Felony File (23 page)

He finished the coffee and cigarette, and got out
cigarettes of his own. His hands were shaking. "I was—I-I
don't work Sundays, acourse. I was sitting in the living room-looking
at TV—about noon it was, when she came over. She never seemed to
notice when I wasn't polite, she said she'd baked a cake for me—she
was all smiles, just pushed right in. I said I didn't want it, I was
busy, and she tried—she tried to put her arms around me—and she
said, after what she done for me I ought to be nicer to her—she
said—oh, my God—she said she knew it was hard for me to pay that
money to Leta all the time, so she'd come down here and killed her so
I wouldn't have to pay her any more—"

"
¡Santa Maria!" said Mendoza.

"
I laughed at her! I thought she was crazy. I
said how could she do that, and she got mad and said she had so. She
got in my apartment and found Leta's address and— She went and got
a gun and showed it to me." Reynolds' expression was part anger
and part bewilderment. "A little bitty gun, it looked like a
kid's play gun. But when she kept saying it—my God. I shoved her
out and I bolted the door, and then I called Leta's folks-and they
told me—told me about—" He put his head in his hands.

"
My God," said Hackett.

"
There was something wild about it all along,"
said Galeano. "A real nut you can say—"

Mendoza got up. "Jimmy, get me a line to the
Ventura P.D."

Len Reynolds was suddenly crying. Unashamed, he
brought out a handkerchief and mopped his eyes. "Leta dead,"
he said. "That crazy pushy girl. Not as if I'd ever—thought of
her like that. Leta. I—I feel as if I'd killed her myself, you
know? I never had anything against Leta—she was the nicest,
sweetest girl I ever knew—I wasn't good enough for her, was all.
And now—and now—" He blew his nose, got himself under a
little control. "I'll never go back to that place again. That
girl—"

Mendoza was talking to somebody at the Ventura police
station.
 
About four o'clock
Sanders called and talked to Palliser. He thought there was a chance
that Linda Carr was about to regain consciousness. If she did, it
might not be for long. Landers came in while they were on the phone,
and he and Palliser left the suspect rapist waiting in an
interrogation room and rushed over to the hospital.

She was moving restlessly in the high bed, and a
nurse was standing by to see she didn't disturb the I.V. needle. She
was moaning a little.

"
Her pulse is better," said Sanders. He
bent over the bed. "Lindal Linda, can you hear me?"

She stopped moaning and lay still for a few moments.

Then her eyes opened—blank eyes, wide and blue.

Palliser pushed Sanders aside and took his place.
"Linda," he said quietly, "I'm a police officer. Can
you tell us who hurt you?"

Slowly the eyes tried to focus on him. She said in a
thick drowsy voice, "Didn't—kill self—after all."

"
Linda. Who hurt you?"

She let out a little sigh. "Mike," she
said. "Mike."

She turned her face on the
pillow and fell asleep; but her breath was coming easily, regularly.

* * *

The Hoffman funeral was at ten o'clock on Monday
morning. Out of a sense of duty, Mendoza went to it. The only other
people there were the men from the Hollenbeck station, some of their
wives. And Cathy Robsen, sitting in a back row. The three caskets
were closed, and it was a brief formal ceremony, with no graveside
service.

Mendoza got back to the office at eleven-thirty, and
Lake said, "They waited for you to open the ball."

In his office Hackett and Higgins were talking with a
stocky blond man in a rumpled-looking gray suit. He got up as Mendoza
came in and offered a hand. "You'll be the boss. I'm Roy Dodd, I
talked to you yesterday.

We picked her up just where you told us, and I drove
her down this morning. This is the damndest thing I ever ran across.
The damndest. I didn't question her. Your baby."

Betty Simms was standing looking out the window. She
was a big girl, broad-shouldered and broad-hipped and heavy-bosomed.
She was wearing a bright-red wool dress and black high-heeled shoes.
"Oh, we checked her car as you asked. It's a white Nova about
eight years old."

"
De veras
," said
Mendoza, watching her. She turned around. She was black, with a round
plain face, broad lips, round little eyes under a bulging forehead.
"We also," said Dodd, "found the gun." He took it
out of his pocket and laid it on Mendoza's desk: a tiny thing barely
four inches long.

"
Who're you?" she asked Mendoza.

He told her. "Sit down, Miss Simms. We've got
some questions for you."

"All because he had to go and tell you,"
she said. "I never thought he'd do that. It was stupid, real
stupid. I told him, he oughta be grateful to me, get him out of all
that trouble—so he wouldn't have to pay her no more." She ran
her tongue over her lips. "Nobody should tell the fuzz nothing,
I thought anybody knows that. Then we could get married, see? Every
girl wants to get married."

"
Did you think Len wanted to marry you?"

"
Well, I heard him bitch 'n' bitch to Mr.
Chapman, he's the landlord, 'bout all the money he had to pay his
wife. Len's a real nice fellow—at least I thought he was—and he's
got a good steady job. Be nice to have regular money, if we got
married and had some kids. That's what I always wanted, a nice fellow
and some kids. But there was all that money he had to pay her. I
thought, you know, if she was dead he wouldn't have to, and we could
get married."

"
Did he ever ask you to marry him?" asked
Mendoza. She simpered a little. "Oh, not in so many words, but a
girl can always tell."

"How did you know where to find Mrs. Reynolds?"

"
I was goin' to be Mrs. Reynolds. That was easy.

I went in Len's apartment once and looked in the
little book where he keeps people's addresses. Do you know he's got a
picture of her in his apartment? I suppose it's to remind him how
terrible it was bein' married to her."

"
Like to tell us just how you did it?"

"
I don't care," she said. "I had that
little gun, I got it to protect myself when I was livin' in San
Francisco, in the city. A girl's got to be careful, 'specially when
she's pretty. I just phoned Mr. Shapiro, he's the boss where I work,
I was sick and couldn't come in, and I drove down here and found the
house. Twenty-seventh Street, and the number. I thought up the idea
about the Avon lady on the way down. I used to know a girl sold Avon
things. She didn't want to let me in, but I sort of went in anyway.
And she said about not havin' time look at anything but I went all
the way in and then I shot her with the gun."

"
You know, Betty," said Mendoza—he was
perched on the corner of his desk, gently swinging one ankle—"those
payments Len was making weren't alimony. They were child support, for
the little girl."

She turned up astonished eyes. "They was? You
sure?" She looked disgusted. "And I saw the kid! She was
right there! I coulda shot her too, just as easy, if I'd'a' known
that!"

Dodd said something under his breath.

"
It really wouldn't have made any difference,"
said Mendoza. "Len wasn't going to marry you, you know."

She looked sullen. "He might have. There've been
lots 'n' lots of fellows wanted to marry me. There was another fellow
I nearly married awhile back—but he wasn't as good-looking as Len."
She reflected. "I wonder if I could find him again."

"
You're not going to have the chance, Betty."

"
Why not? Oh. Oh, I suppose you're going to put
me in jail awhile for shooting her."

"
That's just what. Have you ever been in jail
before?"

All of a sudden she seemed to lose interest.

"
I don't know," she said vaguely. "I
don't remember."

"
My God," said Higgins.

"
Sergeant Hackett's going to take you over to
the jail now. But we'll be seeing you again."

"
O.K.," she said. She went out with Hackett
quietly.

"
My good God in heaven," said Dodd. Mendoza
sat down at his desk.

"
She's subnormal, of course. Arrested
development? They've got so many new names for everything these days.
Evidently she's been able to function, earn a living—but there may
be progressive deterioration. Let the head doctors fight it out."

The phone rang and he picked it up. "Yes,
Jimmy?"

"
You've got a call from the director of the
Humane Society. He wants to invite you to be the featured guest at
their annual banquet. You're getting a lot of mileage out of that
cat, Lieutenant?

"
¡Válgame Dios!
"
said Mendoza.

* * *

Landers called the hospital about four o'clock.
Sanders sounded worried. "I don't like this protracted
unconsciousness," he said. "She went off into a natural
sleep and then lapsed back again. I've got a hunch it's an
involuntary retreat from reality, to avoid remembering the experience
she's been through."

"
But how long might that go on?"

"
It might go on long enough," said Sanders,
"to block it off from the conscious mind entirely. She might
wake up with complete amnesia about what happened, simply because
it's too terrible to remember."

"
But you don't know that?"

"
We'll have to wait
and see."

* * *

Ken Kearney called about four o'clock on Monday
afternoon. "Well, we're here," he told Alison. "I had
the hell of a time getting hold of a U-Haul truck to bring 'em down.
The sheep ranch was to hell and gone north of Los Alamos, and I had
to go all the way to Lompoc to rent a U-Haul. Thought I'd never get
'em down here, but I did. They're up on the hill now, and Kate's
feeling sentimental about our first spread when we had a few."

He chuckled. Kate Kearney had been starting to move
their possessions into the new place for the last week. "Like to
come up and take a look?"

Everybody was excited about the sheep, and it had
stopped raining. Alison brought El Señor in, the other cats being in
already, and bundled the twins in parkas; Mairi bundled the baby in a
warm sleeper and a blanket. There wasn't room for Cedric too in the
Facel-Vega, and he was left staring after them lonesomely behind the
driveway gate.

Up in the hills above Burbank, they left the last
streets behind and wended up the blacktop road, with the twins asking
excited questions. Would the sheep be girls or boys? Did they have
names? Would they play like Cedric? Would they come in the house?

"
No, no, lambies, sheep stay out on the hills
where they belong."

"
What are wethers, Mairi?" asked Alison.

"
Well, achara, ah, mmh," said Mairi with an
eye on the twins, "they'll be gentlemen sheep that can't have
lambs."

"
Oh," said Alison amusedly. "Very
sensible of Ken. We wouldn't want lambs running all around every
spring."

"We could then," said Mairi. "Two or
three nice lambs would butcher verra well, and home—bred lamb is
far and away tastier than what you get at the market."

"
Eat your own lambs? After seeing them running
around? I couldn't."

"
Mamacita
, are we
gonna eat the sheepses?" asked Terry uneasily.

"
No, no, darling. The sheep are just for fun."

At that moment the gate came into view, their own
iron gate of the entrance to La Casa de la Genie Feliz, and just
beyond them in the new blacktop drive was Ken Kearney's car attached
to a U-Haul trailer. He was standing beside it, tall and
loose-limbed, and his little plump robin of a wife was standing
beside him. Up on the hillside—the house was beyond the crest of
the hill—were five white creatures loosely bunched together.

He came and opened the gate, shut it after the car.

"
Oh, they're pretty!" said Alison,
surprised. The sheep she'd remembered vaguely were the thin, grayish,
dingy sheep in Mexico, hopelessly foraging on thin pasture. These
creatures were white and plump and woolly, and at her voice a couple
of them baaaed at her and started down the hill toward the humans.
They had black faces and ears, and they looked absurdly as if they
were wearing black silk stockings and high-heeled black shoes.

Their dainty slender legs looked too frail to support
their bodies.

"
They don't butt things, do they?" she
asked.

"
No, no. This must be the two were
bottle-raised, the mother couldn't feed all four. They're tame as
dogs."

They came up baaaing, and Alison felt the smooth
black heads, the curled matted wool.

"
Oh, they're darling. Look, Terry, Johnny—feel
how soft!"

"
Och, they do put me in mind of my own
Highlands!" said Mairi sentimentally. "The dear wee black
faces! Our Scottish sheep are nae sa' big, o' course. These are grand
beasts, Mr. Kearney." `