Shell Scott's Seven Slaughters (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  It was a big, mangy-looking mongrel sniffing a dirty white blob at the road's edge. In my headlights the blob looked like something wrapped in newspaper, part of the paper darkly stained.

  I kept on, angling toward Sunset, but that brown-stained paper stuck in my mind. It was a sort of creepy night to begin with; thick clouds were massed overhead blotting out the moon and stars, though it hadn't yet started to rain. Thunder rumbled softly far away and the air was heavy, damp.

  When I hit Sunset, the sight and sound of all the cars, instead of making me forget that thing I'd seen, brought it even more clearly into my mind. I turned around and drove back. The dog ran a few steps away and squatted close to the ground when I parked. Leaving the Cad's headlights on I walked to the newspaper-wrapped bundle, looked at the mud smears on it—and at another brown stain. Then I gripped a corner of the paper and unwrapped it from the thing inside.

  I didn't know what it was at first. But two minutes later, using the phone in a nearby house, I was talking to my good friend, Phil Samson, Captain of Central Homicide. “Sam, this is Shell. Get somebody out here on Chavez Ravine Road. I think I've found a—a leg."

  “Damn,” he said. “Another one."

  “Yeah.” This was number three. Three murders, parts of three dismembered bodies—three that we knew about. Sam was swearing. I told him where I was and hung up.

  There were two others with me in room 42 at City Hall. Samson, a big pink-faced guy with a jaw like a boulder and a black unlighted cigar clamped in his strong teeth; and bald, brush-browed Louis from the Vice Squad. This was in Homicide's lap, but the Vice Squad is interested in murders that show the work of a twisted mind.

  We'd been kicking the case around and anyone eavesdropping would have thought there was a little respect for the dead here. They'd have been wrong. In any large police headquarters death becomes, finally, so common that it's treated more casually, more flippantly, than by most people, and here in L. A. Homicide the boys had got to calling this particular killer The Butcher.

  Louis, the Vice Squad Lieutenant, poured more coffee into my paper cup and I said to him, “Lou, you're the psychologist. What the hell kind of guy would cut them up?"

  He raised a shaggy eyebrow and patted his bald skull. “Two kinds. The practical guy, because it's easier to get rid of an arm or leg than a body; and the nut. The nut likes it, gets a charge. This one's a nut."

  “Why not practical?"

  “Because the same guy did it. Three times is getting damned unpractical. At least it looks like the same guy, right, Sam?"

  Samson bit into his black cigar. “So far. They're still working on it.” He grabbed his phone and growled into it for a minute, then hung up. He looked at me. “Young girl again, about eighteen, five-two, hundred-ten pounds, blonde. Damn.” He banged a big horny fist against his desk top and said, “All that they give me from a leg. Why in hell can't they look in a test tube and come up with her name and who killed her?” He swore. “Same guy. This one had been frozen, too. Cut up while she was frozen stiff."

  Louis perched on Sam's desk and leaned toward me. “Add that in. Shell, if you want to know what kind of guy. We get the dregs, chum. And the hell of it is you can't tell it by looking at them. Take a number from one to two million, and that's our boy. Could be you, me, even Harrington Harrington the Fourth. And it always gets worse, like a bug multiplying in the blood. First maybe a pin to stick a woman with, then a rape, then you find a leg.” He shrugged. “They run amuck, but they look O. K.; they run amuck in their minds."

  The conversation drifted to the Black Dahlia; to Albert Fish, who killed a little girl, cut her up, and ate her flesh—cooked with carrots and onions and bacon; to some of the things that never hit print and that are difficult to believe even though you know they've happened. When the morning watch came on at midnight I left, and drove home on brightly-lit Sunset.

  In the morning, I couldn't get the murder out of my thoughts, I'd dreamed a crawly cold-sweat dream, and awakened with the picture of that severed limb in my mind. Ex-Marine, long-time detective, I'd seen worse things, especially in the war; but even the mass insanity of war didn't seem quite so personal or frightening as a guy who would kill a kid, freeze her, and cut her up.

  Just before nine a.m., when I was getting ready to leave for my office, Samson phoned. Some more of the girl had been found. “Thought you'd want to know, Shell,” he said. “Rolled prints off the hand and made identification. Judith Geer."

  “Oh, no, Sam. Not one of those sweet little gals."

  “Yeah. Sister listed this Judith with Missing Persons two days ago. Thought maybe she'd been hurt, hit by a car or something."

  I told him to hang on a minute while I lit a cigarette. The identification had rocked me. I knew both of the gals he was talking about. Judith Geer—the dead one—and Norma Geer, her sister, worked at a Carpenter's Drive-In where I'd had innumerable hamburgers and beers, and kidded with both girls a lot; they had shared an apartment on Melrose.

  I thought about Judy, little and cute and blonde as sunshine, trotting out to my car and laughing with me over nonsense, and I thought of that ugly unreal thing I'd found last night. I said, “Sam, are you sure? It doesn't seem possible—"

  “Hell, yes, we're sure. Look, you knew them pretty well, didn't you?"

  “Just to yak with. I know their names, and they know mine, and we had a lot of laughs. That's about all. Hell, Sam, what kind of a sonofabitch would...” I let it die.

  He said, “If you know the sister well enough to drop in later you might pick up something we haven't got. You know, you're unofficial, no uniform."

  “Yeah. I'm hamburger with onions and two beers. Sure, Sam."

  “We want this one, Shell, the worst way. The guy must be clear off now, gone, nuts; Christ knows what he'll do next."

  “Uh-huh. You get anything, give me a buzz. I'll see you later."

  Nothing happened at the office except the phone rang once. It was a gal with a thready voice asking that I please hurry to her address because tiny saucer-shaped men were on her roof, screeching down the chimney at her. I told her to call 2680 at City Hall: the police psycho detail; they got calls like that every day.

  It wasn't funny. When I hung up a shiver ran over my spine again, and I swore, phoned Norma's place on Melrose. Norma said she was glad I'd called and, sure, come on over; she could use some company. She could use a few laughs, she said. She was trying to sound adult, brittle, not frightened. But she was seventeen, and she couldn't quite pull it off.

  There weren't any laughs. Norma was scared, shocked; all through with crying for now, and white-faced scared. Tall and slim and blue-eyed, she sat with her legs curled under her in an easy chair. I could tell she was thinking that it might have been her instead of her sister, that maybe it might still be.

  I tried to convince Norma that whoever had killed Judy would certainly stay clear of her, and I really opened my mouth and put my foot in it. I'd been thinking about the talk at Homicide last night, and for a moment I must have forgotten who I was talking to.

  I said, “Hell, doll, we were talking about The Butcher last night, and it's not—"

  Norma straightened up in her chair, rigid. I could have yanked out my tongue; she might not even know how Judy had been mutilated.

  I started to apologize for my choice of words, but Norma interrupted, “It's all right. Shell. It just shocked me when you said butcher, because it made me think of Mr. Hecker."

  “Who?"

  “Mr. Hecker. He's our—butcher, where we get our meat."

  “This Hecker,” I said slowly, “you know him very well?"

  “Just from the market. Oh, he tried to date ... both of us, but naturally we wouldn't have anything to do with him."

  “Why ‘naturally,’ honey?"

  “He's an old guy—and he's married. Oh, he's sort of an ugly geek, and kind of funny, but we still wouldn't have had anything to do with a chaser like him. He's tried to date other girls around here
, too."

  “He go out with any that you know about?"

  Norma shook her head, frowning. She described Hecker for me and told me his wife worked in the market with him. Finally I told Norma I'd keep in touch and left. Hecker's was only a block and a half down Melrose, so I walked. On the way I picked up a newspaper, just out, at a small store; the Judith Geer murder was on the front page.

  Hecker's Market was kind of run down and needed a coat of paint. Inside, the meat case was on my left; shelves along the right wall held hams and canned goods; a couple frozen-food lockers stood before them. There weren't any other customers, and Hecker was behind the glass-fronted meat case. He turned to look at me as I came in.

  Hecker was built like an ape. An inch or two shorter than me, he must have weighed 300 pounds, and his enormous wrists were nearly as big as my forearms. He was heavy-featured, with eyes that looked too round, too big, in a pasty-white and red-veined face. When I stopped before the meat display he said, “What you want?” in a deep voice that rumbled in his thick chest.

  “Top sirloin,” I said.

  He slid open the rear glass of the case and grabbed a steak, flopped it onto a paper on the scales. Behind him was an oversized meat block, pitted and stained; a lot of sawdust was on the floor, and dark stains were around the chopping block. Above the block a green-shaded light hung on a cord from the ceiling.

  He slid the wrapped meat to me and I tossed the newspaper on the counter while I got out my wallet. Paying him I said, nodding at the paper, “Hell of a note, huh? That kid?"

  I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, “What kid?” I pointed to the story. He picked up the paper and glanced at it. “Yeah.” His fingers left blood-marks on the newsprint.

  I heard a noise behind me and looked over my shoulder as a woman walked toward us from the rear of the store. From Norma's description, I recognized her as Hecker's wife. She walked behind the meat counter and stood beside her husband.

  Mrs. Hecker was a frail, plain-looking woman, bony and angular, wearing no makeup and with short dark hair matted on her head. She looked almost like a small wizened boy, standing there next to her huge, thickly-muscled husband.

  I said to Hecker, “This Judy and her sister shopped here?"

  He turned his head slowly to stare at me from the large too-white eyes. “Who'd you say you were?"

  “Shell Scott.” I hadn't said.

  “What you so gabby for, mister?"

  I could feel a warm flush on my face and neck, but I pulled my wallet out again and flipped it open so he could see the photostat of my license.

  “Cops,” he rumbled. “Geezus, all the crudding cops."

  “Since the girls lived so close, I wondered if you ever noticed anybody hanging around them, following or watching them."

  He grinned, showing square, too-short teeth, a film of yellow coloring them. “You didn't want no steak, did you?"

  Before I could answer he walked from behind the meat counter and across the floor to the door of a walk-in refrigerator. Keys jangled as he unlocked a big padlock, then slid a heavy bolt back, flipped on a light and went inside; in a moment he came out with what looked like a whole half cow balanced on one of his heavy shoulders. Holding it with one upstretched hand he bolted and locked the door, then carried the beef back to the meat block, carried it effortlessly, big muscles swelling.

  He dropped the beef with a sodden thud onto the block, picked up a long wide-bladed knife and conical stone, began sharpening the knife with a whispering grate, grate, grate of steel on stone, ignoring me.

  I said, “You didn't answer my question. Might be you could help."

  Without looking at me he said, “I don't know nothing about them. They bought meat here is all. Beat it.” The knife moved faster as he sharpened it, then he slid the stone into a metal bracket clamped on the block, ran the keen blade over the meat, sliced easily down to the bone.

  I rephrased my question, asked it of Mrs. Hecker. She shook her head wordlessly, looking tired and nervous. In silence Hecker deftly sliced around the bone, put down the knife and picked up a massive cleaver, raised it over his head. He swung it in a swift arc and I heard it crack completely through the bone, bury its edge in the wood beneath. Then he turned and stared fixedly, soberly at me, still in silence. Finally he turned back to the block. I left.

  Driving downtown in the Cad there was a tightness between my shoulder blades; all I had was a funny feeling about Hecker, a hunch, no real proof against him. But he had acted damned strange. And I kept seeing that knife rub on stone, hearing the grating sound, hearing the crack of a cleaver slicing bone. I went to Homicide.

  Samson had his inevitable cigar going, so naturally there was a horrible smell in his office. I gave him the story of the last hour. “This guy's a bug,” I said to him. “He's non compos whatever, not at all pleasant. He could sure as hell stand a check."

  Samson sighed, fumbled in his desk, found some papers and flipped through them. “Robert Hecker, fifty-two years old, married, no kids—he's been checked. Along with a hundred and forty others."

  “You mean he's clean?"

  “Not clean. Just nothing that looks wrong."

  “You got a man on him?"

  A slight trace of annoyance flickered over his pink face. “How many men you think we got. Shell? I put men on some other guys that look better and got records that fit this better. I'd like to have a man on all hundred and forty. And it still could be the hundred and forty-first."

  “Answer me this, pal: you told me yourself the guy that did the others, and this one, knew what and where and how to do it; that he could be anything from a meat cutter to a brain surgeon.” He nodded. “And they were all three frozen stiff; this guy's got a cold room, a freezing room with beef hanging in it; easy enough to drop the temperature lower than usual if he wanted; he's got frozen-food lockers."

  “Yeah. So has every other butcher in town,” Samson growled. “You want to watch the guy, watch him. Get me some more cops. Take the butcher to dinner and show him ink blots."

  “Yeah, sure. I'll get you a good cigar."

  He blew foul smoke in the air. “O.K., Shell. This guy's got me jumpy, but we'll put him through the wringer, give him a closer look."

  I spent a long afternoon at the office. Samson phoned me before he went home for dinner. “No soap on Hecker,” he said. “Nothing yet, anyway. No past record, not even any complaints; far as we can tell he never even went out with any of the girls that live around Melrose there. He tried to date some—but according to the boys that saw his wife, you could hardly blame him for trying."

  “I know what they mean. If she were married to anybody but Hecker, she'd look more like a man than her husband."

  “We'll go over him some more, but he looks clear."

  “Thanks, Sam.” We hung up.

  Maybe I was a little off balance about it, but thinking of Hecker still gave me the creeps. When I headed the Cad out Sunset I remembered how carefully locked and bolted that walk-in refrigerator had been. Seemed funny that it would be locked during the daytime, when Hecker was in the market himself. He must be damned careful about his meat. Or something.

  I swung over to Melrose and when I got close to Hecker's it looked dark. I doused the Cad's lights, parked at the curb and poked the glove compartment open, rumbled for a ring of keys I keep there. I wanted a look in that big refrigerator.

  When I got out of the car I could see that the front door of the market was closed, but a thin strip of light slanted out the window from behind drawn blinds—and I could hear the soft, measured thud of that cleaver. I hesitated, and my right hand went to my shoulder where my gun should have been—only the gun was in my office desk. Then I made up my mind. The sodden chop, chop, persisted inside as I tried the door, found it locked, and selected keys on my ring until one worked. I unlocked the door, eased it open, slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.

  Light from the green-shaded bulb behind the meat c
ounter spilled down over the bulky shape of Hecker, reached out to touch me here by the door, glanced from the cleaver as Hecker raised it above his head and slammed it down onto the block. He wore only an undershirt covering his huge chest, and perspiration glistened on his hairy shoulders and arms. I moved forward, bent so I'd be out of his line of vision, then straightened until I could see a quarter of beef on the chopping block. Cold sweat beaded my forehead. There was something odd about Hecker's actions, the way he chopped at the meat, and I could hear grunting sounds in his throat. His arm rose and fell rhythmically.

  Suddenly he stopped and turned. I thought he'd heard me but he wasn't looking at me, was staring across the room, yards beyond where I stood in partial shadow. I glanced to my right; the door to the walk-in refrigerator was closed, but a red bulb burned above it. He stared fixedly at the refrigerator, seemed strangely agitated.

  He turned back to the block, picked up the long knife, the conical stone, and again I heard the grating scraping noise of steel rubbing stone as he sharpened the knife. He slid the stone into its bracket with a crash, sliced at the meat before him on the block.

  His back was to me and I bent over, moved toward the refrigerator door. It was closed but unbolted, the padlock hanging open. As quietly as I could I cracked the heavy door. Cold air seeped from it and its inside surface chilled my fingers as I touched it, pulled it out far enough to let my body through. The chopping didn't falter.

  I pulled the door shut, turned and looked inside the freezing room, cold swimming over my flesh. In the dim light I could see naked carcasses of beeves hanging from iron hooks. I walked forward, the light throwing eerie shadows on the wall ahead of me. And finally, far in back against the wall, hidden among the suspended meats, I found something that was different.

  It was a white and bloodless thing like something made of wax, an artfully fashioned image of a woman—of part of a woman. It was a human slug suspended from a pointed iron hook. Then I saw the matted, clinging hair, and part of it was blonde, blonde as sunshine. This was what was left of Judy.