The Case of the Courteous Killer

Chapter XXIV

12:02 a.m. The sound equipment arrived and was set up. Captain Hertel picked up the amplifier and said, “George Whiteman!”

The words boomed out against the mountainside and echoed back eerily. There was a note of inexorability in the way Hertel called out the name. I wondered how the cornered man felt, looking down into glaring lights and hearing his name reverberate across the countryside. It must have sounded to him like the final calling to judgment.

“You’re completely hemmed in,” the captain’s magnified voice rolled on. “Why drag it out, when you can’t beat it in the long run? You have five minutes to come out with your hands up. If you don’t, we’re coming in after you. How about it?”

Nothing but silence came from above. A full minute ticked by.

“Four minutes, Whiteman,” the amplified voice said.

A figure appeared at the edge of the porch, waving a white handkerchief.

I said, “That’s not Whiteman.”

Over the amplifier Captain Hertel said, “All officers, hold your fire.”

We waited as the man carrying the handkerchief stepped off the porch and started down the narrow road that led from Mulholland Drive up to the house. The road led off at a gradual angle along the side of the mountain for a hundred yards, reversed itself in a hairpin turn, ran for another hundred yards in the opposite direction, reversed itself again, and finally came out at the point Frank and I had Used to turn around our car.

Captain Hertel, Marty Wynn, Vance Brasher, Frank, and I all moved up the road to the point where the descending figure would come out. All the time he was descending, he continued to wave the handkerchief violently, as though afraid the police might shoot. It took him some time to descend, for though the vertical distance was only about a hundred yards, the road distance was three times that. When he finally reached the bottom, we saw that he was a short, plump man of about fifty with sagging jowls that were trembling with fright. He must have just returned from a party and been starting to undress when the suspect broke into his house, for he wore tuxedo trousers, a collarless white shirt with a pleated front, black patent-leather pumps, and a purple smoking jacket.

He stopped a dozen feet off and said, “For God’s sake, don’t shoot.”

“We won’t,” Hertel assured him. “Just keep coming.”

The man traversed the rest of the distance, wiped his brow with the handkerchief he had been waving, and put it away.

“He sent me,” he said. “He said he’d shoot me if I didn’t come down and tell you. My God, it’s the Courteous Killer up there. I recognized him the minute he broke in. You’ve got to listen to me.”

“We’re listening,” the captain said. “Who are you?”

The plump man looked at him in surprise, as though he were used to instant recognition. “David Grommick,” he said. “Grommick Productions.”

I hadn’t recognized his face, but I knew the name. David Grommick was currently the most talked-about independent movie producer in Hollywood. A relative newcomer, he had made only three movies to date, all smashing box-office successes.

“Uh-huh,” Hertel said. “That your house up there?”

“Yes. My God, I thought moving way out here, it would be quiet. Couldn’t stand the noise of the city, Janie said. Noise, she objected to. Three years we lived in the city. Right on Wilshire Boulevard. Sure, there was noise. All that traffic right outside our door. But did we have criminals breaking in the house in the middle of the night? Not once, we didn’t. You’ve got to do something. He’s got my wife and son up there.”

“Yes, sir,” Hertel said. “We’re doing everything we can. Why’d he send you down?”

David Grommick brought out his handkerchief and wiped his brow again. “To give you a message. He says he’ll kill Janie and Pete if you don’t let him go.”

We all just stood looking at him.

“You’ve got to do it,” Grommick said on a high note. “You can’t let him kill Janie and Pete.”

After a moment of silence, Hertel asked, “What’s he mean, let him go? He doesn’t expect assurance that he won’t be prosecuted for his crimes, does he?”

“He’s going to take one of my cars,” Grommick said. “I got two cars up there. See?” He pointed toward the house.

At the right-hand edge of the house was a built-in double garage. It was set too far back from the edge of the yard for us to be able to see into it, but we could see the upper portion of open double doors.

Grommick said, “He’s going to make Pete drive, and make Janie go along in the back seat. He says if you don’t let him pass through, he’ll kill them.”

Hertel looked at me. I ran my eyes over the sheer cliff above the house and said, “Stall him, Skipper. Give us a half hour.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Guess we’ll have to try it the hard way after all.”

Unit 1K80, the car Frank and I had, was a call car. Call cars are equipped with everything you conceivably could need in an emergency, from assorted weapons to battle lanterns. I walked over to the car, drew out a coil of rope, and looped it over my shoulder.

Frank said, “Guess I can’t climb with this,” and put his riot gun back in the car.

Walking back to Captain Hertel, I said, “Coming in from the east looks like the best bet. Don’t think we could by-pass that overhang on the other side of the house.”

I pointed to a bulge in the cliff face on the west side of the house, where the cliff took an outward lean.

Hertel nodded agreement. “We’ll keep the spots off you. We’ll stick them right in his face, and hope they blind him enough so he can’t see you out there. Good luck.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

Frank and I walked east along Mulholland Drive for a hundred yards until we were beyond even the reflected glow of the spotlights. Frank gazed up the steep incline and emitted a low whistle.

“Fay’s been saying I need more exercise,” he said. “Thinks I ought to take some of the weight off.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“But you know something, Joe?”

“What?”

“Think I’d rather take my exercise in a gym.”

I started up first, moving slowly and feeling my way, testing each handhold and foothold before trusting my full weight to it. Behind me I could hear Frank begin to pant before we had climbed a quarter of the distance.

We paused when we heard the amplified voice of Captain Hertel boom out, “George Whiteman!”

There was silence for a moment, then, “We got your message, Whiteman. No one here has authority to make a deal with you. We’ve sent for Chief of Detectives Brown. You’ll have to wait until he arrives.”

For the first time the suspect answered. We could hear his shout roll down the mountainside, but we were too far away to make out the words. We started to climb again.

When we reached the place where the incline became a nearly sheer cliff, we stopped a second time to rest. From here we could clearly see the house a hundred yards off to our left and on the same level we now were. The whole area was brilliantly lighted by spotlights, except for the section of cliff face by which we would have to approach the house. Even in the moonlight this formed a dark strip in contrast to the glare above and below it. This wasn’t very reassuring, though, because we could still make out the details of the cliff face in the darkened area. Which meant the suspect wouldn’t have any trouble spotting us, if he happened to glance out one of the east windows.

“Okay so far?” I asked Frank.

“Ruined a good suit,” he said. “Tore the knee right out of my pants.”

Glancing down at the torn place, I said, “Tough break.”

“Oh, well,” he said philosophically. “Much more of this kind of exercise and it wouldn’t fit me, anyway.”

Now that we were right next to it, the cliff face looked just as formidable as it had from the road below. We decided that while we might be safer from observation if we climbed higher and then moved along the almost vertical wall, it would take too long to traverse the hundred yards between us and the house that way. Instead we decided to risk moving to within twenty-five yards of the house before climbing upward any more. At that point we could make out a rift in the wall that looked as though it might take us clear to the crest of the mountain. As there was a slightly overhanging ridge all along the top, this looked like the only place we would be able to reach the summit. And it would be considerably easier to walk the last twenty-five yards along the top than to sidle along the face of the cliff.

While the incline we had already come up was pretty steep, we were able to walk erect along the face of the cliff by holding onto projections for support. We moved toward the rift we had spotted as rapidly as we could, momentarily expecting to be spied by the suspect. If we were, we both knew, we were finished. At that range he couldn’t miss.

We reached the rift without being seen. It was about three feet wide by two deep, but it afforded complete protection from the house. I climbed upward inside of it about ten feet in order to allow Frank room to squeeze in below me.

Then I looked upward, and my heart sank. We weren’t going to be able to reach the crest this way, either. The crevice we were in petered out a few feet below the overhang.

Suddenly, from what sounded like the upper windows of the house, the suspect’s voice yelled, “It’s been twenty minutes, cops! Five more and I’ll toss Mrs. Grommick down the mountain for you to look at.”

Over the amplifier Captain Hertel’s voice said, “Chief Brown is on the way. He’ll be here any minute now.”

“Rest period’s over,” I whispered down to Frank. “Let’s go”

We climbed up the natural flue until I estimated we were well above the level of the roof. Then, one at a time, we edged out of its protection and clung to the side of the cliff. Here we were fully exposed to view. Above and below us the beams of the spotlights glared against the cliff face. On a darker night the contrast might have made us invisible, but the bright moonlight had the effect of making me feel as though we were on a lighted stage.

We edged closer to the house. It was slow going, because we had to test each handhold and foothold. There was not only the danger of falling. A loosened rock bounding down the mountainside would almost certainly be heard in the house, and would bring the suspect running to a side window.

I thought we had made it when we were fifteen feet from the house. We were a good twenty feet above the upper windows, and even if Whiteman glanced out on that side, he wouldn’t see us unless he looked upward.

As I groped for another handhold, I looked down at the rearmost window of the upper floor. I froze with one arm extended when I saw a pale face in the window. The eyes in the face were staring straight at me.