Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon

by Dell Shannon

  "But I am telling you I know nothing about the girl personally! Very likely my uncle did, I believe he had known her family, had taken her on here for some such reason. That is only an impression, I really do not know. He was a bachelor, there is no family left. Miss Martin was merely my secretary, I do not know her friends or her interests outside the office. I am very sorry to hear that she is dead, but—"

  He flung out his hands.

  "You can supply us with her home address?"

  "That, yes. It will be in our records." He picked up a phone and issued a rapid order. "There are, I think, some thirty employees in this office, but I do not think any of them would have known Miss Martin, except casually. The readers, the editors, their secretaries, the stenographers, they are all on the floors below and she would have no occasion ` to go there. But her address we can supply." A moment later a slim dark girl came in and gave him a slip of paper which he presented formally to Rambeau.

  Rambeau glanced at it. "Ah, yes. This arrondissement—convenient to the office. I thank you." They exchanged bows.

  Mendoza stood by impatiently while Rambeau talked to the employees on the next floors down in a succession of offices large and small, occasionally translating the answers briefly. When he led Mendoza back to the Renault, he lit both their cigarettes and said, "It is unsatisfactory, but I can see how it comes about. None of these people knew her personally. She is simply the secretary to the head of the firm. These women who read the manuscripts, they are all older women, and Juliette would have no contact with that office, with the editors, except now and then. The editors keep a different lunch hour, she did not go out until one o'clock. Even if they all frequented the same café, you see—they all knew her and liked her, but none of them know where she lived or that she was affianced. Or, of course, what the fiancé's name is. But her apartment will tell us

  more." He started the engine with a flourish. "If there is a concierge in the building—"

  But it proved to be one of the new high-rise apartment buildings with no manager living there. Rambeau swore in French at length. "It is more delay. But we will still proceed." He took Mendoza back to his office. Mendoza had been interested to see that that office was laid out on the general lines of his own, a much larger one beyond, housing a number of desks where men typed reports, questioned witnesses. Rambeau issued peremptory orders to the man nearest the door. "It will not take long to find out," he said to Mendoza, and within twenty minutes was looking at a sheet of paper with a name and address on it. "So. The building is maintained by what you would call a management corporation. They oversee many such buildings, apartments and offices, for the owners. They will know, some answers."

  Suddenly he erupted into a whirlwind of energy. He bundled Mendoza back to the car, to another tall building down anonymous streets, finally into the office of a small man in a sharply tailored suit. They went on talking with many gestures for some time and the small man brought manila-covered files from a row of file cases in a larger office. At last he went away and was gone for some minutes.

  Rambeau said, "So we progress. He has gone to get us the key. And it was something I should have foreseen. Rents in Paris are very high now, and often girls like Juliette, they share an apartment with another, two other girls. That has happened here. Only the one girl officially leases the apartment, you see. Up to four months ago, that apartment was leased under the name of Claire Ducasse. Since then, the checks for the rent are signed by Juliette. The lease is to end in December. Who knows what happened?—perhaps this Ducasse has lost her job or gets married or has a little argument with Juliette. But of course the address and phone number will be in her name in the directory. Never mind. We have got there in the end."

  The small man came back and handed him a key and they exchanged formal bows. Rambeau drove rapidly back to the apartment building. Juliette Martin's apartment was on the fourth floor, and the door opened into a pleasant living room with upholstered couch and chairs, a lady's writing desk with a fold-down lid, a small T.V. in one corner, all very neat and clean. There was one bedroom with twin beds, a bureau, a chest of drawers, a lamp table between the beds. Clothes hung in the closet. A metal stand held shoes on the floor. Rambeau went back to the living room and made straight for the desk while Mendoza began to search drawers in the bedroom.

  Fifteen minutes later, Rambeau said, "There is something stranger than we had thought here, my friend. There is no correspondence at all in the desk. No address book. No list of phone numbers beside the telephone, and it is across the room from the desk, it would only be natural— Me, I am a bachelor, but that is not to say I know nothing about women. Always they keep the love letters, even the little notes, the letters from friends. They keep so much!—but aside from this there should be her bankbook, the canceled checks—she is a businesslike young woman, she would keep perhaps a book of accounts—and there should be receipts for the rent."

  Mendoza stood in the middle of the living room, rocking a little heel to toe, his eyes vacant. He said, "There's nothing in the bedroom ¡Media vuelta! But, pues si. They had to have her keys. That made the delay. That and maybe something else. Saturday to Tuesday."

  "What are you saying?"

  "They had to get her keys to get in here. I don't know if she'd have packed her address book, planning to be gone only three weeks or a month—the people she might send postcards to, she'd have known their addresses. The fiancé, friends. Our anonymous X's would have known her address from the letters to Grandfather, but they needed the keys. They got those as soon as she arrived. That autopsy report—yes, it's on the cards she was kept on enough sedatives to be docile all that while—Saturday to Tuesday—and somebody came over here to clear out the apartment. The address book, if it was here, everything personal. I think she'd have kept Grandfather's letters, you know. So that even if the police ever got this far, there'd be no definite connection." He focused on Rambeau. "Does it strike you that this place is a little too clean? It hasn't been occupied for nearly a month. There ought to be more dust."

  "In the name of seven devils!" said Rambeau. "To remove all the fingerprints? That is not so easy to do."

  "No," said Mendoza. "Maybe that was just somebody trying to be extra thorough. And Trennard identified the photographs, but that isn't quite the same as identifying the body. And such a businesslike, ambitious fellow, apparently he hadn't got an eye for a pretty girl, it could be argued that he couldn't be sure. Do you know what it adds up to, Rambeau? I don't think they ever expected anybody to get this far. But just in case, they made a clean sweep."

  "Sacrée Mere," said Rambeau. He brought out a cigarette and then put it away again. He said, "If there is anything for the scientists to find—but now I will say something also. Grandpére. He becomes an obsession with me as with you. But if you are right, something else emerges, and that is—money. All of this—what we deduce—has cost someone a respectable amount of money. The bribing of the witnesses to the Hoffman business, and now a flight to Paris—"

  "Yes, and it's another dead end," said Mendoza. "Where do we go from here?"

  Rambeau said violently, "By the good God in heaven, we will go on from here! This animal, he insults me with his little cleverness. We will scour France for this Claire Ducasse— I will bring the technicians here, and somewhere there will be Juliette's fingerprints. We will inquire at all the shops and businesses within half a mile of here and that office—she must have purchased food, clothing, necessities at local places, and she will have gone to shops with her friends—somewhere she will be known and perhaps the friends remembered. There are the banks—we will find where she kept an account, examine the records. My friend, there must be something to lead us on."

  "I wonder," said Mendoza.

  * * *

  PALLISER AND LANDERS walked down Jefferson Boulevard toward Thirtieth Street. The nearest parking slot had been a block away. Landers said, "This is a damned waste of time."

  "Probably," agreed Palliser. Th
ey went into the drugstore on the corner. It was a dingy old place with miscellaneous merchandise on two long counters. No customers were in at the moment, and there was a man sitting on a high stool behind the pharmacy counter at the rear of the store, bent over a ledger. Palliser said, "There it is." Just inside the front door on the wall was a cork bulletin board and there were several little handwritten signs thumbtacked to it. FREE KITTENS, and a phone number. GOOD TRANSPORTATION CAR $300. SEWING MACHINE OR SALE—BABYSITTING— "Freeman remembered the fellow's name was Len. I just thought we could have a look at him."

  At the bottom of the board, there was a little card attached with one thumbtack to the cork. In neat ballpoint print it said, Len, any hand work, with a phone number.

  Palliser looked at it, took it down, and walked down the length of the store. The man on the stool looked up inquiringly. He was a middle-aged black man in a pharmacist's white smock. "Do you know anything about this fellow?" asked Palliser, showing the card.

  "Oh, sure. I wrote that for him, I don't think he can read and write, he's kind of simple. He comes in here on errands for his mother sometimes and she always sends a note, says what she wants. I guess he could do any kind of work like cleaning or yard work—he's big enough."

  "Do you know what his last name is—where he lives?"

  "Sure. She writes me checks sometimes. Up on Twenty-ninth, their name is Williams. She's Martha Williams. The apartment on the corner."

  They left the car where it was and walked the block up there. It was another ancient apartment building. The mailbox said that the Williamses lived in 4-A at the rear.

  There wasn't any bell. Landers knocked on the door. After a dragging minute it was opened by a tall thin black man with a vacant face and dull eyes. Palliser asked, "Did you do some work for a fellow named Rawson last Friday, on Thirtieth Street?"

  Before he answered, they realized that he was drunk. Beyond him they could see a bare, untidy living room. A T.V. was on with the volume turned down and there were a couple of empty bottles on the floor in front of it. He was nearly falling-down drunk and he certainly didn't look too bright. He said, "Huh?" And Palliser hesitated. There wasn't anything to be got out of him. And then Williams said in a thick, slurred voice. "Tha' fella—yeah—yeah— I guess I show him! Tha' damn cheapskate dude." He hiccuped and clutched the door for support. "Him inshult a guy, give me ten lousy dirty bucks for all tha' damn work—I cut 'em up good, I did!" He staggered against the door and slid down to the floor and passed out.

  Landers said to Palliser, "For God's sake, are you starting to have hunches like the boss? My God. And of course it's not an admissible confession, but—"

  "Three people dead, like that," said Palliser. "It never crossed my mind, Tom. I just wanted to ask if Rawson had talked to anybody else that day." They looked at the long limp body on the dirty floor and they felt a little tired. This gave them that much more to do. "Get the lab out here looking for the knife. Get a warrant. Talk to him when he's sobered up. Talk to the mother." And he'd probably be certified as unsuitable for trial and wind up in the asylum at Atascadero. They were always glad to clear one away, but they couldn't claim any credit for this one. And whatever happened to Len Williams, it wasn't going to bring three people back to life.

  * * *

  HACKETT WAS TYPING the initial report on Gloria Pratt when his phone rang and he picked it up. "Robbery-Homicide, Sergeant Hackett."

  "Oh, Art," said Alison's voice at the other end. "You aren't hypnotizing people now, are you?"

  Hackett had never hypnotized anybody in his life, in any sense of the word, but he answered the sense of the question equably. "Not since the court threw it out as admissible evidence. Why? We never used it here as far as I remember. It can be useful in getting people to recall plate numbers and so on, but I suppose the court figured it's a little too close to black magic."

  "Well, l thought maybe somebody down there could put me in touch with a good hypnotist—one the police had used. Luis called last night and he's hit another dead end. This French detective who's been helping him still thinks they can find something, but Luis doesn't—and I know that girl said something else, and I just can't remember, and I thought maybe a hypnotist might get it out of me."

  Hackett massaged his jaw. "We1l, somebody at the lab will probably know. I can find out for you."

  "Find out now, Art, will you? If there's anything buried in my subconscious mind I'd like to get it for Luis."

  "I'll call around and get back to you," said Hackett.

  * * *

  MAIRI MAC TAGGART said in a cross voice, "I'm not liking this at all, my girl. It's a verra dangerous thing to do, letting a doctor or anybody at all go poking around at your brain."

  "Don't be silly," said Alison. "Thousands of people are hypnotized every day. I just hope I'm a good subject."

  "And suppose you come home all changed around like in your brain, what would I say to the man?—him finding maybe you've forgot who you are at all."

  Alison said briskly, "Don't fuss, Mairi. Nothing like that's going to happen. But I don't know how long it might take, and this Dr. Cargill's way out in Westwood. I'll be home as soon as I can."

  Mairi said gloomily, "And I only hope it'll be with your brain in one piece, achara."

  * * *

  HACKETT GOT HOME late. It was starting to cool off the last couple of days, had only gone to eighty today, and please God they had seen nearly the last of this summer. The ridiculous huge mongrel Laddie was chasing around the backyard with Mark and Sheila. They all came running to greet him and Laddie nearly knocked him over. He went into the kitchen and kissed Angel. "I suppose the freeway was murder," she said.

  "I stayed overtime to finish a report. Alison went to be hypnotized this afternoon, did she tell you about it?"

  "For heaven's sake, what for?"

  "Try to trigger her memory about that girl." Hackett yawned. "I am bushed. I think I'll have a drink. But at least we've cleaned up those two homicides."

  * * *

  HE AND GALEANO had gone over to the jail to talk to Neil Pratt when it could be presumed that he was sobered up. Unless they got anything definite out of him they couldn't hold him any longer.

  But Pratt was another stupid lout, which they could have deduced from that clumsily faked suicide. He was surprised and aggrieved that they'd seen through it. When they explained how they knew, it passed straight over his head.

  "I thought everybody'd think she did it herself," he said naively. "It was the way I set it up to look." After he had been seen by that sharp-eyed manager, who would probably recognize him, and batted them on the head with some weapon before turning on the gas—and leaving the bedroom window wide open.

  "Why did you want to set it up?" asked Galeano.

  "Goddamn it," said Pratt, still annoyed. "Everybody should've thought she'd done it herself. Well, goddamn it, I couldn't afford to give her all that money! That goddamn judge said a hundred and fifty a month and I couldn't afford it no ways. I don't know why she had to have that damn kid in the first place. I need all the money I make to live on. Goddamn it, I still don't see how anybody knew she didn't do it herself! "

  * * *

  MENDOZA WAS IN THE MIDST of a graphic dream. He dreamed that Laurent Rambeau had found Grandfather for him and they were questioning him in the first interrogation room down the hall at the Robbery-Homicide office at Parker Center, which seemed quite logical to the dreaming mind. Grandfather looked exactly like the picture of Fagin in the illustrated Dickens Mendoza had read in high school. He was small and hunched, with a scraggly white beard and beady little crafty eyes. Rambeau was thundering at him, "You villain, what have you done to the little Juliette?"

  And Grandfather leered at them and said solemnly, "You will never prove it. We have buried her in a filing case at the main library." This struck Mendoza as the most fiendish method of homicide he had ever heard of and he was recoiling from Grandfather in loathing and disgust when he became aw
are that there was some intrusive extraneous sound.

  He swam up from the depths of sleep and heard the telehone ringing. After a moment he was enough awake to sit and grope for the switch on the bedside lamp. The phone ent on ringing. He picked it up and answered it.

  "Oh, Luis, thank goodness you're there, I thought you were out, they've been ringing you for ages—"

  "Qué es esta? What's wrong?—the twins, the baby—"

  "Nothing's wrong, why should there be? I knew you'd want to hear—"

  "It's the middle of the night here, cariña, and I was sound asleep."

  Alison laughed. "Good Lord, I am sorry, Luis, the time difference went right out of my mind—and I suppose Mairi would say it's all the poking around. But listen, I saw this Dr. Cargill, and he hypnotized me, he says I'm a pretty good subject, I went under right away. And he had a tape going and he got it out of me—what the Martin girl said that I couldn't remember. It was there in my subconscious mind."

  "Maravilloso. And what was it?" He groped for cigarettes on the table.

  "Well, it was just after I'd asked her if she lived in Paris that I went to sleep. But my mind took in what she said. She said she had lived in Paris for five years since she worked for Mr. Fournier. But before that, they had always lived at Evreux because her father was attached to the museum there. That was all I came out with. But, Luis, it could help, couldn't it? If you can trace her parents, there'll be other people—"

  "It could help one hell of a lot, mi vida, " said Mendoza. "It was a brainstorm. Muchas gracias. Everything all right there?"

  "The twins have discovered that first grade isn't as much fun as they'd expected. That old Sister Grace is awful strict. And El Señor caught a toad and was sick. Everything else is fine."

  "Muy Bien. Keep your fingers crossed, querida. This might mean a big break."

  * * *

  "Evreux!" said Rambeau. "The museum!" He smote himself on the forehead. "Ie Musée de l'Archeologie et de l'Histoire Naturelle. And Maman and Papa died only six months ago. Now, indeed we will march! Allons!"