“Just for me to sit there?”
“Hospital rules. You’re using the room. We’ll have to change the linen.” The smile was gone. Sister Claridge considered Masuto an unredeemed heathen. For a time she had tried, gently, to show him the path. Lately, she had given up. “Also, Sergeant, I’ll have to check with my supervisor. We can’t have violence here in the hospital.”
“I’m trying to prevent violence, Sister. Now what room can you give me?”
Still she hesitated.
“I’m trying to save her life-and the lives of two other women. Please help me,” Masuto said quietly.
She sighed and nodded. “All right. Room three fifty-one.”
“Thank you. And spread the word, please. Hospital people, floor people, and anyone who calls, friends, press, anyone. Room three fifty-one.”
“I feel like a conspirator,” the sister said.
“In a good cause. Is there a phone I could use?”
She pointed to a booth on the main floor. Masuto looked longingly at the phone on her desk. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s for hospital use only. Really, Sergeant, you can’t walk in here and use the hospital as a police station.”
He went to the booth and called Wainwright. Mrs. Wainwright answered the phone in a tone not unlike that of Sister Claridge. “He is not here, Sergeant,” she said acidly. “He’s at the station.”
Masuto called the station. Wainwright’s snarl was almost comforting after talking to the two women.
“Where the hell are you?” Wainwright demanded. “The whole thing busts loose, and you disappear. Do you know that Mitzie Fuller’s gone? Beckman let her walk out of there. I’m going to have his head for this-”
“Take it easy. Beckman couldn’t help it.”
“Why? Because he was taking a crap? Who the hell says he has to take a crap when he’s on duty! If that dame’s dead, we can all spend our time on the crapper.”
“She’s not dead.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s here with me at All Saints Hospital. She got a nasty concussion, but she’s all right.”
“Why am I always the last to know? What happened?”
Masuto summed it up as tersely as possible.
“You can’t be sure that he’ll try it tonight,” Wainwright said.
“It’s in his nature. He’s in motion, and now he’s desperate. He planned this whole thing like a lunatic chess game, and it came to pieces at the seams. That girl’s testimony will send him to the gas chamber.”
“For what, Masao? For attempted murder. You still have no way to tie him into the murders.”
“Mitzie can.”
“You tell that to the D.A. when the time comes.”
“I have the owner of the bar and the piano player.”
“To do what? To tell us that he was there?”
“Captain, don’t worry it. Let me pick him up. We have the assault on the girl and the shots he fired at me. If the bullets are in the car, we may have something. And he’ll have a gun tonight.”
“Which gun? You don’t think he’s walking around with the murder weapon?”
“I’ll talk to you later,” Masuto said.
He came out of the booth and walked over to Sister Claridge. She nodded smugly. “I trust I’m doing the Lord’s work and not the devil’s work, Sergeant Masuto. While you were in the booth, a gentleman called. He said he was Mrs. Fuller’s husband.”
“Mrs. Fuller is divorced.”
“I am simply telling you what he said. He said he was Mrs. Fuller’s husband. He was very concerned about her condition. I told him she would be all right but we were keeping her here overnight. He was very insistent on seeing her tonight, and I told him at this hour it would be impossible. I told him we were discharging her at ten o’clock tomorrow morning and that he could pick her up then.”
“Did he ask what room she was in?”
“Yes, he did. And I told him she was in room three fifty-one.”
“Thank you,” Masuto said. “You did nobly. I don’t know how he’ll get in, but if anyone comes through the front door between now and midnight, I want you to pretend to be dozing. For your own safety.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Please, please do as I say. I don’t have the time to stand here and convince you. All the odds are that he won’t come in the front door, but if he does-”
“I don’t know why I’m going along with this-”
Masuto went to the elevator. On the third floor, he said to the nurse on duty, “I’m Sergeant Masuto, Beverly Hills police. I’ll be in room three fifty-one. You can check that with Sister Claridge. If a man comes up here and asks for Mrs. Fuller or for room three fifty-one, don’t stop him. If anyone-doctor, attendant-if anyone wishes to go into room three fifty-one, don’t interfere.”
“But-”
“No buts,” Masuto said harshly. “I don’t have the time. And if anyone asks, I’m not in that room. Mrs. Fuller is-alone. Do you understand me? And above all, do not interfere.”
Then Masuto walked down the corridor and into room three fifty-one. It was a very ordinary hospital room, one window, the hospital bed and two chairs. There were two pillows on the bed. On a shelf in the closet, Masuto found a third pillow and two extra blankets. With the pillows and the blankets, he put together a vaguely lifelike form which he covered with the counterpane, pressing it into shape. Then he switched on a small blue night light and switched off the overhead lights.
Then he went into the room’s bathroom and stood there in the dark, his gun in his hand, the door open just a crack. His mind was clear, without memory or anticipation. He was aware of himself, of his feet on the floor, of the gun in his hand, and of his view of the room through the crack in the door.
Nothing else existed. Time did not exist. When finally he heard the steps outside the door, he had no notion of how long he had been waiting there. The door opened. The man stepped into the room, grotesque in the blue light. For a long moment, the man stood without moving, one hand in the pocket of his jacket. Then the hand came out with the gun, the heavy, long-nosed.22-caliber automatic target pistol. The gun came up, and he fired into the bedclothes, five shots, one after another, lacing across the simulated body.
Masuto kicked the toilet door open and snapped, “Drop it, Crombie!”
Crombie was very quick. Masuto lived because he was in the dark, because he presented no visible target, but Crombie got off two more shots before Masuto fired. Crombie’s shots splintered the edge of the bathroom door. Masuto’s single shot caught Crombie between the eyes.
15
The Question
It was after one o’clock in the morning when Masuto drove his Datsun, three bullet holes in the windshield, into the driveway of Laura Crombie’s house on Beverly Drive, parked, and rang the doorbell. They were still awake, and a tired, harassed, and miserable Detective Beckman answered the bell and opened the door.
“I don’t know what to say, Masao,” he pleaded. “I never goofed off like that before.”
“Forget it. Maybe it was the only way. At least it’s over.”
“That’s what we heard,” Beckman said.
“I want to talk to Laura Crombie.”
“They’re both in the kitchen drinking coffee.”
He led Masuto into the kitchen. Nancy Legett poured a cup of coffee for him. Laura Crombie sat at the end of the table, her face gray and tired.
“How is Mitzie?” Nancy asked.
“She’s all right. She’ll be out of the hospital tomorrow.”
