Felony File (24 page)

"
What are their names?" he was repeating to
Terry's insistent query. "Well, now, I don't know as they've got
any names, Terry."

"
But they got to have names. Everything's got
names."

"
They're graceful sort o' beasts in spite of
their shapes," said Mairi. "To see a sheep houplin' over a
hill is a fine graceful sight. Ooh, it does put me in mind—"

"
They're the Five Graces," said Alison with
a laugh.

"
That's what we'll call them, Terry." The
other three sheep were grazing contentedly a little way up the hill;
she patted the silky smooth head so close against her knee. "They
must have had very good care to be so tame." There was a sharp
tearing sound and she staggered at a sudden pull.

"
I should've warned you," said Kearney.
"Now get away, you!"

The sheep so confidentially responding to Alison's
patting had eaten a large piece out of her tweed skirt. She looked at
it in dismay and then laughed. "I suppose it was attracted to
the wool."

"
That's a shame," said Kate Kearney, "a
good skirt like that. It's not only wool. It's queer the things they
will eat."

Kearney was explaining about the wool to the twins.

"
These were just born in February—they'll be
due for a first shearing in April. Their nice wool coats are cut off,
you see, and they'll be all clean and cool for the summer."

Terry said, "No. They gonna keep their fur
coats."

She was very decisive
about it.

* * *

The A.P.B. had still not turned up Marion Stromberg's
car in a full week.

The warrant came through on Betty Simms; but in all
probability the psychiatric examination would take some time, and in
the end she'd be committed to Camarillo.

The prints Duke and Scarne had so painstakingly
lifted from the body of Consuela Rivera weren't in L.A.'s records.
They had been sent to the F.B.I.

The autopsy report on the Jackmans had come in late
Monday. All it told them was that the knife used had a blade about
nine inches long, tapering from an inch to one-eighth of an inch. He
had been stabbed forty-eight times, she fifty-three. There was more
detail, but it didn't mean a great deal.

The P.R. man with the idea for a TV commercial had
called back several times. When Mendoza went out to lunch on Tuesday
with Hackett and Higgins, he was waiting to waylay Mendoza on the top
step of the front entrance. He was a fat little man with an eager
face and boundless energy. He pressed his card on Mendoza
insistently. His name was Norman Yadkin, and he was  with the
Slocum-Traskins Advertising Agency.

"
Look," he said, "look, Lieutenant, we
did that great production for Rubinstein's new cologne—we did the
Hercules luggage commercials, you must've seen those— Fantastic!
Imagination, that's our specialty—we're one of the biggest outfits
doing commercials in the business, because we're good, see? We've got
the imagination to do different commercials, see?"

"
I told you I'm not interested."

"
But this has got to be the greatest ever,
Lieutenant! You got to see it! Listen, it's the Crunchy Catty
account—they got both canned and dry cat food—-and the idea is
this, see?" He was pattering along beside Mendoza, talking fast,
while Hackett and Higgins, nobly choking down mirth, strode ahead.
"Now we all know how fussy cats are about what they eat, right?
So O.K., we get in with the human interest right away, the sympathy
of all these people love cats, by running that great shot of you
saving the poor little cat from the fire—that's a beaut of a shot,
Lieutenant—and then we put the spiel—It Takes a Smart Detective
to Discover What Cats Like Best—and we show a shot of you, with a
lot of cats eating Crunchy Catty like they're starving, see—
Please, Lieutenant, you can see what a great idea—"

"
If either of you say a word—" said
Mendoza, violently locking the door of the Monte Carlo.

"
Well, it is quite an idea," said Hackett.
"You could expand it, Luis. How I Became a Veteran Detective
Through Tracking Down My Cat's Opinions. Silver Boy won't look at
that Crunchy Catty stuff."

"
If Alison has ever bought any," said
Mendoza, "she won't be buying any more.
¡Dios!
"

They came back from lunch; Palliser and Landers had
been questioning a possible heister and had let him go—he'd had an
alibi of sorts. It wasn't raining, but it was cold and gray. They
lingered in the office; there was legwork to be done, but it would
probably be unprofitable.

Sergeant Lake came in with a manila envelope. Mendoza
slit it open idly and slid out the contents: the autopsy reports on
Dick Sanford and Consuela Rivera. Sanford had sustained a skull
fracture. Same as Marion Stromberg, he thought. The filing case: that
had been obvious at the scene. He passed the report to Hackett; he
was perched on one corner of Hackett's desk in the big communal
office. He looked at the other report. And he said, "
¿Y
qué significa eso?
I'll be damned."

Hackett took his glasses off and looked up.
"Something?"

"
Something," said Mendoza. "The Rivera
girl wasn't raped. Not even an attempt."

They were all surprised. "Well, that's a funny
one," said Palliser. "By all the evidence, after the killer
had disposed of Sanford—he probably never realized he'd killed
him—he had plenty of time to deal with the girl."

"
Suppose," said Hackett, "it was about
the time the other cleaning people came looking for her, and scared
him off?"

"Sloppy deduction, Arturo. They'd be coming in
the back way and would have seen him. Look at the estimated times of
death. Both Sanford and the girl six-thirty to eight."

They thought about it. "All right," said
Higgins, "he'd just got back to the girl when something else
startled him—one of the cleaning people in the alley, whatever."

"And he'd already killed her by then?"
She'd been manually strangled. "Now, you've seen enough rape
cases, George. She was strangled—when does that happen in a rape?
Not every woman who gets raped is killed, but what they do tell us,
the most dangerous moment, when the rapist's at the peak of
excitement and violence, is—"

"
When he's just done the rape," said
Hackett. "That's so. Where does that take us?"

Mendoza's eyes were glittering. He lighted a new
cigarette carefully. He said, "The way this looked, so obvious,
the would-be rapist didn't know Sanford was there. That
was—mmh—extraneous. The girl was the intended target." He
emitted smoke. "Suppose it was the other way around, boys?
Suppose Sanford was the intended target—and somebody didn't know
the girl was there?"

"By God!" said Higgins.

The phone rang and Mendoza picked it up. "Yes,
jimmy .... " He looked at Palliser. "The hospital. Linda
Carr's conscious."

Palliser and Landers went out in a hurry. "Jimmy,"
said Mendoza, "put me through to S.I.D .... Scarne?

About those prints Duke
lifted off that body last Friday night .... "

* * *

Linda Carr was still swathed in bandages, but she had
a couple of pillows propping her head up higher, and her eyes showed
awareness. "You can't talk to her long," said the nurse
firmly. "Three minutes."

"
All right," said Palliser. He bent over
the hospital bed. She was alone in this two-bed room.

The blue eyes blinked. "Remember you—police
officer."

"
That's right. Listen, Linda. Can you tell us
who hurt you?"

"
He said—call him—Mike. Mike."

Palliser tried to think of the most vital questions
to ask her. "Where did he take you, do you know?"

Immense surprise widened her eyes. She croaked,
"Where I—jumped out—window. Finally couldn't—stand—didn't
mind if I killed myself—he left me untied in bathroom—I broke the
window—and jumped out."

"
What?" said Palliser.

"
Woman there—never helped. Foreign. The man at
the restaurant, he was there—before the bus—"
 

NINE

THEY HADN'T SEEN the original Traffic report; it had
been phoned up to the office. They went back there in a hurry, and
Traffic located it for them. The reporting patrolman was Moss, and he
wouldn't be on until the shift changed at four o'clock, so they
called him at home, hoping he was there.

He was. "What the hell?" he said,
surprised. "It was Eleventh—the block just north of Alvarado,
the right-hand side about the middle of the block."

It was a block of old apartment buildings, a few with
shops on the ground floor. Palliser was driving; Landers spotted what
they were looking for and said so, and Palliser pulled over into a
red zone at the curb. In the grimy-faced tan brick building midway
down the block, one of the second—story windows was broken, a rough
piece of cardboard covering it from inside.

By the layout on the first floor, it should be
apartment 7-B to the left upstairs. There wasn't any nameplate on the
door; at Palliser's third imperative knock it opened halfway, and he
shoved it all the way. The girl, standing there holding a baby, began
to back away across the room; she looked terrified. There was a
toddler about two on the floor. It was a shabby, dingy room.

"No Engleesh," she said. She was quite a
pretty girl, dark, with a creamy, warm complexion.

They went through the place while she watched in
fearful silence, and it was the place where Linda Carr had been held.
There were the coils of wire on a closet floor, some of it still
bloodstained, and they found her handbag on a shelf in the bathroom,
all her I.D. in it, the billfold empty. Neither of them had any
Spanish; Landers swore, found a public phone up the street, and
summoned Mendoza.

The girl clutched the baby to her and huddled on the
frayed old couch, watching their every move. She didn't seem much
relieved when Mendoza arrived and started to question her. She looked
at the badge and said, "I cannot read. It is police? You have
arrested him."

"
Not yet. Your name?"

"
Alicia Contreras."

"And who is he?"

"
My husband. Michael Contreras. Now I do not
know how we will live, the babies and I. I have no English, I cannot
work and take care of the babies. I am ignorant, I do not read or
write. Please, it was because of this I did nothing, I could do
nothing." She gestured apathetically.

"Your husband was holding a woman prisoner
here."

She burst into slow tears and a spate of explanation.
All her family was dead except her papa, a plague it had been, and
she and her papa had come here from Sonora, because there would be
work and good pay for him; it was four years ago and she was but
fifteen. But they had no papers, and then her papa was killed in an
accident in the street and she had nothing, she did not know what to
do. But he had said he would marry her so she might stay here. "Who?"
asked Mendoza. Michael Contreras, he lived near where they had lived
then, and he was a born American. He was young and good-looking, and
she did not know what else to do. And now there were the babies.
Diego and Maria. She must think first always of the babies.

"
You will tell me about the woman he kept
prisoner here," said Mendoza sharply.

"
Yes. She is not the first. But the others are
all girls without papers, they do not dare go to the police and tell
about it. He never kept another girl so long here. He made her have
the sex with him while I watch, I do not want to but he makes me. He
says he will cut my heart out, I untie her or give her food when he
is not here. So I do not. I am much afraid of him," she said
simply.

"
Where is he? Does he work?"

She picked up a bundle from the couch beside her and
gave it to him. It was a white jumpsuit; she had been I mending a
seam neatly. Across the left breast was embroidered in scarlet the
name Arrowhead. "It is there," she said. Mendoza looked at
Palliser and said briefly,

"
Go pick him up," and Palliser and Landers
went out. He looked through the apartment, which was reasonably
clean; the children were clean and plump, solemn-eyed little things.
"I did not dare disobey him," she said. "What will I
do now? How shall we live?"

"
Wasn't he alarmed when the girl escaped? Did he
think this girl would keep silent like the rest?"

"
No, but he said she must have been killed, she
is killed when she jumped out, and he was tired of her anyway."

"
For the love of God," said Mendoza.

"
I was very sorry for her, but I am afraid of
him, and afraid he would hurt my babies," she said timidly. In
the end he took her over to the jail. A couple of the matrons spoke
Spanish, though they were going to have a fight getting those babies
away from her to deliver to juvenile Hall. He wondered if the D.A.
would want to hold her as an accessory. And where would she end? If
the A.D.C. office heard about her, they'd turn her into a
professional welfare recipient pronto. But she was very young, and at
least she'd shown some guts and cunning in protecting her babies.
Maybe not altogether a lost cause.