The Knave of Hearts

by Dell Shannon

  It was surely, surely more than random coincidence, to begin with, that the man who lived in that place where he’d buried Mary Ellen had known her, that there should have appeared some reason for his having killed her. Well, perhaps by itself it was all perfectly natural, looked at in separate segments, as it were: her meeting this boy, this Jim Fairless, at the college, and then the Haineses, and because she lived within eight or ten blocks of them, the Haineses hiring her that way. And it had been quite by chance—or had it?—that he happened to live in that place, where he walked past the Haineses yard every day. But he remembered how surprised he had been, afterward, when it came out in the papers where she had lived, in the same district—roughly—as he did; that was something more than coincidence, when he’d actually met her at the college, a good three or four miles away, maybe more. People from much farther off, hundreds of them, going to that college: and the one girl he spoke to, Mary Ellen.

  Of course, say it hadn’t been: say it had been a girl from—from Huntington Park or somewhere: not knowing, he’d still have put her in Allan Haines’ yard, probably, and then They would have looked at Haines just the same, wouldn’t They?—and maybe Haines would have it been accused just as it had happened.

  Nevertheless, it was odd. When he thought about the others it seemed more than coincidence, too. The way he had met them casually (but as if it was arranged) in places where people round about didn’t know him, so he could say whatever he pleased.

  Of course he had been careful, there: the fact that They hadn’t found him was mostly his own planning. And yet, when he thought, why had he happened to meet just those women? All coincidence—the random chance—and yet, could God have arranged it particularly, was it conceivable that they were all due punishment? Rhoda and Julie, obviously bad women—and could it be that the others had possessed some taint, some potential evil which—?

  Beyond what they all had, of course: the whole source of temptation.

  It was a queerly exciting thought, for—in the first place—if it was not intended that he should be brought to punishment by men, then all his carefulness had never been necessary and it was not necessary to feel any anxiety now or again. However cunning They might be (and he had been much encouraged to read what the papers said of Them, for responsible newspapers would not print falsehoods) nothing They could do would bring Them any closer to him. And—secondly—as a corollary to that, nothing he could do would put him in any danger.

  There was nothing to say if it was true, about those others; but he’d known about the evil in Rhoda and Julie, of course, and now (as if it was intended he should know, and be reassured?) he knew about this other one too. That woman, the one who had introduced him to her first, mentioning it quite casually (as so many people did, such things, here and now). A divorce, she said. Something about—One of those impulsive teenage marriages, quite short I believe, but a pity all the same. A pity. A woman, then—this one who excited him, interested him, this Alison—who had deserted her lawful husband, and that was not only evil of itself but led to other—

  And so perhaps, if the idea was true, it was indeed meant— But he must be very sure.

  They didn’t seem to know very much, certainly, all this while: as stupid as the papers said? Something in what the papers said: there must be. Of course. Two weeks since They’d found Julie, and nearly seven weeks, eight, since They’d known Allan Haines hadn’t killed Mary Ellen. Still, nothing bringing Them any nearer. Was there? He didn’t think so, he didn’t see how there could be, but he’d like to know. He went on staring up at the ceiling, lying motionless there, listening to the surf outside across the highway—and thinking about the idea.

  * * *

  On Tuesday the Telegraph came out with a front-page head, Key Witness Held Incommunicado? Somehow, God knew how, a rumor had got out—garbled, of course—about Madge Parrott. They didn’t know who, or why, or in connection with which murder, but Brad Fitzpatrick made quite a story of it regardless. That little word alleged had saved many a newspaper from a libel action. The story was all secondhand report and speculation, but it was surprising how few ordinary readers discriminated—it was in print, it must be so. The impression a hasty reading left was that the police had had presumably sensational information from a new witness, whom they were holding secretly, refusing all cooperation with the press. There was a subhead, The Public Should Be Told, and references to the Gestapo.

  Mendoza saw it on the way downtown, stopped and bought a copy, and arrived at his office white-hot with anger. The office men took one look at him and examined their consciences uneasily, as did every other man he hauled up before him in the next hour. But what it came down to was—no one in particular to blame: reporters always hanging around, and a thoughtless word muttered within twenty feet of one like Fitzpatrick was enough.

  Nevertheless, they all got a tongue-lashing about careless talk; and all but a couple of them retired shaken. It was rare for Mendoza to vent his temper on Juniors, and it was somehow more devastating to be reviled for a fool in three-syllable words, packed in ice and tied up with cutting sarcasm, than if he had used a horsewhip. Hackett remained imperturbable in a corner; and Sergeants Curraccio and Lake, who long ago had learned to bow to the storm on occasion and let nature take its course, said, "Yes, sir," and waited stolidly for dismissal. When it came, Lake was even brave enough to say, "Excuse me, Lieutenant, but there’s someone waiting to see you."

  "Unless it’s the Chief, let him wait!" said Mendoza. "I’ve wasted enough time on this damned business. Get out, get out!" Lake sighed and did so. Mendoza swung round in his swivel chair to face the window, lit a cigarette with an angry snap of his lighter. "The public should be told! ;Qué va! Show hands round the table, boys, all friends here!"

  "Oh, well," said Hackett mildly, "a little something there, Luis. They’ve got a right to know whether their tax money is going to fools or not. And you’ve got to admit the other papers have been pretty fair on the whole. After all, they had something on us to start—Allan Haines."

  "¡Estupido!” said Mendoza violently. "That’s it, that’s it! Enough to make any citizen uneasy—he might find himself in Haines’ shoes any day! Which would not be enjoyable, but if it’s an honest error at least he knows the odds against it—and that, when it does happen, it’s usually rectified before they lock the door to the gas chamber. Fitzpatrick and his ilk slant it to read that we’re either morons or a new Gestapo—a little of both—damn the public! And that’s bad, that couldn’t be worse, because in the last analysis it’s the public we look to for help and cooperation."

  "Don’t lecture me," said Hackett. "I can read too."

  "Then you’re a damn sight smarter than seven of ten ordinary citizens! It is alleged, sure—they spell it out, but what does it mean to them? It says in the paper, the paper said! Obvio, it’s true, it’s in print! And so—and s0,"—he swung back and pointed his cigarette at Hackett—"how many people the boys are out talking to, questioning, have been a lot harder to get at, have thought what the hell, why waste time, tell them anything—the cops can’t see through a pane of glass anyway! How many have been scared of getting in trouble with these arrogant, brutal cops, and told them the easy lie—don’t know nothing about it!—when one of them might have given us just one valuable little pointer—¡Válgame Dias! Sure, let Fitzpatrick say anything he pleases short of libel about us, but if I say he’s delayed the hunt, put a spoke in our wheel, how he’d yell foul!"

  "Tómelo con calma, take it easy. Just one of those things. Here’s the latest news. Myself, I think we’ve done pretty well for ten days on the Andrews list. Twelve out of the twenty."

  "What do they look like?" Mendoza took the reports, glanced over the names.

  “Offhand, I’d say three out of the bunch are worth looking at a little closer. I’ve checked them—the top ones. Item, all three correspond roughly to the description. Item—"

  "Yes. George Hopper, William Bell, Michael- Yes, I see. Resident a
t the house twenty to thirty months ago—approximate dates, of course, damn the woman. Clerk, salesman, clerk."

  "Not very elusive," said Hackett. "A couple of them, she remembered where they worked, and they were still there. Some more big as life in the phone book. The rest were tougher—So Bert and Tom and I divided ’em up and went to look at them, and these three come closest to the description. Three or four more we can definitely mark off on that count-bald, or fat, or something. Four or five of ’em left the Andrews house when they got married, but of course that doesn’t really say much. He might be. I don’t think so, you don’t think so, but it happens. But for what they’re worth, I think these three look at least as promising as a few others we’ve got."

  "Yes, we’ll look at them. But from a little distance, Art. Through men who can smell a reporter when one’s hanging around, and whose tongues aren’t hung in the middle. Bert and Farnsworth, maybe."

  "Why the long way round? This isn’t a pro deal, where we might warn off the big boy sniffing around open. Everybody who’s innocent here—and there’s only one guilty man—will cooperate, answer questions. In spite of what you say about the ordinary citizen, most of ’em have a kind of touching blind faith in us, you know."

  "Even if that’s so, we won’t give Fitzpatrick or anybody else any small excuse to yell Gestapo. We can’t afford to. Claro está, a lot of those on some other lists of possibles we’ve got, men with records—nobody cares what we do there. But let us openly approach one man who holds a fairly good job, substantial-looking citizen, respectable background, and what’ll be the next thing?—pray make it public why, Lieutenant! What’s your ground for casting public suspicion? This case has attracted too much publicity as it is. Things the press usually expects us to keep to ourselves—the cry goes up here, let the public know! And what grounds, Art, what the hell could we say there? You know and I know, on a thing like this, you look everywhere you can, it’s just logical routine to look the places we’re looking, in Haines’ office, in that neighborhood, and so on—but it doesn’t look that way to a civilian with no experience of hunting. So we have an open session with, say, this George Hopper,” he flicked the top name on the list, "and the press boys print it, Suspect Questioned, you think Hopper as an honest fellow—if he is—likes it? How come suspect, he says—and so do the press boys. And we say, Why, he once lived in Mrs. Andrews’ house. That’s all, boys. Just that. You think it makes sense to anybody who hears it? There’s the moronic cops for you, grasping at straws, trampling roughshod over a man’s reputation!"

  "O.K., 0.K., I got your idea in the first sentence, I agree with you. I’ve been a cop a while too, I know how these things go. Calm down, Luis, or you’l1 be the one to get high blood pressure. All I will say is that it’s goin’ to make it a harder job, posing as poll takers and insurance investigators and contacting acquaintances and neighbors instead .... This is getting you down, boy, you’re letting it ride you.”

  Mendoza didn’t answer that for a minute, lighting a new cigarette; then he said in a more restrained tone, "I know, I know. Sorry. But you know one of the things I keep thinking about, Art? Today’s the thirteenth day of November. It’s seventy-eight days since Pauline McCandless was killed. And between some of them there was quite a gap, six months, nine months, but he only waited two months and a little between Mary Ellen and Celestine Teitel. We don’t want another one.”

  Hackett said, "God, no .... I’ll contact Bert, get started on these. You know what’s in my mind? You better tune up your private radar and come through with a hunch, because I think on this one it’s a long chance routine’s going to get us there."

  FOURTEEN

  But Mendoza had no hunches. He sat there doing nothing for a while, after Hackett had gone; the letdown from the outburst of anger had drained him of energy. He had slept three hours last night, finally, and all the force left in him was nervous mental force. Sometime today he must get something to make him sleep tonight.

  He roused himself at last and began to look over the reports. No, it didn’t show, to make an exciting story—the plodding hard work, the collecting of statistics. They had a lot of information now, on a lot of their possibles. (And Romeo might not be on any list they had.) They had, of course—praise heaven for small mercies—been able to eliminate some, for good reasons: this man had been in jail for two years; that one was vouched for in San Francisco at the time of one of the murders; that one had been in the hospital. But because of the little they had on their man, they hadn’t too many reasons to eliminate. There might, as Hackett said, be a wife and family: he might not look the way they thought at all.

  Presently Sergeant Lake came in and reminded him of the man waiting. A Mr. John Lockhart. No, he wouldn’t say what he wanted, just to talk to the man in charge. No, he wouldn’t be fobbed off with anything lower.

  "I know what he wants," said Mendoza. "He wants to tell me all about his theory of this case, which he’s sure I’ll find interesting because for so many years he’s been an amateur student of crime—or possibly, worse yet, of the psychopathic criminal. He may even be a professor of psychology or something. He may be a nut who wants to confess to the murders, and so we’ll waste time checking and find he hadn’t been released from Camarillo when McCandless was killed. Tell him to go away, Jimmy. But tell him politely. Offer him somebody else aga1n."

  "That might be," said Lake. "They do come in. Though he doesn’t look like a nut, Lieutenant."

  "Does he match our description for Romeo?"

  "Well, you couldn’t hardly say so. About sixty-five, five-seven, upwards of two hundred pounds, and bald."

  "I don’t want him. Shuffle him back in the pack."

  Lake grinned and went out. Mendoza brooded over the reports some more, and at twelve-fifteen left, to run the gauntlet again and get some lunch. He had quite a time getting past the press downstairs. The Telegraph story had caught the rest of them off balance; they all wanted to know about it. Mendoza told them, without naming the witness. They had questioned approximately lifty people with just as important information, he told them, and there was no reason to hold any of them in or out of jail as material witnesses; the police were not doing so.

  "Yah, tell that to the marines!" Fitzpatrick heckled from the back row. "We’ve got definite information—"

  "From the ex-patrolman, retired, who changes the targets on the practice range?" inquired Mendoza icily. "You shouldn’t waste your talents with the Telegraph, Mr. Fitzpatrick—you’d make better money writing pulp fiction." He pushed past them and they let him go, muttering, breaking up into little cliques behind him.

  But when he was settled in a rear booth in the quiet dimness of Federico’s, where a lot of headquarters men habitually lunched, he found he wasn’t hungry. He had not wanted breakfast either; he had a dull headache from the sleeplessness and, probably, hunger, and he knew he should eat. He ordered a meal, and had two fingers of rye, then black coffee, beforehand; when the plate was set before him, he could not eat more than a few mouthfuls. After a while, when he’d had a second cup of coffee, he beckoned the waiter and asked for more rye. It was Adam, the tall, grave Jamaican Negro; and he leaned on the table and said, "You didn’t eat hardly any of your luncheon, Lieutenant Mendoza. I never knew you had a drink middle of the day, except once or twice. It’s in my mind, you’re worrying over this bad fellow you’re looking for."

  "I suppose I am, Adam."

  "Liquor and no food, it won’t help you find him any sooner, Lieutenant. Better you let me bring you something else—if you don’t fancy the beef, I make up a real nice ham sandwich. Tide you over, like. And a little brandy in your coffee, sir, but that rough hundred-proof stuff, it’s only fit for Irishmen. They like to make whiskey so, let ’em—civilized folk got no call to drink it."

  Mendoza laughed and said, "No, it’s O.K., I’m not hungry. Bring me the rye. You know when I do want a drink, I want the most kick for my money."

  "Now, Lieutenant—"

&nbs
p; "Hell and damnation," said Mendoza softly, "are you trying to wet nurse me, boy? If I don’t get served here, there’s a bar three doors down."

  Adam bowed his head and said mournfully, "I serve you, sir."

  At one-fifteen Mendoza came back to the big new police building, and he was walking carefully and watching himself. The liquor he’d had, Hackett or another man would be feeling just a pleasant glow, but he wasn’t used to more than two at once, and it never took much to set him feeling it anyway. He knew logically he’d have been better off to force himself to eat, but the alcohol had set his brain working at normal speed, and that was what he’d expected and reached for. Just to take him over the afternoon, put some spurious energy in him, and tonight he’d take a couple of the little non-barbiturate sleeping tablets he’d got at the drugstore, and get a decent night’s sleep. And tomorrow he’d be himself again, operating on all cylinders.

  He didn’t know what the hell had got into him, letting a thing take him down physically like this. Getting old maybe. Maybe just that he was an egotist, couldn’t take criticism, couldn’t stand failure—even temporary. But the liquor had picked him up beautifully, if that was only temporary; he had stimulated a few vague ideas to buzzing round the back of his mind.

  Which was excellent, but no legwork himself today—better not drive. And if the one bright idea came to him, the inspired hunch—stirred up from the subconscious (if there was such a thing)—it’d be worth any little hangover afterward.

  He walked into the lobby and they were still there, waiting around in their little cliques. They formed the gauntlet again.

  "I just dare you, Sherlock, tell us anything definite you know about the killer yet! Don’t give us that one about warning him before you’re ready to close in—you admit it, you’re not in fifty miles of—"