Kolchak: The Night Stalker: A Black and Evil Truth

by Jeff Rice

  On a small steel table just past Deke’s desk was a two-unit hotplate with a silex of coffee. Next to it were Coffeemate and sugar. The desk was littered with theft and accident forms, copies of Argosy and Playboy, and last night’s Daily News. I set them to one side and put down my tape recorder, turning it on again and positioning the mike so it pointed to the chair next to the desk.

  In this cheery atmosphere I was about to question the woman who was sniffling quietly as Clabaugh seated her on the chair. Then he slouched on the camp bed while I offered her coffee.

  “Black,” she said, sniffling.

  “Just take your time. My name is Kolchak and I’m with the Daily News. I’d like you to tell me your name, what you do here, and just what you told the deputies out there, ma’am.”

  “Oh dear Jesus,” she moaned. “That poor girl…poor girl,” and she again started to sob.

  I glanced at the clock on Deke’s desk. It was almost 8:40. I took her gently by the shoulders. “Just take it easy, lady. This will only take a minute. C’mon. Drink some of that coffee.”

  She sat there, dabbing at her nose and eyes with a Kleenex and I started going through Deke’s desk drawers looking for his bourbon. I found it, in the bottom right drawer next to several Peters .38 special ammunition and poured a generous dollop into her plastic mug.

  “C’mon. It’ll do you a world of good.”

  She sniffed, took the cup without looking at me and made a hesitant attempt at sipping. Then she looked me right in the eye, pulled herself erect and took three fast swallows almost draining the cup. She set it down on the table, grabbed a fresh sheet of Kleenex from her purse and blew her nose.

  “I’m… I’m all right. Uh… where do I begin?”

  Her name was Olive Bowman. She was forty-eight years old, a native of Salt Lake City, and a day-shift waitress in the bosses’ section of the Deauville coffee shop for the past seven years.

  She had been called in early, arriving around 5:50 and parking in the sixth row of the employee’s lot. As she had walked towards the timekeeper’s office, the dim glow of the impending sunrise just backlighting the hotel, she had seen what she thought were a man and woman kissing by a sports car in the third row. Her route was taking her right past them and she saw that “they didn’t want to be disturbed.” As she started down an alternate row the man turned toward her.

  It was too dark, still, for her to see his face clearly but she noticed he was very tall, and thin. As he turned, the girl with him slumped to a sitting position against the side of the car.

  “My mind was on other things, but I think my first reaction was that she was drunk. I half expected the man to help her up…”

  “And…”I prodded her.

  “He just stared at me. Then he… he… sort of hissed, you know… like a cat spitting when it’s mad. He hissed at me and turned… uh, off to his left, uh… my right, and put both his hands on the top of the car next to him. He just sort of pushed himself up with his hands like some kind of athlete and jumped right over the roof… and then he started running like crazy across the lot.

  “I looked down at the girl to see if she was alright. She hadn’t moved. Then I looked over the other car at the man who was halfway across the lot near that place where they keep the elephants they use in the main show. I shouted at him to stop but he just kept on running. He jumped into a car and took off around the… uh… south side of the hotel…”

  “Did you see what kind of car?”

  “It was white… uh… dirty white. I can’t be sure. The light, you know. I’m not much good at spotting cars. And my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I’m just not sure. I think maybe a Chevrolet.”

  “Two or four-door?”

  “Oh. It was a coupe… you know, a hardtop I think they call them, now.”

  “New?”

  “No. It was a few years old. Oh, I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. It wasn’t real old. Not a junk heap, you know. I didn’t get that good a look.”

  She finished the coffee. “It didn’t have any fins on it if that helps.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Well, I just stood there and watched him disappear. Then I looked back at the girl. I started trying to lift her up and she was all limp. I thought she had passed out and then I noticed some wet stuff on her neck. It was… oh, Jesus, it was b-blood. I got closer and saw she wasn’t breathing. And then… and then…”she started sobbing again, “and then I fainted.”

  She had fainted very conveniently for the girl’s killer. She had been out just about a full hour before she recovered her senses and ran for the timekeeper who had seen nothing at all.

  “That’s about it, Kolchak," Clabaugh broke in. “We have to get her down to the office and have her check some mug shots.”

  “One more question, OK?”

  I turned back to Olive Bowman. “Can you tell me anything at all about the man you saw?”

  “I… I don’t know. It only lasted a few seconds. I mean, he didn’t say anything or… or touch me. He just hissed like I said… wait a minute… wait a minute! There was this smell, yet it was… like he had… bad breath… but worse. I thought it was coming from where the elephants, oh I don’t know… I guess it seems stupid to think of a thing like that. It was like… a grave I saw once that bad been dug up after about two weeks, up in Utah… a dead dog. And the stink… God!”

  I snapped off the recorder and turned to Clabaugh. “You got the dead girl’s name?”

  He picked up his clipboard. “Got it off her driver’s license. Mary Branden, twenty-four, give-eight, one hundred and twenty-six pounds, brown hair and eyes. And she’s got a sheriff’s card. Timekeeper told us she’s got a time card listing her as a showgirl here. Checked in at seven last night. Never checked out. Lived at the Westhaven Apartments on Pershing.”

  He paused. “Listen. You better hold up on this until we check her out for survivors. They have to be notified first.”

  “I’m just going to phone in the information to my office,” I told him. “My editors will handle that end of it. Ah… what if she can’t find this character in your files and want sheets?” I asked, pointing to Olive Bowman.

  “We’ll try the Iden-T-Kit for a composite. Wish we had a staff artist on hand for these things, but the departmental budget’s strained as it is. Damn town’s growing too fast.”

  I thought that one over. “Hold on a second.” I grabbed my pocked phone book and flipped through it. “Here. Call this number. That’s the university. Ask for the fine arts department. Call about fifteen minutes from now and ask for the secretary. Tell her who you are and get her to put you in contact with Steve Rayeburn. He’s a grad student out there and a helluva sketch artist. Get him on down to the sheriff’s office and give him ten dollars an hour and he’ll make you the best damn composite you ever saw.”

  “Sure, and where’s the ten bucks going to come from?”

  I didn’t answer but thanked the waitress and took off down the hall, past the costumes, props and dressing rooms, all padlocked. I ducked through the showroom and into the kitchen. Before the checker could ask who I was, I’d made it into the coffee shop and was craning my neck for my four “girl friends” who I finally spotted, sitting on the far side in a big, yellow booth.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Michelle,” I panted. “The girl’s from here, all right. Confirmed. Her name is Mary Branden.”

  Michelle looked stunned. The pert redhead next to her spilled her coffee and the two others across from me, both blondes, just stiffened and looked at each other.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked.

  She looked very pale and her hand shook visibly. “Good friend. Three years. A… a nice girl. Crazy as a bedbug. But nice. Straight. She… she might have become a line captain in a year or so. Jesus H. Christ!”

  From the girls, by turns, I learned that Mary Branden was a thoroughly professional dancer. She’d studied ballet from the age of nine in Syracuse, New York, and later
in New York City. Her parents were divorced. Mother in New York. Father in Miami. When she turned eighteen, she moved in for a time with her father and auditioned for the Harkness Ballet. Danced with them for a year and then joined the Jane Trobridge Dancers. When she’d turned twenty-one she had come to Vegas to try for the $225-plus weekly check that dancers were getting on the Strip and, with unusual luck, clicked the first time out. She’d been at the Deauville just over three years and was known as a very hard worker. Some comments were: “Crazy. Lots of fun. Couldn’t save a dime.” “Always buying stuffed animals and ‘frou-frou.’” “Dead serious about here dancing career. Practicing all the time.”

  “When she wasn’t subbing for the line captains in breaking in new girls on their routines,” Michelle told me, “she was off alone at odd hours working on routines of her own… sometimes with friends and sometimes alone.”

  During the past week or so, Mary Branden had been staying well past the 1:45–2:00 A.M. check-out time of her friends. She’d been working on a solo number she hoped to convince the stage manager and choreographer to put in the show’s new edition, still (then) more than seven months off.

  Mary Branden, Attractive. Warm. Friendly. Talented. And dead at twenty-four.

  The five of us sat around and looked gray. They, out of grief. I, out of a growing sickness composed of equal parts of shock and my hangover. The waitress came by and I ordered an extra-large orange juice with a raw egg beaten into it. The waitress gave me the look usually reserved for “freaks and other tourists” (the girls explained it to me later), then turned tail and headed for the kitchen.

  I excused myself and went in search of a phone. I found one in the deserted boss’ booth at the front of the coffee shop. The hotel operator got me through to Vincenzo at the office. I gave him what I had and he plugged Meyer into the line for a rewrite while I played back the tape of Miss Olive Bowman’s story. Then I got Vincenzo back on and asked him about the “extra.”

  “Boss says you’ve got it–this time. Guess four killings is too many for him. He checked with Jake and the old man is on his way down here to do a special piece in his column on the murders. Hope you’re finally satisfied,” he growled.

  “Satisfied.” Christ! I may have my odd points but I never got any particular kick in seeing innocent people used for blood banks.

  Vincenzo cut off my thought. “Also, we got some of the girls in display working up a map of Vegas -- simplified, of course–with the killings pin-pointed. This ought to play for at least three days. Might even make it through to Monday. Cairncross is planning a special full page for the early edition. You’ve finally got what you’ve been begging for, you bastard. So enjoy it while you can.”

  Vincenzo’s got some warped ideas of what my enjoyments are.

  “He wants to use on-the-scene shots [my ideas, which had died on Vincenzo’s desk only a day before] with portrait-art of the victims, quotes from friends–we got Meyer on that sidebar stuff–and, of course, quotes from all responsible officials.”

  I guess I did have some kind of grim satisfaction in seeing my colleagues trying to run the Daily News like a real newspaper. Even Vincenzo sounded interested, almost excided when he talked about it.

  “What about the Sunday takeout?” I asked.

  “Don’t push a good thing too far. A full page tonight and tomorrow morning is about all you can expect. It’s more than I’d give you. But, I don’t run this paper. I just take orders. Oh, yes. Forget about the holes in her neck. Until we get an OK from Jake, she was killed and the police are investigating the particular method used. Period!”

  “What about art on the suspect?”

  “What can you get me?”

  “Call the university.” I gave him the number, and the info I’d given Clabaugh. “This Rayeburn kid’s a pro. The sheriff’s boys may use him on this. He’ll do a good job on this thing. I think you can get him for… twenty dollars an hour. Not even one cent less.”

  “My ass,” said Vincenzo. “Nobody’s worth twenty dollars an hour. Not even Michaelangelo. He’ll take ten dollars and like it… if we use him.”

  “You’ll use him. And fifteen dollars an hour is as low as he goes. C’mon, Tony. Don’t you want to pretend just once in your life that you’re a real, live newshound? Don’t you want to cream the opposition? Let’s not give up an exclusive to the little yellow rag down the street. Remember Pulitzer and James Gorden Bennett? Remember?”

  With his usual courtesy, Vincenzo hung up in the middle of my pep talk. For a fleeting moment I had the bleak thought that he’d get mad enough to kill the whole deal. Then I forgot even Vincenzo isn’t that stupid, I told myself.

  As I walked back to the table, I thought about the walking-around-money I’d arranged for Rayeburn. My good deed for the year.

  The girls were sitting as I’d left them, looking glum. I slipped into my seat and started on the juice. It slithered into the pit of my gut like a cold lump of glue.

  The redhead looked at Michelle. “I don’t feel so good. I think I’ll go home.”

  “I think we all should,” said Michelle. They excused themselves and I got up to let Michelle out.

  I grinned sickly at her. “Thanks, kid. I appreciate you and your friends coming down.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Well, just spell our names right. And take care of yourself.”

  I grabbed the check away from her and sat for a while feeling drained and grubby. Then I paid the check, by telling the cashier to put it on my city ledger, and headed out through the casino, turning into the artists’ entrance next to the showroom, and back on out to my car. I figured there was no sense in trying to catch any sleep, so I stopped off at my place just long enough to shower and shave, and put on a sportcoat and slacks. Then I was off for the sheriff’s office where the main effort of the law’s investigation was headquartered.

  On something like this, involving both Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, the two agencies–LVPD and the Sheriff’s Office–joined forces with a command post at the Clark County Sheriff’s Office in the courthouse because of their bigger budget and better facilities. There has always been inter-service rivalry between them. The county, with its greater share of multi-million dollar hotel-casinos, has more money with which to operate. So, generally speaking, the sheriff’s office is better equipped.

  They haven’t always cooperated on cases, especially on narcotics raids where they once openly competed for the publicity. But after one particularly disastrous affair involving a large haul of drugs by air from Mexico to a small town outside the Vegas city limits where several agencies stepped on each other’s toes to the mutual and very public embarrassment of all, changes were instituted, mutual cooperation was arranged for, and heads rolled. One of the first belonged to the disgruntled boss of a narcotics squad who was known as a particularly tough cop. It was known inside his particular department that if he couldn’t effect a clean bust, he would always being along some marijuana to use as a “plant.” Thus, until the aforementioned raid, he’d never come up empty handed.

  The papers (our own Daily News far out in front) nosed out the story and shortly thereafter Las Vegas Major Olin Preston announced the new “combined forces” concept which has resulted in a more efficient law enforcement effort in southern Nevada. On any major crime that crosses county lines or city boundaries, a liaison officer from one agency is always present at the other’s command headquarters.

  As two of the bodies had been discovered in the county and one was right on the county line, the sheriff’s office had a marginal claim to running the operation. As the first murder had occurred in the city, PD Captain Ed “Bat” Masterson was named by protocol as command post operations director and Sheriff’s Lieutenant Bill Jenks was assigned full charge of field operations. In return for the sheriff’s office footing the lion’s share of the bill, the PD offered the use of its newly acquired Hughes helicopter.

  The sheriff’s office is on the third floor of the Clark County courthous
e, occupying virtually the entire floor with windows giving a clear view of the municipal parking lot across Carson from Second to Third. Over its bulk, the tops of some of Glitter Gulch’s new high-rise hotels can be seen.

  I stopped off on the fourth floor and entered a door marked “Private” to pay my thrice-weekly respects to Helen O’Brien, the chief switchboard operator. [Now retired. J.R.] With very few exceptions, Helen knows more of what is going on in Las Vegas’ political and official circles at any given time than anyone I can think of. She can tell you what the D.A. had for breakfast; who is on “report” for misconduct in the sheriff’s office; who is planning to “ditch out” on a political race and why. And she keeps her mouth shut. There are not many people she will give the occasional tip to. Not many she trusts. I was one of the few. And she didn’t trust me too often, or, as she used to say, “Not farther than I could throw a piano.” At five-one and ninety-five pounds, that would not be far.

  She castigated me for my increasing girth and told me that the sheriff’s boys were checking with the department of motor vehicles on registrations of every white Chevy hardtop in Clark and neighboring Nye counties. She tipped me that the D.A. was meeting with Sheriff Lane in the D.A.’s office. I thanked her and promised to come by some night soon for some home-made cherry pie and took the elevator back down to the sheriff’s office. I passed by the “Complaint desk” behind which is a showcase of weapons–pistols, rifles and shotguns–and on around it, doubling back down a glass-walled hallway, and into Lieutenant Bill Jenks’ cubicle. Jenks works a twelve hour day and his door proclaims simply: “Lt. Jenks, Cmdr. Uniform Div–Day.”

  On the western wall divider of his “office” was a map of Clark County. A smaller overlay of Las Vegas was on top. It was studded with little colored pins. “Take a look, “he said, pointing them out. “Yellow for victims. Yellow with a slash for victims and witnesses at scene [a new pin, referring to Olive Bowman, I assumed]. Red for the blood theft. Well, what do you see?”

  I looked. A yellow pine marked “1” on Bridger between Eighth and Ninth streets. One marked “2” on the end of a long strip of tape running off the map on West Charleston Boulevard. One marked “3” on Ida, halfway between Audree and Suzanne. A blood-red pin stood over Parkway Hospital.