The Disappearance (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  He nodded, still staring down toward her grave. Then, drawing a long, deep breath, he said, “It all began by chance—accidentally, as everything begins. I didn’t even know she was in San Francisco. I’d made a particular effort to sever the present from the past, you see. And for a while, living in Bolinas, I was reasonably contented. I began grinding out my horror comic books and receiving checks from the publisher. I even wrote a little anonymous pornography to supplement my income. And then a year ago I happened to see a newspaper picture of Carol. Ironically, the newspaper was actually a few years old; I’d found it among some trash in the basement of a house I’d rented. You see, I never read newspapers. I avoid newspapers, mirrors and people. I—” His disembodied voice trailed off. He was staring straight ahead now, sightlessly.

  “And that’s when it started,” I said. “When you saw her picture in the paper.”

  He nodded. “That’s when it started. At first I found myself drawn to that part of the basement so that I could glance at the paper. Finally I took the newspaper upstairs and put it on my desk. I had a stack of other research material there, and I tucked the newspaper underneath. But a week or so later, the newspaper emerged on top. I’d find myself staring at it while I was writing grisly little comic books for grisly minded little children. And then—only then, mind you—did I finally allow myself to actually read the caption of the picture and the ridiculous little society squib concerning a Halloween costume party. I next noted the date: almost three years previous. Possibly, then, she’d moved. Possibly she’d even died, I remember thinking.” He paused. Then, half smiling, he said, “That, I suppose, was the essential embryo, the one single significant germ of the idea. I remember feeling vaguely cheated, imagining that she was already dead. I remember feeling that in some strange way her death was my affair, just as my nominal death had been her affair.”

  Again he paused, obviously caught in reverie. Then, in a strangely indifferent voice, he said, “The newspaper picture, of course, remained on top of my research material, the material from which I actually wrote. So one day, on a whim, I began writing a scenario—the story of a murder. And the victim, of course, was Carol. The murderer was myself, and the motive was revenge. It took weeks to complete the story. Then, when it was done—when I’d planned the so-called perfect crime—I began implementing the plan. I studied Carol’s movements minutely. Once I even sat behind her in a movie. In a way, that sensation—being so close to her, unrecognized—was even more compelling than the actual murder.”

  “How long did you track her, Farwell? Over what period of time?”

  His eyes on the graveside ceremony, he ignored me. I repeated the question. Finally, blinking, he said, “The whole process took almost a year. First, you see, it was just an idea; it developed exactly as a story develops in a writer’s mind. In this case, it began with the fictitious moment of her death. I spent days imagining that moment. I would fantasize myself to sleep, just as a lover does. In fact—” His thick lips moved in a sad, pensive smile, strangely gentle. “In fact, I first considered a murder and suicide. I would steal into her bedroom, I decided, and kill her. Then I would kill myself. I remember imagining in detail how I would stand leaning over her body and shoot myself in the head so that I would fall across her and our blood would flow together. But then—” He sighed, shaking his head. “Then more violent fantasies began to intrude, until finally the plot was fixed on murder. Then, having accepted that, I began to work out the story so that I would escape detection. That was when I hit on the idea of the cab. I observed her leaving the house once or twice a week regularly, by cab.” He shrugged. “The rest was simple. First I bought a new Ford. Then I stripped a Yellow Cab of its meter and radio, et cetera, and then proceeded to manufacture myself a taxicab.” He smiled. “I even made a few dollars picking up fares. It gave my role as cabdriver a feeling of verisimilitude. That’s very important, you know, in the arts. And her murder—the story of her murder—was a work of art. I’ve often thought, these last few days, that it’s impossible to say when fiction left off and fact began. It seems somehow as if everything was a blank between that first rough scenario and the actual murder. One moment I was imagining her dead, and the next moment I was watching her bleed.” He glanced at me with vague, puzzled eyes. Then, recovering himself, he said, “You’ll find the manuscript in my files, Lieutenant. I titled it The Disappearance.” Now his smile twisted into a wry grimace. “The discovery of her body, you see, wasn’t in the script. I spent five hours digging her grave. And another two hours concealing it. Elaborately.”

  “Why did you come into headquarters when you heard she’d been found?” I asked.

  “It’s all in the script, Lieutenant. Or rather, in the epilogue. I wrote two epilogues, as you’ll see: one upbeat, the other downbeat.” He paused, his attention now fixed on the burial ceremony. Looking past him, I saw the minister making the final sign of benediction. Connoly was turning away from the grave, walking down the gentle slope to the waiting cars. One by one, the mourners followed. Quickly the gravesite was deserted.

  “Tell me why you came down to headquarters, Farwell,” I repeated.

  Rousing himself, he sighed deeply. Then, as if he were impatiently explaining a simple problem to a backward student, he said, “Naturally, I made elaborate contingency plans based on the procedures I knew you’d follow in the event her body was discovered. I knew, of course, that you’d eventually run across my name. And since I had a possible motive and also the opportunity, I knew I’d at least be questioned. So I simply employed a basic preemptive gambit, which I imagine was successful. I imagine you took me for exactly what I seemed: an odd, misshapen little man who’d loved Carol hopelessly and wanted to help you find her killer.”

  I heard Canelli chuckle ruefully. “That’s right, by God.”

  Seemingly pleased, Farwell nodded, faintly smiling as he said, “If you’d come looking for me, you’d’ve been more suspicious, more alert. It’s basic psychology.”

  Again Canelli chuckled. This time I frowned, silencing him.

  “Did you always keep your cab with the other Yellow Cabs?” I asked.

  Farwell seemed almost primly shocked. “Of course not, Lieutenant. I’d rented a garage, where I spent months converting the car into the cab. When I’d—” He paused, then blinked, as if wracked by a sudden spasm. “When I’d … finished … Tuesday night, I took the cab back to my garage. But last night I’m afraid I panicked. I was upset, anyhow, because of the necessity for killing the Rayburn girl. But I knew she’d recognized me. So—” His voice trailed off as he shook his head with slow regret. Then, recovering, he said, “Just as I was turning into the last block before my garage last night, I saw a police car coming toward me. I thought—probably mistakenly—that my garage was staked out. So I implemented my emergency plan, which called for parking my cab outside the Yellow Cab lot, then picking it up the following day.” He smiled wryly. “Little realizing, of course, that somehow you’d second-guessed me and already had my cab staked out.”

  In the front seat, Canelli was leering. I frowned at him. The funeral procession was pulling away; the hearse had already cleared the gates. Now two men were approaching the deserted grave, each carrying a shovel.

  “I suppose,” Farwell said, turning to stare at me with his wounded, deep-set eyes, “I suppose it’d be against regulations if you were to allow me to go down there alone and see the casket before it’s buried.”

  I started to nod, agreeing that, yes, it was against regulations. If he should escape or kill himself, or even harm himself, I’d be in serious trouble.

  “I’d have to go with you,” I said finally.

  He nodded regretfully. “You’d have to. Certainly.” He looked at me for a long moment of mute entreaty, then settled back silently in the seat, closing his eyes.

  For a moment I watched the approaching gravediggers. Then I reached across to open the door.

  “All right, Farwell. But you’d better not mak
e a fool of me.”

  Without speaking, he climbed out of the car, moving awkwardly with his handcuffed hands. Then outside he turned briefly back to me. “We’re all fools, Lieutenant—born fools, eventually dead fools. That’s what makes it all so foolish: death.”

  He smiled with a kind of wan, gentle regret, then began walking briskly down the slope, racing the gravediggers.

  24

  FROWNING, KREIGER UNCOVERED HIS hamburger, removing a limp slice of dill pickle. He salted the hamburger, then reassembled the sandwich. He bit once, tentatively, then grimaced. “The next time there’s a staff meeting, so help me God, I’m going to make a motion that they get a new fry cook.”

  “He’s an ex-hero, though.”

  Kreiger snorted. “He’s brain damaged. He was chasing a speeder and ran his bike into a delivery truck. He’ll get his pension whether he’s cooking or not. In fact, he’d make more money if he didn’t cook. I took the trouble to check.”

  “The tuna fish isn’t bad. For a police department cafeteria, that is.”

  Glumly chewing, he asked, “Is Farwell still cooperating?”

  “Beautifully. Exhaustively.”

  “What about the horseshit blanket that Friedman kept talking about? Was it a bona-fide clue or not?”

  “It turned out to be one of those clues that creates more problems than it solves. Everyone thought that because Carol rode there was a connection. The way it worked out, though, Farwell just picked up an old blanket that he happened to have around the house. And it just so happened that, the Sunday before, he’d taken the blanket out to some pasture near Bolinas. He apparently dragged the blanket through some horse manure.”

  “That’s the trouble with lab findings,” Kreiger said. “There’s no qualitative index. They found traces of manure—plus traces of oil, and dirt, and dried soda pop, and iodine crystals, and God knows what else. But because manure rang some kind of a bell, everyone charged off in the wrong direction.” He shook his head, took a last dissatisfied bite of the hamburger and reached for his coffee. “It may be old-fashioned, but I still say that most of the time most cops can nail down their suspects simply by taking the time to ask a few questions, and then taking the trouble to watch the suspect while he answers.”

  Finishing my tuna sandwich, I didn’t reply. I watched Canelli and Friedman come into the cafeteria. They seemed to be arguing amiably as they studied the menu board. Kreiger was watching them, too. Hearing him exhale vigorously, I knew that something was bothering him. Kreiger never allowed himself to become really disturbed over anything of major importance. Instead, he vented his feelings on trivia, like overdone hamburgers, or automobile repair bills, or misbehaving English sheepdogs.

  “When I see those two together,” Kreiger said, nodding toward the cafeteria line, “I swear to God that I’m going to get every man in my detail out jogging. It—it’s a departmental disgrace.”

  I smiled to myself, sipping my coffee. “The fact is, though, that almost everyone else in the detail is pretty trim.”

  “That may be,” he answered. “But the sight of those two standing together is just—” He shook his head, again exhaling loudly.

  I finished my coffee, then glanced at the clock. “I’d better go. I’ve got to be at the D.A.’s in ten minutes.”

  He nodded, saying good-bye. I walked across the cafeteria, then paused at the door, looking back. Friedman and

  Canelli were sitting at the captain’s table. I took a moment to study Kreiger’s inscrutable face as he watched the two men unloading their trays. Then, smiling to myself as I imagined Friedman in a sweat suit, I allowed the heavy door to swing closed.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Lt. Hastings Mysteries

  1

  FRIEDMAN SLUMPED INTO MY visitor’s chair, sighing deeply and shaking his head sadly as he sailed a departmental memo across my desk.

  “At age forty-six,” he said heavily, “I’ve finally gotten used to the idea of being Jewish. When I was a kid, I used to get into fights about being Jewish—most of which I lost. When I was a struggling patrolman who never wanted to be a cop anyhow, I was edgy about being a Jew. When I didn’t advance in the department, I decided it was discrimination. I finally figured out, though, that the problem was really two kids, both in diapers at the same time, plus a wife who was too pooped to do much at night but sleep. So eventually I made detective, then detective sergeant. Then, lo, I made lieutenant. The kids, meanwhile, are growing up, and Clara is pinching me nights to keep me awake. I have money in the bank for the first time in my life. Whereupon I discover that all that time I wasn’t discriminated against like I thought. I was just broke, and up to my elbows in unpaid bills and kids screaming and nylons and diapers hanging in the bathroom. So now”—he flapped a hand—“so now, at age forty-six—a detective lieutenant with a locked-in pension—I discover that, by God, I’m being discriminated against. For being overweight.” He pointed to the memo, looked at me reproachfully, and then uttered the single word “jogging” as if it were an obscenity.

  I moved the memo aside, searching for a particular lab report analyzing the contents of a suspect’s ashtray, large amber glass, File H-1843-B, Exhibit 7. My eyes burned and my arms felt heavy. There’d been two homicides in San Francisco the previous night. A hooker had been found knifed and robbed at about nine P.M.; a housewife had been found bludgeoned and robbed approximately four hours later. I’d just gotten the first investigation organized when the second call had come over the air. I’d gotten home at four A.M. I was up at eight A.M.; by nine A.M. I was dozing in a courtroom antechamber, waiting to testify in a fatal child-beating case. Now, at three P.M., I intended to empty my In basket, then go home.

  “My informants tell me,” Friedman was saying, “that you and the captain are in collusion on this—this jogging thing.”

  “Not true. He asked me what I thought about the idea. I said that it sounded fine.”

  “There is nothing,” he said with solemn emphasis, “in either the California Civil Service Code or the San Francisco Police Department Manual that can get me jogging twice a week. Nothing at all.”

  I shrugged, paper-clipping a sheaf of onionskin interrogation transcripts, still searching for the missing lab report. Finally I dropped the transcripts into my top desk drawer, along with the contents of my In basket. I slid the drawer shut and got my gun from another drawer, locking the desk. Then, yawning and leaning back in my chair, I smiled faintly as I clipped on the gun. Friedman’s bullfrog eyes were regarding me with an expression of betrayed accusation.

  “You want the truth?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Well, the truth is, a couple of weeks ago I was having lunch with the captain. In the cafeteria. And it just so happened that both you and Canelli came in at the same time, and started loading up your trays. Now, you’ll have to admit that the sight of you and Canelli together, in profile, loading up on calories, was a lot for the captain to take. He’s supposed to be commanding a division of hard-bitten detectives. So when he looks up, halfway through his soup, and sees—”

  “All right.” He held up a beefy hand. “I’ve heard enough. I’ll handle it myself.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind. Are you going off duty?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned laboriously forward in his chair, retrieved the memo, then sank back with a sigh. “When the captain hand-delivered this to me,” Friedman said, “he told me to take over the Moresco case from you, on the theory that two cases in one night is too much for one man, even if he does have a thirty-four-inch waist. I suppose,” he added heavily, “that Moresco is the hooker. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Who’s got the file?”

  With difficulty, I kept my face straight. “Canelli had it this morning, as a matter of fact. He’s out in the field, so the file is probably back in Records.”

  He studied me for a long, sardonic moment before saying, “What you’re telli
ng me, then, is that Canelli is on the case.”

  “Count your blessings. Canelli is the luckiest man in the history of the Inspectors’ Bureau. You’ve said so yourself. Not the smartest. Not the most ambitious, or the slimmest. But the luckiest.”

  “Well, next time you see Captain Kreiger, reporting on the progress of your devious little jogging scheme, no doubt, you can say that Canelli and I will—”

  My phone rang.

  “Lieutenant Hastings,” I answered, watching Friedman extract a cigar from an inside pocket, then heave himself laboriously from side to side, grunting and frowning as he rummaged for a match.

  “Anything look promising on those two new ones, Frank?” It was Kreiger’s voice: crisp, neutral, controlled. As always.

  “Not much, I’m afraid.”

  “I promised the reporters I’d meet with them in a couple of hours—five o’clock. If you get anything new, be sure and give it to me.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you given Pete the Moresco case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he there with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him what I told you, then. About the news conference.”

  “Yessir.” I hung up, eying Friedman as he lolled belly-up in my visitor’s chair, puffing on the cigar and absently brushing at his ash-spotted vest.

  “I’d offer you a cigar,” he said, “but it’d be bad for your wind.”

  I glanced at the clock, then took ten minutes to outline the Moresco case, finishing with the admonition that the captain wanted something newsworthy by five P.M.

  Friedman grunted. “The captain has one failing. He expects us to write his press-conference material for him.”

  I thought about it, then slowly nodded.

  “He’s also been saying too much to the reporters lately. One of these days he’s going to get himself socked with a libel suit. Whereupon he’ll lose his clear shot at the deputy chiefs job.” Friedman aimed the soggy end of his cigar at me, his shrewd, narrowed eyes suddenly serious. “You should tell him, Frank. You’re old football buddies—army buddies. You should buy him a drink and pick the right time and tell him to let the reporters work a little harder. Christ, Kreiger’s usually about as talkative as a cowboy sucking on a straw, and until just recently he was the same way with the press. Now, though—the past few weeks—when those reporters start working on him, he sings like a stoolie raising muscatel money.”