“Where are we?”
The boy looked properly surprised at this ignorance.
“Between Alcatraz and the Wharf.” He shook his head. “I told you.”
“I wasn’t listening,” Reardon said shortly.
The boy brought his speed up again, his ears sharp for the various sounds from the thick mist about them. Reardon realized again how completely lost he would have been had he been alone. It was like playing blindman’s buff in an area fifty times the size of municipal San Francisco, and with no limitations in movement as proscribed by paved streets. The young man suddenly cut his speed once again; the boat rocked in silence. Ahead of them Reardon heard a sound that repeated itself without pause; a pulsing that could not have been a foghorn. With time I suppose I could learn, he thought, and turned as the boy spoke. He was nodding in satisfaction.
“That’s Ann’s boat. That’s him.” He looked at Reardon. “What are you going to when we catch up with him?”
“If we catch up with him,” Reardon amended. He looked at the boy. “I don’t know. I know one thing; once he’s in sight I want you to give me the wheel. And you duck down. There have been enough people hurt in this affair as it is.” He saw a look of stubbornness come over the young features and his voice hardened. “That’s an order from a police lieutenant, so forget about any argument.”
He turned his head, staring out into the mist as the boy brought his speed up again, turning the wheel. They ran less than a minute before the young man cut his engines once again. A new sound came to them. “Yerba Buena Island,” the young man said. They swayed in a murky isolated pool of gray light, surrounded by the mysterious shifting yellowish walls. The sound of the other motorboat was louder; apparently Crocker was running blindly, not taking the precaution of stopping to listen as they were doing. He obviously felt himself safe from imminent pursuit by the police, whatever he felt about the possibility of eventual escape. The boy instantly brought up his speed, turning toward the sound.
“He’s not going very fast,” he said, “for which I don’t blame him, especially if he doesn’t know the bay.” He couldn’t help adding with a touch of pride, “I could catch him easily enough if he went top speed. Ann’s boat is all right, but it’s no racer.”
His hands handled the wheel with confidence, his head turning now and then to catch the nuances of the various foghorns assailing them from all sides. Reardon brought out his revolver, checked it automatically, and held it loosely in his lap. The young man paid no attention to it. Suddenly he frowned, looking at the other.
“Your man better watch himself—”
“What’s the matter?”
“There’s a ship’s horn coming right at him, and another of some sort not very far from him. Sounds like one of the ferries.”
“Ferries?” Reardon frowned. “I thought they’d all stopped running a long time ago.”
“I call them ferries; they’re barges, actually. Leslie Salt, for one; you’ve seen them I’m sure, blue and white. And Southern Pacific still brings freight cars over from Oakland, and we’re just about in their route.”
He opened his speed again; ahead of them the flat side of a long, low barge suddenly appeared through the mist. Freight cars lined up in rows on its deck; they looked like toys in the swirling light. The boy nodded at this confirmation of his judgment and swung the wheel sharply, paralleling the large flatbottom boat; the speedboat edged toward the prow. Several workmen standing on the front portion of the deck were visible now; he opened his engines wider, moving ahead, and then suddenly cut them completely. Through the fog ahead of them the familiar sound of the other motorboat could be heard between the loud hoots from the barge at their side. The small boat’s engine sound grew louder; then it came into view through the swirling vapor.
“That’s Ann’s boat,” the boy said softly. “He isn’t looking. He’s going to get run down.…” He sounded very young at the moment, not at all like a Vietnam veteran.
Reardon watched tautly; in the noise of the foghorns it was useless to shout, but still he found himself bending forward, yelling at the top of his voice. It seemed impossible that Crocker did not note the danger he was in. The figures on the railroad barge were bending over the side of the boat, obviously screaming. One had run back and was shouting up to the wheelhouse. Confused by the din from every direction, the man in the speedboat looked up. He hesitated a moment, half out from behind the wheel as if in preparation to jump, but it was too late. The barge had reversed its engines, churning water in a mad attempt to stop, but its impetus carried it inexorably forward. The flat curve of the prow climbed the small speedboat almost gently, apologetically, crushing it, thrusting it and its passenger beneath it and coasting ahead a bit before the straining engines had their effect and slowly drew it back from the scene of the crash. Reardon looked at the boy.
“Try to get closer.”
The boy obeyed without question, easing his craft amid the wreckage that was beginning to come to the surface and bob about on the dark water. Reardon tucked his gun back into its holster and leaned over the side of the boat, searching. For a moment he thought the body might have been entangled beneath the barge, but then it rose slowly to the surface, face downward, as if it were searching the depths for something it had lost, like life.
“There he is …”
The body rose and fell limply with the waves; it looked like an untidy bundle of clothing loosely tied in the middle and tossed into the bay to be gotten rid of.
“Closer,” Reardon said. The boy was pale. “Closer …”
The stocky detective leaned over the side, gripping the sodden jacket collar, lifting, straining. The body came part way over the side of the boat, tilting it; the neck canted at a drunken angle. Reardon thought of Bob Cooke’s body lying against the curb on Indiana; he put the thought away and tugged. The body hung there inertly a moment, rocking with the boat, and then tumbled in loosely, pushing against Reardon in comradely fashion. The boy stared away pointedly. Reardon made his voice expressionless.
“Can you find your way back to the marina from here?”
“Sure. The horns; the ones on land.” He tilted his head. “That’s North Point. I know them. It won’t be hard.”
“Let’s go, then.”
In the fog they had drifted out of sight of the barge and its crew; Reardon could picture the curiosity of the men on board at the appearance and subsequent disappearance of a speedboat picking up the body and taking it away. Well, he’d call the harbor police once they got back to the patrol car.
The boy pushed the throttles and the huge engines responded instantly, burbling the water behind them with its twin exhausts, tilting them backward as the boat increased speed. Crocker’s body lolled against Reardon in an attitude of affectionate idiocy; the young red-haired lieutenant eased it to the floor boards behind him, his face grim. He turned back, his jaw tight. Around them foghorns tooted and blared and squeaked and bawled with varying rhythms, echoing hollowly in the mist; before them the fog eddied mysteriously as the boy turned the boat and headed back toward shore.
Thursday—2:45 P.M.
Assistant Chief Boynton kept his eyes moving from one to another of the three men in his office, evaluating, checking, adding or subtracting from the running performance list he automatically kept in his head on all of his staff. It was a habit from the earliest days of command, and one he was able to indulge in without fear of detection, since his eyes were the merest of slits, closed against the blue smoke curling lazily from the cigar in his mouth.
“So he murdered Cooke,” he said, speaking around the cigar effortlessly. “I’ll accept that; because he attacked Morrison, he ran from the police, and he fired on a patrol car.” He modified his statement slightly. “That is, I’ll accept it as a provisional theory. I’d like to hear what you consider proof, Lieutenant.”
“Well—” Reardon paused and then added, almost as an afterthought, “—sir; my first doubts were caused, subconsciousl
y I admit, by the fact that he said he drove there directly from a restaurant and called us immediately after the accident happened. Now, his car had left an oil slick further up the street and I’d seen it and my mind registered the fact. It also registered an oil slick caused by the Buick standing in one place that appeared on the photographs the APB boys took of the skid marks. So my mind refused the time element that Crocker tried to feed us. And later, in checking, we found—that’s Sergeant Dondero and myself—that Crocker had faked at least a fifteen-minute alibi at the restaurant. Or, anyway,” he added, “he tried to.”
“And you can prove this?” The assistant chief’s voice was almost toneless. He looked on the verge of falling asleep, but every man in the room was well aware that he was probably the most alert of them all.
“Yes, sir. Definitely. The counterman’s testimony will prove it.” He took a breath and went on, wondering briefly if the counterman’s built-in sense of time would be enough proof for a jury, and then remembered that no jury would hear the case. “Then later, sir, in looking over the car, I noticed that the registration showed he’d bought the Buick only a week before. It struck me as odd. I—”
Boynton interrupted. He didn’t seem to shift his head at all but it was instantly apparent he was addressing Captain Clark.
“Was this fact noted in the technical report on the car?”
“Yes, sir.” Captain Clark couldn’t help sounding a bit smug. Getting by one of the assistant chief’s sudden questions was a bit like finding yourself in the quiet waters after a rough stretch of rapids. “All the information on the registration was duplicated in the report.”
“But you drew no inference from the registration date?”
Captain Clark wondered if perhaps the white water had been fully passed. “No, sir.”
“I see. All right, Lieutenant. Go ahead.”
“I hadn’t seen the technical report at that time, sir. I just read it a few minutes before this meeting. At any rate, it struck me as a coincidence that a man would get hold of what I would call the perfect car for killing someone, and a few days later actually happen to kill someone. I said in the beginning of this case that I’m leery of all automobile accidental deaths, as a matter of principle. A car is a deadly weapon that anyone can license and use at will. At any rate, we checked out the purchase of the Buick and found that Crocker had traded in a Volkswagen on it. Now, I don’t know what you know about vintage cars—”
“Quite a bit,” the assistant chief said quietly. “What’s your point?”
“Well, sir, then you know he certainly wasn’t a car fancier, because nobody who likes cars for the sake of cars drives a VW. They’re strictly a convenience job, easy to get through traffic with, easy to park, and relatively cheap. So his buying a monster of a car thirty years old didn’t make sense, unless you thought of his wanting to kill someone with it. It’s perfect for that, whereas the VW is too small and fragile to do the job without the man driving it taking the chance of getting killed himself in the accident.”
Assistant Chief Boynton frowned. “I’m not sure I buy that bit,” he said slowly.
“Well, sir,” Reardon said, equally slowly, “when you take it by itself, maybe not; but when you add it as one more link in the chain of evidence, I don’t think there’s much doubt that it fits in.”
“Maybe.” Boynton was noncommittal. He wiped the ash from his cigar and replaced it in his mouth. “I suppose it’s possible. Go ahead.”
“Yes, sir. Well, there were two questions in my mind—and I’m sure in yours. The first one was, how could he know Cooke would be there, right where he wanted him for killing? And the second one—and the big one, of course—is, why did he do it?”
He looked about the room a moment, wondering if his logic would convince the others. Captain Tower was looking at him encouragingly; Captain Clark expressionlessly, and the assistant chief didn’t seem to be looking at him at all. He plunged ahead.
“I think he knew Cooke would be there because he had an appointment to meet him there. I know that means he must have known the man, even though we can’t prove it, but he must have. Cooke’s ship was at Pier 26, under the Bay Bridge; he was killed at Indiana and Eighteenth, a block or so from the Central Basin docks. That’s miles away, and south. He had left his ship to meet someone at the Fairmont; a girl. That’s in the opposite direction. Why did he go to Indiana and Eighteenth? What was he doing there?”
“And also, how did he get there?” That was Captain Tower.
“By cab, almost certainly. We’re looking for the driver who carried him; he might have said something in the cab. But no matter how he got there, he wouldn’t have gone without a reason. And the most logical reason would be to meet someone.”
“It’s logical,” Assistant Chief Boynton admitted. “That doesn’t make it factual. Any more than even if Crocker killed Cooke purposely, it necessarily means he knew him personally. He could be a professional gun.” For the second time he removed his cigar and opened his eyes wider. He used the cigar as a pointer in Reardon’s direction. “If you want to use logic, use logic. If you want to use facts, use facts. If you want to use guesswork, use guesswork.” He replaced his cigar as if relenting. His eyes assumed their half-slit condition. “For example: suppose Cooke went to Indiana and Eighteenth to meet John Paul Jones to discuss the possibility of switching from the Mandarin to the Serapis; and suppose that Crocker just happened to have the ill fortune to be coming down the street at that time? While John Paul Jones was unavoidably detained?”
“No, sir.” Reardon refused the bait. “As I said before, maybe one little thing can be put down to coincidence, and maybe a second, but all together they can’t be handled that simply. Crocker had an appointment with Bob Cooke. He waited for him—the oil slicks prove it—and he kept his appointment. By running Cooke down.”
Assistant Chief Boynton wasn’t perturbed in the least. He nodded equably, his cigar bobbing. “I merely asked a question. Now, suppose you tell us why.”
Reardon started to lean forward in his chair, and then forced himself to relax and lean back again. He avoided Captain Clark’s eye as he answered.
“Well, sir, he got suspicious by Merkel asking for a continuance of his case, which he certainly hadn’t expected. He knew we didn’t have enough to hold him, or we would have. But he also knew I wasn’t happy about the case, or somebody wasn’t happy, or he would have been released at once, which is what he had expected. So he obviously knew we would be digging like mad between Wednesday and Friday, when he had to be back in court. He had no idea we might discover he’d faked fifteen minutes of alibi at that coffeepot, or traded a VW for a big Buick, or even that we might discover the true motive for the killing—”
“Which you still haven’t,” the assistant chief said dryly.
“Which we still haven’t,” Reardon admitted. “But Crocker didn’t know we hadn’t, or wouldn’t. But despite all this, where was the first place he headed after he skipped?” He paused a moment, unconsciously seeking effect. “The first place he went was to the police garage to get the Buick!”
“So he needed wheels. So?”
The lieutenant was well aware that the assistant chief was needling him but he refused to be drawn in. He also knew the old man wanted the facts, despite his tone.
“He went to the police garage downstairs to get the Buick, not because he needed wheels, but because he needed the Buick. Specifically! Remember, it was a pretty dangerous gamble; for all he knew we’d found our proof and were looking for him; but he still comes here to the Hall of Justice. And he slugged Morrison from behind to get the car away, and that was even more of a gamble, because if he doesn’t take Morrison the first time, Morrison will eat him for breakfast and still want coffee. So we can only assume there was something in that car valuable enough for him to take those chances.”
Captain Clark came erect from his slumped position in his chair, suddenly realizing the implications of the other’s accusation. Hi
s face began to redden.
“Now, look here, Lieutenant! Are you implying—?”
“I’m not implying anything, Captain. I’m just saying he wanted something that was in that car!” Reardon’s voice was low and stubborn, refusing to be intimidated by the other’s rank. “And since the technical squad couldn’t find anything except dust and a few hairpins which I’m sure must be at least thirty years old, then whatever he was looking for is still there. Or was two hours ago when the tow truck brought it in.”
Clark was white-faced at this insubordination. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Captain, that I have Sergeants Lundahl and Dondero searching the wreck down in the garage at this moment,” Reardon said flatly. His hands were resting lightly on his knees in the posture of one ready to use them actively if need be, and damned to the consequences. “And I mean searching it!” He dropped his voice, relaxing once again. “Because it’s obvious the squad missed something.”
“What do you mean? They didn’t miss a thing! Do you think this is the first car the squad went over and searched? Or the second, or the thousandth?” Clark’s voice reached for heavy sarcasm but somehow failed to make it. He really didn’t sound too sure of himself; he sounded as if he knew something had slipped in his jurisdiction, but he didn’t know who, why, where or when. And didn’t like not knowing, but promised disaster to those who had put him in this position.
“Maybe this is the first car they ever searched where they were told they were wasting their time before they even started,” Captain Tower suggested dryly.
“Now, look here, Tower!” Captain Clark was on weak ground and he knew it. He also knew the slit eyes of Assistant Chief Boynton were recording the scene photographically. “There was nothing to indicate it was murder at the time—”
“Except the Lieutenant told me he thought it was murder; that the car had killed the man deliberately,” Captain Tower said imperturbably. “Your technical squad tackled the car on that basis—or were supposed to. Did you think Lieutenant Reardon made up the murder angle to make work for himself? Or for publicity?”
Reardon Page 17