The Man Who Followed Women

by Bert Hitchens

  “I thought you were quite finished with me.” Howery was standing in the middle of the rug; his face was flushed, and his eyes glittered.

  He was mad. Madder even than last night. In fact, last night, up until the end, he’d been pretty careful though feisty. This was a genuine fury, and Kernehan, from long experience plus the instincts of a cop, wondered what he had interrupted by ringing the doorbell.

  “I thought you might help us, Mr. Howery,” Kernehan said disarmingly. “We’ve accepted your story, you were more or less lured into the yards by the actions of this woman.” He watched to see if Howery believed that he believed it. “I just wondered—” He looked around and picked out a chair and sat down in it. Howery retreated to a seat on the couch. “You must see our problem, keeping trespassers out of the freight yards. Inside are carloads of valuable merchandise, waiting shipment or delivery.”

  “I told you I hadn’t stolen anything,” Mr. Howery protested.

  “Yes. We believed you. You aren’t in jail. What I want from you is a good description of the woman. There might be more to her than just mischief, just hanging around where she doesn’t belong.”

  “Like what?”

  “Theft.”

  “How could she get out of there with anything as big as a tire?” the other flung out. “It’s ridiculous. She’s a slim woman. How could she—” Some of the glitter went out of his eyes, he swallowed twice, and then kept still.

  Kernehan’s expression hadn’t changed in the least. “Of course she’d have help. I didn’t mean to say she went in, broke into shipments, carried out heavy merchandise. Answering your guess, one tire wouldn’t be too much of a hassle if she had plenty of time and no one to interfere. But one tire wouldn’t be worth it.”

  “I … I guess not.” He was staring into the bag of knitting beside him. He was also obviously frightened by the break he had made in anger and haste, and wondering how to repair it.

  And Kernehan was wondering: what in hell are we talking about stolen tires for, when the big grab is taking place between Colton and the Colorado River? It’s nuts. He said, “I was thinking that she might be a spotter.”

  Howery glanced at him obliquely. “You mean, she’d examine shipments, pick out the ones to be raided?”

  “Yes, something of the sort.”

  They were way off the subject, way off dangerous ground now, and Kernehan knew it. This wasn’t what the woman had been doing. Howery’s relieved tone told him so.

  Kernehan asked, “Where do you think she was headed?”

  “I don’t have the least idea,” Howery said, so quickly that Kernehan spotted the lie.

  “She had already passed some cars she should have found interesting.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, you know—there are manifest cards tacked outside, giving the destination and the type of merchandise and so on.” A lie, so far as giving a hint of the stuff inside. Howery seemed to swallow it, a clue to his inexperience. “So perhaps it wasn’t freight she was interested in. Perhaps it was a person. A man.”

  “I wouldn’t know. We went over all that last night,” Howery said in a mean tone. “I told you then, I say it again now, I don’t know what she was after. I followed her in because I was flabbergasted at where she was headed. Dark, deserted. Freight yards, you know the reputation they’ve got, bums hiding out. Anything can happen. A young good-looking girl has no business in there.”

  “Young and good-looking? Come to think, you didn’t supply much of a description.”

  He waited. He watched Howery concocting the lies.

  “Well … black hair, cut real short,” Howery said.

  Blond, Kernehan said to himself. Something about her hair struck Howery’s fancy, caused him to mention it first. Probably it’s long and blond and beautiful.

  “Sure had class. Clothes must have cost a mint.”

  Shabby. Kernehan’s interest quickened.

  “Good legs. Expensive hose.”

  He met Kernehan’s glance without blinking. The little bastard had nerve, Kernehan thought.

  Kernehan said, “Not at all the type to be hanging out in the freight yards.”

  “That’s what I mean. I hated to see a girl like that go in there. I just had to follow.”

  “What would you have done if you had caught up with her?”

  Howery’s momentary loss flickered in his eyes.

  Hadn’t meant to catch up, Kernehan decided, remembering then the furtiveness of Howery’s footsteps following hers in the night. He’d been keeping his distance; he hadn’t wanted her to hear. What the hell had he been after?

  “I wish you could supply a name, an address,” Kernehan urged.

  “I wish I could.”

  Again the lie was obvious, and Kernehan was suddenly weary of it. He stood up. “Tell you what. If you happen to see this woman again”—he took out one of his cards, put it down on a table—“give me a ring.”

  “Shall I … shall I tail her?”

  The manner was eager, the mean belligerence suddenly swallowed up in anticipation. Hell, this was what Howery wanted, Kernehan thought incredulously; he’s asking my permission to follow this woman into the yards again. It was fantastic. It didn’t make sense, but it was too real to ignore.

  “That might be a good idea,” Kernehan said, testing, watching the glow of interest come into Howery’s face.

  Howery’s manner, showing him to the door, was almost bubbling.

  Once outside in the foggy dark, Kernehan went down the block until he was sure that if Howery was watching, he could no longer see him. Then he cut back and stood across the street behind some parked cars. He didn’t have long to wait. Someone came out of Howery’s door.

  Kernehan felt like shaking his head to clear it. This was a figure he didn’t recognize. About Howery’s height, but nothing else like—something military in the pose and gait. The figure walked away into the flowing mist, and Kernehan went after it. Howery’d had someone hidden in there during their interview.

  He recalled his sense of having interrupted something when Howery had come to the door.

  The steps ahead were muffled by the fog. Kernehan went silently, walking on grass verges where he could. Street lamps swam in cloudy halos; all around the trees dripped, and the traffic, blocks away on a main boulevard, was only a distant hiss interrupted by cottony grunts.

  Kernehan felt the damp on his hands and face, smelled the wool of his coat drinking it up. He was aware of his senses tuned to a fine edge.

  All at once something began to register. A memory.

  The steps he could hear through the fog were familiar. He’d heard them before. He listened, trying to choke back his own heartbeat, holding his breath.

  The footsteps were Howery’s. He’d bet on it!

  Kernehan concentrated, doubting; and then began to grin. “What do you know?” he whispered to himself. The little twerp had a disguise.

  He trailed Howery to an intersection in a quiet neighborhood. A girl waited under a street lamp, indistinct; she had a black scarf over her head and she stood crouched-like, as if chilled and shivering. Howery seemed at first about to approach her, and then hung back. He stood in the half-light, between the intersection and Kernehan, and seemed to study her with nervous indecision.

  When he finally turned back, not having gone close to her at all, Kernehan faded up a walk to the shadow of a house.

  And when, fifteen minutes or so later, the girl had had enough, Kernehan followed her to her home in the middle of the block.

  Chapter 8

  Kernehan was still mulling it over when he checked in at the office next morning. Howery was an oddball, you couldn’t get away from that. A real way-out-willie. He’d togged himself out in the weird disguise—a good one, come to think of it—and then he hadn’t displayed himself, hadn’t seemed to need it, as far as Kernehan could see.

  The thing that interested Kernehan most was whether the girl waiting on the corner was the one
Howery had trailed into the freight yards.

  Could be. Could also not be. Howery obviously had something fouled up with him as far as women were concerned. He was playing some funny kind of game. Kernehan wondered uneasily if Howery could actually be a sex fiend.

  He’d have to think of some way to check on whoever lived at the house where the girl had turned in, find out if she lived there with her family, or whoever. He had the house address written in his notebook.

  Farrel was already in the office, waiting for him. A big man, gone quite gray, a tired face and a pair of eyes that told Kernehan he didn’t like him much. It bothered Kernehan. Farrel was one man whose respect and approval he would have valued. Farrel stared at him from the chair next his desk, his gaze summing up the handsome physique and the casually well-fitted clothes. Farrel’s shirt collar was crumpled and his tie frayed at the knot. He’d probably been drunk last night, had a hang-over. Kernehan sat down.

  “What do you know about Jennings?”

  Farrel said, “I just called the local P.D. for any news. They’ve decided Jennings might have been alive, briefly, under that load of gravel. Something to do with the final report on amount of blood, juices, and sticking qualities.” Farrel’s tone was unperturbed. “Still, the evidence he was killed by blows hadn’t changed. Which seems to put it right at Sidewinder. He wouldn’t have lived for any kind of a trip there.”

  Kernehan was surprised at Farrel’s grasp of the situation; something he should have expected. Farrel was one of the best.

  He said, “There may not be any kind of tie-in at all with these thefts of tires and so on.”

  “But you hope so.” Farrel’s gaze seemed to warm. Not much, but a little. “If there is, this is a break. A real one.”

  “We can use it.”

  Kernehan turned to the phone, put in a call to Richie in Colton. Richie reported that he had gone out to Pethro’s address, asking the wife about Pethro’s friendship with the dead man. The wife appeared to be drinking and didn’t seem to know much about her husband’s affairs.

  “She didn’t even seem to know Jennings was dead,” Richie added. “I asked how long they’d been friends, and she said must have been for years, they’d done a hitch in the Army together and before that had lived in some town up north, gone to school there.”

  “Bishop.”

  “I asked when her husband would be home so I could talk to him, and she said they’d separated. No kids. She volunteered the fact that she’s looking for a waitress job. Asked if I knew of one.”

  “She wasn’t sore or anything?”

  “No. Wined up, I think, from the smell. Not a bad looking dame. Twenty-five or so.”

  “See if she’s got a picture of Pethro she’ll let you have.”

  “I go out there again, she’s going to think I’m trying to make her.”

  “Don’t fight it, man,” Kernehan advised. “It’s bigger than both of you.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Kernehan then put in a call for Vermillion, and while he waited for Dyart to come on the line he sketched for Farrel the relationship between the dead Jennings and Pethro. “Pethro’s disappeared. He quit the job about the time Jennings did. Somebody saw Jennings in a beer joint in Vermillion a month or so ago. I want to find out, if I can, if Pethro was with him.”

  But Dyart, when he answered, had little to offer. He had no picture of Jennings, the town was always full of transients, nobody remembered the man. One slim lead—a lot of railroad men, working or out of work, stayed at a rooming house near the yards. Dyart was going to see the landlady that morning. Even if Jennings hadn’t stayed there during the time he switched in the Vermillion Yards, somebody there should know him, might remember if he’d been around as recently as a month before.

  When Kernehan hung up, he told Farrel what Dyart was trying to do.

  Farrel gazed at him tiredly. “These two characters, old friends—what’s to prevent their falling out and one killing the other? If it happened that way, what’ve you got now? Pethro in Seattle or somewhere. No connection to the thefts whatever.”

  “That’s right. If it happened that way. If.”

  “As far as these thefts go”—Farrel scratched one gray temple with a thumbnail—“it’s an inside deal. Any way you look at it. They pick and choose.” Kernehan realized that Ryerson had been talking to Farrel. “They know what to hit. It means they somehow get a look at the teletype consist of the incoming trains.”

  The teletype consist of a train, coming in ahead of the train itself, permitted much more efficient protection. Each car was spotted by number from the engine, and the railroad police could see at once which cars, judged by what was in them, would need extra protection while in the yards. At the same time, the consist in the wrong hands would wreak havoc.

  Kernehan realized that he’d been avoiding the idea. “It’s not being done in Vermillion; the cars leave there with the seals intact.”

  “They’re seeing the consist in Vermillion,” Farrel said doggedly. “It just has to be that way.”

  “I hate to think of a stoolie in the office, working with an outfit like that.”

  “It takes all kinds.”

  They got up to go. Farrel preceded Kernehan out of the office, and Kernehan saw that the back of his coat collar was greasy. He really didn’t take much care of his clothes. Kernehan wondered why Ryerson didn’t do or say something to Farrel. Maybe he figured that with what Farrel had done for the railroad over the years, he deserved some leeway not granted the others.

  They checked out a company car in the basement garage. Kernehan drove. Farrel settled back and shut his eyes. Recuperating, Kernehan thought to himself without disparagement. He had great respect for Farrel’s ability, drunk or sober. They headed out the freeway. New sections were being opened all the time, and Kernehan rarely found himself driving the same pavement each time he went out.

  The country changed. The highway rose through the foothills of the Santa Ana canyon, on through fertile farms, more hills, and then into the desert. All at once they had passed the last of the cultivated land and were looking at the dry reaches of sandy waste, dotted by Joshua trees, cactus, and paloverde.

  Sidewinder wasn’t even a wide place in the road. Far off the highway, its principal function out here in the middle of nowhere was to provide rail facilities for ranches in this part of the county, ranches which shipped in feed and farm machinery and sent out cattle. There was a long team track with a big unloading shed, plus an office, and, to the south of these, corrals and a loading chute for cattle. A spur track headed off northeast toward an outcropping of small stony hills. The gravel pits must be up that way, Kernehan decided. To the east, where the land sloped to a hazy valley, lay the long passing track in which they were most interested, a siding almost a mile long.

  Kernehan parked next the office, and he and Farrel got out to look around.

  It was close to noon, and the sun was almost directly overhead. Under the brilliant desert sun it all looked weathered and deserted, like a set for a western movie. Farrel went up the steps to the platform and peered in through the glass pane in the office door. “They could dust the place.”

  Kernehan already knew that it was a non-agency station. On the rare occasions when a man was needed in the office, a yard clerk was sent out from Vermillion. Under ordinary conditions the conductors took care of any paper work.

  There were tire marks around the loading shed, but they looked old, filmed with blown dust.

  While Farrel and Kernehan were on the platform, they heard a train in the distance. While they watched, a local freight pulled into the passing track and sat waiting; and in a few minutes one of the big through freights came pounding up out of the distant valley and passed with a thunder of Diesels.

  Kernehan watched it roll past with a professional curiosity, wondering if any cars in it had been hit by the thieves.

  When the through freight had gone, the local pulled out of the siding and gradually picke
d up speed. It rolled past with a smell of stirred dust and oiled gears, the rattle of brake rigging, the engineer nodding to them from his cab.

  Kernehan was thinking, it hadn’t taken long. Less than five minutes. Even at night under cover of dark, with the right car spotted, it would take fast work to hit it sitting in the passing track. Even if there was an unexpected delay the thieves couldn’t plan on, the other train late, there didn’t seem scope for the sort of organized thievery they had here…. He frowned over it, knowing the idea didn’t fit what they already knew. But what did?

  The cars weren’t being hit in the Vermillion Yards. Nor, he’d bet on it, in Colton under Richie’s nose. There was no way he’d ever heard of to hit a car in motion.

  He turned, found Farrel frowning as if he too were thinking along these lines.

  Kernehan said, “Well, let’s take a run up to the gravel works.”

  Farrel stood waiting, looking after the vanishing freight.

  “You getting an idea?” Kernehan asked.

  Farrel glanced at him, as if asking him to mind his own business. “I guess not.” Kernehan wondered what he’d really been thinking about.

  There was a dim road which crossed several spurs and sidings and then headed for the rocky hills. It wasn’t a very good road. There were a lot of rocks, and here and there last winter’s rains had filled the ruts with debris.

  The road climbed, dipped among the hills. They came to an amphitheater where a vast bowl was being gouged in the ground by giant excavating machines. A good-sized operation—there was a hopper at least fifty feet in height, with conveyor buckets leading down into the pit. A dozen or so hopper cars sat waiting to be filled.

  They found a short, swarthy man in a white cotton shirt and brown denim pants. He seemed to be running things. Kernehan and Farrel flashed their I.D.’s and asked about the dead Jennings.

  “Them other cops, sheriff’s men, were up here. I don’t know from nothing.” The short man waved his hands. He had short-cropped gray hair, and he smelled dusty, as if some of the gravel dust might be clinging to him. “This hopper car they found the dead guy in, I guess it got filled at night. Brought up here from Sidewinder and filled in the dark. Otherwise looks like somebody should have noticed him.”