The Case of the Courteous Killer

Chapter I

It was Wednesday, June 19th. It was warm in Los Angeles. We were working the night watch out of Homicide Division. My partner’s Frank Smith. The boss is Captain Hertel, and the night watch commander is Lieutenant Newton.

My name’s Friday.

Nine men are on duty with the Homicide night watch. In addition to the watch commander, there are three sergeants, four policemen, and one civilian hearing reporter. In a city that averages only one murder every three days, this may seem like a lot. It isn’t. Homicide Division has twenty-two separate functions in addition to murder investigation. It’s responsible for the investigation of kidnapping, train wrecking, treason, rape, bigamy, and unlawful assembly, to mention a few. Some of these may sound unrelated to our basic function of homicide investigation, but we get them for the sound reason that murder may stem from such cases, and if it does, we’re in on the ground floor. Bigamists, for example, sometimes try to dispose of extra wives by violent means. By getting in on bigamy cases from the start, we’re a jump ahead when and if a body turns up.

Some nights we wish we had eighteen men. Other nights we sit around and look at each other. Wednesday, June 19th, was one of the latter.

Until 12:28 a.m.

There is no swing shift in Homicide Division. From 12:30 a.m. until the day watch starts, homicide calls are taken in the Detective Headquarters Unit. If Homicide officers are needed, they’re routed out of their beds at home. For this reason we don’t much like after-midnight activity. But we get it. People go on committing crimes twenty-four hours a day.

Which means police officers have to be on call twenty-four hours a day, even when they’re asleep.

The Homicide gang detail, which cruises in undercover cars, had already made its final check-in by radio and had been ordered out of service for the night. The sergeant in charge of the gang detail had closed his log and gone home. The civilian reporter had left. The lieutenant was in his office, across the anteroom from the squad room. Frank and I sat in the squad room waiting for the last few minutes of the watch to tick off.

The deadliest phase of police work is waiting for something to happen. After eight hours of inactivity, we’d exhausted all possible subjects of conversation. Frank had even stopped complaining about traffic. He lives in the Valley with his wife, Fay, and two kids, and has to fight the four-to-five-P.M. traffic on his way to work each day. Next to fishing, it’s his favorite subject of conversation.

At 12:28 a.m. we heard the phone ring in the lieutenant’s office. Frank gave me an inquiring look.

“Must be a personal call,” I said. “Anything urgent would come over that.”

I nodded toward the hot-shot speaker on one of the tables. The hot-shot speaker is tied into a special panel on the complaint board. When a call concerning Homicide comes in, the policeman on the board flips a switch and we hear the phone conversation over the loud-speaker as it takes place, then hear any messages issued to radio units.

Frank said, “Uh-huh.”

I glanced at my watch, saw it was 12:29, and stood up. “Let’s call it a night,” I said.

Frank stood up, too. We both had our hats on when Lieutenant Newton crossed the anteroom between his office and the squad room and grinned at us from the doorway.

Frank said, “Oh, no, Lieutenant. Not after nothing stirring all night.”

“You’ve had your rest,” the lieutenant said. “Now you can earn your salary. Just got a call from the new Central Receiving Hospital.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Woman brought in a man with a fractured skull. She was in a state of mild shock. They assumed it was an auto accident, and didn’t ask questions until they’d given both emergency treatment. She’s quieted some now, and they’ve just learned it was no accident.”

I asked, “What was it?”

“On purpose. Somebody bounced a pistol barrel off his skull.”

That made it our baby. Battery is one of the twenty-two things aside from murder that Homicide Division investigates.

“Let’s roll,” I said to Frank.

12:52 a.m. Frank and I drove over to the new Central Receiving Hospital at Loma and Sixth Streets. The Hospital Division duty officer told us that the injured man, a Mr. Harold Green, was still in Emergency, but that the woman who had brought him in, a Mrs. Wilma Stenson, would be available for questioning shortly. He said the doctor in charge had decided her state of shock was not severe enough to require hospitalization, and she was being released. We could see her as soon as she finished being checked out.

Just off the intake desk was a little alcove, which had been furnished with chairs, sofas, and smoking stands to serve as a waiting room. Frank and I waited there.

Frank looked around approvingly at the brand-new furniture and shining, modern smoking stands. “Everything in this building is brand spanking new,” he said. “They didn’t move a bit of the old equipment over from Georgia Street. Pretty nice, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Most modern hospital equipment you can get throughout the building. They even got conductive floors and furniture in the operating rooms.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Drains off static electricity,” he explained. “Ordinary floors and furniture, the surgeon’s apt to build up a lot of static electricity in his body. Spark jumps from him to the patient, and bingo.”

“How you mean?” I asked.

“Ether. Inflammable. The guy’s lungs are full of a mixture of ether and oxygen. Spark hits it, the flame travels right down into his lungs. He goes off like a bomb.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Where’d you learn all this?”

“Couple of weeks back. June 6th. Day the hospital was dedicated. Fay and I came to the ceremony.”

I looked at him. “You taking in hospital openings for kicks now?”

“Well, Fay wanted to see it. She worries about Armand.” Armand is the cross Frank has to bear. He’s Frank’s brother-in-law, and as nearly as I can tell from what Frank says, he’s never held a job for more than a few days at a time. He floats from relative to relative, making his living by sponging. Currently it was Frank’s turn to support him.

I said, “What’s Armand got to do with it?”

“Well, when he’s out late, Fay always thinks he’s been run over or something. He never has been, but Fay says you never can tell. Now that this place is open, accident victims will be brought here instead of to Georgia Street. She wanted to see what kind of treatment he’d get.”

I didn’t say anything. Frank didn’t either for a moment. Then he said broodingly, “Probably never happen.”

The Hospital Division duty officer came along the hall accompanied by a slim, attractive brunette of about thirty-five who had a definite air of wealth about her. This was indicated not so much by her dress as by her soft, well-cared-for look, which suggested little work and much expensive beauty treatment. There wasn’t a line in her face or a sag in her body. She wasn’t satisfied just to be well-preserved, though. She was one of those women who fight chronological age as hard as they fight physical age. She wore a cotton print suitable for a teen-ager and had her hair done up in a pony tail.

Frank and I rose when they neared. The duty officer said, “These police officers want to talk to you, Mrs. Stenson.” Then he said to me, “Want to use the Hospital Division room, Sergeant?”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll make out here.”

The Hospital Division is a branch of the Detective Bureau, and has a man on duty at Central Receiving on all watches. It was the duty officer who had made the preliminary investigation and had called Lieutenant Newton. Now that we were there, we were in charge of the case, however.

When the duty officer had moved off, I said to Mrs. Wilma Stenson, “My name’s Friday, ma’am. This is my partner, Officer Smith.”

“How do you do?” she said, with a nervous nod.

“Want to sit down, Mrs. Stenson?” I suggested, indicating one of the sofas.

“Will this take long?” she asked. “I really ought to be getting home.”

“Depends,” I told her. “Sooner we get your story, sooner we’ll know how long you’ll be held up.”

She thought this over, obviously wondering what I meant by “held up.” Finally she decided to take my invitation, and seated herself on the sofa. Fumbling in her bag, she brought out a silver cigarette case, selected a gold-tipped cigarette and put it between her lips. I held a match to it for her.

“Thanks,” she said, after inhaling deeply and blowing thin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “What is it you gentlemen want to know?”

I said, “We understand this Mr. Harold Green you brought in was hit over the head by a gun. Like to know what it’s all about.”

She took two nervous puffs on her cigarette before saying, “There is a kind of delicate problem connected with this... ah... is it Lieutenant Friday?”

“Sergeant, ma’am.”

“Well, Sergeant, I’ll have to have your guarantee that I won’t be dragged into this as a witness before I can tell you anything.”

I said, “We can’t guarantee anything at all, Mrs. Stenson, until we hear your story.”

She shook her head determinedly. “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse to co-operate. I can’t possibly have my name connected with this.”

I said patiently, “Afraid you’ll have to co-operate, ma’am. Our information is that a crime’s been committed, and that you’re a witness. We don’t put innocent people’s names in the paper if we can keep them out, but if you’re the only witness, you may have to appear in court.”

She raised her nose a trifle. “And if I refuse?”

“Afraid we’d have to take you over to the Police Building and hold you as a material witness until we can find out what happened from somebody else.”

She chewed at her lower lip indecisively, looking from me to Frank and back again.

Frank said, “Maybe there won’t have to be any publicity. Can’t tell till we know what happened. Want to tell us about it?”

She took another deep drag on her cigarette, punched it out in one of the smoking stands, and immediately took another from her case. I held a second match for her.

“Thanks,” she said. “The thing is, you see, I’m a married woman.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“My husband is Dr. Carter Stenson. The psychiatrist. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

I shook my head, and Frank said, “No, ma’am.”

In a hesitant voice she said, “Well, he’s in San Francisco at a psychiatric convention at the moment. And I... well, he doesn’t know about Harold.”

“The injured man?” I asked. “Harold Green?”

“Yes. It’s perfectly innocent, you understand. A purely platonic friendship. Carter is busy evenings so much — if it isn’t office hours, he’s addressing a banquet somewhere — sometimes I get bored. So now and then I spend an evening with Harold. I’m sure you understand, but I’m equally sure Carter wouldn’t.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Tonight was so beautiful, we decided just to take a drive. You know where Laurel Canyon Road is?”

“Yeah,” I said. Laurel Canyon is one of the several canyon roads crossing Mulholland Drive that serve as local lovers’ lanes.

“Well, we parked for a few minutes near Mulholland Drive. Just to smoke a cigarette, understand. I was behind the wheel, and I don’t like to smoke when I’m driving.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Suddenly this man appeared alongside the car and pointed a gun at us. He ordered us out of the car.”

“A stickup?” Frank asked.

“Yes. He was very polite about it. Almost ludicrously polite. I remember, for instance, he said, ‘Step from the car, please.’ ‘Please,’ mind you, from a holdup man. He had a soft, quite pleasant voice.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“He was about forty-five, with a round, cheerful face and rimless glasses. About five feet eight and stockily built. I’d guess about one hundred seventy-five pounds.”

Frank entered the description in his notebook. “You get a real good look at him?”

“Oh, yes. There’s nearly a full moon tonight, you know. Then, too, I examined him quite carefully, because I wasn’t in the least frightened, you see. Not at first, I mean. Later I thought I’d have hysterics.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“He seemed so gentle and so courteous. He wasn’t frightening at all. It just didn’t seem possible that so nice-acting a man would hurt anyone. Even the gun wasn’t frightening. Matter of fact, it seemed kind of ridiculous for him to be pointing it at us.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I guess he impressed Harold the same way. The man was so unassuming, I suppose Harold thought he could take the gun away from him. All of a sudden he grabbed for it.”

“Go on,” I said.

“I never saw anyone move so fast. The gun flashed out like a — well, I hate clichés, but the only simile that fits is, like a striking snake. It landed alongside Harold’s head, and Harold dropped like a — this is another cliché, but he dropped like a poled ox. I opened my mouth to scream, but the holdup man stopped me.”

“How?” I asked.

“His voice changed. All of a sudden it was cold as ice. He said, ‘Madam, if you utter one peep, I’ll put a bullet in your... ah... intestines.’ ”

“Intestines?” Frank asked, with raised brows.

Wilma Stenson flushed. “I guess the actual word he used was ‘guts.’ Anyway, I saw he meant it, and I just froze. He took the bag from my hand, took out the money in it, and quite courteously handed back the bag. Then he leaned over Harold, emptied his wallet — I don’t believe Harold had more than two or three dollars — and dropped the wallet next to him. He said, ‘Please don’t make any disturbance now, or I’ll have to return.’ Then he walked off down the road.”

“He didn’t have a car?” I asked.

“He may have had one farther along. But he was still walking when he disappeared from sight. I’m not sure exactly what happened then, because I was almost in hysterics. Harold was unconscious and a dead weight, but somehow I got him into the car and drove here. I don’t remember much about it. It was like moving in a dream.”

Frank said, “They tell you how bad Mr. Green is hurt?”

“They said a probable fractured skull. He won’t die, though, I’m sure. He has a marvelous constitution. Then, too, youth is on his side.”

“Huh?” I said.

She dimpled prettily. “He’s somewhat younger than me, you know. I don’t know why younger men find me so attractive, but they do. Perhaps it’s because they so often mistake me for much younger than I am. How old do you think I am, Sergeant?”

I grunted.

“You may not believe it, but I’m nearly thirty.”

“Oh?” I said. “How much younger is Mr. Green?”

“Several years. He’s just eighteen.”