“Sounds to me like they got to be from out of town,” Haynes said gloomily. Which meant the holdup men would be unknown to informants who, for a price, might name them. “You want us to try LA and Beverly Hills, Lieutenant?”
“Might as well. Nothing new developing with our killing in the park?”
“Zilch, sir,” Zwingler reported. “We’re at a standstill. All we’ve got is an unclaimed motorcycle. No family we know of yet for the decedent. A dead end on contacts. Narco says Taylor was for sure a dealer—pot, smack, pills, the works.” He shrugged callously. “Small loss to the world, right? Our maybe-witness can’t add anything to his story about seeing a guy sitting in an import car near the scene. Except maybe the car was blue or green.”
Have to see what turned up, if anything, Timms said. Wait and see, the investigator’s motto. Night tour had corroborated Eddie Parsons’s story, he told them. Neighbors on both sides claimed at least three boys were there Monday night with the television blasting. “According to the statements we’ve rounded up, they’re all pretty much in the clear. Only one hole in the doughnut—the Flesher girl. Maybe the Simmons girl’s parents can give us a line on her. Could be the two kids were friends.”
“Yeah, I thought of that already,” Krug said. “Missus isn’t talking, but Mister might. We’ll catch him at his office.”
The lieutenant nodded. “Funny, none of those kids mentioning that the Simmons girl was dead.”
“Could be self-protection,” Zwingler suggested. “She checks out as an OD. Got to be the dirtiest word in their language right now.”
“All right.” Timms leveled a finger at Casey. “Where’s the report on that woman you talked to last night?”
“Cesana, Doris,” Krug answered before Casey could. “Also known as Lila. Also known in her flaming youth as Delila.” He yanked the report Casey had been typing out of the typewriter. “Here it is, hot off the presses.”
“Yeah, twelve hours late. ‘Mrs. Doris Cesana,’ ” Timms read, “ ‘stated that she knew the decedent for more than twenty years, first in San Francisco, then later in Los Angeles.’ ” He scowled at Krug. “What about Santa Monica?”
“That comes later. Story is, she and her husband, Angelo Cesana, came down here in 1960. But three years later she divorced him and went back to Frisco.”
“Looking for Myrick, you think?”
“Yeah, but which Myrick, that’s the problem.” Krug grinned. “Want to bet his brother’s got one of those glamour-puss shots, ‘To Bill with Love,’ signed ‘Lila’?”
Timms looked interested all of a sudden. “What do you think?” he asked Casey.
“Well, it’s only a guess,” Casey said carefully, “but offhand I’d say she was just trying a number on us.”
“Meaning what?”
“She isn’t getting any younger and—well, she likes being thought of as—you know—still irresistible.”
“For Chrissake,” Krug muttered.
But Timms ignored him. “Better not jump to any conclusions,” he advised. “This brother doesn’t look too far-fetched to me as a possible suspect. And here could be a motive.”
“But he must be nearly—” Casey stopped himself too late.
“Fifty? At least forty-five?” Timms was not amused. “For your information, Kellog, crimes of passion are not limited to the under-thirty age group. That’s point one. Point two is, Myrick’s brother was trying the worst way yesterday to work up a stink that those kids in the group did it. They didn’t realize he was taping their sessions for a book, the brother says. Everything they said in private was going to turn up in print. And when they found out, he claims, they felt betrayed, so they killed him.”
“What’s so crazy about that?” Krug’s tone was belligerent.
“Maybe nothing,” Timms said patiently. “Except so far they’ve got alibis. All I’m saying now is, William Myrick isn’t in the clear. It’s only an hour down here by plane from San Francisco, and between all the airlines there must be twenty, thirty flights a day. So the next step is a query to San Fran PD, right? We want chapter and verse on William Myrick’s activities Monday night.”
“Something else, too, Lieutenant,” Casey added as Krug headed for Communications. “Mrs. Cesana let a hint drop. Nothing we could pin her down on. But it was something about the decedent serving notice a while back that he didn’t want any of his friends dropping in.”
“This got something to do with Miss Crewes, you think?”
“Maybe, sir. But maybe not, too.”
“All right, see what you can get out of Allman when you see him.”
Through the marine operator, Casey called Robert Allman at the houseboat, finding that he had already left. From the studio in San Fernando Valley, he received the report that Mr. Allman had not yet arrived, so he left the number and a message for the producer to call as soon as possible.
While he was on the telephone, more news from the lab arrived. One of the victim’s contact lenses had been smashed, possibly under the feet of his murderer. Any suspect’s shoes should be sent for testing, since there was a possibility that tiny pieces of optical plastic might still be found imbedded in the soles. Also a variety of latent prints had been lifted from the scene; Detective Bureau should note that any and all visitors to, and residents of, the decedent’s premises must be fingerprinted before the latents could be sorted out. The confiscated tape of the Monday meeting contained a little over one hundred minutes of miscellaneous talk. A transcript would be typed and sent up as soon as possible.
The autopsy report arrived shortly after Krug returned, confirming the information in the preliminary PM that the victim had not eaten for several hours prior to his death, and that he had died instantly of massive cranial injuries inflicted by a large heavy instrument. There were no bruises, lacerations, no matter under the fingernails—no sign, in short, of a struggle. It was the opinion of Dr. Harold Deacon that the murderer had struck from the rear, and with intent to kill, taking his victim by surprise. Time of death was placed after ten, but before midnight Monday.
“Which leaves us six kids, that Flesher girl, a pack of fat patients and the Crewes woman—just to name a few,” Timms said moodily. “That bronze thing he was killed with sat on that table in the front hall. Looks to me like Myrick was in his office, heard something maybe, came out to investigate and surprised whoever it was.”
“Could have been the doorbell he heard,” Casey suggested.
“Right, we can’t discount it could’ve been a caller,” Timms agreed. “But I also like the idea of somebody already in the house. Somebody laying for him. Somebody who knew the housekeeper was off the premises.”
“The only person who fits that,” Krug said, “is the Crewes dame.”
“Well, I’m not discounting her by any means, Al,” Timms said. “What the hell, we can’t cross out any of ’em yet! Not unless we can find a neighbor or somebody who saw something definite. So far, all we’ve got from canvassing is a lot of gripes about the motorbikes and those kids meeting there.”
The incoming lines began to light up then—the nut calls Krug had predicted. One was from a clairvoyant who, for half the reward, offered to use her occult powers to solve the murder of Stephen Myrick. Haynes kept trying to explain to her that no reward had been offered, but the seeress was either stubborn or hard of hearing. Zwingler’s call was from a full-blooded Apache whose talents as a tracker had been used, he claimed, in many a manhunt. All he asked in return for his services was a lot of the sort of publicity which might help him break into film work. Another call, from an elderly citizen who claimed to have seen a band of bloodstained hippies roaming north of Montana near Ocean Avenue on Monday night, occupied Krug and Casey. “How come you didn’t call the police, mister?” Krug asked. Well, he didn’t realize, the old man sputtered, and anyhow, if the police didn’t want his help…
Leaving Casey the task of calming the old man, Krug quietly hung up his extension and called out on another line. �
�Let’s go,” he said impatiently when Casey had finished talking. “Big deal, the Simmons kid’s father says he can give us a few minutes between appointments.”
FIFTEEN
“I’m expecting a prospect in half an hour, but he can wait if he has to,” Frank Simmons told them cordially. “Like to help you fellows whenever I can. Come on back…” He gestured toward a desk at the rear of the storefront office. “We’ve got coffee or a drink, whichever you want. No? Nothing? Well, at least have a seat. Come to think of it,” he said, laughing, “we should have stayed up front. At Sol’s desk. Business has been so lousy lately, we need some activity by the window to let ’em know out there we’re still operating!” Large, ungainly, older than Casey expected, he slumped into the Naugahyde executive chair behind his desk, still talking compulsively—a high-powered, eternally smiling salesman.
Krug kept nodding politely while they progressed from the subject of high interest rates and taxes, which made real estate hard to move these days, to the new high rises which were changing the nature as well as the skyline of Santa Monica. When it became apparent that Simmons might never run down, Krug finally interrupted, reminding the talkative Realtor why they were there.
“Yes, I read about the case in the paper,” Simmons said. “A terrible thing. Just terrible. A real shock for some of those Palisades Avenue residents, all right, a murder on their doorsteps. Thing like that happens, you always see some changes in a neighborhood.” He winked at Krug. “Bad as undesirables moving in, if you know what I mean.”
But when they got down to details, his voice slowed and the jovial mask of the salesman slipped, revealing the tired, bitterly bereaved man behind it. He didn’t understand what had happened to his daughter, he told them mournfully, maybe it was his own fault for doting on her so, this child he and his wife had waited for all those years. He showed them a snapshot he kept in his desk, of a pretty, long-haired teenager, and told them how she had changed overnight, one day a sweet, loving child, the next this moody stranger who refused to say what had come over her.
“By the time we realized, it was too late, of course,” he said as he brooded over the photograph. “She was arrested. And that boy never came forward. The one she’d been going with who gave her the stuff. My God, we never even knew his name!”
“Take it easy, Mr. Simmons.” Krug cleared his throat. “We see a lot of it nowadays. Isn’t anything you have to blame yourself for.”
“But I do. God knows, I do!” His eyes filled, and blinking rapidly, he stared beyond them into the sunlight falling through the wide front window lettered Simmons and Bernstein, Realtors, Licensed Real Estate Brokers. “We got her released and took her to our doctor,” he went on unsteadily. “And he recommended this Myrick fellow. Said he’d heard he was doing wonders with—with cases like Sandy’s. Well”—he drew a deep, shuddering breath—“it was fine for a while, she seemed to be doing all right. Then, after a few weeks, all of a sudden she wanted to quit.”
“Did she say why, Mr. Simmons?” Casey asked.
“Ah, for God’s sake,” he groaned, “what difference does it make?”
“This is a homicide,” Krug reminded him. “Anything might make a difference.”
“Yes, I understand. But to tell you the truth, it all seems so far away and—and—unimportant.” He looked at them pleadingly. “I know that’s a lousy thing to say. But since Sandy—since we lost her—nothing has seemed to matter very much.”
His face looked naked, blind, as he pushed up his dark-rimmed spectacles and rubbed his eyes. He was sweating, Casey noticed. And his fingers trembled. It was difficult to recall him as the bustling salesman they had first encountered. A basic lesson in human psychology, Casey reminded himself: no one is entirely what he appears; seldom is the person that he characterizes himself to be.
“She never told us what was wrong,” Simmons was saying, “but my wife guessed it might be Myrick.”
Krug glanced at Casey. “You mean he made a pass at your daughter—something like that?”
“Tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to believe, Sergeant. She wouldn’t say anything, so maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was that bunch of hoodlums. That group he got her into.” He kept sighing deeply. “She wouldn’t tell me anything at all. Ashamed maybe; I don’t know. But she told my wife some of the things they talked about at those meetings, and I tell you it made my blood run cold. I never heard such stuff in a locker room, much less in a mixed group of teenagers!”
“Yeah, they’re pretty wise these days,” Krug agreed before Casey could inquire what kind of stuff Simmons meant. “So what did you do then, Mr. Simmons?”
“Why, I called and told them she was dropping out.”
“Was this your decision or hers?” Casey asked.
“Hers, of course. Tell you the truth,” Simmons confessed, “I tried to persuade her to handle it herself. I mean, that was one of the problems, she wouldn’t take responsibility for what she did. Like I told you, there wasn’t a damn thing I knew for sure, but I still had my suspicions.” He sighed again deeply. “Anyway, I phoned and told them she’d decided not to go on. They tried to talk me out of letting her quit. Spouted a lot of psychiatric jargon at me. Absolute nonsense, of course, and I made damn sure they knew I knew it, too.”
“You keep saying ‘they,’ ” Casey said. “Apparently you talked to someone else besides Myrick?”
“Sure, his secretary. Had a hell of a time getting it through her head I meant business. But when she finally got the picture, she let me talk to Myrick.”
“Must be Crewes,” Krug muttered. “A lame woman?”
“Wouldn’t know, I never saw her. But I do know,” Simmons added with a glint of humor, “she’s a damn good talker.”
“You can say that again,” Krug grunted. “If she can write as sharp as she talks, for sure that’s one female don’t have to worry any she’s a cripple.”
“What d’you mean, write?” Simmons asked curiously. “What would she write in a job like that but an occasional letter?”
“The way we hear it, she come out here specially to write this book about those kids with Myrick.” Krug shrugged. “Beats me who’d be interested.” Unaware of his gaffe, he went on briskly, “Mr. Simmons, we don’t want to take up any more of your time than we have to. Just a couple more questions.” He hesitated. “You remember your daughter mentioning anything about that Group Five bunch that might indicate they were unhappy with Myrick?”
“No, I don’t recall anything like that.”
“She ever say anything about the meetings being taped, anything like that?”
Simmons shook his head.
“How about Judy Flesher, she ever talk about her?”
“Sorry.” The real estate broker made a helpless gesture. “Looks like I can’t help you there, either. I don’t know the name.”
“Christ,” Krug groused when they had climbed into the Mustang again, “some more fat nothing. Thought the least we’d get is some word on the Flesher kid. Time, I say, we get an APB out on her.” He was still elaborating on the possibilities when they walked into the squad room once more.
At his corner desk, Timms was on the phone, and he beckoned urgently, covering the receiver. “Get on this, Al! Line six. Some nut about to slaughter his whole family, he says, and he won’t let loose of his address.”
No longer harsh, but soft-voiced and soothing, Krug spoke gently into the receiver. Good old Uncle Al, Casey thought, charms birds out of trees, maniacs out of hidey holes—
“Crazy bastard!” Krug slammed the receiver. “Okay, I got him located.”
“You want some backup, Al?”
“Nah, it’ll only spook him. Let me try it solo.”
As Krug rushed out, Casey took a call from Robert Allman, who reluctantly agreed to meet them later in the day.
“It’s not that I don’t want to cooperate with the police any way I can,” the producer explained, “but, you understand, I’ve got schedu
les to meet. A budget to keep up with. I walk off the set even at four, four-thirty, I’ve blown a third of a day’s shooting.”
“If you’d rather, we can meet you earlier at the studio,” Casey offered.
“No, no, that’s all right. Around five is fine. But if you don’t mind, let’s make it at the apartment instead of the boat. Merriweather says Mother seems to be handling it all right now…”
Mother? Casey stifled an exclamation. “That’s Mrs. Mona Allman you mean?”
“Yes, Merriweather said you wanted to talk to her, so this way you can kill two birds with one stone.”
Just for the record, Casey inquired, how old was Mrs. Allman? Eighty-two, the producer replied. But she was sharp as tacks. His mother ran rings around women half her age.
Well, Casey thought as he hung up, it wasn’t the first time he and his partner had missed the obvious. Nor the first time that some preconceived idea of Krug’s had short-circuited his own. Something new, a triangle. The insidious thing about experience, Casey decided, is that it can kill imagination. He was still brooding on the subject when Lotte Haas called from her sister’s, saying it was necessary for her to get into the Palisades Avenue house. Not only was she without her belongings, so fast had they made her leave yesterday, but also, she had promised the poor Doktor’s brother to keep watch in case those verfluchten Halbstarken should try to break in and do further mischief.
Wondering what marvels of translation had made murder into mischief, Casey said he’d let her know when the premises would be officially unsealed. “Incidentally, Mrs. Haas,” he added guilelessly, “maybe you can help me? It’s about that photograph in Dr. Myrick’s office. The one signed ‘Lila’?” He waited, but she didn’t bite. “We were wondering if he might have seen her frequently. If you saw her around there much.”
“Lila. I don’t know this person.”
“But you have seen the photo.”
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 44
