by Guy Bolton
“I wouldn’t worry yourself.” There was a brief pause as Simms took off his glasses and sighed. “Leonard Stone cut his wrists with a piece of broken glass. They found him dead in his cell this morning.”
* * *
Craine closed the crime scene and left the apartment building not long after the last of the uniformed officers. His mind was weighed down by what Simms had told him. Leonard Stone. He couldn’t believe it.
Outside, the first thing he noticed was that the streets were unusually quiet. There was no sound of sirens, no crowds gathered. Even the homeless had cleared the streets. It was as if the entire neighborhood had heard about the shooting and wanted nothing to do with it.
The second thing he noticed was O’Neill standing by the curb. He was waiting for him with two paper cups of coffee in his hands.
O’Neill stepped forward. “Craine. You want a coffee?”
“No thanks. Surprised to see you here, O’Neill. I understand you’ve been a little . . . unwell.”
Craine started walking toward where his car was parked. He was in no mood for conversation, least of all with O’Neill, but the young detective was determined. He kept step, sipping at both coffees so they wouldn’t spill.
“Did Dr. Collins tell you that?” O’Neill said, clearly embarrassed. “It was a passing stomach bug, maybe something I ate, that’s all. Anyway, I was wondering . . .” he formed his words carefully like he was treading on eggshells.
“What is it you want, O’Neill?”
“I heard about the shooting.”
“It was nothing. A minor incident.”
But it wasn’t nothing. Underneath he knew it wasn’t and O’Neill was no fool either.
“It was Campbell, wasn’t it? The man who called Stanley shot at you.” There was a steel in O’Neill’s voice but it lacked conviction.
“It’s possible it was a misunderstanding,” Craine replied, trying his best to sound calm, with nothing to hide. “Probably a carjacker or pickpocket worried he was going to get pulled in.” Craine was sounding more and more like Simms and he didn’t like it.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to bother you about it. I only . . . I only wanted to know if you’d asked him anything about the phone call. About Stanley.”
Craine slowed but didn’t stop walking. “He escaped before I could bring him in for questioning. Honestly, I barely mentioned Stanley. I’m not even sure he knew who he was.” Craine was tempted to expand on what had happened and Campbell’s connection to Florence Lloyd but he knew no good would come of it. He’d already said too much so he clamped his mouth shut.
“Don’t you think we should maybe . . . try and find him? You should—I mean—have you put a search order out?”
They’d reached his car. Craine fished in his pocket for his keys. “Everything that needs to be done is being done already.”
The young detective was red from effort. “I’m concerned we’re not doing enough. Did Collins tell you that Stanley had drugs in his system? Why not pursue this Campbell character? We could do a background check, see where it leads. Or we could talk to the studio.”
“You stay away from M.G.M.”
“What is it with you and the studio? I know your wife worked for them but—”
Craine twisted around and jabbed a finger in O’Neill’s face. He was uncommonly angry. “Don’t ever mention her again, do you understand?”
Detective O’Neill was almost quaking. He dropped one of his coffees and stepped back. “Craine, I’m sorry—”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
But Craine had no interest in O’Neill’s apology, the words plowing past him as he pulled open his car door and slammed it shut again. A few seconds later and he was gone, his Fleetwood fast accelerating north toward Beverly Hills.
One hundred and fifteen miles east of Los Angeles, Jimmy Campbell lay on his hotel bed in Barstow, contemplating his future. He was booked under his own name in room 24 of the St. Louis Motel. “Louis” pronounced “Lewis,” the manager kept telling him when he said it wrong. His room was a cubic cell on the first floor, with three windows facing the parking lot and a glimpse of the San Bernardino mountain range if you pulled the drapes all the way back. A moth-eaten chenille bedspread lay loosely over a single mattress and the bathroom faucet leaked cold water, deep brown puddles already spreading across the tile and making their way into the bedroom.
He tensed when he heard a car pull off the gravel track and onto the forecourt. The room lit up momentarily as the headlights flickered against the net curtains. He heard the engine cut and then the sound of a car door opening. Calm yourself, Jimmy, it’s the third car in the last thirty minutes. The manager said people turned up at all hours.
Campbell slid further down the bed and tried to relax. The bedside clock said it was two in the morning and the night manager had promised he’d call by to fix the leak in the bathroom hours ago. Where was he?
He took out a cigarette and lit it, hoping the smoke would put off the flies. He wished he could afford to stay somewhere better but things hadn’t panned out and he needed to save his money where he could. He calculated he had about a hundred dollars in his case, at least a hundred more stored in a security box at the Pacific National Bank in Chicago. Over two hundred dollars in total. The sum of his entire life’s earnings. It didn’t matter; he wouldn’t let it get to him.
He looked at the suitcase sitting next to him and took out a set of pictures. He looked at them intently, one after another, grainy flesh-on-flesh photographs that had brought him nothing but a lifetime alone. He drew hard on the cigarette. Christ, what had they been thinking? How could Florence have died for a set of lousy photographs?
He knew that keeping the pictures was a risk. He should burn them, destroy the photographs completely. He should have done this weeks ago.
Campbell took out his lighter and ran his thumb against the flint. A flame sparked then died. He shook it and tried again but it wouldn’t light. It was out of fuel.
Before he could search through his pockets for matches there came a soft double knock at the door.
Campbell slid off the bed and leaned his head toward the window. There were no lights on outside but he could see someone standing by the door.
“Who is it?”
“Management.”
A small sigh of relief. “One second.”
Back toward the bed, he slipped the photos in the case with his camera and latched it shut. He’d squared a chair under the doorknob and pulled it away now before twisting the knob and opening the door.
“Thanks for coming. I was worried the whole place would flood—”
Campbell stopped still. The roof of his mouth went suddenly dry and he felt his cheeks start to burn. Barely three feet away, the tall silhouette of a man in a long gray coat stared at him through the darkness.
It wasn’t the manager.
Chapter 14
May 13th
Returning to Beverly Hills feeling dejected, Craine pushed his anxieties about the case aside and ate a light meal with a bottle of claret.
As the evening endured, however, the doubt seeded. He drank another bottle of wine but there was no ridding himself of the feeling that something about these two cases wasn’t right.
When daylight gave way to darkness, he took his place on the living-room divan and drifted toward half-sleep, waking at hour-long intervals without ever knowing if his eyes had even been shut. Images flitted across his eyes. Celia. Michael. Then Leonard Stone. Thoughts of what had happened to that boy had been silently nagging him all night. Leonard Stone was dead, and it was his fault. He tried not to think about Stone dead in his cell but it was easier to think of Leonard than it was of Celia. She would have hated him for what had happened, he knew that much. The man she fell in love with used to really believe in the merits of police work. Or at least he pretended to. Craine wondered at what point he’d stopped caring about his job.
Or if he ever truly had. Because no detective with any self-worth would ever agree to cover up his own wife’s suicide simply to satisfy the needs of a motion picture studio.
To clear his mind of self-loathing, Craine began to concentrate instead on the investigation. At some unknown hour of the night he came to the conclusion that he would never satisfy his conscience if he didn’t delve into the two cases further. Not just find a story to fit the theory but piece together what really happened the night Stanley and Lloyd died.
It was clear now that he would have to start from the very beginning. For the first time he could remember, Jonathan Craine was approaching a case with no preconceived agenda, no certainty of outcome.
Knowing that he would need to talk to Gale Goodwin, Craine thought back on the conversation they’d had yesterday in his car. He felt strangely excited at the prospect of seeing her again and lidded his eyes to evoke an image of her face. When he opened them again it was light outside.
At five, Craine drove back to the Bureau. At six he was in his office, calling down to the Records and Identification Division and asking the female admin clerk to track down R.A.P. sheets on James Campbell and Florence Lloyd. An arrest and prosecution record might provide a photograph or an address. It might even give some clue as to what Campbell was looking for at Lloyd’s house. Or not—it could also lead to nothing.
After retrieving Florence Lloyd’s homicide file, Craine went into his office and locked the door. The Bureau worked on rotating shifts and although four detectives were always on duty between midnight and 8 A.M., the steno pool only worked a regular day and without their fevered chatter the office floor felt unusually quiet.
Within the pages of the red binder, a one-page missive written by himself only two days ago highlighted the key elements of the case. ROBBERY-HOMICIDE it said in bold letters at the top. Turning to Lloyd’s autopsy report, he considered instead what he now believed to be the essential facts: cause of death was gunshot wound to the head—precisely as predicted. The medical examiner had determined that Lloyd was not sexually assaulted but the report stated that there were signs of physical abuse. Torture, it meant. Florence Lloyd was tied up and beaten then finally shot dead. There was no casing found on the scene but the slug had been pulled out of the wall and sent off for examination. Was there any way to compare it to yesterday’s shooting?
Shortly after 8 A.M., Craine picked up the phone and asked to be connected to the ballistics unit on the second floor. The ballistics team was barely six years old, a team of three responsible for logging and analyzing weapons, cartridge cases and projectiles recovered at crime scenes.
“Ballistics,” said a gravelly voice at the other end of the line. “This is Noakes.”
“Noakes, Craine. Have you made any headway on those casings I asked to be sent in?”
“From the Main Street apartment block?”
“That’s the one.”
“Yeah, came in last night. Some firefight I hear. You alright?”
“I’m fine. We have a positive I.D. but he hasn’t turned up. I was hoping you could match the projectiles.”
“Well, we made some comparisons with the ammunition located in the stairwell. I assume you were firing a Browning P-35 with nine-millimeter rounds?”
“I was. I don’t know how many.”
“Doesn’t matter. The other casings belong to a nine-by-nineteen Parabellum round. Likely a German manufacturer, D.W.M., probably from a Luger semi-automatic or perhaps a Mauser.”
“Are they common?”
“Not really, not in California State. But I saw some the other day. Which was it—?”
Craine let out a breath slowly. “Was it the Lloyd file?” he asked tentatively. “From the house on Longbrook Avenue?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Same ammunition used in that robbery-homicide. Except there was no casing. Slug went straight through the headboard and into the wall. It was all in one piece, if I remember.”
“You’re certain? I need to know there’s absolutely no doubt.”
“I’d have to run some more tests on the projectiles to make sure there’s an exact match, but yes, I’m almost definite.”
“Thank you, Noakes.”
Craine put the receiver on the hook and tapped his foot against the floor. His theory was gaining credibility. He contended that Campbell had entered Lloyd’s house somewhere around 10 P.M. There was a struggle and Lloyd was trussed to the bed and shot dead. Campbell then went through the house and robbed her.
Probing through the first officer’s report, Craine remembered what Officer Becker had said about the watch in the bathroom and the forgotten money in the kitchen. Even at the time he knew it was strange but he’d chosen to dismiss it. He seized on a new theory now. Florence Lloyd’s murder was planned, premeditated. She was tortured, killed and her house searched. But why? And for what?
His secretary Elaine was outside his office, nibbling at a muffin. She wiped her mouth and sat up straight when she saw him. He hated how he had that effect on people.
“I’m sorry, I was just eating. How are you feeling today?”
Craine ignored the question. “Has Detective O’Neill come in this morning?”
“He’s not due in until noon. Do you want me to call him?”
“No, it’s fine. Hold my calls. I’ll be out for the rest of the day.”
“If the Captain asks for you?”
“Tell him I’ve gone home.”
Craine took the elevator down to R. & I.—the Records and Identification Division—a network of rooms filled with shelves and file cabinets that took up most of the second floor.
When he entered, a neatly turned-out girl at reception looked up and smiled a little desperately. She was sat at a wide desk beneath a row of bare, hanging bulbs. There was no one else in the room.
“I’m Detective Craine.”
“Oh, hi, hello—we spoke earlier, didn’t we?” she said, with the flustered desperation of a girl who’d never imagined spending her better years sitting locked up alone. She looked to be early twenties, with mousy brown hair and a broad, toothy smile.
“So did you find the R.A.P. sheets for Florence Lloyd and James Campbell?”
She stared at him for a second, her mouth a little open. “Oh, yes. I mean, I couldn’t find anything on Lloyd—”
“Nothing?”
“Well, nothing in California State,” she said, handing him the file.
“And Campbell?”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t had a chance to—”
“Then let’s find it together.”
He followed her into the archive hall, a low-ceilinged room filled with long rows of metal shelves stacked with manila files. The room smelt of paper, the thin dust clinging to his throat.
“Gets awful stuffy in here. And dark,” the girl said sadly as they moved down a line of shelves. Craine looked around. There were no windows.
The files on the shelves were ordered alphabetically. Each letter spanned between ten and fifteen shelves, with each shelf containing an average of eighty or ninety folders, each marked with a name.
They reached “C,” eleven shelves and a thousand files of liars, thieves and murderers. The girl consulted her notepad and stopped. Craine waited as she ran her fingers across the spines, first the top shelf and then the second before selecting a thin manila file and sliding it out. She held it under the light: CAMPBELL, J. L. was carbon-printed across a small white label on the front. “Here we are—that’s Campbell.”
Craine took it from her and removed the paper from the file. A summary report stated that James Campbell was born in Chicago in March 1903 and on a charge sheet for a recent drunk-driving misdemeanor he’d stated his profession as photographer. His description was listed as white male, thirty-six. He was five-ten, brown and green but there were no photographs clipped to the file.
“What about prints and mug shots?”
“We only store those if the subject has a state conviction. If there
are no yellow pages then he doesn’t have any. We’d have to track them down from other counties.”
Craine was already turning pages. “There aren’t any. What about out-of-state convictions?”
“They’re at the back there. I’m Maggie, by the way,” the girl added when Craine didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “You look tired. Would you like some coffee?”
“No. No, thank you,” he said, turning one final page before he found the R.A.P. sheet.
James Campbell had a conviction dating back to ’31, a two-year sentence at the Joliet Correctional Center in Illinois for distributing illegal narcotics, detailed as two ounces of street-produced diamorphine powder. He was convicted alongside another man, Jackson T. Rochelle.
Rochelle. A figure from Craine’s past now creeping into his present. Jack Rochelle was a bootlegger who’d run speakeasies in Boston during Prohibition then moved over to California seven years ago, running rum from Mexico into Los Angeles before M.G.M. hired him to manage their barbershop, a front for illegal activity. Craine considered the relevance of this new piece of information. Campbell knew Jack Rochelle, who in turn knew almost everyone on the M.G.M. studio lot, including Stanley. So what was their connection? Drugs?
“Could you call Chicago, get me what they have on either Campbell or Lloyd? And try and get a mug shot of Campbell. We’ll need it to track him down.”
“Yes, Detective,” she said, looking at him with something that looked like despair. “But it might take a week or so.”
“Does Campbell have a separate employment record?”
“Should be something on the second or third page in . . .”
Craine flicked backward, thumbing through closely typed sheets of court reports until he found what he was looking for.
Two pages after the appendix, an employment notation listed his name, temporary address and date of birth. A single line stated that he was employed as a nightclub photographer between May and November of last year. It was a club Craine knew only too well.
