The Case of the Murdered MacKenzie: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Seven)

by Howard Fast

  “You don’t hear, do you? You don’t listen, you don’t hear. You have as much brains as your colleague over there, Mr. Sweeney, crawling around and trying to pick up fingerprints.”

  “You give me a pain in the ass,” Sweeney said.

  “Look, Doc, I was only pushing because I got a theory. I got a theory that hole in her head was made by a thirty caliber. Now, that’s not a usual caliber, thirty.”

  Beckman, spreading her clothes on the bed, said, “I will be damned. These were ripped off her.”

  “She is stacked,” Brody said.

  “What are you, some kind of ghoul?” Beckman demanded.

  “He’s a dimwitted necrophile. But in a cop, nothing surprises me,” Dr. Baxter snorted. “Where’s Wainwright?”

  “Downstairs with the sergeant,” Brody said.

  “Don’t keep staring at her. What is with you characters—haven’t you ever seen a naked woman before? Get a robe or a blanket or something and cover her up.”

  “Where?”

  “In the closet, you lackluster moron.”

  Beckman went to the closet with Brody. “Don’t mind him. He hates these things,” he whispered to Brody. “I think it scares him. All he wants is to stay in the pathology lab in the basement of All Saints Hospital and cut people who have died of ordinary causes like screwed-up operations.”

  “Cover her up,” Baxter said. “I’m going downstairs to talk to the brain trust.”

  “What’s a necrophile?” Brody asked him.

  “What!”

  “What’s to get sore about? I’m no doctor. How should I know what a necrophile is?”

  “Eat more fish. It’s good for the brain.” As he started down the stairs, Beckman called after him, “Tell the sergeant I found her clothes.”

  Officer Keller was at the bottom of the stairs, and Baxter said to him, “Where are they?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  The kitchen was a large room, twenty feet by twenty feet, festooned as were most kitchens in Beverly Hills with the newest wonders in stoves, refrigerators, and small kitchen appliances. Wainwright and Masuto sat at a big butcher-block table, drinking coffee. On the table was a large brown purse, its contents spread out across one end of the table.

  “Have a cup of coffee,” Wainwright said.

  “What is with you people? Up there, Brody comments on how stacked this Feona Scott was, and now you two sit here drinking coffee.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Why not? This is a house in which a murder took place.”

  “You’re a medical examiner, not a damn preacher,” Wainwright said.

  “Then pay me what a medical examiner should be paid. You got the excuse that nothing happens in Beverly Hills to require a full-time medical examiner. Then what’s that upstairs? You’ll soon have them dropping out of the trees.”

  “It’s just instant coffee,” Masuto said gently, “two spoonfuls. The water stays hot in that cooler affair. You see, it’s got two—”

  “I know what it is. No thank you.”

  “When was she killed?”

  “Between seven-thirty and eight-thirty this morning. Your brilliant Brody thinks it was a thirty-caliber bullet, but he’s wrong, and anyone who makes a mistake like that shouldn’t pose as any kind of an expert. But what can you expect of Rexford Drive?” naming the street where the combined City Hall—police station was located.

  “What did kill her?” Wainwright asked respectfully.

  “Twenty-two short. Far enough away to leave no powder marks and expertly placed. I’m no arms expert, but I’d say the man carries a semi-automatic, one of those magazine things that spray bullets.”

  “Yet he used only one bullet,” Masuto said.

  “He’s good. Well, I’m taking off now. I’ll send the ambulance for the body. Do you want an autopsy?”

  “Will it reveal anything?” Masuto asked. “I saw no needle marks. Do you think she was a doper?”

  “No reason to think so. What about it, Captain?”

  “I don’t know. You’re specifying the cause of death. What do you think, Masao?”

  “I think she was shot and killed, and that’s it.”

  “Then skip it,” Wainwright said.

  “All right. But what about the body?”

  “Put it in a cold locker.”

  “We got just so many cold lockers. I have to fill in a report for the hospital and tell them just how long that locker will be occupied—for which, I may remind you, they charge us twenty dollars a day. Now what is with this Feona Scott? Does she have a relative?”

  “There was some talk that she was Mackenzie’s mistress. And having seen her in her birthday suit, I can believe it. And I’ll tell you something else. There is nobody we’d rather talk to right now than Mr. Robert Mackenzie, but where he is, God only knows.”

  “We’re trying to find some connection with Feona Scott,” Masuto told him, “so just put her on ice for a few days and then we’ll see.”

  “As you say, as you say. By the way, your oversized snoop upstairs says he found her clothes.” With that, Baxter departed.

  “So what do we have?” Wainwright asked.

  Masuto pointed to the contents of the purse. “A hundred and sixteen dollars. A lot of cash for a housekeeper to carry. Small checkbook for an account at Crocker. Balance—nine hundred and twelve dollars, fourteen cents. Checks very normal, cash checks mostly under one hundred dollars, check to Ralph’s supermarket, check to Thrifty drugstore, check to Robinson’s. Driver’s license. Social security card—tell me, Captain. Suppose we put this card on the wire to Washington. They must be computerized, so they could give us the facts, where she was born, et cetera.”

  “No problem. But they’re three hours later on the time belts, so it’ll have to wait for tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Keller!” Masuto called.

  “Yes, sir?” the officer asked, coming into the kitchen.

  “Would you go upstairs and ask Beckman to come down and bring the clothes with him.”

  “What clothes?”

  “He’ll know.”

  Keller departed and Dr. Baxter returned and said, “Something I forgot to tell you, thought you’d like to know.”

  “Oh?”

  “About the cadaver that was Eve Mackenzie.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, her sister came and signed for it and had it shipped over to a funeral home for cremation.”

  “That’s what you came back to tell us?” Wainwright demanded sourly.

  “No.”

  “Then what in hell are you talking about?”

  “Thought you’d be interested in who was with her.”

  “Mark Geffner?” Masuto asked softly.

  “What!”

  Wainwright burst into laughter.

  “How did you know that?” Baxter asked, chagrined.

  “We have ways. No, we’re grateful to you, Doc, really. Tell me something before you leave. What did the man in the tub die from—the man they thought was Mackenzie?” Wainwright was being very polite for Wainwright.

  “Cardiac arrest.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means his heart stopped beating. What do you think it means?”

  At that point, Beckman came into the kitchen, carrying the clothes. He paused at the door, behind the doctor.

  “But you specified electrocution as the cause of death,” Masuto said.

  “Now, wait a red-hot minute, my Oriental wonder. You were in Japan when the man was killed, which was two months ago, and now you sit there and tell me I specified death by electrocution!”

  Masuto turned to Beckman. “Sy, didn’t you tell me that Doc here made a determination?”

  “I think I told you the twin was electrocuted, but I don’t think I said that Dr. Baxter made the determination.”

  “Well, did you?” Masuto asked Baxter.

  “Did I what?”

  “Specify electrocution, or the bl
ow on the head? You keep changing your diagnosis.”

  “Does it matter now?” Wainwright asked. Baxter’s fits of spleen always made him nervous.

  “Yes, it matters,” Masuto insisted.

  “I told you what I determined to be the cause of his death. Cardiac arrest. What happened that night killed him, but whether it was the blow to his head severe enough to fracture his skull or electrocution, I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  “Then there was no way to discover whether he had been electrocuted or not?” Masuto asked.

  “His body wasn’t burned—no, no way.”

  “So the whole electrocution thing might have been a scene set to direct attention away?”

  “Could be.”

  “Away from where?” Wainwright asked.

  “I’m not sure, not yet.”

  “And I’m going home,” Baxter said, shaking his head hopelessly and stamping out of the room.

  “What eats him?” Wainwright wondered.

  “I don’t know that anything eats him. I think he just enjoys being the way he is.” He gave the social security card to Wainwright, swept everything else back into the purse, put the purse on a counter, and said to Beckman, “Bring the clothes over here, Sy, and let’s spread them out on this tabletop. By the way, where were they?”

  “Just pushed under the bed.”

  “Interesting,” Masuto said to Wainwright. “Last time, the twin’s clothes disappeared—never found, just as his body disappeared. Both told a story they didn’t want us to read.”

  “Not this time.”

  “No, indeed,” Masuto said, spreading the bundle of clothes. “Look at this, Captain. Cotton dress, ripped open from the neck down—great anger. Here—this is a blood spot, so she was dead already when he undressed her. Tore the clothes off her, I should say.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a reprise, Captain. She killed his brother and then put the dead man through the ridiculous indignity of sitting dead and naked in a bathtub.”

  “Mackenzie? You’re saying that the real Mackenzie killed her?”

  “No question about it as far as I’m concerned. No proof yet, no evidence, but I’m ready to go out on a limb.”

  “That still leaves one loose end,” Beckman said. He held up a bronze statuette about two inches in diameter and ten inches high, Atlas holding the earth as a globe above his head. “I found this in the library or den or whatever you call it. The legs make an easy grip, and the globe acts like it was meant for a sap. I don’t know what else she could have used, and I can’t find anything that she maybe just picked up and sapped him with. So what I mean is that if she did that downstairs, there’s no way in the world that lady could have gotten the twin upstairs and into the bathtub.”

  “You’re right. No way,” Masuto agreed.

  “That leaves a place open,” Wainwright said. “If it wasn’t Mackenzie.”

  “If it were Mackenzie,” Masuto said, “then the scene in the bathroom upstairs is absolutely senseless. I don’t think it’s senseless. I don’t think Mackenzie had anything to do with killing his brother—except possibly in a roundabout way. He was spelling out his revenge brutally and dangerously when he put Feona into the bathtub. But he wasn’t talking to us. He was talking to the third party—the man who helped Feona kill the twin and drag the body upstairs.”

  “Masao,” Wainwright said with annoyance, “I’ve watched you spin out these guesses of yours too many times not to put a lot of faith in them. But this time we’re not playing parlor games. One of my men is dead. We’re going to his funeral tomorrow. And that was the second attempt to kill you.”

  “I was aware of that.”

  “Don’t get cool on me. Nobody’s that cool. Who was the man with Feona?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “That’s flattering, Captain. I wish I had the crystal ball you credit me with. I don’t. I don’t know who was with Feona that night. I don’t know why they killed the twin. I think I could make twenty wild guesses, but what good is that? You could do the same, Sy could do the same. I don’t know why they wanted to kill me. I don’t know who wanted to kill me.”

  Beckman had wandered out of the room during this. Sweeney and Brody came down and stood in the kitchen entrance.

  “I got everything,” Sweeney said. “Can I go?”

  “Have you got the dead woman’s prints?” Masuto asked him.

  “What?”

  “I said, do you have the prints of that woman in the bathtub upstairs?”

  “Do you want them?”

  “Officer Sweeney,” Masuto said deliberately, “do you remember that I was rather provoked with you when you told me you didn’t have Mackenzie’s prints?”

  “Sergeant, I told you it was not procedure.”

  “Sweeney,” Wainwright roared, “get your ass upstairs and take a set of prints from the woman in the tub! Both hands! Perfect!”

  “Nothing more I can do upstairs,” Officer Brody said as Sweeney hurried past him.

  “Take a post at the door—outside.”

  “What’s a necrophile?”

  “A what?”

  “Fascination with dead bodies,” Masuto told him.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, that’s what it means.”

  Brody walked away, shaking his head, and Beckman came back and announced, “They’re here.”

  “The media. There’s a CBS sound truck outside, and there’s a young kid from the L.A. Times.”

  “That’s the beginning. What do you think, Masao? Should we talk to them?”

  “There’s no way in the world you can keep a lid on it now. Two naked dead bodies in the same tub two months apart, one a man, one a woman. It has to be the juiciest bit of kinky madness that they’ve had to play with in a long time. You can hint that it’s a copycat murder that some lunatic put together, but the trouble is there’s no sign of breaking and entering.”

  “I put in a call for Abramson an hour ago,” Wainwright said. “I wish to hell I knew what the public relations implications of this are. Today a cop can’t just be a cop, and especially in Beverly Hills.”

  Masuto looked at his watch. “It’s seven o’clock. I think the evening is just beginning.”

  “That’s instructive. What in hell do I say?”

  “I don’t know. You called Mr. Abramson.” Masuto shook his head. “Until he comes and decides how he wants to handle this, I say nothing.”

  “What’s nothing?”

  “Just no comment.”

  “The ambulance is here for the body,” Beckman announced.

  “Beckman—I want those All Saints people to keep their mouths shut,” Wainwright told him.

  “I’ll try, but they’ll blab. They been pushing Officer Garcia out front, and he let out that it’s a murder.”

  “You tell him one more word out of him or anyone else and I’ll burn their asses good and plenty.”

  “Did you call about the alarm?” Masuto asked Beckman.

  “Never turned on.”

  “He had a key. He could have let himself in or she could have let him in.”

  “Where do you suppose he’s been these two months?”

  “According to Soames, Canada.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Heaven only knows,” Masuto said. “Sy, in the original investigation, did it come out what kind of engineer Mackenzie was?”

  “Chemical engineer. His specialty was missile fuel.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Beckman left to spell out the law of silence to the cops outside. The ambulance people came down the stairs carrying Feona Scott’s remains, and Abramson, the city manager, was let in by Beckman and brought to the kitchen.

  “Just tell me whether what I hear is true?”

  “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

  “How about a stiff Scotch?”

  “It’s in the library,” Masuto said, “but I don’t think drink
ing his Scotch goes with the territory.”

  “What did you hear?” Wainwright asked him.

  “Well, the poop is that this is another Manson affair, that a gang busted in, broke up the place, and disemboweled the housekeeper.”

  “It’s kinky but not that kinky,” Wainwright said. “Masuto and Beckman came here with a search warrant signed by Judge Simpkins, all very aboveboard and legal, and they found the housekeeper dead in the bathtub.”

  “I’ll be damned. Electrocuted?”

  “Shot through the head and naked.”

  “Well, I will be damned. Was it a break-in? Was the door open?”

  Wainwright turned to Masuto. “Was it open?”

  Masuto shrugged. “No. Truth is, I picked the lock.”

  “Naked and in the bathtub. What in God’s name does that mean?”

  Masuto told him what it meant, spelling out his entire theory and trusting that Wainwright would be sufficiently distracted to forget about illegal entry. He was. He listened to the recitation, and then said bleakly, “So that’s what we got—the kind of thing that’ll boost the circulation of the National Enquirer through the sky.”

  “I needed this!” Abramson complained. “I needed this like a hole in the head. Why can’t they do these things in Pasadena or in Palos Verdes or in Bel-Air if they want a fancy neighborhood? We run a quiet city, we don’t push people around, we offer a decent place to live—oh, Lord, I want to put my head on the table and weep—unless you’re putting me on. Naked in the bathtub with a bullet in her head—you’re not putting me on?”

  “That’s it,” Masuto said.

  “Well, we have to figure out how to handle this. We’ve had enough bad publicity. I can’t repeat that story you told me. It’s just too insane. What happened two months ago was bad enough.”

  Wainwright turned to Masuto. “Come on, Masao, give us something.”

  “It’s not that much of a problem. The housekeeper, living here alone, was shot by an intruder and killed. That’s all you have to say.”

  “And when they come up with the story about the bathtub?”

  “You know nothing about any bathtub. We can keep our own men quiet, and if you talk to Baxter, he can put a lid on the ambulance people.”

  “It might just work.”

  “Worth a try.”

  “Where are you going, Masao?” Wainwright asked him.