Extra Kill - Dell Shannon (2 page)

"It was just one of those things," agreed
Hackett.

"I got the siren on, and I went after it, but no
use, like I said. I saw that, and I pulled into the side and reported
in what had happened. They told me to go straight to Vineyard and
Brook, there was an ambulance on its way there already, so I did.
That's where they'd finally picked up the kids, you know, just then.
Price and Hopper, I mean, and Gonzales and Farber in the first car
that'd been after them were called in too—they were there when I
got there. Price had to fire at the car to get it to stop, and one of
the kids was hit, not bad—you know all that, sir."

Mendoza nodded. "That's all clear enough. What's
in your mind about it now? Your own sergeant and Sergeant Hackett had
your story  then, and you said, if I recall rightly, that it
must have been those juveniles. Something changed your mind?"

"It looked," said Walsh, "1ike it
must've been, sure, because what else could it have been? I mean,
it's not as if there were a dozen cars around that area that night
with somebody taking pot shots at squad cars out of them. When we
came to sort it out, the times looked tight, but it could have
happened like that, and how else could it have?"

"We went into it as thoroughly as possible,"
said Hackett.

"Yes, sir, I know. And I don't want to make out
that I was mistaken in anything I told you, it's not that. It's just
that when I came to think about the whole thing afterward—as a
whole, if you see what I mean—well, it's nothing to get hold of,
nothing definite, but the more I thought about it— And I told
Sergeant Simon, and Lieutenant Slaney too, but I guess the reason it
sounded crazy to them is just that—how else could it have
happened?"

"What bothers you about it?" asked Mendoza
patiently.

"The main thing is the times. Sure, it could
have been, but it's tight figuring. Look, here's Cameron and San
Dominguez, where it happened. I don't see how I could have been more
than thirty seconds getting under way afterward, even call it a
minute before I got the car turned and got up speed after that
car—and it didn't take me another minute to see it was no go. All
right,"—in his urgency Walsh was forgetting some of his
nervousness—"there's two minutes, and I'm about half a mile
down San Dominguez. Give me another ten seconds to pull in and start
to call. I couldn't get through right away, they were busy that
night, but it couldn't've been more than another twenty seconds
before I was reporting in. Say that's three minutes, even four, after
the shots were fired—I don't think it was four, actually, but give
it that much leeway—and I was talking maybe another twenty seconds
or half minute, and the girl had me wait another ten, twenty seconds
while she checked on where that ambulance call was from—Price
reported in just before me. So I'm sent to Vineyard and Brook where
they got the kids, and that's about half a mile from where I was
then, or from where the shots were fired—it makes a kind of
triangle, see, with the point at Vineyard and Brook. O.K., now when I
got there, which was maybe two and a half minutes later, the first
squad car'd already got there, that's Gonzales and Farber, who'd been
the first to go after the kids, and they'd been called up after Price
and Hopper were on the kids' tail. Look, I even made a diagram of it,
and this is how it works out in my book. Call it five past nine when
the shots were fired at us and Joe was killed. Say it was the kids,
they've got to get over to Vineyard—which runs the same way as San
Dominguez, it's not a cross street—and be going west there
hell-bent for election when Price and Hopper spotted them two-three
minutes later. Because Price's call in, saying they were on them, was
clocked at seven minutes past nine, and Gonzales and Farber got the
word where to join them a minute later. The ambulance call Price put
in, same time as he reported arresting the kids, came over at eleven
minutes past nine. And at about that time I was calling in about Joe.
I can't figure how it could've been more than four minutes between
Joe's getting shot and Price and Hopper picking up those kids. And
you know, I don't suppose they gave one look at the car and spotted
it, bang, right off—they'd take a closer look to be sure it was
those kids, which cuts down the time a little."

"Mmh, yes. You've really gone into this, haven't
you?" Mendoza tilted back his chair, regarding the opposite wall
thoughtfully. "That sounds like a very short space of time, but
a lot of things can happen in three or four minutes, and you're not
absolutely sure of the times on your end, are you? Even if you'd just
happened to look at your watch before Bartlett was shot, it could
have been off a bit from the clocks in the radio room here."

"Yes, sir, I know. But another thing, as I don't
need to tell you, Price and Hopper didn't just slam bracelets on the
kids and rush right back, to report in, there'd be a couple of
minutes there, getting the kids out of their car and so on .... Well,
I don't know, it just seems to me—"

"Look," said Hackett, rubbing his jaw.
"Leave all this thirty seconds, twenty seconds business out,
what you're saying is, it seems to you that by the time you got sent
to meet that ambulance, the kids had been busy with Price and Hopper
a little too long to have been over on San Dominguez when Bartlett
was killed. Now I've got just this to say. Time's funny—when a
lot's happening, sometimes it seems to go faster and sometimes
slower—you've had that experience?" Walsh nodded silently. "I
agree with you that it all happened damn fast, but we've got no check
on exact times, and nobody can say just on that account it
couldn't've been those kids. And the gun checks—as much
identification as we'll ever get. I don't need to remind you it was a
homemade gun with a smooth bore, so, sure, Ballistics can't say
definitely this bullet came out of that gun—but the market cashier
and Bartlett both had .38 caliber bullets in them, and the kids had a
half a box of 'em left. It looks pretty open and shut."

"I know," said Walsh helplessly. "All
I can say is, even making every allowance for the way you do lose
track of time in the middle of a thing like that—well, I still feel
it's too tight. And, Sergeant, why did they turn off San Dominguez if
it was them?"

"Why shouldn't they?"

"It's the main drag," said Walsh, "the
best road along there. They were all from that section, they'd know
the streets. They must've known that if I was on their tail after
they'd fired at us, their best chance of losing me was to stay on San
Dominguez, because it's a divided highway and not much traffic that
time of night. They could make tracks and still do enough weaving in
and out of what traffic there was to throw me off. They'd know I
couldn't have got their plate number—it's dark as hell along there,
those arc lights are so high—and they'd blacked out their
taillight. Look, you get off the main drag along there, most of the
cross streets are full of potholes and not all of 'em go through to
the next main street, Vineyard. They'd be damn fools to turn off
right away, and take a chance on getting to the next boulevard—they
couldn't be sure I wasn't on them when they'd turned off, the way
they must've if they were going to be spotted where we know Price and
Hopper spotted them, on Vineyard just west of Goldenrod going about
sixty."

"Well, now,” said Hackett. "They weren't
exactly thinking very clear, you know, right then.”

"They'd just shaken off Gonzales and Farber,
Sergeant, after a twenty-minute chase—and Lieutenant Slaney says
Farber's the best damn driver out of our precinct."

Mendoza laughed. "That's a point—he's got you
there, Art. Of course,"—he sat up abruptly—"they
wouldn't have us after them if they weren't damn fools to start with,
and damn fools have a habit of acting like what they are. And like
the rest of us they have good luck and bad luck." He brushed
tobacco crumbs off his desk tidily, straightened the blotter, lined
up the desk tray with the calendar as he spoke; but automatically,
like a persnickety housewife, thought Walsh. Even in the midst of his
earnest effort to get through to them with this, Walsh couldn't help
noticing. One of those people who went around straightening pictures,
he figured Mendoza was: the orderly mind. He looked it too, very
natty and dapper in an ultraconservative way, like an ad in
Esquire—the faintest of patterns in the tie, and that suit must
have cost three hundred bucks if it cost a dime. Of course, all that
money Lieutenant Slaney said he had . . .

"And if it wasn't the kids?" asked Mendoza.
"What else?"

"It's crazy," said Walsh, "I know. But
suppose it was somebody who wanted to kill Joe as—well, who he was.
Not just a cop in a squad car. A—a specific cop."

"Now let's not reach for it," said Hackett
dryly. "You know anybody who might have wanted Bartlett dead?
Who might try it like that?—not just the easiest method, by the
hell of a long way. I manage to keep up enough of a score on the
board myself so I don't come in for extra practice, but I'd think
twice about trying a target shot like that, practically in the dark
and at thirty miles an hour."

"I know," said Walsh again, humbly. "It
sounds crazy to me too, Sergeant. If it wasn't those kids, I don't
know who it could've been, or why. But I just can't figure it as the
kids, when I think back over it. The way I told you, I didn't get any
kind of look at the car, I had my head down sliding into our car
beside Joe. I couldn't say if there was just the driver or three kids
or a dozen blue baboons in it. And when I did look up, at the shots,
it was already almost past, and all I could tell was it was a
sedan—but two-door or four-door I couldn't see—and a dark color,
and it had fins, so it was a fairly late model. That's all I can
honestly say, sir, for sure. I only had it in sight for about two
seconds. So I know it doesn't count for much when I say that,
thinking back, I get the impression that looking at those tailfins
side on, the way I saw the car as it went past, they curved up at the
ends."

"The car the kids were driving," said
Mendoza, "was a two-year-old four-door Mercury. I don't keep up
with all these little changes in design—" He looked at
Hackett.

"Straight fins," said Hackett tersely.
"When did all this begin to come to you, Walsh—in a dream?"

"Look, sir, I'm just trying to be honest about
it. Maybe I was slow on the uptake, but like you say, a lot happened
all at once, and it wasn't until I had a chance to sit down and think
about the whole thing in—in retrospect, you know, that it added up
like this. Or didn't add up. And by then you all had my statement and
the inquest was set—and the sergeant said I was crazy, because how
else—and the coroner wouldn't 1et—"

"You did quite right coming in to tell us,"
said Mendoza.

"Second thoughts—" began Hackett, looking
a little angry.

"
Tómelo con calma,
chico
, if we don't like a little new piece of
truth we can't shove it under the rug because we like something else
better. Which you know as well as I do. And another thing we all know
is that sometimes you get a clearer picture of a thing looking back
on it. No, you were quite right to pass this on, Walsh—you needn't
be afraid you'll get in any trouble over it."

"Do you think—?”

"I don't think anything right now," said
Mendoza. He put out his cigarette carefully in the brass tray. "We
haven't got enough to think about. But maybe it wouldn't do any harm
to take a little closer look at this thing.
Todos
come tomes errores
—we all make mistakes—and
peculiar coincidences do occur, no denying."

"Now look," said Hackett, "if you've
got one of your hunches, Luis, tell it to go away. Of all the
far-fetched—"

"No hunch," said Mendoza. "I'd just
like to look at it a little closer. To be sure." He looked at
Walsh. "We'll keep this quiet for a while. If it turns out
you've been exercising your imagination, I don't want it to get round
that you fooled Mendoza for a minute—everybody knows I'm never
wrong! But if there seems to be something in it, I'll want to see you
again."

"Yes, sir," said Walsh, grinning and then
canceling the grin as he remembered Bartlett.

Hackett shut his eyes and said, "
Lo
mismo me da
—all the same to me—I'm only
the wheel horse that'll do all the work. The games you think up,
Luis! Working a case twice, just to be sure."

"Well, this is one we'd like to be very damned
sure about, isn't it?"

"That's why," said Walsh. "I mean, I
thought I ought to tell somebody, sir, on account of those kids. That
cashier's still alive. If he doesn't die, it wouldn't be a homicide
charge—except for Joe."

"Oh, that," said Mendoza. He got up,
straightening his tie, yanking down his cuffs; his cuff links, Walsh
noticed, were heavy gold monogrammed ones. "What the hell, about
the kids? They're no good to anybody and the chances are very small
they ever would be. They're all under eighteen and wouldn't get the
death penalty anyway. This way or that way"—he took down his
hat, a rather high-crowned black Homburg, and brushed it—"they'll
be around quite a while to make work for us and deviltry for a lot of
other people. It's not on that account I'd like to know more about
this. I just want to know what really happened. I'm told I've got as
much irrational curiosity as a dozen women, which is maybe why I'm a
cop in the first place."