Murder Most Strange (15 page)

"There was the dust from marijuana leaves all
over the place," said Fisher. "The car's been at the beach
a lot, beach sand all over too. More hairs, probably female, in the
back seat—black and brown. That's really about it."

"What type was the blood?" asked Mendoza.

"O." Fisher didn't comment, and Mendoza
snarled. That was the commonest type; also Eileen Mooney's type. But
it wasn't enough.

"If we ask him about it," said Higgins,
"he'll say he scraped his knuckles changing a tire."

They made another try at it, of course. Mendoza,
Hackett and Higgins went over to the jail and spent a while grilling
Bartovic again, going at him hot and heavy. He just kept saying he
didn't know nothing about Eileen, he hadn't seen her since last week,
he didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

“
We can't hold him," said Mendoza with a
vicious snap of his lighter, on the jail steps. "Minus a body,
it's nothing." They were all annoyed about it, but it couldn't
be helped. And even in the great urban sprawl of L.A., there were
places a body could lie for months without being found.

They stopped for lunch, and got back to the office
just after one. The kickback from NCIC had come in. Known and
currently wanted violent heisters from below the Mason-Dixon line, or
possessing southern accents wherever they had latest violated the
law, and corresponding to the descriptions, numbered exactly three,
on two jobs. A pair of brothers from Tennessee, Walt and Gilbert
Craven. And Leroy Rogers, wanted on a job in Georgia. The Cravens
were wanted for a heist in Nashville where a man had been shot and
seriously wounded. Rogers was wanted for a homicide pulled on the
Georgia heist. All of them matched the description, of course.

"Well," said Higgins, looking at that,
"let's see what these lawmen might know about these characters,
if any of them have any relatives or pals out here. Of course, they
might have landed here by accident, that kind just does what comes
naturally." But leads turned up in odd places sometimes, and it
was usually the dogged routine that broke cases. He glanced at the
clock. "Time differences—oh, the day shift'll still be on back
there." He sat down at his desk and picked up the phone.

Palliser and Grace came in, heard the news about
Bartovic and cussed. They looked tired and annoyed. Palliser said to
Wanda, "We could both use some coffee."

"Wait on you just because I'm female," she
grumbled, but she went to get it.

"Well," said Palliser, "we now know
there was no connection between Kelly and Barker. Both Simms and
Moreno are definite on that. Certainly neither of them could have had
any connection with the derelict."

"The autopsy report on Kelly came in while you
were gone," said Wanda brightly.

"So," said Mendoza, "let's see if it
has anything to tell us."

He took it from her, scanned it rapidly, shrugged and
passed it over to Palliser. "
Nada
absolutamente
. Healthy specimen for his age,
slightly enlarged heart. Approximate time of death . . . And the
knife tapers from an inch and a half to a quarter inch, and has a
serrated edge. Even if the autopsy on Barker says that too, that's an
ordinary-sized knife, you can buy one in any hardware store."

"Well, there's just one thing struck me,"
said Grace. He stretched out his legs, leaning back and sipping
coffee.

"Any idea is welcome," said Palliser.

"That bum on the Row," said Grace, and his
brown face wore a meditative expression. "Over there, you could
knife a man on the street and never be noticed, so many of the crowd
being drunks and dopies. But on Kelly, you know, he used a little
rudimentary cunning, lying in wait for him like that. And then on
Barker he did it right out in the open, in a fairly decent area of
town, middle of the day in front of two witnesses, no caution at all.
It looks to me as if he's a nut, and getting nuttier fast."

"Thank you," said Palliser. "That
hadn't occurred to me, Jase. So it could be the next time he hits,
it'll be in the middle of a crowd and somebody might nab him."

"Lieutenant," said Lake down the hall, "the
D.A.'s office wants to talk to you."

"Oh, hell," said
Mendoza. It was, of course, one of the deputy D.A.'s wanting to talk
about Harriet Cooper. He swiveled around in his desk chair so he
would have a nice view, and lit a cigarette, and disposed himself to
listen.

* * *

Higgins got some information from the southern
lawmen, but not much. Rogers was from Texas originally. It wasn't
known whether any of them had relations in California, but it was
possible they may have some pals here: they had all spent time in
federal prisons. The helpful lawmen said they'd do some phoning and
asking around, and get back to L.A. with anything they picked up. And
about that time, which was three-thirty, a new call came in and the
address was Wesley Avenue so Grace went out with him on it. That was
a solid black area down there.

The patrolman from the squad was black too, a rookie
by the name of Turner, and he was somewhat helplessly trying to
comfort the brown young woman sitting on the front porch sobbing. It
was a short street of modest old houses, for the most part neatly
kept up; this one was a small white frame place with a minute strip
of lawn in front.

"She was just starting to tell me about it when
she broke down," said Turner. "I guess she's got reason—she
said that's her mother in there. Dead some time, I'd say." He
swallowed; as a rookie he hadn't yet seen many dead bodies. "Look,
miss—I'm sorry, but the detectives'll have to have some
information."

She tried to control herself; she choked back the
sobs and wiped her eyes. She was a nice-looking young woman in rather
smart clothes. "I know—try," she gulped. "Mother—Mrs.
Edna Patterson—we've been away—and—her old f-friend called to
say she wasn't—at Wednesday prayer meeting—Mrs. Altura
Fielding—and was she sick, because she c-c-couldn't get her on the
phone—and I—c-couldn't either so I—came—"

There weren't any neighbors out on either side, but
it was a working-class neighborhood and there might be nobody at
home.

"Can we have your name?" said Grace in his
soft voice.

She peered at him over the wadded-up handkerchief.
"I'm—Linda Gilman. Mrs. I'm sorry, I tried to keep my head,
called the police, and then—seeing her -like that—and the house—
Oh, I've got to call Dave, I've got to call Dave—"

"Have you got a car, Mrs. Gilman?" There
wasn't one parked on the street nearby.

"C-came on the bus—"

"Well, now, if you'll just wait a few minutes
and answer a few questions, we'll have Patrolman Turner here drive
you home, and you can get hold of your husband. Is that all right?"

She gulped and nodded. "But it's not—it's
not—only Mother! That's bad enough—it's terrible, it's
terrible—but where are all her things? All the furniture—we were
all b-brought up here, it's home—thirty years—and all the things
we saved up for, nice things-and the last thing Dad made her, that
cedar chest in her room—mantel clock—the platform rocker Dad
always—"

Grace patted her shoulder. "You wait just a
couple of minutes."

The front door was open. They went in, and looked.
The house was larger than it seemed from outside; there were three
bedrooms, a separate dining area oif the kitchen. From the kitchen
window was a view of a pleasant back yard. The body of the woman was
in the largest bedroom. She was a chocolate-brown woman probably
around sixty, small and thin, and she was wearing a pink nightgown
and—a blue corduroy bathrobe. It looked as if she'd been strangled,
and as Turner said, she'd been dead for some time.

And the house was empty. There wasn't any furniture
in it at all, any carpets, even any pictures on the walls. They
couldn't open drawers or cupboards until the lab had been through
here, but those might be empty too.

The only thing left in the whole house except the
telephone was in the middle of the kitchen floor: a pair of scuffed,
worn tapestry bedroom slippers.

"My sweet Christ," said Grace, awed.

"We'd better get the lab on it quick," said
Higgins stolidly, turning away.

It was a funny thing, he'd
been a cop for over twenty years, and a detective for fourteen, and
in that time he'd seen a lot of bloody messes and human misery and
sordid little tragedies and irrational suffering. But, ridiculously,
he felt tears burn his eyes, and he knew it would be a while before
he forgot that—two limp, worn, comfortable bedroom slippers in the
middle of a kitchen floor. Marking a place where home had become
unsafe, and a humdrum life, death.

* * *

Hackett walked into Mendoza's office at nine o'clock
on Saturday morning and found him sitting with his eyes shut and the
County Guide open on his desk. "Are you practicing going into
trance or what? I always said you ought to try a crystal ball."

Mendoza opened his eyes, sat up and got out a
cigarette.

"
Mas vale tarde que
nunca
. Better late than never. Like the lost
horse and the idiot boy, I was just trying to think where I might
have dropped off Eileen's body if I was Rudy Bartovic.”

"You come to any conclusion?"

"Maybe," said Mendoza. "He finished
with Eileen—whatever he did to her, and we can guess—and he left
her in the trunk of the car, wrapped in a blanket or something, while
he went to that porno movie house—I'll lay a bet it was porn.
Sometime that night he could have been down at the beach—he landed
at Doreen's place that next noon. It's just possible, Arturo, that he
dropped her off the end of the pier."

Hackett nodded slowly. "I can see it. If so,
she'll turn up soon. Tides—and it's nice weather, a lot of people
flocking to the beaches."

"I don't know anything about tides. I just think
I'll call Harbor—and the Santa Monica boys—and ask to be told
about any new bodies they come across."

"Damn it, there should have been evidence in his
car."

"
Paciencia
.
Even the smart lab boys can't pick it up where it isn't."

Sergeant Farrell looked in. "Oh, there you are.
Call for you, Art."

Hackett went back to his desk, and picked up the
phone. "Sergeant Hackett."

"Oh," said a bright female voice, "I
didn't—Well, the manageress said it was someone asking about Alice
and I should call this number. I'm Angela Bickerstaff, and Alice—"

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Bickerstaff. Is Miss McLennan at
home yet?"

"Oh, no. I didn't quite understand—"

"Well, I'd like to talk to you, if I could see
you now?"

"I suppose so," she said, sounding
bewildered.

And he didn't know what he was wasting the time for,
but he drove over to Baxter Avenue and found Mrs. Bickerstaff in the
apartment across the hall from Alice McLennan's. She was a little
brown bird of a woman, possibly fifty, with a kitten face, bright
brown eyes. She looked at the badge and said, "My goodness,
police. What's it about? It isn't—is. Alice all right?"

"Quite all right as far as I know. We're rather
anxious to talk to her," explained Hackett. "It's about her
former employer, Mr. Parmenter. He's just, well, died, and the
circumstances—"

"Oh," she said. "He has? Isn't that
strange, and Alice'll be very interested. I wonder—" but she
didn't say what.

"I understand you and Miss McLennan are quite
good friends. I just wondered if you knew why she quit her job with
Mr. Parmenter. She'd worked for him quite a while, hadn't she?"

"Four years," said Mrs. Bickerstaff
promptly. "It didn't pay much, but she has a little family money
from a trust too. I don't know, Mr. Hackett, but we probably will
when Alice comes back. She was very upset about it, about quitting
her job. That was on March nineteenth, and I didn't happen to see her
until the next Monday, the twenty-first, and I knew she was upset and
worried about something. But Alice is pretty closemouthed, she's one
to sort of mull things over until she makes up her mind about
something. All she said to me then was that she had a good reason to
quit the job. And you see, I'd been worried because the baby was
sick, my daughter's baby, little Sue—and it was that next Saturday,
Lisa—my daughter—called to ask could I come and help. So I packed
a bag, it was about ten in the morning, and when I left I went across
the hall to tell Alice where I'd be—and she was just coming out her
door with a suitcase. And Mickey."

"Yes," said Hackett patiently.

"We1l, she said she was going up to Big Bear or
somewhere, she just felt she needed to get away for a while. I think
she'd have told me more about it if we hadn't both been in a hurry,
you see how it was, she said she'd been going to tape a note on my
door, tell me where she'd gone. And she said"—Mrs. Bickerstaff
cocked her brown head at him—"she'd tell me all about it when
she got back, she couldn't bear to talk about it now, but she said
the reason she'd quit her job, she'd found out something about Mr.
Parmenter that was so terrible it just didn't bear thinking about,
and he was the wickedest man in the world. And she grabbed up
Mickey's leash and started downstairs."