In a Lonely Place

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  Dix shoved his across. “Take mine. The shrimp are too good to dilute. Try them, Sylvia.”

  “Yes, don’t wait for me,” Brub said.

  Sylvia picked up her fork but she didn’t do anything with it. Just held it loosely, her eyes on Brub’s face.

  He took a drink before continuing. “In April. We found her in Westlake Park. There wasn’t any reason for it. She was a nice normal girl, young, attractive. She’d been to a movie with a couple of girl friends. She lived in the Wilshire district, blocks from the park. No clues. She’d been killed the same way.” He looked at Dix angrily. There wasn’t any reason for her to be killed. There’s been no reason for any of them.” Again he drank.

  “There’ve been others?”

  “Last night was the sixth,” Brub said heavily. “One a month. Since March.”

  “Except last month,” Sylvia said quickly. “There was none in August.”

  Brub continued, “No motive. No connection between any of them. Never the same neighborhood.”

  “Last night’s—” Sylvia’s voice was hushed, as if she dreaded the question.

  Brub said, “A new neighborhood. Beverly Glen Canyon—up where it’s country. She wasn’t found until late this morning. She was lying in the brush at the side of the road.” Anger clanged in his voice again. “It’s like hunting a needle in a haystack. Los Angeles is too big—too sprawling. You can’t patrol every street every night, all night. He’s safe. A maniac walking the streets, looking just as normal as you or me, more normal probably.”

  “You’ll get him,” Sylvia said, pushing conviction into her wish.

  “We’ll get him.” Brub believed it. “But how many women will be murdered first?” He tipped up the glass.

  “You’d better eat, dear,” Sylvia said. She forced herself to start eating.

  “Yeah.” Brub began spearing the shrimp, eating hurriedly, not tasting the food. “Take this girl last night. A nice girl like the others—except perhaps the first was a different cut. This one was a stenographer. Worked downtown. Lived in Hollywood. She’d been playing bridge with friends in Beverly. On South Camden. Just four girls. They played once a week, rotating the meeting place. They always quit early. None of them wanted to be out late, alone that way. Last night they stopped around eleven. The three left together, walked up to Wilshire together. The other two lived downtown farther. They took the Wilshire bus. Mildred was taking the Hollywoodland bus. Her name was Mildred Atkinson. She was still waiting when the girls’ bus came along. She waved goodbye to them. No one saw her after that.”

  Sylvia had stopped eating. “It’s horrible,” she said.

  “Yes. it’s horrible,” Brub agreed. “There’s no reason for the pattern. If we could just get at what’s behind it.”

  Dix put on a thoughtful frown. “Have you no leads at all?”

  “Not much.” Brub said. “There are no clues, there never are: no fingerprints or footprints, God, how we’d like just one fingerprint!” He returned to monotone. “We’ve double checked all the known sex offenders.”

  “It’s a sex crime?” Dix interrupted.

  Brub nodded. “That’s a part of it.”

  Sylvia’s shiver was slight.

  He continued, “We know one thing, of course. He works from a car.”

  Malcolm brought the chowder.

  “How do you know that?” Dix asked.

  “He has to. Take last night, for instance. The place is inaccessible without a car.”

  Dix scowled. “Can’t you check tire prints?”

  “We can’t check every car in L.A.,” Brub said helplessly. “It’s the same as footprints. We can’t check every pair of shoes in L.A.”

  “I understand that,” Dix nodded. “Excellent chowder.” But they’d have the tire tracks in plaster. If you could get them off concrete.

  “We have an excellent chef at the club,” Sylvia said. She had no appetite. Her soup was barely tasted when Malcolm brought the abalone steaks.

  Dix began on his with relish. “What you know then is that there is a man and he has a car—”

  ‘Yes. In the fourth case, he was seen.”

  Dix’s eyebrows lifted. He held his fork in mid-air. ‘You mean you have a description?”

  Brub sighed. “The fourth girl was seen leaving a movie with a man. As for description, hell!” He gestured. “The guy who noticed them, a tailor waiting for a street car, was half a block away. All he knew was the man was kind of young and sort of tall and normal looking. Only one head and no fangs!”

  Dix smiled slightly. “Maybe he saw two other people.”

  “He saw them all right. But he was so busy looking at the girl’s red suit, he didn’t notice the man.”

  “No one else has ever seen him?”

  “If they have, they’ve taken a vow of silence. You’d think he—”

  Sylvia broke in, “Brub, let’s talk about something else. Please, Brub. We asked Dix to a party, not a postmortem.”

  “Okay, sweetheart.” He patted her hand. “I’m sorry. Sorry, Dix. How about another drink? Malcolm!”

  Dix smiled. “I’ll have another with you.” He hid his annoyance. Just like a woman, interfering, imposing her whims on the party.

  “Who’s here tonight?” Brub edged his chair to look around. He lifted his hand to the group at the next table. “Hi, there.”

  Dix lit a cigarette and also surveyed the room. Nice people, healthy and wealthy. Normal as you and me. Normal as Sylvia when she didn’t have the megrims. But you didn’t know what was beneath beach-tanned faces and simple expensive clothes. You didn’t ever know about thoughts. They were easily hidden. You didn’t have to give away what you were thinking. No one exchanging pleasantries now with Brub would know that the man’s mind was raw with murder. No one watching Sylvia replacing her lip rouge, smiling over the mirror of her bleached wooden compact, would know that fear was raveling her nerves. Even he, permitted as friend to know that there was fear in her veins, didn’t know whether the fear was for Brub’s safety or her own. Or an atavistic fear of reasonless death.

  The color under her sunbrown had returned as she did the little normal things of lipstick, cigarette. He could make it recede so easily, a word, or one more question on the subject. He could make her heart stop beating as easily. With a simple statement. His lips smiled. And his eyes again turned to the room. Away from temptation.

  It was then that he saw her, the little brown girl. It almost shocked him for a moment. She didn’t belong here; she belonged out in the dark. She wasn’t a brown girl tonight, save for her healthy beach color. She was in starchy white, an evening dress, cut low on her brown back, flaring to her white sandals. She had a young, laughing face, short brown curly hair. She was at the table directly across the floor. He should have seen her earlier. He had, he realized, but only the brown back and white pique dress. She’d shifted her chair as Brub had, bringing her face to the room.

  He took a long draw on his cigarette before he asked, deliberately casual, “Who’s the girl over there?”

  Brub turned back to their table. “Which one?”

  Sylvia followed Dix’s gesture.

  “Over there. In white.”

  Brub peered. “Oh, that one. I’ve seen her—who is she, Sylvia?”

  Sylvia had placed the girl. “Betsy Banning. You know, Brub. The Bannings bought the Henry house up the beach.” Sylvia said to Dix, “I’ve met her but I don’t really know her.” She smiled, “Or I’d introduce you.”

  Dix laughed. “Don’t start match-making. I’m happy. She looked familiar, that was all. Is she in pictures?”

  No,” Sylvia answered. “She’s at the university, I believe.” She smiled. “She doesn’t need the pictures; the Bannings are Texas oil, floating in it. Otis Banning, her father, is the bald one. They say he has seven million in a little black box. No doubt an exaggeration.”

  Brub said, “Sylvia ought to be the detective in the family. She knows everything about everybody.”<
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  “Otis and I share the same dentist, darling.”

  “She’s a cute kid.” Brub was again looking across at the girl.

  “You’re married now,” Dix reminded him.

  “To me,” Sylvia added sweetly. “I may not be a cute kid but I’m nice.”

  They exchanged that happy intimate look. Then Brub turned his eyes again to the Banning girl. “You’re right, though. She does look familiar.” He was scenting her, the way a detective would, narrowed eyes, his brows pulled slightly together, his nose keen.

  “Come on home,” Dix laughed.

  Brub’s head snapped to Dix quickly. His dark eyes were lighted. “That’s it! You know who she looks like? Brucie!”

  The name was spoken before he could warn Brub not to speak it. He’d known in that split second of Brub’s remembering, in the second before the name. It was said and for the moment he could see nothing, only the red blur before his eyes and the dread roaring of sound in his ears. He didn’t know his knuckles were white knobs gripping the table, his cigarette mashed between his fingers. The moment passed and he was in control of himself again. He let the cigarette brush to the floor. In another moment he could speak.

  Sylvia spoke first. “And who is Brucie, darling?”

  “A girl we knew in England. She was a Red Cross worker when we were stationed near Dover. Scotch—that’s where the Bruce, Brucie, came from. Cute as a button.”

  Brub had noticed nothing. But he wasn’t sure about Sylvia. Behind her civilized attention, her humor, her casualness, he wasn’t certain. Something was there behind the curtain of her eyes, something in the way she looked at Dix, a look behind the look. She might have been watching him at that wrong moment.

  Dix said, “She was, all of that.” His voice wasn’t thick; it was as casual as Sylvia’s.

  “Wonder what ever happened to her? She was sure a cute kid. You kind of went for her, didn’t you, Dix?”

  Dix laughed, a normal laugh. “You kind of liked her yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Brub!” Sylvia’s eyes opened, wide surprise. She was pretending. She was too level-headed, too secure to care.

  “You bet I liked her. I guess every man in the platoon sort of liked Brucie. But you needn’t worry, honey. No one had a chance with old lady-killer Steele present.”

  Dix was very careful lighting his cigarette. Because Sylvia was watching him. With the look behind the look.

  “You ever hear from her, Dix?”

  He shook his head. He was surprised at how easy it was to talk. “No. Brub,never did.”

  “Out of sight, out of mind. That’s the great Steele. Don’t ever fall for a guy like that, Sylvia.” Brub began on his neglected ice cream.

  “No, darling,” Sylvia murmured. She wasn’t looking at him, yet Dix had a feeling she was seeing him. And probing him with her mind.

  “If I’d had a girl like Sylvia,” he began, and he realized there was some honesty in the play, “I wouldn’t have looked at anyone else. I wouldn’t have been like you. ogling all those U.S.O. legs.”

  “I’m learning things.” Sylvia nodded a severe head. “Go on. Dix, tell me more.”

  He invented lazily but his mind wasn’t there. It was remembering Brucie and the ache in him was the ache of a wound torn open. His face covered his mind, as his voice covered the pain crying from his throat. “Remember the redhead contortionist?” and he remembered the redhead in the patio this afternoon. With a woman like that, he might be able to forget. Nothing else brought forgetfulness, only for a brief time. Another section of his mind moved as the brown girl stood up from her table with her young crew-cut escort. The look of Brucie, not the face, the swagger of her shoulders, the echo of laughter. Perhaps married to seven million dollars you could forget. You could have fast cars, fast boats, a good plane to climb up there into the vastness of eternity. Brub and Sylvia were happy. Marriage could be happy.

  He realized there was music when the brown girl and her partner began to dance. He should ask Sylvia to dance. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to get out of here, to go home. He couldn’t leave abruptly, not two nights in a row. However, he didn’t think the Nicolais would stay much longer, off guard their faces returned to somberness. He could nudge them. He said abruptly, “You’re tired, Brub.”

  Brub nodded, “Yeah. But I’ve got to go back to work.”

  “No, Brub,” Sylvia cried.

  “I shouldn’t have left when I did.”

  “You’re worn out now. You can’t, darling. It’s an hour’s drive downtown—”

  He interrupted, “I don’t have to go downtown, Sylvia. To the Beverly Hills station is all. That isn’t fifteen minutes. Why don’t you keep Dix—”

  Sylvia shook her head.

  Dix said, “I ought to get back to work myself. So don’t be polite.”

  Sylvia said, “I couldn’t stay. You understand.”

  He gave her an appreciative smile. “I understand.”

  “It’s been a punk evening for you, Dix,” Brub was apologetic. “We’ll make it up to you.”

  They almost hurried from the dining room into the lounge. As if, once it had been admitted, all three could make up with haste for the spent time. Sylvia said, “I’ll get my coat.” She hesitated, “You are on the case, Brub?”

  He admitted ruefully, “Just a little bit, honey.”

  She didn’t say anything, simply turned and went to the cloakroom. Brub watched her go.

  “Why is she afraid?” Dix asked.

  Brub started, “Wha—” He realized Dix’s question. “I guess it’s pretty much my fault. Ever since this thing started, I’ve been afraid for her. She’s lived in the canyon all her life. She never had any fear, wandered all over it, any time of day. But the canyon at night, the way the fogs come in—it’s a place for him.” His face was again angry, helplessly angry. “I’ve scared her. She’s alone so much. I never know what hours I have to keep. We have good neighbors, a couple of our best friends are right across the road. But you know our street. It’s dark and lonely and the way our house is set up there—” He broke off. “I’m the one who’s scared; I’ve infected her. And I can’t help it. I can’t pretend, until we’ve caught him—”

  Sylvia was coming into the hall. She looked herself again, tall and lovely and unruffled, her gilt hair smooth, her movements unhurried.

  Brub said under his breath, “If we could only find the why of the pattern—” He didn’t finish because she was there, and the three were moving out of the club into the sea-fresh darkness. The swish of the breakers was liquid against the night.

  “I could take Sylvia—” Dix began.

  “No, I’ll run her home, get her settled. Unless you’d like to sit with her until I—”

  “Dix has to work,” Sylvia said. “And I’m tired.” She put out her hand. “Another time we’ll do better, Dix.”

  “We certainly will,” Brub vowed.

  He watched Brub wheel the car out of the drive. In a hurry, hurried to get back to the Beverly Hills police station. He would take Sylvia into the house, make sure there was no shadowy stranger lurking. They would cling together for a moment, fear in both of them. The woman fearing to have her man sniffing the spoor of a murderer, fearing lest he catch up with evil. Fearing less for herself; only the unease she must feel, infected by Brub’s fear for her. Brub fearing for her because she was a woman, because she was his woman, and women were being stalked in the night. Fearing, he would yet leave her, and quickly, because he was a hunter and this was a big hunt. For wild game.

  Dix circled back to his car, Terriss’ car. The plain black coupe. He warmed the engine. It was a good car and he kept it functioning smoothly. He released the brake. Fifteen minutes at the outside and Brub would be gone. He could go there then; she’d let him in. Brub’s friend. He could have an excuse, Brub could have infected him too with the fear. She’d be glad to see him. He could coax her into driving up to Malibu. For a drink. For fresh air. She wouldn’t be afraid—
at first.

  He slid the car to the gates. Left lay the canyon. Left lay Malibu. Right was the California Incline. Right was Wilshire, the road back to town. She was Brub’s wife. Brub was his friend. Brub, the hunter.

  He was very tired. He hadn’t had much sleep last night. He turned to the right.

  2

  The morning paper had columns on the case. Having been scooped by the afternoon papers on the original story, this sheet at least was making up its loss by intensive research. It had pictures of the girl, Mildred, of her family, of the apartment house where she’d played bridge, of the lonely spot in Beverly Glen Canyon where her body was found.

  Her name was Mildred Atkinson and she had led a very stupid life. Grade school, high school—Hollywood High but she was no beauty queen—business college and a job in an insurance office. She was twenty-six years old and she was a good girl, her parents sobbed. She played bridge with girl friends and she once taught a Sunday-school class. She didn’t have any particular gentlemen friend, she went out with several. Not often, you could bet. The only exciting thing that had ever happened to her was to be raped and murdered. Even then she’d only been subbing for someone else.

  The sleuths had found that she and the man had had a cup of coffee about midnight in a near drive-in. The couple had been served inside, not in a car. She’d been standing there alone, waiting for a bus. Her girl friends had waved goodbye to her. The man had seen her standing there alone, a little nervous. He’d said, “Busses don’t run often at night,” as if he too were waiting. She hadn’t wanted to talk; she’d been brought up not to talk to strange men. “Mildred was a good girl,” the parents sobbed. She’d never let a man pick her up, her girl friends chorused, but they wondered how much they hadn’t known about Mildred. “Not unless she knew him.” The cops were scouring the town now, talking to every man Mildred had known. They’d be thorough; they’d check men who’d passed through that insurance office. Believing they had a lead at last on a man apparently as normal as you or I, who tracked women at night. The lead editorial called him Jack the Ripper and demanded more and better police protection. The editorial—it was a non-administration paper— sneered politics and got in some snide cracks about the mayor.