Streets of Death - Dell Shannon (3 page)

"And don’t anybody say, she could walk out or
divorce him," said Conway cynically. "The people we deal
with aren’t so logical. I suppose there’s got to be a boyfriend."

"Go and look," said Carey. "They don’t
seem to have had many friends. They used to live over on Berendo in
Hollywood, but I couldn’t locate anybody who knew them. All I’ll
say is, the thing is obvious. There’s got to be a boyfriend. She
gave him a key, or he knocked on the door and Fleming let him in. He
knocked him over the head--there’s not a trace of blood in the
place--and there’s a driveway down the side to garages at back, he
could’ve driven his car back there and lugged Fleming down to it in
five minutes. Ten feet from the back door. Your guess is as good as
mine what he might have done with him--maybe he’s got a boat and
dropped him out at sea, or buried him in his backyard--all I say is,
Fleming’s got to be dead, so it’s your baby."

"The logic I fol1ow," said Conway, "but
what a bastard to work. But if there is a boyfriend, somebody’s
bound to know. The other girls she works with?"

"Four of ’em. They all say she’s a loner,
doesn’t confide all girlish."

"What about her family?" asked Galeano.

"I said, she’s German--married him over there.
Oh, I guess she could have some family in Germany. I don’t know."

"If she does, it could be she’d mentioned
something in letters, but how to get at it--"

"No bets," said Carey. "I’ll wish
you good luck on it."

He got up.

"Thanks so much," said Conway. "You
know it’ll end up in Pending--your files and ours."

"Well, I kind of hope you nail her," said
Carey. "I don’t like having my common sense insulted.
Vanished, she says, batting her eyes at me--this blonde. A man in a
wheelchair, a cripple!"

"And the empty wheelchair there. I like that,"
said Galeano. "It’s a nice touch somehow."

"Do have fun with
it," said Carey.

* * *

Jason Grace and Tom Landers had been handed the new
rape-assault because they’d been on the one last week, and the one
last month, and this being in the same general neighborhood it might
add up to the same X. The first two had been funny. "I hope,"
said Landers now, "we’re not in for a spate of the offbeat
ones. If this does match up."

"Oh, I don’t know, relieves the monotony,"
said Grace. His chocolate-colored face with its dapper little
mustache like Mendoza’s was thoughtful as he reread the statement
from the second victim. "Has Jimmy talked to the hospital yet?"

"I’ll see."

The first victim, last month, had been a Mrs. Rena
Walker over on Twentieth Street. Mrs. Walker was sixty-four, an
upright and respectable widow, owned her own modest little house, and
devoted much of her time to the Afro-American Methodist Church where
she directed the choir. She said she’d just come home from
grocery-shopping, about four that afternoon, when her doorbell rang
and it was a boy asking about yard work. "I told him I couldn’t
afford anybody to cut the grass, my son-in-law does it for me, but he
was so polite, seemed like a real nice boy, I was sorry I had to turn
him down. So then he says could he trouble me for a drink of water,
ma’am, and I naturally said, why, surely, sonny, and let him in,
and the next thing I knew he pulled this knife-- But he was just a
little kid! Just a boy, didn’t look more than twelve years old!"
She had given them a description, such as it was: a light-colored
Negro boy about that age, maybe five-six, slightly built. Mrs. Walker
had definitely been raped, said the doctor, and cut about with a
knife. She had been surprised: cops weren’t much, any more.

The second victim, last week, had been Miss Ruth
Trimball who lived alone in a rented house two blocks down the street
from Mrs. Walker. She was sixty-eight, still worked at a drugstore
over on Jefferson, and had just got home from work when a boy rang
her doorbell and asked if she wanted anybody to do yard work. She
told the same story Mrs. Walker had--such a nice polite boy, she
hadn’t thought twice about letting him in, for his drink of water.
She’d been raped and cut too, and gave the same description.

Yesterday Mrs. Wilma Lightner had called LAPD and
reported finding her mother injured when she went to see her. Mrs.
Sylvia Beaver had been raped and knifed, according to the hospital,
but would recover. Piggott and Schenke, on night watch, had taken a
statement from Mrs. Lightner last night. Her mother was a widow,
sixty-two, owned her own home on Twenty-third Street, was living on
Social Security.

Landers came back to report that the hospital said
Mrs. Beaver could be questioned. "Take your car," he added,
"that thing’s acting up on me--I’m going to have to figure
on a new one." And what with Phil talking about new
furniture--he and Policewoman Phil O’Neill had just got married
last August, and Landers was discovering all the fallacies of that
one about two living as cheaply as one. The Corvair was of an age to
be retired, and with Phil so enthusiastic about her little Gremlin
he’d rather like to try one of his own, but the payments--

They took Grace’s car, the little blue racing Elva.
At the hospital, they found Mrs. Beaver propped up in bed with her
daughter in attendance. She was a fat, black, very
respectable--looking matron with round steel-rimmed spectacles, and
she looked at the detectives indignantly.

"Tell you? I can most certainly tell you all
about it!" she said loudly. "I was never so surprised in my
life! He was just a little kid--a little boy! Rang the bell and asked
to cut my lawn for a dollar. I told him I didn’t need anybody to
cut the grass, but he seemed like a nice youngster, so polite and
all, and when he asked for a drink of water, I didn’t see any harm
in letting him in--"

She gave them the same description. It amounted to
assault with intent, like the other ones.

"Offbeat all right," said Grace on the way
back to headquarters. And of course there was no lead on it at all.
They could look in Records for the description, but it was general.

At the office, Hackett was
in talking to Mendoza, and as they came in Lake told Grace and
Landers that there was a new body reported by the Fire Department.
Glasser and Palliser had gone out on it.

* * *

"There’s nothing in it," said Hackett. "I
gave it an hour or two--just to look--and it’s silly. This Yeager
is letting his imagination run wild or something. Overheard a joke
and built it up. These Lamperts are ordinary quiet people, the son’s
on full disability from a service injury, and by what I heard from
the people I talked to in the apartment, they get on just fine
together."

"Yes," said Mendoza inattentively, and
pulled the trigger on his flame-thrower.

"That damned thing," said Hackett. "Set
the place afire if you’re not careful."

"Don’t be silly, Arturo." The phone
buzzed on his desk and he picked it up. "Robbery-Homicide,
Mendoza."

Without preamble, Dr. Bainbridge said crisply in his
ear, "Traffic sent in a body on Monday night, said to be a
hit-run victim. What it looked like. It isn’t. Man about thirty, a
heavy drinker, and he was beaten to death with a club or something
similar. I thought you’d like to know."

"Hell and damnation!" said Mendoza.
 

TWO

PALLISER WENT our with Glasser on the new call, and
condescended to fold his six feet into the little Gremlin Glasser had
so luckily won in a drawing last year. As Glasser backed out of the
slot Palliser massaged his handsome straight nose in a habitual
gesture and said, "You know, I’ll have to do something about
that dog, damn it."

"What dog? Oh, the pup that woman gave you?"

"That one," said Palliser. "She’s a
very nice dog, Trina, but she’s big, and going to be bigger. A
German shepherd after all. She ought to have obedience training, but
damn it, how can I take her? Robin can’t, with the baby. I’ve
been on the phone to this local club, and the nearest class to us is
Saturday afternoons, and I’m only off on Monday. This fellow said I
could get a book and try training her myself, just a few minutes a
day, but I don’t know."

Glasser hadn’t any useful suggestions.

The new call turned out to be an old building out on
San Pedro, plastered with CONDEMNED signs and looking ready to fall
down, all four stories of it. The fire truck was still there, and the
battalion chief waiting for them. "Not much of a fire," he
told them, "but when we’d knocked it down we found the body.
Somebody likely thought he’d get rid of it by lighting a match, but
he bungled the job, this damp weather."

"Arson?" said Glasser. "Definitely?"

"You better believe. A trail of kerosene to the
body, but it fizzled out--you notice it’s a derelict building, part
of the roof’s gone and there was a mist this morning. It’s back
here." Even on this gray morning threatening rain, a little
crowd had gathered to watch the activity, and the uniformed men from
the black and white were keeping them back. The chief led Glasser and
Palliser into what might have started life as a small hotel fifty
years ago, and ended up as an apartment house. The place had been a
shambles even before the fire; there were clusters of broken bricks
and heaps of plaster dust, gaping empty doorways, and most of it was
open to the sky. "The quake in seventy-one finished it off, but
they just haven’t got round to taking the rest of it down. There
you are." The chief pointed unnecessarily.

Near what had been the rear door of the building,
between the empty doorway and another pile of rubbled brick, the body
sprawled almost casually. Palliser and Glasser didn’t need the
chief’s interpretation to read what had likely happened here. It
was a little, slender body, and somebody had tried to set fire to it,
but the fire had gone out without doing much damage.

"A lot of smoke," said the chief. "Fellow
at the tailor shop down the block called in the alarm." There
was a cluster of miscellaneous little shops down the block, in other
ramshackle buildings not yet condemned--the cluster of citizens
outside had probably come from there.

Palliser squatted over the body. "Make any
educated guesses, Henry?"

"One," said Glasser sadly. "She was
raped-assaulted at least--and probably strangled."

Palliser grunted. "You’d better call up S.I.D.
Go through the motions, photographs and so on." Glasser went out
to use the radio in the black and white.

The body was that of a young girl: very young,
Palliser thought. Dark blonde, thin, hard to say if she’d been
pretty or not, the face discolored with death or the effects of
strangulation, the body already stiff: dead awhile. She was naked
from the waist down, and there was dark dried blood on the inside of
her thin little-girl thighs. Still on the upper half of the body was
a pale-green knit turtleneck sweater, pulled up to show part of a
dirty white brassiere; by the slight small swell of one breast, she’d
hardly needed that. On her feet were what looked like new sneakers,
blue and white, fairly clean, and white ankle socks. One arm was
flung out from the body, and Palliser had just made a couple of
discoveries when Glasser came back.

"The mobile lab’s on the way."

"Good. Look at this," said Palliser. "Makes
it not quite so anonymous, at least. We may get her identified
right off."

"Oh, yes," said Glasser, squatting beside
him. "Helpful."

The trail of kerosene had led from the front hallway,
but the fire had first created a lot of smoke, and according to the
engine boys had been already dying out when they got here; it hadn’t
damaged the body at all. On the outflung bare arm on the inside of
the elbow, clearly visible, was a long puckered scar; on the third
finger of that hand was a ring. Palliser had delicately manipulated
the nearly rigid wrist around to inspect the bezel. "We’ll
want pictures, but it could make shortcuts all right." The ring
was a school ring, the usual indecipherable crest, a little blue
enamel, and in minute letters around that, FRESNO JR. HIGH. Palliser
stood up.

"Fresno," said Glasser. "My God, these
kids. She doesn’t look over thirteen or fourteen. And ending up
down here--" But it wasn’t anything new, they’d seen much
the same thing before, and there wasn’t much to say about it.

They waited for the mobile lab, told Duke to get
shots of the ring and send it up to the office. It was getting on for
noon then. In the Missing Persons office back at headquarters they
found Lieutenant Carey hunched over a report, and he just groaned at
mention of a possibly--reported-missing juvenile.

"We’ve got a million of ’em, from all over
the country. Take your pick."

"Maybe we can narrow it down," said
Palliser. "I don’t think this one was very far into the teens.
An older one, she could have been out roaming on her own a couple of
years, but one this young--she might not have been away from home and
mother very long. And we’ve got two good leads--she had on a ring
from Fresno Junior High, and there’s a distinctive scar on the left
arm."

"
We can have a look at the recent files,"
said Carey.