Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (5 page)

Quite expectable, he thought sadly. What the hell was
wrong here? Just something a little funny, that he couldn't put a
finger on.

Palliser had found an address book in the desk. See
what showed up there, but . . .

And back in the office,
with Miss Corliss still telephoning in the background, he thought
abruptly that those two examination rooms hadn't been quite the same.
He went back to the rear one, next to the office. Near the door stood
an electric cabinet, squarish, about three feet high. That hadn't
been duplicated in the other room. It was white porcelain, baked
enamel, and across its front was a neat metal plaque. Sterilizer.

* * *

"I guess that musta been the guy killed Roberto
all right," said Miguel Garcia. He was still half scared,
self-important, self-conscious, genuinely awed at his own good luck.
"I guess it was lucky I ran."

"Maybe it was," said Palliser, beginning to
feel a little hopeful. It was after five; he wondered if Bert or
Landers had come up with anything at one of the hotels. He'd taken
part of the hotel list himself, had drawn blank, and then started to
hunt up all the boys who'd been at that Scout meeting. Miguel was the
ninth one he'd talked to; none of the others had known anything. He'd
found Miguel in this big schoolyard, pointed out by a couple of other
kids, and was talking to him here on a rickety wooden bench in the
still hot sun. Of course, he remembered absently, actually it was
only a little after four, sun time.

"Tell me exactly what happened, Miguel." He
lit a cigarette. "Everything you remember."

"Yes, sir. Excuse me, but nobody's supposed to
smoke on the school ground.” Palliser started to say that it didn't
matter, it was after school hours and he was grown up, and met
Miguel's solemn dark eyes, and stepped on his cigarette. A kid like
Miguel, several counts on him already, who unlike some kids down here
seemed to have some respect for the rules, and parents who encouraged
him to join the Scouts--well, no harm to set an example. He smiled at
Miguel, who was small for his fourteen years and a nice-looking boy,
if slightly grimy at this end of a day.

"Let's hear all about it."

"Yes, sir. Gee, it's awful--Roberto getting
killed like that. When we heard about it, Danny Lopez was telling
about it at lunchtime, gee, I thought right off it musta been that
guy--and I better tell somebody about it, I was goin' to ask my dad
when he gets home tonight--"

"
Well, you tell me now."

"Yes, sir. See, like I was just tellin' you, I'm
the only one went the same way as him, goin' home last night." A
couple of the boys had been called for by a parent, an older brother
or sister, but most of them hadn't been. Down here, kids were
expected to be self-reliant pretty young. And it wouldn't have been
quite dark yet, what with daylight saving--full dark about
eight-twenty, in July. Dusk, deepening dusk, as the boys walked along
Second Street. "So we went together, I mean, I kind of I caught
up to Roberto, he left first. At the corner of Corto, about there.
See, I had a lot further to go, we live on Angelina."

Palliser produced a city map and made him point out
the place. Miguel was unhesitant. "See, I'd go the other way, up
Douglas Street, about a block further along. It was the middle of
that block, just before I'd go the other way 'n' Roberto'd be turning
up Beverly, see. There was this guy standin' there by the curb--just
standin' there's all." He warmed to his tale now, and his dirty
hands flew out in gestures. "I dunno why he scared me, it was
just something about him--way he stood, kind of still, or something.
just as we come by, he stepped out nearer an' started to say
somethin'--he said something like, ‘Hey, kids'--only then I looked
at him, and when I saw his face I was all of a sudden awful scared,
and I just went on, kind of fast. But Roberto stopped. An' I--an' I
went on faster, up toward the corner, and then I looked back and .
Roberto was still talkin' to the guy--I thought I'd call him, tell
him come on, but then I didn't. And, well, the light turned green an'
I--just ran. But gee, it musta been him. The one did it. That
Slasher, like they call him. Why do you suppose he wanted to kill
Roberto, anyways?"

"We don't know," said Palliser. "Now,
what did the man look like, Miguel?"

"Gee," said the boy regretfully, "I
didn't have much of a look at him, mister. It was funny, what scared
me about him, I mean he didn't try to hit me or have a gun or
nothing. Kind of the way he stood. I dunno. It was almost dark, you
know, and not anywheres near a street light. He--he was kind of tall
and thin, I guess--I don't remember nothing about his
clothes--except, well, they seemed kind of loose on him, like they
didn't fit good. And he had this kind of red face, kind of
nasty-lookin'--"

Palliser took him over it again, but nothing else
emerged. Miguel couldn't say what kind of face, thin or round, long
nose or short, anything definite. The man had had a hat on, he hadn't
seen his hair. "It was just a minute, see--and it was nearly
dark--"

It was the most definite information in yet, and what
did it amount to? A tall thin man with a red face. And considering
Miguel's size, a medium-sized man might look tall to him. And come to
think, in the dusk how had the boy seen the red face?

He thanked Miguel and went back to his car. Get a
formal statement from the boy tomorrow. Report in, see if they wanted
him to stay overtime--if not, might go to see Roberta, if she wasn't
busy correcting her fourth-graders' papers. He yawned. He wondered if
Hackett had got anything on that chiropractor.

This Slasher. Hell of a thing .... "Manners
maketh man," he thought. If that Reyes kid hadn't been so well
brought up, to stop and answer the stranger on the street, he might
have been as alive as Miguel Garcia, who had providentially got
scared and run.

But this was a little something, from Miguel. Piece
by piece you built it up.

He drove back down Vignes to First Street, up to Los
Angeles Street, and parked in the big lot behind the solid looming
rectangle of the Police Facilities Building. He realized he was
hungry. He took the elevator up to the homicide office and asked Lake
if Hackett was in.

"No, he just called in. Said for you to call him
at home."

"O.K.” Palliser passed on Miguel's story. "Not
much, but more than we had before. You might circulate that very
vague description around." That was easily said; it would entail
a lot of work. Every patrolman had to be briefed, and because you
couldn't confine it to just the one area--the Slasher might turn up
anywhere next time, God forbid--every precinct station, the
sheriff's' boys, and suburban forces. Just in case. They were running
an extra car tonight, around that downtown area.

Higgins was on night tour this month; he lounged up
to hear about it, and said start the phoning. "Hackett turn up
anything definite on that new case?" asked Palliser.

"I don't think so," said Lake. "But he
said he doesn't like the way it smells. Could be he's pinch-hitting
for our Luis, havin' hunches."

Palliser yawned. "In Bermuda about now, I
understand," he said. "I wish I was in Bermuda. Listening
to some nice calypso over, say, a Cuba Libre .... ”
 
 

F0UR

"You will," said Angel, standing on tiptoe
to kiss him at the door, "have to learn to curb your language,
Art."

"
What? What have I been saying wrong?"

She laughed. "I scolded Mark for pulling the
cat's tail a while ago and he distinctly said, ‘Damn.' "

Hackett grinned. "Starting young. You all right?
You left those trash cans for me to bring in, I trust."

"I did. Of course I'm all right. Once you get
past the morning-sickness bit--I never felt better."

"Well," said Hackett doubtfully. It seemed
quite an undertaking to him.

"Silly," said Angel, and her mountain-pool
eyes that shaded from green to brown were smiling at him.

Mark Christopher, who would celebrate his second
birthday two months from now, fastened like a leech on Hackett's left
leg and demanded imperatively, "Kitty-kitty!"

"
How the hell did we get into all this?"
asked Hackett plaintively. "We said two, but if this isn't a
girl--I know you--and I'm not a millionaire like Luis, just
remember."

"I don't mind if it's not a girl," said
Angel. They wouldn't know about that for five months. "We can
always try again."

"That's just what I said. Nothing doing. These
days, they all expect college--”

"The more we have," said Angel logically,
"the better chance that one of them will make a lot of money and
support us in our old age. And there's a sort of exotic new French
casserole for dinner. Yes, I remembered about calories--though I
think the doctor's silly about that, you're a big man, you need lots
of good food. You're not really too fat."

"Not yet," said Hackett gloomily. Ten
pounds off, the doctor had said firmly.

"And you don't have to go out again, do you?"

"Well, there's a new one come up, on top of this
damned Slasher thing. I'd better call in, anyway, and if anything new
has turned up--"

Angel made a face at him. "Why did I ever marry
a cop?"

"You want to be reminded?" He reached for
her again but she laughed and backed off.

"Fifteen minutes--I'll just get it out of the
oven."

"Daddy get kitty-kitty!" said Mark
Christopher. Hackett looked around and pointed out kitty-kitty: the
big smoke-silver Persian curled in his basket by the hearth. "Kitty
won't play!" said Mark tearfully.

"Well, old boy, I can't do anything about that,"
said Hackett, who had learned this and that about cats in the time
since Mendoza had wished Silver Boy on them. He sat down in the big
armchair.

That Nestor. The outside thing, or the personal,
private kill? Something a little funny there, anyway. Those files . .
.

Something nagging at him--some little thing.

Chiropractors. A four-year-course now.

The evening paper, the Herald, was unopened there on
the ottoman. He didn't pick it up.

The Slasher. Quite the hell of a thing. The sooner
they picked that one up . . .

Some little thing he'd noticed, there. And for some
reason he didn't much like that Corliss woman. There was also the
wife.

And . . .

"A sterilizer," he said aloud suddenly. "A
sterilizer."

"Well, I try to keep
the place reasonably clean," said Angel amusedly from the
dining-room door. "Need we go quite that far?"

* * *

Alone out there in the night, a man walked a dark
street. His mind was a confused jumble of thoughts, and all the
thoughts were full of hate.

As long as he could remember, he had hated, and
envied, and resented. He had learned to hate early, and learned why
afterward.

He had hated the unknown mother who had left a baby
to the orphanage. He had hated the unknown father who had begotten
the baby. He had hated all the other children who laughed at him and
called him names, and hated the women at the orphanage who called him
stupid and punished him for breaking silly rules.

Other people had things, incomprehensibly and
unfairly. Things he had never had and didn't know how to get--things
he realized only dimly were good to have.

Other people concerned about them, and homes, and
settled existences. He didn't know why. He didn't know why about
anything, except that he hated.

He walked the dark street, an entity full of vague
undirected hatred against the entire world, and his hand closed over
the knife in its sheath, hard.

They had called him names, the other children.
Laughed at him. People didn't like to look at him, you could see it
in their eyes. As if he was a monster or something. Ever since the
fire that time in the school, and the pain--the awful pain . . .

Nobody, he thought. Nobody. Everybody but him.
Everybody against him. Bosses, calling him dumb. Girls . . .
Everybody hating him. He could hate right back, harder.

But there was always the blood; He liked seeing the
blood. Things felt better then. He got back at them then. For a
little while.

He came to an open door, hesitated, went in. It was a
bar, dark and noisy and crowded. He shouldered up to the bar and
found a stool, ordered whiskey straight. He felt the weight of the
knife in the sheath on his belt. The man on the stool next to him,
raising an arm to light a cigarette, jostled him; instant red fury
flowed through him like an electric current, but the bartender had
put the shot glass in front of him and he picked it up with a shaking
hand..

"
Sixty-fi' cents," said the bartender.

He felt in his other pocket, threw a silver dollar
onto the bar. He drank the whiskey, and as it jolted his insides he
felt a little better.

"You like to buy me a drink, honey?" A hand
on his arm, insinuating. He turned and looked at her. Another one
like that last one--a kind he knew, knew all about, the only kind of
woman he'd ever had, ever could have. She was a little high, her
voice was slurred, she had a scrawny aging body and her lipstick was
all smeared. "You buy a lil drink for Rosie, an' Rosie'll be
nice to you, honey. I seen you before, ain't I? Around--"