Killer in the Street

by Nielsen, Helen

  “Why did Kyle have you trace a license number?” Van demanded.

  Jameson knew then that he wasn’t going to get rid of his visitors so easily. He related the story of Kyle’s midmorning call. Mrs. Walker seemed to hold her breath all through the explanation.

  “Kyle didn’t say anything to me about recognizing a man on the street,” she said, “and it must have been right after he stopped talking.”

  Now it was her turn to explain.

  “When he stopped talking?” Jameson repeated.

  “Kyle telephoned from the station wagon,” she said. “He hadn’t been home all night because he had to finish the specs for the new job. This morning, after he had breakfast with Van and Sam Stevens, he called and told me the job was all set. Then he started to tell me something that he wanted me to do for him and stopped in the middle of the sentence.”

  “He broke the connection,” Van explained.

  “No—not right away. He just stopped talking. I could hear traffic noises through the receiver and thought he was in some kind of traffic trouble. I called to him but he didn’t hear. After a few minutes he did break the connection. I tried to get him back through the special operator but there was a delay so I called his office. He wasn’t in.”

  “But you did get him,” Jameson remarked. “You said that he sent you to the mountains.”

  “Yes. But that was later when he called me from the office. He did say he was caught in traffic, but he didn’t mention seeing an old friend on the street. Don’t you understand, Captain? It must have been at the time Kyle called me that he saw this person—what was his name?”

  “Dover,” Jameson answered. “Charles Dover of Prescott.”

  Dee Walker’s face was one tight, worried frown. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I know Kyle had never been to Arizona before we left New York, and we’ve never been to Prescott. And, Captain Jameson, I’ve never heard Kyle even mention a Charles Dover. Van, have you—?”

  Jameson had a container of coffee somewhere on his desk. He pivoted his chair about to reach for it and found it on top of the filing case under the wall calendar. The coffee was cold by this time and somebody had floated a cigarette in it, but at the moment neither of these things seemed important. The wall calendar had been hanging on the same nail for months, but not until this moment had that one word “Dover” reached out and grabbed his imagination.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” he had asked Kyle Walker, and Kyle, with a glance at the wall behind Jameson’s head had answered: “Dover. Charles Dover.”

  Jameson replaced the coffee container on the cabinet and swung slowly about to face his visitors. Mrs. Walker hadn’t seen a thing. He wasn’t sure about Bryson. Bryson didn’t have his thoughts branded on his forehead.

  “Did you tell Mr. Walker where Donaldson was registered?” Van asked.

  “I did,” Jameson admitted. “He didn’t seem interested. Mrs. Walker—” Jameson came to his feet. He might not think any better standing up, but he could at least face these sophisticated Easterners at somewhat higher than eye level. Everybody has an ego. “—why don’t you just get on back to Sam Stevens’ cabin and get some sleep?” he said. “Your husband’s a busy man. He’s probably tied up right now in some conference he just couldn’t foresee.”

  “I called Sam,” Dee protested. “But he was out to dinner.”

  “Well, Sam’s a busy man too. You know he’s somewhere, Mrs. Walker. A grown man in a station wagon just doesn’t disappear!”

  Jameson tried to grin, but it wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t soothing the feelings of some anxious housewife who had been watching too many daytime video serials.

  “If Kyle went to a business conference, why did he take his gun?” Dee demanded.

  “What gun?” Jameson asked.

  “Dee,” Van begged, “I explained—”

  “You explained nothing,” Dee said quietly. “Why did he take his gun, Captain? Why did he unlock his desk and take out his service pistol? And why did he leave the holster behind if he was taking it to the mountains?”

  The second question was for Van. He didn’t answer and Jameson couldn’t even relate.

  “And why isn’t there any Charles Dover?” Dee added. “Captain Jameson, I told you before. I want you to find my husband.”

  And so that was the end of any idea Jameson had of patting Mrs. Walker on the head and getting her out of his office without protest. The gun was a new development, and Charles Dover was an unfinished one. He flipped the intercom button on his desk and, when no one answered, because he wasn’t even supposed to be in the building at this hour, he left Mrs. Walker and Bryson and the Dover Insurance Brokerage to keep one another company and walked across the hall to the squad room. There he found Detective Lon Geary, who was twenty-four and could write B.A. behind his name if he wanted to impress anybody, cleaning the blue barrel of his .38 police special.

  Jameson watched him for several moments. “Why does a civilian carry a gun?” he asked.

  Geary snapped the chamber open and squinted at the empty cartridge slots. “For protection,” he said.

  “Why not turn to the police for protection?”

  Geary carefully began to load the chambers with nickel-plated center fire shells. “Some guys like to be heroes,” he said.

  “And?”

  Geary completed loading the pistol and snapped the chamber shut. “And some guys never make it,” he added.

  That was the wonderful thing about a college education. It could reduce complexities to simplicities without resorting to compound sentences. Jameson then told Geary what he wanted him to do. He was to keep in touch with the hospitals and the highway patrol for any report of Kyle Walker or his blue station wagon; and he was to contact the Prescott Police Department and find out if anyone named Charles Dover lived in that city or its environs. When Jameson had finished giving Geary his assignment, he returned to the office where Mrs. Walker was getting a light for her cigarette from a lighter in Bryson’s hand.

  “All right, Mrs. Walker,” Jameson said. “We’ll find out if there really is a Charles Dover.”

  The flame on Bryson’s lighter snapped off. The cigarette in Dee Walker’s fingers was still burning but she no longer remembered it. She watched him get his jacket from a hanger in the metal cabinet behind his desk, and she said, “Where are you going now?” Jameson sighed. “Mrs. Walker,” he said, “you know as well as I do that I’m going over to the Apache Inn to have a talk with R. R. Donaldson. And I know as well as you do that you’re going to the same place to look for your husband. In view of those two unchangeable facts, we might as well stop playing it coy and go together.”

  Chapter Ten

  When the room clerk relinquished the key to room 227, Kyle quickly made his way across the lobby and slipped through the whispering plate-glass doors to the patio. Avoiding the area of the bar and dining room, he walked at a normal pace to the stairway of the wing opposite his own room and ascended the stairway to the second floor. By this time a small instrumental group had gathered on a platform near the pool and a wildly gay Latin-jazz beat drifted up the corridor where the night guests were arriving and a white-coated waiter had just delivered a tray of drinks to a cozy-minded group who were having a private party in one of the suites. Nobody had time to notice Kyle Walker. He went directly to room 227, rapped sharply and waited. There was no response. He then inserted the key and unlocked the door.

  Donaldson was accommodating—or was it an occupational fear that had prompted him to leave the bathroom door open and the bathroom light burning? Nothing of that light could be seen from the window, and the illumination was enough to make a surprise attack from any uninvited guest impossible. Kyle entered quickly and closed the door behind him. He snapped the safety catch on and made a swift survey of the room. Donaldson was neat. The spread on the bed was army-smooth and the pillows were primly corseted by a tight bolster. The closet doors were closed. Closed doors were a challenge. Ky
le slid them open and took out the sample case. It was locked. A lock was another challenge and would snap easily under pressure, but breaking the lock would be the same as handing Donaldson an engraved invitation to a showdown. Kyle still wasn’t ready to sacrifice the advantage of the strangler’s belief that he was the only hunter in the field. He replaced the attaché case. Hanging from the clothes rod was an expensive wardrobe case—open. In it were a few hand-tailored shirts, half a dozen narrow ties and two pairs of silk pajamas—monogrammed. On hangers near the wardrobe were the beige suit the strangler had worn when Kyle first saw him, an Italian silk dressing gown and a white ulster-type raincoat with a Regent Street label. There were two pairs of hand-crafted oxfords on the floor of the closet and one pair of brushed pigskin loafers. The wages of sin were in an inflationary spiral, and they had always been considerably above union scale.

  Kyle closed the closet doors and turned his attention back to the room. Donaldson was neat, but he had used the dresser as the untidy repository for the newspaper. It was opened to an illustrated story. Kyle glanced at the dateline: New York City. The face in the photo was vaguely familiar—then, perhaps because the jazz combo on the patio below gave his memory a prod, sharply familiar. There was no doubt. He was staring at the likeness of Donaldson’s accomplice in the murder of Bernie Chapman. The caption told the story.

  “… a five-year-old gangland murder …”

  Now something was alive and gnawing at Kyle’s memory. He scanned the story quickly. There was no mention of the wire man; no details at all. But to go before the grand jury meant the state was ready. They had worked a long time, and Berendo would be just the opening wedge. It was all there in black and white if you knew how to read between the lines.

  Donaldson had read it. The light was poor, coming only from the bathroom. Kyle reached out and switched on the dresser lamp. Doing so, his hand dislodged a magnifying glass and then retrieved it quickly before it fell to the floor. He didn’t have to worry about noise as long as the combo maintained a beat; but he did remember, as he held the glass in his hand, that Donaldson had used it to read the news story. That was interesting because it reminded him of something else. The man who killed Bernie Chapman in the garage of the Cecil Arms had worn glasses. Steel-rimmed glasses. R. R. Donaldson wore only dark glasses and had removed them to study the menu posted on the window of the hotel coffee shop and removed them again to read this newspaper. That meant they weren’t prescription lens, and that was an oddity that demanded investigation.

  “… a five-year-old gangland murder …”

  There was something about the law—the law in New York. It kept gnawing at Kyle’s mind while he searched the drawers of the dresser. Eyeglasses. Donaldson was a killer. He wouldn’t travel so far from his home territory without the most important tool of his trade—his eyes. Kyle tossed the newspaper onto the bed and transferred the search to the bedside table. There he found only a Gideon Bible and a telephone directory. Donaldson wasn’t the type to go in for scriptural reading, but he had used the directory. It was open to the classified section at the listing of optometrists. Kyle took a red ballpoint pen from his pocket and unscrewed the top. He underlined the number of the top listing and picked up the telephone with his free hand, but he had underestimated Donaldson’s confidence. Tucked under the dialing wheel was a business card: D. D. Madsen, Optometrists. Hours: 9 to 5. Kyle put away the pen and pocketed the card. This was one item Donaldson could consider lost.

  And so now Kyle could understand why no attempt had been made on his life. R. R. Donaldson, professional killer, was mortal. He had broken his glasses. Because of that Kyle could hear the music drifting up from the patio below. Because of that he could see the lights from the torch-illumined chuck wagon dancing on the drapery at the glass door that led to the balcony. Because of that small human error he was alive and beginning to understand why Jake Berendo’s indictment carried an automatic death penalty for Kyle Walker.

  He read the story once more … carefully.

  There were two bars at the Apache Inn—the large one off the lobby with a direct entrance to the dining room and a small dance floor where the musicians held forth in cooler weather, and the downstairs bar that had a wide glass window which formed one side of the pool. The purpose of the window was to provide a showcase for the six bikini-clad girls who were swimming to the piped-in music of the group on the patio. It was all very sexy and enthralling and successful in the purpose for which it was staged: to keep the bar customers reordering for the duration of the show.

  R. R. Donaldson was cooperative. He ordered another rum punch for Veronica and another light Scotch for himself. The punch came in a tall, frosty glass with a pink straw and Veronica, who was dressed in a short frosty pink dress, giggled slightly as she accepted it.

  “I shouldn’t—really,” she said.

  “Why not?” Donaldson asked. “Don’t you like the taste of it?”

  “I love it! It makes me feel so happy.”

  “Then you should have it,” Donaldson said. “That’s what it’s for—to make you happy.”

  And so Veronica began to work on her third punch while the nearly nude girls wiggled and writhed just beyond the window and a female vocalist with a nasal affliction joined the combo in tribute to some Brazilian beach boy of varied talents. The marine ballet was a feast for the wide eyes of the tender Veronica, and she was a feast for the eyes of Donaldson. He held her in a kind of awe—for want of more articulate expression. Sex was no problem for him. He was attractive to women. They mistook his hardness for strength. They glamorized and he dominated and possessed, but he never enjoyed. Something inside was never able to yield to pleasure. The child in him had never laughed. The man couldn’t do what the child hadn’t learned.

  But Veronica laughed. She bubbled like champagne. He watched her intently and tried to understand what mystery happened to people when they were really happy, and then, suddenly, he was angry. He turned away from Veronica and took a deep pull on the Scotch. Rick Drasco was no cheapskate. He could afford anything anywhere he went. But he couldn’t buy laughter. He couldn’t buy fun. Irritated, he reached into his pocket for a cigarette and found nothing but an empty pack. That gave him an excuse to leave her until the anger passed. He stood up.

  “I’m going upstairs to buy some cigarettes,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’m getting hungry,” she said.

  “Okay, we’ll eat. I said I’d be right back!”

  He didn’t want to argue with her. A kid. A baby. He must be out of his mind getting stuck with a clinging vine like that. He brushed past a cigarette girl on his way to the stairs and didn’t notice her. He was getting a headache. All day without his glasses—that was the trouble. He needed some aspirin. He reached the lobby and went directly to the drugstore. He bought the aspirin and cigarettes and then, while the clerk was making change, turned away from the counter to see if there was any life in the lobby. There was. The registration desk was located about forty feet away from where he stood. At the moment, two men and a woman were in earnest conversation with the clerk, and one of the men, even without a uniform, had all the earmarks of a cop. Donaldson accepted his change without counting it. The tableau across the lobby was too fascinating.

  “Would you like some water for the aspirin?” the clerk asked.

  “I’ll get it in my room,” Donaldson said. “Is there another way out of this store?”

  “There’s a patio entrance behind the magazine stand.”

  Donaldson wasn’t quite ready to leave. The woman looked familiar—but she shouldn’t. She should be miles away in that mountain cabin of Sam Stevens. He pulled the dark glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on. The figures were still indistinct, but he knew he was right. The woman was Mrs. Walker. And the other man? He didn’t want to take the notebook from his pocket and try to read it in his present location, but he knew the words by heart. The name was listed right after Diedre Walker and Sam Stevens
.

  Van Bryson—friend and business associate. Instructor of physics at state university. Description …

  Donaldson didn’t need the description. Nobody would be that casual even in Tucson except a man like Bryson. From such a distance he couldn’t tell what all that excited conversation was about, but something had gone wrong or Diedre Walker wouldn’t be back in the city. It was suddenly moving day.

  Donaldson left the store by the patio door and threaded his way through the group of smiling people wending their way past the chuck wagon. He smiled brightly and nodded a time or two, but not once did he remember Veronica and her third rum punch.

  Kyle was still reading the paper when Donaldson’s key scratched the lock. He switched off the lamp and waited. Donaldson was having trouble. The key rattled impatiently, and then Kyle heard a man’s voice hailing a porter farther down the hall.

  “Give me a hand with this key,” he said.

  There was just time enough to drop the paper on the dresser and release the inside door latch before the porter arrived, and then there was just enough time to get to the sliding glass doors and step out onto the narrow balcony. He slid the doors shut behind him as the hall door opened. The porter said something about the new locks and then departed. Donaldson was left alone in the room.

  Kyle stood on a wedge of cement about three feet wide and ten feet long. Behind him was a plate-glass door lightly draped; in front of him was a waist-high wrought-iron railing and a second-story drop to the patio below. He edged back against a wooden slat partition that separated the upper-floor balconies where there would be less chance of the lower-level lights outlining him against Donaldson’s drapes. The glass door hadn’t completely closed. When Donaldson switched on the ceiling light, Kyle could watch him through a narrow opening. The strangler wasn’t a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. There was no emotion in his face, but he seemed bent on some sudden action. He went to the closet and slid open the doors. He was out of Kyle’s range of vision now, but not out of his range of hearing. There were sounds of hurried packing—drawers being opened and cases locked. Donaldson traveled light, was instantly mobile, and something must have happened to spark a quick change of plans.