available.”

  Sergeant Brittigan shrugged. “Up to you, sir,” he said.

  “No, it’s not up to him,” Martha interjected. “The captain ordered him to qualify today.”

  “In that case—”

  “Captain won’t mind if—”

  “Columbo.”

  “Not havin’ the revolver I’m used to—”

  “We can make an allowance for that, Lieutenant,” said the range sergeant.

  “Y’ can?”

&nbs
p; “Oh, sure. Look, sir, take a look at this.” Sergeant Brittigan snapped loose the strap that held his own sidearm in his holster and handed Columbo a gray steel automatic.

  “What’s this?”

  “That’s a Beretta, sir. Standard U.S. military issue these days. Replaces the old Colt .45. Very accurate. Easy to hit your target with that. Look, just let me put some earmuffs on you, and you fire five rounds through that. Just for practice. Let me show you. Here’s the safety—”

  Sergeant Brittigan and Martha stood back and watched Columbo take a stance and aim the Beretta. His cigar smoke drifted away on puffs of wind. He fired, squinted at the target, and took aim again.

  “You know who he is, Sarge?” Martha asked Sergeant Brittigan.

  “Columbo… I’ve heard his name.”

  “Do you remember the Morrow case?” she asked. “Child stabbed. Mama insisted it had been done by a man who’d broken into the home, tried to rape her, then killed the child in a fit of rage. Do you remember who broke that case?”

  “Columbo?”

  “Columbo. And do you remember when Officer McCarthy was killed when he responded to a call for help from a man dying from a heart attack? The man died all right, but the officer was bludgeoned to death, and—”

  “Columbo?”

  “Columbo. But he can’t shoot worth a damn.” Sergeant Brittigan glanced at Columbo, who was now firing his fourth shot. “The problem is. I’m not supposed to find they’re crack shots; I’m supposed to make sure they are good enough they won’t send stray shots at innocent people.”

  “Couldn’t happen with Columbo,” she said. “He doesn’t carry his service revolver. He’s one of the finest detectives on the force, but he doesn’t carry his service revolver, and he can’t swim.”

  The sergeant watched Columbo fire his fifth shot, then picked up his spotting scope and studied the target. He glanced at Martha, frowning. “Now that I think of it,” he said, “there is some kind of rule that an officer is entitled to requalify with his own personal sidearm.”