Streets of Death

TWO

Palliser went our with Glasser on the new call, and condescended to fold his six feet into the little Gremlin Glasser had so luckily won in a drawing last year. As Glasser backed out of the slot Palliser massaged his handsome straight nose in a habitual gesture and said, "You know, I’ll have to do something about that dog, damn it."

"What dog? Oh, the pup that woman gave you?"

"That one," said Palliser. "She’s a very nice dog, Trina, but she’s big, and going to be bigger. A German shepherd after all. She ought to have obedience training, but damn it, how can I take her? Robin can’t, with the baby. I’ve been on the phone to this local club, and the nearest class to us is Saturday afternoons, and I’m only off on Monday. This fellow said I could get a book and try training her myself, just a few minutes a day, but I don’t know."

Glasser hadn’t any useful suggestions.

The new call turned out to be an old building out on San Pedro, plastered with CONDEMNED signs and looking ready to fall down, all four stories of it. The fire truck was still there, and the battalion chief waiting for them. "Not much of a fire," he told them, "but when we’d knocked it down we found the body. Somebody likely thought he’d get rid of it by lighting a match, but he bungled the job, this damp weather."

"Arson?" said Glasser. "Definitely?"

"You better believe. A trail of kerosene to the body, but it fizzled out-you notice it’s a derelict building, part of the roof’s gone and there was a mist this morning. It’s back here." Even on this gray morning threatening rain, a little crowd had gathered to watch the activity, and the uniformed men from the black and white were keeping them back. The chief led Glasser and Palliser into what might have started life as a small hotel fifty years ago, and ended up as an apartment house. The place had been a shambles even before the fire; there were clusters of broken bricks and heaps of plaster dust, gaping empty doorways, and most of it was open to the sky. "The quake in seventy-one finished it off, but they just haven’t got round to taking the rest of it down. There you are." The chief pointed unnecessarily.

Near what had been the rear door of the building, between the empty doorway and another pile of rubbled brick, the body sprawled almost casually. Palliser and Glasser didn’t need the chief’s interpretation to read what had likely happened here. It was a little, slender body, and somebody had tried to set fire to it, but the fire had gone out without doing much damage.

"A lot of smoke," said the chief. "Fellow at the tailor shop down the block called in the alarm." There was a cluster of miscellaneous little shops down the block, in other ramshackle buildings not yet condemned-the cluster of citizens outside had probably come from there.

Palliser squatted over the body. "Make any educated guesses, Henry?"

"One," said Glasser sadly. "She was raped-assaulted at least-and probably strangled."

Palliser grunted. "You’d better call up S.I.D. Go through the motions, photographs and so on." Glasser went out to use the radio in the black and white.

The body was that of a young girl: very young, Palliser thought. Dark blonde, thin, hard to say if she’d been pretty or not, the face discolored with death or the effects of strangulation, the body already stiff: dead awhile. She was naked from the waist down, and there was dark dried blood on the inside of her thin little-girl thighs. Still on the upper half of the body was a pale-green knit turtleneck sweater, pulled up to show part of a dirty white brassiere; by the slight small swell of one breast, she’d hardly needed that. On her feet were what looked like new sneakers, blue and white, fairly clean, and white ankle socks. One arm was flung out from the body, and Palliser had just made a couple of discoveries when Glasser came back.

"The mobile lab’s on the way."

"Good. Look at this," said Palliser. "Makes it not quite so anonymous, at least. We may get her identified right off."

"Oh, yes," said Glasser, squatting beside him. "Helpful."

The trail of kerosene had led from the front hallway, but the fire had first created a lot of smoke, and according to the engine boys had been already dying out when they got here; it hadn’t damaged the body at all. On the outflung bare arm on the inside of the elbow, clearly visible, was a long puckered scar; on the third finger of that hand was a ring. Palliser had delicately manipulated the nearly rigid wrist around to inspect the bezel. "We’ll want pictures, but it could make shortcuts all right." The ring was a school ring, the usual indecipherable crest, a little blue enamel, and in minute letters around that, FRESNO JR. HIGH. Palliser stood up.

"Fresno," said Glasser. "My God, these kids. She doesn’t look over thirteen or fourteen. And ending up down here-" But it wasn’t anything new, they’d seen much the same thing before, and there wasn’t much to say about it.

They waited for the mobile lab, told Duke to get shots of the ring and send it up to the office. It was getting on for noon then. In the Missing Persons office back at headquarters they found Lieutenant Carey hunched over a report, and he just groaned at mention of a possibly-reported-missing juvenile.

"We’ve got a million of ’em, from all over the country. Take your pick."

"Maybe we can narrow it down," said Palliser. "I don’t think this one was very far into the teens. An older one, she could have been out roaming on her own a couple of years, but one this young-she might not have been away from home and mother very long. And we’ve got two good leads-she had on a ring from Fresno Junior High, and there’s a distinctive scar on the left arm."

"We can have a look at the recent files," said Carey.

They did. Just in the last month, enough juveniles had been reported missing to this office to build up those files into a thick stack, and they had to be glanced at one by one, the description scanned briefly to weed it out. Palliser and Glasser took a lunch break, ran into Galeano and Conway at Federico’s on North Broadway, and heard about the off-beat case Carey had just handed them. Glasser went down to S.I.D. when they got back to base, to see if they’d come up with anything, and Palliser went back to the files. It was after two-thirty when he came up with a recently filed report that rang bells.

Reported missing to the Fresno police, Sandra Moseley, aged fifteen, five-two, a hundred and five, blonde and blue: scar inside left arm, appendectomy scar; reported by mother, Mrs. Anita Moseley. She was thought to have been with another girl, Stephanie Peacock, also fifteen, also missing.

"Kids," thought Palliser. He went back up to Robbery-Homicide and got on the phone to the Fresno department. A Captain Almont said he’d get in touch with Mrs. Moseley. "It looks pretty definite, it’s this Moseley girl dead down there?"

"Well, we’d like a positive identification, but there’s the ring and the scar. No autopsy yet, but it looks pretty certain for Murder One."

"Hell of a thing," said Almont. "We’ll get in touch with the mother and get back to you."

"Thanks very much," said Palliser. He wondered momentarily what had happened to the other girl-if they had been together. He wondered what he was going to do about Trina. The obedience club secretary had given him the name of a book to get.

Glasser came back and said S.I.D. hadn’t picked up any latents or any other physical evidence at the scene. She’d probably been killed elsewhere and brought there just before the fire was set. "Well, we’ve probably got her identified, at least," said Palliser absently.

Galeano and Conway had been deflected onto the supposed hit-run, which everybody had comfortably supposed would get buried in Pending. Landers had gone to cover the inquest.

At least they had no sooner been informed that it wasn’t a hit-run than they got an I.D. for him. Traffic had come across the body about midnight on Monday, in the middle of Valencia Avenue up from Venice Boulevard; there hadn’t been any I.D. on it, so the lab had collected his prints next morning to run through. Ten minutes after Bainbridge had called Mendoza, the routine report came in. His prints were in their records; he had a small pedigree from a while back. He was Robert Chard, now thirty-nine. He’d been picked up for auto theft as a juvenile, for attempted assault just after he’d turned legally adult, and had one count of B. and E. after that. He’d never served any time at all, and apparently had never been in trouble since.

The latest address was sixteen years out of date, but it was a place to start. Longwood Avenue. You had to go by routine even when it looked unproductive. Not feeling very hopeful, Galeano tried that address, which was an old frame house in need of paint, and turned up a Mrs. Holly, a thirtyish slattern who said she was Robert Chard’s sister.

"Why you looking for Bob? He hasn’t been in any trouble for a long time, nor he won’t be either, under the thumb of that bitch he married. You cops tryin’ to make out he done something?"

"No, ma’am," said Galeano politely. "We’d like to get his body identified. He’s dead."

"Well, for God’s sake," she said mildly. "Bob? Is that so? Was it an accident?"

"We’re not sure," said Galeano. "When did you see him last?"

"Gee, I’d hafta think. The last years, since he got married, rest of the family hardly ever saw him at all. That bitch, she used to be scared he’d spend money on presents for Ma, and he kinda got out of the habit of coming-of course Ma died last year- Well, I could tell you where they were living, last I knew, but I don’t know if they still lived there. It was Constance Street. My God, think of Bob dead-damn, I s’pose I got to get in touch with her, I oughta go to the funeral."

If you didn’t get rich at a cop’s job, Galeano reflected, you had a box seat at the eternal spectacle of human nature in action.

Nobody was home at the address on Constance, an old cracker-box duplex. A nameplate next to the doorbell had a hand-printed slip in it that said CHARD, so at least this was the right place. Funny, maybe nobody had missed him yet. Or maybe nobody cared whether he came home or not. Galeano tried the neighbors, and found only one home, a deaf elderly man who told him that Mis’ Chard worked someplace uptown, and he didn’t take any notice when she usually came home.

Better leave a note for the night watch to contact her, thought Galeano.

He was still intrigued by the empty wheelchair in that tale Carey had spun them, and he wanted to talk to that blonde, start asking questions around on that; but what with all the legwork, it was the middle of the afternoon and he still had to type out a report on this.

He got home about six-thirty, to his neat small bachelor apartment on Edgemont up in Hollywood, rummaged in the freezer and put a TV dinner in the oven, and sat down with the Herald over a glass of the cheap red wine he liked. His mother and sisters had given up years ago deviling him to find a nice girl and get married; at thirty-six, Galeano had settled into comfortable bachelorhood.

That was a fishy little story of Carey’s, he thought idly. It would be interesting to know what really had happened there, just how Edwin Fleming had managed to melt into thin air, leaving his empty wheelchair behind. Galeano thought that blonde couldn’t be quite so dumb as Carey thought.

Mendoza was greeted exuberantly by the twins as he came in the back door, and Mrs. MacTaggart rescued him.

"Your father’ll come to see you in your baths, my lambs, right now you’l1 let him have some peace and quiet." She led them off firmly.

He found Alison, surrounded by the four cats Bast, Sheba, Nefertite and El Senor, stretched out on the sectional in the front room, with Cedric curled up on the floor beside them. "Hello, amado," said Alison. "I’m sorry I was cross this morning, but this is turning out to be quite a project. No, I don’t want any dinner-I had some bouillon a while ago, Mairi bullied it down me-but she’s getting something for you. And if you’re going to have a drink first, you can bring me just a little creme de menthe to settle my insides." She looked wan.

At his first touch on the cupboard door where the liquor was kept, El Senor appeared, his Siamese mask-in-reverse wearing a hopeful look. Mendoza poured him half an ounce of rye in a saucer and took his own drink and Alison’s back to the living room.

"You know, Luis," she said, half sitting up to take the glass, "we’ll have to think about a new house. Just as I was saying last night. Because there are only four bedrooms here, and with the baby we’ll need five. And besides-"

"One thing," said Mendoza, "leading to another. Pues que." The twins had been, not without protest, graduated to separate rooms.

"And it did seem like a lot of space at first, two lots," said Alison, sipping, "but it isn’t really enough room for Cedric-he needs more exercise. And I’ve been thinking, it’d be nice to be-you know-a little farther out, on an acre or even more-it isn’t as if you haven’t got the money."

"Delusions of grandeur," said Mendoza.

"Well, we might as well enjoy it while we can. I think I feel better," said Alison. "Give me a cigarette, darling. You might tell Mairi I could take some mushroom soup."

The phone rang down the hall and he went to answer it, passing E1 Senor thoughtfully licking his whiskers.

"Mendoza."

It was the main desk at headquarters; the night watch wasn’t on yet, upstairs. Central Receiving had just called in the information that Father O’Brien had died an hour ago. "Thanks so much," said Mendoza.

So the pretty boys had a homicide to their credit now. And still not a smell of a lead as to where to look for them.

Just before Palliser left the office, Fresno called back. Mrs. Moseley had been contacted and would come down to L.A. tomorrow to look at the body.

"The report we had, they thought there was another girl with the Moseley girl," said Almont. "You just found the one?"

"We think. Just her so far," said Palliser. "Thanks, we’ll be expecting her."

"No trouble. These kids. Poor woman sounded all broken up."

Palliser stopped at a big bookstore in Hollywood on his way home and asked for a copy of The Kennel Club Obedience Manual. He handed over seven bucks for it and had it under his arm when he unlocked the driveway gate and slid through it. A solid object weighing some seventy pounds immediately hit him amidships like a bomb, and he said breathlessly, "Down, girl!" But she impeded every step to the back door and into the kitchen, giving him to understand what a hard day she’d had guarding the family every alert minute, all for love of him. In the kitchen, she rose up lovingly at Roberta and nearly knocked her over. She was, no question, going to be a very large German shepherd; only nine months now and still growing.

"We’ll have to do something about training her, John," said Roberta severely.

"I know, I know. I’ve got a book," said Palliser, and then discovered that Trina had it instead, chewing the cover like a bone. He rescued it hastily and hoped that wasn’t a bad omen.

Piggott and Schenke came on night watch at the same time and shared an elevator. It was Shogart’s night off. Piggott didn’t mind doing a tour of night watch, except that it interfered with choir practice and Prudence didn’t like it, but he’d have a chance to shift back in three months. Schenke had been on night watch so long he’d come to prefer it.

Galeano had left them a note to call this Mrs. Chard, tell her her husband was dead. Schenke tried the number and got a busy signal. They’d try again.

At seven-thirty they got a call from Traffic, a new body. Looking, said Traffic, like Murder One. "The citizens keep us busy, Matt," said Schenke.

"Or Satan does," said Piggott. They were on the way out when the phone buzzed again, and he went back to pick it up. "Robbery-Homicide, Detective Piggott."

"Oh-is Sergeant Palliser there? That’s the name I was told to-"

"Sergeant Palliser’s on day watch, ma’am. Can I help you?" The woman sounded upset.

"I-yes, I suppose. It’s just to let him know-that is, whoever’s concerned-I’m Mrs. Moseley. In Fresno. They think-the police here said-you think you’ve found my daughter there. D-dead. I was to come- But just now- just a while ago-the Peacocks called me-"

"You want me to give this to Sergeant Palliser?" asked Piggott patiently.

"Yes, if you would. We were sure they were together, Sandra and Stephanie. Ran away together. And Mrs. Peacock just c-called to say-they’ve heard from Stephanie. They’re driving down there to meet her, she wants to come home, and I’m coming with them. Because if Stephanie’s all right, maybe it’s all a mistake and the dead girl isn’t Sandra-but-"

"I’ll pass it on to Palliser, ma’am." Piggott hadn’t heard anything about the dead girl; he scrawled that down as she hung up with a gasp, and put the note on Palliser’s desk.

The address for the new body was Orchard Street, a little backwater of old single houses, a few duplexes, past Virgil. The black and white was in front of one of the singles, a little white frame house looking shabby. The uniformed men were talking to a paunchy shaken-looking man at the curb.

"These are the detectives, Mr. Buford. Mr. Piggott, Mr. Schenke. You tell it all to them. It’s inside," added one of the Traffic men. "Looks like a B. and E. and assault for robbery. Maybe somebody didn’t expect him to be home."

"That’s why I got worried," said the paunchy man.

"Dick usually was home-he’s a great homebody, and he was between jobs, see, I told you that, he’s in construction and they can’t work this weather, but it didn’t matter to Dick, he’s got savings, makes good money, and besides he don’t buy much for himself-he just lost his wife last year and it kind of took the heart out of him, they hadn’t any kids, and I used to call him three, four times a week, just to talk-oh, I didn’t tell you fellows, Dick’s my brother-I’m Robert-we were always kind of close-and I couldn’t raise him on the phone no way, the last three days, and I got worried about it, maybe he was sick or something, because he’s not one for going out much, maybe once a month he’ll go up to a neighborhood bar for a couple of beers, but not regular-and I said to my wife, I got to find out if anything’s wrong, and I drove up right after work. I live way out past Thousand Oaks and it was murder on the freeway but I-" He stopped, gulped, and said, "Murder! Dick! But who’d murder Dick? A quiet fellow like Dick! It don’t make sense!"

"He had a key to the house, went in and found him and called us," said the Traffic man, sounding tired. Piggott and Schenke went up the narrow front walk. The front door was open, past a neatly mended screen door. The body was in the middle of the living room, a small square room crowded with old-fashioned furniture, a big TV console in one corner. A straight chair was overturned, the carpet rucked up in folds, a clock and vase from an overturned table lying around the corpse; there’d been some sort of scuffle here. The TV was on, volume turned low.

The body was lying face up in the middle of the room, a big fleshy middle-aged man with a Roman nose and a mop of gray hair. They looked at him and Schenke said, "He was in a fight all right, probably right here. Could be he hit his head on something, or the other guy hit him deliberately to kill. We can ask the brother what’s missing. We better get S.I.D. out for pictures and so on."

They called up the lab boys and talked to Robert Buford while they waited. He said his brother Dick was kind of a loner, didn’t have too many friends; trouble was he and Mary, his wife, had been awful close, didn’t seem to want anybody else, and when she died- Since then, when Dick wasn’t working, he mostly stayed home, watched TV. He didn’t have any worries about money, they owned the house; Dick was kind of close with money.

When the lab men had taken pictures and printed the body, they went over him. In one pocket there was seventeen cents, a handkerchief, what looked like car keys, and an empty wallet. There was an old Chevy in the garage, Buford’s car, undisturbed. They asked Robert about what cash Dick might have carried, and he said helplessly, "Jesus, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how much he might have had-could be he’d just run out and was figuring to go to the bank tomorrow, or he coulda had a bundle and been robbed-I don’t know." He peered sorrowfully at the dead man. "You don’t figure he coulda just had a heart attack or something? He was fifty-nine. No, I suppose it wasn’t."

The autopsy would tell them, but they’d both seen enough bodies to have an educated guess about this. It would give the day watch something else to work.

Hackett was off on Thursdays. "Thank heaven," said Angel, getting out her car keys, "there’s one day I can go to the market without the kids. But I’m going to see Alison first. Poor darling, she’s feeling awful with this one so far- I think it was a mistake myself-"

"I’m taking bets it’ll be a redhead," said Hackett.

"And, Art-if you touch a crumb of that cream pie I’ll kill you. You’re ten pounds up again."

"All right, all right." But after she’d backed out, he listened to Mark prattle about school-Mark would be starting kindergarten next month, which seemed impossible-and thought, It was probably something like that. Whatever that Yeager had overheard, or thought he had. People said things, I’ll kill you, It was murder-and also made jokes. What they didn’t do, at least people like these Lamperts, from what he’d gathered about them, was casually plan a real killing with the apartment door open and people wandering around.

He called in after a while, keeping an eye on his darling Sheila trotting busily around, to hear if anything new had gone down. Lake told him that that priest had died, about the dead teenager, and the new one last night. So that unholy trio had done a murder now; Hackett wished there was some way to get a lead to them.

The first thing Mendoza did on Thursday morning was to get on to S.I.D. as to what, if anything, they’d got on that Pontiac.

"We’ve been busy," said Duke. "I was just getting out a report. Nothing. The priest’s prints were in it, and that other priest’s, he used it sometimes-but that’s all. If he was jumped around there, it was before he got into the car. No, we didn’t turn up any keys anywhere."

"Thanks so much for nothing." But there was a little something there, Mendoza thought, and said so to Higgins who had just come in, looming as bulkily as Hackett.

"What?" asked Higgins. "I don’t see anything, Luis."

"Like the dog that didn’t bark in the night, George. O’Brien dropped the keys when they jumped him, but they didn’t take the car. I know we’ve got nada absolutamente on these louts, as far as court evidence goes, but a picture builds in my mind." Jason Grace had wandered in, Landers and Conway behind him, and Galeano; they listened to the boss having a hunch. "The fancy clothes," said Mendoza, picking up the flame-thrower lighter and pointing it absently at Higgins, who shied back. "And one of the victims-a woman-said that one of them, she thinks the tall blond one, called her a dirty peasant. Which is not the kind of-mmh-invective you hear around Temple Street, boys. And they couldn’t be bothered to steal a ten-year-old Pontiac. I get the feeling they’re not native to our beat."

"Then what the hell are they doing down here, jumping the senior citizens?" said Higgins. "For kicks?"

" Es posible," said Mendoza. He pressed the trigger, the flame shot out and he lit his cigarette. "They haven’t made any kind of haul. Any halfway smart four-year-old around here would know that the average senior citizen in this area isn’t exactly loaded, or he wouldn’t still be living in the area. It’s possible our pretty boys in their fancy clothes-from somewhere a little way up the social scale-are prowling around here just for the kicks, beating up the senior citizens for fun. Mmh. Como no -maybe with the idea that cops wouldn’t go to much trouble over these particular senior citizens."

"That’s a little far out," said Higgins, "or is it?"

"He smells these things," said Grace seriously. "I’ll add, what you might call a mixed population down here. One of these here racists, Loo-tenant suh?"

Mendoza laughed. "I don’t know if I smell anything or not, Jase. Just off the top of my mind, if I remember right, two of the victims were Mexican, three black, the rest just people-and O’Brien. They must have seen his priest’s collar-but it was dark. But-? vaya historia! -that 'dirty peasant’ sticks in my mind. Not Temple Street. More like U.C.L.A."

"Which may be a thought, but it doesn’t take us anywhere to look," said Conway. "Have you had a chance to look at the offbeat thing Carey handed us? I like it, as a story, but it’s going to be a lot of work for nothing. I want to see that blonde."

Mendoza picked up the night report, didn’t start reading it. "You’ll tell me about it. A blonde?"

"I’m bound to say," said Galeano, "it’s the wheelchair that sort of caught my imagination-the empty wheelchair. You can see what Carey means-it’s a locked-room puzzle in a sort of way."

"An empty wheelchair," said Mendoza, cigarette suspended. "So, I’ll hear about it."

Sergeant Lake looked in. "There’s a Mrs. Chard here and some other people. A Mrs. Moseley and a Mr. and Mrs. Peacock asking for Palliser."

"So the night watch got hold of the Chard woman," said Galeano. "I’d better talk to her, Jimmy. John hasn’t showed up yet. You can tell the boss about the wheelchair, Rich."

Mrs. Cecelia Chard identified the body with loud sobs and groans. She was a thin dark hard-faced woman with shrewish black eyes, and Galeano didn’t take to her at all. She was supported by her mother, Mrs. Wilma Dixon, and her brother Elmer, both generally resembling her.

"Poor Bob," she lamented, drying her eyes with a Coty-scented handkerchief when they’d got back from the morgue and Galeano had settled them down in the office to make a statement. "Like I said, Mr. Galeano, I never reported him missing because I thought he was off on a bender, like he did every now ’n’ then, and goodness knows-Mother and Elmer can bear me out. I’m not about to say he was the best husband in the world, Mr. Galeano, but I wouldn’t have wished him a terrible death like that-he must’ve got into a fight with somebody when he was drunk. I got to say, he used to get fighting mad with any liquor in him, it takes some like that, you know."

"A regular mean man in drink he was, all right," said Elmer, and giggled.

"He certainly was," said Mrs. Dixon with a long sigh.

"It’s a sorry thing he should’ve come to such a bad end, but running around with riifraif the way he did, in all them bars, no wonder. I’m sorry to say it, Mr. Galeano, but I guess my girl’s rid of a bad bargain."

Galeano didn’t think much of them at all, but there was the one about birds of a feather. Their estimation of Chard was probably right. He’d been found about half a block down the side street from a bar on the corner of Venice Boulevard, and it was very likely he’d got into a brawl with some other drunks and died of it. It was just more of the sordid violence cops got paid to cope with, and it made him feel tired.

He got the gist of that down in a statement, and Mrs. Chard signed it. He told them they’d be notified when the body could be released, and they thanked him and went away.

And he supposed that somebody ought to ask a few questions at that bar, try to find out who the other drunks were-not that it seemed very important.

Mendoza scanned the night report before he listened to Conway, and handed the Buford thing to Landers and Grace. It didn’t look as if there’d be much handle to it, unless S.I.D. turned up something.

Then he heard all about Carey’s blonde and the empty wheelchair, and like Galeano he was fascinated. Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza was not, perhaps, temperamentally suited to be a cop, who by the nature of the job had to deal with physical evidence, facts and figures and tangibilities. The men who worked with him were convinced that his natural calling was that of a cardsharp, that most innocent of con-men who relied on instinctive knowledge of human nature.

"I see what Carey means," he said amusedly. "Masterly gall. Please, sir, he’s gone, I don’t know where. But the empty wheelchair-which was probably quite inadvertent, if we’re reading it right-it’s a nice touch.?Me gusta! "

"So all we do is find the boyfriend," said Conway.

"I thought Carey’d made kind of heavy weather of it. In spite of the-er-imaginative touch, it looks open and shut to me."

Mendoza regarded him sardonically. "Yes and no, Rich. In this job, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, things are just exactly what they look like. Just occasionally they aren’t. But I want a look at Carey’s blonde and the wheelchair. That so eloquently empty wheelchair!"

"So does Nick. But there’s only one obvious answer, isn’t there?"

" Es posible," said Mendoza. "Go see if he’s back from the morgue."

Palliser had got caught in a jam on the freeway, a pileup backed up for a mile, and it was nearly nine o’clock when he came into the office to find four forlorn-looking people waiting to see him. Mrs. Anita Moseley, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Peacock, and Stephanie Peacock.

Mr. Peacock offered to go to the morgue to make the identification. "I knew Sandra all her life, since she and Stephanie started school together. I wish you’d let me, Anita-save you the agony-" But Mrs. Moseley said tautly she had to see for herself and be sure. She was a nice-looking woman, late thirties, brown hair, good figure, conservatively dressed. They were all nice people, Palliser could see, in the euphemistic phrase: upright middle-class people: Peacock an insurance agent, the two women ladies. At the morgue, Mrs. Moseley looked at the body and said thinly, "Yes, that’s Sandra. That’s her. Oh, my God, to have it all end like this-I tried so hard- To see her like that- No, I’m all right. Honestly, I’m all right. But when it was all for nothing-no reason for her to-"

Back at the office, Palliser got Wanda Larsen in for support, and she was briskly sympathetic but businesslike, their very efficient policewoman; Mrs. Moseley talked mostly to her, and Wanda took unobtrusive notes.

"I have to say, she-Sandra-had been more and more difficult-since the divorce," she said painfully. "You see, I divorced her father last year. He-that doesn’t matter, the reasons, but you see he’d always spoiled her dreadfully, and I’m afraid-she’s just a child really, she didn’t understand about the divorce, she always idolized " her father and I didn’t want to-to destroy any of that-maybe that was a mistake, if I had told her-but I guess that doesn’t matter now either. I tried to discipline her-sensibly-God knows I tried. But-"

They listened patiently, asked questions. When Sandra hadn’t come home, last Saturday, she had called the Peacocks first. "Because Sandra and Stephanie were always together, best friends, and I thought-" And Stephanie hadn’t come home either. By next day it was pretty clear they’d run away together: some of their clothes were missing. "Oh, I’ve got to say it," said Mrs. Moseley, "Sandra would have been the leader, she always was-" She’d gone to the police then.

The Peacocks said that, of course, they’d been frantic, their only daughter missing, and then she’d phoned them last night. She was in a big railroad station in L.A. with no money-scared and sorry and wanting to come home. "We told her just to stay there, we’d come as soon as we could," said Mrs. Peacock. "And we called Anita-"

"If you’d called us," said Wanda, "we’d have taken care of her until you got here, Mrs. Peacock."

"Well, we don’t know anything about the police. Naturally. We just wanted to get here and find her. And thank God she’s all right-when I think what could have happened-that wild headstrong girl-I’m sorry, Anita, but you know she was, you tried but you know yourself-"

Mrs. Moseley sobbed once, convulsively, and Wanda brought her a glass of water.

"Well, now, Stephanie," said Palliser, wishing he knew more about teenagers, "suppose you tell us what you know about this."

She was a thin, gawky girl, not terribly pretty and looking even younger than she was, with long brown stringy hair and mild brown eyes; right now she was scared. "I-I-I didn’t really want to-it was all Sandra! I was scared all the time, but Sandra-"

"My poor darling!" said her mother.

Peacock had better sense. "Now listen here, young lady," he said roughly. "If you were scared it was your own damn fault for being such a little fool. You speak up and tell whatever you know right now!"

"Y-yes, Daddy. I’m sorry. I w-will," gulped Stephanie unsteadily.