The Blue Movie Murders (3 page)

“I'll leave at once,” he told the Governor.

“You'd better go out the back way. I don't want you tangling with those women again.”

McCall shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I rather enjoyed it.”

On the way out McCall observed that the line of marchers had increased to the hundred Cynthia Rhodes had predicted. The new recruits were mainly older women, and they marched in near silence, only a few of them carrying placards. These were the women of the city, coming out now to join the protest. Although it made for a more orderly gathering it was also what McCall feared most. Cynthia's cause had found a following among people who ordinarily wouldn't have been caught dead at a woman's liberation rally.

“How do you like it now, McCall?” she shouted when she saw him, leaving the line of march to run to his side.

“I'm glad you stopped the cheering.”

“You haven't heard anything yet! Come back at noon and we'll rock those walls.”

He glanced up at the old stone building he'd just left. “I don't think the place could take it.”

“What did the Governor say? Is he going to close down these movies?”

“You know there's very little he can do on a state level.”

“But that's where we have to start. In the states. In the cities. Washington tends to ignore women, except at election time. But up here we've got some muscle, some clout.”

“Why use it against Sam Holland? He's one of the most progressive, most able, governors in the nation. He's done a great deal for minority groups. He's a modern man—one who sees things with a clear eye, and doesn't allow built-in prejudices to influence him. I've known and worked with him for years. His whole philosophy reflects a willingness to listen, an openmindedness towards new ideas in these changing times. He's not opposed to women, or even to women's liberation. He deserves an even break.”

The girl at his side chuckled, her long legs easily keeping up with his pace. “That little speech sounds as if it was lifted directly from the Holland campaign literature.”

“I'm sorry if it does, but that's the way I feel.”

“All right. I agree that Governor Holland is basically a good man. And that's the very reason we're here. In many states and cities a protest like this would be dismissed as the work of flighty females without a brain in their heads. But we think Holland
can
do something, if only in a symbolic way. If enough governors and mayors start to act on issues like pornography and equal pay and day-care centres, perhaps Washington will get the message. It has to be a grass-roots movement in the beginning, if we're to have any success at all.”

“It's just too bad a man like Holland has to bear the brunt of your attack.”

She smiled at his words. “I think he'll survive.”

He paused beside his car. “This is where I leave you, Miss Rhodes.”

“You asked me yesterday to call you Mike. You can call me Cynthia, if you want.”

“What's this? Softness from the leader of Cynthia's Raiders?”

“Sometimes there's more than one way to win a battle. Lets' be friends, Mike.”

“I'll think about it, Miss Rhodes.”

He slipped into the front seat and closed the door. She hit the glass with the flat of her palm and yelled, “You're a bastard, McCall, in case you didn't know.”

He smiled and drove off.

THREE

Wednesday, May 12

McCall had been a private detective with a small but growing practice when he first met then-Senator Holland some years back. He was fresh from the Marine Corps and a brief stint at law school. The idea of working with a state senator on a particularly difficult murder case had appealed to him. Holland came from a wealthy, politically oriented family—but though that wealth had contributed to his initial success in politics, he was very much his own man. He might have followed in his father's footsteps as a successful corporation lawyer, or become a crusading district attorney like his grandfather, rather than enter politics on the state level. But Holland was a man who often did the unexpected.

The first case they'd solved together—the killing of a state legislator—had left McCall and Sam Holland with a great deal of respect for each other's ability. Holland, for his part, found McCall to be a tough honest man he could trust completely. And McCall in turn found Holland to be one of the few open, fearless politicians he could serve with a clear conscience. He'd studied the man's strengths and weaknesses, and when the time came he was ready to serve in Governor Holland's administration.

Holland was tall, ruggedly handsome, with a mid-forties youthfulness that made him one of the most popular state governors with the working press. It was always more interesting to do a feature story or a picture layout on a man of Holland's impressiveness and appeal than on the usual second-rate officeholder.

McCall's relatively large salary as Assistant to the Governor for Special Affairs came out of Sam Holland's own pocket—thus effectively freeing the Governor from the clutches of the state's political machine. The two men were close friends, and McCall occasionally dined with the Holland family. A newspaper article speculating on Holland's attractiveness as a presidential possibility had once tagged McCall “the logical choice for Attorney General under such an administration.” McCall had snorted and thrown the paper across the room. For him, a desk in the Attorney General's office would have offered the same plodding dullness that he'd found in the practice of law.

McCall was not a memorable man physically. The Marine-trained muscles were well hidden, and he had a face and bearing that could change and blend with the background of the moment. He could mix with almost any group without attracting undue attention, and even his few close friends tended to forget that this ordinary-looking man had grown up in the tough Chicago streets, studied judo and karate, and then gained a law degree during a remarkably short period at Northwestern University.

But if the world of courtrooms was too calm for McCall, he liked his present job just fine. This afternoon, driving north through the bright sunshine of a perfect spring day, he felt the old pleasant tenseness of the hunt. Rockview was a new city for him, in a new part of the state, and that meant a new challenge. Governor Holland had paraphrased Tolstoy one day and told him, “Mike, happy cities are all alike, but every unhappy city is unhappy in its own way.” The words were true, McCall had found out. Reading the morning newspaper might give one the superficial impression that cities from Maine to California were troubled with the same variety of budgetary woes and racial problems and pollution concerns, and yet each situation was always a little bit different. New York's problems were not exactly those of Los Angeles, and the situation he would find in Rockview would surely be different from the campus troubles he'd investigated at Tisquanto or the racial upheavals at Banbury.

Rockview was only a two-hour drive from the capital, and so he'd decided to take the car rather than fly. The car would come in handy in a city that size, where a population of 76,000 was loosely spread out over an area of twenty-three square miles. For reasons of climate and economy the population explosion of the postwar years had never reached Rockview. It was far enough north to experience really snowy winters, and a location off the main trade routes had contributed towards its being overlooked during the early industrial expansion that had populated the southern and western portions of the state.

Still, Rockview had a few things to offer. It was the nearest city of any size to Stanyon University, whose law school had graduated Governor Holland, among others. It had a smattering of small industry, much of it controlled by the city's reigning family, and during the summer months the area thrived on tourists and campers from the nearby state park.

McCall had visited Rockview only once before briefly, when he'd accompanied Sam Holland on a campaign swing prior to his election. He remembered it was a pleasant-looking place, and as he drove down May Street this afternoon it seemed friendly enough. He stopped the car by a parked taxi and asked the driver the way to the Rockview Motel.

The man, sandy-haired and casually dressed in a flowery sports shirt, climbed out of his cab to point down the street. “You go straight for about a mile, then turn left. That's Cherry Street, and it'll take you clear out to the city line. You can't miss the motel.”

“Thanks.”

The taxi driver scratched his sandy head. “You figuring on staying there, mister?”

“I might be. Why?”

“Just a little tip. There was a killing in that place this morning and the cops are all over. You'd probably be a lot more comfortable right here downtown. The Parkview House isn't as new as the Rockview Motel, but at least it don't have cops.”

“Thanks for the tip, but I guess I'll drive out there anyway.”

“Suit yourself, mister.”

“Tell me—who got killed?”

“Nobody from around here. Some film producer from Hollywood.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Who killed him?”

“Nobody knows, but I could make a pretty good guess.”

“Like who?”

The man began to grow suspicious. “Nobody you'd know, mister. It's a labour problem we've got here locally. A strike that's got a lot of people on edge.”

“All right,” McCall said, pulling in his horns. “Thanks for the directions.”

He drove down May Street, but before he reached Cherry he'd changed his plans. Ben Sloane's body would no longer be at the Rockview Motel. It would be downtown by now, and the place for him was at Police Headquarters.

The man in charge of the investigation was an overweight, middle-aged detective named Powell. He walked as if his feet hurt constantly, and he eyed McCall with a mixture of wonder and disdain.

“Micah McCall?” he repeated, studying the shield case and identification card. “I've heard of you. The Governor's errand boy.”

“Not exactly,” McCall replied, his face tight. He'd faced lawmen like Lieutenant Powell before, and he couldn't really blame them for resenting his intrusion. And this sort of attitude never made his job any easier. “But he is interested in the Sloane killing. Major Hart of the State Police reported it to him this morning.”

“Major Hart isn't in charge of the investigation. The motel is on city property.”

“I understand that.”

“I'm in charge. Me.” Powell's face was flushed with barely suppressed anger, and McCall suspected there'd been run-ins with the State Police before.

“Certainly. No problem. Actually, the Governor is more interested in the reasons for Sloane's visit than in the killing itself.”

“His secretary says it was something about a movie he planned to make.”

“Exactly how was he killed?”

“Shot twice in the chest. One bullet passed through his heart and killed him instantly. It happened in his motel room, sometime early this morning. He was still dressed in his pyjamas and robe. Cigarette in an ashtray to the left of a chair. Maybe a clue.”

“Did anybody hear the shots?”

“The secretary, whose room was down the hall, thought she heard something about eight o'clock. But she didn't identify it as gunshots till later.”

“She found the body?”

“Along with the manager. When she couldn't get any answer from the room she got worried and called downstairs. They opened the door and found him dead. That was around nine o'clock.”

“Could I see the body?”

Lieutenant Powell shrugged. “There's nothing to see, but come on.”

He led the way out of headquarters and across the street to the coroner's office. The building was sterile and musky, its air heavy with death. McCall looked at the body and saw nothing, as Powell had predicted. Ben Sloane was only a dead man with two holes in his chest.

“Powder burns?” he asked the detective.

“Traces. But they weren't contact wounds, if that's what you're asking. The killer stood several feet away.”

“No weapon was found?”

“None.” Powell scowled. “And it wasn't robbery. He still had money.”

They went back across the street to headquarters. “I met Sloane and his secretary at a party in the capital just yesterday,” McCall said. “He said he was coming here. What's the secretary's name—Walsh?”

Powell shifted on his aching feet. “Suzanne Walsh. She's here if you want to talk to her. She's been making a statement to one of my men.”

“I would like that,” McCall said. “I must say I'm not used to this sort of co-operation, Lieutenant. Thank you.”

Powell scowled at him. “I'm giving you everything you want, McCall. Everything to get you out of Rockview as soon as possible.”

Suzanne Walsh was seated on a straight-backed wooden chair, red-eyed and obviously still distraught. She looked up at him when he entered the room, but did not recognize him.

“I'm Micah McCall. I met you at Dora Pringle's party yesterday.”

She sniffed and focused her eyes on him. “Was that only yesterday?” She was younger than he'd estimated at their first meeting—possibly still in her early thirties—but her rounded face and slim formless body made her appear somehow ageless. She was not really an unattractive woman, but she gave the impression of one already resigned to spinsterhood.

“Governor Holland was most disturbed to learn of this terrible crime. He wanted me to convey his deepest regrets. Has Mr. Sloane's family been notified?”

She touched her nose with a balled-up handkerchief. “He had no family. There was a brother who died some years back, and that was all.”

“He never married?”

“Once, when he was very young. But as I understand it, the marriage was annulled after a few months.”