The Lonely Hunter (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “I know.”

  “Well, what’d you want me to do, Carolyn?”

  “Find her, and put her on a plane.”

  “I’d rather find this Sandy Tomilson, and put a fist down his throat.”

  “Do that, too, if you want to. That’s up to you.”

  “It doesn’t sound, from her letter, like she’s very happy at home.”

  For a long moment she didn’t reply. I could picture her, making sure of her stylish self-control before she said slowly, “This isn’t the time for recriminations, Frank. You’re the one, if you remember, who left. I was willing to try. Always. Right up to the last. I was trying. I—”

  “You were trying to keep a pet husband, Carolyn. That’s what you were trying to do. That’s all you know anything about: pet husbands. I was someone to make love to you, after parties—a pet lover. Before that I was a pet football player—a chic, amusing conversation piece. Then—”

  “Frank, there’s no need to—”

  “Then, when it was obvious that I wasn’t much of a pro player, you got together with your old man and converted me into a pet public relations man—a family pet, for the family business. Which meant, really, that I spent all my time with a highball glass in my hand, trying to think of some reason for smiling at a bunch of—”

  “I always thought you were smiling because of the highball glass.” Her voice was very clear and very sharp—yet very quiet. Carolyn never actually lost her temper. She fought with a calm vicious precision.

  “Liquor was the first refuge you stumbled into,” she said, “when you finally realised that your days of so-called glory were behind you, and all your clippings were getting yellow. It was Liquor for you—and money. Don’t forget the money, Frank. And don’t blame me for the drinking, either. Or for what happens to the children. You’ve never even bothered to see them. So don’t—”

  “I send you three hundred dollars a month, Carolyn. And for the first year, I sometimes didn’t make three hundred a month. My salary—now—is seven-fifty—about half the handout your father gave me when the decree was filed by your expensive lawyers. Which means, that in the last seven years, I could only afford to see Claudia and Darrell three times. I’m still paying for that trip we took to the Grand Canyon, three years ago. And, at the Grand Canyon, all we did was make polite conversation and take snapshots of each other—like people who just happened to meet on a trip, the day before. We just—”

  “I should’ve known better than to call you, Frank. I should’ve known what your reaction would be—spite, and jealousy. Don was right. He said—” Her voice was painfully tight, in a moment might slip beyond her control. And, suddenly, I realised that it was what I wanted: to hear her cry. I’d never made her cry. I was still trying. It was my stock in trade—my profession, breaking people down. All kinds of people. But always strangers.

  “Okay, Carolyn,” I was saying. “I’ll find her as soon as I can. It’ll probably take time, though.”

  “All right, Frank.” Her reply was cool and concise; she’d always recovered fast. “There’s one thing, though, that I should mention. We’re—” She hesitated. “We’re supposed to be flying down to Puerto Rico this Friday. Don and I. There’s a conference of stockbrokers there, and he wants me to come along. Naturally, I wouldn’t dream of going unless Claudia is taken care of. And of course, we’ve made provisions for the children. But I just thought I should mention—”

  “I’ll call you, Carolyn, Goodbye.”

  TWO

  I CLOSED THE MANILA folder, ignoring the suspect. Slowly, deliberately, I tipped back my chair, taking out my cigarettes. I gestured with the pack to Nazario, yawning in the corner. Smiling, the uniformed man shook his head. I lit a cigarette for myself. Then, in studied afterthought, I pushed the cigarettes across the interrogation table.

  “Go ahead. Help yourself, Starbuck.”

  With shaking fingers he finally managed to take a cigarette from the pack. It was all part of an established, predictable routine. Junkies, drying out, couldn’t get enough smoke in their lungs. So, first, you gave them all the cigarettes they wanted. Then you began holding back. Finally, watching them squirm, you got down to business.

  “Light?” I struck the match, leaned forward, and finally found his wavering cigarette with the flame. I lit my own cigarette, shook out the match, and settled back to watch him. He was about nineteen, six feet tall, medium complexion, brown hair—a Caucasian male. He wore a misshapen sweater and filthy jeans. His sick twitching face was a mass of pimples and blackheads; his hair was matted. He’d been arrested four times during the past year on assorted breaking and entering charges. The first two raps got him suspended sentences, the last two thirty days each in the county jail. Now, this time, he’d been discovered by a nurse as he was breaking open a doctor’s narcotics cabinet. She’d screamed, and he’d stabbed her—eight times in the abdomen and lower chest. She wasn’t expected to live.

  Although his face was thin and pale, his lips were cherub like, pink and full. Sucking so ravenously, he reminded me of a hungry, fretful baby taking the bottle. It was the same kind of urgency. I flipped open the manila folder. I’d only had time so far to glance at his offences. Now I discovered that his habit cost him forty dollars a day, which meant that he had to steal almost two hundred dollars in retail merchandise daily, just to stay even with his pusher. Unless, of course, he cut out the middle man, going right for the narcotics.

  His father, I noticed, had worked steadily for twenty-three years as a shipping clerk, always with the same employer. His mother was dead; his older brother was in the Army.

  “Whenever you want to make a statement,” I said, “I’ll get the stenographer. That nurse, you know, might be dead already. If she’s not, though, you’d be doing yourself a lot of good to confess right now, before she dies. You’d be confessing to assault, not murder.”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. He was holding the last half inch of the cigarette with his stained, broken fingernails as he sucked in the smoke.

  “Did she fight you?” I asked. “That makes a difference too, you know. You might get manslaughter instead of murder. And it’s your life, Starbuck. You can get off with a few years, maybe, or you can go all the way to the gas chamber.”

  I reached across the narrow table, gripping his chin, hard—raising his head.

  “I’m talking to you, Starbuck.”

  His head lolled loosely in my grasp; his eyes were tightly shut. His cheeks were streaked with tears. I could feel his scrawny frame trembling.

  “Where’s the lawyer?” he gasped, still with his eyes closed.

  “You didn’t call a lawyer, Starbuck. You called your father.”

  “He—he’ll get me a lawyer.”

  I released him. His head fell forward, bobbing. I motioned to Nazario. The patrolman came forward, gripping the suspect’s hair, pulling his head back.

  “Open your eyes,” I said. “I’m talking to you. Open your eyes.”

  His small-pupiled addict’s eyes stared at me unseeing. I sighed.

  “Want another cigarette, Starbuck?”

  Without speaking he nodded, eagerly reaching out his hand. As I lit his cigarette I decided that I probably had another hour to wait before he started climbing the walls. Then, after that, it might be another hour before we’d have to ship him off to hospital, confession or not.

  A soft knock on the metal door. I rose, unlocked the door, and stepped into the hallway. Jerry Markham, my new partner, held a paper cup full of coffee in his hand.

  “My turn,” he said. “The Captain wants to see you.”

  I spent several minutes giving Markham detailed instructions on how to handle Starbuck during the next hour, if I shouldn’t get back. Markham obviously had his own ideas. He’d been an inspector barely three months, but he had lots of ideas.

  Finally, with a last caution to use his brains instead of his fists, I walked down the long hallway to the Captain’s office.

  I did
n’t enjoy the walk; I thought I knew what Kreiger wanted. I knocked on the frosted glass, waited for the familiar “Come,” and reluctantly pushed open the door.

  Kreiger was about my age and build; in fact, we’d played football together in O.C.S., training as M.P. officers, more than twenty years ago. That’s how my belated career in crime prevention began: with Kreiger’s shoulder in my gut every time I tried to pick up a little off-tackle yardage in scrimmage. Kreiger, though, had returned to college after the war and changed his major to Criminology. I’d stayed with Business Ad., really majoring in football. I’d gone from college into pro ball, and from pro ball I’d wandered into the wrong marriage, and later into the wrong business—always for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, in the wrong town. And so, now, Kreiger was sitting in his leather swivel chair behind his desk—the Captain, Homicide Division. I was sitting in the straight-backed visitor’s chair—the sergeant.

  “Anything on that Starbuck kid?” he asked abruptly.

  I shook my head. “He’s too far gone, drying out. I don’t think we’ll get anything before we have to send him over to the hospital.”

  “That nurse,” he said, “will probably die. I just heard from her doctor. He says her spleen is ruptured and one lung’s collapsed, plus other complications. He gives her until tonight.”

  I didn’t reply. I knew I wasn’t there to talk about collapsed lungs.

  “I also heard from this guy George Miller’s attorney,” Kreiger said in a different, down-to-business voice. “They’re thinking of bringing suit against you.” Kreiger was a casting director’s Captain of Inspectors—or maybe an S.S. officer, depending on the movie. His close-cropped blond hair was still thick, his mouth was straight and firm, his face square and purposeful-looking, bunched with muscles, outlining jaw, cheek and temple. It was an intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable face, reflecting a disposition both deliberate and decisive. I’d never seen Kreiger lose his temper. He took his time making decisions. Then, having once decided, he acted calmly and quickly.

  I lit a cigarette. “I guess I’m not surprised,” I said. “You arrest a sorehead who’s drunk and’s got money and influence, I guess you can expect trouble.” I was satisfied with my voice: low and slow.

  “You should’ve given me a supplementary report on it first thing this morning, Frank. Your preliminary didn’t give me enough to go on. Yesterday, while you were working on Ramsey, I had to talk to this guy’s lawyer. Today I’ve been getting calls from the papers—all without enough information from you.”

  I knew Kreiger well enough not to protest, or even to offer much of an excuse. Instead I said only, “I was going to write the supplementary first thing this morning, but I hadn’t even taken off my hat when I got the call on Starbuck. I didn’t know Miller’s lawyer had contacted the department. I was pretty busy yesterday.”

  Trying to find my kid, I could have added. My girl.

  “Did Miller tell you, Monday, that he was going to make a stink?”

  “Sure he did. But what drunk doesn’t?”

  “It’s this damn flu bug,” Kreiger said finally. “If we weren’t short handed, you’d’ve been here this morning. You wouldn’t’ve had to take the Starbuck call.” He pointed to his “out” basket. “I was just looking at the morning report. Exactly one quarter of my inspectors are absent. Who ever heard of a flu epidemic in August? And another five don’t feel so good. How do you feel?”

  “All right.”

  “Of course,” Kreiger was saying, “you still could’ve let someone else take first shot at the Starbuck call, flu epidemic or not. You could’ve done the report, then caught up. That’s why we have supplementary reports, you know—because preliminary reports don’t cover us.”

  “I figured,” I said slowly, “that attempted murder was more important than covering myself on some crummy bar-room brawl, especially when we’re short handed. And I spent all day yesterday on Ramsey.”

  And looking for Claudia. My daughter.

  On my own time, Captain. My own goddam time.

  “There’re all kinds of bar-room brawls, though.” He hesitated, then said, “I guess you’re right, though. Give me the run-down on what happened Monday night.”

  “Well, it was my day off, if you remember. I went to a movie. Alone. I got out about eleven fifteen, and I discovered that I didn’t have any cigarettes. There weren’t any drug stores open, so I went into a bar—the Interlude, on Union Street. I had to get some change from the bartender, and while I was waiting for him to finish up with a customer this guy, Miller, started talking to me. He was drunk—sloppy, back-slapping drunk, and he remembered me, from college. Anyhow, he insisted that I have a drink with him. I said no. Then he started to lean on me, especially when he found out that I was a cop. He seemed to think that was very funny—especially since he’s some kind of a big shot sales manager, he told me several times, with a brand new Cadillac, and a brand new wife. He also thought it was very funny that my pro ball career didn’t exactly make history. Apparently he follows football. So when I told him he’d had enough, and he’d better go home. He said he wouldn’t, and got belligerent. Thinking about it, I’ll admit that I could’ve handled it better; for one thing, I could’ve put in a call for a car. But, hell, he got me sore.”

  “So what happened then?”

  I shrugged. “I started backing him out, intending to put him in his car and forget it. I wasn’t looking for a beef. Not really. I just—just decided I’d rather handle it myself, after all the crap he gave me. And for a couple of minutes I thought he was going to go. But then he took a swing at me. Suddenly. I hit him, in the gut, and we wrestled around for a minute or two while I got the cuffs on him. By that time, a car showed up. So we took him downtown and booked him—D. and D. And that’s all there is to it. Everything.”

  Kreiger sat silently for a moment, staring down at the notes he’d made, and the doodles. Then, quietly, he said, “Miller claims you were drunk. He says that you’d both been drinking.” Slowly he raised his eyes, silently staring at me. Waiting.

  “He’s lying, Carl. I haven’t had a drink for almost five years.”

  We looked at each other, unsmiling. I was remembering the moment, five years ago, when I’d opened my eyes to see Kreiger’s broad, frowning face close to my own. My first conscious thought had been that the room was filled with the sour stench of vomit, a smell familiar to every policeman. People who are frightened, or dying, or drunk either soil themselves or vomit. And frightened, dying, drunk people are a cop’s business—his daily routine.

  Then I’d realised that the stench was my own; my clothes were soaked and reeking. I’d tried to raise my head, but couldn’t. I’d been helpless, too sick even to feel ashamed.

  Then Kreiger had stirred. Painfully I’d opened my eyes. He was standing. He’d buttoned his jacket and adjusted his hat. Then, slowly, he’d said: “This isn’t going on your record, Frank. One of the boys was off duty. He spotted you, and called me. I was off duty, too, so there’s nothing official. But—” He’d paused briefly, then continued in a low, even voice, “But you’d better understand, right now, that there’s no place in my division for drunks. I don’t care whether he’s a friend of mine or not, a drunk is a drunk. You can’t depend on him. And, if you’re a cop, it’ll cost you someday.” He’d abruptly walked to the door, and twisted the knob. Then he’d turned back, saying, “You’ve had a few tough years, Frank. I’m not forgetting it, and I’m not asking for any bouquets because I decided to give you a hand. I figured you’d be a good cop, and you have been. But let me tell you this—” He’d raised a forefinger, slowly and deliberately. “The next time you feel like taking a drink—one drink—put your gun and your badge on my desk first.”

  Now, looking at Kreiger across his big desk, I realised we were both thinking of that day in my apartment, five years ago.

  “He’s lying,” I repeated. “I haven’t had a drink since—since that time.”

  “What if Miller ge
ts a witness to say you’d been drinking?”

  “Then the witness would be lying. He’d be—”

  A buzzer sounded. Kreiger’s intercom. He pushed the button.

  “Can I interrupt for a second, Captain?” It was Jerry Markham’s voice.

  “Sure”

  “I just wanted to tell Frank that the Starbuck kid flipped. We got him in a strait jacket. Shall I send him to County?”

  Kreiger looked across at me. I nodded.

  “Go ahead,” the Captain said. “Send two patrolmen with him in the ambulance, though. Don’t go yourself. I’m short handed today. Tell the patrolmen they’ll get orders from Frank later, but they’re not to leave Starbuck until relieved.”

  “Yessir.” The intercom clicked dead.

  Kreiger sighed, and pivoted back to face me. For a long moment we gazed at each other, silently. I could feel myself beginning to perspire as I met his pale blue eyes.

  Then he picked up a pencil and began idly doodling. “Never mind the supplemental report, Frank,” he said quietly. “I’ve got all I need. Chances are, Miller’s lawyer was trying to scare us, and won’t call back. If he does call, though, I’ll refer him to the D.A. We’ll give him a choice: either get the book thrown at his client for resisting arrest, or else cool the whole stupid mess, depending on whether they make any formal charge against you.”

  I realised that I was exhaling, slowly. I knew Kreiger didn’t want thanks, any more than he’d first wanted excuses.

  “What about Ramsey?” he asked brusquely.

  “We got a confession, and the D.A.’s got a case. As far as I know, everything’s tied up. No loose ends.”

  “Good. With this flu bug, I haven’t had a chance to—”

  The intercom buzzed again. It was Sergeant Cunningham, in charge of Communications. A man’s body had just been found near the Twenty-fifth Avenue entrance to the Presidio, San Francisco’s major army installation.

  Kreiger took down the details on his note pad, then released the intercom switch. “You working on much right now except Starbuck and Ramsey?” he asked.