Dead Aim (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  Dead Aim

  A Lt. Hastings Mystery

  Collin Wilcox

  This book is dedicated to

  Addie Gilbert,

  with the deepest thanks

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Preview: Hiding Place

  1

  FRIEDMAN SLUMPED INTO MY visitor’s chair, sighing deeply and shaking his head sadly as he sailed a departmental memo across my desk.

  “At age forty-six,” he said heavily, “I’ve finally gotten used to the idea of being Jewish. When I was a kid, I used to get into fights about being Jewish—most of which I lost. When I was a struggling patrolman who never wanted to be a cop anyhow, I was edgy about being a Jew. When I didn’t advance in the department, I decided it was discrimination. I finally figured out, though, that the problem was really two kids, both in diapers at the same time, plus a wife who was too pooped to do much at night but sleep. So eventually I made detective, then detective sergeant. Then, lo, I made lieutenant. The kids, meanwhile, are growing up, and Clara is pinching me nights to keep me awake. I have money in the bank for the first time in my life. Whereupon I discover that all that time I wasn’t discriminated against like I thought. I was just broke, and up to my elbows in unpaid bills and kids screaming and nylons and diapers hanging in the bathroom. So now”—he flapped a hand—“so now, at age forty-six—a detective lieutenant with a locked-in pension—I discover that, by God, I’m being discriminated against. For being overweight.” He pointed to the memo, looked at me reproachfully, and then uttered the single word “jogging” as if it were an obscenity.

  I moved the memo aside, searching for a particular lab report analyzing the contents of a suspect’s ashtray, large amber glass, File H-1843-B, Exhibit 7. My eyes burned and my arms felt heavy. There’d been two homicides in San Francisco the previous night. A hooker had been found knifed and robbed at about nine P.M.; a housewife had been found bludgeoned and robbed approximately four hours later. I’d just gotten the first investigation organized when the second call had come over the air. I’d gotten home at four A.M. I was up at eight A.M.; by nine A.M. I was dozing in a courtroom antechamber, waiting to testify in a fatal child-beating case. Now, at three P.M., I intended to empty my In basket, then go home.

  “My informants tell me,” Friedman was saying, “that you and the captain are in collusion on this—this jogging thing.”

  “Not true. He asked me what I thought about the idea. I said that it sounded fine.”

  “There is nothing,” he said with solemn emphasis, “in either the California Civil Service Code or the San Francisco Police Department Manual that can get me jogging twice a week. Nothing at all.”

  I shrugged, paper-clipping a sheaf of onionskin interrogation transcripts, still searching for the missing lab report. Finally I dropped the transcripts into my top desk drawer, along with the contents of my In basket. I slid the drawer shut and got my gun from another drawer, locking the desk. Then, yawning and leaning back in my chair, I smiled faintly as I clipped on the gun. Friedman’s bullfrog eyes were regarding me with an expression of betrayed accusation.

  “You want the truth?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Well, the truth is, a couple of weeks ago I was having lunch with the captain. In the cafeteria. And it just so happened that both you and Canelli came in at the same time, and started loading up your trays. Now, you’ll have to admit that the sight of you and Canelli together, in profile, loading up on calories, was a lot for the captain to take. He’s supposed to be commanding a division of hard-bitten detectives. So when he looks up, halfway through his soup, and sees—”

  “All right.” He held up a beefy hand. “I’ve heard enough. I’ll handle it myself.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind. Are you going off duty?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned laboriously forward in his chair, retrieved the memo, then sank back with a sigh. “When the captain hand-delivered this to me,” Friedman said, “he told me to take over the Moresco case from you, on the theory that two cases in one night is too much for one man, even if he does have a thirty-four-inch waist. I suppose,” he added heavily, “that Moresco is the hooker. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Who’s got the file?”

  With difficulty, I kept my face straight. “Canelli had it this morning, as a matter of fact. He’s out in the field, so the file is probably back in Records.”

  He studied me for a long, sardonic moment before saying, “What you’re telling me, then, is that Canelli is on the case.”

  “Count your blessings. Canelli is the luckiest man in the history of the Inspectors’ Bureau. You’ve said so yourself. Not the smartest. Not the most ambitious, or the slimmest. But the luckiest.”

  “Well, next time you see Captain Kreiger, reporting on the progress of your devious little jogging scheme, no doubt, you can say that Canelli and I will—”

  My phone rang.

  “Lieutenant Hastings,” I answered, watching Friedman extract a cigar from an inside pocket, then heave himself laboriously from side to side, grunting and frowning as he rummaged for a match.

  “Anything look promising on those two new ones, Frank?” It was Kreiger’s voice: crisp, neutral, controlled. As always.

  “Not much, I’m afraid.”

  “I promised the reporters I’d meet with them in a couple of hours—five o’clock. If you get anything new, be sure and give it to me.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you given Pete the Moresco case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he there with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him what I told you, then. About the news conference.”

  “Yessir.” I hung up, eying Friedman as he lolled belly-up in my visitor’s chair, puffing on the cigar and absently brushing at his ash-spotted vest.

  “I’d offer you a cigar,” he said, “but it’d be bad for your wind.”

  I glanced at the clock, then took ten minutes to outline the Moresco case, finishing with the admonition that the captain wanted something newsworthy by five P.M.

  Friedman grunted. “The captain has one failing. He expects us to write his press-conference material for him.”

  I thought about it, then slowly nodded.

  “He’s also been saying too much to the reporters lately. One of these days he’s going to get himself socked with a libel suit. Whereupon he’ll lose his clear shot at the deputy chiefs job.” Friedman aimed the soggy end of his cigar at me, his shrewd, narrowed eyes suddenly serious. “You should tell him, Frank. You’re old football buddies—army buddies. You should buy him a drink and pick the right time and tell him to let the reporters work a little harder. Christ, Kreiger’s usually about as talkative as a cowboy sucking on a straw, and until just recently he was the same way with the press. Now, though—the past few weeks—when those reporters start working on him, he sings like a stoolie raising muscatel money.”

  “He’d agree with you,” I said shortly. “I’ve already mentioned it.”

  “What’s he say?”

  “He says that the chief wants it this way. Public relations. Part of the new departmental image.”

  He grima
ced. “And the chief, no doubt, has been talking to our brand-new mayor-elect. Mr. Public Relations himself.”

  I shrugged, abruptly dropping a paperweight on a stack of miscellaneous unclassified documents and letters.

  “You’re not going off duty after all,” Friedman said, examining his cigar’s precarious ash. “You’re going to tough it out—dig up a news item. With three hours’ sleep.”

  “I’m going to tough it out until five o’clock. Just like you are.”

  “How’s your case look?”

  “Not as good as yours. All you’ve got to do is find the Moresco girl’s pimp, and you’ll come up a hero.”

  “You don’t have any leads on that housewife thing, eh?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What was her name, anyhow?”

  “Draper. Susan Draper.” I got to my feet. “Which is where I’m going: the Draper house. Are you going to sit there and smoke, or do you want to walk down to the elevator?”

  Not bothering to reply, Friedman heaved himself to his feet and followed me out of the office, trailing cigar ashes.

  2

  I PULLED TO A stop, set the brake, then checked my watch. The time was 3:50 P.M. I had exactly an hour in which to concoct a news item for the captain’s news conference.

  I sat behind the wheel for a moment, surveying the scene of the Draper murder: a narrow one-story stucco row house, one of thousands built during the late thirties and early forties. I’d lived my first seventeen years in San Francisco. I could remember watching those row houses slowly, inexorably propagating themselves like long, segmented worms, finally covering the wide, rolling sand dunes, my own private wonderland. As a small child, I’d chased howling, war-painted Indians across those dunes. As a teenager, parked on a freshly paved, sand-dusted street, surrounded by the bare nighttime skeletons of half-finished houses, I’d first touched the warm, secret flesh of Jacqueline Grant. We’d been fifteen. Earlier in the day—a Sunday—I’d first seen my name in print. As a sophomore fullback, I’d made the varsity squad, second string. Derek Rawlings had come by for me in his wheezing, chugging Model A. Both wearing our letter sweaters—mine two days old—we’d picked up Derek’s girl friend, then Jacqueline. The four of us had spent the long, sunny Sunday together, riding in the Model A, sprawling on the beach, chasing each other, prancing through the surf. Later, as we awkwardly, ardently strained together in the anonymous darkness of the car’s rear seat, I’d been conscious of the smell of salt water and sweat and the urgent musk of love—Jacqueline’s and mine, mingled.

  I sighed, blinking my eyes against the burning of last night’s fatigue—and against the unexpected sharpness of sensations remembered almost thirty years later.

  She’d be forty-three now. My age.

  I got out of the cruiser, locking the door. I’d parked across the street from the Draper house, and I stood for a moment surveying the scene. Daylight made a difference. Daylight, and the muted shouts of playing children, and the endless row of look-alike houses, each of them built on a twenty-five-foot lot, a hundred feet deep, each with precisely three inches of air space separating it from its neighbor, according to the city code. Most of the houses were fussily well kept, with elaborate drapery at the front windows. The Draper house, though, didn’t quite match up. The small front lawn was pale green, splotched with brown. The border plantings were only half tended. A small pane of glass in the garage door was broken.

  A patrol car was parked directly in front of the house, a patrolman slumped behind the wheel. When he recognized me, he sat up abruptly. He was a young, lean, serious-looking cop, and I saw him swallowing as he half saluted, tentatively smiling.

  “Hello, Lieutenant.”

  “Hi. Anything doing?”

  “Nothing, Lieutenant. They haven’t left the house, either the husband or the little girl. Haven’t peeped out, either. Not since I came on, anyhow.”

  “When was that?”

  “One P.M.”

  “Anyone try to get inside?”

  “A couple of reporters and one neighbor. A few kids, too, and a paperboy. None of them gave me any trouble, though.”

  “Did the neighbor look all right?”

  “As far as I could see—just a woman. I mean—” He cleared his throat, glancing sideways at me, then shrugging uncertainly. “I mean, she was a little fat, wearing a housedress and run-over shoes. And she went back to her house, three doors down, there. So—” Again he shrugged, raising his hand from the steering wheel, gesturing down the block.

  I nodded. “Okay. Good. Where’s Inspector Markham?”

  He pointed across the street, indicating a pink stucco house trimmed in gleaming white. “Inspector Markham’s been over there for about forty-five minutes or so. Inspector Sigler went down to the Welfare Department, where the victim works. Worked, I mean.”

  I nodded again. “Tell Inspector Markham I’m going to talk to Mr. Draper. Do you happen to know the little girl’s name—the victim’s daughter?”

  “Gee, I don’t, Lieutenant. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. Is the back covered?”

  “Yessir. My partner’s back there. I mean, he’s actually in the basement, where he can see the back door.”

  “Okay. See you in a few minutes.”

  I walked around the car, heading for the Drapers’ front door. As I walked, I was recalling the details of last night’s preliminary investigation: She’d apparently been an ordinary, average housewife, age thirty-two, comfortably married, a working mother. Name, Susan Draper. Medium build, medium features. Brunette. She’d gone out about eight-thirty P.M., heading for a Sunday night movie, leaving-her husband home to mind the only child, a daughter. The husband put the daughter to bed at about nine, then watched TV until approximately midnight, when he retired. He read for a few minutes, then slipped off to sleep, still with the bedroom light on. He awoke at approximately 1:15 A.M. He didn’t know whether anything had awakened him, or whether he’d just opened his eyes. His wife wasn’t there. He decided to check on her, and went to the garage, using an inside stairway to the ground-level basement-garage, which extended the full width and length of the house. He discovered that he’d neglected to unbolt the inside access door to the garage, so that his wife had to enter the house by the front door, passing through the narrow, thickly planted tunnel entrance, then climbing the outside stairs to the front door.

  Entering the garage, Mr. Draper found the car parked, the overhead garage door closed and locked. He’d slid the door up and left it open, intending to reenter the house as he’d left it, locking up behind. He’d walked to his right a few paces, then turned into the tunnel entrance leading up to the front door. The entrance was planted with large, broad-leafed plants, growing thickly. Mr. Draper had immediately seen his wife’s feet protruding from the shrubbery. She’d been lying on her back, eyes open, staring straight up. Her purse had been torn from her arm, its strap broken. The wallet from the purse had been taken; the purse had been discarded at the scene. Mrs. Draper had been hit repeatedly on the head, probably with an iron pipe. Her husband had phoned Taraval Station a little after one-thirty.

  Now, standing in the tunnel entrance, I saw the six-inch bloodstain on the sidewalk and the brown spatterings on the nearby foliage. According to the coroner, she’d probably been hit first on the right side of the skull as she was preparing to ascend the first step leading up to the front door. Her assailant, then, had been hiding in the shrubbery, waiting—the familiar mugger’s M.O.

  Except that muggings, statistically, seldom end in murder.

  Perhaps she’d struggled, or cried out. Perhaps he’d hit her first to quiet her down—then lost control of himself. Either way, considering the close quarters of the entryway, the murderer must have spattered himself with blood.

  I knelt down to examine the planting area’s soft earth, now completely reproduced in interlocking plaster casts. Markham’s preliminary report indicated that Mr. Draper’s footprints had probably obliter
ated any meaningful evidence.

  As I climbed the stairs my legs were heavy, my feet lagged. With three hours’ sleep, I owed myself an evening in pajamas, watching an hour of TV, then going to bed for ten hours.

  Mr. Draper answered the door on my second ring. He was a stocky man of medium height, dressed in slippers, casual slacks and a pullover fisherman’s sweater. He was probably in his middle thirties, with blond hair thinning in front, worn long over his ears and thick at the back of his neck. He was a handsome, restless-looking man. His eyes were brown and wide-set. His mouth was wide and firm, but somehow too perfect: an actor’s mouth. His manner, I’d decided last night, was petty and self-indulgent. He probably had a quick, unpredictable temper and an inflated idea of his own importance—a vain, hollow man, essentially weak. Last night he’d done little more than stare down at his toes, slowly shaking his head, constantly mumbling that he must be dreaming.

  Now he was frowning at me, as if he was trying to focus his eyes. He seemed puzzled, vague—in delayed shock. He didn’t recognize me.

  I took off my hat, then introduced myself, apologizing for the intrusion. Still, I said, there were questions that must be asked, the sooner the better.

  Sighing deeply, raggedly, he abruptly turned away, walking into the living room, leaving me to close the front door. He slumped down on a sofa, gesturing me to a facing chair. Shakily he took a cigarette from a crumpled pack lying on the cluttered, glass-ringed coffee table.

  “I’ll be as brief as I can, Mr. Draper,” I began. “Last night—this morning, really—you weren’t up to answering any questions for us. And for that matter, we weren’t really sure what we needed to ask. Now, though, if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you a few things.”

  As I’d been talking, he’d stared fixedly into my eyes, but I had the impression that he wasn’t really listening. Now, as soon as I stopped speaking, his head dropped, as if it had been held erect by my words alone.

  “Have you found him yet?” he mumbled, sucking on the cigarette. “Have you found out who did it?”