The Good Old Stuff (40 page)

“Did she recover consciousness in the ambulance or before the anesthetic?”

“No. You want to look at her?”

“Sure.”

The elderly patrolman who sat next to the bed with a notebook and pencil in his hand and a bored look on his face changed the look to quick recognition and then distaste when Jud Brock walked in.

“Relax, Jones,” Brock said. “I just want a look at her.”

He stood by the bed and looked down. There was a faint trace of color in her greenish cheeks, but she was breathing shallowly, rapidly. Her eyes were shut and seemed to have sunk farther back into her head. The nostrils looked pinched, and her hair had turned brittle and dead. Her lips were dry. She breathed rapidly through her mouth, and he could see the tip of her tongue protruding slightly beyond the even lower teeth.

As he looked down at her, he wondered if the slug had been
meant for him, and he knew suddenly that he would soon be face to face with whoever had fired the shot. Whether Stella Galloway lived or died, he would stand face to face with someone, and with the new strength that corded his arms and shoulders he would smash that face with a fist like a rock.

Jones had been watching him. The elderly patrolman said, “You look good, Brock. You off the bottle?”

Brock transferred the anger that burned him. “What’s it to you?”

“Nothing, boy. Nothing at all.”

Stella Galloway’s lower jaw dropped and she began to breathe more hoarsely. Jones glanced at her and hitched his chair closer. “Miss Galloway! Stella!” he said insistently.

She didn’t answer. Brock turned and left the room.

At five they let the ones go who had been searched and interviewed. Captain Davis, acting on the report from the hospital, had assigned more men, and, while Brock had been over at the hospital, Inspector Durea had looked in for a few minutes.

The investigation had narrowed to three angles. One: Where had each person been when the shot was fired? Two: What had happened to the weapon? Three: Had the shot been fired at Galloway or Brock—and why?

At six only Brasher, the watchman, and Brock were left of the working force. Everyone else had been interviewed and dismissed with a warning to stay in town. Brock saw that Maclaren was weary, but he felt no weariness himself. He felt no hunger. He stood, solid and impassive, and listened to Maclaren, Horowitz, Cantrelle, and the others discuss the case, and he knew that, as for himself, he could keep going for an unknown period before exhaustion finally beat his strong body.

The trucks arrived with the floodlights, and the watchman let them into the yard. Lights were thrown across the piles of scrap, and everybody except Brasher and the watchman began to hunt for the pistol. Two men with a metal detector were left back in the office building, covering all the desks and closets and other possible hiding places.

Brock marked off the piles in which the assailant would have had no chance to hide the weapon. Horowitz looked at
the other piles of scrap and groaned. “Give me a nice simple needle-and-haystack proposition any day.”

Brock searched along beside Horowitz and found out that of the working force of sixty-three there were fourteen who could not substantiate their location at the time the shot was fired. Eliminating the possibility that two or more had been in on it, they were left with fourteen suspects. Among those were Walter Brasher, Karkoff, Jane Tarrance, Hodge Oliver, and Pennworthy, the guard. The other nine included the receptionist in the lower front hallway; a stenographer named Nudens, who claimed she was in the women’s room; the operator of the indoor crane in the baling shop, who claimed he was out for a smoke; Brasher’s office boy, who couldn’t remember where he was; Boris Howe, the accountant, who said he was at the water fountain on the stair landing; two laborers in the back end of the yard near the loading platform; and two men who were off-loading aluminum scrap from a railroad car.

At ten o’clock a new batch of men reported, and many of the searchers went off duty. Maclaren sent Horowitz home for some sleep and looked as if he could use some himself.

At three in the morning there were no places left to search. The piles of scrap in which the gun could have been hidden were dismantled and restacked in new locations, piece by piece. The men stood around and inspected their bruised hands and wrists, felt gingerly of the small of their backs.

Brasher had gone home at midnight. Maclaren sent the rest of the men home except for one at the front door. The harsh lights were on in Brasher’s office. Maclaren, his face pale and lined, sat behind Brasher’s desk and drew red pencil marks on a small scale floor plan of the plant. Brock sat woodenly in one of the straight chairs, staring at the far wall.

Maclaren finished marking the plan and shoved it over to Brock. Brock said, “You sure you’re asking me for my opinion, John?”

“I’ve got no time to fight with you, Jud. We were good friends once.”

“That’s right. Until I was down and out. We were swell friends.”

Maclaren smiled at him. “Sure, kid. And one night I found
you on Water Street in the gutter, and I took you home and got you cleaned up. You were still in bed when I went on duty in the morning. You got up, dressed, and left with my three shotguns. I had to pay eighty-eight dollars to get them out of hock. The next time you took the electric clock and the wife’s solid silver. Two hundred it cost the second time. I couldn’t afford it, kid.”

Brock waited a full thirty seconds, his face changing slowly. “I can’t even remember it, John. I’m sorry. I’ll pay back that money. I’ve got it in savings. I’m sorry.”

“Forget it. Look at the floor plan here. It shows the yard, shop and all. See the fourteen red circles? Those are where the ones say they were who can’t account for where they were at the time of the shot. The X shows where she fell, and the great big circle shows where somebody had to be to shoot her—whether they were aiming at you or not. Now look. This floor plan shows how it would have been impossible for Jane Tarrance, the guard, the receptionist, the girl in the can, Boris Howe, or the two guys unloading the aluminum to have gone over into the area from which the shot was fired. They would have been seen going and coming.

“That leaves us seven. Brasher and his office boy, Hodge Oliver, Karkoff, the two guys in the yard, and the crane operator.”

“You can take off Karkoff. The baler didn’t stop until long after the shot was fired. It won’t work without an operator.”

“Good work! On my own hook I’m taking out the office boy. That kid is too dopey to know which end of a gun to hold onto. Now we’re down to five: Brasher, Hodge Oliver, Lavery the crane operator, and the two guys in the yard. Let me see: Howard Barnes and Duke Schortz. Brasher, Oliver, Lavery, Barnes, or Schortz. Of course if more than one was in on it, we’re way out of line and we’ll have to start all over. Now we need the gun and the motive.”

“Could the gun have been tossed over the fence out into the weeds to be picked up later?”

“I thought of that and made a thorough check. Superman couldn’t have thrown it any farther than we looked.”

“Then it’s still on the place?”

“Unless either my boys or the matrons missed any spots on the people big enough to hide a forty-five. And my money says they didn’t.”

“How about the gun being tossed out of one of the front windows into a moving vehicle?”

Maclaren thought it over. “Boy, that booze didn’t soften your head any. I’ll have to consider that as a possibility.”

“Another thing, John. That slug split up when it went in. It had to have some encouragement. My guess is that somebody sliced it good before they loaded it. That means they wanted whoever they hit to stay dead, right?”

“Go on.”

“Okay, then. You put a deep notch in a forty-five slug and you spoil the ballistics. I figure that a guy who would know enough to notch it would know about it shortening his effective range. The slug hit her in the back while she was still forty feet from me. The odds are that he couldn’t have hit me with anything but an unmarked slug. That means it was aimed at her, not me, and you can look for motives for her death, not for mine.”

Maclaren chewed his lip. “Pretty damn slim, Jud, but we’ll go along. We’ll check into her before we check you.”

“How about Hodge Oliver? As far as I know he’s the only guy who knew her in the past.”

“I don’t think so, Jud. He’s a clean-looking kid with a good record. He worked in Washington too. At the Pentagon. He says that he knew Galloway as one of the girls who worked in a nearby office. She was a stenographer for a while, and then she was in charge of the filing of blueprints and specifications. He was upset about her being shot. You could see that. He doesn’t owe any dough, he’s got a steady gal, and he got a raise two weeks ago. I got all this from him and from others. Of course, I’ll check it, but I’ve got a hunch it’ll all be true.”

“Personally I don’t think Brasher’s got the guts to shoot anybody.”

“Don’t low-rate those nasty little soft guys who can only talk big. Force them into a corner and you can’t tell what they’ll do. I could see from the way he acted that you moved in on him in this investigation. In a way, I don’t blame you. After
all, she was knocked off on her way to see you.” Brock felt quick alarm and a feeling of loss at the easy way Maclaren made the assumption that Stella was already dead. “Suppose that this Brasher made a pass at Galloway and she pushed him off in a way that hurt his pride and then, when he saw her falling for you, he couldn’t take it. After all, the woman who turned him down getting chummy with … well, with unskilled labor. Did you notice anything about him, any way he might have looked at Galloway in the past?”

Brock stared down at his clenched knuckles. “John, I’ve been in a fog for a long time. I haven’t paid much attention to what has been going on around me.”

“Sure, kid. I see what you mean. But you’re out of the fog now?”

“Way out. Brasher’s line is plugged open on the switchboard, John. I’m going to see about Stella. Mind if I use your name?”

After Brock had identified himself as Lieutenant Maclaren, the night intern came on the phone and said, “Condition unchanged, sir. She’s had two more plasma transfusions, but she’s losing fluids so fast that she’ll be due for another one soon.” Brock thanked him and hung up, told Maclaren the score.

“You tired, Jud?” Maclaren asked.

“Not yet.”

“Here’s Hodge Oliver’s address. An apartment on Quenton Street. I’ve got to follow the book or they’ll yank my badge. Maybe you could”

“Kick him around and see if anything drops out?”

“Something like that. But you’re on your own. I’m going over and have another talk with Brasher.”

Hodge Oliver’s eyes were puffed with sleep. He blinked in the hall light and said, “Oh, it’s you, Brock. What do you want?”

Brock pushed in, found the switch, clicked the lights on, and closed the door.

Oliver said, “Now wait a minute! Can’t you—”

Brock planted a big palm against Oliver’s chest and sent him sprawling across the living room couch. Oliver braced
himself on his elbows and stared at Brock. “I’m going to toss you out of here,” he said quietly. He was lean and rangy, with brush-cut blond hair, a strong-looking neck, and knobby knuckles.

He came off the bed fast, charging in. Brock caught a wild right in the palm of his left hand and blocked a left hook with his elbow. As Oliver planted a second right high on Brock’s cheek, he was caught right on the point of the chin with a gentle right. It made a noise as though a clod of wet mud had been thrown against a brick wall. Brock caught him and laid him gently on the couch.

Oliver’s papers were in the second drawer of his bureau. Not much to go on. A file of personal letters. An address book listing people in Washington, Louisavale, and Detroit—plus a few other people scattered across the country. On the bureau was a large picture of a very lovely girl with blond hair. She looked something like Caree had once looked.… Brock, realizing that, was surprised to find how little pain there was in the thought—as though Caree had been married to someone else, a different Judson Brock. A younger, softer Judson Brock.

He pulled a chair up beside the couch. A few minutes later Oliver opened his eyes wide and groaned. He tried to sit up. Brock reached out a hand and pushed him back down. “Take it easy, boy,” he said.

Oliver felt of his chin and gave Brock a twisted grin. “What did you hit me with, a city bus?”

“I was afraid you’d be sore. As you know, I’m handling the company end of the investigation of Miss Galloway’s injury. She will probably die without regaining consciousness. You knew her in Washington. What’s the angle? Anything you can say to give us a reason?”

Oliver hoisted himself up and reached for his cigarettes on the coffee table. He gave Brock one, and Brock lit the two of them. “Look, Brock. I just knew her in Washington. She happened to be in the same section, that’s all. Ordnance procurement. I had lunch with her a few times, and a few times we went to the cola bar in the Pentagon in the middle of the afternoon. She was very nice in a quiet way, very tidy and polite. She seemed to know her job well. That’s all I know
about her. I’ve got a girl of my own, man. That’s her picture over there.”

“Did you know her friends in Washington?”

“I saw her with the women she worked with, of course. And I remember seeing her once at a hotel. She was dancing with someone, but I haven’t any memory of what he looked like. I remember thinking he was too short for her, and that’s all.”

Brock leaned back in the chair, shook his head, and sighed. “Sorry I had to pop you, Oliver.”

He shrugged and smiled. “I didn’t give you much choice. No hard feelings.”

Brock stared at the far wall of the room for a few moments, and then at the glowing end of the cigarette he held. “Where are you from, Oliver?”

“Detroit, originally. Before I tried the civil service job, I had a two-bit position working in the mechanical drawing department of one of the independent auto-parts makers.”

“You’ve got family there?”

“Sure, but I don’t want to go back. They try to run my life. My mother is a very domineering woman. I’ve been around some, and I like the looks of it here. It suits me. I’m not sorry I stayed. I wouldn’t have met Alice if I hadn’t found a job here.”