Midnight Rain: A Detective Jack Dunning Novel (12 page)

CHAPTER 22

Penelope Hanover stands in front of the class. She’s not pleased to see us, but manages a tight smile. “You’ll have to come back another time,” she says, “I’m dismissing class for the day.”

“Why so early?” I say.

“I’m not feeling well. I’m going home.”

“We only need a few minutes of your time.” I stand in front of the blackboard and Jim stands beside the shelves in the cloak room where the children’s lunches sit in a row. I address the class. “One by one, beginning with the lowest grade, I’d like each of you to collect your lunch and return to your desks.” There are several sack lunches, children’s lunch boxes and three large black ones like the one belonging to Georgie.

“What on earth are you doing?” says Miss Hanover, a nervous flush rising to her cheeks. “This is highly irregular.”

After a few minutes every lunch but one has been claimed. The black boxes belong to older boys, each with their names painted or scratched into the metal, none belonging to Georgie. Two lunchless girls in bare feet and faded flour sack dresses sit with their hands folded and eyes lowered.

“The remaining sack lunch has no name on it. Who does this one belong to?” I ask the teacher.

“I can’t imagine,” she says. “It must be left over from yesterday.”

“That’s Rebecca’s,” pipes a boy in the back row. I’d already noticed her absence. Miss Hanover gives me a chilly look of inquiry. “Why are you here?” she says. “What is it you want? I’ve already answered all of your questions.”

“Georgie Allen owned a lunch box. It isn’t here,” I say. “It wasn’t in the orchard and it wasn’t in the ditch. So where is it?”

“What does it matter? He had it when he left.” She realizes her mistake the minute it comes out of her mouth.

Jim smiles. He looks like a squirrel with a cheek full of nuts.

“You said you had no memory of him leaving that day, remember?”

“I’m simply assuming. He always carried it with him.”

“Now we have Rebecca’s lunch and no Rebecca.”

“She came to school with the flu. I sent her home but not before she passed it on to me. I’d keep your distance if I were you.” Whether intentional or not, it sounds like a threat.

“You seemed in the full bloom of health in the Gold Dust Lounge last night.” It comes and goes quickly from her face—a flash of fear. A few children giggle at the thought of their mousy teacher in a hotel bar. I turn to the class and clap my hands together. “Okay kids, go on home.” The children grab their coats and fly out the door. As soon as we’re alone her anger simmers to the surface.

“Alright Lieutenant,” she concedes. “So, I’m a real person with a real life after the factory whistle blows. It is now a sin to look fashionable?”

Her change of syntax doesn’t go unnoticed and I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

“Don’t get me wrong, Miss Hanover. You looked smashing, it’s just dramatically inconsistent with the way you present yourself to the world. It makes me wonder which is the real Miss Hanover. Both of them? One of them? None of them?”

“I’m not feeling well. Can’t we do this tomorrow?”

“I had a talk with Horace Churchwell.” At the mention of his name she stiffens. “Why so nervous? He confirmed everything you told us about your term of employment, even the reason for your departure. What you failed to tell us, however, is that you left before the end of the semester.”

“It was irrelevant.”

“By the way, how is it you can afford a suite at the St. Ambrose? Family money? A lucky hand at poker? The mysterious Ludwig von Buchholz? I’ve talked with Mrs. Bloch on Cleveland Street. Would you care to comment?”

“You’ve certainly done your homework, Officer Dunning, but I’ve committed no chargeable offense.”

“It’s actually,
Detective
Dunning. We’re a curious breed, especially when we think someone isn’t being entirely candid with us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My life is an open book.”

“Your life is a book of secrets, lady.” A tic pulls at the corner of her left eye and she breaks eye contact.

“Unless you’re going to arrest me for having a nice hotel room and fancy clothes, I’m leaving now,” she says. “If you have further questions you can address them to my lawyer.”

“By the way, Churchwell wants you to call your mother. She’s worried about you.”

“It is a mother’s job to worry.”

“He wants to know if you still have her San Diego phone number?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You haven’t done
your
homework, Miss Hanover. Your mother doesn’t live in San Diego.”

She brushes past us out the door. We watch her start up the Dictator and drive toward town.

“Let’s check on Rebecca while we’re here.”

We drive up Schoolhouse Road to Rebecca Smallwood’s house and knock on the door. A goat peeks around the corner of the house and bleats a greeting. No one answers and there’s no car in the driveway.

“Maybe, her mother took her to the doctor,” says Jim. “What if she really does have the flu?”

* * * *

Frances pulls the ceiling chain and a dim light goes on at the top of the basement stairs. She brushes aside cobwebs and descends the steep flight through a rush of cold air smelling of dust and stored apples.

The moment she looks at the recording device on the main phone line, she knows it’s been activated. Her heart thumps in her chest as she rewinds the tape and turns the knob to play. She listens for thirty seconds, turns it off and lets fly a barrage of profanity worthy of Red O’Hara. She coughs until her throat is raw. She knows what she needs is on that tape, but the conversation is in German.

“Mittie!” she calls up the stairs, her voice rattling with gravel. “Come down here and bring my cigarettes.”

There’s a quick, light tread on the stairs. “Here you are,” says Mittie, handing her a pack of Old Golds. “What are you doing down here, Mrs. D? It’s freezing.”

“Remember the Cantor in the morning paper, the one who said he was from Berlin?” She taps a cigarette from the pack and lights it, her hand a little unsteady.

“Yes, Cantor Nemschoff.”

“See if he’ll come here. I need a translator.”

“If he had a car, I don’t think he’d be limping around the neighborhood on a cane.”

“Take the Mercedes. If he balks, offer him a bribe.”

“What kind of a bribe?”

“Whatever it takes.”

* * * *

I pick up the message slip from my desk blotter. It’s Horace Churchwell’s private extension. Jim and I get on the line and I dial. Churchwell picks up on the first ring like he’s hovering over the phone.

“Horace, this is Jack Dunning, returning your call,” I say.

“Jack, I hardly know where to start. All hell has broken loose around here. The Alamillo Escarpment is crawling with cops.”

I lean forward in my chair. “What’s happened?”

“A hiker discovered four skeletons up there.”

“Four!” An incredulous look passes between Jim and I.

“Yes, four skulls and miscellaneous bones.”

“What the hell is going on?”

We suspect three are the missing students. A skeletonized hand was wearing Penelope Hanover’s class ring. She’s probably been dead since May. I think your teacher is Hedy Greiss, an embezzler from our accounting department who vanished a week before the arrival of the state auditors. We have reason to believe she’s murdered all of these people, to what advantage, I can’t imagine.”

“I may know the answer, Horace, but I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

As soon as we hang up, the phone rings. It’s Mrs. Smallwood, Rebecca’s mother.

“Yes, Mrs. Smallwood. How may I help you?”

“I was returning from town when I noticed there’s no one at the school. Where is everyone?”

“The teacher sent the children home.”

“Then, where’s Rebecca?” I snap to attention.

“Miss Hanover said she went home with the flu.”

“That’s nonsense. She was perfectly well when she left this morning.”

Rebecca, the curious little girl who saw something from her hiding place behind the sunflowers.

“Do you know if she tried to call me yesterday?”

“We thought she was calling a boy. Her father made her hang up the phone. Why? What’s going on? Where is she?”

“I’ll get back to you on that, Mrs. Smallwood. I have to make a few inquiries.” I hang up before she asks questions I have no answers for. I look at Jim. “We need to get to the St. Ambrose. I think Hanover is about to bolt and she might have Rebecca with her…if the girl is still alive.”

* * * *

Mittie helps Cantor Nemschoff down the basement stairs, one slow step at a time on his feeble knees. Frances stands restlessly by as the cantor listens to the tape, rewinds it and listens a second time. When he’s finished, Frances switches off the machine.

“Two men talking,” he says. “Day vill meet tomorrow at midnight on River Road across bridge. Dah von calt von Stroheim is bring money and passport to dah von called Ludvig. Dat is vat you vant to know, correct?”

“Correct. Thank you. You understand that everything you’ve heard here is confidential.”

“I do.”

“I’m only gathering evidence for a court case, nothing more.”

“Is not my business.”

“You’ve been a great help,” says Frances. “How can I compensate you for your time?”

The Cantor makes a broad sweep of his hand, indicating she is a rich woman who has much to be thankful for. An abacus clicks inside his head as he quickly calculates the value of his silence.

“I have in mind you should perform a little mitzvah,” he says, and whispers in her ear.

Frances rolls her eyes. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she says, but she smiles when she says it.

* * * *

I drive and Jim rides shotgun as we fly down Cork St. to the St. Ambrose Hotel. The Studebaker Dictator is not in the lot. I’m already flipping my shield as we trot up to the clerk at the front desk.

“We need entry to the suite of Penelope Hanover,” I say.

“There is no room registered to a person of that name.”

“Room 423.”

“I imagine you have a search warrant,” he says, looking down his nose at the blue-collar cops from Little Ireland.

“You can imagine anything you please,” says Jim, poking the bloody cotton back in his cheek. “Just hand over the goddamn key or I’ll strangle you with your tie.”

The concierge rushes over.

“Henry, Miss Hanover checked out half an hour ago,” he says. “Give them the key.” With a prissy two-fingered gesture, Henry drops the key in Jim’s hand.

“Remember when we talked on the phone and you deliberately misled me, Henry?” I say. “When I get back we’re going to have a nice little chat down at the station.”

“Well, I…I…”

I turn to the concierge. “Did Hanover have a young girl with her?”

“No sir, just a purse, one suitcase and her passport. I glanced at it when I removed it from the hotel safe. It was her photo, but the name didn’t fit. It was something like Heidi Geist.”

“Hedy Greiss.”

“Yes, that was it. Did you know she was here from Germany?”

“I know now.”

I’d grown suspicious back in the classroom when she’d said,
So, it is now a sin to look fashionable?
People under stress often slip into the syntax of their native tongue. A small lapse, but very telling.

Once inside 423 we see the expensive wardrobe and luxurious accessories left behind in haste…furs, jewelry, Lalique perfume bottles, pieces of white luggage monogrammed in gold, luxuries that were probably purchased with money embezzled from Saguaro Correctional or given to her by Leland Dietrich. In the left corner of the closet is her teacher’s wardrobe of grey and black skirts, high-collared blouses and low-heeled practical shoes.

“Look what I found in the closet,” says Jim. “A shortwave radio. She’s some kind of foreign agent.” We drag it into the room.

“That’s even better than a skeleton.” It’s when I see the black lunch box in the back of the closet that my blood runs cold. I pick it up. It has H. A. for Hayden Allen scratched into the paint. I’m looking at a souvenir taken from the murdered child.

“Here’s another one,” says Jim, lifting a smaller plaid lunch box from the closet shelf. Written on a piece of adhesive tape inside the cover is the name Danny Battle. We’re looking at momentos of unspeakable deeds perpetrated on the weak and defenseless.

“The Chief needs to put out a BOLO for the Studebaker. My bet is she’s heading south to L.A where she can get a rail connection to the east.”

“Not if we can help it,” says Jim.

We tape off the room and race back to the car.

CHAPTER 23

Hedy Greiss swings the Dictator behind the schoolhouse. She takes a hammer from the trunk, walks behind the bed of sunflowers and whacks the lock off the outhouse door. Rebecca lies on the floor, drugged, bound and gagged.

The girl makes a chipmunk sound in her throat when Hedy pulls her up by the hair and tosses her in the trunk. In seconds she’s traveling south in her black hat, leather coat and shiny boots. Somewhere between Santa Paulina and Los Angeles, she’ll pull off the road, wrap the brat’s mouth and nose with tape and toss her in the underbrush. Once she gets to New York she’ll book passage on a steamer bound for the Fatherland.

She can’t wait to get out of the U. S. although she’s enjoyed dispatching a few mongrels and defectives along with the nosy teacher whose identity she’s assumed. She’d have taken care of the little colored boy too if she hadn’t run out of time. Soon there will be another great war. The Aryans will establish dominance over all inferior races and she will have been a part of it.

Hedy passes through small towns and miles of orchard and vineyard, white-knuckling the wheel, eyes locked in a purposeful trance. Although a lower profile vehicle would best serve her at the moment, the Studebaker can dominate the road at a steady forty five mile clip.

About an hour out of Santa Paulina, she pulls into a small station in the middle of nowhere and cranks open the windshield to let in some fresh air. From the office, the attendant squints at the car and goes for the phone. She can’t believe those hick cops have already put out a Be-On-The-Lookout.

She pulls a Luger from her pocket, strides through the office door, shoots the attendant in the head and jerks the phone cord out of the wall. A car approaches from a distance and with no time to gas up, she continues south, her gas tank running low.

Hedy feels rhythmic thumping through the floorboards. Rebecca is conscious and kicking. She slams on the brakes and pulls to the side of the road, stomps to the back of the car and throws the trunk open. The girl has slipped her bonds and removed the gag. She’s also pulled the lining back from the floor and ripped out several electrical wires.

Rebecca struggles violently as she’s pulled from the trunk and sinks her teeth into her captor’s thumb. Hedy screams with pain but Rebecca only grinds deeper until she hits the bone. Hedy strikes her in the head with her fist, but it isn’t until she cocks the gun and jams it against her temple, that the girl lets go. Hedy staggers backward with a moan and sucks on her wounded thumb.

Her immediate impulse is to shoot the kid, but she gets her emotions under control. A quiet kill is better, like the wet towels she pressed over the faces of Danny Battle and Georgie Allen. The boys were dirty…contaminated. She recalls with disgust, the nits and lice, all that scratching and ooze. The solution was simple. Offer a hungry kid a nickel candy bar and they’ll get in a car with the devil herself.

As for Rebecca? It’s not that she saw much, but it’s enough to contradict everything Hedy told Dunning and Tunney. And now the bite. She’s never felt anything so painful. It’s already swollen to twice its normal size and the bacteria from human teeth can be deadly.

A flatbed loaded with bales of hay is coming from the opposite direction and she doesn’t want some chivalrous hayseed stopping to ask if she’s having car trouble. Hedy shoves Rebecca in the front seat and pulls back onto the highway.

Hedy tries the headlights, but all that wire-pulling has disabled them along with her plan to drive non-stop through the night. She aims for Rebecca’s face with a sharp backhand, but the kid hunches down and takes it on the arm. The car is bucking and stuttering when she pulls into the next station, a crumbling adobe box in the middle of nowhere with quake fractures running up the walls. She turns to Rebecca.

“If you make a sound I will shoot the attendant, then blow your brains all over the front seat. Understand?”

Rebecca, her face stained with tears, her braids in a tangle, nods her head. Hedy is sweltering inside her leather coat. She tosses it, along with her hat, into the back seat, freeing an abundance of wavy, brown hair. She slips her Luger in her slacks pocket and looks around at the two rusty pumps sitting on a pad of cracked concrete. No phone lines run to the building.

The attendant is a woman…sort of. She’s Mexican about five feet tall, gut like a five gallon drum and a pack of hard muscle at the shoulder…short bristly hair…a thin cigar in her mouth. A defective! A mongrel! Hedy tries to hide her disgust. The name embroidered above the creature’s pocket reads, “CiCi.” She has a welcoming smile and axel grease under her fingernails.

“You want I should fill ’er up, Senorita?”

“Please.”

Cici removes the gas cap and stretches out the gasoline hose.

“May I use the phone?” asks Hedy, to make sure there is none.

“A storm took the lines down, but you can make a call at the general store, half a mile up the road.”

Confirmation. No phone. Maybe she’ll let this one live. Hedy sees Rebecca eying the car keys and jerks them out of the ignition with a scathing look. Rebecca has seen her parents drive enough times to know how it’s done. What if the car couldn’t move at all?

With Hedy’s eyes on the attendant, Rebecca works one of the tiny buttons loose at the collar of her dress. With a tug it pulls away from the material. She holds it between her fingers and forces it deep into the key slot.

Hedy pays for the gas and climbs back in the car. Sitting on a full tank, she breathes a sigh of relief. She goes to insert the key and looks puzzled when it won’t go in. She tries again and bends over for a closer look. Now she panics, wide-eyed with terror, her eyes cutting toward Rebecca. “What have you done!”

Rebecca bolts from the car.

“Help me!” she hollers. “I’ve been kidnapped! She’s got a gun!”

Hedy climbs from the car and goes for the Luger. Her swollen thumb gets in the way and she fumbles the gun. Startled, but quickly sizing up the situation, CiCi swings the hose in her direction, pulls the trigger and drenches Greiss from head to foot with gasoline. Hedy manages to stabilize the gun in a rather awkward grip and aims it at the attendant, finger on the trigger.

“Stand back!” CiCi shouts, but Rebecca’s already running away from the car. CiCi flicks her cigar onto Hedy’s sweater. There’s a loud whoosh and she ignites like a Roman candle, her hair flashing, then shriveling like melting plastic around her head. She shrieks, spinning and gyrating in a macabre dance toward the road. She drops, rolls and thrashes wildly, then goes motionless on the gravel shoulder…like Danny…like Georgie…like road kill.

Mongrels, one.

Master race, zero.

CiCi hangs up the hose with a shaking hand and trembling knees. “Saints preserve us!” she says. This is far more excitement than she expected when she rolled out of bed this morning. She gives the flaming puddle on the ground wide berth and approaches the girl.

“You okay, my little muchacha?” she says.

“Not really,” says Rebecca, her hazel eyes as big as moons, tears cutting through the dust on her cheeks.

“Well, you will be. What’s your name?”

“Rebecca Smallwood. I’m from Santa Paulina. I want to go home.”

“Rebecca. That’s a good strong name. Look at me. I’m as fat as a Shetland pony. Who do you think can reach the general store quicker, you or me?”

Rebecca wipes her tears and takes off down the road to find help.

* * * *

Jim and I stop when we see an ambulance at a service station in Stanislaus County north of Turlock. A deputy tells us the attendant has been murdered, but we should keep going, because there’s something even bigger going on just this side of Merced.

When we arrive, the second scene is crawling with deputies, a coroner, and a growing crowd of curiosity seekers in cars and pickups, on horseback and on foot. The Studebaker sits in front of a gas station and on the side of the road, covered with a canvas tarp is a lump too small to be a cow and too large to be Rebecca Smallwood.

We compare notes with the local sheriff and bring one another up to speed. He tells us about the quick-thinking station attendant…a woman no less…who torched a kidnapper and freed the hostage. Jim and I are ecstatic. CiCi Gonzales has done everything for us except write our report. The Studebaker stays in Merced as part of the criminal investigation and after giving a statement, Rebecca is released into our custody.

On the drive home, Rebecca tells us that she didn’t witness the murder of Georgie Allen, but she saw Greiss lure the boy from the orchard into her car, never to be seen alive again. We’re disappointed that she won’t face the American judicial system but there’s no doubt as to her culpability in at least six homicides. Our first call when we get back to Santa Paulina will be to the Allens. Their son’s case has been solved.

Georgie was killed because he was poor and had head lice, Danny because he had a chronic skin condition. I will learn in the next few days that Patty Gregson had a disfiguring birthmark and Velma Becker, a stammer. Sarah Levin, was killed simply because she was Jewish. But, it was Hedy Greiss who had the biggest defect of all…a cruel, black heart.

As for CiCi Gonzales? Tomorrow she’ll be on the front page of every newspaper from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Rebecca deserves to be there too for her bravery and quick thinking.

I take the wheel as we leave the daylight behind, Rebecca asleep in the back, Jim dozing in the passenger seat with a big lump on his jaw. Things don’t always work out exactly the way you plan them, but you take what you can get, any way you can get it.