Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (22 page)

It was ten-forty; he ought to go home. He sat on of
inertia, reading reports .... There'd been men out, covering this
crowded downtown area, asking questions wherever rooms were rented,
at hotels, at random. They had reported evidence from several places
of men with burnscarred faces, and they had turned up three such men,
all on Skid Row. Considering the importance of that, all were being
held overnight for the Garcia boy to look at in the morning. One
little lead looked more promising, even though it had come to
nothing. A man with such a scarred face had taken a room at a house
on Boardman Street, giving the name of John Tenney. The landlady had
thought he was in, but when they looked, he wasn't, and all his few
possessions were gone. It was possible he'd overheard the
plainclothesman asking questions and slipped out the back door. But
of course that didn't say he'd been the Slasher--and it didn't say
where he'd gone. Ought to go home, thought Mendoza. He wasn't
accomplishing anything here .... He heard the phone ring on Farrell's
desk, and Farrell's voice. And then, "Lieutenant? Call in from a
squad car--another Slasher job, but the woman got away--"

"
¡Dios!
Where?"

"
San Pedro, between Emily and Myrtle. It just
happened ten minutes ago."

"I'm on my way. Send
another car."

* * *

When he did get home, at two-thirty Tuesday morning,
he was feeling the way Higgins had felt on Friday night. How the hell
had they missed him? The men in the first squad car couldn't have
been five minutes behind him, and they'd had four other cars there
within ten minutes, and men on foot to search that whole area.

Etta Mae Rollen had sobbed, "It was like he come
up out of the ground--all of a sudden he was just there, and
g-grabbed for me, and I saw his knife--"

Etta Mae had been very damn lucky indeed. She had
managed to tear herself away from him, and she had run. A block up
she had seen a squad car coming toward her, and run to it screaming.
The men had called in for assistance at once and gone back with her
to where he'd been, but if he'd appeared out of thin air he'd
disappeared that way too.

They weren't doubting it had been the Slasher,
because Etta Mae had got a good look at him, and she offered a
description before they asked any questions. She'd been coming home
from her job as waitress at a coffee shop on Broadway. Just past the
corner of San Pedro and Emily streets, where there was a good bright
street light, there was a TV store where the lights were left on all
night. She'd had a good look at the man with the knife. "He
wasn't awful tall but he was mighty strong, only he just had hold of
a piece of my coat mostly, and it tore all down the seam--you can
see--when I got away from him. Oh, he had a terrible sort of face--
I'll never forget it to my dying day!--it was all thin and sneery and
he had this great big red scar, all puckered, right across the middle
of his face, and his eyes kind of glittered--”

Her coat hadn't been torn, but partly cut with a
knife where he'd missed his first stroke. Probably the lab would tell
them it had been a partly serrated blade.

`They'd covered all the alleys and back yards, they'd
routed out the few night watchmen left in warehouses, to search the
premises; they'd really covered that area. And nothing had shown.
Where the hell had he gone? At least he hadn't killed again. But if
they didn't get him soon . . .

Mendoza had been tired, earlier this evening. Now he
wasn't conscious of tiredness--he'd worked past that point--and he
ought to sleep but he knew he wouldn't. He ought to have something to
eat, too, but he wasn't conscious of hunger. His mind kept going over
and over all this--what they had, on both cases, and on Art. Was the
assault on Art linked with either, or had that been the extraneous
thing? He didn't know; he couldn't make up his mind.

Canyon Drive, in Hollywood. The Hollywood hills.

Very exclusive, expensive houses up there. Had X been
familiar with it, or picked it at random?

He slid the Ferrari into the garage; he went out,
pressed the electric-eye button to close the door. Very quietly he
let himself into the dark house. But as he went down the hall he saw
light there under the nursery door and softly opened it to look in.

"Well, you are late and no lie," said Mrs.
MacTaggart.

"What's wrong, Máiri?"

"Nought at all much. I've been up a bit with
young Johnny, but they run a wee temperature for nothing at all,
times. He's gone off peaceful as you please now, you can see. Just a
bit fretful like.” El Señor, self-appointed guardian of the twins,
had joined her sleepily and was sitting on the foot of Master John's
crib, playing watch cat.

"
Sure?" Mendoza looked down at the flushed
sleeping twins. It was very odd, suddenly, the idea that they were
his; he could hardly disown it, young Master John with that uncannily
identical widow's peak, if he had Alison's hazel-green eyes. He
didn't know much about the twins, thought Mendoza suddenly. The
little monsters who'd kept them awake at night until they found that
treasure, Mrs. MacTaggart. Of course at this age, he supposed, they
hadn't developed very distinct personalities maybe. He wasn't around
them enough to say, really.
 
Miss
Teresa moved restlessly and one pink thumb found its automatic way to
her mouth. Mendoza yawned. He thought vaguely, start any sort of job,
you ought to see it's done properly. He ought to know more about
them. Try to be around more.

But things came up ....

"You are tired to death, man," said Mrs.
MacTaggart softly. "Can I not get you something? A nice cup of
hot broth now? Or a hot whiskey and lemon maybe?"

"No, thanks, Máiri, I'm fine."

She surveyed him calmly, drawing him out to the hall.

"If a lie could have choked you, that would have
done it. We are only waiting on God's will. Go to your bed, man."

He went on down the hall. El Señor had opened the
bedroom door to join Mrs. MacTaggart when she'd first gotten up to
check on the twins. Mendoza shut it and began to undress. Alison was
asleep, but stirred and muttered his name drowsily as he got into
bed.

He would not sleep, of course. Another full day
tomorrow. Go and see that Anita Sheldon? No, first get the court
order to look at the Corliss woman's safe-deposit box. That list.
Yes, and what would that tell him? Nothing really. No real lead
there; she'd said there hadn't been trouble over a patient. Hell.

Cast your bread upon the waters . . . How did it go
on? Something about, it shall be returned to you in many days. That
didn't sound quite right. Scriptures. Prayer. Only there was nothing
to pray to .... just the way the hand got dealt round.

He decided quite suddenly that if Art died he'd
resign from the force. Even apart from this thing--working overtime
at the job, the fascinating job, when it wasn't necessary. Not fair
to Alison; not fair to the twins, as time went on.

He lay thinking about that, staring into the
darkness. And El Señor, shut out from his mother and sisters,
rattled the doorknob impatiently until he tripped the latch, slid in,
and landed with a thud on the bed on top of Nefertite, who spat at
him sleepily.

Who might get his desk? Mendoza wondered. If? Higgins
was the next senior sergeant after Art, but they'd probably bring in
somebody from outside--the senior sergeant from Vice or Narcotics.
Little shake-up all round. If.

What would he do with himself all day? Learn to live
a new kind of life. Play a little. More time with Alison and the
twins.

More than half his lifetime, jettisoned. And God,
he'd seen friends killed on duty before, but . . .

He had known he wouldn't sleep, but he slept,
heavily; and woke feeling stupid and slow. It was six o'clock. That
much sleep anyway. Six o'clock Tuesday morning, and-- He got up,
shaved and dressed, went out to the living room and called the
hospital. The patient's condition was unchanged.

He thought, Friday night. Call it eighty hours.
MacFarlane: be feeling much more hopeful if . . .

He went out to the kitchen. Mrs. MacTaggart was
already there, making coffee. Of course, of course. Her damned
novena: out to the church first thing for nine days.

"You will stop for breakfast somewhere,"
she said severely.

"Yes, all right."
Suddenly he realized he was ravenous. He did stop, at a Manning's
coffee shop on Vermont, and had three eggs, a double order of bacon,
and four cups of coffee. When he got to the office he was feeling
more like the old Mendoza, the boy with a little reputation on this
force.

* * *

By the time the lab man came in he'd got quite a bit
done. He'd started the machinery going to get that court order on
Margaret Corliss' safe-deposit box. He'd looked over the night
reports--they'd had four men looking all around that area of the
Slasher's latest job, but they'd turned up nothing. He had got the
other warrant on Corliss, charging her with complicity in Nestor's
abortion trade. He'd talked that over with the D.A.'s office, and the
charge on Webster. The D.A.'s office didn't think they'd press an
accessory charge on Webster: too vague.

He had called Mrs. Anita Sheldon to ask if she'd be
at home this morning; he wanted to talk to her. She had sounded very
frightened. "You can't come here! Oh, please--if Bob ever got to
know, he'd-- And it's his day off, I can't--”

"Would you prefer to come to my office? Say
eleven o'clock?"
 
"Oh
dear. Oh, I guess so--if I've got to--there won't be any reporters,
will there? I don't know anything to tell you about Frank, really, I
didn't know him very well--"

He had called the Elger apartment and got no answer.
Called Elger's office and been told Elger was out somewhere with a
client.

When the lab man came in Mendoza was studying the
official shots of Nestor's body. They weren't telling him much. He
had a little box full of the contents of Nestor's pockets on his
desk; he looked at it and picked up the button. That ordinary little
button that had been clutched in Nestor's dead fingers. The clue out
of the detective story.

"Morning," said the lab man, whose name was
Duke.

"Say, I've got a little something, I--"

"Hold it a minute," said Mendoza. "Jimmy!
I must be going senile. Jimmy, I want search warrants for the
quarters of every male in the Nestor case. Let's see, Webster, Elger,
this Bob Sheldon, every legitimate male patient he had, every man
listed in his address book, every male he knew. To look at their
clothes. Just in case. It's possible X didn't realize he'd lost a
button. You never know where you'll hit pay dirt. Damn it, it's a
very long chance, but--"

He looked at Duke. "What have you got?" `

Duke laid a pair of shoes on the desk. "We're
always damn busy," he said, "but we've been concentrating
on Hackett the last couple of days. As you can imagine."

Duke was snub-nosed, freckle-faced, and right now
looking pleased with himself. "We've been going over his
clothes, for any little thing that might show up. Now it is your job
to say what this might mean, but for what it's worth, it looks kind
of interesting to me. Not to say suggestive. These are his shoes, I
just got to them this morning."

"Yes?" said Mendoza.

They were a pair of black moccasin-type shoes,
middling expensive, well worn but polished. Mendoza thought absently,
Size 11B.

Duke lifted them and held them toward him heel first.
"Look at that. They're not new shoes, but they've been taken
care of. Kept polished. But here, on both heels--that is, the back of
both shoes above the heels--is this deep scrape. The surface of the
leather's entirely gone, violently scraped off--more on the left than
on the right one."

"Yes, I see."

"
Well, that wasn't done when he went over the
cliff in his car, you know. It wasn't done on anything in the car.
I've had these under the microscope, and I took scrapings to look at
closer. You know what was in those scraped spots? Asphalt. Asphalt
and," Duke added dreamily, "crankcase oil, and bird
droppings, and decayed leaves. Traces, you know."

Mendoza sat up. "What the hell? Does that say--"

"Me, I'm only a chemist,” said Duke. "You're
the detective. But we aren't exactly disinterested in this one, and I
saw what Dr. Erwin said about that skull fracture. The back of the
skull, more to the left side. I think this does tell us a little
something?

"Asphalt---"

"The way I read it," said Duke, "and
stop me if I don't make sense, is that he got that first blow
outdoors, on the street. Literally on the street--a blacktop street.
He got knocked backwards, maybe tripped over something or it was just
a very hefty blow--and his feet went out from under him, scraping the
street, and he went down hard on something--as Erwin said--broad and
hard and flat."

"But not the street itself," said Mendoza
slowly, "because there wasn't a trace of anything like that in
the wound or on the scalp. Of course he had on a hat, but you didn't
find anything like that on it. Nothing extraneous."