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

by Carolyn Weston

  Repetition, Casey thought. The art of detecting was a matter of endless repetitive conversations. The clock on the squad-room wall said eleven-thirty. He yawned to cover his unconscious groan. Another hour to go yet, at least, before he could possibly finish typing the day’s reports. They never told you at the Academy how much time you’d spend parked in front of typewriters. How many hours you’d waste waiting for developments. Or how many girls you’d lose because of the damned waiting—

  “Here’s your news,” one of the night-tour men announced as he walked into the squad room. “Just picked up this little goodie from our local witch doctor.” He pitched a large brown envelope onto Krug’s desk.

  But it was Timms who scanned the report inside first. “Final PM on Roche,” he muttered, scowling. “Listen to this.”

  As he began to read aloud, all the tiny hairs on Casey’s skin stirred uneasily—an atavistic reaction to the horror implied in the cold, technical post-mortem language. What it boiled down to, as Timms was saying, was a severe manhandling of the decedent before death. Deep contusions on both upper arms—hand marks from the shape. It looked, he said, like some strong-arm had grabbed her from behind with a paralyzing grip. Which meant either a maniac or some muscle type as strong as a gorilla. There was a good possibility that Susannah Roche had been thrown bodily out the window.

  Another murder as crazy as killing a man with his own car.”

  “You get the picture,” the lieutenant was saying unemotionally. “What we’re up against is a real ironball killer.”

  “A nut case, you mean,” Krug grunted.

  “Or a guy so scared and greedy, it amounts to the same thing.”

  “Could be that the timing figures somehow,” Casey mused aloud, unaware at first that he was interrupting. “Something queer about that gap between the time the U-Haul left Tantra and the Godwins were—” But no one was listening.

  “How it went, maybe,” Timms’s steady magisterial voice overrode his, “one thing led to another. They wasted Barrett because he blew their deal. But they had a witness to that—Rees. Then a fast phone call gave them the news we had the murder car, too.” He leaned against Krug’s desk, rubbing his end-of-the-day whiskers. “Driver probably figured we could connect Roche with Barrett sooner or later, so he didn’t waste any time getting to her. On the other hand, he took the time to make it look like suicide—which makes me think he still wasn’t scared. But by the time he got to the Godwins—Well, never mind that,” he interrupted himself. “Next move is Rees. He’s all we’ve got going for us,” he repeated, “so the sooner we get him in here the better.”

  But ten minutes later even that hope was blasted.

  “Just took a call for you fellas,” the manager informed Casey and Krug when they walked into the Pelican Motel office. “Police, right? Said you should phone as soon as you got here.” They usually charged a quarter for phone service, he explained while he dialed from the small switchboard behind the counter which held a cash register, stacks of brochures printed by the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce, a plaque from some motel association and an ivory-colored house phone. But seeing this was official—“Police Department? Hold on a second.”

  Krug lifted the ivory-colored receiver, handing it to Casey. “Be my guest.”

  “Thanks, partner. Yeah, Kellog,” Casey said into the receiver. “What’s up?”

  “Logged in an anonymous call a couple minutes ago the lieutenant said you guys’d be interested in.” Casey recognized the gravel voice of the duty sergeant. “Party that lives near that Coast Highway house, so he or she claimed. Voice could be a woman. Anyhow, he was out for the evening, he claims. Just got home and heard about the shooting from the neighbors.”

  “Any reason for the anonymity?”

  “The usual crap about not wanting to be involved. But he claims he saw what might be your killer.”

  Hell, Casey thought despondently as he listened to the description, there goes my certified Sherlock button. “Seems we’re at the right place at the wrong time, Al.” He banged the receiver. “See you outside for a minute?” He hustled his partner out the door. “A tall dark-haired man about thirty was seen driving away from the Godwin house in a blue Volkswagen.”

  “Rees, sure as hell!”

  “But the time’s wrong, Al. At the time the witness is talking about, we were here with Rees.”

  “So give or take a half hour, how long you think it takes to pull a trigger? Anyway, you ever know a witness to get anything right?” Krug looked feverish now, boiling with excitement. “Christ, the nerve of the guy! He’s got the balls of a—But he really blew it, didn’t he? When he gave us that ‘E and J Godwin’ bit? Blew his own cover-up. And you remember how he was sweating when he opened the door?”

  Promise of a warrant on the way did little at first to convince the motel manager. “But how can he be gone when he’s paid up for the night?” he kept insisting. “People don’t—Well, listen, he didn’t say anything—”

  “Joe, tell them about his phone call,” an unseen woman called through the half-open inner door which connected the motel office with living quarters. “If he’s in trouble of some kind—”

  “Yeah, that’s right, I forgot. Rees called here a while ago. Something about his car, the wife said. Squawking about some mechanic—which don’t surprise me any. Guy was only here five minutes, she said. Probably charged Rees a fortune.”

  “So that’s his worry, right?” Krug jerked a thumb toward the Plexiglas outer door. “Come on, don’t give us a hard time.”

  With the draperies drawn, lamps burning, Rees’s motel room had a kind of transient coziness as shallow and false as the pictures on the walls. Crumpled newspapers lay scattered on the floor. The bedspread was wrinkled where someone had sat on it. An ashtray on the nightstand overflowed with cigarette butts. In the bathroom a faucet drip-dripped monotonously.

  Krug tried the closet first. “Clothes’re still here.” He started going through the pockets while Casey peered into the bathroom.

  “All his shaving gear’s here, Al. Toothbrush and so forth.”

  “Don’t mean a thing, he’s got the dough to buy more.” Krug’s voice was muffled, for he was on his hands and knees now, poking under the bed. “Nothing but house moss here.” Groaning softly, he straightened and began pulling the bed apart, tossing the covers in a heap—an old police technique of random ransack-search which, to Casey’s mind, had always seemed excessive.

  But even so, there was something exciting in his partner’s furious energy, and Casey quickly went through the bureau drawers, one by one, searching under neatly stacked shirts, socks, underwear. In a bottom drawer was the jumble of miscellaneous items which Rees had dumped out of his bags when they had picked them up for fingerprinting this morning. Among them was a manila envelope which Casey opened, finding escrow papers from a property sale, some letters and pictures which were personal and a passport made out to Ellen Hollis Rees and Paul Joseph Rees, husband and wife. Inspecting the deceased wife’s passport-picture smile, Casey tried to imagine the loss, but grief was as yet unknown to him. Probably in the flesh she’d been even prettier, he decided. One of those quiet passionate helpmeets. The old-fashioned word brought a twinge of longing which made him feel callow and silly. He riffled quickly through the passport. “Looks like they used to travel a lot.” There was no reply from Krug. “Here are his parole papers. He’s due to report at nine tomorrow.”

  “Fat chance. Son of a bitch’s probably across the Mexican border by now.”

  “Without his passport?”

  “Hell, you can travel all over mañana-land on a tourist card. Buy a fake one for ten bucks.” Like a ragpicker with competition, Krug was tearing through the closet again. “Pair of shoes here. Old ones, looks like, no loss there. Shoe box on the floor.” Casey heard him puffing as he squatted for a look. “No store label. Lid’s gone. Looks brand-new.” He straightened again, grunting. “Nothing in his pockets is the giveaway. Bastard prob
ably cleaned ’em out before he split.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense, Al. Why would he phone?”

  “Ah, come on, use your head. He’s playing for time.”

  “But leaving all his stuff —”

  “Wouldn’t you if you figured it’d give you a lead of maybe twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours? He don’t know somebody spotted that Volks, we’d be getting an APB out on him. Probably figures the first we’ll tumble is when he don’t show up at Parole in the morning.”

  It sounded logical, Casey had to admit. But logic didn’t usually enter into homicides. “Al, it doesn’t work,” he said ten minutes later as he pulled into the section behind the City Hall marked official vehicles only and they crawled out of the Mustang for what seemed the thousandth time that day. “Either Rees has flipped, or somebody’s doing a number on us. Who we should be hunting right now is that anonymous caller.”

  Krug’s raspberry was eloquently loud and insulting. Good old Uncle Al, the Emperor of Put-Down. “You want coffee? I’ll buy.”

  Entering headquarters, they detoured down the corridor to the vending machines. As usual, Krug griped about the cream which wasn’t real anymore, settling for black with lots of sugar. The coffee smelled like stewed inner tubes as always, but it was burning hot and welcome. They both sipped cautiously, then headed for the stairs.

  “The fact remains,” Casey said stubbornly, “we haven’t anything but circumstances and that anonymous call to connect Rees.”

  “Bullshit.” Krug slumped into his swivel desk chair.

  Opposite him, Casey hunched over his coffee, brooding. “Just take a look at what the guy’s been up against, Al. He’s a witness to a murder. Then his room gets searched. But when he reports it to us, all we do is hassle him, because by this time we’ve not only caught up with his record, his chick’s dead, too. All of a sudden he’s a prime suspect.” Krug started to growl, but Casey persisted. “Whoever searched his room must’ve spotted those parole papers, Al. Saw he had a natural for a setup of some kind. And if he’s desperate for time—Well, isn’t it possible he could be using Rees as a red herring?”

  “For Chrissake, you and your goddam theories.” Krug gulped his coffee and crushed the cup. “Red herring.” His laughter blared like a brass horn. “Go back and read the book, genius. Like the part where it tells about following evidence.”

  “Instead of steering it, you mean.”

  “Who’s steering? I’m not”

  “Not unless you have to, anyway.”

  Krug sucked in a breath, expelling it violently. “Now you listen to me, college boy, and you listen good. I been a cop for as long as you been living, you get me? A cop. Which means I’ve seen every kind of two-bit hustler by now. I’ve smelled every kind of nickel-a-bunch crook. I’ve listened to every kind of shithead phony that’s ever come down the pike. What I’m talking about is experience—get me, genius? Police experience. Something you haven’t got much of yet, and don’t you ever forget it! We stick with what we got, and what we got now is Rees—right? Now, get busy on the reports,” he finished sullenly. “I’ll hit up the watch commander for a plainclothes team to stake out the Pelican.”

  THIRTY

  Serves you damn well right, Casey thought as his partner stamped out and down the stairs again. He kept leafing through his notebook, trying to concentrate. But his brain was like a fist closed tight around resentment and rage at his own stupidity. Instead of persuading Al, making him see the possibility could conceivably exist that Rees was being used, he’d started an idiotic mini-war which could go on for days, even weeks.

  Time, he kept thinking. Has to figure somehow. That gap between clearing out Tantra Press and killing the Godwins must mean something. Delay of some kind? Or a change of plan? If something had pinned down the killer, for instance…But this was the wildest kind of guessing, he knew.

  His coffee had gone cold by this time. Depressed by the idea of all the typing he faced, Casey pocketed his notebook and trudged down the stairs for a fresh cup from the vending machine. But he pushed the wrong button, cream instead of black, and seething as he watched the pale liquid flowing into the paper cup behind the glassed-in slot, he decided to punish himself by drinking it. He was halfway through the bland unsatisfying cup, beginning to focus again, when the sense of a pattern began to emerge in his mind. He hadn’t quite pinned it down when Harry Berger called.

  “Good news, bubi. Our fearless feds may have a line on that U-Haul truck.”

  “That’s fast work.”

  “Why not? They got a hundred guys out ringing doorbells.” His voice quickened. “Hey, remember that Narco spook’s newsy little bit about some blond dame delivering the truck? Well, it looks like it might be kosher. Because a blonde rented one late this morning from a place on Lincoln. Guy said she wanted a van, but he didn’t have any, so she settled for the truck. Anyway, she gave a fake address. Claimed she’d forgotten her driver’s license, but she sweet-talked the guy into letting her have it anyway. After she paid in advance, that is, plus a huge deposit.”

  “What’s the description?”

  “I told you, bubi, blonde—what else d’you want?”

  “A description, Harry.”

  “Okay, Sherlock. Maybe thirty years old. Plenty of face paint, the guy said, so he couldn’t really tell. But around thirty. Sort of skinny, he said, but plenty of pizzazz. Ankle-strap platforms and a groovy dress. Hair was out of a bottle, he figured. About shoulder length—”

  Scribbling frantically in his notebook, Casey got it all down. And after he hung up, he studied what he had written, a slow excitement beginning to stir in him. No mistaking that somebody, somewhere along the line, was seeing wrong.

  Ten minutes later, at Santa Monica Hospital, he was explaining that he realized he couldn’t talk to the patient: “Mrs. Emrie Godwin? What I need is her vital statistics. A police matter.”

  While he waited for the woman who was obviously the senior nurse to inspect his badge and ID card, he glanced cautiously around the ward, intimidated by the deadly quiet, the cool incurious scrutiny of the nursing team. Surgical Intensive Care was dimly lit, heavily carpeted, curtained into cubicles positioned like spokes in a half-circle wheel around the electronic console where the nurses sat like astronauts, monitoring pulsing signals from each fragile, ailing human mechanism adrift in the dark limbo of life or death. The opposite of my job, Casey was thinking when he became aware of the nurse’s soft murmur.

  “—All here on her Emergency Admittance.” She handed him the aluminum-backed hospital chart. “Help yourself. It’s the bottom page.”

  As quietly as he was able, Casey flipped through the chart. And squinting in the insufficient light, he read the Jane Doe identification: height approx. 5'7", weight approx. 155 lbs., age approx. 50 years, eyes blue, hair blond, complexion fair, scars as follows—

  “That was quick,” the nurse commented when he handed her the chart. “What’d she do to get herself shot up like that?”

  “Don’t know yet. This is just routine.” Casey smiled his thanks and pushed out through the padded door into the hospital corridor. For sure the one thing Mrs. Godwin had not done was rent a U-Haul truck this morning.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Staying on the northbound San Diego Freeway instead of branching off onto the westbound connecting artery to Santa Monica, Rees by-passed the small city’s eastern limits, continuing on to the Sunset Boulevard exit. The famous scenic boulevard, lined with huge houses on deep garden lots, wound westward, he knew. The longest way around, to be sure. But, he hoped, the safest.

  Panic had settled now into a slow, heavy fear-pulse in him. How much time? he kept wondering. How long could he stay free? Once the police had him, any chance of aiding himself would be finished—Krug would see to that. But whoever had planted the gun—

  His mind veered crazily. Like a formula, he thought. Not chemistry, physics. Between X, the unknown factor, and Y, the known force, anything caught must experience ohm-p
ressures at a ratio calculated—

  He groaned aloud. Just get there, for Chrissake. Get there. When you’ve only one chance to save yourself, it doesn’t take any intellectualizing to prove the simple fact that you’re desperate.

  “—So there’s six, not five,” Casey shouted over the persistent buzzing on the telephone line, his mouth full of bread and paper-thin ham. “Four men and two women. And listen, Al, I’ve got another idea about that, too—”

  “Save it, we’ll get our answers from Rees when we nail him.”

  “No, listen to me! They must’ve planned a rendezvous later somewhere. But something went wrong—”

  “Save it, I said. I’m heading home.”

  Casey choked down the mouthful. “At least give me a chance to tell you, Al. Because it all begins to fit now. So wait’ll I get there? Five minutes,” he added before Krug could speak, and hung up. But the promised five minutes stretched into fifteen while he made two more calls—both inquiries, which he hoped sounded casual enough to conceal their information-gathering purpose.

  He had parked in a red zone on Sixteenth, getting into the hospital through an Employees Only entrance which he’d overshot on his way out, discovering instead this small visitors’ foyer, which was a policeman’s dream—not only public phones, but also a tempting array of vending machines lined against one wall, each dispensing something different, from sandwiches to fresh fruit. Sophisticated machines which even made change.

  Shoving an apple in his pocket, juggling the milk and sandwich he had also purchased, Casey pushed out through the swing door onto the quiet street. Milk sloshed out of the carton, dribbling down his front. The half sandwich he was trying to gobble as he ran crumbled into fragments. So much for dinner, he thought bitterly, licking his fingers. But he gulped the balance of the milk before he climbed into his Mustang, tossing the empty carton in the gutter—according to city littering ordinances, a fifty-dollar fine.