by Bill Bernico
The house was a light blue duplex with darker blue trim around the windows. The gate in front of the double doors wasn’t locked. It simply required you to lift the latch and let yourself in. Elliott and Gloria did just that.
Elliott turned to Gloria. “We’ve got the address, but which half is hers?” he says.
“It didn’t say,” Gloria tells him. “You have a fifty-fifty chance on the first try. Shall we?”
Elliott went with his instincts and knocked on the left door. A woman opened the inner door, staring out at Elliott through the screen door. “What do you want?” she says.
“Mrs. Wallens?” Elliott says.
The woman hikes her thumb at the next door. “Other door,” she says and quickly closes her door, without so much as a ‘have a nice day’.
Gloria knocks on the other door and waits. She hears footsteps on the other side of the door. A second later a curtain gets pulled back on the front window and a small face peers out. The curtain falls away again and the front door opens.
A smaller woman, perhaps forty looks through the screen door at Gloria. “Yes?” she says. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Sylvia Wallens?” Gloria says.
The woman doesn’t answer right away. She looks at Gloria suspiciously and then glances at Elliott.
Gloria adds, “My name is Gloria Campbell and this is Elliott Cooper. We like to ask you just a couple of questions about your ex-husband, Chet, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Why do you want to know about Chet?” she says.
“Mrs. Wallens,” Gloria says, “Elliott and I are private investigators and we’re looking into the death of someone over on Gordon Street. Do you think we could come in for a minute?”
“Can I see some identification?” the woman says.
Gloria and Elliott hold out their badges and I.D. cards so the woman can get a good look at them. She studies the photos and then compares them to the faces looking back at her. She opens the screen door and steps aside.
“All right,” she says. “But just for a minute. What did you want to know?”
“You are Sylvia Wallens?” Gloria says.
Sylvia nods. “I was,” she says. “I took my maiden name back when I divorced Chet. It’s Sylvia Powers now.”
“Well, Sylvia,” Elliott says, “We’d just like to ask you a few questions about Chet, it you don’t mind.”
“Sure,” Sylvia says. “What can I tell you?”
“Did Chet own a gun?” Elliott says.
Sylvia is taken by surprise. “What?” she says. “Why would you ask a question like that?”
“It’s just routine,” Elliott assures her. “These are just standard questions we ask when we look into someone’s background. Did he own a gun?”
Sylvia thinks for a moment and then offers, “I seem to remember that he used to have one years ago. I haven’t seen it in a long time.”
“Do you remember what kind of gun it was?” Elliott says.
“What do you mean?” Sylvia says.
Elliott pulls his .38 revolver from under his arm and shows it to Sylvia. “Do you recall if it was a revolver with a rotating cylinder, like this one, or could it have been an automatic, which looks a bit square and boxy?” He slips the .38 back under his arm.
“The other kind,” Sylvia says. “The boxy kind. I remember because I’d seen the other kind on those police shows on TV. Once I asked Chet where the bullets went in and he pressed a button somewhere on the gun and a pack of some sort slipped out of the bottom of the handle. It had the bullets in there.”
“That would have been a clip,” Elliott explains, “that slips into the butt of the gun. Let me ask you, did Chet have a temper?”
“You mean a short fuse?” Sylvia says. “Oh, yes. That was one of the main reasons I divorced him. Sometimes it didn’t take much to set him off and before you knew it, we’d be arguing over nothing at all. He always had to be right, at least in his own mind. Whether he was or not, it didn’t matter. He thought everything that went wrong was somebody else’s fault.”
Gloria leaned forward and looked at Sylvia. “Have you heard from him lately?” she says.
Sylvia shifter her gaze from Gloria to me and then back to Gloria. “Why do you ask?” Sylvia says,
“Again,” Gloria says, “Just routine. We’re just trying to get some background on Chet.”
“Do you think he’s involved in that death you mention over on Gordon Street?” Sylvia says.
“We don’t know,” Elliott says. “It’s on Chet’s mail route and we’re just trying to cover all the bases. We’ll eventually get around to talking to everyone on that route and maybe we’ll even talk to Chet before this is all done.”
“Well all I can say is try to stay on his good side, if you can,” Sylvia says. “You don’t want to set him off.”
“Sylvia,” Elliott says, “I know this sounds a bit cliché, Chet being a postal worker and all, but I have to ask. Do you recall if he ever, oh, how should I put this?”
“I believe the phrase is ‘going postal, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Sylvia says. “Chet didn’t go all out postal, you know, shooting up the place or anything, but he did have a big argument with the Postmaster shortly before our divorce.”
Elliott exchanges glances with Gloria and then turns to Sylvia. “Do you recall what that was all about?” he says.
“How could I forget?” Sylvia says. “It was about Chet’s transfer from his old route to the one near Gordon Street. He didn’t like that one bit. His original route was our old neighborhood near Grammercy Place. Chet could always stop back home in the middle of his route if he felt like it. Sometimes he’d stop in for a quick drink or a sandwich or just to use the bathroom. He couldn’t do that anymore after they transferred him to that other route. He looked at the transfer almost as a punishment for whatever they thought he did.”
“One last question, if I may,” Gloria says. “Would you have a photo of Chet that we could have?”
“Hell no,” Sylvia says. “Why would I want to be reminded of him?” Then she pauses and thinks about the question for a moment. She snaps her fingers. “Hold on, I just might have one after all.” She gets up and goes into another room and comes back out after a minute holding a medium-size photo of herself and another man sitting at a picnic table. She hands the photo over to Gloria. “You can have this one,” Sylvia says. “I don’t even know why I saved it.”
“Are you sure?” Gloria says.
Sylvia takes the photo back from Gloria, rips it down the middle and keeps the half with her picture on it, handing the half with Chet on it to Gloria. “There,” she says. “Now you can keep it.”
Gloria and Elliott rise from the sofa and extend their hands out to Sylvia. “Thank you so much for your cooperation,” Gloria says before she and Elliott get back into their car and drive back toward Chet Wallens’ new route.
“Wallens is probably still on his route,” Gloria says. “You don’t think he’d be stupid enough to kill two people in one day on the same route, do you? They’d have his number for sure and he’d be picked up before the day was out.”
“No,” Elliott says. “I figured that if he’s still on his route, he won’t be in his house.”
Gloria’s eyes get large. “You’re not really thinking about breaking into his house are you?” she says. “What happened to this being Dean’s case and that we should stay out of it?”
“You were there,” Elliott says. “You heard Dean and his veiled inference meant for our benefit. As long as we don’t involve him, we can do whatever we want to stop this madman, and I say we go have a look. Would you like me to let you out at the corner? I understand busses run every fifteen minutes.”
Gloria sighs. “All right,” she says. “But if it doesn’t feel right, we scram, okay?”
“Sure,” Elliott says. “Whatever you say.” He looks at his watch. “I figure we have maybe forty-five minutes on the outside, so how about if we’re in and o
ut in twenty?”
“No longer than that,” Gloria says, “or you’re on your own.”
Elliott drives north to Hollywood Boulevard and then east to Grammercy Place. Franklin Avenue is north at the next corner. Elliott parks around the corner on Franklin and he and Gloria get out and casually walk back around the corner, like a couple out for a stroll. Wallens’ house is near the corner and Elliott quickly looks around the neighborhood before he and Gloria slip between the houses and around to the back door of Chet Wallens’ house.
Gloria checks behind them while Elliott works the lock with two thin pieces of steel more aptly suited to a dentist’s hands. With a quick twist the knob yields and the two of them enter the Wallens house, closing the door behind them. Elliott points to the living room and Gloria softly steps toward that room while Elliott lightly pads down the hall in search of the bedroom.
Elliott pulls open drawers and checks closet shelves, coming up with nothing for his efforts. H stoops down and looks under the bed. There’s nothing there except dust bunnies. He lifts the mattress and sticks his hand between it and the box spring. His hand hits something hard and he grabs it, pulling it toward himself. It’s a .45 automatic with a silencer screwed on to the end.
Gloria gives the living room a thorough search but finds nothing incriminating. She heads back to the kitchen, pulling open cupboard doors and drawers. The drawer next to the sink must be his junk drawer because Gloria finds nothing more than a small hammer, a pair of pliers and two screwdrivers, one flathead and one Philips. There is also a box cutter with a retractable blade and a box of kitchen matches. She closes the drawer and heads back toward the hallway. She runs into Elliott coming the other way.
“Anything?” he says.
Gloria shakes her head. “Just the regular kitchen stuff plus a junk drawer with a few tools. How about you?”
“The usual,” Elliott says. “Shirts, ties, shoes, socks, a .45 automatic with a silencer, underwear and jackets.”
Gloria pauses, not sure she heard correctly. “Did you say socks?”
Elliott smiles. He knows when Gloria’s yanking his chain. He nods. “Socks with a silencer,” he says.
“Did you take it?” Gloria wants to know.
Elliott shakes his head. “We can’t let him know that we’re onto him just yet,” he says. “I have an idea. You just keep watch out the window for a few minutes. Fifteen minutes later Elliott looks at his watch. They have less than five minutes to clear out. Elliott and Gloria put everything back exactly as they found it…almost. The let themselves out the back door again and Elliott takes a few more seconds to lock the door again before the two of them casually walk back to their car and drive away. Elliott looks at his watch again.
“That was cutting it pretty close,” he says. “Let’s hope this works.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a .45 slug and hands it to Gloria. She examines it, turning it over in her hand.
“How will Dean explain where this slug came from?” Gloria says.
“I don’t suppose he’ll worry about that for the time being,” Elliott says. “What’s important for now is if we can match this slug up to the ones taken out of Mad Dog Vogel’s face. If it matches, Dean and his men will come down on Wallens like a ton of bricks. If not, this slug can quietly find its way into the garbage and no one will be any the wiser. And that leaves Dean off the hook if anything goes wrong.”
“And what about the two of us?” Gloria says. “Where does that leave us if something goes wrong?”
“Let’s just try to make sure nothing does go wrong,” Elliott tells her. “Wallens starts his route tomorrow morning around nine. Let’s just make sure we’re there on time.”
The next morning Gloria and Elliott meet in their office ten minutes before the time Chet Wallens is due to start delivering mail on his route. They drive to Gordon Street, parks under a palm tree and wait. Halfway down the block Elliott spots Dean in his unmarked cruiser. He’s almost positive that the black and white patrol cars can’t be far away.
“Looks like everyone’s in place,” Elliott says. “And just in time. Here come Wallens now. Let’s see if we can rattle his cage a little.”
They get out of their car and start walking down the sidewalk, toward mailman Chet Wallens. They watch as he goes up one sidewalk and down the other, dropping letters into the mailboxes hanging on the sides of the houses. The mailman is looking down at a stack of mail in his hands and doesn’t notice Elliott and Gloria approaching. They stop in the middle of the sidewalk and Wallens nearly walks right into them before he finally looks up and stops just inches from the two private eyes.
“Excuse me,” Wallens says, trying to step around Elliott.
Elliott takes a single step to his left, blocking Wallens’ path. Wallens tries stepping the other way, around Gloria, but she steps to her right, again blocking the mailman’s way.
“I said excuse me,” Wallens repeats, louder this time.
Elliott steps in closer and gets his mouth close to Wallens’ ear. “I know what you’ve been doing, Chet,” he says. “I just don’t know why?”
Wallens recoils, stepping back and cocking his head at an odd angle. “Are you drunk?” he says indignantly. “Get out of my way.”
Gloria steps in closer and whispers, “You’ve already killed four people, Mr. Wallens. You can’t just walk away from that.”
“I’m warning you,” Wallens says angrily. “Get out of my way.”
“Or you’ll what?” Elliott says.
Wallens catches Gloria looking at something over his shoulder. He turns to see a man walking toward them. Over Gloria’s shoulder Wallens sees a black and white cruiser go past the intersection and out of sight. He panics and reaches into his mail pouch, producing his .45 automatic with the silencer screwed onto the end of the barrel. He steps back two more steps, lifts the weapon and points it at Elliott’s chest. Without further provocation Chet Wallens’ pulls the trigger twice and then turns the gun on Gloria, firing two more rounds. His face falls apart when neither of his intended victims falls over.
Elliott reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a handful of .45 caliber slugs and shows them to Wallens. “It works much better with real bullets,” he tells Wallens, who is now staring incredulously down at his handgun.
A hand reaches around Wallens’ body and pulls the gun from him. It’s Dean Hollister, who has his weapon stuck in Wallens’ back. “I’ll take that,” he tells Wallens, and then turns to Elliott. “I saw this man pull a gun on you and thought I’d better come over and make an arrest. Do you want to press charges, mister?”
“I most certainly do,” Elliott tells him.
Dean turns to Gloria. “How about you, ma’am. Do you want to press charges, too?” he says.
Gloria nods. “Thank you,” she pauses like she doesn’t know who the man is.
Dean pulls out the leather case with his badge and I.D. and holds it up, mostly for Wallens’ benefit. “Lieutenant Hollister, L.A.P.D.,” he tells Gloria.
The black and white patrol car rolls around the corner and pulls to a stop in front of Hollister and his prisoner. Dean motions to the officer, who quickly pulls the cuffs off his belt and slaps them onto Wallens’ wrist. Before he connects them to Wallens’ other hand, he eases the mail pouch off Wallens’ shoulder and then turns him around, cuffing the other hand behind Wallens’ body. He shoves Wallens into the back of the patrol car and turns to Dean.
“Take him downtown and book him on suspicion of murder, four counts, and two counts of attempted murder,” Dean tells the officer.
The black and white rolls away and around the corner. Dean turns to Elliott and Gloria and shakes his head.
“You two were taking an awful chance,” Dean tells the two of them. “Suppose Wallens had discovered that someone had tampered with his .45 and had pulled the slugs out of all his bullets. He could have reloaded it with live rounds and you two would be sucking seeds right about now.”
“I take
it the slug I gave you yesterday matched the Vogel specimens,” Elliott says,
“Like two peas in a pod,” Dean says. “How’d you manage to get it?”
Elliott laughs. “Funny thing,” he says. “When you get to Wallens’ house you may find a hole lengthwise in his mattress. Obviously Wallens didn’t see it last night when he went to bed or this morning when he retrieved his .45 from under the mattress.”
“And wasn’t that nice of him to have that tool drawer in the kitchen?” Gloria says. “It only took Elliott a few minutes to turn that whole clip of slugs into a clip of blanks.”
Dean pinches his chin and then points a finger at Elliott. “But we still don’t have a motive of any of Wallens’ killings, do we?” he tells Elliott.
Elliott thinks for a moment and then offers, “From what you’ve told me and from what I was able to get out of Sylvia Wallens, my theory is that the killings were his way of protesting his recent transfer out of his old neighborhood. I guess he figured that if he made this neighborhood look dangerous enough that he’d have grounds for another transfer out.”
“That’s a little weak,” Dean says.
“Couple that with the fact that he had a short fuse,” Gloria says, and probably just needed one more thing in his life to send him over the edge and you have the makings of a dangerous man.”
“And his wife leaving him was just the thing to set him off,” Elliott says. “You can bet that every time he pulled the trigger on those people on his route that he was probably visualizing his wife, and that’s why he shot them in the face. Robbery was never a motive. Vogel was never a contract hit or revenge. He just happened to be on Wallens’ route and his time was just up on that particular day. One hell of a coincidence, though, wouldn’t you say?”
“And therein lies the silver lining in this dark cloud,” Dean says. “Society got rid of Mad Dog Vogel in the bargain. Too bad those other three people had to pay for it, though. I’d better get back to the station and see that Wallens is read his rights. Wouldn’t want him to slip through any cracks in our justice system, now would we?”