by Ed McBain
"What's the scratch have to do with it?"
"It gave us a skin sample, to begin with. That's how we knew the man was white, dark complected, and oily. But it also gave us a beard hair."
"How do you know it was a beard hair?"
"Simple," Grossman said. "Under the microscope, it showed up in cross-section as being triangular, with concave sides. Only beard hairs are shaped that way. The diameter, too, was greater than 0.1 mm. Simple. A beard hair. Had to be a man."
"How do you know he was a mechanic?"
"The head hairs were covered with metal dust."
"You said possibly a highly skilled and highly paid one. Why?"
"The head hairs were saturated with a hair preparation. We broke it down and checked it against our sample sheets. It's very expensive stuff. Five bucks the bottle when sold singly. Ten bucks when sold in a set with the after-shave talc. This customer was wearing both the hair gook and the talc. What mechanic can afford ten bucks for such luxuries—unless he's highly paid? If he's highly paid, chances are he's highly skilled."
"How do you know he's not over fifty?" Carella asked.
"Again, by the diameter of the hair and also the pigmentation. Here, take a look at this chart" He extended a sheet to Carella.
Age 12 days 6 months 18 months 15 years Adults
Diameter mm 0.024 0.037 0.038 0.053 0.07
"Fellow's head hair had a diameter of 0.071," Grossman said.
"That only shows he's a adult."
"Sure. But if we get a hair with a living root, and there are hardly any pigment grains in the cortex, we can be pretty sure the hair comes from an old person. This guy had plenty of pigment grains. Also, even though we rarely make any age guesses on such single evidence, an older person's hair has a tendency to become finer. This guy's hair is coarse and thick."
Carella sighed.
"Am I going too fast for you?"
"No," Carella said. "How about the singe and the haircut?"
"The singe was simple. The hairs were curled, slightly swelled, and grayish in color. Not naturally gray, you understand."
"The haircut?"
"If the guy had had a haircut just before he did the shooting, the head hairs would have shown clean-cut edges. After forty-eight hours, the cut begins to grow round. We can pretty well determine just when a guy's had his last haircut"
"You said he was six feet tall."
"Well, Ballistics helped us on that one."
"Spell it," Carella said.
"We had the blood to work with. Did I mention the guy has type O blood?"
"You guys . .." Carella started.
"Aw come on, Steve, that was simple."
"Yeah."
"Yeah," Grossman said. "Look, Steve, the blood serum of one person has the ability to agglutinate . . ." He paused. "That means clump, or bring together the red blood cells of certain other people. There are four blood groups: Group O, Group A, Group B, Group AB. Okay?"
"Okay." Carella said.
"We take the sample of blood, and we mix a little of it with samples from the four groups. Oh, hell, here's another chart for you to look at." He handed it to Carella.
1. Group O — no agglutination in either serum.
2. Group A — agglutination in serum B only.
3. Group B — agglutination in serum A only.
4. Group AB — agglutination in both serums.
"This guy's blood—and he left a nice trail of it when he was running away, in addition to several spots on the back of Hank's shirt—would not agglutinate, or clump, in any of the samples. Hence, type O. Another indication that he's white, incidentally. A and O are most common in white people. 45% of all white people are in the O group."
"How do you figure he's six feet tall. You still haven't told me."
"Well, as I said, this is where Ballistics came in. In addition to what we had, of course. The blood spots on Hank's shirt weren't of much value in determining from what height they had fallen since the cotton absorbed them when they hit. But the blood stains on the pavement told us several things."
"What'd they tell you?"
"First that he was going pretty fast. You see, the faster a man is walking, the narrower and longer will be the blood drops and the teeth on those drops. They look something like a small gear, if you can picture that, Steve."
"I can."
"Okay. These were narrow and also sprinkled in many small drops, which told us that he was moving fast and also that the drops were falling from a height of somewhere around two yards or so."
"So?"
"So, if he was moving fast, he wasn't hit in the legs or the stomach. A man doesn't move very fast under those conditions. If the drops came from a height of approximately two yards, chances are the man was hit high above the waist. Ballistics pried Hank's slug out of the brick wall of the building, and from the angle—assuming Hank only had time to shoot from a draw—they figured the man was struck somewhere around the shoulder. This indicates a tall man, I mean when you put the blood drops and the slug together."
"How do you know he wasn't wounded superficially?"
"All the blood, man. He left a long trail."
"You said he weighs about 180. How ..."
"The hair was healthy hair. The guy was going fast. The speed tells us he wasn't overweight. A healthy man of six feet should weigh about 180, no?"
"You've given me a lot, Sam," Carella said. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it. I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to check on doctors' gunshot wound reports, or absentee mechanics. Not to mention this hair lotion and talc. It's called 'Skylark,' by the way."
"Well, thanks, anyway."
"Don't thank me," Grossman said.
"Huh?"
"Thank Hank."
Chapter SEVENTEEN
the teletype alarm went out to fourteen states. It read:
XXXXX APPREHEND SUSPICION OF MURDER XXX
UNIDENTIFIED MALE WHITE CAUCASIAN ADULT BELOW FIFTY XXXXX
POSSIBLE HEIGHT SIX FEET OR OVER XXX
POSSIBLE WEIGHT ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY XXX
DARK HAIR SWARTHY COMPLEXION HEAVY BEARD XXXX
USES HAIR PREPARATION AND TALC TRADENAME "SKYLARK" XXXX
SHOES MAY POSSIBLY CARRY HEELS WITH "O'SULLIVAN" TRADENAME XXXX
MAN ASSUMED TO BE SKILLED MECHANIC MAY POSSIBLY SEEK SUCH WORK XXXXX
GUNWOUND ABOVE WAIST POSSIBLE SHOULDER HIGH MAN MAY SEEK DOCTOR XXXX
THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS AND ARMED WITH COLT .45 AUTOMATIC XX
"Those are a lot of 'possiblys'," Havilland said.
"Too damn many," Carella agreed. "But at least it's a place to start."
It was not so easy to start.
They could, of course, have started by calling all the doctors in the city, on the assumption that one or more of them had failed to report a gunshot wound, as specified by law. However, there were quite a few doctors in the city. To be exact, there were:
4,283 doctors in Calm's Point
1,975 doctors in Riverhead
8,728 doctors in Isola (including the Diamondback and Hillside sectors)
2,614 doctors in Majesta and 264 doctors in Bethtown for a grand total of COUNT 'EM!
17,864 DOCTORS 17,864
Those are a lot of medical men. Assuming each call would take approximately five minutes, a little multiplication told the cops it would take them approximately 89,320 minutes to call each doctor in the classified directory. Of course, there were 22,000 policemen on the force. If each cop took on the job of calling four doctors, every call could have been made before twenty minutes had expired. Unfortunately, many of the other cops had other tidbits of crime to occupy themselves with. So, faced with the overwhelming number of healers, the detectives decided to wait—instead —for one of them to call with a gunshot wound report. Since the bullet had exited the killer's body, the wound was in all likelihood a clean one, anyway, and perhaps the killer
would never seek the aid of a doctor. In which case the waiting wo
uld all be in vain.
If there were 17,864 doctors in the city, it was virtually impossible to tally the number of mechanics plying their trade there. So this line of approach was also abandoned.
There remained the hair lotion and talc with the innocent-sounding name "Skylark."
A quick check showed that both masculine beauty aids were sold over the counter of almost every drug store hi the city. They were as common as—if higher-priced than —aspirin tablets.
Good for a cold.
If you don't like them...
The police turned, instead, to their own files in the Bureau of Identification, and to the voluminous files in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And the search was on for a male, white Caucasian, under fifty years in age, dark-haired, dark-complected, six feet tall, weighing one-hundred-eighty pounds, addicted to the use of a Colt .45 automatic.
The needle may have been in the city.
But the entire United States was the haystack.
"Lady to see you, Steve," Miscolo said.
"What about?"
"Said she wanted to talk to the people investigating the cop killer." Miscolo wiped his brow. There was a big fan in the Clerical office, and he hated leaving it. Not that he didn't enjoy talking to the DD men. It was simply that Miscolo was a heavy sweater, and he didn't like the armpits of his uniform shirts ruined by unnecessary talk.
"Okay, send her in," Carella said.
Miscolo vanished, and then reappeared with a small bird-like woman whose head jerked in short arcs as she surveyed first the dividing railing and then the file cabinets and then the desks and the grilled windows and then the detectives on phones everywhere in the Squad Room, most of them in various stages of sartorial inelegance.
"This is Detective Carella," Miscolo said. "He's one of the detectives on the investigation." Miscolo sighed heavily and then fled back to the big fan in the small Clerical office.
"Won't you come in, ma'm?" Carella said.
"Miss," the woman corrected. Carella was in his shirt sleeves, and she noticed this with obvious distaste, and then glanced sharply around the room again and said, "Don't you have a private office?"
"I'm afraid not," Carella said.
"I don't want them to hear me."
"Who?" Carella asked.
"Them," she said. "Could we go to a desk somewhere in the corner?"
"Certainly," Carella said. "What did you say your name was, Miss?"
"Oreatha Bailey," the woman said. She was at least fifty-five or so, Carella surmised, with the sharp-featured face of a stereotyped witch. He led her through the gate in the railing and to an unoccupied desk in the far right corner of the room, a corner which—unfortunately—did not receive any ventilation from the windows.
When they were seated, Carella asked, "What can I do for you, Miss Bailey?"
"You don't have a bug in this corner, do you?"
"A... bug?"
"One of them dictaphone things."
"No."
"What did you say your name was?"
"Detective Carella."
"And you speak English?"
Carella suppressed a smile. "Yes, I ... I picked up the language from the natives."
"I'd have preferred an American policeman," Miss Bailey said in all seriousness.
"Well, I sometimes pass for one," Carella answered, amused.
"Very well."
There was a long pause. Carella waited.
Miss Bailey showed no signs of continuing the conversation.
"Miss ... ?"
"Shhl" she said sharply.
Carella waited.
After several moments, the woman said, "I know who killed those policemen."
Carella leaned forward, interested. The best leads sometimes came from the most unexpected sources. "Who?" he asked.
"Never you mind," she answered.
Carella waited.
"They are going to kill a lot more policemen," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan."
"Whose plan?"
"If they can do away with law enforcement, the rest will be easy," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan. First the police, then the National Guard, and then the regular Army."
Carella looked at Miss Bailey suspiciously.
"They've been sending messages to me," Miss Bailey said. "They think I'm one of them, I don't know why. They come out of the walls and give me messages."
"Who comes out of the walls?" Carella asked.
"The cockroach-men. That's why I asked if there was a bug in this corner."
"Oh, the... the cockroach-men."
"Yes."
"I see."
"Do I look like a cockroach?" she asked.
"No," Carella said. "Not particularly."
"Then why have they mistaken me for one of them? They look like cockroaches, you know."
"Yes, I know."
"They talk by radio-nuclear-thermics. I think they must be from another planet, don't you?"
"Possibly," Carella said.
"It's remarkable that I can understand them. Perhaps they've overcome my mind, do you think that's possible?"
"Anything's possible," Carella agreed.
"They told me about Reardon the night before they killed him. They said they would start with him because" he was the Commissar of Sector Three. They used a thermo-dis-integrator on him, you know that, don't you?" Miss Bailey paused, and then nodded. ".45 calibre."
"Yes," Carella said.
"Foster was the Black Prince of Argaddon. They had to get him. That's what they told me. The signals they put out are remarkably clear, considering the fact that they're in an alien tongue. I do wish you were an American, Mr. Carella. There are so many aliens around these days, that one hardly knows who to trust."
"Yes," Carella said. He could feel the sweat blotting the back of his shirt. "Yes."
"They killed Bush because he wasn't a bush, he was a tree in disguise. They hate all plant life."
"I see."
"Especially trees. They need the carbon dioxide, you see, and plants consume it. Especially trees. Trees consume a great deal of carbon dioxide."
"Certainly."
"Will you stop them, now that you know?" Miss Bailey asked.
"We'll do everything in our power," Carella said.
"The best way to stop them . . ." Miss Bailey paused and rose, clutching her purse to her narrow bosom. "Well, I don't want to tell you how to run your business."
"We appreciate your help," Carella said. He began walking her to the railing. Miss Bailey stopped.
"Would you like to know the best way to stop these cockroach-men? Guns are no good against them, you know. Because of the thermal heat."
"I didn't know that," Carella said. They were standing just inside the railing. He opened the gate for her, and she stepped through.
"There's only one way to stop them," she said.
"What's that?" Carella asked.
Miss Bailey pursed her mouth. "Step on them!" she said, and she turned on her heel and walked past Clerical, and then down the steps to the first floor.
Bert Kling seemed to be in high spirits that night.
When Carella and Havilland came into the hospital room, he was sitting up in bed, and aside from the bulky bandage over his right shoulder, you'd never know anything was wrong with him. He beamed a broad smile, and then sat up to talk to the two visiting detectives.
He chewed on the candy they'd brought him, and he said this hospital duty was real jazzy, and that they should get a look at some of the nurses in their tight white uniforms.
He seemed to bear no grudge whatever against the boy who'd shot him. Those breaks were all part of the game, he supposed. He kept chewing candy, and joking, and talking until it was almost time for the cops to leave.
Just before they left, he told a joke about a man who had three testicles.
Bert Kling seemed to be in high spirits that night.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
the three fun
erals followed upon each other's heels with remarkable rapidity. The heat did not help the classical ceremonies of death. The mourners followed the caskets and sweated. An evil, leering sun grinned its blistering grin, and freshly turned soil—which should have been cool and moist —accepted the caskets with dry, dusty indifference.
The beaches that week were jammed to capacity. In Clam's Point at Mott's Island, the scorekeeper recorded a recordbreaking crowd of two million, four hundred and seventy thousand surf seekers. The police had problems. The police had traffic problems because everyone who owned any sort of a jalopy had put it on the road. The police had fire-hydrant problems, because kids all over the city were turning on the johnny pumps, covering the spout with a flattened coffee can, and romping beneath the improvised shower. The police had burglary problems, because people were sleeping with their windows open; people were leaving parked cars unlocked, windows wide; shopkeepers were stepping across the street for a moment to catch a quick Pepsi Cola. The police had "floater" problems, because the scorched and heat-weary citizens sometimes sought relief in the polluted currents of the rivers that bound Isola—and some of them drowned, and some of them turned up with bloated bodies and bulging eyes.
On Walker Island, in the River Dix, the police had prisoner problems because the cons there decided the heat was too much for them to bear, and they banged their tin cups on the sweating bars of their hot cells, and the cops listened to the clamor and rushed for riot guns.
The police had all sorts of problems.
Carella wished she were not wearing black. He knew this was absurd. When a woman's husband is dead, the woman wears black.
But Hank and he had talked a lot in the quiet hours of the midnight tour, and Hank had many times described Alice in the black nightgowns she wore to bed. And try as he might, Carella could not disassociate the separate concepts of black: black as a sheer and frothy raiment of seduction; black as the ashy garment of mourning.
Alice Bush sat across from him in the living room of the Calm's Point apartment. The windows were wide open, and he could see the tall Gothic structures of the Calm's Point College campus etched against the merciless, glaring blue of the sky. He had worked with Bush for many years, but this was the first time he'd been inside his apartment, and the association of Alice Bush in black cast a feeling of guilt over his memories of Hank.
The apartment was not at all what he would have expected for a man like Hank. Hank was big, rough-hewn. The apartment was somehow frilly, a woman's apartment. He could not believe that Hank had been comfortable in these rooms. His eyes had scanned the furniture, small-scaled stuff, stuff in which Hank could never have spread his legs. The curtains at the windows were ruffled chintz. The walls of the living room were a sickeningly pale lemon shade. The end tables were heavy with curlycues and inlaid patterns. The corners of the room contained knick-knack shelves, and the shelves were loaded with fragile glass figurines of dogs and cats and gnomes and one of Little Bo Peep holding a delicately blown, slender glass shepherd's crook.