The Complete Krug & Kellog

by Carolyn Weston

  The boy shook his head.

  “Nothing different about anybody or anything there last night?”

  “Nah, everything was, you know, like always.”

  “How about his assistant? The crippled woman. Was she there?”

  “I never—” Eddie stopped. “Oh, yeah, I know who you mean. Yeah, I seen her a couple times, but she wasn’t there last night. Wasn’t anybody around but the doc and us.”

  “Meaning the group,” Casey pressed him. “All six of you?”

  “That’s the story, Captain.” The boy grinned, fully restored to his cheeky adolescent self now. “Listen, I gotta go find my granddad or you’ll be busting him for peeing someplace public. He just walks off, see. Sometimes we don’t see him for a couple days.”

  Knowing it was useless to try to continue, they let him go, and he bolted out through the back of the house.

  “Christ,” Krug muttered as they let themselves out the front screen door, “if they’re all like that…” He made a check mark on the list. “Okay, so we miss on this one, we catch the next.” He glanced at his watch. “Your stomach feeling like your throat’s cut, sport? Mine is, so how about a pizza?”

  The question was rhetorical, Casey knew, and required no answer. They headed next for the Pizza Palace.

  NINE

  By the time they got back to City Hall, the preliminary reports were already coming in: a post-mortem, and news from the lab that the murder weapon was clean of prints. “Not surprising,” Lieutenant Timms grunted. “What we’ve got here is a smart killer. Possible premeditation. You get a line on those kids yet?”

  “Half a line maybe,” Krug replied. “Manager at this pizza joint is pretty sure they were all there till about ten o’clock. They ordered three large pizzas and six Cokes. Sounds kosher so far, and he’s got the ticket to prove it. We’ll see how it jibes with what the other guys come up with. Maybe they can get somebody to spring with the somebody the Parsons kid nearly tipped us to.”

  Timms nodded. “You find out yet who or what Lila might be?”

  Krug looked disgusted. “Hell, we should’ve asked Merry-what’s-his-name. Okay, so we find out from Allman when we get to her maybe.” He loosened his tie. “Christ, it’s hotter’n a pistol out there! You wouldn’t believe how many people in this town are doing without air conditioning.”

  “The housekeeper might know about Lila,” Casey suggested.

  “She’s at her sister’s,” Timms said. “House is sealed till tomorrow probably. Had a hell of a time getting that lame woman out. She kept talking about having to check the tapes in case there’s more damage.” He chewed his lower lip. “We’ll have to find a way to shake her loose from that ‘privileged material’ pitch of hers. Everything I asked her was a violation of professional confidence, she claimed.” He smiled slightly. “But she let loose of one little piece of information. And a real kicker it might just be. Seems their argument was over that gang of kids. Some hassle they got into with Myrick. She claims she doesn’t know what it was about—”

  “Then maybe we’re one up on her,” Krug interrupted. “The way we get it, he had the two girls twirling. The dropouts. Want to bet we find a couple little pussies in the woodpile?”

  “Nice going, Al.” Timms looked pleased. “If he was fooling around—well, you figure it. Everybody’s got to be unhappy. So keep bird-dogging that angle. Incidentally,” he added briskly, “our decedent’s brother is on the way from the airport. Phoned in about fifteen minutes ago. He ought to be here any time now.”

  “Better tell ’em downstairs,” Krug instructed Casey. “And bring back some coffee. I’ll get started on the reports.”

  Happy to be free, however briefly, from his partner’s irascible presence, Casey pounded down the stairs to the busy police station below. Phones rang; somewhere a teletype clattered; from the Watch Commander’s office came a deep, booming dirty-joke laugh.

  But in the morgue all was silence. Casey crossed the empty anteroom, pushing through a heavy door into the chill, dry antiseptic chamber where the bodies were kept. From somewhere a familiar voice said, “Will you dig the dude?” It was the morgue attendant, a fashion freak to whom even a new tie was sartorial excitement. He kept circling Casey admiringly. “Denim, stripes, flowers yet. Man, you’re a wide-screen full-color dreamboat!”

  “Many thanks. I take it Dr. Deacon’s not here?”

  “The forensic genius will not return until nine bells.”

  “So all we get on Myrick till then is what we’ve got now?”

  “Well, there’s a couple little items. For instance, he didn’t have any dinner last night. Also, he wore contact lenses. One got stuck in his eye. The lab boys probably vacuumed up the other one at the scene.” He grinned at Casey, whose weak stomach was well known. “Want another look at the body?”

  “Once was enough. What I came to tell you, his brother’s due any minute.”

  “I’ll get the smelling salts ready. Hey, wait a minute,” he called after Casey, “where’d you get that tie?”

  “For fear of imitation, we do not choose to make our haberdasher known.” Followed by the attendant’s protest, Casey pushed through the heavy swinging door. Contact lenses. Making a mental note, he fished in his pockets, finding the coins he needed for the coffee vending machine. One black, one black with sugar. Since the advent of nondairy products, Krug had given up cream.

  When he returned upstairs, Casey found Timms and Krug and a worn-looking, well-dressed man huddled around Timms’s corner desk. Obviously no interruptions would be welcome, so Krug’s coffee was wasted expense. “That the brother?” he asked one of the other detectives.

  “Better believe it. And a lawyer yet. He’s already griping how the case is being mishandled.”

  “That’s nice.” Casey offered a Styrofoam cup. “Black with sugar?”

  “Sure, if it’s free.”

  As usual the coffee was vile. Settling down at the typewriter, Casey began a preliminary homicide report in triplicate. One of the outside lines rang, but somebody else grabbed it. From the corner came a rumble of voices—Timms’s mostly, with sharp resonant rebuttals from the lawyer. Krug’s face was deadpan, but getting redder and redder by the minute, Casey noticed. Nearly blowup time, he decided. With luck he’d be out of the line of fire when it happened.

  A resounding sneeze echoing up the stairs announced Haynes’s arrival. His partner, Zwingler, preceded him into the squad room, flopping fatly at his desk. “Listen to that. Would you believe he’s been whooping like that for ten minutes straight without stopping? Claims it’s a new allergy his pills don’t work on. He’ll never admit he forgets to take ’em.”

  “Lot you know about it.” Haynes mopped his streaming eyes. “My specialist says—”

  “Oh, brother, not only do I have to listen to you whooping, now I got to listen to a lecture why?”

  “I’m only trying to explain, Ralph.”

  “Don’t bother. Just take your pills, Denny, okay? Take the pills. Because if you don’t, so help me—Ah, never mind,” Zwingler said disgustedly. “Let’s flip who does the report. Heads or tails?”

  Haynes chose tails and lost. “My luck,” he sniffed morosely. “Ought to be used to it by now. This’s the lousiest two weeks…Listen, this must be the fiftieth dud follow-up we’ve been out on, right? Damn Taylor Case,” he explained to Casey. “Dead end all the way, believe me. We should’ve thrown it in Pending a week ago.”

  Casey agreed, but didn’t say so, having been burned already by a rashly stated coffee-time opinion that the case was a bummer and probably insoluble because of lousy police work. So much for idle criticism. It travels, he discovered. He’d spent fifteen minutes on the carpet over that one.

  According to the overnight report filed by night tour almost two weeks before, two backpackers who claimed they were looking for a camping spot in Palisades Park had reported finding a body lying hidden in the deep shadow under a spacious, old-fashioned latticed arbor built long
ago to shade park passersby. One of the young men had stayed with the body, they later told police, while the other ran to a pay phone situated outside a public restroom in the park nearby. Time of the call-in was logged at ten minutes after midnight—a fact which night-tour detectives subsequently chose to find significant.

  The victim, identified by a driver’s license in his wallet as Charles Taylor—white, male, twenty-three years old, a local resident—had been bludgeoned to death, apparently only a short time before discovery. Blood at the scene was still coagulating, and at the edge of the sticky mess some footprints, later identified as belonging to the backpackers, were found. According to technicians on the scene, the series of violent blows dealt the victim would have caused his assailant to be copiously splashed with blood, but except for the soles of their heavy walking sandals, neither backpacker showed any sign of blood on his clothing. Nevertheless, detectives took them both into custody.

  Reading the report the next morning, Casey had been baffled by the arrests, even more by the charge which was—of all things—trespassing. Obviously night tour must have decided it was worth alienating possible witnesses in order to keep them on hand with a phony charge. There was no reason otherwise to make a point of the fact that Palisades Park was officially closed between midnight and 5 a.m.—“closed” being a euphemism, since the long narrow bluffside park was unfenced, and unless the backpackers had happened to notice one of the scattered warning signs, they’d have had no way of knowing they were trespassers after midnight.

  Both young men had been able to identify themselves as Berkeley students, residents of the San Francisco area, and both had enough money to disqualify them as vagrants. Neither had any sort of record, not even the little busts for possessing pot which were usual with students. Either somebody had gone off the deep end because they were long hairs, Casey had decided, or night tour was keeping secrets.

  Police routine had turned up a record for the decedent, Charles Taylor—also known as “Tay”—as a drug user and possible pusher. Also a uniformed search team had located the murder weapon at the foot of the high bluffs which the park skirted. Obviously the murderer had thrown the length of ordinary plumber’s pipe over the railing at the edge of the cliff. There were no fingerprints, only smudges indicating that the assailant had worn gloves.

  By noon a motorcycle registered to the decedent was found parked at the curb on Ocean Avenue less than a block from the spot where the body had been discovered. And that afternoon they had a citizen’s call from a late-night dog walker who lived not far from the scene. He reported seeing a motorcycle about eleven-thirty the night before. He’d noticed a car also, he claimed, parked nearby across the street from the motorcycle. A foreign car, he couldn’t place it any closer. The reason why he had noticed it in particular was that a man had been sitting behind the wheel when he passed with his dog and it had made him a tiny bit wary, what with all the crazy things going on you read about in the papers. On his way back home, however, he had noticed that the car was empty.

  The possibility of a drug-buy rendezvous which had turned into murder had begun to look like a good bet to everyone by this time. And criminals killing criminals lessened the psychological pressure around the bureau. One thing was sure by day tour’s end that next day—nobody was interested any longer in the two backpackers. They had paid their fines and left town fast, all their indignation about police brutality and violated civil rights wasted on the busy municipal judge, who fined them lightly for trespassing. Clearly, if they were needed later as witnesses, the chances of cooperation were nil…

  Lousy police work, Casey thought again. But pot did not call kettle black here. Haynes’s typewriter was rattling like a machine gun, but refusing the challenge, Casey kept pecking slowly, translating the scribbles in his notebook into flat official language. Myrick, Stephen. Another dead-end case? he wondered. Too early to tell yet. A lot of leads on this one. Loose threads. And maybe, just maybe, one would tie up somewhere.

  “How d’you spell ‘subsequent’?” he heard Haynes asking.

  “If you can’t spell it, don’t use it,” Zwingler replied.

  “Thanks a million.”

  “Kellog”—Timms’s barking voice echoed across the squad room—“Can I see you?”

  “Yes, sir, right away.” Casey saw that the huddle in the corner had broken up. He passed Krug and William Myrick on their way out, receiving a surprising wink from his partner. Myrick looked exhausted, and if he had been angry, he was no longer.

  “Follow up on this as soon as you can.” Timms tossed a piece of paper across the desk. “The brother says this might be Lila.” He squinted at Casey. “You call that Allman woman?”

  Casey admitted he had forgotten.

  “All right, catch it later. Myrick says this Lila used to call herself Delila in San Francisco. Show girl, I guess. Says she married the headwaiter at some joint she was working in up there. Guy named Angelo, he thinks. He heard they came down here, so if Allman doesn’t know, we start looking for the needle in the haystack.”

  Mrs. Allman’s phone didn’t answer, and hoping for a break from Lotte Haas, Casey called her sister’s number. But there was no answer there, either. Have to do it the hard way, he decided, and starting with Local 814 on Colorado Avenue, he called all the branches of the Culinary Workers and Bartenders Union he could locate in the various Los Angeles directories.

  “Waste of time,” Krug declared later when he returned and they continued their outside follow-ups. “Isn’t enough we got the old patients, the new patients, the goddamn group and all the dropouts from that—Now we got to find some Frisco fan dancer? For Chrissake, she could be married six times by now!”

  “I know, Al, but the lieutenant said—”

  “So let him find her. I say let’s keep hitting these kids.” He sucked in his breath. “The way you drive, I’ll be a basket case before I ever get a chance to put in for my pension!”

  “A little excitement’s good for your circulation.” Casey double-clutched and the tires screeched. “How about the brother, Al? Any leads there?”

  “You got to be kidding—from a lawyer?” Which closed the subject. “Been thinking about those girls, though,” he said a minute later. “Why they both dropped out of that pill-head setup. Could be the kicker, hah?”

  Casey agreed it was possible.

  “Let’s try Simmons first, she’s closest. Sandra Simmons. Head for Ninth and Georgina, and you’ll just about hit it.”

  TEN

  “They said the inquest might be Wednesday or Thursday.” William Myrick kept rubbing his forehead, thin, unsteady, parched-looking fingertips digging at the bone. “But I’m due in court in San Francisco Thursday, and I’m not at all sure I can get a postponement. These damn judges and their prerogatives. Not that I can help here any.” He tried to smile at Adrian, but his lips trembled so that the smile was instead a painful grimace. “The toils of the law. God, the complications! They’ve got the house sealed, so I can’t do anything there. All I’ve been able to accomplish is a call to a mortuary. They’ll take him—take the body as soon as it’s released.”

  “Will you…” Adrian hesitated. “Will the funeral be in San Francisco?”

  “No, I don’t see any point. We’re from Michigan originally, and there’s no family left.” Again he tried to smile. “These are the times when one could loathe modern life. No home places anymore. No last resting places full of ancestors.”

  Aware of something volatile and vaguely alarming behind his quiet grief, Adrian made no comment. He had called from the police station saying he had formally identified his brother’s body, made arrangements, now he wanted to see her. Or was it, she thought, that the police wanted him to? Was this a snare of some sort? She had a feeling he was working up to something, and as they both watched the cat stalking a shadow in the corner, tension built in her unbearably. Then Myrick leaned back into the creaking Naugahyde sofa, closing his eyes, and she relaxed slightly.

>   “Still can’t believe it,” he murmured, sounding dazed now. “When I think I talked to him less than a week ago.” He drew a shuddering breath, and without opening his eyes, said in a different, hard-edged voice, “They killed him, didn’t they? You know they did.” His eyes flew open, glaring at her wildly. “You know, don’t you? Yet you’re hanging on to those tapes, protecting them!”

  Shocked, Adrian started to protest. But this was what he had come to her for, she realized. A fight, a confrontation. As reasonably as she was able, she said, “Surely as a lawyer you know I can’t part with privileged material.”

  Myrick groaned. “Do you really believe you can circumvent the law for some contemptible—Listen,” he cried, “I know him—knew him better than anyone! You think I don’t realize he was in over his head? He was always a pipe-dreamer. Always in the clouds. Good God, he was no more qualified to deal with those addicts than I am!”

  “But that’s not—”

  “Miss Crewes, I’m able to add two and two as well as the next one,” he said, overriding her protest. “And I know he was in trouble. You both were. Can you deny that you’d been arguing? Can you? Or that you threatened to quit?”

  “That’s ridiculous. We disagreed, yes. But it was a professional matter. There was no question of my not continuing with the project.”

  “Then more fool you for not knowing his limitations. And why was he so distressed if you weren’t quitting?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. “He told me those savages were completely out of hand. The whole silly so-called project was falling apart.”

  “Hardly silly when you consider that a major publisher—Oh, never mind,” Adrian sighed, “I won’t argue with your prejudice. I can only assure you that nothing was, as you say, falling apart. Only his own anxiety made Steve think it was.”