The Paw of the Cat

Chapter Two The Lady’s Out for Blood!

It was a fifty-minute run to the commuter community of Dumont. At nine o’clock Stenn folded his newspaper and got off. There was a bean wagon down the street from the small station. He had a cheese sandwich and coffee.

The first witness lived at 81 Clover Road. It was a fifty-cent taxi fare. Stenn carefully wrote the amount plus tip in his notebook. As he walked up to the doorway of the small Georgian red-brick house he saw the man inside glance up from the paper. He was a small, puffy man with the grey, cautious expression that spoke of organic disorder plus a doctor’s warning.

“I’m from the police,” Stenn said at the door. “About that business at the station today.”

“Come on in. I didn’t think you’d be around so fast. Terrible thing. Terrible. I told the policeman that I wasn’t a well man and I shouldn’t be bothered with this thing but somebody else pointed me out as having been standing close to her when she fell and he made me tell my name and everything.”

Stenn sat down in the small living room, put his hat on the floor and took out his notebook. “Just routine questions,” he said.

“Well, make it fast. My wife took the kids to the movies and she gets excited about things like this. I didn’t tell her and I don’t want her finding you here, Officer.”

“Your name is Frank J. Kelleher. I suppose you were on your way home?”

“From Shallon Photo on Broad. I bought a paper outside the station like I always do. I stood on the platform reading and waiting.”

“You saw the deceased?”

“She died? Well, I guess that was best all around. Sure, I saw her. You notice a dish like that, a blondie like that. I saw her from the back and then edged around so I could see the front elevation. She was out of my class so I went back to the paper.”

“How far from you was she?”

“Four feet, maybe five. I think a little to my left.”

“Did you look up when the train backed down to the platform?”

“No. It’s something I see every day. But I heard this scream. Horrible. I’m a man with a terrible heart. They keep warning me all the time and—”

“What did you see?”

“Her falling, naturally. Both arms waving like she wanted to claw her way across the open space. Then all I see is the high heels and legs up in the air and then the train sliding by and I can’t see anything any more. Look, it gives me heart flutters to talk about it.”

“Did you notice anyone else near her?”

“At that hour there’s a jam on that platform. You got to be fast on your feet to get a seat. I can’t run. Lots of times I got to stand up the whole way. There were people all around us.”

“Could somebody have pushed her?”

“Who’d do a terrible thing like that? But I don’t know. Maybe. Right then I was on the comics. I guess I was reading Dagwood when she screamed. Sure she could have been pushed without me seeing it. Anything could have happened. I wouldn’t know.”

“Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Kelleher. We’ll call on you again if we need anything more.”

“Next time, please, get me at the office. Shallon Photo on Broad.”

“Okay.” Stenn walked to the front door. He turned. “What’d you do after she fell?”

“Me? Nothing. My heart was going fast. The train was open. I got in. It was easy to get a seat. So many people watching everything.”

“You went back to Dagwood, I suppose?” Stenn asked.

Kelleher shrugged. “And why not? It takes my mind off things. The doctors all say that I’m a man whose got to have his mind taken off—”

“Good-night,” Stenn said abruptly.

It was a three-block walk to the next address. The house was a duplex in Spanish-style stucco. 518 Catherina Street. He looked at the name again under the street light. Miss Della Clove. It was a quarter after ten, and the downstairs lights were still on.

He pressed his thumb on the bell for a long time. Seconds after he removed it the door was yanked open and a heavy-set man with a bullfrog face said, “Okay, okay. Push a hole in the door, why don’t you?”

Stenn sighed and flashed the gold and blue badge. “I want to talk to Della Clove. You her father?”

“Step-father,” the man muttered. “Wait here in the hall.”

Stenn leaned against the wall and whistled tonelessly. In the back of the house he heard the man bawling for Della. She came in a few moments, the man following her. “What’s she done?” the man asked, his tone eager.

“She’s just a witness to something. I want to talk to her alone.”

“This is my house and I listen to anything in it I want to,” the man said sullenly.

Stenn looked at the girl. Her heavy black hair was worn in an outmoded pageboy, the front bangs falling to the thick unplucked eyebrows. It gave her young face a pointed, vulpine look. She wore a black sweater and slacks. The sweater was a turtle-neck, and the slacks were closely tailored. Stenn guessed her at about nineteen.

“Go on back to that crummy program you were listening to,” she said in a hoarse gamin’s voice.

“Watch your mouth!” the man bellowed.

The girl shrugged. “Come on, Mr. Police. We’ll go on up to my room if he wants to act that way.”

The man gave them an evil grin. “See if I care how many guys you take up to that room, you tramp.”

The girl was halfway up the steep stairs, looking back over her shoulder.

“We’ll talk right here,” Stenn said. She paused, turned, started back down. Stenn turned to the man. “Go on into the back of the house and shut any doors you come to. Give me an argument and I’ll have you booked on the first thing I can think up and we both know it won’t be the first time.”

The man licked his lips. He tried to smile confidently. He turned and left the hallway.

“All talk, he is,” Della Clove said. She sat on the second stair from the bottom, her fingers locked around one knee. “I suppose this is about that girl and the train today. Is she dead?”

“She is.”

“I thought she would be, with both legs gone that way. I’m going to have nightmares tonight, believe me.”

“You went around and took a look at her?”

“Sure. I never saw anything like that before. Raoul says we must seek all experience.”

“Who is Raoul?”

“My director. We’re in rehearsal right now. The Theater of the Dance.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard of it yet, but you will. It’s all volunteer work. We give plays in pure pantomine. We dance out the parts. It’s a new art form.”

“Then you were coming back from rehearsal?”

“We worked all afternoon. I was exhausted.”

“Did you notice that girl before she took the dive?”

“Yes. I always study everyone around me. Raoul says that observation is something a true actress must have. I always select the most attractive person nearby and study them. But blondes often look just a little anemic, don’t you think? She was nervous. Very nervous. She kept fiddling with the strap on that alligator shoulder bag. She kept looking down the track and tapping her foot.”

“Then you were looking when she jumped?”

“I had learned everything I could from her. I had turned around to find someone else to study when she screamed. I turned in time to see her fall. I made a grab for her... like this.” The girl made an exaggerated reaching motion, then shrank back as though in an extremity of fear. She sank to the step, fingering her dark hair back off the pale forehead. “Just like that.”

“Maybe you should have grabbed a little quicker. Where was she in relation to you, Della?”

“Three or four feet in front of me and a little to my right.”

“Was there a little fat man standing beside you?”

She frowned. “The world is full of little fat men. I wouldn’t know.”

“In your opinion, could she have been pushed?”

“I really don’t know. It’s possible, of course. The normal thing to do when a train backs in like that is to look at it. I suppose it would be a perfect time to push anyone.”

“You’ve got a point there.”

“And there was quite a crowd, you know. I often stay in until later to avoid that very thing.”

“You do this dancing or acting or whatever it is for free, eh?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“You mentioned it, Della. I was just wondering how you lived.”

She lifted her chin. “If it is of interest to you, I have my own money, from my father, my real father. I have to live with my mother until I am twenty-one. I’ll be twenty-one in two more months. And then, believe me, I’ll never look at this crummy town again. In the meanwhile I have a small income from the lawyers.”

She came up onto her feet with a dancer’s grace. Her eyes were snapping black under the heavy eyebrows. It was a dancer’s body, long-waisted, flat across the belly, with a thigh-muscle swell under the tailored slacks.

“Is that all you have to know?” she asked loftily.

“For now.”

“Could you make an appointment the next time?”

“I could, but I don’t think I will. That is, if there is a next time.”

He smiled as he walked away from the house. That one was a handful, for anybody. He phoned a cab from a drugstore that was just closing, rode back to the station and read a magazine until his train came through at a quarter after eleven.

Three days later, at the request of white-haired, lean Lieutenant Sharahan, Sergeant Paul Stenn reported to him.

“How about this Jane Doe?” Sharahan asked in his mild voice. “You got anything on her yet?”

“Nothing. No tumble to the picture in the paper. No answers on the tape. Drew a blank in the San Francisco underwear shop. No dry-cleaning marks. Nothing at the hotels. I coordinated with Missing Persons and they’ve sent about fifteen people over to take a look at her. No dice. I sent her prints to Central Bureau Files. Got the answer this morning. Nothing on her. The dental work is pretty average. She had good teeth. Three small fillings. Not enough to go on.”

“A big bundle of nothing,” Sharahan breathed softly.

“I checked on the ways she could have come into town. I took the picture around. The desk guy at Intercity thought maybe. He dug out the manifest and the only one we couldn’t check off was a Miss Betty Brown of Seattle. She got on the flight at Chicago. Could be, and then again maybe not. The Seattle report ought to be here day after tomorrow. That smells to me as though it would fade out on us. They give those Reno matches away all over the country. All we know is she probably was in San Francisco some time within the past year and that she definitely was in Mexico. Her suit was made there, the experts say, and she had to be there for the fittings. It looks to me like she was traveling without identification for a purpose.”

“How do you mean? Because she was going to knock herself off?”

“It doesn’t smell that way. More like it wasn’t healthy for her to spread the right dope around. I’ve got a hunch she might have been wanted. But only a hunch.”

Sharahan sighed again. “Okay. Drop it. No sense wasting any more time on it.”

Stenn cleared his throat. “If it’s okay with you, Wally, I’d just as soon work on it a little longer.”

“Why?” For the first time Sharahan’s voice was sharp.

“Call it a hunch. Call it anything. Give me a couple more days. I’ll work it in between the regular stuff.”

“Suit yourself,” the lieutenant said. “Suit yourself, Paul.”

That night Stenn went to a movie. The images raced across the surface of his eyes, leaving no impression on the brain. He sat utterly still in the seat and, starting from the beginning, he went over every detail of the case, the inventory, the way the dead girl had looked, the faint crispness of the blonde hair under his fingers. There was only one vague area in the entire case.

From the lobby he phoned headquarters and asked to have Kevan and Matchic pick him up in front. Within two minutes they cut out of traffic and pulled up beside the curb.

“Just keep cruising, Matchic,” Stenn said as he climbed into the back. “I got a couple of questions. About the blonde at the station three-four days ago.”

Kevan laughed. “The day Matchic was grass colored, eh?”

“Shut up,” Matchic growled.

“I want to know about those two witnesses. The little fat guy give you trouble?”

“Sure,” Kevan said. “He didn’t want any part of it. He was groaning about his bad heart. Somebody pointed him out sitting in the train reading his paper like nothing had happened. He tried to say he wasn’t anywhere near the girl when she went over the edge. But two people saw him there and told me and I pressured the name and address out of him, then checked it against his papers.”

“How about the Clove girl?”

“That was something else again. She insisted on being a witness. I thought she was a phony like a lot of that kind are. But we checked and found she was really right near the blonde.”

“Notice anything else about her?”

“Outside of acting a little goofy, no.”

“Goofy in what way besides wanting her name taken down?”

“Well, while the doc was under the train putting the tourniquets on the blonde, the Clove gal was on her hands and knees right beside me. I expected her to faint because it wasn’t very pretty under there. I looked over at her and she looked like somebody watching the waiter bring a steak dinner. When a female is bloodthirsty she gets under my skin. I had to shove her away.”

“Thanks. You can drop me off on the next corner. See you around.”