Deadline, 2 A.M.

Chapter 13

Tuesday — 9:35 A.M.

Foot Patrolman Daniel C. Gottlieb reached his call box in ample time for this, his first report of the day, prepared as always to advise his sergeant that nothing of earth-shaking importance had occurred between the time he had left his home station in the Mission District and the time he had arrived on his beat. Then he paused in surprise, for it appeared that something had happened after all, albeit not very much. It seemed someone had gone to the trouble of prying open the door of the call box, and the only reason for going to this much bother had to be mischief, since the little telephone inside was of no inherent value, and could only be used to speak either with the Mission Police Station or the Communications Center at the Hall of Justice. It didn’t even have a dial to permit other calls. In addition, he noted that whoever had pried the door open had gone to the additional labor of refastening the door with a bit of cord, as if to make sure the door did not bang in the wind and possibly disturb someone, although this consideration was largely wasted, since the neighborhood where Patrolman Gottlieb’s call box was located was quite deserted.

Patrolman Gottlieb unwound the cord with a slight touch of excitement. His beat in this quiet section of the sprawling city usually produced little activity worthy of revelation to his superiors, and now, at least, he could begin the new day with a report of vandalism, even though the purpose of the vandal had been no more than the mere breaking of a patrolman’s box. Still, it was city property, or county property — Patrolman Gottlieb wasn’t sure which — which all citizens were importuned to respect, and he opened the box prepared to transmit all vital details to the desk sergeant at Mission. But then he paused, frowning, for it appeared that whoever had vandalized the call box had not done so without a purpose. They had apparently done so in order to leave behind a sealed envelope tucked between the old-fashioned mouthpiece and the back wall of the metal box. Patrolman Gottlieb removed the envelope and studied it closely.

It was addressed to one Lieutenant James Reardon, and Patrolman Gottlieb knew very well that Lieutenant James Reardon was one of the brighter lights in the Homicide Division, and that the message was undoubtedly meant for him and not for any Lieutenant Reardon in the Army, or the Navy, or even the Fire Department, although they also boasted lieutenants, a fair share of whom were probably named Reardon. Besides, if the note were intended for someone in the Fire Department, why hadn’t it been left in a fire box, of which there were even more in the city than patrolmen’s call boxes?

No, the note was clearly meant for Lieutenant James Reardon of Homicide, and Patrolman Gottlieb had a strong feeling it was important that the lieutenant receive the message as soon as possible. For, among other things, such as the method of delivery, there was something quite mysterious in the manner the vandal had addressed the envelope, what with each letter apparently of a different size and cut from some magazine or newspaper and pasted in place. Patrolman Gottlieb knew this to be suspicious in the extreme, clearly indicating someone’s desire to avoid self-identification.

Convinced that this was only the first step on the sure path to promotion, and subconsciously thanking the vandal for having chosen this particular call box for the leaving of the envelope, Patrolman Gottlieb raised the receiver and pressed the button connecting him to the Hall of Justice, asking that a patrol car be sent around at once to pick the message up and deliver it. He only refrained with effort from adding that Gottlieb was spelled with two “t”s.

Tuesday — 9:45 A.M.

One of the many things that often puzzled Lieutenant Reardon was how his lovely Jan could possibly consider his work dangerous, when 95 per cent of his working day seemed to be spent either in putting words on paper or in attempting to make some sense from papers upon which others had spent hours putting words. If they gave service awards for writer’s cramp, he often thought, or for strained eyesight, a man could retire from the police force after five years with a chest full of medals that would have made a five-star general jealous.

The ringing of the telephone spared him from one more report. He gladly put it aside and picked up the receiver, grunting into it.

“Reardon, here.”

“Hello, Jim? Roy Gentry. How’d you like to get a preview of a report that’s about to go up to the chief?”

“Why a preview?”

“Because the chief is out of the Hall at the moment, and Homicide will be getting a copy anyway after the chief sees it, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to wait.”

And you also have found something you feel you can brag about, Reardon thought; and I hope you’re right. I’ll be the first to kiss you on both cheeks.

“I’ll be right there,” he said, and happily shoved papers aside, coming to his feet. His departure was delayed, however, by a repeat of the telephone ring. Reardon sighed and picked it up.

“Reardon, here.”

“Sergeant Martin, Communications, Lieutenant. We just received a call from one of the foot patrolmen out of Mission. He was checking in at his box and found it broken open. Somebody had left a sealed envelope inside, tucked between the mouthpiece and the wall. It was addressed to you.”

Reardon leaned back against his desk, taking some of the weight off his feet. His eyes were narrowed. “What did it say?”

“He didn’t open it,” the sergeant said. “Like I said, it was sealed. He asked for a patrol car to pick it up and take it down to the Hall for you. We sent the nearest car we had. It ought to be there and back in a couple more minutes.”

“Very gentlemanly not to open other people’s mail,” Reardon murmured.

“Sir?”

“Nothing. I’ll be down in the lab with Roy Gentry when it gets here.”

“Right, sir.”

Reardon hung up the telephone and stared at it a moment in thought, an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew he had been expecting a message from the kidnapper ever since Dondero had disappeared from that bridge that night before, and he wished that knuckle-headed patrolman had had the sense to open the envelope and relay the message. And the kidnapper, whoever he was, remained as cagey as ever. Using the call box would assure him relatively quick delivery — quicker than the post office, surely — and be almost impossible to trace.

Because in Reardon’s mind there was no doubt the message was from the kidnapper. Well, the bastard was still keeping his distance ahead of them all, but he had to slip sometime. They all did, sooner or later, according to the book; although nothing in the book had told him to put Dondero in jeopardy together with Pop. He sighed, hitched himself from the desk, and headed for the door.

He trotted down the steps to the floor below, walked down the corridor to the end, and pushed through the swinging doors to the laboratory. He nodded to the people working at the various benches and continued on through two more sterile-looking rooms to the small private laboratory Roy Gentry usually used to verify results obtained by subordinates in other sections of his department. Gentry was bending over a microscope, his horn-rimmed glasses perched on his head out of the way, while his ever-present cigarette was held as far from his work as possible, as if to avoid contamination of his samples. Reardon came up behind him, plucked the cigarette from the extended fingers, and placed it neatly in an ashtray. Gentry looked up.

“Oh. Hi, Jim. Want to take a look?”

“Sure, but where’s the report?”

Gentry pulled his glasses into place, tucked his cigarette back into one corner of his mouth, and jerked a thumb toward the small office in one corner of the room.

“On my desk,” he said, speaking around smoke. “But this is all part of it. Thought you might be interested.”

So let him show off, Reardon thought. I just hope it’s worth bragging about. He bent over the microscope and adjusted the knob to bring the surface of the slide into focus. In his circle of vision, coming from blur to sharp image, was what seemed to be, in principal, a grayish stain with a series of darker streaks throughout. Reardon changed lenses, bringing up the magnification, since he knew he couldn’t read as much into these mysteries as Roy Gentry.

Now the streaks seemed to have little various colored nodules attached to them, and were in turn attached to each other by little stems. Lighter bluish-colored random shapes were scattered throughout the area of vision, almost as if added as an afterthought. It looks like a moonscape, Reardon thought, and straightened up.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “What is it?”

“Dark air-cured.” Gentry was smiling proudly.

“Dark air-cured what?”

“Tobacco,” Gentry said, not at all surprised by the other’s ignorance. “Tobacco ash, that is.”

“And what’s so impressive about that?” He looked at the cigarette in Gentry’s hand and nodded. “I see. You’re checking the stuff you’re smoking these days. You’re trying to figure out if you can’t come up with something cheaper, using old broom straws or something.”

“No,” Gentry said, not at all disturbed by this Philistinism. “That, my friend, came from the stuff collected from the floor of the back seat of Mike Holland’s Chevy by Frank Wilkins and his crew. It was found on the portion of the back seat behind the passenger side of the car. It indicates that whoever was sitting in the back seat was smoking—”

Reardon stared at him a moment and then broke into a grin.

“For this you need a microscope? My old mother, bless her soul, never smoked a day in her life, but she sure as the devil saw enough cigarette ash on my father’s jacket lapels! She could have saved you scientific geniuses a lot of work. Good grief! A microscope to tell tobacco ash! And as far as it being on the floor of the car in the back,” he added, playing the devil’s advocate, “it was probably from someone Pop gave a lift to fourteen years ago when the car was new, or maybe even a neighbor he took to the ball game last week.”

“No,” Gentry said evenly. He was enjoying himself. “A guest doesn’t usually drop ashes on the floor, not in those quantities; he uses the ashtrays. And the ashtrays were clean, unused. The rest of the car was clean, too, so we can assume Mike kept it that way normally. Therefore, finding ash where it was found clearly indicates to me that the man who dropped that ash dropped it quite recently, and most probably was the man who kidnapped Mike Holland.”

Reardon considered the idea and shook his head. “That still doesn’t sound too conclusive to me. Mike may not have cleaned the car for weeks—”

“No,” Gentry said calmly. Behind his thick glasses his eyes were twinkling. “You’ll also note — if you can note the difference — that there is very little black dust mixed with the ash, and in this town, as in most towns unfortunately these days, it doesn’t take very long for dust to settle.”

“In a car with the windows closed?”

“Even in a car with the windows closed; modern cars certainly aren’t dustproof. And we don’t know they were always closed. We just know when the car was found, all the windows were closed, except the one across from the driver, which was partially open.”

“All right,” Reardon said, happy to agree. “Let’s assume that the man who kidnapped Pop smoked. So what? Half the idiotic population of the entire country smokes — present company included.”

“Actually, less than twenty-five per cent,” Gentry said, ever the pedantic, “although that statistic includes children, of course, too young to smoke.” He puffed on his cigarette with enjoyment as he went on. “However, the percentage is smaller for those who smoke cigars.”

Reardon frowned. “Cigars?”

“That’s right.” Gentry was enjoying his triumph. “The ash is definitely from a cigar.”

“Look,” Reardon said, “I know you can tell a lot from tobacco ash in the laboratory, but it still seems a little Sherlock Holmesish, again, to me. So tell me, Holmes, how do you deduce the ash was from a cigar? And don’t tell me you found the cigar band on the floor of the back seat.”

Gentry shook his head unhappily.

“I wish we had. You see, we can’t go as far as Holmes. He was supposed to be able to identify every known make of cigar and tobacco by its ash, but we’re satisfied to be able to distinguish between the eight basic classifications of tobacco by their ash — flue-cured, dark air-cured, oriental and semi-oriental, dark sun-cured, Burley—”

“All right! All right. I believe you. So?”

“So each type leaves a distinctive ash.” Gentry gestured toward the microscope. “That is dark air-cured, which is used almost exclusively for cigars. Unless,” he added with dry humor, “the man was smoking a hookah in the back seat, because dark air-cured is also used in water pipes in the Middle East. But of course,” he said, thinking about it, “there wouldn’t have been any ash at all with a hookah, would there?”

“I doubt it. Look, Roy—”

“Now, cigarettes, of course, are blends, either of whatever the smoker prefers, or what is available at a good price, or whatever the manufacturer feels like putting in at the moment,” Gentry went on, now wound up. He smiled. “Sherlock Holmes would have gone crazy in today’s cigarette market.” His smile disappeared; the lecturer returned. “Most American cigarettes contain a blend of flue-cured, oriental, and Burley, with or without Maryland light air-cured. English cigarettes are wholly flue-cured tobacco with no additives permitted by law, other than water. Pipe tobaccos—”

Reardon interrupted at last, weary of more knowledge.

“Look, Roy, I’ll read about it in your report, if you don’t mind.”

“If you wish.” Gentry was not at all disturbed; his show was scarcely half over. He turned to a second microscope. “Now, here we have an example of hair. You might know that the man was bearded—”

Reardon was quite aware of the magic sometimes developed in a police laboratory, and he knew that hair gave many more clues than most people knew. Still, it seemed a pity to break up Gentry’s triumphant mood.

“All right, Roy, I’ll play the straight man. How do you know he was bearded?”

Gentry crushed out his cigarette and automatically reached for another.

“When we first separated the stuff Frank Wilkins vacuumed from various parts of the car, we found among the vacuum cleanings of the back seat, in addition to ash, hair. Now, hair,” he said, thinking about it, “is of great importance in identification. Not only can race and sex be determined by microscopic evaluation of hair, but even age can be roughly calculated. Not to the year, of course, but childhood can be differentiated from youth, youth from middle age, middle age from old age, and so forth. In addition, hair from different parts of the body varies considerably in appearance under a microscope. According to Belfield, the hair of the male beard is readily distinguishable from scalp hair by diameter, shape, and pigmentation. The hairs of the scalp generally vary from 1/200 to 1/1000 of an inch in diameter, while the hairs from the jaw are larger, varying in diameter from about 1/150 to—”

“All right!” Reardon modified his tone. “All right, Roy. Do you mind? I appreciate the job you’ve done, but give it to me in nice short sentences. What race, sex, and age are we talking about?”

Gentry nodded, pleased with the reaction of the other man. He brought his exposition to a properly dramatic close.

“The man we’re talking about — the man I am assuming kidnapped Pop Holland — is a white male, between twenty-five and forty years of age, with a beard at least three inches in length and possibly more, beginning to gray at the tips, who smokes cigars. As you know from our voice graphs, we assume him to be a native Californian, probably raised in the bay area, and with a decent education, no doubt at least some college.”

“And a nasty habit of hurting people,” Reardon added. “Also accompanied by a small companion who isn’t any angel himself, considering we figure he was driving the car when the wino was run over.”

He drummed his fingers on the laboratory bench absently while he went over it all in his mind. There were undoubtedly many hundreds of people who fit the physical appearance that Gentry had magically evoked from his microscope and his voice comparator, but the lieutenant had to admit they were a lot farther along than they had been, and a lot farther along than he had expected to be. Still it was a long way from being sufficiently identitive to permit the issuance of an all-points bulletin. If only they could pinpoint the kidnapper a bit more accurately; if only they had one or two more descriptive elements to narrow the field! Well, maybe the message that had been left in the patrolman’s call box might give them what they lacked, though it was doubtful if the kidnapper would make that hoped-for mistake.

As if in answer to the thought, the door swung back and one of the uniformed officers from the reception desk in the lobby was there, holding out a crumpled envelope.

“Not much chance for fingerprints,” he said apologetically. “The patrol car driver said the footman who gave him this was hanging onto it like it was his birthday present. Ruined any possibility of prints.” He added under his breath, “The dummy!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Reardon said shortly. “This guy doesn’t leave prints.” He studied the pasted letters on the envelope a moment, and then slipped a finger under the flap, ripping open the cover. He removed the single sheet of paper, unfolded it, and read it. The words, also clipped from a newspaper or magazine, were of varying sizes and type shapes, but together they formed a message that was short and to the point:

The words were evidently cut from the same newspaper or leaflet as the letters on the envelope; and the underlining of the last four words, as well as the exclamation points, had been added using a heavy black marking pencil. Reardon read it again, although the message was clear enough. He felt a sickening feeling in his stomach. He should never have permitted Dondero to go ahead with his harebrained scheme! Permitted? He practically abetted it! Which was what came from desperation and frustration. Idiot! He forced down the fury he felt at himself and handed the note and envelope both to the laboratory head.

“Okay, Roy,” he said heavily. “This is the only tangible thing we have from the man, other than that first tape. What can you dig out of this to add to what we’ve got? And maybe give us enough to nail the bastard!”

Gentry took the paper and envelope. He looked at the envelope briefly and then concentrated on the note. He looked up, curious.

“What does he mean, two for one? And ‘good bye to both’?”

“Never mind,” Reardon said shortly. “Forget the words — concentrate on the note itself. Give me something to work on.”

Gentry studied the angry face a moment and then shrugged. He considered the sheet once again, and then placed it on the bench; his glasses went back up to his forehead and he bent over the paper, studying it through a large lens he took from the jacket pocket of his laboratory coat. Reardon waited impatiently while the tall thin man scanned the letters carefully. Gentry looked at the pencil markings last and then looked up. He sounded and looked apologetic.

“Printing isn’t our big forte, but I can make some educated guesses. Obviously, none of these letters came from any magazine, but rather from newsprint stock of some sort. Secondly, I’d say the paper the letters were printed on was the same grade paper stock as the paper the words were pasted on, which is a bit unusual—”

“Unusual? In what way?”

“Well, now.” Gentry said logically, “if you were cutting out letters to paste up a message, from the evening newspaper, for example, what would you normally paste them on?”

Reardon stared at him a moment in dawning understanding and then nodded.

“I see! You’d scarcely have some of the same blank newsprint around the house, would you?” Could his bearded, cigar-smoking, sardonic adversary finally have made a mistake? If so, it was a dandy! Reardon picked up the note, folded it along the original creases carefully, and replaced it in the envelope.

Gentry frowned. “Don’t you want us to work on that?”

“You keep working on what you have,” Reardon said, and tucked the envelope into his pocket.

“And what are you going to go?”

“Something I should have done long ago,” Reardon said grimly. “Do some work myself!”