Murder Most Strange (2 page)

"The city jungle," said Mendoza, and yawned
again.

"Yes, but—it just struck me as funny,"
said Palliser. Landers had rolled the triplicate forms into the
typewriter and was starting the report.

George Higgins came in towing a weedy, very black
young Negro and said, "Good, somebody's here. I finally caught
up with Willy." Three witnesses had fingered Willy Lamb for the
knitting of another unsavory character who had been supplying him
with heroin. "Who'd like to sit in and talk to him?"

Higgins looked tired; he'd been out all day following
up the few elusive leads to Willy, and probably hadn't had any lunch.

"Oh, stash him away and take a breather,"
said Mendoza. "You look a little beat, boy."

"I could use a sandwich and coffee, but we ought
to get to him while he's still surprised he got tabbed for it."
Higgins shepherded his capture out toward one of the interrogation
rooms, and Palliser swore and followed him. Quite a lot of the time
this was a very boring, dull and sordid job.

Landers had finished the report, and it was getting
on for four o'clock, when Sergeant Barth of the Hollywood precinct
came in. Higgins and Palliser were still closeted with Willy Lamb.
Hackett went down the hall to the coffee machine and brought back
three cups to Mendoza's office, remembering that Barth liked sugar.

"Thanks very much," said Barth, looking
slightly less sour. "My God, what a day—we're in a hell of a
mess up on my beat, four homicides this week—four, I ask you—I
can remember when Hollywood was the cream-puff beat, and now all
these goddamned hookers and pimps cluttering the streets, not to
mention the nest of fags— Augh!" He took a swallow of coffee
and sighed. He had a year to go to retirement; he'd put in
thirty-five years at the job, and today looked his age and more, a
middle-sized nondescript fellow with a comfortable little paunch and
a nearly bald head. He had laid a fat manila folder on Mendoza's
desk, and nodded at it. "There's all we've got on Dapper Dan.
You think he's pulled one down here?"

"It sounds suggestive," said Mendoza. "Tell
us the high-1ights."

Barth shrugged. "Seven cases, roughly last
September to February. He must have cased the girls at least
desultorily, to know they were living alone. But of course they all
had their names in the slots in the apartment doors. He gave them all
the same story, and they all—-that is, except the one who turned up
dead—said the same thing. He was so polite, such a gentleman, they
didn't hesitate to let him in when he asked. And none of them was the
kind who'd admit a strange man in the ordinary way, so he must be
damned plausible. The same little tale, and it was just simple enough
to sound plausible, I suppose. He'd just landed here from somewhere
back East, and this was the new address he had from his sister and
her husband, and he was all mystified at finding they weren't there.
He padded it out, and every one of the girls believed him—-all so
apologetic, so sorry to bother them. And they gave us a good
description. Five ten to six feet, thin, dark hair, probably dark
eyes, clean shaven and very well dressed. Which seems to have been
one of the things that reassured them, you see? The natty suit, the
white shirt and tie."

"Mmh, yes," said Mendoza. "Not a bum
or an addict. What about the homicide?"

"Well, it's very probable it was him," said
Barth. "It looked like a carbon copy. In all the other cases, as
soon as he got into the apartment he pulled the knife and seemed to
go berserk—"

"Jekyll and Hyde," said Hackett.

"Yeah, one of them said that. He only went for
the straight rape, nothing kinky, but he was rough—all of them were
beaten up and stabbed, two of them seriously. The homicide—well,"
said Barth, "a hell of a lot of suggestive evidence ties it up
to him. Girl named Gay Spencer, lived in an apartment on Fountain.
She was a sales clerk at Magnin's. Girl friend of hers worked there
too, so when she didn't turn up for work one Monday the girl friend
went to see why, found the door unlocked and Spencer dead on the
living-room floor. She'd been stabbed twenty-three times, died of
shock and blood loss. The autopsy said about twenty-four hours
before. That linked it up right there—the knife, and the day—all
the jobs were pulled on Sunday afternoons. So we asked around, and
two women had seen a man coming up the hall, from the direction of
Spencer's apartment, about four o'clock the afternoon before. Same
description, if not quite as much of it."

"Yes," said Mendoza. "All on Sundays?
That's a queer one."

"Day when a lot of single young girls would be
home," said Barth. "Washing their hair or stockings or
something, or doing their nails, getting ready for the week's work.
Anyway, you can see it linked up. There's all the statements and so
on in there, and I wish you luck. He does tie up to your victim?"

"Oh, definitely, I'd say." Mendoza gave him
a brief rundown on Cindy Hamilton. "You didn't turn anything at
all?"

"Not a thing," said Barth. "We went
the usual route. All of 'em said they'd very definitely recognize
him, but none of them picked out any mug shots. We wasted a hell of a
lot of time dusting all those places for latents and weeding out
prints of all their friends who might have left any around, and
didn't get one damn thing. He wasn't wearing gloves, so he's just
careful—or lucky. NCIC didn't have a thing on the M.O. or the
description, and he didn't show in our records where we looked first.
So now you can go look in all the same places and come up empty."

"Hell," said Hackett unemphatically. "What
a bastard to work. He damn near killed this one too. She only came to
this morning—concussion and about twenty knife wounds. It looked as
if he'd knocked her against the stereo cabinet. She put up quite a
fight, by the look of the place."

"Yeah." Barth nodded. "So did all of
ours—and the Spencer girl—but he's big and tough, and he doesn't
care how much damage he does. Do have fun chasing him, boys."

He got up. "I'm going home. Thank God it's my
day off tomorrow. Let me know if you catch up with him, but I won't
hold my breath."

As he went out, Mendoza eyed the fat folder idly,
making no move to pick it up. "Inventive character," he
said. "And a waste of time to speculate what the head doctors
would say about him. I think I'll go home too, Arturo. We haven't had
a lab report on the Hamilton girl's apartment. I suppose this time he
could have left some prints, but if they're not in anybody's
records—"

"How do we know?" asked Hackett. "The
nothing they got from NCIC doesn't say a damned thing." It
didn't, of course, because the National Crime Information Center's
computers only numbered current crimes unsolved; when a case was
cleared it was removed from the computers' memory. "Or have you
got a hunch he's first time out?"

"No hunch—it could be, it doesn't have to be.
The only thing I will say is that if we don't land on him, sooner or
later he'l1 end up killing another girl. I wonder," said
Mendoza, "why he's switched beats."

"We don't know that he has," said Hackett
dampeningly.

"He may just have spotted the Hamilton girl
somewhere and it was chance she lives where she does."

"
¿Como?
"
Mendoza pulled the folder onto the desk blotter and opened it, began
to leaf through the reports. Five minutes later he said, "I
don't think so, Art. Look at what a tight little circle it
is—
extrario
—Fountain
Avenue, Berendo, Kenmore, Harvard, Delongpre—and the homicide on
Fountain again. All the addresses above Santa Monica, in old
Hollywood—between Vermont and Western." After twenty-six years
on this force, Mendoza knew his city by heart. "And now all of a
sudden he's come all the way down here."

"If you feel like deducing from A to B,"
said Hackett, "I'll point out that an area like that—old
uptown Hollywood —is the kind of place a lot of young women might
live who're working for fairly small salaries. Cheaper rents, more
convenient to public transportation if they don't drive. You aren't
suggesting he picks victims by their addresses, are you?"

"I don't know, damn it. I just say it's a little
odd." Mendoza shut the folder, leaned back and shut his eyes.
"Wait for the lab report. Somebody had better type up a
statement for the Hamilton girl to sign."

"Meaning me," said Hackett. "But right
now I'm going home."

Mendoza picked up his hat and followed him out. In
the corridor Higgins was talking to Sergeant Lake at the switchboard.
He said to Mendoza, "Well, Willy finally came apart and gave us
a statement. Just one more of the younger generation who doesn't
believe in free-enterprise capitalism."

"Oh?" said Hackett. "Which way?"

"The supplier expected to get paid for the H—he
was interested in profits all right. Willy was mad because he
wouldn't extend credit."

"Go home," said Mendoza. "You're not
supposed to be here at all."

"I know, I know." Thursday was normally
Higgins' day off. "But the damn painters are at the house. and
one of them keeps a transistor radio going. I hope to God they'll be
finished tomorrow." He stretched and resettled his tie, which
was under one ear as usual. "John took Willy down to book him."
He drifted out.

In the communal office, their policewoman Wanda
Larsen was arguing about something with a sleepy-looking Henry
Glasser. There hadn't been any sign of Jason Grace since late this
morning; he was probably out hunting possible heisters; but Galeano
had come back from somewhere and was just sitting at his desk staring
into space. Hackett went over and prodded him.

"Hey, paisano, it's end of shift." Galeano
jumped and looked up. Hackett grinned at him. "Bridegroom
daydreaming. Only three more days, Nick."

Galeano laughed. "As a matter of fact," he
said, "I was wondering if we're so smart to go to Yosemite for a
honeymoon, after those couple of earthquakes up there last month."

"I've always said
marriage is dangerous," said Glasser deadpan. Wanda made a
grimace at him and got up, rummaging in her bag for keys.

* * *

By the time Higgins got home to the big old house in
Eagle Rock, the painters had mercifully left for the day; they only
had the back wall to finish and should complete the job tomorrow.
Mary said she'd spent most of the day at the public library or she'd
have gone mad. The house was quiet enough now, with Laura Dwyer busy
over homework and Steve, expectably, in the new darkroom built onto
the garage a couple of months ago. The little Scotty Brucie bounced
underfoot.

Strangely enough, these days Higgins felt a little
like a bridegroom himself, even if he and Mary had been married over
three years. It wasn't that he had felt like an interloper in the
house on Silver Lake Boulevard, but it was the house that Bert Dwyer
had bought sixteen years back when he and Mary were expecting their
first baby, and there were memories of Bert in it—Bert who had died
on the marble floor of the bank with the heister's slugs in him.

These days, the Higginses
were even more a solid family. It just slid vaguely through Higgins'
mind as he bent to pick up their own baby, solid little Margaret
Emily who was unbelievably two years old now, and just as pretty and
smart as her mother.

* * *

Hackett was getting used to the longer drive these
four months since they'd moved to the new house high in Altadena; on
the freeway it didn't take that much longer, unless there was a jam.
But they weren't on daylight saving yet, and it was dark when he got
home.

He kissed Angel; the
children were for once playing quietly, Mark with a coloring book and
Sheila with her beloved stuffed cats. It was good to be home, after a
boring day. He sat down to look at the Herald before dinner, and he
wasn't thinking at all about the offbeat rapist or the other things
they were working on.

* * *

As Mendoza approached the tall iron gates, high on
the hill above Burbank—the wrought—iron gates leading to Alison's
new country estate—he squinted up at them in the last rays of the
dying sun and reflected that his red-haired Scots-Irish girl had been
right again. These days she had one resigned phrase for any new
problems arising: it all went to show, she said, how one thing led to
another.

Certainly her love affair with the ancient Spanish
hacienda had led her to spend a lot of money on updating it; and the
chain-link fence enclosing four and a half acres had only been the
beginning. There had been the construction of an apartment in what
had been the old winery for Ken and Kate Kearney, the latest
additions to the household. Kearney, a retired rancher, would of
course know all about the ponies for the twins, she had said, and so
of course he did; and plump little Kate Kearney would be such a help
to Mairi in the house.  The ponies had materialized; that had
meant creating a stable out of one of the outbuildings. The ponies, a
Welsh pair of dark bays named Star and Diamond for their white face
markings, were a great success with the twins, but they had further
necessitated the construction of a riding ring and corral along-side
the stable. And it was too dark to spot them now, but somewhere on
the hill would be the Five Graces, the sheep recommended by Kearney
to keep the wild undergrowth eaten down.