The Owlhoot

by J. T. Edson

  Wishing to make certain that Laurie was aware of their presence, Brad had entered the Temple House shortly before six o’clock and sought out the superintendent. Assessing the man’s character, the big blond had concocted a story which would best serve the peace officers’ purpose. Unless Brad missed his guess, the super was the kind of man who could not resist grandstanding, especially to a pretty girl. So, if Laurie should question him about Brad’s visit, he would begin by doing as the deputy had asked, saying it was just a routine call. Pressed further, Brad felt sure that he would confess the visit had been in connection with the new occupants of Apartment Eighteen; parading his special knowledge to make himself appear more important, the confidant of the deputy, to the girl.

  The visit, story and ‘accidental’ meeting with Laurie all formed part of the ‘psychological tailing’ operation. Made nervous by the deputies’ presence, she would most likely find an early opportunity to question the super. If she accepted Brad’s fabrication—and the deputies believed she would want to accept it—her anxieties and concern would diminish. Lulled into a sense of false security, the impact would be so much greater when she realized that she was the real object of the surveillance.

  In her apartment, Laurie tried to control her growing anxiety. To prevent herself from crossing to the window and betraying her concern by looking at the deputy car, she cooked a meal. Although possessing a healthy appetite, she could only pick at the food. At last she decided that she must settle her doubts one way or the other. From what she knew of the superintendent, he would be only too willing to tell her why the deputy had called, provided she put the question to him in a suitable manner.

  Changing into a pair of black stretch pants, a tight sweater that left her midriff bare and flip-flop sandals, Laurie studied her reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Old Kroon would be eager to answer any questions if she let him look her over with lecherous eyes. Suitably dressed for her mission, she left the apartment.

  If Laurie had looked along the passage, she might have seen that the door to Apartment Eighteen was slightly ajar. Closer scrutiny would have detected an eye peering through the crack at her. Not that such an opportunity would have arose. At the first sign of Laurie turning her way, the watcher would have closed the door. However the blonde neither looked nor turned along the passage, but went to the elevator and disappeared inside.

  ‘Stake-out to all observers,’ said the good-looking, fashionably-dressed brunette policewoman, speaking into her Voice Commander radio as she closed the door. ‘Suspect just entered elevator. May be leaving.’

  On reaching the ground floor, Laurie saw the tall, angular figure of the superintendent standing in the entrance hall. Hearing the clatter of Laurie’s sandals, he turned and his eyes raked her from head to foot.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Zingel,’ Kroon greeted, staring at the mounds of her breasts as they forced against the thin material of the sweater.

  ‘Hello, Mr. Kroon,’ Laurie answered, flashing a dazzling smile his way. ‘How is everything?’

  ‘I can’t complain,’ Kroon replied and his gaze moved down to her hips.

  ‘Wasn’t that a deputy sheriff I saw as I came in earlier?’ Laurie inquired with nonchalant casualness, despite her inner concern.

  Kroon adopted a mysterious air and replied, ‘Yes. He was just making a routine check ‘

  ‘Oh,’ Laurie said and started to turn slowly away. ‘I thought that it might be something interesting.’

  Not wishing to have Laurie go away too quickly, Kroon darted a glance around and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.

  ‘Strictly between you and me, Miss Zingel, that wasn’t the reason he called. I know you don’t gossip with the other roomers, so I can tell you. Strictly in confidence, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Laurie agreed.

  Already she felt the tension dying away. If the deputy had been inquiring about her, Kroon’s behavior would have been less friendly and amiable. Woman-like, her curiosity was still aroused and she waited eagerly to learn which of the building’s occupants had attracted the attention of the law.

  ‘He was asking about the two young women in Apartment Eighteen,’ Kroon said in the tones of one imparting secret information.

  ‘Why?’ Laurie asked.

  ‘I couldn’t tell a young lady that,’ Kroon answered and winked. ‘But it’s to do with the way they use their telephone.’

  ‘Oh,’ Laurie purred coyly. ‘I get it. And they look such nice girls at that!’

  ‘I was going to evict them, but I decided against it. Like I told the deputy, if I did that he’d have to start looking for their next place. So I’m letting them stay on and the law’ll grab off the whole outfit.’

  While Laurie would rather have heard the opposite, she hid her feelings. The watching peace officers would not interfere with her plans, for they did not suspect her. When the time came, she could do as she had planned from the start. Putting on her most dazzling smile, she prepared to leave the super.

  ‘That was smart of you,’ she complimented. ‘Well, I’d better go up and make supper.’

  ‘When will you be leaving us, Miss Zingel?’ Kroon inquired.

  ‘I’m just waiting to hear from mom,’ Laurie replied. ‘But I won’t be leaving, I’ll be back in two weeks.’

  Feasting his eyes on her shapely figure, Kroon watched until she had entered the elevator. While Miss Zingel’s apartment would not be vacant, he could offer the plump, blonde woman Number Eighteen if she came back looking for accommodation. He wondered what had given the woman the idea that Miss Zingel was leaving. Anyways, he had straightened her out on that point. Kroon did not know that Woman Deputy Joan Hilton was an expert at obtaining information without the one giving it being aware of doing so.

  On leaving the elevator, Laurie looked towards Apartment Eighteen. Acting so quickly that the blonde did not see it happen, the watching policewoman closed the door. When she drew it open sufficiently for her needs, she saw Laurie enter her apartment. Taking up the radio, the policewoman passed the word that the suspect had returned.

  ‘The way she looked straight at our door, I think she’s been talking to the super,’ the brunette finished. ‘Brad Counter, you’ve plumb ruined our good names.’

  ‘And this stake-out’s going to ruin our beauty-sleep,’ the tall, slender, beautiful black-haired girl at the table went on.

  ‘You should talk,’ came the voice of the telephone-tap operator. ‘I’m in a basement and there’s a deer’s head on the wall keeps looking at me like it’s saying, “You’re the lousy son who put me here’’.’

  ‘At least you’re inside,’ Valenca pointed out from the car at the rear of the building. ‘I have to share this heap with Lars.’

  ‘If he snores as much as Alice, I’m real sorry for you,’ Brad commented.

  ‘How do you know Alice snores, Psycho One?’ asked the brunette.

  ‘We’ve done stake-outs together,’ Alice replied. ‘How else?’

  ‘As you say, darling,’ the brunette purred. ‘How else?’

  Then the talk stopped. In the car, Alice and Brad made themselves as comfortable as they could manage. As Alice had said, she and her partner had done stake-outs together. So they knew what to expect. However, one advantage of ‘psychological tailing’ was that they could leave their place of concealment and stretch their legs without worrying about the suspect seeing them.

  Time went by slowly. Night fell and the peace officers continued their watch. Clearly Laurie did not intend to go out that night. She drew the drapes at dusk and by half past ten the lights went out behind them. Although Alice called the stake-out and informed them of it, they did not report that the blonde was leaving her apartment.

  Despite the evidence that Laurie had gone to bed, one of the policewomen remained seated by and peering through the slightly-open door. In the basement of the sporting goods store, the member of the Communications Bureau stayed close to his equipment ready to intercept a
nd record any messages that Laurie received on her telephone. Behind the Temple House, Lars Larsen left his partner in the car while he went to grab a meal. In the alley opposite the apartment building, Brad and Alice played chess on a pocket set she had bought during the journey from the Central Receiving Hospital to Longley Street. Further along the street, in their undercover car, Joan Hilton and her stocky, medium-sized, pure-blood Comanche partner, Sam Cuchilo, sat and waited for something to happen.

  Shortly after midnight, Brad saw First Deputy McCall coming into the alley. Without waking Alice, sleeping on the back seat, the big blond opened the door and stepped from the car.

  ‘Everything all right?’ McCall inquired.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Brad replied. ‘I dearly love stake-outs. But I’d sooner do them under a sagebrush down by the Rio Grande in a rainstorm.’

  ‘Give me time,’ McCall said dryly. ‘I’ll likely be able to fix one for you.’

  Although the men kept their voices down, Alice stirred and sat up. She joined them outside the car, stretching her arms and sucking in a deep breath.

  ‘Anything doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Brad answered. ‘That Zingel gal’s got better sense than we have. She’s curled up in her soft little bed for the night.’

  McCall listened to a report of the deputies’ activities. After hearing of how Brad had handled the Temple House’s superintendent, the First Deputy gave a soft grunt that rated as an expression of his approval.

  ‘It’ll do,’ McCall stated when Alice had finished describing the work so far. Coming from him, the words amounted almost to a standing ovation. ‘That owlhoot of your’s’s been at it again. He hit three cars out on the turn-offs from State Auto Road tonight. Made himself about four hundred dollars this time.’

  ‘Was anybody hurt?’ Alice demanded.

  ‘Nope. He used the same M.O. as last night. Had the victims empty their money into his hat. Only thing different was that he wore gloves. One of the victims reckoned he thought of jumping the owlhoot, but figured it wasn’t worth chancing for fifty bucks. The other two handed over, but thought the owlhoot was more of a joke than a danger.’

  While she was relieved to learn that nobody had been hurt, Alice listened to McCall with a sense of foreboding. She wondered how long it would be before somebody decided that the joke had gone far enough and was hurt trying to prove his point to the owlhoot.

  Seven

  The fact that she, not the occupants of Apartment Eighteen, was the subject of the peace officers’ surveillance did not strike Laurie Zingel until she went to collect her convertible from the Euro-Tex parking lot at the end of her day’s work. Even then she tried to fight off the bitter acceptance that maybe the law knew more about her affairs than she had imagined.

  On rising that morning, she had been so certain of being unsuspected that she did no more than glance out of the window to see if the deputies still maintained their watch. She had assumed that the car in the alley was the same one which had given her such a fright the previous night. Driving across town, she had been too busy coping with the work-going traffic to notice the deputy car following her. Although she had seen it halted by the gates to the parking lot, while going from her convertible to the office, she had attached no importance to it. Two men sat inside it, not the red-headed woman deputy and the big blond. Visits by deputies and other peace officers had become so commonplace since the robbery that she missed the significance of the pair’s presence.

  Laurie’s day had been normal enough; routine work in the office, avoiding the flirtatious advances of a couple of company wolves, lunch on the premises and finally leaving to collect her car to drive home. If she thought of the deputies watching the Temple House, it was merely to wonder if they had learned anything about the activities of the girls in Apartment Eighteen.

  While walking to the car, Laurie became aware of a growing feeling that somebody watched her. Not merely watched her with the interest of men in a pretty, shapely girl wearing attractive, revealing clothes, but studied her in a cold, calculating manner. Try as she might, she could not throw off the sensation. So she yielded to it and looked around. At first she saw only the familiar sight of other employees hurrying to collect their cars and head for home. Then she turned her eyes towards the wire-net fence surrounding the lot. Through its mesh she could see the street—and the black and white Oldsmobile parked on it.

  The realization came like a flash. It was not the car she had seen there that morning, but the one from the Temple House. Seated at its wheel, the red-haired woman deputy looked into the parking lot. Laurie turned her head as the female peace officer’s eyes fixed on her. Staring at the gates, the little blonde saw the big blond standing by them. Like his partner, he was looking straight at Laurie. Forcing herself to keep moving, she boarded her convertible. Fortunately its top was up, so nobody saw her sitting rigid behind the wheel and fighting to regain control of her emotions.

  ‘It can’t be me they’re after,’ she breathed as she started the engine. ‘It can’t be. So they’re here. The sheriff wouldn’t keep the same deputies watching those girls, they’d soon get wise to them. Those two’ve been here on some other inquiry. They’re not after me.’

  A sentiment she repeated many times during the drive home. Halfway from the company to Longley Street, while stopped by a red light, she became aware that the deputy car was right behind her. She could see its occupants and recognize them. Laurie’s self-confidence started to shake, but it held. Under that merry exterior was a tough resilience and a sizeable amount of ego. Having grown accustomed to believing that she and Sandwich had outwitted the dumb peace officers, she fought back against admitting that she might be wrong.

  Even so Laurie’s complacency received another severe jolt on reaching the Temple House. She parked her convertible and saw the deputy car halt across Longley Street. There was no other vehicle in the alley between the drug and music stores. That might mean the stake-out had been brought to a successful conclusion and the officers involved recalled to the Sheriff’s Office.

  For all her theory, Laurie could not bring herself to look directly at the deputy car as she left her convertible. Staring pointedly away from them, she received another shock. A medium-sized man of Latin origin, wearing a deputy sheriff’s uniform, stood at the opposite side of the lot. Even as Laurie looked at him, he raised his hand in a signal to the peace officers beyond her. Then, finding that Laurie had noticed him, he turned and walked out of sight behind the building. Letting out her held-back breath in a gasping sob, Laurie almost ran to the side door and let herself into the Temple House.

  ‘She’s worried, Brad,’ Alice commented as they watched the blonde’s reaction to the sight of Deputy Sheriff Valenca.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Brad admitted. ‘Thing being, is she worried enough to try to join Sandwich?’

  ‘I hope so. The sooner we can get back to hunting the owlhoot, the happier I’ll be.’

  Relieved by a day watch deputy team at four o’clock that morning, Alice and Brad had not bothered to go up to the Sheriff’s Office after leaving the Oldsmobile in the D.P.S. Building’s parking lot. Instead they had collected Brad’s M.G. and gone to Alice’s apartment. They had slept until almost noon, too tired to think of making love. Over their belated breakfast, they had studied the newspaper’s comments on the owlhoot.

  As they had expected, the Lightning and the Mirror went for the story in a big way. Yet, reading the stories, Alice had felt disturbed. Although representing opposite poles of political and social thought, the two papers each tended to treat the owlhoot’s robberies as more of a joke than a potentially serious series of crimes. The fact that one victim had been injured received scant attention, which might not be entirely the newspapers’ fault. Respecting Ivy Monoghan’s pleas, the Public Relations Bureau had withheld her and Hoopler’s names when preparing a press hand-out. P.R. had merely said that one victim had been pistol-whipped by the owlhoot, but his condition wa
s not serious. Nor had Hoopler been available for comment. Wishing to avoid any mention of her connection with him, Ivy had arranged for Hoopler to be transferred secretly to a private sanatorium shortly after the deputies had interviewed him.

  The television and radio newscasts had followed the general trend of the newspapers. On the former, four of the owlhoot’s victims were interviewed and treated the loss of their money as little more than the price of an amusing conversation-piece. Both of the male victims had said that their lack of resistance stemmed from a desire to avoid antagonizing an obvious nut, not out of fears for their own safety. The two girls had claimed that they were not frightened by the incident and thought it to be a real gasser, something to talk about at the office.

  All of the news-media had paid lip-service to the P.R.’s warning by saying that the municipal and county law enforcement departments considered the owlhoot dangerous, but gave that aspect of the hand-out the smallest coverage of all.

  Sharing Alice’s concern, Brad had readily agreed to go in early that afternoon. They had arrived at the Sheriff’s Office at three-thirty. After logging on, they had set about acquainting themselves with the latest developments of the owlhoot case. These proved to be few and mostly negative. Berns-Martin’s letter had not yet arrived, although they had not expected it so soon. All of the trio suggested by R. & I. had proved to have excellent alibis for the night of the owlhoot’s first appearance and protested vigorously at being suspected of pulling such a loco caper. The previous night’s victims had merely corroborated the earlier complainants’ description of the robber and all mentioned his use of old-West terms or expressions when giving his warnings and threats. Once again the S.I.B.’s search specialists had turned in negative reports. Nobody, hunters in the woods or lovers using the turn-offs, had come forward to say that they had heard or seen a man on a trail motorcycle passing in the night.