Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (11 page)

Hackett went in the back door to blessed
air-conditioning. Angel was setting the table. "I was just
starting to worry about you," she said.

"Traffic," said Hackett, bending to kiss
her.

"Murder, I know. Good day, darling‘?"

"Unproductive," said Hackett. "It got
up to a hundred, by the radio."

"I know. Thank God I
didn't have to go out anywhere, and I've kept the kids in until it
started to cool off about an hour ago. Do you want a drink before
dinner?"

* * *

SATURDAY NIGHT on the Central beat could be busy. But
if the heat stirred up the violent emotions, it also kept people
ready to stay inside. The night watch got called out only twice the
whole shift. The first call was a hit-run on Beverly with a young
woman D.O.A, and there had been plenty of witnesses to say the car
had run a light and was going about forty, but no one had got the
plate number and there was confusion about a description of the car.
The consensus was that it had been a medium-sized sedan, not very
old, not very new.

Traffic was probably busy writing tickets and dealing
with drunks, but the night watch sat and waited until the second call
came in at just on midnight. Piggott had finished the report on the
hit-run. Schenke was reading a paperback historical novel. Conway was
just sitting. When the desk called, it didn't sound like much. A body
in the street. Conway went out to look, expecting the drunken
derelict, and that was almost what it was. On a quiet, run-down side
street, just up from Venice Boulevard, the man dead in the gutter
wasn't more than twenty-five. He hadn't been dead long and the minute
Conway laid eyes on him in the glare of the squad-car headlights he
knew what the autopsy report would say.

"Christ," he said disgustedly to the
uniformed man.

"These stupid damn punks. Rotting what brains
they have on the dope."

The uniformed man said succinctly, "They've got
no brains to start with or they wouldn't."

Conway went over him. There wasn't any I.D., but in
one of his pantspockets was a cardboard box with about fifty
Quaaludes in it. "My God," said Conway, "if the dope
hadn't got him, he might've got taken off for this. Let's have that
light closer." The patrolman shifted the flashlight. "I
thought so. More of the fake stuff. It's coming in by the ton, by
what Narco says. Mostly from South America."

"It isn't the real stuff?" The patrolman
was interested.

"Oh, it's the real stuff. It'll kill you as
quick as the bona fide American-made, but look at the little stamp
mark."

The pills were slightly smaller than a dime and in
the beam of the flashlight they could make out the tiny legend
stamped on each. LEMMON 74. "The real pharmaceutical company
doesn't use that mark, but it looks like a guarantee that these are
American-made. Real Quaaludes."

"I'll be damned," said the patrolman. "I
suppose we want the morgue wagon?"

"What else?" said Conway. "I'll see
these get handed over to Narco, as if they needed any more."
* * *
 

AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, one of the sergeants sitting on the
central switchboard at Hollywood Division got a call from a
frightened citizen. At first she was rather incoherent, but he calmed
her down and got her talking straight. "Now, have I got your
name right, Frances Holzer? Yes, Mrs. Holzer. Start out again, it's
about your mother?"

"Miss," she said. "Miss Holzer. Yes,
I'm just worried to death because she should've been home hours ago,
she's a good driver, but an accident—but she's carrying
identification, I would've heard about it, somebody would've called.
And she was only going to stay a little while, Mrs. Lincoln's been
pretty sick and visitors aren't supposed to stay long—"

"Just let me have your address, Miss. 0.K, Del
Mar Avenue. What's your mother's name?"

"Mrs. Edna Holzer. She was going to the French
Hospital to see Mrs. Lincoln. She left about seven and she should've
been home by at least eight-thirty, I've been worried to death. She
was coming straight home, she said so, and—"

The sergeant thought rapidly. That was a pretty
classy address, up above Los Feliz, and the girl sounded straight.

"What's she driving?"

"A Chrysler Newport-two years old—navy-blue."
She was more businesslike now, reassured by the solid masculine
voice. "Wait a minute, I've got the license number. It's
one-E-D-seven-four hundred."

It passed fleetingly across the sergeant's mind that
these seven-digit plate numbers, issued since the state ran out of
different six-digit ones, made life a little complicated. He wrote it
down. "I'd like a description of her, please."

"Of M—mother?— She's f-forty nine, five six,
a hundred and t-t—twenty," and the girl burst out crying.

"Now, Miss Holzer, try to get hold of yourself.
Miss Holzer?"

She hiccupped and sobbed once more and said, "I'm
sorry. I don't want to sound stupid, but it's just, she was so
p—p—proud of herself, she'd been on a diet and lost twenty
pounds—she's got brown hair and blue eyes and she's wearing a
sleeveless blue nylon dress and bone sandals."

"All right, Miss Holzer. That's fine. We'll have
a look around. Check the hospitals, and so on. I'll get back to you."
.

He did the obvious things on it. Called the emergency
rooms, the Highway Patrol. If the woman had been heading for
Hollywood from downtown she'd likely have been on the freeway and the
Highway Patrol handled freeway accidents. He drew a blank. So then he
called Central Traffic, explained and asked them to look around that
area for the car. The woman could have had a heart attack, a lot of
things could have happened.

At twelve-fifty, Central Traffic called back. A squad
had checked the parking lot at the French Hospital. The Chrysler
wasn't there. The squad had looked all around side streets there and
it wasn't anywhere. Funny, thought the sergeant. What could have
happened to the woman? Of course, without knowing anything but what
the girl said she could have stopped for a drink, she could have gone
to see a friend and lost track of time, she could have—

He called the girl back. "No, she hasn't come
home. What have you found out?"

"I'm sorry, I haven't a thing to tell you. But
we'll keep looking. Miss Holzer, have you checked with any of her
friends? She could have stopped in to see someone. She could have—"

"At nearly one A.M.?" she said. "She
told Mr. Shepherd she'd be in the office at nine, she's his
secretary. Mr. Lynn Shepherd, he's the head of the firm—Shepherd,
Lynch, and Morse. Mother's been his secretary for twenty years, and
there was this important tax case, there has to be a deposition and
the witness could only come in on Sunday. She said she'd be home by
eight-thirty."

They both sounded like responsible citizens, but of
course even that kind came all sorts. The sergeant said, passing the
buck, "Well, we've done all we can do, Miss Holzer. I tell you,
if your mother hasn't come home by morning, you can file a missing
report with Central Headquarters."

"And what would they do?" she asked wildly.

The sergeant wasn't too sure. He said stolidly,
"Well, that's what you'd better do. All I can tell you, your
mother hasn't been involved in an accident in the last six hours."

"That's all you know?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Holzer. That's all."

"Well, thank you,"
she said.

* * *

THE MISSING REPORT on Edna Holzer got filed at nine
A.M. on Sunday morning, but that was not a busy office, Missing
Persons. Their business was quiet and slow, and Lieutenant Carey was
off on Sunday. The sergeant in that office filed the report without
thinking much about it. Carey didn't see it until Monday morning.

On Sunday morning there was another cable from the
Sûreté. They had turned up Juliette Martin's passport number. She
had applied for it on the first of August. It had been issued on the
nineteenth. No information was required for a passport except
evidence of citizenship. There was no address available. No further
information.

"
¡Diez milliones de
demonios desde infierno!
" said Mendoza.
 
 

FIVE

ON SUNDAY Wanda Larsen was off. Higgins and Palliser
might have taken her along to help break the news to Verna Coffey's
daughter; a woman officer was helpful at that sort of thing. The
address corresponding to the Pasadena listing was one side of a
duplex, on a quiet middle-class street, but nobody had been home. Now
this morning they tried there again and found the family just
starting off for church, Robert and Julia Elmore and an
eighteen-year-old daughter, Lila. There was the usual reaction to
news of violent death. Palliser and Higgins gave them time. These
were more honest solid citizens, as Verna Coffey had been. The
husband worked at a Sears store here, the girl was a senior in high
school. But Julia Elmore was a sensible woman and when her first
grief subsided, she answered questions readily.

"I couldn't say exactly how much money might've
been there. Mother only went to the bank once a week, on Wednesdays."
She was a thin sharp-faced woman, not very 'black. "She didn't
drive and her arthritis bothered her. She had to take the bus, she
used to close the store for a couple of hours—same as when she went
up to the market once a week."

"I don't suppose," said Elmore, "she
made an awful lot out of the store, but more than you might think. It
was a steady trade." He was a heavy-shouldered man, medium
black. "I suppose she might've had a hundred bucks or so, in
cash, maybe more."

"Where did she keep the money, do you know?"
asked Palliser.

"She kept it all in an old handbag in the
closet," said Julia Elmore. "But she was careful about
keeping the doors locked, Sergeant, living alone like she did—and
that's an old building and it was lonely at night there—you know,
she was the only one lived there, all the rest of those stores were
closed and empty at night. She was crying a little again. "Oh,
we worried about it—"

Elmore said, "But there were good deadbolt locks
on both doors, I'd seen to that, I don't see how anybody could break
in, but you say it looked as if she'd opened the door to somebody."
He shook his head. "She wouldn't have let anybody in after
dark."

"Unless it was someone she knew," said
Palliser.

"But nobody like that would've hurt her."
They were incredulous.

"She knew a lot of people around that
neighborhood," said Julia. "She'd lived there for more than
forty years, but I don't think she'd have opened the door to anybody
after the store was closed."

He said, "She'd had some trouble with kids. Some
of the kids there—coming in and stealing candy bars. She was always
having to chase them off. But no kid—"

"Oh, we did worry," she said. "I
wanted her to close the store and come to live with us. She was
sixty-nine and her arthritis was getting worse all the time, and she
had Daddy's Social Security, but she'd had the store so long she
didn't want to change. That isn't too good a neighborhood now, not
like it used to be. Oh, I can't stand thinking how scared she must've
been—the last time we saw her was a week ago today, she had a
little birthday party for Toby—"

"Who's that?" asked Higgins.

"My sister Eva's boy, Toby Wells. Eva died last
year. We were all there, she had a cake and ice cream and she gave
Toby ten dollars for a birthday present. It was his twenty-fourth
birthday. He's a nice boy, Toby. Got a good job at a Thrifty
drugstore up in Hollywood." She wiped her eyes.

Higgins asked, "Was she hard of hearing at all,
Mrs. Elmore? How was her sight?"

She was shrewd enough to catch his thought. "You
mean she might've thought somebody she knew was at the door when it
wasn't? Oh, no, I don't think so. She wasn't deaf and her eyes were
good. It was just the arthritis bothered her. I just can't imagine
her opening the door to anybody after dark."

"Do you know anyone in that area? Does anyone
there know your name?" asked Palliser.

What had occurred to him, someone like that might
have got her to open the door with a tale that the family had tried
to call her—that the phone was out of order.

"Not for twenty-four years—since Bob and I
were married," she said. "Of course, we didn't live in the
store, then. We had a house on Twentieth. It was just since Dad died
I that she lived in the back of the store. And the neighbor hood had
changed, not the same kind of people around."

Higgins explained about the mandatory autopsy. That
they'd be told when they could have the body. They just nodded
quietly.

"Did she have any close friends around there?"

"Well, there's Mrs. Wiley. She lived next door
on Twentieth Street and she's still there, she's a widow now. She
came to see Mother now and then—and Mrs. Buford, but she's in a
rest home on Vermont. Sometimes Mother went to see her."

Back in the car, Palliser rubbed a finger along his
handsome straight nose and said, "Ways it could've happened—so
she was a careful old lady. If somebody banged at the door and said
the building was on fire—"