Scenarios - A Collection of Nameless Detective Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  We ran the twenty yards or so to the front entrance. The noise had awakened Prince Charles and his sister; they were up and starting to prowl their cage as we rushed past. I caught hold of the door handle and tugged on it, but the lock was secure.

  I snapped at Dettlinger, "Have you got a key?"

  "Yeah, to all the buildings . . ."

  He fumbled his key ring out, and I switched on my flash to help him find the right key. From inside, there was cold, dead silence; I couldn't hear anything anywhere else in the vicinity either, except for faint animal sounds lost in the mist. Dettlinger got the door unlocked, dragged it open. I crowded in ahead of him, across a short foyer and through another door that wasn't locked, into the building's cavernous main room.

  A couple of the ceiling lights were on; we hadn't been able to tell from outside because the Lion House had no windows. The interior was a long rectangle with a terra cotta tile floor, now-empty feeding cages along the entire facing wall and the near side wall, another set of entrance doors in the far side wall, and a kind of indoor garden full of tropical plants flanking the main entrance to the left. You could see all of the enclosure from two steps inside, and there wasn't anybody in it. Except—

  "Jesus!" Dettlinger said. "Look!"

  I was looking, all right. And having trouble accepting what I saw. A man was lying sprawled on his back inside one of the cages diagonally to our right; there was a small glistening stain of blood on the front of his heavy coat and a revolver of some kind in one of his outflung hands. The small access door at the front of the cage was shut, and so was the sliding panel at the rear that let the big cats in and out at feeding time. In the pale light, I could see the man's face clearly: his teeth were bared in the rictus of death.

  "It's Kirby," Dettlinger said in a hushed voice. "Sweet Christ, what—?"

  I brushed past him and ran over and climbed the brass railing that fronted all the cages. The access door, a four-by-two-foot barred inset, was locked tight. I poked my nose between two of the bars, peering in at the dead man. Kirby, Al Kirby. The temporary night watchman the Zoo Commission had hired a couple of weeks ago. It looked as though he had been shot in the chest at close range; I could see where the upper middle of his coat had been scorched by the powder discharge.

  My stomach jumped a little, the way it always does when I come face to face with violent death. The faint, gamy, big-cat smell that hung in the air didn't help it any. I turned toward Dettlinger, who had come up beside me.

  "You have a key to this access door?" I asked him.

  "No. There's never been a reason to carry one. Only the cat handlers have them." He shook his head in an awed way. "How'd Kirby get in there? What happened?"

  "I wish I knew. Stay put for a minute."

  I left him and ran down to the doors in the far side wall. They were locked. Could somebody have had time to shoot Kirby, get out through these doors, then relock them before Dettlinger and I busted in? It didn't seem likely. We'd been inside less than thirty seconds after we'd heard the shot.

  I hustled back to the cage where Kirby's body lay. Dettlinger had backed away from it, around in front of the side-wall cages; he looked a little queasy now himself, as if the implications of violent death had finally registered on him. He had a pack of cigarettes in one hand, getting ready to soothe his nerves with some nicotine. But this wasn't the time or the place for a smoke; I yelled at him to put the things away, and he complied.

  When I reached him I said, "What's behind these cages? Some sort of rooms back there, aren't there?"

  "Yeah. Where the handlers store equipment and meat for the cats. Chutes, too, that lead out to the grottos."

  "How do you get to them?"

  He pointed over at the rear side wall. "That door next to the last cage."

  "Any other way in or out of those rooms?"

  "No. Except through the grottos, but the cats are out there." I went around to the interior door he'd indicated. Like all the others, it was locked. I said to Dettlinger, "You do have a key to this door?"

  He nodded, got it out, and unlocked the door. I told him to keep watch out here, switched on my flashlight, and went on through. The flash beam showed me where the light switches were; I flicked them on and began a quick, cautious search. The door to one of the meat lockers was open, but nobody was hiding inside. Or anywhere else back there.

  When I came out I shook my head in answer to Dettlinger's silent question. Then I asked him, "Where's the nearest phone?"

  "Out past the grottos, by the popcorn stand."

  "Hustle out there and call the police. And while you're at it, radio Hammond to get over here on the double—"

  "No need for that," a new voice said from the main entrance. "I'm already here."

  I glanced in that direction and saw Gene Hammond, the other regular night watchman. You couldn't miss him; he was six-five, weighed in at a good two-fifty, and had a face like the back end of a bus. Disbelief was written on it now as he stared across at Kirby's body.

  "Go," I told Dettlinger. "I'll watch things here."

  "Right."

  He hurried out past Hammond, who was on his way toward where I stood in front of the cage. Hammond said as he came up, "God—what happened?"

  "We don't know yet."

  "How'd Kirby get in there?"

  "We don't know that either." I told him what we did know, which was not much. "When did you last see Kirby?"

  "Not since the shift started at nine."

  "Any idea why he'd have come in here?"

  "No. Unless he heard something and came in to investigate. But he shouldn't have been in this area, should he?"

  "Not for another half-hour, no."

  "Christ, you don't think that he—"

  "What?"

  "Killed himself," Hammond said.

  "It's possible. Was he despondent for any reason?"

  "Not that I know about. But it sure looks like suicide. I mean, he's got that gun in his hand, he's all alone in the building, all the doors were locked. What else could it be?"

  "Murder," I said.

  "How? Where's the person who killed him, then?"

  "Got out through one of the grottos, maybe."

  "No way," Hammond said. "Those cats would maul anybody who went out among 'em—and I mean anybody; not even any of the handlers would try a stunt like that. Besides, even if somebody made it down into the moat, how would he scale that twenty-foot back wall to get out of it?"

  I didn't say anything.

  Hammond said, "And another thing: why would Kirby be locked in this cage if it was murder?"

  "Why would he lock himself in to commit suicide?"

  He made a bewildered gesture with one of his big hands.

  "Crazy," he said. "The whole thing's crazy."

  He was right. None of it seemed to make any sense at all.

  I knew one of the homicide inspectors who responded to Dettlinger's call. His name was Branislaus and he was a pretty decent guy, so the preliminary questions-and-answers went fast and hassle-free. After which he packed Dettlinger and Hammond and me off to the zoo office while he and the lab crew went to work inside the Lion House.

  I poured some hot coffee from my thermos, to help me thaw out a little, and then used one of the phones to get Lawrence Factor out of bed. He was paying my fee and I figured he had a right to know what had happened as soon as possible. He made shocked noises when I told him, asked a couple of pertinent questions, said he'd get out to Fleishhacker right away, and rang off.

  An hour crept away. Dettlinger sat at one of the desks with a pad of paper and a pencil and challenged himself in a string of tic-tac-toe games. Hammond chain-smoked cigarettes until the air in there was blue with smoke. I paced around for the most part, now and then stepping out into the chill night to get some fresh air: all that cigarette smoke was playing merry hell with my lungs. None of us had much to say. We were all waiting to see what Branislaus and the rest of the cops turned up.

  Facto
r arrived at one-thirty, looking harried and upset. It was the first time I had ever seen him without a tie and with his usually immaculate Robert Redford hairdo in some disarray. A patrolman accompanied him into the office, and judging from the way Factor glared at him, he had had some difficulty getting past the front gate. When the patrolman left I gave Factor a detailed account of what had taken place as far as I knew it, with embellishments from Dettlinger. I was just finishing when Branislaus came in.

  Branny spent a couple of minutes discussing matters with Factor. Then he said he wanted to talk to the rest of us one at a time, picked me to go first, and herded me into another room.

  The first thing he said was, "This is the screwiest shooting case I've come up against in twenty years on the force. What in bloody hell is going on here?"

  "I was hoping maybe you could tell me."

  "Well, I can't—yet. So far it looks like a suicide, but if that's it, it's a candidate for Ripley. Whoever heard of anybody blowing himself away in a lion cage at the zoo?"

  "Any indication he locked himself in there?"

  "We found a key next to his body that fits the little access door in front."

  "Just one loose key?"

  "That's right."

  "So it could have been dropped in there by somebody else after Kirby was dead and after the door was locked. Or thrown in through the bars from outside."

  "Granted."

  "And suicides don't usually shoot themselves in the chest," I said.

  "Also granted, although it's been known to happen."

  "What kind of weapon was he shot with? I couldn't see it too well from outside the cage, the way he was laying."

  "Thirty-two Iver Johnson."

  "Too soon to tell yet if it was his, I guess."

  "Uh-huh. Did he come on the job armed?"

  "Not that I know about. The rest of us weren't, or weren't supposed to be."

  "Well, we'll know more when R and I finishes running a check on the serial number," Branislaus said. "It was intact, so the thirtytwo doesn't figure to be a Saturday Night Special."

  "Was there anything in Kirby's pockets?"

  "The usual stuff. And no sign of a suicide note. But you don't think it was suicide anyway, right?"

  "No, I don't."

  "Why not?"

  "No specific reason. It's just that a suicide under those circumstances rings false. And so does a suicide on the heels of the thefts the zoo's been having lately."

  "So you figure there's a connection between Kirby's death and the thefts?"

  "Don't you?"

  "The thought crossed my mind," Branislaus said dryly. "Could be the thief slipped back onto the grounds tonight, something happened before he had a chance to steal something, and he did for Kirby—I'll admit the possibility. But what were the two of them doing in the Lion House? Doesn't add up that Kirby caught the guy in there. Why would the thief enter it in the first place? Not because he was trying to steal a lion or a tiger, that's for sure."

  "Maybe Kirby stumbled on him somewhere else, somewhere nearby. Maybe there was a struggle; the thief got the drop on Kirby, then forced him to let both of them into the Lion House with his key."

  "Why?"

  "To get rid of him where it was private."

  "I don't buy it," Branny said. "Why wouldn't he just knock Kirby over the head and run for it?"

  "Well, it could be he's somebody Kirby knew."

  "Okay. But the Lion House angle is still too much trouble for him to go through. It would've been much easier to shove the gun into Kirby's belly and shoot him on the spot. Kirby's clothing would have muffled the sound of the shot; it wouldn't have been audible more than fifty feet away."

  "I guess you're right," I said.

  "But even supposing it happened the way you suggest, it still doesn't add up. You and Dettlinger were inside the Lion House thirty seconds after the shot, by your own testimony. You checked the side entrance doors almost immediately and they were locked; you looked around behind the cages and nobody was there. So how did the alleged killer get out of the building?"

  "The only way he could have got out was through one of the grottos in back.

  "Only he couldn't have, according to what both Dettlinger and Hammond say."

  I paced over to one of the windows—nervous energy—and looked out at the fog-wrapped construction site for the new monkey exhibit. Then I turned and said, "I don't suppose your men found anything in the way of evidence inside the Lion House?"

  "Not so you could tell it with the naked eye."

  "Or anywhere else in the vicinity?"

  "No."

  "Any sign of tampering on any of the doors?"

  "None. Kirby used his key to get in, evidently."

  I came back to where Branislaus was leaning hipshot against somebody's desk. "Listen, Branny," I said, "this whole thing is too screwball. You know that as well as I do. Somebody's playing games here, trying to muddle our thinking—and that means murder."

  "Maybe," he said. "Hell, probably. But how was it done? I can't come up with an answer, not even one that's believably farfetched. Can you?"

  "Not yet."

  "Does that mean you've got an idea?"

  "Not an idea; just a bunch of little pieces looking for a pattern."

  He sighed. "Well, if they find it, let me know."

  When I went back into the other room I told Dettlinger that he was next on the grill. Factor wanted to talk some more, but I put him off. Hammond was still polluting the air with his damned cigarettes, and I needed another shot of fresh air; I also needed to be alone for a while. I could almost feel those little random fragments bobbing around in there like flotsam on a heavy sea.

  I put my overcoat on and went out and wandered past the cages where the smaller cats were kept, past the big open fields that the giraffes and rhinos called home. The wind was stronger and colder than it had been earlier; heavy gusts swept dust and twigs along the ground, broke the fog up into scudding wisps. I pulled my cap down over my ears to keep them from numbing.

  The path led along to the concourse at the rear of the Lion House, where the open cat-grottos were. Big, portable electric lights had been set up there and around the front so the police could search the area. A couple of patrolmen glanced at me as I approached, but they must have recognized me because neither of them came over to ask what I was doing there.

  I went to the low, shrubberied wall that edged the middle catgrotto. Whatever was in there, lions or tigers, had no doubt been aroused by all the activity; but they were hidden inside the dens at the rear. These grottos had been newly renovated—lawns, jungly vegetation, small trees, everything to give the cats the illusion of their native habitat. The side walls separating this grotto from the other two were man-made rocks, high and unscalable. The moat below was fifty feet wide, too far for either a big cat or a man to jump; and the near moat wall was sheer and also unscalable from below, just as Hammond and Dettlinger had said.

  No way anybody could have got out of the Lion House through the grottos, I thought. Just no way.

  No way it could have been murder then. Unless—

  I stood there for a couple of minutes, with my mind beginning, finally, to open up. Then I hurried around to the front of the Lion House and looked at the main entrance for a time, remembering things.

  And then I knew.

  Branislaus was in the zoo office, saying something to Factor, when I came back inside. He glanced over at me as I shut the door.

  "Branny," I said, "those little pieces I told you about a while ago finally found their pattern."

  He straightened. "Oh? Some of it or all of it?"

  "All of it, I think."

  Factor said, "What's this about?"

  "I figured out what happened at the Lion House tonight," I said. "Al Kirby didn't commit suicide: he was murdered. And I can name the man who killed him."

  I expected a reaction, but I didn't get one beyond some widened eyes and opened mouths. Nobody said anyt
hing and nobody moved much. But you could feel the sudden tension in the room, as thick in its own intangible way as the layers of smoke from Hammond's cigarettes.

  "Name him," Branislaus said.

  But I didn't, not just yet. A good portion of what I was going to say was guesswork—built on deduction and logic, but still guesswork—and I wanted to choose my words carefully. I took off my cap, unbuttoned my coat, and moved away from the door, over near where Branny was standing.

  He said, "Well? Who do you say killed Kirby?"

  "The same person who stole the birds and other specimens. And I don't mean a professional animal thief, as Mr. Factor suggested when he hired me. He isn't an outsider at all; and he didn't climb the fence to get onto the grounds."

  "No?"

  "No. He was already in here on those nights and on this one, because he works here as a night watchman. The man I'm talking about is Sam Dettlinger."

  That got some reaction. Hammond said, "I don't believe it," and Factor said, "My God!" Branislaus looked at me, looked at Dettlinger, looked at me again—moving his head like a spectator at a tennis match.

  The only one who didn't move was Dettlinger. He sat still at one of the desks, his hands resting easily on its blotter; his face betrayed nothing.

  He said, "You're a liar," in a thin, hard voice.

  "Am I? You've been working here for some time; you know the animals and which ones are both endangered and valuable. It was easy for you to get into the buildings during your round: just use your key and walk right in. When you had the specimens you took them to some prearranged spot along the outside fence and passed them over to an accomplice."

  "What accomplice?" Branislaus asked.

  "I don't know. You'll get it out of him, Branny; or you'll find out some other way. But that's how he had to have worked it."

  "What about the scratches on the locks?" Hammond asked. "The police told us the locks were picked—"

  "Red herring," I said. "Just like Dettlinger's claim that he chased a stranger on the grounds the night the rattlers were stolen. Designed to cover up the fact that it was an inside job." I looked back at Branislaus. "Five'll get you ten Dettlinger's had some sort of locksmithing experience. It shouldn't take much digging to find out."