When he paused, Hertel said, “Yes, sir?”
“I want it to be pointing at a cop.”
The captain nodded. “How soon do you want the operation to start? It’ll take a while to line up all the teams we’re going to need and figure out where to spot them.”
“It better not take more than a few hours,” Chief Brown said.
“Huh?”
‘The operation starts tonight.”
Captain Hertel looked startled. He glanced at Frank, then at me, and said, “Then we’d better get moving. Friday, you and Smith get a map of that section from Traffic Services Division. Then drive out to the canyon-roads area and mark on the map every point where you think we should set up a decoy. You ought to be able to cover every road in three hours.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s two thirty now. See if you can have the data back here by six thirty.”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
“Meantime, I’ll be lining up teams of officers and extra cars. We’ll hold a mass meeting in the downstairs auditorium at 7:00 p.m. and brief the men on the positions they’re to take. Better get the biggest map of the area Traffic Services has.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll get right on it.” I looked at Chief Brown. “That all, sir?”
“That’s all. Better get going.”
Captain Hertel returned to his office, and Frank and I went upstairs to the Traffic Services Division.
As one phase of traffic control, the Traffic Services Division maintains a constant study of accident frequency in all parts of the city. It employs huge maps for this purpose, which are mounted on spindles reaching from the floor nearly to the ceiling, so that the individual maps resemble the pages of an enormous book. Each time an accident report comes in, a colored pin is stuck in one of the maps at the point the accident occurred. The type of accident is indicated by the color of the pin. This gives a complete and up-to-the-minute visual picture of all spots where accidents are recurrent. The officers responsible for the assignment of personnel can tell at a glance which areas require more police supervision.
One of the girls who worked in Traffic Services got out a map including the area we were interested in and cut out the portion we wanted. Traffic maps are so large, even this small section was bigger than the average road map. It was perfect for our purposes, because it showed every minute twist and turn along Mulholland Drive and the various canyon roads.
With our map we drove out to the canyon-roads area and spent the next two and a half hours driving up one road and down another. At each spot that seemed a possible place for the Courteous Killer to hit, I made a small red X on the map. Many curves and bends were left blank because there were nearby houses, and it seemed unlikely that the suspect would pick such spots when so many more isolated ones were available. Nevertheless we ended up with sixty-six red X’s.
We finished the job in time to grab a quick sandwich before returning to the Police Building.
* * * *
7:03 p.m. Nearly two hundred officers were gathered in the first-floor auditorium. As our map study indicated only sixty-six teams would be needed, there was a surplus of about fifty officers. Captain Hertel opened the briefing by explaining that a large number of the men present wouldn’t be used, but had been called in because it wasn’t known until only a few minutes previously just how many would be needed to cover the area.
He then had the officers file up onto the stage a team at a time, and pointed out to each team the point on the map where it was to park. When all locations had been assigned, he appointed a half dozen additional teams to act as rolling stakeouts in different areas. Frank and I were assigned the eastern portion of Mulholland Drive from the place Coldwater Canyon intersected it up to the Outpost Estates, where the most recent robbery had occurred.
When this was finished, Captain Hertel released the extra officers and had the ones he had picked file back to their seats.
“The idea is to look like lovemaking couples,” he said. “Each team can decide which one is to play the role of the woman. No elaborate disguises will be necessary, because it will be dark. A woman’s hat and coat should be sufficient. I want every car in its assigned place by eight thirty P.M. The rolling stakeouts will report in by radio when all cars in their sections are in position.”
He paused a moment, then went on. “You all know how dangerous this suspect is. He’s killed three times, and he’s injured several more people. He won’t hesitate to kill again. We’d like to take him alive, but don’t take any chances. We don’t want any dead police officers. If you have to shoot, make sure you don’t miss.” Slowly he ran his gaze over the assembled group, then finished by saying, “Good hunting.” The briefing session had lasted forty-five minutes. It broke up at 7:45 p.m., which gave the officers only forty-five minutes to decide which would act the parts of women, put on simple disguises, and get into position. Some borrowed hats and coats from female employees in the building. Others, who lived nearby or on the way to the canyon-roads area, drove home to get hats and coats from their wives.
* * * *
8:26 p.m. Frank and I started at the point Coldwater Canyon Drive intersects Mulholland Drive, and began to check the cars in our detail. The eleven cars assigned to us were spotted along Mulholland between that point and the Outpost Estates. Only three were police undercover cars equipped with two-way radios. The remaining eight were privately owned by the officers driving them. We placed one radio car at either end of our area and the third in the center.
As we drove slowly along Mulholland Drive, Frank said, “Moon makes it bright enough now, but it feels like a fog’s coming up.”
I stuck my head out the window to glance up at the clear sky, pulled it back in, and looked at Frank. “What do you mean, feels like it? You got a corn that tells you about changes in the weather?”
Frank shrugged. “I can always feel fog coming up, Joe. Don’t know how. Just feel it in my bones. You watch. By ten o’clock we won’t be able to see a dozen feet in front of us.”
I grunted. Then as we approached the next curve, I said, “Hold it up.”
Frank let the car drift over onto the shoulder and stop. He looked at me inquiringly.
“Ramirez and Emlet aren’t in position yet,” I said. “Ought to be along any minute now. May as well wait.”
Even as I spoke, a green Ford sedan drove past us from behind, drew off on the shoulder, and parked. Frank shifted into drive and pulled up alongside of it.
Tony Ramirez, in the driver’s seat, peered across at us. He grinned and said, “Three minutes late, boss. Jacqueline couldn’t get her lipstick on straight.”
Jack Emlet growled, “Keep it up, Buster. Just keep it up.” He was wearing a woman’s coat draped over his shoulders and a floppy-brimmed woman’s hat. He stared across at Frank and me belligerently, waiting for a comment.
Frank said, “You don’t have to be self-conscious, Jack. I think you look lovely.”
Emlet made an impolite sound. Ramirez said, “With this moon, I don’t think it’s going to work, Joe.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“The suspect gets a good look at Jacqueline’s face, he’ll know we’re plants. He’d know a good-looking fellow like me wouldn’t be out with a hag like this.”
Emlet said, “If he sees your face, he’ll know it’s a phony setup, too. A guy as ugly as you couldn’t even get a hag to park with him.”
Frank said, “Maybe you both better hide your faces.”
“Yeah,” I said. “One thing you better not hide, though.”
“What’s that?” Ramirez asked.
“Your guns. Keep them in your laps.”
We rode on to check the rest of the detail. All the other cars were now in position. I lifted the radio microphone from its bracket and reported that we were all set.
For the rest of the night, up till 2:00 a.m., we rolled up and down Mulholland Drive checking on the decoys. As Frank had predicted, a fog settled down about 10:00 p.m. By eleven it
was so thick we had to creep along at ten miles an hour. The Courteous Killer didn’t appear. At 2:00 a.m. we were ordered to close up shop for the night. We made one final run to pass the order along to the decoy cars.
Sunday night was a repetition of the first night. Monday, December 1st, we set up the decoys again. And again Frank predicted fog.
* * * *
11:21 p.m. We were approaching the Outpost Estates at the eastern end of our assigned territory. Frank’s prediction had been right for the second time. Fog had started to descend about 10:00 p.m., gradually thickened until visibility was cut to a dozen feet.
As we crept along, Frank said, “Got another hunch, too, Joe.”
“Yeah?” I said.
‘This one isn’t anything physical. Not like telling the temperature by my feet, or feeling fog in my bones.”
“Uh-huh. What is it?”
“It’s sort of psychological. You believe in psychology?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t know much about it.”
“Fay brought home a book the other day. Talked about the experiments they’ve been running at Duke University. Extrasensory perception, they call it. Sort of like mind reading. Tells about some pretty weird cases. The woman who dreamed her son was drowning, for instance. Didn’t even know he was on a ship. Thought he was in an Army camp in Texas. But next day she got a telegram from the War Department saying his troopship had been torpedoed and he’d drowned in exactly the way she’d dreamed it.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Some of the stuff’s hard to believe. But there must be something to it. These professors aren’t just crackpots. The whole study’s being run like a scientific investigation.”
“Sure,” I said. “You gonna get to the point?”
“Huh?”
“What’s your hunch?”
“Oh, that,” Frank said. “I think he’s going to hit tonight.”
CHAPTER XXIII
The parking lights of the last car in our assigned territory appeared out of the fog. Sergeant Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher were in this car. Because of the fog we had been moving at only ten miles an hour. Frank slowed to five as we passed the car.
I said, “Okay, Marty?” as we drifted by.
“Quiet as a barrel of butterflies,” Marty’s voice came back.
We rounded the last bend, and Frank stepped up the speed to ten miles an hour again. Suddenly a car, parked on the shoulder without light loomed out of the fog. As we crawled past it, our lights momentarily picked out a mist-shrouded figure standing on the far side of the car.
We were past then, and fog swallowed both the car and the figure. Fifty feet beyond was the entrance to a narrow road that wound up the mountainside to one of the Outpost Estates. We had been using it as our turning-around point at the end of each run. As Frank swung the car into it and backed out again, he said, “Check him out, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Better cut your lights and park. We’ll walk back.”
Frank pulled over on the shoulder and flipped the light switch. I lifted the radio microphone from its bracket and said, “Unit One-K-Eight-Oh to KMA-Three-Six-Seven, Control One.”
A voice from the speaker said, “Go ahead, One-K-Eight-Oh.”
I said, “Suspect parked without lights at stakeout point eleven. Four Adam.”
“Roger, One-K-Eight-Oh.”
Hanging up the mike, I fished a flashlight from the glove compartment and stepped from the car. Frank climbed from the other side, reached into the back seat and lifted out a riot gun. I drew my pistol as we crossed the road and started to walk back toward the parked car.
Visibility was no more than ten feet. We were almost on the car when it suddenly appeared out of the haze. It was a Buick coupe, and the engine was idling. Frank stepped to the window on the driver’s side at the same instant I reached the opposite window. I shone my light into the front seat.
The car was empty.
Flicking off the light, I said to Frank in a low tone, “Looks like it, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Then the night silence was split by a sharp crack I recognized as the distinctive sound of the sawed-off carbine. It was immediately followed by the sound of shattering glass. A whole series of pistol shots answered the carbine.
The gunfire came from about a hundred yards ahead, where Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher were parked. As Frank started to run forward, I called, “Hold it, Frank!”
He stopped and said, “Huh?”
“If Wynn and Brasher didn’t hit him, he’ll head back here at a dead run. We might miss him in the fog if we get too far from the car.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “Be smarter, I guess.” He moved back alongside of me.
The bend in the road beyond which Wynn and Brasher were parked was about fifty yards off, and their car was another fifty yards beyond that. As we listened, we heard feet pounding the road toward us. I waited until they neared to ten yards, then flicked on my flashlight and pinpointed the running figure.
“Hold it right there, mister!” I snapped.
He skidded to a halt, dropped sidewise, brought up his short-barreled carbine, and fired, all in one incredibly swift motion. The bullet struck the lens of my flashlight dead center, sweeping it from my hand and stinging my palm, without doing any real damage.
Frank’s riot gun roared, and I pumped three rapid pistol shots at the point from which the carbine had fired. The range was almost point-blank, but we were also firing blind. He must have started to roll the instant he hit the ground, for the sounds we heard during the next few seconds indicated neither of us had hit him. First there was a scrambling noise suggesting he was scurrying to one side on hands and knees, then the sound of feet running to the opposite side of the road.
There wasn’t any point in firing blindly into the fog. Frank and I stood still, straining our ears in an attempt to figure out where he was. The rattle of loose dirt and stones sliding downward told us he was attempting to climb the steep incline across the road.
From off to our left, Vance Brasher’s voice called, “Get him, Joe?”
“Not yet,” I called back. “We’re over here.”
Vance and Marty Wynn appeared out of the fog. Vance had a pistol in his hand, and Wynn carried a riot gun. Wynn said, “The joker smashed the windshield right in my face. Gave me a free shave. Where is he?”
“Over there somewhere,” I said, gesturing toward the opposite side of the road. “Sounds like he’s trying to climb the mountain. In this pea soup we’re going to have trouble finding him.”
Wynn said, “I radioed in. There’ll be roadblocks both sides of here within a couple of minutes. There’s nowhere he can go. A mountain goat couldn’t get out of this area any way except along the road.”
He was probably right. The road here wound along the side of a mountain, so that there was a drop-off behind us and a steep incline a hundred yards high on the side where the suspect was. At some time in the dim past, the ridge of the mountain had broken away, so that the top twenty-five yards was an almost sheer cliff. It didn’t seem likely that the suspect could scale it and get away by crossing the mountain.
I reached through the Buick’s front window, cut the idling engine, and dropped the ignition key in my pocket. “Let’s get some light on the subject,” I said. “Bring your car up, Marty. And switch on our headlights, Frank.”
Marty Wynn said, “Roger,” and started back toward his car. Frank moved off in the opposite direction.
A few moments later Wynn drove his car around the bend and halted in the center of the road. He turned up his highway lights. Frank’s came up, too.
This didn’t help much. We could now see the other side of the road, but the mountainside was lighted only about a dozen feet up. Wynn switched on a spotlight and methodically began to sweep it back and forth over the incline.
From above us the carbine cracked, and the spotlight abruptly winked out.
Vance Brasher and I both f
ired at the gun flash. An instant later Marty Wynn’s riot gun boomed. His car door slammed, and he walked over to us.
“What the devil’s he think he’s doing up there?” Wynn asked disgustedly. “He must know he can’t go anywhere.”
“Yeah,” I said. Then I thought of something. “Wait a minute. The road Frank and I have been using to turn around leads to one of the Outpost Estates. It must be right above us somewhere. He may be heading for it to make a stand.”
The Outpost Estates are private homes perched along the mountainside. They are beautiful places for the most part, if you like a drop of fifty to a couple of hundred feet at the edge of your front yard.
Wynn said, “Where is this road? Maybe we’d better try reaching the place before he does.”
“We’d never make it in time,” I said. “It probably winds back and forth for a half mile or more to get up a hundred yards.” Cupping my palms in front of my mouth. I shouted, “Whiteman! You hear me?”
The carbine cracked in reply, and we all hit the dirt as the slug slammed into the concrete in front of us and ricocheted off with a whine. Apparently Frank had been waiting alongside our car for another gun flash, for in the wake of the shot a riot gun sounded from that direction.
The three of us near the Buick crowded behind it. I called again, “Whiteman! Why don’t you give it up? You haven’t got a chance.”
This time there was no reply.
From behind Wynn and Brasher’s car, a flashing red light appeared as the first of the reinforcements arrived. A moment later another radio unit arrived from the opposite direction. Within another two minutes squad cars lined the road for fifty yards in both directions.
I sent Frank one way to brief the new arrivals on the situation, and I went the other way. A few moments later a dozen spotlights began to sweep the mountainside. They weren’t very effective because of the fog.
I returned to the Buick, and a moment later was joined by Frank, who still carried the riot gun. He said, “Breeze just started, Joe.”
“What?” I said, wondering why he picked a time like this to make a comment about the weather.
Dragnet Page 15
