Hiding Place (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Read online

  Hiding Place

  A Lt. Hastings Mystery

  Collin Wilcox

  With the deepest thanks,

  this book is dedicated to

  Kenneth Millar

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Preview: Doctor, Lawyer …

  One

  I UNLOCKED MY TOP right-hand desk drawer and grunted as I drew my revolver. I balanced the .38 in my hand, idly frowning at my “in” basket. The basket had been empty when I’d left to get a haircut an hour ago. Now two letters, a departmental memo, and a manila case folder lay in the gray metal tray.

  I used the gun barrel to push the memo aside, revealing the folder’s label. Recognizing the case, I sighed, surrendering to a Monday morning’s moment of glum self-pity. Outside, the sky was cold and gray, threatening a day-long winter’s rain. I’d just come off a sunny three-day weekend, after sixteen straight days of duty. And already my fellow officers were up to their departmental tricks.

  Irritably I ignored the “in” basket, looking instead at the .38, held flat on my open palm. The gun needed cleaning. For more than a month, ever since I last fired it, I’d been meaning to clean the gun thoroughly, instead of haphazardly swabbing out the bore with powder solvent.

  Years ago, when I’d first made inspector, I had faithfully cleaned the revolver once a week, every Friday. But the feel of the gun had been different then—different in my hand, different on my hip. Years ago the metallic bulge beneath my coat had seemed my very special secret. Now the gun sometimes seemed merely a bulky nuisance.

  I laid it in the open drawer. The drawer was stained with gun oil, even though I’d had the office for less than a year. Had the desk’s previous owner kept his gun in the same drawer? I’d never know. The previous owner, Lieutenant Travis, had died in the men’s room, of a heart attack. After almost thirty years of “meritorious duty serving the people of San Francisco,” they’d found Travis propped against a urinal, dead.

  No one had really mourned him. As he’d gotten older, Travis had started to believe his own press clippings.

  The gun, I noticed, was scarred and worn-looking. Bright metal showed through the bluing; the walnut grips were chipped and scratched.

  The departmental psychologist had once said that a cop’s gun was his phallic wish-fulfillment. Cops, he’d said, fondled their guns instead of themselves. He’d been drunk at a Christmas party when he’d said it—sloppily, pugnaciously drunk. But no one would fight with him, and he’d finally passed out, snoring loudly, mouth wide open, his dentures clicking as he breathed. He’d been…

  A knock sounded on my office door.

  “Come in.” I closed the drawer, turning the key.

  Pete Friedman, my senior co-lieutenant, stood in the open doorway. As usual, his suit was rumpled, his collar wilted, his vest powdered with chronic cigar ash. His shirt bloused between his vest and his belly-bagged trousers. His collar was unbuttoned, his twisted tie loosened.

  Smiling quizzically, he glanced amiably toward my “in” basket as he nodded a sly, knowing greeting. “I see you got the Wagner case.” He eased his bulk into my visitor’s chair, sighing deeply, settling himself elaborately. “No hard feelings, I hope. The captain decided to give you a shot at it, with my blessing.”

  “That case,” I said slowly, “is three months old. Half the witnesses aren’t even around.”

  “Four months old, actually. Don’t worry about the witnesses, though. They weren’t worth a damn.”

  “What am I supposed to do, read it and file it with my other sixty-two open cases?”

  He shrugged indifferently, drawing a cigar from his vest pocket. “Use your own judgment. As far as I’m concerned, Wagner is just another dead hooker. She turned the wrong trick, and got herself strangled. Probably the John couldn’t get an erection, so he strangled her instead. Or maybe it was one of those sadistic-masochistic tricks. That’s very big now, I understand.”

  “And the John left town. And has never been traced. Right?”

  “Now, now, don’t get testy. You’ve got to expect these things, when you haven’t been a lieutenant for even a year.” He lit the cigar, shook the dead match once, and dropped it into my wastebasket, trailing a tiny plume of smoke. As I turned to stare pointedly at the paper-filled basket, I heard him saying, “When you’re the senior homicide lieutenant—when I’m comfortably retired, that is—you’ll have the privilege of sloughing off your unwanted cases on your fellow officer. Besides, maybe you’ll get lucky with Wagner. A different approach, you know, can often do…”

  My phone rang.

  “Lieutenant Hastings.”

  “Just a minute, Lieutenant. I have Sergeant Markham for you.” It was Communications.

  A moment later Markham came on the line. His voice was metallic; he was calling on his radio. “We’ve got a homicide in Golden Gate Park, Lieutenant—a female Caucasian, about eighteen years of age. Apparently she’s been dead since last night. She’s been bludgeoned. She seems to be clean and well dressed. Her name is apparently June Towers, address 848 Twenty-fourth Avenue.”

  “Robbed?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Raped?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Anyone else on the scene with you?”

  “Just me and Culligan. And the park patrolman who discovered the body.”

  I glanced at my watch; the time was 11:15 A.M. The date was January 17. June Towers was our first homicide of the new year. With last year’s San Francisco homicides totaling more than a hundred, she was an overdue statistic.

  “All right,” I said into the phone, “I’ll call the lab and the M.E. and the coroner. I’ll be out in a half-hour. You’d better get reinforcements.”

  “I’ve already put in the call. A black-and-white car’s just now arriving, in fact.”

  “Anything else to report?”

  “No. Culligan’s trying to line up possible witnesses, and the uniformed man is guarding the body. So far there isn’t a crowd.”

  “Roger. I’ll see you in a half-hour or so.”

  “Right.”

  I broke the connection and gave the necessary orders, instructing Canelli to get my car. Finally I swiveled to face Friedman.

  “I was beginning to believe the mayor’s oratory about how we’re stamping out violent crime.” He leaned laboriously forward, flicked his cigar ash into my wastebasket, then subsided, grunting. In the field—in action—Friedman could be surprisingly quick on his feet, especially taking cover. In the office, though, he seemed incapable of more than a portly, rolling waddle, propelling himself like an overweight banker from one chair to another, always seating himself with a long, grateful sigh.

  I gestured to my “in” basket. “Wagner will have to wait.”

  “Obviously. Who’s dead?”

  “A teen-aged girl named June Towers. Well dressed. Lived in the Sunset, apparently. Robbed. Not raped.” I unlocked my top desk drawer.

  “I wonder why Markham bothered to call in. Since he’s made acting se
rgeant, I’d expect him to be even more one-way than ever. Which is pretty one-way.”

  “Here—” I pushed an ashtray across the desk.

  Flicking the ash without looking, and missing the tray, Friedman said, “Did you recommend Markham for sergeant?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t either; I was for Culligan. Markham must’ve been entirely the captain’s idea.”

  “Culligan’s a good man, but he’s got an ulcer,” I said shortly. “He’s a worrier. Besides, Markham’s smart.” I scanned the two letters and the memo, and returned them to the basket. “Markham’s efficient too, and he doesn’t get rattled.”

  “But you don’t like him much.”

  “I wish he’d smile once in a while. But for that matter, I wish Culligan would smile once in a while.” I holstered my gun.

  “I could say the same about you, if you want the truth. The plain fact is, there really aren’t many laughs in this business. It’s…”

  My phone rang.

  “Lieutenant Hastings.”

  “Frank?” It was Ann.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “Well, I…”

  “I’ll just be a minute. That’s all I can talk, actually. I’m between classes. But I just wanted to tell you that Billy’s spending the night with a classmate. So I wondered whether—” She let it go unfinished.

  Glancing at Friedman, half turning away, I spoke into the phone. “Why don’t I call you about five? Maybe we can go to a movie. I’m not sure, though. I’ll have to see how things work out.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll be home by four-thirty. “Bye.”

  “Goodbye.” As I hung up, I realized that I was avoiding Friedman’s eye.

  “Don’t let me keep you from the year’s first corpse,” he said breezily. “I’ll stay here and finish my cigar, if you don’t mind. Sometimes I think better in your office than in mine.”

  “You’ll probably set it on fire.” I rose, taking my coat from the rack.

  “Was that Ann Haywood? Your favorite grammar-school teacher?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded mock-solemnly. “If I were you, I think I’d marry her. You might not realize it, but your face actually softens when you talk to her. Or for that matter, when you talk about her. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”

  “Listen, Pete, Canelli’s probably…”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “Approximately a month, as a matter of fact. Not that it’s really any of your…”

  “You’ve smiled more this last month than you have during all of last year. Not only that, but my wife thinks you’re perfect for each other. Did you know that?”

  “This is beginning to sound more like a sorority house than a homicide bureau.”

  “Hmm—” Drawing on his cigar, he wagged his head elaborately, projecting a judicious approval. “Not a bad crack, considering that you’re not really a comic type. Maybe it’s Ann’s softening influence.”

  “Shall I close my door? Or would you rather have it open?”

  “Closed, please. Good luck.”

  Two

  I BRACED MYSELF AS the car lurched around the corner. Canelli drove like he did everything else: earnestly but clumsily, constantly at odds with the job at hand. Yet, somehow, Canelli managed to blunder through, thanks to an incredible run of perpetual good luck. The entire homicide detail could be searching for a suspect while that same suspect was tapping Canelli on the shoulder, asking for a match. It was Friedman’s theory that Canelli was lucky for all the wrong reasons: because he neither looked like a cop nor acted like a cop nor thought like a cop. Canelli was twenty-eight, weighed two hundred forty pounds, and usually looked as if he’d just gotten off an all-night bus. He never wore his haphazardly creased hat at the same angle, and he often needed a shave. His large brown eyes were round and wondering. His habitual expression was a thoughtful, half-perplexed frown. Canelli was the only cop I’d ever known who could actually get his feelings hurt.

  “It can’t be much farther, Lieutenant. Maybe a mile, at the most.”

  “You don’t have to rush, Canelli. The lab crew is only ten minutes ahead of us.”

  “Right.” He slowed the car, but still managed to throw us awkwardly around the next curve. The park was almost deserted; the sky was a grim winter’s gray, still threatening rain. The tall trees were dark, featureless blobs of leaden green; the broad, sweeping lawns were lusterless. Yet yesterday the weather had been bright and warm: a perfect January day, cloudless and cheerful. Yesterday the park would have been crowded with cars, bikes, and hundreds of Sunday strollers—even a few hearty picnickers.

  “I wonder how many murders’ve been committed in this park,” Canelli was saying. “Hundreds, I bet. Maybe thousands.”

  “Maybe not. Don’t forget, San Francisco didn’t always have this kind of a homicide rate.”

  He nodded in thoughtful agreement. “You know, Lieutenant, I been an inspector for two years—just two years. But just in two years, the homicide rate’s doubled. It’s hard to believe. When I first made inspector, we were getting about forty murders a year.”

  “It’s very simple, Canelli: it’s the junkies. Just about two years ago the junkies started coming to town. If they aren’t killing each other because of burn jobs, they’re robbing to get enough money for the next fix. And a junkie with a gun is eventually a murderer.”

  “I was reading in the Reader’s Digest that about seventy percent of all violent crime is connected to junk. Do you think that’s right, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if it is right, then why don’t the government just lean on places like Turkey, and make them cut out raising poppies? I mean, if we can send a man to the moon, then I don’t see why we can’t…”

  “You’re forgetting about the juice, Canelli. Heroin is big business. A lot of people have to be paid off to make it all work. If there’re no more poppies, there’re no more payoffs. A lot of people would have to switch from Cadillacs to Buicks. It’s that simple.”

  “You really think so, Lieutenant? Honest?”

  “Six months ago I had to go to New York. I had lunch with a precinct captain, up in Harlem. He was just retiring, so he didn’t have to watch what he said. And he told me he could bust a dozen pushers that afternoon, carrying. But the next day they’d be right back on the street.”

  “Graft, eh?”

  “It’s not even as simple as graft. This captain said something that made me think. He said that like it or not, we’re at war with the blacks—the ghetto blacks, anyhow. Maybe no one knows how the war started, or who’s right, or how it’ll end. It’s like every other war: God’s on both sides. But anyhow, this captain said that heroin is permitted in Harlem for one very simple reason: because it’s just about the most effective weapon that the whites have against the blacks. He said that…”

  Ahead, I saw the familiar, haphazard cluster of radio cars, cruisers, vans, and press cars.

  “Jeez,” Canelli was saying, bouncing the car off the curb as he pulled to a stop, “it really makes you think. I mean, that’s like—like using poison gas, or something.”

  I swung open the door.

  Immediately Kanter from the Sentinel and Ralston from the Transcript were beside me, one on either side. Kanter, on the morning paper, had lots of time. But Ralston, I knew, had a twelve-thirty deadline, just thirty minutes away.

  “What’s it look like, Lieutenant?” Ralston asked, walking so close that his shoulder jostled mine.

  “Have you seen the body?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you talked to Markham?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “Then you know more than I do.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “No crap, Lieutenant?”

  I smiled at him sardonically. “I wouldn’t give you any crap, Ralston. Not after that piece you did on me a couple of weeks ago. The one about how the dog tore my pants while
I was going after a suspect.”

  He was a tall, gaunt man with uneasy eyes, bad breath, and a wolfish, unpleasant grin.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant. I couldn’t resist it. I mean—candy-striped shorts.”

  “Just don’t park near any fireplugs, Ralston.”

  “I was humanizing the policeman, Lieutenant. It’s part of our new policy.” But he couldn’t keep his mouth straight. And out of the corner of my eye I saw Canelli’s full lips twitching.

  “I’ve got work to do,” I said shortly. “As soon as I have something, I’ll let you know. Now stand back.”

  The half-circle of detectives, lab men, and the coroner’s crew parted silently as I stepped to the body.

  She’d been dragged into a small, semi-concealed area in which dead branches and grass cutting were piled, awaiting collection by the park’s maintenance trucks. The area was surrounded on three sides by thick laurel bushes growing a foot above my head. She was on her back, feet primly together, hands along her sides. Her long dark hair lay upward from her head; she looked as if she were falling feet first through the air, hair streaming up as she fell. The murderer must have dragged her to the spot by her hair.

  He’d have gotten bloody hands. Her hair was blood-matted; her forehead and ears and neck were caked almost black. Her face was oval, well shaped. Her brown eyes stared straight up; her mouth hung half open. Her teeth were white and even. She looked as if she might have swallowed her tongue.

  She wore a hand-knit fisherman’s sweater over an ordinary white shirt, open at the throat and cut like a man’s. Her jeans were elaborately paisley-patched in the current teen-age fashion, bleached and spot-dyed, held by a silk scarf pulled through the belt loops. The scarf was knotted, the jeans buttoned. She wore beautifully made high-laced boots that could have cost fifty dollars. The boots were almost new.

  Turning away, I studied the trail that her body had made through the park’s dead leaves and twig-littered dirt. Two parallel lines of white tape led to a small grassy glade almost entirely surrounded by pine and eucalyptus trees. The glade was approximately a hundred feet from the spot where I stood, and would be almost completely invisible from both the nearby road and the sidewalk. Two patrolmen stood among the trees, on guard.