Susannah Screaming (The Krug & Kellog Thriller Series Book 2)

by Carolyn Weston

  “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 wallet. “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.

  THREE

  Driving his own Volkswagen, Rees followed the Mustang through the early-morning grayness. He was surprised when the detectives ahead stopped for traffic signals at Wilshire Boulevard and again at a street named Colorado. You never think of policemen as having to obey ordinary laws. Once, a moony face looked briefly back at him through the Mustang’s rear window—the girl, he realized. Of course they would want her official statement also. Green American-made sedan versus black Mercedes. Conflicting witnesses. Oh hell, he thought exhaustedly, what’s the difference? The police would need a miracle to find anybody to prosecute.

  A Sears store reeled by on his left, then Rees followed the Mustang south across a bridge over the Santa Monica Freeway. Ahead lay a series of white stucco public buildings. In front of the first one, he saw a lighted sign at the curb—Police Station—marking an entrance. The Mustang swung in and disappeared behind the building. Rees followed, and, parking his car among official vehicles in the lot, joined the detectives and the girl as they entered the brightly lighted Police Department housed like a nerve center behind the Santa Monica City Hall.

  “This way,” Krug said. Beefy in his baggy slacks and a sports coat which had seen better days, he led them along a shiny corridor and up a flight of stairs. Passing a door marked “Juvenile” in the narrow hall at the top, they entered the Detective Bureau—a large, light squad room with a counter in the front, rows of desks behind, most of which were empty at this hour. “Grab a seat,” Krug told them. “We’ll run over what you folks gave us, then type it up for you to sign, okay?”

  The younger one was pulling up a straight chair from a neighboring desk for the girl. Krug settled with a grunt into a swivel chair. Sitting on either side of his desk, Rees and the girl waited as he leaned back watching while his partner perched on the corner of the desk and opened his notebook, leafing through it.

  The young one kept swallowing huge yawns, Rees noticed, and his tanned face looked tired now, washed out under the cold pervasive light which filled the big office. Doesn’t look like a cop, he thought. Twenty years and he will, though. The young detective began to read slowly from his notes, and like a palimpsest superimposed over the present scene, Rees saw himself that other time: sitting like this with his fury dead in him, his spirit drowned in another man’s blood while a detective read back his own words…I, Paul Joseph Rees, do hereby confess of my own free will and in full cognizance of what I am saying, that I assaulted with intent to do bodily injury—

  “Mr. Rees,” Krug’s voice recalled him sharply.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t get—”

  “We were asking if you’ve ever had any experience with the police before.”

  A mind reader. Spellbound, Rees stared at him. “Why, no,” he managed to say finally. “No, of course not.”

  “No offense intended.” Krug was smiling faintly, his cold eyes watchful. “Lots of people who’ve never even had a traffic ticket have dealings with the police. Anyhow,” he added in a mild tone which was somehow chilling, “I was asking you both. Miss Roche, too. Just in case you didn’t understand you could be subpoenaed from now on.”

  Unable to trust himself, Rees only nodded. He was certain that the conversational trap he had fallen into was deliberate, a cop trick. Even the young one seemed to look at him differently now. Once a con, always a con. Tempted to walk out, Rees restrained himself, knowing that he would only be furnishing a bullyboy like Krug with further fuel. />
  The girl was watching him too, he saw, slumped and huddled like a waif inside the huge trench coat. A man’s coat, he recognized vaguely. Husband’s? Boyfriend’s? She had turned up the sleeves, exposing the coat’s faded yellow-and-black plaid lining. One of the sleeves, which exaggerated the delicacy of her wrists and ringless hands, had a peculiar triangle-shaped tear in the lining. Her nails looked like pale opalescent shells. Under the too-long, ridiculous raincoat, her purple ankle-strapped platform shoes looked like part of a musical comedy costume.

  As if she knew how absurd she looked, she made a face at Rees, a droll secretive grimace which included him in some joke on herself. Or perhaps on both of them, he decided. She was trapped in this oppressive officialdom too, and perhaps finding it almost as much of a strain.

  Smiling back at her, he felt the stir of some awareness in himself, a lost sense of the possibility of happiness coming to life like a half-severed nerve. With a girl like this, you could laugh and be carefree, he thought. The idea filled him with such longing and pleasure that he went dizzy for a second. When we’re through here, he decided, I’ll ask her to have breakfast with me. And he knew if he did, and she accepted, he would probably take it as an omen. He was hungry for signs, famished now, he realized, for some glimpse of the future. He had lived too long in an emotional wasteland.

  FOUR

  “Well, thanks to Mr. Clean washing his clothes at four in the morning, looks like we got ourselves a homicide,” Krug said. “And for my dough it smells from here to tomorrow. That Rees dude’s as phony as a three-dollar bill.”

  The witnesses were waiting at the other end of the squad room for their statements to be typed. Casey studied Paul Rees for a moment. A tired man. Perhaps thirty. Lean and lanky, morose-looking. Was it an old cop hunch that made Krug suspect him, he wondered—or just his usual prejudice against anyone younger? “Seems all right to me, Al,” he said neutrally. “Shaky, sure, but who wouldn’t be?”

  “He’d be a hell of a lot shakier without that girl to back him up.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant! All I’m saying is, without her, we’d have to play him maybe for kinky with a story like that. As it is—” He sucked his teeth, staring in space, his ruddy face sour as usual. “Well, let’s let it lay for now. But when we get through with the openers, I’m checking out that dude, but fast.”

  There wasn’t time to file a report before Lieutenant Timms came on duty, so they filled him in verbally. “Sounds crazy, all right,” he commented. “Your witnesses still around?”

  Krug shook his head. “Signed and gone. You just missed ’em.”

  “Doesn’t hurt my feelings.” Timms chewed his lower lip. “Think your eyewitness is solid, Al?”

  “I’d feel a hell of a lot better if he was a local.”

  Timms’s tufty eyebrows lifted. Rubbing his freshly shaved jaw, he looked at Casey. “You got qualms, too?”

  “No, sir. He seemed solid enough to me.”

  “How about this woman? Susannah Whatshername.”

  “A hooker—what else?” Krug grunted. “But at least she’s local.”

  “You’ve got local on the brain this morning, Al. What’s eating you?”

  “A feeling, that’s all. Something about that guy Rees just don’t strike me as kosher. Too nervous, maybe—I don’t know. Can’t put my finger on anything positive yet.”

  “All right, check him out. No use beating our brains if he’s a nut of some kind. Anything from the lab yet?”

  “Not so far. We got a Telex off to Washington. The usual. Just in case there’s no make on any kinfolk where Barrett lives. The rest”—Krug yawned and stretched like a bear—“up to you day-watch dudes. Me, I’m ready for about eight hours solid.”

  “Not a chance, Al. With two guys out sick and one on vacation—”

  Krug groaned. “Okay, so what’s next, we hit Barrett’s pad?”

  Timms nodded. “By the time you get back, we ought to have the prelim and something from the lab…”

  “ ‘Be a policeman,’ ” Casey quoted as they pounded down the stairs. “ ‘Serve your fellow man’—”

  “Bullshit. Nobody but the ass end of a donkey stays a cop anymore. The smart guys all get out into the rackets. You got Barrett’s address handy?”

  Casey fished out his notebook for Krug, and started the Mustang, pulling out onto Main. Krug was licking his thumb to turn pages—a habit that nauseated Casey. “You were right, Al, it’s got to be Ocean Park. Just off Neilson, I think.”

  “Real class address, yeah.” Krug read it off. Then scowling out the window as they swung right onto Pico, catching the signal left at Neilson, he made his usual comment. “Christ, look at the shacks around here. They ought to tear down the whole goddam district.”

  After a few blocks, Casey turned right again, driving slowly along a narrow side street lined with shabby old beach cottages crammed together on small lots. The front-stoop sitters were already out, he saw—old men in too-large hats and baggy pants. An elderly woman with black-dyed hair and sparkle-rimmed glasses stared after them with the unabashed curiosity of the foreigner. Beyond the roofs of the old houses the sea seemed to curve bowl-like upward, melting into the low early-morning fog.

  “Oh-Sheeny Park,” Krug groused. “A truckload of kerosene and a box of matches is what this place needs. There it is.” He pointed. “That motel-type joint.”

  Casey pulled up in front of a peeling one-story stucco—obviously several units, probably one room and bath each—with a walk down the side leading to each door. In a cluster near the back stood four or five motorcycles of various makes.

  “Dig the wheels. Want to bet this is one of those hogger joints?” Krug blew out his breath. “Christ, all we need to really start this thing right is a pack of mouthy two-bit Hell’s Angels types.”

  Knife carriers, Casey thought. Chain wielders. Weary as he was of his partner’s constant griping, this time he had to agree with him.

  “Am I glad to be out of there!” He heard her sigh beside him. “That older one really bugged me. Sourpuss. Didn’t he give you the creeps?”

  “Not particularly,” Rees lied. “A policeman is a policeman is a policeman.”

  “You putting me on?” She turned in the narrow front seat, knees touching his thigh. Her long, silky dark-brown hair blew across her face like a torn veil. Impatiently, she pushed it back. “Man, are you trying to tell me he didn’t scare you?”

  “Don’t be silly.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Why should he scare me?”

  “Guilt, man, guilt. The human condition.”

  She was smiling, he saw. Not serious? He couldn’t be sure.

  “So who isn’t spooked around cops,” she was saying in a wry tone. “I always get the feeling they’ve got X-ray eyes. You smoke too much,” she added abruptly. “That’s what’s wrong with your throat. And you know what’s going to happen? Cancer and out. Bye-bye, Mr. American Pie.”

  “Thank you for the diagnosis, Doctor. Now having made my day, do you think you can direct me to the nearest beanery?”

  “No problem, there’s one two blocks from here.” She pointed ahead. “Just follow your nose. My dad used to say that. We were always following our noses.” She giggled. “Mostly into trouble, I seem to recall.”

  Intensely aware of her, Rees gunned the Volkswagen, grinding the gears. You trying to tell me he didn’t scare you? Wondering if Krug could have noticed anything, he felt a lessening of delight like a cloud on his spirit. “What makes you think he scared me?” he asked as casually as he could when they had stopped for a signal and he could watch her expression.

  “Well, let me see.” She frowned consideringly. “Would you believe something psychic—like woman’s intuition?”

  Rees suppressed a sigh. “Please, I’d really like to know.”

  “The light’s green again.”

  The Volkswagen shot forward.

  “See that sign that says Norm’s?�
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  “I see it.” He had forgotten how exasperating women could be.

  “Jesus, you dudes really hit it early!” He kept yawning hugely, puffing foul breaths at them through the three inches open between the doorframe and the chain-held door marked Manager. “You know what time it is?”

  “So sorry,” Krug apologized sarcastically. “Maybe next time something happens to one of your tenants, we can arrange it better for your beauty sleep. Which one is Barrett’s place?”

  “Number Six. Last door at the end.”

  Krug waited, staring at the bleary eye, the puffy cheek, the portion of wiry-bearded chin, which were all they could see of the manager’s face. “You going to open up for us?” he asked finally.

  “Not without a paper I ain’t.”

  Krug sighed. “So we get a warrant. Takes an hour, maybe more, and we got to wait for it. Judges like their sleep, too. You want to waste the taxpayers’ money with all that?”

  “Fuck the goddam taxpayers, I ain’t letting nobody—” His voice rose in a yelp as Krug reached in swiftly, grabbing a handful of beard. “Leggo me!”

  “You got one minute, asshole.”

  “That’s police brutality, and I got a witness in here!” He yelped again as Krug twisted tighter.

  “Tell Witness to get decent, because you’re opening up—like now, right?”

  Tearing, the one eye glared out at them. Then the manager nodded, grimacing with pain. Krug let him go and he closed the door. As the chain rattled out of its slot, they could hear whispering, then the manager’s howl: “You heard him, for Chrissake! Come on, will ya? Get your butt in that bathroom!”

  Krug grinned at Casey. “Any bets?” he asked softly as bedsprings twanged behind the door. “Easy as anything it could be another guy. That macho beard don’t fool me any.”

  Good old Uncle Al, your friendly neighborhood psychologist. Casey shook his head—no bets—yawning so hard his jaw cracked. Then watery-eyed, he watched the door swing open, wide this time.

  “Okay, you mothers.” The bearded manager was yanking a wrinkled robe around a body shaped like a beer barrel. “I’mopening the goddam door, but that’s all I’m doing. Better believe I’m putting in a complaint, too!”