Mark of Murder

F0UR

"You will," said Angel, standing on tiptoe to kiss him at the door, "have to learn to curb your language, Art."

"What? What have I been saying wrong?"

She laughed. "I scolded Mark for pulling the cat's tail a while ago and he distinctly said, ‘Damn.' "

Hackett grinned. "Starting young. You all right? You left those trash cans for me to bring in, I trust."

"I did. Of course I'm all right. Once you get past the morning-sickness bit-I never felt better."

"Well," said Hackett doubtfully. It seemed quite an undertaking to him.

"Silly," said Angel, and her mountain-pool eyes that shaded from green to brown were smiling at him.

Mark Christopher, who would celebrate his second birthday two months from now, fastened like a leech on Hackett's left leg and demanded imperatively, "Kitty-kitty!"

"How the hell did we get into all this?" asked Hackett plaintively. "We said two, but if this isn't a girl-I know you-and I'm not a millionaire like Luis, just remember."

"I don't mind if it's not a girl," said Angel. They wouldn't know about that for five months. "We can always try again."

"That's just what I said. Nothing doing. These days, they all expect college-”

"The more we have," said Angel logically, "the better chance that one of them will make a lot of money and support us in our old age. And there's a sort of exotic new French casserole for dinner. Yes, I remembered about calories-though I think the doctor's silly about that, you're a big man, you need lots of good food. You're not really too fat."

"Not yet," said Hackett gloomily. Ten pounds off, the doctor had said firmly.

"And you don't have to go out again, do you?"

"Well, there's a new one come up, on top of this damned Slasher thing. I'd better call in, anyway, and if anything new has turned up-"

Angel made a face at him. "Why did I ever marry a cop?"

"You want to be reminded?" He reached for her again but she laughed and backed off.

"Fifteen minutes-I'll just get it out of the oven."

"Daddy get kitty-kitty!" said Mark Christopher. Hackett looked around and pointed out kitty-kitty: the big smoke-silver Persian curled in his basket by the hearth. "Kitty won't play!" said Mark tearfully.

"Well, old boy, I can't do anything about that," said Hackett, who had learned this and that about cats in the time since Mendoza had wished Silver Boy on them. He sat down in the big armchair.

That Nestor. The outside thing, or the personal, private kill? Something a little funny there, anyway. Those files…

Something nagging at him-some little thing.

Chiropractors. A four-year-course now.

The evening paper, the Herald, was unopened there on the ottoman. He didn't pick it up.

The Slasher. Quite the hell of a thing. The sooner they picked that one up…

Some little thing he'd noticed, there. And for some reason he didn't much like that Corliss woman. There was also the wife.

And…

"A sterilizer," he said aloud suddenly. "A sterilizer."

"Well, I try to keep the place reasonably clean," said Angel amusedly from the dining-room door. "Need we go quite that far?"

Alone out there in the night, a man walked a dark street. His mind was a confused jumble of thoughts, and all the thoughts were full of hate.

As long as he could remember, he had hated, and envied, and resented. He had learned to hate early, and learned why afterward.

He had hated the unknown mother who had left a baby to the orphanage. He had hated the unknown father who had begotten the baby. He had hated all the other children who laughed at him and called him names, and hated the women at the orphanage who called him stupid and punished him for breaking silly rules.

Other people had things, incomprehensibly and unfairly. Things he had never had and didn't know how to get-things he realized only dimly were good to have.

Other people concerned about them, and homes, and settled existences. He didn't know why. He didn't know why about anything, except that he hated.

He walked the dark street, an entity full of vague undirected hatred against the entire world, and his hand closed over the knife in its sheath, hard.

They had called him names, the other children. Laughed at him. People didn't like to look at him, you could see it in their eyes. As if he was a monster or something. Ever since the fire that time in the school, and the pain-the awful pain…

Nobody, he thought. Nobody. Everybody but him. Everybody against him. Bosses, calling him dumb. Girls… Everybody hating him. He could hate right back, harder.

But there was always the blood; He liked seeing the blood. Things felt better then. He got back at them then. For a little while.

He came to an open door, hesitated, went in. It was a bar, dark and noisy and crowded. He shouldered up to the bar and found a stool, ordered whiskey straight. He felt the weight of the knife in the sheath on his belt. The man on the stool next to him, raising an arm to light a cigarette, jostled him; instant red fury flowed through him like an electric current, but the bartender had put the shot glass in front of him and he picked it up with a shaking hand..

"Sixty-fi' cents," said the bartender.

He felt in his other pocket, threw a silver dollar onto the bar. He drank the whiskey, and as it jolted his insides he felt a little better.

"You like to buy me a drink, honey?" A hand on his arm, insinuating. He turned and looked at her. Another one like that last one-a kind he knew, knew all about, the only kind of woman he'd ever had, ever could have. She was a little high, her voice was slurred, she had a scrawny aging body and her lipstick was all smeared. "You buy a lil drink for Rosie, an' Rosie'll be nice to you, honey. I seen you before, ain't I? Around-"

He laughed and leaned into the light from the blaring TV above the bar, and she gave a little gasp and drew back: "You seen me before?"

"No-maybe not." She'd have stepped back farther, but he put his arm around her and closed his hand cruelly round the thin sagging breast. "I buy you all the drinks you want," he said savagely, "an' pay you besides. Is it a deal?"

"Sure-it's a deal," she said dully. "Can I have a drink now, honey?"

"Sure thing," he said. He hated her, hugging the hate to himself. The way she'd gasped and looked away. Everybody in the world, except him. His hand went secret and sure to the knife.

There was always the blood…

Mendoza's turn at the newspaper and magazine counter finally arrived and the fatherly attendant turned his British beam in his direction. "Do for you, sir?"

"I see you stock some American papers-I don't suppose you've got a Los Angeles paper? A Times?"

The beam faltered. "Well, now, I'm afraid not, sir. I don't recall that I've ever been asked-"

"Well, could you get me one, please?"

"l really couldn't say, sir. I can try. Beg pardon, what was the name again?"

" The Los Angeles Times," said Mendoza hopefully. He looked around the vaulted immense lobby of the luxury hotel, the new sports jacket feeling uneasy on his shoulders, and felt homesick. Nearly two weeks out of touch now, and they were staying here another week before flying home.

"Beg pardon, would you mind-that's L-O-?… Yes, sir. Er-would that be California, I presume?"

"It's quite a well-known town," said Mendoza irritably.

"Yes, sir. I'll see what I can do, sir. ‘Kyou, sir." The beam turned elsewhere.

Mendoza turned away and a diffident voice said, "Another Californian? I just flew in myself-if this is any use to you, you're welcome." A big hearty-looking man in city clothes, smiling, holding out a folded newspaper. "Kind of foolish to extend the feud this far from home." The paper was a San Francisco Chronicle, with yesterday's date on it.

"Thanks very much indeed," said Mendoza. The big man waved away gratitude.

Carrying his treasure under one arm, Mendoza wandered down the lobby toward the alcove where he'd left Alison. Alison was enjoying the vacation anyway, he thought gloomily. And probably, just as she said, it was only egotism.

Alison was chatting with Mrs. Garven; inevitably, they were showing each other snapshots. Of Mrs. Garven's two rather plain daughters back in Montreal, and-of course-of the twins. When the Kitcheners abandoned them in favor of a round of night clubs, Mrs. Garven had attached herself. Garven was a prosperous businessman, with an ulcer to prove it, and all he talked about was common stock, its vagaries and inner economics, which Mendoza knew as much about as he knew or cared about the migration of lemming.

It was a fine hotel, and the weather was nice, and the service excellent, if they did keep pressing exotic rum drinks on you. But he still felt self-conscious without a tie, and he still felt uneasy about being so far from home. Suppose something big had come up. Or Art should have come down with Asian flu or something. Quizas, and so what? Other good experienced men in the office.

He sat down opposite Alison and Edith Garven and lit a cigarette. "Just eleven months,” Alison was saying rather wistfully. "But Teresa's walking already and Johnny probably is by now too. It does seem ages we've been away, but we have such a wonderful nurse-"

Mendoza opened the well-handled Chronicle and started to hunt through it for any news from L.A. The alleged feud was largely a joke, but for all that the San Francisco papers were a little chary of printing news about Los Angeles, and prone to treat it sarcastically where possible. The headlines were about forthcoming elections, a senatorial speech, an argument in the House. A socialite wedding. A dog show. He turned pages hopefully.

"… must go up and dress, Ted and I are going to that amusing calypso place tonight. Have you been there yet?"

"Yes, last night. Well, I didn't exactly-”

"Of course the songs do tend to be rather… But I feel one should be broad-minded, my dear, especially in a foreign country. I-"

"?Ca! " said Mendoza softly. The bottom corner of this page had been torn, but he saw the dateline, Los Angeles, and carefully held the torn pieces together to read the brief story tucked away on the third page. Los Angeles, July I4.-A fourth victim of the latest mass killer roaming the City of Angels was found today, a teen-age boy. The Slasher, as he is locally known, has murdered and mutilated two men, a woman, and the boy within a period of less than two weeks. His first victim was left in a hotel room almost certainly rented by the murderer, but police as yet have apparently no clue to his identity.

"?Por Dios! " said Mendoza to himself distractedly. "My God-that body in the hotel-I knew there was something about it…" He could vividly imagine all the desperate hunting, the try-anything routine, on a thing like that. And no details at all, of course, damn it-not from 'Frisco. He got up and paced down the lobby, muttering to himself. The Slasher, My God. My God, four people-a mass killer, one of those berserk killers. He wished to God there'd been just a few details. Damn. He thought, I could call Art, long distance. And what good would that do, to know the details?

"?Que ocurre, querido? " Alison put her arm through his. "I do wish you'd cheer up and enjoy yourself more. You look-"

He told her, thrust the folded paper at her. "I know what sort of job one like that is, damn it. I should never I have let you drag me this far from home. God knows what a mess that is, and don't I know it, the press needling us for not dropping on him inside twenty-four hours-probably damn all in the way of evidence-"

"Now look," said Alison reasonably, "there's Art, and John Palliser, and a lot of other perfectly capable men still there to cope with it, Luis. It's hardly as if you were-were shirking your duty or something like that. And it's silly to worry about it when there's nothing you can do. Look, it's nearly six o'clock. Let's go up and get dressed, and we said we'd try that Spanish place the taxi driver recommended.?Como no? Come on, be sensible and forget it."

"Oh hell," said Mendoza miserably. He trailed upstairs after her, to the luxurious big room that he disliked further because it had twin beds, and shaved and got into the uncomfortable evening clothes she'd insisted on; but he didn't forget the Slasher. He could just imagine what the boys were going through. And a few other cases on hand too, probably.

He hadn't any business to be here. He ought to be home, joining the hunt.

He could call Art. He could-"?Mil rayos! " he said to the very bad rye that the Spanish place had produced with prodding. He'd had a feeling all along… There was a boy with a guitar who sang, but Mendoza hardly heard him. He was back home, with a harassed Hackett and all the rest of them, visualizing the routine they'd be setting up, the tiresome questioning, the eager follow-up of any small lead. On one like that. The Slasher. Hell. Thirty-five hundred miles…

"Well, you understand, I don't want to get anybody in trouble," said Mr. James Clay. "You couldn't help liking Frank, he was that sort of guy, but that doesn't say I exactly approved of all he did. Not that I'm a prude, but-"

Mr. Clay was being fairly helpful in building back-grounds, and Hackett drew him out hopefully. Frank Nestor had once worked as a salesclerk in Clay's sporting-goods shop on Hollywood Boulevard, and they had, Clay said, kept up. Clay only a few years older than Nestor, a friendly, pug-faced little man.

"He was doing real well the last few years, since he got to be a chiropractor. But from what he said here and there, I don't figure he was being just so ethical at it, if that's the word… Oh well, he said once you'd be surprised how you could rook the old folks, selling 'em regular courses of special vitamins and so on, at ten and twenty bucks the bottle. Like that."

That figured right in with what Hackett was beginning to build on Nestor.

"Mind you, I guess most chiropractors are honest, like most M.D. s. I go to one regularly," said Clay, "chiropractor, I mean, for my sacroiliac, and he's good, too. I asked him about it once, after I'd heard Frank say that, and he said it's so, there are a few of 'em just in it for the money-well, like some M.D. s, I suppose-and they rake it in by overcharging for vitamin pills, supposed to be something new and different. I could figure Frank doing that, and just thinking it was smart. And yet you couldn't help liking the guy. He had what they call charm-you know?"

"That kind isn't usually shy with the opposite sex," suggested Hackett.

"Sure as hell he wasn't," agreed Clay. "That I can tell you. I started out feeling sorry for that wife of his, but in spite of everything I couldn't keep it up. And my wife said the same. So, anybody knew them knew he'd married her for the money-her old man was a millionaire, everybody thought then. Turned out he'd lost most of it before he died. Frank was working for me when he married her, you know-six, seven years back. She should've known what kind Frank was, when she'd been married a month. He was making a good salary here, but he always had expensive tastes-and he was always ready for a little session of poker. He didn't go out of his way to be mean to her, just the opposite-he wanted everybody to like him so bad he was nice to everybody, her included. But she just asked for it. Acting like a doormat, you know. Never complaining when he lost the grocery money at cards, or like that. Never standing up for herself, or trying to fix herself up a little. I never could take to the woman somehow… "

It seemed that Nestor, Clay, and several others used to get together for poker a couple of times a month, and Nestor had talked, casually, about his girl friends, about his lucrative practice. "I don't mean he'd come right out with names and details-Frank wouldn't do that. On the women, I mean. But he'd say things like, he had a date with a hot number tomorrow night, or something like that. So I knew he was stepping out on his wife a lot."

"Did he ever mention a name to you at all?"

That was where Clay said again he wouldn't want to get anybody in trouble. "He did, once. About two weeks ago, last time I saw him, matter of fact. He had the tail end of a nice shiner-about three days old, you know-and I asked him about it. He laughed and said, oh, Ruthie's husband had caught up to him."

"Ruthie." There was a Ruth Elger, and an address, in Nestor's address book. "I see."

"I guess at that,” said Clay, "even if he wasn't just so level, at that job, he'd have been good at it. He'd always wanted to be a surgeon, he used to say, and he was good with his hands, any hand work. I understand now it's not like it used to be, this chiropractic thing, a six-week course anybody could take-it's like a regular college course, and they have to take all the pre-med classes. He may have turned quite a few unethical bucks, but he was really interested in it and no fool, you know. I don't know how much it's worth to you, Sergeant, because I couldn't say whether it was so, but he told me once his family had had a lot of money, he'd always had everything, and been going to go to medical school and so on, but after his father died his mother got hooked by some con man and lost it all. He said he'd made up his mind to get his however he could-he was kind of bitter about it."

"And that might figure too," said Hackett. "Could be. Now, you knew him pretty well, Mr. Clay. This could be what it looks like, the break-in after drugs or cash, and the impulsive assault. But not so many burglars carry guns. It could also be a private kill. And generally speaking, in a case of murder, the deceased has done something-or been something-to trigger it off. Could you make any guesses as to who might have wanted Nestor dead? Off the record-just between us."

"Hell," said Clay, "that's a thing to ask me, Sergeant? He looked down at his scarred old desk there in the back room of his store, the untidy pile of invoices, business letters. "I don't know about any-you know-specific person. Far as I know, everybody liked Frank just line. But I'll say this much. If it was like that, the private reason like you say, I'd make a guess that it was most likely over some woman. Some girl's husband or boy friend. He liked the girls-and they liked him."

"Yes. What about his wife? Do you think she-felt anything about him any more? Enough to-"

"His wife? Hell, I don't know," said Clay doubtfully. "That's-well, I don't know, I never could read that woman." That makes two of us, thought Hackett. He wanted to see Andrea Nestor again. "You think a woman might have-Lord, what a hell of a thing, old Frank getting murdered… "

"Well, we'll see what turns up," said Hackett. He thanked Clay and went out to his car. One of the new Traffic Maids, on her three-wheeled cycle, was righteously making out an overparking ticket for him. Without compunction Hackett pulled rank on her and got the ticket torn up. No millionaire indeed, with another one coming along he needed every dollar he earned.

What, he wondered again, had Nestor wanted with a sterilizer? Chiropractors weren't allowed to give shots or do anything they'd need surgical tools for, were they? Instruments that would have to be sterilized. There was just the glimmer of an idea in his mind about that, but resignedly he thought there'd be no way to prove it-now. That Corliss woman. He could kick himself for such stupid carelessness, leaving the place wide open… He wanted to see her again too. And he wanted another try at that desk clerk in the Third Street hotel, the man who'd been on the desk when the Slasher signed for a room. The man was hardly the world's greatest brain but he must have noticed more about the Slasher than he claimed to remember.

Hackett ruminated behind the wheel, uncertain where to go from here. There were a lot more places to look, on the Nestor thing, than there were on the Slasher. But that one was the one most urgent to catch up to. God, yes.

The prints in Nestor's office had been mostly his and Margaret Corliss'. It would be largely wasted effort, probably, to track down all his patients and get their prints to compare to the unknown ones in the office; probably X had worn gloves or wiped off anything he'd touched. If it had been the casual thief, why hadn't he taken Nestor's star-sapphire ring and jade tie clasp, along with the cash? Of course, it could have been juveniles after drugs; in the dark they wouldn't notice from the sign that Nestor had been a chiropractor and wouldn't have any drugs on the premises. But…

Margaret Corliss had said at first that she'd come to call and put off the patients because-how had she put it?-it would be awkward having them come in while the police were there. And then later on she'd said that there never were any patients on Wednesdays. Hackett got out his notebook, turned to the page where he'd written down the facts of that odd little encounter with Miss Corliss, and added that one.

That button. By the thread hanging from it, maybe already loose; so when Nestor saw the gun, made a grab for it, he got the button instead? Button from, probably, a man's jacket. Just an ordinary dark gray button.

He couldn't sit here the rest of the afternoon. Where now?

They had the bullet out of Nestor's skull, and not too much damaged: a. 22. When, as, and if they ever found a possible gun, Ballistics could probably say whether it was the right one.

Well, all right. Go and see Ruth Elger, whose husband had presumably given Nestor a black eye. Go and see everybody listed in his address book. See Mrs. Nestor again…

While the berserk killer roamed around loose. Hell. Hackett started the engine. It was Friday afternoon, getting on to five o'clock. He'd promised Angel he'd be home for dinner, but he thought he'd go out again afterward. See that desk clerk: he was on the night shift, wouldn't be on until nine o'clock. See Mrs. Nestor. See-