Probable Cause

by Ridley Pearson

  “Maybe you can answer me this, Commander,” Dewitt said, standing and walking to the door. “What exactly did you and Lumbrowski discuss when he came over to your house on Saturday morning?”

  Capp stood. From his expression, the question had caught him by surprise. “What?”

  “Yes, Commander, what? What did you discuss?”

  Capp marched to the door, opened it, and turned at the last minute. “The Brow was right: You’re a stupid fuck, Dimwit. You don’t know when to quit.”

  Dewitt was so close, he could feel the man’s breath. “I never quit,” he said softly.

  “We’ll see,” said Karl Capp, refusing to look at the man.

  Dewitt returned to his desk, thoughts whirring. How involved was Capp? What, if anything, did the man plan next? He pulled Jessie Osbourne’s check out of his wallet, delivered it to Ginny, and instructed her to find out how to process it into petty cash and arrange for Collette to get his personal entertainment center. “It’s a hell of a system, Ginny. The convicted murderer ends up with a nicer TV than you or I will ever see.”

  “Maybe we’re in the wrong business,” Ginny said.

  2

  “Hi, Emmy,” Billy Talbot said as he stepped out from the recess of a classroom door, startling her. He wore a dungaree jacket and a white T-shirt.

  “Billy,” she said, blushing. “I’m sorry about my father—”

  “No sweat. You can make it up to me,” he said, sliding his hand onto her behind and holding her there.

  She wiggled away from him even though it felt good. He smiled confidently, as if he knew what she was thinking. “I don’t think so.”

  “I heard about your dog,” he said. “Real sorry to hear about that.” He said it in a funny way.

  “I’ve got a class,” she tried.

  “No you don’t,” he told her, returning his hand there. She didn’t wiggle free this time because Liza Smart and Gennine Falk were approaching, and if she were seen talking to Billy, then maybe they would include her in a few more things. Billy squeezed her there as the two girls passed and Emmy felt an instant warmth all the way up into her breasts. She wondered whether he could see the flush below her neck. She fiddled with a button there, using her hand as a screen.

  “You going to the mall tonight?” he asked.

  “The aquarium. Monday. My dad’s working at the aquarium.”

  “Not the mall?”

  “I can’t, Billy.”

  “What if I picked you up at the aquarium? Would you take a ride with me?” He squeezed her again. “A short ride?” She pulled away. Was Billy as bad as her father said, or was her father just being overprotective? No one at school thought he was bad—that was for sure.

  “He’d see you,” she said.

  “No he won’t,” Talbot corrected. “I’ll meet you at eight-thirty out front. We’ll take a ride over to the mall.”

  “I don’t think so, Billy. I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”

  “It’s a great idea. Eight-thirty, Emmy. Don’t let me down.”

  He joined up with some friends and was lost in the jam of students.

  Emmy stepped up to the safety glass of the classroom door and used it as a dim mirror. Her chest was as red as a robin’s.

  3

  Nelson entered Dewitt’s office without so much as a knock, waving a small piece of notepaper in his hand. “This shit’s a lot more satisfying than traffic work,” he said.

  “What do you have, Brutus?” Dewitt asked. The nickname fit the broad-shouldered, dark-featured man. It struck him then that he really didn’t know Nelson nor any of the uniforms well. Professionally, yes. He knew a man like Nelson was the brightest of the bunch; But how this man spent his free hours—who he was—remained a mystery.

  “The Plexiglas,” Nelson announced proudly. “Just got word back from a distribution-center manager. Had a list of all retail facilities that sell the Plexiglas. It’s a lower grade, cheaper, and not that many places carry it. That’s in our favor, ‘cause the more industrial stuff is used a lot by custom-campertop makers, some home-security outfits, marinas and boat-makers, and all combined there are a shitload of those guys. So, what I got here, Sergeant, are the only three stores within a hundred miles that sell the shit we found under McDuff’s fingernails.”

  “Seaside?”

  “One store.”

  “Get over there. See if there’s any way to determine how much Plexiglas they’ve sold over the last six months. That specific grade. Find out anything you can. Who buys this lower-grade stuff and what do they use it for? Information, Brutus. We want as much information as we can gather. Even if it seems insignificant, write it down.”

  “I’m supposed to pull a patrol this morning,” the uniformed man complained.

  “I’ll square it, don’t worry about it. You do this right, Brutus, you’ll have that uniform in mothballs before long. You hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  After Nelson left the office, Dewitt returned to his premise that given enough of it, the evidence would tell the story. The investigation was stuck on a matter of sequence. In the terms of a mystery novel or a movie, he could not determine who done it until he understood how done it. He still lacked a plausible explanation of how the victims had been “convinced” to sit still while the killer gassed them. He took his folders, thick with crime scene and laboratory photographs, into the lunchroom and carefully laid out the evidence picture by picture on the larger tables: Osbourne lying where Anderson had dragged him to the pavement; the triangle of motor oil; a typed version of his notes on the Laughton interview; Clare’s comparison photos of the ends of the tape; Osbourne’s personal belongings, and his open suitcase with the clothes neatly folded; McDuff’s truck; the gaping hole in the dashboard; the bike track and the lab enlargement of the paint chip; the cotton pills found on both victims; a transcript of his interview with Mrs. McDuff; the back of McDuff’s truck filled with junk; McDuff’s personal belongings, and his open suitcase with the clothes neatly folded…. He paused, his fingers still on the edge of this photo. He reached back up the line and pulled a similar picture of Osbourne’s suitcase out of the group, placing it side by side with that of McDuff’s. Next, he reached for the transcript of the Mrs. McDuff notes. Police work: papers and pictures, pictures and papers. He flipped through the pages.

  McDuff a slob, but he knew where things were. Beneath that was written, Receipts in suitcase? He had checked that. There had been no receipts found, which implied the killer had taken them. That, in turn, meant the receipts somehow threatened the killer. But it wasn’t the receipts that interested him. It was the photograph of the suitcase.

  4

  “What do you see?” he asked Clare.

  “A suitcase,” Clare said from the opposite side of a pink linoleum-topped table.

  The café on the outreaches of Salinas was marked by a neon sign in the window that read, CHINESE FOOD. As best Dewitt could determine, that was the name of the place. They shared a booth on the far wall. The first half of the restaurant was dedicated to a genuine soda fountain, complete with swivel stools and bowling trophies over the glass-doored refrigerator.

  The egg rolls were delivered first—greasy tubes with bean sprouts and Chinese cabbage, but good. Dewitt soiled his pants with a gob of juice and tried to rub it away. It looked as if he had pissed in his pants. He untucked his shirt so that when he stood, the stain could be hidden.

  “Tell me about the person who packed that suitcase,” he said.

  “Neat and organized, likes his clothes that way, too.”

  “That’s McDuff’s suitcase. By his wife’s admission, he was a complete slob.”

  “So someone packed for him.”

  “My thinking exactly.”

  “I thought this meeting was to discuss what I have.”

  He bit into the greasy roll, ignoring her. “No receipts,” he reminded.

  “You’re quizzing me!”

  “Yes. I want
to see if two of us can come up with the same explanation.”

  “You’re forgiven. Go ahead.”

  “Cotton pills with the same bleach, but on two different bodies.”

  She summarized, “Someone packed for him. Stole his receipts. Cotton pills with the same bleach indicating the same place.”

  “Factor in Marvin Wood, and that McDuff would have reported that stolen tape player.”

  “The pills were on their skin. That means they were both naked and came in contact with the same material…”

  “The suitcase,” he reminded. “That’s where the killer screwed up. He shouldn’t have packed McDuff’s suitcase so neatly.”

  “A motel,” she said. “He stalks his victims at a motel. It backs up what Wood told you.”

  “It has to be,” he agreed. “Yes, that’s what I came away with. And if he follows Collette’s method closely, which it sure looks like, then he suffocates them to unconsciousness, gets them out of the motel, and stages the suicides. They have the same cotton pills on their skin—”

  “Because of towels or bedding,” she concluded. “James, that’s it. That’s fantastic!”

  “Only one small problem: There’re more motels in this area than there are permanent residents. That’s what held us up in the first place. We have to narrow down an area to search.”

  “It also suggests that Lumbrowski was either a suicide or done by someone else in a copycat crime. The first two were out-of-towners. They had reason to stop at a motel. Would Lumbrowski? We’re still going through the Lumbrowski evidence, but we don’t have a bike track, and no luggage, of course. Would this guy have hit a local at a motel? That’s got to be unlikely.”

  “Depending how you look at it, that makes sense, I suppose,” he said. “That’s certainly what I thought at first.”

  “But now?” she asked.

  He reminded her, “There was a bike track at the Lumbrowski kill, Clare. The rain stole it away from me, so it’s useless information as far as the courts are concerned, but I saw it. Sure, it’s possible a copy cat used a bicycle to maintain consistency, or that it was from some kid’s bike and had nothing to do with the case, but we’re trained away from coincidence. If it was a copycat kill, then it was a damn good one. And it was done by someone with inside information. Only a dozen of us know about the bicycle. There’s a possibility, if you believe a guy like Dr. Shilstein, that the first two kills were bait for a trap intended to snare Lumbrowski. What Jessie told me about the crime scenes coming to Lumbrowski, not the other way around, backs that up.”

  “Bait?” she said with a puzzled expression.

  “Osbourne and McDuff, yes. Selected at random from the same motel. The distribution pattern of the cotton fibers supports that. Both men had been lying down. I think this guy gets them in their sleep somehow—same as Collette. Maybe he got Lumbrowski in his sleep.” He asked, “Why are you smiling?”

  “Just because,” she said, staring at him. “Besides, you haven’t asked me yet why I wanted this meeting.”

  “And why did you want this meeting, Ms. O’Daly?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” She opened her briefcase and handed him some papers.

  Dewitt accepted the papers, saying, “If it wasn’t for government, we would have a lot more forests.” He read the piece of paper: “Suspect’s weight = 155–165; height (if average) 5‘8"—5‘11" bicycle = Schwinn ‘Hillclimber’ mountain bike.”

  She explained, “The paint chip. Schwinn came through with the reference information as promised. FAXed it this morning. The bicycle that was in Lumbrowski’s trunk is a metallic black Schwinn ‘Hillclimber.’ If his tires are filled according to manufacturer’s specs, then he weighs exactly one hundred sixty-two pounds. We know that from measuring the compression of the tread in the crime scene photographs. According to the chart, an average male weighing one-sixty is between five-nine and six feet. So if he is average, then we do have that much of a description of him, yes. And if you put me on the stand, Detective: The reason we believe he’s average is because that particular bike model is mid-size.”

  “So I check for stores that sell ‘Hillclimbers,’ or stolen-property reports. Hope to narrow down an area. Nelson came up with a single store in Seaside that retails that Plexiglas. That may help us to narrow it down, as well.”

  She tried some of the fried rice. “You’re making headway, James. You have a general description and a general area, even a general idea of how it’s done.”

  “General Dewitt, at your service,” he said.

  She offered him a mocking salute. His pager sounded an obnoxious electronic pulsing at his waist. “Nice timing.”

  He excused himself and called the office. When he returned, he dropped fifteen dollars on the table.

  “Where to?” she asked.

  “Seems Collette likes his television. He wants to talk. Lucky me. I get to spend the afternoon driving to Atascadero and back. Would you do me a favor and call Zorro—Emmanuel—over at the hospital. Tell him I’ll be late for the Lumbrowski autopsy but to go ahead and start without me.”

  “He’ll never believe me,” she said.

  “No, he probably won’t,” admitted James Dewitt. “But give it a try. If he suggests you sit in for me—”

  “Forget it!”

  “Exactly.”

  5

  The drawn and impossibly pale Collette paced the “tennis court” restlessly in long confident strides, like a military character in one of his afternoon matinees. He looked over his shoulders at Detective James Dewitt, without belt, without shoelaces, appearing as impatient as he felt.

  “I kept my part of the bargain,” Dewitt said loudly, too loudly for the room. The man’s head bobbed in response. “I’ve checked with Shilstein. You’re in permanent lockup here. If that’s true, how could you possibly have a name for me?”

  “It is true. It amounts to solitary confinement in a padded cell. This is a prison, after all. And who said I had a name?”

  “You better have, or the equipment goes back.”

  “The equipment hasn’t even been delivered. Shilstein tells me it will be if I cooperate, and I trust Dr. Shilstein to keep his word.” He stopped abruptly and viewed Dewitt with disdain before returning to his anxious pacing. “People like you have no concept of this existence. None whatsoever. Unless I have the good fortune to escape, I will spend the remainder of my days here. Can you fathom that? The rest of my days. And that,” he said, inserting an overly dramatic pause, “is what they mean by an eternity. If you think I would risk losing this system I have negotiated, you are a fool. I never promised you a name; I promised you information.”

  “It had better be good information,” Dewitt cautioned.

  “It’s true I’m in lockup here. They give me magazines with staples removed. All my mail is read. I’m not permitted to shave myself. I’m groomed infrequently by a man who is blind in one eye and has a slight limp. This system I have negotiated will be mounted outside my reach and accessed by remote control… did you know that? They won’t allow me access to any electronic wiring… this I suppose in case I should decide to do myself in. Ironic that they should insist on keeping me alive, isn’t it? And after what I’ve done! And I’ll do it again if I ever get out. Gladly. Enthusiastically.” He looked at Dewitt again. “Know it’s true, James. May I call you James? Know it’s true.”

  Dewitt understood the importance of maintaining a rapport but felt his skin crawl. Collette had conceived an alarming arrogance, which he flaunted in a rigid carriage and a smooth, controlled voice. He had seized control—he had a captive audience—his intention clearly to make the most of it. “You’re the expert, Collette,” Dewitt said tautly.

  “I’m in lockup here, yes. But did you know I’ve served time elsewhere? No, I can see by your face you did not. You needn’t check the files, although it must be in there somewhere. I’m telling you the truth, James. Know it’s true. Shilstein didn’t mention the transfer? I’m surprised.
Something to do with asbestos. Discovered it when they installed the smoke detectors. A few of my colleagues got hold of matches… very dangerous in the wrong hands, James. Nearly burned us all up. That caused some inspired thinking on the part of some governing agency and a smoke-detection system was installed at the taxpayers’ expense. Know it’s true. The discovery of asbestos created a mandatory leave of absence from this wing. We were transferred to Vacaville State Prison—the mental hospital there. How loose they are with terms like hospital, James. Know it’s true. Is there any healing done there? Not your concern, I know. Not your concern.” His pacing had become more frantic, and immediately reminded Dewitt of Manny Roth in Hindeman’s office. So little separated the two of them, he thought: some netting and a few laws. That they were of the same species—related, as it were—disturbed Dewitt. He wanted no association with Harvey Collette whatsoever.

  Collette explained in that same confident monotone: “It was during my brief but welcome stay at Vacaville that I encountered the individual in question. An aside, Detective: Do you know how wonderful, how tempting, how teasing that long bus ride was? The smell of the farmers’ fields? People going about the chores of everyday life? The women in the cars that passed us, their skirts hiked up by the seat, their long elegant fingers twitching impatiently on the steering wheel?” He was stopped, eyes squinted shut, head tilting back in recollection. “There are no smells on television; you cannot taste the air. This… this is a crime. Know it’s true.” He began his pacing again, saying softly, “The individual in question.”

  Dewitt sat on his hands to keep them from shaking. A busload of Harvey Collettes out on the open road. So little separating them: some glass and steel and a few laws.

  “We seldom use names in places like this. Did you know that? Quality conversations are limited, and well, quite honestly, the level of medication…” He faced Dewitt again. “Did you know Shilstein dried me out for this interview? I bet he didn’t tell you that, did he? Can’t have all the patients acting like zombies… someone might figure out what’s going on here. You get out of hand here, the guards hold you down—naked, mind you—and put a stun stick to your balls. You report them and you get it worse the next time. Cozy little family here at the motel—”