Felony File (20 page)

"
I never said it was," said Palliser.

"You will both make detectives yet."
Mendoza was shuffling the cards in his long strong hands, cigarette
in mouth-corner. "If she'd just been snatched, mauled and raped,
and left in the street, I'd say it was the random thing. But keeping
her prisoner for a month—
¡ay de mi!
—I
think it had to be a personal motive. No, there's not much we can do
unless she can tell us about it. Have you checked the hospital?"

"
She's still unconscious," said Landers.

"
Jase and Hich," said Higgins through a
yawn, "got interested in that Reynolds thing at the inquest and
are going back over all Nick's reports. I think they're working it
from scratch."

And then Lake came down
the hall and said that Mr. Jackman was here, and stood back to let
him pass into Mendoza's office.

* * *

Hackett and Higgins sat in on it.

"
I don't think I've grasped this—this ghastly
thing yet," said Jackman. "My sister didn't feel up to
coming in—she has a slight heart condition, and you can guess how
upset she is. God! Mother and Dad—they wanted to be independent as
long as they could, and they got along all right, with our help, of
course. And of course we checked up on them frequently. They were
both well and fairly active, there was a market in walking distance,
and Dad liked to have a garden. It was on account of this wedding,
all of us away, that it wasn't discovered before—one of us always
phoned them every day." He took off his glasses to polish them.
He was a big man going bald, in a slightly shabby gray suit.

"When did you see them last?" asked
Mendoza.

"
It was a week ago today. I usually drove them
to church—we all attend St. Mary's on Melrose—but we were leaving
early Monday, busy packing and so on, and we skipped church on
Sunday. Helen—my sister—had seen them on Saturday."

"
Then we'll want to talk to her eventually. Had
they recently mentioned any trouble or disturbance, Mr. Jackman?
Prowlers, threatening phone calls?"

"
Good Lord, no, why?"

"
Had they said anything to you about running
into any prejudice against your church?"

He stared. "In this day and age?" Mendoza
told him about the message on the mirror, and he was incredulous.
"Medieval," he said. And then, "But why—Mother and
Dad?"

"
Exactly," said Mendoza dryly. "Any
number of Catholics around. We hope our laboratory will pick up
something useful—fingerprints for choice. I suppose all of the
family has been in the house at one time or another. They'll want
your prints to compare. And I'd like you to look over the house and
see if anything's missing."

"Yes, certainly. The—the bodies—"

"
There'll be an autopsy, that's mandatory. We'll
let you know when you can claim them."

"
Yes."

"
Tell me about their habits. When did they
usually have an evening meal?"

"Well, since Dad retired they never had much for
lunch. A sandwich. Then they'd have dinner about five o'clock."

"That pins it down to about five on Monday,
then."

Mrs. Guttierez had been providential. "Let me
see if the lab is finished with the house," said Mendoza, "and
you can look it over. I'm sorry to ask you, Mr. Jackman—it's not in
a very pleasant condition—but it has to be done."

"
Yes, all right," said Jackman shortly.
"They owned that house since nineteen forty. I grew up
there—Helen and I. God, this is .... "

Mendoza got S.I.D. and Horder answered. ."Oh,
yeah, it's all yours, Lieutenant. We left it sealed. We've picked up
the hell of a lot of prints, some made in the blood. Also footprints.
He walked in some of the blood, and the house being shut up and the
bodies not found for four days, they'd dried as clear as a good
moulage. We got some dandy pictures. It's a size nine, medium width,
and it was a moccasin-type rubber sole."

"
That's progress. So you'll want the family's
prints for comparison?"

"
I don't think we need 'em. When we've got
prints in the blood, that identifies X pretty damn plain. The writing
on the mirror, by the way, was black spray paint, the kind used on
wrought iron. I can hunt down the brand for you if it's necessary."

"
The wonders of science. Good. If you should
come across a match for the prints in our files I trust you'll let us
know."

"
Oh, the dishes. There was a casserole of some
kind with tunafish and mushrooms in it, and canned peas, and tapioca
pudding."

"
That doesn't matter now, but thanks. We can go
to the house now if you'd like, Mr. Jackman." Mendoza put the
phone down.

"I suppose I'd better get it over," said
Jackman thinly.

It was still trying to make up its mind to rain
again, chill and gray. Mendoza disliked being driven, but in case
Jackman passed out on them they thought they'd better all go; they
took Hackett's new Monte Carlo, and they were so used to the thing by
now that it never occurred to them that Jackman might find it garish.

He didn't pass out on them. He looked around, looked
at the lettering on the mirror and shook his head. The kitchen had
looked only a little worse when the bodies were still there; there
seemed an impossible amount of the dark brown that had been blood,
and while the lab men had taken most of the spoiled food for
analysis, they had left their chalk marks where the bodies had been,
generous amounts of fingerprint powder all over everything.

Jackman just said, "God," again. "I'll
have to get this cleaned up somehow—before Helen sees it."

"
If you'd just have a quick look for anything
missing."

Mendoza doubted very much that the killer had stolen
anything here, but they had to know. Jackman started through the
house; they heard him opening and shutting drawers, and presently he
came to them in the living room and said heavily, "There's
nothing gone that I can see. Of course there wasn't anything very
valuable to steal. You—are finished in the house? I've got a key,
of course. I suppose—I can hire somebody to come in and clean."

When they came out, Mendoza said, "
Un
momento
, Art. I'll be three minutes." It
was a dark afternoon, and there were lights in the house next door.
He went up to the porch and rang the bell. In a moment little Mrs.
Burroughs came to the door, and said, "Oh, it's you."

"
Just one question for you, Mrs. Burroughs. What
time were you at the market on Monday afternoon?"

She said, ‘'Why—" and a man came up behind
her, a round-shouldered middle-sized man in shabby clothes. "This
is my husband, he's off today. It's the police officer I told you
about, Harry."

He nodded at Mendoza. He looked tired, not just at
the moment but as if it was a permanent state, and he was defeated by
life in general. Mendoza reflected that driving a city bus was not
likely to be a euphoric career.

"Awful thing next door," he said.

"What happened," she told Mendoza, "I
was starting to get dinner, and I remembered I was out of coffee.
There was time before Harry got home, it's only a block up to the
market. I left about half-past four and as long as I was there I went
on and did a little shopping, it was about twenty of six when I got
back."

"
That's exactly the answer I expected,"
said Mendoza.

"
Thanks so much."

* * *

Tonight Bob Schenke was holding down the night watch
alone; it was Piggott's night off. Friday night was usually quiet,
and he had an interesting book; he was annoyed when he got a call at
nine-fifteen.

It was a block of stores out on Wilshire, five
store-fronts in the same building, and Patrolman Paulsen was in front
of the end one, with a little crowd of people around him. He came to
meet Schenke and said, "There are two bodies, sir, and it looks
funny—"

"
What?" said Schenke. Well, sometimes
things came along fast and furious, but it was rather surprising, the
first week of cold weather when the pace usually slowed down.

"
One of them's the cleaning woman, and the other
one I'd guess is the store owner. Those are the cleaning people,"
said Paulsen, who was rather a new rookie. "They clean all these
places here every Friday night. They've got a van out back. It's the
Service-Kleen Company. When the rest of them were finished, they came
to get this woman—girl. Consuela Rivera. She was cleaning in the
music store there. And they found her then. Say they didn't hear a
thing, but the building looks pretty solid."

Schenke said, "I'll take a look."

The five stores, or shops, housed a tax service, a
woman's dress shop, an answering service, a health-food store, and
the music store. SANFORD-NEWTON Music, said the sign on the window.
The front door was open. "They did that from inside, sir. They
came in the back from the alley."

"
Damn," said Schenke. Stupid civilians. He
went in. The music store was long and fairly narrow. The lights were
all on. At the right side in front was a cramped office space closed
off with wood-and-glass partitions, and in the doorway of it was
crumpled the body of a man. He was a thin man about forty-five, in
neat sports clothes; he had a little black moustache. He was lying
half propped up against a tall steel filing case just outside the
office door. His jacket was pulled up under him and the corner of a
billfold showed in that hip pocket. Schenke prodded it out delicately
and opened it on a driver's license for Richard L. Sanford of an
address on Poinsettia in Hollywood. He walked up the store, past
racks of records and tapes, counters and shelves bearing sound
equipment, tape recorders, stereo components, and past a door at the
back labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, came to a store-room and the two rest
rooms side by side. There was a back door onto an alley, standing
ajar.

The second body was just outside the door of the
women's rest room. It was the body of a very pretty young woman, and
most of her clothes had been torn off, were lying scattered around.
She was lying on her back with her legs spread apart and knees
slightly flexed. Schenke read the story almost at a glance. He looked
out the back door. The narrow alley, with a white van parked a little
way down, was between the block of stores and the backs of apartment
buildings on the next street. He looked at the girl again. She had a
mass of black wavy hair, a warm olive skin. Pity, he thought. About
twenty-five.

He went back outside and called in to the lab. Nearly
every bureau at LAPD worked round the clock; the felons kept weird
hours. Duke was there, said they'd be up. Schenke went over to the
silent little crowd huddled together.

"
O.K., somebody tell it from the start."

Therewas a man and three women; the women all looked
older than the girl; the man was tall and thin, in a white jumpsuit.

"
Yes, sir," he said. "I'm Clarence
Stiggs. We're from Service-Kleen, we hit this block every Friday
night—you know how cleaning services do? Well, the jobs are all
bunched together like—one office building or line of stores like
this. We been cleaning here about three years. We do these places,
and then we go on to another bunch of stores on Beverly. Tomorrow
night we—but I guess that don't matter." He swallowed
nervously. The women, looking scared, herded together silently.

"
Go on," said Schenke.

They usually landed here, Stiggs said, about
six-thirty. They met at the Service-Kleen office on Melrose, and all
the crews—dozens of crews, he said, it was a big business—took
the vans to the jobs. Here, each of them cleaned one place. It didn't
take very long, about two hours. They dusted, vacuumed carpets,
cleaned the bathrooms, put up new toilet paper and paper towels. By
about eight-fifteen they'd be finished, meet at the van out back. But
Consuela hadn't showed, and after a while he went in the music store
looking for her. He found her. He called the police from there.

Schenke nodded. "None of you heard anything?
Heard her cry out—any sound?"

"
No, sir. If I'd heard her scream or anything
I'd have gone to see what the matter was, naturally. But I was up in
the tax office, other end. And some of the time we was running
vacuums."

"
O.K.," said Schenke. "You'll all have
to come in to make statements. Tomorrow if you can make it. The
Robbery-Homicide office at headquarters. Do you know Miss Rivera's
address?"

One of the women volunteered, "It's Mrs. It's
Boyd Street."

"
O.K. You can go now, but don't forget the
statements." They dispersed reluctantly, heading down the side
street for the alley. The lab truck slid up to the curb behind the
squad car, and Duke's lanky figure got out of it.

"What have you got?"

"
Open and shut," said Schenke. "But
likely, unless you can give us something concrete, we'll never know
who or make a legal charge."

He thought he knew exactly what had happened here,
even before he called Sanford's wife to break the news—if there was
a wife. The store owner here late, maybe working on the books. The
killer either having spotted the girl before, working here (those
apartment back yards) or just coming along the alley while she was
working at the back. Coming in and attacking her. And the girl making
some sort of noise, loud enough to reach Sanford, not loud enough to
reach the other stores. The killer knocking the girl right out.
Running up front—Sanford had probably called out—to deal with
Sanford, who was in the doorway of the office. The lights wouldn't
have been on then—he'd bet the stupid civilians had done that. And
knocking Sanford down, unaware he'd killed him against that
sharp-cornered filing case. Going back to rape the girl.