Mendoza opened the door for air while he waited. He was rapidly developing a guilty conscience: wasting time over this meaningless thing. He didn't get paid or shouldn't-for listening to inconsequential gossip. A dozen things he should have been doing this morning besides'-Graham Court,' said Gunn's voice in his ear.
'Oh? Any idea approximately where that is?'
'Somewhere down the wrong side of Main, that area-below First or Second. We've got'
'?No puede ser! ' said Mendoza very softly to himself. 'It can't be, not so easy, I don't believe it… When Morgan comes in, tell him to wait, I want to see him. Call me at my office immediatamente -or even quicker! I want everything you've got on these people. Let me have that address again.'
It was Gunn, of course, and not Hackett, who said all the things Hackett might say later; before outsiders, like this, Hackett paid lip service to rank. Gunn had once been Mendoza's superior; he spoke up. By the same token, of course, Mendoza wouldn't have talked so freely if Gunn hadn't been a retired Homicide man.
'You've got your wires crossed, Luis. What you've got here is just damn-all, it doesn't mean a thing. First off, how many people d'you suppose moved out of that section of town last September? There's no narrowing it down to a couple of blocks, you have to take in at least a square mile-call it even half a mile-at a guess, seven-eight thousand families, because you're taking in apartments, not just single houses. In that kind of neighborhood people aren't settled, they move around more. And-'
'I know, I know,' said Mendoza. 'And that's the least of all the arguments against this meaning anything at all. But say it-it's not even very significant that the move should be from the twenty-four-hundred block on Tappan to within two blocks of Commerce and Humboldt, because those are the same sort of neighborhoods, same rent levels, same class and color of people. All right. Evidence-!' He hunched his shoulders angrily, turning from staring at the view out Gunn's office window. 'Say it. Even if it is the same killer, no guarantee he lived anywhere near either of the girls. So all this is cuentos de hadas, just fairy tales.'
Hackett made a small doleful sound at his cigarette. 'I guess you're saying it for yourself, Lieutenant.'
'You've got no evidence,' Gunn said flatly. 'You'd just like to think so, which isn't like you, Luis. What the hell have you got?'
'I've got two dead girls,' said Mendoza, abrupt and harsh. 'And they don't matter one damn, you know. The kind of murders that happen in any big town, this week, next week, next year. No glamour, no excitement, no big names. Nothing to go in the books, the clever whimsy on Classic Cases or the clever fiction, ten wisecracks guaranteed to the page, a surprise ending to every chapter, where fifteen people had fifteen motives for the murder and fifteen faked alibis for the crucial minute, conveniently fixed by a prearranged long-distance phone call. They weren't very important or interesting females, these two, and anybody at all might have killed them. You know,' he swung on Gunn, 'this kind of thing, it doesn't go like the books, the clues laid out neat like a paper trail in a game! You start where you can and you take a look everywhere, at everything-?Que mas?- I then you start all over again.'
'I know,' said Gunn heavily. 'What I'm saying is, you've got nothing at all to link these two cases. The doll, that's really out of bounds, boy, that one I don't figure any way. The odds are that somebody found the girl, didn't report it, but picked up the package-'
'You're so right,' said Mendoza. 'It was dark, and her handbag was half under her, almost hidden.'
'Well, there you are. They were killed the same general way, but it's not a very unusual method-brute violence.'
'That eye,' said Hackett to his cigarette.
Gunn looked at him, back to Mendoza. 'If it's a real hunch, Luis, all I've got to say is, keep throwing cold water at it-If it just naturally drowns, let it go.'
'What else am I doing?' For they both knew that it wasn't ever all pure cold logic, all on the facts: nothing that had to do with people ever could be wholly like that. You bad a feeling, you had a hunch, and you couldn't drop every other line to follow it up, but a real fourteen karat hunch turned out to be worth something-sometimes. Say it was subconscious reasoning, out of experience and knowledge; it wasn't, always. Just a feeling.
'All right,' said Hackett amiably, 'cold water. I don't like the doll much myself. I said I'd buy all that about the guy at the skating rink, but there's nothing there to show it's the same one. In fact, the little we have got on that one, it suggests he admired the girl, wanted to pick her up-like that, whether for murder or sex.'
'So it does,' said Mendoza. 'And no hint of anything like that for Carol Brooks.'
Gunn opened his mouth, shut it, looked at Hackett's bland expression, and said, 'You saw both bodies, of course-you're a better judge of what the similarity there is worth.'
'Oh, let's be psychological,' said Mendoza. 'Not even that. Art says to me before I looked at Ramirez, 'It's another Brooks'-maybe he put it in my mind.'
'Sure, lay it on me.'
There was a short silence, and then Mendoza said as if continuing argument, 'Nobody's interested in this kind of killing, no, except those of us whore paid to be interested. But it's the kind everybody ought to take passionate interest in-the most dangerous kind there is-just because it's without motive. Or having the motive only of sudden, impulsive violence. The lunatic kill. So it might happen to anybody. Claro que si, let one like that kill a dozen, twenty, leave his mark to show it's the same killer, then he's one for the books-the Classic Case. And don't tell me I've got no evidence these were lunatic kills. It's negative evidence, I grant you, but there it is-we looked, you know. Nobody above ground had any reason to murder the Brooks girl, and she wasn't killed for what cash she had on her. The couple of little things we've got on Ramirez, nothing to lead to murder-and she wasn't robbed either. Not to that murder. I don't have to tell you that brute violence of that sort, it's either very personal hate or lunacy.'
Morgan cleared his throat; he'd been waiting in silence, a little apart, his case book out ready, if and when they remembered him. 'I don't want to butt in, you know more about all this, but I can't help feeling you're on the wrong track here, just for that reason. These people-well, after all-I don't suppose you're thinking the woman did it, and a thirteen-year-old kid-'
Again a short silence. Hackett leaned back in his chair and said conversationally, 'I picked up a thirteen- year-old kid a couple of months ago who'd shot his mother in the back while she was watching T.V. She'd told him he couldn't go to the movies that night. You remember that Breckfield business last year?-three kids, the oldest one thirteen, tied up two little girls and set fire to them. One died, the other's still in the hospital. I could take you places in this town where a lot of thirteen-year-old kids carry switch-knives and pug off organized gang raids on each other-and the neighborhood stores. And some of 'em aren't little innocents, any other way, either. Juvenile had a couple in last week-and not the first-with secondary stage V.D., and both on heroin.'
Morgan said helplessly, 'But-this kid-he Is not like that! He's just a kid, like any kid that age. You can tell, you know.'
'Something was said,' cut in Mendoza, 'about his size, that he'd started to get his growth early. How big is he?-how strong?'
'Almost as tall as I am-five-eight-and-a-half, around there. Still childish-looking, in the face. But he's going to be a big man, he's built that way-big bone structure.'
'Weight?'
'Hell, I can't guess about all this,' said Morgan angrily. 'As far as I can see you've got no reason at all to suspect the Lindstroms of anything. I don't know what's in your mind about this boy-you talk about lunatics and juvenile hoods, so O.K., which is he? You can't have it both ways. The whole thing's crazy.'
Mendoza came a few steps toward him, stood there hands in pockets looking down at him, a little cold, a little annoyed. 'I've got nothing in my mind about him right now. I don't know. This is the hell of a low card, but I've got the hell of a bad hand and it's the best play I've got at the moment. Carol Brooks was killed on September twenty-first, and these people left that neighborhood-unexpectedly, and in a hurry-within twenty-four hours. The woman was working at night, so the boy was free to come and go as he pleased. Shortly before Brooks was killed, the woman showed interest in an article Brooks was buying on time, and it now appears that the girl had this with her before she was killed and it subsequently disappeared. I'm no psychiatrist and I don't know how much what any psychiatrist'd say might be worth, here-the boy just into adolescence, probably suffering some shock when his
