Gary Alexander - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 6. Whole No. 511, December 1985

“Where was Reese taking you?”

“Father was a lizard, we lost him in a blizzard.” Ankles free, she swung her legs and sat up, rubbing her wrists, working her mouth.

He got out. Two San Carlos cruisers and one from Belmont had curved into the area, intimidating the gawker cars on their way. Drinkers clustered at the door of the Nut Haven and were ignored. One of the Belmont cops, wide and low with grey hair, said, “Hello, Weare.” He was Sergeant Dolan. “You got something on Reese?”

“He had that girl taped up and under a blanket. She’d doped but doesn’t seem hurt.” He walked with Dolan and a couple of cops to the cruiser, where Reese sat behind the screen, watching. Weare got in, Reese sliding centerward to give room. The two young cops in front watched and listened. “What’s her last name?”

“I never heard it.”

“Where does she live?”

“She has a van, an old green Dodge.”

“Where?”

“I dunno.”

“How about parents?”

“Somewhere, I guess.”

“Why did you have her taped up, under a blanket?”

“A game.” The eyes were less murky — not amused, but not particularly anxious either. “When she came to, I was going to tell her, ‘There’s a contract on you, you’re a ripoff artist, and you ripped off the wrong guy.’ That’s what I’d say. And I’d look real fierce, like this—” he made bulging eyes and a brutally twisted mouth “—and take out my knife, rub it on my thumb, and say, ‘Sorry, but this is it.’ She’d be scared, but excited, too, to be in the middle of a real heavy scene. Underneath, she’d know I’d never really hurt her.”

Weare looked at him in his steady way. Reese blew a sigh. “I guess it sounds crazy, but — well, that’s how it was.”

“Where did you get her?”

“At a dope party up near Skyline. She’d had a load and I thought I’d get her out before things got completely screwy. I got her in the car and asked where the van was. She said she didn’t know but if we drove around we’d find it. That’s what I was doing.”

“With her taped up under the blanket.”

“She’d passed out. I keep tape in the glovebox. I’ve played this game before three or four times — not on her but other girls. They’re scared at first but at the end we’re laughing at how shook up they were when it was just a game.”

Weare didn’t comment on Reese’s sense of humor. “Where was the party?”

Reese shook his head.

Weare asked for his car keys. Reese said they were in the switch of the LTD.

Weare asked the cop at the wheel to drive Reese to the Courthouse, and his partner to drive Reese’s car to the Courthouse garage for deputies there to go over it for anything useful. He asked Dolan if he and his partner would take the girl to Chope Hospital to be checked and held overnight.

Twenty minutes later he was on the fourth floor of the Courthouse, checking Reese into jail on overnight hold. He turned in the Buck knife. Reese gave him a pleasant goodnight and was trotted away to be strip-searched, showered, given orange jail rompers, and tucked in.

Weare went down to the garage and was told that the search of the LTD had turned up nothing that looked useful. He looked over stuff from the trunk and under the seats and agreed that it might as well be chucked back in. He drove to San Carlos, made his turn on Howard, and half an hour later, a little past 1:00, he was asleep.

At 8:30 A. M. he was at Chope, on the third-floor jail ward. A nurse told him, “She’s okay. She didn’t take as much as they first thought.” She led him to a 6 x 10’ nothing-colored room with a screened window, a bed with a folded blanket and a pillow, a chair, and a toilet. Gale or whoever perched on the bed in jeans, plaid shirt, and worn sandals, her brown hair brushed, small face clean, looking at an old People. She put it down and blue eyes a lot less shiny than last night looked him over. He took the chair and said who he was, and who was she?

“Am I busted for something?”

“Do you remember last night?”

“Not particularly.”

He told her when and where he had discovered her last night, taped and blanketed. She was quiet a while, then shrugged. “It’s all a jumble.”

“Did Reese tape you up?”

“Is that what he says?”

“Where did you get the dope?”

“I dunno. Somebody gave to me, I guess.”

“Were you at a party?”

“Could be. There’s lots of parties.”

“What do you think of Reese taping you up, throwing a blanket on you?”

“Somebody told me he did that to her once for a joke. He does weird things.”

“What’s your name?”

“Gale Winfield.” Which could be true or a lie, as could further information he got — that she was seventeen, from Modesto, an orphan who had lived with an aunt named Ann Woods until two years ago when she had split to find out what life was like. She didn’t remember the Modesto address, Aunt Ann didn’t have a phone. Weare didn’t push — his interest was last night. “Are you a ripoff artist?”

“Is that what Frank said?”

“Are you?”

“Now and then.”

“What’s the most you’ve ripped off?”

“Once I got a guy for about a hundred dollars’ worth of crank.”

“Recently?”

“Kind of.”

“Who was he?”

“I dunno. Never saw him again.”

A young guy new on the scene might take it hard, being foxed by a small, slight girl — might consider it an insult he should do something about, else be put down as a nobody, a wimp. He might hear about a burly, bearded dude with a sawed-off shotgun rumored to take care of ripoff artists for a prices.

Weare rambled around with that notion for a few minutes. The girl fiddled with her lip, looking thoughtful “If someone hired Frank to off me, he’d have been driving toward the coast, or into the hills — not north on El Camino at Belmont, like you said.”

“Sometimes bodies are found in the Sierras. Nobody ever finds who they were, or where from.” Sometimes bodies were found on beaches on the San Mateo coastside.

The girl was quiet. He asked, “Did Reese give you the dope?”

“All I know about last night is what you tell me, that you found me taped up and I started babbling about frogs and swans.”

“I didn’t say anything about frogs or swans.”

She mumbled, “No? I thought you did. I guess it was a thought floating around in my head.”

Weare guessed that last night she had been stalling until she could work things out, decide the best line to take — which seemed to be that she remembered nothing. He asked again if Reese had been her dope source. She got a tight mouth. “What difference does it make what I say? He’ll walk anyway, you know that. You cops never get anything solid on him. Maybe you don’t try too hard. Why should I stick my neck out, get him down on me?”

“He is already.”

“You don’t know that.” She said sulkily, “Get him on your own if you want him. I doubt you do. If he went to prison, who would you have to play your cop games on?”

Weare said they might put an ad in the paper and left.

He told the nurse he’d like to have the girl held seventy-two hours. In that time he’d try to run down some info, find out if there was an Aunt Ann, and if she wanted her back and could handle her. If not, he’d turn her over to a juvenile officer, to get her into a halfway house or a treatment center or somewhere.

He liked her. He remembered the bright line of baloney she had handed him last night. Where had she picked up on an old poem like ‘Ben Bolt’? Probably a reader, high IQ, good marks in school before discovering the wonders of dope, heading out to find out about life. Or death. Or TV.