Dead Aim (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

“This is beginning to sound more like a sorority house than a homicide bureau.”

  “Hmm—” Drawing on his cigar, he wagged his head elaborately, projecting a judicious approval. “Not a bad crack, considering that you’re not really a comic type. Maybe it’s Ann’s softening influence.”

  “Shall I close my door? Or would you rather have it open?”

  “Closed, please. Good luck.”

  Two

  I BRACED MYSELF AS the car lurched around the corner. Canelli drove like he did everything else: earnestly but clumsily, constantly at odds with the job at hand. Yet, somehow, Canelli managed to blunder through, thanks to an incredible run of perpetual good luck. The entire homicide detail could be searching for a suspect while that same suspect was tapping Canelli on the shoulder, asking for a match. It was Friedman’s theory that Canelli was lucky for all the wrong reasons: because he neither looked like a cop nor acted like a cop nor thought like a cop. Canelli was twenty-eight, weighed two hundred forty pounds, and usually looked as if he’d just gotten off an all-night bus. He never wore his haphazardly creased hat at the same angle, and he often needed a shave. His large brown eyes were round and wondering. His habitual expression was a thoughtful, half-perplexed frown. Canelli was the only cop I’d ever known who could actually get his feelings hurt.

  “It can’t be much farther, Lieutenant. Maybe a mile, at the most.”

  “You don’t have to rush, Canelli. The lab crew is only ten minutes ahead of us.”

  “Right.” He slowed the car, but still managed to throw us awkwardly around the next curve. The park was almost deserted; the sky was a grim winter’s gray, still threatening rain. The tall trees were dark, featureless blobs of leaden green; the broad, sweeping lawns were lusterless. Yet yesterday the weather had been bright and warm: a perfect January day, cloudless and cheerful. Yesterday the park would have been crowded with cars, bikes, and hundreds of Sunday strollers—even a few hearty picnickers.

  “I wonder how many murders’ve been committed in this park,” Canelli was saying. “Hundreds, I bet. Maybe thousands.”

  “Maybe not. Don’t forget, San Francisco didn’t always have this kind of a homicide rate.”

  He nodded in thoughtful agreement. “You know, Lieutenant, I been an inspector for two years—just two years. But just in two years, the homicide rate’s doubled. It’s hard to believe. When I first made inspector, we were getting about forty murders a year.”

  “It’s very simple, Canelli: it’s the junkies. Just about two years ago the junkies started coming to town. If they aren’t killing each other because of burn jobs, they’re robbing to get enough money for the next fix. And a junkie with a gun is eventually a murderer.”

  “I was reading in the Reader’s Digest that about seventy percent of all violent crime is connected to junk. Do you think that’s right, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if it is right, then why don’t the government just lean on places like Turkey, and make them cut out raising poppies? I mean, if we can send a man to the moon, then I don’t see why we can’t…”

  “You’re forgetting about the juice, Canelli. Heroin is big business. A lot of people have to be paid off to make it all work. If there’re no more poppies, there’re no more payoffs. A lot of people would have to switch from Cadillacs to Buicks. It’s that simple.”

  “You really think so, Lieutenant? Honest?”

  “Six months ago I had to go to New York. I had lunch with a precinct captain, up in Harlem. He was just retiring, so he didn’t have to watch what he said. And he told me he could bust a dozen pushers that afternoon, carrying. But the next day they’d be right back on the street.”

  “Graft, eh?”

  “It’s not even as simple as graft. This captain said something that made me think. He said that like it or not, we’re at war with the blacks—the ghetto blacks, anyhow. Maybe no one knows how the war started, or who’s right, or how it’ll end. It’s like every other war: God’s on both sides. But anyhow, this captain said that heroin is permitted in Harlem for one very simple reason: because it’s just about the most effective weapon that the whites have against the blacks. He said that…”

  Ahead, I saw the familiar, haphazard cluster of radio cars, cruisers, vans, and press cars.

  “Jeez,” Canelli was saying, bouncing the car off the curb as he pulled to a stop, “it really makes you think. I mean, that’s like—like using poison gas, or something.”

  I swung open the door.

  Immediately Kanter from the Sentinel and Ralston from the Transcript were beside me, one on either side. Kanter, on the morning paper, had lots of time. But Ralston, I knew, had a twelve-thirty deadline, just thirty minutes away.

  “What’s it look like, Lieutenant?” Ralston asked, walking so close that his shoulder jostled mine.

  “Have you seen the body?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you talked to Markham?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “Then you know more than I do.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “No crap, Lieutenant?”

  I smiled at him sardonically. “I wouldn’t give you any crap, Ralston. Not after that piece you did on me a couple of weeks ago. The one about how the dog tore my pants while I was going after a suspect.”

  He was a tall, gaunt man with uneasy eyes, bad breath, and a wolfish, unpleasant grin.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. I couldn’t resist it. I mean—candy-striped shorts.”

  “Just don’t park near any fireplugs, Ralston.”

  “I was humanizing the policeman, Lieutenant. It’s part of our new policy.” But he couldn’t keep his mouth straight. And out of the corner of my eye I saw Canelli’s full lips twitching.

  “I’ve got work to do,” I said shortly. “As soon as I have something, I’ll let you know. Now stand back.”

  The half-circle of detectives, lab men, and the coroner’s crew parted silently as I stepped to the body.

  She’d been dragged into a small, semi-concealed area in which dead branches and grass cutting were piled, awaiting collection by the park’s maintenance trucks. The area was surrounded on three sides by thick laurel bushes growing a foot above my head. She was on her back, feet primly together, hands along her sides. Her long dark hair lay upward from her head; she looked as if she were falling feet first through the air, hair streaming up as she fell. The murderer must have dragged her to the spot by her hair.

  He’d have gotten bloody hands. Her hair was blood-matted; her forehead and ears and neck were caked almost black. Her face was oval, well shaped. Her brown eyes stared straight up; her mouth hung half open. Her teeth were white and even. She looked as if she might have swallowed her tongue.

  She wore a hand-knit fisherman’s sweater over an ordinary white shirt, open at the throat and cut like a man’s. Her jeans were elaborately paisley-patched in the current teen-age fashion, bleached and spot-dyed, held by a silk scarf pulled through the belt loops. The scarf was knotted, the jeans buttoned. She wore beautifully made high-laced boots that could have cost fifty dollars. The boots were almost new.

  Turning away, I studied the trail that her body had made through the park’s dead leaves and twig-littered dirt. Two parallel lines of white tape led to a small grassy glade almost entirely surrounded by pine and eucalyptus trees. The glade was approximately a hundred feet from the spot where I stood, and would be almost completely invisible from both the nearby road and the sidewalk. Two patrolmen stood among the trees, on guard.

  “What about a purse?” I asked Markham, standing beside me.

  “Over in that clearing.” He pointed. “She was killed over there.”

  Signaling for him to follow and for the lab crew and police photographers to continue their work, I began to pace slowly beside the tapes, my eyes on the ground. The murderer had made no effort to conceal his victim’s trail; two long, wobbling grooves had been clearly scratched in the ground by the expensive boots.

&n
bsp; Midway to the clearing I paused, pivoting, studying the terrain. The road was about fifty feet away, down a gentle, treeless slope. Assuming that she’d been murdered in the clearing just ahead and that she’d been dragged to the shelter of the laurel bushes, then the murderer and his victim would have been exposed to view from the road for approximately a hundred feet, the distance from the glade to the debris pile.

  Either he’d killed her after dark, or he’d been very lucky. Or both.

  I allowed my gaze to wander idly over the ground, surrendering myself to the whim of random thought, seeking some sense of how it could have happened. Sometime late yesterday the murderer had passed the spot where I now stood. He’d been dragging his victim toward the shelter of the laurel bushes. He’d had blood on his hands. Bending double over the body, panting, dragging her by the hair, he must have been terrified—looking wildly over his shoulder with each step.

  Was he a madman?

  Probably not. If he’d been a madman, he’d have raped her, or mutilated her, or arranged her body in some obscene pose, getting his kicks.

  Was he a mugger—a hood, prowling the park’s forest-like terrain, hunting a victim?

  “Who found her?” I asked.

  “A little guy named Lester Farley. Over there.” Markham pointed to a black-and-white car. A figure was seated in the back, alone.

  “Have you interrogated him?”

  “Not really.”

  I ordered Canelli to question Lester Farley, then turned back to Markham. “What about a weapon?”

  “No luck yet. But I haven’t started a real search.”

  “What kind of a weapon does the M.E. think it was?”

  “A pipe, probably. Or a heavy metal rod. Something about a half-inch in diameter, anyhow. Her skull’s dented in. It required a lot of force, according to the M.E.”

  As we passed between the huge pine and eucalyptus trees circling the grassy clearing, Markham pointed to traces of blood on the grass, then to a separately taped-off purse lying less than a yard from the gleaming black boots of a patrolman. “There’s her pocketbook. It’s been photographed and printed, so you can handle it.”

  “Thanks.” I deliberately flatted my voice. Markham was the man who would doubtless someday be my co-lieutenant. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  I nodded to the patrolman and stooped to pick up the purse, holding it carefully in full view of the three men. It was actually a small rattan satchel, made in Hong Kong. Even the two catches were fashioned of wooden pegs and rattan loops. The purse had been lying open, presumably just as it had been found. Inside was the usual jumble of keys, Kleenex, and cosmetics. A red plastic wallet had apparently been thrust hastily into the satchel. The wallet had been left open. Random bits of paper protruded from the red plastic at odd angles. The section designed for currency was empty.

  “Is this exactly the way you found it?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did the lab print the card folder?”

  “Yes.” In his voice was a hint of irritation that he didn’t bother to conceal. Markham didn’t like to be pressed.

  Withdrawing the fan of plastic folders, I found a driver’s license, a library card, a BankAmericard, a Macy’s charge card, and a student-body card from Alta High School—all made out to June Towers, age seventeen, a senior in Alta. In six months she’d have graduated.

  I replaced the identity folder and emptied the wallet of everything else. I found a small color snapshot of a good-looking teen-age boy, a receipt for three records totaling $13.64, an address book covered in red watered silk and three slips of paper, each with someone’s first name and phone number.

  After copying her address, I returned everything to the billfold, leaving it all for the lab men. Turning to Markham, I said, “I’ll talk to Lester Farley for a minute, then Canelli and I will start with her parents. You and Culligan stay here until you’re sure you’ve got everything. Try to find the weapon. He probably threw it as far as he could, into some bushes. Give it plenty of time—two, three hours; if you have to, more. Use all the men you need; right now we haven’t got anything else current. Make sure Ralston gets something for his paper, and take care of the radio and TV reporters. When the story’s out, the chances are you’ll have some witnesses showing up. I’ll see you downtown about five, and we can compare notes.”

  “Are you sure you want me to spend a lot of time with a bunch of half-assed witnesses?” It was more than a question. It was a complaint—even a challenge.

  At age thirty, good-looking and arrogantly self-confident, Markham had always reminded me of a too-handsome, too-ambitious Hollywood actor playing a badman in a “B” Western. Maybe it was the way he moved: slowly, smoothly, deliberately—as if each movement was carefully rehearsed. Or maybe it was his eyes: calm and cold—killer’s eyes.

  “This is a percentage business,” I answered. “Talk to enough jerks and you’ll eventually get something you can use. I’ll see you about five.” I held his eye for a last long moment, then turned away. He hadn’t dropped his glance.

  As I approached the black-and-white car, Canelli got out of the back seat, moving several paces away from the car, waiting for me. Lester Farley remained inside.

  “Did you get anything from him?” I asked.

  “Well,” Canelli said slowly, “not much, I guess. But still—” He frowned thoughtfully, looking away, rubbing his chin. Watching him, I was thinking that Canelli would probably never master the rudiments of law-enforcement officialese. His reports read like high-school compositions laced with phrases from Official Detective.

  I waited. Finally, refocusing his gaze and clearing his throat, he said, “Farley spends a lot of time in the park here. He’s a walker, he says. He’s unemployed and he lives with his mother, just about four blocks from here. He’s been unemployed for three years, it turns out. But anyhow, the point is that he was here yesterday, too. Yesterday and today both. And he saw the victim yesterday. Right here.” Canelli waved his hand vaguely.

  I looked up at the secluded area where the body had been found, a hundred feet from the sidewalk. “He must be a crosscountry walker. He couldn’t have seen the body from either the sidewalk or the pathway.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, nothing else, really. Except that—” Again he frowned, struggling with the thought. “Except that he seems like kind of a kinky little guy. And you hear about these guys returning to the scene of the crime, and everything. So—” He shrugged.

  “Do you have his address?”

  “Yessir. And his mother’s name. He has identification, too.”

  “All right. Get him out here.”

  Canelli stepped to the car, opening the door, beckoning. A slight, anxious-looking man emerged, blinking, and hesitantly approached me. He looked to be in his early forties. Everything about him was pale and frail-looking: sallow complexion, faded blue eyes behind bookkeeper’s glasses, thinning blond hair, a pursed cupid’s mouth. He wore a tan jacket and dark brown slacks. His clothing was neat and clean, his shoes shined. He was a nondescript, harmless-looking little man.

  I introduced myself and asked him to repeat his account of finding the body. Telling the story, talking in a low, precise monotone, he seemed strangely unshaken by his recent encounter with violent death.

  “I was out for a morning walk,” he said primly, “and I saw her lying there. At first I just saw her feet. Then, when I got closer, I saw—all of her.” Involuntarily his glance strayed up the gentle slope to the cluster of men surrounding the body. Two stretcher bearers were approaching the group. Soon the body would be moved.

  “What time was it that you discovered the body?”

  “It was about ten o’clock.”

  I gestured up the slope, saying, “To have seen her feet in that area where she was found, screened on three sides by bushes, you’d’ve had to’ve been walking across the grass.”

  “Yes.”

  I looked down
at his shoes. They were actually high-laced hiking boots, moccasin-toed.

  “The grass would’ve been wet. It’s still a little wet.”

  He nodded. “Yes, it was wet. But I walk a lot. I don’t work. And I like to exercise. So I walk.”

  I eyed him silently for a moment, looking him over, taking my time. His reaction was a slightly puzzled, puckered frown. He didn’t squirm under my scrutiny.

  “You were here yesterday, too,” I said finally.

  “Yes.”

  “You saw the victim then, too.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What time was that, Mr. Farley?”

  “It was about four-thirty in the afternoon, I’d say.”

  “What was the victim doing when you saw her?”

  He shrugged. “She was just standing there.” He pointed to a point perhaps twenty feet beyond my car. “She was standing by the popcorn wagon.”

  “Was she buying popcorn?”

  “No. She was just standing there.”

  “How’d you happen to notice her? Had you ever seen her before?”

  He shook his head slowly. He stole another glance up at the murder scene. The official group was parting, making way for the stretcher bearers.

  “Did you see anyone else yesterday that you recognized?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “What about the popcorn man? Had you seen him before?”

  “Well, yes. But I thought you meant—” He fluttered a narrow, delicate hand, letting the sentence go unfinished.

  “If we were to collect a group of people—random people—do you think you could pick out one or two who’d been in this area yesterday?”

  He moistened his lips, frowning, blinking. “I—I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Well,” I said slowly, consciously projecting an air of deliberate patience, “you were able to identify the murder victim as having been here yesterday. I’d think you could do the same for others.” I paused, watching him carefully. “Or was there something special about the girl that made you remember her?”

  Startled, he looked at me quickly. “No,” he answered. “There was nothing—nothing at all. I just—just recognized her, that’s all.”