Mrs. Cecelia Chard identified the body with loud sobs and groans. She was a thin dark hard-faced woman with shrewish black eyes, and Galeano didn’t take to her at all. She was supported by her mother, Mrs. Wilma Dixon, and her brother Elmer, both generally resembling her.
'Poor Bob,' she lamented, drying her eyes with a Coty-scented handkerchief when they’d got back from the morgue and Galeano had settled them down in the office to make a statement. 'Like I said, Mr. Galeano, I never reported him missing because I thought he was off on a bender, like he did every now ’n’ then, and goodness knows-Mother and Elmer can bear me out. I’m not about to say he was the best husband in the world, Mr. Galeano, but I wouldn’t have wished him a terrible death like that-he must’ve got into a fight with somebody when he was drunk. I got to say, he used to get fighting mad with any liquor in him, it takes some like that, you know.'
'A regular mean man in drink he was, all right,' said Elmer, and giggled.
'He certainly was,' said Mrs. Dixon with a long sigh.
'It’s a sorry thing he should’ve come to such a bad end, but running around with riifraif the way he did, in all them bars, no wonder. I’m sorry to say it, Mr. Galeano, but I guess my girl’s rid of a bad bargain.'
Galeano didn’t think much of them at all, but there was the one about birds of a feather. Their estimation of Chard was probably right. He’d been found about half a block down the side street from a bar on the corner of Venice Boulevard, and it was very likely he’d got into a brawl with some other drunks and died of it. It was just more of the sordid violence cops got paid to cope with, and it made him feel tired.
He got the gist of that down in a statement, and Mrs. Chard signed it. He told them they’d be notified when the body could be released, and they thanked him and went away.
And he supposed that somebody ought to ask a few questions at that bar, try to find out who the other drunks were-not that it seemed very important.
Mendoza scanned the night report before he listened to Conway, and handed the Buford thing to Landers and Grace. It didn’t look as if there’d be much handle to it, unless S.I.D. turned up something.
Then he heard all about Carey’s blonde and the empty wheelchair, and like Galeano he was fascinated. Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza was not, perhaps, temperamentally suited to be a cop, who by the nature of the job had to deal with physical evidence, facts and figures and tangibilities. The men who worked with him were convinced that his natural calling was that of a cardsharp, that most innocent of con-men who relied on instinctive knowledge of human nature.
'I see what Carey means,' he said amusedly. 'Masterly gall. Please, sir, he’s gone, I don’t know where. But the empty wheelchair-which was probably quite inadvertent, if we’re reading it right-it’s a nice touch.?Me gusta! '
'So all we do is find the boyfriend,' said Conway.
'I thought Carey’d made kind of heavy weather of it. In spite of the-er-imaginative touch, it looks open and shut to me.'
Mendoza regarded him sardonically. 'Yes and no, Rich. In this job, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, things are just exactly what they look like. Just occasionally they aren’t. But I want a look at Carey’s blonde and the wheelchair. That so eloquently empty wheelchair!'
'So does Nick. But there’s only one obvious answer, isn’t there?'
' Es posible,' said Mendoza. 'Go see if he’s back from the morgue.'
Palliser had got caught in a jam on the freeway, a pileup backed up for a mile, and it was nearly nine o’clock when he came into the office to find four forlorn-looking people waiting to see him. Mrs. Anita Moseley, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Peacock, and Stephanie Peacock.
Mr. Peacock offered to go to the morgue to make the identification. 'I knew Sandra all her life, since she and Stephanie started school together. I wish you’d let me, Anita-save you the agony-' But Mrs. Moseley said tautly she had to see for herself and be sure. She was a nice-looking woman, late thirties, brown hair, good figure, conservatively dressed. They were all nice people, Palliser could see, in the euphemistic phrase: upright middle- class people: Peacock an insurance agent, the two women ladies. At the morgue, Mrs. Moseley looked at the body and said thinly, 'Yes, that’s Sandra. That’s her. Oh, my God, to have it all end like this-I tried so hard- To see her like that- No, I’m all right. Honestly, I’m all right. But when it was all for nothing-no reason for her to-'
Back at the office, Palliser got Wanda Larsen in for support, and she was briskly sympathetic but businesslike, their very efficient policewoman; Mrs. Moseley talked mostly to her, and Wanda took unobtrusive notes.
'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.
THREE
'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.
