happened to see it reflected in the windowpane.'
The T.V. in one corner of the living room still had a tag on it, suspended from the back of the set: the manufacturer's tag, but neatly stuck across. it was a little strip of gummed paper with printing on it. PURDUE'S T.V. AND APPLIANCES. Hackett burst out laughing too. 'They are so seldom smart enough to add two plus two. My God, what a stupid damn thing.'
They took the T.V. in as evidence, and went to talk to Montano again. He was hardly the biggest brain in the world, but even he saw that the T.V. tied him to that job and he started to talk fast. 'For Jesus' sake, you're not goin' to pin that on me, shooting that damn cop- I like to had a fit when Joe shot the cop- I didn't know he had a gun on him even. You don't pin that on me, it was Joe, I don't take no rap for him. I don't even know him so good, I just saw him around, and he needed some eating money, he says, how about we hit that place and I-it was Joe shot that cop. I tell you where to drop on him, it's Joe Vasquez, he got a pad on Fourteenth. No, for God's sake, acourse he ain't got a job, why the hell you think we was knocking off that place? '
With a feeling of warm satisfaction, Higgins and Hackett went out to collect Vasquez, and he wasn't at home, but a helpful neighbor said he spent a lot of time hanging around the pool hall a couple of blocks up and they found him there. He didn't have the gun on him but they got a search warrant and in going through his apartment found a. 45 Colt, a nearly new gun, in a box on the closet shelf. They handed it over to the lab. The lab would, of course, tell them that it was the gun that had fired the slugs into Dubois. And Dubois was conscious and sitting up. Somebody would go to see him and tell him about Montano and Vasquez.
They didn't bother to talk to Vasquez right away. Wait for the ballistics report. When he heard about that and about Montano snitching on him, he might be mad enough to come out with a confession. But it wouldn't matter much. There was the nice obvious evidence on him.
HIGGINS GOT HOME EARLY. With that case broken, just the heist to work, and with all the overtime they'd been doing, they could go slack for a day or two. When he went in the back door, Mary was just taking a cake out of the oven, the kids just home from school, Laura and Steve Dwyer, Steve looking more like Bert every day. But the memory was a little faded now, in Higgins' mind, of Bert Dwyer dead on the marble floor of the bank with the bank robber's bullets in him. They were surprised to see him and Higgins said, yawning, 'We cleared up that shooting, so we can all relax some.'
'How did you get them?' asked Steve, interested. Higgins told him. 'Well, that was a pretty stupid thing for that guy to do.'
'They're never very smart, or they wouldn't be what they are. It didn't take any brains to drop on them, just the usual routine.'
'Yeah, the lab's the most interesting part of the job. Say, George. The counselor let me switch from Biology One to general science. I figured that'll be more useful to me later on.'
'Fine,' said Higgins. Someday, about ten years from now, unless he changed his mind, Steve Dwyer was going to be up in the police lab with the other miracle-working technicians.
OE COURSE the night watch had heard about Vasquez and Montano and were pleased about it. 'But you know what he'll likely get,' said Piggott. 'A one-to-three and parole in a year. The courts have thrown out the rule, a third-time felony draws life.'
'You never know,' said Schenke. 'He might get a realistic judge.' But they wouldn't bet on it.
There was a call at nine-fifteen-a dead body. It had been spotted by a squad, passing in front of an empty building scheduled for demolition on Second Street. It was just a body of a man in the twenties-no I.D. or money on him. He'd been stabbed. He smelled strongly of liquor and there was a broken bottle which had held bourbon alongside the body.
'Somebody rolling the drunk,' said Schenke. All they could do was send him down to the morgue. Maybe his prints would say who he'd been-maybe not.
The end of the week was usually quiet, but they had the weekend coming up. There was always the paperwork and a report had to be typed on the body. Piggott had finished that and they were sitting around talking desultorily when the desk called at ten to eleven. Conway took it and after thirty seconds said, 'Jesus, all right. What's the address?'
He put the phone down. 'We've got a triple homicide. All we needed.'
They all rode on it. It was on Thirtieth Place and Bill Moss was waiting for them at the curb in front of the squad. He said, 'My God, the rate always goes up in summer, but this is the worst I've seen in a while. I mean, the baby-it just happened about half an hour or twenty minutes ago, it took me a few minutes to get here, I was back uptown on Beverly. The woman who called in lives in the front house, a Mrs. Ballard. The people in the rear house just moved in there a few days ago. She heard screams and saw a man running away. It's one goddamned mess, boys.'
Before they went to look at it they talked to Mrs. Ballard. She was an elderly fat black woman and she was shocked and scared, but she told a straight enough story.
'They were real nice young people, Rawson's their name, they just moved to California because she had the asthma and the doctors thought she'd be better here. It was her brother rented it for them, he just lives down the street a ways. They moved in on Monday. Yes, sir, I was just getting ready to go to bed when I heard the screaming, oh, Lordy God, it was awful-coming from the back house-and I looked out the window and I saw a man come running out of there. He was a tall, skinny man. No, sir, I don't know if he was black or white. He run across the yard and up the drive into the street. And I didn't hear no more screams, but I called the police, and that policeman out there he says-he says-they're all cut up and dead-'
The little frame house in the rear had been neat and clean before carnage struck. There were no dirty dishes in the kitchen. The shabby but comfortable furniture was dusted. Clothes hung tidily in the one closet. It was a small place with two meager bedrooms, a tiny living room, kitchen, bathroom and that was all. Now there was blood all over. The man, a stocky, very black man in pajamas, was on the floor of the larger bedroom, blank empty eyes fixed on the ceiling. He had been stabbed and slashed repeatedly, but by his position it didn't look as if he'd put up a fight. Possibly he'd been attacked in his sleep. The woman had tried to get away-probably while producing the screams. She was a thin young black woman in what had been a blue nylon nightgown, and she had got as far as just inside the front door when she died. They could read it. While the killer was busy with the man, she'd wakened up, screamed, tried to run, and been caught. There was more blood in the little hall, in the living room. She'd been stabbed and slashed viciously. The baby, looking to be about a year old, was still in the crib beside the double bed, and its throat had been cut.
'God,' said Conway. 'What have we got here, a lunatic?'
They called the lab and a mobile van came out. All the night watch could do was write the initial report. Let the day men take it from there.
'IT MUST'VE BEEN A CRAZY PERSON, that's all,' said Alexander Freeman to Landers and Palliser. 'That's all anybody could say. Nobody had any reason to do such a thing I to Jim and Paula. It's just crazy.'
They were talking to the Freemans in one side of the duplex, half a block down on Thirtieth Place from Mrs. Ballard's house, on Friday morning. The living room here was clean and neat, if shabby. The Freemans, both medium black, looked like solid citizens. Louise Freeman had been crying; now she sat listlessly on the couch, staring at her clasped hands.
'I didn't go to work,' Freeman said. 'I knew the police would be here and I didn't like to leave Louise. There's just no sense to it.'
'You said Mr. and Mrs. Rawson had just moved to California?' asked Landers.
'That's right. They lived back in Wisconsin, that's where Louise and Jim were raised, but the winters were awful hard on Paula and they thought they'd try it out here. I even got Jim a job, a good job, same place I work, the
