Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  Headlights appeared on Twin Peaks Boulevard behind me, then swung in a slow arc onto the spur road. I drifted lower in the seat and waited for them to pass.

  Only they did not pass. The car drew abreast of mine and came to a halt. Police patrol. I sensed it even before I saw the darkened dome flasher on the roof. The passenger window was down and the cop on that side extended a flashlight through the opening and flicked it on. The light pinned me for three or four seconds, bright enough to make me squint, then shut off. The patrolman motioned for me to roll down my window.

  I glanced past the cruiser to Hornback’s Dodge. It remained dark and there was still no movement anywhere in the vicinity. Well, the decision whether or not to check on him was out of my hands now; the cops would want to have a look at the Dodge in any case. And in any case, my assignment was blown.

  I let out a breath and wound down the glass. The patrolman, a young guy with a moustache, said, “What’s going on here, fella?”

  So I told him, keeping it brief, and let him have a look at the photostat of my investigator’s license. He seemed half skeptical and half uncertain; he had me get out and stand to one side while he talked things over with his partner, a heavy-set older man with a beer belly larger than mine. After which the partner took out a second flashlight and trotted across the lookout to the Dodge.

  The younger cop asked me some questions and I answered them, but my attention was on the older guy. I watched him reach the driver’s door and shine his light through the window. A moment later he appeared to reach down for the door handle, but it must have been locked because I didn’t see the door open or him lean inside. Instead he put his light up to the window again, slid it over to the window on the rear door, and then turned abruptly to make an urgent semaphoring gesture.

  “Sam!” he shouted. “Get over here on the double!”

  The young patrolman, Sam, had his right hand on the butt of his service revolver as we ran ahead to the Dodge. I was expecting the worst by this time, but I wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw inside that car. I just stood there gaping while the cops’ lights crawled through the interior.

  There were spots of drying blood across the front seat.

  But the seat was empty, and so was the back seat, and so were the floorboards.

  Hornback had disappeared.

  One of the two inspectors who arrived on the scene a half hour later was Ben Klein, an old-timer and a casual acquaintance from my own years on the San Francisco cops in the ‘40s and ‘50s. I had asked the patrolman to call in Lieutenant Eberhardt, probably my closest friend on or off the force, because I wanted an ally in case matters became dicey. Eb, though, was evidently still on the day shift. I hadn’t asked for Klein, but I felt a little better when he showed up.

  When he finished checking over the Dodge we went off to one side of it, near the guard rail. From there I could look down a steep slope dotted with stunted trees and underbrush. Search teams were moving along it with flashlights, looking for some sign of Hornback, but so far they didn’t seem to be having any luck. Up here the area was swarming with men and vehicles, most but not all of them official. The usual rubberneckers and media types were in evidence along the spur and back on Twin Peaks Boulevard.

  “Let me get this straight,” Klein said when I had finished giving him my story. He had his hands jammed into his coat pockets and his body hunched against the wind, because the night had turned bitter cold now. “You followed Hornback here around ten-fifteen and you were in a position to watch his car from the time he parked it to the time the two patrolmen showed up.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You were over on that turnaround?”

  “Yes. The whole time.”

  “And you didn’t see anything inside or outside the Dodge?”

  “Nothing at all. I couldn’t see inside it—too many shadows—but I could see most of the area around it.”

  “Did you take your eyes off it for any length of time?”

  “No. A few seconds now and then, sure, but no more than that.”

  “Could you see all four doors?”

  “Three of the four,” I said. Not the driver’s door.”

  “That’s how he disappeared, then.”

  I nodded. “But what about the dome light? Why didn’t I see it go on?”

  “It’s not working. The bulb’s defective. That was one of the first things I checked after we wired up the door lock.”

  “I also didn’t see the door open. I might have missed that. I’ll admit, but it’s the kind of movement that would have attracted my attention.” I paused, working my memory. “Hornback couldn’t have gone away toward the road or down the embankment to the east or back into those trees over there. I would have seen him for sure if he had. The only other direction is down this slope, right in front of his car; but if that’s it, why didn’t I notice any movement when he climbed over the guard rail?”

  “Maybe he didn’t climb over it. Maybe he crawled under it.”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m only making suggestions.”

  “Well, I can think of one possibility.”

  “Which is?”

  “The suicide angle,” I said. “I told you I was worried about that. What if Hornback decided to do the Dutch, and while he was sitting in the car he used a pocketknife or something else sharp to slash his wrists? That would explain the blood on the front seat. Only he lost his nerve at the last second, panicked, opened the door, fell out of the car, and crawled under the guard rail.”

  I stopped. The idea was no good. I had realized that even as I laid it out.

  Klein knew it too. He was shaking his head. “No blood outside the driver’s door or along the side of the car or anywhere under the guard rail. A man with slashed wrists bleeds pretty heavily. Besides, if he’d cut his wrists and had second thoughts, why leave the car at all? Why not just start it up and drive to the nearest hospital?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “There’s another screwy angle—the locked doors. Who locked them? Hornback? His attacker, if there was one? Why lock them at all?”

  I had no answer. I stood brooding out at the city lights. “Assume he was attacked,” Klein said. “By a mugger, say, who’s decided to work up here because of the isolation. The attacker would have had to get to the car with you watching, which means coming up this slope, along the side of the car, and in through the driver’s door—if it wasn’t locked at that time. But I don’t buy it. It’s TV-commando stuff, too farfetched.”

  “There’s another explanation,” I said musingly.

  “What’s that?”

  “The attacker was in the car all along.”

  “Not a mugger, you mean?”

  “Right. Somebody who had it in for Hornback.”

  Klein frowned; he had heavy jowls and it made him look like a bulldog. “I thought you said Hornback was alone the whole night. Didn’t meet anybody.”

  “He didn’t. But suppose he was in the habit of frequenting Dewey’s Place and this somebody knew it. He or she could have been waiting in the parking lot, slipped inside the Dodge while Hornback and I were in the tavern, hidden on the floor in back, and stayed hidden until Hornback came up here and parked. Then maybe stuck a knife in him.”

  “Sounds a little melodramatic, but I guess it’s possible. Still, what kind of motive fits that explanation?”

  “One connected with the money his wife claims Hornback stole from their firm.”

  “You’re not thinking the wife could’ve attacked him?”

  “No. If she was going to do him in, it doesn’t make sense she’d hire me to tail him around. Hornback might have had some accomplice in the theft. Maybe they had a falling-out and the accomplice wanted to keep all the money for himself.”

  “Maybe,” Klein said, but he sounded dubious. “The main trouble with that theory is, what happened to Hornback’s body? The attacker would have had to get both himself and H
ornback out of the car, then drag the body down the slope. Now why in hell would somebody kill a man way up here, with nobody around so far as he knew, and take the corpse away with him instead of just leaving it in the car?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t figure it any other way.”

  “Neither can I right now. Let’s see what the search teams and the forensic boys turn up.”

  What the searchers and the lab people turned up, however, was nothing—no sign of Hornback dead or alive, no sign of anybody else in the area, no bloodstains except for those inside the car, no other evidence of any kind. Hornback—or his body—and maybe an attacker as well had not only vanished from the Dodge while I was watching it; he had vanished completely and without a trace. As if into thin air.

  It was 1:30 A.M. before Klein let me go home. He asked me to stop in later at the Hall of Justice to sign a statement, but aside from that he seemed satisfied that I had given him all the facts as I knew them. But I was not quite off the hook yet, nor would I be until Hornback turned up. If he turned up. My word was all the police had for what had happened on the lookout, and I was the first to admit that it was a pretty bizarre story.

  When I got to my Pacific Heights flat I thought about calling Mrs. Hornback. But it was after two o’clock by then and I saw no point or advantage in phoning a report at this time of night: the police would already have told her about her husband s disappearance. So I drank a glass of milk and crawled into bed and tried to sort things into some kind of order.

  How had Hornback vanished? Why? Was he dead or alive? An innocent man, or as guilty as his wife claimed? The victim of suicidal depression, the victim of circumstance, or the victim of premeditated murder?

  No good. I was too tired to come up with fresh answers to any of those questions.

  After a while I slept and dreamed a lot of nonsense about people dematerializing inside locked cars, vanishing in little puffs of smoke. A long time later the telephone woke me up. I keep the damned thing in the bedroom and it went off six inches from my ear and sat me up in bed, disoriented and grumbling. I pawed at my eyes and got them unstuck. There was grey morning light in the room; the nightstand clock said 6:55. Four hours’ sleep and welcome to a new day.

  The caller, not surprisingly, was Mrs. Hornback. She berated me for not getting in touch with her, then she demanded my version of last night. I gave it to her.

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” she said.

  “That’s your privilege, ma’am. But it happens to be the truth.’’

  “We’ll see about that.” Her voice sounded no different from the way it had when she’d hired me: cold, clipped, and coated with vitriol. There was not a whisper of compassion. “How could you let something like that happen? What kind of detective are you?”

  A poor tired one, I thought. But I said, “I did what you asked me to, Mrs. Hornback. What happened on the lookout was beyond my control.”

  “Yes? Well, if my husband isn’t found, and if I don’t recover the money I know he stole, you’ll hear from my lawyer. You can count on that.” There was a clattering sound and then the line began to buzz.

  Nice lady. A real princess.

  I lay back down. I was still half asleep and pretty soon I drifted off again. This time I dreamed I was in a room where half a dozen guys were playing poker. They were all private eyes from the pulp magazines I read and collected—Race Williams, Jim Bennett, Max Latin, some of the best of the bunch. Latin wanted to know what kind of detective I was; his voice sounded just like Mrs. Hornback’s. I said I was a pulp detective. They kept saying, “No you’re not, you can’t play with us because you’re not one of us, “ and I kept saying, “But I am, I’m the same kind of private eye you are.”

  The jangling of the phone ended that nonsense and sat me up the way it had before. I focused on the clock: 8:40. Conspiracy against my sleep, I thought, and fumbled up the handset.

  “Wake you up, hotshot?” a familiar voice said. Eberhardt. “What do you think?”

  “Sorry about that. I’ve got news for you.”

  “What news?”

  “That funny business up on Twin Peaks last night—your boy Hornback’s been found.”

  I stopped feeling sleepy and the fuzziness cleared out of my mind. “Where?” I said. “Is he all right?”

  “In Golden Gate Park,” said Eberhardt. “And no, he’s not all right. He’s dead—been dead since last night. Stabbed in the chest, probably with a butcher knife.”

  I got down to the Hall of Justice at ten o’clock, showered, shaved, and full of coffee. Eberhardt was in his office in General Works, gnawing on one of his briar pipes and looking as sour as usual. The sourness was just a facade; he wasn’t half as grim and grouchy as he liked people to think.

  “I’ve been rereading Klein’s report,” he said as I sat down. “You get mixed up in the damnedest cases these days.”

  “Don’t I know it. What have you got on Hornback?”

  “Nothing much. Guy out jogging found the body at seven-fifteen in a clump of bushes along JFK Drive. Stabbed in the chest, like I told you on the phone—a single wound that penetrated the heart, the probable weapon a butcher knife. The medical examiner says death was instantaneous. I guess that takes care of the suicide theory.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “No other marks on the body,” he said, “except for a few small scratches on the hands and on one cheek.”

  “What kind of scratches?”

  “Just scratches. The kind you get crawling around in woods or underbrush, or the kind a body might get if it was dragged through the same type of terrain. The ME will have more on that when he finishes his post-mortem.”

  “What was the condition of Hornback’s clothes?”

  “Dirty, torn in a couple of places. The same thing applies.”

  “Anything among his effects?”

  “No. The usual stuff—wallet, handkerchief, change, a pack of cigarettes, and a box of matches. Eighty-three dollars in the wallet and a bunch of credit cards. That seems to rule out the robbery motive.”

  “I don’t suppose there was any evidence where he was found.”

  “None. Killed somewhere else, the way it figures. Like up on that Twin Peaks lookout. Hornback’s blood type was AO; it matches the type found on the front seat of his car.”

  We were silent for a time. I watched Eberhardt break his briar in half and run a pipe-cleaner through the stem. Then I said, “Damn it, Eb, it doesn’t make sense. What’s the motive behind the whole business? Why would the killer take Hornback’s body away and then dump it in Golden Gate Park later? How could he have got it and himself out of the car without me noticing that something was going on?”

  “You tell me, mastermind. You were there. You ought to know what you saw or didn’t see.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it again, and blinked at him. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. I said you were there and you ought to know what you saw or didn’t see.”

  What I saw. And what I didn’t see.

  Eberhardt put his pipe back together and tamped tobacco into the bowl. “We’d better come up with some answers pretty soon,” he said. Klein got back a little while ago from breaking the news to the widow. He says she blames you for letting Hornback get killed.”

  Two things I didn’t see that I should have seen.

  “She claims he siphoned off as much as a hundred thousand dollars from that interior-design company of theirs. According to her, he overcharged some customers, pocketed cash payments from others, and phonied up some records. She also figures he took kickbacks from suppliers.”

  Several things I did see.

  “Evidently she accused him of it earlier this week. He denied everything. She’s got an auditor going over the books, but that takes time. That’s why she hired you.”

  Add them all up, put them all together—a pattern.

  “The money is all she cares about, Klein says. She thinks Hornback spent part
of it on the alleged girlfriend, but she means to get back whatever’s left. That kind of woman can stir up a lot of trouble. No telling what kind of accusations she’s liable to—”

  Sure. A pattern.

  “Hey!” Eberhardt said. “Are you listening to me?”

  “What?”

  “What’s the matter with you? I’m not just talking to hear the sound of my own voice.”

  I stood up and took a couple of turns around the office. “I think I’ve got something, Eb.”

  “Got something? You mean answers?”

  “Maybe.” I sat down again. “Did you see Hornback’s body yourself this morning?”

  “I saw it. Why?”

  “Were there any marks on it besides the stab wound and the scratches? Any other sort of wound, no matter how small?”

  He thought. “No. Except for a Band-Aid on one of his fingers, if that matters—”

  “You bet it does.” I said. “Get Klein in here, would you? I want to ask him a couple of questions.”

  Eberhardt gave me a narrow look, but he buzzed out to the squad room and asked for Klein. Ben came in a few seconds later.

  “When you checked over Hornback’s car last night,” I asked him, “was the emergency brake set?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What about the transmission? Was the lever in Park or Neutral?”

  “Neutral.”

  “I thought so. That’s the answer then.”

  Eberhardt said, “You know how Hornback’s body disappeared from his car?”

  “Yes. Only it didn’t disappear from the car.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning the body was never inside it,” I said. “Hornback wasn’t murdered on the lookout. He was killed later on, somewhere else.”

  “What about the blood on the front seat?”

  “He put it there himself, deliberately—by cutting his finger with something sharp, like maybe a razor blade. That’s the reason for the Band-Aid.”