more and I paid that-and all of a sudden he got better-the doctor said, in remission and it might be three, four, six months.'
He was staring dully at the floor of the little interrogation room at the jail. 'He was sitting up and taking notice of things again, and just a couple of days before he'd asked me to bring in all the bank statements-and the first thing he said-that Sunday when I got there-had I brought them, and I had to say I forgot about it, but I knew he'd keep on about it, and he was always at me about the gambling. He'd raise all hell when he found out. He'd call me a damn thief. The rest of the family, they don't like the gambling either and it would be one goddamn king-size mess, and I just didn't know what to do. I'd thought by then it'd be all over and the will in probate.' He passed a shaking hand over his face. 'And that day, when I went back for my cigarettes, the last thing he said to me-don't forget to bring those statements the next time you come, boy. And I-and I-' He put his face in his hands.
Mendoza said to Higgins when they came out of the interrogation room, 'And God knows I was the hottest poker player in town before the domesticities ruined my game, but the compulsive gambler I never was. More fatal than the drink, that. And in the end he's made even more of a king-size mess for himself than he had already.'
'You and your hunches,' said Higgins. 'All the damned legwork we did on that, and all for nothing.'
'He was ready to break, George. If I hadn't had the hunch, he'd have come in to confess within a matter of time.'
THE DOCTORS were saying that Dubois would make it, but it would be a long convalescence for him. Most of the men at the Robbery-Homicide office were on that. They still had a long list of names of pickup-truck owners to process and nobody was taking any time off. Hackett had got deflected temporarily to arrange that lineup, but the witness couldn't definitely identify the suspect and they had to let him go.
On Tuesday morning, the computers in R. and I. turned up their first lead. The owner of a Ford pickup truck showed up in the records with a pedigree of armed robbery-Alfonso Barrios, last known address the same as the current registration, Maxson Place in El Monte. Landers and Galeano were alone in the office when the word came up and Galeano said, 'If he's our boy, what the hell was he doing so far from home base? Don't say it, I know- freeways. And he won't have lived in El Monte all his life. Let's see if we can find him.' The lab had told them yesterday that the slugs out of Dubois had been fired from a. 45 Colt.
Barrios' wife told them that he worked at a garage on Rosemead Boulevard and they picked him up there, brought him in. Higgins was back in the office by then and they stood over him and asked him questions. He was a wiry dark small man in the thirties, and he snarled back at them. 'I'm clean since I got out last time, I done nothing. Just because a guy got a little record, the fuzz come down on him alla time-'
Higgins said, 'All right, where were you on Saturday night?'
'Iast Saturday night? I was sittin' in a game of draw with four other guys. We went on late, they can tell you.' He supplied names and addresses and they went to look, stashing him in jail meanwhile. The poker game, he said, had been in a private home in El Monte; and none of the other men had any police records. The wife of the householder said, 'Do I know that Barrios? Sure he was here that night. These damn fool men and their cards, they went on till two in the morning and nobody got any sleep. That damn Barrios-he took nineteen bucks off Joe and I'll be short on grocery money all this week.'
You won some, you lost some. They let Barrios go. It had just been a first cast.
PALLISER HAD BEEN our looking for one of the heist suspects up till noon on Tuesday. When he came back to the office after lunch, Lake said the lab had been calling him.
'Well, all right, put them through.' He sat down at his desk and picked up the phone when it rang.
Duke said, 'I'd have called you right away but I know you've been busy.'
'We still are.'
'You do any good on that shooting yet?'
'Not yet. What do you want?'
'Well, I'd like you to come and look at something interesting. You can get a warrant and clean one up on it. Come and see.'
Palliser, slightly intrigued, took the elevator up to the lab. There in that big busy office, the long room with long tables and glaring strip lighting, the microscopes and Bunsen burners and cameras in a string of smaller offices, Duke led him to a microscope at one end of a table and said, 'This is from one of Wells' shoes. The right shoe of a pair of black oxfords.'
Palliser peered into the microscope and asked, 'So what is it? You're the technician.' He had nearly forgotten Toby Wells.
Duke said, grinning, 'I didn't suppose you'd be an expert on house plants, but it's another kind of offbeat little thing like that damn snapshot. Sometimes we do turn them up. It's Beloperone guttaia. '
'Come again?' said Palliser.
'To you, the common shrimp plant. We spotted it when we were taking photographs in the Coffey apartment. There was a big potted plant knocked over and in the little iight the old lady put up, somebody trampled all over it on the floor. You could see where branches and leaves had been stepped on. I thought there was an outside chance that there'd be some trace on the soles of somebody's shoes, those leaves are pretty tough and springy-and I was right. There was one whole squashed leaf stuck on the arch of the shoe where the wet earth from the pot acted like glue. It's not that common a plant, Palliser. And if you can show that your boy hasn't been near another one since the murder-'
'By God,' said Palliser. 'Those will be his best shoes. He had them on for the date with the girl and he probably hasn't had them on since. By God, what a damned queer little thing.'
'It's the little things that trip them up,' said Duke. 'Little things most people don't notice.'
Palliser and Galeano went to bring Toby Wells in, and they had to spell it out for him, how they knew, what the definite scientific evidence was. He didn't take it in at first, said, 'How'd anybody know one little leaf from another'?'
'The men at the laboratory can tell,' said Galeano. 'They've got ways. You were there when that plant got knocked over, you stepped on it and that tells us you were there when your grandmother was killed.' Wells thought that one over for awhile.
'Why?' asked Palliser. 'Why did you go there that night?' Wells just looked at the floor.
'Your own grandmother,' said Galeano. 'She'd been good to you. Gave you a birthday party just the week before, hadn't she, and got you out of that little trouble a couple of years ago. Why?'
Wells said, 'Oh, for Gossakes. I was out of money.' He didn't look up at them. 'It all goes so quick-and she had money put away. She made good money out of that business. She never spent nothing on herself. She had that couple hundred bucks to hand right over-time I took those clothes and got caught. And she gives me a lousy ten bucks for my birthday. A lousy ten bucks! I was cleaned out, time I paid the bill at that disco that night. I went to see her, ask her to loan me some bread, and she let me in and then when I asked she started to talk real sharp, how I was young and foolish and ought to be careful, save some out of my salary-and I got mad. Old people just don't know how it is for young people these days-and I hit her and she fell against that plant and I started to look around for any money. I knew she had some hid away somewheres-but she came after me into the kitchen. She was yelling and calling me names and that hammer was laying on the counter and-'
'And did you find any money?' asked Galeano.
'There was only ninety bucks in her purse in the closet, I thought there'd be a lot more. I'm sorry. I never meant to do it. Never meant to hurt her so bad. I just needed some money to take Mae to that show she wanted to see.'
Palliser picked up the phone to ask for the warrant on him.
