When I’d finished talking, Kreiger made a few brief notes, then turned to Markham. “Anything to add, Jerry?”
“A couple of things.” Markham’s voice was subdued, yet subtly smug. He’d always been good on the street. Now he was learning to handle himself in the captain’s office. “The lab men found a smear of blood on the front door,” Markham said, “undoubtedly left by Mr. Draper when he went inside to phone us, after he discovered the body.”
“Did he admit to touching the body?”
“Not to me, he didn’t,” Markham said, turning inquiringly to me.
“It’s unclear,” I said. “My impression was that he didn’t remember much. Anyhow, the point wasn’t established.”
“He could’ve been purposely evasive,” Kreiger said. Then, to Markham: “What else besides the blood smear?”
“An unclassified print on the handle of the garage door. Not Mrs. Draper’s either. Or Mr. Draper’s.”
“Is it a good print?”
“A dream. A thumbprint. Right thumb. It’s already in Washington and Sacramento. The print was made over prints of both Mr. and Mrs. Draper. So it’s exceptionally clear.”
“Good,” Kreiger said, inclining his head gravely. “What else?”
“I questioned the little girl. She slept right through the murder, apparently. But she said that her parents were fighting yesterday afternoon.”
“How do you rate her as a witness?”
Markham shrugged. “She’s only seven. Personally, I’ve never had much luck with kids that age. Twelve, yes. Seven, no.”
Kreiger was thoughtfully making notes on a large legal-size pad. Finally he said, “The way I understand it, then, we’re going in three directions: we’ve got Draper as a possibility, and we’ve got this kid Dan Haywood. But mostly we’re going on the third possibility: that a mugger with either robbery or rape in mind did the job. Which would tie in with what the Haywood kid says about the black man he saw. Assuming, of course, that the Haywood kid isn’t lying.” He looked from Markham to me. “Anything else?” He said it crisply, plainly anxious to get on to the Manley homicide.
“That garage door handle should take beautiful prints,” I said slowly, ignoring Kreiger’s frown as I turned to Markham.
“It did.”
“There were three sets, you say: Mr. and Mrs. Draper’s and the unclassified set on top. Right?”
Markham nodded. His dark eyes were alert as he tried to guess my point.
“Which set was next?”
He frowned.
“It should be Mrs. Draper’s,” I said. “Her husband didn’t touch the outside handle that night, according to both versions of his story. He pushed the door up, from the inside. He discovered his wife’s body. Then he left the door up, no matter which way he entered the house. That much is for sure. So his prints should be last. Underneath the other two.”
“I’ll check,” Markham said shortly.
“You might also be sure the lab goes over the inside handle of the garage door. On that handle, if Draper’s telling the truth, his prints should be on top.”
“I’ll check that, too,” came the grudging reply.
I nodded, unwilling to press him further in public, even though I wanted a better picture of Draper’s precise movements after discovering the body.
I turned to Kreiger. “You want to get to the Manley thing?”
Glancing at his watch, he nodded impassively. This time referring to my notes, I carefully summed up my information. As I talked, the other four men became more attentive. The Manley case meant prestige, publicity, possible promotion. Something for everyone.
When I’d finished, Friedman shook his head elaborately, mock-dolefully. “You’ll have to do better than that, Lieutenant. So far, as suspects, you’ve come up with a millionaire and a millionaire’s son. At that rate, you and I will be out dodging bullets, while Canelli and Markham sit behind our scarred oak desks.”
Unsmiling, Kreiger asked Canelli for a summary of late developments at the scene of the crime. Canelli cleared his throat, frowning with earnest, sweat-sheened concentration. It would be years before Canelli would learn to handle himself in the captain’s office.
“Well,” Canelli began, “I was just down to the lab before I came here, and the lab—” He swallowed, still frowning earnestly, looking first to me, then to the captain. “Or maybe you read the lab reports already.”
“Never mind,” Kreiger said. “Tell us about it. I’ve read the report. But Lieutenant Friedman hasn’t.”
“I haven’t either,” I said. “I just got here.”
“Oh. Well—” Again he swallowed. “Well, the lab came up with something like nine sets of prints, so it’s going to take a little while to sort it all out. So far, all they can eliminate are prints from the two victims, plus the cleaning lady. Which leaves six. So—” He cleared his throat. “So that’s where we are on prints. About the bullets, out of four shots, we don’t have a damn thing. I mean, they all went right on through; they’re all messed up. You can’t tell the lands from the grooves. But the lab figures the gun was probably either a .357 Magnum or a .38.”
“Did they recover the bullets?” Friedman asked, shifting his bulk to flick his cigar ashes, then subsiding with a sigh.
“Yep. All four of them. All in the wall. It’s a wood-paneled wall, and one of the slugs went all the way through that wall, and almost through the kitchen wall. It’s bulging out, like a boil, or something. So you know it was a pretty powerful gun. Like the lab says.”
“How about money and drugs on the premises?” I asked.
“We found two hundred thirty dollars in a bedroom bureau, in Valenti’s wallet. Which seems to rule out robbery, unless they only took the real big stuff. The girl had about twenty dollars in her purse. So far, we haven’t found anything but a kilo of marijuana. But we’re still looking.”
“Have you and Culligan been able to reconstruct the murderer’s movements from any physical evidence?”
“More or less. It looks like the murderer must’ve come in through the front service door, which wasn’t locked. From there, he had to go alongside the house and back to the garden. Then it looks like he jimmied the back door. It’s just a spring lock, so it didn’t take much. Also, there’s some marks along the lock, according to Estes from the lab. I couldn’t see any marks myself; I figured it was a celluloid job. Still—”
“Then what happened?” Kreiger interrupted.
“Well—” Canelli lifted his hands, palms up. “He just went in and did the job, it looks like.”
“What about that talcum powder?” I asked.
Canelli snapped his fingers ruefully, loudly clicking his teeth. “I knew I was forgetting something. Estes claims he followed it right from the bedroom into the kitchen and out onto the back porch and then alongside the house to the service door, and out to the sidewalk. Which is a pretty good reason for figuring that’s the way the murderer came, figuring that he left the same way he came. If Estes is right. Personally, I think that those lab guys figure they know more than they really know. I mean, they find a couple of specks of suspicious-looking dust, or something, and right away they think they’ve got the whole case solved.”
“It’s evidence, though,” Friedman said gently. “It impresses juries.” He eyed Canelli for a moment, then said in the same soft, speculative voice, “Maybe, unconsciously, you’re jealous of Estes’ willowy physique. Have you ever thought about that?” He moved his cigar toward me. “I used to have similar feelings concerning Lieutenant Hastings, even when he was a sergeant. I used to think it was professional jealousy. Then I realized that it was his thirty-four-inch waist. Not to mention his forty-four-inch chest.”
“What about witnesses?” I asked Canelli.
Frowning dubiously at Friedman, Canelli said absently, “Yeah. Well, we turned up quite a few. I mean, the M.E. said the murder was probably committed between midnight and three A.M. And the upstairs neighbor thought he heard shots abou
t two A.M., which would tie in with what the M.E. said. So me and Culligan, we—” He paused for breath. Watching him, Friedman rolled his eyes briefly upward, elaborately exhaling. “We went on the theory that we should be looking for people out on the street about then. About two. And we probably found a dozen people, which kind of surprised me. Of course, it’s the holiday season, and all. But anyhow—” Again he paused, breathing deeply.
“This suspense,” Friedman muttered, “is almost unbearable.”
“Anyhow, we got two or three pretty good witnesses,” Canelli continued, apparently oblivious to his sardonic superior, “who all came up with a late-model Volkswagen bug, white, that was parked in the area for maybe a half-hour or so around two o’clock, with someone inside. So we started—”
At the word “Volkswagen,” I felt myself stiffen.
“Bruce Manley,” I said, “has a white VW bug.”
Kreiger’s expression, typically, didn’t change. Friedman, typically, whistled reflectively through his teeth. “This,” he said, “is what the manual calls a ‘potentially significant intersection of seemingly random events.’ It’s also the answer to a city editor’s erotic fantasies.”
Kreiger was slowly, precisely tapping his pad of paper with a long yellow pencil. His pale blue eyes were very remote. “We’ve got to have that car for a lab check,” he said. “And we’ve got to keep it quiet. I don’t want the papers to smell a thing.”
“This Bruce Manley doesn’t sound too sharp,” Friedman said thoughtfully. “Maybe we can con him.”
“We can’t con Billy Mitchell, though,” I replied. “Take my word for it.”
“We’ll just have to play it straight,” Kreiger said quietly. “Give Bruce Manley the old wheeze: a car answering the description of his was seen at the scene. For his own good, we want to eliminate his, to clear him. Hell, there must be a thousand cars like that in the city. More than a thousand, maybe. Tell him that; make it sound like a—an amusing coincidence.”
“Ho, ho,” Friedman interjected dryly.
“What if he doesn’t want to cooperate,” I asked, “and goes for a lawyer? If he contacts his father, there’ll be a lawyer down here in five minutes. Followed by reporters.”
Kreiger answered, “We don’t have any choice, Frank. We’ve got to have the car for an hour, with or without the kid’s permission. We can’t—”
“Why don’t we steal it?” Friedman asked blandly.
“What?”
“Why not? I’ll go interview Bruce and his buddy. Haskell, from Auto Theft, can do the job while I’m conducting my three-ring interrogation. If Haskell gets caught, we can stage an arrest. I could be the hero. Either way, we’d come up heroes. When the car’s reported missing, we’ll recover it within the hour.”
“If we wait until tonight,” I said, “we might even be able to get it back undetected. Then we could—”
“Are you two out of your heads?” Kreiger’s lips were tight with the effort of keeping his voice level. “You’ll get us all—”
“I could pretend that I don’t know Frank has already interviewed him,” Friedman interrupted smoothly. “Besides, Haskell’s cool. Not only that, he looks more like a crook than a cop. It’s a breeze. He could even pretend to be repossessing the car for a bank. I’d leave that part up to him.”
“Repossessing proceedings could be libelous,” Kreiger snapped. Then, thoughtfully, he added, “A fake theft is better than repossessing.”
Friedman looked at me, careful that Kreiger didn’t see his smug leer. Canelli seemed embarrassed, as if he were very young, listening to the older boys telling dirty jokes.
In a few minutes we’d fixed the details, deciding to steal the car as soon as possible, hopefully to return it after dark, now less than three hours away. Meanwhile, I would take Canelli and try to interview Jane Swanson and her friend Dave Rawlings. Then, alone, I’d interview Walter Manley.
When the heist was settled, Kreiger abruptly announced that he was going to have a cup of coffee—alone.
11
CANELLI SWUNG THE CRUISER to the curb, switching off the ignition and radio. We sat silently for a moment, surveying the run-down building in which Rawlings’ apartment had finally been located. I yawned, stretching. We should have taken time for a cup of coffee.
Canelli cleared his throat, hesitated, and finally said, “Can I ask you something, Lieutenant?”
“Sure.” I threw my half-smoked cigarette out the window and turned to face him. For more than a year I’d been trying to quit smoking. I was down to half a pack of half-smoked cigarettes each day.
“Does Lieutenant Friedman have anything against me?”
I smiled. “Yes, he does. He has your waistline against you. Because your waistline reminds him of his waistline. Between the two of you, you’ve got the whole Bureau jogging twice a week. And Lieutenant Friedman hates exercise.”
His guileless relief was almost comical. I’d often wondered how Canelli managed to make Inspector, his incredible luck notwithstanding. Kreiger ran a tight ship. Performance was the first criterion, but appearance and presence counted, too. Kreiger had his own ideas about how an inspector should look and act.
“Can I ask you something else?” he was saying, this time more tentatively.
“All right.”
“Well—” He cleared his throat. “Is it really true that you played pro ball for the Lions? I mean, I don’t follow football much. Not the older players, anyhow. So—” He broke off. Too late.
I sighed. Then, resigned, I recited: “I played two years on a football scholarship at Stanford, after the war. I got honorable mention in my senior year. I played four years with the Lions, usually as a second-string wingback—a utility man. I was no hero, and I didn’t make much money. End of the story.”
He nodded, hesitated, then said, “About saying ‘older players,’ Lieutenant, I—”
“You meant what you said, Canelli. Don’t worry. One lieutenant sore at you is enough. More than enough, once Friedman starts jogging. Come on—” I opened the door. “Let’s see what Jane Swanson has to say.”
I pushed the bell a third time, then pressed my ear gingerly to the door. I could hear the soft sounds of movement within. Should I have sent Canelli to cover the back, playing the percentages? Had they …?
Footsteps were approaching. As the door opened on a chain, I glanced at my watch. The time was 3:45.
“Yes, what is it?” The woman’s voice was thick with sleep, drowsily resentful.
I identified myself, verified her identity as Jane Swanson, and asked to be let into the apartment.
“What’s it all about?” she asked. But the sudden tightness in her voice betrayed her. She knew.
A good detective, like a good door-to-door salesman, never transacts business in hallways. Finally, pretending exasperation, she let us inside. The door, I noticed, was secured by two chains and two locks.
Both the girl and the apartment were about what I’d expected. The girl was perhaps thirty. Tight magenta stretch slacks and a not-quite-clean print blouse revealed a figure just beginning to spread and sag. Her long brown hair hung tangled about her shoulders; her bare feet padded heavily on the scarred entryway floor. The slow, lazily suggestive swing of her hips seemed somehow more slatternly than sensuous—more listless than lustful.
The dark, stale-smelling apartment was crammed with cheap modern furniture. Discarded clothing, newspapers and movie magazines littered every chair. Children’s toys completed the ruin. From a portable TV came the insinuating bleat of a daytime quizmaster. I stepped to the TV and turned down the volume, purposely not asking permission. Then I took a long moment to look around.
The two-bedroom apartment would rent for about a hundred thirty a month, I decided. The neighborhood was marginal, the building probably thirty years old. The kitchen appliances were badly chipped. The bathroom was dingy. A small aluminum Christmas tree had been placed on a sheet-draped table and set before the living room’s sin
gle window.
“Here—” She cleared the couch of newspapers, a child’s sweater and an empty 7-Up bottle. “Sit here.” She surveyed the room for a brief, frowning moment before muttering, “I was taking a nap while Jerry and Dave are out. It’s the only time I get to myself, between the two of them.” She sat in a chocolate-colored plastic armchair, the room’s most comfortable piece of furniture. She immediately began picking at the chair’s arm with long carmine fingernails, avoiding my eyes, biting at her sullen, pouting lips, painted a matching carmine. Her features were boldly drawn: dark eyebrows, dark eyes, a wide jaw and mouth, straight nose.
“Is Jerry your son?” I began.
She nodded petulantly, then suddenly shifted in the plastic chair, impatiently recrossing her legs. Finally, looking at me directly, she said abruptly, “It’s about Valenti, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. We understand that you phoned him late last night.”
“Wh—what?” Her dark eyes widened, then narrowed. “Who the h—Who told you that?” Her voice was raggedly aggressive. Her body, suddenly tensed, arched forward in the chair.
“There were people present at his end, Miss Swanson,” I said. “Roberto Valenti was heard to state, by two witnesses, that you called him late in the evening.”
“Well, whoever they are,” she answered promptly, “they’re damned liars. What would I be calling him for? I haven’t seen him for—hell, months.”
“Did you ever visit him at twenty-seven thirty-one Jackson Street?”
“Well—” Her eyes slid aside.
“How often? Think, Miss Swanson. It’s important.” I said it gravely, slowly, somberly holding her eye.
Uncertainty now tugged at the brash defiance in her face, revealing a quick flicker of apprehension. Head-to-head, she was a quick-tempered brawler. But she couldn’t handle innuendos, or lingering doubt.
Dead Aim (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 7