The Lonely Hunter (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “What intervals do the patrols run?”

  Markham frowned, riffling the notebook pages. But I knew there was nothing in the notebook. He was stalling, hoping to remember. Finally, though, he was forced to admit that he didn’t know. I decided not to volunteer the information, at least not then. But, sure enough, Kreiger swung around to me.

  “How about it, Frank?” he asked.

  “They run half-hour patrols until ten,” I answered shortly, avoiding Markham’s eyes. “After ten, it’s once an hour. By then, though, the secondary gates are closed.”

  “They close at ten, is that right?”

  I nodded.

  Kreiger opened the manila folder and withdrew two sheets of onionskin. It was the coroner’s report.

  “It says here,” Kreiger announced, scanning the report, “that the victim was probably between nineteen and twenty-three years old, apparently in good health. They figure, assuming that the victim ate dinner between six and seven, that he died between eight and nine. In other words, the process of digestion was approximately two hours along. And that checks out with the temperature of the body, and rigor mortis, and so forth.”

  “What else did the coroner say?” I asked. “What about the wound?”

  Kreiger nodded, the question anticipated. “First of all,” he said, “there weren’t any powder burns on the face or neck, which certainly seems to indicate that, wherever he was killed, it wasn’t in a car. The bullet nicked the sternum, passed through the right ventricle of the heart, and emerged about two inches to the right of the spine. If it’d hit a few more bones, it might’ve stayed in the body.”

  “Either that,” I offered, “or it was a pretty powerful gun.”

  “They guess,” Kreiger replied, “that it was a .38, judging by the impression on the sternum. But that’s only speculation. Anyhow, it’s obvious that the victim died right away. No fuss, and not much muss, since the heart quit pumping almost immediately. There probably wasn’t any excessive bleeding, beyond the blood found soaked into the victim’s clothing.”

  “That sweater,” I said, “could’ve absorbed a lot of blood.”

  Kreiger nodded absently, still scanning the report. “That’s about all,” he said finally. “No visible scars, no especially significant identifying features. Nothing.”

  “I figured,” I said slowly, “that he probably came from a middle-class background. I mean, his clothing was fairly expensive, and his appearance wasn’t scroungy. And when the coroner says that his health and his teeth were good, it seems to add up.”

  “Fine,” said Markham drily. “That really narrows it down—to the whole middle class.”

  I decided not to smile.

  Kreiger was rummaging in the folder, extracting another report form. “I don’t have much from the lab yet,” he said, “except that they didn’t find any preliminary evidence of powder burns on the sweater, and nothing significant impacted in the soles of the shoes.”

  “How about clothing labels?” I asked.

  Kreiger shook his head. “Manufacturer’s labels in the sweater, pants, shoes and belt, but no store labels. It’ll take a lot of checking.”

  “If that sweater was bought here,” Markham offered, “it shouldn’t be too hard to trace. Those’re pretty rare.”

  “And pretty expensive,” I added.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Kreiger sighed. “My oldest kid decided he couldn’t make it another month without one of those sweaters. They’re woven in Ireland or the Scandinavian countries, a lot of them—and they cost a good, solid forty bucks. The problem is, though, that they’re popular as the devil right now, so there’re plenty around, even at forty bucks a throw.”

  “How about the contents of his pockets?”

  Kreiger shook his head. “Cleaned out. Everything. Not even a handkerchief. Except for—”

  “That seems to indicate robbery,” Markham interrupted.

  “Hmmm.” It was a noncommittal sound.

  “Well, doesn’t it?” Markham insisted.

  Pointedly, Kreiger ignored him, saying instead, “There’s just one thing that the murderer must’ve overlooked.” He paused, looking at me ironically. “A subway token,” he said. “A New York subway token. It was in the watch pocket of the victim’s pants, along with a dime and a nickel.”

  I snorted. “Great. A transient. He could’ve been just passing through. And when he’s missed, he’ll be missed in New York.”

  Kreiger shrugged, replacing the lab report in the manila folder. Then, depositing the eight-by-ten picture on the folder, he slid both across the desk towards me. “I was talking to the city editor of the Sentinel a little while go,” he said, “concerning something else. And he promised he’d run the victim’s picture on the front page tomorrow morning. So you’d better get the artist to make a sketch of this, Frank, and get the sketch right over to the Sentinel!”

  I nodded. Then, glancing at Markham, I quietly asked Kreiger, “Is there anything on that—that matter we were discussing this morning?”

  Kreiger also glanced briefly at Markham, and then said shortly, “The subject’s lawyer knows exactly where they stand, and I think they’ll go along.”

  “What about Starbuck?” Markham asked, unwilling to be out of the conversation for long.

  “Starbuck’s dead,” Kreiger said, rising to his feet. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Dead?”

  “Yeah. They were taking him across that—you know—that bridge-of-a-thing they’ve got at the county hospital. They had him in a strait jacket, and everything—two guards, everything according to the book. But then, about halfway across, he jerked away and threw himself against one of the windows. The security screen gave way—it turned out later that the fastening had been rusted—and he went right down. Twenty feet, on to the parking lot. He hit the side of a pickup truck, and it almost broke him in two.”

  “One less junkie,” Markham said. “Just think how many thousand dollars he saved the state of California.”

  For a long, silent moment we looked at him. Then, quietly, Kreiger said, “Just think how much the state would save if suddenly all the criminals quit being criminals. Our salaries, for instance—that’d be quite a saving right there. All that’d be necessary would be a few traffic cops, and maybe a couple of guys to handle the barking dog complaints.”

  “Well,” Markham said defensively, “it’s the parents who’ve got themselves to blame. My dad, he’d’ve beat me black and blue, if he’d’ve ever caught me smoking pot.” Almost sulkily he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, then walked away without another word, shoulders hunched.

  “A cop like Markham,” Kreiger was saying, “it’s pretty simple for him, in lots of ways. He’s got it all figured out. There’s the good guys, and the bad guys—and there aren’t any left over.”

  “What about the nurse?” I asked, moving towards the hallway. “What happened to her?”

  “She died, too. They’re both dead.”

  I sighed. “Well, I’d better get that sketch made. Take care of your cold.”

  FIVE

  BY NINE O’CLOCK THE following morning we’d received more than a dozen calls promising positive identification of the murder victim. Most of the callers were anonymous, and sounded like kooks or cranks. But Markham took one call that sounded promising, from a woman in the Sunset district. I’d taken another. My informant was Cecile Franks, the owner and proprietress of a coffee house called the Crushed Chrysanthemum, at Haight Street near Masonic.

  The intersection of Haight and Masonic is where it’s happening, according to San Francisco hippies, and most of it seems to happen in or around the Crushed Chrysanthemum. We pulled up in front, at about eleven twenty A.M. Even on a Thursday morning the sidewalk was already crowded with hippies—all sizes, shapes, colours and temperaments.

  Markham switched off the engine, then turned to stare. “Look at them,” he said, disgusted. “Half of them shot full of LSD and STP, half of
them probably loaded with VD, and all of them too damn lazy to do an hour’s work.”

  I was watching a tall, long-faced youth ambling towards us, walking with a kind of gangling, loose-jointed good humour. He wore leather sandals, baggy blue jeans, a fringed buckskin vest and no shirt. His hair grew to his shoulders, held in place by a blue bandana. Colourful Indian beads hung across his narrow, bare chest; rimless glasses perched far down on his long nose. At his side walked a beautiful girl, draped toga-fashion in what looked like a bright-patterned bedspread. Her blonde hair dropped in long, straight strands almost to her waist; her feet were bare.

  Claudia could be there. Anywhere.

  And Tomilson, too.

  Or they could still be sleeping—drowsily caressing each other, sleepily murmuring.

  I heard Markham still talking about LSD, and the hippies, and their costumes, and their dirt, and their love-making.

  “Come on,” I said, shouldering my way to the doorway. “We aren’t getting anywhere out here.”

  The Crushed Chrysanthemum looked as if someone had gone through the city’s salvage shops and junk stores, furnishing the huge room like a jumbo hippies’ pad, complete with throbbing hi-fi, psychedelic posters, flower garlands, incense, and bizarre bric-a-brac from the ’20s and ’30s. Threadbare carpets were laid two and three thick on the floor. Heavy furniture trailed shreds of white cotton stuffing. The walls and windows were completely covered with a haphazard array of brightly coloured drapes, tablecloths, bedspreads and just plain yard goods. From the ceiling hung billows of what seemed to be multicoloured parachutes, some of them jungle mottled, some segmented orange and blue, some a gleaming nylon white.

  And everywhere lounged the hippies—talking very quietly, seldom laughing, sipping coffee. A few couples were dancing, but most seemed to prefer sitting or lying. Close by, a girl was stretched full length on a tattered, lumpy sofa while a companion caressed her toes and ankles with urgent, ardent fingers. At first I thought the companion was a long-haired boy. Looking closer, I discovered I was wrong.

  Markham’s voice sounded almost awed as he said, “This place must be violating a hundred ordinances a minute. Is this where they’re supposed to have marijuana parties upstairs?”

  “I guess so. I’ve never been down in Haight Ashbury much. These hippies don’t seem to get themselves killed or knifed.”

  “I can believe it. I don’t know where they’d get the energy.”

  I led the way to a huge carved refectory table on which rested an espresso coffee machine, a conventional coffee maker, a tray piled with cups and an assortment of pastries. A young man smiled at us, but said nothing.

  “Where can we find Cecile Franks?” I asked.

  “Are you from the police?”

  “Yes. She’s expecting us.”

  “I know. She’s back there.” Preceding us, he drew back a moth-eaten red velvet curtain, fringed in tarnished gold.

  A slim dark-haired girl sat at a huge roll-top desk. She wore dark-blue slacks and a simple white silk shirt, open at the throat. Her hair was drawn up into a ponytail. She was talking on the phone, and as we entered she motioned us to a pair of carved Chinese teak chairs placed on either side of a low marble table. She smiled at me briefly, her brown eyes quick and shrewd as she looked me over.

  “If we can’t get the paper at the right price,” she said into the phone, “then let’s try Los Angeles. I’ll tell you what the problem is, Marve: they don’t think we’ve got much volume potential, and they don’t feel like bothering with us. So tell them that we’ve already sold a hundred thousand of these posters—and that’s only the West Coast. There’s the whole rest of the country; we’ve got a good chance to go all the way on this thing, but we can’t wait. Make it plain that we wouldn’t even be talking with them if we weren’t looking for a better price than we’ve got already. Tell them that—”

  A telephone buzzer interrupted; a second line was blinking.

  “I’ve got another call, Marve. If you can’t get anywhere with him, tell him to call me in about an hour. And in the meantime, double check with Jerry Owens, that drummer with The Calumet Sextet. He’s the only one with any initiative. Tell them we can’t do business with their agent, so if they want the September fourteenth booking they’d better get that agent straightened out. Tell them we’ll offer sixty-five hundred for the single concert—no options, no subsidiary rights. Just a single package deal.” Without ceremony she clicked to the second line.

  “Hello?”

  She listened for a long moment, frowning—tapping irritably at the desk. Finally, drawing a deep breath, she said: “I’ve heard all this before. Now—” She paused, taking deliberate control of herself as she said very slowly and distinctly, “Now, the Sentinel ran a story two months ago about these alleged pot parties we’re supposed to have upstairs every Friday. And I just heard from my lawyer today that the Sentinel’s offering to settle with us for ten thousand dollars damages. So unless your magazine’s got ten thousand dollars extra, I wouldn’t advise you to run the story. I’d advise you to—What?”

  She listened, nodding with a bored, monotonous movement of her dark, sleek head. Her face had a kind of thin, hollow-cheeked Semitic intensity. If she’d bothered with make-up, I decided, she’d probably be striking.

  “The precise facts are,” she said abruptly, as if she were interrupting the speaker, “that I own this building, with a couple of other people. It’s a corporation. We rent out the apartments upstairs, and what happens up there doesn’t have anything to do with us. They can be reading poetry, or smoking hashish, or doing a little white slaving or maybe just watching T.V. But as long as they pay their rent, and don’t make any noise or break up the place, which they don’t, then I’ve got no complaint. The rest of it’s up to them and—” She glanced at me. “—and the police. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. Now, speaking of the police I’ve got a couple of them here right now, waiting. We’re—” Her dark, intense eyes came mischievously alive. “We’re collaborating on a case, as a matter of fact. So you’re going to have to excuse me. But if I were you, I’d talk to my lawyers before I put anything down on paper. Unless, of course, you want to do a story on the Crushed Chrysanthemum. There, I’ll help you, provided I have approval rights.” She listened for a moment, nodding. “Right. Anytime. Good-bye.”

  She pressed the disconnect button, then the intercom buzzer. “Take the calls out there for a while, will you, Bronco? I’ve had it.” Without waiting for a reply she hung up the phone and turned in her swivel chair to face us.

  “I’m Cecile Franks. Sorry to keep you waiting. You’re probably wondering what my bag is, as they say. Well, the fact is that I did my Ph. D. thesis on what makes the hippies tick, and I decided to take a year out and do a little field work. My field is Behavioural Psychology. My father’s a successful businessman. We figured that with ten thousand dollars capital and my father backing me, I could double the initial investment in eighteen months, giving the hippies what they want. And that’s about how it’s working out. So far, I’ve been able to figure out which button to push, and when. That’s what it’s all about in the Haight, you know. You create just the right mood, and find just the right sound, and you’ve got yourself a captive market, as Daddy would say. This summer, there’s already been forty thousand hippies through San Francisco, and we figure each one spent between two and three hundred dollars. Maybe more. Hippies, you know, are really refugees from the middle class. You’d be surprised how many dividend cheques we cash in here, every week.”

  I glanced sidelong at Markham. He was blinking.

  “I’m Sergeant Hastings,” I said. “This is Inspector Markham.” I took both the artist’s drawing and a small photo of the victim from my pocket. I gave her the drawing first.

  “Is this the drawing you identified in the paper, Miss Franks?”

  She glanced at the drawing, then nodded. I gave her the photo. She swallowed. “Was that taken—after he died?”
/>   “Yes.”

  Again she nodded. “Well, I’m pretty sure he’s been in here at least once or twice. I wouldn’t swear to it. But I think his hair was shorter, then. And that makes a difference.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “I think it’s Robertson—Don Robertson. But I’m not sure. He used to come in with someone I know, once in a while.”

  “What’s the name of the person you know?”

  “Frank Walters. They call him Snow Boy.”

  “Why do they call him that?” Markham asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Where can we find Frank Walters?” I asked.

  “He lives six or eight blocks from here.”

  “How long ago was Robertson in here?”

  She thought about it, then said, “I guess two, three months ago. Give or take a few weeks.”

  “Did you notice anything particular about him, that might help us?”

  She hesitated, glancing at me with her dark, quiet eyes. “He was very quiet,” she said thoughtfully. “There wasn’t much to notice. But—” Again she hesitated, then finally decided to say, deliberately, “But if I had to guess, I’d say he was high on something pretty hard. That’s how I happened to notice him. We keep a close watch for those around here. I don’t know whether you know it or not, but this place is completely, absolutely clean. However, every once in a while—frequently, in fact—they come in after they’ve been smoking, or taking a trip. We get rid of them as soon as we can, but I’d be lying if I said we bounce them as soon as they wander in. There’s just too much grass and acid in the Haight to keep it all out. But this is strictly a commercial enterprise, as I told you. I operate this place, plus a business publishing psychedelic posters, plus I’ve got a controlling interest in the Haight Street Auditorium. I can’t afford to waste my time down at City Hall.”

  “In other words,” Markham said, “you’re telling us that you’ve got influence. Is that it?” His tone was unpleasant.