The Cool Cottontail

by John Ball

  Upon arrival he parked his car in an assigned slot and made his way to his modest office. It was a bare functional area that he shared with another investigator, but he had worked hard to earn it. He seated himself behind his badly scarred desk, put the little box on top where he could look at it, and leaned back to think.

  When he had first joined the Pasadena police, and had completed the training courses set out for him, he had graduated to a uniform and the job of standing most of the day in the broiling sun directing traffic. Later he had been given a three-wheeler to ride, which carried with it the job of going up one street and down another, endlessly, day after day, checking cars for overtime parking. He had patrolled the parking areas during the Rose Bowl game and still remembered the massive roars of the crowd which signified to those outside that some moment of exciting action was in progress.

  For six years he patiently performed his basic police tasks while at the same time he occupied a good part of his spare time in another activity. When he was in college, he had become interested in the basic Oriental martial arts: judo, kendo, aikido, and karate. Kendo swordsmanship, while it appealed to him, was of less immediate concern than the arts that he might be able to use in the work he was hoping to do. Gradually his interest had concentrated on the subtle power of aikido and, in almost direct contrast, the Spartan lethal discipline of karate.

  In both the schools he had chosen to attend, he had learned to sit erect on his bare feet on the floor, look straight ahead, and address the man in charge as sensei. In the aikido dojo, on the unyielding tatami mats that offered little comfort, he had learned to fall, to roll, and to deal with opponents with the motions of his hips and wrists. At the karate school, where each session was a test of his muscular control and stamina, he learned to concentrate the entire power of his body with whip-like force. He learned to punch, to kick, to chop, to strike, and to thrust, all with lightning speed and total accuracy. He learned to use the edges of his hands, his elbows, his knees, the many parts of his feet that made effective weapons, and to protect himself from similar attacks by possible future opponents.

  At these schools none of his teachers ever seemed to notice that he was a Negro. And he had long since dismissed any awareness that some of his teachers and fellow students were Japanese and others were not. In karate sparring, in particular, there was no time for such considerations. An opponent was a man of a certain physical structure and skill; overcoming him, if possible, took total concentration, total dedication to the art of karate, with no possible room for any other thoughts.

  In aikido, which he had started relatively late, he wore the brown belt of the nikyu.

  He had been a policeman for six years, and a dedicated karate student for eight, when a decision concerning him had been made behind the stony faces of the ranked karate examiners. After evaluating him many, many times they at last found him up to a stratospheric standard from which no exceptions were ever made. It had been the proudest, and most humbling, moment of his life when they had called him before them, he had bowed his obedience, and they had handed him the ultimate reward of the black belt. He had become a shodan, the lowest black-belt rank, but a member of the elite nonetheless.

  Four days later an armed robber shot a filling-station attendant at night and in fleeing encountered a slender, unarmed Negro in street clothes. The robber had thrust out his arm to drive the harmless-looking man away and had received the greatest surprise he’d ever known just before sudden unconsciousness. He awoke much later in the prison ward of Los Angeles General Hospital with a broken arm in a plaster cast and the realization that he would shortly be back in Big Q for an extended stay.

  That timely incident had marked the beginning of Tibbs’ career as an investigator, which was the Pasadena Police Department’s designation for certain of its detectives. On one of his first assignments he had worked as a shoeshine man for almost three weeks waiting for two men who were reported to meet there from time to time. When at last they had come, they had mistakenly assumed that the spiritless laborer working with the polish and brushes had no possible interest in their affairs. When he had finished their shines, he held out his hand, not for payment but to display a badge. At first they had not believed it; later they believed it completely, and for a short while, at least, one of the strands of the narcotics trade had been cut.

  Tibbs, now the experienced professional, sat at his desk and went through a long file of missing-person reports. There were four possibles. He was noting them down when his phone rang and he was summoned to give a personal report to Captain Lindholm. He went gladly, but he had little to offer at that early stage beyond what was already on file.

  “As I understand it, Virgil,” the captain said, “the body was entirely nude, no clothing on it or nearby.”

  “No, sir,” Tibbs replied.

  “Anything useful at all in the way of ground marks?”

  Tibbs shook his head. “The soil is very hard out there, sir. I made a careful check and found nothing.”

  “Then I assume there was not much to be found. Do you see any connection between the nude body and the fact that it was found where it was?”

  “No, sir, at least not at this point. The people who run the place appear responsible. They have a good reputation. The sheriff’s office told me they have never had a complaint involving the nudist park—discounting crackpot calls, of course.”

  “Have you any ideas at this point?”

  Tibbs hesitated. “Only in part. It seems pretty clear that the body was stripped and the dentures removed to give us a job making an identification.”

  “That seems logical, and except for the regular routine you haven’t much to go on.”

  “There is one thing, sir.” Tibbs put a small box on the captain’s desk. “The murderer, if it was murder, overlooked something. I didn’t call attention to it at the time because I didn’t want to advertise the fact.”

  “What have you got, Virgil?”

  Tibbs pointed to the little box. “Contact lenses,” he said.

  chapter 5

  Whenever Virgil Tibbs spent a day, or a succession of days, of hard work without any fruitful result, he would refer to it as a “Yellow Face period.” He drew his reference from Sherlock Holmes’ famous adventure of The Yellow Face in which the immortal detective overreached himself, failed to come to the right conclusion, and ended up in humiliating defeat.

  The next twenty-four hours constituted a Yellow Face period. Had the deceased been an itinerant-laborer type, he might never have been missed by anyone concerned enough to turn in a police report, but it was clear he had been a man of some substance and possibly even importance. Thus the normal expectation was that from some quarter an inquiry would come in concerning a missing person, who would turn out to be the body in the nudist-park pool. But no such person was reported missing.

  Local fingerprint records were of no help, and the F.B.I. reported that it could not provide a make from its central files in Washington. Apparently the unknown man had never had his fingerprints taken, at least not in the United States.

  Meanwhile Tibbs took another careful look at the four missing-person reports that he had already chosen as possibles. A little work eliminated two of them; one was a decided long shot; the fourth offered some slight hope.

  Then, at ten in the morning, a woman, who from her appearance could have been the dead man’s wife, sailed with hesitant regality into the small lobby of the Pasadena police station and paused before the inquiry window.

  “I would like to speak with a police officer,” she announced with thin-lipped determination.

  The desk man, who had been alerted, sensed a good possibility and summoned Tibbs. When the investigator arrived, the woman looked coolly at him and repeated herself almost exactly. “I would like to see a police officer.”

  “I am a police officer,” Tibbs replied. “May I help you?”

  The woman continued to regard him coolly. “I would like to speak to one of
your regular officers.”

  “I am a regular officer, Ma’am.”

  “Perhaps, then, I should ask to see a detective.”

  At times, Tibbs’ patience wore thin. Normally he controlled himself well, but the early frustrations of the day were already beginning to tell on him. “Madam,” he said with enough firmness in his voice to convey authority, “I am a detective and am at your service. Now, what may I do for you?”

  The woman stared at him for a moment, turned without a word, and walked out through the lobby doorway.

  Tibbs bent over the drinking fountain to regain his self-control. He took hold of the sides of the fixture for a moment and the muscles of his fingers locked tight. When he straightened up, he was himself once more.

  “Call me if anything else comes up, Harry,” he said to the man on duty. “If she comes back, try to find out what it’s all about. If not, to hell with her.”

  Harry understood and nodded; things like this had happened before.

  The morning mail brought a letter from Officer Sam Wood, of the Wells Police Department. With pardonable pride he informed Tibbs that his advancement to sergeant had been approved and would shortly take effect. Despite the fact that he had lived all his life in the South and was a Caucasian, Wood’s was a very friendly letter. He reported that the music festival had been a definite success in Wells and that even the diehards now admitted that it had been a good idea. The town showed some few signs of reviving life due to the influx of tourist money. Miss Duena Mantoli, whom he had an engagement to see that evening, had specifically asked to be remembered, and sent her warm regards.

  Tibbs slipped the letter into his pocket and felt infinitely better.

  Missing person Number 4 on Tibbs’ list was the possible. The subject had been a local resident and a personal call might be helpful. Tibbs called a number in the Eagle Rock area, reached the missing man’s wife, and requested an appointment. Since it was only a short distance down the Colorado Freeway, he said he would be right over, fully aware that if the call resulted in anything positive, it would be his unfortunate duty to break the news to this woman that her husband was dead.

  Mrs. Sean McCarthy, mother of five, confronted Tibbs through a hooked screen door and announced, “We’re not in the market for anything.”

  “I’m the police officer who phoned you a few minutes ago, Mrs. McCarthy,” Tibbs explained.

  Very dubiously the woman unhooked the door and held it open to let him in. She was not tall—Tibbs guessed that she weighed about a hundred and sixty pounds. From the set of her jaw, he sensed that she could be a terror and that her temper probably lay just under the surface. Her eyes had a glittering hardness, though when she was young they might have been lovely. Her face was largely still smooth, but there were lines around her mouth already permanently sculptured into outlines of disapproval.

  She made a cursory effort to be polite and motioned Tibbs to a vacant chair in the small living room. The furniture was pure borax, cheaply made with an effort to give it the appearance of massiveness. The upholstery was heavily studded with cloth-covered buttons intended to suggest elegance; when Tibbs sat down, the slight appearance of comfort dissolved.

  Although he carefully tried to keep from jumping to unwarranted conclusions, he was already prepared for a disappointment. This home and this woman did not fit with the man whose body he had examined.

  “The room isn’t properly picked up yet,” the woman said. “When you have five kids to look after and no man to help, you can’t get everything done.”

  Tibbs felt a twinge of sympathy for her and approached the matter at hand as carefully as he could. “Mrs. McCarthy, something has come to our attention that might cast some light on your husband’s disappearance.” He decided to stretch the truth a little. “I take it from the appearance of your home that he is a man of some importance.”

  Mrs. McCarthy nodded firmly. “That he is,” she agreed. “What have you discovered?”

  Tibbs went on as delicately as possible, “We have a matter under investigation, and while there is very little chance it pertains to your husband, we don’t want to overlook anything that might help to solve Mr. McCarthy’s disappearance.”

  At last the woman showed a slight sign of approval. “Yes,” she said.

  Tibbs took the plunge. “Yesterday a distinguished-looking man was found, apparently the victim of an accident. He had no identification on his person, and so far we have not been able to establish who he was.”

  “He was dead, then?”

  Tibbs nodded. “I fear so, Mrs. McCarthy, but I repeat, we have no real reason at all to believe that he was your husband.”

  The morning paper lay on the floor next to the chair Tibbs was sitting in. He picked it up, folded it to the story concerning the discovery of the body in the swimming pool, and silently handed it to his hostess. She took the paper and read the account without expression. When she was through, she laid it down as though it were something unclean. “That is not my husband,” she announced, and the lines around her mouth set themselves firmly.

  “May I ask how you know?” Tibbs inquired quietly.

  Mrs. McCarthy took a deep breath, let it go, and clasped her arms in front of her generous bosom. “That body is not Mr. McCarthy,” she reiterated, leaving no room whatever for question.

  Tibbs framed his next words carefully and paced them slowly, knowing that many people close their thoughts to lock out grief. “I’m sure that your opinion is correct, Mrs. McCarthy,” he said, for the second time deliberately enlarging on the truth. “But for the sake of our official records it would be of great help if you would give me the reason for your conclusion.”

  If he had read her rightly, she was not the kind to be sparing of her advice. The desire to offer guidance might overcome her manifest unwillingness to discuss the body found in the pool. He watched while she struggled within herself, and knew the result before she spoke again.

  “My husband,” she said with unsinkable firmness, “would never be found, under any circumstances, in a place like that. We are respectable people here, Mr. Tibbett.” She dropped her hands into her lap as though she were driving a pile.

  Tibbs let a few seconds pass; then he made his voice flat and unemotional. “The people at the nudist resort made it very clear they didn’t know the man who was found on their premises. He was neither a member nor a guest there.”

  “That is beside the point,” Mrs. McCarthy said.

  “What I am trying to say,” Tibbs added, taking the blame upon himself, “is that the man obviously did not belong where he was found. Someone carried him there and put him into the pool.”

  The woman refused to yield. “I told you, and I see no need to repeat it, that we are an upright family and have nothing to do with places of public immorality. We are church people and we live our faith. My husband would never set foot in a nudist colony, dead or alive.”

  Tibbs knew better than to challenge a fixation head-on. He rose to his feet with the air that he was entirely convinced and satisfied. As he did so, the substantial housewife noted his apparent surrender and relaxed her guard.

  Tibbs said, “While you are being so helpful, Mrs. McCarthy, there is one other thing that might assist us to resolve the matter of your husband’s disappearance. Can you tell me if he had had his appendix removed?”

  She shook her head. “No, he did not. He has never had surgery of any kind, unless it’s been since he left home.”

  That nailed it down. “Thank you again for your cooperation, Mrs. McCarthy,” Tibbs said in leaving. “From what you have told me, I am certain that the man we found is not your husband.” This time, at least, he could speak the strict truth.

  When he got back to his office, there was a preliminary phoned-in report from the San Bernardino medical examiner. It supplied the cause of death, a matter to which Tibbs gave his immediate full attention.

  According to this first information, the unknown man had died as a result
of a physical beating. All indications were that it had been a skilled assault; externally the body showed almost no signs of the abuse it had taken. A massive blow just below the breastbone, which had ruptured the aorta, was in all probability the major contributing cause of death. The deceased having been a good-sized man apparently in better-than-average physical condition, the person or persons who had caused his death had almost certainly been both powerful and well trained.

  That put a fresh light on the matter. Any lingering thoughts of a morbid prank went out of Tibbs’ mind. He swung his feet up onto the corner of the well-worn desk that had served many others before him, stared unseeing at the ceiling, and thought hard.

  He was still in his position of deep concentration when his office mate came in. Tibbs was so fiercely involved in his thoughts that it was a good five minutes before he noticed his unofficial partner.

  Bob Nakamura was ten pounds overweight and wore his thick black hair in a crew cut that emphasized the slight roundness of his face and figure. He did not have the buck teeth so commonly supposed to be a mark of Japanese ancestry, but he did wear glasses and with them a perpetual look of bland, innocent happiness. No one would have guessed he was a police detective, which added greatly to his value.

  “How is it going?” Bob asked.

  Tibbs pursed his lips before answering. “I think,” he answered slowly, “I’ve just been able to figure out one thing that has been bothering me. Otherwise not so good. It’s not as simple as I thought it was going to be.”