“Don’t low-rate those nasty little soft guys who can only talk big. Force them into a corner and you can’t tell what they’ll do. I could see from the way he acted that you moved in on him in this investigation. In a way, I don’t blame you. After all, she was knocked off on her way to see you.” Brock felt quick alarm and a feeling of loss at the easy way Maclaren made the assumption that Stella was already dead. “Suppose that this Brasher made a pass at Galloway and she pushed him off in a way that hurt his pride and then, when he saw her falling for you, he couldn’t take it. After all, the woman who turned him down getting chummy with … well, with unskilled labor. Did you notice anything about him, any way he might have looked at Galloway in the past?”
Brock stared down at his clenched knuckles. “John, I’ve been in a fog for a long time. I haven’t paid much attention to what has been going on around me.”
“Sure, kid. I see what you mean. But you’re out of the fog now?”
“Way out. Brasher’s line is plugged open on the switchboard, John. I’m going to see about Stella. Mind if I use your name?”
After Brock had identified himself as Lieutenant Maclaren, the night intern came on the phone and said, “Condition unchanged, sir. She’s had two more plasma transfusions, but she’s losing fluids so fast that she’ll be due for another one soon.” Brock thanked him and hung up, told Maclaren the score.
“You tired, Jud?” Maclaren asked.
“Not yet.”
“Here’s Hodge Oliver’s address. An apartment on Quenton Street. I’ve got to follow the book or they’ll yank my badge. Maybe you could”
“Kick him around and see if anything drops out?”
“Something like that. But you’re on your own. I’m going over and have another talk with Brasher.”
Hodge Oliver’s eyes were puffed with sleep. He blinked in the hall light and said, “Oh, it’s you, Brock. What do you want?”
Brock pushed in, found the switch, clicked the lights on, and closed the door.
Oliver said, “Now wait a minute! Can’t you—”
Brock planted a big palm against Oliver’s chest and sent him sprawling across the living room couch. Oliver braced himself on his elbows and stared at Brock. “I’m going to toss you out of here,” he said quietly. He was lean and rangy, with brush-cut blond hair, a strong-looking neck, and knobby knuckles.
He came off the bed fast, charging in. Brock caught a wild right in the palm of his left hand and blocked a left hook with his elbow. As Oliver planted a second right high on Brock’s cheek, he was caught right on the point of the chin with a gentle right. It made a noise as though a clod of wet mud had been thrown against a brick wall. Brock caught him and laid him gently on the couch.
Oliver’s papers were in the second drawer of his bureau. Not much to go on. A file of personal letters. An address book listing people in Washington, Louisavale, and Detroit—plus a few other people scattered across the country. On the bureau was a large picture of a very lovely girl with blond hair. She looked something like Caree had once looked.… Brock, realizing that, was surprised to find how little pain there was in the thought—as though Caree had been married to someone else, a different Judson Brock. A younger, softer Judson Brock.
He pulled a chair up beside the couch. A few minutes later Oliver opened his eyes wide and groaned. He tried to sit up. Brock reached out a hand and pushed him back down. “Take it easy, boy,” he said.
Oliver felt of his chin and gave Brock a twisted grin. “What did you hit me with, a city bus?”
“I was afraid you’d be sore. As you know, I’m handling the company end of the investigation of Miss Galloway’s injury. She will probably die without regaining consciousness. You knew her in Washington. What’s the angle? Anything you can say to give us a reason?”
Oliver hoisted himself up and reached for his cigarettes on the coffee table. He gave Brock one, and Brock lit the two of them. “Look, Brock. I just knew her in Washington. She happened to be in the same section, that’s all. Ordnance procurement. I had lunch with her a few times, and a few times we went to the cola bar in the Pentagon in the middle of the afternoon. She was very nice in a quiet way, very tidy and polite. She seemed to know her job well. That’s all I know about her. I’ve got a girl of my own, man. That’s her picture over there.”
“Did you know her friends in Washington?”
“I saw her with the women she worked with, of course. And I remember seeing her once at a hotel. She was dancing with someone, but I haven’t any memory of what he looked like. I remember thinking he was too short for her, and that’s all.”
Brock leaned back in the chair, shook his head, and sighed. “Sorry I had to pop you, Oliver.”
He shrugged and smiled. “I didn’t give you much choice. No hard feelings.”
Brock stared at the far wall of the room for a few moments, and then at the glowing end of the cigarette he held. “Where are you from, Oliver?”
“Detroit, originally. Before I tried the civil service job, I had a two-bit position working in the mechanical drawing department of one of the independent auto-parts makers.”
“You’ve got family there?”
“Sure, but I don’t want to go back. They try to run my life. My mother is a very domineering woman. I’ve been around some, and I like the looks of it here. It suits me. I’m not sorry I stayed. I wouldn’t have met Alice if I hadn’t found a job here.”
“Like your work?”
“Well enough. The money is medium okay. Enough to get married on, at least. Hey, maybe I shouldn’t ask. You sound like a man with education. I’ve wondered about you off and on. What are you doing out in that yard as a common laborer handling all that heavy scrap?”
Brock didn’t smile. “You might call it a health course.”
“Oh.”
Brock stood up. “Go on back to sleep, boy. You’ll have a little mark on that chin in the morning.”
Brock was sitting in Brasher’s office when the puffy little man walked in that morning. He marched up to Brock and said, “A fine thing! A very fine thing! You force me to put you in charge of the company end of the investigation, and then you let that Maclaren hoodlum get me out of bed at three thirty in the morning to ask a lot of insane questions leading to nothing. The kids woke up. My wife got a headache. You aren’t worth the dollar a week you asked for.”
Brock saw Maclaren when he came in. Brock said, “No dice on Oliver; how about Brasher?”
“I think he’s clean. I got to Lavery last night, too. Rather, at five this morning. I think that angle is okay too. I found out that this Karkoff had told Lavery to knock off and grab himself a smoke. The way it works, the crane that Lavery runs gets ahead of the baler once in a while, and then Karkoff gives him the sign to climb down and go out in the end of the shop to the can where he can smoke. If Lavery was the one, it would mean that he’d have to depend on Karkoff giving him the sign at just the right time for him to slip out, plug the girl, and get back. It’s too thin. I saw Karkoff and he backed the guy up. By the way, this Karkoff has a record. Yeah. Did a year back in 1973. Grand theft auto. Been straight ever since—he says. You sure that baler was working all the time?”
“It makes a hell of a racket. It stopped after she was down and I had my fingers on her pulse. You have to have a guy on it to keep it running.”
By noon they had worked on Barnes and Schortz for an hour apiece and gotten nowhere. Brasher complained that they were slowing down operations and wasting time. At noon, Brock took Jane Tarrance down to the lunch wagon down the street.
He could see that she had been crying, and she told him that she had phoned the hospital just before noon and they had said there was no change in Miss Galloway’s condition.
“Jane, you lived with her, roomed with her. Have you got any hunches? Did she act differently the last few days?”
Jane sipped her coffee. “I … I think so. She was dressing last Tuesday night. You were coming to pick her up, rememb
er? She was looking in her mirror, and I looked at her and she seemed to be miles away. I asked her if it was an old boyfriend and she said no. She said that there was something she was going to try to remember, and that if it didn’t come back, she was going to phone an old friend of hers and he’d help her remember. I tried to tease it out of her, but she just smiled sort of mysteriously and said that I could sit back and watch the fireworks. Those are the words she used.”
Brock stirred his coffee, said, “You realize, of course, that if she had told you, you’d now know the reason why she was shot.”
Jane’s eyes went wide. “You think so?”
“Elimination. It is the only clue to motive that we have. Therefore, it must be the clue. Did she make the phone call she talked about?”
“No. The next night she came back from the date with you. She was happy as a lark. She woke me up and told me that she had remembered that little thing she was thinking of on Tuesday night, but that before she jumped she’d have to make certain that she wasn’t being tangled up in a coincidence that would just make her look silly.”
“Jane, please try to remember her exact words on each occasion. Tell me what you said too, and I’ll write them down. They may be the answer.”
Back at the plant he met Maclaren, who said that he was going home and get some sleep and the hell with it. Maclaren said that it didn’t look like it could be any one of the five and yet he felt it had to be. He said that he’d feel clearer in the head if he got some sleep, and he advised Brock to do the same. Brock felt the weariness in his back and legs, and his eyes felt as though there was grit in them, but he knew that he could keep going. He knew that if he went back to his bed it would be impossible to sleep.
He didn’t tell Maclaren about the conversation with Jane. He had cautioned Jane to be silent, knowing that sooner or later Maclaren or one of his men would come around to her. The information he had was too vague to go on. He took the notebook out of his pocket and stood by the water cooler, reading the conversation.
Oliver came down the stairs, grinned at him, and said, “Did you hear the peeling I just got?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, this whole mess has got little Walter into a foul humor, and he’s been taking it out on me. I am no longer his fair-haired boy. Now I’m a dope who wasted forty thousand bucks of the firm’s money.”
Hodge Oliver leaned over the fountain and drank. As he straightened up, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, Brock said, “I don’t get it.”
“Heck, Brock, I talked myself into this job on the basis of some mechanical engineering background. You see, the old idea was that Brasher bid on miscellaneous mixed scrap, performed the sorting and baling, if necessary, with cheap labor, and then resold the clean scrap for enough to cover his costs and make himself a profit. I sold him on the idea that I could go around and buy junk equipment whenever I could find a good price and felt certain that, with the dismantling of it, we could get our dough back plus a profit. He sent me around to auctions and sales, and now he doesn’t like the last forty thousand I spent. I was working on the stuff at the time Stella was shot.”
“What is the stuff?”
“Oh, two thousand gimmicks that were Vietnam surplus. I got ’em for twenty bucks apiece. Sort of a computing gadget. They’re all out in the back end of the shop. I’m certain that I can rig them around some way so that we can unload them at a profit, but now little Walter thinks I’m nuts and he’s sorry he ever got off the straight, semifabricated, and unfabricated scrap business.”
Once again Brock stood by her bed and looked down at the face, darkening with the shadow of death. He stood, large and brooding, looking at her dry lips, at the painful slightness of her under the hospital blankets—and for a long time he thought.
From the lower corridor of the hospital, he phoned Maclaren, who was back on duty. Maclaren objected at first, but at last he listened to Brock’s plan.
Brock went back to the plant and went into Brasher’s office, managing to smile. “The doctors just told me that Miss Galloway will be okay. She’ll be able to talk tomorrow.”
He also told Jane and Karkoff and Oliver and the switchboard girl and the guard and the office boy. Every one of them looked pleased. Everyone told him that it was swell, that Galloway was a good kid.
Horowitz and Maclaren sat in Brasher’s office and the overhead light shone out across the shadowy expanse of desks, across the hooded typewriters. Brock stepped over to the desk and reached for Maclaren’s cigarettes. He missed the pack, staggered slightly, and got it with his second grasp. Maclaren looked up at him suddenly. “When have you slept, Jud?”
“Not for quite a while.”
“Go to bed. We’ll take care of this.”
“I couldn’t sleep if I did, John. I’m okay.”
“All we can do is wait,” Horowitz said.
“Have we got good men on Galloway?” Brock asked. Neither of the two seemed to notice the use of the word “we.” Somehow Brock had gained acceptance.
“The best,” Horowitz said. “Plus good guys on each of the others. The only one we don’t have to fret about is Oliver. He’s over in the shop working on something. I guess he fouled up and he’s trying to redeem himself with the boss.”
The minutes passed in silent monotony while the three men smoked and glanced at the phone. Maclaren sent a man out for coffee and more cigarettes.
Maclaren snatched the phone when it rang. “Yeah? What! Sure. Grab him. Don’t lose him. Bring him right back here. Thanks.” He hung up.
He looked puzzled. He said, “For the hell of it, just to play safe, I stuck guys at the bus station, railroad station, and on the two bridges. I figured that if any of the tails slipped up, we’d have a second line of defense. Walker, over on the Anders Avenue Bridge, has picked up Karkoff in his jalopy headed out of town. He’s bringing him over. Hell, we didn’t even have a tail on that boy. According to the noise of that baler, he couldn’t have done it.”
Brock felt a lot of his weariness disappear, felt the muscles bunch along his thick arms as he clenched his hard hands. This was a start. Maybe this was it.
Karkoff slouched in the straight chair and said, “I tell you, you guys are on the wrong track. Sure, I got a record. That was a hell of a long time ago and I’ve been straight ever since. But that don’t do me no good when it comes to a thing like this. I figured that if you guys couldn’t find out who did it, you’d pin it on me somehow. I was skipping out of town, sure. But I don’t know anything about it.”
Brock stepped over to the chair, clubbed Karkoff in the side of the head with a clenched fist, picked him up off the floor, and jammed him back into the chair.
Karkoff shook the mist out of his eyes and said, “That stuff won’t do you no good, pal. I got nothing to tell you.”
Brock glanced at Maclaren. Maclaren shook his head slowly. Horowitz was kneeling on the floor, going through Karkoff’s luggage. He straightened up. “Nothing here, John. A mess of tools and wire and clothes. One hundred bucks in a tin box along with some pictures of some lush women.”
“You guys going to book me?” Karkoff said.
“Sure. Maybe we haven’t got anything to go on, but we’ll find something,” Maclaren said with a tight smile.
“Okay. I don’t mind. But there’s no sense in carting all this stuff of mine down to your game rooms. Let me drop it off at my room and pick out some clothes when you take me down.”
Something restless stirred in the back of Brock’s mind. Something wasn’t right. Why should Karkoff be concerned about such a trivial thing? It didn’t make good sense. The man was too casual. He glanced at Maclaren. Apparently John felt nothing wrong. Neither did Horowitz. Brock wondered if the lack of sleep was harming his mental processes.
He stepped over the tin suitcase and looked down. Wrenches, a battered micrometer. Some spools of fine, white wire. This was the stuff that Karkoff wanted to leave in his room.
Suddenly a lot o
f things made sense. He felt the quick thud of his pulse. He went over it again in his mind. It still checked. Maclaren said sharply, “What is it, Jud? I’ve seen you look like this before.”
Brock said, “I can’t tell you … yet. Play along with me, John. Just a little while. Hold Karkoff here. I want to go down into the shop.”
He heard the scream of boards ripped loose as he stepped into the shop. Oliver was prying open a small case. Against the far wall was a pile of empty cases. Oliver, a smudge on his cheek, grinned up at Brock. “A little night work, Brock. Got to get all this stuff uncrated so we can see what we’ve got. If I don’t unload it soon, Brasher is going to take the forty thousand out of my pay.”
Just beyond Oliver was a bulging burlap sack. Brock kicked it. “What have you got here?”
“Oh, some damn wire that’s fastened to each unit. No good to me. Thought I might as well peel it off as I uncrated the stuff.”
Brock grinned. “Don’t work too hard, Oliver.” He walked back to the office. He didn’t answer Maclaren’s questioning look. He picked up the phone, dialed the operator, and asked to speak to the President of the Stoeffer Corporation of Birmingham, Alabama. The operator said she’d call back. He hung up.
Horowitz said, “Have you gone nuts? Alabama! What goes on?”
“Leave him alone,” Maclaren said. “Take a look at Karkoff.”
The man had slouched further in his chair and his face was white, his lips compressed.
A Mr. Stoeffer got on the line and Brock asked him a few questions. Stoeffer said, “I’m afraid that I don’t have the detailed knowledge to answer that question. My production head was a man named James Beeson. He’s no longer with me, but he’s still here in town. Try phoning him.”
Beeson came on the line in a few minutes and Brock heard him yawn into the phone. Brock snapped him out of it by saying, “This is police business, Mr. Beeson. You worked for the Stoeffer Corporation on government contract W-one-eighteen—ORD-three-two-five-five?”
“I guess so, but I can’t remember them by number. What sort of an item was it?”
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