Exploit of Death llm-34

by Dell Shannon

  Siemens lived alone in a little apartment over the garage at the rear of a single house on Berendo Avenue, and the owners lived in the front house, a Mr. and Mrs. Dearborn. They said he was a quiet tenant, out a lot, always paid the rent on time. Mendoza got a search warrant for the place and they looked at it, Higgins trailing along. It was a shabby bare little apartment, not much furniture, but he had a nice wardrobe of clothes. In one corner of the living room stood one of the newly popular reproductions of an old Franklin stove-economical heating. Mendoza opened the door and looked in and said, "Why has he had a fire in this, compadres? In ninety-degree weather‘?" The stove was half full of ashes, partly burned lumps of unidentifiable burned matter.

  "So that's what he did with the handbag," said Higgins, a hand to his jaw.

  "I rather think so," said Mendoza. "Let's turn the lab loose on it.".

  "Impossible," said Hackett. "Nobody could say what that stuff once was."

  "Well, see what they make of it."

  A lab crew went out next morning. They talked to Siemens again that afternoon and he was openly contemptuous.

  "I don't know what the hell you're trying to tie me into, but you might as well stop wasting your goddamn time, gents, I'm clean and you'll never prove I'm not." His cocky attitude just reinforced their conviction. He said he'd been with the girl that Saturdays night and she backed him up, but nobody believed her. Then Hackett went to talk to the owner of the gas station again. All he had to say was that Siemens was a damn good mechanic and he'd always liked him fine.

  "I don't know why the cops are picking on him," he said now. "What the hell you think he's done, anyways? When's he supposed to have done something?"

  "Two weeks ago Saturday night," said Hackett absently.

  "Well, there you are," said the owner. "Cops picking on him. I don't know any of his pals or what he does at night, but I just happen to remember that one. He told me his sister just had a baby and he was going to see her in the hospital."

  "The French Hospital downtown?" asked Hackett mildly.

  "How do I know what hospital?"

  The sister's name was Marcia Field and she had been in the French Hospital.

  "He's our X on Holzer. He's guilty as hell," said Higgins, "and goddamn it, we'll never prove it on him. All the evidence there ever was is long gone. Connections, but nebulous." He hunched his brawny shoulders angrily. "He wasn't the only one at that hospital that night. That Visa card could have been dropped by somebody else. There's damn all to show a judge." And that kind of thing happened too, and it was always frustrating.

  But on the following Tuesday morning, Scarne showed up in the Robbery-Homicide office with a manila envelope. He was looking pleased. He said to Mendoza, "I think we've got something interesting for you, Lieutenant. It was one hell of a job. We had to use the ultraviolet and infrared film, but it came up better than I thought it would." He slid an enlarged glossy photograph out of the envelope and laid it tenderly on Mendoza's desk. "All we could salvage out of all that burned material in the Franklin stove, but maybe it's enough. There was what was left of a billfold, just the corners and a spine, and what looks like the handle of a woman's handbag, which says you're right about Siemens. The plastic slots from the billfold were completely gone, of course. Any I.D. was past recall. But this thing-" He cocked his head at it. "It was about three by five originally, and we can deduce that it was in the middle of a bunch of other papers-other snapshots possibly-in an inside pocket of the billfold. It was protected enough that all of it didn't burn, and we brought up about half of it."

  It had been a snapshot, probably in color. The delicate lab processing wouldn't restore that, and the picture was gray and fuzzy from the rate of enlargement. It showed the upper half of a little girl smiling at the camera. She was wearing a polka-dotted dress and a big hair bow.

  " Muy lindo, " said Mendoza. "You bring about the miracles these days, don't you? Thank you so much."

  "It was one hell of a job. But it might," said Scarne, "be almost as good as a driver's license."

  Mendoza and Hackett took the enlargement up to Hollywood, where Frances Holzer worked at the Fidelity Federal Savings and Loan, and she took one look at it and said in surprise, "Why, it's that snapshot of Monica. My niece-Mona's little girl. Mona just sent it down about three weeks ago. Yes, Mother had it in her billfold with some other snapshots of the family, and of course Mona has a print of it too. Where on earth did you get it? And what happened to it?"

  "Jackpot," said Hackett in immense satisfaction..

  " Mejor tarde que nunca," said Mendoza. "Better late than never. Let's go pick him up and get the warrant." But they never got Siemens to open his mouth. Even when they spelled out the evidence to him, he stayed cocky and silent. They had to speculate on exactly what had happened to Edna Holzer. Had he been in the parking lot at the same time, grabbed her on impulse for what she had in her billfold, or intending rape, and then, finding he had put the quietus on her permanently, stashed the car with her in it to give himself time? Had he abstracted the Visa card, intending to use it, and then changed his mind? They didn't know, and Siemens wasn't talking. But there had been only two prints of that snapshot and the other one was up in Bakersfield.

  Siemens had thought he'd got rid of all the evidence. What he hadn't reckoned on was the simple yen on Sally's part for a couple of free dresses, and the little miracles the lab could perform.

  ***

  AND NOTHING CAME IN from the French police. "I said so," said Mendoza to Hackett on Friday. He had just got back from a session on Siemens at the D.A.'s office. He perched one hip on the corner of Hackett's desk. "It's a dead end. There and here. Why? Why the hell hasn't someone missed her by now? By all logic, somebody should have."

  "You'd think so. But you had the hunch."

  "By God," said Mendoza savagely. "I'm tempted to go over there and try to pick up the trail myself."

  Hackett took his glasses off. "How would you know where to start looking, for God's sake?"

  "There must be a record of her somewhere, damn it. There's got to be. From this distance there's not a hope in hell of locating it-of placing her. But on her home ground-" He smoked in silence for a moment and said, "What are you brooding about, John?"

  Palliser at the next desk had stopped typing and was sitting staring into space.

  "There's probably nothing to it. But damn it," said Palliser, "I keep thinking about that Toby Wells. On the Coffey case. His prints were there, but so were the rest of the family's. I saw his girlfriend and she confirmed that they were at that disco on Jefferson that night. I talked to his roommates, and they'd both gone to bed before he came in. It's nothing. He's got no record of violence at all. But with the lab turning that evidence for you on Siemens- Well, Duke said something to me about shoes. If we ever got a hot suspect."

  "Do no harm to have a closer look at him," said Hackett.

  "By God, I am thinking about it," said Mendoza. "I'd surely to God like to know who set up that little farce, and why, and how."

  Palliser abandoned his report and went out. It was Galeano's day off and everybody else was out hunting heisters or hospital visitors. They had descriptions on two more heisters now. There weren't, for once, any indictments or arraignments coming up to waste time in court. There wasn't anything to be done about the Robertson homicide. Higgins had talked to somebody in Juvenile and none of those kids she had complained about had any record with them. It wouldn't say much if they had.

  There had been another teenager found dead by his mother in his own bed. It was another O.D. of the 'ludes, combined with liquor.

  Mendoza wandered down to his own office and Hackett was alone when Grace came in with a possible suspect on one of the heists, so he sat in on that. It was all inconclusive. The man didn't have an alibi, but there was nothing else but his description to connect him to the heist. They decided to hold him overnight and arrange for a lineup in the morning to see whether the witnesses would pick him out.


  ***

  PALLISER THOUGHT this was probably a waste of time, but he applied for a search warrant for Toby Wells' apartment. It came through on Saturday morning, and he and Galeano went out to execute it. There wasn't anybody at home in the apartment, but they showed the warrant to the manager and he agreed to let them in. He said the three young dudes who lived there seemed to be nice quiet boys. They all had jobs and paid regular.

  They looked around the place. It was just a place for sleeping. No sign in the kitchen that much cooking was done there. There were two bedrooms, and the largest one contained twin beds, had a walk-in closet. In the other one there was a framed photograph of Mae Weaver on the dresser, so this was Toby Wells' bedroom. It just had a wardrobe with sliding doors. On the floor of that were five pairs of shoes-a pair of brown moccasins, a newer pair of black oxfords, another pair of moccasins-black-and some sneakers. Palliser had a look at them but couldn't see anything suggestive. He stashed them all in a plastic evidence bag and they drove back downtown to drop them off at the lab. Then they went up to that Thrifty in Hollywood to talk to Wells. He wasn't as amiable as before, when Palliser asked questions over again. "What the hell you want with my shoes, anyway? I didn't know cops could go right in a person's pad and just steal stuff."

  "You'll get them back," said Galeano easily. "We may want to borrow the ones you're wearing too. Are all those I the only shoes you've got?"

  "For Gossakes, what am I supposed to do till then? I don't know why you guys are bothering me, I never had anything to do with that-you know what I mean. I haven't done anything at all."

  "So you've got nothing to worry about," said Galeano in a friendly tone. "We can't prove you did anything. We're just looking around, Wells."

  "So you can go and look around somewhere else."

  "You'd like us to find out who killed your grandmother, wouldn't you?" asked Palliser.

  "Oh, sure, sure, I sure hope you do. But I told you where I was that night, you asked Mae and she told you, we were out at that disco all the time."

  "Yes, we know you were."

  "Then why are you bothering me? Go stealing my shoes! Cops! When do I get them back?"

  "When we're finished with them," said Galeano. They went back to the parking lot and sat in the car and Palliser switched on the engine for the air-conditioning. "In a sort of way," said Galeano, "I see what you mean, John. Another Baby Face. A little too innocent to be true, but on the other hand-"

  "Oh, I know, I know," said Palliser. "He's got no remote history of violence-only that one little count on him, and it's an honest upright family."

  "What the hell is all this business about shoes?"

  "I've got no idea," said Palliser. "It was Duke suggested it. He must have something in mind. Something they spotted in that apartment. But there wasn't any mention in the lab report."

  "Well, I suppose they'll tell us sometime. My God, why does anybody stay in this climate?-and the way the smog's hanging on it'll likely be the middle of October before we get any relief."

  "You like to start building seniority all over again, some place where it never gets over seventy degrees."

  "Is there such a place this side of heaven?" wondered Galeano.

  ***

  THAT SATURDAY NIGHT turned out to be a busy one for the night watch. It was still ninety-four at eight o'clock. September was the worst month for heat in Southern California. There was a bar on Third Street held up by two men at about nine o'clock and Conway wrote the report on that. There'd be eight witnesses to come in and keep the day watch busy making statements. They got a call to a mugging before he finished the report and Schenke went out on that. The victim had managed to get to a public phone and call in, but by the time Schenke got there he was looking green and couldn't stand up, so Schenke called an ambulance. He was a man in the sixties, Clarence Anderson, and all Schenke got was that he'd been working late in his office on Wilshire, been jumped when he came back to his car in a public lot. His home address, by the I.D. on him, was West Hollywood. He passed out as the ambulance arrived, but Schenke didn't think he was too bad. Probably a mild concussion.

  However, they were supposedly there to serve the citizens, so when he came back to the office to find it empty, he called Anderson's wife and broke the news to her. Piggott and Conway came back at eleven-thirty. There'd been another affluent-looking couple jumped and manhandled and robbed in the parking lot of the Shubert Theatre. "Why wasn't there a crowd if the show was just over?" asked Schenke.

  "They were about the last people to come back to the lot. They'd stopped for a drink at the Sushi bar on the way. The punks got about another fifty and some more jewelry."

  "Hell," said Schenke. "I wish there was just some handle to it, some way to chase them down."

  "Wel1, there isn't," said Conway. "And they seem to be fairly rough and ready with the M.O. One of these nights they're going to tackle somebody with a weak heart and leave a corpse for us."

  "And still no way to chase them down," said Piggott dryly. The phone rang and he picked it up. "Robbery-Homicide." In the next thirty seconds his mouth went tight and the usually mild-mannered, easygoing Piggott was an angry man when he put the phone down and stood up.

  "We'd all better ride on this one. It's a shooting and it's one of the uniformed men.".

  "Christ," said Conway.

  "The squad man said he didn't look too good. It's the corner of Hoover and Eleventh." They went downstairs in a hurry and piled into Conway's car.

  Down there, a normally busy secondary main drag, at that time of night the streets were empty of traffic and the traffic lights had stopped working. There were three squads parked in a row at the curb in front of half a block of store buildings. One of the squads had the driver's door hanging open. The uniformed men were Bill Moss and Dave Turner and they were looking grim and shaken. "It was at the appliance store," said Moss. "A break-in." There had been a dim security light left on above the door. By the streetlight at the corner they could read the sign-PURDUE'S T.V. AND APPLIANCES. "All we've heard on it is, two men, and Dubois walked into it. He looked bad, Conway-a couple of slugs in the chest. The ambulance just left. A woman across the street in the apartment at the corner of Eleventh saw it and called in, and Dubois got chased over. She called again when she heard the shooting, but they were long gone when Dave and I got here."

  Turner's hand was shaking as he raised the cigarette to his mouth. "We were in the same class at the Academy," he said.

  "We haven't called the owner yet. The woman's in apartment Twelve-B."

  "O.K." said Conway. "You get the emergency number off the door and contact the owner. We'll go talk to her."

  She was waiting for them. Her name was Alice Rabinovich and she was still excited and scared but she had kept her head. She was around forty, dark with a scrawny figure in an old cotton bathrobe over a nightgown, and scuffed bedroom slippers. The apartment was at the side of the building, looking down on Hoover Street.

  She said, "I couldn't sleep, it's so hot. I was tired, we had a busy day at the store, but I couldn't sleep. I went to bed, but it was no use, and I got up and sat by the window, the fan helped some. I was sitting in the dark and you can see-" she was gesturing the men into the bedroom. There was an electric fan going on a table by the open window, and a chair, and the window looked down directly to those store buildings on Hoover. The door of the appliance store would be about a hundred feet away, seen at a slightly oblique angle.

  "I saw the whole thing. It's terrible about the policeman. There were two men-it was a pickup truck, they parked right in front of the store-you can see the sign from here-and one had a flashlight and the other one had a tool of some kind. There wasn't anything in the street so late-cars or people-and they broke in the door, I could see them plain, they went in and I was sure they were burglars. I was just picking up the phone to call the police, but I was still watching and they came out with a T.V. and put it in the truck and went back in, and they brough
t out another T.V. and went back and it was just as they came out again with another the police car came up and the policeman got out, and I could see he had his gun in his hand, and I guess he'd have told them to put their hands up or something, but he never had the chance. One of the men just shot him-bang-like that-and he fell down and I called the police back again and told them what had happened-and the men put the T.V. in the truck and drove away fast-and about five minutes later the other two police cars drove up and then the ambulance came. I hope the poor policeman isn't hurt bad-"

  "So do we," said Conway. "That's fine, Mrs. Rabinovich, you've been a big help. We're lucky you were here. Could you give any description of the men?"

  She said regretfully, "Oh, no, I'm afraid not. My sight is good, but they weren't that close and it was dark even with the streetlight. But it was a Ford pickup truck. It wasn't very far from the streetlight and I saw the letters plain across the front. It was light-colored-white or light blue-something like that."

  "Are you sure?" asked Conway.

  "Yes, I'm sure about that."

  They went back across the street. By then the owner was there and he said there were three T.V.'s missing-nothing else. They told him as they'd told her to come to headquarters to make a statement in the morning. Then they went out to Cedars-Sinai to ask about Dubois.

  That was about an hour and a half after the shooting, and the doctors weren't saying anything definite. He had lost a lot of blood before he was brought in.

  Dubois wasn't married, but somebody had called-Turner?-and his mother was there in the waiting room down the hall in Emergency. She was a tall thin black woman with dignified regular features and she sat there quietly without crying. She looked at the Robbery-Homicide men without speaking and Conway said, "You know everybody's concerned, Mrs. Dubois. It's one of the possibilities that goes with the job."

  "Do you have to tell me that?" she said in a remote voice. "I've been afraid ever since Don put on that uniform. But he always wanted to be a police officer-ever since he was a little boy. A good, honest, honorable police officer-like his father." She raised her eyes from the floor. "His father was on the force in Chicago. He got shot by a drunk when Don was five. We came out here to live with my sister and her family then."