Murder Most Strange

by Dell Shannon

  Conway laughed. "You could be right. Anyway, there's not much chance of dropping on this one. Him and his savage beast."

  * * *

  Mendoza had left orders that he was to be called if Bartovic was picked up. But on Wednesday morning, with Hackett off, there was no news about Bartovic or Eileen at all. Bartovic's car hadn't been spotted, he hadn't come home, and his mother said she didn't know where he might be.

  Cindy Hamilton had come in yesterday to look at mug shots, but of course hadn't made any. Higgins was feeling annoyed; all the immediate possibles on the hair-trigger heister had been exhausted with inconclusive results. "If you're interested," he told Mendoza, "I'm halfway convinced it was Osterberg. He's got the right record for it, and he matches the description. He's got no alibi, we just can't pin it on him without more evidence."

  "The southern accent," said Mendoza.

  "Oh, damn it, he could have faked it. Who said he had one? Just Burroughs, and he's not a good witness."

  Mendoza looked up at him, looming over the desk; Higgins might as well have COP tattooed on his craggy face. "Forget about it and come help me scare somebody, George."

  "Pleasure. Who?"

  "Mrs. Bartovic."

  But she wouldn't scare. She was a fairly stupid woman, and it finally became apparent that she really didn't know anything to tell them. She gave them the names of Rudy's best pals again, but they'd been checked out already with no result. The two younger brothers were just sullen.

  The day wore on, and nothing much happened. One of the squads reported a body in an alley off Alameda, and Palliser went out to look at it, reported that it looked like another derelict dead of natural causes: a man about seventy, nothing on him but half a bottle of muscatel and a single dollar bill. The city would end up burying him.

  Everything seemed to have come to a standstill, suddenly and unexpectedly; for once they didn't have enough to do. From experience, they knew it wouldn't last; but with Eileen to worry about, it worried them.

  About three o'clock Mendoza had wandered out to the communal office where Higgins, Glasser, Grace and Wanda were fidgeting around; Wanda went down the hall and brought back coffee for everybody. "You know how it's going to end," she said. "When he's picked up, he'll have her body in the trunk, or finally tell us where he left it. Oh, damn. I know these things happen, but—"

  "She's a damn pretty girl," said Higgins gloomily. The sister had given them a photograph by now, bringing it in this morning, in case they wanted to send it around. She'd said miserably that she couldn't get in touch with Randy, Eileen's ex-boy friend, maybe he'd already gotten another girl. Eileen was as cute as a button, with a freckled tip-tilted nose, hair like a new penny, a wide friendly smiling mouth. Into the little silence came Lake's voice from the corridor.

  "Yes, ma'am? What can we do for you?" Whatever reply he got was inaudible; in a minute he came down to the big office with a woman and said, "It's Mrs. Bussard, Lieutenant; About an I.D."

  "Bussard?" said Mendoza. "I don't—"

  Glasser got up and so did Wanda. "Yes, Mrs. Bussard?"

  They were surprised to see her, anybody, on that one. She looked as if life had used her hard; she was a woman looking to be too thin, with fast-graying brown hair, sagging lines in weather-beaten-looking skin; she was cheaply dressed in an ill-fitting navy pantsuit and white blouse.

  "The police told me you'd found Gerald's body down here," she said in a fiat voice. "The police in Bakersfield, I mean. I didn't even tell that officer I knew Gerald, but it got to bothering me. I was still married to him after all, I had a kind of duty. I suppose. To see he isn't buried in a—a potters' field or anything like that. I haven't got much money but I guess I could afford something. It got to bothering me, so I took off from work and drove down this morning."

  "We're sorry to ask you." Glasser hesitated. "Isn't there anyone else who could—"

  She shook her head. She looked very tired. "It's all right, I don't mind. Just looking at him. I just wondered—I guess Annie wasn't with him, then. What did he die of?"

  "He shot himself, Mrs. Bussard," said Glasser quietly. That inquest was scheduled for tomorrow, along with one on Marion Cooper.

  "Oh," she said. "Oh." She had taken the chair Mendoza pulled out for her. She leaned back in it and shut her eyes. After a long moment she said, "It's queer how things turn out. When we got married he'd just started his own business—nice roadside restaurant up there, good class. We were doing good for a while. But you wouldn't be interested in that, I'm sorry." She straightened up. "Where do I have to go?"

  "Mrs. Bussard," said Wanda gently, "there was a girl with him. He'd shot her too. Would you know who she was? She was about twenty-three, a very pretty girl with long black hair and blue eyes."

  She sagged in the chair. "Annie," she said. "Annie."

  Wanda fled down the hall for a glass of water; but she was sitting up straight again when she accepted it. She took a sip, and sat just holding the glass. They gave her time.

  "So Annie's—gone too." She drew a shallow breath. "So I guess I got to tell about it. Annie—she was our daughter. Gerald's and mine. The youngest one. He—he did it to all of them—soon as they got to be thirteen, fourteen. You know what I mean. I never found out about Sandra, it just grieved me when she ran away. I don't know where she is, never heard. But after Julie run off she wrote me a letter, told me why—so I knew what was wrong with Annie. I was ashamed—tell anybody, have him put in jail—and then—then they just went away together, he took her away. That was five years back, I never heard nothing since." She put the glass down on Landers' desk and stood up. "I'd better go and look at them now," she said. "To say it is them, and whatever you want me to do."

  Wanda and Glasser took her out.

  * * *

  There wasn't a smell of Rudy Bartovic all day. At five o'clock, after kicking it around with everybody in, Mendoza amended the A.P.B. to cover eight counties around. He could be anywhere.

  Higgins went home early. Grace and Landers left about ten minutes later. Palliser was talking about dogs to Glasser, who didn't seem to be interested; he was saying that the obedience training Roberta had been doing with their German shepherd was really taking effect, it was a lot of work but with a dog like that worth it. Glasser was unresponsive. He hadn't written the final report on the Bussards yet. Palliser stabbed out a final cigarette and went out, and Glasser followed him. Wanda had already left.

  Mendoza went back to his office for his hat, and when he came out, a messenger had just dropped off two manila folders. Lake said good night and left.

  One was the autopsy report on Gregory Parmenter, the other, finally, the lab report on Marion Cooper's apartment. He took them back to his desk to glance at quickly. Parmenter: he'd been well beaten up, all right, but hadn't died of it directly; he'd had chronic heart disease, and the fatal attack had probably been brought on by the beating. Which was not much help, if interesting.

  In the other report, there was just one detail which caught his eye. He reached for the phone book, looked at the clock, which told him it was five of six, reconsidered, and then said to himself, “¿Por qué no?”

  If the man wasn't there, he could reach him tomorrow.

  But the man was there.

  FIVE

  Mendoza had called Hackett at home. He slid the Ferrari into the curb under the streetlight at five minutes to eight, and a couple of minutes later Hackett's Monte Carlo, its garish paint job not too visible in the dark, pulled up on the other side of the street. They both got out and met on the sidewalk.

  "My God, Luis," said Hackett. In the unnatural sodium light of the arc lamp he looked a little sick. "What a thing."

  "So. But once I'd heard that, as I told you, almost the foregone conclusion, ¿como no?"

  They went up to the deep porch of the old-fashioned bungalow together, and Mendoza pushed the bell. After a minute Cooper opened the door. "Oh—you again," he said. "Hello. Have you—found out anything more?" />
  "I'm afraid so, Mr. Cooper," said Mendoza gently, and swept off his hat. "May we come in?"

  They didn't say very much to the Coopers; there wasn't much to say, and the Coopers were silent and stunned, just staring dumbly at them.

  "You understand, we'll have to talk to Harriet," said Mendoza.

  Daniel Cooper looked at his mother. She said faintly, "She's—in her—I'll—" and went out like a sleepwalker. She was an attractive child, not pretty-pretty, but characterful: the neat dark cap of hair, the clear hazel eyes, the small sober mouth. "Oh," she said, looking from Mendoza to Hackett, "you're the policemen."

  "That's right, Harriet." Her grandmother eased her gently into a chair, and Mendoza sat down on the big ottoman opposite that. "You know we've been trying to find out what happened to your mother. We've been talking to people who knew her, and looking at that apartment. And we've just found out that she had a bottle of capsules of something called phenobarbital. Some of our men found the empty bottle in the wastepaper basket in the kitchen." She was listening politely, head down—or perhaps she wasn't listening. "There was a doctor's name on it, because it was a prescription. Dr. Adam Guilfoyle. I talked to him a couple of hours ago, and he told me some interesting things." She just sat there, unmoving. "You know what I'm talking about, don't you, Harriet? Your mother had an abscessed tooth a couple of months ago, and Dr. Guilfoyle gave her the prescription in case she had any pain after he'd taken the tooth out. But he told her to be careful. He knew your mother—she'd been a patient of his for six or seven years. And he told her to tell you to be careful. Because he knows you too, doesn't he? He takes care of your teeth too. And in fact, after your mother had gone to him then—in an emergency—you had an appointment with him, to be checked for any new cavities, just a couple of days later, didn't you? And Dr. Guilfoyle gave you a little lecture about those capsules he knew your mother had at home, didn't he'? He knows that sometimes people your age are tempted to experiment with the pills, and he explained just how dangerous that could be."

  She just sat there, very still. "You know you'll have to tell us about it," said Mendoza. "Or do you want us to guess? You were the only one there, you see."

  “Harriet, honey—" said Cooper chokingly.

  She raised her eyes slowly and looked at him. "Do you—want me—to tell, Daddy?"

  He could only nod silently. He got out, "You have to—be honest, honey."

  Harriet said drearily, draggingly, "Well, all right. She didn't want me there or even like me much. It was just the money from Daddy she wanted. And she never cleaned the apartment, all the dishes were dirty all the time, all messy everywhere. And I didn't like that school. I just—I just want to live with Daddy and Grandma—they really want me. It got so I couldn't—hardly—stand it—I wanted so bad—to get away—but I never could because of the money from Daddy. And—that week—I was so ashamed—no clean clothes to put on, she forgot about the laundry, she was cross when I—I—I—all of a sudden I thought, if she just wasn't there anymore that would sort of fix everything. And I could stay with Daddy and Grandma all the time."

  Cooper made a strangled sound. "So, tell us what you did that night," said Hackett.

  She raised docile eyes. "I was thinking about it ever since I got home from school. She went out after dinner, she'd just brought a couple of hamburgers from McDonald's and mine was all cold and too red, I didn't eat much. And I knew she'd fix herself a drink before she went to bed, she always did lately. Lots of times I woke up when she came home. I'd hear her. And there wasn't much left in that bottle of scotch, I thought she'd prob'ly use it all. I remembered what Dr. Guilfoyle said. She hadn't used hardly any of those little capsules. So I took them all apart and put all the powder stuff into the bottle. And then I just went to bed. I heard her come in." Harriet was looking down at the floor again. "She was singing a song about blue skies, and she knocked over a chair in the kitchen."

  Cooper put his hands over his face.

  "Next morning I didn't—didn't look—it felt all funny, like maybe I'd dreamed all that—but when I got home from school—I was scared, but I had—to look, and then I didn't know what to do, except just tell somebody." She looked squarely at Mendoza. "Are you—going to put me in jail for it?"

  "We'll have to tell the story to a judge, Harriet,” said Mendoza seriously, "and right now we'll have to take you to a place called Juvenile Hall, where you'll be staying until you see the judge." He flicked a glance at Hackett, who went to find the phone and call in.

  Mrs. Cooper said in a thick voice, "She'll need—I'd better—a bag—" Harriet began to cry, slowly and tearlessly, and her grandmother went to her, led her out.

  Cooper was standing with his back turned in front of the empty blackened hearth. "What—what's going to happen?" he asked in a dead tone.

  "I don't know, Mr. Cooper. There'll be a hearing before a Juvenile Court judge. She's pretty young. But it wasn't exactly impulse, she'd planned it out—that'll be taken into consideration. They'll want a psychiatric evaluation, and pending the result of that—I can't tell you, but I'd rather doubt that she'll be held in custody. It's possible she'll just be put on probation and remanded to you—with a juvenile officer keeping a check on her behavior."

  "Oh, God," said Cooper wearily, "I don't—know how to talk to her about it." He dragged a hand down over his face, and then he said suddenly, "It's my fault. Christ, it's all my fault. If I'd had the guts to fight Marion, insist on getting custody . . . God, I knew she was a bad mother. It was all my fault. My God, eleven—eleven years old—she didn't—really know what she was doing, did she?"

  "Oh, yes, Mr. Cooper," said Mendoza steadily, "she knew. That's the worst of it. Just remember that."

  A couple of policewomen from Juvenile Division came up to take Harriet in. Both she and her grandmother were crying then. Cooper hugged her, kissed her, told her they'd be coming to see her. Then he and his mother went into the house and shut the door.

  Mendoza and Hackett went back to their cars without much exchange. There really wasn't much to say about Harriet.

  * * *

  On Thursday morning there were inquests scheduled for the Bussards, for Marion Cooper; Mendoza and Glasser would cover those, offer the formal testimony. There wasn't anything in on Bartovic at all. It was Higgins' day off.

  Hackett and Palliser went back to the little quiet dead-end street to ask the neighbors if they knew of anybody who'd come to see Parmenter, about any relatives. After all, it was a settled neighborhood, and he'd lived there a long time. Palliser went to try the places across the street. Hackett tried the neighbors immediately next to Parmenter.

  Mrs. Klaber was a pleasant-faced, friendly middle-aged woman; her husband was at work, of course: he was a clerk at Bullocks' men's shop. "Well, she had a brother," she told Hackett doubtfully. "Mrs. Parmenter, I mean, she seemed to be a nice enough woman, what little I saw of her—but of course she died, it was cancer, and I couldn't tell you the man's name, not that he came to see them very often. Mr. Parmenter was a kind of recluse, nobody ever knew him very well."

  At the house on the other side of Parmenter's, the rather attractive dark-haired Mrs. Hilbrand was on her knees weeding a flower bed at one side of the sparse front lawn, with a toddler about three riding a tricycle on the front walk. She recognized Hackett, asked him to sit down on the porch, accepted a cigarette, saying she was glad of an excuse to take a rest. "I don't remember anybody ever coming to see him—them. The wife was still alive when we bought this place, of course. They'd never had any children, and I guess there weren't any relatives. He was a sort of queer old man."

  "We've gathered that," said Hackett.

  "It was as if he didn't want any friends." The toddler came staggering up the steps and solemnly showed Hackett a black-and-white stuffed dog.

  "Nice doggie," he said. Hackett smiled at him and patted the dog obligingly. "Nice Pepper," crooned the toddler. "Pepper die and go to heaven."

  "Yes, darling," she
said gently, "but we're busy talking, you run and play. We're going to get a nice new doggie pretty soon. Mr. Parmenter was really an old grouch, to be plain about it. I was furious at him that time when Don fell down—it was last summer, a Sunday afternoon, and I was out with my sister. Oh, you don't know, of course, but Don—my husband—was in a terrible car accident last year, he lost a leg and the sight of one eye, and he was still getting used to the artificial leg. He fell in the back yard and couldn't get up, and Mr. Parmenter was out in his yard, Don called and asked for help and the old—well!—the old bustard just pretended he couldn't hear. You see what kind he was."

  "I can think of other names," said Hackett sympathetically.

  "It's just lucky, of course, that they held the job for Don—he's a desk clerk at the Ambassador, so the leg doesn't really bother him much. Haven't you found out anything about what happened to Mr. Parmenter?"

  "Not very much," said Hackett.

  "Well"—she gave him a friendly smile—"I suppose I'd better get back to the yard work."

  He compared notes with Palliser, who had heard much the same thing from the other neighbors. "I don't," said Palliser, "see anywhere else to go on it."

  Hackett agreed, rather bored with Gregory Parmenter. They drove out to Federico's, separately, for lunch, and met Mendoza and Glasser just going in. There hadn't yet been a smell of Bartovic, and Mendoza was feeling annoyed. When they got back to the office, Lake said, "Business picking up some, Lieutenant. There was a new call ten minutes ago, body in MacArthur Park—Jase took it." And just then a light flashed on the switchboard and he plugged in automatically. "Robbery-Homicide, Sergeant Lake . . .

  Oh. Oh? Yeah, he just came in. Palliser—it's Jase."

  "Listen," said Grace, "I think you'd better come and look at this, John. You'll see what I mean when you get here."

  Curious, Palliser went downstairs again and drove over to MacArthur Park. There are a few privileges granted to police officers, and one of them is parking in red-painted curb zones; parking slots were always rare along here, but he left the car in front of an office building across Wilshire and walked over into the park. Just up by the little lake on this side were Grace, a uniformed man, and two women; beyond them a man slumped on a park bench. They were the only people in the park. It was rather queer, thought Palliser, remembering Eileen, that people didn't seem to go and sit in parks anymore, feeding the pigeons and enjoying the sunshine; maybe these hectic days they just didn't have time. And MacArthur was a nice city park, too, with its war memorial and green lawns, and little lake, and the clean new bright skyline of all the high—rise buildings along Wilshire, bisecting it.