“I’m not counting her out.”
“Come on, Al, she can hardly walk.”
“She can lift her arm, can’t she? And pushing those canes around, she must be strong as a horse. She tell you they got tape recordings of those meetings, including last night’s maybe?”
The lieutenant nodded. “We found a third tape recorder behind some books in there,” he said, indicating the front room. “A partly used tape on it. Nothing much I could hear but some loud-mouth kids cussing each other out. McGregor took it with him. Madam Queen in there put up a squawk.” He jerked a thumb at the closed sliding door. “Says it’s privileged material. I explained to her how it’s direct evidence, too. Or could be,” he amended. Then he grinned slightly. “Don’t need to tell you, I guess, to keep hands off any others?”
Krug nodded. “We got any next of kin yet?”
“Brother somewhere up north. Crewes has the dope on him.”
They had the housekeeper’s alibi nailed down, Krug told him. Then he reported the information they had squeezed out of Merriweather: “According to him, Mrs. Allman had this dinner party last night. Five people there—we got names—plus Mona and Robert Allman. And,” he added, “Allman’s girlfriend. Merry-what’s-his-name claims nobody moved out of the apartment till after two this morning.”
“Some dinner party.” Timms hesitated. “You said Allman and girlfriend?”
Krug grimaced. “The Beautiful People. Looks like Missus spent her time with Myrick. Allman spends his with his cookie, I guess, playing house on a boat down at the marina.”
“Cozy arrangement. I’ll be interested to hear Allman’s version.”
“We’ll check him out, and the other people, too.”
Timms nodded. “How’d the butler—or whatever he is—take the news about Myrick?”
“Blandly,” Casey replied. “But that’s his style.”
“Yeah, he’s strictly hincty all the way.” Krug scowled at Casey. “How about getting the smartass in there started on that list of patients?”
“We want everybody,” Timms instructed, “including any dropouts. And name and address for the brother right away.”
Adrian Crewes was sitting at the desk. One of the locked files was open. A tape spool turned slowly on the machine—a soft babble of voices which she shut off as he entered. “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten—”
“Kellog, Miss Crewes. Is that a tape of the group?”
“Yes, it’s last Friday’s. Thought maybe it might be the one Steve called me about. But it seems to be in perfect condition.”
“There’s another one on the machine in his office. We only switched it on for a second, but it sounded to me as if it had been erased.”
“Then that must be it.” Slipping her forearms into the leather cuffs of her crutch canes, she rose laboriously, levering herself over to the open file. “They’re all in sequence here.” Leaning one cane against the file, she quickly ran through what looked to Casey to be hundreds of boxed and labeled tape spools. “I wonder which—”
“Would it help if I got it from his office?”
“If you could.” She smiled faintly, composed now, ironic—a style Casey liked, he decided, even though it was slightly unnerving. “Heard the other man say only the hall and this room were done. I suppose he meant fingerprints?”
Casey nodded. “Latents.” Then he asked her if she knew Myrick’s brother’s name and whereabouts, discovering they already had it in the private phone directory under “Bill.” Scribbling William Myrick and an address in Sausalito in his notebook, he suggested that she start a list of the patients as soon as possible. Meanwhile he would retrieve the damaged tape from Myrick’s office.
Krug and Timms were in the front room, both comfortably seated in armchairs, smoking. Casey passed on the brother’s name and phone number. Myrick’s office had already been worked over for prints, the lab man informed him, so it was okay to remove the tape from the recorder.
Timms was on the front-room phone, Casey saw when he came out of the hypnotist’s office a minute later, already at the grim business of notifying next of kin. William Myrick would make the formal identification of the body.
“ ‘Group Five,’ ” Adrian Crewes read from the label on the tape spool Casey handed her. “ ‘Friday, June thirtieth.’ That’s almost two months ago. I wonder—” Looking bewildered, she listened to the hiss issuing from the playback. As if she could not believe her ears, she speeded up the tape, sampling section after section. “But—this is terrible. It’s completely ruined!”
“Are these files open to anyone else?”
“No, only Steve and I have—had access to the keys.” She stared at the tape turning in the machine, woebegone. “No wonder he was so angry. This breaks the sequence, you see.”
“Could it have been erased accidentally? Maybe by the housekeeper?” But she was shaking her head no. Casey toyed with an idea, decided to keep it to himself, then changed his mind. “Is it possible one of the patients might have done it?”
“I suppose so. But when?” She blinked rapidly. “Oh, I see what you mean.” She looked ill all of a sudden. “If one of them stayed after the session…”
“Only an idea, Miss Crewes. We don’t know anything for sure yet.” Casey hesitated, rapidly sifting the questions which must be asked. “Do you play these tapes frequently? Like once a week, say, something like that?”
“No, I only monitor once for my preliminary notes. Usually the day after the taping. Then each tape is filed till I’m ready for the verbatim transcriptions. That’s the last part of the book, so it’ll be some time—” Her eyes widened, moist suddenly, luminous. “But it won’t be finished now,” she whispered. “It’ll never be finished, will it?”
Helplessly Casey watched her struggle with the terrifying reality of death by violence. The bloody, unspeakable horror of murder. This is when they collapse. When it finally hits them. “Miss Crewes, maybe you’d better sit down? Here, let me—”
“No, please.” One hand stayed him, a gesture so eloquent of pride and the fierce unself-pitying strength which must sustain her every day that he froze in mid-step. “I’m all right. Really. Just have to—to think it out.” She explained then about the publisher’s contract she and Myrick had signed six months before. “The book was to be a kind of group journal, you see. Case histories charting the backgrounds and progress of the patients, individually and as a group. My job was to get it together and write a readable text.”
“This group—they’re all drug addicts?”
“Not hard stuff. No cocaine or heroin.” She leaned exhaustedly against the file. “They’re all barbiturate and amphetamine addicts. Pill droppers. Speed freaks. They’re all teenagers. All troubled, of course—”
The sliding door flew open, and sour-faced, Krug looked in at them. “How about that list of patients? We haven’t got all day.”
“Coming right up,” Casey said, and ten minutes later he emerged with the list. They began the long tedious process of checking out names.
SEVEN
Amuttering in the hall grated on her nerves, the scraping of feet, someone running down the stairs when the one they called Lieutenant asked for help with something. Concentrating on the damaged tape, Adrian tried to shut out the noises. Friday, June 30. Why had Steve chosen this one to monitor last night? Must have been something said during the meeting, she decided. Some connection between the trouble and the June 30 meeting. In her sketchy notes, Adrian knew, there might be a hint, but how would she know without last night’s tape for reference? The police had it now. And her notes were in her briefcase, which she had left behind in her apartment.
“Fifty different sets,” a quiet voice, slightly hollow-sounding, was saying outside the door. “You got hers in there yet?”
Fingerprints, he meant. Later today, they would ask her to sign a statement, the bulky middle-aged lieutenant had told her, and her prints would be taken as a matter of routine. Also, they must ask her to s
tay in the vicinity in case further questioning might be necessary.
On her desk lay the chart from which she had listed the Group Five names. Only six left now, for two had been dropped. Six possibilities? The police must think so. But their list is longer than that, she reminded herself. All the patients. Everyone he knew. And I’m on it, too.
The sliding door opened, and the lieutenant looked in. Could she spare a couple of minutes? Adrian nodded, and he stepped in, closing the door behind him. Perching on the comer of her desk, he offered a cigarette pack. Adrian told him she didn’t smoke.
“What kind of a guy was this Myrick?” he asked casually after his cigarette was lit. “Easy to get along with, would you say?”
“Why—yes, I suppose so.”
He smiled slightly. “You don’t seem very sure, Miss Crewes.”
“Well, we worked closely together, after all. Any collaboration has its rough times.”
“Like a business partnership.” He nodded and said, “Plenty of give-and-take, I guess.” He waited as if he expected her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he said evenly, “Miss Crewes, what I’m after right now is anything you can tell me. Sometimes it matters in a case like this what the victim was like as a person.”
The victim. In her mind’s eye she saw the half-erased chalk outline on the entry-hall floor. A tall figure sprawled with one arm outstretched. As if, she thought, sickened, he had reached for something at the very last instant. Into eternity he would still be reaching beyond his grasp.
What he was talking about, the detective was explaining, was Myrick’s everyday life. Friends, activities, that sort of thing.
An insane urge to laugh possessed Adrian. The word “everyday” with its connotations of ordinariness was not one you could ever apply to Stephen Myrick. But explaining why was a trap of sorts, she realized. “As far as I know—” she began, then stopped. He waited impassively. “His everyday life was his work, of course. As for his nonworking life—well, he lived very privately. Anything I know is inadvertent. People calling here, that sort of thing. We never saw each other except when we were working.”
“All business, I see.” His glance was mild. “That arrangement suit you, Miss Crewes?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
He blew smoke at the ceiling. “Looks like he pretty well used this whole house for business, as a matter of fact. Except for those rooms upstairs. The bedrooms and—what would you call that setup of his—a suite?”
“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen it.”
“You’ve never been upstairs at all?”
“No, never.” Adrian hesitated, oppressed by the certainty that he had already formed some opinion of her. “For obvious reasons, I don’t climb stairs unless I have to.”
Nodding, he shifted slightly. “So, unless Myrick or the housekeeper told you, for instance, you wouldn’t have any way of knowing who might’ve stayed up there. Like overnight, say.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“You happen to know if he saw any of his patients outside office hours?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“He didn’t, or you don’t know?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant. As I told you, I know nothing of his personal life.”
“Seems a funny kind of arrangement.” He kept looking at her quizzically. “I mean, two people working that closely, figures at least you’d have dinner or a sandwich together once in a while. But then, you just said it suited you not to.” He left it hanging as a question while he considered the next one. “Did he ever mention any trouble with anybody?”
“No, I don’t recall hearing anything like that.”
“But there was some trouble here, isn’t that right?”
“I’d be interested in knowing where you heard that, Lieutenant.”
“Never mind, Miss Crewes, let’s just stick to the question. The way we hear it, this trouble was with you. Don’t you think you’d better tell me what it was all about?”
EIGHT
From the long list they had divided with the rest of the squad, Casey and Krug chose four names at random—two adult patients and two from Group Five. They were unrewarding choices, as it turned out, since only one of the four was to be found at home, and this one they had to battle to see.
“Now, you listen to me, Officers,” the old man who answered their knock kept yelling through the screen door. “You listen to me, that boy’s as steady now as a boy’ll ever be. You can take my word for it, I’m his granddad, ain’t I? He’s—”
“That’s fine,” Krug said patiently. “Glad to hear it. Now if you’ll tell him we want to talk to him—”
“No siree!” And the old man was adamant until Casey persuaded him that it was to his grandson’s advantage to cooperate with the police. “Hell and damnation,” the old man grumbled, but he let them into the dingy frame house, which looked unchanged from the days when Santa Monica was half rural and this house probably sat in a patch of beans or field of corn. “My day a man’s house was his castle. Wasn’t nobody could come barging in. You just stay there; I’ll get him.” He shuffled off, cursing, slamming an inner door behind him.
Krug eyed a scrawny, crisply neat woman standing by the rickety-looking stair. “You the boy’s mother, ma’am?”
“And what if I am? Listen, he’s a good boy, you hear me? Hasn’t done nothing wrong!”
“We’re not saying he has, ma’am.”
“Just like Pa told you, he’s as steady as steady can be now. We sent him to this doctor—”
“Aw, cool it, Ma,” a cracked young voice floated down the stair. Treads creaked somewhere out of sight. Then a long-haired, bearded boy in patchwork jeans appeared. “I’m Eddie Parsons,” he announced defiantly. “What’s the hassle this time?”
“Don’t you say a word, Eddie, till I get your granddad!” His mother rushed out after the old man.
“You want to wait?” Krug asked him.
“And listen to their shit? Hell, no.”
“You’re a patient of Dr. Stephen Myrick’s, is that right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Part of a group, is that right? You meet with this group three nights a week?”
“Come on, man, cool the law-and-order shit,” the kid sneered. “I’m clean, see. You know it, I know it, so what’s going down here?”
“A police investigation,” Casey replied. “Dr. Myrick was killed last night, Eddie.”
“No shit. How’d he get it?”
“Somebody hit him too hard,” Krug said dryly. “On the back of the head. What we call this is murder.”
“Oh, Jesus,” the boy whispered. “That mother really—” Then sick, scared, he swallowed the rest.
“What ‘mother’ you talking about?” Krug glared at him. “Mother Machree? Motherfucker? Come on, kid, give.”
But as swiftly as a gamefish, he had wriggled off the hook, and Casey knew he wouldn’t be caught again. “Fucking cops, you can’t pin nothing on me.”
“Okay, Eddie, you want to play games, we’ll do it the hard way.” Krug blew out his breath. “Start with where you were last night from six on. And just answer the question, don’t try any smart stuff.”
He had supper about six, the boy told them, watched the news on television, then went on to the meeting at seven o’clock.
“How did you get to Dr. Myrick’s house, Eddie?” Casey asked.
“Another guy picked me up.”
“Name.” This from Krug. “He part of the group?”
“Sure, Ramirez and me got busted together.”
“His first name Hector?”
Eddie agreed it was. The meeting was over—he replied to Krug’s next question—a little before nine. As usual, they had all left together—
“Eddie, your granddad’s gone again,” his mother called from somewhere at the back of the house. “You got to go after him right away!”
But the boy ignored the summons. “After we split, we went to the Pizza Palace.”
>
“How long were you there?”
“Maybe an hour, I guess. Then we watched this flick on the tube. Some shit,” he added scornfully, “about World War Two.”
“You wouldn’t think it was shit if you’d been in it,” Krug informed him. “Where did you watch this movie, Eddie?”
“Here.” He grinned slightly, relaxing now. “Ma was baby-sitting, and the old man’s always zonked on vino by nine.”
“That’s all the members of the group you’re talking about? You were all here?”
Hesitating, Eddie licked his lips. “Nah,” he admitted reluctantly, “just Ramirez and Lubov and me.”
“How about the others?”
“Went home, I guess.”
“But you were all at the Pizza Palace together. Nobody stayed behind after the meeting?”
“Come on, man, only chicks pull that stuff!”
“What chicks?” Krug waited. “The way we get it, they’re both dropouts.” He scowled as the kid hesitated again. “Okay, Eddie, you want to play hard to get, you can come on in with us.” He prodded him slightly. “Get going, sonny.”
But the boy hung back. Okay, so the girls were dropouts, he began, whining. He only meant to say none of the guys ever hung around after the meetings. But these two chicks, they really grooved on the doc. Like groupies, see? One was a turkey, but the other one was okay. A real cool little blonde chick. She used to make it with this chopper dude—
“Wait a minute,” Krug kept saying till the boy stopped babbling. “How about some names here? Which is the blonde you’re talking about—Simmons or Flesher?”
Eddie looked bewildered until Casey mentioned first names. The blonde was Sandra Simmons. The turkey was Judith Flesher—“A real weirdo,” Eddie declared. “Man, you just look at that chick and she freaks out.”
“She by any chance this ‘mother’ you were talking about?” Krug waited, but there was no reply. “Okay, let’s get back to last night. You see anybody in or around Myrick’s house? Like parked out in front, anything like that?”
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 40
