“Save it, Kellog. I’ll talk to you later.”
When the meeting was over, Casey fished coins out of his pocket and wandered forlornly downstairs to the coffee vending machine. As he stooped to extract the steaming cup from its automated slot, he heard someone clattering down the stairs. A familiar voice—Zwingler’s—said behind him, “The game’s called ‘Tag a pigeon,’ Casey. Don’t you recognize it?”
Balancing the brimming cup, Casey straightened. “I dig I’m ‘it,’ all right, but why?”
“Ah, come on, use your head. It’s politics. The pressure bit. You know if Myrick wasn’t a lawyer, he’d get the fisheye and a fast shuffle. But mouthpieces, you know, they got ways and means. He’s got this five-foot chip on his shoulder because he thinks we’re pussyfooting with the juveniles. You heard what Timms said yesterday. The legal eagle’s blown his mind on the idea it’s another Manson-type slaughter.”
But that was only half of it, Casey discovered later when he was finally called on the carpet. Myrick was present—not the usual procedure with complaints of this sort—and as well as the charge of departmental negligence, he seemed determined to work up a bill of particulars against Adrian Crewes. “Not that I’m suggesting anything more now than malicious mischief,” he said several times. “But the fact remains, she had more reason than anyone to destroy those tapes.”
“I disagree.” Casey finally spoke up. “Of all the people involved, she seems to me to have less reason—”
“Wait a minute, Kellog,” the captain interrupted. “If there’s a possibility of some misguided loyalty on Miss Crewes’s part, either to the material or the patients in that group, we have to consider it.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Myrick kept staring at Casey. “I might add that I mentioned to her Tuesday that she ought to turn those tapes over to you as possible evidence. A mistake, I soon realized. She flew at me as if I’d suggested she burn them instead.”
“Well, it could be,” Casey ventured, “she was thinking of them only in terms of privileged material.”
“And her professional scruples wouldn’t allow her to let go of them?” Myrick smiled unpleasantly. “Detective, don’t try to sell me that story. I believe I know what Miss Crewes is up to. But let it go for now,” he added. “What I’m here for is a satisfactory explanation why you took it upon yourself to open my brother’s house to a possible suspect, leaving her alone there to do whatever she pleased.”
“I didn’t open the house, Mr. Myrick. Miss Crewes has keys. If you didn’t want her there, you should have asked her Tuesday to surrender them. As for her being a possible suspect, we have no evidence so far—”
“And she’s lame, and a woman, therefore automatically passed over.”
“Not automatically, Mr. Myrick. Until we prove otherwise, no one connected with your brother will be passed over. Not even you,” Casey added unwisely.
Myrick’s pale, parched-looking face flamed, and for an instant his hard professional poise deserted him. “That woman deliberately destroyed evidence,” he shouted. “She as good as told me herself…” Suddenly he calmed down. “Are you aware that she was determined to break her contract with my brother and their publisher?”
Casey glanced at the captain. No help there. These were courtroom tactics.
“Of course she denies it, but you can see the possibilities.” Again Myrick smiled unpleasantly. “But the real question is, Why would she want out of a profitable project she’s already given six months to?” A skillful pause, then he answered himself: “I say she realized they had a tiger by the tail with those hoodlums. And to nullify her contractual obligation—as well as save her own skin!—she sabotaged the project.”
“Well, so much for the flimflam man,” the captain said when Myrick had finally gone. “I think we’ve seen everything in his bag of tricks. But if he talks to any reporters”—he made a futile gesture—“we’ll probably get some flak.” A very tall, deceptively bland-looking man, he looked down on Casey. “Incidentally, you want to watch how you handle these types hereafter,” he suggested mildly. “You go treading on any local toes like that, you’ll make Detective Second about the time you’re ready to retire.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but he’s so far out of line…”
“How can you be so sure when all you’ve got is the word of a suspect? Don’t you realize what a bind you’ve put us in, letting Myrick see your prejudice for this woman?”
“It isn’t prejudice, sir, it’s common sense. This is a professional woman we’re talking about. I’ve seen her books in the reference stacks at the library—”
“All right, Kellog, let’s not argue the matter. All I’m telling you is, watch it.” Then he dismissed Casey, and it was Timms’s turn.
“Listen,” the lieutenant said harshly, “in the first place, that report you filed is so much quicksand. You’re talking about damage to material we haven’t officially recognized. Can’t, as you know, without legal red tape. Then, in the second place, you refuse to see what’s obvious. If Crewes wiped those tapes, she could be building up a neat little defense for herself.”
“I don’t believe that, Lieutenant.”
“Goddammit, you know the woman’s a question mark! She’s not in the clear by any means. And if she—Ah, the hell with it,” he said impatiently, “you know the score. You’ve stuck us on a tightrope, and whether Crewes is guilty or innocent of anything, Myrick’s got us dead to rights if he wants to start a stink about mishandling.”
“Lieutenant, I heard that tape, and I’ll stake my bottom dollar it’s either a nut of some kind or somebody bombed out of his mind.”
“Or somebody who wants us to think just that? Whatever happened to those tapes, they’re dynamite. And officially they don’t exist. Can never exist now—you understand—because they’re conveniently destroyed.”
“Not completely, sir,” Casey said. “Miss Crewes monitored each tape and took notes, she told me. So if it was the killer who wiped them—”
“But you told me yourself, she said there was nothing incriminating on them! Don’t push it, Kellog,” Timms warned as Casey opened his mouth to argue. “You’ve had your say. Let’s just finish up with a little piece of news you don’t seem to have heard yet. Your crippled lady wasn’t home last night after you tucked her in. Either that, or she wasn’t answering the phone.” He smiled chillingly. “Something to think about, isn’t it?”
TWENTY-THREE
This is experience, Casey kept telling himself, dialing Adrian Crewes’s number. This is learning the ropes. But it didn’t help. He listened to the ringing at the other end, realizing that they had been asking the wrong people all the wrong questions. The facts as they knew them now were a map of enemy country where all the road signs had been changed overnight.
“When you get through with your social calls”—Krug was broadly sarcastic—“I got a job for you.”
“Wait a minute, Al.” Seven rings, but she’d be slow to answer. Eight. Nine. He hung up and started to dial again.
“Listen, genius, you’re on thin enough ice…”
Casey banged down the receiver. Krug informed him that the detective who’d been assigned to Palisades Avenue had been shifted to a smelly-sounding shooting which had just come in. Did the genius think he could come down to earth long enough to handle some routine work?
Five minutes later, Casey shot out onto Main Street, supposedly headed for Palisades Avenue where he was to canvass every house again on the off chance of finding someone they had missed who had seen something. I’ll get a transfer, he promised himself. To Bunco maybe. Or Juvenile. But like a separate heartbeat, panic pulsed in him. What good is a policeman if he can’t protect anybody?
Her car was in its stall in the subterranean garage, but there was no answer when he pounded on her door. Summoning the elevator, Casey watched the indicator which seemed stuck on two. After thirty seconds’ waiting, he started down the stairs, taking the four flights three steps at a time, arriving i
n the lobby breathless.
“Man, you fixing to have yourself a seizure flying around like that,” the janitor, vacuuming the carpet, commented. “You looking for somebody or just getting your exercise?”
“The manager.”
“Round the corner yonder.” He pointed the way, adding, “But he ain’t in,” as Casey started off.
“Is there someone with keys in the building?”
“You looking at him, mister.”
“I’m a police officer.” Casey showed his identification. “This is an emergency. Have to get into Miss Crewes’s apartment immediately.”
“You fixing to bust her?”
Masking his fury and panic behind the official deadpan he had learned from Krug, Casey informed him of the laws about obstructing a police officer in the furtherance of his duties.
But, unfazed, the janitor said he didn’t know about that. “All’s I know is what I’m told here. She already gone complaining to Mr. Argyle ’bout somebody letting that cat out.”
“When was this?”
“Last night, I reckon. Anyhow, this morning he told me never to go in there no more.”
“You’ve seen her this morning?”
“Sure, a hour back. She been ’round and about this whole building, looking for that cat.”
Deflated by relief, Casey headed for the stairs. He found her on the third floor emerging from the elevator.
“Excuse me, have you seen—Oh, it’s you,” she said coldly. “Is this what they mean by police harassment?” Then exhausted, she leaned against the closed doors of the elevator, near tears, bereft now that she realized how much she had liked and trusted this young man. “Marmalade’s gone.”
“The janitor told me. Are you certain someone let him out?”
“What else could have happened? I asked the manager last night, but he swore no one from the building was in my apartment.”
“You should have called us, Miss Crewes.”
“I thought of it. Thank heaven I didn’t,” she added bitterly, “because God only knows what sort of sinister claptrap you’d have made of it.”
Suppressing a sigh, Casey held the door of the elevator open while she got in slowly.
“Really, I was dazzled when I heard the popular interpretation of our incident last evening.”
“It’s not mine, Miss Crewes.”
“Oh, don’t,” she said wearily. “Don’t play games with me. I didn’t destroy those tapes, but if you think I did, at least have the decency to be honest about it.” And furious at the tears which had begun to trickle now, she cried, “Where the hell is my cat? Where the hell is my life? Ever since I arrived in this godforsaken tinhorn paradise, I’ve been living some kind of lunatic’s dream!”
William Myrick had called earlier, she told Casey when she had calmed down, demanding her keys to the Palisades house. He would send a messenger for them. Myrick had also informed her that the matter of the destroyed tapes had been cleared up; although not officially involved in the matter yet, the police suspected that it was she who was responsible. Furthermore, he was considering legal action to recover from her the material she had made off with.
“What material is that?” Casey asked.
“I can only suppose he means the manuscript and my notes.” Then an idea struck Adrian. “That man, the one who called yesterday. That obnoxious reporter. Maybe it was someone Myrick hired to do his dirty work?” The man had said his name was Burns—a curiously nasal, hectoring voice. He was a writer, too, he had claimed, specializing in crime features. He had offered to pay her well for a look at her work. “Just for research, he said. As if I’d do such a thing,” she added indignantly. “He was so insistent I finally hung up on him.”
“Well, maybe it was a reporter,” Casey soothed her. “But just to make sure, I’ll check with Mr. Myrick. You have the manuscript and your notes here with you?”
“Yes, in my briefcase. I usually carry it. Habit, I guess. I often work here in the evening.” She hesitated, looking suddenly helpless. “How can he talk about recovering what’s mine? Doesn’t he realize—” She stopped herself. “Sorry, I’m wasting your time, aren’t I? You can hardly be concerned about a half-finished manuscript that’ll probably end up as biodegradable trash.”
Casey was of two minds on the subject, but recalling Krug’s rule—one thing at a time—he decided to pursue the cat’s disappearance first. He asked her permission to use her phone.
“My God, Kellog”—Timms’s voice sounded hoarse and distant—“you’re driving me nuts with that Crewes woman. What the hell do we care if her cat’s missing?”
“Lieutenant, it could indicate someone was in her apartment yesterday.”
“Well, for Chrissake, you were there last night. If the cat was gone—”
“He sometimes hides, Lieutenant. Anyway, it was an hour or more, Miss Crewes says, before she realized he wasn’t in the apartment. She went downstairs to the manager, but he told her no one from the building had been in 404.”
“Any sign of a break-in?”
“No, but if her keys were duplicated—”
“That again.” Casey heard him sigh. “All right, is anything missing?”
“Doesn’t seem to be.”
“Just the cat.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“So if she’s conning us, she’s got herself another piece of jigsaw puzzle in place.”
“Or someone does. Myrick, for instance.”
“Aren’t you forgetting he has an alibi? Now, listen,” Timms added harshly, “I’ve had about enough of your haring around—You get me? This is a team we’ve got here, and you either work with us as a part of it or you don’t work at all—Do I make myself clear? We’ve got a mountain of stuff to get through today.”
“Yes, sir, I’m headed for Palisades Avenue right now.”
“You’d better be, Kellog, or where you’re headed for next is the suspension list.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The fog had burned off, and it was hot work, slow work; like almost everything detectives do to earn their pay, dull and repetitious. Casey seethed and plodded and blotted sweat, spending the balance of the morning, well past noon, canvassing ten houses. Then, taking a break to get something to eat, he drove back to Ocean Avenue, making a sharp right turn onto what used to be called the California Incline, a steep street slanting down the palisades to the Coast Highway at sea level. He stopped at the first public parking lot sandwiched between two lines of stately beach houses—many the property of film stars and other public figures. Waiting his turn at the take-out food stand which occupied a corner of the beach-front lot, he ordered a hamburger, fries and a Coke, time-honored fare of more carefree beach days.
Keys—his mind wandered as he chewed and swallowed hungrily—tapes, Marmalade. A man named Burns. Myrick. Suspension. An unconscious equation? Casey hoped not. And he realized he had crossed some dividing line: he was a cop first whether he wanted to be or not, a professional.
Okay, he thought angrily, so be it. Professionalism doesn’t mean becoming a mindless automaton that rings doorbells and types reports. Means I use my own head. Means I find a line and stick to it till it pays off or doesn’t.
Gulping the last of his Coke, chewing crushed ice, he slid out of the Mustang again. First a phone booth, hopefully one with the directory intact. Inquiring if there was a pay station at the food stand, and finding that there was, he changed a dollar bill into a handful of dimes. The booth was on the shady side of the stand, and it was occupied by what appeared to be a two-headed creature of indeterminate sex. Casey waited, and the occupant separated at last into two sopping-wet, sand-covered teeny-boppers, one male, one female, both high on something.
A Western Section directory hung from a chain inside the hot stuffy booth. Across the dirty glass side facing the sea, someone had scrawled PIG with orange lipstick. Casey sighed. By thy name shall ye be known. Oink-oink.
In the yellow pages of the directory he found e
ight large ads featured under the heading “Locksmiths.” Three advertised twenty-four-hour service; another merely said “day and night”; and the other two clearly stated relatively civilized hours—one from 6 A.M. to midnight, the other 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Choosing the nearest of the twenty-four-hour numbers, Casey inquired if anyone had ordered several keys duplicated on the evening of July 27. There had been three calls, he found, all local addresses. The next locksmith, located in Mar Vista, had a record of five calls. From the third twenty-four-hour service, a Marina del Rey firm, Casey received the discouraging sum of ten. At least half the worksheets were illegible, he was told; he would have to check with the night locksmith who kept duplicate records.
Casey asked for the telephone number, but the night-shift locksmith was either asleep and not answering his phone, or not at home. Without much hope of benefit from it, Casey underlined the number scribbled in his notebook for later follow-up. Then, remembering his promise to Miss Crewes, he called the Palisades Avenue house.
William Myrick was not there, the housekeeper reported. He had called her after the poor Doktor’s inquest, saying he would be at the hotel and would see her later.
“Mrs. Haas,” Casey said carefully, “a man named Burns phoned there yesterday, and it might help us a great deal if you could remember anything about the call.”
“Burns?” He could hear her puffing. “Ach, ja, she says he is a reporter?”
“There’s a possibility he wasn’t, Mrs. Haas. So if you could think of anything…”
She was muttering in German. “Is about some material,” she admitted finally. “He wants to see this material. Why she thinks this is a reporter, I cannot imagine. A tailor, maybe?” But with a little prodding, she did quite well quoting the conversation, which, of course, she had overheard quite by accident.
Casey tried the Miramar Hotel next, and after a long wait while William Myrick was paged, asked the lawyer if he had engaged anyone to assist him in his efforts to recover Adrian Crewes’s manuscript and notes.
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 48
