File on a Missing Redhead

by Lou Cameron

  “I do,” I said. “I’ve already cleared it with Roberta, and I’ll need you when we close in. You know Kathy. It might make my job easier with you spotting her for me, and it might make it easier for Kathy if a close friend breaks the news that her boyfriend’s wanted for everything but leprosy.”

  She fell silent for a moment and then asked, “How… long will we be in Elko, Frank?”

  “Dunno,” I replied. “But suffice to say we’ll have separate rooms, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m a big-time spender with the state footing the bills. I’ll admit I couldn’t afford the Sands every night when we were dating, but—”

  “You still think it was the money, don’t you?” she cut in.

  “Wasn’t it?” I asked brutally. “I brush my teeth and comb my hair, you know. I even use cologne. Maybe not as expensive as that crud your boyfriend smears all over himself, but—”

  “Look, Frank,” she said, “I didn’t call you to be insulted. If you want me to help you find Kathy, I will. But let’s not make it any harder on both of us than it already is, huh?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sometimes, when the weather’s damp, my old wounds start bothering me.”

  She laughed. “You goof. It’s ninety-nine in the shade and as dry as a bone out!”

  “Yeah?” I cracked. “Maybe that’s why I’m starting to feel better. Can I pick you up in an hour? There’s a two o’clock shuttle for Elko.”

  “I’ll just have time to dress,” she said. “Why don’t I meet you at the airport?”

  “Deal,” I said. “I’ll wear a white carnation so’s you’ll recognize me.”

  I hung up and started to dial the air shuttle service for reservations. Bert Crawford’s phone rang about the same time, and he picked it up.

  I was vaguely aware of his agitated voice as I completed my own call. I got two seats on the two o’clock shuttle and hung up. Bert was still talking. He was saying, “Jesus H. Christ! You mean he’s got a four-or five-hour lead? They won’t keep that car, Warden. Ten to one they had another waiting just down the road. The APB might help but we’re going to need a break. A big break!”

  He hung up, and I asked, “Trouble?”

  “Stretch Voss has escaped,” he said.

  • • • It was an outside job, with a little inside help on the part of the elusive Mr. Voss. Stretch had faked appendicitis and gotten transferred to the prison hospital. Prison hospitals are not nearly as easy to get out of as some movies would have you believe. But they’re considerably easier to escape from than a maximum security block.

  Springing him had been a large, well-managed operation. The details will probably never be known. But essentially, what they did was to tunnel into the hospital basement from outside.

  Since very few people dig their way into a prison, the guards had been caught napping. There’d been no maximum security cons in the hospital up until Stretch staged his fake attack. So the gang had managed to dig all the way to a concrete wall behind a hot-water boiler. They hadn’t broken through until Stretch, along with another con called Scars Masulli, had overpowered a guard, locked him in a linen closet, and forced the door to the hospital boiler room.

  It had taken them nearly four hours to notice the guard was missing when they changed shifts, search the wards to see who was missing, and put out the APB.

  A woman who’d been driving into Carson City reported seeing two men in prison uniforms getting into a gray Corvette. She’d taken down the license number. It was the number of a car owned by a Las Vegas rental agency. But they weren’t missing any ’Vettes.

  Yeah, the plates had been switched. The getaway car reported in Carson City had been wearing the cool plates someone had taken off the cream Corvette Weeping Willie Wagner was driving when we picked him up.

  It could have been a coincidence. But the odds looked sort of fishy. I called the FBI office in Boulder City and told them about it. They agreed with me that it looked very much like Weeping Willie’d been had.

  “The Mob’s been known to frame a hot hairpin to get rid of him,” said the FBI agent I was talking to, “and Weeping Willie was hot as a two-dollar pistol. Could be they combined a prison break and a double cross at the same time.”

  “Think he might talk, if we explained things to him?” I asked.

  “He’s not here,” replied the FBI agent. “Couple of Georgia marshals flew back to Atlanta with him last week. But I’ll get in touch with our Atlanta branch. He might want to sing before he burns. Especially when we tell him his Vegas pals brushed the chair off for him.”

  “One thing puzzles me,” continued the FBI agent. “From what you’ve told me about Voss, he’s operating on his own. I didn’t think he was that buddy-buddy with the Mob.”

  “He’s a cowboy,” I agreed. “Steals money from his friends and kills cops. The pros tend to frown on both activities.”

  “But they helped spring him,” said the FBI man.

  “We don’t know that,” I objected. “He was sprung by outside help, but we don’t know who they were. Stretch has his own gang. Or at least some people who think enough of him to blow up police cruisers. It’s entirely possible he’s at war with the regular syndicate. That might explain why they framed a Mob gun in the process of swiping a getaway car for Stretch and Masulli.”

  “In that case,” said the FBI man, “it might not have been Weeping Willie’s friends who set him up as a patsy.”

  “You really think we ought to tell him that?” I grinned.

  I couldn’t see his face, but I’d have made book the FBI agent was grinning back as he said, “Nothing like having thieves fall out to clear up a mess of old cases, eh? Tell you what, Talbot. We’ll play it by ear and see what we can get out of Weeping Willie. Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d be careful. The way this mess is shaping up, you’re liable to have some wild shooting along the Strip. Reminds me of Chi in the twenties.”

  He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. I was looking for a girl I had to catch up with before her boyfriend killed her. The girl who was helping me had a boyfriend who wanted to kill us both. The Mob was looking for the guy I was after and the guy who was after me. And he thought he had to tell me to be careful?

  • • • Our plane touched down outside Elko at two forty-seven. Two unmarked Highway Patrol cruisers were waiting for us at the airport. Their crews consisted of Sergeants Rose and Cooper. Both were in plain clothes. I’d told them, most of it by phone, but I filled them in again over a cup of coffee in the airport restaurant. I stressed the importance of taking MacDonald without endangering the girl.

  “Our best bet,” I said, “is to stake the shop out and have Miss Collier here call to see if the Gorm girl’s there. As far as we know, MacDonald never answers. If we can talk her into telling us whether she’s alone or not, we’ll just go in and take her into protective custody. He may or may not have a code worked out with her. If he calls in from outside, or if anyone calls from outside, we leave the phone alone. He’ll either smell a rat and run for it or come in to see why Miss Gorm doesn’t answer, and we’ll have him. Either way, half our job will be done. We can move a lot more freely once he’s running alone.”

  “What if he’s there with her?” asked Rose. “From what we know of the punk, he’s liable to come boiling out of there with her as a shield!”

  I nodded. “That’s where Miss Collier comes in.” I explained the kind of work Hazel did and added, “The whole idea is to keep MacDonald from becoming suspicious. Unless we know, for sure, the Gorm girl’s alone, we have to sweat him out. He has to go out, or come in, sooner or later. Their whole MO is based on her sitting by the phone covering for him while he runs around town buying everything in sight, on credit.”

  I looked at my watch and said, “We’d better move in. MacDonald likes to pass checks after the banks close. It’s Friday, and after three. If he’s figuring to make a killing and skip, this is about the right time for it. Are there any questions?”

  �
��I’ve got one, Lieutenant,” said Cooper.

  “What is it?”

  “What if they’re not there? What if they never were there? I mean, we don’t know the people who opened the sheet metal shop on Utah Street are MacDonald and Miss Gorm, do we?”

  “No,” I agreed, “we don’t. So why don’t we find out?”

  • • • I drove one of the unmarked cruisers, with Hazel at my side, while Cooper and Rose led the way in the other. I followed the sergeant’s cruiser into Elko and through the main drag. We threaded into a semi-industrial area of used-car lots, railroad spurs, lumberyards, and small, seedy factory buildings. They pulled in near a meat packing plant on a corner and got out. I pulled in behind them and opened the door. The smell was overpowering.

  Hazel gagged as I helped her out of the cruiser. “What’s that awful odor?”

  “Boiling glue,” I said, pointing up at a sign over the loading dock of a nearby building. It informed the world, proudly, that Krausmeyer and Sons rendered hooves, horns, and hides into the stickiest stuff you ever saw.

  There was a candy store on the corner. Sergeant Rose pointed to it and said, “We’ve got a couple of plainclothes troopers staked out in the apartment over the store. It’s empty. Guy who runs the store owns the building. He’s been selling cigarettes and Pepsi-Cola to the girl who works in the sheet-metal store, by the way. Says she’s a plump brunette. Not bad-looking if you like them zaftik.”

  “Can we get into the store without being seen from the shop?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Rose. “Side entrance. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He led the way, and we followed him into a little cluttered store full of magazines, candy, cigarettes, sodas, and two elderly people. The man’s name was Mr. Glass. His wife’s name was Goldie. They were delighted to be in on a police case.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t know whether or not there was anyone in the sheet-metal shop across the street. From the vantage point of the candy store window, you couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t see how they stay in business,” volunteered Goldie Glass. “Such a stink in the neighborhood with that glue factory already, and they’re not there half the time should a customer come!”

  “I don’t imagine they do much business,” I said. It was an observation, but Mrs. Glass took it as a question. She rolled her eyes ceilingward and shrugged. “Business? Who does business on this block? Such a location you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.”

  “They get a lot of deliveries,” objected her husband.

  “Deliveries,” snorted the woman. “Who makes a living on deliveries? Have you seen anything going out, I ask you?”

  “Sheet metal they’d be loading in the back alley,” said Glass. I shot Cooper a look. He nodded and said, “The alley’s covered, Lieutenant. Guy who goes in and out over there drives a Rambler station wagon. It’s not there, right now.”

  “You want to see if Kathy is?” I asked Hazel.

  She nodded and walked over to the pay phone on the wall. She dialed the number from memory, I noticed. But there was no answer. She dialed it again. Nothing. The third time, she took a notebook out of her purse and checked. It was good to know she didn’t feel as infallible as she looked.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anyone there,” she said. “What do we do now?”

  “We could wait,” I said. “But considering what time it is on a Friday, I think we might have gotten here a little late. Neither Kathy nor MacDonald know me on sight. I’m going to try walking over there.”

  “Isn’t that taking a chance, Lieutenant?” asked Rose.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Even with a deliberately chosen bad location, there’s bound to be some off-the-street business. MacDonald seems to have chosen a business he knows something about as a front. If I walk in like a customer, I imagine he’d rather con me than shoot me before he knows who I am.”

  “You’ll wait until you get the drop on him, then?”

  “I’ll ask the price of sheet aluminum and walk right back out as soon as he quotes me a ridiculously high price,” I said. “The guy’s a killer and he’ll be on guard until I leave. I like it better when the odds are a little more in my favor. I’m a cop, not Wild Bill Hickok.”

  “Hickok was a phony,” said Rose. “I read in True that he shot a lot of guys in the back when he was marshal of Dodge.”

  “Most of the marshals did,” I said, opening the door. “That’s how guys like Wyatt Earp lived long enough to die in bed.”

  I stepped out onto the sidewalk and stared around like I was lost. If anyone was watching from the shop across the way, I hoped I looked like a man unfamiliar with the neighborhood who’d stopped in the candy store for directions. I consulted the palm of my hand, like I was reading a written address, and looked up at the lettering over the grimy glass door of the sheet-metal shop. I smiled, as if relieved, and started across the street.

  It wasn’t a wide street, as streets go. But any street seems awfully wide as you cross it, if you’re wondering about a bullet between the eyes about the time you reach the middle.

  It was important not to hesitate. A man looking all over town for a price on sheet aluminum does not fritz around once he’s found a place that sells it. I walked up to the door like a big brave boy and opened it. There was the tinkle of a bell over the door as I stepped into an empty front room and called, “Anybody here?”

  There wasn’t. I walked around the counter at one end of the room and with a big happy smile pasted across my sweating face, stuck my head through a door leading out back. I called again. A hearty, extrovert-customer yell. Nobody answered. The back of the empty store calling itself a sheet-metal shop was as empty as Mother Hubbard’s you-know-what.

  I walked back to the entrance and signaled the others. Hazel came across the street with Rose and Cooper. I told them what had happened, and Rose, with a disgusted look, went to tell the others on stakeout. They’d stay staked out for a while. But by now they’d be dying of curiosity, and I’d pulled enough of that duty to know how it is.

  Hazel took a seat behind the counter while Cooper and I frisked the joint. It was Cooper who found the letter. It was in the wastebasket. A plain, sealed envelope with a name on it.

  “Didn’t you say your name was Miss Collier?” Cooper asked Hazel, “This letter seems to be addressed to you.”

  “It’s Kathy’s handwriting,” Hazel gasped, taking it from Cooper.

  I told her to open it. She did. She read swiftly, and her eyes welled up with tears as she murmured, “Oh, the poor little thing!”

  “Let’s see it,” I said.

  Hazel handed me the letter and I read:

  Dear Hazel,

  I recognized your voice the other day. But I couldn’t talk because Duncan was here. I know what you’re up to. I broke you in, remember? I called a few numbers and found out you’re working with the police. I don’t know why you’d do a thing like that to a friend. But, Hazel, I’m not one bit sorry.

  “How could she have checked you were with me?” I shot at Hazel.

  She shrugged and replied, “Dozens of ways. Probably posed as someone in your office. Have you gotten to the scared part yet?”

  I shook my head and read on:

  Hazel, I’m so scared and I don’t know what to do! I love Duncan and I don’t want him to he in trouble. I’ve been trying to get him to leave the state and go away somewhere where we can be happy together. But he won’t leave Nevada and he won’t stop gambling. I know they’ll catch us, sooner or later, if we keep going the way we’ve been. I’ve conned more money for him than I ever thought was possible. And he’s gambled away every bit of it.

  “The guy’s running true to form,” I said, “and your chum’s about fed up with it. That’s the trouble with glamorous types. They don’t wear well.”

  “Keep reading,” she said.

  I did. The letter said:

  I’d leave him, now, if I could. I think I’m pregnant, and I know I’ll nev
er be happy with anyone else. But he frightens me so with some of the things he says. I told him we were sure to get caught and he just laughed, with a funny look in his eyes, and said something silly about never being taken alive! I told him not to be so crazy. I told him the most we could get would be a couple of years with time off for good behavior. But he just laughed, real strange, and said I didn’t know everything in the world.

  “That’s for sure,” I muttered, reading on.

  Kathy’s rather childish scrawl continued.

  Hazel, you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to explain to the police about the way he’s been acting. You’ve got to tell them he needs psychiatric help. And, Hazel, you’ve got to get me and my baby away from him! I’m weak, Hazel. You know how helpless I am when somebody even yells at me. I’ve had a couple of chances to get away from Duncan, but I’ve been too scared! He’s coming back, soon, and we’ll be leaving again. He’s bought a car on time. A 1966 Volkswagen. We’re going to go someplace called Rochester. He says it’s not very far, and that he has business with a friend there. That’s all he’s told me, Hazel. Lately, he’s been acting so moody and strange that he hardly tells me anything! Anyway, please tell the police we’re on our way to Rochester in a blue Volkswagen and, please, Hazel, tell them not to hurt me!

  I looked up at Cooper and said, “Where’s Rochester?”

  “The town, or Jack Benny’s valet?” joked Cooper.

  “Don’t be funny!” I snapped. “MacDonald’s headed for a place called Rochester in a blue sixty-six Volkswagen. Where the hell is it?”

  “Up near Carlin,” he said. “Used to be quite a hell-raising little town until the mines closed down.”

  “He’s going there to meet a friend,” I said.

  “In Rochester?” Cooper frowned. “That doesn’t make sense, Lieutenant.”

  “Why not? Even a guy like MacDonald’s liable to have some friends.”

  “Not in Rochester he ain’t,” explained Cooper. “The mines closed down years ago and everybody moved away. Rochester’s a ghost town.”

  • • • The phone in the dummy office was still connected. I got on it and called everybody but the United States Marines. There was only one reason I could think of for Duncan MacDonald to be taking Kathy Gorm to a ghost town in a Volkswagen. It was time to take off the gloves and stop horsing around. I ordered road blocks set up between Elko and Carlin and an APB on the car and the couple in it. Then I asked the Highway Patrol troop stationed in Carlin to move in on the deserted mining settlement with plenty of ammo and a goodly supply of tear gas.