Point of Contact

by J. T. Edson

  Seated at his desk, First Deputy McCall looked up from the papers he had been working on but made no attempt to rise or remove his hat. Neither omission implied disrespect for Alice’s sex. When she logged on watch, she insisted on receiving no more courtesies than the men; and, according to Office tradition, not even McCall’s wife had ever seen him bare-headed. Tall, craggy, he looked like portrait of a Scottish Highland shepherd who for some reason had insisted on posing while dressed in a well-cut grey business suit. Tough, capable and experienced, he hid a dry sense of humor under a cold exterior. He had the gift of keeping in touch with his Watch’s cases, yet not riding the deputies handling them.

  ‘How’d it go?’ McCall asked, without offering his visitors a seat. He never encouraged people to stay long.

  ‘Buck’s satisfied that Slocum didn’t do it,’ Alice replied. ‘He thought it might be the start of a combine war and’s taken steps to stop it.’

  ‘Huh huh,’ McCall grunted, clearly satisfied that he could leave that side of the case in Buck Shield’s capable hands. ‘S.I.B.’s sent in their preliminary search report, there’s nothing in it. F.I.L. and the M.E. haven’t come through with anything yet. Reason I sent for you is that Lars and Tony answered a ‘man-down’ call out by Lake Rockabye. You’d best go over and take a look at it.’

  ‘Is it tied in with the Morgan kill?’ Brad asked.

  ‘The M.O. was the same. Victim shot twice just inside his front door, with a .30 Luger using soft-points, early this morning.’

  ‘Is he mixed in with the combine?’

  ‘Not as far as we know, Alice. It’s Austin Hagmeyer.’

  ‘The theatrical producer from New York?’ Alice asked.

  ‘You could call him that,’ McCall admitted dryly. ‘The address’s 28 East Shore Drive. Take a ride out there and look around.’

  ‘We’ll go over straight away,’ Alice promised.

  Giving the order did not imply a lack of faith on McCall’s part in the ability of Deputies Larsen and Valenca to handle the investigation. It was standard procedure in the Sheriff’s Office. Perhaps the remarkable resemblance between the methods of operation in the two killings was no more than a coincidence. If they should be connected in any way, Brad and Alice must be on the case as quickly as possible.

  On the face of it, there seemed no connection between the two killings other than the similarities of method. The second murder had taken place in a location far different to the humble confines of Tapley Morgan’s small farm. While running parallel to the shore of Lake Rockabye, East Shore Drive formed the eastern fringe of the upper-crust district known as Upton Heights. There seemed little likelihood that a man as socially prominent as Austin Hagmeyer would be involved with the moonshining combine.

  Over the past three or four years Hagmeyer had achieved considerable fame as the producer of plays and shows which some critics praised as ‘a new departure in the theatrical field’, ‘anti-war’, or ‘touching the social conscience of the nation’. Other people regarded his efforts as pornographic trash on a level with a cheap stag-show, anti-American rather than anti-war, or blatantly one-sided distortions of the country’s social problems. By selecting subjects calculated to outrage decency and appeal to the liberal-intellectual press, he had won acclaim as a genius of the modern theatre—and made a fortune. Alice and Brad knew that his death would attract far more attention than had the killing of the old farmer-moonshiner.

  ‘Why’s he here in Gusher City, anyways?’ Brad asked as he and Alice rode Unit SO 12 towards East Shore Drive.

  ‘There was something in the Mirror about him coming for a vacation,’ Alice replied. ‘If it was one of his productions, we’d soon know who did it.’

  ‘Sure,’ Brad grinned. ‘The first one to use a Southern drawl. It’s hell being a peace officer down here, everybody talks that way.’

  ‘They can’t all have killed him,’ Alice pointed out. ‘I know two of us who didn’t for starters.’

  Cruising along the Drive, they found their expectations about the interest in the killing to be correct. There was no need to check on the house numbers to find the right place. Although the M.E.’s ambulance had gone, two radio patrol cars, three black Detective Bureau Fords and a Sheriff’s Office Oldsmobile were parked before number twenty eight. Several patrolmen and a sergeant held back the inevitable crowd who could be expected to assemble at any dramatic incident. Already both the local newspapers, the Daily Lightning and Gusher City Mirror, had reporters and cameramen on the scene.

  Parking their car behind the other Oldsmobile, Alice and Brad walked towards the front gate. They showed their id. wallets to the sergeant, told the reporters that they had been sent to assist the other deputy team, and entered the garden. A big man with close-cropped blond hair and wearing a light brown suit stood in the center of the path leading to the one-floor ranch-house style building. He was talking to a uniformed officer Alice and Brad recognized as the inspector commanding the Upton Heights Police Division. Four S.I.B. experts, working in pairs, were carrying out a careful search of the gardens on either side of the path.

  ‘Alice, Brad,’ Deputy Lars Larsen greeted. Considering that his size equaled Brad’s and that he weighed much heavier, his voice sounded gentle, almost meek. ‘You know Inspector Beamish?’

  ‘We’ve met,’ Beamish said. ‘I reckon I can leave you to it.’

  Realizing that Beamish had probably the most difficult Division in the city to handle, none of the deputies resented his abrupt, pompous manner. Dealing with rich, influential citizens called for tact and diplomacy, but left its mark.

  ‘He’s giving us plenty of help,’ Larsen commented as Beamish walked away. ‘He always does, comes to that. Shall we go up to the house?’

  ‘Sure,’ Alice smiled. ‘What do you know, Lars?’

  ‘Not much yet. Time of death was around seven this morning. The house-keeper found him when she arrived at nine. He’d been shot twice at the front door and fell back inside. Then the killer closed the door, or the wind blew it shut. I’ve got four local fuzz doing a house-to-house, asking if anybody saw or heard the shooting, or noticed anybody coming away from the house.’

  ‘Mac said the killer used a .30 Luger and soft-points,’ Brad remarked as Larsen handed Alice a sheaf of scene-of-the-crime photographs.

  ‘We found the empty cases. They’re already on their way in for F.I.L. to run a comparison with the two from the Morgan killing,’ Larsen answered. ‘The exit holes told us he’d been killed with soft-points. A man’d have to have a belly full of hate to use them on anybody.’

  ‘Or want to make damned sure that he knocked the victim down,’ Brad suggested. ‘Which a jacketed .30 Luger wouldn’t, not straight off or quickly.’

  ‘A soft-point sure as hell would,’ Larsen conceded. ‘We found the bullets, but they won’t be any use.’

  While the male deputies talked, Alice studied the scene-of-crime photographs. Taken with a Polaroid self-developing camera, they carried a complete record of the sights that had greeted Larsen and Valenca on arrival at the house. Going by the pictures and chalk-marks on the porch, the empty cases had been lying in roughly the same position as those left by the gun of Tapley Morgan’s killer. Other photographs showed the body from various angles and points in the entrance hall of the house. Hagmeyer had been a slim man of medium height, fairly handsome with hair turning grey at the temples. Dressed in bedroom slippers, without socks, pajamas and a bathrobe, he lay on his back and had been shot twice in the center of the chest. Agony distorted his features, indicating that he had not been killed instantly and had died in severe pain.

  ‘Is the house-keeper still here, Lars?’ Alice inquired, passing the photographs to Brad.

  ‘She’s only just recovered enough for Tony to question her,’ Larsen replied. ‘You’d best go in, Alice. He’s got a policewoman with him, but an extra gal around won’t do any harm. Anyways, if this kill is tied in with Tap Morgan’s, you and Brad’ll be in on it.’ He indica
ted the front door. ‘We’ve had it dusted for prints, didn’t find any that’ll help. Which don’t mean much. Everybody these days knows that if you wear gloves you don’t leave finger-prints.’

  Going into the entrance hall, Alice and Brad paused to look at the chalk outline and bloodstains on the floor. The medical examiner had already removed the body, to commence the autopsy which almost invariably followed any death unattended by a doctor. As in Morgan’s case, the bullets had been found and removed, their positions on the wall being clearly marked. Hearing voices from one of the rooms, the deputies went towards it. Inside they found Larsen’s partner, Tony Valenca, talking with the woman who had discovered the body. A uniformed policewoman hovered in the background. Young, pretty, her face showed that she did not relish what must be her first brush with violent death and its aftermath.

  ‘Howdy Alice, Brad,’ the medium-sized, quietly-dressed deputy greeted. ‘This’s Mrs. Lubbitz. She’s the victim’s house-keeper. ’

  ‘I never seen him before this morning!’ the woman protested. ‘He rented this place from the owners. I work for them.’

  Tall, buxom, dressed in disheveled, but clean clothes, Mrs. Lubbitz looked haggard and distressed by the experience of finding a dead man. She could not be the guilty party in any ‘liberal’ television detective program, for she was a member of a minority group and did not speak with a Southern drawl.

  Experience in real life had taught the peace officers that members of minority groups could and, on occasion, did act as violently as the most debased television Southerner. So the deputies did not overlook the possibility that Mrs. Lubbitz’s condition might stem from some more active participation than merely discovering Hagmeyer’s body.

  Throwing the policewoman an encouraging smile, Alice went to Mrs. Lubbitz’s side. The house-keeper lay on a divan and stared at the newcomer.

  ‘Are you from a newspaper?’

  ‘No, Mrs. Lubbitz. I’m a deputy sheriff. How did Mr. Hagmeyer come to be here, if you’d never met him?’

  ‘The agent sent him the keys when he rented the house. He should’ve been here a week ago.’

  Knowing Alice’s ability in handling distraught female witnesses, the male deputies withdrew. Larsen and Valenca left the room, but Brad remained to hear what was said. Joining the policewoman, he asked her to take notes as a means of distracting her from the shock she clearly felt.

  ‘Do you know why he didn’t come?’ Alice asked. ‘He didn’t write me, or call,’ Mrs. Lubbitz replied. ‘I get paid whether anybody’s here or not, so I just carried on.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Gleaning, seeing nobody’s broke in at night, collecting the mail and sending it on. Mr. Hag—He—He’s had some letters come. I locked them in the desk.’

  ‘What time do you normally get here?’

  ‘Around eight when there’s anybody living here. When there isn’t. I come later. I should rush across town to an empty house—Hey! Maybe if I’d been here earlier, it’d been me lying in the hall.’

  ‘Why do you say that, Mrs. Lubbitz?’ Alice asked. ‘Has somebody threatened to kill you?’

  ‘Who’d want to kill me?’ the woman yelped.

  ‘You suggested it. Is there any reason why somebody would want you dead?’

  ‘No!’ Mrs. Lubbitz stated with conviction. ‘Only if I’d opened the door instead of him, it’d’ve been me who got shot.’

  ‘Try not to think of it,’ Alice advised. ‘Which won’t be easy, I know. Who owns the house?’

  ‘Colonel Thomas. He’s with the Army in Europe, so he rents it out.’

  ‘How long has he been away?’

  ‘Almost a year. A family from Houston had the house last Nice folks, man, wife and their two sons. They left three weeks ago.’

  ‘Has anybody been around asking about the colonel, the folks from Houston, or Mr. Hagmeyer?’

  ‘Only a reporter from the Mirror,’ Mrs. Lubbitz replied. ‘He came two days ago, asking if Mr. Hagmeyer’d arrived.’

  ‘Are you sure he was a reporter?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I made him show me his press-card,’ the woman answered. ‘His name was Crossman or something.’

  ‘Was he about my height, well-built, with long brown hair?’

  ‘More fat than well-built, but his hair was long and brownish,’ Mrs. Lubbitz corrected. ‘He left a card and asked for Mr. Hagmeyer to call him when he got here. You think that he wasn’t a reporter?’

  ‘It sounds like Mr. Crossman, of the Mirror,’ Alice smiled, for she had cause to remember him. ‘And nobody else has called, or asked about Mr. Hagmeyer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did you get here this morning, Mrs. Lubbitz?’

  ‘My daughter brought me over in her car, after she’d dropped the kids off at school. She’s a good girl and don’t like me working. But, like I tell her, I can’t sit around home doing nothing all day.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘About nine. I let myself in the back way, came through to the hall and—and—’

  A shudder ran through the woman and her face twisted spasmodically. Alice soothed her gently until the spasm passed and waited for her to continue.

  ‘I think I fainted,’ Mrs. Lubbitz went on. ‘When I recovered, I managed to call the police. They seemed to take so long to come and all the time I was there with the—that—’

  ‘Take it easy, Mrs. Lubbitz,’ Alice advised quietly. ‘If you will give us the key to the desk, so that we can examine the mail, the officer here will take you home.’

  ‘There’s only six letters for Mr. Ha—him—’ the woman answered. ‘I sent the others on as soon as they arrived. The key’s in my handbag.’

  ‘I brought it in, ma’am,’ the policewoman put in, showing relief at being able to leave the death-house. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

  After the policewoman had taken Mrs. Lubbitz from the room, Alice and Brad went to the desk. Producing a pair of cotton gloves from her. bag, Alice slipped them on before unlocking and raising the roll top. She lifted out the small pile of letters, taking them across to the divan. With their recipient dead, the privacy and sanctity of the U.S. mails could be forgotten. Inside one of the six envelopes might be a clue to why Hagmeyer had been murdered. Sitting down, Alice and Brad began to open the letters.

  Four of them had been forwarded from Hagmeyer’s New York office: two being theatrical trade journals; one an abusive, unsigned comment on his work, morals and antecedents; the last from an apparently semi-illiterate playwright extolling the virtues of his latest work. The other two letters had been addressed directly to 28 East Shore Drive and came from Mrs. Hagmeyer. Brief, unemotional, they might have been written by a business associate rather than his wife. While they gave a little news of New York events, nothing in them hinted that either he or she expected trouble.

  ‘From the way she writes, I’d say Mrs. Hagmeyer expected her husband to be here last week,’ Brad commented as they returned the last letter to its envelope. ‘So did his office, comes to that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alice agreed. ‘I wonder where he was until last night?’

  The door opened and Larsen ambled in. ‘Mac just called,’ he announced. ‘The empty cases match. Says you’ve got it, since you’ve been on it since last night.’

  ‘How do you get so lucky?’ demanded Valenca, following his partner.

  ‘Jest fortunate, I reckon,’ Alice replied, sounding like a hillbilly.

  ‘S.I.B. say there’s nothing on the lawns in front of the house,’ Larsen said. ‘The house-to-house hasn’t turned anything up.’

  ‘Who’d be out of bed in this neighborhood at around six or seven in the morning?’ Valenca grunted.

  ‘Newsboys, milkmen, cops,’ Alice replied. ‘It’d be too early for most delivery men or postmen. We’d better have the dairies and newspaper distributors checked out, Brad.’

  ‘Lars and I’ll lend a hand with that,’ Valenca offered. ‘If you’ll marry both of us instead o
f Pat Rafferty;’

  ‘Why is it only married men propose to me?’ Alice sighed. ‘Thanks for the help, boys.’

  ‘The thing that’s bugging me,’ Brad remarked as he returned the letters to the desk and locked it. ‘Upton Heights is one of the best patrolled Divisions in town. So why didn’t the prowl cars see this feller.’

  ‘We’ll ask for reports,’ Alice answered. ‘Maybe they did. What’re we dealing with, some kind of nut?’

  ‘Either that, or there’s some connection between Hagmeyer and Tap Morgan,’ Larsen replied. ‘We’d best make a start and see if we can learn which it is.’

  Seven

  Although they did not know it, the classic heroes of detective fiction had things easy on the majority of their cases. The victim was usually considerate enough to be a friend or an acquaintance and all the suspects hovered around obligingly until exonerated, becoming additional victims, or proved to be the guilty party. Only rarely did a peace officer find such conditions. Mostly they worked among strangers, with no knowledge of with whom the case might bring them into contact.

  Alice and Brad knew the identities of the victims, but no convenient crowd of suspects assembled to allow the deputies to display their deductive genius. Instead they faced the dull, unglamorous, often fruitless routine of asking questions and making other forms of inquiry.

  Leaving Larsen and Valenca to run down and check with newsboys, milkmen and other early risers who might have seen the killer, Alice and Brad returned to the Sheriff’s Office. There they set into motion the machinery of modem law enforcement, which they hoped would augment their deductive genius.

  In addition to checking their own files, R. and I. requested information from the Identification and Criminal Records Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety at Austin and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. I.C.R. maintained records of crimes from the whole State, while the F.B.I. could supply details at a national level. Maybe R. and I. could produce the answers from the County’s records, but they contacted the two larger agencies to save a delay if they failed. The Mexican authorities were also asked to forward information, in case the killer had come from below the border.