Hiding Place (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “Go down and get her, will you?” I considered a moment, finally saying, “Then, if you want to, you can go home. All I need now is a statement from the boy. You can witness it in the morning, if you don’t mind taking my word for what he said.”

  Rising promptly to his feet, he smiled. “Well, I am a little hungry. But if you want me to, I can sure stick around, Lieutenant.”

  “No, never mind. Just tell Mrs. Haywood to come up.” I smiled. “I’d rather talk to her than you.”

  Returning the smile, he waved awkwardly. “Yeah. I see what you mean. Well—” He waved again. “See you tomorrow, Lieutenant.”

  “Right. And thanks, Canelli.”

  “That’s okay. See you.” He turned away, narrowly avoiding a sand-filled ashstand.

  Quickly glancing up and down the deserted hallway, I kissed her as she stepped from the elevator. Startled, she first squirmed, then giggled, finally returning the kiss with a sudden, playful lust. Momentarily aroused, I could feel her body secretly, subtly responding to mine.

  She stepped back, smiling into my eyes. “Are you on duty, Lieutenant?”

  “Just going off. Would you like to go off duty with me?”

  “I’ve got a roast in the oven.”

  “Let it burn.”

  “We have to eat, though. We…”

  Wheeling a stainless-steel lab cart, a nurse was turning a nearby corner. Test tubes tinkled like wind chimes. The nurse smiled at us impersonally.

  “Come on—the waiting room’s down here.” As I fell into step beside Ann, I saw David’s door opening. A nurse came out, nodded to me, and turned in the opposite direction. The doctor was still inside with the parents. The doctor had promised the parents fifteen minutes. Then I would have my turn.

  Seating herself primly in an easy chair, Ann’s eyes darkened as she asked, “How is he?”

  “As far as I know, he’ll be all right. Still, when anyone’s been unconscious for that length of time as a result of a blow on the head, there’s always the possibility of brain damage.”

  She caught her breath. “Oh, no.”

  I looked down at my lap, examining the knuckles of my clenched right fist.

  “How long was he unconscious?”

  “About forty-five minutes.”

  “What kind of a person could have done that—attack a child with a club? It—it’s bestial.”

  I was aware that, to her, I might seem indifferent, yet I could only answer with one short, expressionless phrase: “He was scared.”

  “The murderer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he a pervert?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say so.”

  “But what is he?” she pressed, her eyes snapping indignantly. “What made him do it?”

  I sighed. “I’ve already told you: he was scared. Literally, he was scared to death. He had a guilty conscience. And guilty consciences catch more criminals than smart cops. Believe me.”

  She drew a deep, exasperated breath. “Either tell me how it happened, or don’t tell me. But please don’t tease me, Frank. Don’t be cryptic. It—it’s unfair. And besides, you’re reminding me of your friend Pete Friedman, playing cat-and-mouse.”

  “If I tell you, you’re sure to tell the kids in your class.” I was trying to match her half-bantering mood.

  “Probably.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You’re still teasing me.” Now there was a hint of vexation in her voice.

  I sighed again, saying, “It’s very simple, really. Cross murdered his wife, probably by administering a barbiturate overdose. Or maybe he just didn’t bother to prevent her from taking an overdose.”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “It depends. But in any case, he was guilty—in his own mind, at least. Apparently it showed, and June picked up on it. Living so close to the Cross family, it’s not surprising. So June proceeded to try a little blackmail. She started out on a small scale, as most blackmailers do—twenty bucks here and twenty bucks there. Then it got to be fifty, then a hundred. And as insurance, she told Kent Miller about her little sideline. So—” I spread my hands. “So Walter Cross met June Towers in the park, by prearrangement, and he killed her. He told her that he was going to make a payoff. He planned it carefully. He very cleverly rented a getaway car, which he dutifully returned the next day. And he bludgeoned her to death. To make it look like robbery, he rifled her purse and even stole her car, which took nerve. But he had one more problem.”

  “What was it?”

  “Before she died, June Towers told Cross that Kent Miller knew about the blackmail scheme.”

  “So Cross killed Kent Miller.”

  “Yes. And by that time, thanks to Marge Fisher, David’s uncle was a suspect. So Cross tried to set up Fisher for both murders, by stealing a so-called murder weapon from the Fishers’ potting shed. It was a clumsy attempt. But it probably would’ve worked if it hadn’t been for David.”

  “David?”

  I nodded, obscurely pleased at her rapt, wide-eyed interest. “David cut school today, and he played detective. He’d seen Cross yesterday, just before Cross stole the pruning shears—the fake murder weapon. No one believed David had seen him, least of all David’s mother. But he did see Cross, and today he went looking for him. Maybe he even knew where Cross lives. We don’t know yet. But David found him. And you know the rest.”

  “Cross would actually have killed him,” she said slowly. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t.”

  “When he saw David following him,” I replied, “he knew that David had ‘made him,’ as we say. He knew it was just a matter of time before we’d hear about him, from David. Cross was desperate. Thanks to David, his time was running out.”

  “What about James Fisher? Will he be all right?”

  I hesitated, then said, “He’s out at the county hospital—in the psychiatric ward, for observation. It’s—” Again I hesitated, dropping my eyes. “It’s probable that he’ll be institutionalized. He just hasn’t got any other place to…”

  With a start I realized that the doctor was standing in the archway. I introduced Ann, explaining that she had been David’s teacher.

  “I think he’ll be all right,” the doctor said briskly. “So far, anyhow, so good. No evidence of any trauma.”

  “Can I question him?”

  “For fifteen minutes, no more. His parents are leaving right now. He’s sedated, so don’t be surprised if he’s a little woozy. His mind might seem to wander, too. Otherwise, no problem. We didn’t even have to give him any blood. Well—” He offered me a wide, muscular hand. “I’ve got things to do.” Nodding to Ann, running a quick, appreciative eye over her figure, he turned on his heel and walked quickly down the hallway, his white coat billowing behind him, revealing mod-striped trousers.

  As the doctor passed David’s door, it opened. The Fishers emerged. Before closing the door, the mother looked back into the room. Almost timidly, she waved, then let the door close.

  I stood in the waiting-room archway, silently watching them as they walked to the elevator. Beside me, Ann whispered, “Is that them? The parents?”

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on the man and wife. As Fisher pressed the “down” button his eyes strayed aside, briefly meeting mine, then falling away. A whispered word passed between the two. Together they raised their heads, staring up at the elevator arrow climbing slowly.

  I stepped forward, clearing my throat. Twenty-five feet of white-tiled corridor separated us. Fifteen feet. Ten. The elevator was on the next floor down, ascending.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  The elevator doors slid noiselessly open. Without looking at me, Marge Fisher stepped into the empty elevator. With a glance of quick, furtive apology, the husband followed. Once inside, the woman turned to face me, her back to the gleaming metal wall of the elevator. Eying me with calm, silent disdain, she reached deliberately forward, arm fully extended, to press the control button. Beside her, Bill Fisher muttered t
hat David was fine—just fine.

  As the doors began to slide closed, I raised my hand, touching the black rubber bumper. The doors sprang back. “Do you realize,” I said softly, “that David wouldn’t even be in that room if it weren’t for you?” As I said it I looked directly at the woman. My voice, I realized, shook slightly. “You tried to set up your own brother-in-law for a murder charge. You didn’t quite succeed, of course. But you undoubtedly succeeded in robbing James of whatever sanity he had left. Which for your purposes, I suppose, is just as good. But in the process you also succeeded in almost getting your own son killed. Because if you hadn’t fingered James, Cross would never have tried to set him up, and David would never have become involved.”

  I paused a moment, drawing a deep, unsteady breath. “If Cross could have reached a foot farther inside that cave,” I said slowly, “you’d have a dead son.” Again I paused before finally saying, “I’m not going to ask the D.A. for an indictment against you for obstructing justice, Mrs. Fisher. In the first place, he probably wouldn’t comply. And in the second place—more to the point—I wouldn’t want to put David through an experience like that—seeing you get what you deserve. I just couldn’t cut it.”

  Tapping my hand on the black rubber bumper, I had the satisfaction of seeing the shame and guilt in her eyes. I allowed the door to half close before I deliberately tapped it open again, this time holding it.

  “I’m sure you’re going to be spending a lot of time telling your friends what a monster Cross is—how he almost killed your boy. But I’d like you to know, Mrs. Fisher, that while you’re telling your friends about Cross, I’m going to be telling the men in the squad room about you. We see bastards like Cross every day—he’s our stock in trade. But we don’t often see someone like you.”

  I released the doors. They slid smoothly together.

  I turned abruptly away—colliding with Ann. As I hastily grabbed her arm, steadying her, I saw that her eyes were tear-brimmed.

  “That was one hell of a speech, Lieutenant,” she whispered. “That was really one hell of a speech.”

  I cleared my throat, muttering something. Then, still holding her arm, I turned her toward David’s room.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Lt. Hastings Mysteries

  One

  “TURN LEFT AT THE next corner,” I said, pointing. “It’s in the thirty-two-hundred block.”

  “Oh. Right.” Glancing hastily over his shoulder, Canelli wrenched the steering wheel. As I braced myself I sighed, glancing at Canelli’s broad, bemused face. At age twenty-seven, Canelli was engaged in a long, losing war with the machine. When our car’s engine stalled, he rolled his eyes skyward. Avoiding a constant succession of minor disasters, Canelli kept up a running commentary, darkly criticizing women drivers, teen-age drivers, taxi drivers and, most balefully of all, Chinese drivers. Canelli had been my driver for more than six months; he’d been in Homicide for almost two years. I’d originally picked him for Homicide because, on or off duty, Canelli looked more like a suety, overweight fry cook than a detective. Running down leads, he acted more like a stranger in town than a manhunter. Perpetually puzzled, yet always anxious to please, Canelli was the only man in the Detective Bureau who could get his feelings hurt. He’d been engaged to a girl named Gracie for almost eight years. Whenever Canelli and Gracie had a lovers’ quarrel, the squad room echoed with Canelli’s long, tragic sighs.

  “The victim’s a doctor, eh?” Canelli asked.

  “Right. Dr. Gordon Ainsley, according to the squeal.”

  “I used to think I wanted to be a doctor,” Canelli offered. “That’s when I was a kid. But then, Jesus, I fainted one time when I saw Jimmy Klinger lay his hand open on a broken bottle. I fainted dead away, at the age of ten, or something. Jimmy used to live across the street from me.”

  “How’d you come to be a cop?” I asked, “if you can’t stand the sight of blood?”

  “Well,” he answered slowly, frowning as he earnestly considered the question, “I can stand the sight of blood, I guess. Or at least I don’t faint anymore. But I sure don’t like it.”

  I nodded. I’d been a rookie patrolman—and an overage rookie, at that—when I’d seen a six-year-old Negro girl lying with her head completely crushed beneath the wheels of a bus. As the inevitable ring of onlookers gaped, I’d leaned against the side of the bus, helplessly vomiting. For days afterward I’d considered resigning.

  “With me,” Canelli was saying, “it’s more the smell, I guess, than the blood.”

  Again I nodded, wordlessly agreeing. In death, sphincters relax and bladders empty. The smell of excrement mingles with the sickly sweet odor of drying blood. The stench of death is overwhelming—and unmistakable. Searching for a victim, a policeman usually smells the corpse before he sees it.

  “I never drive around here without wishing I was rich.” Canelli moved his head to indicate the big, handsome Victorian buildings lining each side of Jackson Street.

  “You might not enjoy being rich, Canelli. It’s not for everyone, you know.”

  “Just try me, Lieutenant.” His swarthy, untroubled face broke into a cheerful grin. Then, tentatively: “Someone told me once that you were rich, or something.”

  “It wasn’t me, Canelli. It was my ex-wife. There’s a difference.”

  He nodded soberly. “Yeah, I can see that, all right. Gracie and me talk about it, every once in a while—how it would be to have a lot of money, and never have to worry about—”

  “You’d better find a parking place,” I interrupted, pointing ahead toward the predictable gaggle of official vehicles, most of them parked at odd, officious angles.

  “Yeah. Right.” Canelli aimed our cruiser haphazardly toward the curb, parking at the most officious angle of all.

  “The way it looks to me,” Culligan was saying, gesturing toward the body sprawled on the gleaming parquet floor of the town house entryway, “he’d just come in the door when the shot was fired.” Culligan pointed to a ring of blood-spattered keys lying beside the body. “He still had his keys in his hand, apparently. And the mail—Saturday’s mail—is under the body. Which squares with what the neighbors say, and the victim’s wife. She went to Los Angeles for the weekend. She left Friday night, and didn’t get home until this morning about ten o’clock.”

  “How about his wallet?”

  Culligan held up a clear plastic bag containing an alligator wallet, credit cards and a sheaf of currency. “A hundred thirty-four dollars. Nothing missing, apparently.”

  “Who discovered the body?”

  “His wife did.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Yeah. Upstairs.”

  “Will she talk to us? Can she talk?”

  “Is she in shock or anything? Is that what you mean?”

  I nodded.

  Culligan’s long, dolorous face registered prim disapproval. Tall and stoop-shouldered, with sad eyes and a mouth permanently drawn down into lines of displeasure, Culligan was Homicide’s doomster. When he wasn’t laconically talking shop, his conversation alternated equally between his ulcer, the lingering Communist menace and his long-haired son who grew organic marijuana in the backwoods of Oregon.

  “All I can say, Lieutenant, is that she’s one of the cool ones. When she talks about him”—Culligan gestured toward the dead man—“it’s like she’s talking about a stranger, I swear to God.”

  “So she left Friday night and got back this morning,” I said. “And he could’ve been out of town too, judging by the fact that he hadn’t picked up Saturday’s mail. Is that how you see it?”

  “As far as I know, that’s it,” Culligan answered cautiously. Then, self-defensively, he added: “But I’ve only been here for a couple of hours, you realize.” Without all the facts, Culligan never committed himself. “One neighbor, though, says she’s sure she saw the victim’s car parked out in front of the house at eleven o’clock last night—Sunday. So, if I had to guess, I’d say that he left the
house Saturday morning and came back last night, sometime before eleven.”

  I glanced up at Roger Tate, the medical examiner, standing patiently on the landing four steps above the level of the entryway. We nodded to each other, and I asked for his estimate of the time of death.

  “Sometime last night,” came the crisp answer. “Six hours ago, at least.” Tate was a small, precise man, always in restless motion, even when compelled to stand in one place. Now his eyes were busily blinking, his hands were fidgeting. “I’ve got everything I need, Frank,” he said. “And there’s another one down in the Fillmore.”

  I looked inquiringly at Culligan, who nodded indifferent agreement. I dismissed Tate, then turned back to the body. So far, I knew, the body hadn’t been moved. That was my responsibility.

  “Is the lab finished?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Culligan answered.

  “Pictures?”

  “All done. They’ve left for the Fillmore one already.”

  “How about the weapon?”

  “We’re waiting for Canelli.” Culligan permitted himself a brief, pinched smile. It was a standard squad-room joke: the Canelli luck. Whatever Canelli lacked in technique, he compensated for with a continuous run of improbable good luck. The entire police department could be searching for someone while Canelli was standing beside the fugitive at a bus stop.

  Taking a deep breath—and involuntarily holding it against the odor—I knelt down beside the body, automatically making a final assessment of Dr. Gordon Ainsley. It was easier, I’d learned long ago, to think in departmental officialese: Weight, approximately a hundred sixty. Medium height. Well dressed in casual clothes: expensively stitched leather jacket, elegant whipcord slacks, fifty-dollar sport shoes, boldly patterned silk shirt, pulsar-style gold watch. Judging by his clothing, the victim had considered himself a swinger. Age—I glanced at the texture of the skin at hands and neck, at the grey-flecked hair, at the lightly lined face in profile—early forties, I decided. Brown hair, modishly barbered to medium length. He lay on his stomach, with his head jammed hard into the angle of the first step and the wall of the foyer. The wall, I noticed, was papered in a richly textured fleur-de-lis pattern; the steps were thickly carpeted in an oyster-colored wool. A thin trail of dried blood was smeared on three of the four stairs. A single small circle of blood was centered between the victim’s shoulder blades. His left hand, tightly clenched, was cocked beside the head, the arm rigor-locked in a Fascist-style salute. The right hand lay concealed beneath the body. The legs were drawn up, probably crooked by death’s last spasm. His keys lay approximately eighteen inches from his clenched left hand. I counted eight pieces of mail scattered across the polished floor. Six of the letters were obviously either bills or circulars. Two of the letters were personal, one addressed to “Dr. and Mrs. Gordon Ainsley,” the other addressed simply “Gail Ainsley.”