He came back to the office at noon. 'And I hope to God S.I.D. comes up with some solid evidence,' he said to Mendoza. 'We haven’t been exactly brilliant on this one-I really didn’t think that Stephanie girl knew what she was talking about-but at least we got there in the end. It was a strictly spur of the moment deal-'
'With the ones like Steve, they usually are,' said Higgins, who had been sitting at the other side of Mendoza’s desk when Palliser came in.
' Ya lo creo. So what did he tell you, John?'
'He’d been down here visiting an old pal a couple of days before, and noticed the house was vacant-his mother used to live there, and he still had a key. When he picked up the girls it was the first place he thought of. He got some groceries on the way-there was a refrigerator there, the place was furnished. I’ll bet whoever owns the place will be surprised to get a power bill. It’s on Gladys Avenue.'
Mendoza grunted. 'Three blocks from San Pedro. Very nice. Let’s hope S.I.D. turns something.'
'I just turned them loose on it.'
And Lake came in with a telex: the feedback from the FBI on the prints picked up in the Freeman house. Mendoza swore, looking at it. 'Why can’t these hoods stay home, George? New to us-his record’s all in West Virginia. Neal Benoy, and he’s wanted for homicide, and that’s all they tell us. Well, we know he’s here, or was, but it’d be helpful to know something more about him. Jimmy, get me an outside line.' After an interval, he got connected to a Lieutenant Devore of the Huntington force, and began taking notes. Devore gave him the gist of Benoy’s record. 'He’s been just another no-good bum around town till he got together with a kindred spirit one night last August and murdered a harmless old black fellow. We picked them both up, but they made a break on the way to the courthouse for indictment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were still teamed up-they’re buddies from way back. You want Benoy for something out there? A long way from home-he’s never been out of the state before, far as I know.'
'We’ve tied him to a double homicide,' said Mendoza. 'The lab thinks it was a pair. Who’s the other one?'
'Tony Allesandro. Birds of a feather,' said Devore succinctly. 'You want his prints and particulars too?'
'Anything you can give us.'
'I’ll shoot some stuff out.'
' Gracias. We’ll get an A.P.B. out on both of them, just in case.' Mendoza put the phone down. Higgins and Palliser had gone out, and Galeano had just come in, looking thoughtful. He sat down in the chair beside the desk. 'Have you recovered from your aberration, Nick?'
'Damn you,' said Galeano amiably, 'it’s not. I said all along that girl is honest-if she wasn’t, she’d have thought up a hell of a lot better tale than that. I just want to put this in front of you-' and he plunged into the story of Marta’s revelations. Mendoza sat back, smoking.
'From the viewpoint of human emotions, interesante, ' he said sardonically at the end, 'but as for giving us any clue to what happened to Edwin, damn all.'
'I know, I know. But it does show why she’d thought and done things to look suspicious. All perfectly natural,' said Galeano.
'Maybe.'
'And maybe you think she’s conned me!' said Galeano.
'Not necessarily. But I would damn well like to know what did happen to him,' said Mendoza. 'The hell of it is, the pair of them were so damned isolated-no close friends, the other people in that place strangers, and she-'
'Homesick,' said Galeano. 'Proud. Holding everybody at arm’s length. I hope she’ll learn better.'
'And I’ve reluctantly come round to admit, at least, that there isn’t any smell of a boyfriend,' said Mendoza sadly. 'It shakes my faith in the eternal venality of human nature.'
'They do say, it’s the exception that proves the rule. I just thought you’d like to think all that over,' said Galeano, and went out.
Mendoza sighed and swiveled his desk chair around to stare out the window toward the Hollywood hills, invisible today in heavy gray mist. Every now and then something a little more complicated than usual showed up. As a rule the things that bailed them were just the anonymous crimes (like that dairy-store heist) where no possible lead showed and there was nothing much to be done about it. But once in a blue moon, a real mystery came along, where there should be leads and weren’t; and the mystery of Edwin Fleming was the most ballling one that had come their way in some time. He missed Hackett, off today, to talk it over with.
At five o’clock Palliser and Glasser came in with Scarne. 'Well, we’ve got Sandra all tied up,' said Glasser.
'These stupid jerks-Smith trying to get rid of the body and he couldn’t even do that efficiently-you wouldn’t believe the stuff he overlooked at that house. It’s still empty, luckily, nobody in to mess up the evidence for us. The first thing we found was Sandra’s green plane case. There were prints all over the house-'
'We had the Peacock girl’s and Sandra’s, we’ve sorted out quite a few of both,' said Scarne. 'Odds and ends of clothes the parents can probably identify, but the prints are solid evidence. He isn’t going to be able to claim that Sandra ran off and met up with some other X, the times are too tight. The other girl could say she was alive at seven, and the autopsy says she was dead between eight and ten.'
'Good-solid evidence I always 1ike,' said Mendoza.
'And something new just went down; we passed George and Jase going out in a hurry,' said Palliser.
Landers had heard what the mechanic had to say about the Corvair without much surprise. The damn thing had been on its last legs for months. 'You’d do better to junk it,' said the mechanic. 'It’s not worth putting money into.'
Landers took a look at what they had on the used lot, but nothing looked like a good buy. He walked on down Hollywood Boulevard to the American agency, priced a couple of new models and winced, and went out to the used lot to browse around. Finally he settled on a little Sportabout, the pony-size station wagon, and made a deal for it. It was only three years old, had thirty thousand on it, which wasn’t bad.
But at least the Corvair had been paid for. What with the new payments on top of the rent and everything else, he reflected, Phil would have to stop talking about a house for some time.
Higgins and Grace looked at the new homicide and had the same thought at the same time.
'The Freemans,' said Grace, touching his mustache thoughtfully. 'Same earmarks, George.'
'Such as there are,' said Higgins. This was much the same kind of house as the Freemans’, in the same kind of neighborhood: modest middle-class. The householder had been Mrs. Myrtle Hopper, widow, who’d lived alone here since her youngest daughter got married. It was the daughter and her husband who had found her, coming to visit.
The front door wasn’t forced; the back door was locked. Mrs. Hopper was knifed and dead on the livingroom floor, and the place had been ransacked. At the moment the daughter was having hysterics at a neighbor’s house, but eventually they’d ask her what was missing.
'No phone book,' said Grace. 'Maybe they used another excuse this time. They didn’t get much at the Freemans’, and I don’t suppose they’d have got much here. What we’ve heard about this Benoy, maybe just mean by nature, doing what comes naturally.'
'Could be,' agreed Higgins. 'Could also be, careless about his prints as he seems to be, he’s left some here too.'
They’d thought at first the Freemans might have been killed by someone who thought he still had the church collection money, but now the prints had been identified as this Benoy’s, it looked like just the random thing, and this bore the same general appearance.
They called S.I.D. and imagined how the men would be cussing, a new one to work turning up at this end of
