The Zebra-Striped Hearse

by Ross Macdonald

  “We know that.” Arnie’s voice was low and fast. “Campion’s been seen in Saline City, talking to the key boy of one of the local motels. A patrol cop made him but he didn’t pick him up right away. He wanted to check with our bulletin, and he had an idea that Campion was checking in. But when he got back to the motel, Campion had cleared out. This happened within the last couple of hours. Do you have later information?”

  “You’re ’way ahead of me. Did you get the name of the motel?”

  “The Travelers, in Saline City. It’s a town in the East Bay.”

  “What about Harriet?”

  “Nothing so far. We’re starting dragging operations in the morning. The police lab established that the blood in the hat is her type, B, but that doesn’t mean much.”

  “How do you know her blood type?”

  “I called her father,” Arnie said. “He wanted to come up here, but I think I talked him out of it. If this case doesn’t break pretty soon, he’s going to blow a gasket.”

  “So am I.”

  By midnight I was in Saline City looking for the Travelers Motel. It was on the west side of town at the edge of the salt flats. Red neon outlined its stucco façade and failed to mask its shabbiness.

  There was nobody in the cluttered little front office. I rang the handbell on the registration desk. A kind of grey-haired youth came out of a back room with his shirttails flapping.

  “Single?”

  “I don’t need a room. You may be able to give me some information.”

  “Is it about the murderer?”

  “Yes. I understand you talked to him. What was the subject of conversation?”

  He groaned, and stopped buttoning up his shirt. “I already told all this to the cops. You expect a man to stay up all night chewing the same cabbage?”

  I gave him a five-dollar bill. He peered at it myopically and put it away. “Okay, if it’s all that important. What you want to know?”

  “Just what Campion said to you.”

  “Is that his name—Campion? He said his name was Damis. He said he spent the night here a couple months ago, and he wanted me to look up the records to prove it.”

  “Was he actually here a couple of months ago?”

  “Uh-huh. I remembered his face. I got a very good memory for faces.” He tapped his low forehead lovingly. “ ’Course I couldn’t say for sure what date it was until I looked up the old registration cards.”

  “You did that, did you?”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t do him no good. He took off while I was out back checking. The patrol car stopped by, the way it always does around eight o’clock, and it must of scared him off.”

  “I’d like to see that registration card.”

  “The cops took it with them. They said it was evidence.”

  “What was the date on it?”

  “May five, I remember that much.”

  It was evidence. May the fifth was the night of Dolly Campion’s death.

  “You’re sure the man who registered then was the same man you talked to tonight?”

  “That’s what the cops wanted to know. I couldn’t be absotively certain, my eyes aren’t that good. But he looked the same to me, and he talked the same. Maybe he was lying about it, though. He said his name was Damis, and it turns out that’s a lie.”

  “He registered under the name Damis on the night of May the fifth, is that correct?”

  “They both did.”

  “Both?”

  “I didn’t get to see the lady. She came in her own car after he registered for them. He said his wife was gonna do that, so I thought nothing of it. She took off in the morning, early, I guess.”

  “How do you remember all that, when you’re not even certain it was the same man?”

  “He sort of reminded me. But I remembered all right when he reminded me.”

  He was a stupid man. His eyes were glazed and solemn with stupidity. I said: “Do you have any independent recollections of the night of May the fifth?”

  “The date was on the registration card.”

  “But he could have registered another night, and said that it was May the fifth? And the man who signed in on May fifth could have been another man?”

  I realized that I was talking like a prosecutor trying to confuse a witness. My witness was thoroughly confused.

  “I guess so,” he said dejectedly.

  “Did Campion tell you why he was so interested in pinning down the date?”

  “He didn’t say. He just said it was important.”

  “Did he give you money?”

  “He didn’t have to. I said I’d help him out. After all, he was a customer.”

  “But you’d only seen him once before?”

  “That’s right. On the night of May five.” His voice was stubborn.

  “What time did he check in that night?”

  “I couldn’t say. It wasn’t too late.”

  “And he stayed all night?”

  “I couldn’t say. We don’t keep watch on the guests.” He yawned, so wide I could count his cavities.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Nelson Karp.”

  “My name is Archer, Nelson. Lew Archer. I’m a private detective, and I have to ask you to return the five dollars I gave you. I’m sorry. You’re probably going to be a witness in a murder trial, and you’ll want to be able to tell the court that nobody paid you money.”

  He took the bill out of his pocket and dropped it on the counter. “I might of known there was a catch to it.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “You and who else is sorry?”

  “Anyway, the State pays witnesses,”

  I didn’t say how little, and Nelson Karp cheered up.

  “When Campion left here tonight, which way did he go?”

  “ ’Crost San Mateo Bridge. I heard them say that.”

  “By ‘them’ you mean the cops?”

  “Yeah. They did a lot of telephoning from here.” He gestured toward the pay phone on the wall.

  I stepped outside and looked across the flats, where piles of salt rose like ephemeral pyramids. The lights of the Peninsula winked blearily in the haze across the Bay. As the crow flies, or the hawk, I wasn’t more than ten miles from Menlo Park.

  I went back into the office and got some change from Karp and placed a toll call under the name John Smith to Campion’s sister Mrs. Jurgensen. Her phone rang thirteen times, and then a man’s voice answered.

  “Hello.”

  “I have a person call for Mrs. Thor Jurgensen,” the operator intoned.

  “Mrs. Jurgensen isn’t here. Can I take a message?”

  “Do you wish to leave a message, sir?” the operator said to me.

  I didn’t. Campion knew my voice, as I knew his.

  Shortly after one o’clock I parked in the three-hundred block of Schoolhouse Road in Menlo Park. I crossed into the next block on foot, examining the mailboxes for the Jurgensens’ number. It was a broad and quiet street of large ranchtype houses shadowed by oaks that far predated them. Bay-shore was a murmur in the distance.

  At this hour most of the houses were dark, but there was light in a back window of 401. I circled the house. My footsteps were muffled in the dew-wet grass. Crouching behind a plumbago bush, I peered through a matchstick bamboo blind into the lighted room.

  It was a big country-style kitchen divided by a breakfast bar into cooking and living areas. A used-brick fireplace took up most of one wall. Campion was sleeping peacefully on a couch in front of the fireplace. A road map unfolded on his chest rose and fell with his breathing.

  He had on the remains of his grey suit. There were dark stains on it, oil or mud or blood. His face was scratched, and charred with beard. His right arm dragged on the floor and he had a gun there at his fingertips, a medium-caliber nickel-plated revolver.

  No doubt I should have called the police. But I wanted to take him myself.

  A detached garage big enough fo
r three cars stood at the rear of the property. I approached it through a flower garden and let myself in through the unlocked side door. One of the two cars inside had the outlines of a Chevrolet convertible.

  It was Dr. Damis’s car. I read his name on the steering post in the light of my pencil flash. The keys were in the ignition. I took them out and pocketed them.

  I looked around for a weapon. There was a work bench at the rear of the garage, and attached to the wall above it was a pegboard hung with tools. I had a choice of several hammers. I took down a light ball-peen hammer and hefted it. It would do.

  I went back to the Chevrolet and stuck a matchbook between the horn and the steering wheel. It began to blow like Gabriel’s horn. I moved to the open side door and flattened myself against the wall beside it, watching the back of the house. My ears were hurting. The enclosed space was filled with yelling decibels which threatened to crowd me out.

  Campion came out of the house. He ran through the garden, floundering among camellias. The nickel-plated revolver gleamed in his hand. Before he reached the garage he stopped and looked all around him, as though he suspected a trick. But the pull of the horn was too strong for him. He had to silence it.

  I ducked out of sight and saw his shadowy figure enter the doorway. I struck him on the back of the head with the hammer, not too hard and not too easily. He fell on his gun. I got it out from under him and dropped it in my jacket pocket. Then I unjammed the horn.

  A man was swearing loudly in the next yard. I stepped outside and said: “Good evening.”

  He turned a flashlight on me. “What goes on? You’re not Thor Jurgensen.”

  “No. Where are the Jurgensens?”

  “They’re spending the night in the City. I was wondering who was using their house.”

  He came up to the fence, a heavy-bodied man in silk pajamas, and looked me over closely. I smiled into the glare. I was feeling pretty good.

  “A wanted man was using it. I’m a detective, and I just knocked him out.”

  “Evelyn’s brother?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Does Evelyn know he was here?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Poor Evelyn.” His voice held that special blend of grief and glee which we reserve for other people’s disasters. “Poor old Thor. I suppose this will be in the papers—”

  I cut him short: “Call the Sheriffs office in Redwood City, will you? Tell them to send a car out.”

  He moved away, walking springily in his bare feet.

  chapter 19

  ROYAL AND I waited outside the hospital room while Campion returned to consciousness. It took him the better part of an hour. I had time to fill the Captain in on my activities, and Campion’s.

  Royal was unimpressed by my findings in Saline City. “He’s trying to fake an alibi for his wife’s murder.”

  “Or establish one. I think you should talk to the key boy Nelson Karp, and see if that registration card is genuine. It’s in the hands of the Saline City police.”

  Royal said without much interest: “Alibis like that one come a dime a dozen and you know it. He could have checked in at this motel and even spent part of the night, then driven back to Luna Bay and done her in. It’s only about thirty miles between the two places.”

  “Which makes it all the easier to check.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’ve got other things on my mind. Take it up with Deputy Mungan if you like. He’s in charge of the substation at Luna Bay, and he’s been handling the evidential details.”

  I didn’t pursue the argument. Royal was a good cop but like other good cops he had an inflexible mind, once it was made up. We sat in uneasy silence for a few minutes. Then a young resident wearing a white coat and a high-minded expression came out of Campion’s room and announced that, in view of the importance of the case, his patient could be questioned.

  Royal and I went in past the uniformed guard. It was an ordinary small hospital room, with the addition of heavy steel screening on the window. Campion’s bed was slightly raised at the head. He lay still and watched us. His heavy eyes recognized each of us in turn, but he didn’t speak. His head was bandaged, and the flesh around his eyes was turning purple. Scratches stood out on his pale cheeks.

  I said: “Hello, Campion.”

  Royal said: “Long time no see, Bruce.”

  Campion said nothing. The turbanlike bandage on his head, the grimace of pain on his mouth, made him look a little like an Indian fakir lying on a bed of spikes.

  Royal’s shadow fell across him. “What did you do with Harriet Blackwell, Bruce?”

  “I didn’t do anything with her.”

  “She was last seen in your company.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “You can’t help killing people, you mean?”

  “I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “What about your little wife Dolly?”

  “I didn’t kill Dolly.”

  “Come on now, Bruce. We know different. You’ve had your little burst of freedom. This is the end of the trail. The end of the trail and the beginning of the trial.” Royal grinned at his own bad joke. “Anything you say can be used against you, true, but I’m advising you to speak out now, tell us the whole thing freely. It’ll be easier on you in the long run.”

  “Sure,” Campion said. “They’ll put a cushion on the chair in the gas chamber and perfume the cyanide.”

  Royal leaned over the bed, his wide shoulders blotting out Campion’s face. “You know you’re headed for the gas chamber, eh? So why not give me the full story, Bruce? I been waiting a long time to hear it. Just come clean about Dolly, and I’m your friend. I’ll do what I can to save you from the green room.”

  “Don’t do me any favors, cop. And get away from me. You have bad breath.”

  Royal’s open hand jerked up. “Why, you dirty little bas—” He bit the word in two and backed away, with a sideways glance at me.

  Campion said: “Go ahead and hit me. Hitting people is what you people are for. I’ve hated you people all my life. You sell out justice to the highest bidder and let the poor people take the gaff.”

  “Shut up, you.” Royal was shouting. “You lie there crying about justice with women’s blood on your hands.”

  Campion flapped his hands in front of his face. “I don’t see any blood.”

  “That’s right, you didn’t shed any blood when you killed Dolly. You used a stocking around her neck. Her own stocking.” Royal made a spitting noise. “What goes on in a mind like yours, Bruce? I’d like to know.”

  “You never will. You’re too ignorant.”

  “I’m not too ignorant to know a psycho when I see one, fooling around with paintboxes and living on women. Why don’t you do a man’s work?”

  “Like vagging prostitutes and shaking them down?”

  “Don’t talk to me about prostitutes. I read a book about that whoring psycho French painter—the one that cut off his ear and committed suicide. How psycho can you get?”

  Campion sat up in bed. “If you weren’t so ignorant you’d speak of Van Gogh with respect. Incidentally, he wasn’t a Frenchman. He was a Dutchman, and a great religious genius.”

  “And you’re another? Is that what you’re trying to say? You’re a great religious genius who goes in for human sacrifice?”

  “You’re the one who puts people in the gas chamber.”

  “I’m the one, and that’s where you’re going.”

  I stepped between them, facing Royal. His face was congested with blood, and his eyes had an oily sheen. I’d never seen him out of control before. Campion had lain back and closed his eyes.

  I opened them with a question: “How did the blood get on Harriet’s hat?”

  “What hat?”

  “The hat I fished out of the lake today. What was it doing in the lake, and how did her blood and hair get on the lining?”

  “You better ask her. It’s her hat.”

  “You knew it was in the lak
e?”

  “You just told me, and I know you wouldn’t lie. Cops never lie.”

  “Change the record, boy. How did that hat get into the lake?”

  “I said, why don’t you ask her?”

  “She isn’t available. Where is she, Campion?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I have a suggestion, however.”

  “What is it?”

  “Disappear. I’m a sick man. I need rest.”

  “The doctor says you’re questionable.”

  “Not me. I’m incommunicado. It’s my reputation that’s questionable.”

  “Stop playing word games.”

  “Why? A man needs some amusement in the long night watches. Storm troopers make dull companions.”

  Hot blood rose in my face. I felt a growing solidarity with Royal.

  “You don’t show much concern for your fiancée.”

  “My what?”

  “You were going to marry her, weren’t you?”

  “Was I?”

  “Answer me.”

  “You already know all the answers. Cops always do.”

  “If you weren’t going to marry her, why did you take her to Tahoe? Because the lake is deep?”

  Campion looked up at me with a deathly boredom. Royal spoke behind me in a new quiet voice: “Mr. Archer deserves an answer, Bruce. He’s gone to a lot of trouble to ask you that question.”

  “Mr. Archer can take a running jump in the lake.”

  “Is that what Harriet did,” I said, “with a little help from you?”

  “I don’t know what she did. I never touched her.”

  “How did you get those marks on your face?”

  One of his hands crawled up to his face. His fingers explored it like a blind man’s fingers palpating a strange object.

  “I was wandering around in the woods last night. I must have scratched myself on the bushes.”

  “This was after your trouble with Harriet?”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “What was the trouble about?”

  He lay and looked at me. “What trouble?”

  “You mentioned trouble with Harriet.”

  “You were the one who mentioned trouble,” he said.

  “But you agreed that trouble had occurred.”