Felony File

by Dell Shannon

  Just as she put down the phone, she heard the Ferrari, and rushed to tell Luis about that.

  He said, "The sheep. And what next? And I suppose you saw that—that photograph—"

  "No comment," said Alison. "Where on earth did they get it?"

  "Never mind," said Mendoza. "I need a drink." But then, of course, the twins discovered he was home and came running.

  * * *

  Hackett came home and Angel told him it was all arranged. They'd definitely be moving at the end of the month, a short escrow, and it would cost about seven hundred dollars. Hackett was aghast, but she said they wouldn't move again for a long, long time, if ever, and it was such a nice house.

  "Yes," said Hackett. "Well, I hope we don't have to get a loan from the bank."

  When the night watch would be on he called in. "Matt? I meant to leave you a note, but it slipped my mind. Look, would you check on this Pete Jackson .... "

  SEVEN

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, with Glasser and Galeano off, the night watch had left them a couple of things. That was one of the annoyances of the job; new things were continually coming up to work, while old cases waited to die natural deaths.

  Piggott had found Pete Jackson at home; he was waiting in jail to be questioned, but they could only hold him twenty-four hours. There had been a new heist while Piggott was taking him in; Schenke had just noted on the report laconically, "By description, the blonde bomber again." It had been a liquor store. There were witnesses coming in to make statements this morning. There was also something more serious. Just before the night watch closed down, a squad car had called in.

  Moss reported coming across a nearly naked woman on the street, lying half on the sidewalk, in the middle of a block on Eleventh; she was unconscious and seriously injured. He'd got an ambulance and she'd been taken to the emergency ward at the General.

  Palliser and Landers went out on that, to see what the hospital could tell them.

  Conway, talking with Galeano yesterday, had got interested in the Reynolds thing, and was looking over all the back reports on it. That inquest was called for this morning; he and Wanda would cover it.

  One of the witnesses on the heist came in at eight-fifteen, and Hackett started talking to him.

  Mendoza passed on the gist of the Jackman killing to Higgins. "We should be seeing the family some time this afternoon." It was the better part of three hundred miles over to Yuma. "They may be able to give us some lead." He was formally very dapper in a dark suit; he would be sitting in on the Hoffman inquest this morning.

  "That's offbeat all right," said Higgins. "Somebody—and somebody way off his rocker—with a prejudice against Catholics—"

  "But," said Mendoza, "why these particular Catholics, George? At this particular time? There must be a lot of Catholics to hand right around there—and a lot of other places. That old couple were living restricted lives, Jackman not driving anymore. They probably got out very seldom, except with the family. Who singled them out, and why? What triggered it?"

  Sergeant Lake came in and said, "There's a female just come in who says she knows something about the Jackmans. Mrs. Anna Guttierez, lives down the block from them."

  "No me diga," said Mendoza. "Fetch her in. Any news welcome."

  She was in the forties, plump and still pretty, and she didn't subject them to any Latin emotion, though she was obviously distressed. There was no accent on her English; a good many Mexican families had been here longer than some Anglos had; but her choice of words said that she habitually spoke another tongue.

  "Mrs. Duvane phoned and told me," she said without preamble. "About the Jackmans. The Duvanes live next door—she said the police came to their delicatessen yesterday."

  "Oh, yes," said Mendoza.

  "I knew them." Her big dark eyes were sorrowful.

  "It's a terrible thing. But she said you were asking about Monday, and I saw them that day, I thought I must come and tell you. So I called Mr. West and told him I will be late. I work at the Goodwill office, but only three days each week."

  "What time on Monday?" asked Mendoza interestedly.

  "It was about twelve-thirty. They were good old people. I didn't tell you, I live across the street and down a little. Not every time I go to the market, but sometimes, I would go and ask if I could do any shopping for them—save them trouble. That's why I went across on Monday. They said no, they would be shopping the next day. But then—they were fine. Just like always."

  "That's very helpful."

  "They had just been eating lunch, Mrs. Jackman was washing the plates. They were fine. So if they were murdered that day, it was later. I thought the police would wish to know."

  "We do indeed, we're very grateful to you for coming in .... That pinpoints it very nicely, doesn't it?" he said when she had gone out. "More than we could have hoped for. They were just starting a meal when the killer arrived, so that must have been dinner. The family will be able to tell us what hours they kept. And I said off the top of my mind, it wasn't an utter stranger, but it could well have been. The back door was unlocked. They were elderly and slow. He could have walked right in on them and got busy with the knife before they could get up. I hope to God the lab has something—they always take their time. We probably won't get an autopsy before Monday." He stabbed out his cigarette, looked at this watch and swore. "I've got to be at that inquest—not that there'll be anything to it. Short and not so sweet." He got up and yanked down his cuffs, reached for his hat.

  * * *

  At the hospital Palliser and Landers talked to a Dr. Sanders, who was a veteran of the emergency ward but could still be shocked. He hunched his shoulders and grimaced at them; he was a young man with tired cynical eyes. "My God, talk about the city jungle," he said. "What's been happening to that poor damned girl—I just came in, but I talked to Aarons and the nurses, and saw the chart. It looks as if she's been held prisoner somehow—"

  "What?" said Palliser, startled. "Our report said she'd apparently been thrown out of a car after a beating."

  Sanders nodded. "She may have been, but it was just the latest thing. By the condition of her wrists and ankles, she's been bound with wire for long periods of time. She's been tortured too—there are burns all over her, probably from cigarettes, and some nasty razor cuts—not deep enough for serious injury, just to inflict pain. She's been raped repeatedly, by all the laceration, both normally and anal. The latest injuries are the most serious—she's got both legs broken—one a compound fracture—concussion, and severe deep wounds in both thighs and buttocks. I understand one of your cars spotted her in the street—well, she couldn't have been there five minutes or she'd have been dead by the time the ambulance got there. The femoral artery was severed and she'd lost half the blood in her body by the time she was brought in."

  "My good God," said Landers. "I suppose it's silly to ask if she's been conscious, identified herself."

  "Let's say unrealistic," said Sanders dryly. "No. We hope she's going to make it, but we're not saying for sure yet. Of course we've pumped blood into her, and started I.V. feedings—that's another thing, she's been pretty well starved and dehydrated. And she was filthy—obviously hadn't had an opportunity to bathe in some time. That, and the wrists and ankles, made us deduce she'd been forcibly confined somewhere."

  "There wasn't anything on her at all?"

  "Four things," said Sanders. "One of them may be some help to you. You can see her if you'd like." He led them down to the nearest nursing station, picked up an envelope from the desk. "She was wearing rags of stockings and one shoe—it's a fairly new shoe from Leeds." That was a middle-priced chain shoe store.

  "And this." He shook the envelope and a bracelet dropped into his palm; he handed it to Palliser. It was an inexpensive gold-toned bracelet, and it was marked shallowly with a name; some department stores sold these as novelties, the costume jewelry not really en- graved, but cheaply incised with an electric stylus. In rather shaky script, the letters on the I.D. ba
r of the bracelet spelled out Linda Carr.

  "I'll be damned," said Palliser. "That's a break."

  They had a brief look at her, motionless in the hospital bed, nearly buried in bandages. Her face hadn't been touched; she was a very pretty girl, a creamy-skinned blonde, and she didn't look much more than twenty.

  Without having to discuss it, they took the I.D. bracelet back to Parker Center and up to Missing Persons, and Lieutenant Carey had a look at their current files. When he came to the right one he said, "Oh, yeah, the name rings a bell now. We never followed it up because it looked to us like a voluntary take-off, and she's over twenty-one. She was reported missing about three weeks ago by an Arnold Sorenson. Listed as her employer. Haines handled it, and he had a look, but he thought she'd probably just taken off with a boy friend or on her own. Don't tell me it's turned into a case for you?"

  "You'd better pray it doesn't," said Landers, "or you and Haines may be up in front of Internal Affairs for sloppy police work."

  "What's the address?" asked Palliser.

  It was on La Brea Avenue: a ‘low-priced chain restaurant, Denny's. Sorenson was there; he was the manager. He was a big pear-shaped man in the forties, with thinning brown hair and myopic blue eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He heard what they had to say, and took off his glasses to mop his eyes, and said, "Oh, my God, my good God. I was afraid something had happened to her, but I never suspected anything as bad as that. I knew she wouldn't have just walked off the job without telling me. She'd only been in California six months, she needed the job, and she's a good steady responsible girl."

  "Why did you report her?" asked Palliser. "Why not her family?"

  "Because she hasn't got any," said Sorenson simply.

  "She's an orphan, she was raised in some church orphanage back in Illinois. She's only twenty-two—hell, gents, I've got a daughter her age, I wouldn't feel so easy about Lori being out on her own like that! But Linda's steady. A good girl. I knew she hadn't just walked away."

  He had worried about it, he said, for a few days before he reported her missing. He'd got one of the other waitresses who knew her to go with him to her little apartment, and it looked as if most of her things were there, that she hadn't taken any clothes.

  "How'd you get in?" asked Landers.

  "Jimmied the door," he admitted. "My God, what could have happened to her? I used to worry about her getting on the bus that late, but she'd rather take second shift because she didn't like getting up early. I know there are a lot of violent kooks around, but to think of—God."

  He could tell them when he'd seen her last. The restaurant was open from 6:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. A crew of waitresses and chefs came on at six and a second crew at two; Linda was one of the waitresses on that shift. The other girls would say the same thing: they didn't know her intimately, maybe, she'd only been working here four months, but the girls got along, they all liked Linda. Of the other girls, four of them, all but one had cars, and Ellie's husband always called for her. It was a Thursday night, a month ago last night. They'd closed the place up, and left mostly together; Ellie's husband had been early. The rest of them had gone out to the parking lot at the side, and Linda had said goodnight and started across the street to get the bus. "She wasn't nervous about it," said Sorenson, "but I was.

  That's another thing, you see, she's from a small town, not a city anyway—she doesn't know what the city can be like. Is she going to be all right?"

  "They don't know," said Landers.

  "Oh, my God."

  "We'll want to talk to the other girls. Ask about boy friends and so on."

  "She doesn't have one," said Sorenson. "She a pretty strait-laced girl. She dated one young fellow she met in here, a few times, but she said he was too handy, know what I mean, and she gave him the push."

  And maybe the young fellow had wanted to get back at her. Or maybe she'd just run into a violent kook. They went out and looked at the bus-stop across the street. This was a fairly main drag but they were all business blocks this far down La Brea; there wouldn't be many people around at that time of night, and not so much traffic. The cross street was a narrow one, old residential. The arc lights were high above the intersection. They didn't have to discuss it. She might have been, almost certainly, the only one waiting for a bus here most nights.

  "Hell of a thing," said Landers.

  She'd had an apartment up on Berendo; the rent, Sorenson said, was up next week, and what about that? He could keep her things for her until she got better; it was mostly clothes. Palliser and Landers started up there to look at it, and Palliser said grimly, "Carey's Mr. Haines doesn't use much imagination, does he?"

  "He probably didn't give Sorenson a chance to talk," said Landers. "Let's hope she comes to and tells us what happened?

  * * *

  On account of the witnesses in the liquor store coming in to make statements—"Who argues with a dame waving a gun around?" they both said expectably—Hackett and Higgins didn't get over to the jail until eleven o'clock.

  Pete Jackson was brought to them in the bare tiny interrogation room. He was sixteen, and looked younger; he wasn't very big, he had the same pure African features as his mother, a woolly cap of hair, and he looked a little scared.

  "All right, Pete," said Hackett, and he laid out the few little pieces on the table. The old Waltham railroad watch's crystal had been broken when Mendoza knocked out the window, but it was all recognizable. "We know where you got this, but we'd like to hear the story."

  Pete looked at the things and said, "Where'd you get that?"

  "From the pawnshop where you took it. It was on the list of stolen goods." That went over his head; he didn't know anything about that. "We know where it came from and how it got there, so suppose you tell us the middle part."

  Pete looked at him blankly, and Higgins said, "You're getting a little too fancy, Art. Look, boy. You snitched this from a house after knifing a man. There was somebody with you. Who was it?"

  A Pete looked sullenly at the table. "I don't know nothin' about it."

  Both of them had dealt too long with utter stupidity to feel impatient. "We'll sit here until you tell us," said Higgins not unkindly. "We know everything but that, and you're going to be up in front of a judge for it anyway. Wouldn't you like to take him with you?"

  Pete thought that over for a long painful minute, and then he said, "That ain't fair."

  "That's right, but how do we know who he is unless you tell us?" asked Hackett cheerfully.

  After another long minute's thought, Pete said, "It was his idea."

  "Whose idea?"

  "Bobby Porter. We needed some bread. Ma never gives me none, she need all she get for the wine. But we dint set out to rob nobody, we was just ridin' around. Bobby, he sort of borrowed his brother's heap. An' we needed some bread, so he says hey man s'pose we knock off a house. So we did."

  "Why did you pick that place?"

  "We dint," said Pete succinctly. "Mighta been any place along there. We parked inna next street over an' come through yards. We tried one place but we couldn't get the door open. Bobby had a switchblade an' I had a big ole bread-knife, but we couldn't—"

  "So you'd thought of knocking off a house before you went riding around?" asked Higgins.

  "Uh. Yeah. I guess. That place, we got the door open. We dint know there was anybody there. Man come at us yellin' somethin', we just cu t him a little bit, make him stop—an' I wanted get out then but Bobby made me help him rob that stuff. An' the guy's bread. He hadn't but twelve bucks."

  "So tell us where Bobby lives," said Hackett.

  "Di'mond Street."

  It was all they needed, and they were slightly tired of Pete. They handed him back to the jailer, went back to the office and applied for the warrant, and went out again to look for Bobby. He too was probably a minor, and the worst that could happen to them was incarceration until they turned twenty-one, and probation. That wasn't much retribution for Dave and Dan Whalen. At least the c
at Merlin still had a good home.

  * * *

  The Hoffman inquest was very official and brief. There wasn't a jury. The evidence was read into the court record and the coroner's representative handed down the expectable verdict, willful homicide and suicide while the balance of mind was disturbed. There were only two reporters there; the rest had all known how it would go. The Hoffman case was over—ended. Except for Larry Hoffman; and you could wonder how it might affect him, for better or worse or not at all. The egocentric personality.

  The Times had run a brief story and the photograph of Marion Stromberg on its second page this morning. Unless Mendoza had asked for it, that murder probably wouldn't have got much mention at all if any; there wasn't enough newsprint to report every murder that occurred in L.A., and some murders were just naturally more interesting than others.

  He got back to the office at a little after eleven o'clock, and Sergeant Lake said, sounding rather annoyed, "You've had nine phone calls about that thing in the Times. The secretary of the Western Cat Fanciers' Association wants to interview you for an article, and so do two people at a thing called Pet Pride. A sixth grade teacher in Montebello wants you to come lecture her class on kindness to animals. A PR. man at a local agency has a great idea how to spot you in a TV commercial, and the rest of the citizens just called up to gush about your heroic act. The first three said they'll call back."

  "¡Ca!" said Mendoza, also annoyed.

  He disliked the routine, but it was always there to be done. He laid Marion Stromberg's address book on the desk and methodically began to call every name listed. There weren't all that many; and along with the names of personal friends, she had listed alphabetically the service companies she had dealt with: TV repairs, plumber, electrician, tree service, gardener, beauty shop. Indiscriminately he called them all, missing a few; he broke for lunch, came back to try for those he'd missed.

  At two o'clock he was sitting back thinking about it, and in reflex action had got out the cards from the top drawer and was practicing stacking a poker deck. Domesticity had ruined his poker game, but he still thought better with the cards in his hands. Possibly one reason that Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza was a reasonably good detective was that essentially, as Hackett had told him, his mind had all the deviousness of a criminal mind to start with.