“Only what I told you, sir.”
“All right. Sounds like more claptrap to me, but let’s try to get something out of those kids. Maybe one of ’em knows where the girl’s holed up.” He sighed gustily. “I just hope it wasn’t a mistake, you letting that woman back in Myrick’s house.”
“Don’t get what you mean, Lieutenant.”
“Forget it, I’m probably borrowing trouble.”
The six teenagers were all different, yet in some mysterious way all the same, Casey decided later. Like a family resemblance, a kinship of behavior rather than blood—the JD’s habitual kind of half-sullen, half-kidding adolescent arrogance.
All were fingerprinted, then each one was questioned individually about Judy Flesher. The one Casey drew, Ellis Johnson, kept calling him “piggie,” assuring him cockily that he was scaring nobody.
“Don’t try to psych me, Ellis,” Casey said patiently. “Nobody’s trying to scare anybody yet. This is strictly routine.”
“The name’s Johnson, piggie. Only my friends call me Ellis.”
“Says here”—Casey glanced at the file lying on the desk in front of him—“they call you Tiger these days. But last year you answered to—I don’t believe this—Sonny?”
“Ah, pigshit, you don’t bother me none.”
“Likewise, Ellis. But you keep jiving like that, you’re going to annoy somebody.”
“Who you talking about, piggie?”
“Me,” Krug interrupted his own questioning. “Book him,” he added. “Suspicion of homicide will do just fine for starters.”
Johnson looked dumbstruck. “Man, you off the wall! You ain’t dropping no killing on this brother!”
“We’ll see about that. Meantime, boy, you stop flapping your lip and try listening to what you’re here for. That goes for you, too, tough guy,” Krug said to the boy sitting beside his own desk. “I’m sick of listening to you stupid little pricks making like two-bit hoods.”
“Hoooooeeeee,” Johnson moaned low, “that’s the Man for sure.”
“Better believe it.” Krug glared at him, then turned hot-eyed back to his own victim, whose sassy grin had already slipped. “Okay, you, start talking.”
“Ready?” Casey asked, and Johnson nodded. “First I want to know Judith Flesher’s whereabouts.”
“Man, I tell you straight, I don’t know nothing.”
“When did you last see her?” Casey waited. “Look, her record says she runs with you.”
“No way, man. That was a accident, me getting busted with her that time. Listen, the Flesh—I mean, nobody messes with her, man. She trouble all the way.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Not the kind you thinking. ’Cause she really weird, man, weirdo! Like the way she goes hanging around the doc’s all the time.”
“Why shouldn’t she? She’s his patient, after all. Or was,” Casey amended, “till you got rid of her.”
“You shucking me, man, I didn’t get rid of nobody!”
“I meant you, plural. You all hassled her out of that group—Why, Ellis?” But it was obvious that Johnson had no intention of talking. “All right,” Casey said, “maybe you can part with a few words about when you last saw her?”
Monday night. At the meeting, he meant? The boy shrugged. “Seen her after, too, man. See, she come messing around, and the doc he told her to split. But she strictly evil, that Jude-baby. Kinks, man. The whole time we was rapping, she just squat there like a spook out on the porch.”
“Was she still there when you left?” Casey waited again. “Ellis, you just got through saying—”
“Well, I didn’t rightly mean I seen her sitting there.” Ellis Johnson grinned. “Seen her wheels, man. You figure she gonna walk off someplace and leave a brand-new Yamaha?”
“What did I tell you,” Krug said later when the new statements had been filed and the group had gone. “All got together and cooked us up a killer.”
“I wonder, Al.” Absently, Casey scratched a fleabite on his wrist. “None of the others mentioned seeing her motorbike.”
“Stick around, that was just the first pitch, sport. I’ll bet my bottom dollar on it.”
“Well, maybe. But she sounds spaced out enough to be capable of anything.”
“Sure, according to them. But when we find her, maybe we’ll hear a different story.”
“If we find her.”
“We’ll find her, all right, don’t worry about that.”
Casey stood up, yawning and stretching. “Anybody got any bright ideas about who their leader might be?”
“Speed,” Zwingler answered. “No pun intended, it’s the kid’s name. Arthur Speed.” He rattled a flimsy copy of the statement he had taken from the boy named Speed. “A real smart one. Read this, you’ll see what I mean. This kid’s from a good solid home. Parents are okay. Everything’s roses—So why the hell does he mess around with pills?”
“Maybe for the adventure.”
Krug snorted. “If these kids had to do something besides sit on their butts while their old man supports ’em…”
“Come on, Al,” Casey protested. “There are more kids concerned about the public good now than at any time in the history of this country.”
“Yeah, and who’s paying for it? They’re running around playing missionary, and who’s footing the bills?”
Money, always money, Casey thought. And pursuit of it the only proper goal for an adult. This belief alone could be the collapsed bridge between the world that is and the world that was. Even his own parents had a struggle believing that his way, not theirs, was best for him. “Al,” he interrupted Krug’s customary tirade on the young, “it’s half past three. If we’re going to check out the Flesher girl’s place before we head for Allman country, hadn’t we better get going?”
They left immediately. But as it happened, they never made it to the Allman apartment.
NINETEEN
By spot-checking instead of monitoring each complete tape, Adrian had managed to go through seven by late afternoon—almost all of June. All were intact, she had found, and relieved, she was sure that the damage to the June 30 tape must have been accidental. Therefore unconnected with Myrick’s death. Discovering a curious sort of comfort in the idea, she realized that she had been sitting here all afternoon dreading some clear and unmistakable sign. A crazy idea. But the expectation persisted in her that some dark spirit inhabited this place, and being malevolent, inhuman, implacable, it must surely manifest itself again.
Something banged at the rear of the house. Lotte, Adrian decided, banging in the kitchen, gathering grievances as always. The sunlight through the windows seemed a melancholy illusion. Next door, lawn sprinklers spouted, creating miniature rainbows in the fans of spray. Adrian sighed as the telephone rang for the tenth time. Another reporter. But she was glad to answer. Anything was better than the ceaseless round of her own thoughts.
When she picked up the receiver, she heard the click of an extension. A clumsy eavesdropper, Lotte had as usual forgotten to turn off the kitchen radio. Literally, in this house the walls had ears…
“Miss Crewes?” A nasal voice was quacking at her through the receiver. “This is Burns speaking, Frederick Burns. I’ve got a proposition that’s going to interest you…”
But Mr. Burns was wrong, and Adrian soon hung up on him. “My God,” she said ruefully when Lotte loomed in the doorway five minutes later, “what a ghoul that one was! He’s the worst yet.”
“What is this?”
“That stupid phone call. Didn’t he sound like the sort who’ll come through the windows next? Oh, never mind,” Adrian added, having learned from experience that Lotte would never admit to eavesdropping on phone calls. “Some obnoxious reporter. The sixth today. Isn’t it awfully early for you to be leaving?”
“We don’t fix no hours.” Lotte’s mouth turned down. “Is all very well, this looking after things,” she grumbled, “but who will pay? I don’t work for nothing.”
“If it worries you, why don’t you call Mr. Myrick? I have his San Francisco office number right here.”
“Sure, so then he thinks I am money-crazy like an American.”
Adrian suppressed a giggle. “Whatever you think best. I’m sure you know better than I do.”
“Ja. So.” Lotte shifted restlessly. “Is time to go, anyway. I am at Annaliese if something happens.”
Adrian glanced out the window. She had meant to leave when Lotte did, but now it seemed such a waste of time. The street was still bright, bathed in summer sunlight which would last for hours. Nothing happens when the sun is shining. “All right, Lotte,” she said dismissingly, “see you tomorrow.”
As soon as the front door had closed, she was sorry she had stayed. For now the silence was like a held breath, the walls around her seemed to resonate. The house is still listening, she thought. And anything can happen.
In a way that was decidedly against regulations, Krug leaned against the door, trying to force the latch. A smell of frying onions floated through open windows next door. Swallowing hungrily, Casey tried to see through the closed sliding-glass panes into Judy Flesher’s apartment. But the curtains were drawn; his own dim reflection looked back. Starving pig. They never told you at the Academy how many home-cooked meals policemen missed.
“You still looking for that kid?” The loud disembodied voice made them both jump. It was the neighbor they had talked to before. The onion fryer. Behind the rusty window screen next door, her face hovered pale and ghostly. “Haven’t seen her since you were here before,” she was saying. “Believe me, if I had, she’d know it, all right! I mean, it’s one thing to live dirty the way she does. But when it gets so your neighbors can smell it, I say it’s time to do something. You wouldn’t believe the stink that’s coming out of that place!”
“Windows are closed,” Casey said. “How can you smell—”
“I’m talking about out back. You just go on back there, you don’t believe me. Why, it’s terrible! Turns your stomach right over. Can’t you do something about it? You’re cops, aren’t you? Somebody’s got to—”
“All right, ma’am,” Krug stopped her. “Isn’t our line of work, but we’ll take a look.” He walked off while she was still talking—around the front of the building to the other side.
Each apartment had a back door, a narrow cinder-block stoop, each with a garbage can sitting beside it. Sour-faced, Krug sniffed the air as they counted their way back to Judy Flesher’s door, one from the end. “No wonder they got a stink,” he muttered, “garbage sitting under their windows like this.” He kicked irritably. “Few thousand dog turds don’t help any, either. Want to bet the mutt’s hers? Those squawkers never smell their own—” He stopped abruptly, staring at Casey, who was holding his breath to keep from gagging. “Jesus,” he breathed, “Jee-sus!” and in two strides he was at the smallest of the two open windows—Judy’s bathroom, Casey guessed. With one punch Krug shoved his fist through the half-rotted screen and pulled it loose so he could shove his head in for a look. Casey heard him groan. Then Krug pushed himself back, his ruddy face purple now, contorted with rage. “That goddamn stupid old sonofabitch! She couldn’t take a look in there. Oh, no, not her!”
“Is it—”
“You’re goddamn right!” Then Krug took off, and at the first back door, began to pound furiously.
TWENTY
“Lord’s sake, how was I to know?” The manager’s shrill, quavering voice floated without a pause through the open windows. “I’m no mind reader I could tell the poor thing was laying in there. Now, could I? I ask you. Wasn’t a sign of anything wrong, so how was I to—”
“For Chrissake, somebody shut her up,” Krug snarled. “We got enough here without listening to that crazy old bat.”
“Let her talk,” said Timms. “Maybe she’ll entertain the sightseers enough to keep ’em out of our hair.”
“Fat chance,” one of the medical men muttered. “All that’s keeping those fools from climbing through the windows is the smell in here.” He kept coughing hoarsely. “God, what a stink! I never smelled one as bad as this. What we need here is gas masks.”
“You got any opinions?” the lieutenant asked him.
“Well, under conditions like this…” Hesitating, he brooded over the swollen corpse. “Strangulation maybe. Lot of discoloration when they go this long. Look here at the neck.”
Gagging behind the handkerchief which he held clamped over his nose, Casey looked, then stepped back hastily, bumping into Krug.
“Finger marks, I’d say,” the medical man was saying. “Nine chances out of ten we’ll find the hyoid bone broken.”
“How about time?”
“Hard to tell when the time of death is days instead of hours ago, Lieutenant. And in weather like this…”
“All right, we’ll leave it for the morgue freaks to figure out. Would you guess it could be as far back as Monday?”
“It’s possible, yeah.”
As Timms rose from a squatting position, his knees cracked and he groaned unconsciously. “Could be coincidence, I suppose. But we’d better go with a connection theory to start with.” Somber-faced, weary, he glanced around the tiny apartment. “Some pad, hah? Looks like a grease monkey instead of a girl lived here.”
There was a battered couch which obviously converted into a bed at night, a stained armchair with broken springs, a table and two straight chairs in one corner. Through the bar-type pass-through into the kitchen, they could see a rusty stove and an old refrigerator. The sink was full of dirty dishes, and on the drainboard lay a heap of trash—mostly empty cartons from frozen TV dinners. The only reading material in the place appeared to be a stack of dog-eared comic books on the bar counter.
Timms was inspecting a shiny motorbike which stood propped on its stand near the back door. “Hell of a place to park this. Looks new to me. Be interesting to know who gave her the money to pay for it.”
“Mother probably,” Krug guessed. “Who gets elected to notify?”
“Let Vegas PD handle it. If they can reach her soon enough, she can probably catch one of the commuter flights tonight.”
“Lieutenant,” Casey ventured, “if Judy was hanging around Myrick’s after the group left—”
“So they claim,” Krug interrupted. “Which means nothing, right?”
“All I meant is, she might have seen the killer, Al.”
“And brought him home with her? You’re dreaming, genius. That story about seeing this bike there could be so much bullshit. Didn’t I tell you,” he said to Timms, “I had her pegged for their scapegoat? For my dough, we ought to hold the whole gang as material witnesses. Lay you even money we can break one of ’em down before tomorrow morning.”
“Sure, and in the meantime we’ll have sixteen different citizens’ committees down on us for violating their rights. We’ll question ’em, of course. Keep hammering. That’s all we can do.” Timms gnawed his lower lip. “The first thing we get back, let’s eyeball that transcript of the Monday meeting. If there isn’t any sign she was there, we’ll have a handle to start pumping with.”
But the typewritten transcript of the Monday tape clearly showed that Judy Flesher had been present at the meeting, if only for a short time.
“So there goes our handle.” Timms sighed. “But here’s an interesting item.” In the quiet squad room, his voice echoed hollowly as he read from the transcript, “ ‘You a real heavy chick since you connected, hunh, baby?’ Sounds to me like the Flesher kid was backsliding.”
“If she was,” Casey suggested, “that might account for their hostility toward her.”
“Bullshit,” Krug growled. “I still say they’re setting her up.”
A word from the blurry transcript caught Casey’s eye. “ ‘Pigsucker,’ ” he murmured, then aware of sudden tension, he said, “Quote,” hastily, pointing it out. “Here, before that part the lieutenant just read. ‘Pigsucker, you a real heavy chick,’ et cetera.”
Krug was peering over his shoulder. “So what about it?”
“Could be jive language for an informant.”
The three men stared at each other. Timms was the first to speak. “That doesn’t make sense. Or does it? Maybe she was playing both sides of the street?” He rubbed his jaw, considering. “Better check out Narco on both counts. But listen,” he warned, “don’t get locked in on any theories yet. Because we could be way off, completely wrong on all counts. For all we know, this is a nut case of some kind, so maybe this is just the beginning. Like two down—and how many more to go?”
TWENTY-ONE
The light was failing, but she had to go on. A boy on a skateboard whirled by on the sidewalk. Next door the forgotten lawn sprinklers whirred peacefully, creating a river in the gutter. How much confirmation do you need? Adrian raged at herself as she switched on the lamp. The truth was, she knew, she was afraid to go out into that dusky hall outside the sliding door. But she must soon. And it would take every ounce of her courage.
Deciding to skip the balance of the June tapes, she had started on the July section. The sooner she was done, the better, she had told herself. Surely a spot check ought to be sufficient.
The first tape her hand had fallen on was dated July 17. Adrian pulled it out of the stack she had left on her desk yesterday when the house was sealed. Sliding the reel out of the box, she fit it on the spindle, then threaded the tape quickly. Punching the PLAY button, she had leaned back, waiting, bored by now.
But this time no voices came forth, young and screechy with woe, with outrage, with callow self-importance. And as she listened to the gentle hissing, the quiet around her seemed deadly again, the room suddenly chill. Adrian speeded up the tape, then slowed it again. Nothing. Deliberately, for her fingers were unsteady now, she removed the tape from the spindle and tried another—July 14. Then another, July 12. Then July 10, and finally, July 7. All had been erased; the damage was intentional.
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 46