But instead, one thing had led to another. Casey kept blinking, trying to make the connections. But his brain felt like a mass of soggy cotton. “It’s the timing today that really bugs me—”
“Yesterday, you mean.” Krug jerked a thumb toward the window letting in gray dawn light. “It’s tomorrow, Sleeping Beauty.”
Another day. Casey thought he had never seen anything as beautiful as that misty, shadowless, silken light from which tomorrow was emerging like a dream realized. “What I can’t figure—if they were going to do it—why they waited so long to kill the Godwins. Something else unexpected must’ve happened. Besides the slide, I mean.”
“We happened.” Krug laughed at Casey’s expression. “Yeah, you and me, sport. With the help of that waiter we never laid an eye on.”
“But…Oh.” Casey saw it suddenly. “Charley tipped them we were checking on—what did I say? ‘A couple that had dinner there the night before’?”
Krug nodded. “According to Freddy, they figured we were getting closer. Too close, anyway, with that truck sitting there. And they’re ready to flip anyway, what with the slide—meaning an audience of twenty road crew guys if they try to get the U-Haul out.”
“But the Godwins,” Casey reminded him.
“More trail-covering, according to Freddy. They were scared we’d get to them next, and the Godwins’d blow it. Freddy says he called ’em to see if we’d been there yet. They said maybe, but they were laying low. That was about three-thirty, four. Half an hour later, Russo pays ’em a fast call—”
“Christ, we had it straight from the horse’s mouth,” Timms broke in disgustedly. “ ‘Something or somebody was ready,’ remember? Only what the Godwin woman was trying to say was ‘Freddy,’ not ‘ready.’ If we’d used our heads—”
Another near miss.
But it didn’t seem to bother Krug. “Okay, Russo knocks off the Godwins,” he went on. “Then he stops by Rees’s motel long enough to stash the murder gun in his Volkswagen. Incidentally,” he interrupted himself, “Rees was our mysterious visitor, would you believe it? This is a guy that’s gonna fall in the shit no matter what. Stupid bastard claims he was so scared we wouldn’t believe it was accidental he found ’em that he couldn’t think straight. Won’t admit it, of course, but what I figure is, he ran as fast as he could. Then he found the gun in his car about ten. Guess it scared him enough to get him back on the track again.”
“Some track,” Timms grunted. “Instead of reporting it to us, he walks right into the snakepit.” He blew out his breath. “Amateurs. They’re the real policeman’s nightmare, not the crooks. But we should’ve figured out the red herring angle,” he added as if he had invented the expression. “Why the possibility didn’t occur to us with that phony anonymous call—” He shook his head. “What comes of getting locked in on one idea, right?”
“Right,” Krug agreed solemnly. “Got to keep an open mind in this business, that’s for sure.”
With the promise of three full days off, and at least a month of day-tour desk work to be assigned until the cast was off his arm, Casey fell asleep, smiling. Thirty beautiful nights free ahead. Surely time enough for even a one-armed lover? It was sweet-dream time. The sweetest. Visions of reconciliation and romantic advancement—
But he had slept only an hour, Casey discovered when he was wakened for breakfast. And he had another visitor.
“I’m on my way to the Parole Authority,” Paul Rees said awkwardly. “Thought I’d drop by first and thank you.”
“Seems to me it should be the other way around.” Casey studied the sallow, exhausted face. Something concealed there still, he thought. But Rees was a man who would always harbor ghosts. “Aren’t you starting out kind of early for a nine o’clock appointment?”
“Probably. But I don’t know how long it might take to get my Volks out of the garage. The police garage,” he added stiffly. “They—you—impounded it. But I was told I could get a release in a little while.”
They chatted in a half-friendly but cautious fashion for a bit. Then suddenly reminded, Casey said, “About that money. Doesn’t matter, but I’m still curious. Did you really win it in a poker game?”
God, Rees thought, don’t they ever quit? A policeman is a policeman is a policeman. He was not out of danger yet. “Let’s just say I won it, period. The details belong to a time I’d like to forget about forever.”
“Fair enough,” Casey started to say, but the phone on the stand beside his hospital bed rang. Joey, he thought. It’s ESP. But nothing so mysterious, it was his mother: What on earth had happened to him? Was he all right? She hadn’t been able to get a single sensible word out of those men he worked with, so Dad had called the captain—
“Oh, no,” Casey groaned. But he couldn’t help laughing.
He was still laughing as Rees signaled good-bye and slid out into the long, waxy hospital corridor busy with attendants wheeling carts full of breakfast trays. A disembodied voice kept paging doctors. Nurses rustled by Rees as if he were invisible. Another closed world, he thought. Like prison. Like the courtroom he would be appearing in soon to testify against murderous strangers. Like the jail cell he might still occupy today if he were not lucky—
And he knew he was not when he pushed out into the cool gray morning and saw Krug lounging against an official-looking car parked at the curb.
“No answer at the Pelican, so I figured you might be here.” He opened the front passenger door of the car. “Want a lift?” He grinned as Rees shook his head no. “Come on,” he said derisively, “what’re you scared of? Better than hoofing it to the garage, ain’t it?”
Knowing he had no choice, Rees climbed into the car, his exhaustion becoming despair as he looked at the radio equipment, the rifle clamped under the dashboard, the clipboard holding lists of wanted cars and other police bulletins. The plastic bag containing the pistol had been found in the Volkswagen’s trunk and impounded with the car as evidence. Evidence which someone—Krug probably—had reexamined. And a bloodhound like Krug would not miss the significance of those pieces of shoe-box lid, like a jigsaw puzzle, spelling out parole conditions broken—
“Y’know something really bugs me,” Krug was saying as he pulled jerkily away from the curb. “About that scene up on the hill?” He glanced at Rees. “How come a guy like you makes a grandstand play like that? I mean, look”—he seemed to be arguing with himself—“here’s a ten-ton killer about to waste a cop. No skin off yours if he does, right? Only makes it easier for you to get away, save your own neck. But instead, you mix in like a—” he broke off, laughing. “That’s what bugs me! You playing hero. It just don’t figure with a guy as easy to scare as you.”
“Maybe you’ve been reading me wrong, Sergeant.”
“The hell I have.”
Rees stared blindly out the window. “Well, even a rat fights when it’s cornered,” he said bleakly.
“That’s what I’m talking about, fella. You wasn’t cornered up there.”
“So I’m a different sort of rat. Something new for your book.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure. Something real new.” Krug swung into an alley and stopped the car abruptly. “Okay, this is it.” And again He grinned at Rees’s reaction. “See what I mean? Easy to scare.” He shook his head sadly, plunging his hand into his pocket.
Expecting a gun, brass knuckles—anything but what appeared—Rees flinched back against the door. Then numb with shock, he stared at the two pieces of cardboard which Krug had flipped at him. Buff shoe-box cardboard with small black printing. Put together, the two pieces spelled out Stateline, Nevada.
“Garage is half a block down,” Krug was saying. “I signed the release, so all you got to do is receipt it and split.” He leaned across Rees, opening the car door. “They’ll charge you for three inner tubes, but the labor for changing the tires is on us. So we’re even-steven, right?”
Rees climbed dazedly out and the door slammed behind him. Before he could turn, Krug had
gunned away. Even-steven, the harsh voice kept echoing in his head as Rees watched the City of Santa Monica departmental car roll down the alley and disappear. Meaning debt paid. Game over. He looked at the two ragged pieces of cardboard shoe box in his hand. Then very slowly he shredded them into confetti which he scattered behind him as he walked down the alley. In two hours he was due at Parole. And with any luck, his new parole officer might be someone he could talk to…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carolyn Weston grew up in Hollywood during the Depression. Hollywood Boulevard was the scene of her truancies; movie houses one refuge, the public library another. She spent part of World War II working in an aircraft plant, and afterward gypsied around the country, working at anything and everything (Reno gambling club, specialty wallpaper house as decorator, New Orleans nightclub, Prentice-Hall and Lord and Taylor in New York, among others!). All this time she had been writing and discarding manuscripts, until at last one of the novels was published. Now she lives in California.
ROUSE THE DEMON
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2015 Brash Books
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 1941298516
ISBN 13: 9781941298510
Published by Brash Books, LLC
12120 State Line #253
Leawood, Kansas 66209
www.brash-books.com
Also by Carolyn Weston
Poor Poor Ophelia
Susannah Screaming
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
“You’ve been shopping again,” his mother observed. “Casey, where in the world did you get that tie?”
“A real mind-bender, isn’t it?” Enjoying his psychedelic image in the dining-room mirror—wide flowered tie, purple striped shirt, blue denim hacking-style jacket—he ignored her expression. “Coffeepot’s full, I only drank one cup. Got to split, like now. My public’s waiting.”
“Some public,” she sniffed. “Murderers, thieves—”
“And I’m wasting a perfectly good education,” he finished for her. “You’re in good voice this morning, Mrs. Kellog.” Blowing her a kiss, he ducked through the kitchen, calling, “See you later!” and slammed out the back screen door.
Her voice floated after him as he trotted down the driveway of the garage: “Did you read your astrological forecast? It says to be wary of strangers…”
And Greeks bearing gifts, he thought. And hoods bearing guns. His new Mustang started with a Grand Prix roar even louder and more satisfying than the power-punch boom of his last year’s model, now a heap of incinerated metal in some junk dealer’s lot—RIP, lost in the performance of duty. He’d broken his arm in that fracas on the hilltop, too, but it had mended perfectly; not even a twinge this morning as he shot down the long driveway in reverse, crimping the wheel hard to swing into the street.
From two blocks away, the first traffic signal at Montana Avenue gleamed a tiny green eye of temptation at him. Succumbing, Casey floored the accelerator, shattering the middle-class morning quiet of his neighborhood. Zero to fifty in six seconds flat, and he caught the green. Caught the next and the next. Obviously this was to be a banner morning. Seven minutes later when he whirled into the entrance by the Santa Monica City Hall—a snow-white building, part of a gleaming complex of municipal structures which ended, a block away, with the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium—he found he’d tied his portal-to-portal record.
Parking in a slot marked official vehicles only, he jogged into the beehive-busy police headquarters housed in the rear of the City Hall. Ten minutes to spare, he congratulated himself, pounding up the stairs to the Detective Bureau. Time to grab a cup of coffee. Time to skim through the overnights before the morning rundown…
“Don’t bother to sit down.” Krug’s harsh voice stopped him at the counter which divided the desk-filled squad room from the small area which served as the captain’s anteroom. “New one just came in, and it sounds like a beaut.”
My partner, the early bird. Spying Ralph Zwingler’s grin across the squad room, Casey’s spirits sank. Caught a worm already, too.
“No details yet.” Krug’s ruddy, weather-beaten face looked even sourer than usual. “Only what the cruiser team reported in. Some dude with his head beat to a pulp. The troops have already gone with the lieutenant. Come on, let’s roll.”
So much for banner mornings.
The address was on Palisades Avenue, Krug filled him in as they pounded down the stairs and made their way through the bustling corridors below. “Don’t get much business in that district.”
Casey nodded. “I used to bicycle along there to get to the beach. It’s still nice, quiet.”
“Keep forgetting you’re a native son.” They climbed into the Mustang, and as usual, Krug slammed the door violently. “My wife claims there ain’t no such animule here; the storks in California bring poodles instead of babies.”
Dutifully Casey said, “Hoho,” and swung out onto Main Street again. More sedately than usual, he crossed the freeway bridge by Sears, turning toward Ocean Avenue. Squinting in the glare cast up from the sea lying hundreds of feet below the towering bluffs which Ocean skirted, he headed north. Palisades Avenue was five minutes away—a wide, seven-block-long residential street lined with spacious old houses which had not changed in the twenty-odd years he could remember.
“There it is.” Krug was pointing. “You can always tell where the action is.”
Neighbors in bathrobes had gathered in groups on the sidewalk. Squad cars clustered at the curb, parked helter-skelter. The ambulance sat in the drive in front of the porte-cochere to the left side of the large, square, two-story stucco house. Casey turned in and pulled up behind it. Krug was already out of the car by the time he set the brake. Bloodhound, Casey thought, and his stomach tilting queasily, he jumped out, following his partner across the lawn to three wide cement steps which led to a square-pillared porch.
The front door was open, guarded by a uniformed patrolman who greeted Krug cheerily. “Hi, Sergeant. Looks like we got an easy one for you. Murder One, no doubt about it.”
“So now all you got to do is give me the killer’s name and I can relax, right?”
As Krug brushed by him, the patrolman winked at Casey. “Would you believe that guy was ever a pink-cheeked rookie peeing in his pants when he made his first arrest?”
“Whose imagination is that good?”
Inside, Casey saw a square entry hall with a wide staircase, a long hall. To the right, near the stair, was a closed sliding door. To the left, an archway let into another la
rger room, and on the waxed floor under the arch lay a body.
McGregor, the senior lab man, was already busy marking the outlines of the sprawled legs, the long form clothed in a glen-plaid suit. A police photographer hovered nearby, impatiently waiting for a chance at his next shot. As one of the medical men moved aside, Casey caught a glimpse of the dead man’s head—a bloody pulp of bone and tissue and brain matter. Thick dark hair with a little bit of gray where it wasn’t matted with blood. The bold-nosed, full-lipped profile of vigorous sensual man. A corpse now.
“Take a look at this,” he heard Krug saying behind him.
His partner and Lieutenant Timms crouched over something lying on the polished floor. “Your murder weapon, all right,” Timms was saying.
Squatting beside them, Casey stared at the bronze statuette of a knight in armor, the sort of old-fashioned art object which was back in style again, kitsch to some, camp to others.
“Must weigh ten pounds or more.” Timms poked at it delicately with a pencil and said, “See that?” as he pointed out a dark crust on the solid metal. It looked like dirt or grease to Casey. Then he saw the hairs sprouting from the crust, and his stomach lurched. “Exhibit A—when and if we catch ourselves a killer. Pray for a full set of nice clear prints.” The lieutenant’s knees cracked as he rose, groaning. “Leave it for the lab boys to handle.”
They inspected the contents of the dead man’s pockets which lay spread out on a refectory table pushed against the left-side wall. “Burglary maybe?” Krug suggested.
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 37
