“You covered him yesterday,” Krug snapped. “What’s new?”
“Well, maybe it doesn’t amount to anything, but I’ve got a hunch Saretti saw a postcard or something from the brother. He had a yen for the girl, so he kept pretty close track of her. Anyway, I tried worming it out of him what he’d seen yesterday, but his wife was making him nervous—”
“Hit him again,” Timms advised. “Keep hitting everybody. And keep bird-dogging for the uncle. That’s all we can do till something breaks…”
“You want to drive?” Casey inquired as they walked out into the desert-clear morning sunlight.
“Suit yourself,” Krug said stiffly. “And the next time you get any hunches, check ’em out with me first, see?”
“Believe it or not, I forgot to mention it yesterday.”
“Sure, I know.” Krug climbed into the car, slamming the door.
Another lovely day, Casey thought as he crawled in behind the wheel. Whatever he did would be wrong from now on.
The couple on the boat in the slip next to Farr’s were in their late fifties, Casey judged, retirees for whom living on a sailboat was apparently a life’s dream. But it hadn’t turned out quite as dreamed, they admitted. The wife was cramped for housekeeping space. The husband was bored and missed a garden. They had given up sailing even as far as Catalina Island after a series of mishaps at sea. “The thing is,” the husband—Joe Caswell—confessed, “we’d never sailed before, either one of us. And it was a toss-up after we sold the house, whether we got this boat or a house trailer.” He grinned sheepishly. “Guess we zigged when we should’ve zagged. An old story with retired folks, I guess. By the time they get where they want to be, it’s too damn late, they don’t want it any more.”
“Oh, Joe, let it go,” his wife said, but she was smiling at him fondly. “We beat everybody’s ear off about this darned boat. The fact is, we should admit our mistake and sell it.”
“What, and listen to our kids’ razzing?” Caswell laughed, his droll grimace inviting them to join in. “Not a chance! Not till they’ve made a few mistakes of their own.”
Guessing that this was an old dialogue worked up by now into a sort of kidding-on-the-square patter, Casey grinned appreciatively. Nice old sports, he thought. A little silly, but nice. In a way they were very like his own parents—
“By the way,” Caswell was saying, “wasn’t that City of Santa Monica I saw on your identifications? You fellas are kind of out of your territory, aren’t you?”
“Don’t worry, we’re in touch with your division out here,” Krug assured him. “Everything’s okay.” He hesitated. “You folks acquainted at all with the guy owns the next boat? Farr’s his—”
“Dave, sure,” the husband interrupted. “We’ve talked some, cracked a beer together. He’s a nice sort of fella—except for needing a haircut.”
“Now, Joe,” his wife chided, “you know it’s the style now.”
“Some style. Man looks like an idiot with all that—All right, Sally, all right.” He winked at Krug and Casey. “What’s he done, skip as many parking tickets as he has haircuts?”
“Hasn’t done anything we know of,” Krug said. “But we’d like to know how often he comes here. Like once a week—twice—weekends—anything like that you can tell us.”
“Weekends mostly,” and Sally Caswell would have gone on, but her husband stopped her.
“Excuse me, but I’d like to know why you want to know about Dave before we answer any questions.” He smiled modestly—not tough, but nobody’s fool, either. “No problem if it’s important. I just don’t think a person has any right—”
“A girl he was friendly with was killed,” Krug cut him off flatly. “Somebody dumped her body in the bay north of here.”
“Oh!” Sally Caswell stepped backward, stumbling against a chair in their snug cabin. “You can’t mean Dave—”
“This is strictly routine in this kind of a case, ma’am. We check everybody involved.”
“Poor Dave,” Joe Caswell murmured. “He won’t like this much, that’s for sure. Involvement, I mean,” and he hesitated. “What day in particular are you asking about?”
“Last Tuesday, Mr. Caswell.”
“Oh. Tuesday.” He glanced at his wife, then down at his feet. “Well, Dave usually doesn’t show up on weekdays. Like my wife told you—”
“Joe, he was here Tuesday, you know yourself he was! That’s why we noticed him,” she said excitedly, “because he’s usually never here except Saturdays and Sundays.”
“But last Tuesday he was?” Krug glanced at Casey. Both opened their notebooks. “What time of day, would you say, Mrs. Caswell?”
She looked at her husband for help.
“Evening,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Sally? Fairly late, too. We were already in bed.”
“The thing is, weekends it’s a madhouse around here.” She giggled wildly, nervousness making her shrill. “If you let noise bother you, you’d never sleep! But weekdays—especially now with the summer over,” then her voice trailed off.
That’s why they had noticed, Caswell took up their story—a careful man, Casey decided. To be a witness was one thing, to gossip was another. They’d get nothing extra here unless Sally Caswell blew up…“We heard him about ten or so,” Caswell was saying. “You know how that dock resounds over the water. Clump, clump, like an army coming—”
“We had no idea it could be Dave, of course. Just somebody clumping along.” She glanced at her husband. “Not very steadily, either.”
“Now, Sally, that’s only an opinion.”
“I know, dear, but that’s what—”
“Mrs. Caswell, you suggesting he was drunk?” Krug asked. “Under the influence of something?”
“All I know is he didn’t sound—well—right. And he couldn’t have been, either, the way he took that boat out!”
“Now, Sally—”
“Joe, there’s no use bending over backward to make Dave right when he wasn’t! Now, I know what I know,” she insisted. “He and whoever he was with were dead drunk. I saw them, you know I did!”
“Them,” Casey picked up hastily before she could start again. “Could you be a little clearer, Mrs. Caswell?”
“What do you mean, clearer?”
“Well, how many people, for instance.”
“Oh! Two. Dave and somebody else. A girl, I think.”
“Sally, you don’t know—”
Then Krug moved in strong, dominating both of them. No more Mom-and-Pop nonsense from now on, Casey thought with a prickling excitement. “Why do you think it was a girl, Mrs. Caswell?”
“Well, you can’t see very well at night, I know that. And they were all bundled up. But she”—hesitating, appearing alarmed now—“I mean, whoever it was—was much smaller. Not nearly as tall,” she added carefully.
Krug looked at the husband. “You agree with that, Mr. Caswell?”
“I didn’t get up to look.”
“You went up on deck, Mrs. Caswell?” Casey asked.
“No, of course not. I just—well—peeked out the porthole. That one.” She pointed. “That’s why I couldn’t see very well. Just their outlines. But I’ll tell you something, he was practically carrying her!” Then, staring at them, she swallowed convulsively. “I don’t know. I mean”—thin-voiced and frightened now—“I wish. Well, they went below. Then the next thing I knew, he was back up again, starting up the motor.”
“Auxiliary engine,” Caswell corrected. “Damn-fool thing to do drunk,” he muttered. “If he was drunk. Didn’t even have his riding lights on, Sally said. Wonder the Harbor Patrol didn’t pick him up…”
“Neat but not gaudy—right, sport?” Satisfaction had made Krug amiable again. “From now on, we go by the book. Right down the line, chapter and verse.” He grinned hugely as he climbed into the passenger side of the front seat. “Farr don’t know it yet, but he’s almost in the bag.”
“I wonder,” Casey muttered as he start
ed the car.
“Now what?”
“Well—why doesn’t he know?”
“Oh, for chrissake,” Krug groaned. “You heard the story—he was bombed out of his mind. Crazy bastard probably can’t even remember.”
“Crazy is right.” Casey fished for his sunglasses as he turned out of the fenced-in yacht club compound. Doesn’t make sense, he kept thinking as he slid into the light traffic on Admiralty Way, driving a short distance eastward until he came to a cross-over in the divided street. Or maybe it makes too much sense?
“Jesus”—Krug rocked against him as Casey gunned into the U-turn, his tires squealing—“what a maniac. Believe me, the way you highball a car, they’d lock you up as a menace if you didn’t carry that badge.”
“Privilege of the public servant.”
“Yeah—to die young.”
Casey whipped around a Volkswagen, then slowed slightly for the turn onto Washington Boulevard. Directly ahead lay an apartment complex for singles only. More instant happiness. Depressed by the idea of another airtight compartment in a society hellbent on separating itself into rival camps, he sighed unconsciously. Tribalism.
“Okay, genius, what’s bothering you?”
“I don’t know really.” Casey hesitated. Then he blurted impulsively, “Al, it just doesn’t feel right somehow. It’s too pat, too easy—you see what I mean? And it’s all wrong for a man like Farr. He’s no Jekyll and Hyde—attorney by day and fiend by night.”
“Bullshit.” Krug shifted irritably, his heavy body bouncing the front seat. “The trouble with you is you still believe in nice people. Nice people don’t commit murder.”
“Ah, Al, don’t give me that! You know what I’m talking about. Farr may have killed her, sure. For a hundred good reasons he could have smacked her and thrown her overboard. But systematic beating? Torture? That takes a sadist, some kind of monster. It doesn’t go with what we’ve heard so far.”
“Let me tell you something about human nature, sport. A quickie lesson, okay? We’re all sadists. All monsters. We’re all animals, you get me? And all the college degrees, all the flossy fronts in the world don’t mean a thing. Because we’re all of us hyenas—wolves—weasels—you name it. Animals that eat each other. Animals that live off each other—”
As he raved on, Farr’s voice kept echoing ironically in Casey’s head: You make a meal off anybody you can bully every day. Villain sees hero’s villainy, he thought. But Krug as cannibal could be projection on Farr’s part. Or intuition, he told himself, uneasy suddenly with his own stubborn disbelief. Krug versus Farr had in some way destroyed his perspective, he decided. Because it was too close to their own conflict? Groaning inwardly, Casey longed for maturity, for the sort of detachment which would allow him to learn from Krug without also judging him. And he was glad they were obliged to check in with Lieutenant Timms before moving further. For in the routine of official procedure, he realized now, was protection for the policeman as well as his suspect. From his power and prejudice. From blindness which could make his righteousness brutal…“All right,” he said when he could listen no longer. “Okay, Al. I get the message. What I meant was—even a hyena goes about his killing differently from a weasel, that’s all. What the autopsy showed and what we heard about Tuesday just don’t go together. You see what I mean? If that was Farr there Tuesday, then somebody else must’ve worked her over and dumped her on him to get rid of.”
“Which means two killers.” Krug blew out his breath. “And what’re you using for a motive?”
“If I knew that, I’d know everything.”
“Which is lesson one for today, right? When you got a suspect, nail him. Save the psychoanalyzing for the experts.”
“Then you’re for picking him up?”
“I’m for picking him up, yeah. And working him over till he spills his guts. Which he will,” he added. “Take my word, he will. Once I get him behind those bars, Farr’s going to talk his head off…”
“Ah, come on, Al,” Timms said wearily, “you’re jumping the gun, for God’s sake. You can bring him in for questioning, sure, but why bother if you don’t have to? If he’s cooperative, don’t push him. Any lawyer in the world is going to know you can’t make him talk at this point unless he wants to.” He glanced at Casey. “You check out that landlord hunch of yours?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
“Good enough.” And to Krug again: “See if you can get Farr’s permission to let a fingerprint man in that boat of his. If not, we’ll have to get a warrant.” He smiled faintly. “Pete’s going to love us for all this business we’re handing him. On the other hand, he keeps squawking all he gets is burglaries down there, so this’ll be a change for him.”
Krug grinned. “I’ll tell him you said so.”
“You do that.” Timms hesitated. “I think you ought to call Farr now. At his office. See if he’ll come by, or meet you at his place. I’m curious to know how he reacts.”
But as it turned out, Farr wasn’t in his office. He had called in earlier—the receptionist at Scobie, Stone and Levinson reported—saying he was ill. Was there a message? It being Saturday tomorrow, the office would be closed, so Mr. Farr was not expected back till Monday.
“Interesting,” Timms commented. “Maybe you better pay him a call? Just in case that illness might be travel fever.”
But Farr wasn’t home, either—not home, or not answering his door. As he had previously, Krug punched neighboring doorbells, but those didn’t answer, either. “Let’s try a janitor or somebody,” he suggested. “They got a lot of help at this place, I notice. One of ’em might’ve seen him…”
“Sure I seen him early this morning walking in the park,” one of the janitors told them. “I was just fixing to go to work when I spotted him coming up the ramp there. Walking, I mean, not driving.”
“Man’s not very sick if he’s out hoofing around that early,” Krug said. “We called his office, they said he was sick.”
“Well, come to think of it, he did look kinda peaked.” The janitor grinned. “ ’Course, he maybe just had him a party head. Anyhow, he taken out his auto a while later. Don’t reckon he been back since.”
“What do you think,” Casey asked as they drove off. “Coincidence maybe?”
“Like hell,” Krug grunted predictably. “For my dough, he’s skipped. Come on, hotshot, let’s step on it. I want that warrant to get in his boat.” Then he smiled happily. “One print, that’s all we need. One good one that matches hers in that cabin, and that’s the end of the kid gloves for Mr. Farr. He’s Suspect Number One for murder.”
EIGHTEEN
Feeling burned out, David Farr drove slowly southward, only half-aware of the beauty of the morning. The sea sparkled, calm as a lake. The air coming through his open windows was dry and balmy. Filthy climate, he thought resentfully. No seasons, no rain, eternal sun. With a nostalgia he knew to be false, he longed for frost, fog, a violent storm—some weather manifestation to match his sense of distress and helplessness. For nothing was left now of the consuming fury that had driven him last night. All the plans which had seemed miraculous constructions to protect him from exposure were cinders this morning. And at the root of his being, a chill certainty sent numbing messages along his nerves. He shivered in the sun, shuddered in the warming dry air blowing in on him. Apprehension, the other side of the coin of his ambition, had made him rash, he realized, foolhardy. He knew now he had sacrificed an advantage. Jackass, he thought savagely, of all the things you could have done, why call Krug?
Something dark, sick, had kept rising in him as he had driven home from Kenji’s at a snail’s pace last evening. Krug seemed to hover, a gigantic shadow behind him. Krug, now the shape of all his spectral fears. Failure. Loneliness. Oh, he knew the labels, all right. Inability to love. Weakness. Doubt. But to label is not to cure. And knowing thyself is its own kind of sickness.
Big stupid cop hands holding those four pieces of board. That’s what you call sudo? Y
es, sir, Sergeant, we call that sudo. Pseudo, see? Meaning fake, Sergeant. Darkness, sickness ballooning in him. Terror, that was it. No, wrong word. Word was horror. As in punishment. Or torture. Whatever you call it, she took a hell of a pounding.
Groaning as he pulled into his parking slot in the apartment complex where he lived, Farr sat with his eyes closed, seeing her clearly. Another loner. Another hollow being—colorful, almost real…Not, not Molly. It’s Holly. Had a twin, too. Delbert. He should have called himself Huckle. Names can wreck you if…You want me to bad-mouth my brother’s—?
Farr’s eyes flew open. Blindly he stared at the dull nighttime gleam from the dashboard of his car, hearing his own voice: Ah, I see now. She was with the band that night. Like a sister, she said. Sometimes when they’re stoned they let me sing with them.
He jumped out, slamming the car door so hard the Jaguar rocked. For Christ sake, why hadn’t he thought of it before? he wondered as he rushed for the nearest elevator and punched his own floor button. Something forgotten, the other detective said. Some small detail. Like a band at a party. Her brother’s friends. You go underground at that age, your friends know where.
He poured himself a drink first. Then hoping his hosts at the party that night didn’t go in for private unlisted numbers, he dialed Information. Directory Service it was called. His hosts were listed, the girl assured him—the real anonymity of the really rich, he thought as he dialed their number. But convincing the servant who answered that he was worthy of her employer’s attention almost stopped him.
“My goodness,” he heard his hostess say at last, “what can possibly be so important to an attorney at this hour?”
“Nothing professional,” Farr confessed, and tried a laugh which sounded almost genuine. “I’m afraid I’m trying to take advantage—not only of your good nature, but your taste, too.”
“Such winning flattery. All right,” she said brusquely, “what is it, dear? Some charity, I suppose. No? The what? Oh, band you said. You mean musicians? But I didn’t really think they were all that…Oh, you did. Well, I’m glad you enjoyed them. Hang on a second, I’ll get my book.” And as easily as that he had the name of her “little man”—the booking agent—who had engaged the rock band for her party on the ninth. Very graciously she assured him it was no trouble at all, she did hope they’d see him again soon…
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 10