Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

And now Lawrence Treat has begun, especially for Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, a new series of short stories about Jub Freeman, Mitch Taylor, and Taylor’s superior, Lieutenant Decker; and you will find them engrossing tales of the now popular procedural style. But we did want you to realize that in a contemporary sense it was Lawrence Treat who blazed this particular trail — the police procedural novel — and all credit to Mr. Treat for his significant contribution.

It was the middle of the morning when Mitch Taylor drove the patrol car through the archway and into the big courtyard in the center of the municipal building. He parked in the space reserved for police, picked up the hub cap with the bullet hole — if it was a bullet hole — and stuck it under his arm.

Mitch Taylor was a stocky guy, of medium height, chesty, with a small-featured face that had enough flesh on it to take an occasional sock without getting hurt. He always looked cheerful enough but you could never tell what he was thinking, because usually it was nothing. Or anyhow, nothing you ought to know.

What he was thinking now was, he should have left the thing back there in the junk yard where he’d spotted it. Because he was going on vacation tomorrow — three weeks of it up at the lake — and no new business was going to mess up that vacation.

A couple of hours ago he’d had everything figured out He still had those summonses to serve, and he’d string those out till afternoon. Then he’d stop in at the garage and tell them there was something wrong with the steering, he didn’t know exactly what, they’d better look it over. He’d hang around while they found nothing, and when it was time to quit, they’d stop kidding themselves and he could go home and start packing.

That’s what life was for. Vacations. Him and Amy and the kids, taking it easy, having a good time. A girl like Amy, she came ahead of everything else. She always had and always would.

Still, when a hub cap starts telling you stuff, you can’t pass it up. You take it up to the lab and find out — from Jub Freeman, who was a wizard at things like that.

Jub, perched on a stool and hunched over a work bench, was studying something under a microscope when Mitch marched into the lab. At the sound of the door Jub swung around, grinned, and ran his hand through what was left of his hair, which was pretty well thinned out from brain-work.

“Hi,” he said energetically. “All set to go?”

“Right after breakfast tomorrow. Bought me a hub cap, too, on account I had one missing.”

Jub glanced at the disk in Mitch’s hand. “That’s the new one?” Jub asked.

Mitch shook his head. “No, I got mine outside. Thought maybe you’d want to look this one over.”

Jub took it and examined it carefully. He tilted it so that the light caught it at an angle, then he bent down and squinted at the hole. He ran his finger along the rim, turned the cap around, and studied the inside. After a couple of minutes he put it down on his work bench.

“Chevy,” he said. “Almost brand-new. Not driven in the winter because there’s no corrosion from the salt. No wrench marks, either. Where’d you get it, Mitch?”

“Junk yard,” Mitch answered. He didn’t give any details and Jub didn’t ask for them. Jub merely tapped the disk as if he wanted to test the ring it gave out.

“Brand-new Chevy,” Jub said again. “Are you thinking the same thing I am?”

“Rogan,” Mitch said promptly.

Jub nodded. Rogan was a bank robber who’d broken out of jail the month before and was still on the loose. His picture, on Wanted sheets, was all over the place and showed a squat, heavy-set guy with bulging eyes, a broad bulging forehead, and spread ears. A teller at the Farmers’ Bank had identified him as one of the pair that had held up the bank a week ago and got away with $14,000, after exchanging shots with the guard. They’d been driving a brand-new, stolen Chevy; but they’d ditched it somewhere, switched cars, and smashed their way through a road block, where they’d killed a State Trooper in a gun battle and then escaped in his car. The state car had been found the next day, with the body of one of the bandits in it. But neither Rogan nor the money had showed up.

Jub fingered the hub cap. “Didn’t notice a new Chevy in that junk yard, did you?”

“When I got a vacation coming up?”

Jub got the point. “Look,” he said. “Why don’t you go back there while I check this over? If it’s a bullet, I’ll know it from the trace metals, and I can drive over later and try to spot the Chevy. That way, I’ll turn in the report, not you. Okay?”

Mitch nodded. “Just so I don’t get tagged with a case,” he said.

But out at the junk yard again, Mitch saw he’d taken on too much. There were acres of cars — rusty jalopies, smashed-up wrecks, cars without motors, cars without wheels, cars upside down or lying on their sides. Killer cars — and over-age cars that had been towed here to die a natural death. They were stacked up everywhere and they overflowed into a marshy hollow wild with sumac or something... Easy to run a hot car in here, bust it up with an ax, and then seem to abandon it And maybe with $14,000 in cash, locked up in the trunk... It was possible — a graveyard of old cars was a pretty safe hiding place for loot.

Nevertheless Mitch realized he had pulled a boner coming back. Because after a while this Jackson fellow who ran the place would come over and ask Mitch what he was doing. Mitch would say he was just looking, or else he’d say he was doing calisthenics or something, and the guy would get nasty about it and the whole thing would end up with an arrest. Then Mitch would have to hang around tomorrow so he could show up in court.

This Jackson fellow was built like a tackling dummy, except he had muscles instead of cotton wadding inside him. An hour ago he’d told Mitch to fork over fifty cents and go out and find his own hub cap. Tough cookie, this Jackson.

Any other time Mitch would have taken it all in stride and walked in without any worries except maybe was there any poison ivy around. But now he stared at the shack that was supposed to be an office, over there at the other end of the lot. There was no sign of Jackson, so the hell with him.

Mitch had gone about twenty or thirty feet, watching his step so he didn’t trip over the rusty springs and fenders and stuff, when the kid’s voice sounded out. “Boom-boom — you’re dead!”

Mitch swung around and saw this brat with the toy gun. He was maybe six years old, but for a second or two that mug of his had wrinkles and the gun was real, so Mitch froze.

There couldn’t be two faces like that — the same bulging eyes and spread ears and oversized forehead. For that second Mitch felt as if he were seeing Rogan cut down to size. Then the kid’s eyes seemed to get a little smaller, the ears weren’t quite so spread out, and the forehead looked almost normal. Mitch wasn’t sure now, except the impression stuck.

Yes, this was Rogan’s kid. He was sure of it.

Mitch let out a smile, lifted his hands and said, hamming it up, “You got me, kid. Now what?”

The kid stared, bug-eyed. Mitch, real friendly-like, said, “What’s your name, huh?”

The kid didn’t answer.

You can chase a kid in the open and catch him easy, but six-year-olds are slippery and they get through narrow spaces where a grown man can trip and land flat on his puss. And by the time Mitch could get hold of the kid and drag him off, Mitch would have Jackson on his neck, and then what?

So Mitch said, “You know what?”

The kid didn’t move.

Mitch lowered his hands and said, “I give up. Now you take me to jail and lock me up.” And trying to make like a crook caught with the goods, he approached the kid.