Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (22 page)

The little frame house in the rear had been neat and
clean before carnage struck. There were no dirty dishes in the
kitchen. The shabby but comfortable furniture was dusted. Clothes
hung tidily in the one closet. It was a small place with two meager
bedrooms, a tiny living room, kitchen, bathroom and that was all. Now
there was blood all over. The man, a stocky, very black man in
pajamas, was on the floor of the larger bedroom, blank empty eyes
fixed on the ceiling. He had been stabbed and slashed repeatedly, but
by his position it didn't look as if he'd put up a fight. Possibly
he'd been attacked in his sleep. The woman had tried to get
away—probably while producing the screams. She was a thin young
black woman in what had been a blue nylon nightgown, and she had got
as far as just inside the front door when she died. They could read
it. While the killer was busy with the man, she'd wakened up,
screamed, tried to run, and been caught. There was more blood in the
little hall, in the living room. She'd been stabbed and slashed
viciously. The baby, looking to be about a year old, was still in the
crib beside the double bed, and its throat had been cut.

"God," said Conway. "What have we got
here, a lunatic?"

They called the lab and a
mobile van came out. All the night watch could do was write the
initial report. Let the day men take it from there.

* * *

"IT MUST'VE BEEN A CRAZY PERSON, that's all,"
said Alexander Freeman to Landers and Palliser. "That's all
anybody could say. Nobody had any reason to do such a thing I to Jim
and Paula. It's just crazy."

They were talking to the Freemans in one side of the
duplex, half a block down on Thirtieth Place from Mrs. Ballard's
house, on Friday morning. The living room here was clean and neat, if
shabby. The Freemans, both medium black, looked like solid citizens.
Louise Freeman had been crying; now she sat listlessly on the couch,
staring at her clasped hands.

"I didn't go to work," Freeman said. "I
knew the police would be here and I didn't like to leave Louise.
There's just no sense to it."

"You said Mr. and Mrs. Rawson had just moved to
California?" asked Landers.

"That's right. They lived back in Wisconsin,
that's where Louise and Jim were raised, but the winters were awful
hard on Paula and they thought they'd try it out here. I even got Jim
a job, a good job, same place I work, the Parks and Recreation
Department. He was working for a big nursery back there so he was
experienced at that kind of job, and we were so glad to find that
house for them so close. It was a good deal for them, see, because
they was getting it at a lower rent than usual. Jim was going to do
all the yard work for part of the rent. Mrs. Ballard's been a widow a
long time and she couldn't keep up the yard. It was all in a mess,
and Jim had started to work on it, just since they got here. They
drove in last Sunday night and moved in there Monday."

Freeman was smoking nervously. His wife started to
cry again. "There's no sense to it because Jim and Paula didn't
know a soul out here and nobody knew them. Not a soul. Unless it was
some drunk, a crazy person, but to kill the poor baby too—"

"They hadn't even met any of our friends,"
she said in a thick voice. "They'd been so busy getting settled,
and Jim had to start right in on that yard. He didn't need to do it
all at once, but that was Jim for you—always had to be busy. And he
never could stand anything in a mess, liked everything just so. We
were going to have the Pattersons and the Greens over for dinner on
Sunday—"

"That's so," he said, "I told Jim to
leave it, I'd help him on my day off. That place had been let go,
weeds a mile high and there was even one of those old incinerators
there from before the city stopped people using them. Jim said he
could make a real nice barbecue out of it. And I'd have been glad to
help him but I'm not off until Saturday, he hired some fella to help
him cut the weeds. That's a big yard. He'd been busy at it all
yesterday. A fool for work. He was starting on the P. and R. job on
Monday, see."

"They didn't have any family or friends here,
except you?" said Palliser.

"That's right. Look, even if there could have
been any reason—only there couldn't be a reason for that—but you
know what I mean, any reason for anybody to have a grudge on them—and
Jim and Paula were both easygoing people, didn't get across anybody
anytime—where was the time for it to happen? They just got here!
They hadn't hardly been out of the house since Monday. Louise and
Paula went to the market on Monday—"

"And the laundromat," she said. "That
was all. We didn't talk to anybody."

"And Jim was getting things put away in the
house and then working in the yard. I don't suppose they'd talked to
anybody since they got here, except us and Mrs. Ballard and, oh, that
guy he hired to help in the yard."

"Rawson hired him? It's not his yard," said
Palliser.

"No, but it was in a mess. Jim said one good
cleanup and it'd be easier for him to keep up without so much work."

"Where did he hire the man?"

"Drugstore down at the corner. There's a
bulletin board, people put up ads. But it was a crazy man, or a
drunk. I haven't taken it in yet—all of them gone—like that. Jim
and Paula—they were the best—and such a cute baby. He was named
for Jim." Freeman was shaking his head blindly.

"Just no sense. Nobody here even knew them, to
want to do such a thing—"

Landers looked at Palliser. Often there wasn't much
sense in the violent crimes, but there seemed to be less in this one
than most. They walked up the street and talked to Mrs. Ballard, but
she knew even less to tell them, except to repeat that she'd seen the
man running away. A tall, skinny man. She didn't know what color.

"There's nowhere to start looking," said
Landers. "The house wasn't robbed. There was forty dollars in
his wallet and thirty in her handbag."

"The lunatic or the drunk," said Palliser,
rubbing his nose. "There may be prints."

"And even if there are, they might not be in
Records."

"Well, time will tell. I don't see that there's
much we can do on it until we see the lab report, and the autopsies
should tell us something about the knife."

"For whatever it's
worth," said Landers pessimistically.

* * *

HACKETT WAS JUST starting out to lunch with Higgins
on Saturday when a man came into the office past Rory Farrell at the
switchboard. "The desk man downstairs said to come up here."
He was a pudgy middle-aged man with thinning red hair and a bulldog
jaw. "With this. You're welcome to it." He held out a small
imitation leather case, the kind made to hold a man's shaving tackle.

"What's this?"

"Well, I wouldn't know," said the man. "But
I thought the cops had better see it. Sure as hell I thought so. My
name's O'Hara, and I drive a cab for Yellow."

"Yes, Mr. O'Hara. Come in and sit down. What's
this all about‘?"

In the communal office, O'Hara put the case down
gingerly on Hackett's desk. "I don't want one damn thing to do
with it. So I tell you. I carried five fares since I come on duty at
eight. This is the hell of a town for cabs. Everybody and his brother
got cars, see. And when I dropped the latest fare it was an old lady
and I got out to help her up on the curb and I see that thing.
Somebody's left it in the back seat, and she says it's not hers. So I
don't know who it belongs to. One of the other fares."

"Yes." Hackett offered him a cigarette.

"So naturally I looked to see if it's unlocked,
if there's maybe some I.D. in it to say who left it, see, and it was.
And, Jesus, then I didn't want to know who owns it. You open it and
look, just look."

Hackett pulled the case in front of him. It was the
kind that had a zipper all around three sides and he ran it around
and the case gaped open.

There were two things in it. The first was a
bunched-up bath towel. It had originally been white, but it was now
liberally stained with great rusty smears of long-dried blood.
Something showed at the loose end of the bunch. Hackett lifted out
the towel and from its folds a knife fell with a little clatter onto
the desk. It was an ordinary kitchen knife with a blade about nine
inches long and an inch wide, and it was deeply stained with the same
rusty brown dried blood, both blade and handle.

"For God's sake," said Higgins, looking
over his shoulder.

The other thing in the case was a worn imitation
leather billfold. Any experienced detective was trained to be careful
about disturbing possible latent fingerprints, but there were times
when you had to take the risk. Hackett upended the case, the billfold
fell out and he eased it open to lie flat with his pen. The first
little plastic slot held a driver's license and it had been issued to
Mabel Carter, forty-six, brown hair and blue eyes, five two, one
hundred and ten pounds. The address was Portland Street.

"Now I will be good and goddamned," said
Hackett in naked astonishment. He sat back and stared up at Higgins.
"That hooker who got cut up by a john. There was nothing on it.
I shoved it in Pending myself."

"That's damn funny all right. Do you have any
idea which of those fares might have left this?" Higgins asked
O'Hara.

"Well, I have. And if he did I don't want to lay
eyes on him again. I got to thinking after I saw that damn thing. Two
of the other fares were female and I got a sort of idea it's got to
have been the one with the luggage. I think he had a little case like
that in his hand when he got in the cab. That was the fare about ten
o'clock. I picked him up at the Biltmore and took him to the Holiday
Inn on Figueroa."

"I will be goddamned," said Hackett again.
"That was dead. Well, thanks very much, O'Hara."

"You know who it is? He's done a murder by all
that. Well, you're welcome to it," said O'Hara. "Me, I
never could stand the sight of blood."

There wasn't that much urgency about it, surprising
and interesting as it might be. They went out and had lunch. They got
to the Holiday Inn at about one-thirty and Hackett told the desk
clerk they were looking for a man who had checked in about ten this
morning. The clerk shied nervously at the badge.

"I hope there won't be any trouble, we run a
quiet place here." He looked at the registration book. "We've
only had one guest register this morning. Dr. Walter Thomas, from
Indianapolis. He's in room eighteen."

"Thanks very much," said Hackett. They rode
up in the elevator, walked down the carpeted hall. "What the
hell can this be, anyway?" He had the dressing case in one hand.
The door of room 18 opened promptly to a knock and they faced a large
round man in an elegant silk dressing gown. He looked about fifty. He
had a dough-colored face with a small prissy mouth.

"Dr. Thomas?" said Hackett. "By any
chance does this belong to you?" Pending a look at this funny
thing, they had restored the contents to the case.

The man seized the case, unzipped it, looked inside
and said, "Dear me, yes I am most obliged to you for returning
it. Most obliged." He gave them an open, friendly smile.

"You see I always
like to keep the souvenirs of the bad ones. You may call it a little
foible of mine. I only bother to kill the bad ones. The others are
not so important. I'm very glad to have this returned to me,
gentlemen."

* * *

MENDOZA WAS NOT a sightseer by nature, and he was not
particularly interested in Paris. As far as he could see it was just
another city, as sprawled out into suburbs as his own city. He had
dutifully, if uninterestedly, been to the Eiffel Tower.

This morning he had gone to Rambeau's office, but
Rambeau was out, the man at the switchboard told him in rudimentary
English, on a new homicide. What Rambeau called the spadework was
still going on, he supposed. He wandered up the streets from the big
Prefecture of Police building and presently came to a large public
park. An elderly woman at a tobacconist shop had pressed a guidebook
on him yesterday and he consulted it now to find that he was in the
Jardin des Tuileries, and the imposing building beyond the lawns and
flowers and the octagonal pool would be the Louvre. He sat down on a
bench by the pool. Two excited little boys in knee pants were sailing
miniature boats on the pool. He hadn't any urge to go into the
Louvre, look at paintings and objects of art.

There was a little girl sitting on the grass, watched
over by a woman on the bench opposite his. She was a pretty little
girl with dark hair, about six. She reminded Mendoza of Terry. He
smiled at her and she smiled back shyly. He supposed he ought to go
and have some lunch.
 

NINE

BOTH HACKETT AND HIGGINS had had a number of varied
experiences in their combined years on the L.A.P.D., but Dr. Thomas
was something new to them. He agreed quite amiably to accompany them
to meet a friend and they waited while he dressed in a new gray suit,
clean white shirt and tie. They took him straight out to the
psychiatric ward at Cedars-Sinai and left him there, and went back to
look at the hotel room. There was a suitcase full of nearly new
clothes and in one of the side pockets was nearly seventy thousand
dollars in cash. They also found a few of his other souvenirs,
bloodstained knives and four other wallets with female I.D.'s in
them, all the addresses in New Jersey.