it wasn't an accident. Anybody could see that by the tire marks. The Ford was backed around to face the drop square-there's a two-yard soft shoulder either side, loose dirt that takes marks just dandy. And gunned over. Not a sign of any attempt to brake. Traffic's taking the car apart looking for anything, they're the experts on that. And we figure, with what the lab came up with, that the reason he wasn't killed is that he was already unconscious, lying across the front seat, face down.'
'I did wonder why there weren't any facial cuts,' said Mendoza. He sat down at his desk and lit a cigarette. The desk needed dusting, and somebody had overfilled his ashtray. He didn't do anything about it.
'So did the interns in the ambulance,' said Palliser.
'And for a civilian, we might not have committed lese majeste, but as it was we hauled Dr. Erwin himself out of bed and shot him over to the hospital. He saw him before they did the surgery, and went over his clothes.' They were all avoiding Hackett's name; maybe the impersonal pronoun would help to keep this on the objective level, if anything could. As cops, they had all seen other cops killed on the job, and that was always bad; but this was something worse. Something really bad. The deliberate thing.
Dwyer got up in silence and took the lid off the shoe box sitting on the desk. 'Erwin said,' said Palliser, 'he'd been tied up. Wrists and ankles. For one or the other, his own belt had been used.' Dwyer lifted out the belt and passed it over. It was a worn brown steerhide belt with a plain buckle, and it was twisted out of its normal flatness still, where it had been used as a rope would be used. The fifth hole in it was the most worn and frayed, but evidently more recently the fourth hole had been in use. Hackett and his diet… Mendoza's eyes stung suddenly. He put the belt down. He said, 'Yes.'
'He'd got the worst knock on the head at the back of the skull, a little to the side, not the front. The interns said he was half on the floor, head on the passenger's side of the car. Glass all over from the windshield but he hadn't a cut on him.'
'Yes. I see. You've printed the car. Anything?'
'What do you think?' asked Higgins savagely. 'His, that's all, and his wife's. Steering wheel and gear selector clean. Naturally.'
'Naturally. All right. Why?'
Dwyer looked at Palliser, 'It's your fairy story,' he said. 'Tell the detective man,'
'And it's no fairy story,” said Palliser equably. He sat smoking quietly; he looked relaxed, but his mouth was grim. 'What else could it be, for God's sake? Nobody's got any private reason for murdering Art Hackett. I'll tell you what it has to be-something he spotted on one of those cases. He was out looking, and he found out something, something definite, a giveaway. And somebody knew he had, right then. So he got knocked on the head then and there, and tied up, and the faked accident was set up later.'
Mendoza was watching him. 'I'll take that, John. What was he working on? Where was he?'
'We don't know, damn it,' exploded Dwyer. 'We couldn't press Mrs. Hackett too much, and she didn't seem to know anything definite anyway-'
'All he said to me-that was before he went home,' said Palliser, 'was that he was going to see the desk clerk, and maybe Mrs. Nestor, and maybe a couple of the people in Nestor's address book. He didn't like the way the Nestor case smelled-he thought it was a private kill, not the outside thing. We've got his notebook, with a couple of interesting ideas on that jotted down. But there's also the desk clerk, and that was on the Slasher, and I don't like the way the desk clerk smells.'
'He denies Art came to see him?'
Palliser smiled bitterly. 'You're ahead of me. Sure he does. I don't like him.'
'This is where I part company,' said Dwyer, 'from our brain-trust boy, Lieutenant. I just don't see the Slasher, who we can build pretty easy as a hair-trigger lout with a low LQ., setting up that faked accident.'
'You'll have to convince me on that too,' said Mendoza, stabbing out his cigarette and immediately lighting another. 'Nobody, a hotel desk clerk or anybody else, is collaborating with the Slasher. That's the berserk, unplanned thing.'
'So it is,' agreed Palliser. 'Let George tell you how the Slasher vanished last night. After Number Five. The pretty Negro girl, seven months pregnant. Only she wasn't so pretty by that time. At the corner of Third and Hartley, which is about two blocks from that hotel. The interns said she hadn't been dead fifteen minutes when they saw her, and the squad car couldn't have missed him by more than ten. Where did he go?'
'?Demonios! ' Mendoza sat up. 'You scoured the neighborhood, George?'
'Sure we did,' said Higgins bitterly. 'Five squad cars and fourteen men on foot. For six blocks all around. What else? Christ, the blood couldn't have been dry on his knife!'
'Tell me a story about that,' said Mendoza to Palliser.
'Of a sort,' said Palliser. 'Maybe he's just smart enough-hearing the sirens so soon-to threaten the desk clerk into hiding him? Clerk'd be scared afterward to admit it-or there could be some other tie-up between them. Hackett thought the clerk must have noticed more about the man than he admitted. Why was he chary of talking? Look. If Hackett was at the hotel, it'd have been after nine o'clock-the clerk didn't come on until then. The call on Number Five-Loretta Lincoln-came in at ten-sixteen. Say that Hackett had just left the hotel, was heading home. He'd go straight up Third, making for the freeway exchange and the Pasadena Freeway. He could have been at that corner about then, even, my God, spotted the Slasher at work. And followed him when he ran. So you say the Slasher isn't one to set up the faked accident. Maybe not. Maybe Hackett tangled with him, got that knock on the head, there in the hotel, and somebody else got stuck with an assaulted cop and set up the accident. All I say is, it being the same general area-'
'Same general area the Slasher's been roaming right along,' said Mendoza. 'Nothing says Art was there. He just might have been.'
'That's what I say,' said Higgins. 'God, I don't know how we missed him-he couldn't have been five minutes ahead of us! But on this thing, if Palliser's right, and I don't see what else it could be, it looks the hell of a lot likelier to me that Hackett maybe went to see Mrs. Nestor and caught her talking over Nestor's murder with a boy friend or something. Or went to see Nestor's office nurse-we know he didn't like her either and from what's in his notebook neither do I-and spotted something definite. All I say is, I think it's likelier it was something to do with the Nestor case, not the Slasher.'
Mendoza put out his cigarette, looking around the group. His gaze came to rest on Higgins. 'Of all of us big tough homicide cops,' he said mildly, 'you're the biggest, at least, George. Six-three, about a hundred and ninety? Yes. Could you handle Art, boy? Half an inch taller, forty pounds heavier? Barring a fluke, a very lucky first blow that put him out, not very many men-even big men-could put Art down and out very easy. And I really don't see any female doing that. Presumably somebody had to lift him into the car too.'
'Which we also thought of,' said Palliser sardonically.
'So she-whoever-had a boy friend. Or it was two people together.'
'Yes. Damn it, if we only knew definitely where he'd meant to go, who he'd-' Mendoza lit another cigarette with a quick angry snap of his lighter. 'All right, I'll go along with your story, John. It was something on a case he was working. Nobody had any reason to want him dead as Art Hackett-only as a cop on a case. Conforme. So,?pues que? On the Slasher's sudden vanishing after Number Five, I might just buy-with a lot of reservations -your little idea of his scaring the desk clerk-or somebody-into hiding him. But I don't buy the idea of one like the Slasher setting up that faked accident. Of course, I will say that whoever set it up didn't take many pains with it. Didn't realize how obviously faked it looked. Which doesn't look like a brain
… You hadn't really settled who was handling which case. I see that. Art had been concentrating on the Slasher, most urgent, naturalmente, and then this Nestor thing came up and he got interested in that, sent you out on routine on the- Yes. All right. He might have gone to see anybody involved in either case. I'll talk to his wife, see whether- But I do not see one like this berserk lunatic-'
The office door opened and Marx came in. He had a couple of still damp five-by-seven prints in one hand. He asked, 'How's Hackett?'
'No change. They'll call if- What've you got?'
Marx came up to the desk and laid the prints on the blotter. They were enlargements, a trifle fuzzy that big, of two fingerprints. 'I've got a lot of imagination,' said Marx. 'I think Palliser's got something about that desk clerk. And on principle I don't like cops getting clobbered. Nice to see you back, Lieutenant-you made time home, I guess. These jets. So I did some overtime for you. I thought I recognized that print when I saw it blown up, so I checked.'
