Case Pending - Dell Shannon

by Dell Shannon

  He thought he heard a noise over by the closet door. It wasn’t really, he told himself. It wasn’t.

  In California they didn’t hang people for murder, they had a gas chamber instead. It sounded even worse, a thing maybe like a big iron safe and with pipes that—

  But other people, they shouldn’t get killed like that—even if he didn’t know, didn’t mean—even if Ma— It wasn’t right. Dad would say so too, whatever it meant, even something awful like the gas. Somebody’d ought to know, and right off too, before it ever happened again. But Ma—

  And that was a noise by the closet door.

  Primitive physical fear took him in what seemed like one leap across the room and out to where it was light, in the parlor.

  She had an old shirt in her lap she’d been mending, the needle still stuck in it, but she was just sitting there not doing anything. "What’s the matter with you now?" she asked dully.

  He tried to stop shaking, stop his teeth chattering. "P-please, Ma, can I—can I sleep out here on the sofa, I—I—I don’t like the dark, it—"

  She looked at him awhile and then said, "You’re a big boy, be scared of the dark."

  "Please, Ma—"

  "I guess, if you want," she said in almost a whisper. She went in and got the blanket off his bed.

  He lay on the sofa, the blanket tucked around him and face turned to the arm but still thankfully aware of the comforting light. And after a while a kind of idea started to come to him—about a way he might do . . . .

  Because somebody ought to—and she’d never let—she’d made him promise on the Bible, something awful would happen if you broke that kind of promise, but if he didn’t say anything, just—

  It was a frightening, tempting, awful idea. He didn’t see how he could, he didn’t know if he’d dare. And where?—it had to be a place where—

  Danny said cops were all dumb. But Marty didn’t think that could be right, because his dad must know more than Danny, and Dad had always said, Policemen, they’re your friends, you go to them for help, you’re ever in trouble.

  Trouble . . . . he felt the slow hot tears sliding down into the sofa cushion, fumbled blind and furtive for the handkerchief in his pajama pocket. The gas chamber. I never meant nothing bad—

  But you had to do what was right, no matter what. Dad always said, and anyway it was a thing you just knew inside.

  * * *

  Morgan had got used to the oddly schizophrenic sensation—that was the word for it, wouldn’t it be, for feeling split in halves?—more or less. He wondered if everybody who’d ever planned or done something criminal had the feeling: probably not. The visible Morgan, acting much as usual (at least he hoped so), going about his job—and the inside one, the one with the secret.

  That one was still, in a detached way, feeling slightly surprised at this Morgan who was showing such unexpected capacity for cool planning. (The Morgan who’d been kicked around just once too often and this time was fighting back.)The original Morgan was still uneasy about the whole thing, but quite frankly, he realized, not from any moral viewpoint: just about Morgan’s personal safety, the danger of being found out.

  He wrote down the address as the man read it out to him. "How’s that spelled?—it’s a new one to me."

  "T-A-P-P-A-N. Over past Washington some’eres, I think."

  "Well, thanks very much," said Morgan, putting his notebook away.

  "I still can’t hardly believe it," said the clerk worriedly. "Lindstrom, doing a thing like that! Last man in the world, I’d’ve said—why, he thought the world of his wife and the boy. Never missed a lodge meeting, you know, and I don’t ever remember talkin’ with him he didn’t brag on what good grades his boy got at school, all like that. One of the steady kind, that was Lindstrom—no world-beater, but, you know, steady."

  "That so?" said Morgan. He lit a cigarette. He felt a kind of remote interest in this Lindstrom thing, no more, but it constituted his main lifeline, and it must appear that he’d been working hard on it, been thinking of nothing else all today.

  "Never any complaints on him, he always did an honest day’s work, I heard that from a dozen fellows been on the job with him. He was working for Staines Contracting, like I said. He was a member here for three years, always paid his dues regular. We did figure it was sort of funny, way he quit his job and quit coming to meetings all of a sudden. When his dues didn’t come in, we sent a letter, but it come back. But things come up in a hurry sometimes, sickness or something. You know. Last thing in the world I’d’ve expected a guy like Lindstrom to do—walk out on his family." He shook his head.

  "You haven’t heard anything from him since, no inquiries from other lodges of your union?"

  "No, not since last August when he stopped showing up."

  "Well, thanks." The man was still shaking his head sadly when Morgan came out to his car.

  It it hadn’t been for this other thing, he’d have been interested in the Lindstroms more than he was. Funny setup: something behind it, but hard to figure what. Had the hell of a time getting a definite answer out of the woman about where they’d been living when the husband walked out. Sometimes they let out something to one of the neighbors, a local bartender: it was a place to start. Then, when he did, she gave what turned out to be a false address. He hadn’t tackled her about that yet; it wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened, and there were other ways to check. He’d found Lindstrom, got this last address for him, through his affiliation with the Carpenters’ Union.

  The thing was, concentrate on Lindstrom today, keep the nose to the grindstone. Forget about tonight, what was going to happen tonight. It would all work out line, just as the inside, secret Morgan had planned it. There was only one thing both Morgans were really worried about, and that was, whether and when, about telling Sue. Not, of course, before; she mustn’t guess, or she’d be too nervous with the police. Not easy to put over the story on her, Sue knew him too well, but he thought he’d got away with it—that he was still stalling Smith, trying to bring him to compromise. It was going to be very tricky, too, afterward, when he had given the police one story and had to meet Sue before them. There was also the woman and the boy, but you had to take a chance somewhere. It was very likely that the woman (if indeed she was still living with Smith at all, and knew about this) would be too afraid of getting in trouble herself to speak up. And Sue was very far from being a fool; Sue he could count on.

  It would go all right, always provided that the man was there. Otherwise it could be awkward, but Morgan figured that as Smith was renting a three-room flat instead of just a room, the chances were that his wife, or some woman, was with him, and he’d be home sometime around the dinner hour. So that was the first way it might go: the upright citizen Morgan, visiting one of his cases on his lawful occasions—if it was after hours, well, it was a case he’d got interested in, there was no law against zeal at one’s job. The Lindstroms’ flat was on the second floor; Smith’s was on the third, so the mail slots told him. Those landings would be damn dark at night, not lighted anyway. Wait for him to come down on his way to collect—the ransom, only word—wait on the i second-floor landing. And get up close, to be sure—but no talk. The first story, then: this man put the gun on me at the top of the stairs, before I got to the Lindstroms’ door—I never saw him before, no, sir—he was after my wallet, when he reached for it I tackled him, tried to get the gun—we struggled, and it went off—

  Remember (and not much time to see to it, after the shot) to get his prints on the gun. They were so very damned careful and clever these days, about details.

  And if he missed Smith there, it would have to be in the street. If he was at that corner: or, if again he redirected Morgan to a bar, stall him off in there, and follow. A chance again, that the bartender would be honest, would remember them together: but in most of these places down here, hole-in-the-wall joints, the chance probably on Morgan’s side. The second story: I was on my way back to my car, when this ma
n tried to hold me up—

  They would never trace the gun, never prove it didn’t belong to Smith. Nobody could. Morgan had taken it off a dead German in 1944, the sort of ghoulish souvenir young soldiers brought home, and he’d nearly forgotten he had it; he had, being a careful man, taken the remaining three cartridges out of the clip, but they’d been put with the Luger in the old cash box his father had kept for odds and ends, locked away in a trunk in the basement. Morgan had gone down there at three this morning, when he was sure Sue was asleep, and got the gun and the cartridges. It was an unaccustomed weight in his breast pocket right now.

  He ought to be somewhere around where this street came in; he began to watch the signs. The third was Tappan. He turned into it and began to look for street numbers.

  * * *

  At that precise moment, Mendoza was having an odd and irritating experience. He was discovering the first thing remotely resembling a link between these two cases (if you discounted that gouged-out eye) and it offered him no help whatsoever. If it wasn’t merely his vivid and erratic imagination.

  "I’m real glad I clean forgot to th’ow that ol’ thing out," said Mrs. Breen, soft and southern, "if it’s any help to you findin’ that bad man, suh. Ev’body knew Carol thought the world an’ all of her, nice a gal as ever was. Terrible thing, jus’ terrible."

  Mendoza went on looking at the thing, fascinated. It was a good sharp commercial cut, three by five inches or so, one of a dozen in this dog-eared brochure, three years old, from a local toy factory. Mrs. Breen, maddeningly slow, determinedly helpful, had insisted on hunting it up for him, and as he hadn’t yet penetrated her constant trickle of inconsequential talk to ask any questions, he’d been forced to let her find it first.

  "You can see ’twas a real extra-special doll. Tell the truth, I was two minds about puttin’ it in stock, not many folks’d spend that much money."

  Was it imagination? That this thing had looked—a little—like Elena Ramirez? After all, he told himself, the conventional doll would. The gold curls, the eyelashes, the neatly rouged cheeks, the rosebud pout, the magenta fingernails. The irrational thought occurred to him that even the costume was exactly the kind of thing Elena would have admired.

  He said to himself, I’m seeing ghosts—or catching at straws. What the hell, if the thing did look like her, or the other way around? Dolls. The whole thing was a mare’s nest. Overnight he had begun to suspect uneasily that he was wrong, dead wrong about this thing; he hadn’t taken a good long look at all the dissimilarities—he’d wanted to think this was the Brooks killer again, without any real solid evidence for it. Wasting time. Look at the rest of the facts!

  Brooks: the handbag not touched. Ramirez: bag found several blocks away. True, apparently nothing taken, for Teresa said she wouldn’t have been carrying more than a little silver, to the rink where she’d leave her bag and coat on a chair at the side.

  Brooks: colored, not pretty, not noticeable. Ramirez: very much the opposite.

  Brooks: attacked on a fairly well-frequented street, in a fairly good neighborhood—just luck that there hadn’t been a number of people within earshot. Ramirez: attacked in that lot away from houses and in a street and neighborhood where a scream wouldn’t necessarily bring help.

  The chances were, just on the facts, that there were two different killers: say irrational ones, all right, because there didn’t seem to be any good logical reason for anyone in either of the private lives wanting those girls dead. But two: and the first could be in Timbuctoo by now. He was annoyed at himself. He said, "May I have this? Thank you."

  Let Hackett laugh at him for an imaginative fool! "Now, about this woman, the one who came in and wanted to buy the doll—"

  "Shorely, Lieutenant, I had a good rummage firs’ thing this mornin’ when Mis’ Demarest call me ’bout it, and I found that bitty piece o’ paper with the name and address—"

  NINE

  Because afterward, thought Morgan (both Morgans), there would be a time when Sue would look at him, that steady look of hers, and want the truth. And he had better know what he was going to say. He wondered if he could tell her half the truth convincingly (my God, no, I never meant—but when he got mad and pulled a gun, I—and afterward, I knew I couldn’t tell the police the whole story, you know—) and go on forever after keeping the rest a secret. He’d never been very good at keeping secrets from Sue. But a big thing like this—and there was also the consideration, wouldn’t it be kinder, fairer, not to put this on her conscience as it would be on his? Let her go on thinking it was—accident. Because he guessed it would be on his conscience to some extent. You couldn’t be brought up and live half your life by certain basic ethics and forget about them overnight.

  All the while he was thinking round and about that, at the back of his mind, he was talking to this woman, this Mrs. Cotter, quite normally—must have been, or she’d have been eying him oddly by this time. He saw that he had also been taking notes in his casebook of a few things she’d told him, and his writing looked quite normal too. As usual now, he was having some trouble getting away: people liked to talk about these things. You had to be polite and sometimes they remembered something useful. He managed it at last, backing down the steps while he thanked her for the third time.

  His car was around the corner, the only parking space there’d been half an hour ago; now, of course, there were two or three empty spaces almost in front of the building. As he came by, a long low black car was sliding quiet and neat into the curb there. The car registered dimly with him, because you didn’t see many like it, but he was past when the driver got out. It was the car, a vague memory of it, pulled Morgan’s head round six steps farther on. The driver was standing at the curb lighting a cigarette, in profile to him.

  Morgan stopped. Absurdly, his mouth went dry and his heart missed a few beats, hurried to catch up. You damn fool, he said to himself. They’re not mind readers, for God’s sake! But, he thought confusedly, but— An omen? Today of all days, just run into one—like this. Casual.

  That was a man from Homicide, a headquarters man from Kenneth Gunn’s old department. Lieutenant Luis Mendoza of Homicide. Morgan had met him, twice-three times—at the Gunns’, and again when their jobs had coincided, that Hurst business, when one of the deserted wives had shot herself and two kids.

  Luis Mendoza. Besides the childish panic, resentment he had felt before rose hot in Morgan’s throat: unreasonable resentment at the blind fate which handed one man rewards he hadn’t earned, didn’t particularly deserve—and also more personal resentment for the man.

  Mendoza, with all that money, and not a soul in the world but himself to spend it on: no responsibilities, no obligations! Gunn had talked about Mendoza: ordinary backstreet family, probably not much different from some of these in neighborhoods like this—nothing of what you’d call background . . . . and the wily grandfather, and all the money. What the hell right had he to pretend such to-the-manner-born—if indefinable—insolence? Just the money; all that money. Do anything, have anything he damned pleased, or almost. And by all accounts, didn’t he! Clothes—and it wasn’t that Morgan wanted to look like a damned fop, the way Mendoza did, but once in a while it would be nice to get a new suit more than once in five years, and not off the rack at a cheap store when there was a sale on. That silver-gray herringbone Mendoza was wearing hadn’t cost a dime less than two hundred dollars. An apartment somewhere, not in one of the new smart buildings out west where you paid three hundred a month for the street name and three closet-sized rooms, but the real thing—a big quiet place, spacious, and all for himself, everything just so, custom furniture probably, air-conditioning in summer, maid service, the works. It was the kind of ostentation that was like an iceberg, most of it invisible: that was Mendoza, everything about him. Nothing remotely flashy, all underplayed, the ultraconservative clothes, that damned custom-built car you had to look at twice to know it for what it was, even the manner, the man himself—that precise hairline mustac
he, the way he lit a cigarette, the—

  A womanizer, too: he would be. And easy to think they were only after the money: not, for some reason, altogether true. God knew what women found so fascinating in such men. But he remembered Gunn saying that, a little rueful as became a solid family man, a little indulgent because he liked Mendoza, a little envious the way any man would be—Poker and women, after hours, that’s Luis, his two hobbies you might say, and I understand he’s damn good at both .... A lot of women would be fools for such a man, not that he was so handsome, but he—knew the script, like an actor playing a polished scene. And all for casual amusement, all for Mendoza, and when he was bored, the equally polished exit, and forget it.

  Gunn had said other things about Mendoza. That he was a brilliant man—that he never let go once he had his teeth into something. All that, while the lighter-flame touched the cigarette, and was flicked out, the lighter thrust back into the pocket. Mendoza raised his head, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and saw Morgan there looking at him. And so Morgan had to smile, say his name, the conventional things you did say, meeting an acquaintance.

  "How’s Gunn these days? He’s missed downtown, you know—a good man. I understand that’s quite an organization he’s set up."

  Morgan agreed; he said you ran into some interesting cases sometimes, he had one now, but one thing for sure, you certainly had a chance to see how the other half lived—but that’d be an old story to Mendoza.

  "That you do," said the man from Homicide, and smoke trickled thin through his nostrils; if he took in the double-entendre he gave no sign of it.