Felony File (19 page)

"
Let's say unrealistic," said Sanders
dryly. "No. We hope she's going to make it, but we're not saying
for sure yet. Of course we've pumped blood into her, and started I.V.
feedings—that's another thing, she's been pretty well starved and
dehydrated. And she was filthy—obviously hadn't had an opportunity
to bathe in some time. That, and the wrists and ankles, made us
deduce she'd been forcibly confined somewhere."

"
There wasn't anything on her at all?"

"Four things," said Sanders. "One of
them may be some help to you. You can see her if you'd like." He
led them down to the nearest nursing station, picked up an envelope
from the desk. "She was wearing rags of stockings and one
shoe—it's a fairly new shoe from Leeds." That was a
middle-priced chain shoe store.

"
And this." He shook the envelope and a
bracelet dropped into his palm; he handed it to Palliser. It was an
inexpensive gold-toned bracelet, and it was marked shallowly with a
name; some department stores sold these as novelties, the costume
jewelry not really en- graved, but cheaply incised with an electric
stylus. In rather shaky script, the letters on the I.D. bar of the
bracelet spelled out Linda Carr.

"I'll be damned," said Palliser. "That's
a break."

They had a brief look at her, motionless in the
hospital bed, nearly buried in bandages. Her face hadn't been
touched; she was a very pretty girl, a creamy-skinned blonde, and she
didn't look much more than twenty.

Without having to discuss it, they took the I.D.
bracelet back to Parker Center and up to Missing Persons, and
Lieutenant Carey had a look at their current files. When he came to
the right one he said, "Oh, yeah, the name rings a bell now. We
never followed it up because it looked to us like a voluntary
take-off, and she's over twenty-one. She was reported missing about
three weeks ago by an Arnold Sorenson. Listed as her employer. Haines
handled it, and he had a look, but he thought she'd probably just
taken off with a boy friend or on her own. Don't tell me it's turned
into a case for you?"

"
You'd better pray it doesn't," said
Landers, "or you and Haines may be up in front of Internal
Affairs for sloppy police work."

"
What's the address?" asked Palliser.

It was on La Brea Avenue: a ‘low-priced chain
restaurant, Denny's. Sorenson was there; he was the manager. He was a
big pear-shaped man in the forties, with thinning brown hair and
myopic blue eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He heard what they had
to say, and took off his glasses to mop his eyes, and said, "Oh,
my God, my good God. I was afraid something had happened to her, but
I never suspected anything as bad as that. I knew she wouldn't have
just walked off the job without telling me. She'd only been in
California six months, she needed the job, and she's a good steady
responsible girl."

"
Why did you report her?" asked Palliser.
"Why not her family?"

"
Because she hasn't got any," said Sorenson
simply.

"
She's an orphan, she was raised in some church
orphanage back in Illinois. She's only twenty-two—hell, gents, I've
got a daughter her age, I wouldn't feel so easy about Lori being out
on her own like that! But Linda's steady. A good girl. I knew she
hadn't just walked away."

He had worried about it, he said, for a few days
before he reported her missing. He'd got one of the other waitresses
who knew her to go with him to her little apartment, and it looked as
if most of her things were there, that she hadn't taken any clothes.

"
How'd you get in?" asked Landers.

"
Jimmied the door," he admitted. "My
God, what could have happened to her? I used to worry about her
getting on the bus that late, but she'd rather take second shift
because she didn't like getting up early. I know there are a lot of
violent kooks around, but to think of—God."

He could tell them when he'd seen her last. The
restaurant was open from 6:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. A crew of waitresses
and chefs came on at six and a second crew at two; Linda was one of
the waitresses on that shift. The other girls would say the same
thing: they didn't know her intimately, maybe, she'd only been
working here four months, but the girls got along, they all liked
Linda. Of the other girls, four of them, all but one had cars, and
Ellie's husband always called for her. It was a Thursday night, a
month ago last night. They'd closed the place up, and left mostly
together; Ellie's husband had been early. The rest of them had gone
out to the parking lot at the side, and Linda had said goodnight and
started across the street to get the bus. "She wasn't nervous
about it," said Sorenson, "but I was.

That's another thing, you see, she's from a small
town, not a city anyway—she doesn't know what the city can be like.
Is she going to be all right?"

"
They don't know," said Landers.

"
Oh, my God."

"
We'll want to talk to the other girls. Ask
about boy friends and so on."

"
She doesn't have one," said Sorenson. "She
a pretty strait-laced girl. She dated one young fellow she met in
here, a few times, but she said he was too handy, know what I mean,
and she gave him the push."

And maybe the young fellow had wanted to get back at
her. Or maybe she'd just run into a violent kook. They went out and
looked at the bus-stop across the street. This was a fairly main drag
but they were all business blocks this far down La Brea; there
wouldn't be many people around at that time of night, and not so much
traffic. The cross street was a narrow one, old residential. The arc
lights were high above the intersection. They didn't have to discuss
it. She might have been, almost certainly, the only one waiting for a
bus here most nights.

"
Hell of a thing," said Landers.

She'd had an apartment up on Berendo; the rent,
Sorenson said, was up next week, and what about that? He could keep
her things for her until she got better; it was mostly clothes.
Palliser and Landers started up there to look at it, and Palliser
said grimly, "Carey's Mr. Haines doesn't use much imagination,
does he?"

"
He probably didn't
give Sorenson a chance to talk," said Landers. "Let's hope
she comes to and tells us what happened?

* * *

On account of the witnesses in the liquor store
coming in to make statements—"Who argues with a dame waving a
gun around?" they both said expectably—Hackett and Higgins
didn't get over to the jail until eleven o'clock.

Pete Jackson was brought to them in the bare tiny
interrogation room. He was sixteen, and looked younger; he wasn't
very big, he had the same pure African features as his mother, a
woolly cap of hair, and he looked a little scared.

"
All right, Pete," said Hackett, and he
laid out the few little pieces on the table. The old Waltham railroad
watch's crystal had been broken when Mendoza knocked out the window,
but it was all recognizable. "We know where you got this, but
we'd like to hear the story."

Pete looked at the things and said, "Where'd you
get that?"

"
From the pawnshop where you took it. It was on
the list of stolen goods." That went over his head; he didn't
know anything about that. "We know where it came from and how it
got there, so suppose you tell us the middle part."

Pete looked at him blankly, and Higgins said, "You're
getting a little too fancy, Art. Look, boy. You snitched this from a
house after knifing a man. There was somebody with you. Who was it?"

A Pete looked sullenly at the table. "I don't
know nothin' about it."

Both of them had dealt too long with utter stupidity
to feel impatient. "We'll sit here until you tell us," said
Higgins not unkindly. "We know everything but that, and you're
going to be up in front of a judge for it anyway. Wouldn't you like
to take him with you?"

Pete thought that over for a long painful minute, and
then he said, "That ain't fair."

"
That's right, but how do we know who he is
unless you tell us?" asked Hackett cheerfully.

After another long minute's thought, Pete said, "It
was his idea."

"
Whose idea?"

"
Bobby Porter. We needed some bread. Ma never
gives me none, she need all she get for the wine. But we dint set out
to rob nobody, we was just ridin' around. Bobby, he sort of borrowed
his brother's heap. An' we needed some bread, so he says hey man
s'pose we knock off a house. So we did."

"
Why did you pick that place?"

"
We dint," said Pete succinctly. "Mighta
been any place along there. We parked inna next street over an' come
through yards. We tried one place but we couldn't get the door open.
Bobby had a switchblade an' I had a big ole bread-knife, but we
couldn't—"

"
So you'd thought of knocking off a house before
you went riding around?" asked Higgins.

"
Uh. Yeah. I guess. That place, we got the door
open. We dint know there was anybody there. Man come at us yellin'
somethin', we just cu t him a little bit, make him stop—an' I
wanted get out then but Bobby made me help him rob that stuff. An'
the guy's bread. He hadn't but twelve bucks."

"
So tell us where Bobby lives," said
Hackett.

"
Di'mond Street."

It was all they needed,
and they were slightly tired of Pete. They handed him back to the
jailer, went back to the office and applied for the warrant, and went
out again to look for Bobby. He too was probably a minor, and the
worst that could happen to them was incarceration until they turned
twenty-one, and probation. That wasn't much retribution for Dave and
Dan Whalen. At least the cat Merlin still had a good home.

* * *

The Hoffman inquest was very official and brief.
There wasn't a jury. The evidence was read into the court record and
the coroner's representative handed down the expectable verdict,
willful homicide and suicide while the balance of mind was disturbed.
There were only two reporters there; the rest had all known how it
would go. The Hoffman case was over—ended. Except for Larry
Hoffman; and you could wonder how it might affect him, for better or
worse or not at all. The egocentric personality.

The
Times
had run a brief story and the photograph of Marion Stromberg on its
second page this morning. Unless Mendoza had asked for it, that
murder probably wouldn't have got much mention at all if any; there
wasn't enough newsprint to report every murder that occurred in L.A.,
and some murders were just naturally more interesting than others.

He got back to the office at a little after eleven
o'clock, and Sergeant Lake said, sounding rather annoyed, "You've
had nine phone calls about that thing in the
Times
.
The secretary of the Western Cat Fanciers' Association wants to
interview you for an article, and so do two people at a thing called
Pet Pride. A sixth grade teacher in Montebello wants you to come
lecture her class on kindness to animals. A PR. man at a local agency
has a great idea how to spot you in a TV commercial, and the rest of
the citizens just called up to gush about your heroic act. The first
three said they'll call back."

"
¡Ca!
" said
Mendoza, also annoyed.

He disliked the routine, but it was always there to
be done. He laid Marion Stromberg's address book on the desk and
methodically began to call every name listed. There weren't all that
many; and along with the names of personal friends, she had listed
alphabetically the service companies she had dealt with: TV repairs,
plumber, electrician, tree service, gardener, beauty shop.
Indiscriminately he called them all, missing a few; he broke for
lunch, came back to try for those he'd missed.

At two o'clock he was sitting back thinking about it,
and in reflex action had got out the cards from the top drawer and
was practicing stacking a poker deck. Domesticity had ruined his
poker game, but he still thought better with the cards in his hands.
Possibly one reason that Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza was a
reasonably good detective was that essentially, as Hackett had told
him, his mind had all the deviousness of a criminal mind to start
with.

The essential question, of course, was where the hell
the woman had been between eight and ten on Friday night. And without
much doubt they would know that if they knew who she'd phoned from
the Brown Derby, but that was past praying for. Nobody she knew—and
he hadn't missed many—had seen her or talked to her on Friday. Or,
of course, said they hadn't. But all her female
friends—acquaintances—the same kind: there hadn't been enough
real feeling there for any animosity, had there?

But she had gone somewhere, alone or with someone,
and had at least two more drinks. And where the hell her car had got
to ....

Hackett and Higgins came in at two-thirty and
announced that they'd finally run Bobby Porter to earth and had him
stashed in jail. Hackett was still typing a report on that when
Palliser and Landers came in and laid the new case in front of
Mendoza. There wasn't, of course, anywhere to go on it, much to do,
until and unless Linda Carr regained consciousness and told them what
had happened to her. Landers said, "We want to talk to the girls
on the same shift with her. Hear about the discarded boy friend. But
on the face of it, it looks as if she was snatched off that bus-stop
bench that night. All I say is, I don't think it was at random."