Murder Most Strange (27 page)

"Good."

"But our precious offspring, having attention
called to the gates, wandered down there when nobody was looking and
played around opening and shutting them, and of course when they got
bored and came back to the house they left the gates open. And all
the sheep got out."

"
¡Desastre!
"
said Mendoza.

"Ken was up on the
roof of their garage putting on shingles, and just happened to glance
down the hill. He had an awful time rounding them up and getting them
back in, they were starting down into Burbank— Well, it's not that
funny, Luis! What a day! And the twins are confined to quarters. And
if you'd like to take me out to dinner, I won't say no."

* * *

Glasser was off on Friday. They'd be glad to have
Nick Galeano back, with business picking up a little. Overnight there
had been a felony hit-run on Hill, a woman and child killed and
another woman injured; she might be able to give them a description
of the car, when she could be seen in the hospital.

There was still paperwork to be done on the Patterson
case, and the other heisters to look for, and the new one that had
gotten started yesterday. But Hackett came into Mendoza's office, sat
down and lit a cigarette and said, "What you were telling me
about that lawyer—you know, Luis, I still don't think we know the
whole story on Parmenter. I've just got a funny feeling on that one."

"Oh, I've had the same thought," said
Mendoza. He leaned back and blew smoke at the ceiling.

"Hunch?"

"No hunch." And detectives weren't supposed
to work by hunches, but one reason that Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza
sometimes saw through a difficult case where logic failed was that he
was prone to the hunches now and then. "Just a funny feeling, as
you say."

"When you come to think of it, can you really
see any of that—that furtive little bunch killing him? I know it
wasn't intentional, he had a heart attack, but—even beating him
lip."

"No, not men of action. But he didn't seem to
know anybody else." The phone rang and Mendoza picked it up.

"It's the D.A.'s office," said Lake. "They
want a conference about Upchurch."

"
¡Por Dios!
What's it got to do with me? It's their baby now." He had won
the bet; Rosalie was spread all over front pages, and possibly would
end up getting screen tests offered.

"Oh, all right, all right. What time?"

"Three o'clock."

"Well, I suppose I'd better go and earn my pay
for once."

Hackett got up. "George hasn't been able to find
out a single thing about that Fuller. At least our Dapper Dan missed
last Sunday, I wonder if he's got a victim picked out for next
Sunday."

"Don't borrow trouble,
chico
."

"And how in hell we'd ever catch up to that one
. . ."

Grace and Palliser were now getting statements from
the wives of the men involved with Goodis; the D.A. hadn't decided
yet whether to charge them as accessories.

Mendoza was sitting there thinking about Parmenter,
about any possible way to set up a trap for Dapper Dan—but his
imagination failed him there—when Lake brought in a big handsome
young fellow in uniform and a tall thin miserable-looking kid. "And
what is this in aid of?" asked Mendoza.

The uniformed man almost shied back. He said humbly,
apologetically, "I'm very sorry to disturb you, Lieutenant, but
I figured it was the right place to come. I mean, we're supposed to
do everything by the book, sir, and that's what I thought was right
to do. To bring him here."

"How long have you been riding a squad—what's
your name?"

"McConnell, sir. Dave McConnell. Thirty-two
days, sir."

Mendoza grinned at him. "Well, not that I want
to encourage insubordination, but just bear it in mind when you're
talking to any brass that all of us started out riding a squad and
there was a time when all of us had been wearing the uniform just
thirty-two days. ¡Dios! When I was riding a squad, this was a hell
of a lot easier town to police than it is now. I don't envy you. So
tell me why you've come to see me."

McConnell relaxed a little. "This kid," he
said. "I was stopped for a light at Woodlawn and Santa Barbara,
and he came up to the squad and said he wanted to confess to a
murder. And he gave me a gun."

"¿Qué es esta? Let's have it."

McConnell stepped closer and laid a gun on the desk.

Mendoza looked at it with interest. "That's
fine, McConnell—thanks, we'll take it from here. And you did
right—going by the book."

"Thank you, sir." McConnell very nearly
saluted, and with encouragement might have backed out; Mendoza, never
especially concerned with protocol, didn't realize what a reputation
he had on this force.

He looked at the kid. Not quite a kid: at least
six-two, but gangling and skinny, probably looking younger than he
was, with a narrow weak face. "Suppose you sit down," he
said. Silently the kid sat down in the chair beside the desk. "Like
to tell me your name?"

"Tommy—Tommy Hernandez."

Mendoza got up and went out to see who was in. Wanda
was typing a report; he lifted a finger and she followed him back to
his office. "Tommy Hernandez. He says he wants to talk about a
murder. What about it, Tommy?"

He looked ready to cry. He wasn't a bad-looking boy,
in a girlish way; he had black hair a little untidy but not overlong,
neat features. He said in a thin voice, "I been thinking about
it ever since, I just can't stop thinking about it, and I never felt
so bad in my life. Mr. Robillard—he was just the nicest guy in the
world, I'd never do anything to hurt Mr. Robillard. He used to help
me with lots of things when he hadn't no call to. It was the money,
that was all. I just wanted the money."

"All right," said Mendoza. "Tell it
from the beginning."

He sat there with his head down, and he said
miserably, "I couldn't get a job, I mean to keep. I got the
diploma when I graduated, and I thought that meant I knew something,
I didn't do too bad all through school. But I got the job at the gas
station, and after a couple days the boss said damn stupid kid, they
don't teach you enough arithmetic to make change, and he fired me. I
couldn't learn to work that register thing at all. And Mom said try
the employment agency so I did, and they gave me a kind of test and I
got all mixed up, I couldn't make out the questions, and the guy said
I was func-func something illiterate and it'd be hard to find me a
job. And then I got a job at the market, putting things in bags and
carrying them out for people, only I couldn't do that right either,
they got mad at me because I mixed things up, you're supposed like to
put certain things in the same bags and I couldn't read what it said
on the packages, all different kinds of letters. And I wanted to help
Mom—she always needs money so bad. See, my dad died a couple of
years ago. He got sick and died. And Mom has to work, she works at a
place where they make ladies' dresses. And I got three brothers,
they're all younger'n me, Billy's only ten, and they need things."
He looked up at Mendoza, and there was a terrible bewilderment in his
dark eyes. "Last year," he said, and paused, "last
year, before I graduated, everybody thought I was great. I did pretty
good on the basketball team. Everybody cheered when I made a basket.
And then all of a sudden I'm no good for anything. And I wanted to
get some money for Mom, and I thought if I wasn't smart enough to
keep a job, maybe I could be a crook and just steal some. If I wasn't
no good anyway—

"And I remembered how Mis' Flowers always brings
out the cafeteria money in the afternoon. I guess I just didn't think
about anybody else maybe bein' there. I knew which was her car."

"Where did you get the gun?" asked Mendoza.

"Oh, it was my dad's, to scare burglars with. I
think Mom forgot it was there, on the closet shelf. I was just going
to scare Mis' Flowers with it, to get the money. I didn't know there
were any bullets in it." He gave a sudden dry sob. "I never
meant to shoot it! But when I heard Mr. Robillard yel1—I never knew
he was there—it scared me and I turned around and it went off all
by itself—I never knew a gun could go off all by itself like that—"

Mendoza sighed. An automatic could be a tricky sort
of gun, and a lot of them had a very light pull. If there was a
charge left up the spout ready to go . . .

He began to cry. "It's gonna hurt my mom awful
bad—find out I did a thing like that—I never meant to do a thing
like that—and Mr. Robillard . . ."

Wanda sighed too. And this was another senseless
random thing, and what would happen to Tommy now was in the lap of
the gods.

But later on, when the warrant had been applied for
and he'd been booked into jail and Wanda was typing a report on it,
Mendoza said to her, "Don't mention rehabilitation services in
prison."

"Don't they ever work?"

"It's a nice idea in
theory. About once in a thousand times. What annoys the hell out of
me is these damned schools that don't even teach the kids to read,
and then hand them the nice diploma that says they're educated. Maybe
they'll teach him to read in prison." He wandered back to his
office sadly. Cases like that depressed him.

* * *

Higgins was feeling annoyed and frustrated. The
hotel-in-quotes on Temple was a sleazy sort of place, and tenants
came and went without any sort of record being kept. All the manager,
the desk clerk, whatever he called himself, could say was how long
Fuller had been there, that he didn't seem to have a regular job but
paid for his room on time. There hadn't been anything in the room to
suggest any kind of background for Fuller; in fact it was just a
little mystery, who he'd been and why anybody had shot him and who
that had been.

He and Landers had been here again this afternoon,
talking to the various tenants who were on Social Security, who had
night jobs, and they hadn't gotten any new information. They were
just thinking of knocking off and going back to the office when
Higgins remembered that he hadn't talked to the man in the next room
to Fuller's. Gillespie. He went over to the desk, where the
manager—desk clerk was sitting reading a paperback Western, and
asked him if Mr. Gillespie had come back yet. Another mystery, that
one taking off for a few days now and then; maybe off on a drunk.

"Yeah," said the manager. "He came
back last night, I was just goin' in my place," and he nodded to
the door behind the counter, evidently his private domain, "when
he come in. I nearly stepped out again, tell him about Fuller, and
then I figured what the hell. But he ain't been out today."

Climbing the creaky old bare stairs, Higgins thought
they might as well shove this in Pending now and stop wasting time on
it; they were never going to get anywhere. He went down the hall and
rapped on Gillespie's door. Almost at once it opened. Gillespie was a
short spare man with a bald head.

"Mr. Gillespie?"

"Yes?" he said in a quiet voice.

Higgins reached for his badge. "I'd like to ask
you a few questions—"

Gillespie slammed the door in his face, and ten
seconds later there was a loud crack from behind it. "My God!"
said Higgins, stupefied.

Landers came pounding up the stairs. "Was that a
shot? What—"

"Nearly gave me a heart attack. What the hell?"
They tried the door and it opened. Across the bed lay the short spare
body of Mr. Gillespie; he had shot himself in the head, and he was
dead. The gun had fallen out of his hand; it was an old Hi-Standard
.22.

The manager came running. "Was that a shot? Oh,
my God!"

"Ten years off my life," said Higgins. But
of course, maybe it solved their little mystery. When Marx and Horder
got there, to take the routine pictures, he asked, "Did the
morgue send over the slug from the other one here on Tuesday? Have
you looked at it? Well, was it a twenty-two?"

"George," said Marx, "you saw the
corpse. Does a twenty-two blow off half a man's head? It was a three
fifty-seven magnum."

"That just makes all of this more confusing,"
said Higgins. They went back to the office and told Mendoza that the
little mystery had escalated, and what had happened.

"Just run through that once more . . . Well, I
can only think you both need a vacation, George. The manager told you
that Gillespie hadn't heard about Fuller yet, didn't know there were
police around, about that. You march up to him and show him a badge,
say you want to ask questions.
Obvio
,
he thought you were after him. He's probably wanted somewhere. Ask
NCIC."

"Damn it, that never— Of course."

"You don't realize,"
said Mendoza, "what an intimidating fellow you are, is all."

* * *

Higgins got home that Friday night just as the light
was fading; next month they'd be on daylight saving and he'd be home
before dark. The little Scotty Brucie came to meet him as he shut the
garage door, and he went into the kitchen to find Mary at the stove.
He kissed her and she said, "Reasonably good day?"