he'd been with the girl that Saturdays night and she backed him up, but nobody believed her. Then Hackett went to talk to the owner of the gas station again. All he had to say was that Siemens was a damn good mechanic and he'd always liked him fine.
'I don't know why the cops are picking on him,' he said now. 'What the hell you think he's done, anyways? When's he supposed to have done something?'
'Two weeks ago Saturday night,' said Hackett absently.
'Well, there you are,' said the owner. 'Cops picking on him. I don't know any of his pals or what he does at night, but I just happen to remember that one. He told me his sister just had a baby and he was going to see her in the hospital.'
'The French Hospital downtown?' asked Hackett mildly.
'How do I know what hospital?'
The sister's name was Marcia Field and she had been in the French Hospital.
'He's our X on Holzer. He's guilty as hell,' said Higgins, 'and goddamn it, we'll never prove it on him. All the evidence there ever was is long gone. Connections, but nebulous.' He hunched his brawny shoulders angrily. 'He wasn't the only one at that hospital that night. That Visa card could have been dropped by somebody else. There's damn all to show a judge.' And that kind of thing happened too, and it was always frustrating.
But on the following Tuesday morning, Scarne showed up in the Robbery-Homicide office with a manila envelope. He was looking pleased. He said to Mendoza, 'I think we've got something interesting for you, Lieutenant. It was one hell of a job. We had to use the ultraviolet and infrared film, but it came up better than I thought it would.' He slid an enlarged glossy photograph out of the envelope and laid it tenderly on Mendoza's desk. 'All we could salvage out of all that burned material in the Franklin stove, but maybe it's enough. There was what was left of a billfold, just the corners and a spine, and what looks like the handle of a woman's handbag, which says you're right about Siemens. The plastic slots from the billfold were completely gone, of course. Any I.D. was past recall. But this thing-' He cocked his head at it. 'It was about three by five originally, and we can deduce that it was in the middle of a bunch of other papers-other snapshots possibly-in an inside pocket of the billfold. It was protected enough that all of it didn't burn, and we brought up about half of it.'
It had been a snapshot, probably in color. The delicate lab processing wouldn't restore that, and the picture was gray and fuzzy from the rate of enlargement. It showed the upper half of a little girl smiling at the camera. She was wearing a polka-dotted dress and a big hair bow.
' Muy lindo, ' said Mendoza. 'You bring about the miracles these days, don't you? Thank you so much.'
'It was one hell of a job. But it might,' said Scarne, 'be almost as good as a driver's license.'
Mendoza and Hackett took the enlargement up to Hollywood, where Frances Holzer worked at the Fidelity Federal Savings and Loan, and she took one look at it and said in surprise, 'Why, it's that snapshot of Monica. My niece-Mona's little girl. Mona just sent it down about three weeks ago. Yes, Mother had it in her billfold with some other snapshots of the family, and of course Mona has a print of it too. Where on earth did you get it? And what happened to it?'
'Jackpot,' said Hackett in immense satisfaction..
' Mejor tarde que nunca,' said Mendoza. 'Better late than never. Let's go pick him up and get the warrant.' But they never got Siemens to open his mouth. Even when they spelled out the evidence to him, he stayed cocky and silent. They had to speculate on exactly what had happened to Edna Holzer. Had he been in the parking lot at the same time, grabbed her on impulse for what she had in her billfold, or intending rape, and then, finding he had put the quietus on her permanently, stashed the car with her in it to give himself time? Had he abstracted the Visa card, intending to use it, and then changed his mind? They didn't know, and Siemens wasn't talking. But there had been only two prints of that snapshot and the other one was up in Bakersfield.
Siemens had thought he'd got rid of all the evidence. What he hadn't reckoned on was the simple yen on Sally's part for a couple of free dresses, and the little miracles the lab could perform.
AND NOTHING CAME IN from the French police. 'I said so,' said Mendoza to Hackett on Friday. He had just got back from a session on Siemens at the D.A.'s office. He perched one hip on the corner of Hackett's desk. 'It's a dead end. There and here. Why? Why the hell hasn't someone missed her by now? By all logic, somebody should have.'
'You'd think so. But you had the hunch.'
'By God,' said Mendoza savagely. 'I'm tempted to go over there and try to pick up the trail myself.'
Hackett took his glasses off. 'How would you know where to start looking, for God's sake?'
'There must be a record of her somewhere, damn it. There's got to be. From this distance there's not a hope in hell of locating it-of placing her. But on her home ground-' He smoked in silence for a moment and said, 'What are you brooding about, John?'
Palliser at the next desk had stopped typing and was sitting staring into space.
'There's probably nothing to it. But damn it,' said Palliser, 'I keep thinking about that Toby Wells. On the Coffey case. His prints were there, but so were the rest of the family's. I saw his girlfriend and she confirmed that they were at that disco on Jefferson that night. I talked to his roommates, and they'd both gone to bed before he came in. It's nothing. He's got no record of violence at all. But with the lab turning that evidence for you on Siemens- Well, Duke said something to me about shoes. If we ever got a hot suspect.'
'Do no harm to have a closer look at him,' said Hackett.
'By God, I am thinking about it,' said Mendoza. 'I'd surely to God like to know who set up that little farce, and why, and how.'
Palliser abandoned his report and went out. It was Galeano's day off and everybody else was out hunting heisters or hospital visitors. They had descriptions on two more heisters now. There weren't, for once, any indictments or arraignments coming up to waste time in court. There wasn't anything to be done about the Robertson homicide. Higgins had talked to somebody in Juvenile and none of those kids she had complained about had any record with them. It wouldn't say much if they had.
There had been another teenager found dead by his mother in his own bed. It was another O.D. of the 'ludes, combined with liquor.
Mendoza wandered down to his own office and Hackett was alone when Grace came in with a possible suspect on one of the heists, so he sat in on that. It was all inconclusive. The man didn't have an alibi, but there was nothing else but his description to connect him to the heist. They decided to hold him overnight and arrange for a lineup in the morning to see whether the witnesses would pick him out.
PALLISER THOUGHT this was probably a waste of time, but he applied for a search warrant for Toby Wells' apartment. It came through on Saturday morning, and he and Galeano went out to execute it. There wasn't anybody at home in the apartment, but they showed the warrant to the manager and he agreed to let them in. He said the three young dudes who lived there seemed to be nice quiet boys. They all had jobs and paid regular.
They looked around the place. It was just a place for sleeping. No sign in the kitchen that much cooking was done there. There were two bedrooms, and the largest one contained twin beds, had a walk-in closet. In the other one there was a framed photograph of Mae Weaver on the dresser, so this was Toby Wells' bedroom. It just had a wardrobe with sliding doors. On the floor of that were five pairs of shoes-a pair of brown moccasins, a newer pair of black oxfords, another pair of moccasins-black-and some sneakers. Palliser had a look at them but couldn't see anything suggestive. He stashed them all in a plastic evidence bag and they drove back downtown to drop them off at the lab. Then they went up to that Thrifty in Hollywood to talk to Wells. He wasn't as amiable as before, when Palliser asked questions over again. 'What the hell you want with my shoes, anyway? I didn't know cops could go right in a person's pad and just steal stuff.'
'You'll get them back,' said Galeano easily. 'We may want to borrow the ones you're wearing too. Are all those I the only shoes you've got?'
'For Gossakes, what am I supposed to do till then? I don't know why you guys are bothering me, I never had anything to do with that-you know what I mean. I haven't done anything at all.'
