by Dell Shannon
"Oh, yes," said Glasser, squatting beside him. "Helpful."
The trail of kerosene had led from the front hallway, but the fire had first created a lot of smoke, and according to the engine boys had been already dying out when they got here; it hadn’t damaged the body at all. On the outflung bare arm on the inside of the elbow, clearly visible, was a long puckered scar; on the third finger of that hand was a ring. Palliser had delicately manipulated the nearly rigid wrist around to inspect the bezel. "We’ll want pictures, but it could make shortcuts all right." The ring was a school ring, the usual indecipherable crest, a little blue enamel, and in minute letters around that, FRESNO JR. HIGH. Palliser stood up.
"Fresno," said Glasser. "My God, these kids. She doesn’t look over thirteen or fourteen. And ending up down here-" But it wasn’t anything new, they’d seen much the same thing before, and there wasn’t much to say about it.
They waited for the mobile lab, told Duke to get shots of the ring and send it up to the office. It was getting on for noon then. In the Missing Persons office back at headquarters they found Lieutenant Carey hunched over a report, and he just groaned at mention of a possibly-reported-missing juvenile.
"We’ve got a million of ’em, from all over the country. Take your pick."
"Maybe we can narrow it down," said Palliser. "I don’t think this one was very far into the teens. An older one, she could have been out roaming on her own a couple of years, but one this young-she might not have been away from home and mother very long. And we’ve got two good leads-she had on a ring from Fresno Junior High, and there’s a distinctive scar on the left arm."
"We can have a look at the recent files," said Carey.
They did. Just in the last month, enough juveniles had been reported missing to this office to build up those files into a thick stack, and they had to be glanced at one by one, the description scanned briefly to weed it out. Palliser and Glasser took a lunch break, ran into Galeano and Conway at Federico’s on North Broadway, and heard about the off-beat case Carey had just handed them. Glasser went down to S.I.D. when they got back to base, to see if they’d come up with anything, and Palliser went back to the files. It was after two-thirty when he came up with a recently filed report that rang bells.
Reported missing to the Fresno police, Sandra Moseley, aged fifteen, five-two, a hundred and five, blonde and blue: scar inside left arm, appendectomy scar; reported by mother, Mrs. Anita Moseley. She was thought to have been with another girl, Stephanie Peacock, also fifteen, also missing.
"Kids," thought Palliser. He went back up to Robbery-Homicide and got on the phone to the Fresno department. A Captain Almont said he’d get in touch with Mrs. Moseley. "It looks pretty definite, it’s this Moseley girl dead down there?"
"Well, we’d like a positive identification, but there’s the ring and the scar. No autopsy yet, but it looks pretty certain for Murder One."
"Hell of a thing," said Almont. "We’ll get in touch with the mother and get back to you."
"Thanks very much," said Palliser. He wondered momentarily what had happened to the other girl-if they had been together. He wondered what he was going to do about Trina. The obedience club secretary had given him the name of a book to get.
Glasser came back and said S.I.D. hadn’t picked up any latents or any other physical evidence at the scene. She’d probably been killed elsewhere and brought there just before the fire was set. "Well, we’ve probably got her identified, at least," said Palliser absently.
***
Galeano and Conway had been deflected onto the supposed hit-run, which everybody had comfortably supposed would get buried in Pending. Landers had gone to cover the inquest.
At least they had no sooner been informed that it wasn’t a hit-run than they got an I.D. for him. Traffic had come across the body about midnight on Monday, in the middle of Valencia Avenue up from Venice Boulevard; there hadn’t been any I.D. on it, so the lab had collected his prints next morning to run through. Ten minutes after Bainbridge had called Mendoza, the routine report came in. His prints were in their records; he had a small pedigree from a while back. He was Robert Chard, now thirty-nine. He’d been picked up for auto theft as a juvenile, for attempted assault just after he’d turned legally adult, and had one count of B. and E. after that. He’d never served any time at all, and apparently had never been in trouble since.
The latest address was sixteen years out of date, but it was a place to start. Longwood Avenue. You had to go by routine even when it looked unproductive. Not feeling very hopeful, Galeano tried that address, which was an old frame house in need of paint, and turned up a Mrs. Holly, a thirtyish slattern who said she was Robert Chard’s sister.
"Why you looking for Bob? He hasn’t been in any trouble for a long time, nor he won’t be either, under the thumb of that bitch he married. You cops tryin’ to make out he done something?"
"No, ma’am," said Galeano politely. "We’d like to get his body identified. He’s dead."
"Well, for God’s sake," she said mildly. "Bob? Is that so? Was it an accident?"
"We’re not sure," said Galeano. "When did you see him last?"
"Gee, I’d hafta think. The last years, since he got married, rest of the family hardly ever saw him at all. That bitch, she used to be scared he’d spend money on presents for Ma, and he kinda got out of the habit of coming-of course Ma died last year- Well, I could tell you where they were living, last I knew, but I don’t know if they still lived there. It was Constance Street. My God, think of Bob dead-damn, I s’pose I got to get in touch with her, I oughta go to the funeral."
If you didn’t get rich at a cop’s job, Galeano reflected, you had a box seat at the eternal spectacle of human nature in action.
Nobody was home at the address on Constance, an old cracker-box duplex. A nameplate next to the doorbell had a hand-printed slip in it that said CHARD, so at least this was the right place. Funny, maybe nobody had missed him yet. Or maybe nobody cared whether he came home or not. Galeano tried the neighbors, and found only one home, a deaf elderly man who told him that Mis’ Chard worked someplace uptown, and he didn’t take any notice when she usually came home.
Better leave a note for the night watch to contact her, thought Galeano.
He was still intrigued by the empty wheelchair in that tale Carey had spun them, and he wanted to talk to that blonde, start asking questions around on that; but what with all the legwork, it was the middle of the afternoon and he still had to type out a report on this.
He got home about six-thirty, to his neat small bachelor apartment on Edgemont up in Hollywood, rummaged in the freezer and put a TV dinner in the oven, and sat down with the Herald over a glass of the cheap red wine he liked. His mother and sisters had given up years ago deviling him to find a nice girl and get married; at thirty-six, Galeano had settled into comfortable bachelorhood.
That was a fishy little story of Carey’s, he thought idly. It would be interesting to know what really had happened there, just how Edwin Fleming had managed to melt into thin air, leaving his empty wheelchair behind. Galeano thought that blonde couldn’t be quite so dumb as Carey thought.
***
Mendoza was greeted exuberantly by the twins as he came in the back door, and Mrs. MacTaggart rescued him.
"Your father’ll come to see you in your baths, my lambs, right now you’l1 let him have some peace and quiet." She led them off firmly.
He found Alison, surrounded by the four cats Bast, Sheba, Nefertite and El Senor, stretched out on the sectional in the front room, with Cedric curled up on the floor beside them. "Hello, amado," said Alison. "I’m sorry I was cross this morning, but this is turning out to be quite a project. No, I don’t want any dinner-I had some bouillon a while ago, Mairi bullied it down me-but she’s getting something for you. And if you’re going to have a drink first, you can bring me just a little creme de menthe to settle my insides." She looked wan.
At his first touch on the cupboard door where the liq
uor was kept, El Senor appeared, his Siamese mask-in-reverse wearing a hopeful look. Mendoza poured him half an ounce of rye in a saucer and took his own drink and Alison’s back to the living room.
"You know, Luis," she said, half sitting up to take the glass, "we’ll have to think about a new house. Just as I was saying last night. Because there are only four bedrooms here, and with the baby we’ll need five. And besides-"
"One thing," said Mendoza, "leading to another. Pues que." The twins had been, not without protest, graduated to separate rooms.
"And it did seem like a lot of space at first, two lots," said Alison, sipping, "but it isn’t really enough room for Cedric-he needs more exercise. And I’ve been thinking, it’d be nice to be-you know-a little farther out, on an acre or even more-it isn’t as if you haven’t got the money."
"Delusions of grandeur," said Mendoza.
"Well, we might as well enjoy it while we can. I think I feel better," said Alison. "Give me a cigarette, darling. You might tell Mairi I could take some mushroom soup."
The phone rang down the hall and he went to answer it, passing E1 Senor thoughtfully licking his whiskers.
"Mendoza."
It was the main desk at headquarters; the night watch wasn’t on yet, upstairs. Central Receiving had just called in the information that Father O’Brien had died an hour ago. "Thanks so much," said Mendoza.
So the pretty boys had a homicide to their credit now. And still not a smell of a lead as to where to look for them.
***
Just before Palliser left the office, Fresno called back. Mrs. Moseley had been contacted and would come down to L.A. tomorrow to look at the body.
"The report we had, they thought there was another girl with the Moseley girl," said Almont. "You just found the one?"
"We think. Just her so far," said Palliser. "Thanks, we’ll be expecting her."
"No trouble. These kids. Poor woman sounded all broken up."
Palliser stopped at a big bookstore in Hollywood on his way home and asked for a copy of The Kennel Club Obedience Manual. He handed over seven bucks for it and had it under his arm when he unlocked the driveway gate and slid through it. A solid object weighing some seventy pounds immediately hit him amidships like a bomb, and he said breathlessly, "Down, girl!" But she impeded every step to the back door and into the kitchen, giving him to understand what a hard day she’d had guarding the family every alert minute, all for love of him. In the kitchen, she rose up lovingly at Roberta and nearly knocked her over. She was, no question, going to be a very large German shepherd; only nine months now and still growing.
"We’ll have to do something about training her, John," said Roberta severely.
"I know, I know. I’ve got a book," said Palliser, and then discovered that Trina had it instead, chewing the cover like a bone. He rescued it hastily and hoped that wasn’t a bad omen.
***
Piggott and Schenke came on night watch at the same time and shared an elevator. It was Shogart’s night off. Piggott didn’t mind doing a tour of night watch, except that it interfered with choir practice and Prudence didn’t like it, but he’d have a chance to shift back in three months. Schenke had been on night watch so long he’d come to prefer it.
Galeano had left them a note to call this Mrs. Chard, tell her her husband was dead. Schenke tried the number and got a busy signal. They’d try again.
At seven-thirty they got a call from Traffic, a new body. Looking, said Traffic, like Murder One. "The citizens keep us busy, Matt," said Schenke.
"Or Satan does," said Piggott. They were on the way out when the phone buzzed again, and he went back to pick it up. "Robbery-Homicide, Detective Piggott."
"Oh-is Sergeant Palliser there? That’s the name I was told to-"
"Sergeant Palliser’s on day watch, ma’am. Can I help you?" The woman sounded upset.
"I-yes, I suppose. It’s just to let him know-that is, whoever’s concerned-I’m Mrs. Moseley. In Fresno. They think-the police here said-you think you’ve found my daughter there. D-dead. I was to come- But just now- just a while ago-the Peacocks called me-"
"You want me to give this to Sergeant Palliser?" asked Piggott patiently.
"Yes, if you would. We were sure they were together, Sandra and Stephanie. Ran away together. And Mrs. Peacock just c-called to say-they’ve heard from Stephanie. They’re driving down there to meet her, she wants to come home, and I’m coming with them. Because if Stephanie’s all right, maybe it’s all a mistake and the dead girl isn’t Sandra-but-"
"I’ll pass it on to Palliser, ma’am." Piggott hadn’t heard anything about the dead girl; he scrawled that down as she hung up with a gasp, and put the note on Palliser’s desk.
The address for the new body was Orchard Street, a little backwater of old single houses, a few duplexes, past Virgil. The black and white was in front of one of the singles, a little white frame house looking shabby. The uniformed men were talking to a paunchy shaken-looking man at the curb.
"These are the detectives, Mr. Buford. Mr. Piggott, Mr. Schenke. You tell it all to them. It’s inside," added one of the Traffic men. "Looks like a B. and E. and assault for robbery. Maybe somebody didn’t expect him to be home."
"That’s why I got worried," said the paunchy man.
"Dick usually was home-he’s a great homebody, and he was between jobs, see, I told you that, he’s in construction and they can’t work this weather, but it didn’t matter to Dick, he’s got savings, makes good money, and besides he don’t buy much for himself-he just lost his wife last year and it kind of took the heart out of him, they hadn’t any kids, and I used to call him three, four times a week, just to talk-oh, I didn’t tell you fellows, Dick’s my brother-I’m Robert-we were always kind of close-and I couldn’t raise him on the phone no way, the last three days, and I got worried about it, maybe he was sick or something, because he’s not one for going out much, maybe once a month he’ll go up to a neighborhood bar for a couple of beers, but not regular-and I said to my wife, I got to find out if anything’s wrong, and I drove up right after work. I live way out past Thousand Oaks and it was murder on the freeway but I-" He stopped, gulped, and said, "Murder! Dick! But who’d murder Dick? A quiet fellow like Dick! It don’t make sense!"
"He had a key to the house, went in and found him and called us," said the Traffic man, sounding tired. Piggott and Schenke went up the narrow front walk. The front door was open, past a neatly mended screen door. The body was in the middle of the living room, a small square room crowded with old-fashioned furniture, a big TV console in one corner. A straight chair was overturned, the carpet rucked up in folds, a clock and vase from an overturned table lying around the corpse; there’d been some sort of scuffle here. The TV was on, volume turned low.
The body was lying face up in the middle of the room, a big fleshy middle-aged man with a Roman nose and a mop of gray hair. They looked at him and Schenke said, "He was in a fight all right, probably right here. Could be he hit his head on something, or the other guy hit him deliberately to kill. We can ask the brother what’s missing. We better get S.I.D. out for pictures and so on."
They called up the lab boys and talked to Robert Buford while they waited. He said his brother Dick was kind of a loner, didn’t have too many friends; trouble was he and Mary, his wife, had been awful close, didn’t seem to want anybody else, and when she died- Since then, when Dick wasn’t working, he mostly stayed home, watched TV. He didn’t have any worries about money, they owned the house; Dick was kind of close with money.
When the lab men had taken pictures and printed the body, they went over him. In one pocket there was seventeen cents, a handkerchief, what looked like car keys, and an empty wallet. There was an old Chevy in the garage, Buford’s car, undisturbed. They asked Robert about what cash Dick might have carried, and he said helplessly, "Jesus, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how much he might have had-could be he’d just run out and was figuring to go to the bank tomorrow, or he co
ulda had a bundle and been robbed-I don’t know." He peered sorrowfully at the dead man. "You don’t figure he coulda just had a heart attack or something? He was fifty-nine. No, I suppose it wasn’t."
The autopsy would tell them, but they’d both seen enough bodies to have an educated guess about this. It would give the day watch something else to work.
***
Hackett was off on Thursdays. "Thank heaven," said Angel, getting out her car keys, "there’s one day I can go to the market without the kids. But I’m going to see Alison first. Poor darling, she’s feeling awful with this one so far- I think it was a mistake myself-"
"I’m taking bets it’ll be a redhead," said Hackett.
"And, Art-if you touch a crumb of that cream pie I’ll kill you. You’re ten pounds up again."
"All right, all right." But after she’d backed out, he listened to Mark prattle about school-Mark would be starting kindergarten next month, which seemed impossible-and thought, It was probably something like that. Whatever that Yeager had overheard, or thought he had. People said things, I’ll kill you, It was murder-and also made jokes. What they didn’t do, at least people like these Lamperts, from what he’d gathered about them, was casually plan a real killing with the apartment door open and people wandering around.
He called in after a while, keeping an eye on his darling Sheila trotting busily around, to hear if anything new had gone down. Lake told him that that priest had died, about the dead teenager, and the new one last night. So that unholy trio had done a murder now; Hackett wished there was some way to get a lead to them.
***
The first thing Mendoza did on Thursday morning was to get on to S.I.D. as to what, if anything, they’d got on that Pontiac.
"We’ve been busy," said Duke. "I was just getting out a report. Nothing. The priest’s prints were in it, and that other priest’s, he used it sometimes-but that’s all. If he was jumped around there, it was before he got into the car. No, we didn’t turn up any keys anywhere."