John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

“Hello, John,” Brock said.

Maclaren turned to Horowitz. “Since when does a lush get to call a police officer by his first name?”

“Maybe it’s a new custom, Johnny,” Horowitz said. “Maybe it says he can on the back of his union card.”

The girls were back at their desks and they smiled with bright curiosity at the police, making no attempt to work. Maclaren glanced at them and then turned back to Brock. “We got it a girl was shot here. Accident?”

“Intentional. It looked to me like it might be a fatal wound. Maybe you better alert Homicide to keep a check on her condition.”

“Horowitz,” Johnny Maclaren said, “listen to the guy give orders!” He turned to Brock. “Just where do you fit?” he said in a flat tone.

Brock heard Brasher come out of his office, knew that he was a few feet behind him. He said loudly, “I’m representing the company in the investigation.” He turned around. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Brasher?”

Brasher coughed and licked his lips. He gave one startled glance at Brock’s eyes and said, “Yes. Yes, that’s right. I’m the manager here. Mr. Brock is handling it for us.”

Maclaren glanced at Brock’s dirty coveralls, at his reinforced shoes, sneered, and said, “You ought to dress your key personnel a little better, Brasher. Let me use your phone.” Without waiting for an answer he went into Brasher’s office, called the hospital, and asked for a report. When he got it, he called headquarters, got hold of Captain Davis of Homicide, and said, “A girl was shot in the back at Brasher Scrap Metal twenty minutes ago. The intern says she’s in bad shape. Maybe you want one of your people to cover this with me just in case... Okay, I’ll brief him when he gets here.”

He walked around the desk and sat in Brasher’s chair. He flapped a hand at Brasher. “Shut the door on your way out.”

Brock leaned on the wall near the window. Horowitz sat on the edge of Brasher’s desk.

Because of Brock’s background, little time was wasted. In ten minutes, Maclaren knew that because of the danger of theft there were only two ways in and out of the grounds, the main entrance and the truck gate. There was a guard at the truck gate and a receptionist at the lower hall at the main entrance. The fence around the property was a nine-foot hurricane fence with three strands of barbed wire at the top. No one had left the area since the shooting.

The property was roughly square, with the office building running along one side at right angles to the road. The shop was in the back, parallel to the road, forming an L with the office building. The truck gate was at the other end of the front and was wide enough to include the spur track. A magnet crane was located near the loading platform. The entire center of the area was filled with mounds of scrap, some over twenty feet high.

Throughout the questioning both Horowitz and Maclaren treated Brock with amused contempt. Brock ground his fingers into the palms of his hands and managed to keep all expression off his heavy-boned face.

Cantrelle of Homicide arrived just as Maclaren had started to question Brock about the girl. Maclaren stopped and briefed Cantrelle on the information so far and then continued with Brock.

“How well did you know this Miss Stella Galloway?”

“I’ve been out with her several times.”

“Girl friend, eh?”

“Not exactly. A friend. She roomed with Jane Tarrance, that dark girl in the far corner of the office. Miss Galloway was a quiet girl, well-educated. She left here and worked for three years in Washington, D.C. She came back to Louisavale and got her job here a month later. She had been here over a year when I started work. She... she took an interest in me. Her parents are dead. She has a married brother in California and a married sister in Toronto. She has a very small income from her father’s estate. I don’t know of any enemies, or any reason why she should be shot.” Jud Brock had managed to keep his voice low, his tone calm and unhurried.

Cantrelle snickered. “You have bad luck with your women, don’t you, Brock?”

Brock started across the office toward Cantrelle, his chin lowered on his chest, his fists clenched. Maclaren grabbed Brock’s shoulder and spun him around. “Try anything funny, Brock, and I’ll gun-whip you.”

Brock stood perfectly still and tried to force the anger to run out of his big, raw-boned body. At last he shrugged and stepped back against the wall, the anger still with him but changed to a small hot glow deep inside of him.

It was bad because they all knew about it. They all knew the story of Jud Brock. He had put in six years with the Louisavale police, going on the force directly from college. He had advanced rapidly, had been transferred to Homicide, where he worked under Captain Davis. He was looked on as one of the bright young men in the department. Since Louisavale was a city of two hundred thousand, he could plan on merit promotions to the point where he would make a good living and have a responsible position. He was popular and he liked his work and he was good at it.

During his sixth year on the force he became engaged to Caree Ames. She was a slender, enchanting blonde, the only daughter of the city manager.

They were engaged for just two months before they were married. She seemed pleasantly but curiously anxious to be married, as though it would be some sort of haven for her.

Five weeks after the wedding and three weeks after they had returned from their Bermuda honeymoon, he came home to their new suburban house to find that a man with whom Caree had been intimate before he had ever met her had broken into the house, shot her twice in the skull, and then shot himself. She was dead. The man was still breathing. She had died almost within reach of the telephone. The man lived in a coma for five days before he too died.

He could not get that kitchen scene out of his mind, the two of them on the vinyl pattern he and Caree had selected, both face down in the pattern of a grotesque T, the still-breathing man lying across her dead legs.

Later he found out that quite a few people had known of her affair with the man who killed her. Her father had been anxious for her to be married. The man was demonstrably unstable, potentially dangerous.

For two months after the funeral he had continued his duties, walking through each day like a mechanical man. He had found he could not forget that scene; it was inextricably mixed somehow with some of the bloodier episodes which had happened during his years of police duty before he had met Caree.

During those two months, all the reality of the world around him took place dimly behind the shining screen of memory, and at last he had discovered that alcohol would dim the memories. At first he had been suspended for a month and had managed to get himself in shape to go back to duty at the end of the month. The second suspension was for six months.

After a long period of forgetfulness, he had walked into headquarters, his broken shoes flapping on his feet, his gray face dirty and whiskered, and found out that his suspension had been up for over three weeks and that he had been suspended indefinitely.

The period after that was impossible to remember. There were vague memories of a ward and of people strapping him down while he fought to get away from the incredibly slimy things that were creeping across the floor toward his bed.

One morning he had stopped and looked at the reflection of himself in the plate glass of a store window. He had frowned at it for a long time, trying to see in the watery eyes and hollow cheeks of the reflection something familiar — something of Judson Brock. There were coins in his pocket, and he waited until the bars opened. He bought a beer and held the first swallow in his mouth, looking across and seeing in the mirror of the back bar the same face that had looked back at him from the store window. Then he had spewed the beer onto the floor, turned, and left.