Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (28 page)

"
Oh,” said Mendoza. "I begin not to like
it too. My God, on top of--"

"Listen to the list," said Goldberg,
unfolding a sheet of paper. "They or whoever took an old
Springfield .22 rifle, a Ruger Standard Single-Six .22, an S. and W.
.357 Magnum, a .38 CoIt Trooper, an Iver-Johnson Supershot .22, a
Whitney Lightning .22 automatic, and three of the gunsmith's own
target revolvers--he's a pro shot--a CoIt Python .357 Magnum, a CoIt
Cfficers' Match Model .38 revolver, and an S. and W. Target .45. And
about twenty rounds of ammo for all nine guns."

"
¡Santa Maria!
"
said Mendoza. "Is he starting a little private war?"

"That may be too close for comfort," said
Goldberg soberly. "Tell you what just crossed my mind--a gang of
juveniles. Planning a rumble with something new added."

"
¡Por Dios!
And you could be right," said Mendoza. "God, on top of all
the rest of this-- We can only hope, if that's so, the rumble isn't
planned for tonight. Thanks for the warning, anyway."

"I could be just woolgathering," said
Goldberg, sneezing and groping for the inevitable Kleenex. "Just
thought you ought to know. All but one of them handguns, you know,
and all that ammo--"

"Yes indeed."

Sergeant Lake came back and handed Mendoza a .38
Police Special, a shoulder holster, and a box of ammunition.

"
Hey, what's up?” said Goldberg. "You
never pack a gun unless it's something damn serious."

"I think," said
Mendoza, taking off his jacket, "we're on damn serious business
tonight, Saul."

* * *

Nobody else thought so for quite a while. Dwyer said
to Scarne, "Work our tails off on an all-night job, just because
he gets a wild hunch! There's nothing to say the Slasher's holed up
in that area. Why just that area?"

"First cast," said Scarne gloomily, "I
guess."

"My God, sure, we sweat it out all night and
don't find him because he's a block outside the line our Luis drew on
the map!"

But Mendoza was the one who gave the orders. They set
it up, with the fifty-six men from Traffic and those available in the
homicide office--Dwyer, Scarne, Palliser, Piggott, Landers--and
Higgins and Galeano would be in later.

There were some residential streets in the area they
were covering, but more of it was business. The residential streets
were shabby and poor, and a lot of those old houses had derelict
shacks built at the rear of the lots; a few still had henhouses
standing from years back before the town was a city. But along the
main drags--San Pedro, Main, Los Angeles, Third and Second, First and
Temple--were many kinds of small business and some large: a solid
block of warehouses, some, they discovered, empty. Store owners were
called, keys to the empty buildings were sent for, the men were
briefed. They assigned one crew of men, in pairs, to two-square-block
sections, and started them out. It was, of course, very unlikely that
their boy was holed up in a private residence; but if there was an
empty house somewhere even that was possible.

They got the men all down there by five-thirty, with
seven cars roaming at random, and the operation started. Dwyer,
paired off with Landers, was still grumbling. They were let out of a
squad car with the other two men, both uniformed, who were on this
particular block with them; Dwyer looked at the building on the
corner, a four-story warehouse, blank-faced. "Hell of a waste of
time," he said. "Just because Mendoza the brain gets a
hunch--"

"Hey, I've heard of him," said one of the
uniformed men interestedly. "Is this one of his deals?"

"One of his wild deals. We're supposed to look
for an open window or something this boy could have got in by--but
I've got the keys. You go round to the side and look, and then come
back."

In many streets other men were dropped, began their
search. They made polite requests of householders and shopkeepers; in
almost all cases they met no resistance. Over on Stevens Street,
Officers Carlson and Ramirez ran into a belligerent householder who
tried to start a fight, so they hailed a patrol car, put him in it to
cool, went through the house, and found several hundred gallons of
homemade beer in the garage. But there weren't many cases like that.

The dogs and their handlers arrived. By that time the
word had got out that a mass raid of cops was in the neighborhood,
and people came out to stare, form little crowds. The dogs fascinated
them, of course.

And then it was getting on for eight-thirty, and the
dark had come down full, not insidiously and reasonably as it does
elsewhere; the sky changed from pink-streaked silver blue to full
dark within fifteen minutes, and after that the dark was studded with
the men's flashlights, little eyes of light moving along the
sidewalks, and, here and there where a house or building was empty,
moving past windows inside.

Mendoza was over on Temple Street with Palliser then.
"For God's sake," he said to the driver of a squad car at
the curb, "can't we get these people off the streets?"
Little knots of people stood about, at front doors, under street
lights. "They've been warned--they ought to know--"

"
You think he might try another one, with all
this force out and about?"

"We don't know," said Mendoza. "With
one like that, who can say?"

"Well, we can tell
'em to go home," said the driver, "but it's supposed to be
a free country." He gunned the car up to the nearest little
group, got out, and began to talk to them.

* * *

That kind of job was always a tiresome one; at the
same time, tonight, the men were all a little keyed up at the thought
that they might, just might, find themselves unexpectedly facing the
Slasher ....

It was ten twenty-three when Patrolmen McLelland and
Leslie, both of the Wilcox Street station, came out of an ancient
brick office building on Los Angeles Street and paused to light
cigarettes. The office building was on a corner, and a little wind
had got up; they went round the side of the building to get their
lights, and Leslie said, "Half these old places ought to be
knocked down. Did you see the state of those lavatories?"

McLellar1d opened his mouth to answer, and there was
a sharp crack; Leslie staggered, dropping his cigarette and shoving
McLelland against the brick wall. "Jesus!” he said. "That
was a--" A second shot barked and the slug hit the building an
inch from McLelland's right ear.

Both men dropped flat in the next second. "You
hit?"

"Just nicked me, I think." Leslie explored,
said, "Went through the shoulder padding. VK/That the
hell--Where's he shooting from? Can you--"

"Over there--kitty--corner across the
intersection, I think. Try to cover me." McLelland, gun out,
crawled up toward the corner and around it. The side street was all
dark, across there, and the street lamp at the corner was out. This
block of Los Angeles Street was deserted at night, and not well
lighted.

About four buildings up, just passing under one of
the feeble street lights, were two men walking in his direction.
McLelland debated about calling to warn them to stop. Then a gun
spoke again--a heavy gun, by the sound--and one of the two men spun
round and fell flat. The  other one stopped in his tracks and
then stooped over the first man, so the second bullet flew over his
head and made a sharp spat on the building front.

McLelland turned and sent a snap shot toward where he
thought the gunman was. This thing had started so suddenly that he'd
hardly had time to feel surprise. He just found himself thinking
blankly, What the hell? Now, lying there, he heard footsteps across
the intersection--soft, but audible; steps walking, then
running--away. Leslie heard that too. He came up panting. "For
God's sake--" he said. "You hit? What--"

The other man came up to them. "You're cops?"
he said, seeing McLelland in uniform. "Thank God. Mac's dead.
Did you see that? He's dead. We were just walkin' along, talking
about politics, and he'd just been saying about all this lousy
foreign aid, and then-- He's dead. And his eye's all--his eye--"
He leaned over, retching, and Leslie took his arm. McLelland, gun
still in hand, ran down to where the man lay; he'd been neatly
drilled through the left eye, probably a fluke shot.

He looked up the street and saw a black and white
squad car coming. It screeched to a halt beside him.

"
Were those shots?" asked the driver.

"Sounded like a .38," said McLelland. "This
poor devil's a D.O.A. A sniper-- I think he was just shooting at
anything that showed, way it--"

From about a block away a gun began to talk--a
fusillade of shots, in rapid succession. "For God's sake,"
said the squad-car driver, "has war been declared?" He
picked up the hand radio. "Car 104 at L.A. and Woods. Sniper
just shot a man here. Shot at two of our boys."

"He went up Woods," said McLelland.

"He went up Woods toward Main."

The radio crackled excitedly at him. They heard more
shots, a little farther off. "Awk!" said the radio as if in
comment. "Join car 194 at junction of Main and Woods. Repeat--"

"What about us?"
asked McLelland. But the radio didn't say anything about that, so
they stayed there and got the names of the two men, quick and dead,
and after the ambulance came they went on with the search. That had
been their orders.

* * *

Mendoza and Palliser were in an empty factory on
Third Street when they heard about the sniper. A uniformed man came
down the corridor looking, said, "Lieutenant? They sent me over
to find you. There's a sniper loose. Last they heard of him, he was
on Woods Street somewhere--killed a civilian and shot at two of our
men. Then he took some shots at a squad car along Main--"

"
¡Porvida!
"
said Mendoza, and then he said suddenly, "That's our boy. Come
on. You've got a car? Let's get going."

"But how could-- A sniper?" said Palliser
incredulously. "You mean like that Corning thing last year? Just
some nut loose with a gun? I don't--"

Mendoza was hustling him along. "
¡Vamos,
vamos!
It's our boy--I see how his mind
works,
pues si
. I
said, just enough sense. He wants to kill, he likes to kill with the
knife, but we've told people what he looks like now--and you can kill
people from a distance with a gun. With guns. My God, yes--Goldberg's
boy too, and that young arsenal--"

They got over to the corner of Woods and Main at
about eleven o'clock. Men were looking at the squad car, whose right
front door was riddled with bullet holes. A uniformed man was propped
against it ‘with his jacket off and a makeshift bloody bandage
round one arm. "For God's sake, isn't anyone following him up?
Any idea which way he went?" demanded Mendoza.

A shattering explosion of shots in the distance
answered him. He commandeered the nearest squad car, piled three men
in the back and Palliser beside him, and gunned it in the direction
of the shots. They roared up Main, with its lights and crowds
thinning here, to Winton Street; down there to the right were three
squad cars, slewed around in the street, and a little crowd, and four
uniformed men. Mendoza swung the car down there.

"For the love of God, haven't you people any
sense?" one of the men was demanding impatiently. "Scatter--get
away--" A second man in uniform was leaning against the side of
a car, clasping his shoulder; blood seeped between his lingers.

The gun barked, and the other man's plea was heeded.
Several women screamed, the crowd scattering back into the shadows of
hedges and houses. This was a residential street. The sniper was
apparently behind a hedge across the street.

There was a woman lying in the street beside the
cars. "She's only winged," said one of the patrolmen. "I
put a tourniquet on, and the ambulance is on its way. Now let's have
a look at you, Bill---"

They were all crouched clown, now, behind a squad
ear, and they all had their guns out.

"What the hell is all this, anyway?" asked
the wounded man, sounding indignant. "All of a sudden--"

"It's our boy," said Mendoza calmly,
peering round the bumper long enough to fire a shot at that hedge. "I
know. We've flushed him."

"The-- That's crazy," said the other
patrolman. "Excuse me, sir, but he's always used a knife, I
don't see--"

"I think he's beyond caring how he kills,"
said Mendoza, firing another shot. Two more bullets hit the other
side of the squad car, and then there was silence. The woman lying in
the street moaned. "Don't tell me we've got him? Cover me,
please." He moved around the car, bent low, made a dash for the
shelter of the hedge across the street. His flashlight flicked on
briefly; he straightened.

"Gone--fan out after him--all directions! John,
come with me--call up some more cars, will you?"

Palliser ran to keep up with him as he started down
toward San Pedro. "I don't see how you make this out--all of a
sudden--"