“Something must have,” Casey commented. “He’s been straight for months. Joined an encounter group. Has to be somebody or something that got him into it.”
“Maybe he saw the light.”
“Bullshit,” said Krug rudely. “Somebody scared him into it. Let’s take a look at his sheet, I want to know who.”
He had Myrick’s group spread out all over the place, Lieutenant Timms told them grimly when they finally checked in. “Keeping ’em separated this time. And this time I want some results.” He leveled a finger at Casey threateningly. “Your crippled lady just called. Said she found her cat. Said she had her lock changed. I told her to stop worrying, you’d call her tomorrow. And until then, I don’t want to hear anything more about her, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Timms listened without comment until they had finished their report. “Sounds like zero possibilities, but go ahead, try it and see what happens. We’ve got to fish till we catch something, and I mean now. There’s either a connection between those two killings or there isn’t, and by Christ, I’m finding out tonight!”
Ellis Johnson had been isolated in the small interrogation room which opened into the reception area outside the captain’s office. Casey and Krug found him sprawled on the table—which, with three hard chairs, was the only furniture—pretending to doze.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.” Krug banged his sandaled foot. “And get your ass off that table.”
“Yassuh, Mr. Pig.” Grinning amiably, the boy slid his long skinny frame onto a straight-backed chair. “Everything’s cool in the pork factory.”
“Don’t bet on it, sonny.”
Johnson laughed and kept laughing, his self-confidence never deserting him during their long series of repetitious questions interspersed with seemingly meaningless inquiries about school activities and friends. They were careful to keep away from any mention of family—their ace in the hole, they hoped.
“All right, Ellis, let’s go over it again,” Casey said patiently. “You claim you saw Judy’s motorbike Monday night. But nobody else seems to have noticed it. Is it possible you were mistaken, what you saw was Hector’s Honda?”
“You shucking me, slick. Figure I don’t know a Honda when I sees one?”
“But you didn’t see Judy after she left the house.”
“Not me, man.”
“When did she start pushing again?” Krug asked abruptly, but Johnson only hooted. “Don’t laugh too soon, sonny boy,” Krug advised him, “we got a little surprise for you.”
Casey explained that they had a tape recording of the Monday meeting. “Every word, Ellis,” he emphasized. Catching a flicker of something behind the boy’s opaque indifference, he said “Pigsucker” quietly, but Johnson only yawned.
Clearly, it was time to play their hole card. “Get his mother in here,” Krug told Casey as if the idea had just occurred to him. “Wherever she is, pick her up, and I mean quick.”
Johnson looked dumbstruck. “Hey, wait up, man,” he hollered as Casey started for the door. “You pull my ole lady in here, she gonna come upside me with a major-league bat!”
“That’s your problem, sonny.”
“But, man, she a righteous woman. You send pigs to pick her up, she gonna climb me good for shaming her!”
Krug’s grin was callous. “Take your choice, kid. You either tell us what you know, or tell your mother why you won’t.”
“Some choice, shit.” The boy slumped in the chair, and they waited, watching him sweat. “Okay,” he muttered finally, “but you got to protect me, man. I ain’t turning that dude in if he gonna blow me away, too, first chance he gets.”
“Who’re you talking about, Ellis?”
“Man, don’t jive me, that nark,” the boy shouted. “That freaky pig wasted Tay in the park—That’s who I’m talking about!”
“Taylor?” Lieutenant Timms looked stunned. “Charles Taylor? How the hell does he fit in here?”
“We think he might be the beginning, sir,” Casey replied. “A couple of weeks ago, Johnson claims he saw a man from one of the plainclothes details rousting Judy Flesher. Around the fifteenth, he thinks.”
“What makes him so sure it was a policeman?”
“Johnson says he saw the guy flash a badge, sir. Then he took the Flesher girl by the arm and started off down the street. Johnson thought it was a bust.”
“This was on Palisades Avenue?”
“Yes, sir. After their meeting, Johnson said. He and the other kids had already taken off, but Johnson forgot his jacket or something. Anyway, when he went back a few minutes later, he saw Judy down the street being accosted by this guy.”
“So from there, how’d he jump to a narcotics deal?”
“Put two and two together,” Krug said. “And he wasn’t too far off, either. He sees the girl nailed. Then their ex-buddy, Taylor, gets his in the park. And all of a sudden she’s got the dough to buy that bike.” His weather-beaten face creased slightly. “Ought to hand him over to Narco and watch him sweat—”
“Wait a minute, Al, let’s see what we’ve got here.” Leaning back, the lieutenant locked his hands behind his head, staring intently at the ceiling. “Putting the mother’s story and Johnson’s together, we get a mystery man posing as a cop. A fake cop flashing a dime-store toy badge. And he’s after—what? Let’s say, some information. And maybe a helping hand, too? He makes Judy an offer she can’t refuse. Money. And in return, she gives him—”
“A setup, right.” Krug nodded. “Sure as hell she set Taylor up for that hit in the park.”
“Which means a pro job, you think?”
Krug nodded again. “A hit some smart professional fixed up to look like an amateur job. Taylor was probably muscling in on somebody’s territory.”
Timms thought it over. “The girl must’ve believed she was only setting up for a bust. Otherwise she’d have protected herself, wouldn’t she? Instead, she went out bright and early the day after Taylor was wasted and bought that Yamaha for cash.”
“Yeah, no panic,” Krug agreed. “Probably didn’t take off for Vegas till the word got around. Maybe when the Evening Outlook hit the stands? She sees the headlines, finds out Taylor’s in the morgue instead of the slammer. Probably scared her shitless. So she went flying off to Mama. No help there, though, so what’s she gonna do, a crazy kid like that? Come back here, that’s all she can do.”
“To a one-room pad with a bike for company.” Timms shook his head. “Not a very pretty picture, is it? No help to be had anywhere.”
“Worse than that, sir,” Casey said. “No protection, either. No one to turn to, the law or her friends. Johnson would have spread his story about seeing her approached. Can’t have taken much imagination for them to connect Taylor’s death with that brand-new Yamaha. And they’re all dumb enough to believe in official murder.”
“So she was an outcast in the group. Then Myrick dismissed her.” Timms squinted at Casey. “You think she’s our vandal?”
Casey hesitated, aware of deep water ahead if they pursued the subject. “It’s possible, Lieutenant. But nobody found any keys. Depends on how crazy she was, I guess.” And a lot of other things, he added to himself. The dates on the calendar he was constructing in his mind didn’t fit right. “She showed up at the meetings at least three times we know of before she was finally kicked out. And possibly she called on Myrick in between times, trying to square herself.”
“Meaning she had plenty of chances for access?”
“She still couldn’t get into the files without keys, Lieutenant.” Casey hesitated again. “And there’s the man Mrs. Foster saw to be considered, too.”
“Not without confirmation.” Timms rubbed his end-of-the-day whiskers. “In all that stuff about your crippled lady’s purse getting snatched, seems to me I remember something about Myrick keeping keys to those files upstairs. Which means somebody determined enough could probably find ’em, right? All that girl had to do was fake she was leaving, slam
the front door, then sneak upstairs till Myrick had left.”
“Except Monday night he didn’t,” Krug added, “and he caught her in the act.”
“So she killed him and ran home—And then what, Al?”
“Our pro was laying for her.”
“Almost two weeks after he wasted Taylor?” Timms shook his head. “If he was planning to kill her, too, he’d have done it right away.” Clearly dissatisfied, he stared into space. “But it was a one-and-one job, all right. A single assailant. Somebody she let in the door, which might mean she wasn’t scared of him.”
“So maybe one of our juveys, then?”
“Have to consider it as a possibility, Al.”
And they were back where they had started, pounding on the group again. A tangential track, Casey was convinced, but orders were orders, every angle had to be pursued.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Stop worrying.” Surely the two sweetest words in contemporary English? In my lexicon anyway, Adrian thought. Relieved and elated by the police lieutenant’s advice, she decided to call her sister, tell her the whole nightmare now that it was almost over. But she’d be hours on the phone, she knew; Ellen would not accept any sketches and wait for the full story in a follow-up letter. Which meant a fortune in long-distance tolls, even direct-dialing. And the cheaper rate didn’t begin for an hour yet. The hell with it, she told herself, call anyway. Then she changed her mind again.
She played with Marmalade until the kitten tired and curled up at her feet. “Some companion you are,” Adrian told him disgustedly. She tried to read, but in her restlessness, found she could not concentrate. Nothing on television appealed to her either. So maybe a movie, she thought. Well, why not, hadn’t he told her not to worry? She would call Ellen before eight the next morning, and the hell with expense. By tomorrow she’d be more able to talk sensibly, too. Yes, a movie would be perfect. A sandwich and a cup of coffee first, then she’d be on her way to the drive-in theater. What she needed now was diversion.
Something forgotten kept boring like a worm at the back of Casey’s mind. Something he had heard or perhaps read in a report. But he was so tired and hungry and bored by the endless interrogations that his mind felt crushed, incapable of functioning.
When night tour came on, Krug suggested that they knock off for dinner. Casey could start the reports when they got back. With any luck at all, they could be out of there in a couple of hours. Casey declined in favor of a vending-machine sandwich and a foul cup of coffee. If only he could remember that niggling thing. He realized he had also forgotten to call the night-shift locksmith he’d been trying to reach all afternoon.
After Krug left, he dialed the number the Marina del Rey locksmith had given him, and this time there was an answer. The night-shift man sounded irritable and sleepy, but after a good deal of persuasion he irascibly agreed to check his workbook for the night of July 27.
Casey listened to footsteps at the other end of the line, a rustling sound which he guessed to be paper, a muttered curse. Then the locksmith said, “Okay, here we go,” and began to list the calls from his work sheets. All seemed legitimate to Casey—until they arrived at the eighth one, a customer named Brown who had called from the airport. “One of those big shots,” the locksmith added. “Claimed he was too busy at conferences to meet me, so I got sixty different notes here how to pick up the keys.”
With a stir of excitement, Casey said, “You mean you never actually saw this Brown?”
“That’s right. He left the keys he wanted copied and the money to pay me at the hotel desk.”
“How many keys?”
“Well, lessee. I got three standard brass blanks here, two aluminum and one special. That’s three door keys, two for a car, and something small, like a drawer key.”
Miss Crewes’s description of her keys matched exactly.
“Way I figure it,” the locksmith was saying, “the stupid jerk probably lost his, took the wife’s maybe and got stuck here on business.”
“You’re probably right. What I’m interested in, though, is your end. You duplicated the keys, paid yourself with the money he left—And then what?”
“Same deal. I put his new set and the old set and his change in an envelope, and left it with the desk clerk.”
“Was this Brown registered there?”
“Could be, I don’t know. Listen, I got to get washed up for work—”
“Just give me the name and address of the airport hotel.” Casey sighed when he heard it. The biggest and busiest in the LA International area, naturally. One of those hostelries specializing in conference rooms and services for busy company men whose lives were spent leapfrogging around the country from meeting to meeting.
On the off chance he might be able to obtain the information he needed the easy way, by telephone, Casey dialed the hotel asking for whoever was in charge at the desk at night.
“That’ll be Mr. Clay, the assistant manager,” said the switchboard operator. “He doesn’t come on duty for half an hour yet.”
Casey scribbled Clay in his notebook and thanked her. No, no message, he said. In half an hour he would talk to Mr. Clay in person.
Before he left, a reply came in from San Francisco. Attn Det/3 Kellog message follows: Subject Wm Myrick registered owner 75 Cad conv, and there was a license number appended. Casey checked Communications and was told there was nothing from Sacramento yet; possibly not until tomorrow would they receive anything as cumbersome as a print-out of all locally registered Citroёn sedans.
Tomorrow. And meanwhile, Casey thought morbidly, he’s out there floating around somewhere. A mysterious visitor with keys to the Palisades house. A professional killer. Or a lunatic.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The subterranean garage was well-lit, and at this early-evening hour seemed less spooky than usual. Fighting the timidity which had plagued her since her purse had been snatched a month before, Adrian stepped out of the elevator after a careful look around. Dinnertime for the snatch-and-grab crowd, she told herself. Even muggers have to eat. When she returned, she decided, she would leave her car parked out on the street and use the front entrance to the apartment building. All other precautions—looking in the back seat for anyone hidden there before getting into the car, locking the doors securely once she was inside—were old established New York habits.
Just beyond the exit a car was parked illegally, blocking the one-way alley. But there was someone sitting behind the wheel. Talk about women drivers, Adrian fumed, who but a man would just squat there, oblivious of anyone trying to get by? She flicked her lights up, then down again, and the blue Citroёn started moving down the alley. Someone’s driver or waiting husband. Certainly nobody’s illicit amour, she decided nastily as her headlights through his back window illumined the driver’s bald spot and jug-handle ears. At the mount of the alley he turned right. Adrian turned left and continued to Seventh Street, where she turned south toward Olympic Boulevard. The drive-in theater was eastward, at Olympic and Bundy—always a double feature, a weekly change of bill; going there had been the sum total of her social life for over six months now.
Why is it everyone who travels out to the Coast seems to drop off the face of the earth? Ellen had written plaintively. One letter and four postcards of your palm-tree paradise, and that’s that. You really must be having a busy, wonderful time!
In her consuming loneliness—the sort of isolation she had never before experienced—Adrian had read those words many times, savoring the irony like a sore tooth. No way to explain her curious daylight relationship with Stephen Myrick without worrying her overprotective sister. All business, as the police lieutenant had said. But even business partners occasionally have dinner together. More fool you. Oh, shit, quit thinking about it. But she couldn’t stop.
Would you believe, she imagined a letter to her sister, this time I drew the whole ball of wax? Served her right for not investigating first. But, my God, who’d have imagined anyone with scientific pretension
s playing therapist by day and spiritualist by night? Any serious reviewer in possession of such juicily schizophrenic behavior would have destroyed us both, and the book, too. So much for my career and so-called scholarly reputation. Only the cruellest kind of fate saved me.
An unconscious shudder shook her. August, not April, is the cruellest month. Stop thinking, think about the movie. Obviously, from the ad in the newspaper, it was one of those sex-and-violence fantasies so dear to the heart of America. Adrian knew she would be bored. But getting out would restore her perspective. Already the claustrophobic sense of being trapped in a nightmare was leaving her.
Remembering that Olympic joined the freeway somewhere near Seventh—a junction to be avoided—Adrian turned east on Santa Monica Boulevard, and a mile or so on, became aware of the Citroёn trailing her. The same blue color as the car which had blocked the alley. She kept watching in the rear-view mirror, trying to see if it was the same man as before, but lights shining on the windshield obscured the driver. Coincidence, she told herself. But how many blue Citroёns can there be in this vicinity?
Turning south again on Twenty-sixth, Adrian proceeded to Olympic, which was a surface street there. The Citroёn was still behind her, and ahead the traffic light shone green. Without signaling, she turned left. The Citroёn turned behind her.
It’s that nut, Burns. Or William Myrick. A pair of nuts. She should have asked the police lieutenant if they had discovered any connection. Oh, don’t be such a fool, she told herself, it’s probably one of those joy riders out looking for kicks. Of course it is. A pickup artist on wheels. Modern version of the old-fashioned masher.
She was certain she was right, but the uneasy stirrings of apprehension would not be suppressed. And as she sped along Olympic, watching the Citroёn hanging behind her, a wild urge to push her car as fast as it would go gripped Adrian. Panic. And the old sickening sense of helplessness. For the rest of her life never to be able to run, doomed to crawl…
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 50
