Dell Shannon - Streets of Death

"Leaving the wheelchair," said Galeano. The wheelchair had taken possession of his mind; the thing was like a conjuring trick.

"Look, it’s kind of like one of those locked-room puzzles," said Carey, "and then again it’s not. I mean, there’s people all around-apartments, busy streets. Only nobody saw anything. And you remember it was raining like hell all that day. On the other hand, why would anybody see anything? That apartment house-everybody out at work except Fleming and old Offerdahl dead drunk down the hall."

"Yes, I see," said Conway. "Fleming almost completely helpless, on the second floor. And there’s no smell of him anywhere?"

"Not a trace. And he’d be easy to trace, you can see.

If you’re feeling that energetic," said Carey, "you can have all the pipes examined, but I doubt that the blonde had time to murder and dismember him that thoroughly and feed him down the bathtub, say, before she called us. She’s not a very big blonde, she wouldn’t have had the strength to carry him anywhere, dead or alive-he was six feet, a hundred and eighty. You can see there’s just one answer, it hits you in the eye."

"The boyfriend," said Galeano. "Yeah."

"I haven’t turned one up, damn it. Good luck on it. All I see is that Fleming has got to be dead. I don’t pretend to understand females," said Carey gloomily, "but however she may have felt about him once, here he was, a dead drag on her. He’s no good to her as a husband, she’s got to support him and take care of him, and he could live to be eighty. He didn’t have any life insurance, he hadn’t converted it when he got out of the service-that could explain why they didn’t try to fake a suicide or accident. She d like to be rid of him, don’t tell me she wouldn’t. She-"

"And don’t anybody say, she could walk out or divorce him," said Conway cynically. "The people we deal with aren’t so logical. I suppose there’s got to be a boyfriend."

"Go and look," said Carey. "They don’t seem to have had many friends. They used to live over on Berendo in Hollywood, but I couldn’t locate anybody who knew them. All I’ll say is, the thing is obvious. There’s got to be a boyfriend. She gave him a key, or he knocked on the door and Fleming let him in. He knocked him over the head-there’s not a trace of blood in the place-and there’s a driveway down the side to garages at back, he could’ve driven his car back there and lugged Fleming down to it in five minutes. Ten feet from the back door. Your guess is as good as mine what he might have done with him-maybe he’s got a boat and dropped him out at sea, or buried him in his backyard-all I say is, Fleming’s got to be dead, so it’s your baby."

"The logic I fol1ow," said Conway, "but what a bastard to work. But if there is a boyfriend, somebody’s bound to know. The other girls she works with?"

"Four of ’em. They all say she’s a loner, doesn’t confide all girlish."

"What about her family?" asked Galeano.

"I said, she’s German-married him over there. Oh, I guess she could have some family in Germany. I don’t know."

"If she does, it could be she’d mentioned something in letters, but how to get at it-"

"No bets," said Carey. "I’ll wish you good luck on it."

He got up.

"Thanks so much," said Conway. "You know it’ll end up in Pending-your files and ours."

"Well, I kind of hope you nail her," said Carey. "I don’t like having my common sense insulted. Vanished, she says, batting her eyes at me-this blonde. A man in a wheelchair, a cripple!"

"And the empty wheelchair there. I like that," said Galeano. "It’s a nice touch somehow."

"Do have fun with it," said Carey.

Jason Grace and Tom Landers had been handed the new rape-assault because they’d been on the one last week, and the one last month, and this being in the same general neighborhood it might add up to the same X. The first two had been funny. "I hope," said Landers now, "we’re not in for a spate of the offbeat ones. If this does match up."

"Oh, I don’t know, relieves the monotony," said Grace. His chocolate-colored face with its dapper little mustache like Mendoza’s was thoughtful as he reread the statement from the second victim. "Has Jimmy talked to the hospital yet?"

"I’ll see."

The first victim, last month, had been a Mrs. Rena Walker over on Twentieth Street. Mrs. Walker was sixty-four, an upright and respectable widow, owned her own modest little house, and devoted much of her time to the Afro-American Methodist Church where she directed the choir. She said she’d just come home from grocery-shopping, about four that afternoon, when her doorbell rang and it was a boy asking about yard work. "I told him I couldn’t afford anybody to cut the grass, my son-in-law does it for me, but he was so polite, seemed like a real nice boy, I was sorry I had to turn him down. So then he says could he trouble me for a drink of water, ma’am, and I naturally said, why, surely, sonny, and let him in, and the next thing I knew he pulled this knife- But he was just a little kid! Just a boy, didn’t look more than twelve years old!" She had given them a description, such as it was: a light-colored Negro boy about that age, maybe five-six, slightly built. Mrs. Walker had definitely been raped, said the doctor, and cut about with a knife. She had been surprised: cops weren’t much, any more.

The second victim, last week, had been Miss Ruth Trimball who lived alone in a rented house two blocks down the street from Mrs. Walker. She was sixty-eight, still worked at a drugstore over on Jefferson, and had just got home from work when a boy rang her doorbell and asked if she wanted anybody to do yard work. She told the same story Mrs. Walker had-such a nice polite boy, she hadn’t thought twice about letting him in, for his drink of water. She’d been raped and cut too, and gave the same description.

Yesterday Mrs. Wilma Lightner had called LAPD and reported finding her mother injured when she went to see her. Mrs. Sylvia Beaver had been raped and knifed, according to the hospital, but would recover. Piggott and Schenke, on night watch, had taken a statement from Mrs. Lightner last night. Her mother was a widow, sixty-two, owned her own home on Twenty-third Street, was living on Social Security.

Landers came back to report that the hospital said Mrs. Beaver could be questioned. "Take your car," he added, "that thing’s acting up on me-I’m going to have to figure on a new one." And what with Phil talking about new furniture-he and Policewoman Phil O’Neill had just got married last August, and Landers was discovering all the fallacies of that one about two living as cheaply as one. The Corvair was of an age to be retired, and with Phil so enthusiastic about her little Gremlin he’d rather like to try one of his own, but the payments- They took Grace’s car, the little blue racing Elva. At the hospital, they found Mrs. Beaver propped up in bed with her daughter in attendance. She was a fat, black, very respectable-looking matron with round steel-rimmed spectacles, and she looked at the detectives indignantly.

"Tell you? I can most certainly tell you all about it!" she said loudly. "I was never so surprised in my life! He was just a little kid-a little boy! Rang the bell and asked to cut my lawn for a dollar. I told him I didn’t need anybody to cut the grass, but he seemed like a nice youngster, so polite and all, and when he asked for a drink of water, I didn’t see any harm in letting him in-"

She gave them the same description. It amounted to assault with intent, like the other ones.

"Offbeat all right," said Grace on the way back to headquarters. And of course there was no lead on it at all. They could look in Records for the description, but it was general.