Mark of Murder

EIGHTEEN

"Well, and what can we do for you, Saul?" asked Mendoza. Goldberg asked first about Hackett and shook his head at the latest report. "It's more the other way around, I'm afraid. I just thought it'd be neighborly to mention it, in case anything does happen."

"Make it short, we've got quite a night's project mapped 0ut."

"Well," said Goldberg, "there was a break-in last night at a gunsmith's shop over on Spring. Quite a lot of stuff gone, and-"

"Your problem," said Mendoza.

"It could turn into yours. I don't like it," said Goldberg. "All they took was guns-and the hell of a lot of ammo for them. There was other valuable stuff there-he had a color TV in the back room he was keeping for his wife's birthday, and he does a side line in transistor radios, there were about twenty of those. And he'd left a few bucks in the register. Well, the first thing a burglar looks for is cash, usually. But all somebody, or several somebodies, was interested in, was guns. We've been all round the suspected fences and pawnbrokers today, and not a smell has turned up. Which makes it look as if whoever the somebodies were, they just wanted guns-as guns."

"Oh,” said Mendoza. "I begin not to like it too. My God, on top of-"

"Listen to the list," said Goldberg, unfolding a sheet of paper. "They or whoever took an old Springfield. 22 rifle, a Ruger Standard Single-Six. 22, an S. and W.. 357 Magnum, a. 38 CoIt Trooper, an Iver-Johnson Supershot. 22, a Whitney Lightning. 22 automatic, and three of the gunsmith's own target revolvers-he's a pro shot-a CoIt Python. 357 Magnum, a CoIt Cfficers' Match Model. 38 revolver, and an S. and W. Target. 45. And about twenty rounds of ammo for all nine guns."

"?Santa Maria! " said Mendoza. "Is he starting a little private war?"

"That may be too close for comfort," said Goldberg soberly. "Tell you what just crossed my mind-a gang of juveniles. Planning a rumble with something new added."

"?Por Dios! And you could be right," said Mendoza. "God, on top of all the rest of this- We can only hope, if that's so, the rumble isn't planned for tonight. Thanks for the warning, anyway."

"I could be just woolgathering," said Goldberg, sneezing and groping for the inevitable Kleenex. "Just thought you ought to know. All but one of them handguns, you know, and all that ammo-"

"Yes indeed."

Sergeant Lake came back and handed Mendoza a. 38 Police Special, a shoulder holster, and a box of ammunition.

"Hey, what's up?” said Goldberg. "You never pack a gun unless it's something damn serious."

"I think," said Mendoza, taking off his jacket, "we're on damn serious business tonight, Saul."

Nobody else thought so for quite a while. Dwyer said to Scarne, "Work our tails off on an all-night job, just because he gets a wild hunch! There's nothing to say the Slasher's holed up in that area. Why just that area?"

"First cast," said Scarne gloomily, "I guess."

"My God, sure, we sweat it out all night and don't find him because he's a block outside the line our Luis drew on the map!"

But Mendoza was the one who gave the orders. They set it up, with the fifty-six men from Traffic and those available in the homicide office-Dwyer, Scarne, Palliser, Piggott, Landers-and Higgins and Galeano would be in later.

There were some residential streets in the area they were covering, but more of it was business. The residential streets were shabby and poor, and a lot of those old houses had derelict shacks built at the rear of the lots; a few still had henhouses standing from years back before the town was a city. But along the main drags-San Pedro, Main, Los Angeles, Third and Second, First and Temple-were many kinds of small business and some large: a solid block of warehouses, some, they discovered, empty. Store owners were called, keys to the empty buildings were sent for, the men were briefed. They assigned one crew of men, in pairs, to two-square-block sections, and started them out. It was, of course, very unlikely that their boy was holed up in a private residence; but if there was an empty house somewhere even that was possible.

They got the men all down there by five-thirty, with seven cars roaming at random, and the operation started. Dwyer, paired off with Landers, was still grumbling. They were let out of a squad car with the other two men, both uniformed, who were on this particular block with them; Dwyer looked at the building on the corner, a four-story warehouse, blank-faced. "Hell of a waste of time," he said. "Just because Mendoza the brain gets a hunch-"

"Hey, I've heard of him," said one of the uniformed men interestedly. "Is this one of his deals?"

"One of his wild deals. We're supposed to look for an open window or something this boy could have got in by-but I've got the keys. You go round to the side and look, and then come back."

In many streets other men were dropped, began their search. They made polite requests of householders and shopkeepers; in almost all cases they met no resistance. Over on Stevens Street, Officers Carlson and Ramirez ran into a belligerent householder who tried to start a fight, so they hailed a patrol car, put him in it to cool, went through the house, and found several hundred gallons of homemade beer in the garage. But there weren't many cases like that.

The dogs and their handlers arrived. By that time the word had got out that a mass raid of cops was in the neighborhood, and people came out to stare, form little crowds. The dogs fascinated them, of course.

And then it was getting on for eight-thirty, and the dark had come down full, not insidiously and reasonably as it does elsewhere; the sky changed from pink-streaked silver blue to full dark within fifteen minutes, and after that the dark was studded with the men's flashlights, little eyes of light moving along the sidewalks, and, here and there where a house or building was empty, moving past windows inside.

Mendoza was over on Temple Street with Palliser then. "For God's sake," he said to the driver of a squad car at the curb, "can't we get these people off the streets?" Little knots of people stood about, at front doors, under street lights. "They've been warned-they ought to know-"

"You think he might try another one, with all this force out and about?"

"We don't know," said Mendoza. "With one like that, who can say?"

"Well, we can tell 'em to go home," said the driver, "but it's supposed to be a free country." He gunned the car up to the nearest little group, got out, and began to talk to them.

That kind of job was always a tiresome one; at the same time, tonight, the men were all a little keyed up at the thought that they might, just might, find themselves unexpectedly facing the Slasher

…

It was ten twenty-three when Patrolmen McLelland and Leslie, both of the Wilcox Street station, came out of an ancient brick office building on Los Angeles Street and paused to light cigarettes. The office building was on a corner, and a little wind had got up; they went round the side of the building to get their lights, and Leslie said, "Half these old places ought to be knocked down. Did you see the state of those lavatories?"

McLellar1d opened his mouth to answer, and there was a sharp crack; Leslie staggered, dropping his cigarette and shoving McLelland against the brick wall. "Jesus!” he said. "That was a-" A second shot barked and the slug hit the building an inch from McLelland's right ear.

Both men dropped flat in the next second. "You hit?"

"Just nicked me, I think." Leslie explored, said, "Went through the shoulder padding. VK/That the hell-Where's he shooting from? Can you-"

"Over there-kitty-corner across the intersection, I think. Try to cover me." McLelland, gun out, crawled up toward the corner and around it. The side street was all dark, across there, and the street lamp at the corner was out. This block of Los Angeles Street was deserted at night, and not well lighted.

About four buildings up, just passing under one of the feeble street lights, were two men walking in his direction. McLelland debated about calling to warn them to stop. Then a gun spoke again-a heavy gun, by the sound-and one of the two men spun round and fell flat. The other one stopped in his tracks and then stooped over the first man, so the second bullet flew over his head and made a sharp spat on the building front.

McLelland turned and sent a snap shot toward where he thought the gunman was. This thing had started so suddenly that he'd hardly had time to feel surprise. He just found himself thinking blankly, What the hell? Now, lying there, he heard footsteps across the intersection-soft, but audible; steps walking, then running-away. Leslie heard that too. He came up panting. "For God's sake-" he said. "You hit? What-"

The other man came up to them. "You're cops?" he said, seeing McLelland in uniform. "Thank God. Mac's dead. Did you see that? He's dead. We were just walkin' along, talking about politics, and he'd just been saying about all this lousy foreign aid, and then- He's dead. And his eye's all-his eye-" He leaned over, retching, and Leslie took his arm. McLelland, gun still in hand, ran down to where the man lay; he'd been neatly drilled through the left eye, probably a fluke shot.

He looked up the street and saw a black and white squad car coming. It screeched to a halt beside him.

"Were those shots?" asked the driver.

"Sounded like a. 38," said McLelland. "This poor devil's a D.O.A. A sniper- I think he was just shooting at anything that showed, way it-"

From about a block away a gun began to talk-a fusillade of shots, in rapid succession. "For God's sake," said the squad-car driver, "has war been declared?" He picked up the hand radio. "Car 104 at L.A. and Woods. Sniper just shot a man here. Shot at two of our boys."

"He went up Woods," said McLelland.

"He went up Woods toward Main."

The radio crackled excitedly at him. They heard more shots, a little farther off. "Awk!" said the radio as if in comment. "Join car 194 at junction of Main and Woods. Repeat-"

"What about us?" asked McLelland. But the radio didn't say anything about that, so they stayed there and got the names of the two men, quick and dead, and after the ambulance came they went on with the search. That had been their orders.

Mendoza and Palliser were in an empty factory on Third Street when they heard about the sniper. A uniformed man came down the corridor looking, said, "Lieutenant? They sent me over to find you. There's a sniper loose. Last they heard of him, he was on Woods Street somewhere-killed a civilian and shot at two of our men. Then he took some shots at a squad car along Main-"

"?Porvida! " said Mendoza, and then he said suddenly, "That's our boy. Come on. You've got a car? Let's get going."

"But how could- A sniper?" said Palliser incredulously. "You mean like that Corning thing last year? Just some nut loose with a gun? I don't-"

Mendoza was hustling him along. "?Vamos, vamos! It's our boy-I see how his mind works, pues si. I said, just enough sense. He wants to kill, he likes to kill with the knife, but we've told people what he looks like now-and you can kill people from a distance with a gun. With guns. My God, yes-Goldberg's boy too, and that young arsenal-"

They got over to the corner of Woods and Main at about eleven o'clock. Men were looking at the squad car, whose right front door was riddled with bullet holes. A uniformed man was propped against it ‘with his jacket off and a makeshift bloody bandage round one arm. "For God's sake, isn't anyone following him up? Any idea which way he went?" demanded Mendoza.

A shattering explosion of shots in the distance answered him. He commandeered the nearest squad car, piled three men in the back and Palliser beside him, and gunned it in the direction of the shots. They roared up Main, with its lights and crowds thinning here, to Winton Street; down there to the right were three squad cars, slewed around in the street, and a little crowd, and four uniformed men. Mendoza swung the car down there.

"For the love of God, haven't you people any sense?" one of the men was demanding impatiently. "Scatter-get away-" A second man in uniform was leaning against the side of a car, clasping his shoulder; blood seeped between his lingers.

The gun barked, and the other man's plea was heeded. Several women screamed, the crowd scattering back into the shadows of hedges and houses. This was a residential street. The sniper was apparently behind a hedge across the street.

There was a woman lying in the street beside the cars. "She's only winged," said one of the patrolmen. "I put a tourniquet on, and the ambulance is on its way. Now let's have a look at you, Bill--"

They were all crouched clown, now, behind a squad ear, and they all had their guns out.

"What the hell is all this, anyway?" asked the wounded man, sounding indignant. "All of a sudden-"

"It's our boy," said Mendoza calmly, peering round the bumper long enough to fire a shot at that hedge. "I know. We've flushed him."

"The- That's crazy," said the other patrolman. "Excuse me, sir, but he's always used a knife, I don't see-"

"I think he's beyond caring how he kills," said Mendoza, firing another shot. Two more bullets hit the other side of the squad car, and then there was silence. The woman lying in the street moaned. "Don't tell me we've got him? Cover me, please." He moved around the car, bent low, made a dash for the shelter of the hedge across the street. His flashlight flicked on briefly; he straightened.

"Gone-fan out after him-all directions! John, come with me-call up some more cars, will you?"

Palliser ran to keep up with him as he started down toward San Pedro. "I don't see how you make this out-all of a sudden-"

"He wouldn't have expected all this," said Mendoza.

"He didn't know we were out hunting too. His first night's target practice with the arsenal-yes-but maybe getting his fire returned has shaken him a little. Damn, I'm out of condition. Wait a minute. Listen."

There were distant sirens; Palliser couldn't hear anything else. Then from the corner of San Pedro down there a squad car came bucketing around the corner fast, and its headlights caught a man running diagonally across the street. Just one flash, and he was gone; he'd been nearly at the opposite curb; but they both saw the guns, one dangling from each hand. The squad car braked loudly, and Mendoza fired across its hood. "Searchlight, for God's sake!" he snapped.

The light came on, swung to point where they'd seen him. Two men scrambled out of the car. A bullet came out of the dark and hit the top of the light, and they heard a man running.

"One of you follow me-the other call in a Code Nine," said Mendoza, and plunged across the street. Another shot plucked at Palliser's sleeve as he ran beside him.

"He's heading back-to his hole," panted Mendoza. "Bet you-" But these damn dark streets, and they were only guessing he was ahead of them…

Then they saw him, for just another half second. There was a street light at the corner, and they saw him-a darting thin figure in clothes that flapped loose about him-turn left there, running awkwardly in great strides. They came round the corner after him, and skidded to a haIt.

"Where the hell did he go?" gasped the uniformed man. This silent empty street was fairly well lighted; along here all the buildings were dark, but they could see the full block ahead, and no living thing moved on it.

"Damn!" said Mendoza. "into one of these buildings. The nearest one, for choice. I want men-a lot of men-we're going through every building on this block-"

A squad car screeched to a stop beside them, with one man in it. "O.K.," said Mendoza tautly. "You call up reinforcements-tell them where we are. You two go round to the side of this place-and be damn careful, no flashlights! John, let's see what we've got here." He moved to the front of the corner building. "I think this has got to be it, we weren't thirty feet behind him-he didn't go far past the corner. What in God's name is this place?"

It was an old building; and they saw now, in the yellow light from the old-fashioned street lamps, that this whole block of buildings was waiting for demolition. In the last few years a good many of these shabby old streets had come in for renovation; the city was building itself new city and county buildings, and big companies were buying up this valuable downtown land to knock down the derelict old buildings, put up shiny new skyscrapers.

A start had been made on demolishing the buildings near this corner. A great pile of knocked-apart lumber and twisted metal lay in a heap alongside the corner building, which had two wings enclosing a square open entrance. For a second that looked vaguely familiar to Palliser, but he couldn't place it. A department store of some kind? But no sign of display windows. The whole place looked ready to fall down, and up there past the wings it was dark as the mouth of hell. But Mendoza was walking up toward where the door would be, quite cool, gun in hand.

"He'll be lying quiet," he muttered, "hoping we won't realize this is where he's got to be."

There had been a door, probably; it was missing now, they found by feeling along a rough stucco wall. They went in shoulder to shoulder-into whatever it was, and Palliser thought, an extra-wide doorway.

Bare wooden floor. Mendoza wasn't trying to be quiet. He took a few steps straight ahead and, holding his flashlight at arm's length away from his body, switched it on briefly.

"Christ!" said Palliser involuntarily.

It sprang at them out of the darkness, terrifying, incredible-a dark-skinned giant in a great feather head-dress and long glittering cloak, double life size.

He heard Mendoza take a breath, and then laugh. "Wall mural," he said. "Polynesian god of some sort?" His voice echoed oddly. "Where are we, anyway, John?"

Palliser held his own flashlight out and pointed it to their right. A long wide corridor, thick with dust. There was a door, closed, at the far end: they could just make out, painted on it, the mute legend GENT ME.

Nothing stirred: no gun spoke out of the darkness. Mendoza turned his flashlight ahead, lower. There was a wooden counter there, like a bar; fittings of some kind had been removed from it. The light flashed around nervously, here and there, and a pair of giant hula dancers seemed to undulate at them from another wall.

"I think-" said Mendoza, and at that moment the light showed them a face. A face not fifteen feet away-a face of nightmare. The man was pressed against the wall there, rigid, looking toward them. Not a big man: a thin man in ragged clothes too big for him, nondescript clothes. His face was a mask of blind hate and rage and terror: and splashed across it was the mark-the red scar mark of death, that in the end had triggered death.

For an instant they all stood there motionless; then the Slasher made one quick, convulsive movement and vanished out of the circle of light. Mendoza plunged after him, the flashlight sweeping a wide arc.

Black as the Earl of Hell's weskit, thought Palliser ridiculously, hurrying after him. His grandmother used to say that. Black as…

But the flashlight showed a rectangular blackness-and another-and then they were through the nearest one, and he understood where they were.

This was a derelict movie theater. That had been the candy and popcorn stand out there. All the fittings taken out-carpets and curtains-probably the plumbing-and, here, the seats.

It was a vast, black, empty great place, with the floor sloping sharply away under his feet. The two flashlights found the man again, running diagonally across the uneven floor, stumbling, turning up toward the archway that had once led to the last left aisle. Mendoza fired at him and evidently missed.

Then the quarry was out of the light, and the roar of Mendoza's gun was echoed by anther-a bullet slammed past Palliser's shoulder, close. He fired blindly.

They were running, up the slanting floor now, and Mendoza fired again. Dimly Palliser was aware of sirens somewhere in the distance, and loud excited voices nearer…

He rammed into a wall, and swore. He had missed the archway-he groped for it and came out into unexpected light.

They had parked two squad cars directly in front, and headed their searchlights up here. It wasn't very bright, but you could see in here now. Palliser saw.

The man who liked to kill was standing against the wall there twenty feet away, his terrible face contorted. He still had both his guns. Mendoza was facing him, ten feet down from Palliser.

Men were coming, pouring into the lobby excitedly.

The man fired, and missed, and raised the other gun. Then a shot spat at him from another direction, and he fell back against the wall and slid down it slowly, and sprawled full length.

"Thanks very much, Bert," said Mendoza. "That was my last slug. I never claimed to be a marksman."

Dwyer walked up to the body and looked down at it, gun still in hand. "You can say I told you so if you want," he said. "You and your hunches!"