The Galton Case

Chapter 27

I PHONED Sheriff Trask long distance. He agreed to wire me transportation authorization for the Lemberg brothers. I picked it up at Willow Run, and the three of us got aboard an early plane. Trask had an official car waiting to meet the connecting plane when it landed in Santa Teresa.

Before noon we were in the interrogation room in the Santa Teresa courthouse. Roy and Tommy made statements, which were recorded by a court reporter on steno and tape machine. Tommy seemed to be awed by the big room with its barred windows, the Sheriff’s quiet power, the weight of the law which both man and building represented. There were no discrepancies in the part of his statement I heard.

Trask motioned me out before Tommy was finished. I followed him down the corridor to his office. He took off his coat and opened the neck of his shirt. Blotches of sweat spread from his armpits. He filled a paper cup with water from a cooler, drained the cup, and crushed it in his fist.

“If we buy this,” he said at last, “it puts us back at the beginning. You buy it, don’t you, Archer?”

“I’ve taken an option on it. Naturally I think it should be investigated. But that can wait. Have you questioned Theo Fredericks about the Culligan killing?”

“No.”

“Is Fredericks doing any talking at all?”

“Not to me he isn’t.”

“But you picked him up last night?”

Trask’s face had a raw red look. I thought at first that he was on the verge of a heart attack. Then I realized that he was painfully embarrassed. He turned his back on me, walked over to the wall, and stood looking at a photograph of himself shaking hands with the Governor.

“Somebody tipped him off,” he said. “He flew the coop five minutes before I got there.” He turned to face me: “The worst part of it is, he took Sheila Howell with him.”

“By force?”

“You kidding? She was probably the one who tipped him off. I made the mistake of phoning Dr. Howell before I moved on the little rat. In any case, she went along with him willingly – walked out of her father’s house and drove away with him in the middle of the night. Howell’s been on my back ever since.”

“Howell’s very fond of his daughter.”

“Yeah, I know how he feels, I have a daughter of my own. I was afraid for a while that he was going to take off after her with a shotgun, and I mean literally. Howell’s a trap-shooter, one of the best in the county. But I got him calmed down. He’s in the communications room, waiting to hear some word of them.”

“They’re traveling by car?”

“The one Mrs. Galton bought for him.”

“A red Thunderbird should be easy to spot.”

“You’d think so. But they’ve been gone over eight hours without a trace. They may be in Mexico by now. Or they may be cuddled up in an L.A. motel under one of his aliases.” Trask scowled at the image. “Why do so many nice young girls go for the dangerous ones?”

The question didn’t expect an answer, and that was just as well. I hadn’t any.

Trask sat down heavily behind his desk. “Just how dangerous is he? When we talked on the telephone last night, you mentioned a knifing he did before he left Canada.”

“He stabbed his father. Apparently he meant to kill him. The old man is no saint, either. In fact, the Fredericks’ boardinghouse is a regular thieves’ kitchen. Peter Culligan was staying there at the time of the knifing. The boy ran away with him.”

Trask took up a pencil and broke it in half, abstractedly, dropping the pieces on his blotter. “How do we know the Fredericks boy didn’t murder Culligan? He had a motive: Culligan was in a position to call his bluff and tell the world who he really was. And M.O. figures, with his knifing record.”

“We’ve been thinking the same thing, Sheriff. There’s even a strong likelihood that Culligan was his partner in the conspiracy. That would give him a powerful motive to silence Culligan. We’ve been assuming that Fredericks was in Luna Bay that day. But has his alibi ever been checked?”

“There’s no time like the present.”

Trask picked up his phone and asked the switchboard to put through a call to the San Mateo County sheriffs office in Redwood City.

“I can think of one other possibility,” I said. “Alice Sable was involved with Culligan last year in Reno, and maybe since. Remember how she reacted to his death. We put it down to nervous shock, but it could have been something worse.”

“You’re not suggesting that she killed him?”

“As a hypothesis.”

Trask shook his head impatiently. “Even putting it hypothetically, it’s pretty hard to swallow about a lady like her.”

“What kind of a lady is she? Do you know her?”

“I’ve met her, that’s about all. But hell, Gordon Sable’s one of the top lawyers in the city.”

The politician latent in every elected official was rising to the surface and blurring Trask’s hard, clear attitudes. I said:

“That doesn’t put his wife above suspicion. Have you questioned her?”

“No.” Trask became explanatory, as though he felt that he had missed a move: “I haven’t been able to get to her. Sable was opposed, and the head-shrinkers backed him up. They say she shouldn’t be questioned on painful subjects. She’s been borderline psychotic since the killing, and any more pressure might push her over the edge.”

“Howell’s her personal doctor, isn’t he?”

“He is. As a matter of fact, I tried to get to her through Howell. He was dead set against it, and as long as it looked like an open-and-shut case, I didn’t press the point.”

“Howell should be ready to change his mind. Did you say he’s somewhere around the courthouse?”

“Yeah, he’s down in Communications. But wait a minute, Archer.” Trask rose and came around the desk. “This is a touchy business, and you don’t want to hang too much weight on the Lemberg brothers’ story. They’re not disinterested witnesses.”

“They don’t know enough to invent the story, either.”

“Schwartz and his lawyers do.”

“Are we back on the Schwartz kick again?”

“You were the one that got me on it in the first place. You were convinced that the Culligan killing was a gang killing.”

“I was wrong.”

“Maybe. Well let the facts decide when they all come out. But if you were wrong, you could be wrong again.” Trask punched me in the stomach in a friendly way. “How about that, Archer?”

His telephone chirped, and he lifted the receiver. I couldn’t make out the words that came scratchily over the wire, but I saw their effect on Trask. His body stiffened, and his face seemed to grow larger.

“I’ll use my Aero Squadron,” he said finally, “and I ought to be there in two hours. But don’t sit around waiting for me.” He slammed down the receiver and reached for the coat draped over the back of his chair.

“They made the red Thunderbird,” he said. “Fredericks abandoned it in San Mateo. They were just going to put the word on the teletype when they got my call.”

“Where in San Mateo?”

“Parking-lot of the S.P. station. Fredericks and the girl probably took a train into San Francisco.”

“Are you flying up?”

“Yeah, I’ve had a volunteer pilot standing by all morning. Ride along with us if you want. He has a four-passenger Beechcraft.”

“Thanks, I’ve had enough flying to last me for a while. You didn’t ask them to check Fredericks’s alibi.”

“I forgot,” Trask said lightly. “I’ll take it up with Fredericks personally.” He seemed glad to be leaving Alice Sable in my lap.