Authors: Dorothy B. Hughes
“I’m married, son. I’m safe.”
“Maybe. What about that little gal yesterday? Wasn’t she cooing at you?”
Brub said, “Maude would coo at a pair of stilts. Cary’s sort of a sixth cousin of Sylvia. That’s why we get together. Maude thought you were wonderful, hero.”
“Did she ever stop talking?”
”No, she never stops. Although after she saw you with Redhead, she subdued a bit.”
It was good to know that it didn’t matter how many saw him with Laurel. That he could appear with her everywhere, show her everywhere; there was no danger in it. Only he wouldn’t take her to Nicolai’s. Not to face Sylvia’s cool appraisal. Sylvia would look at her through Sylvia’s own standards, through long-handled eye glasses.
“She was certainly hipped on your case,” Dix said. It was time to steer the conversation. “How’s it coming?”
“Dead end.”
“You mean you’re closing the books?”
“We don’t ever close the books, Dix.” Brub’s face was serious. “After the newspapers and the Maudes and all the rest of them forget it, our books are open. That’s the way it is.”
“That’s the way it has to be,” Dix agreed as seriously.
“There’ve been tough cases before now. Maybe ten, twelve years the department has had to work on them. In the end we find the answer.”
“Not always,” Dix said.
“Not always,” Brub admitted. “But more often than you’d think. Sometimes the cases are still unsolved on paper but we have the answer. Sometimes it’s waiting for the next move.”
“The criminal doesn’t escape.” Dix smiled wryly.
Brub said, “I won’t say that. Although I honestly don’t think he ever does escape. He has to live with himself. He’s caught there in that lonely place. And when he sees he can’t get away—” Brub shrugged. “Maybe suicide, or the nut house—I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s any escape.”
“What about Jack the Ripper?”
“What about him? A body fished out of the river, an accident case. A new inmate of an asylum. Nobody knows. One thing you can know, he didn’t suddenly stop his career. He was stopped.”
Dix argued. “Maybe he did stop it. Maybe he’d had enough.”
“He couldn’t stop,” Brub denied. “He was a murderer.”
Dix lifted his eyebrows. “You mean a murderer is a murderer? As a detective is a detective? A waiter a waiter?”
“No. Those are selected professions. A detective or a waiter can change to another field. I mean a murderer is a murderer as . . . an actor is an actor. He can stop acting professionally but he’s still an actor. He acts. Or an artist. If he never picks up another brush, he will still see and think and react as an artist.”
“I believe,” Dix said slowly, “you could get some arguments on that.”
“Plenty,” Brub agreed cheerfully. “But that’s the way I see it.” He attacked his pie.
Dix put sugar in his coffee. Black and sweet. And hot. He smiled, thinking of her. “What about this new Ripper? You think he’s a nut?”
“Sure,” Brub agreed.
The quick agreement rankled. Brub should be brighter than that. “He’s been pretty smart for a nut, hasn’t he? No clues.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Brub said. “The insane are much more clever about their business, and more careful too, than the sane. It’s normal for them to be sly and secretive. That’s part of the mania. It makes them difficult to catch up with. But they give themselves away.”
“They do? How?”
When is more important. But plenty of ways. Repetition of the pattern.” Brub finished off the pie and lit a cigarette. “The pattern is clear enough with the strangler. It’s the motive that’s hard to fix on.”
”Does an insane man need a motive? Does he have one?”
He lit a cigarette. “Within the mania, yes.”
Dix said offside, “This is fascinating to me, Brub. You say you have the pattern. Doesn’t that in a way incorporate the motive?”
“In a way, yes. But you take this case. The pattern has emerged. Not too clearly but in a fuzzy way, yes. It’s a girl alone. At night. She doesn’t know the man. At least we’re reasonably sure of that. This last girl, as far as we can find out, couldn’t possibly have known the man. And there’s no slight connection between the girls. All right then: it’s a pickup. A girl waiting for a bus, or walking home. He comes along in a car and she accepts a ride.”
“I thought you were figuring he didn’t have a car. What were you talking about?”—he appeared to try to remember—”Going into a drive-in to eat—”
Brub broke in. “He had to have a car. Not in every case but definitely in the last ones.” His eyes looked seriously into Dix’s. “My own theory is that he doesn’t make the approach from the car. Because girls are wary about getting into a car with strangers. The danger of that has been too well publicized. I think he makes the approach on foot and after he has the lamb lulled, he mentions he’s on his way to get his car. Take this last one. She’s waiting for a bus. He’s waiting on the same corner. Busses don’t run often that time of night. They get talking. He invites her to have a cup of coffee. It was a foggy night, pretty chilly. By the time they’ve had coffee, he mentions his car isn’t far away and he’ll give her a lift.”
Dix set down his coffee cup carefully. “That’s how you’re figuring it,” he nodded his head. “It sounds reasonable.” He looked at Brub again. “Do your colleagues agree?”
“They think I may be on the right track.”
”And the motive?”
“That’s anybody’s guess.” Brub scowled. “Maybe he doesn’t like women. Maybe some girl did him dirt and he’s getting even with all of them.”
Dix said, “That sounds absurd.” He laughed, “It wouldn’t hold water in my book.”
“You’re forgetting. It’s mania; not sanity. Now you or I, if we wanted to strike back at a girl, we’d get us another one. Show the other gal what she’d lost. But a mind off the trolley doesn’t figure that way.”
“Any other motives?” Dix laughed.
“Religious mania, perhaps. There’ve always been plenty of that kind of nut out here. But it all comes back to one focal point, the man is a killer, he has to kill. As an actor has to act.”
“And he can’t stop?” Dix murmured.
“He can’t stop,” Brub said flatly. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go up Beverly Glen. Want to come along?”
Dix’s eyebrows questioned.
“To the scene of the crime,” Brub explained. “Would you like to have a look at it? It’ll tell you more than I can in words of what we’re working against.”
His pulse leaped at the idea of it. To the scene of the crime. For book material. He said, “Yeah, I think I will.” He glanced at his own watch. Two-twenty. “I can take another hour from work. Particularly since I can charge it up to research.”
Brub picked up the checks. At Dix’s demurring, he said, “This is on me. In the line of business.”
The cold touch at the base of his spine was imaginary.
He laughed. “You mean detectives have a swindle sheet? Authors aren’t so lucky.”
“I’ll put it down: conferring with an expert.” He queried, All mystery authors claim to be crime experts, don’t they?”
“I’ll dedicate the book to the dick who bought me a lunch.”
He and Brub emerged into the sunshine of Beverly Drive. The lunch hour was done; the workers had returned to their offices. Women shoppers were beginning to stroll the street. They clustered at the shop windows. They held little children by the hand. They chattered as they went about their aimless female business. There wasn’t a brilliant redhead in sight.
The news vendor on the corner talked the races with a passing customer. His folded papers, the early edition of the
News,
lay stacked on the sidewalk beside a cigar box holding coins. Dix’s eyes fell to the papers but he didn’t buy one. There wouldn’t be any fresh news anyway. He was with the source of news.
They returned to the city hall. “Shall we take your car or mine?” Brub asked.
The cold hand touched him quickly again. How could he know? Brub couldn’t be suspicious of him. There wasn’t a shred of reason for thinking it. Brub included Dix with himself, “normal as you and I.” Yet how could he be sure? Brub had once known him so well. That was long ago. No one could read him now. Not even Laurel.
Did Brub want him to take his car back up the Beverly Glen Canyon? Was this luncheon arranged; were the two ordinary men, who were L.A. Homicide, waiting for Brub to report back to them? He had hesitated long enough in answering, too long. It couldn’t matter which car. There couldn’t be eyes waiting to identify a black coupe, a coupe like a thousand others. It couldn’t be tire marks they were after; they were unable to get marks off a clean, paved road. Brub had said so. Had intimated so. Too many cars had passed that way.
He pretended to come to. “Did you say something? Sorry.”
Brub grinned. “Thinking about the redhead? I said, whose car shall we take? Yours or mine?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered promptly. But he knew as he answered that he preferred to take his own. He’d been a panty-waist to have considered anything but that. That was what quickened his mind, that was what put zest into the game. To take the dare. “Might as well use mine.”
Brub said, “Okay,” but he stopped at the doors to the building. “I’ll go in and see if Lochner wants to ride up with us. You don’t mind another passenger?”
“Not at all.” He followed Brub. To watch faces, to see if there were interchange of expression.
Only one of the Homicide men was left. He was talking to a couple of motorcycle cops in uniform. Talking about the local baseball club. Brub said, “Want to go up Beverly Glen, Loch?” He made the introductions then. “Jack Lochner—my friend, Dix Steele.”
Lochner was the tall, thin man. His clothes were a little too big for him, as if he’d lost weight worrying. His face was lined. He looked like just an ordinary man, not too successful. He didn’t give Brub any special glance. He didn’t examine Dix now as he had earlier; he shook hands and said, “Nice to know you, Mr. Steele.” His voice was tired.
Brub said, “Dix is a mystery writer. Loch. He wants to go along. You don’t mind?”
“Not at all.” Lochner tried to smile but he wasn’t a man used to smiling. Just used to worry. “Nothing to see. I don’t know why we’re going back. Except Brub wants to. And the Beverly Hills bunch seems to think he’s on the right track.”
Dix raised one eyebrow. “So you do have some ideas?” Brub’s laugh was embarrassed. “Don’t you start riding me too. All I’ve got is a feeling.”
“Psychic,” Lochner droned.
‘No,” Brub denied fast. “But I can’t help feeling we’re on the right track here in Beverly.” He explained to Dix, The Beverly bunch sort of feels the same way. That’s why we’re hanging around here. Beverly has its own force, you know, separate from L.A.. but they’re doing everything they can to help us.”
“And they know how to help,” Loch said. “A smart bunch.”
They left the building together. Dix said, “We’re taking my car.” He steered them to it. He wasn’t going in a police car. Only a man off his trolley would consider riding around in a police car with Homicide. Homicide with psychic hunches.
“Do you know the way?” Lochner asked.
“I know where Beverly Glen is. You can direct me from there.” With the dare taken, his mind was sharp, cold and clear and sharp as a winter wind back East. They could direct. Not a muscle would twitch to indicate he knew the place. He began laughing to himself. Actually he didn’t know the place. He didn’t even have to worry about making the unwary move.
“Go over to Sunset,” Brub directed. “Turn right on Beverly Glen.”
“That much I know.” He swung the car easily towards Sunset, enjoying the power of the motor, the smoothness of the drive. A good car. He held it back. You shouldn’t speed up with cops in your car. “There were a couple of cops guarding the portals when I went by Sunday. On my way home after I left your place, Brub.” Were those the same cops Lochner had had in the office? Were they there to look him over? He was getting slap-happy. The cops couldn’t have picked him out of all the drivers passing that intersection Sunday afternoon. Just him, one man. His fingers tightened on the wheel. Did the police know more than they had told? Had there been someone else in the canyon on Friday night? He went on talking, “What were they doing? Waiting for the killer to return to the scene of the crime?”
”They were checking traffic,” Lochner said in his disinterested voice. “I never knew a killer yet who went back. Make it easy for us if they did. We wouldn’t have to beat our brains out all over town.”
“All we’d have to do was post a couple of the boys and wait,” Brub enlarged. “They could play checkers until he came along—easy.”
“How would you know him from the sightseers?” Dix joined the game.
“That is an angle.” Brub looked at Lochner.
The older man said, “He’d be the one who was too normal.”
“No fangs? No drooling?” Dix laughed.
“Of course, he wouldn’t know the cops were watching,” Brub said.
They’d reached Beverly Glen and Dix turned right. “You can direct me now.”
“Just keep on going,” Brub said. “We’ll tell you when.”
It was a pretty little road to start, rather like a New England lane with the leaves turning and beginning to fall from the trees. He had no tension, perhaps a slight fear that he might recognize the place, that muscular reaction might be transferred from him to Brub seated close beside him. He relaxed. He said, “This reminds me of home. Autumn in New York, or Connecticut, or Massachusetts.”
“I’m from the East myself,” Lochner said. “I’ve been away twenty years.”
It wasn’t pretty for long. A few estates and it became a road of shacks, little places such as men built in the mountains before the rich discovered their privacy and ousted them. And then the shacks were left behind and the road became a curving pass through the canyon to some valley beyond.
It would be lonely up here at night: there were deep culverts, heavy brush, on the side of the road. It was lonely up here now and they passed no cars. It was as if they had entered into a forbidden valley, a valley guarded by the police keeping the sightseers away. Only the hunters and the hunted allowed to enter. The walls of the canyon laid shadows over the road. There was a chill in the air, the sun was far away.