Felony File (29 page)

"
You're not supposed to tell me what to do!
Nobody's supposed to tell me what to do, order me around—Dr. Locke
said so! Tell them to go away!"

Mendoza said, "We just want to look at the
knife, Tommy."

"
No."

"
Just for a minute."

"
No. You want to take it away." He gave
them a sudden secret smile, and his eyes were terrifying. "I
might need it again."

"
Oh, Christ," said Mrs. Burroughs. She
turned and reeled down the hall drunkenly.

The ambulance attendants handled him expertly, but he
fought like a cornered beast all the way, until they got him tied
down on the stretcher. Burroughs would have seen that before; he just
sat waiting for it to be over. He sat on the couch and he said sickly
to them,

"
But the doctors ought to know—all you can do
is believe what the doctors tell you. Dr. Locke said he'd be all
right, no trouble, if he just took the medicine, and we always saw
that he did. If—if he could do—that—why did the doctors—keep
letting him out?" He put his head in his hands.

It was, of course, a good question. They called up
the lab; by the time Marx and Horder got there the Burroughses had
retreated into their bedroom and shut the door.

At the very back of the walk-in closet in the back
bedroom, rolled in a paper bag, they found the bloody shoes and the
bloody knife. In the garage they found the can of black spray paint.

"
And let us hope that this time," said
Mendoza savagely, "he gets sent to Atascadero." That was
the asylum for the criminally insane. "They don't get let out of
there quite so easy."

This was one time he'd
like to pull rank and delegate somebody else to break the news to the
Jackmans. Only he wasn't built that way.

* * *

On Sunday morning they all went up to the new place.
Alison and Mairi were busily plotting where furniture should go—some
of the new furniture had already been delivered—and the twins were
wild to introduce him to the sheep. They were uninterested in the
house entirely, and led him firmly out and down the hill again. The
sheep had vanished utterly from where they had been on the hill five
minutes ago.

"
They runned away!" said Terry.

"
They're around somewhere,
nijos
."
They located the five sheep just over the crest of the hill, busily
munching on the flourishing weeds. At least they seemed to be doing
the job expected of them.

"
Five Graces, Mama said." Johnny was
pleased with the sound of that and repeated it thoughtfully several
times.

At their voices, two of the sheep headed for them and
thrust smooth black heads for patting. They were oddly attractive
creatures, thought Mendoza, remembering Alison's experience and
keeping well out of the way. They looked very pastoral and peaceful
there on the empty hillside, and the only negative thought that
crossed his mind was that they had unexpectedly loud bass voices.

If he could have foreseen
the trouble those sheep were to cause .... But the crystal ball was
not operating, and he merely regarded them with vague benevolence.

* * *

There were three new heists on Saturday night. This
week there would be arraignments scheduled for Contreras, the heist
woman, and Newton. One of the assistant D.A.'s, unaffectionately
known to the LAPD as Nervous Nellie, monopolized Mendoza for an hour
on Monday morning, discussing the relative merits of charges on
Newton ranging from involuntary manslaughter to murder two.

That morning the central desk got a routine call for
a squad car, and Zimmerman landed at a middle-class frame house on
Diana Street and asked the young woman at the door what the complaint
was.

"
Well, I don't really think there's anything in
it," she said hesitantly. "But Stewart's never been one for
telling lies, and I just wondered. It's my little boy Stewart, he's
five."

"
Yes, ma'am," said Zimmerman patiently.

"Well, he and his sister spent yesterday with
their grandparents—my mother and father—and when we brought them
home Stewart was saying he'd seen a man put a lady in a closet in the
house next door and she was dead. He says he went into that yard to
get his ball back, and saw it through the glass door. Mom and Dad
just laughed and said he was good at making up stories." She was
silent, thinking. She was a pretty girl in the mid-twenties. "So
did Bob—my husband. But he keeps talking about it. I wondered. The
house next to Mom and Dad's is up for sale. It does have a sliding
door at the side." She was apologetic. "I know it sounds
silly, but I wonder if somebody ought to go and look?"

Zimmerman thought too. He got the address, but he
wasn't going to yell for the front-office boys when it might be just
a kid's story; they'd cuss him out from here to there. He drove past
the house, got the name of the realty company from the sign, and went
there. One of the salesmen drove back with him and let him into the
house. They looked, and in the closet of the master bedroom was the
body of a woman in a nightgown, nothing else. There wasn't any I.D.
anywhere. She'd been shot in the head.

So then he called the front-office boys.

Besignedly, Grace and Galeano went out on it. It was
the house next to the corner, and first they asked the neighbor in
the corner house to see if she knew the woman; she looked, gave a
shriek, and said, "My God, it's Cindy Hamlin! Stewart did see
something after all! My God, they just moved away two months ago, her
husband got transferred to Bakersfield—how did she get here?"

It was a nice house on Edelle Place; a block away,
this would have belonged to the sheriff's department. The husband,
Randolph Hamlin, was manager of a chain shoe store, the neighbor told
them. Presumably he should be at the store, up in Bakersfield;
unaccountably he wasn't. They had turned the lab loose there.

Also on Monday morning, Hackett finally found Myra
Amberson. Her son, Doug Carpenter, had a pedigree of narco selling
and assault, so they had his prints; and his prints were plastered
all over the wrench that had battered James Amberson to death.
Hackett got tired of dealing with the stupid, stupid people. He
brought her in to question her; she was a nice-looking black woman,
smartly dressed, with coy manners and a brittle laugh.

"
I don't know where Doug is, honestly," she
said. "He's twenty-three, he lives his own life." She shook
her head archly; she had on dangly earrings and they rattled. "That's
just awful, if he did kill James like that, Sergeant. He must have
been high on something, to do that. James would have come back to
me—he was going to."

Hackett put out an A.P.B. for Doug Carpenter and came
back to the office to find Mendoza fulminating on the phone.

"
Are you telling me that your cretinous uniform
branch never checked—? . . . Santa Maria! How do they remember
where to bring the squads back at end of shift? Nearly two weeks that
A.P.B.'s been out, and nobody—nobody at all—thought to look ....
All I know is, if I was watch commander at Hollywood, your God-damned
stupid patrol units would shape up or get off the force! Yes, you may
tell that to Captain Andrews, from me, with bells on! Your damned
excuses for patrolmen have set us back two weeks on a homicide case!"

He slammed the phone down, noticed Hackett, and said
shortly, "Hollywood's just spotted Marion Stromberg's car. Would
you have a guess? Probably right there all along. In the visitors'
parking lot at the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital."

"
What?" said Hackett. "Why wasn't it
noticed before?"

"Because it never occurred to any of the idiotic
Traffic men working out of that precinct to look in a hospital
parking lot, of course. The only reason it got noticed just now was
that a woman went into unexpected labor at home alone, and called for
a squad. The gallant bone-headed officer duly rushed the lady to the
hospital and on his way out did a double-take and checked the plate
number. They're towing it in."

"
Well, we come all sorts like other people,"
said Hackett.

"
Not on this force,"
said Mendoza. "We're supposed to be smarter." He was
slightly mollified a couple of hours later when Marx called up to
tell him they'd picked up a couple of good latents from the inside of
the passenger's door, and would check them with records. There had
been a bright-red handbag on the front seat, with all her
identification and forty-three dollars in it.

* * *

Grace and Galeano wanted to talk to Randolph Hamlin
about his wife's body and they couldn't find him; so on Monday
afternoon they put out an A.P.B. for his car. The lab hadn't finished
processing the house—the body wasn't going to get autopsied for at
least a day or so—when the car was spotted parked up on the Sunset
strip, with Hamlin sound asleep inside it. The patrolman brought him
in.

He had the hell of a
hangover, and he said to Grace and Galeano, "Bitch, bitch,
bitch. She couldn't stand Bakersfield. She didn't like the house.
Bitch, bitch. Twenty times a day, she said it over and over, I wish I
was back in the old house. So—" he yawned hugely— "I
put her there. That's where she wanted to be."

* * *

At four o'clock that afternoon, a doctor at the
emergency ward of the General called in to say that he had a man
there with some knife wounds. Higgins was in the middle of a
follow—up report on Amberson, but went out to see what it looked
like.

It wasn't anything for Robbery-Homicide. The man had
unwillingly given his name as Charles Chidsey. He was a smallish man
about thirty, and he was mad at the doctor for calling in police.
"Only I was bleeding so much I didn't know if I could get home
without passing out, and my wife won't be home until six." He
was a teacher, he wouldn't tell them where. "Damn it, I have to
finish out my year's contract, and then I'm getting out. Maybe out of
teaching altogether—teaching! Dealing with hop-heads and hoods! Oh,
I couldn't be assigned to the nice high school up in Flintridge where
I applied—at least the kids there come from homes that have toilets
and don't use the halls—oh, no, I'm white, so I have to come down
here to balance the racial quota! God, I never had any prejudice
before but I'm sure as hell growing some! And no, I'm not going to
tell you who the Goddamned louts were who pulled the knives on me—do
you think I'm crazy? All a judge would do is put them on probation,
and next time they'd kill me!"

It wasn't a case for Robbery-Homicide. Yet.

Marx called at five o'cl0ck on Monday to say that the
prints from the Stromberg car weren't in records, had been sent to
the Feds.

For once the F.B.I. was commendably prompt. At ten
o'clock on Tuesday morning the kickback came in. The prints belonged
to Andrew Clifford; he had spent thirty-five years in the Air Force,
retired as sergeant two years ago.

"
¡Paso!
" said
Mendoza, and brought out the phone book. "And kindly don't tell
me there are dozens of Cliffords with whatever initials." He had
picked up the Hollywood book, and ran down the C's to all the many
Cliffords. "Romaine, Rosewood, Orange Grove, Delong-pre,
Outpost-Catalina. Y
a lo creo
.
That's our boy. Go and see if you can pick him up."

"
The crystal ball told you?" asked Higgins.

"
If you'd just do a little elementary thinking,
amigos
. It was a cold
night and he had to get home—he wouldn't leave the Buick far from
where he was going, and Catalina's two blocks from that hospital."

Higgins and Hackett looked at each other and went
out.

They brought Andrew Clifford back with them forty
minutes later, and introduced him to Mendoza. Clifford was in the mid
or late fifties, an upright stocky man with thinning brown hair and a
stubborn jaw; he was casually dressed in sports clothes. He looked at
Mendoza appraisingly and Mendoza studied him with equal interest.
"Exactly the type I predicted, isn't he?" he said to his
senior sergeants. "Outwardly a very respectable citizen. Good
manners, good background, clean and neat. She wouldn't have settled
for less."

Cliiford's grim mouth relaxed a trifle. "You
think you know all about it?"

"
No, Mr. Clifford, I don't know anything about
it. You're going to tell me."

Clifford had sat down in the chair beside the desk.
He looked down at his hands. "I thought I'd cleaned my prints
off every place I'd touched in the car. I'm damned sorry you caught
up, Lieutenant—but in one way it'll be a relief to have it off my
conscience. I like to think I've always been an honest man. You seem
to know about May."

"
Marion Stromberg."

"
Was that her name? I never knew it."

"
We knew there'd be a man. Where did
you—mmh—pick each other up?"

Clifford said slowly, "I'm a bachelor. I got out
of service, I settled here because I like the climate, but I didn't
know anybody here then. I haven't had a permanent home for years, of
course. Now—well—not being exactly as naive as I was when I
joined up at eighteen, I know where to find a woman if I want one.
But I happened to wander into one of those porn stores on the
boulevard, right after I landed here—I don't go for that stuff, but
they had some Oriental carvings in the window I wanted to look at—I
spent some time over there after the war, I like their art. Well,
being there, I looked around, and spotted that bulletin board. I got
a mild kick out of it, and just on impulse I stuck up my phone
number. That was all. So what? The fags or the kinks call, no sweat,
hang up. A chick maybe I look at."