Later he found out that quite a few people had known of her affair with the man who killed her. Her father had been anxious for her to be married. The man was demonstrably unstable, potentially dangerous.
For two months after the funeral he had continued his duties, walking through each day like a mechanical man. He had found he could not forget that scene; it was inextricably mixed somehow with some of the bloodier episodes which had happened during his years of police duty before he had met Caree.
During those two months, all the reality of the world around him took place dimly behind the shining screen of memory, and at last he had discovered that alcohol would dim the memories. At first he had been suspended for a month and had managed to get himself in shape to go back to duty at the end of the month. The second suspension was for six months.
After a long period of forgetfulness, he had walked into headquarters, his broken shoes flapping on his feet, his gray face dirty and whiskered, and found out that his suspension had been up for over three weeks and that he had been suspended indefinitely.
The period after that was impossible to remember. There were vague memories of a ward and of people strapping him down while he fought to get away from the incredibly slimy things that were creeping across the floor toward his bed.
One morning he had stopped and looked at the reflection of himself in the plate glass of a store window. He had frowned at it for a long time, trying to see in the watery eyes and hollow cheeks of the reflection something familiar—something of Judson Brock. There were coins in his pocket, and he waited until the bars opened. He bought a beer and held the first swallow in his mouth, looking across and seeing in the mirror of the back bar the same face that had looked back at him from the store window. Then he had spewed the beer onto the floor, turned, and left.
He had scrubbed his body with harsh yellow soap at the mission and put on the suit and shoes from the Salvation Army. There was no money in the bank. The house had been sold, the money spent.
Two days later, in spite of his weakness, Brasher had hired him, sensing that here was a man whose spirit was so far gone that he would accept without question the long hours and the small pay.
He had gone to work in the yard, learning dully what was expected of him. The heavy sheets and plates cut into his soft flesh through the canvas gloves, and he could work for only an hour at a time before weakness hit him.
Brasher had given him an advance, and with it he rented a cheap room and bought food his stomach could retain.
At the end of a month his eyes were clearer and the moments of weakness came less often. During the second month he began to fill out, and with a thick, stubborn pride in the strength that had come back to him, he punished his body, working at high tempo so that at the end of the day he could fall exhausted into bed, into dreamless sleep.
For a time one of the office men brought his orders into the yard, copies of the material shipped in and the manner in which it should be sorted. Gradually he became conscious of the fact that it was a girl who came out with the orders, and that each time she came she smiled at him and that he liked the way she walked and smiled.
No longer could he completely exhaust his body with the day’s work, and in order to fill his evenings, to keep from remembering, he went to dull movies, sat in his room, and read books, fighting against the face of Caree that threatened to come between his eyes and the printed page.
One night he grew tired of fighting, and when the face came before his eyes he saw that it wasn’t the face of Caree, but the face of the girl who brought the orders out to him as he worked in the yard.
The next day he asked her clumsily to have dinner with him, and to his relief she acted neither coy nor haughty. She accepted with pleasure, and later, as they sat over coffee and she told him about herself, he realized that at last he had begun to heal.
He found out that she knew all about him from one of the girls in the office whose brother worked in Identification at headquarters. He had tried to tell her one night, and she had stopped him and said that she knew about it and it was probably better if he didn’t talk about it until some day when it would be easier.
She became a habit, and more than a habit. She became as necessary to him as warmth and food and shelter. And yet he was awkward and uncertain with her. He felt as though somehow, in the past, his soul had been dug out of him with a hasty spoon and the bits and fragments of it left inside him were too few to offer to anyone.
And, as he was gradually coming back to life, as each night he managed to be more cheerful, less strained, she walked out of the doorway and moments later the wind plucked the orders out of her limp hand, danced them over the piles of scrap, and plastered them flat against the wire mesh of the fence.
Brock said, “I was standing in this exact spot. Here is the sheet that I had picked up when I saw her coming. I was going to carry it over and lay it on that pile over there, but when I saw her coming, I put it down and waited. John, you’re standing exactly where she was when the slug hit her. She came toward me, her head tilted back with the force of the blow, her right side turning half toward me. She landed on her side on that pile of copper scrap and bounced off. She lay with her cheek against the dirt, her face turned away from the scrap pile.”
“How was she facing when it hit her?”
“I couldn’t be sure. You see, with the junk about here, she didn’t come on a straight line but sort of picked her way through on a zigzag. If I had to guess, I’d say that she was heading almost directly at me, turned maybe a little to her left.”
Maclaren took off his soft felt hat and scratched his thinning hair. He looked back at the direction from which the slug, and Stella Galloway, had come. He said, “What happened to your head, Jud? That shot was fired either from the back end of the office building, the far end of the shop, or from behind one of the piles of scrap. If you’d been on your toes …”
Brock managed a tight grin. “Since when does a police officer get to call a lush by his first name?”
Maclaren looked angry for a moment and then sighed. “The hell with scrapping, Brock. Did the shot seem far away?”
“Somewhere between maybe sixty and a hundred feet from me. Not much farther. You can’t hit anything with a forty-five much farther than that. I figure that because she was between me and the pistol, or whatever it was, if it had been much over a hundred feet, I’d have seen her lurch before I heard the shot. As it was, the two things happened at the same instant.”
Horowitz said softly, “That makes sense.” He drifted over to Maclaren and whispered in his ear.
Maclaren stared at Brock for a few moments. He said, “Any chance that somebody was gunning for you and hit the young lady by mistake?”
It was a new thought. Brock said, “Could be, but somehow I don’t think so. I haven’t made any enemies lately, and if somebody wanted to knock me off for old stuff, they could have had me while I was … on the town.”
“Maybe somebody didn’t like the girl being friendly with you and wanted to knock you off and hit her instead. She mention any ex-boyfriend?”
“Told me of a few locals who had made passes. One guy works here that she used to know. Fellow named Hodge Oliver.”
“Where was he when Galloway was shot?”
“You’ll have to get the stories on that. I haven’t had a chance to check on anybody.”
Maclaren walked close to him and looked full into his eyes. “Okay, Brock,” he said gently. “I don’t know your angle, but Brasher says you represent the company in this so we’ll deal with you, even if I don’t like it. Just get one thing clear in your mind. When you were on the force you liked to bang off on angles of your own. Don’t try it this time. Don’t get in our way, and do just what we ask you to do. Understand?”
“You need me for anything right now?” Brock asked.
Maclaren shook his head. Brock went to his locker, changed into street clothes, and took a taxi to the hospital.
The i
ntern said, “Galloway? Doing very nicely. Very nicely.”
“Don’t give me customer talk, friend, I represent the company, private investigation. I asked you how she is.”
The intern shrugged. “She’s all chopped to hell inside. The slug hit flat against her shoulder blade and smashed it. The lead split into two hunks. One went up through the top of her right lung and stopped just under the skin. The other hunk sliced down through her lung and belly, perforated her intestines twice, and came out just above the left hip. A hunk of the shoulder blade was driven over against her spinal cord, and we don’t know what damage that did. She just came out of the operating room ten minutes ago. We gave her two transfusions, and she’ll probably need another. Providing there’s no spinal injury, she’s in bad enough shock so that she’s got maybe one chance in ten of lasting through the next twelve hours. There’s a cop in her room with her just in case she comes out of it. I just gave a full report of her condition to Police Headquarters.”
“Did she recover consciousness in the ambulance or before the anesthetic?”
“No. You want to look at her?”
“Sure.”
The elderly patrolman who sat next to the bed with a notebook and pencil in his hand and a bored look on his face changed the look to quick recognition and then distaste when Jud Brock walked in.
“Relax, Jones,” Brock said. “I just want a look at her.”
He stood by the bed and looked down. There was a faint trace of color in her greenish cheeks, but she was breathing shallowly, rapidly. Her eyes were shut and seemed to have sunk farther back into her head. The nostrils looked pinched, and her hair had turned brittle and dead. Her lips were dry. She breathed rapidly through her mouth, and he could see the tip of her tongue protruding slightly beyond the even lower teeth.
As he looked down at her, he wondered if the slug had been meant for him, and he knew suddenly that he would soon be face to face with whoever had fired the shot. Whether Stella Galloway lived or died, he would stand face to face with someone, and with the new strength that corded his arms and shoulders he would smash that face with a fist like a rock.
Jones had been watching him. The elderly patrolman said, “You look good, Brock. You off the bottle?”
Brock transferred the anger that burned him. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing, boy. Nothing at all.”
Stella Galloway’s lower jaw dropped and she began to breathe more hoarsely. Jones glanced at her and hitched his chair closer. “Miss Galloway! Stella!” he said insistently.
She didn’t answer. Brock turned and left the room.
At five they let the ones go who had been searched and interviewed. Captain Davis, acting on the report from the hospital, had assigned more men, and, while Brock had been over at the hospital, Inspector Durea had looked in for a few minutes.
The investigation had narrowed to three angles. One: Where had each person been when the shot was fired? Two: What had happened to the weapon? Three: Had the shot been fired at Galloway or Brock—and why?
At six only Brasher, the watchman, and Brock were left of the working force. Everyone else had been interviewed and dismissed with a warning to stay in town. Brock saw that Maclaren was weary, but he felt no weariness himself. He felt no hunger. He stood, solid and impassive, and listened to Maclaren, Horowitz, Cantrelle, and the others discuss the case, and he knew that, as for himself, he could keep going for an unknown period before exhaustion finally beat his strong body.
The trucks arrived with the floodlights, and the watchman let them into the yard. Lights were thrown across the piles of scrap, and everybody except Brasher and the watchman began to hunt for the pistol. Two men with a metal detector were left back in the office building, covering all the desks and closets and other possible hiding places.
Brock marked off the piles in which the assailant would have had no chance to hide the weapon. Horowitz looked at the other piles of scrap and groaned. “Give me a nice simple needle-and-haystack proposition any day.”
Brock searched along beside Horowitz and found out that of the working force of sixty-three there were fourteen who could not substantiate their location at the time the shot was fired. Eliminating the possibility that two or more had been in on it, they were left with fourteen suspects. Among those were Walter Brasher, Karkoff, Jane Tarrance, Hodge Oliver, and Pennworthy, the guard. The other nine included the receptionist in the lower front hallway; a stenographer named Nudens, who claimed she was in the women’s room; the operator of the indoor crane in the baling shop, who claimed he was out for a smoke; Brasher’s office boy, who couldn’t remember where he was; Boris Howe, the accountant, who said he was at the water fountain on the stair landing; two laborers in the back end of the yard near the loading platform; and two men who were off-loading aluminum scrap from a railroad car.
At ten o’clock a new batch of men reported, and many of the searchers went off duty. Maclaren sent Horowitz home for some sleep and looked as if he could use some himself.
At three in the morning there were no places left to search. The piles of scrap in which the gun could have been hidden were dismantled and restacked in new locations, piece by piece. The men stood around and inspected their bruised hands and wrists, felt gingerly of the small of their backs.
Brasher had gone home at midnight. Maclaren sent the rest of the men home except for one at the front door. The harsh lights were on in Brasher’s office. Maclaren, his face pale and lined, sat behind Brasher’s desk and drew red pencil marks on a small scale floor plan of the plant. Brock sat woodenly in one of the straight chairs, staring at the far wall.
Maclaren finished marking the plan and shoved it over to Brock. Brock said, “You sure you’re asking me for my opinion, John?”
“I’ve got no time to fight with you, Jud. We were good friends once.”
“That’s right. Until I was down and out. We were swell friends.”
Maclaren smiled at him. “Sure, kid. And one night I found you on Water Street in the gutter, and I took you home and got you cleaned up. You were still in bed when I went on duty in the morning. You got up, dressed, and left with my three shotguns. I had to pay eighty-eight dollars to get them out of hock. The next time you took the electric clock and the wife’s solid silver. Two hundred it cost the second time. I couldn’t afford it, kid.”
Brock waited a full thirty seconds, his face changing slowly. “I can’t even remember it, John. I’m sorry. I’ll pay back that money. I’ve got it in savings. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it. Look at the floor plan here. It shows the yard, shop and all. See the fourteen red circles? Those are where the ones say they were who can’t account for where they were at the time of the shot. The X shows where she fell, and the great big circle shows where somebody had to be to shoot her—whether they were aiming at you or not. Now look. This floor plan shows how it would have been impossible for Jane Tarrance, the guard, the receptionist, the girl in the can, Boris Howe, or the two guys unloading the aluminum to have gone over into the area from which the shot was fired. They would have been seen going and coming.
“That leaves us seven. Brasher and his office boy, Hodge Oliver, Karkoff, the two guys in the yard, and the crane operator.”
“You can take off Karkoff. The baler didn’t stop until long after the shot was fired. It won’t work without an operator.”
“Good work! On my own hook I’m taking out the office boy. That kid is too dopey to know which end of a gun to hold onto. Now we’re down to five: Brasher, Hodge Oliver, Lavery the crane operator, and the two guys in the yard. Let me see: Howard Barnes and Duke Schortz. Brasher, Oliver, Lavery, Barnes, or Schortz. Of course if more than one was in on it, we’re way out of line and we’ll have to start all over. Now we need the gun and the motive.”
“Could the gun have been tossed over the fence out into the weeds to be picked up later?”
“I thought of that and made a thorough check. Superman couldn’t have thrown it any
farther than we looked.”
“Then it’s still on the place?”
“Unless either my boys or the matrons missed any spots on the people big enough to hide a forty-five. And my money says they didn’t.”
“How about the gun being tossed out of one of the front windows into a moving vehicle?”
Maclaren thought it over. “Boy, that booze didn’t soften your head any. I’ll have to consider that as a possibility.”
“Another thing, John. That slug split up when it went in. It had to have some encouragement. My guess is that somebody sliced it good before they loaded it. That means they wanted whoever they hit to stay dead, right?”
“Go on.”
“Okay, then. You put a deep notch in a forty-five slug and you spoil the ballistics. I figure that a guy who would know enough to notch it would know about it shortening his effective range. The slug hit her in the back while she was still forty feet from me. The odds are that he couldn’t have hit me with anything but an unmarked slug. That means it was aimed at her, not me, and you can look for motives for her death, not for mine.”
Maclaren chewed his lip. “Pretty damn slim, Jud, but we’ll go along. We’ll check into her before we check you.”
“How about Hodge Oliver? As far as I know he’s the only guy who knew her in the past.”
“I don’t think so, Jud. He’s a clean-looking kid with a good record. He worked in Washington too. At the Pentagon. He says that he knew Galloway as one of the girls who worked in a nearby office. She was a stenographer for a while, and then she was in charge of the filing of blueprints and specifications. He was upset about her being shot. You could see that. He doesn’t owe any dough, he’s got a steady gal, and he got a raise two weeks ago. I got all this from him and from others. Of course, I’ll check it, but I’ve got a hunch it’ll all be true.”
“Personally I don’t think Brasher’s got the guts to shoot anybody.”
The Good Old Stuff Page 31