Badge of Evil (16 page)

Gould read his thoughts but only partly. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? We run into it all the time, teenage vandalism, no rhyme or reason to it.”

“It wasn’t teenagers.”

Gould blew out his breath in a disgusted sound. “Oh, for crying out loud, grow up, Holt! I thought we had all that settled this morning. What have you got, a complex or something? I’ve been willing to let bygones be bygones but you’re going to get yourself in real trouble if you don’t watch out.”

“I could always call a cop,” said Holt sarcastically.

“You may not have to,” Gould stared at him grimly. “According to the report, your brief case was stolen — if it really was — in front of the Buccios’ saloons. Where were you, Holt? Making a deal with the Buccios — or paying them off for taking that shot at you last night?”

“They offered to help me. That’s more than I’ve gotten from you. Maybe I should have taken them up on it.”

“Are you sure you didn’t?”

“Yes. Just like I’m sure of a lot of things.” Holt took a tight grip on his temper, willing to try once more. “Chief, this whole thing is ridiculous. We should be working together, not fighting each other. Surely it’s to your interest and the interest of your department to let me prove myself right or wrong, not to cover up.”

“I don’t need you to point out my duty,” said Gould inflexibly. “But I will do one thing for you, and that’s to make an appointment with one of the doctors at the state mental health clinic. Believe me, Holt, you need it.”

Holt rose and picked up the remnants of his brief case. “I guess we know where we stand. There’s just one other thing. I applied for a permit to carry a gun. Am I going to get it? And if so, when?”

Gould shrugged. “If you can show cause, yes. I’m not persecuting you, Holt, no matter what you may think. As to when, well, that just depends on how soon the application can be processed. Talk to Sergeant Quinlan — that’s his section.”

“Sure,” Holt agreed bitterly. “Did you ever hear of a mouse asking a cat for a trap?”

Outside, the boulevards were busy as the city’s workers, their day’s labours done, headed for their homes. Holt followed suit, although without the sense of accomplishment. But he knew nowhere else he might go. It was a cheerless silent house to which he returned. The glaziers had replaced the front window during his absence. Holt lowered the blinds before he turned on any lights.

He went to the telephone. He wanted badly to call Connie at her father’s ranch but, staring sombrely at the shot-pocked living room wall, finally decided against it. It would be his business to set her fears at rest, keep her from worrying too much, but in his present mood he knew he couldn’t carry the pretence off. With her sure instinct for hearing more than his words, Connie would end up by being more troubled than before. He would call her in the morning. Maybe a night’s sleep would make the situation appear brighter. Maybe he would think of something to do.

Right now he felt trapped and helpless. “Exhibit A,” he murmured to the scarred wall. Then he looked down at the slashed brief case in his hand. “Exhibit B.” With the rest of the alphabet yet to come.

“Young man with a book” Adair had dubbed him today. Holt didn’t feel like a man to beware. A book might be a fine civilized weapon when your opponents also fought with books, but tonight it didn’t seem to be any protection at all.

H
E
ate a cold and meagre supper from the contents of the refrigerator, and then sat brooding over his coffee at the kitchen table. He didn’t feel like settling in his easy chair in the damaged living room. He was already sufficiently aware that his enemy watched from outside, the enemy he wouldn’t be able to catch watching even if he crept outside and looked for him.

He wondered, since it was now the night shift, if Quinlan had taken over. Or maybe McCoy never slept; maybe he had no eyelids, like a snake. Or maybe the captain wouldn’t trust his sergeant with a such a delicate job. Quinlan nowadays would make a rather conspicuous and lumbering shadow, what with his crippled knee.

So, if anyone, it must be McCoy outside, watching from the shadows. McCoy alone.

Holt sat up straight abruptly. His new idea was a rigid one.

McCoy alone! What if all the time it had been McCoy alone? Holt began to fit it together. There had been a fragment of the idea when he’d told Adair that McCoy had fired the warning shotgun because Quinlan would have used his fists. There had been another fragment in the Hall of Records when he had noticed that McCoy gave trial testimony far oftener than Quinlan. And now Holt realized that it was not necessary for both members of the legendary detective team to be guilty.

If there was a choice, it had to be McCoy. He had the mind for it, the quiet subtlety to play his tricks through the years. A single monomania — for that was what it amounted to — was simpler to believe in than two. It was also easier to believe that one man had fooled the public and his devoted partner all this time than to believe two men had agreed on perfidy and neither had made a mistake up to now. And if McCoy alone was guilty, that would explain why the two detectives had paid separate visits to Farnum in his cell. McCoy’s visit had been the purposeful one, Quinlan’s a simple matter of curiosity.

Holt shivered with excitement. The picture was simplifying, the shadows were taking on more definable edges. He didn’t over-rate himself as an amateur psychologist, but as a successful attorney he had to have more than a feel of facts; he also had to have a feel for people. And this new conception of the two men felt right. McCoy the plotter, the over-reacher, the too long arm of the law. Quinlan the plodder, the faithful assistant, unimaginative enough to be fooled by his superior.

And if the truth about McCoy could be proved to Quinlan … Holt shook his head. His imagination was running full blast but he couldn’t imagine Quinlan turning on McCoy. There probably wasn’t any proof sharp enough to cleave that tough old friendship, or quick enough to avoid Quinlan’s rage of battering fists.

The idea seemed to be a dead end for the time being, but at least the thinking had resurrected Holt’s desire for action. He wanted to make a move in some direction, no matter how dark and hopeless. He began by consulting the telephone for Douglas Fenn’s home address.

The foreman of the county grand jury lived in one of the city’s oldest, and still most fashionable, residential districts. His big two-storey house, Georgian style, was hidden from the street by a row of tall fir trees in front and protected on the other three sides by an ivy-covered brick wall. There were several automobiles parked on the curving driveway that arched past the front door. Holt left his own car on the street.

A maid in a crisp black uniform answered his ring and informed him that Mr. and Mrs. Fenn were entertaining friends. When Holt insisted, she agreed to inform Fenn of his presence. “What name shall I say, sir?”

“Adair,” said Holt without hesitation, since the truth had gotten him nowhere earlier. He was left to wait in the reception hall, a high-ceilinged room whose spiral staircase led to the sleeping quarters upstairs. It was nearly large enough to hold Holt’s entire house.

The owner of the mansion came striding in almost immediately. He was a corpulent red-faced man with a shining bald head and veined cheeks. His toothy grin vanished when he discovered Holt.

“I thought Adair wanted to see me,” he said, looking around irritably for the servant who had misinformed him. “Where is he?”

“I’m afraid I gave your maid the wrong impression,” Holt explained. “I’m from Adair’s office. My name is Mitchell Holt.”

“Oh.” From Fenn’s expression, Holt knew that he was acquainted with the name, and unfavourably. “Well, I’m afraid I’m busy right now, Mr. Holt. I’m entertaining some guests.” In his hand, Fenn held a sizeable bundle of paper currency, toy money, and Holt guessed that he had interrupted a game of Monopoly or something similar. “I’d suggest you come by my office.”

“I tried that. You wouldn’t see me.”

“I see,” said Fenn coolly. “And so you decided to force your way in here by giving Esther a fictitious name. It won’t work, Mr. Holt. I don’t intend to talk to you.”

“What are you afraid of? I don’t bite.”

“I’m not afraid of anything. But I don’t intend to waste my time on crackpots or to get involved in your schemes. Mr. Rackmill has told me all about you.”

Holt bit his lip. “As foreman of the grand jury, you have a duty to listen — even to crackpots.”

“Not in my own home. Goodnight, Mr. Holt. My guests are waiting.”

“A lot of people are waiting, Mr. Fenn, including some men who may be in prison unjustly.” Fenn made an impatient gesture with the hand that held the money and turned away. Holt called after him, “You’re not giving me much choice. You’ll have to consider my findings if I have to send them to you registered mail.”

“That’s your privilege. But don’t assume that that means you’re going to get any action — or cheap publicity, either.” And he was gone before Holt could frame a suitable reply. From the distant party came a faint burst of laughter. Somebody had won something.

Holt didn’t have to be told that it was not he. The maid appeared discreetly to usher him out and he walked slowly back to his car. Luck had been running against him so consistently that he wouldn’t have been surprised to discover a flat tyre. But the car seemed in good shape; better shape, Holt reflected morosely, than he himself at the moment.

“Now what?” he muttered aloud. There appeared to be no answer except to go home and Holt accepted it. He drove slowly, as if hoping to encounter some solution to his dilemma around the next corner but when he finally turned into his driveway it still eluded him.

The garage door was down and Holt didn’t have enough energy left to raise it. Garages were something of a useless appendage, anyway, in Southern California’s mild climate, and so he left his car sitting in the driveway where he had halted it. Automatically, he reached for his brief case; it was already in the trash can. But that reminded him of something else, so he unlocked the glove compartment and removed the pistol which, as yet, he carried in violation of the law. Holt shoved it in his pocket and plodded wearily for the back door.

He was crossing the breezeway, clearly outlined against the night sky, when the shot came.

T
HIS
attack was meant to kill. The bullet tugged at the lapel of Holt’s coat in passing and then went on its way with a complaining whine at having missed. Holt plunged forward on to the patio concrete, shaken but unhurt. He drew his pistol and then, cursing his stupidity, recalled that he had neglected to load it. So he lay still, hoping that his assassin would think that the first shot had found its mark and that there was no need for a second.

Holt heard nothing but this did not reassure him since he remembered the catlike quiet of McCoy’s movements. He began to imagine sounds where there were none and his body refused to obey logic. On his hands and knees, Holt crawled rapidly for the sanctuary of the back door.

He was halfway there when he heard a noise, and it was not his imagination this time. Holt experienced a moment of pure terror when he realized that his attacker was not behind him as he had supposed, but in front of him — between him and safety. There was no escape. Frozen in a crouch, like an animal at bay, Holt waited for the bullet that would kill him.

It didn’t come. Instead, a woman’s frightened voice whispered, “Mitch! Is that you?”

So delicious was the relief that it didn’t even occur to Holt to be surprised to find Connie here instead of miles away in Mexico. He sprang up and gathered her into a fierce embrace. The corner of the house cut them off from ambush from the street. “Connie, baby,” he said. “God, you scared me to death!” He reflected that he had not been so stupid, after all, in not loading his pistol. Had it been loaded he might well have shot his own wife in blind panic. That thought served to remind him that she now shared his danger and he hustled her toward the back door. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought I told you — ” He stopped abruptly in both movement and speech as he realized that they were not alone. A man barred their way on the porch.

“Oscar brought me back,” Connie said.

Holt shook hands with Connie’s brother. Both men had to shift their pistols to their left hands to accomplish this but neither saw anything humorous in it. It was a night for the bizarre.

Holt hustled them into the kitchen but refused to turn on any lights. He crept through the dark house, his wife and brother-in-law trailing him, and peered out the front windows. He saw nothing but shadows. He doubted if McCoy had lingered after shooting at him; he had probably escaped on foot to where he had left his automobile and now was undoubtedly miles away from the scene of the attempted assassination. Just the same, Holt didn’t feel like taking any chances. He told the others why, briefly.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Connie kept asking him, adding incongruously, “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“I bruised myself a little when I flopped but I guess that’s all. I don’t know what the bullet did to my coat.” Holt hugged her reassuringly. “Now tell me about you. Why’d you come back, Connie? I didn’t want you to be mixed up in this.”

“Did you actually think I was going to stay away? As soon as I got Nancy settled, I came back. I belong here — with you.”

Holt was so glad of her presence, and the comfort he drew from it, that he couldn’t argue convincingly. Even if he had been able, it probably wouldn’t have mattered to Connie. She said positively, closing the discussion, “A wife’s place is with her husband, and I’m staying.”

“She’s right, you know,” Oscar Mayatorena chimed in. He was just a youngster, the youngest of the family, a slim handsome boy with dark curly hair and a prominent nose. He was somewhat Americanized, through a social life that extended on both sides of the border, but not so much as his sister. “And I am here to help you, Mitch.”

Oscar still held his pistol and he flourished it. Holt viewed the weapon dubiously. “That’s swell, but just what did you have in mind?’’