The Man Who Followed Women

by Bert Hitchens

  “Tell me about the other two,” said Kernehan, lighting a cigarette and moving upwind from the dead animal. The mists of the night had burned away, and the place was bright with sunlight. His shadow and the old man’s were sharp on the brown earth.

  “Little old white one, part poodle. Other one about this one’s color, but long-haired. They wasn’t skinny, somebody’d fed them and kept them.”

  “No, I mean where you found them. And when.”

  “First one last week, and the brown one two … three days ago. They was both right hereabouts.” The car-knocker indicated the fence, the overpass, the main-line tracks. “Just dropped, stark-like. The way he is. The part poodle, though, was on the tracks yonder. I’ve a notion they thought to splatter him.”

  The irises of Kernehan’s flat brown eyes seemed to narrow with concentration. “You found them when you came to work?”

  The old man nodded. “Somebody brings them in at night.”

  “Look at the dog’s neck. He’s worn a collar. Did either of the other two have a collar and license?”

  “Like him, they’d worn one.”

  “Did you call the pound, see if they might have been taken out just recently by someone? Or the Animal Shelter?”

  “Ain’t my job,” he sniffled, peering red-eyed at Kernehan, “I ain’t no detective.”

  “Anything you noticed beside the dogs? Any signs of mischief?”

  “Nope.” He brushed at his nose with the back of his free hand. “Who you expect is doing it? Kids, maybe?”

  Kernehan gave him an enigmatic look. “Go to the yard office and call the city health offices. They have a truck for picking up dead animals.”

  “Wish to hell I’d known it before.”

  Kernehan began to prowl, using the dog as the center of a widening area. It was a spot where a lot of track terminated. There was open ground between the row of car bumpers and the fence where the main line cut through the yards. Here stood two small buildings, the car-knocker’s shanty and a tool house. The shanty was open, and Kernehan glanced in. Then he went to the tool house, used the company switch key which he carried to unlock it, and went in. It too was bare of any sign of trouble or disorder. He went out and relocked it.

  He opened the gate in the fence and went through, looking for the spot where the poodle had been placed on the tracks, hoping there was still some sign of where the dog had lain and knowing there wouldn’t be. Passing trains would have taken care of it.

  There was a switchman’s shanty this side of the fence, close to it, and a small heap of ties. As soon as he got over there he saw the small, distinct impressions of a woman’s shoes.

  He was careful not to step on them. He found where she had stood beside the shanty, a lot of restless overlapping prints, and then some more prints alongside the ties.

  Puzzled, he went farther; and almost at once he found a man’s shoe mark. A minute or so later he discovered Mr. Howery’s path up the side of the embankment. Weeds were torn and trampled, and there were gouges and slide marks in the slanted bank. Kernehan studied carefully how the land lay. Then he returned to the gate, back through the fence and down a way, to the wooden stairs leading to the overpass. He climbed these and so out upon the footbridge, leaned upon the railing. From this point the marks made by someone climbing the bank were laid out like a map. Kernehan studied them without being able to understand. A woman had stood over there by the shanty, then had paused by the heap of crossties. A man had scrambled up the side of the small cut, had trampled out a perch for himself right beside the cement reinforcements of the bridge.

  Kernehan looked further, getting the general outlay. Behind the little hill, which had been cut here to provide a way for the main-line tracks, lay another part of the yards. Here was a new commissary for the diners, big freight offices, and the coach yards, an area almost as large as the freight yards to his left.

  He looked around over the wooden planking, down the stairs of the other approach, without finding anything unusual.

  He found the car-knocker in the vicinity of the yard offices and took him back inside. He called the City Pound and a couple of private animal refuges, getting the old man to supply descriptions of the dead dogs, but found that no dogs like these had been adopted and removed from any of the shelters recently. Kernehan decided that his original idea was the right one. The dogs were pets and someone had killed them from malice, probably. The thing which made it the railroad’s business was that they were being disposed of on company property.

  He had time to go back to his office and turn in a report before lunch. The chief special agent of the Los Angeles division occupied a huge room in a large old-fashioned office building near skid row. The chief, Ryerson, was out on business, but Pete the office man was at his desk. He got interested right away in the affair of the dead dogs. “Never had anything just like that before. Sounds like something a kid might do.” Then he gave Kernehan a suddenly thoughtful look through his horn-rimmed specs, and went back to the typewriter.

  Kernehan typed up the report of the morning’s work, including his observation that there had been recent trespassers, male and female, and turned it in to Pete and left.

  He waited in the lobby of the building for her. To the left of the foyer was a bank, dignifiedly busy; to the right, beyond the ramp of elevator doors, was the entrance of a small quiet café. It was quite a different block from the one in which the railroad had its headquarters. Three men stood in a group near the small cigar stand, talking together. They glanced over at Kernehan when he came to a stop and stood patiently waiting, but their interest was brief. They were money men, cut to the Spring Street pattern, neatly dark-suited, with toned-down ties and shoes and the correct kind of hat; and they could see at once that Kernehan was not one of them. Perhaps none of the three placed him precisely for what he was, a cop. Kernehan was much better-looking than the average policeman.

  She came quickly, before most of the others. Not more than three or four girls got out of the elevator with her. She was a slim girl in a black dress, the skirt cut full, a white collar turned back like big lapels, two heavy silver bracelets circling her right arm, matching the big silver pin at the neck of the dress. She had pale olive skin as smooth as silk. Below the eyes and across the temples there were rather flat planes, giving her somewhat of an oriental look. She came up to Kernehan and linked her arm in his. “Hello, darling. How’s cops and robbers today?”

  “Slow as hell.”

  “Too bad. Nobody wanted to shoot it out, or anything?”

  “All the corpses were canine.”

  They went through the entry of the small cafe, over to a far corner, and as they sat down at the table for two she gave Kernehan a close look and decided he’d meant it. “Really? Doggies? How many?”

  “Three dead dogs in the freight yards.” He was always reluctant to talk about the job, though she seemed to find great interest in it. Kernehan took the pair of menus from behind the napkin holder and handed one to her. She opened it, looked into it; and for a moment, still watching her, Kernehan marveled at how absolutely green her eyes were. They were green as green leaves. It didn’t have a thing to do with the way he loved her, but somehow it was important. It was a thing to tuck away in memory against a day he felt was coming, when green eyes would no longer be there for him to see.

  Still looking into the menu, she said, “Jimmy’s getting out this Saturday.”

  “I know it.”

  “I want to be there to take him home.”

  There didn’t seem to be an answer to this, so Kernehan made none.

  “I was hoping you’d be there too,” she said, still not looking up.

  “I don’t want to be there.”

  “He’s young and he made a mistake. A year is a long time, even on an honor farm. He told me all about it. He’s not defiant and all closed up inside the way you think he is.” She was looking at Kernehan now, the green eyes seeking his. “He’s humble and honest.”

&nbs
p; “He’s making a jackass out of you. You and your dad and your mother.” Kernehan said it without emphasis or heat, but with complete conviction. “He needs you all now, he’s got to have you to make parole, to get those months off for good behavior. Wait a while and see.”

  She shook her head. The dark hair tied into a pony tail swung with her vehemence. “I want you to go with me when I bring him home.”

  Kernehan laid down the menu. “Why in hell do you insist on having me?”

  “It’s important.” She controlled the inner agitation, reached a hand to touch one of his. “How can I talk to Mother and Dad about marrying you when you have this opinion of us?”

  “Not of you. Of Jimmy. I’m not marrying your brother.”

  “We’re a family. We’re all part of each other. One of us is … has been—sick.”

  “Oh, now,” Kernehan said in mild protest.

  “Sick,” she repeated. “Temporarily not himself. This was his first offense.”

  “First since he turned eighteen and could be dealt with as an adult,” Kernehan corrected.

  The green eyes were turning misty, the part he hated.

  “Let’s order lunch,” he said quickly, looking around for the waitress.

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “Even you. Perhaps. Someday.”

  “I doubt if I’ll steal a car and wreck it.” He jerked up the menu to signal the waitress. All the time, through the heavy dread inside him, he was aware of Lora’s hand on the table and of how he could pick it up and comfort her with a few lying words. He was in a way baffled by his own unmoving stubbornness. It wasn’t as if he believed in any undying principles or had any illusions about being an officer of the law. Nor about Jimmy being any worse than the rest of the nineteen-year-old kids running loose. Jimmy just happened to have been caught.

  It was just something inside him, too mean to give an inch.

  “Mike, I don’t want anything to eat.”

  “I do.”

  Lately all of their times together were like this, starting out with a few minutes of banter, of being amused and of liking each other in the old familiar way. And then the ugly arguments about Jimmy.

  Jimmy was going to split them up, and he wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth one tear of Lora’s, one moment’s regret.

  The waitress was coming. Kernehan looked at Lora. “I can’t always have a third party along, even in thought. It spoils things. That stinking little thief—”

  She was stumbling to her feet.

  “No, wait. I’m sorry. Please sit down.”

  She sat down again, but she seemed dazed, as if the lid had come off something right into her face.

  “That’s how you think of him?”

  “No. No, I didn’t mean it. He’s your brother, after all.”

  In the back of Kernehan’s mind, suddenly, was the memory of one of those nights in the yards, the three kids coming at him out of the dark, converging like a trio of hunting beasts; the glitter of a knife, a bike chain swinging for his head. But he forced the memory aside.

  “He’s your brother, and he didn’t hurt anyone. Only himself.”

  Still she was quiet, she just sat there looking dazed.

  Kernehan turned to the waitress, ordered a couple of sandwiches, tea for Lora and coffee for himself. The waitress went away, keeping a sidelong eye on them, sensing the quarrel.

  “Lora, can’t we just talk about ourselves?”

  “Yes. Let’s do that. Tell me about your case this morning, the dead dogs.”

  She had folded her hands on her lap. She listened while he told her about the dogs being disposed of in the freight yards, but exactly how much got through to her he couldn’t have said. She wasn’t going to forget that slip he’d made, what he had called her brother. No, never.

  The day when he would never see her again had jumped closer, all of a sudden.

  Kernehan looked around at the quiet little café, the white tables shining in the subdued light, clean linen and sparkling glass, the little bar closed off by a bamboo wall against which artificial greenery climbed and spread. He had to hang onto the memory, the way it looked and how she had sat across from him with her hands folded. He had to take it in and cherish it, because memories were coming to a close.

  When he got back to the office Ryerson had come in, and he went into the inner, glassed-off cubicle. Ryerson had a fine green carpet on his private floor, a big desk, and he was behind the desk and puffing a cigar, a big man who looked contented with his lunch. He listened to what Kernehan had to say about the dogs in the New Canyon Yards.

  “The City Pound officer will make an investigation of some sort,” Kernehan added. “I’m going to report to the Humane Society, too, and I’ll find out from L.A.P.D. if anyone has reported these dogs stolen. The thing is, none of them were of any value, they were mutts from what the old man told me.”

  “Somebody must have liked them,” Ryerson pointed out. “They’d been fed. You priced any dog food lately?” He swung in his chair, and the chair squeaked. “The point here, though, isn’t really the dogs at all. It’s the fact that we’ve had repeated trespassing. Someone’s come in and horsed around and got out again without being collared.”

  “Yes, I see that’s the important part.”

  “Check with L.A.P.D. about any dogs stolen, the way you planned, and then if there’s no lead there I want you to go down there tonight. Stay until about midnight. Then check again early tomorrow. Find out more about that dog the old man saw on the main-line tracks, if you can. If he saw him there in the morning and still undamaged, the dog couldn’t have been brought in too long before. Maybe just before daylight.”

  “I thought of that.”

  “It’s a crazy kind of mischief. No point to it. Kid stuff.” For a moment Ryerson hesitated; a thoughtful look crossed his face. He didn’t glance up at Kernehan, though. “See what you can do with it.” He then turned to another case Kernehan had been working on, some freight shipments broken into, partial carloads lost. The losses were growing important, but the point of theft had not been pinpointed.

  When Kernehan left the inner office he went to his desk in the big outer room and picked up the phone. The complaint desk of L.A.P.D. seemed somewhat at a loss about where to investigate dog thievery; the officer finally decided he’d check both robbery and burglary, and call Kernehan back.

  It didn’t take long. L.A.P.D. had no records on missing dogs of the kind Kernehan had needed.

  Chapter 4

  Kernehan decided to stake-out inside the tool shed. It was near the gate to the main-line tracks, which seemed to have been a passing point both for whoever was bringing in the dogs, and the male and female trespassers in the vicinity of the overpass—providing these weren’t all the same people.

  The woman’s prints had been those of an adult. Somehow Kernehan couldn’t fit a grown woman into the mischievous nonsense about the dogs. The person who had climbed the cut could be a kid with big feet, though.

  The misty night closed in early with the sky obscured and the sun swallowed up long before its time. The smell of fog filled the air, invading even the little building; and, touching his face in the dark, Kernehan felt the moisture sticking to his skin.

  He thought about Lora for a while. She had made one brief last plea at the end of their lunch together, wanting him to go with her to pick up the kid brother Saturday, and Kernehan had turned her down. Sitting on a box in the tool shed, Kernehan was filled with a lonely disgust with himself. She was lovely, a warm and wonderful person. He loved her, he suspected much more than he’d ever love anyone else; and yet he couldn’t break down this inner wall inside himself, this stubbornness. The kid was a faker, pulling the wool over Lora’s eyes, the eyes of the mother and father. So what? Why couldn’t he lie a little and pretend to agree with Lora, pretend to believe in the rotten little crook? Why did he have to be so goddammed stiff necked about it?

  Even to himself, he couldn’t
explain it. The only thing that occurred to him was that this particular hypocrisy was for some reason beyond him.

  He waited, and the fog-laden night ticked by, and some other thoughts occupied him. He was going to have to find another place to live, for one thing. The flat where he now lived alone was too big and too far out of town. He had rented it almost a year ago, along with a couple of friends from the service. They’d been going to U.S.C. at the time. Now both of them were back in the Marines. What Kernehan thought he needed was a small hotel room with a hot plate for making coffee.

  He knew he was never going to marry Lora. Day by day, and meeting by meeting, he was driving her away from him.

  He shifted on the box, easing his cramped legs. There was no activity in this part of the yards right now. Off in the distance he could hear a Diesel switcher working at the interminable job of jockeying boxcars; but the nearest sound was the drip of condensed fog off the eaves of the shed.

  Then he heard footsteps.

  Light, little steps. A woman’s. He eased off the box and stood up, and put a thumb in the door casing and looked out.

  Fog.

  His skin seemed to tighten all over his body; he had almost a sense of the flesh flattening and tensing, like a cat’s when it readies to spring. And something stirred in his mind, a black memory.

  He had forgotten what the yards were like on foggy nights. When you walked a long lonely beat between cuts of cars, over miles of crisscrossed tracks, through oil-and-steam smells left forgotten on the thick air, and with young hoods waiting with broken bottles and razors taped to their finger tips and with steel caps on their toes to make kicking really mean something. Yes, he’d forgotten. Until now.

  He reached for the holster on his hip and brought the gun up.

  He stepped out into the fog-filled night. The woman’s steps receded, vanished; his ears couldn’t follow them; but now there were others, heavier. A flash of comprehension rushed through Kernehan; something about the man, the pussyfoot way he walked, betrayed that he was sneaking along after the woman and not wanting her to know it. Kernehan waited until he was just past the side of the tool shed and then stuck the gun in his ribs and said, “Stop right there, Mac.”