All in all, Walsh was enormously relieved; despite his rank and his money Mendoza seemed to be a regular guy.
That happened in January; a month later, the memory of this little encounter emboldened Walsh to go over Lieutenant Slaney's head and lay a problem before the headquarters man.
'I've got no business to be here, Lieutenant,' said Walsh uneasily. 'Lieutenant Slaney says I'm a damn fool to waste anybody's time about this.' He sat beside Mendoza's desk stiffly upright, and fingered his cap nervously. He'd called to ask if he could see Mendoza after he came off duty, and was still in uniform; he was on days, since last week, and it was six o'clock, the day men just going off, the night staff coming into the big headquarters building downtown with its long echoing corridors.
'Wel1, let's hear what it's about,' said Mendoza. 'Does Slaney know you're here?'
'No, sir. I've got no business doing such a thing, I know. I asked him about it, sir, and he said he wouldn't ask you to waste your time. But the more I got to thinking about it… It's about Joe Bartlett, sir, the inquest verdict yesterday-'
'Oh?' said Mendoza. He got up and opened the door. 'Is Art back yet‘?' he asked the sergeant in the anteroom.
'Just came in, want him?' The sergeant looked into the big communal office that opened on the other side of his cubbyhole, called for Art, and a big broad sandy fellow came in: the sergeant Walsh remembered from last Friday night and yesterday at the inquest. He wasn't a man to look at twice, only a lot bigger than most-until you noticed the unexpectedly shrewd blue eyes.
'I thought you'd left, now what d'you want? I just brought that statement in-'
'Not that. Sit down. You'll remember this young fellow, he's got something to say about the Bartlett inquest. You handled that, you'd better hear it too.'
'Bartlett,' said Sergeant Hackett, and sat down looking grim. Nobody liked random killings, but the random killing of a cop, cops liked even less.
'I don't think that inquest verdict was right,' blurted Walsh. 'I don't think it was those kids shot Joe. Lieutenant Slaney says I'm talking through the top of my head, but-I tried to speak up at the inquest yesterday- maybe you'll remember, Sergeant, I was on the stand just before you were-but they wouldn't let me volunteer anything, just answer what they asked.'
'What was it you wanted, to say? Didn't you tell your own sergeant about it?'
'Well, naturally, sir-and the lieutenant-and they both think I'm nuts, see? Sure, it looks open and shut on the face of it, I admit that. Those kids'd just held up that market, they were all a little high, and they weren't sure they'd lost that first squad car that was after them-maybe they thought we were the same one, or maybe they didn't care, just saw a couple of cops and loosed off at us. We were parked the opposite direction, but they might've figured, the way the coroner said, that that first car had got ahead and gone round to lay for them.'
Which had been the official verdict, of course: that those juveniles, burning up the road on the run from the market job, had mistaken the parked squad car for the one that had been chasing them and fired at it as they passed, one of the bullets killing Bartlett. They'd already shot a cashier at the market, who had a fifty-fifty chance to live.
'They say, of course, that they never were on San Dominguez at all, never fired a shot after leaving the market,' said Hackett.
'Yes, sir, and I think maybe they didn't. I-”
'Giving testimony,' said Mendoza, 'isn't exactly like talking to somebody. Before we hear what brought you here, Walsh, suppose you give me the gist, in your own words, of just what did happen. I know Sergeant Hackett's heard it already, and I've read your statement, but I'd like to hear it straight.'
“Yes, sir. We were parked on the shoulder, just up from Cameron on San Dominguez. That's almost the county line, and one end of our cruise, see. We'd just stopped a car for speeding and I'd written out the ticket. Joe was driving then and I was just getting back in, and in a second we'd have been moving off, when this car came past the opposite in way and somebody fired at us from it. Four shots. It must've been either the first or second got Joe, the doctor said, by the angle-and it was just damned bad luck any of them connected, or damned good target shooting, that's all I can figure. The car was going about thirty. The shots came all together, just about as it came even with us and passed, and the way things were I hardly got a look at all. Joe never moved or spoke, sir, we know now the shot got him straight through the head…' Walsh stopped, drew the back of his hand across his mouth. He'd liked Joe Bartlett, who'd been a good man for a rookie to work with, easy and tactful on giving little pointers. Ten years to go to retirement, Bartlett, with a growing comfortable paunch and not much hair left and always talking about his kids, the boy in college, the girl still in high school. Also, that had been Walsh's first personal contact with violence, and while he'd kept his head it hadn't been a pleasant five minutes. 'He slumped down over the wheel, I couldn't get at the controls until I'd moved him, it was-awkward, you can see that. I think I knew he was dead, nothing to be done for him-I just thought, got to spot that car… I shoved him over best I could to get at the wheel, but by the time I got the hand brake off and got her turned, my God, it wasn't any use, that car was long gone. I was quick as I could be, sir-'
'It was just one of those things,' agreed Hackett.
'I got the siren on, and I went after it, but no use, like I said. I saw that, and I pulled into the side and reported in what had happened. They told me to go straight to Vineyard and Brook, there was an ambulance on its way there already, so I did. That's where they'd finally picked up the kids, you know, just then. Price and Hopper, I mean, and Gonzales and Farber in the first car that'd been after them were called in too-they were there when I got there. Price had to fire at the car to get it to stop, and one of the kids was hit, not bad-you know all that, sir.'
Mendoza nodded. 'That's all clear enough. What's in your mind about it now? Your own sergeant and Sergeant Hackett had your story then, and you said, if I recall rightly, that it must have been those juveniles. Something changed your mind?'
'It looked,' said Walsh, '1ike it must've been, sure, because what else could it have been? I mean, it's not as if there were a dozen cars around that area that night with somebody taking pot shots at squad cars out of them. When we came to sort it out, the times looked tight, but it could have happened like that, and how else could it have?'
'We went into it as thoroughly as possible,' said Hackett.
'Yes, sir, I know. And I don't want to make out that I was mistaken in anything I told you, it's not that. It's just that when I came to think about the whole thing afterward-as a whole, if you see what I mean-well, it's nothing to get hold of, nothing definite, but the more I thought about it- And I told Sergeant Simon, and Lieutenant Slaney too, but I guess the reason it sounded crazy to them is just that-how else could it have happened?'
'What bothers you about it?' asked Mendoza patiently.
'The main thing is the times. Sure, it could have been, but it's tight figuring. Look, here's Cameron and San Dominguez, where it happened. I don't see how I could have been more than thirty seconds getting under way afterward, even call it a minute before I got the car turned and got up speed after that car-and it didn't take me another minute to see it was no go. All right,'-in his urgency Walsh was forgetting some of his nervousness-'there's two minutes, and I'm about half a mile down San Dominguez. Give me another ten seconds to pull in and start to call. I couldn't get through right away, they were busy that night, but it couldn't've been more than another twenty seconds before I was reporting in. Say that's three minutes, even four, after the shots were fired-I don't think it was four, actually, but give it that much leeway-and I was talking maybe another twenty seconds or half minute, and the girl had me wait another ten, twenty seconds while she checked on where that ambulance call was from-Price reported in just before me. So I'm sent to Vineyard and Brook where they got the kids, and that's about half a mile from where I was then, or from where the shots were fired-it makes a kind of triangle, see, with the point at Vineyard and Brook. O.K., now when I got there, which was maybe two and a half minutes later, the first squad car'd already got there, that's Gonzales and Farber, who'd been the first to go after the kids, and they'd been called up after Price and Hopper were on the kids' tail. Look, I even made a diagram of it, and this is how it works out in my book. Call it five past nine when the shots were fired at us and Joe was killed. Say it was the kids, they've got to get over to Vineyard-which runs the same way as San Dominguez, it's not a
