Murder Most Strange Read online

  Murder Most Strange

  Dell Shannon

  1981

  This one is for

  Martha Webb

  a real-life cop

  who likes my cops

  Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is

  the one which makes him out to be a rational

  animal.

  —Anatole France

  ONE

  The elevator door slid back silently on the long hospital corridor. Just opposite was the L-shaped desk in a bay of a nurses' station, and a tall blond young fellow in white smock and pants was lounging there casually talking to half a dozen nurses; apparently he'd just gotten to the punch line of a joke, and they were all laughing as Mendoza and Hackett came up. "Dr. O'Laughlin," said Hackett, "called to say—"

  "Me." He surveyed them; he looked too young to be anything but an intern. "You'll be the fuzz."

  "Lieutenant Mendoza, Sergeant Hackett."

  "Yep," said O'Laughlin. "Down this way. She was damned lucky, he just missed the heart with one blow, and she'd lost a hell of a lot of blood. Yeah, she's been conscious since about four A.M., but you can only see her for ten minutes or so—she's still weak, so take it easy." He looked at them interestedly, Mendoza as usual dapper in silver-gray herringbone, Hackett looming bulkily over him. Halfway down the hall he stopped at a door. This was the Intensive Care section of the huge sprawling pile of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center: beyond the window to their left was a rather spectacular view, from five storeys up, out over Hollywood.

  In the two-bed room, the second bed had curtains drawn around it, the occupant invisible; in the bed nearest the door, Cindy Hamilton was half propped up against pillows, an I.V. tube in one arm. Her dark hair was brushed lankly back from her pale face, and she looked disappointed to see the three men; her mouth drooped.

  "I thought—Mother'd be back."

  "Later," said O'Laughlin easily. "You're off the critical list now, darling, and visitors' hours haven't begun yet. It's the police with some questions, Cindy—we do want to catch the fellow who did this, don't we?"

  "Oh," she said. "Oh, yes." She looked at Mendoza and Hackett with faint interest. "Only I haven't the least idea who he was, you know.”

  "Can you give us a description of him?" asked Hackett, getting out his notebook.

  "Oh, my God," said Cindy Hamilton, and shut her eyes briefly. They knew quite a bit about her now, and she was a nice girl. She was twenty-five, and she had a job as a legal secretary, one of three girls in the office of Daniel Frome on Beverly Boulevard; she lived alone in an apartment on Hoover. Her original home was Fallbrook, where she still had family; her parents were here now. Three days ago, last Monday, she hadn't showed up at work, and eventually one of the other girls had gone to the apartment, as they couldn't raise her on the phone, and discovered the door open and Cindy unconscious and bloody on the living-room floor. She'd been beaten, stabbed and raped.

  "My God," she said again now. "Yes, I can do that all right." She was obviously still weak, but she tried to pull herself up straighter in the bed and raised a hand to smooth her hair. "Gah. I feel like death warmed over. Mother and Dad want me to come home to Fallbrook, the big city so dangerous. You know, I'm sort of thinking about it now. And you'll think I'm a fool—but you just don't know—how-how damned plausible he was! It—he—" She shook her head. "It was just like Jekyll and Hyde."

  "How do you mean, Miss Hamilton?" asked Hackett.

  "Funny isn't the right word. Naturally I'm not idiot enough to let a strange man in—you know, the ordinary way. I've lived in L.A. for three years, I know about the crime rate, for heaven's sake. But he was so nice—so polite. He was—well, a gentleman, you know?" She drew a long breath. "I'll tell you—all I can, if it'll help to catch him. It was about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon, the doorbell rang and there he was. Never saw him before, but he looked—" She thought, and decided on, "Nice. Nobody to be afraid of. He was about twenty-five or thirty, tall, around six feet, dark hair, clean shaven, sort of thin—and dressed real sharp, a gray suit, not just sports clothes, a whole suit, white shirt and tie. I mean, he looked—oh, like a professional man of some kind, certainly not a bum or a dopey—and he was so polite." She swallowed. "That was why. Why I was such a fool to let him in. Because—it sounded—he made it sound so plausible."

  "What, Miss Hamilton?" asked Hackett.

  Her eyes moved over the three of them listening, closed again. "Such a fool," she said. "He said—he was looking for his sister. He thought she lived there, at my apartment, I mean—he'd had a letter and they were supposed to have moved there last week, his sister and her husband—he took out a letter from his pocket to check the address. He said a name something like Wayne or Raynes, I don't remember. And he'd just gotten to L.A. from someplace back East, he couldn't understand why they weren't here. He sounded—he looked so really upset and worried. And I said I didn't know anything about it, of course, and he thanked me—he seemed just terribly worried, and he apologized—and then he said he'd sent his taxi away because he'd expected to find his sister there, and he supposed he'd have to go to their old address and see if they were there, and did I mind if he called another taxi—"

  "Ca," said Mendoza interestedly.

  "And like an absolute fool I let him in. Like Jekyll and Hyde," said Cindy Hamilton weakly. "As soon as the door was shut—he whipped out his knife, and he was on me—didn't give me time to scream—all of a sudden, he looked just like a fiend, this awful fixed grin, and he—and he—"

  "Can you tell us anything more about his appearance? Color of eyes? Any scars or tattoos‘?"

  She shook her head. "It was all sort of fast, after that. Feel like such a fool. But he was so plausible—" Her eyes shut again.

  "That'll do for now," said O'Laughlin. In the corridor, he was disposed to ask curious questions, but Hackett was curt and he shrugged and took himself off.

  "And that's something a little different, isn't it?" said Hackett. "She might be able to make a mug shot."

  Mendoza was teetering back and forth, heel to toe, ruminatively. "It rings a small bell in my head," he said.

  "What‘? An offbeat sort of thing—"

  "Mmh. Come on, Arturo, let's go back to base and chase it up."

  They had driven over in Hackett's garish Monte Carlo; it was early afternoon and the traffic light. In twenty minutes they were back at Parker Center downtown, and came into the Robbery-Homicide office to find Landers and Palliser just leaving on a new call.

  "Probably not much," said Sergeant Lake pithily. "Body over on Miramar. Patrolman said looked like a typical old wino."

  Mendoza swept off the inevitable black Homburg and started for his office. "Get me Hollywood, Jimmy—Sergeant Barth if he's in." He sat down at his desk and swiveled around to stare out at the view toward the Hollywood hills over the urban complex sprawl of downtown L.A. It was a clear view, this last day of March; the winter months had been wet, and as yet there hadn't been anything like a heat wave or high smog. So far it was a pleasant, cool spring, and Robbery-Homicide was perking along with enough to do, but not as heavy a caseload as they sometimes had to work. They had, of course, the usual heist jobs, and three of those over the last couple of weeks had apparently been pulled by the same pair; they had a shapeless sort of homicide, a derelict wino stabbed to death over on Skid Row, which would probably end up in Pending. There was a still unidentified body which had turned up three days ago in a cheap hotel room: an O.D. on heroin, the autopsy said, and it wouldn't make much difference if they never found out who he'd been. As the year advanced and the inevitable heat wave arrived, business would pick up; at the moment they were out hunting heisters, and cleaning up a rather messy but obvious homicide invo
lving an addict and his supplier—but more business was always coming along. The phone shrilled on Mendoza's desk and he picked it up.

  "What do you want?" asked Sergeant Barth of the Hollywood precinct. "I'm busy."

  "Just before Christmas," said Mendoza, "I ran into you down in R. and I. with a witness to look at mug shots, and you were telling me something about a gentlemanly rapist. Who talked his way into victims' apartments all very polite and then pulled a knife."

  "Dapper Dan," said Barth instantly. "Yeah. Don't tell me you've got something on that one? As far as we know, he pulled seven rapes up here in the last six months, and one turned into a homicide. What's your interest?"

  "It's possible we've got another victim in our territory. I'd like to hear what you turned up on it. Didn't you say he had some plausible story about thinking his sister lived at this address, and did the lady mind if he called a cab—"

  "That's him," said Barth. "For God's sake. The last we heard of him was in January."

  "Come to Papa, please," said Mendoza gently, "with everything you collected. It looks as if he's branched out into new terrain."

  "Damn it, I've got a couple of witnesses in to make statements. I'll get down as soon as I can. And hell, Bosworth worked that homicide mostly and it's his day off—I'll be down, I'll be down," said Barth resignedly.

  "An offbeat one, all right," said Hackett. "Just chance, you running into Barth like that." But of course, as they went on to work it, NCIC would have pinned down the M.O. and sent them to Hollywood precinct eventually.

  Mendoza sat back, lit a cigarette and yawned. "I think I'm coming down with spring fever. Offbeat—I don't know, Art, nothing a rapist does should surprise us, ¿como no?"

  There wasn't anyone else in the office. They were short one man on day watch now; it was apparent that the brass wasn't about to assign any new men to the bureau, and instead had transferred Rich Conway to beef up the night watch. They were about to lose Nick Galeano, if temporarily. After more than a year of pussyfooting around his very proper and respectable young German widow, Marta Fleming, he had finally screwed up the courage to propose to her, and the formal wedding was scheduled for next Monday afternoon. Galeano had six days of unused sick leave as well as his vacation coming, and it was just to be hoped that the case load at Robbery-Homicide didn't start to get hot and heavy before he got back to them.

  "I've got that report to finish," said Hackett, and reluctantly went back to his desk in the communal office. Most of the heists were, as usual, entirely anonymous with few leads to offer, and he felt rather like coming down with spring fever himself.

  Before Barth showed up John Palliser and Tom Landers came back, with the new one to start a report on.

  "That old wino, Leo Marvin," said Palliser, absently stroking his handsome straight nose. "About ten days ago—in an alley over on Alameda. Stabbed. It looked a little funny, because he didn't have much on him for anybody to steal, and for a couple of days he'd been too broke even to buy the cheapest stuff-panhandling up on Broadway, said a couple of his pals, and no luck. Why the hell should anybody knife one like that?"

  "Annoyed because he didn't have much on him," said Hackett. "What about him?"

  "Well, this new body looks sort of like a replay," said Palliser. "It's funny."

  Landers tendered a quarter and tossed it. "Heads." Palliser said "Tails" uninterestedly and they looked at it. "Hell," said Landers, and took the cover off his typewriter.

  "What do you mean, a replay?" asked Hackett. Mendoza had come wandering out of his office and perched a hip on the corner of Higgins' desk.

  "Well, in a way, just such another one," said Palliser. "Except that he wasn't a wino. One Joseph Kelly, retired railroad man, lived on a little pension and Social Security, an old apartment on Miramar. Harmless old widower, no family, evidently not many friends. The man who lives across the hall found him a couple of hours ago, in the hall right outside his apartment door. Stabbed to death, it looks like. And not very long before, he was still warm. And he had about nine bucks on him, so he wasn't robbed either."

  "The city jungle," said Mendoza, and yawned again.

  "Yes, but—it just struck me as funny," said Palliser. Landers had rolled the triplicate forms into the typewriter and was starting the report.

  George Higgins came in towing a weedy, very black young Negro and said, "Good, somebody's here. I finally caught up with Willy." Three witnesses had fingered Willy Lamb for the knitting of another unsavory character who had been supplying him with heroin. "Who'd like to sit in and talk to him?"

  Higgins looked tired; he'd been out all day following up the few elusive leads to Willy, and probably hadn't had any lunch.

  "Oh, stash him away and take a breather," said Mendoza. "You look a little beat, boy."

  "I could use a sandwich and coffee, but we ought to get to him while he's still surprised he got tabbed for it." Higgins shepherded his capture out toward one of the interrogation rooms, and Palliser swore and followed him. Quite a lot of the time this was a very boring, dull and sordid job.

  Landers had finished the report, and it was getting on for four o'clock, when Sergeant Barth of the Hollywood precinct came in. Higgins and Palliser were still closeted with Willy Lamb. Hackett went down the hall to the coffee machine and brought back three cups to Mendoza's office, remembering that Barth liked sugar.

  "Thanks very much," said Barth, looking slightly less sour. "My God, what a day—we're in a hell of a mess up on my beat, four homicides this week—four, I ask you—I can remember when Hollywood was the cream-puff beat, and now all these goddamned hookers and pimps cluttering the streets, not to mention the nest of fags— Augh!" He took a swallow of coffee and sighed. He had a year to go to retirement; he'd put in thirty-five years at the job, and today looked his age and more, a middle-sized nondescript fellow with a comfortable little paunch and a nearly bald head. He had laid a fat manila folder on Mendoza's desk, and nodded at it. "There's all we've got on Dapper Dan. You think he's pulled one down here?"

  "It sounds suggestive," said Mendoza. "Tell us the high-1ights."

  Barth shrugged. "Seven cases, roughly last September to February. He must have cased the girls at least desultorily, to know they were living alone. But of course they all had their names in the slots in the apartment doors. He gave them all the same story, and they all—-that is, except the one who turned up dead—said the same thing. He was so polite, such a gentleman, they didn't hesitate to let him in when he asked. And none of them was the kind who'd admit a strange man in the ordinary way, so he must be damned plausible. The same little tale, and it was just simple enough to sound plausible, I suppose. He'd just landed here from somewhere back East, and this was the new address he had from his sister and her husband, and he was all mystified at finding they weren't there. He padded it out, and every one of the girls believed him—-all so apologetic, so sorry to bother them. And they gave us a good description. Five ten to six feet, thin, dark hair, probably dark eyes, clean shaven and very well dressed. Which seems to have been one of the things that reassured them, you see? The natty suit, the white shirt and tie."

  "Mmh, yes," said Mendoza. "Not a bum or an addict. What about the homicide?"

  "Well, it's very probable it was him," said Barth. "It looked like a carbon copy. In all the other cases, as soon as he got into the apartment he pulled the knife and seemed to go berserk—"

  "Jekyll and Hyde," said Hackett.

  "Yeah, one of them said that. He only went for the straight rape, nothing kinky, but he was rough—all of them were beaten up and stabbed, two of them seriously. The homicide—well," said Barth, "a hell of a lot of suggestive evidence ties it up to him. Girl named Gay Spencer, lived in an apartment on Fountain. She was a sales clerk at Magnin's. Girl friend of hers worked there too, so when she didn't turn up for work one Monday the girl friend went to see why, found the door unlocked and Spencer dead on the living-room floor. She'd been stabbed twenty-three times, died of shock and b
lood loss. The autopsy said about twenty-four hours before. That linked it up right there—the knife, and the day—all the jobs were pulled on Sunday afternoons. So we asked around, and two women had seen a man coming up the hall, from the direction of Spencer's apartment, about four o'clock the afternoon before. Same description, if not quite as much of it."

  "Yes," said Mendoza. "All on Sundays? That's a queer one."

  "Day when a lot of single young girls would be home," said Barth. "Washing their hair or stockings or something, or doing their nails, getting ready for the week's work. Anyway, you can see it linked up. There's all the statements and so on in there, and I wish you luck. He does tie up to your victim?"

  "Oh, definitely, I'd say." Mendoza gave him a brief rundown on Cindy Hamilton. "You didn't turn anything at all?"

  "Not a thing," said Barth. "We went the usual route. All of 'em said they'd very definitely recognize him, but none of them picked out any mug shots. We wasted a hell of a lot of time dusting all those places for latents and weeding out prints of all their friends who might have left any around, and didn't get one damn thing. He wasn't wearing gloves, so he's just careful—or lucky. NCIC didn't have a thing on the M.O. or the description, and he didn't show in our records where we looked first. So now you can go look in all the same places and come up empty."

  "Hell," said Hackett unemphatically. "What a bastard to work. He damn near killed this one too. She only came to this morning—concussion and about twenty knife wounds. It looked as if he'd knocked her against the stereo cabinet. She put up quite a fight, by the look of the place."

  "Yeah." Barth nodded. "So did all of ours—and the Spencer girl—but he's big and tough, and he doesn't care how much damage he does. Do have fun chasing him, boys."

  He got up. "I'm going home. Thank God it's my day off tomorrow. Let me know if you catch up with him, but I won't hold my breath."

  As he went out, Mendoza eyed the fat folder idly, making no move to pick it up. "Inventive character," he said. "And a waste of time to speculate what the head doctors would say about him. I think I'll go home too, Arturo. We haven't had a lab report on the Hamilton girl's apartment. I suppose this time he could have left some prints, but if they're not in anybody's records—"