I didn’t want to push my luck. Already I’d managed to get him to drop considerable information about himself. Information that might be invaluable in his apprehension if I ever got a chance to pass it on. I shut up and drove.
At Mojave I half expected him to order me to turn right toward Las Vegas. But when he didn’t say anything, I kept on 6 along the edge of the mountains. At 3:45 a.m. we passed through Big Pine, about two hundred and fifty miles from Los Angeles.
The road became more mountainous now. Periodically my kidnaper began to flick his gaze ahead, just long enough to get a quick glimpse of the terrain, then immediately bring it back to me again. I realized he was looking for landmarks, which probably meant we were nearing the spot he had picked for my murder. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. Never once did he leave his eyes off me long enough for me to make a break. The gun remained leveled at me steadily, and I knew that the slightest wrong move on my part would bring a bullet.
About halfway between Big Pine and Bishop, the road crossed a mountain stream. As we neared the bridge, he abruptly ordered me to stop.
I brought the car to a halt slowly. We were over the bridge and twenty yards beyond it before I drifted off on the shoulder and cut the ignition.
“Dim your lights,” he said.
I dimmed them.
He fumbled behind him for the door handle, pushed open the door and backed out. “Leave the keys in the ignition and get out,” he said.
He backed away as I obeyed, carefully keeping me covered. The early-morning mountain air was chilly, but I could feel sweat running down my sides beneath my shirt. Standing on the shoulder next to the car, I glanced up and down the road. Except for the bridge, there was no sign of civilization in sight. There were no lights of other cars, either. At that hour of the morning we had run into practically no traffic aside from trucks since we turned onto Highway 6. It had been ten miles since we’d even passed a truck.
With his gun he motioned me to walk ahead of him, back toward the bridge. The stream was perhaps a dozen feet across, and the bridge not more than three times that length. The stream ran in a gorge only about ten feet beneath the road. A concrete railing about hip high acted as a guard to keep cars from running into the gorge.
At the near end of the bridge, he halted me while he took a flashlight from his pocket and shone it on the banks on both sides. Apparently he decided it would be easier to get down to the water from the opposite side, for he urged me on again. His plan was obvious. He was going to force me to the water’s edge, shoot me in the back, and let me tumble into the water. By the beam of his flashlight, I had gotten a good look at the stream, and it appeared deep enough and swift enough to carry my body some distance from the road, where it probably wouldn’t be found for days or weeks, if ever.
I started across the bridge slowly, not eager to reach the other side. A third of the way across, the lights of a truck appeared over a rise a quarter mile in front of us.
“Snap it up!” he commanded, not wanting us to be caught in the headlights of the truck. “Run!”
It was the closest to a break I was likely to get from here on. I responded instantly. I took three running steps, heard his feet hit the road behind me, and suddenly dived headfirst over the low concrete railing.
It seemed to take forever to drop the ten or so feet to the water. Not knowing how deep the stream was, I launched myself in a long, shallow dive and hoped I wasn’t diving into six inches of water running over jagged rocks. As I fell, I braced myself for the shock of the water, for the crash of sharp rocks into my flesh, and for a bullet in the back.
Neither of the last two developed. The move had caught my kidnaper flat-footed. I heard him swear just as I entered the water in a flat dive. It was about four feet deep, and the bottom was gravel. My chest barely scraped against the gravel as I straightened out and shot downstream underwater.
CHAPTER XII
The water was ice cold, but it took a few moments for me to feel its full effect through my clothing. I stayed underwater as long as I could hold my breath. The drag of my clothing hampered my swimming, but this was counteracted by the swift current. When I finally came up, I was thirty yards from the bridge.
I floundered erect in waist-deep water and peered back toward the bridge. Apparently the truck had passed while I was submerged, for there were no longer oncoming headlights. Although it was still quite dark, I could clearly see the outline of the concrete bridge-railing against the night sky beyond it. I could have seen the silhouette of the Courteous Killer, too, if he had still been on the bridge. He wasn’t.
I listened, but could hear nothing except the steady murmur of the current. I moved toward the north bank into the cover of some bushes overhanging the water. It was only about two feet deep near shore. I sat on the bottom with just my head above water, my face screened from the opposite bank by the overhanging bushes. I waited, shivering with cold.
It was too dark to see more than a few feet. A full minute passed with nothing happening. Then a flashlight beam stabbed the darkness from the opposite bank, not ten feet upstream. It swept the stream in both directions, passing right over the loose foliage hanging before my face. The beam probed between gaps in the foliage, momentarily lighting my face as it passed.
He hadn’t seen me, however, for he swept the beam up- and down-stream several times, and each time it passed over the spot where I sat in the water. Then the flashlight moved downstream, passing the spot where I was concealed and continuing on to a bend in the stream fifty yards beyond. Apparently my kidnaper satisfied himself that there were no feasible hiding places beyond where I was, and that if I’d managed to get as far as the bend, it would be impossible to track me down. The light moved upstream again. It stopped directly opposite the overhanging bushes.
Too late I realized I’d picked the only possible hiding place along that stretch of stream. And he intended to look it over thoroughly.
The bushes overhung the water for a distance of only about ten feet. He started at the upstream end, probing the beam through the gaps between the dangling fronds in an attempt to see what was behind them. After a moment of study, he moved it downstream a bare foot.
I knew that when the beam hit my face, he would be able to spot its whiteness against the dark background of the mud-and-gravel bank. On top of that my teeth suddenly began to chatter with cold. I clenched my jaws in an attempt to stop them, but it was an uncontrollable spasm. To my own ears the sound seemed loud enough to be heard clearly over the murmur of the current.
When the beam centered a foot from my face, I ducked my head underwater and crawled upstream a yard, passing right under the light ray. Then I sat again, my head just above water, and waited for the light to reach the end of the line of bushes.
When it finally did, the light clicked off. There was no sound but the rush of water and the chattering of my teeth. Again I tried to stop the chattering by clenching my jaws. I couldn’t.
Then he heard it. He must not have been able to place the direction of the sound, for if he had, he would have started pumping bullets that way. But I knew he had heard it and recognized what it was, for his voice called softly, “I know you’re in there someplace, Friday. I’m going to count to ten. Then if you don’t come out, I’m going to put bullets at twelve-inch intervals all along the way.”
I don’t know why he thought this threat would induce me to come out, since it would only be to get shot, anyway. I felt beneath me, found a smooth, round rock about the size of a baseball, and raised one arm out of the water.
Tonelessly he counted, “One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten!”
The light flicked on again, focused on the upstream edge of the line of bushes, and an orange tongue of flame licked out from his other hand. I heard the bullet smash into the water about where my head would have been if I had been seated five feet upstream.
The light moved a foot nearer, and the pistol cracked again. I rose to
one knee and hurled the stone like a softball, in a looping sidearm throw.
I heard him let out a grunt as it caught him square in the chest. The light beam shot upward, then described a flickering arc as the flashlight jolted from his hand and fell into the water. Two shots sounded in rapid succession.
Both went unerringly to where I had been when I threw the rock. But the instant it left my hand, I had launched myself downstream in an underwater dive. The flashlight, still burning on the bottom of the stream, was pointed downstream, and lighted the stream, like an incandescent tube, from bank to bank for a distance of perhaps ten yards. He must have been able to see my swimming figure, for he threw the last two bullets in the gun at the water.
Water deflects bullets, however. Neither hit me, even though the range wasn’t over five yards. Before he could either reload or jerk my .38 from his side pocket, I was beyond the glare of the submerged light and in darkness again.
When I came up, I swam another few yards on the surface, then headed for the bank opposite the one my assailant was on and pulled myself out of the water. Upstream, I could still see the glow of the underwater light.
Scrambling to the top of the gorge would have been suicide while he still had the light, but was perfectly safe in the darkness. I made it to the top and moved back into the cover of some underbrush. There I rested for a moment, panting and shivering.
I peered back toward the glow on the water, and even as I watched, it abruptly went out. Apparently water had finally seeped into the case. When I had my breath back, I angled in the direction of the car. En route, I stopped long enough to search for and find another rock to use as a weapon.
The delay cost me my quarry. My intention had been to conceal myself near the car, alongside the road, and brain him from behind with the rock when he passed me returning to it. But I hadn’t counted on his giving up his search for me as soon as he did. He must have started back for the car as soon as he fired the final shot. As I drifted behind a shrub twenty feet this side of the car, the engine suddenly came to life. Before I could make a move, the Ford roared away toward the north.
After two attempts to flag down trucks, I gave that idea up. I couldn’t blame the drivers for not stopping to pick up a stranger on that lonely stretch of road. Particularly one as bedraggled-looking as I was. My suit was shapeless from being doused in water, and when I climbed up the bank, a good deal of dirt had stuck to the wet cloth. My hat was gone, and my hair stuck up wetly in all directions.
I remembered driving past a roadside cafe about five miles back toward Big Pine. There may have been some place closer in the opposite direction, but I didn’t know, and decided not to chance it. I started to walk back toward the cafe.
On the chance that the Courteous Killer might come back to make another try at the job he had bungled, I got off the road and out of sight every time car headlights appeared from the north. It was now just before dawn, and a few more cars were appearing on the road. About twice every mile I had to duck out of sight.
I reached the roadside cafe just as it began to get light. My outer clothing had dried during the five-mile walk, and the exercise had restored my circulation, but my shirt and underclothes were still soggy. My teeth had stopped chattering, but I was still cold and wet. It didn’t improve my mood to find the cafe closed.
There was a cottage behind the cafe. Its windows were dark, but it looked as though it was lived in. I pounded at the door until a sleepy-eyed man of about sixty came to answer it in pajamas and a robe. When he saw me, the sleepiness left him and he stared at me goggle-eyed.
“Los Angeles police officer,” I said, fishing out my soggy wallet and showing my ID. “I’ve had a little trouble. Like to use your phone.”
He examined my identification carefully before saying in a slow drawl, “Well, I reckon it’s all right, young fellow. Little trouble, you say? Looks like you had big trouble. Been in a mudball fight?”
I said patiently, “Where’s the phone?”
It developed that the cottage, didn’t have one, and that he’d have to open the cafe. I waited while he changed to a shirt and trousers, then followed him to the cafe’s back door.
“You’re not really putting me out none,” he said, as he keyed open a padlock. “Get up at five forty-five, anyway, and it’s nearly five thirty now. Truckers start stopping for breakfast around six.”
Inside, I exchanged a couple of wet bills for coins and made a long-distance call to the Los Angeles Detective Bureau. A half minute later I was setting the machinery in motion to set up roadblocks all along Route 6 and the side roads leading off it.
CHAPTER XIII
Once again the elusive Courteous Killer managed to slip through the police net. My Ford was found abandoned on Route 6 at Bishop. As usual, the car had been wiped clean of fingerprints. The following day a farmer near Bishop reported a Plymouth pickup truck stolen. Within six hours this was located at Mount Montgomery, Nevada.
There the trail stopped. How the suspect got beyond Mount Montgomery was unknown. The town was too small for strangers to pass through unnoticed, yet no one recalled seeing anyone of the suspect’s description. It was assumed that he had hitchhiked from there. An appeal was sent out over the wire services to whoever had picked him up to come forward as a witness. This appeared in every major newspaper in the country, but there was no response.
I spent two full days with Garcia of S.I.D. helping him revise the composite drawings of the suspect. He did two fronts and two profiles, one set showing him hatted and wearing glasses, the other bareheaded and without glasses. By the end of the two days I was satisfied that they were almost photographic likenesses.
The composites, a revised description, and all the additional information I had gleaned from conversation with the suspect were sent to the police of all major cities in the country. Through the newspaper wire services and radio and television news broadcasts, the rewards, totaling five thousand dollars, got national publicity. The composite drawings were shown on television over all major networks.
Reports and tips flowed in from everywhere. The suspect was seen in New York City, Miami, and Seattle, all at the same time. There wasn’t a city in the country where at least one crank didn’t confess to being the Courteous Killer. The number of confessions from cranks residing in the Los Angeles area grew to seventeen.
All leads were checked out, most of them by the police in the cities where they originated, the hotter ones by teams of officers flown from Los Angeles.
The suspect remained at large.
On the basis of the additional information I was able to furnish, the Stat’s Office made several more runs. The new information was also teletyped to C.I.I. in Sacramento, and all possibles turned up by both were checked out. Full information was sent to the F.B.I. in Washington, which turned up more possibles.
All of these checked out clean. At the end of September, nearly four months after the Courteous Killer had first begun his activity, the case was still wide open.
On Monday, September 30th, Frank and I logged in at Homicide at 4:23 p.m. There was nothing in the message book, and after reading our mail we relaxed at a table with cigarettes, waiting for a phone to ring or the hot-shot speaker to sound off.
“Bet this will be some night,” Frank said.
“Yeah?”
“Starts quiet like this, things always begin popping before the watch is over. Never saw it to fail.”
I said, “Uh-huh.”
“Like the night the Courteous Killer case started. Dead quiet all evening until the last two minutes. Then, bingo. We were up to our necks for weeks.” He paused to take a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “Ever wonder what that guy’s doing now, Joe?”
“How do you mean?”
“Where he’s holed up. Whether he’s got a respectable job somewhere, or is still using a gun. You know. Whether or not he’s reformed.”
I said, “I’ll bet you one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“He hasn’t reformed. They never do.”
The phone on one of the other tables rang, and Frank went over to answer it. “Homicide, Smith,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Yeah, he’s here. What? Okay, send him on up.”
He hung up and said, “Some guy downstairs for you. Asked them to check if you were in before he wasted time coming up. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Huh?”
Frank came back over and sat across the table from me. “That things would start popping. I’ve had the feeling ever since noon yesterday. My luck’s been too good. Bound to change.”
“How’s that?”
“Everything I do lately’s been lucky. Like last Sunday, on the Catalina Day Boat. Actually caught some fish for a change. Nobody else was, but I reeled ’em in till my arms ached. Best day I ever had.”
“One thing wrong with fishing,” I said.
“Huh?”
“You have to eat them.”
Frank grinned. He leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. “Then the next day my luck got even better. Armand decided to go live with Fay’s sister for a while. Didn’t even borrow any money before he left. But yesterday noon topped everything.”
“How was that?”
“Fay fixed Swedish meatballs. You know how I like Swedish meatballs.”
“Yeah.”
“Only trouble is, it usually means she’s going to break some bad news. She’s gone and bought a new dress for too much, or Mike’s busted a neighbor’s window. Something like that. She wants to put me in a good mood before she tells me. Makes it hard to enjoy them, wondering what’s coming.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Yesterday there wasn’t any bad news. She just felt like fixing them. See what I mean about good luck? Absolutely bound to change.”
A youngster of about nineteen strode into the squad room. He was tall and arrogantly good-looking, with wavy black hair and long sideburns. There was something familiar-looking about him, but at first I couldn’t place him.
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