But the face which looked back at him was not pitying. A sallow, dark-browed Celtic visage—the face of a fanatic, Ellen had once said. He had laughed at the time. But he’d been happy then.
The washing machine clicked off behind him. Simultaneously the rumble of the hidden water heaters lessened, and as Rees dug his steamy heap of clothing out of the washer, he could hear a droning far off. A summer sound. Like bees in a garden. It grew louder and louder while he tossed his laundry into one of the dryers standing open like a flimsy old-fashioned safe, the somnolent hum becoming a mechanical roar—a motorcycle approaching at high speed. And now he could hear a car also, perhaps a block behind. A chase? he wondered. Cops and robbers. Diverted, Rees slammed the dryer shut. But he forgot the nickels which made it go.
For sudden light flared across the front window of the laundromat. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the lunatic shadow crouched behind the single headlamp as the motorcycle screeched into the alley, booming by the building so violently that the front panes shivered. Christ, at that speed, the fool had to skid. Idiot, idiot. He heard the cycle reeling out of control and rushed for the back door of the laundromat which let into a parking area beside the alley. But he wasn’t quick enough. The clang and clatter of ripping metal and breaking glass resounded down the alley. But the vacuumlike moment of silence which follows wrecks was drowned out by the car which rocked diagonally, tires howling, across Montana and into the alley. Jumping back, Rees had a glimpse of a sedan, an impression of a driver, something glittering in the back seat. The wind of the big dark car’s passage swirled dust back into his face as he stopped in the middle of the alley—spectator, then participant, in another swift and terrible nightmare:
The car hit the wrecked motorcycle, and in the sheeting glare of its headlights channeled up the fenced alley like light in a tunnel, he saw metallic debris flying, and behind that, at the dim edges of illumination, a hunched, crippled figure running. Then the car lights went out. Paralyzed, his mind rejecting what his senses perceived, Rees watched the shadowy vehicle swerve left, then right, then left again, hunting as impersonally as a missile on target. An instant later, he heard the impact, solid yet soft. The car stopped, then backed up. Howling “No” or “Stop”—he would never remember—Rees pounded up the alley. But the car went on, jolting as if it rode over an abandoned tire. And at the next street north it turned left, roaring away. Rees bent over the dark figure crumpled like a ragbag bundle. The motorcyclist was dead. Even in the dark there was no mistaking that life was crushed out of him.
Later, he found out that a neighbor had heard the crash, his shouting, and instead of investigating, had called the police. Rees was still crouched by the body when he heard the siren. A prowl car turned up the alley off Montana. And as the police car pulled up, back gates in the tall fencing began to open. Rees was surrounded suddenly by robed and slippered spectators whose avid faces, pasty in the headlights, seemed ghostly counterparts of those others…Hovering over him like merciless masks as he held Ellen. Hovering while he watched her die…
The patrolmen moved in. And as they bent over the body, Rees moved back, leaning shakily against the fence. He could hardly breathe as he told them. He knew he sounded hysterical, but it did not occur to him that they might not believe him until he heard the one who radioed for an ambulance calling what happened “a hit-and-run.” The other kept talking to the spectators about “the accident.”
“But it wasn’t,” Rees kept saying hoarsely. “Don’t you understand what I’ve been saying?”
“Take it easy, mister,” the policeman who had been radioing said soothingly.
“It wasn’t hit-and-run. That car chased him—”
“We’ll take down your statement in a minute, mister. Just take it easy.” The policeman glanced around the crowd, professionally calm and rational. “Anybody else see or hear this car?”
“All I heard was a crash and him yelling, Officer.” Tubby in his bathrobe, his bald head gleaming, one of the neighbors peered curiously at Rees. “Yelling something, I don’t know what it was. Then I heard the siren, so I come out to have a look—”
“You’re the one who called in, then?”
“That’s right, Officer.” He pursed his lips self-importantly. “Another time, I might of come out first, see if I could help any. But not these days. You got to—”
“I saw the car,” a soft female voice beyond the light interrupted him. Separating like a stage crowd, the bystanders let her through—a young woman wearing a trench coat many sizes too large for her. She was smiling nervously and kept her head turned away to avoid seeing the body. “At the other end of the alley.” She was pointing north where the car had disappeared. “It turned into the street just as I came around the corner.”
“What kind of a car, miss?”
She blinked at the policeman and he smiled encouragingly. She was a very pretty girl in her early twenties, tallish, obviously slender under the too-large coat. “Well, a sedan, I think. But it was going so fast—”
“You notice the color, or what make it was?”
“Green, I think. Dark green.”
“It was black,” Rees said. “A black Mercedes.”
“You see a Mercedes too, miss?”
“Well, no, actually.” She glanced at Rees, then away again. “Didn’t look like an import to me.”
“All right,” the patrolman said before Rees could protest, “we’ll get both your statements later. Miss, if you’d like to sit in the car over here,” and he led her away.
Rees realized the policeman meant to separate them. But from the girl’s pleased, half-flirtatious attitude, it was obvious she thought it was courtesy. Why had she claimed the car was green? he wondered. And she hadn’t said whether she had been driving or walking when she saw it. Doubt filled him suddenly, a dizzy aftermath of his blinding shock. At the center of his mind, Ellen’s face burned incandescent…Eyes closed. Chalky white. They marked DOA on her pale forehead…Sickening, Rees leaned against the fence again. Maybe the car had been green after all.
Another patrol car arrived, then another. After what seemed an eternity, an ambulance rolled up the alley, its siren a dying moan. Then a pale-colored Mustang pulled up, and two men got out. One of the patrolmen pointed to Rees and they made a beeline for him—detectives, they told him. The older of the two said, “You’re the eyewitness, right?”
Rees nodded, stumbling slightly when the older one took his arm, leading him over to the Mustang.
“Patrolman who called in said you’re claiming this wasn’t an accident.”
“Look, I know what I saw!” Trembling, Rees leaned against the Mustang. “That car chased him, and caught him—”
“All right, mister, we’re not arguing with you. Just trying to find out what happened.”
The young one opened one of the Mustang’s two doors, pulling the seat forward. “How about sitting inside while we talk,” he suggested mildly. “Be more comfortable for you.”
Rees climbed shakily into the back seat. Both detectives sat in the front with their legs out the open doors. Suddenly aware of the dome light shining on his face, of the fact that he couldn’t get out now unless they let him, Rees felt a clutch of remembered terror. The older one was asking for identification, and fumbling, Rees pulled his driver’s license out of his wallet, handing it over the back of the front seat.
“Paul Joseph Rees, hah? San Francisco.” The older one’s weatherbeaten face creased into a smile, but his eyes looked hard as marbles, cold and watchful. “You still live at this address in Frisco, Mr. Rees?”
“Not any longer. I don’t have a permanent address as yet.”
“Sounds like you’re planning on locating down here.” The young one was smiling, too. A real smile. “Welcome to Southern California.”
Relaxing slightly, Rees fixed his attention on the pleasant unlined face. What had he said his name was? Detective Somebody. About twenty-five, deeply tanned, a real Southern California type,
with his big shoulders and sun-bleached brown hair—one of the sun worshipers. The other one’s name was Krug, and it suited him. A sergeant. And a bastard, Rees thought. “How about—” He was croaking, he realized, and cleared his throat. “How about some coffee? There’s a vending machine in the laundromat. Don’t know about you, but I could use a lift.”
“Good idea,” Detective Somebody agreed.
But the older one couldn’t be had that easily. “Your company transfer you, something like that, Mr. Rees?”
“I don’t have a company.”
“That mean you’re unemployed?”
“That’s right.” Rees swallowed dryness. “Look, I don’t quite see what this has to do with my being a witness here—”
“Take it easy, Mr. Rees, we’re just doing our job like always.” Krug eyed him calmly. “What’s your line of work?”
“I’m a chemist.”
“Sounds good.” Krug sucked his teeth. “You been out of work long?”
The lie came facilely: “Only a couple of weeks. I decided to take a vacation, then relocate down here.”
“Where you staying, Mr. Rees?”
“At the Pelican Motel. It’s on the oceanfront.”
“Couple hundred feet above it, you mean.” Krug grinned. “Top of the palisades. Ocean Avenue, right?” Without waiting for corroboration, he went on: “So you been in town—what?—a week or so?”
“No, only since Friday.”
“Friday. Un-hunh. Okay, Mr. Rees, let’s hear your story.”
He told it again, but this time the words seemed stale, exaggerated. Some element was missing, he realized. Lying had somehow destroyed his certainty.
The young one kept writing in a notebook, but the older one simply sat there staring at Rees until he had finished talking. Then after a reflective silence he said, “That all of it?”
Bastard cop. “Yes, I think that’s everything.”
Krug sighed gustily. “No details then, I guess. Like a license number. What the driver looked like.”
“Sorry. It all happened so fast, you see. But maybe that girl—”
“Sure.” Krug cut him off. “Okay, Mr. Rees.” He slid off the seat, and, standing outside the car, bent to look in. “Better be sure,” he advised quietly. “Know what I mean? What you’re talking about here is homicide.”
“Yes, I realize—”
“Okay. All I meant was, you sign a statement, it’s official, get me?” Then he walked away.
“What the hell is he trying to do?”
“Easy, Mr. Rees, it’s all part of our job.” The young detective was smiling again. “We only want to make sure you know what you’re saying.” He snapped his notebook shut and glanced at his watch. “We’ll probably be here awhile. Why don’t you go get that cup of coffee you were talking about? Then we’ll be ready to write up a witness statement for your signature.”
No wonder people don’t cooperate with the police. “Do I have any choice?” Rees asked.
“Afraid not,” the young detective said cheerfully. “See you later, okay?” And he followed his partner up the alley.
Rees wandered back into the laundromat and, warmed by a Styrofoam cup of vending-machine coffee, broodingly watched his laundry tumbling inside the barrel of the dryer. He wished now he had never got involved. Much later it occurred to him that the driver of that Mercedes must be wishing the same.
TWO
“Nice pair of night crawlers we got for witnesses,” Al Krug commented sourly when they had finished with the girl. “I’ll believe that guy’s a chemist when I see his diploma. As for her—” He made a flatulent sound with his lips. “All that crap about insomnia. For my dough, she was probably hoofing it home from her last trick.”
Her name was Susannah Roche, the girl had told them, and she lived in one of the high-rise apartment buildings on Ocean Avenue. “I’m an actress,” she had added brightly, snuggling down into the trench coat. “And no cracks, please. Because I really am. Call the Guild if you don’t believe me…”
The uniformed patrolman sitting in the front seat of the squad car grinned appreciatively, and she beamed at him. Then catching Krug’s look, she assumed an exaggeratedly serious expression. “Couldn’t sleep,” she went on, “and I get buggy trying to count sheep. So I took myself a walk, same as I do lots of nights. Or did till tonight. Now that I realize people get murdered—” She shivered theatrically. “Probably have nightmares for weeks.” She turned to Krug. “Was he really run down on purpose? I mean, it seems such a crazy way to kill somebody! Like a schlock movie or something.” She hesitated. “Couldn’t that man—” Then she stopped herself. “Forget I said that. Let’s face it, who’d tell a nut story like that if it wasn’t true? You’d have to be freaking out—”
“You let us worry about that.” Impatiently, Krug blew out his breath. “Go on, Miss Roche, let’s try to get this thing moving.”
“Well, I was walking up Fourteenth Street, and when I was almost at the corner, I heard this noise. Like a crash or something. So, instead of heading home, I turned right. What is it—east? Anyway, I turn the corner on Alta, and this car comes—varoom!—out of the alley.”
“You see the driver?”
“Not really. But it was a man, I think.”
“Anybody else in the car?”
“Not that I could see.”
“And the car was a dark-green sedan, you think?”
“That’s right.”
“Not a Mercedes.”
She hesitated again. “Well—you dig—I’m very visual. Most theater people are. We develop this sense of—”
“Miss Roche,” Krug said warningly, “let’s get to it.”
“What I’m talking about is this picture in my mind.”
“An impression,” Casey Kellog, Krug’s partner, suggested.
“Something like that.” She smiled at him brilliantly. “Detroit wheels, anyway. One of the medium ones. Like a Camaro, maybe.”
“Any impression”—Krug came down hard on the word—“of anything like a license number?”
“Oh, wow,” she groaned, “come on, man. It was there and gone”—snapping her fingers—“just like that!”
“Then what did you do?”
“Me? What did I do?” As she peered at his partner, her large, glistening gray eyes widening, Casey realized she might be nearsighted. Some witness, he thought wearily. “If you mean,” she was saying, “did I walk down this spookville alley, you’re dreaming! I didn’t move till I saw the cop—the police car. But I kept having this freaky feeling. Like something terrible had happened—”
“Apprehension,” Casey said.
“Right on.” Another melting smile transformed her into a beauty. “Anyway, I heard the siren. So I kept waiting. And when I saw the lights down the alley…”
Knowing they would have another chance at both witnesses, they hadn’t wasted any more time on Susannah Roche. Krug told her that she would be driven to police headquarters, where her statement would be typed for signature, and climbed out of the squad car. Casey followed him. As they walked up the alley her clear complaining voice echoed after them: she didn’t have all night, et cetera. Witnesses never had any time, it seemed.
Krug peered in through the open doors of the ambulance where a medical man in wrinkled whites was strapping the body in. “You guys all set to roll?”
“Just about, Al.” He tossed Krug a wallet. “Here’s his ID. Pictures and taping’re all done. I’ll log whatever else is in his pockets. Good sleuthing, gents!” He pulled the doors closed.
Holding the wallet up into the glare of a squad-car spotlight, Krug examined the driver’s license with its photo of a bearded, long-haired young man wearing metal-framed Easy Rider glasses. “All these dudes look alike,” he muttered. “Name’s Gerald Hower Barrett. Address could be Ocean Park.” He opened the money compartment. “Some bills here.” Then he whistled through his teeth. “A pile of twenties. Prosperous dude, right?” He pocketed the wal
let. “Okay, let’s save the neighbors here for the daylight boys to wrap up. Give ’em something to get started on.”
They went on to the lab van parked beyond the ambulance. Two technicians Casey recognized were squatting near the wreckage of the motorcycle inspecting a twisted red-painted cycle fender. “Got a make on your hit-and-runner’s color, maybe,” the gray-haired one—McGregor—reported. “Black, looks like.”
“Score one for our so-called chemist.” With his hands in his pockets, Krug rocked on his heels. “What you say, sport?” he asked Casey. “Think that sexy broad’s playing some kind of a game here?”
Casey grinned. “Think she might need glasses, Al.”
“Jesus, some witness.” He peered at the scrap of metal McGregor was holding. “Looks like black to me.”
“I’d say so.” McGregor nodded. “We’ll test for hue and paint type when we get back to the lab. Got some glass here, too.” He patted the plastic-covered evidence box sitting at his feet. “Pieces of headlight. From the amount, I’d say your hit-and-runner probably lost a lamp, too.”
“Any tire marks?” Krug asked.
“You’re kidding. On this?” McGregor spat into the alley. “Look at that. Dust with asphalt paving underneath. Not a chance in a million of a clear cast.” Then he winked at Casey. “How you like night tour, young fella? Pretty rough on a horny young bachelor, hah?”
“Don’t worry about him,” Krug grunted. “He’s probably fixed up already with an afternoon chick.”
“No such luck.” Casey sighed. “Although I appreciate the thought. How soon can you tell us about the paint, Mac?”
McGregor looked at his partner. “Couple hours, maybe?”
Dourly the other man nodded. “Glass’ll take longer.”
“Okay,” Krug said, “see you guys later,” and still talking, he started back down the alley, not bothering to look to see if Casey was following. “Let’s collect our witnesses and get back. The sooner we get the paperwork done, the sooner day watch can hit this guy Barrett’s pad. Maybe they’ll find something there we can really go to work on.” The eternal hope of the detective.
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 20