Hiding Place (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “Does Records have anything on him?”

  “As a matter of fact,” he answered, “Records does have something on him. It seems that when Farley was twelve years old he set a neighbor’s cat on fire.”

  “It’s like I said,” Canelli offered. “He’s kinky.”

  “Why don’t we keep him under surveillance until bedtime?” I said to Friedman.

  “Suits me.”

  “Fine. What about the coroner’s report?”

  “Preliminarily, he hasn’t got any surprises for us. She wasn’t raped, and probably hadn’t had intercourse previous to being murdered. She wasn’t a virgin. Death was caused by a massive cerebral hemorrhage resulting from three or four heavy blows to the left side of the head toward the front, indicating that the murderer, if he faced her, is probably right-handed—and probably strong. There weren’t any other marks on the body. No fist marks or scratches. Nothing. No needle marks either. However, the right shoulder strap of her bra was broken. Which could, of course, mean anything. I took the time to examine her before they stripped her, though, and it looked to me like someone might’ve grabbed her clothing in front—holding her, you see, while he hit her. He could’ve…”

  The phone rang. It was for me. Friedman signaled for me to take it.

  “Lieutenant Hastings? Sorry to interrupt. This is Gerry Olsen, Lieutenant, in the crime lab. I don’t know whether you remember me, sir. I’m new here. But—”

  “I remember you, Olsen. What is it?”

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you, sir, that we’re finished with the June Towers car.”

  “And?”

  “Well, we got quite a few prints, at least four different sets.”

  “Anything to identify who was the last one to drive the car?”

  “Well, sir, I don’t think it’s exactly my place to say.”

  “Guess, then.”

  “Well, if I had to guess, I’d say no. Everything on the rim of the steering wheel was pretty well smeared.”

  “What about the ignition key?”

  “We didn’t find one, sir.”

  “Anything else of interest besides the prints?”

  “Well, again, sir, I don’t think I should…”

  “All right, Olsen. Have you sent the prints to Classification?”

  “Yessir. Forty-five minutes ago.”

  “Okay. Good. Send the rest of the information to my office.” I hung up.

  “Anything?” Friedman asked laconically.

  “No. Olsen is a very careful man.”

  “In this business, that’s a virtue.”

  “Have you got anything else?” I asked Friedman.

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “Good.” I settled back in my chair.

  “First,” Friedman said, “Mr. Papadopolous mentioned three other regulars. There was a man and a boy who spent some time in the area. They come almost every Sunday, Mr. Papadopolous said, and two or three times during the week if the weather’s good. The man is in his middle thirties, dark hair, weighing probably a hundred seventy-five. The boy is nine or ten. They were just fooling around, according to Mr. Papadopolous. However, he’s sure they were in the area after four forty-five, so they might’ve seen something. He mentioned that they were ‘playing around the trees,’ whatever that means.”

  “How do we find them, though?”

  “I’ve applied myself to that problem,” Friedman said, “and I finally prevailed on Mr. Papadopolous to return to the area every day this week, as a public service. He’ll be there tomorrow. Someone should be on stakeout with him, obviously.” He glanced at Canelli, who in turn glanced appealingly at me. I looked away.

  “Also,” Friedman was saying, “Mr. Papadopolous remembers seeing the victim talking to a kid on a motorcycle.”

  I looked up. “Did he describe the kid?”

  “A teen-ager, blond, with medium-length hair about to the bottom of the ear. He seemed to know the victim. He rode up to her car, and apparently they talked for a couple of minutes. Then he rode off. He was wearing one of those fringed leather jackets and brown cowboy boots. No helmet.”

  “What about the motorcycle?” I asked. “Did he describe that?”

  “No. He thinks it might’ve been red. Or maybe orange. Anyhow, it was a bright color, he thinks.”

  “That motorcycle rider,” I said, “sounds like Kent Miller. The victim’s boyfriend.” I briefly described my interview with the Miller boy. “The time would fit,” I said.

  Friedman nodded. “It would indeed. Are you saying he could be a suspect?”

  I shrugged. “For openers, he specifically stated that he didn’t see June yesterday.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What else have you got?”

  “Nothing, really. Except that I talked to Randall Grant for a while—the victim’s stepfather. He came down to make the identification.”

  “What’d you think of him?” I asked.

  “I thought he was a horse’s ass,” Friedman replied promptly.

  “What’s he do for a living?”

  “Sells real estate, supposedly. But he reminds me of one of those bartenders who spends all his time down at the end of the bar, scowling at the customers.”

  “Did he give you any new ideas about the victim—why anyone would want to murder her?”

  “No,” Friedman answered. “But I was interested in what he had to say—especially how he said it and when he said it, which was just a couple of minutes after he’d identified the body.”

  “What’d you mean?”

  “I mean that he seemed to be talking about a neighbor kid—someone he just knew slightly.”

  “That’s the way he acted when I broke the news to him—like the whole thing was a plot to annoy him.”

  “I wish,” Friedman said thoughtfully, “that we could get a better personality profile on June Towers. I mean, all I get is a picture of some faceless teen-aged chick with three hundred bucks taped under her bed. Nobody loves her, nobody hates her. Nobody knows much about her. Not really.”

  “There,” I said, “I agree with you. We’ve got to know more about her.” I turned to Canelli. “What’d you find out?”

  “Well—” Frowning earnestly, Canelli hunched forward in his chair. “Most of the neighbors said she was just an ordinary girl, like you said. She wasn’t noisy and she didn’t give anyone any trouble. There’s one old lady, though, who lives three doors down from the Grants on the opposite side. She said that June Towers was ‘foxy,’ as she put it. She’s about eighty. The informant, I mean. And she’s one of these real sharp little old ladies. You know—kind of skinny and quick-moving, with an eye like a bird, or something.”

  “What does she mean by ‘foxy’?” Friedman asked. In his voice I could plainly hear the elaborately patient, ironic note that he reserved especially for questioning Canelli.

  “Well, you know—” Canelli shrugged. “Just foxy. Tricky, I guess you’d say.”

  “Did she mention anything specific?”

  “No, it was just a feeling she had. I gather that she spends a lot of her time looking out the window.”

  “If we didn’t have window watchers and paid stoolies,” Friedman observed, “we’d have to triple the force. Overnight.”

  “Anything else?” I asked Canelli.

  “Well, I spotted a couple of teen-aged girls hanging around the victim’s house. They’d just heard the news, and they came by for a look, I guess. I talked to them one at a time. One of them—her name was Cindy—she was one of those weepy types who won’t say anything bad about the dead. And all the time she’s sniffling you know she’s really enjoying herself. But the other one—she was a cute little Chinese girl named Lillian—she was a lot sharper and a lot cooler. She said that June Towers was one of those kids who’s always thinking. She didn’t talk much, and she didn’t laugh much either. She kept to herself. But according to Lillian, she was pretty good at getting what she wanted. Like boys, for instance. Li
llian didn’t say so in so many words, but I got the feeling that when June decided she wanted a guy, she just put out for him. And that was that. No fuss.”

  “How about the money?”

  “I asked Lillian about that. All she said was that if June had figured out some angle, she sure wouldn’t go around advertising.”

  “That,” Friedman said, “is the first bit of information that…”

  The phone rang. Again it was for me. It was Manley in Communications, saying, “I know you’re in conference, Lieutenant. But I’ve got a breather on the phone. He—or she—wants to talk to whoever’s in charge of the Towers investigation. I thought I should at least tell you.”

  “I’ll take it. Be sure and record the call.”

  “Yessir.”

  A moment later a disguised voice whispered in my ear, “If you want to find the girl’s murderer, go to 727 Twenty-fifth Avenue.” The line clicked dead.

  I replaced the receiver and repeated the message to the others.

  “They’re beginning to come out of the woodwork,” Friedman commented, “right on schedule. It’s the power of TV.”

  I said, “Still, I might as well check it out.” And to Canelli: “We can find out what it’s all about, then call it a day—or a night.” I was thinking of Ann, and our movie. I turned to Markham. “Did you find out anything in the park?”

  Sitting a little straighter in his chair, unconsciously lifting his chin against the tug of his gleaming white collar, Markham said, “Not really. I had six men, and we covered everything in a two-hundred-foot radius of the body, looking for the weapon. No luck.”

  “Was the terrain a problem?”

  He nodded decisively. “Definitely. Parts of that park are like a jungle.”

  For a moment we all shared a long, thoughtful silence. Finally Friedman said, “If we knew where she got that money, we’d be a lot further along.”

  “I’d also like to know,” Markham said, “whether the murderer took her car.”

  “It’s a reasonable assumption,” I answered. “Her folding money and her car key were missing. All she had in her purse was a latchkey.”

  “You’re saying that’s the motive then: the money and her car.” His voice was flat, his sidelong glance plainly doubtful. Playing the percentages, Markham was a squad-room skeptic. He constantly sought to identify a certain theory with a certain colleague, on the simple premise that most theories were eventually wrong. Meanwhile, Markham tried to avoid committing himself until the last possible moment. It was a delicate, difficult game, but he was good at it.

  “No,” I answered quietly, “I’m just saying that whoever took her key probably took her car. What I’d really like to know is why the car was abandoned so close to the scene.”

  Listening, Friedman had been poking a hole in a fresh cigar, using a straightened paper clip. “What I’d like to know,” he said, “is why the Miller kid said he didn’t see her yesterday, when maybe he did.”

  I got to my feet. “I’m beginning to wonder about that phone tip, since 727 Twenty-fifth Avenue is in the victim’s neighborhood. I’m also beginning to get hungry.”

  “What about another meeting tomorrow morning?” Friedman said. “Maybe someone’ll have a brainstorm in the meantime.”

  Nodding agreement, I turned toward the door.

  Eight

  AS I PRESSED THE doorbell at 727 Twenty-fifth Avenue, I automatically checked my watch. The time was 6:00 p.m.; the sky was already dark. The house was lit in almost every room.

  As a precaution, I gestured Canelli to stand off to my right, ready. With jackets unbuttoned, we loosened our service revolvers. Almost immediately the porch light came on and the door latch clicked.

  A bulky, balding man of about forty opened the door. With his heavy shoulders hunched aggressively forward, head lowered on a short, muscular neck, he looked like an overweight, out-of-shape linebacker—slow to start but hard to stop.

  I showed him the shield, identified myself, and asked for his name. I watched his gray eyes look us over, taking his time. His face was muscle-bunched, like his shoulders. His sparse hair was faded-red, his eyebrows ginger. His complexion was ruddy and freckle-flecked, seamed by the sun and wind. He was a stolid, stubborn-looking man.

  “My name is Fisher,” he said finally. “Bill Fisher. What’s it all about, anyhow?” He asked the question truculently, meeting my eye with a faintly annoyed frown. “We’re just about to sit down to dinner.”

  “This won’t take more than a few minutes, Mr. Fisher. If we could come inside, I’ll explain.”

  Momentarily he hesitated, then stood aside. I walked into a living room crowded with Early American furniture and dominated by a huge color TV, also Early American. Everything was elaborately ruffled: lampshades, furniture trim, curtains. An expensive book on American antiques was prominently displayed on the coffee table, but a second look confirmed that the furniture was factory-made.

  As I stood looking around the room, a woman wearing a ruffled apron entered from the dining room, standing in the connecting archway. She looked questioningly at her husband. She was a trim, attractive brunette with shrewd eyes and a tight mouth. She had the unmistakable air of a housewife interrupted at the wrong time.

  “These men are from the police,” the husband said shortly. “This is my wife, Marge.”

  Smiling at her, I remained standing while she perched on a straight-backed chair. Her husband stood beside her, pointedly not asking us to sit down. Sighing, I seated myself on the sofa. Canelli stood propped in the archway leading into the hall. He’d forgotten to button his jacket, and I could plainly see the butt of his gun. Frowning, I stared at his waist. Following my gaze, he came to haphazard attention, buttoning his jacket.

  As I turned to face Bill Fisher I said, “I’m sure you know that a neighbor of yours was a homicide victim. June Towers.”

  I watched the woman catch her breath sharply, then glance at her husband, still standing impassively at her side. With obvious effort, rigidly controlling himself, he continued to look directly into my eyes, projecting a slowly gathering sense of outraged puzzlement.

  It was a good, gutsy performance. But his acting partner had already blown the scene.

  “Have you caught whoever did it?” Fisher asked, his voice still steady.

  “No, we haven’t. That’s why we’re here, Mr. Fisher. We’re in the process of sorting everything out—checking all the leads as they come in to us.”

  I saw Marge Fisher’s lips move soundlessly before she finally managed to say, “B—but wh-what do you want? I mean, you certainly don’t—” She couldn’t finish it. Now her wide, incredulous eyes were rapidly circling the room. I’d seen the same desperate expression in the eyes of accident victims about to lose consciousness—trying to see it all, racing that final moment of oblivion.

  “An anonymous telephone caller said that someone at this address could give us information concerning the death of June Towers.” I looked silently from the husband to the wife. It was time for me to wait—and watch.

  The man looked as if he were gathering himself to bluff it out, blustering about his rights, and the taxes he pays, and the friends he had at City Hall.

  The woman, though, was transparently frightened. She was losing control of her writhing fingers and her tight, twitching lips. I noticed that her glance strayed repeatedly toward the hallway stairs leading up to the second story.

  “Is there anyone else in the house, Mr. Fisher?” I asked.

  The question seemed suddenly to deflate him. He looked aside at his wife, then sighed heavily.

  It was the wife who answered. In a low voice she said, “My son and my brother-in-law are upstairs.”

  Having said it, she slumped back in the chair. Her shoulders went slack, her head hung listlessly forward, eyes averted. Now her fingers lay inert in her lap. Her battle was over.

  Beside her, the husband was shifting his feet as his gaze, too, was involuntarily drawn up toward the ce
iling.

  Addressing the man, I asked, “Do you mind if I go upstairs and talk to your son and your brother?”

  As he crossed to a ruffled love seat and sank down, he shook his head sharply. “Go ahead,” he said shortly, suddenly scowling at me. “I don’t give a damn; go ahead.”

  “Thank you.” As I passed Canelli, I moved my head to the Fishers, indicating that he should begin questioning them. Then I climbed the thickly carpeted hallway stairs.

  It was a three-bedroom house, with a spacious upstairs bath done entirely in pink and cream tile. The first bedroom door on my right was perhaps eight inches ajar. From inside, I could hear voices.

  I knocked softly.

  Immediately the voices were silent. All sound of movement ceased.

  Unbuttoning my coat, I knocked again. On the other side of the door I could hear someone clearing his throat. Slowly I pushed the door open.

  The bedroom was furnished for a boy. Posters and pennants were arranged on the walls; models and toys were displayed on shelves and tables. Yet something essential was missing. Looking around a second time, I decided that the room was too orderly. Either the boy was abnormally neat, or his mother constantly picked up after him. Or both.

  The room was dimly lit. On the far side a boy and a man were seated on either side of a small worktable, beneath a lonely cone of bright white light. The boy had Bill Fisher’s carrot hair and freckled face, but his eyes were darker, more sensitive. His mouth was softer, his arms slimmer, his neck skinnier in proportion to his head.

  Except for his dark hair, the man bore a marked resemblance to the boy. Both were slim, delicately built. Both were staring at me with almost identical expressions of anxious, timid concern.

  Advancing into the room, I quietly closed the door behind me and turned first to the man. I introduced myself and stated my business. I realized that I was speaking very softly, as if I’d just entered a sickroom. As I repeated the routine phrases, I was thinking of Mr. Papadopolous’ “regulars”—the man and the boy who often came to the park together.