old woman again!'
'Defenseless?' said the Traffic man to his partner.
'Well, it’s not a very apt word for it. And listen, doesn’t this look like the pair we had the word on at briefing? We better take ’em in to First Aid to start with.' Miss O’Connor had felled Folger with one lusty blow of her heavy handbag, I knocking him clean out on the sidewalk, and tripped Hardwick up and sat on him, yelling mightily for cops all the while. A nearby householder had obliged her by calling it in.
So there they were neatly in jail on Saturday morning, and Mendoza and Hackett talked to them, not very long. They were saying various things about Miss O’Connor.
'We had the word out on you already,' Mendoza told them. 'Your pal Guido told us where to find you.'
'That Goddamn-I might’ve known, weak-bellied little spick!' Folger would have been the leader of the three, a dominating crude force like an aura about him. 'Ever since we got that damn priest he’s been ready to have kittens-' Hardwick just glowered.
'You do realize it’ll be a charge of Murder One,' said Mendoza. 'It was just blind luck you only killed one of them. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re inclined to make statements or not.' Folger growled and told them where they could go for statements. 'So there’s no point in wasting any more time on you two louts.' Mendoza looked them up and down contemptuously. 'Come on, Art.' In the corridor they met Barth, who wanted to talk to the two louts about a few unsolved burglaries. 'I wish you joy of them,' said Mendoza. 'I’m getting old, Barth. These punks without brains or bowels make me sick and tired.'
Barth laughed and said, 'You haven’t changed in years, Luis. And I hear your wife’s expecting again.'
'More than that,' said Mendoza. 'Talking about moving to a ranch, I gather. And God knows, there are times I feel like buying a thousand acres in the middle of wilderness somewhere and building a fence around it and staying inside. What the hell are we doing at this thankless job?'
When he and Hackett got back to the office Landers was slouched at his desk rereading a report, and followed them into Mendoza’s office. 'This Peralta,' he said. 'No damned loss, but we have to do the routine. I’ve now got statements from three other people besides Ford Robinson that these Kings-Nita and Gerald-were at that disco on Monday night and said they were going to see Peralta. By inference, to see if he had any dream powder. I haven’t turned up anything else. Walter Pepple, across the hall from Peralta, says it might have been two people running away. And the Kings have taken off from their apartment. He had a part-time job at a service station, and the owner says he hasn’t been in all week.'
'So maybe we’d better put out an A.P.B.,' said Hackett. 'They sound likely for the job, Tom. At least we want to talk to them.'
'I think so. I just put a query to D.M.V. about the car.'
Hackett went out, heading for the sergeants’ office, and met a diffident-looking couple in the hall. 'Oh-Mr. and Mrs. Joiner.'
'You asked us to come in, sir. Detective Grace said-'
'That’s right,' said Hackett. 'Come in here.' Carla Joiner was Myrtle Hopper’s daughter. Hackett settled them down in front of his desk, and Grace and Higgins came over. The Joiners looked with faint awe at Higgins, that craggy man with COP all but emblazoned all over him, and were dumb before Hackett. Carla was small and pretty, her young husband round-faced and earnest.
'Just as we told you, Mrs. Joiner,' said Grace easily, 'all we want from you is some idea of what’s missing from your mother’s house.'
'Well, there wasn’t much there to steal,' said Carla frankly. 'Mother wasn’t one for much jewelry or fancy things. But one thing we’d better tell you, her credit cards are gone. You people said we could go through the house yesterday, after you got finished looking around, and as soon as I looked I saw they were gone, she always kept them right in her wallet, and there was still a little change in it but the cards were gone.'
'Which are they?'
'A BankAmericard and the gas company card. She was careful about charging, but it was convenient, she always said.'
Her husband broke in diffidently. 'We’d like to know when we can, you know, fix up for the funeral.'
'The coroner’s office will let you know,' said Grace. 'Is there any other family, Mrs. Joiner?' asked Hackett, the kind of random question to put witnesses at ease.
Her husband said, 'I suppose we got to tell Isabel, Carla,' and she just shrugged.
'I’ve got a sister, that’s all.'
'Nothing else is missing from the house that you noticed?' asked Grace.
'I don’t think so, except her silver teapot. An old lady she used to work for gave it to her, and she treasured it a lot. I don’t know what it’d be worth,' she said miserably.
'Have you contacted the credit-card companies to let them know the cards are stolen?'
'Why, no-we never thought-we don’t have any ourselves-'
'We can do that.' Grace smiled at them, and had his mouth open to ask another question when Sergeant Farrell looked in the door.
'Traffic just picked up Benoy and Allesandro. It’s a mess, sounds like-there was a high-speed pursuit down Victory and they rammed the squad-one Burbank man in serious condition, the squad wrecked, and wouldn’t you know the two punks didn’t get a scratch. Burbank’s sending them in.'
Hackett and Higgins got up in a hurry and went out, and the Joiners looked questioningly at Grace. 'They’re pretty hot suspects for your mother,' Grace explained.
'We’ve been looking for them for another homicide, but we think it’s possible they killed your mother too. One of them is definitely tied to the murder of those Freemans, more or less in the same neighborhood.'
'Oh,' said Carla. 'I saw about that in the paper. It was awful. But I don’t see how-I mean, Mother was always careful about locking doors and like that.' They had both relaxed slightly, alone with Grace in the office. She looked at her husband. 'It said in the paper you-the police-wanted to question some man about that murder, something about what it called an all points-'
'Bulletin,' supplied Grace. 'That’s him. It’s just turned him up.'
'But,' said Carla, 'it said he’s a white man. I forget all the description, how tall and so on, but he’s white.'
'Well?' said Grace.
Carla bent a solemn look on him. 'Mr. Grace,' she said, 'Mother wasn’t a fearful woman or one to borrow trouble as they say, but I’ve got to tell you, she’d never in this world have let a white man in her house after dark, the way it must’ve been. She’d never. Whatever they said as an excuse. A white man she didn’t know. I just don’t see how that could be, Mr. Grace.'
Grace suppressed a laugh, looking at their earnest faces. 'Well, it was just an idea,' he said. 'We’ll see what they have to say for themselves.'
What Benoy and Allesandro had to say was chiefly obscene. Hackett and Higgins questioned them at the jail, and it didn’t matter much what they heard in regard to the Freeman homicide because Benoy at least was tied to that, but they asked some questions about Mrs. Hopper.
'I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.' Benoy was a big fat young man, gross and unshaven. 'We never did nothing here. I don’t know no Freemans or anybody named Hopper.'
'Let’s not go the long way round,' said Higgins wearily. 'We know you killed the Freemans, you left a nice set of prints on that phone book.' Benoy began to swear, and his partner looked at him in sudden alarm.
'You said be careful about prints, Neal! You said to-I didn’t leave any, did I?' he asked Higgins anxiously. He was a loose-limbed young fellow with straggly yellow hair. Hackett and Higgins didn’t burst into laughter because they’d met a lot like him over the years.
'Not that I know of. Now let’s talk about Mrs. Hopper, last Tuesday night.' They were just guessing that that was when she’d been killed; the autopsy report should be in sometime today.
