Dirty Harry 06 - City of Blood (16 page)

And because Owens was his partner no longer, Harry felt relieved, shorn of the burden he’d been carrying around with him since Bressler had united them. He didn’t have to be responsible for Owens’ life. Only his own and that, God knows, was responsibility enough.

Dinner was to be at seven, right after Harry was due to get off from work (though with this case the work, the plodding routine of the work, never ended, and Harry stopped only when he was too exhausted to stand or focus his eyes). But by the time he arrived at the Owens home, the table was set and Mary Beth was waiting with an open bottle of Spanish red wine.

“I hear you’re worried I’m not eating well,” Harry teased her as he entered the house.

“Let’s just say I’m concerned. From the way Drake talks about you I wonder if you’re eating at all.”

“If you want to call half a tuna sandwich and a Big Mac eating, well, then I’m eating.”

The dinner that Mary Beth had prepared was somewhat more extravagant than half a tuna sandwich and a Big Mac in that it consisted of flounder broiled in a Dijon mustard sauce that gave it a tart yet subtle taste. The only problem was that Harry scarcely had any appetite left, no matter how good the food in front of him.

Owens asked him what was wrong. Although Harry usually made it a point to say nothing about his work on purely social occasions, the mystery of the Tocador murderer weighed so heavily on him that he couldn’t help himself. He feared that somewhere out in the city that very evening the man would strike again. What right did he have to be sitting here and enjoying excellent food and company?

So he told Owens and his wife about the case, much of which they already knew from the papers. And, of course, Owens had heard a good many stories that were floating around the department. But neither of them was aware of all the particulars. Without being specific (essentially because he couldn’t be specific), the police commissioner had, in a statement to the press, implied that there were significant leads in the case and that while an arrest might not be imminent it could be expected “shortly.” The idea behind this reassuring, and rather misleading, declaration was to lessen the growing anxiety of the populace and to bolster the public’s perception that the police were actually getting somewhere. A second motivation was the hope that if the perpetrator felt he was in danger, he might panic and do something stupid or just plain clumsy and in that way expose his identity.

Needless to say, from the mayor on down, extraordinary pressure was being applied now to invest the commissioner’s words with credibility. If the commissioner stated that there were significant leads well, goddamnit, somebody had better come up with them—and quickly. And being, more or less, at the bottom of this pressure cooker, Harry felt the heat most intensely.

“Now it seems to me,” Harry was saying, “we have two interlocking parts of the puzzle. In one part we know the identities of the victims. One is Martha Denby . . .”

“I’m still shocked that it could happen to such a sweet girl,” said Mary Beth who, while never regarding her as sweet in life, felt obliged to defend her honor now that she was dead.

Harry continued. “The other, just identified yesterday, was an out-of-work actor who drove a taxi on weekends. His name is Rick Hollister. That’s one-half of one part, that’s all we got. We have no trace of the murderer.

“All right, now the other part is even worse. That’s the Tocador slayings. In that part we not only don’t know who the killer is we don’t even know who the victims were. It’s been weeks now, and the forensic boys haven’t come up with anything that might somehow tell us who those two girls were. We’ve circulated ads in this part of the state and wired departments in most of the major cities in the country, requesting information on any missing women. And we’ve been deluged all right, but nothing connects. And no one’s stepped forward to claim the bodies. Whoever those girls were, if they’ve got anybody to cry over them, they’re doing it in private.

“Now it is my belief that if we’re to make any progress on this thing we have got to have more than one out of four pieces. If we knew who the Tocador girls were, we’d have something to go on.”

“How exactly do you mean, Harry?” Owens asked.

“Those girls were not your ordinary ten-dollar hookers, whatever else they were. And the Tocador is not your average sleazy hotel where you’ve got johns coming in night and day. It’s just the opposite, an old-time residential place. So that means the girls were expecting somebody, all right? From what Jim Corona says, Martha probably knew the man who murdered her. Which means that Martha and the Tocador pair probably had one man in common. We find out who the Tocador girls were hanging out with, match it up to somebody who would have access to Martha, and bingo, we might, just might, have our man.”

“So you have nothing at all to go on?” Drake persisted.

“What we’ve got are just a few scraps of clothing, a bit of suede, a bit of velvet, a bit of felt.”

Mary Beth looked suddenly fascinated. “How much of each would you say you have?”

Harry shrugged. It had been some time since he’d last examined the evidence. “A few tatters, and they’re pretty fragile at that because of the fire.”

“I wonder if I could take a look at them.”

“I don’t see why not. Why are you interested, if I may ask?”

“Well, I know a good deal about clothes. I am a wardrobe consultant—at least I was until they closed down the shooting.”

“And Mary Beth worked for a while at a boutique when we lived in L.A.”

“I’m convinced. Look, I’d be grateful for anything you can contribute.”

“OK, when can I see these tatters? Being unemployed as I am, I have plenty of free time these days. I can do it tomorrow morning if you’d like.”

“What about right now?”

“Harry, the lab’ll be closed now,” Owens pointed out.

“So we’ll rouse somebody and make him open up for us.”

“Don’t you stop for a minute?”

“When the killer stops I’ll stop,” said Harry and in such a way that Owens was immediately silenced.

It was not so easy to get a man to open up the lab, and when they succeeded more than an hour had passed. A cranky Walter White, armed with a set of keys he jangled in annoyance, greeted them in the hallway directly outside of the lab. He frowned upon seeing Mary Beth.

“She authorized?”

“I’m authorizing her,” Harry said.

White looked from her to Harry and back again. Owens he chose to ignore. “Oh, it’s one of those, eh?” He decided that he wasn’t about to engage Harry in an argument and opening the door, allowed all three to enter.

More time elapsed before White extracted the evidence from a bureau that held large cumbersome drawers. “Somebody fucked up the filing system,” he muttered more to himself than to his nocturnal visitors. “Can’t find a goddamn thing in all this mess.”

But he was being too pessimistic. He knew every nook and cranny and obscure crevice in this lab, and somehow he managed to find things even when they were misplaced or lost.

The shreds of clothing were stretched out on oversized mats and sealed in a plastic container to protect them from further deterioration. Unless you looked closely, one sample resembled the other, each being badly charred and torn.

But extremely brilliant light and magnifying glasses were available, and microscopes, too, if they were required, and in any case, Mary Beth had a practiced eye when it came to clothing. She was able to decipher the original material beneath the black coating even without resorting to the chemical analysis already run by the lab.

“This suede jacket,” she said after examining the six mats that had been presented to her. “You see the inside of it there?”

Harry really didn’t see it; it all looked equally scorched no matter from which angle the fabric was observed. But he nodded as did Owens who was peering over his wife’s shoulder.

“Silver fox fur, I’m almost certain of it. For some reason your people didn’t register it in the analysis. Now take this one.” She extended a finger toward the next mat. “This is cloche. It’s not from a dress or anything like that, it’s probably from a hat and I would imagine one of those sculptured antique hats that you rarely see women wearing anymore.”

She gazed up at Harry who was growing more impressed as she went on. “Keep going,” he urged her. “You’re doing fine.”

“This third one I’m not sure about. It’s suede, but not the same suede as the first fabric I looked at. But this fourth sample, you see the way it curves here. I’d say that what you have here is a kind of pants, knickers, bloomers, something baggy, not my style at all. But it’s a very recent thing in fashion, these baggy pants legs for women.

“These last two I can’t really say too much about. They’re just too far gone, so I guess you’ll have to rely on your lab analyses for them.”

She turned away from the evidence spread out before her on the table and shrugged almost in apology. “I wish I could do more for you.”

“No, no, really, you’ve been very helpful,” Harry assured her.

“You’re not just saying that.”

“No. All right, all this stuff, what you’re saying is that it’s the latest in fashion, glamorous, chic? Is that the proper conclusion to draw?”

“Oh yes.”

“Could you walk into a department store and buy this junk, you pardon the expression?”

Mary Beth shook her head determinedly. “Oh no. This is specialized, you would probably find these items in a classy boutique.”

“Maybe we are getting someplace,” Owens said.

Harry looked at him, noting his use of the plural; he seemed to be getting caught up in this case, too.

“But wait, I think the shop you want is a very unique place. Because of this cloche hat, you see.”

“How do you mean?”

“If it is antique like I think it is, then it was probably purchased at a store that specializes in accessories as well as highly experimental fashion. And if my guess is right one of these velvet numbers could be antique just like that hat.”

“Of course, all these things could have been purchased from different stores,” Owens said. “I don’t want to spoil the party or anything.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Harry admitted. “What do you think, Mary Beth?”

“I think that most of these things came from one, maybe two shops. These Tocador girls, as you call them, they undoubtedly had a great many clothes at home.”

“Wherever home is,” Harry added.

“And they could be expected to spend a lot of their time shopping. Which leads me to believe that for the image they wanted to project they very well might have relied on a kind of customer service. There might be a woman or a man, it could be either, who dressed them.”

“Like a fashion designer?” Owens suggested.

“I don’t think they were models though. Models you find may show off fancy clothes and very fashionable things, but as a rule most of the ones I know dress fairly simply on their own. No, these were girls who liked to costume themselves. At least that’s my guess. I could be wrong.”

“You could be, yes,” Harry said, “but since nobody else has come up with a better theory—in fact, nobody has come up with any theory—I am going to operate on the assumption that you are right, that there is such a store and that if I can find it, somebody there will be able to tell me who the Tocador girls are. A long shot but what the hell?”

“What I suggest you do, Harry, is to go to places like Daljeet’s on Haight or Tropics on Market. Or you might try Flora which is somewhere in Fairfax. They’re the kind of specialty boutiques that might be able to help you even if they don’t carry these exact sort of things.”

“You think you could write those names down for me? I would greatly appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Then she broke out in laughter that had both men looking at her in bewilderment.

“What is it?” her husband asked.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it. It’s just the idea of Harry marching from one boutique to another, asking if they sell antique cloche hats and velvet skirts. It strikes me as very funny.”

“I’ll just think of it as an education. Mary Beth, I owe you a dinner—and a dress.”

“Nothing like what these girls wore, please,” she said. “I’m just a simple country girl.”

“Thank God for that,” Owens breathed. “Imagine being married to them?” He gestured to the mats with their charred contents glimmering in the intensity of the light. It was almost as if they had collectively conjured up the two dead women from the remnants of the clothes they’d worn.

“I wonder if somebody was,” Harry said. “I wonder if somebody was.”

C H A P T E R
T w e l v e

A
fter undertaking an investigation into the nature of places like Hot Chilly, Orpheus, Mom’s Apple Grave, Tropics, and East/West Leather, Harry began to feel, in a word, foolish. Each boutique seemed to him more eccentric and more theatrical than the last. Who bought all this weird attire? he kept asking himself. Most of the clothes on exhibit seemed meant for a certain type, which to Harry’s mind was a sixteen-year-old girl with a lithe body, tight ass, small breasts, frizzy hair dyed a chilling shade of green or blue, who favored big tinted glasses and chewed gum interminably throughout the day and night.

He supposed he was prejudiced. His work, after all, seldom obliged him to explore the world of fashion, high, low, or retro, and understandably, he was in near total ignorance of the way it operated.

His presence in these shops was immediately noticed by proprietors and customers alike. They did not regard him with suspicion, but they certainly did give him some very curious looks. When he identified himself as a police officer, the salesperson he was addressing acted as though she—most often it was a she—was about to be arrested for some obscure crime she’d committed and then forgotten about. But that was not at all an unusual reaction. Everyone felt guilty about something, and it was Harry’s sense that a great many people were only waiting for a man with authority to tap them on the shoulder and announce that their time was up. While most of these individuals, randomly selected, would probably protest and assert their innocence, it was very likely that they would secretly believe the officer justified in making his arrest.