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

by Carolyn Weston

  “Drop by Fingerprinting while you’re at it,” Krug suggested. “They’ll probably be real glad to check out a citizen like you.”

  Number Six was heavily draped, cave-black after the misty glare outside. Casey fumbled for and found the light switch by the door. Blinking in the glaring overhead illumination common in such places, they silently surveyed the chaos of search or sudden departure—bureau drawers hanging open, an Army-style footlocker turned upside down in the middle of the floor, unmade tumbled bed, closet standing open.

  “Looks like somebody beat us here,” Krug commented.

  “A real trash job.” Casey nodded. “Or maybe a fast split?” He kicked aside an empty plastic-wrap container—one of several littering the floor. “How do you figure all these Saran Wrap boxes?”

  Krug opened the half-sized refrigerator topped by an electric hot plate which constituted kitchen facilities. “Nothing in the freezer part. Beats me.” He began to whistle inharmoniously, poking in the closet, examining the footlocker, tossing back the covers of the couch-bed. “Looks like fun and games here sometime lately. Maybe with the wrong cookie?” He grinned at Casey. “Don’t tell me, I know. Cherchez la femme don’t work anymore. The jealous husband bit. On the other hand—” He sighed gustily. “Come on, let’s get started, sport. Whoever killed him had a reason, and maybe in this mess we can find a connection.”

  FIVE

  “I’ve been hoping that wasn’t really a husband you were calling,” Rees said when she finally joined him at the table. “I’ve already ordered. Coffee and your orange juice coming right up.” He hesitated. “You were a long time in that phone booth.”

  “Suspicious. Didn’t I tell you I was calling my service? I haven’t picked up any calls since yesterday afternoon.”

  “Miss anything important?”

  “Nothing Liz Taylor won’t be able to step into. You’re nosy, you know that? I hate nosy people.”

  “Sorry. It’s anxiety, I guess.”

  “What about?”

  “You, of course.”

  “Oh, heavy,” she murmured. “One of those swifty deals. So what comes next—you’re lonely and misunderstood?”

  Surprised at her tartness and his own reaction to it, Rees looked at her silently. Young and tough. A swinger, an actress. And the sadness that lived in him hungered for tenderness. “You didn’t say, so I ordered your eggs over easy. Bacon well done. White toast.”

  “Groovy.”

  “Do you always talk like that?”

  “Like what, man?”

  “ ‘Groovy’—‘heavy’—‘man’ every other word. I thought only the love-bead set still—”

  “Oh, cool it. Will you please cool it?” Her eyes were suddenly liquid, luminous with tears. “I’m sorry I bug you, but I’ve got feelings, too. You’re not the only bleeding heart—”

  “Susannah, don’t.” He touched her hand. “I’m sorry. Really. Shall we try starting all over again?”

  “Excuse me.” The waitress set two coffees between them.

  “And orange juice,” Rees reminded her.

  “Oops, my mistake.” She beamed toothily. “Coming right up, folks.” And she was gone again.

  “Lawd love us, that’s good,” Susannah sighed after the first sip of coffee. “Staff of life. Elixir.” Then mischievously she added, “Groovy,” and they smiled at each other over the rims of their cups. “Despite your many failings and obvious hang-ups, I think I might like you a lot, Paul Joseph Rees.”

  “Likewise, I’m sure,” he said happily. “Possibly the doctor might consider taking me as a patient?”

  “Ve vill see, Herr Rees. Only time vill tell.”

  Time, he thought. Now a magic word. Suddenly he had a future.

  “What’s the word on our H-and-R homicide?” Krug boomed across the squad room as they walked in. “Come on, let’s go. I’m not working two shifts while you assholes sit around here worrying about your sex life.”

  “Listen to the guy,” Zwingler said, laughing, impervious as always to needling. “Like nobody else ever puts in overtime.” Pudgy and rosy as a baby, he winked at his partner, Haynes. “We keep bankers’ hours—right, Denny?”

  But Haynes wouldn’t go along with it. “Six hours OT already this week.” He sniffed dolefully, a chronic sinus sufferer. “I’ve forgotten whether my wife’s a blonde or a redhead. Al, McGregor wants you to call him soonest.”

  “Soonest, shit. Where the hell’s his lab report?” Krug fell into his swivel chair. “Christ, I’m beat. You guys get a flyer out to the garages for collision reports?”

  “Done,” said Zwingler. “Car make undetermined, possible headlight damage, red paint in any scratches or dents.”

  “What’re you talking about—red?” Then Krug blinked. “Oh, yeah, the motorcycle. Jesus, I’m so tired I’m dingy.”

  “Your mother just called,” Haynes reported to Casey. “Said it was nothing important, she just wanted to know if you were still alive.”

  “Thanks, Denny.” Casey kept yawning helplessly. “Right now I’m not sure it’s affirmative.”

  “She worry about you a lot?”

  “Not too much, I guess. What really bugs her is that I carry a gun. She claims it invites violence.”

  “Women,” Haynes groaned. “So how do they expect us to nail these hoods—put salt on their tails?”

  Remembering his parents’ shocked faces when they had first seen him in uniform—sidearmed and sassy, fresh out of the Academy—Casey sighed. They had wanted him to be a lawyer, a professional man. Why else all that time spent acquiring an education? To them a policeman was a necessary brute, like a savage watchdog. No convincing them that the image was changing, that young men like him, the new breed, were the glue which could help keep society from disintegrating.

  “Let ’em vote in some gun control laws if they’re so finicky,” Haynes was saying over the buzzing of incoming calls. “Maybe if they do, we’ll all live longer. Listen to that phone! Hasn’t stopped yet this morning…Haynes, Detective Bureau.” He grimaced at the shriek coming through the receiver. “Ma’am, this is the Police Department, the duty man downstairs just switched your call…”

  While Krug talked to the lab on an interdepartmental line, Casey used another to call the morgue downstairs. As usual, answer was slow, he had to wait through seven rings. “Decedent Barrett, G. H.,” he said when a voice at the other end barked something unintelligible. “We’re waiting for a prelim—”

  “Prelim, my butt, we’re still peeling the guy.”

  Casey’s stomach lurched. Peeling?

  “Listen, you want to see something wild,” the voice was cackling in his ear, “come on down here and take a look. Your decedent’s papered from his ass to his collarbone!”

  Going down, Casey had expected another of the black humor jokes favored by the morgue assistant he’d been talking to. He gaped at the body lying on a wheeled metal table. “Oh,” he said—a slow exhale which condensed in the chill air. “Papered” wasn’t a joke at all, he discovered, for the corpse was wrapped in a corset fashioned from Saran Wrap. And inside the light-reflecting plastic spiraled like bandages around chest and back and belly was something greenish-colored. Blinking, Casey leaned closer.

  “Yeah,” said the morgue assistant. “Greenbacks, baby. Money! That’s a million-dollar shroud he’s wearing.”

  SIX

  By actual count later, the amount involved shrank to more portable proportions—fifteen hundred bills of twenty-dollar denomination. But that was later, and the magic phrase “million-dollar shroud” still burned in Casey’s mind when he returned upstairs to the Detective Bureau.

  “Chances’re good it’s a black Mercedes, all right,” Krug called across the squad room when he spied Casey coming in. “They got a make on…What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Got an answer to all those empty Saran Wrap boxes.”

  “Who’d he deep-freeze?”

  “Himself, Al.” Slumping at his
desk, Casey wearily explained, “So far it’s all twenties. New bills. Could be counterfeit.”

  “You get Harry Berger on it?”

  “He was out of his office, but I left a message and some samples. He’ll call us as soon as he knows anything.”

  Leaning back, Krug fished a small cigar out of the pocket-sized cardboard box in his breast pocket. Next came a kitchen match from a side pocket. As he habitually did, he flicked it alight with his thumbnail. “Turns out to be paper, we’ll have the feds on our necks.” He scowled at Casey across the double expanse of their desks, which sat back to back. “Couldn’t be heist money?”

  “From where, for instance?”

  “Uh-hunh. Okay.” Krug rose, groaning. “Let’s go tell our story to teacher.”

  At his corner desk, Lieutenant Timms listened silently, seeming to only half hear as he watched Krug’s smoke rings swirling upward into the air-conditioned atmosphere. “Nice,” he finally commented when Krug had finished. “This really makes my day.” He surveyed them gloomily. “In the midst of all the thrills, you happen to run across anybody to identify Barrett’s body? The part that isn’t wrapped in money, that is?”

  Krug shook his head. “All we’ve seen so far is a bunch of neighbors don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. Hoggers,” he added disgustedly. “Low-life lice. So maybe the Hell’s Angels’re switching from dope to paper?”

  “Fat chance,” Timms growled. “Counterfeiting takes a brain cell or two. All right, get on the horn, see if we can get a make on this guy from R and I in LA Try Records here, too. My guess is he’ll have a rap sheet as long as your arm.”

  But the lieutenant was wrong; there was no record for anyone named Gerald Hower Barrett at Los Angeles Police Headquarters. And local Santa Monica files were blank also.

  “That’s crazy,” Krug fumed. “Somewhere, someplace, he’s bound to have a record!”

  “Well, if he has,” Casey said soothingly, “Washington will let us know, Al.”

  “Sure, and we’ll be lucky if we hear by tomorrow.” Krug blew out his breath. “Okay, you goose Berger’s office again while I ask teacher if we can call it a day for a while. Meet you back here like at four, okay?”

  Rees noticed his suitcases first. Both were lying flat, one on top of the other. Yet he distinctly remembered sitting them on end in the corner of the motel room after he had unpacked.

  The maid, he thought. She had moved the bags to vacuum the carpet. Then he noticed the faint oblong shape impressed onto the smooth bedspread. Someone had briefly rested one of his bags there. A maid wouldn’t muss a bed.

  Rees dived for the closet, scrabbling for the package he had hidden in the darkest corner. It was still there—a shoe box in a buff -and-black plastic bag advertising Liljeberg’s Fine Footwear, Lake Tahoe. Lifting the box lid, he poked delicately into the toes of the brand-new handmade brogans still lying in their bed of tissue, sighing unconsciously as his fingertips encountered the lineny softness of used currency. My ill-gotten gains, he thought wryly, fishing out the roll of bills. Crapshooter’s winnings. And no fault of mine some punk thief isn’t set up for months with a lucky haul. Only nuts and old ladies still hide their money in their shoes.

  Knowing the package wouldn’t fit in his luggage, Rees had purposely left it intact, exactly as he had carried it out of the shoe store—his winner’s prize. And he’d been right to do so, he thought as he admired the supple glossy leather, for the sense of luxury still lived in him, the exhilaration of exercising the mundane right of any free man with the price—to choose and buy goods without anyone’s permission. These shoes were a symbol of his freedom.

  The shoe box was also buff -and-black, Liljeberg’s printed in a chic Art Nouveau style on the lid. Lake Tahoe. The high mountains, the tall sky had been balm for his prison-battered spirit. At night a chilly wind had soughed in the pines, and on the vast High Sierra lake, reflected stars had gleamed like submerged treasure. He had felt close to Ellen there, able to think of her again without the doomed sense of despair which had haunted him since her death. After the first day, like a soldier during truce, he had lived only in the present, enjoying everything Tahoe offered without thought of past or future.

  As he slid the box back into its matching plastic bag, Rees noticed some tiny lettering in the left -hand corner of the lid. Address probably, he decided; the room was so shadowy he couldn’t read it. The more expensive the store, the smaller the label always.

  But when he moved into the light from the window, he saw that his guess was only half-right. The lettering spelled out only the name of the border-straddling town where impulse had taken him when he had left San Francisco: Stateline. His motel had been located on the California side of the imaginary line which divided the town; he hadn’t realized that the shoe store, as well as the casino where he had gambled, had been located on the other side. Stateline, Nevada.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. Nevada. He’d been carrying around evidence that he had broken his parole. Only technically, of course. Unintentionally. But if someone wanted to—

  Panic summoned Krug like a genie out of a bottle, and Rees could see him snooping here swiftly, disturbing nothing, missing nothing, cop face hard and blank as slate when he registered his find. Sonofabitch is careless, ain’t he?—

  Stop, he thought savagely. That’s ex-con spook. They’re not after you. Didn’t Stevens warn you to watch for paranoia?

  But somebody’s been here, he answered himself stubbornly. And if it wasn’t the maid, who the hell was it?

  Trying to channel his panic, Rees methodically began checking his room. Everything in the bureau seemed the same—socks folded, shirts stacked, underwear in tidy piles. Nothing on the bureau top seemed different either. Has to be the maid, he reassured himself. No reason for the police to search a witness’s belongings.

  But if they had—he swallowed dryness. Nevada. Couldn’t miss it on that box. On the list of parole conditions, leaving the state was one of the most stringent. Rees groaned aloud, slumping onto the bed as the nightmare year of imprisonment rolled over him, the suffocating despair of every day, every night. Can’t, he thought. Can’t go back. Better dead than sealed alive in that tomb. Then, like a voice out of the dark, he heard his parole officer’s calm, even, professionally rational voice: “The worst thing you’ll have to fight is the feeling that you’re on the wrong side now, Paul, that we’re only waiting for you to make a mistake.”

  Ex-con paranoia. Staring at the phone—one of many amenities advertised in neon below the Pelican Motel sign—Rees tried to blank out the terrifying vision of Krug which dominated his mind. The black plastic receiver felt slick and clammy pressed against his ear. Like a mechanical heartbeat, he heard the slow pulse of a switchboard call signal at the other end. Then the line clicked open. “Office.”

  “I noticed—” His voice failed and he started again. “Noticed someone’s been moving my things around in here. Thought I’d better check to make sure it was one of your maids.”

  “Nervous, hah?” Rees recognized the twangy voice as belonging to the manager who had checked him in Friday night. “Don’t blame you,” he was saying cheerfully. “Saw that wad you was carrying when you paid me for your room. Better let me stow some of it in the safe here.”

  Rees faked a laugh. “It isn’t as much as it looks.” But it was, of course. Fool, he thought again. Luck had made him careless—the taste of freedom and good fortune like a bittersweet payment for all he had lost. “About the maid,” he heard himself saying casually. “Didn’t mean to complain, but I’d appreciate it if you’d check for me. Just if she moved my bags.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Rees. But, okay, I’ll check. Just enjoy yourself, hah? We got a nice place here we want everybody to enjoy. Why, folks keep coming back here from all over the country…”

  Under a hot beating shower, his spirits lifted slowly, bringing a cautious optimism. Of course it was the maid. Anyone else would have been seen and surely commente
d upon by the gossipy manager. Paranoia, he thought again. Must watch it from now on.

  Stepping out of the shower stall, Rees grabbed for one of the fluffy white towels—another advertised Pelican specialty; they were called “thirsty” on the neon sign. Water ran in his eyes, blurring the shiny bathroom, something dark-colored on the marbleized sink counter.

  It was his shaving kit lying open. And something odd about it struck him as he mopped his face dry. The leather lining of the lid looked warped. No mistaking why. It had been neatly slit at one end. Just enough for an investigating hand to slide in.

  Naked, chilled, Rees checked his suitcases, finding that the fabric linings in both had been slit also, top and bottom. A not very neat but thorough search. But why? he wondered wildly. To find his parole papers? One official call to San Francisco would have done the job in a tenth of the time it had taken to snoop here.

  Sitting back on his heels, shivering, Rees savored the full bitterness of his future. Once a con always a con. Stevens was wrong. They had probably checked him immediately, he decided. Perhaps while he was still sitting there waiting to sign his name on that witness statement. And while he had breakfasted with Susannah, walked on the pier with her, driven her home…Like a cruel god, merciless and all-powerful, unforgiving, Krug loomed hugely in his mind. Ever had any experience with the police before? And he had lied, no. Been out of work long? Another lie. You can be subpoenaed from now on…So they had him. Like cats with a mouse. Clever cats. Stupid mouse. He was trapped in a hole of his own making.

  SEVEN

  “So you got yourselves a dead paperhanger, hah?” Harry Berger leaned on the counter in front of the squad room, crisply snapping one of the twenty-dollar bills which Casey had delivered to his office earlier. Officially attached to Fraud, Berger specialized in all the unviolent activities of crooks busy defrauding private citizens as well as the government—anything from kited checks to counterfeiting. “If it’s the same guy,” he was saying, “which I think it is, we’ve been looking for him since yesterday. Federal agents have been after him since last year. What’s this about hit-and-run?”