Rouse the Demon: A Krug & Kellog Thriller (The Krug & Kellog Thriller Series Book 3)

by Carolyn Weston

  “I’m sorry, that must be a blow.” Again he paused. “Miss Crewes, why did Dr. Myrick make an exception of Sandra Simmons?”

  “Pressure, I suppose. She was arrested for possession early in June, and I guess her family took it very hard. Also, her father is one of those high-powered tycoon types. What Daddy wants, Daddy gets. When no miracles happened, he made her drop out again.”

  “Did he give any reason?”

  “I can’t tell you that without violating a confidence.”

  “Was there any suggestion that Dr. Myrick had made advances of any sort?”

  “None whatsoever. What Mr. Simmons objected to was the group, apparently. Some nonsense about Sandy’s attitudes being corrupted. If she’s been suggesting anything else—”

  “Obviously you don’t know,” he stopped her. “Miss Crewes, Sandra Simmons died July twenty-second…”

  Shock number one, Adrian remembered. Number two had followed almost immediately when the detective told her that various things seemed to suggest that Stephen Myrick might have been involved, or at least interested, in spiritualism. Adrian had laughed, saying that was impossible. Surely he must be joking?

  But he wasn’t, it turned out. There were those books upstairs, he said, and bound volumes of a periodical published by an English spiritualist society. Furthermore, there were hints that his friends were also involved…

  “I don’t believe it,” Adrian said angrily.

  But as if he hadn’t heard her, the detective continued, “Possibly that’s why he kept his friends away. So as not to—well, I’m only guessing from your reaction—not to create any prejudice? About the authenticity of your work, I mean.”

  He waited, but Adrian was speechless. More fool you, she kept thinking. More fool you for not knowing…

  “Well, I don’t suppose it’s important,” the detective was saying, and he rose abruptly. “Anyway, thank you, Miss Crewes, you’ve been a great help.”

  “Then—then perhaps you’ll return the favor?” She smiled unsteadily, appalled at the revelation of her own blindness. “I’d like to get back to work. Have to wind it all up somehow.”

  He had called someone named Timms, and very respectfully asked when the Myrick house would be unsealed. “Noon,” he told her when he hung up. “If you care to be seen with a dirty old detective, I’ll be glad to give you a lift.”

  But Adrian had taken her own car—a specially modified paraplegic’s model which she’d had shipped out from New York. It had hand controls for the brake and accelerator, and it was her freedom, this car, her independence. She wished she could get in it, start driving and never stop.

  SEVENTEEN

  Judy Flesher’s mother worked in Las Vegas, the landlord in Riverside reported over long distance. She had paid the first month’s rent, then evidently left town. So was he to blame because the woman left an underage daughter? It was her business what she did, correct? As for him, he wasn’t running any welfare bureau, and as long as she sent the rent from Vegas—Well, his policy was to leave his tenants alone, what they did was their own affair.

  “Get Vegas PD on it,” Timms instructed. “But tell ’em to take it easy with the mother. If the kid’s there, or in touch, we don’t want to stampede her before we get a chance to talk to her.”

  “Right.” Krug nodded. “Kid gloves all the way. Christ,” he added sourly when Timms was out of earshot, “a lousy bunch of juveys, we got to handle ’em like marshmallows.” He squinted at Casey speculatively. “So what the hell you been up to?”

  “Nothing much, Al.” Casey couldn’t help grinning. “Little retouching of our picture of Myrick as the superstud.” He filled in the details, starting with the fact that Mona Allman was an octogenarian.

  “Now for sure I’ve heard everything,” Krug marveled when he had finished. “You mean to tell me all those swingers are maybe spook hunters? Instead of a daisy chain, they get their jollies rapping tables?”

  “It’s a possibility, Al.”

  “What a bunch of weirdos.” He leaned back in his swivel chair. “Okay, so you lay the spiritualism bit on Crewes, she does a quiet flip—then what?”

  “Nothing much. Except everything she told me seems to point to the Flesher girl. In fact, she’s almost too good a prospect at this point.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that yesterday?” Krug was looking cheerier by the minute. “Ought to nail her, dammit. But the brass—Ah, the hell with it. Listen, you want to hear about this so-called maniac I went out on?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The door’s open, see, when I drive up. A lot of hollering and carrying on inside this dingbat house. So I poke my head in the door, and here’s this skinny little shrimp waving a rusty old pistol he must’ve found in the bottom of a trunk. And his wife and four daughters are screaming their heads off. Christ, you should’ve seen ’em!” Krug guffawed. “Five of the biggest females I’ve ever seen. Any one of ’em could of killed the guy just leaning on him! Well, anyhow, it turns out they been heckling the poor sap to cut loose with some dough for new living-room furniture. Every day, every minute he’s home, he says, they been giving him the business. The daughters got their boyfriends coming to the house and they’re ashamed of it. Boyfriends! If you could see these four broads. Christ, those boyfriends must all be Goliaths! And the wife, she’s needling the old man, too. All the time, he says, even in bed. All her lady friends have got new stuff, and here she’s living like a welfare case.”

  Denny Haynes had wandered over from his desk to listen, sniffing dolefully, and at this point he asked if Krug had booked the would-be assailant.

  “Hell, no,” Krug said scornfully. “Took the poor bastard down the street for a couple beers and the Dutch-uncle routine. Then I went back and read the riot act to that bunch of females.”

  “Think they listened, Al?”

  “Sure they did. It was poor Daddy this and poor Daddy that when I brought him back. Love and kisses, the whole bit. Poor sucker had so much lipstick on him by the time I left—”

  “So what happens about the furniture?”

  Krug grinned. “You know what happens. They give it a rest for a week, then start in on him again.”

  “Yeah, and next time,” Haynes suggested. “Maybe he finds himself a hatchet?”

  “Well, if he does, he’s got his work cut out for him, that’s for sure.”

  “Telex,” Zwingler sang out. “San Francisco PD.”

  “What’s the word, Ralph?”

  “Nix on Myrick’s brother. He had a bridge game with friends till midnight or after. It checks out with all parties concerned.”

  Krug fished out one of his smelly cigars and lit it with a kitchen match snapped alight with his thumbnail. “Figures,” he said, like a movie cop. “That one was way too easy for us. What’d you end up with this morning on that rooming-house squeal?”

  “Same old story.” Zwingler’s round face drooped. “Suicide. But in case it hurts the next of kin, we can call it accidental.”

  Same old story, Casey thought as he went downstairs to send the message to Las Vegas. Despair, loneliness, sorrow. And murder, another part of his mind added. And robbery. And mayhem. This wasn’t keeping the peace or serving humanity; this was sweeping up the wreckage of human failure.

  But his spirits lifted after a quick lunch. It was tacos this time—not a dietary improvement, but at least it made a change.

  “Let’s go check in, see what’s happening,” Krug said when they had finished eating. He belched resonantly. “If nothing’s going on we’ll grab a cup of coffee at the hot dog stand. Maybe the Flesher girl’s showed up. If she hasn’t, we’ll hit her apartment again.”

  EIGHTEEN

  At the bureau they walked in on what looked to be a counterculture mini-convention. Four barefoot, hairy teenagers variously dressed in overalls and hayseed hats, or funky leather outfits with embroidered patche
s, ankh medals and Easy Rider spectacles, were milling around the anteroom taking up a lot of space. Two more perched at desks in the squad room and were giving Zwingler and Haynes and two other detectives a bad time.

  “The Children’s Hour,” Lieutenant Timms commented when Casey and Krug checked by at his corner desk. “All their statements are signed, and you wouldn’t believe the cooperation about fingerprinting. If I didn’t know better…” Shrugging, he leveled a finger at Casey. “Didn’t get a chance to talk to you about that Crewes woman. Al, you get started with those kids. The big point now is the Flesher girl’s whereabouts.” And as Krug strode away, he beamed in on Casey again. “All right, let’s hear what you got out of her.”

  Casey told him everything he had reported earlier to his partner, but Timms looked unimpressed.

  “Forget all that spiritualism stuff,” he advised impatiently. “They got alibis, so what do we care?” Then he paused, frowning. “On the other hand, maybe it explains part of the Crewes woman’s story. All that business about how privately Myrick lived.” He smiled to himself. “A bluestocking like her, she’d have blown her top if she’d found out he was mixed up with some séance group, and he probably knew it. Okay,” he went on briskly, “so she doesn’t buy any theories about the tapes being any kind of motivation. Any explanation why she was so hot to get back in the house?”

  “Just that she wanted to get on with her work.”

  “You said yesterday she told you she couldn’t go on with it.”

  “Well, she mentioned she’d be winding up. Probably something to do with their publisher’s contract.”

  Timms leaned back, staring beyond Casey into the busy squad room. “Still something fishy about that whole setup there.” He scowled moodily and Casey thought better of commenting. “And there’s still that goddamn damaged tape.” Timms kept tapping his teeth with the eraser on his pencil. “Got to be some reason that housekeeper hinted maybe Crewes did it. Can’t discount yet there might have been a real war of some kind going on there. For instance, if she found out he was a table rapper—”

  “Even if she did, they were collaborators,” Casey protested. “They had a contract. Destroying that tape would have hurt her professionally as much as Myrick.”

  “All right, if she was a man, I’d buy that. But a woman, I don’t know. And a young good-looking one if she didn’t have those legs. Now, wait a minute,” he went on before Casey could speak. “Aside from all this claptrap about spiritualism, we’ve still got a victim who made a business out of women, right? All his fat patients were females. And don’t forget what Simmons told you.”

  “He was only guessing, Lieutenant. And Miss Crewes said it was the group in general Simmons objected to.”

  “From the looks of ’em, can’t say I blame him. Goddammit”—he slapped the desk top hard—“we’ve got to locate that Flesher girl! She’s bound to spill something, give us some kind of a line on this.” He peered at Casey. “Any comments, by the way? Crewes have any bright ideas?”

  “Only what I told you, sir.”

  “All right. Sounds like more claptrap to me, but let’s try to get something out of those kids. Maybe one of ’em knows where the girl’s holed up.” He sighed gustily. “I just hope it wasn’t a mistake, you letting that woman back in Myrick’s house.”

  “Don’t get what you mean, Lieutenant.”

  “Forget it, I’m probably borrowing trouble.”

  The six teenagers were all different, yet in some mysterious way all the same, Casey decided later. Like a family resemblance, a kinship of behavior rather than blood—the JD’s habitual kind of half-sullen, half-kidding adolescent arrogance.

  All were fingerprinted, then each one was questioned individually about Judy Flesher. The one Casey drew, Ellis Johnson, kept calling him “piggie,” assuring him cockily that he was scaring nobody.

  “Don’t try to psych me, Ellis,” Casey said patiently. “Nobody’s trying to scare anybody yet. This is strictly routine.”

  “The name’s Johnson, piggie. Only my friends call me Ellis.”

  “Says here”—Casey glanced at the file lying on the desk in front of him—“they call you Tiger these days. But last year you answered to—I don’t believe this—Sonny?”

  “Ah, pigshit, you don’t bother me none.”

  “Likewise, Ellis. But you keep jiving like that, you’re going to annoy somebody.”

  “Who you talking about, piggie?”

  “Me,” Krug interrupted his own questioning. “Book him,” he added. “Suspicion of homicide will do just fine for starters.”

  Johnson looked dumbstruck. “Man, you off the wall! You ain’t dropping no killing on this brother!”

  “We’ll see about that. Meantime, boy, you stop flapping your lip and try listening to what you’re here for. That goes for you, too, tough guy,” Krug said to the boy sitting beside his own desk. “I’m sick of listening to you stupid little pricks making like two-bit hoods.”

  “Hoooooeeeee,” Johnson moaned low, “that’s the Man for sure.”

  “Better believe it.” Krug glared at him, then turned hot-eyed back to his own victim, whose sassy grin had already slipped. “Okay, you, start talking.”

  “Ready?” Casey asked, and Johnson nodded. “First I want to know Judith Flesher’s whereabouts.”

  “Man, I tell you straight, I don’t know nothing.”

  “When did you last see her?” Casey waited. “Look, her record says she runs with you.”

  “No way, man. That was a accident, me getting busted with her that time. Listen, the Flesh—I mean, nobody messes with her, man. She trouble all the way.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Not the kind you thinking. ’Cause she really weird, man, weirdo! Like the way she goes hanging around the doc’s all the time.”

  “Why shouldn’t she? She’s his patient, after all. Or was,” Casey amended, “till you got rid of her.”

  “You shucking me, man, I didn’t get rid of nobody!”

  “I meant you, plural. You all hassled her out of that group—Why, Ellis?” But it was obvious that Johnson had no intention of talking. “All right,” Casey said, “maybe you can part with a few words about when you last saw her?”

  Monday night. At the meeting, he meant? The boy shrugged. “Seen her after, too, man. See, she come messing around, and the doc he told her to split. But she strictly evil, that Jude-baby. Kinks, man. The whole time we was rapping, she just squat there like a spook out on the porch.”

  “Was she still there when you left?” Casey waited again. “Ellis, you just got through saying—”

  “Well, I didn’t rightly mean I seen her sitting there.” Ellis Johnson grinned. “Seen her wheels, man. You figure she gonna walk off someplace and leave a brand-new Yamaha?”

  “What did I tell you,” Krug said later when the new statements had been filed and the group had gone. “All got together and cooked us up a killer.”

  “I wonder, Al.” Absently, Casey scratched a fleabite on his wrist. “None of the others mentioned seeing her motorbike.”

  “Stick around, that was just the first pitch, sport. I’ll bet my bottom dollar on it.”

  “Well, maybe. But she sounds spaced out enough to be capable of anything.”

  “Sure, according to them. But when we find her, maybe we’ll hear a different story.”

  “If we find her.”

  “We’ll find her, all right, don’t worry about that.”

  Casey stood up, yawning and stretching. “Anybody got any bright ideas about who their leader might be?”

  “Speed,” Zwingler answered. “No pun intended, it’s the kid’s name. Arthur Speed.” He rattled a flimsy copy of the statement he had taken from the boy named Speed. “A real smart one. Read this, you’ll see what I mean. This kid’s from a good solid home. Parents are oka
y. Everything’s roses—So why the hell does he mess around with pills?”

  “Maybe for the adventure.”

  Krug snorted. “If these kids had to do something besides sit on their butts while their old man supports ’em…”

  “Come on, Al,” Casey protested. “There are more kids concerned about the public good now than at any time in the history of this country.”

  “Yeah, and who’s paying for it? They’re running around playing missionary, and who’s footing the bills?”

  Money, always money, Casey thought. And pursuit of it the only proper goal for an adult. This belief alone could be the collapsed bridge between the world that is and the world that was. Even his own parents had a struggle believing that his way, not theirs, was best for him. “Al,” he interrupted Krug’s customary tirade on the young, “it’s half past three. If we’re going to check out the Flesher girl’s place before we head for Allman country, hadn’t we better get going?”

  They left immediately. But as it happened, they never made it to the Allman apartment.

  NINETEEN

  By spot-checking instead of monitoring each complete tape, Adrian had managed to go through seven by late afternoon—almost all of June. All were intact, she had found, and relieved, she was sure that the damage to the June 30 tape must have been accidental. Therefore unconnected with Myrick’s death. Discovering a curious sort of comfort in the idea, she realized that she had been sitting here all afternoon dreading some clear and unmistakable sign. A crazy idea. But the expectation persisted in her that some dark spirit inhabited this place, and being malevolent, inhuman, implacable, it must surely manifest itself again.

  Something banged at the rear of the house. Lotte, Adrian decided, banging in the kitchen, gathering grievances as always. The sunlight through the windows seemed a melancholy illusion. Next door, lawn sprinklers spouted, creating miniature rainbows in the fans of spray. Adrian sighed as the telephone rang for the tenth time. Another reporter. But she was glad to answer. Anything was better than the ceaseless round of her own thoughts.