In a Lonely Place

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  “To the scene of the crime,” Brub explained. “Would you like to have a look at it? It’ll tell you more than I can in words of what we’re working against.”

  His pulse leaped at the idea of it. To the scene of the crime. For book material. He said, “Yeah, I think I will.” He glanced at his own watch. Two-twenty. “I can take another hour from work. Particularly since I can charge it up to research.”

  Brub picked up the checks. At Dix’s demurring, he said, “This is on me. In the line of business.”

  The cold touch at the base of his spine was imaginary.

  He laughed. “You mean detectives have a swindle sheet? Authors aren’t so lucky.”

  “I’ll put it down: conferring with an expert.” He queried, All mystery authors claim to be crime experts, don’t they?”

  “I’ll dedicate the book to the dick who bought me a lunch.”

  He and Brub emerged into the sunshine of Beverly Drive. The lunch hour was done; the workers had returned to their offices. Women shoppers were beginning to stroll the street. They clustered at the shop windows. They held little children by the hand. They chattered as they went about their aimless female business. There wasn’t a brilliant redhead in sight.

  The news vendor on the corner talked the races with a passing customer. His folded papers, the early edition of the News, lay stacked on the sidewalk beside a cigar box holding coins. Dix’s eyes fell to the papers but he didn’t buy one. There wouldn’t be any fresh news anyway. He was with the source of news.

  They returned to the city hall. “Shall we take your car or mine?” Brub asked.

  The cold hand touched him quickly again. How could he know? Brub couldn’t be suspicious of him. There wasn’t a shred of reason for thinking it. Brub included Dix with himself, “normal as you and I.” Yet how could he be sure? Brub had once known him so well. That was long ago. No one could read him now. Not even Laurel.

  Did Brub want him to take his car back up the Beverly Glen Canyon? Was this luncheon arranged; were the two ordinary men, who were L.A. Homicide, waiting for Brub to report back to them? He had hesitated long enough in answering, too long. It couldn’t matter which car. There couldn’t be eyes waiting to identify a black coupe, a coupe like a thousand others. It couldn’t be tire marks they were after; they were unable to get marks off a clean, paved road. Brub had said so. Had intimated so. Too many cars had passed that way.

  He pretended to come to. “Did you say something? Sorry.”

  Brub grinned. “Thinking about the redhead? I said, whose car shall we take? Yours or mine?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he answered promptly. But he knew as he answered that he preferred to take his own. He’d been a panty-waist to have considered anything but that. That was what quickened his mind, that was what put zest into the game. To take the dare. “Might as well use mine.”

  Brub said, “Okay,” but he stopped at the doors to the building. “I’ll go in and see if Lochner wants to ride up with us. You don’t mind another passenger?”

  “Not at all.” He followed Brub. To watch faces, to see if there were interchange of expression.

  Only one of the Homicide men was left. He was talking to a couple of motorcycle cops in uniform. Talking about the local baseball club. Brub said, “Want to go up Beverly Glen, Loch?” He made the introductions then. “Jack Lochner—my friend, Dix Steele.”

  Lochner was the tall, thin man. His clothes were a little too big for him, as if he’d lost weight worrying. His face was lined. He looked like just an ordinary man, not too successful. He didn’t give Brub any special glance. He didn’t examine Dix now as he had earlier; he shook hands and said, “Nice to know you, Mr. Steele.” His voice was tired.

  Brub said, “Dix is a mystery writer. Loch. He wants to go along. You don’t mind?”

  “Not at all.” Lochner tried to smile but he wasn’t a man used to smiling. Just used to worry. “Nothing to see. I don’t know why we’re going back. Except Brub wants to. And the Beverly Hills bunch seems to think he’s on the right track.”

  Dix raised one eyebrow. “So you do have some ideas?” Brub’s laugh was embarrassed. “Don’t you start riding me too. All I’ve got is a feeling.”

  “Psychic,” Lochner droned.

  ‘No,” Brub denied fast. “But I can’t help feeling we’re on the right track here in Beverly.” He explained to Dix, The Beverly bunch sort of feels the same way. That’s why we’re hanging around here. Beverly has its own force, you know, separate from L.A.. but they’re doing everything they can to help us.”

  “And they know how to help,” Loch said. “A smart bunch.”

  They left the building together. Dix said, “We’re taking my car.” He steered them to it. He wasn’t going in a police car. Only a man off his trolley would consider riding around in a police car with Homicide. Homicide with psychic hunches.

  “Do you know the way?” Lochner asked.

  “I know where Beverly Glen is. You can direct me from there.” With the dare taken, his mind was sharp, cold and clear and sharp as a winter wind back East. They could direct. Not a muscle would twitch to indicate he knew the place. He began laughing to himself. Actually he didn’t know the place. He didn’t even have to worry about making the unwary move.

  “Go over to Sunset,” Brub directed. “Turn right on Beverly Glen.”

  “That much I know.” He swung the car easily towards Sunset, enjoying the power of the motor, the smoothness of the drive. A good car. He held it back. You shouldn’t speed up with cops in your car. “There were a couple of cops guarding the portals when I went by Sunday. On my way home after I left your place, Brub.” Were those the same cops Lochner had had in the office? Were they there to look him over? He was getting slap-happy. The cops couldn’t have picked him out of all the drivers passing that intersection Sunday afternoon. Just him, one man. His fingers tightened on the wheel. Did the police know more than they had told? Had there been someone else in the canyon on Friday night? He went on talking, “What were they doing? Waiting for the killer to return to the scene of the crime?”

  ”They were checking traffic,” Lochner said in his disinterested voice. “I never knew a killer yet who went back. Make it easy for us if they did. We wouldn’t have to beat our brains out all over town.”

  “All we’d have to do was post a couple of the boys and wait,” Brub enlarged. “They could play checkers until he came along—easy.”

  “How would you know him from the sightseers?” Dix joined the game.

  “That is an angle.” Brub looked at Lochner.

  The older man said, “He’d be the one who was too normal.”

  “No fangs? No drooling?” Dix laughed.

  “Of course, he wouldn’t know the cops were watching,” Brub said.

  They’d reached Beverly Glen and Dix turned right. “You can direct me now.”

  “Just keep on going,” Brub said. “We’ll tell you when.”

  It was a pretty little road to start, rather like a New England lane with the leaves turning and beginning to fall from the trees. He had no tension, perhaps a slight fear that he might recognize the place, that muscular reaction might be transferred from him to Brub seated close beside him. He relaxed. He said, “This reminds me of home. Autumn in New York, or Connecticut, or Massachusetts.”

  “I’m from the East myself,” Lochner said. “I’ve been away twenty years.”

  It wasn’t pretty for long. A few estates and it became a road of shacks, little places such as men built in the mountains before the rich discovered their privacy and ousted them. And then the shacks were left behind and the road became a curving pass through the canyon to some valley beyond.

  It would be lonely up here at night: there were deep culverts, heavy brush, on the side of the road. It was lonely up here now and they passed no cars. It was as if they had entered into a forbidden valley, a valley guarded by the police keeping the sightseers away. Only the hunters and the hunted allowed to enter. Th
e walls of the canyon laid shadows over the road. There was a chill in the air, the sun was far away.

  He drove on, waiting for them to give the word to stop They weren’t talking, either of them; they were on the case now, a case that had them angry and bitter and worried. He kept quiet, it wasn’t the time for a conversation piece. He realized his fingers were tightened on the wheel and again he relaxed them. He didn’t know if the detectives would shout a sudden stop command or if they’d give warning or just how it would be done. He kept the speed down to twenty and he watched the road ahead, not the culverts with leaves like brown droppings in them. He didn’t recognize any of the road. That was the good part of it.

  It was Lochner who said, “Here we are. Just pull up along here, Mr. Steele, if you will.”

  This stretch of the road was no different from the others. There was nothing marking it as the place where a girl had been found.

  The detectives got out, and he got out on the other side of the car. He walked beside them across the road. “He came this far, and then he turned around,” Brub said. “Or he may have been on his way back to town.”

  “This is where you found her?” Dix wasn’t nervous. He was an author in search of material, a man along just for the ride.

  Brub had stepped up into the rustling brown leaves. He said, “It’s a little heavier here. He could have known that. He could have figured she wouldn’t be found for a long time, with the leaves falling on her, covering her.”

  Brub was scuffing through the rustle, as if he expected to find something under the sound. A clue. An inspiration.”Every day there’d be more leaves. Not many people look off at the side of the road when they’re driving. Not unless there’s something scenic there. Nothing scenic about this thicket.”

  Lochner stood with his hands in his pockets, with the worry lines in his tired face. Stood beside Dix.

  Dix could ask questions, he was supposed to ask questions. He said, “How was it she was found so quickly then?”

  “Luck,” Brub said. He stood in the ditch, leaves to his ankles. “The milkman had a flat right at this point.”

  Lochner said, “He picked this place on purpose.”

  “The milkman?” Dix looked incredulous.

  “The killer. Take a look at it. The way the road curves here—he can see any lights coming from behind, two loops below. And he can look up to the top of the hill, see the lights of a car approaching him when it makes the first of those two curves. He can sit with her in the car, looking like a spooner, until the other car goes by.” His eyes squinted up the road and back down again. “Not much chance of traffic here in the middle of the night. He was pretty safe.” His voice had no inflection. “He does it. He opens the door of the car and rolls her out and he’s away. No chance of being caught at it. Strangling’s the easiest way. And the safest.”

  Brub had stooped and brushed aside the leaves.

  Dix moved closer to the edge of the thicket, looked up at him. “Find something?” he asked with the proper cheerful curiosity.

  Lochner monotoned, “The experts have been over every inch with a microscope. He won’t find anything. Only he wanted to come back up so I said I’d come along.” He put a cigarette in his mouth, cupped his hands about the match. “The only place we’ll find anything is in his car.”

  A wind had come up, a small sharp wind. Lochner Wouldn’t have cupped the match if it hadn’t. It wasn’t imaginary. Dix said, with the proper regret, “And you’ve not been able to get a description of the car yet?”

  “Not yet,” Lochner said. In that tired way, but there was a tang underneath the inflection. Not yet, but they would because they never closed the books. Because a murderer had to murder. Dix wanted to laugh. They knew so little with all their science and intuition; they were babes in toy-land.

  “When you do, you mean you might find a hairpin or a lipstick or something?”

  Brub did laugh. There in the brush it sounded hollow. “Good Lord, Dix. You’re old hat. Girls don’t wear hairpins. You ought to know that.”

  “Dust,” Lochner said.

  “Dust?” He was puzzled now.

  Brub climbed down from the thicket, one big step down. He began brushing the crumpled brown leaves from his trouser legs.

  “That’s dust,” Lochner said. He turned back to the car. “We’ve got dust from the drive-in. We’ve got the dust from her clothes and her shoes. There’ll be some of that same dust in his car.”

  Dix held the mask over his face. He shook his head, his expression one of awe and admiration. “And even if it’s ten or twelve years, the dust will be the same?”

  “Some of it will,” Lochner said.

  They all got back in the car. Dix started the engine. He asked, “Is there a better place to turn than here?” They were supposed to know. The police cars had been all over this territory. They’d drawn circles around it and carried laboratory technicians into it. They’d done everything but dig it up and carry it to headquarters.

  “Go on a bit,” Brub said. “There’s a side road a little further on.”

  Dix ran the car up the hill. He saw the side road and he turned in. The side road wasn’t paved. If there were any suspicion, this could be a trap to check on his tires. Behind the brush, there could be the two cops, playing checkers, watching. Cops with plaster, ready to make casts. But they were wrong. He hadn’t turned here before. There was a better place further on. He maneuvered the car. Headed back towards town.

  He could be talkative now. He was supposed to be impressed and curious. He said, “Did you find anything, Brub?”

  Brub shook his head. “No. I didn’t expect to. It’s just— I get closer to him when I do what he did. What he might have done. I’ve got a picture of him but it’s—it’s clouded over. It’s like seeing a man in the fog. The kind of a fog that hangs in our canyon.”

  Dix said cheerfully. “The kind you had when I was out at your place Friday night.”

  “Yeah.” Brub said.

  Lochner said. “He’s from the East.”

  Dix’s nerves were in strict control. Not one nerve end twitched. Rather he was stimulated by the sharp and cold blade of danger. He said, “That’s a bit of information you’ve kept to yourselves, isn’t it? Did the waitress recognize an Eastern accent?”

  “It isn’t information.” Brub answered. “He talked just like anybody else. No accent. No particular quality of voice. That’s Loch’s reconstruction.”

  Lochner repeated, “He’s from the East. I know that.” He was deliberate. “He’s a mugger.”

  “What’s a mugger?” Dix asked quickly.

  “Certain gangs used to operate in New York,” Brub explained. He illustrated on himself with his right arm. One man would get the victim so. the others would rob him. Until they found out it could be a one-man job. You don’t need more than two fingers to strangle a man. Or woman.”

  “He’s a mugger,” Lochner repeated. “He doesn’t use his fingers. There’s no finger marks. He uses his arm. He’s from the East.”

  Dix said, “As a fellow Easterner, Mr. Lochner, you might admit that a Westerner could have learned the trick.”

  Lochner repeated, “I’ve seen the way they did it in New York. He knows how. The same way.”

  They came out of the shadowed canyon, out into the sunshine, into the city again. But the sun had faded. There were clouds graying the blueness of sky. And the winding road of Sunset to Beverly was heavy with shadows of the late afternoon. It was almost four o’clock when they reached the city hall.

  Dix pulled up and Lochner got out. He intoned, “Thanks for the lift, Mr. Steele.”

  Dix said, “Thank you for letting me go along.” He shook his head. “It’s pretty gruesome though. I don’t think I’d go for police work.”

  Lochner walked away to the hall. Brub leaned against the car door. He was frowning. “It isn’t pleasant.” he said. “It’s damned unpleasant. But it’s there, you can’t just close your eyes and pretend it isn’t. Th
ere are killers and they’ve got to be caught, they’ve got to be stopped. I don’t like killing. I saw too much of it, same as you did. I hated it then, the callous way we’d sit around and map out our plans to kill people. People who didn’t want to die any more than we wanted to die. And we’d come back afterwards and talk it over, check over how many we’d got that night. As if we’d been killing ants, not men.” His eyes were intense. “I hate killers. I want the world to be a good place, a safe place. For me and my wife and my friends, and my kids when I have them. I guess that’s why I’m a policeman. To help make one little corner of the world a safer place.”

  Dix said. “That’s like you. Brub.” He meant it. It didn’t matter how unpleasant a job was. Brub would take it on if in the end it meant the righting of something wrong.

  Brub pushed back his hat. He laughed, a short laugh. “Junior G-man rides his white horse. I suppose in a couple of years I’ll be as stale as Loch. But right now it’s personal. I want to get that killer.” His laugh repeated. It was apology for his emotion. He said. “Hang around till I check in and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Sorry.” Dix put his hands on the wheel. “I’m late now. We’ll do it again. And thanks for a valuable afternoon, Brub.”

  “Okay, fellow. See you soon.” Brub’s hand lifted and he rolled off, like a sailor on the sea. Like a policeman tracking an unknown foe.

  Chapter Four

  He rang Laurel as soon as he reached the apartment. Before he fixed a drink, before even lighting a cigarette. There was no answer to the call. He rang her every fifteen minutes after that, and at six, when the dusk was moving across the open windows, and when there was still no answer to his call, he stepped out into the courtyard where he could look up at her apartment. But there were no lights in it.

  His toe stubbed the evening paper as he returned to his apartment. He’d forgotten it. His impatience to reach her had made him forget the news. He lighted the lamps in the living room when he reentered. He’d had two drinks and he didn’t want another. He wanted her. He took the paper with him hack into the bedroom where he could lounge on the bed, where the phone was close to hand. He turned on the bed light and he looked through the paper until he found the story. It was on an inside page tonight. There was nothing new. The policy were still working on the case. That was true. They had valuable leads. That was a lot of eyewash. He read the sports page and the comics and he rang her again. And again to no avail.