Dell Shannon - Streets of Death

"I have to say, she-Sandra-had been more and more difficult-since the divorce," she said painfully. "You see, I divorced her father last year. He-that doesn’t matter, the reasons, but you see he’d always spoiled her dreadfully, and I’m afraid-she’s just a child really, she didn’t understand about the divorce, she always idolized " her father and I didn’t want to-to destroy any of that-maybe that was a mistake, if I had told her-but I guess that doesn’t matter now either. I tried to discipline her-sensibly-God knows I tried. But-"

They listened patiently, asked questions. When Sandra hadn’t come home, last Saturday, she had called the Peacocks first. "Because Sandra and Stephanie were always together, best friends, and I thought-" And Stephanie hadn’t come home either. By next day it was pretty clear they’d run away together: some of their clothes were missing. "Oh, I’ve got to say it," said Mrs. Moseley, "Sandra would have been the leader, she always was-" She’d gone to the police then.

The Peacocks said that, of course, they’d been frantic, their only daughter missing, and then she’d phoned them last night. She was in a big railroad station in L.A. with no money-scared and sorry and wanting to come home. "We told her just to stay there, we’d come as soon as we could," said Mrs. Peacock. "And we called Anita-"

"If you’d called us," said Wanda, "we’d have taken care of her until you got here, Mrs. Peacock."

"Well, we don’t know anything about the police. Naturally. We just wanted to get here and find her. And thank God she’s all right-when I think what could have happened-that wild headstrong girl-I’m sorry, Anita, but you know she was, you tried but you know yourself-"

Mrs. Moseley sobbed once, convulsively, and Wanda brought her a glass of water.

"Well, now, Stephanie," said Palliser, wishing he knew more about teenagers, "suppose you tell us what you know about this."

She was a thin, gawky girl, not terribly pretty and looking even younger than she was, with long brown stringy hair and mild brown eyes; right now she was scared. "I-I-I didn’t really want to-it was all Sandra! I was scared all the time, but Sandra-"

"My poor darling!" said her mother.

Peacock had better sense. "Now listen here, young lady," he said roughly. "If you were scared it was your own damn fault for being such a little fool. You speak up and tell whatever you know right now!"

"Y-yes, Daddy. I’m sorry. I w-will," gulped Stephanie unsteadily.

"I didn't want to, it was Sandra," began Stephanie nervously. "She said-she said her mother was so strict and old-fashioned and she’d-she’d treated her father awful bad, she didn’t want to, you know, stay with her any more and-" She stopped and looked uneasily at Mrs. Moseley, her parents, and stuck there. Mrs. Peacock cast a somewhat unloving look at Mrs. Moseley, and Wanda intervened smoothly.

It might be better, she suggested, if they just left Stephanie to her and Sergeant Palliser; it was likely to be a long business taking a statement, and she’d be right with Stephanie all the time, they might be asking her to look at some photographs. Peacock said that was a good idea, they’d heard enough of it that he didn’t want to hear it all again, and he wasn’t going to face that drive again until tomorrow. Mrs. Moseley said faintly she’d just like to go back to the motel and lie down. Peacock exchanged a look with Palliser and urged his wife, protesting, to the door. "I guess we can leave it to you. We’re at the Holiday Inn off the Hollywood freeway."

"What would we do without you, lady?" said Palliser to Wanda, and meant it.

"All part of the job… Now, Stephanie, you can say whatever you want to us, you know, we won’t mind," she said comfortably. "We want to know anything you can tell us that might help to find out what happened to Sandra."

"You’re a policewoman, aren’t you? I guess that must be kind of an interesting job. Well, I know that. It’s all just so awful-Sandra dead and all-but I want to tell how it was, only Mama and Daddy carried on so, and I didn’t like to say in front of Sandra’s mother--"

"That’s all right now, you just tell it the way it happened."

"She said awful things about her mother," said Sandra miserably, "but maybe they were so, I don’t know. She said we could go to L.A., Hollywood, and get jobs, school was stupid and all the teachers squares and silly. She wanted to be a model, she said maybe we could get jobs like that right away, or there are schools where you can learn. I-well, I didn’t want to, I like school all right, but Sandra-she could always make me go along, sort of. She’d done it other times too. And her mother works, since the divorce, and my mother had a club meeting-last Saturday, I mean, so that’s when we did it. I packed a lot of clothes and things in Mama’s biggest suitcase, and Sandra had an overnight bag and a plane case, and we just took the bus out the state highway. It was crowded and nobody paid any notice, and at the end of the line we-uh-got out and, you know, started to hitch." She took a breath. "I was scared right from the first, that’s a thing you’re never supposed to do, get in strange cars, but Sandra wasn’t afraid of anything ever. She had fifteen dollars she’d saved from her allowance and I had nearly eight."

Palliser and Wanda refrained from looking at each other. Glasser wandered in and pulled up a chair behind Palliser silently. She hardly noticed him; she was talking to Wanda.

"Well, this man gave us a ride all the way to L.A. He was a salesman of some kind, he was nice and friendly, he joked with Sandra-she told him we were both eighteen and I guess he believed that. She said we were going to see some relatives of hers here and just to let us out at Hollywood Boulevard, that was the only name here we knew, and he did. He said, Hollywood and what, and we didn’t know what to say." Palliser put out one cigarette, lit p another, and thought, People. "But it was all so queer, sort of," said Stephanie, still sounding surprised. "Not what l we thought it’d be-not what we thought Hollywood’d be like! Just a great big city, and Woolworth’s and Penney’s and drugstores just like home, only some funnier-looking people-I mean, it wasn’t glamorous or anything at all! And we had some sandwiches at a place, but it was Sunday and no place was open, I mean we looked in the yellow pages for those model agencies like Sandra said, but they wouldn’t be open till Monday and I said where were we going to sleep. And then Sandra got talking to this man-"

"Sunday," said Wanda. "The man who drove you here, that was over Saturday night? Do you know his name?"

"He said to call him Jim, that’s all. Yes, ma’am, we drove all night, he bought us two sandwiches at a place on the way. And this other man Sandra got talking to, it was at this place on Hollywood Boulevard we went in to eat. I mean, I didn’t like it, but a person doesn’t know what to do," said Stephanie, blinking back sudden tears.

"My mother doesn’t think black people are very nice at all and Daddy always says nonsense, you judge people as individuals, and at school they seem to think they’re better than us because of slavery and all that and how do you know, anyway- But I didn’t like him! He got talking to Sandra and she told him about going to be a model and get jobs here and he said maybe he could help. He said did we have any place to stay and Sandra said not yet, and so he said we could stay at his place, his wife’d be glad to have us-I didn’t want to go, even when he said that, but Sandra said not to be silly. And he had a car, he took us to this house."

"Did he tell you his name? What did he look like?"

"Sure. His name was Steve Smith. I didn’t see how he might help us get jobs, because, you know, he talked-oh, real ignorant and bad grammar. But after, Sandra said maybe he was a servant to somebody real high up in the movies or something like that. Anyway, he took us to this house, but his wife wasn’t there and he said she must’ve gone someplace."