Richard Deming

The Case of the Courteous Killer

For

Fred, Inez, Feef and Richie.

Introduction

Because of the popularity of the “Dragnet” TV show, the Los Angeles police officer has become symbolic of all municipal police officers. Simultaneously the show has enormously increased the public’s interest in police work and its respect for policemen.

In doing the research for this book, it was my privilege to spend considerable time working with the Los Angeles police department and studying its methods. Prior to this assignment my only knowledge of the department was what I had seen of it on the “Dragnet” TV show, and I approached the study with the preconceived notion that the TV interpretation was probably a highly glamorized one. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I am not a novice at this type of survey. Los Angeles was the fourth major city in which I had made similar police studies. I know what to look for beneath the public-relations hand-outs in order to get a true picture of how efficiently a department functions. I talked and worked with policemen of all rank levels. I drew them out on their feelings about their work, the department, and their superior officers. And I came away from Los Angeles convinced that it probably has the finest, most modern, and most efficient police department in the country, and possibly in the world.

I base this opinion not only on its superb police equipment and up-to-the-minute methods of investigation and law enforcement, but also upon such intangibles as department morale. I was surprised and pleased to discover that the average Los Angeles policeman’s attitude toward the department is approximately equivalent to a career Marine’s feeling for the Marine Corps. Everywhere, from uniformed policemen to deskbound captains, I found an almost fierce loyalty to the department, a deep pride in membership, and an unshakable conviction that Los Angeles has the best force in the world.

Much of the credit for this must go to Chief W.H. Parker, a dedicated police officer who has been with the department for thirty years and who instituted many of its modern methods. Part of the credit must go to the people of Los Angeles themselves, however, for their recognition that policemen, like other citizens, have to eat and pay rent and buy clothing for their children. J. Edgar Hoover has called the salary levels of this country’s major police forces a national disgrace. This condemnation doesn’t apply to Los Angeles, where, on the principle that you get what you pay for, the police salary scale is above that of many other cities.

The result is what you might expect: a high caliber of applicants, and a resulting high caliber of officers.

The reader may be assured, therefore, that in reading this book he is not being given a glamorized picture of police in action. This is the way the Los Angeles police actually operate, and the way they did actually operate in the case presented. As in the “Dragnet” TV shows, the case you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Grateful acknowledgment for their co-operation in helping me obtain the material for this book is made to Chief W. H. Parker; Chief of Detectives Thad Brown; Captain Stanley Sheldon, Commander of the Public Information Division; Ray Pinker, Chief Forensic Chemist of the Criminalistics Laboratory; and the many other police officers who put up with my prying into their work methods. Last, and most important, acknowledgment is made to Jack Webb, the creator of “Dragnet.”

— RICHARD DEMING

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.”

Chapter II

1:38 a.m. We continued to question Wilma Stenson. She told us that the holdup had occurred at approximately eleven o’clock, and that she and her fellow victim had been in her car, a 1957 Thunderbird. She had arrived at the hospital about midnight. She said the bandit had taken about a hundred and fifty dollars in bills from her purse.

She also told us that in the confusion of the moment she had neglected to pick up Harold Green’s wallet, which the bandit had dropped to the ground after he emptied it. She offered to show us the spot where she and the injured man had been parked.

Frank phoned Robbery Division to acquaint them with the facts in the case, as this was a robbery case as well as one for Homicide, and we would work together on it. Robbery said they would send over a team to meet us at the hospital.

Frank also phoned the description of the suspect and MO to R & I and arranged for a local and an APB broadcast giving the suspect’s description. As Wilma Stenson was quite certain the bandit had not touched the car at any time during the robbery, we didn’t call Latent Prints. If we managed to locate the wallet the robber had handled, we could take it in for examination instead of requiring a man to go to the scene.

We didn’t call the Crime Lab at this point, either. If we found any evidence at the scene of the crime for S.I.D. to work on, we could call for a man from the lab by radio. Frank did request Robbery to bring along a camera man, however, in case we required photographs of the scene.

The doctor who had treated Harold Green told us the victim was now conscious, and that while X-rays showed a definite skull fracture, there didn’t seem to be any brain damage. We would not be able to question him for at least twenty-four hours, though. The doctor said Green would be transferred to County Hospital in the morning, and that we would probably be permitted to talk to him there the following night.

The team from Robbery consisted of Sergeant Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher. They brought along a civilian photographer from the Photo Lab.

After introducing the Robbery team to Mrs. Stenson and briefly going over the situation with them again, we all drove out to Laurel Canyon Road. Mrs. Stenson rode with us in the back seat of Unit 7K10, while the Robbery unit followed.

A couple of hundred yards from where Laurel Canyon Road crossed Mulholland Drive, Wilma Stenson told us to slow down. I plugged the cord of the hand spotlight into its dashboard socket and directed the beam at the shoulder. Frank let the car creep along at five miles an hour while Mrs. Stenson and I examined the ground alongside the road. Behind us the other car also switched on its spot.

At intervals along the road, cars were parked with dimmed lights — couples taking advantage of the romantic moon. As soon as our spots went on, engines came to life and the cars hurriedly pulled away. Within seconds we had the road to ourselves as far as we could see.

We had moved at this snail’s pace about a hundred yards when Wilma Stenson said dubiously, “I don’t think it was this close to Mulholland Drive.”

Frank halted the car, and behind us Vance Brasher halted the one he was driving. Ahead we could see the lights of an occasional car moving along Mulholland Drive.

Swinging in a U-turn, Frank started back the way we had come, driving on the left side of the road and turning on his red blinker to warn any oncoming traffic, even though there wasn’t any at the moment. The other car swung around also and continued to follow.

Only a few yards beyond where Mrs. Stenson had first told us to slow down, I suddenly spotted the leather wallet lying next to the road. Simultaneously Wilma Stenson said, “There it is!”

Frank pulled over to the right and parked on the shoulder. The Robbery unit parked behind us.

All six of us crossed the road and stood looking at the wallet without stepping off the concrete. Marty Wynn and I both illuminated the scene with flashlights. Tire marks showing where the car had been parked were faintly visible in the dirt of the shoulder. Six gold-tipped cigarette butts lay on the edge of the concrete, where they had been tossed from the driver’s side of the car. Six untipped butts lay near the wallet, where they had been dropped from the other side.

Wilma Stenson flushed when she saw me looking at the butts. In a faint voice she said, “Maybe we were here a little longer than I thought.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Marty Wynn and I stopped at the edge of the road and carefully examined the ground. While the tire marks, though faint, were clear enough, the ground was too hard and dry to show footprints. There wasn’t an indentation in it other than the tire marks.

Rising, I instructed the photographer in what pictures I wanted, and he shot several of the scene from different angles. Wilma Stenson looked on puzzledly while this was going on.

When he had taken the last picture, she asked, “Why are photographs necessary?”

I didn’t tell her that policemen are naturally suspicious, that tentatively we accepted her story at face value, but that on the off-chance that the holdup man was pure fabrication on her part and she had actually fractured Harold Green’s skull herself, we wanted pictorial evidence of the scene. I just said, “Routine, ma’am.”

Marty Wynn said, “Guess there isn’t any evidence to disturb,” stepped off the concrete, and lifted the wallet by thrusting, a pencil inside it.

“Why is he doing that?” Mrs. Stenson asked.

“Fingerprints,” I said succinctly.

When we had collected the butts and dropped them into a plastic bag, we were finished.

We requested Wilma Stenson to meet us at the Police Building at 1 p.m. the following afternoon in order to look at mug shots. She said she would. We then drove her back to the Central Receiving Hospital, where her car was parked, and let her go home.

The next day, Thursday, June 20th, I arrived at the Police Building at a quarter of one. Before going up to 314, I stopped on the second floor to see what R & I had come up with. I learned that on the basis of our description and MO, the Stat’s Office had pulled a hundred and forty-three possibles. By weeding out those known to be in jail, out of town, or impossible for other reasons, R & I had reduced this to twenty-two. I took the mug shots of these twenty-two up to Homicide with me.

Frank was on the phone when I walked into the squad room. I raised my hand in a general salute to the day-watch men present, then sat on the edge of the table and waited for Frank to finish his phone conversation.

When he hung up, Frank said, “Hi, Joe. Just talking to Latent Prints. They brought out a couple of sets of prints they think must belong to the owner of the wallet. Plus one partial print that doesn’t match any of the others. Think maybe it was left by the suspect, since it’s superimposed over one of the others.”

I grunted. This was as much as we could have hoped for, but it wasn’t very helpful. It would be helpful if we ever got a suspect whose prints we could compare with the partial, but it was useless for comparison with the thousands of sets of prints in the fingerprint file. It takes the prints of at least three fingers to make a search of records feasible. Theoretically it’s possible to match a single print against a similar one in the fingerprint file, but it would take the entire staff a year to do it.

I tossed Frank the R & I report. “Twenty-two possibles,” I said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to have Mrs. Stenson identify one of the mugs.”

“Bet a Coke?” Frank asked.

I looked at him. “Against a case, maybe. I was just doing wishful thinking.”

Vance Brasher came in then, bringing Mrs. Wilma Stenson with him. She was chatting animatedly into his ear as they entered the room, and Vance was replying with polite monosyllables. Last night Mrs. Stenson had been too upset to pay much attention to Vance, but today she seemed to have become aware of his charm.

He wasn’t reciprocating very well. He was polite, but his expression indicated their relationship was going to stay strictly one of witness-police officer.

When Vance led her over to us, Wilma Stenson reluctantly tore her attention from him long enough to say, “Oh, hello, Sergeant Friday. And Officer Smith.”

Frank said, “Afternoon, ma’am,” and I said, “How are you, Mrs. Stenson?”

After this exchange of greetings, she was all set to return her attention to Vance, but I distracted her by saying, “Like you to look at some pictures, ma’am.”

“Of course, Sergeant,” she said, without much enthusiasm.

I showed her the mug shots of the twenty-two possibles R & I had come up with first. She stated positively that none was the man who had held up her and Harold Green. Then we brought out the mug books, and she spent a full hour going through them.

When she closed the last book, she shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Some of the faces bear a faint resemblance, but I’m sure the man who held us up isn’t here. I’m quite certain I’d recognize his picture.”

That was that. We thanked her for her time and told her we’d call her if there were any developments in the case.

“Any time at all,” she said enthusiastically. “Phone me any time you wish.” She was looking at Vance when she said it.

After she left, I phoned County Hospital and inquired about the condition of Harold Green. The doctor I talked to said he was resting nicely, and while it was still a little early to say, it was believed he was probably out of danger. He was not yet allowed visitors, but the doctor felt that if we dropped by about eight p.m., it would be all right to talk to him for a few minutes.

I told him we’d be there.

8:11 p.m. Frank and I drove over to County Hospital and talked to the victim. He was a well-built young man with a handsome, narrow-jawed face and long sideburns, which showed beneath the bandage covering his head. The nurse said we could have five minutes with him.

After identifying ourselves as police officers, I said, “How do you feel, son?”

“Headache,” he said in a weak voice, gingerly touching the bandage.

“Won’t bother you long,” I said. “Just want verification of what happened last night.”

He looked up at me inquiringly. “Didn’t Wilma tell you?”

“Like to hear it from you,” I said.

“Oh? Well, it was just a stickup. We was parked out on Laurel Canyon Road, and this joker come along and poked a gun at us. Told us to get out of the car. He looked easy, so I tried to take him. That was a mistake.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“He wasn’t. Easy, I mean. Never saw a guy move so fast. Batted my brains out before I knew what happened.”

Frank said, “Get a good look at him?”

“Yeah. There was a pretty bright moon. Somewhere between forty and fifty. Not too tall — five seven to nine, maybe — but well built. Round, friendly face and rimless glasses. Looked the kind of guy would be afraid to talk back to his wife. Surprised the devil out of me when he batted me.”

I said, “How much money did he get from your wallet?”

He grinned a little mockingly. “Three singles. Some deal, huh? Take a busted head trying to defend three bucks.”

I asked, “Where do you work, son?”

“Me?” he asked, surprised. “Who works?”

“In school?”

He snorted. “Naw. Quit at sixteen.”

“Live with your parents, huh?”

He gave me a sardonic smile. “My parents are a couple of drunks. I got an apartment over in Crescent Heights.”

I looked at him for a minute. “Independent income?”

He grinned again, a weak grin, but a man-to-man one. “Might call it that. Wilma picks up the tab.”

The nurse stuck her head in the door and said our time was up.

Chapter III

Two nights later the lovers’ lane bandit struck again. He held up a couple in a parked car on Benedict Canyon Drive and robbed them of seventy-four dollars. There was no violence in this case, but the suspect’s description and MO were the same. The victims particularly stressed the bandit’s politeness and unassuming manner. The male victim stated that he had seriously considered attempting to grab the suspect’s gun, and felt that he could have succeeded in disarming him, but had decided not to take the risk.

The following week the suspect struck three more times, in each case using the same MO. He would approach a parked car on foot, rob the victims at gunpoint, warn them not to make any outcry, then walk away. In each case he picked couples parked out of sight of any other parked car, and a short distance from a curve. He would disappear after each, robbery by walking around the curve. None of the victims saw him enter a car.

Robbery Division kept us informed of these incidents, but as there was no further violence, the case was gradually being taken over entirely by Robbery. As Harold Green was now reported out of danger, the case became of less and less concern to Homicide Division. With Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher working on it, there was no point in tying up a Homicide team also. Frank and I became involved in a couple of murder cases and virtually forgot the bandit.

Friday, June 28th, Frank and I checked in at 4:30 p.m. Frank checked the message book while I looked in my mail box. There was nothing there but a couple of bills. “Anything?” I asked Frank.

“Captain wants to see us.”

I stuck the bills in my pocket, and we crossed the anteroom to Captain Hertel’s office. He looked up from the report he was reading and said, “Friday, Smith. Come in.”

Frank said, “Hi, Captain,” and I said, “What’s up, Skipper?” He pointed at chairs, and we seated ourselves. Captain Hertel is a solidly built man with a square, calm face and stubby gray hair cut close to his head. He waited until we had cigarettes going, then said, “About this lovers’ lane bandit. Not doing much on it, are you?”

I said, “Well, Robbery’s got a team doing all it can. The guy hasn’t killed anybody, and the boy he pistol-whipped is well on the way to recovery. Doesn’t seem much point in duplicating Robbery’s effort.”

“Yeah, I know,” the captain said. “But I had a talk with Chief Brown today. He’s concerned about this joker, and wants an all-out effort to get him.”

I hiked my eyebrows. “What’s so important about a minor stickup man?”

“You’ve questioned some of the victims,” Captain Hertel said. “And have seen Wynn’s reports on the others. What’s the one characteristic that stands out in all of them?”

I thought this over, finally said, “Well, they all describe him as polite and unassuming. He doesn’t scare anybody much.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Captain Hertel said. “Every male victim so far has stated that the guy impressed him so little, he was seriously tempted to try taking him. Remember what happened to the only one who did try it?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “He got a cracked skull for his trouble.”

The captain nodded. “Somebody’s going to get brave again one of these nights. The guy’s appearance and manner seem to invite resistance. I think Chief Brown’s right in his prophecy of what’s going to happen if we don’t net him fast.”

“What prophecy’s that?”

“That he’s going to kill somebody.”

5:02 p.m. We got together with Sergeant Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher of Robbery in order to outline the strategy of an all-out effort to take the lovers’ lane bandit. Chief Brown had passed down the word that we could call for whatever extra help we needed.

We were going to need a lot of it. The suspect had struck over a wide area of the Santa Monica Mountain district. Twice he had hit couples parked on Mulholland Drive, which starts west of Cahuenga Pass in the Hollywood district and follows the rim of the mountains past Beverly Hills clear to Ventura Boulevard, and the two robberies had been nearly ten miles apart. The other three robberies had each been along a different canyon road crossing Mulholland Drive.

The area of operation was too large to attempt the decoy system. The only stakeout system that had a chance of success was to cover the area with cruising undercover cars and hope one would spot him in the act. We requested and got six undercover teams from Chief Brown. The teams of Wynn and Brasher and of Frank and me brought the total to eight. We arranged to have all eight cars cruise the bandit’s area of operations from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. nightly, the hours during which all previous robberies had taken place.

Despite these precautions, the bandit hit twice more over the weekend.

Monday, July 1st, at 11:26 p.m., Frank and I were cruising along Nichols Canyon Road in a 1955 Chevrolet undercover car. There had been a hard summer rain earlier, unusual for this time of year, but now the night was clear and warm.

Dozens of couples were parked alongside the road, taking advantage of the nice weather.

Frank said, “This would be a good night for him to hit. For us, I mean.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Rain softened up the ground. Might leave some footprints.”

I grunted. “Way things are going, we better bring in more than footprints soon. Captain’s getting a little short of patience.”

“Well, we’re doing the best we can,” Frank said. “It’s a pretty big area.”

Up ahead our lights picked out a new Ford sedan parked alongside the road. As we neared it, I noticed that the door on the right-hand side hung wide open, and that no one seemed to be sitting in the car.

“Slow it down,” I said to Frank.

He braked to a crawl as we passed the Ford. I peered in and saw that both the front and rear seats were empty. I motioned Frank to pull up on the shoulder in front of it.

I lifted a flashlight from the glove compartment as we got out of the car. We walked back, staying on the concrete, and I flashed the light into the car’s interior. It was still empty.

I walked around behind the car and shined the light on the ground near the open door. There were clear impressions of both a man’s and a woman’s shoes, showing where they had stepped to the wet ground from the car. A churned-up area, halfway between the car and a drainage ditch that paralleled the road a few yards away, suggested that some kind of struggle had taken place. A man’s footprints led away from this spot around the front of the car onto the concrete.

I walked over to the edge of the drainage ditch, being careful not to disturb any of the footprints. The ditch was only about three feet deep, and had a bare trickle of water in it. When I turned my light downward, I saw that it also contained something else.

“Frank,” I called softly. “Chief Brown was right.”

“Huh?” Frank said.

“He finally got around to killing somebody. Two of them.”

Frank came over to the edge of the drainage ditch, carefully stepping in my footprints, and gazed down at the two figures lying there. The man seemed to be about twenty-five. He wore a Marine uniform with sergeant’s stripes. He lay on his back, his eyes gazing sightlessly straight upward. The top of his head had literally been beaten fiat. It was nothing but a red, pulpy mass. Even at the distance of several feet, there was no question that he was dead.

The girl lay on her side, half across his chest. She was a slim redhead of about twenty. She wore a white-and-green summer dress, and the top right corner of it was stained with blood. I slid down into the ditch and felt the girl’s pulse.

I called up to Frank, “She’s still alive. Get an ambulance rolling.”

He moved away toward the undercover car, while I bent over the girl to give her a closer examination. The bullet seemed to have passed entirely through her shoulder, and though she had shed considerable blood, both the entry and exit wounds had now stopped bleeding. She was unconscious, but breathing regularly.

The first rule of first aid is to do nothing that isn’t necessary. Making injured persons “more comfortable” as often as not only aggravates the injury. Since the girl’s bleeding had stopped of its own accord, there was nothing I could do for her until the ambulance arrived. I left her where she was.

Frank came back to the car just as I climbed to the top of the ditch.

“I radioed for an ambulance,” he said. “Also got the other seven cars blocking all roads out of the area. Maybe we can still net him.”

“Doubt it,” I told him. “The girl’s wound isn’t bleeding. This must have happened some time ago if her blood is beginning to clot. Call for the Crime Lab?”

“Yeah. And Latent Prints, just in case he touched the car.”

Walking back onto the road, I scraped some of the mud from my feet off on the concrete. Sirens began to sound in the distance. The sound grew in volume, its direction indicating the vehicles were coming up the freeway.

The first vehicle to the scene was a black-and-white squad car. I motioned the driver to park on the far side of the road. When the two uniformed officers got out of the car, I took them over to the Ford and pointed out the footprints made by the victims and the suspect.

“Happen to have a rope in your car?” I asked one of the officers. A rope is not standard equipment in squad cars, but many officers furnish their own equipment for their personal convenience.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’ve got one.”

“Then I want this area roped off,” I instructed. “Be a million people around here to trample over the evidence before long.”

As the policemen were getting the rope from the squad car, a Buick convertible pulled off on the shoulder behind them. A tall, lean man wearing horn-rimmed glasses got out and walked over to me. Simultaneously, an ambulance rolled to a stop.

“Accident?” the lean man asked me.

“No, sir,” I said. “Police business.”

“You a detective?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

I turned toward the ambulance, and the lean man started around the front of the Ford. I changed direction and caught his arm just as he raised a foot to step off the concrete. “Sorry, sir,” I said. “Have to ask you to go back to your car.”

Shaking off my hand, he stared down his nose at me. “Your badge doesn’t give you the right to manhandle private citizens, Officer.”

“No, sir,” I said. “Just go back to your car, please.”

The ambulance attendant and the driver had gotten out of the ambulance meantime, and Frank was leading them in a wide arc around the rear of the Ford toward the drainage ditch. The two uniformed policemen came over and began roping off the area. Another car parked across the road, and Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher got out of it. The lean bystander started to follow the ambulance attendants.

I said to Vance, “Get that joker to go back to his car and move on,” then turned to Marty Wynn. “Any luck?”

He shook his head. “Got every road out of here blocked off, and the boys are checking every parked car. We don’t even know that he was driving a car, though, do we?”

The lean man’s voice came to us, high and indignant. “Listen, Officer, this is a public road and I’m a taxpayer. Don’t forget I pay your salary.”

The ambulance attendant and driver came from the direction of the drainage ditch, carrying a stretcher. When they reached the road, the taxpayer leaned forward and peered avidly at the girl on the stretcher. “She dead?” he asked.

Nobody answered him. The litter bearers set down their burden on the road, and while one cut away the cloth over the wound to put on an emergency bandage, the other began to start a bottle of blood plasma.

Vance came over and said to me, “How many taxpayers you figure Los Angeles has, Joe?”

I shrugged. “One out of every three population, maybe. Half to three quarters of a million.”

“I been on the force twelve years. How much you figure my salary’s cost each individual taxpayer?”

I grinned at him. “Nickel, maybe. Dime at tops.”

Vance walked back to the lean taxpayer and dropped a dime in his breast pocket. “Now we’re even,” he said. “Go climb in your car and move on before I run you in for hampering a police investigation.”

The man started to open his mouth, then changed his mind when he saw the glitter in Vance’s eyes. Stiffly he crossed to his car, got in and drove off.

The girl on the stretcher stirred, and suddenly her eyes opened. She stared up confusedly at the attendant bandaging her shoulder.

“You’re all right, now, miss,” he said soothingly. “We’ll have you at the hospital soon.”

“Nick,” she whispered. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

The attendant didn’t say anything.

“All right if I talk to her?” I asked him.

“For a minute,” he said. “She’s lost a lot of blood. Want to get her in and pump some back into her as soon as possible.”

Stooping next to the stretcher, I said, “I’m a police officer, miss. Feel up to talking?”

“Is Nick dead?” she asked in a low voice.

“The Marine?” I sidestepped. “Is his name Nick?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Nick Grotto. Where is he?”

“They’ll get to him as soon as they take care of you, miss. Want to tell us your name?”

“Nancy,” she said. “Nancy Meere.”

Glancing up, I saw that Frank was entering the name in his notebook, while Vance Brasher held a flashlight for him.

“Address?”

“Eleven-twenty-two-one Calvert. That’s in North Hollywood.”

“Yes, ma’am. Now, want to tell us what happened?”

“The man beat him with a gun,” she whispered. “Nick shouldn’t have tried to grab it. He hit Nick with it, and when Nick fell to his knees and grabbed the man’s legs for support, he hit him again. He kept hitting him and hitting him. When I tried to stop him, he shot me.”

“What did the man look like?” I asked.

“He looked — well, nice. Sort of friendly and polite. He didn’t even scare me until he hit Nick. Please, mister, is Nick dead?” She started to cry.

The attendant said, “We’d better get her in now,” and I stood up.

We watched as they loaded her into the ambulance and drove off.

Chapter IV

12:14 a.m. Lieutenant Lee Jones and Sergeant Jay Allen came out from the Crime Lab. They had Sergeant McLaughlin of Latent Prints with them, and also a civilian photographer.

I showed Lieutenant Jones the Marine’s body, and also pointed out the footprints in the roped-off area. Lieutenant Jones is a big, white-haired man who looks more like an industrial executive than he does a cop. He’s calm and never in a hurry, and if he misses any scientific evidence at the scene of a crime, it isn’t there.

Before doing anything else, Lieutenant Jones had the Photo Lab man photograph the body, the footprints, and the open door of the Ford. Then, as Jay Allen began mixing plaster of Paris in a large bowl, the lieutenant bent some two-inch-wide strips of aluminum into circles of varying sizes, binding each together at the seam with Scotch tape. These were to serve as molds for the plaster of Paris. I had seen the process many times, but it always interested me.

“You get those metal strips made up special somewhere?” I asked him.

Lieutenant Jones grinned at me. “They’re the slats from old Venetian blinds. Couldn’t work better if they’d been made for the purpose.”

Carefully he set one of the rings over a footprint and pressed gently down on it until the bottom edge had been forced about an eighth of an inch into the ground. Sergeant Allen poured it half full of plaster of Paris, and scattered a few nails in it to strengthen it. As the lieutenant set a second ring over a footprint, Frank called from the drainage ditch, “Joe!”

I walked over to the edge of the ditch and saw that he was kneeling next to the dead Marine. Vance Brasher was with him, apparently to assist him in bringing up the body. Frank held up a man’s wrist watch with a gold expansion band.

“Had this gripped in his hand,” Frank said. “Must have jerked it off the suspect’s wrist. He’s wearing one of his own.”

He handed up the watch, and I examined it under my flashlight. It was a gold-filled Gruen with an engraving on its back reading, To Gig from Min, 1944. I carried it over to Lieutenant Jones.

“Ran into some luck,” I told him. “Looks like the victim grabbed this during the struggle, and the suspect didn’t realize it’d been pulled off.”

Jones looked the watch over. “Hmm. This ought to be easy to trace.”

“Got anything aside from the footprints?” I asked him.

“Little visual evidence. Looks like the killing and shooting took place here.” He pointed to the churned-up area. “Then he dragged both victims over and threw them in the ditch. He must have gotten pretty muddied up in the process. We’ll take along some samples of the mud in case you turn up a suspect with muddy clothing.”

Jones and Allen lifted the last of the footprints and told Sergeant McLaughlin he could take over. The fingerprint expert had waited because he couldn’t get to the open door of the Ford without disturbing the ground where the footprints were.

Sergeant McLaughlin went to work on the car door first, the assumption being that if the suspect had touched the car anywhere, that was the most likely place. It would have been natural for him to lay his left hand on the window sill when he pointed the gun at his victims. There was also a possibility that he had pulled open the door himself when he had ordered them out of the car.

McLaughlin is a lean, dark man who looks a little like the TV version of Boston Blackie. There is nothing gentle-looking about him, but he handles a camel’s hair brush with the tenderness of a mother powdering an infant. Dipping the brush into a round tin of silvery powder, he gently brushed the door handle. Latent Prints uses two different types of fingerprint powder: a light-colored powder for dark surfaces and a dark one for light-colored surfaces. McLaughlin used the light powder on the chrome handle, because chrome photographs black.

A clear thumbprint came into view.

After photographing it with his fingerprint camera, the sergeant stripped off a length of the special inch-and-a-half-wide Scotch tape Latent Prints has made to its own specifications and pressed it over the print. When he peeled it off again, the print came right with it. He laid the tape across a black card, cut off the protruding edges, and there was a perfect print outlined on the card in the light silvery powder. On the back of the card he wrote, John Doe, Ford Sedan, Cal. license FAX — 412, parked Nichols Canyon Rd. 300 yds. South Mulholland Dr., 2 July, 12:34 A.M. Print developed and photoed on rt. front door handle.

As the car was light tan, he used the darker-colored silvery powder on the door itself. And when he raised a palm print, he transferred it to a white card instead of to a black one.

Conscious of me watching him, he looked up and said, “Bet a Coke these both turn out to belong to the Marine or the girl.”

“Bet,” I said. “If I lose, it’s worth it. If I win, at least I’ve got something.”

The coroner’s wagon had arrived by then, and attendants were loading the body. I walked over to Frank and asked, “Get his identification?”

“Yeah. Apparently the suspect got too rattled to rob them after the killing. Wallet was in his pocket with fifteen dollars in it. Plenty of identification, too.”

When the coroner’s wagon had pulled away, I led Frank over to the churned-up area where the victims had struggled with the suspect. I had Frank stand in the spot where high-heel marks indicated the girl had been when she was shot. I stood in the prints made by the suspect and pointed my index finger at his right shoulder. There was no way to judge how far the bullet had gone after it passed through her shoulder, because that would depend on the elevation of the gun muzzle. But at least this gave us a rough idea of the slug’s direction of flight.

Marty Wynn, Vance Brasher, Frank, and I then began going over the whole area with flashlights. I was the one who finally located the gouged-out place in the dirt where the bullet had hit the ground. It was about thirty yards beyond where the shooting had taken place. I probed into the mud with a pocket knife and came up with the slug.

“Got it,” I called to the others.

I took the slug over to Lieutenant Jones, who examined it under his light and said, “Looks like a thirty-eight. Have to weigh it to make sure. Battered a little, but I think it’s good enough for comparison tests.”

That about wound up the investigation at the scene. Arrangements were made to have the Ford brought down to the Police Building when Sergeant McLaughlin was through with it.

Meantime Marty Wynn had been making periodic radio checks with the other units. He came over from the final one with a glum look on his face.

“Checked out every parked car within a mile radius,” he said. “Looks like we shut the barn door too late.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thought we probably had. The girl had been lying there long enough for bleeding to stop.”

Frank and I climbed back into our undercover car and headed back for the office.

The next day Frank and I decided to get an early start. The night watch doesn’t begin until 5:00 p.m., and ordinarily we check in about 4:30 to read the daily bulletin, look over the message book, and read our mail, so that we’ll be all ready to go by 5:00. Today we both got to the Police Building at 2:00 P.M.

I went up to the Stat’s Office, while Frank checked with Latent Prints to see if it’d turned anything. Stat’s ran the name Gig through the moniker file and came up with fourteen possibles. I had R & I weed out the dead, those in prison, and those known to be in other parts of the country. This reduced it to three, and none of the descriptions of the three even faintly matched our suspect’s. Another dead end.

I walked over to the Crime Lab and talked to Ray Pinker. Pinker is a slim, balding man with a retiring manner. He’s widely regarded as the top criminalistics man in the country, but you’d never learn this by talking to him. He’s also about the most modest man in the country.

Pinker told me that our suspect wore an 8½-B shoe with new rubber heels, and that he probably had some kind of leg injury.

“He favors his right foot,” he said. “It wasn’t injured in the struggle, either. The right footprints when he initially approached the car are as light as the ones when he walked away.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “How about the watch?”

“We could trace it through the manufacturer to the jeweler who bought it from the factory,” Pinker said. “But it might be faster to do it by legwork.” He handed me a card on which was written the symbol M-X-#.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Personal mark of the jeweler who did the engraving. Every jeweler has his own. Takes a microscope to see it. Locate the jeweler who uses that mark, and you should have the man who sold the watch.”

“Frank’ll love this,” I said.

“How’s that?”

“He’s crazy about legwork.”

Pinker smiled. “Must not be more than a couple of hundred jewelers in town.”

“Yeah,” I said. “From past experience, the one we want will be among the last ten.”

The only other information Pinker could give me was that the slug we had dug up was a .38, as Lieutenant Jones had guessed.

I went down to 314 and found Frank waiting there. “Anything from Latent Prints?” I asked.

He shook his head gloomily. “The thumbprint was the Marine’s. The palm print was the girl’s. McLaughlin says you owe him a Coke.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Stat’s and R & I couldn’t turn anything, either. Guess we’d better try C.I.I.”

We got off a teletype to George Brereton at C.I.I. up in Sacramento, giving all the information we had on the suspect. When this was off, Frank said, “What now?”

“Let’s get over to the hospital and talk to Nancy Meere,” I said. “Then we’ve got a little chore to do.”

“Yeah?”

I showed him the card bearing the jeweler’s symbol and told him what Ray Pinker had said.

“Legwork,” Frank groaned.

“What’s your beef?” I asked. “You could be worse off.”

“Huh?”

“You could have been a postman.”

3:11 p.m. We drove over to County Hospital and talked to Nancy Meere. The girl’s wound was not serious, and the hospital authorities said she would be able to go home in a few days. She was unable to tell us any more about the suspect than she had at the scene of the crime.

By then it was nearly check-in time for the night watch. We stopped for a cup of coffee and then checked into Homicide at 4:30 p.m. I logged in while Frank read the message book. There was a note for us to meet Captain Hertel in Chief Brown’s office.

We left the squad room and went down the hall to Room 311. Chief of Detectives Thad Brown had Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher in his office, as well as Captain Hertel. The chief was seated behind his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair. He was talking to Hertel, who was seated at the end of the desk next to him. Wynn and Brasher were on our left, seated in chairs.

Thaddeus Franklin Brown has been a policeman for over thirty years. For nine of them he was head of Homicide. Now he’s Deputy Chief of Police, in charge of the 653 officers and 39 civilian personnel of the Detective Bureau. He’s solidly built, with a straight gaze, a broad forehead, and a strong jaw.

When we came in, he looked at us through dark-rimmed glasses and said, “Friday, Smith.” He nodded toward chairs. “Sit down.”

We sat, and Chief Brown said, “You at all close to this lovers’ lane bandit, Friday?”

“Not within a country mile,” I told him. “We’ve run everything we know about him through Stat’s Office and R & I, but they haven’t been able to make him. We’re waiting for a kickback from George Brereton at C.I.I. now. If that washes out, we’ve got one lead.” I told him about the watch.

“Not much to go on,” the chief said, with a shake of his head. “It may have been a stolen watch.”

“Not likely,” Marty Wynn said. “He’s been careful so far to take nothing but money.”

“Well, get on it, anyway,” Chief Brown said. “And continue with your rolling stakeout. Afraid if you don’t get him tonight, your stakeout’s not going to net anything, though.”

I said, “What do you mean, sir?”

“Garcia up in S.I.D. has been working with some of the robbery victims all day, drawing a composite. We’re giving it to the papers in the morning.”

“Oh?” I said.

“That’s why I’ve called you all together. To let you know what you’re in for. We’re asking the papers to make the story page-one. Full description of the suspect, composite picture, MO — the works. Along with a warning to the public not to park in isolated spots.”

“That’ll tear it,” I said ruefully. “He’ll crawl in a hole and pull it in after him.”

“Yeah,” Chief Brown said. “But we can’t fool with the lives of innocent people. This man’s dangerous. Now that he’s killed once, he won’t hesitate to kill again.”

What he said was true. This was a type of problem that frequently confronts the police: the choice between effective strategy and the safety of the public. Wide publicity about the lovers’ lane bandit would make the task of catching him immeasurably harder. But since it might also save some lives, there was really no choice. Policemen are expected to risk their lives, if necessary, in the apprehension of criminals. They accept this as part of their duty. But they can’t risk the lives of private citizens, no matter how much it disturbs their plans to net a criminal.

It’s better to risk letting a criminal get away with the crimes he’s already committed than to catch him at the expense of more innocent lives.

Chapter V

5:02 p.m. We left Chief Brown’s office and began our tour of local jewelry stores. At each store we visited, we showed the inscription on the watch and also the jeweler’s symbol written on the card. The proprietor of the eleventh place we visited said he believed the symbol was one used by a jeweler named Maurice Gavin, who had a store in North Hollywood.

At 7:10 p.m. we arrived at Gavin’s Jewelry Store. Maurice Gavin turned out to be a thin, round-shouldered man in his late sixties. When we showed him the watch, he recognized the engraving as his work at once, but could not recall whom he had done it for.

“Nineteen forty-four’s a long time back,” he said dubiously. “Be a record of it in my books, of course. But if it was a cash sale, I wouldn’t have anything but the date and amount. Don’t ask my customers’ names unless they buy on time.”

“Would you check, please?” I asked.

“Take a while,” he said. “This’d be in the dead-storage file. Only keep stuff in the active file for seven years. Might take an hour to find it.”

I said, “How late are you open?”

“Nine p.m.”

“Then my partner and I will grab something to eat and be back about eight.”

“Fine,” Maurice Gavin said. “Ought to have the dope for you by then.”

We went back to the car, called in a Code 7, and found a nearby coffee shop. We sat at the counter to order.

As we waited for our food, Frank said, “Pretty lucky, huh?”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Only about two hours since we left the office. My feet were just beginning to hurt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“About eighty,” Frank said.

“Huh?”

“The temperature. About eighty.”

“Oh?” I said, glancing around. “I didn’t notice any thermometer.”

“Neither did I,” Frank told me. “My feet are my thermometer. Begin to hurt after two hours, it’s about eighty. Start hurting fifteen minutes earlier, it’s five degrees higher. Fifteen minutes later, it’s five degrees cooler.”

“Yeah?”

“Never fails,” he said. “Prove it to you.”

When the waitress brought our orders, Frank asked, “Know what the temperature is, miss? Outside, I mean.”

The girl walked down the counter to where a double thermometer hung on the wall over the cash register in a spot beyond our range of vision. Apparently it was one of those gadgets that show interior temperature on one side and exterior temperature on the other. “Eighty and a half,” she called back to Frank.

8:03 p.m. We returned to Gavin’s Jewelry Store. Maurice Gavin had managed to locate his record on the watch.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Happened to be a time-payment deal. Woman over on Burbank Boulevard bought it. A Miss Minerva Warden.”

Frank wrote the name and address in his notebook; we thanked the jeweler and left. As the address on Burbank was only a few blocks from the jewelry store, we drove over there. The place was an old home that had been converted into a rooming house for women. A plump, matronly looking woman of about sixty came to the door.

“Police officers, ma’am,” I said, showing her my ID. “This is my partner, Frank Smith. My name’s Friday.”

“Oh, goodness!” she said. “What’s he done now?”

“Ma’am?” I asked.

“Freddie. Is it something about my son Freddie?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “We’re looking for a Miss Minerva Warden. We were given this address.”

“Oh,” she said in a relieved tone. “I was afraid it was that hot rod again. If that boy doesn’t kill himself in that thing, he’ll drive me to my grave with worry.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Are you the landlady here?”

She nodded. “Mrs. Lefferts is my name. Minerva Warden, did you say?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She looked thoughtful, casting her memory backward in time. “Warden. Min Warden. I remember her. But, good lands, she hasn’t lived here in years.”

“Remember how many years?” Frank asked.

Mrs. Lefferts thought some more. “Somewhere in the mid-forties. She was only here one summer. She was on vacation from back East.”

I said, “Remember from where back East?”

The landlady shook her head. “I suppose I knew at the time, but I can’t recall after all these years. What is it you want with her?”

“Just like to talk to her,” I said. “Would you have a forwarding address somewhere?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t keep records like a hotel, young man. Just a ledger showing rent payments.”

Frank said, “Would you still have the one from 1944?”

“I still got them from 1920.”

“Could we see the 1944 one?”

“Sure,” Mrs. Lefferts said. “Come on in.”

She led us into an old-fashioned sitting room and left us there while she went off to another portion of the house. A few minutes later she returned with a small ledger.

The book covered a ten-year period, from 1940 to 1950. Each tenant had a separate page, on which was listed rent payments. Unfortunately nothing but the tenant’s name appeared at the top of the page. The entries on the page devoted to Minerva Warden indicated that she had paid ten dollars per week for a room during the months of July and August, 1944.

“Don’t you keep any other records at all?” I asked. “A sign-in book, for instance, showing roomers’ former addresses?”

“No. I told you this wasn’t a hotel, young man.”

“Do you remember anything about her?” Frank asked. “What she did for a living, for example?”

Mrs. Lefferts frowned in an effort to recall. “Think she was a schoolteacher,” she said finally. “Though I’m not sure. Been dozens of other women have come and gone since then, and I may be thinking of someone else.”

I said, “Recall what she looked like?”

“Vaguely. Around thirty, as I remember. Make her in her forties now. Short and kind of mousy-looking. Light-brown hair, I think.”

“She have any boyfriends?”

She shook her head decisively. “Never that came here. Don’t recall her ever having a visitor of any sort, male or female.”

I said, “The name Gig mean anything to you?”

Mrs. Lefferts corrugated her brow, then shook her head again. “Don’t recall ever hearing it.”

We left a card with the landlady and requested her to phone the office if she remembered anything further about her former tenant. By then it was past eight thirty, and time for us to return to headquarters and get the rolling stakeout underway for the night.

The rest of the evening, until 1 a.m., we cruised the suspect’s area of operations in an undercover car. He didn’t strike that night.

Wednesday morning, July 3rd, the newspapers gave full play to the story of the lovers’ lane bandit. A composite drawing of the suspect appeared on the front pages of all papers, and the public was warned that he was dangerous. Couples were advised not to park in secluded spots, and particularly to avoid the canyon roads in the Santa Monica Mountain district.

The result was as we had predicted. The bandit’s operations stopped completely. We continued the rolling stakeout for the rest of that week and all of the next without result. The newspaper publicity had the effect of making most couples stay away from the roads commonly used as lovers’ lanes. Even the few couples who had either missed the news announcements or decided to ignore the warnings, did not park long. We investigated every parked car we saw and advised the occupants to move on.

In response to our teletype to Sacramento, George Brereton at C.I.I. sent us a couple of dozen mug shots. We checked all of them out without result.

In the middle of July we abandoned the rolling stakeout.

Meantime Frank and I had exhausted every effort to locate Minerva Warden. Her former landlady could not remember what town, or even what state she had-been from. We managed to trace three other tenants who had been at the rooming house during the summer of 1944, but none could give us any information.

The case remained open.

Chapter VI

Wife-beating is another of the twenty-two things aside from murder that it is the responsibility of Homicide Division to investigate. Monday night, July 22nd, Frank and I were called out on a wife-beating case. The wife, who had phoned the police, had changed her mind by the time we arrived, and was belligerently on the side of her husband. When we started to question the husband, she attempted to hit Frank with a frying pan.

We finally got the couple settled down, and when it seemed evident that the woman didn’t want to press charges, no arrest was made. We got back to the office at 11:23 p.m.

As I logged us in, Frank said, “Seems Metro could handle wife-beating cases, doesn’t it? I get the shivers every time we start out on one.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“You know something?” he asked. “Over the years more wives have tried mayhem on me than suspects have. Get sore at their husbands and call in a complaint, then get sore at us when we answer it. Hard to figure.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How come they never swing at you, Joe? Always at me.”

I grinned at him. “You never noticed, huh?”

“What?”

“When we go out on a homicide, I usually do most of the questioning. When we get a wife-beating, I let you do it.”

The hot-shot speaker suddenly blared, “Attention all units. All units in the vicinity of Parkview and Seventh Street. Two-eleven and a shooting. Female victim believed dead. Units One-A-Fifty-one and One-A-Eighty-one handle the call. No description of suspect as yet. Attention all units—”

“Let’s roll,” I said to Frank.

It was approximately two miles from the Police Building to the edge of Douglas MacArthur Park, where the shooting had taken place. As we roared out of the parking-lot exit onto First Street, I pulled the transmission microphone from its bracket and called in, “Unit Seven-K-Ten to Control One. Seven-K-One-Oh to Control One.”

“Go ahead, Seven-K-One-Oh,” the reply came.

“We are answering call at Parkview and Seventh Street. Please advise additional information.”

The voice from the speaker said, “Now have description of suspect. Described as WMA, forty to fifty years, one hundred sixty to one eighty pounds, medium height, wearing a brown sport jacket, also wears glasses. Last seen driving blue 1955 Ford sedan, California license KXT-Two-Oh-Nine on Seventh from Seventh Street and Parkview. Rolling want already broadcast to available units in area. Witness being held at scene of crime. No further information at this time. KMA-Three-Six-Seven.”

I said, “Seven-K-Ten to Control One. Roger.”

“Something familiar about that description,” Frank said.

I glanced at him. “Yeah. Fits half the male population of Los Angeles.”

Two black-and-white radio cars and an ambulance were already at the scene when we arrived. They were parked on the west side of Parkview, a short distance from Seventh. Three of the uniformed policemen from the radio cars were holding back the small crowd that had gathered. The fourth was talking to a bald-headed man of about fifty, who was in shirt sleeves, slacks, and bedroom slippers. An Oldsmobile convertible was parked in a driveway between two houses, and a blanket-covered figure lay next to it on the lawn.

I showed my ID to the officer talking to the bald-headed man and said, “Friday, Homicide.”

“Yes, sir,” the policeman said. “Want to look at the victim first?”

He led us over to the blanket-covered figure and pulled back the blanket. The victim was a thin blonde somewhere in her forties, a prematurely dried-up, spinsterish-looking woman. A small spot of blood showed on her right breast, and a similar one on her left, indicating that she had been shot twice. Apparently she had died instantly, for she had hardly bled at all.

“Name’s Viola Carr,” the policeman said. “She lived there. Alone.” He nodded toward the house to the left of the driveway, then turned toward the bald-headed man. “This gentleman here identified her.”

“Oh?” I said. I looked the man over. “Want to tell us your name, sir?”

“Gerald Wesson,” he said. “That’s my house there.” He pointed to the building to the right of the driveway. “I saw the whole thing, Officer. Terrible thing, murderers coming right up on your lawn and killing your neighbors. Ought to be stopped.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “You actually saw the shooting?”

“Well, not that part of it,” he amended. “Heard the shots and got to my front door just in time to see the killer grab poor Viola’s purse and run. I was sitting in the front room watching television when it happened, so it was just a step to the door. Just luck, really.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Usually go to bed at eleven. Wife’s out playing bridge tonight, so I was waiting up.” He frowned. “Woman ought to be home by now. Silly bunch of hens, playing cards till this hour.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You say the suspect ran? Our information was that he escaped by car.”

“Oh, sure. That came from me. I told the man on the phone at Police Headquarters. Even gave him the license number. I mean he ran to his car, which was parked at the curb. He jumped in and took off around the corner, up Seventh.”

The uniformed officer said, “A description of the car and of the suspect were broadcast, Sergeant. There’s wants on both.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You get a good look at the suspect, Mr. Wesson?”

“Sure. Not while he was running, because his back was to me and it was dark. But when he pulled open his car door, the dome light automatically went on. Got a perfect side view of him. Middle-aged man with a smooth, round face and rimless glasses. Funny thing, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t look like a killer at all. Looked like a nice fellow.”

We continued to question the witness. He said he and his wife had lived next door to the victim for the past ten years, and that Miss Carr had lived there all her life. She had been born in the house next to his. Two years before, when both her parents had died, she had talked of moving to a small apartment, but had never got around to it. Wesson said she worked for a law firm as a stenographer, and had never been married.

“She often went out alone at night,” he said. “To a show or something. My guess is this holdup man spotted her for well-off on account of her convertible, followed her home, and stuck her up just as she got out of the car. I could have told him.”

“Huh?” I said.

“That he’d have to kill her. Viola wouldn’t let a nickel get away without a fight. Tightest woman I ever knew. Not that she had to be. Folks left her the house and some money, and she socked more in the bank every month from her paycheck. Must have twenty thousand or more stashed away. But tight! Always borrowing stuff from my wife. Cup of sugar, couple of eggs, stuff like that. Never bring it back, though. Few days back somebody gave her four dozen eggs. More than she could use, so she brought a dozen over. And you know what?”

“What?” I asked.

“She must’ve owed us about a gross. But instead of giving us the dozen as a part payment, she charged the wife fifty-five cents.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I figure when this robber demanded her money, she probably swung at him with her bag. So look what she got.” His gaze strayed to the blanket-covered figure, and he shook his head pityingly. “Not a soul in the world to leave it to, either. Bet she’s got twenty thousand in the bank, and not a soul to leave it to.”

Frank went back to the car to call for the Crime Lab. When he returned, he said, “They located the car. Just got the flash.”

“Yeah?”

“Abandoned at Seventh and Vermont. He only drove it a dozen blocks.”

I asked, “D.M.V. checking the registration?”

“Yeah. And I asked for somebody at Latent Prints to meet us at the car as soon as we’re finished here.”

I nodded. A third radio car pulled up, and I detailed the two officers in it to canvass neighboring houses to see if they could turn any witnesses in addition to Gerald Wesson. A few minutes later Lee Jones and a photographer arrived and photographed the body from various angles. After carefully scrutinizing the area around the body with a flashlight, Lieutenant Jones grunted.

“Not much to work on,” he said to me. “Best bet is the slugs. Aren’t any exit wounds, so they must still be in her.

I’ll call Dr. Newbarr in the morning and ask him to hold them for me after the autopsy.”

The two policemen I had detailed to canvass nearby homes came back with a negative report. None of the neighbors aside from Gerald Wesson had even heard the shots, or if they had, they had dismissed them as backfires.

We arranged with Gerald Wesson to come down to the Police Building and look at mug shots the next day.

12:28 a.m. Frank and I left the scene and drove over to Seventh and Vermont. The 1955 Ford was parked on the north side of Seventh, facing west. A squad car was parked in front of it, and one member of the uniformed team was watching Sergeant McLaughlin delicately apply fingerprint powder to the door handle. The other member sat in the squad car monitoring the radio.

McLaughlin looked up and said, “Hi, Joe. Frank.”

I nodded, and Frank said, “How you making it?” McLaughlin shook his head. “This boy was a pro. So far everything’s been wiped. Afraid you’re out of luck with D.M.V., too.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He nodded toward the uniformed policeman. “Officer here tells me they just got a radio report from Auto Theft. Car was reported stolen earlier tonight. Suspect must have heisted it just for the job.”

That was disappointing, for it meant the car was a dead end unless the suspect had left his prints on it somewhere. We watched McLaughlin finish with the outside of the car and begin on the interior. After a few moments he said, “Steering wheel and glove compartment are clean. One place he may have missed, though.”

Holding the left front door open, he stooped and brushed powder over the little knob that controlled the seat adjustment. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction.

“Got something?” Frank asked.

McLaughlin nodded. “Suspect’s legs must be a different length than the car owner’s. Beautiful thumbprint. Must have forgotten he had to adjust the seat.”

He photographed the print, then lifted it with Scotch tape, transferred it to a card, and wrote the identifying information on the back of the card.

“All yours,” he said to the uniformed policeman, beginning to pack up his equipment.

Chapter VII

The next afternoon we met with Gerald Wesson at the Homicide Office and had him look at mug books. He was unable to identify the suspect.

Meantime the owner of the stolen 1955 Ford was checked out by another team, and it was determined that he had no connection with, or knowledge of the bandit. The Stat’s Office made us a run on the suspect’s description and MO, and came up with a number of possibles. All of them checked out clean.

Frank called the Crime Lab and learned from Ray Pinker that both of the slugs recovered from Viola Carr’s body were in good condition and would be usable for comparison if we ever located the murder weapon. When he hung up, Frank had a thoughtful look on his face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“This suspect’s description keeps sticking in my mind, Joe. Rings a familiar bell.”

I know Frank’s moods, and I know his tenacious memory. I let him worry out the answer by himself without saying anything.

“Got it!” he suddenly said. “The Nick Grotto kill!”

It took a moment for me to sort this out in my mind, for we had worked on a dozen other cases since the murder of the Marine sergeant and the wounding of his girl companion. When it finally clicked, I said in a slow voice, “Yeah. Forty to fifty, round, pleasant face, rimless glasses. And a killer. Could be. Except guys stupid enough to kill don’t often have sense enough to change their MO’s.”

“It’s a chance,” Frank said. “In this case we forced him to drop his original MO with all that publicity. Let’s check it out. The Crime Lab still has that bullet he put through the Meere girl’s shoulder.”

I picked up the phone and called Ray Pinker. I told him Frank’s idea and asked him to compare the bullets from the Viola Carr kill with the one that had wounded Nancy Meere. Pinker said he’d call me back.

Fifteen minutes later he phoned back. I took the call. When I hung up again, Frank looked at me questioningly.

“Jackpot,” I said. “The bullets came from the same gun.”

Now that we had substantial evidence that the suspect was the former lovers’ lane bandit, we called Latent Prints and asked for a check of the partial print developed on the wallet of the first lovers’ lane victim against the thumbprint that had been brought out on the Ford’s seat-adjustment knob. The two failed to match, but Latent Prints explained that this didn’t eliminate the possibility of their having been made by the same person. They assumed that the print on the seat-adjustment knob was probably of a left thumb, as the left hand would normally be used in adjusting a car seat. The print on the wallet could be that of a right thumb.

We got out a local and an APB giving the new information on the suspect and requesting all officers to familiarize themselves with the suspect’s appearance as pictured in his composite drawing.

But the suspect remained at large.

During the following week three more lone women driving convertibles were held up by a bandit in the vicinity of MacArthur Park. The MO and description of the suspect were the same in all cases.

On Wednesday, July 31st, Frank and I got together with Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher of Robbery to discuss the case. As a result of this discussion, Frank and I went in to talk to Captain Hertel.

When we were seated in his office and had cigarettes going, I said, “We’ve been talking over this convertible bandit with Robbery, Skipper. We’ve got a plan.”

“Yeah?” the captain said.

“It stacks up like this. We’re pretty sure this is the same man who was knocking over lovers’ lane couples last month, and killed that Marine. He’s just changed his MO.”

The captain nodded. “That seems pretty evident.”

I said, “He seems to have pretty set habits, though. Now that he’s picked a new racket, he sticks to it without variation. His victims are always lone women driving convertibles with the tops down. We figure this is because he can get a full view into the cars, and be sure they’re alone.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He tails a victim to her home in a stolen car, parks when she stops in front of where she lives, or turns into her driveway, steps up and sticks a gun in her face just as she gets out of the car. As soon as he has the money, he gets back in his car, drives a few blocks, and abandons it. Probably he has his own parked near where he abandons it.”

“I see,” Captain Hertel said. “So what’s your idea?”

“This isn’t as big an area to cover as when he was hitting the lovers’ lanes. He’s concentrating on women who live in the MacArthur Park district. There’s a lot of apartment houses around there, you know, where women art students and stenographers and so on live. About the best district in town for his purpose. Lots of lone women driving home alone at night, and a lot of them owning convertibles.”

“So?”

“We thought we’d dangle some bait,” I said. “Give him a woman riding alone in a convertible with the top down.”

The captain frowned. “A policewoman, you mean? This guy’s a killer.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we’d make it foolproof. We’d have stakeouts all along the route she followed. If she picked up a tail, she could signal the first stakeout she passed by flashing her lights.”

Captain Hertel continued to frown. “Still, she’d have to be alone in the convertible, or he wouldn’t take the bait. If there was a slip-up, we might have a dead policewoman on our hands.”

“I said we’d make it foolproof,” I told him. “She won’t be alone.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll be on the floor in the back seat. With a gun in my hand.”

After some discussion Captain Hertel agreed to the plan and said he would take it up with Chief Brown. The next day he told us that the chief had given his approval.

As there were no convertibles in the motor pool, we made arrangements with a fellow officer to borrow his personal car. We considered having Communications fit it out with a two-way radio, but finally decided against this. With the top down, the microphone on the dashboard would be clearly visible to passing motorists, and might tip off the suspect that his proposed victim was a decoy.

Because of the dangerous nature of the assignment, we decided that the policewoman we used should be a volunteer. After a discussion of various girls’ appearances and qualifications, we made up a list of six we thought would be most suitable for the job. All six volunteered. We picked Harriet Shaffer, who ordinarily worked out of Valley Juvenile Division. Harriet doesn’t look very formidable. Only about five feet five, with brown eyes and a fair complexion, she’s about as feminine-looking as they come. She would look like an easy touch to the suspect. However, this was only surface appearance. She is an experienced policewoman, and we knew we could count on her to keep a cool head in an emergency.

As all of the robberies had taken place late at night, we decided to dangle the bait from 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. nightly. We worked out a route for Harriet to follow starting at Eighth and Alvarado, driving west on Eighth to Hoover, north to Wilshire Boulevard, east through the park to Witmer, north to Third Street, west to Alvarado, then south alongside the park again to the starting point. This effectively crisscrossed the whole area of the bandit’s operations.

We settled on three stakeout cars as enough, one at Eighth and Hoover, one at Wilshire and Witmer, and the third at Third and Alvarado. Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher would handle the first, Frank and another Homicide officer named Jack Emlet would be in the second car, and a second Homicide team would take the third spot. Harriet was instructed to drive with her ordinary lights on until she picked up a tail. When she got a taker, she would flick on her highway lights, then lower them again at the first stakeout point she passed. She would then lead the suspect to some quiet street, pull into a driveway as though she had arrived home, and wait for him to make his move. The stakeout cars we were using were equipped with triplex radios. The car she signaled would cue the other two cars by radio, and all three would converge on the spot.

It took us two days to complete all arrangements, so it was Saturday, August 3rd, before we were ready to roll. The three stakeout cars and the convertible left the Police Building at 9:45 p.m.

The convertible was a 1956 Ford. I lay on my left side on the rear floor, my knees drawn up to my chest and my head pillowed on my left arm. I held my gun in my hand, as it would be difficult to draw in that position.

It was not a comfortable position. In addition, the motion of the car had a lulling effect, and I found it hard to keep from dropping off to sleep. By 11:30 p.m. I began to wonder if there wasn’t some simpler way to catch bandits.

I called up to Harriet, “Pull up somewhere for a minute. I’m about to freeze permanently into this shape.”

“All right,” she said, and started to slow. But immediately she picked up speed again. In a low voice she said, “Think we just got a taker.”

I forgot the necessity of getting out for a stretch. “Where are we?” I asked quickly.

“Going east on Wilshire. Witmer’s just ahead.”

Wilshire and Witmer was Frank and Emlet’s stakeout point. I said, “Signal the stakeout when you turn left, but keep going toward Third. If your tail turns left, too, pick a driveway just short of Third. That’ll give the stakeout at Third and Alvarado time to close in, too.”

“Roger,” Harriet said in a calm voice.

I felt the car turn left. “Still with us?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. The stakeout car just joined the parade.”

“Can you make out the suspect’s appearance in your rearview mirror?”

“No,” she said. “Just that it’s a lone man. He’s driving a Chevrolet coupe.”

We were driving at no more than twenty-five miles an hour. The convertible slowed to fifteen. “Third’s just ahead,” Harriet said. “I’ve spotted a driveway. Here we go.”

The car turned right into the driveway and stopped. “He’s slowing,” Harriet whispered. “Now he’s parking at the curb.” There was a long pause before she said, “He’s not getting out of the car. He’s just sitting there.”

“You sit, too,” I directed. “Let him make his play. What are Frank and Jack doing?”

“They’re parked fifty feet behind him. Here comes the other stakeout car, too. It’s parking across the street. The suspect doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to it.”

“Sit tight,” I said.

Five minutes passed without anything happening. I knew none of the stakeout men would move until the suspect did. We wanted to take him in the act.

“Think he’s waiting for me to get out of the car?” Harriet asked in a low voice.

“Let him wait,” I said. “We’ve got all night.”

Another five minutes passed before the man in the Chevrolet finally decided to move.

“He’s getting out of the car,” Harriet said softly. “He’s heading this way. The stakeouts are getting out and closing in, too.”

I gripped my gun and got my left hand underneath me, ready to push myself erect.

“Fifteen feet away,” Harriet whispered. “Ten now.”

A hesitant voice from a few feet away said, “Having trouble, lady?”

I came up from the floor like a jack-in-the-box, my gun leveled. “Police officer, mister. Hold it right there!”

He was a tall, gangling blond kid of about nineteen. Before he could even react, Frank was on him from behind and had his arms twisted behind his back. The youngster’s eyes bugged out when he found himself surrounded by three other detectives leveling guns at him.

Jack Emlet gave the suspect a fast shake and said, “He’s clean.”

Frank released his arms. I stepped from the car, and we all put our guns away, since it was pretty obvious this wasn’t the fish we’d been angling for.

“Wha... what is this?” the blond boy gasped.

“What’s your name, son?” I asked.

“Mar — Martel. Harry Martel.”

“Got a driver’s license?”

“Sure,” he said. He pulled out a wallet and thrust it toward me, eager to co-operate.

Without touching the wallet, I said, “Take out the license.”

He looked at me blankly for a moment, then withdrew the license and gave it to me. His name was listed as Harry Martel, and his address was on Hoover. I handed the license back, and he put it away.

“Why were you tailing this car, Harry?” I asked.

“Tailing it?” he said in a tone indicating such a thought had never occurred to him. “I just thought the lady was in some kind of trouble. She sat there without getting out of the car for so long. I was just offering to help.”

“Sure,” I said. “You weren’t trying to pick her up, were you?”

“Me?” he asked on a high note. “I was just being helpful. Honest, mister, I didn’t mean anything.”

Frank said, “Ever take a fall, Harry?”

“A what?”

“Ever been arrested?”

“Me? No, sir. Well, for speeding once.”

“Never been arrested for mashing?”

“Mashing?” he said in a shocked tone. “Not me, mister. You’ve got this all wrong. I wasn’t trying to pick up this lady.”

“You’ve got a lousy technique if you were,” I told him. “You wouldn’t score one time in a hundred.”

We took Harry Martel down to the Police Building and ran his name through R & I. There was no record on him. His description did not answer that of any recently reported mashers.

He was released with an admonition not to attempt to follow any more strange women.

For the next two nights we continued to dangle the bait without getting a rise from the convertible bandit. Harriet, being an attractive woman, drew the attention of several more mashers, but none went so far as to attempt to approach her. In all cases they merely drove slowly by when she parked, looking her over but apparently not having the courage to make an overt advance.

Tuesday, August 6th, at 11:42 p.m., we were cruising as usual. I was half dozing on the floor of the car when Harriet suddenly said, “Another taker, Joe.”

I came awake instantly. “Where are we?”

“We just passed the stakeout at Third and Alvarado. I won’t have a chance to signal again until we hit Eighth and Hoover.”

“That’s Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher,” I said. “Keep going straight on Eighth after you signal them, instead of turning right. He might get suspicious if you start circling.”

“Roger,” she said. Then, after a moment, “Joe, I have a feeling this one is our fish.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I got a glimpse of his face when we turned left at Alvarado. It was too late to signal the stakeout, but he answers the description.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Middle-aged, round face, rimless glasses. He’s driving a Buick sedan.”

A feeling of elation rose in me, only to be immediately replaced by one of consternation. There was a loud bang, and the convertible swerved to the right. Harriet wrenched it straight again, we bumped along for a few yards and slowed to a stop.

“A broken bottle in the street,” Harriet whispered. “I saw it just too late. He’s pulled past and is stopping just ahead of us, Joe.”

We couldn’t have picked a worse spot for a front-tire blowout. We were exactly halfway between two stakeout points. And we had no radio communication.

Chapter VIII

Harriet said, “He’s getting out of his car, Joe.”

My palm was sweating against the butt of my gun. If the man was the bandit, and decided to shoot it out, he was almost certain to get in the first shot. He could be the bandit, he could be another masher, or he could be an innocent citizen offering to help a damsel in distress. I couldn’t fire until I was sure, and about the only way to make sure was to give him a chance to shoot first.

“What’s he look like?” I asked.

“Forty-five, maybe,” she said in a barely audible tone. “Five nine, a hundred seventy to seventy-five. Pleasant face. Joe, it’s him. He answers the description to a T.”

I got my left hand braced beneath me.

“He’s getting close,” Harriet whispered. “He’s reaching into his pocket now.”

“Drop sidewise in the seat,” I said, and heaved myself upward into a crouch, my gun swinging forward. “Police officer, mister!” I snapped. “Hold it right there!”

I was conscious that Harriet had obeyed my order and was lying prone across the seat. But only from the edge of my vision, for my attention was centered on the man fifteen feet in front of the car and off to one side. He didn’t look at all dangerous. He had a round, bland face with an amiable expression on it. In the headlights of our car, his rimless glasses glinted like oversized eyes.

He moved faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. His hand was a blur as it came from his pocket. He fired without aiming, squeezing the trigger as the gun came up. My gun went off a fraction of a second later.

Either he was a marvelous shot or lucky. His slug caught me high in the left arm, jarring me backward so that I sat heavily on the seat. My shot must have been ten feet over his head.

He fired again, putting a neat hole in the windshield. The bullet would also have put a neat hole in my head if I hadn’t slid sidewise in the seat in order to shoot around the windshield at him.

I missed with my second shot, and then he was running back toward his car. I got off a third just as he dived in front of it. I heard my slug whang into his right front fender.

I was out of the car then and moving away from it in order to draw his fire away from Harriet. A bullet whizzed past me as I found the protection of a tree on the opposite side of the sidewalk.

“Give it up, mister,” I called. “Throw out your gun.”

A bullet plunked into the other side of the tree in answer. Each of us had now spent three rounds. Quickly I reloaded and threw three rapid shots at the Buick, hoping he would think that left my gun empty.

Apparently he did. Leaving the protection of the Buick, he broke across the street for the areaway between two apartment houses. I took off after him just as two spaced shots sounded from the convertible. Harriet had sat up and was firing with the same methodicalness she would have used on the practice range.

As I sprinted past the Buick, I saw the man stagger from one of Harriet’s shots. Then he disappeared into the blackness between the two buildings.

I made the back yard at a dead run. It was backed by an eight-foot board fence, and I could see the silhouette of the suspect straddling the top of it. I took careful aim and fired.

In the darkness he didn’t make much of a target, but I must have hit him, for he let out a yell. He made it the rest of the way over the fence, though, and dropped to the alley on the other side.

Ramming my pistol into its holster, I ran at the fence, jumped upward and grasped the top with both hands.

In the excitement I had forgotten my arm wound. There was no grip at all in my left hand. It slipped free, and my weight tore loose the grip of my other hand. My feet hit the ground with a jar.

From the other side of the fence I could hear feet pounding away down the alley, the sound fading in volume as the fleeing man put distance between us. I fumbled along the fence until I found a gate in it, but it was padlocked.

There wasn’t anything to do but return to the street.

The shots had brought people all along the street to their windows and doors. Harriet had put her gun away and was telling a group of people who had spilled from one of the apartment houses that it was police business, and to go back inside. They just stood there, gaping at her, open-mouthed.

I said to her, “He made it over a fence. We’ll have to use one of these people’s phones.”

She looked at me. Her eyes widened at the splotch of blood on my arm, and she said, “You’re hit, Joe!”

“Scratch,” I said. I wasn’t being heroic. While the wound was beginning to pain, I could tell by the use I still had of my arm that it was only a flesh wound. “We have to get this on the air.”

I asked the group of civilians generally, “One of you got a phone we can use?”

They all started to talk at once. An old man in a dressing gown talked the loudest, though. He got across that he lived on the first floor right inside the apartment entrance, and that he had a phone.

Thirty seconds later I had Communications on the wire. A minute after that sirens began to sound, as every available unit in the area responded to a Code 3. When a policeman reports being shot at, it’s always a Code 3 call. No other report gets as prompt and complete response. Not just because policemen stick together. Few criminals, even hardened ones, will fire at an armed officer. When one does, we know he’s the most dangerous kind of criminal, and is a menace to every person he meets until he is caught. So we go all out to get him.

The three stakeout cars got there first, arriving almost simultaneously. We didn’t have to brief them on what had happened, because I had given the whole story to Communications and it had been relayed over the air. Every unit in the area knew the details of the gunfight, and scores of police officers were now blocking off the whole district and making a systematic search for the suspect.

I hadn’t mentioned my wound to Communications, though. When the aged tenant of the apartment from which I had phoned let Frank and Jack Emlet in, they were surprised to find me shirtless and Harriet putting a temporary dressing on my arm with some bandage material she had borrowed from the old man.

“You nicked bad, Joe?” Frank asked, with concern.

“Flesh wound,” I said. “Won’t lay me up any.”

“Better get over to Central Receiving,” Jack advised.

I started to draw my bloodied shirt and jacket back on. “Plan to,” I said. “Nothing more we can do here, anyway. The situation’s under control. Probably got a hundred or more officers screening the area.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “What happened, anyway, that you tried to take the suspect halfway between stakeout points?”

“Blowout. We meant to lead him up Eighth past Wynn and Brasher, but we ran over a broken bottle. He decided it was a good opportunity to hit — a lone woman with a flat tire on a deserted street. There wasn’t anything to do but play it out.”

Frank shook his head gloomily. “Tough break. One of those things you can’t figure.”

“We should net him, anyway,” I said. “He can’t get far with two slugs in him.”

We went outside then, after thanking the old man for the use of his apartment. While Frank was calling for Latent Prints to come out and go over the Buick the suspect had abandoned, Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher jacked up the convertible and replaced the blown-out tire with the spare. Then Harriet drove me over to Central Receiving, where I had the temporary dressing she had put on replaced by a permanent one.

It was past 1:30 a.m. when we got back to the Police Building. We checked in long enough to find out whether or not the suspect had been picked up.

He hadn’t. Somehow or other he had managed to squeeze through the police net with two bullets in him and get clear away.

Chapter IX

Although I felt perfectly all right and capable of pulling at least restricted duty, the captain insisted I take a week’s sick leave because of my wound. I spent it lying around my apartment catching up on my reading.

Frank phoned every day to find out how I was and brief me on what was going on at Homicide. Especially on the progress of the convertible-bandit case, as I had a particular interest in that. Most police work is impersonal, but when a suspect puts a bullet in you, you tend to develop a personal interest in his apprehension.

There hadn’t been any progress. Latent Prints had developed a number of prints from the Buick the suspect had abandoned, but it turned out to be another stolen car, and all the prints checked out as having been made by the owner or members of his family. A pair of ordinary white work gloves were found on the seat of the car. Apparently they had been worn by the suspect when he’d stolen it, and he hadn’t taken them off until he got out of the Buick to approach the convertible. They were of a type purchasable in any dime store, and were untraceable.

Several spots of blood had been found on the board fence, proving that the suspect had been wounded. The Crime Lab established the blood type as O+, which gave us one more factor of information about him. All physicians within a hundred-mile radius had been alerted to be on the lookout for a man of the suspect’s description requesting medical attention for gunshot wounds.

The newspapers became interested in the case and gave it page-one publicity. As the suspect’s known record was now two murders plus the injury of three other people, one a police officer, he began to attain the local status of Public Enemy Number One. When one feature writer referred to him as the “Courteous Killer,” the name caught the public fancy, and the suspect became a general topic of conversation.

All this publicity had the usual effect. Hundreds of people gave us tips about the suspect’s location or identity. Some honestly believed they had seen him; others were merely cranks hoping to share in the publicity. Seven men, none of them even faintly resembling the suspect, walked into the Homicide office and confessed. The suspect was reported as simultaneously having been seen in Santa Monica, Burbank, downtown Los Angeles, and as far away as San Diego.

All these leads had to be painstakingly checked out, but came to nothing. The bandit had disappeared completely.

In an all-out effort to locate him, composite pictures and all known data about him were sent to every major city in the country. Meantime, local newspapers and local business groups began posting rewards for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Eventually these rewards grew to five thousand dollars. The reward notices were sent to all major cities as fast as they were announced, so as to insure more than routine treatment of the want.

I reported back to duty on Tuesday, August 13th, at 4:21 p.m. I stopped by the captain’s office first to check in. When I left there and walked into the squad room, Frank, Jack Emlet, and Tony Ramirez had already logged in for the night watch. All three shook my hand as though I had been away for a year instead of a mere week.

Of course, after this display of comradeship I had to listen to the usual riding about malingering that any police officer takes on his return from sick leave. Jack Emlet asked, “How was the fishing?” and Tony Ramirez said, “It wasn’t fishing, Jack. It was that blonde over in Intelligence. Didn’t you notice she’s been out all week, too?”

Amador Ramirez, nicknamed Tony, and Jack Emlet are partners. Ramirez is broad and dark and good-looking, Emlet slim and wiry and wears a blond crewcut. They practice a running end-man act, usually with each other as targets, but today they both concentrated on me. For five minutes I listened to suggestions ranging from one that I had deliberately stepped in front of a bullet in order to get a week off, to one that I had really only cut myself shaving.

I grinned it off and logged myself in.

“Anything going?” I asked Frank.

“Nothing in the message book,” he said. “Some mail in your box.”

Frank had been forwarding my mail to my home address while I was out, so only the day’s accumulation was there. I dropped a couple of ads in the wastebasket and examined the lone envelope that remained. It was a legal-size post-office envelope, addressed by pencil in block letters to Sergeant JOE FRIDAY, HOMICIDE DIVISION, POLICE BUILDING, 150 LOS ANGELES STREET, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA. It was postmarked from Los Angeles at 6:30 p.m. the previous day, and there was no return address.

Ripping it open, I drew out a news clipping and a single sheet of paper. The clipping was from a week previous, and described the gunfight between the convertible bandit and Harriet and me. This was before the newspapers had begun giving the case page-one treatment, so it was a bare account of the fracas. Both Harriet Shaffer’s and my full names and ranks were given, however.

The message, like the address on the envelope, was printed by pencil in block letters. There was no salutation and no signature. It read:

you think your a smart badge, nobody BURNS ME AND LIVES, COP. START SWETTING.

In the process of unfolding the sheet, I had already left my fingerprints on it, and possibly had obscured those made by the sender, if any. I dropped the message, the clipping, and the envelope onto a table before any more damage could be done.

“Look at this,” I said.

Frank, Emlet, and Ramirez gathered around as I spread the anonymous note flat with a pair of pencils. The three of them read it in silence.

Then Jack Emlet said, “Didn’t go far in school, did he?”

“How would you know?” Ramirez inquired. “If it wasn’t printed, you couldn’t even read it.”

Emlet only grinned at him.

Frank said seriously, “This guy must be a psycho, Joe. Nobody with all his marbles would mail a thing like that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe it’s a break, though. We’ll shoot it down to Latent Prints.”

With one of the pencils, I pushed the three items into an empty file folder. Then Frank and I took it downstairs to Room 208. Sergeant McLaughlin and Bill Tucker were on duty. It took them only a few minutes to determine that the only prints on the message and clipping were mine. There were a few smudged prints on the envelope, probably from post-office handling, but none of them was good enough for comparison purposes.

“Must have worn gloves,” McLaughlin said. “Doubt that any of the prints on the envelope would be his, even if we could bring them out. He wouldn’t be likely to make a mistake with the envelope after being so careful with the inside contents.”

“Let’s, see what Pinker can do with it,” I said to Frank.

We took the elevator up to the fourth floor and went to the Crime Lab. After examining the items, Ray Pinker shook his head.

“Common-type bond paper that’s sold through thousands of outlets,” he said. “Post-office envelope. We might establish the brand of pencil by running a spectogram of the graphite, but what would it prove? Pencils are sold through thousands of outlets, too. Best bet would be Larry Sloan.”

Larry Sloan is the department’s handwriting expert. We took the material to him. After studying the message and the envelope through a magnifying glass, he, too, shook his head.

“Best I can do is make a suggestion,” he said. “Possibly the two spelling errors — ‘your’ for ‘you’re’ and ‘swetting’ for ‘sweating’ — were deliberate. The attempt of a literate person to make you think he was uneducated.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked.

“I don’t figure it,” Sloan said. “I only suggest it as a possibility. But look here.” He pointed to the printed message. “The printing is pretty regular. It’s no draftsman’s job, but it’s even and legible. There are no hesitation marks, and no inverted letters. Semiliterate people sometimes make N’s and S’s backward. This was done by someone who at least is used to holding a pencil. Furthermore, while there’s a little idiom used, there are no grammatical errors. Note the comma before the word cop. Most people uneducated enough to misspell as common a word as sweating wouldn’t use that comma. The line would read, ‘Nobody burns me and lives cop.’”

“So he might actually be a college graduate?”

“He might,” the handwriting expert said. “He might also be as illiterate as he sounds. It’s too small a sample to make much of a guess.”

That left us with little more than we had had before the anonymous note arrived. We did have three additional items of information. We knew the suspect was still in Los Angeles, or at least had been up to the time the letter was mailed the day before. We knew his wounds were sufficiently healed for him to walk to a mailbox.

And we knew he wanted to kill me.

This wasn’t the first threat I had ever received. I couldn’t count the number of convicted felons who had snarled threats of revenge as they were led away to prison after being convicted on the basis of my testimony. Every police officer is used to such threats, and dismisses them for what they are: the childish and momentary anger of caught criminals railing at their fate.

But this wasn’t in the same category. This threat was from a dangerous and nameless killer who I knew wouldn’t hesitate an instant to carry out his threat, if he had the opportunity. He had already twice demonstrated that he would kill on the slightest provocation.

Then another thought struck me. Harriet Shaffer’s name had been included in the news item, too, and the item had said that it was believed the first wound the bandit had received had been inflicted by Harriet’s gun.

I went to the phone to call Valley Juvenile Division and find out if Harriet had received a similar threatening note.

When I got her on the phone, I said, “Joe Friday, Harriet. How are things going?”

“Fine, Joe,” she said. “What’s up? Another decoy assignment?”

“Not tonight,” I told her. “Just checking up to see how you survived the ordeal of that night.”

“Me?” she said. “You were the one hurt.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Anything interesting going up that way?”

“Just, the usual. Runaways, vandalism, Two-eighty-eights.” Her voice sounded a little puzzled.

Since she didn’t mention an anonymous note, I knew she hadn’t received one. There was no point in upsetting her by telling her about mine.

“Well, see you around,” I said.

“Sure, Joe,” she said. She sounded even more puzzled.

I hung up.

While I had been phoning, Frank had been preparing a supplemental local bulletin giving the information that the suspect was still believed to be in town, and asking all officers to be on the lookout for him. He showed it to me, and when I agreed with the wording, he got it out.

“Let’s go talk to the skipper,” I said.

We went in to see Lieutenant Newton. As it was now well past 6:00 p.m., Captain Hertel had gone home and the night-watch commander was in charge.

After showing the lieutenant the anonymous note and explaining what we had done about it, I said, “Harriet Shaffer hasn’t received a similar one, but the suspect knows from the news item that she put a bullet in him, too. We think she ought to have some protection.”

The lieutenant thoughtfully scratched an ear. “Think she’d accept it?”

I said, “We are going to suggest not asking her. Just put her under protective surveillance until we net this guy.” Lieutenant Newton nodded. “Might be best. I’ll check with Chief Brown and see what he says. I think he’s still around.”

“Might suggest stakeouts on me, too,” I said. “If this joker’s serious, it’s the best break we’ve had yet. We might catch him in the act of potting at me.”

After thinking this over, the lieutenant said, “Yeah, I guess we better stake you out. This guy is top priority, and we haven’t a whisper on where he’s holed up. But if he means this threat, we know where he might show. Somewhere you are. Stick around while I talk to the chief.”

He rose from his desk and walked off down the hall to the chief of detectives’ office. He was gone only about ten minutes.

“All set up,” he said when he walked back into the office. “The chief’s on the phone arranging it now. We figure he won’t try to take you while you’re on duty, but he might at your place, or en route to work or home. So starting tonight, you’ll be under surveillance every minute you’re off duty. There’ll be three triplex-radio cars tailing you to and from work, alternating every few blocks so that the suspect won’t tab them as tails. They’ll also be on you whenever you leave home during off-duty hours. To make it easy for them, we want you to phone in ten minutes before you leave your place any time you plan to go anywhere off-duty, even if it’s only down to the corner for a paper. That’ll give Communications time to alert the stakeouts, and eliminate the chance of a slipup.”

I nodded. It didn’t occur to any of us that there was anything strange about an armed police officer suggesting and getting this type of protection against a lone bandit. It was simply normal routine. It’s only in western stories that lawmen go up against killers man-to-man. In dealing with a dangerous criminal, you can’t play Marquis of Queensberry rules. You use every facility you have.

Even with stakeouts following me around, it wasn’t an even contest. On the surface the odds were all on my side. I was backed by an army of 4,400 police officers, armed with the finest law-enforcement equipment in the world. My opponent was a lone man, hunted and in danger of being recognized every time he stepped outdoors.

That was only on the surface, though. I was a known quantity to the suspect; he was an unknown one to me. If he didn’t already know where my Westlake-district apartment was, he could find out by the simple method of looking in a city directory. Without much difficulty he could learn my daily routine: the time I left for work, the route over which I drove my Ford to the Police Building, the time I usually arrived home after work. He had the advantage of being able to pick his time and place. A single shot from a recessed doorway when I stopped for a traffic light would end the contest.

On the other hand, I had no idea where to look for him. I had seen him but once, fleetingly, at night. I knew practically nothing about him, except that he was a killer. Not even his name.

It was a little like fighting a wraith.

Chapter X

During the next three weeks there was no activity on the part of the Courteous Killer, and no progress made toward his apprehension. The stakeouts on Harriet Shaffer and me continued without result.

You can’t continue such an operation indefinitely. On Wednesday, September 4th, Frank and I attended a conference in Chief Brown’s office during which it was decided that the suspect must have left the city. The stakeouts were pulled that night.

Three days later, Saturday, September 7th, was my day off.

I arrived home from a movie at 9:30. I shucked off my coat, laid my gun and holster on an end table, loosened my tie, kicked off my shoes and put on lounging slippers. I was having a sandwich and a glass of milk in the Pullman kitchen when the doorbell sounded.

I was surprised, because I don’t often have visitors at that hour. When the Detective Headquarters Unit calls me out on a case, it always contacts me by phone. As I headed for the door, it occurred to me that my phone might be out of order, and that Headquarters Unit might have sent a cruising squad car to deliver a message. As the only message I would be getting at this time of night would be to go out on an emergency case, I hoped that my guess was wrong.

It was. But when I opened the door, I wished I could reverse the hope.

He stood there in the hall with an amiable smile on his face, his eyes glinting cheerfully behind his rimless glasses. He wore a light-tan Panama hat, a brown sport coat, and light-tan slacks. A blue-steel .38 revolver pointed at my belt buckle.

He didn’t say anything. He merely moved forward. I didn’t say anything, either. I moved backward.

He pushed the door closed with his left hand, looked me up and down, and decided I didn’t need a shakedown. His gaze quickly flicked over the room, settled on the holstered gun lying on the end table. He circled around me sidewise, keeping me covered, until he reached the table. He lifted the gun without taking his eyes from me and dropped it in his pocket.

I said, “You may think you’re holding the cards right now, mister, but your neck is out a mile. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Didn’t you get my note?” he asked in a soft, pleasant voice.

“Yeah, I got it. That wasn’t any smarter than you’re playing now. We figured you might be along. This place is staked out like a military garrison. Give it up and put down that gun, and you’ll get out of here alive.”

He smiled cheerfully. “The stakeouts were pulled two nights ago. I’ve been driving past right under their noses once every night for three weeks. The trouble with you badges is you haven’t got enough patience.”

So much for that attempted bluff. “All right,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I thought you got my note.”

He wanted to play cat and mouse. His ego stuck out all over him. He wasn’t content just to pull the trigger. He had to draw it out by toying with me, by strutting a little to show how much smarter he was than the police. It figured. He had to be an egomaniac in order to go gunning for a cop in the first place.

“Think you can get away with burning a police officer?” I asked.

“You fellows haven’t had much luck with me so far,” he said, with a grin of enjoyment.

“We will, mister,” I assured him. “Maybe not me personally. But you’ve had it. You don’t know it, but you reached the end of the line when you pulled your first kill.”

His tone suddenly changed. In a flat voice as deadly as the hiss of a cobra, he said, “Pretty brave talk from a dead man.”

I felt the hair rise along the back of my neck. But I didn’t let my expression change. “You’re really stupid enough to carry out your threat, are you? Want to know something?”

His expression smoothed as swiftly as it had become menacing. “What?” he asked in his previously cheerful tone.

“You could have blown town weeks ago. We’d almost given you up. We thought you had blown, until you mailed that letter. That started us all over again. Pull that trigger and they’ll never give up. They’ll track you down even if you make it to India.”

In a mocking voice, he said, “Do I detect a note of pleading?”

I forced a cold grin. “I wouldn’t ask you for the time of day, mister. I’m just telling you how stupid you are. You might have beat the rap if you’d run. Now you haven’t a prayer.”

Momentarily his face turned menacing again. But it was just a flicker of an expression. His voice was as pleasant as usual when he spoke. “Get your shoes and coat on.”

“What?” I said.

“Get dressed to go out. You didn’t think I’d do it here, did you?”

I just looked at him, and he said patiently, “You weren’t giving me any news when you said burning a badge makes you hot. I’m leaving these parts, and you’re chauffeuring me. In that nice new Ford you own. This is your day off. Nobody’s going to be looking for you till 4:30 tomorrow. By then I’ll be halfway to the East coast. And you’ll be where you might be found in a month or two.”

His plan made sense in a twisted sort of way. I wasn’t due to log in again for nearly twenty hours. By then he could have disposed of me somewhere on the desert, and be a thousand miles away in my car. He could abandon the car and go on by train or bus long before it was even reported stolen. By the time it and my body were located, the trail would be cold. It was a much better plan than killing me in the apartment and attempting to flee in my car, because then he would have to risk the crime’s being discovered at any moment. He might run into roadblocks an hour after he started running. I said, “Suppose I tell you to shove it?”

His eyes glinted behind his glasses. “Then I’ll have to risk it here. It’s your choice.”

There wasn’t any doubt that he meant it. He preferred it his way, but he wouldn’t hesitate a minute to risk the sound of a shot in the apartment if he had to. I was becoming more and more sure that he was insane. He had to be in order to build such a terrific grudge against a police officer, merely for performing his duty, that he was willing to risk everything to satisfy it.

It occurred to me that I might make it easier for the police if I made him kill me right there. But you cling to life as long as possible, even when the outcome is inevitable.

I crossed the room to put on my shoes and shrugged into my coat.

Chapter XI

Ever since the Courteous Killer had walked into the apartment, I had been subconsciously memorizing his description. Not because I thought I’d ever have the chance to relay it to anyone. It was merely the automatic reaction of long training. None of his victims had seen him for more than a few moments, and always at night. The look Harriet and I had gotten of him wasn’t much better.

But tonight I was able to study him for a considerable length of time under good lighting conditions. I could see now that the composite drawing of him that had been circulated was only slightly similar to his actual appearance. Now, taking my time, I could make an accurate estimate of his weight and height, and fix the shape of his body and the contours of his face in my mind. If I somehow managed to get out of the situation alive, I would be able to sit down with Garcia of S.I.D. and help him create a drawing that would be an almost photographic likeness.

It seemed unlikely that I’d ever have the chance, but I went on memorizing him, anyway.

I even got a look at his hair when we left the apartment. The composite we had circulated showed him wearing a hat, because that’s the way all witnesses had seen him. When he followed me from the apartment, he took off his hat and dropped it over his gun hand in order to conceal the gun in case we ran into anyone in the hall. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw that he had medium-brown hair, receding slightly at the temples and beginning to gray. I filed the information in my mind along with the rest of his description.

Ray Pinker’s deduction that he favored his right leg proved correct. I hadn’t noticed any limp in the apartment, but he showed a slight but obvious stiffness in the leg when we went down the stairs.

We didn’t encounter anyone, either, in the building or outdoors. We made my Ford without incident. He had me get in from the right-hand side, then slide over under the wheel, so that he could more easily keep me covered while we were getting in the car. Once settled, he put his hat back on and kept the gun leveled at me at belt height.

Before starting the engine, I glanced up and down the street and asked, “What did you get here in?”

“Stolen car,” he said.

I thought my smile of satisfaction was suppressed, but something of my thoughts must have shown on my face, because he said indulgently, “It’s parked ten blocks from here. I walked the rest of the way. Did you think I’d park it right in front of your place, so some cop would drop in to say hello when it was found, and maybe get to wondering why you didn’t answer the door?”

I started the engine.

“Don’t get any heroic ideas,” he said. “Like driving without lights, or speeding so we’ll get stopped by some cop. If we do get stopped, you get a slug in the guts. That goes for trying to crack up the car, too. You’ll be dead before we crash, if you try it.”

I believed him. Both ideas he mentioned had occurred to me, but I decided neither would work. I switched on my lights.

He had me cross town to San Fernando Road, then follow it northwest out of town. San Fernando Road is both U.S. Highways 6 and 99. Where the two separate beyond San Fernando, he had me bear right on Route 6.

The fastest route out of the state would have been straight east on 60 toward Arizona. I guessed he was taking the northern route because it passed through the Mojave Desert, and later through the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Either place would be excellent to dispose of a body.

Neither of us spoke until we were past San Fernando. Then I said in a casual tone, “Must not have been hit very bad that night, Gig.”

I felt him stiffen in the seat. “What?”

“I said you must not have been hit very bad.”

“Couple of flesh wounds. I mean, what did you call me?”

“Gig. It’s your name, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. After a moment I said, “What’s your full name?”

“The Courteous Killer, according to the papers.”

He wasn’t going to tumble, so I tried another tack. “How’d you manage to stay out of the way of four thousand cops looking for you?”

“Disguise,” he said laconically.

I glanced sidewise at him. “Yeah?”

“Simple one,” he said. “In the first place, that drawing you published wasn’t much good. And it stressed the glasses They’re only reading glasses, you know. I see just as well without them. I deliberately wear them on jobs, because ordinarily nobody ever sees me on the street with them. Just taking them off was a perfect disguise. I’ve walked right past a hundred cops in the past three weeks.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rather clever idea, huh?”

Instead of answering, I said, “You’re not as illiterate as that letter you wrote, are you?”

I could almost feel his ego inflate. “That was a disguise, too. I’m pretty well educated.”

“College?” I asked.

I’d touched a sore spot. His tone was defensively short when he said, “Self-education sometimes beats a college degree. What you dig out yourself sticks better.”

I said, “Ever take a fall anywhere?”

He snorted. “Only suckers get caught in this racket.”

That told me that somewhere, sometime, he’d at least been questioned on suspicion. Maybe he’d even served a term somewhere. He wouldn’t have been so familiar with the term “take a fall,” otherwise.

“Where’d you take it?” I said.

He frowned at me. “Who told you I had?”

“You did,” I said. “Hurts your vanity, huh?”

His voice underwent a sudden change, turning as frigid as a deep-freeze. “You’re talking more and more like a cop... and less and less like a chauffeur. Just shut up and drive, unless you want your part of the trip to end sooner than I planned.”

I didn’t want to push my luck. Already I’d managed to get him to drop considerable information about himself. Information that might be invaluable in his apprehension if I ever got a chance to pass it on. I shut up and drove.

At Mojave I half expected him to order me to turn right toward Las Vegas. But when he didn’t say anything, I kept on 6 along the edge of the mountains. At 3:45 a.m. we passed through Big Pine, about two hundred and fifty miles from Los Angeles.

The road became more mountainous now. Periodically my kidnaper began to flick his gaze ahead, just long enough to get a quick glimpse of the terrain, then immediately bring it back to me again. I realized he was looking for landmarks, which probably meant we were nearing the spot he had picked for my murder. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. Never once did he leave his eyes off me long enough for me to make a break. The gun remained leveled at me steadily, and I knew that the slightest wrong move on my part would bring a bullet.

About halfway between Big Pine and Bishop, the road crossed a mountain stream. As we neared the bridge, he abruptly ordered me to stop.

I brought the car to a halt slowly. We were over the bridge and twenty yards beyond it before I drifted off on the shoulder and cut the ignition.

“Dim your lights,” he said.

I dimmed them.

He fumbled behind him for the door handle, pushed open the door and backed out. “Leave the keys in the ignition and get out,” he said.

He backed away as I obeyed, carefully keeping me covered. The early-morning mountain air was chilly, but I could feel sweat running down my sides beneath my shirt. Standing on the shoulder next to the car, I glanced up and down the road. Except for the bridge, there was no sign of civilization in sight. There were no lights of other cars, either. At that hour of the morning we had run into practically no traffic aside from trucks since we turned onto Highway 6. It had been ten miles since we’d even passed a truck.

With his gun he motioned me to walk ahead of him, back toward the bridge. The stream was perhaps a dozen feet across, and the bridge not more than three times that length. The stream ran in a gorge only about ten feet beneath the road. A concrete railing about hip high acted as a guard to keep cars from running into the gorge.

At the near end of the bridge, he halted me while he took a flashlight from his pocket and shone it on the banks on both sides. Apparently he decided it would be easier to get down to the water from the opposite side, for he urged me on again. His plan was obvious. He was going to force me to the water’s edge, shoot me in the back, and let me tumble into the water. By the beam of his flashlight, I had gotten a good look at the stream, and it appeared deep enough and swift enough to carry my body some distance from the road, where it probably wouldn’t be found for days or weeks, if ever.

I started across the bridge slowly, not eager to reach the other side. A third of the way across, the lights of a truck appeared over a rise a quarter mile in front of us.

“Snap it up!” he commanded, not wanting us to be caught in the headlights of the truck. “Run!”

It was the closest to a break I was likely to get from here on. I responded instantly. I took three running steps, heard his feet hit the road behind me, and suddenly dived headfirst over the low concrete railing.

It seemed to take forever to drop the ten or so feet to the water. Not knowing how deep the stream was, I launched myself in a long, shallow dive and hoped I wasn’t diving into six inches of water running over jagged rocks. As I fell, I braced myself for the shock of the water, for the crash of sharp rocks into my flesh, and for a bullet in the back.

Neither of the last two developed. The move had caught my kidnaper flat-footed. I heard him swear just as I entered the water in a flat dive. It was about four feet deep, and the bottom was gravel. My chest barely scraped against the gravel as I straightened out and shot downstream underwater.

Chapter XII

The water was ice cold, but it took a few moments for me to feel its full effect through my clothing. I stayed underwater as long as I could hold my breath. The drag of my clothing hampered my swimming, but this was counteracted by the swift current. When I finally came up, I was thirty yards from the bridge.

I floundered erect in waist-deep water and peered back toward the bridge. Apparently the truck had passed while I was submerged, for there were no longer oncoming headlights. Although it was still quite dark, I could clearly see the outline of the concrete bridge-railing against the night sky beyond it. I could have seen the silhouette of the Courteous Killer, too, if he had still been on the bridge. He wasn’t.

I listened, but could hear nothing except the steady murmur of the current. I moved toward the north bank into the cover of some bushes overhanging the water. It was only about two feet deep near shore. I sat on the bottom with just my head above water, my face screened from the opposite bank by the overhanging bushes. I waited, shivering with cold.

It was too dark to see more than a few feet. A full minute passed with nothing happening. Then a flashlight beam stabbed the darkness from the opposite bank, not ten feet upstream. It swept the stream in both directions, passing right over the loose foliage hanging before my face. The beam probed between gaps in the foliage, momentarily lighting my face as it passed.

He hadn’t seen me, however, for he swept the beam up- and down-stream several times, and each time it passed over the spot where I sat in the water. Then the flashlight moved downstream, passing the spot where I was concealed and continuing on to a bend in the stream fifty yards beyond. Apparently my kidnaper satisfied himself that there were no feasible hiding places beyond where I was, and that if I’d managed to get as far as the bend, it would be impossible to track me down. The light moved upstream again. It stopped directly opposite the overhanging bushes.

Too late I realized I’d picked the only possible hiding place along that stretch of stream. And he intended to look it over thoroughly.

The bushes overhung the water for a distance of only about ten feet. He started at the upstream end, probing the beam through the gaps between the dangling fronds in an attempt to see what was behind them. After a moment of study, he moved it downstream a bare foot.

I knew that when the beam hit my face, he would be able to spot its whiteness against the dark background of the mud-and-gravel bank. On top of that my teeth suddenly began to chatter with cold. I clenched my jaws in an attempt to stop them, but it was an uncontrollable spasm. To my own ears the sound seemed loud enough to be heard clearly over the murmur of the current.

When the beam centered a foot from my face, I ducked my head underwater and crawled upstream a yard, passing right under the light ray. Then I sat again, my head just above water, and waited for the light to reach the end of the line of bushes.

When it finally did, the light clicked off. There was no sound but the rush of water and the chattering of my teeth. Again I tried to stop the chattering by clenching my jaws. I couldn’t.

Then he heard it. He must not have been able to place the direction of the sound, for if he had, he would have started pumping bullets that way. But I knew he had heard it and recognized what it was, for his voice called softly, “I know you’re in there someplace, Friday. I’m going to count to ten. Then if you don’t come out, I’m going to put bullets at twelve-inch intervals all along the way.”

I don’t know why he thought this threat would induce me to come out, since it would only be to get shot, anyway. I felt beneath me, found a smooth, round rock about the size of a baseball, and raised one arm out of the water.

Tonelessly he counted, “One — two — three — four — five — six — seven — eight — nine — ten!”

The light flicked on again, focused on the upstream edge of the line of bushes, and an orange tongue of flame licked out from his other hand. I heard the bullet smash into the water about where my head would have been if I had been seated five feet upstream.

The light moved a foot nearer, and the pistol cracked again. I rose to one knee and hurled the stone like a softball, in a looping sidearm throw.

I heard him let out a grunt as it caught him square in the chest. The light beam shot upward, then described a flickering arc as the flashlight jolted from his hand and fell into the water. Two shots sounded in rapid succession.

Both went unerringly to where I had been when I threw the rock. But the instant it left my hand, I had launched myself downstream in an underwater dive. The flashlight, still burning on the bottom of the stream, was pointed downstream, and lighted the stream, like an incandescent tube, from bank to bank for a distance of perhaps ten yards. He must have been able to see my swimming figure, for he threw the last two bullets in the gun at the water.

Water deflects bullets, however. Neither hit me, even though the range wasn’t over five yards. Before he could either reload or jerk my .38 from his side pocket, I was beyond the glare of the submerged light and in darkness again.

When I came up, I swam another few yards on the surface, then headed for the bank opposite the one my assailant was on and pulled myself out of the water. Upstream, I could still see the glow of the underwater light.

Scrambling to the top of the gorge would have been suicide while he still had the light, but was perfectly safe in the darkness. I made it to the top and moved back into the cover of some underbrush. There I rested for a moment, panting and shivering.

I peered back toward the glow on the water, and even as I watched, it abruptly went out. Apparently water had finally seeped into the case. When I had my breath back, I angled in the direction of the car. En route, I stopped long enough to search for and find another rock to use as a weapon.

The delay cost me my quarry. My intention had been to conceal myself near the car, alongside the road, and brain him from behind with the rock when he passed me returning to it. But I hadn’t counted on his giving up his search for me as soon as he did. He must have started back for the car as soon as he fired the final shot. As I drifted behind a shrub twenty feet this side of the car, the engine suddenly came to life. Before I could make a move, the Ford roared away toward the north.

After two attempts to flag down trucks, I gave that idea up. I couldn’t blame the drivers for not stopping to pick up a stranger on that lonely stretch of road. Particularly one as bedraggled-looking as I was. My suit was shapeless from being doused in water, and when I climbed up the bank, a good deal of dirt had stuck to the wet cloth. My hat was gone, and my hair stuck up wetly in all directions.

I remembered driving past a roadside cafe about five miles back toward Big Pine. There may have been some place closer in the opposite direction, but I didn’t know, and decided not to chance it. I started to walk back toward the cafe.

On the chance that the Courteous Killer might come back to make another try at the job he had bungled, I got off the road and out of sight every time car headlights appeared from the north. It was now just before dawn, and a few more cars were appearing on the road. About twice every mile I had to duck out of sight.

I reached the roadside cafe just as it began to get light. My outer clothing had dried during the five-mile walk, and the exercise had restored my circulation, but my shirt and underclothes were still soggy. My teeth had stopped chattering, but I was still cold and wet. It didn’t improve my mood to find the cafe closed.

There was a cottage behind the cafe. Its windows were dark, but it looked as though it was lived in. I pounded at the door until a sleepy-eyed man of about sixty came to answer it in pajamas and a robe. When he saw me, the sleepiness left him and he stared at me goggle-eyed.

“Los Angeles police officer,” I said, fishing out my soggy wallet and showing my ID. “I’ve had a little trouble. Like to use your phone.”

He examined my identification carefully before saying in a slow drawl, “Well, I reckon it’s all right, young fellow. Little trouble, you say? Looks like you had big trouble. Been in a mudball fight?”

I said patiently, “Where’s the phone?”

It developed that the cottage, didn’t have one, and that he’d have to open the cafe. I waited while he changed to a shirt and trousers, then followed him to the cafe’s back door.

“You’re not really putting me out none,” he said, as he keyed open a padlock. “Get up at five forty-five, anyway, and it’s nearly five thirty now. Truckers start stopping for breakfast around six.”

Inside, I exchanged a couple of wet bills for coins and made a long-distance call to the Los Angeles Detective Bureau. A half minute later I was setting the machinery in motion to set up roadblocks all along Route 6 and the side roads leading off it.

Chapter XIII

Once again the elusive Courteous Killer managed to slip through the police net. My Ford was found abandoned on Route 6 at Bishop. As usual, the car had been wiped clean of fingerprints. The following day a farmer near Bishop reported a Plymouth pickup truck stolen. Within six hours this was located at Mount Montgomery, Nevada.

There the trail stopped. How the suspect got beyond Mount Montgomery was unknown. The town was too small for strangers to pass through unnoticed, yet no one recalled seeing anyone of the suspect’s description. It was assumed that he had hitchhiked from there. An appeal was sent out over the wire services to whoever had picked him up to come forward as a witness. This appeared in every major newspaper in the country, but there was no response.

I spent two full days with Garcia of S.I.D. helping him revise the composite drawings of the suspect. He did two fronts and two profiles, one set showing him hatted and wearing glasses, the other bareheaded and without glasses. By the end of the two days I was satisfied that they were almost photographic likenesses.

The composites, a revised description, and all the additional information I had gleaned from conversation with the suspect were sent to the police of all major cities in the country. Through the newspaper wire services and radio and television news broadcasts, the rewards, totaling five thousand dollars, got national publicity. The composite drawings were shown on television over all major networks.

Reports and tips flowed in from everywhere. The suspect was seen in New York City, Miami, and Seattle, all at the same time. There wasn’t a city in the country where at least one crank didn’t confess to being the Courteous Killer. The number of confessions from cranks residing in the Los Angeles area grew to seventeen.

All leads were checked out, most of them by the police in the cities where they originated, the hotter ones by teams of officers flown from Los Angeles.

The suspect remained at large.

On the basis of the additional information I was able to furnish, the Stat’s Office made several more runs. The new information was also teletyped to C.I.I. in Sacramento, and all possibles turned up by both were checked out. Full information was sent to the F.B.I. in Washington, which turned up more possibles.

All of these checked out clean. At the end of September, nearly four months after the Courteous Killer had first begun his activity, the case was still wide open.

On Monday, September 30th, Frank and I logged in at Homicide at 4:23 p.m. There was nothing in the message book, and after reading our mail we relaxed at a table with cigarettes, waiting for a phone to ring or the hot-shot speaker to sound off.

“Bet this will be some night,” Frank said.

“Yeah?”

“Starts quiet like this, things always begin popping before the watch is over. Never saw it to fail.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

“Like the night the Courteous Killer case started. Dead quiet all evening until the last two minutes. Then, bingo. We were up to our necks for weeks.” He paused to take a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “Ever wonder what that guy’s doing now, Joe?”

“How do you mean?”

“Where he’s holed up. Whether he’s got a respectable job somewhere, or is still using a gun. You know. Whether or not he’s reformed.”

I said, “I’ll bet you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He hasn’t reformed. They never do.”

The phone on one of the other tables rang, and Frank went over to answer it. “Homicide, Smith,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Yeah, he’s here. What? Okay, send him on up.”

He hung up and said, “Some guy downstairs for you. Asked them to check if you were in before he wasted time coming up. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Huh?”

Frank came back over and sat across the table from me. “That things would start popping. I’ve had the feeling ever since noon yesterday. My luck’s been too good. Bound to change.”

“How’s that?”

“Everything I do lately’s been lucky. Like last Sunday, on the Catalina Day Boat. Actually caught some fish for a change. Nobody else was, but I reeled ’em in till my arms ached. Best day I ever had.”

“One thing wrong with fishing,” I said.

“Huh?”

“You have to eat them.”

Frank grinned. He leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. “Then the next day my luck got even better. Armand decided to go live with Fay’s sister for a while. Didn’t even borrow any money before he left. But yesterday noon topped everything.”

“How was that?”

“Fay fixed Swedish meatballs. You know how I like Swedish meatballs.”

“Yeah.”

“Only trouble is, it usually means she’s going to break some bad news. She’s gone and bought a new dress for too much, or Mike’s busted a neighbor’s window. Something like that. She wants to put me in a good mood before she tells me. Makes it hard to enjoy them, wondering what’s coming.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Yesterday there wasn’t any bad news. She just felt like fixing them. See what I mean about good luck? Absolutely bound to change.”

A youngster of about nineteen strode into the squad room. He was tall and arrogantly good-looking, with wavy black hair and long sideburns. There was something familiar-looking about him, but at first I couldn’t place him.

“Hello, Sergeant Friday,” he said. He nodded to Frank. “Hi, Officer Smith.”

In a puzzled voice Frank said, “Hello,” and I said, “How are you, son?” We both got up and stood looking at him.

“Don’t you remember me?” he asked. “Harold Green.” We both placed him then. The Courteous Killer’s first victim. Neither of us had recognized him because the last time we’d seen him, his head had still been covered from the eyebrows up by a bandage.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “You all recovered now?”

“Feel fine.” He rapped his knuckles against his skull. “You can’t hurt a Green by hitting him here. It’s solid rock.”

Frank said, “How’s Mrs. Stenson?”

The young man shrugged. “Haven’t seen her in a couple of months.”

I couldn’t help saying, “Oh? Working now?”

He grinned at me, unabashed. “Not me. Just got a different girlfriend.”

Frank grunted, and I said a little shortly, “What do you want?”

“Thought I’d make myself a little money,” he said. He pulled out a package of cigarettes and held them toward Frank and me. I indicated the butt I was already smoking, and Frank shook his head. He took one himself and lighted it with a gold-plated lighter. “Got a tip for you.”

I said coldly, “We don’t buy information.”

“Who said I’m selling any?” he asked. “I meant reward money. Know where Rossmore Avenue is?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Starts at Wilshire and runs up into Hollywood.”

He nodded. “There’s a gas station a couple of blocks from where it crosses Santa Monica. Stopped there to have my tank filled about a half hour ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Attendant was a real pleasant fellow. Cleaned the windshield, checked the radiator. Gave me the full treatment. I kept thinking I’d seen him somewhere before. Couldn’t remember where until after I’d driven away, though. Then it hit me.”

“Go on,” I said.

“He was the fellow who batted me over the head with a gun.”

5:01 p.m. On further questioning, Harold Green stated that he was positive that the gas-station attendant was the man who had robbed him on Laurel Canyon Road the previous June. We took him in to see Lieutenant Newton, and he repeated his story. The lieutenant went up the hall to report the development to Chief Brown.

Chief Brown decided to take no chances on the suspect’s again eluding arrest. He issued orders over the phone to have the block in which the filling station was located surrounded by police units. Frank and I would go in to make the arrest as soon as all units were in place.

Frank and I took the elevator down to the garage, checked out Unit 7K10, and drove to the area. We parked on Rossmore a half block from the filling station and waited.

At 6:03 p.m. a voice from our radio speaker said, “Attention, Unit Seven-K-Ten. KMA-Three-Six-Seven to Seven-K-One-Oh. Come in.”

I lifted the microphone from its bracket and said into it, “Seven-K-One-Oh to Control One. Go ahead.”

“The area is now surrounded by police units. You may move in for the arrest when ready.”

“Roger,” I said. “We’ll move in now. Four Adam. Seven-K-One-Oh.”

I put the microphone back into its bracket, and we got out of the car. We walked up the street toward the station, side by side.

Frank said, “Working in a filling station, he probably won’t be armed, huh?”

“We’ll play it like he is until we’ve shaken him down,” I told him. “We take him at gunpoint.”

“Check,” Frank said, and loosened his gun in its holster.

There were no cars at the gas pumps when we approached the station. Through the open door of the garage, we could see a coveralled attendant standing beneath an elevated car with grease gun. Beyond the glass window of the office, another coveralled man stood by the cash register drinking a Coke. The latter’s face was toward us, and I could see at a glance that he wasn’t the suspect. He was a tall, redheaded man of about thirty.

The man with the grease gun had his back to us. His height and the shape of his body were identical to that of the man who had kidnapped me. We walked quietly to the door of the garage, our hands on our guns.

The coveralled man glanced idly over his shoulder. He wore no glasses, but his face was that of the Courteous Killer. He had the same graying hair, slightly receding at the forehead.

I said, “All right, Frank,” and whipped out my gun. Frank’s came up at the same instant.

“Police officers, mister,” I said. “Hold it right there.”

He froze with the grease gun still pointed upward, his back half to us and his face pointing over his shoulder. His mouth fell open in surprise.

“Drop the grease gun on the floor,” I ordered.

He opened his hand and let it fall. Frank put away his gun, moved in fast, and jerked the man’s hands behind him. The handcuffs clicked in place.

The suspect’s gaze followed us as we circled around in front of him. There was no recognition in his expression when he looked at me. Only astonishment. I kept him covered, while Frank gave him a quick but thorough shakedown.

Frank stepped back and said, “He’s clean.”

“What’s this all about?” the handcuffed man asked in a stupefied voice. The arrogant ego was gone from it, but otherwise it was the same voice my kidnaper had.

I put my gun away. “You don’t know,” I said. “You don’t recognize me. You’re just an innocent grease monkey.”

“I never saw you before in my life,” he said on a high note. “What are you talking about?”

The younger man came through the door between the garage and office. His expression was as astonished as the suspect’s. “Hey, what’s going on here?” he asked.

“Police officers,” I said, showing him my ID. “You own this place?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What have you got George handcuffed for?”

“He’s under arrest,” I told him. “How long’s he been working here?”

“About a week.” He gave his employee a fascinated look. “What’d he do?”

I said, “You must not read the papers, mister.”

“Huh,” he said. “Sure, I read the papers.”

“Then you don’t look at the pictures they publish. You just lost yourself five thousand dollars.”

“Huh?”

“Your grease monkey is the Courteous Killer.”

Chapter XIV

Back at the car, we reported by radio that the suspect was in custody and the surrounding police units could be removed. Then we drove him to the Police Building. All the way he kept assuring us that we had made a mistake.

Because of his record of violence, we took him directly to the booking desk in the Felony Section and had him booked on suspicion of robbery and homicide. Ordinarily we would have taken him to an interview room for questioning before having him booked. But the Courteous Killer was classified as too dangerous a criminal to get less than the full security treatment.

At the desk he was required to empty his pockets and was thoroughly searched. A Form 5.1 was filled out, listing the items in his possession and the amount of money he had. He wore no watch or jewelry. In his pockets he had cigarettes and matches, a handkerchief, a small pocket knife, a key ring with two keys on it, some change, and a wallet. A driver’s license in the wallet gave his name as George Whiteman and a North Hollywood address.

All these items were sealed in a manila envelope, to which the white sixth copy of the Form 5.1 was attached. The pink fifth copy was given to the prisoner as a receipt. Of the remaining copies, one would go to C.I.I. in Sacramento, one was for us, and one would go to the district attorney. The original, which contained his complete booking record in addition to the property list, was the Felony Section’s file copy.

The door leading to the cell rows was unlocked by the booking sergeant, and the prisoner was led inside to be fingerprinted. From the fingerprint desk, he was taken to the shower cell. All newly booked prisoners are required to take a shower before being assigned to a regular cell.

When he had had his shower, he was led to a cell in the first row and locked in. Frank and I remained out in the corridor. The booking sergeant left us there, locking the door at the end of the corridor when he went back to the desk.

The cells of the Felony Section are clean and modern, with white porcelain fixtures and double-decker bunks. Instead of bars, the front walls are of shatterproof herculite glass thick enough to withstand the blows of a sledge hammer. The only bars are on the doors.

George Whiteman gazed around his cell with a numb look on his face. Then he turned to us.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asked. “You’re making a terrible mistake.”

“We don’t think so,” I told him. “George Whiteman your real name?”

“Of course it is.”

“How’d you get the nickname Gig?”

He gave me a blank look. “Nobody ever called me Gig.”

I looked at him for a moment. “Still live at the address on your driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody live with you?”

He shook his head. “It’s a rooming house. I just got one room.”

“How long you lived there?” I asked.

“Couple of weeks this trip. I’ve stayed there on and off for over a year.”

“Where’d you live before a couple of weeks back?”

“In Kansas City. I thought I had a job there, but it didn’t pan out, so I came back to Los Angeles.”

“Uh-huh. What date did you leave Los Angeles to go to Kansas City?”

“First week in September. The fourth, I think.”

September seventh was the night I had been kidnapped by the Courteous Killer. I said, “Where were you living from June nineteenth until you left for K.C.?”

“At the rooming house. I checked in about the first of May. Mrs. Lawson can tell you I’m not any bandit.”

“Who?”

“My landlady. Mrs. Lawson. You’ve got this all wrong.”

“Not from where we sit,” I told him. “What size shoe you wear?”

He looked puzzled. “Eight-and-a-half-B.”

“Where are your glasses? In your room?”

He looked even more puzzled. “What glasses?”

“The ones you read with.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “In my room. I never wear them at work.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You told me the night of September seventh. The guns in your room, too?”

He just looked at me blankly.

“We’ll find them, anyway, if they are,” I told him. “Why do this the hard way? You know you haven’t got a chance. You can save a lot of trouble by giving it to us straight.”

“Giving what to you straight?” he asked. “I haven’t done anything.”

I looked at him steadily for a long time. Then I said, “It won’t stand up, Whiteman. We’ve got you made all along the way. Why don’t you make it easy on yourself?”

“By confessing to something I haven’t done?” he asked in a high voice. “I want a lawyer.”

“You’ll get one,” I said. “But he won’t beat this rap for you. How about it?”

He walked over and sat on the lower bunk. “I don’t have to talk to you. I’m not going to say another word till I see a lawyer.” He looked up at me stubbornly.

I glanced at Frank, and he shrugged. “Think we’re wasting our time, Joe. Be better to take a look at the room.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll be back, Whiteman. Don’t go away.” We walked down to the end of the corridor, and Frank yelled for the sergeant to come let us out.

8:30 p.m. Before leaving the Police Building, we called Latent Prints and asked them to compare the suspect’s prints with the partial developed on Harold Green’s wallet and the thumbprint lifted from the seat-adjustment knob of the 1955 Ford the suspect had stolen the night he killed Viola Carr. We also called the Crime Lab and asked for a comparison of the shoes the suspect was wearing with the footprints found at the scene of Marine Sergeant Nick Grotto’s murder. We told the lab we would bring in any other shoes we found when we searched the suspect’s room.

Then we obtained a search warrant and drove out to the North Hollywood rooming house where George Whiteman lived.

Mrs. Lawson, the landlady, turned out to be a tall, thin woman of about sixty, with the harassed air of a person who never finds quite time enough to get everything that needs doing done. She looked flabbergasted when we identified ourselves as police officers and showed her the search warrant.

“What’s it all about?” she asked. “What do you expect to find in Mr. Whiteman’s room?”

“Some shoes, ma’am,” I told her. “Would you show us the room, please?”

She led us up the stairs to the second floor and opened a door with a pass key. The room was about fifteen by fifteen, furnished with a brass bed, a marble-topped dresser, a writing table, and a couple of chairs. It was just a place to sleep, not a place to live.

A glasses case lay on the writing table. I opened it and frowned when I discovered it contained a pair of horn-rimmed glasses instead of rimless ones.

We made a quick but thorough search of the room. There were no guns in it, nor any other incriminating evidence. We found an extra pair of shoes in the closet. Frank and I both marked our initials inside the tongues of the shoes and had the landlady mark hers, too, so that if they ever had to be presented in court as evidence, there would be no question that they were the same shoes we found in the room.

Mrs. Lawson asked, “Are these shoes all you were looking for?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Mr. Whiteman own any glasses aside from those on the table?”

She stared at the glasses case as though she had never seen it before. Apparently she hadn’t, because she said, “I didn’t even know he had those. I never saw him with them on.”

Frank said, “He have any possessions anywhere else in the house? In a storage room, for instance?”

Mrs. Lawson shook her head. “No. Some of the roomers keep trunks in the attic. But all Mr. Whiteman owns is a suitcase. It’s in his closet.”

We had already looked in the suitcase and found it empty. I said, “Happen to know if he owns any guns?”

“Guns?” she repeated, shocked. “Of course not. I wouldn’t allow a gun in the house.”

Frank said, “Understand he’s lived here off and on for about a year, ma’am. Happen to have a record of just what periods he was here?”

“It would be in my rent book. What’s he done, Officer?”

I said, “We’re just making an investigation, ma’am. Could you get the rent book, please?”

“It’s downstairs,” she said.

We followed her downstairs and waited in the front room while she went to get it. It was a ledger similar to the one the landlady of the rooming house on Burbank had shown us. The record indicated that George Whiteman had been in town during the entire period of the Courteous Killer’s activity. He had checked out on September 4th telling the landlady he was taking a job in Kansas City, Missouri, and had returned again on September 16th.

“Dates figure,” Frank commented. “Doesn’t seem much doubt.”

“There never was from the time I first spotted him,” I said. “I had plenty of time to memorize his face that night.”

“What’s he done?” Mrs. Lawson asked again.

“We think he may be a man we’ve been looking for, ma’am,” I said. “You know where he worked before he left town earlier this month?”

“Why, in a filling station over on Moorpark. Stoddard’s Texaco Station. He worked days.”

Frank entered the name of the station and its address in his notebook. Then he referred to another section of the notebook and said, “Be helpful if you could remember whether or not Mr. Whiteman was home on certain nights we’re interested in, ma’am. Wednesday, June nineteenth, for instance.” That was the date of the Courteous Killer’s first robbery, and his attack on young Harold Green.

The landlady looked blank. “My goodness, I couldn’t remember that far back.”

“There’s also the nights of June twenty-first, twenty-fourth, twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth,” Frank said, reading off the dates of other robberies from his notebook. “Recall any of those nights?”

Mrs. Lawson’s face lit up. “June thirtieth, I do. That’s my birthday.”

I said, “Recall if Mr. Whiteman was away that night?”

Her face fell again. “Yes, he was. The roomers all gave me a party. Lasted till after midnight. But Mr. Whiteman left at nine thirty. Said he had some business, but we all figured he had another date, and was just running out on the party. Hadn’t gotten home by one a.m., when I went to bed.”

That was the night before the murder of Marine Sergeant Nick Grotto and the wounding of Nancy Meere. The night of the Courteous Killer’s seventh robbery.

“Recall the next night?” Frank asked. “July first?”

Mrs. Lawson looked thoughtful. “Believe he went out again. Can’t be sure, though. He goes out a lot at night.”

She was unable to remember whether or not he had been home on the night of July 22nd, when Viola Carr was murdered, or on the 24th, 26th, or 29th, the dates of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh robberies.

I said, “We have reason to believe that the man we’re looking for was wounded on the night of Tuesday, August sixth. You recall Mr. Whiteman giving any indication that he might have been injured about that time?”

The-thoughtful look returned to her face. “He laid off from work sick a few days the first part of August. Can’t remember the exact dates. First or second week, it was, though.” After a pause she added, “Does that every once in a while, though. Pretends he’s sick to get a few days off. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It would be helpful if you could recall the exact day he got sick.”

She thought some more, finally shook her head. “Afraid I can’t come any closer than the first or second week of August.”

There wasn’t any point in asking her about the seventh of September, the night of my kidnapping, as he had checked out of the rooming house on the fourth. We thanked her for her trouble and left.

9:27 p.m. We drove over to Stoddard’s Texaco Station on Moorpark. The place stayed open till 11:00 p.m., and we found Earl Stoddard, the proprietor, still there. He was a plump, middle-aged man with an easygoing manner.

The filling-station proprietor could give us no information about George Whiteman’s evening activities on the dates we were interested in. However, he did have a record of the days the suspect had missed work because of illness. One of the periods was from Sunday, August 4th, through Friday, August 9th.

“I remembered I suspected at the time he’d been on a toot Saturday night, and all he really had was a hangover,” Stoddard told us. “Must’ve really been sick, though, to stay out six days. When he went on a bust, usually he only missed a day or two afterward.”

The record showed that he had missed several other periods from work because of claimed illness, but none of the others were for more than three days at a time.

As we drove back to the Police Building, Frank said, “Funny he laid off sick two days before he was shot.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Course, he might have gone on a drunk on Saturday the third, like Stoddard seemed to think, and missed a couple of days because of that. Then missed more time because of his wounds.”

“One way to find out,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Have a doctor look him over for a couple of eight-week-old wounds.”

Chapter XV

Back at the Police Building, we signed the suspect out and took him to the Central Receiving Hospital, where we had him examined by a doctor for evidence of gunshot wounds inflicted approximately eight weeks before.

It developed that the suspect had two recently formed scars that could have been from gunshot flesh wounds. One was on the fleshy inside part of his left thigh; the other was a light scar on his left forearm that could have been made by a bullet barely searing the flesh. Whiteman claimed that both were the result of a fall he had suffered about two months previously when he was cutting across a vacant lot in an intoxicated condition. He said he had fallen on some tin cans, cutting his leg and arm, and that he had not sought medical attention for the injuries.

I asked the doctor to check for any sign of an old injury to the suspect’s right leg.

After examining it, the doctor said, “Don’t see any. We could X-ray it if it’s important. Is it?”

I said, “Man we’re looking for favors his right leg. No noticeable limp except when he’s on stairs, but then it’s pretty definite. We figured he had some kind of leg injury.”

The doctor gave the leg another examination and then looked at the man’s foot. He said, “There’s the mark of a corn having recently been removed from the right big toe. A corn could cause a temporary limp.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, I guess that does it. Thanks, Doctor.”

We had the suspect dress and took him back to the Felony Section.

I wasn’t very satisfied with the physical examination. It left me feeling vaguely uneasy. After Whiteman was back in his cell, I stood in the corridor for a time carefully looking him over. The size and shape of his body were identical to that of the man who had kidnapped me. The contours of his face were the same. His voice was the same.

The feeling of uneasiness died. I was reassured that we had the right man.

Regular showups are held in the first-floor auditorium of the Police Building on Monday and Thursday nights at 8:00 p.m. As we didn’t want to wait until Thursday to complete our case, we scheduled a special showup for Tuesday night. We arranged for all victims of the Courteous Killer who could make it to attend.

Meantime, the Crime Lab checked the shoes the suspect had been wearing at the time of his arrest, and also the shoes Frank and I had found in his closet, against the plaster casts of the footprints lifted at the scene of Marine Sergeant Nick Grotto’s murder. Before I checked in at Homicide at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 1st, I stopped by the Crime Lab to find out the results of these comparisons.

Ray Pinker shook his head. “They’re the same size shoes, Joe, but neither pair are the ones the suspect wore that night. Of course, it’s been four months. He might have worn the others out and have thrown them away.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks, Ray.”

When I walked into the Homicide squad room, Frank was already there. I said, “Pinker didn’t come up with a match on the shoes.”

Frank said gloomily, “McLaughlin didn’t turn anything, either. Just talked to Latent Prints. Suspect’s prints don’t match either the partial on Harold Green’s wallet, or the thumbprint on that seat-adjustment knob.”

I grunted.

“Doesn’t mean that he’s not our man, though,” Frank said. “McLaughlin says there’s no proof the suspect made either of those prints. Maybe Green handed his wallet to somebody to look at a picture. Maybe somebody came along while it was lying there, picked it up, then dropped it again when he found it didn’t have any money in it. And anybody could have left that print on the seat-adjustment knob. Some grease monkey, for instance, when the car was left at a station to be washed or greased.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But you know something?”

“What?”

“I’d feel better if they matched.”

8:07 p.m. The audience in the auditorium was seated, and the sergeant at the control board at the rear of the room began his introductory remarks over the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “This is a special showup. Before we begin, I’ll explain procedure. Suspects are brought from the Felony Jail Section under maximum security. They will appear in groups of six to eight behind the copper screen you see before you, which runs the width of the stage. When the lights of the house are dimmed and the stage lights left on, you will be able to see the suspects clearly, but they will be unable to see you. Each suspect has been assigned a number. As I call his number, he will step forward into the circle painted in the center of the stage. I will ask him certain standard questions over the microphone. These are designed not for information value, but to let you hear the sound of his voice. The acoustics of this room were planned so that a person standing in the circle can be heard all over the auditorium without the aid of a microphone, thereby letting you hear his natural voice. There are also lighting controls on the panel before me which allow the adjustment of backstage lights to simulate actual lighting conditions at the time of the crime. If you recognize a suspect, please raise your hand. Identified suspects will be brought back for a second showup when the regular showup is over. Thank you for coming.”

The house lights dimmed, the stage lights came up bright, and a group of six suspects were led from the right side of the stage to line up against the height chart. George Whiteman was the first in line.

The sergeant at the control panel said, “Number one. Robbery and homicide. Step forward into the circle.”

Suddenly Whiteman moved forward to the center of the stage and stood peering at the screen in front of him with lowered head.

“Raise your head, please,” the sergeant said.

The man’s chin came up. His expression remained sullen. “Where were you born?” the sergeant asked.

Whiteman muttered something in a low voice.

“Speak louder, please.”

“Columbia, Missouri.” This time he could be heard as clearly as though he were only two feet away.

“How old are you?”

“Forty-six.”

“Where were you arrested?”

“At work. Filling station on Rossmore.”

“Were you armed?”

After a pause the suspect said, “I didn’t understand that.”

“Were any weapons found on you?”

“No.”

“Were any weapons found at the location of your arrest or elsewhere?”

“No.” There was another pause, then, “Well, I had a pocket knife on me.”

The sergeant asked, “Do you own a car?”

“No.”

“Is a car available to you?”

“A tow truck at the station. Just for work.”

Nothing happened for a short period, then the stage lights dimmed to the blue-purple cast of a starlit night. After a moment they brightened slightly to simulate moonlight.

As the lights came up bright again, the sergeant said, “All right. Step back.”

Fourteen hands shot up in the audience. As exactly fourteen victims of the Courteous Killer were present, that meant all of them had identified him.

The sergeant droned, “Hold Number One to bring back later.”

Frank leaned over to me and whispered, “That ought to clinch it. Fourteen makes.”

On the basis of the many identifications, the district attorney issued a complaint against George Whiteman on Wednesday, October 2nd. The following day the suspect was held to answer at a preliminary hearing in Division 34 of the Municipal Court. He was bound over for the charges filed against him and transferred to the County Jail in the custody of the sheriff. A date was set for his arraignment in the Superior Court.

This by no means ended Frank’s and my responsibility in the case. Our investigation had barely begun.

The purpose of a police investigation in a criminal case is to gather, evaluate, and preserve evidence, so that the prosecuting attorney can prove in court what happened. It is not just to gather evidence that will assure a conviction, however. It’s to establish the truth, which means that evidence of the innocence of the accused person is sought after as diligently as evidence of his guilt.

Every phase of activity on the part of George Whiteman during the period of the Courteous Killer’s operations was checked out. He claimed to have left Los Angeles on September 4th, which, if we could establish it as a fact, would eliminate him as having been my kidnaper. Contact was made with the man Whiteman said had promised him a job in Kansas City. It was verified that there had been such a promise, that the suspect had shown for the job, and that arrangements had fallen through. However, he had not reported until September 9th. The suspect claimed it had taken him five days to hitchhike from Los Angeles to Kansas City, and that he had slept in fields en route. He was unable to give us the license numbers of cars that had given him rides, or the identities of anyone he had had contact with en route.

He was given every opportunity to produce alibis for the dates and times of the Courteous Killer’s robberies. He was unable to come up with any for even one of the dates. Even for the periods when he was off work for claimed illness, his landlady testified that he frequently went out at night.

The circumstantial case against him seemed complete.

Nevertheless, it was entirely circumstantial, and he continued to insist he was innocent. I found myself making frequent trips to the County Jail while the investigation was going on. Ostensibly the reason for these visits was to attempt to get him to make a statement admitting his guilt. Actually I knew I had to keep looking him over to reassure myself we had the right man.

On Wednesday, October 9th, I met Frank at the Police Academy at 2:00 p.m. for our monthly qualification shoot. Every Los Angeles police officer must qualify on the pistol range once a month. If he scores high enough, he can have two, four, eight, or sixteen dollars a month added to his pay. A good natural shot can make four dollars with no practice other than the monthly qualification shoot. To make higher, shooting almost has to be your hobby. The $16 shooters probably spend more than sixteen dollars a month on practice ammunition.

While waiting our turns, I tore a piece of Kleenex in half and wadded part into each ear. Most officers stuff either cotton or Kleenex in their ears when they fire on the range. Rookies sometimes smile at this habit, considering it a sign of sissiness. After a couple of shoots, they’re doing it themselves, though. The concussion from gunfire is highly damaging to eardrums, particularly when men are firing both sides of you. Police officers can’t afford to develop hearing defects. Loosely wadded cotton or Kleenex breaks the effects of concussion without cutting your ability to hear in the slightest.

I noticed that Frank wasn’t stuffing his ears. “Want some Kleenex?” I asked.

“No, thanks,” he said. “Got a new idea I want to try out.”

The range sergeant, seated behind his desk across the room, called our numbers then. We stepped out on the porch to line up. I laid my gun and can of ammo on the brick railing edging the porch, and turned to see what Frank was doing. He was bending over the box where used brass was thrown, picking out a couple of empty shell casings. He straightened and fitted one into each ear.

“Ready-made earplugs,” he said. “Fit perfect.”

As we waited for the other officers who were going to fire to get in line, I said, “Frank, I’ve been thinking about this George Whiteman.”

“What?” he asked.

“I said I’ve been thinking about George Whiteman.”

Frank removed one of the shell casings from his ear. “Can’t hear through these like you can cotton. What did you say?”

“Never mind,” I told him. “We’re almost ready to shoot.” Shrugging, he reinserted the casing.

The order came, “Ready on the right.”

I picked up my gun and faced the targets in the open area directly in front of the porch railing. Frank glanced at me and picked up his, too.

“Ready on the left.”

I raised my gun, from the corner of my eye saw Frank’s head momentarily turn toward me, and then his gun came up, too.

“Commence firing.”

We finished the slow firing and began to reload.

“Work perfect,” Frank said.

“The earplugs?”

“What?” he asked.

I shook my head at him.

“Only trouble is I couldn’t hear the orders,” Frank said. “Had to watch what you were doing.”

When we had fired time, rapid fire, and silhouette, we went inside to return our ammo cans and wait for our scores. I wadded up the Kleenex and dropped it in my pocket. “What were you trying to tell me out there?” Frank asked.

I said, “I was talking about George Whiteman.”

“What?”

I looked at him. He still had the shell casings in his ears. I reached out with both hands, removed them, and dropped them in his palm.

“Oh,” Frank said. “Forgot to take them out.”

The range sergeant called us over to give us our scores then. Despite his inability to hear the orders, Frank had shot as well as usual.

As we walked toward our cars, I said, “This is the fourth time I’ve said it. I’ve been thinking about George Whiteman.”

“Yeah?”-

“It’s all circumstantial evidence.”

“Sure,” Frank said. “But it all fits.”

“How about those horn-rimmed glasses? The Courteous Killer always wore rimless ones.”

Frank glanced at me. “He could have broken the others and had new ones made.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “How about him not having a limp?”

“The doctor explained that. It could have been that com he cut off. Whiteman has the scars of two wounds, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Or two cuts from tin cans. How about neither pair of his shoes matching the plaster casts?”

Frank glanced at me again. “He could have worn the original pair out and have thrown them away, like Pinker suggested. The size was right.”

“Sure,” I said. “He throw away his gun, too, and the one he lifted from me?”

We reached the place where our cars were parked, and Frank stopped to stare at me curiously.

I said, “How about his fingerprints not matching?”

“McLaughlin explained how that could be.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Every point in his favor has got a logical explanation.”

“What’s eating you, old buddy?” Frank asked. “We’ve got this guy dead to rights. You positively identified him yourself. The case is closed.”

“That’s what’s eating me,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I think we’ve got the wrong man.”

Chapter XVI

2:45 p.m. I followed Frank’s car to the Police Building, and we went upstairs to talk to Captain Hertel. He looked up from a telegram he was reading and said, “Friday, Smith. You’re not due in for a couple of hours yet.”

“Got something on our minds, Skipper,” I said. “Want to talk it over.”

He pointed to chairs. “Sit down.”

We took seats and lit cigarettes. “This is going to jolt you,” I said. “I’ve been stewing about it for days. It just came to a head.”

“Yeah?”

“This George Whiteman. I don’t think he’s really the Courteous Killer. I think he’s just a guy unlucky enough to be his twin.”

The captain’s eyes widened, but he seemed more bemused than upset. “You got some reason for thinking this?”

“A lot of small reasons. Things that don’t quite fit. It’s more hunch than evidence.”

Captain Hertel nodded. He still didn’t seem either surprised or disturbed, and I wondered why. I found out when he tossed the telegram he had been reading over in front of me.

“You couldn’t have timed your hunch better,” he said. “Take a look at that.”

I picked it up, held it so that Frank could read it at the same time. It was from the chief of detectives of the St. Louis Police Department, and it read:

HAVE IN CUSTODY GEORGE WHITEMAN, WMA, AGE 46, BORN COLUMBIA, MISSOURI, BELIEVED ROBBERY-MURDER SUSPECT DESCRIBED YOU WANT NUMBER 314 DATED SEPTEMBER 10TH. HEIGHT FIVE NINE AND ONE HALF, WEIGHT ONE SEVENTY-TWO, HAIR GRAY-BROWN, EYES BROWN, COMPLEXION RUDDY. SLIGHT LIMP RIGHT LEG. WEARS RIMLESS GLASSES. MUGS AND PRINTS BEING AIR-MAILED. CHARGED ARMED ROBBERY HERE, BUT IF YOUR MAN, WELL HOLD FOR POSSIBLE EXTRADITION.

We looked up from the message, and both of us stared blankly at the captain. He grinned a little sourly.

“Nice, isn’t it?” he asked. “Same name, same age, same birthplace, same description. If he turns out to have the same fingerprints, I’m going to resign and take up truck farming.”

“You’ll have a partner,” I told him. “How do you figure this, Captain?”

“I don’t,” Captain Hertel said. “I don’t even want to think about it until those mugs and prints come in tomorrow.”

We left it at that. Frank and I didn’t want to think about it, either.

Frank and I left word that we wanted to be called at home the next day as soon as the mugs and prints from St. Louis came in. I got the call at 12:30 p.m. and arrived at the Police Building at 1:00. Frank, having a longer drive, arrived fifteen minutes later. He found me in the captain’s office examining the mugs.

There were two sets. A regular front and profile, and stand-up mugs. I handed them to Frank.

After looking them over, Frank let out a whistle. “How do you figure a thing like this? Might be our suspect’s twin.”

“The only thing different about the two is their prints,” Captain Hertel said. “I checked them myself as soon as they came in, before I sent them to Latent Prints. You could see the difference with the naked eye.”

He sounded relieved, which was an indication of how far off center the whole screwy situation had thrown us. There has never been a case on record of two different people having identical fingerprints. But these two men were so identical in every respect, the captain had half suspected the impossible would happen, and even their prints would match.

I grinned at him. “No truck farm then, huh, Skipper?”

He grinned back. “Not this trip. I’m waiting for a kickback from Latent Prints now. Asked them to check the St. Louis suspect’s prints against the wallet and seat-adjustment knob.” The phone rang before he finished speaking. He picked it up and said, “Hertel.” After listening for a moment, he grunted, said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

“Latent Prints?” I asked.

The captain nodded. “Made him on both prints.”

I felt a sense of relief flow over me. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to think you might have been instrumental in sending an innocent man to the lethal chamber or prison. “How about the one we’ve got?” I asked.

Captain Hertel grinned. “That’s a chore for you,” he said. “Chief Brown thinks you ought to break the good news yourself. I’ll have Whiteman brought over from the County Jail.”

Frank and I waited in the squad room until George Whiteman was brought in. He looked at us sullenly.

“Sit down, Mr. Whiteman,” I said. “We’ve got a little shock for you.”

He took a seat at one of the tables, and I handed him both sets of mug shots. After a brief glance at them, he looked up at me again.

“Who do you think that is?” I asked.

“Me,” he said shortly. “What about it?”

“Look again,” I said. “Can you positively identify the pictures?”

With a mixture of suspicion and puzzlement he gave them a more careful examination. “Of course it’s me,” he said finally. “What kind of game you playing?”

“Read the data below the pictures on the card containing the head shots.”

He studied the indicated card. “George Whiteman,” he muttered. “Height, weight, and so on. Birthplace, Columbia, Missouri. Birthdate — Hey, I wasn’t born April twenty-fifth!”

“He was,” I said.

“Huh?”

“The man in those pictures. George Whiteman. Same age as you, same name, same home town, same appearance. Only he’s in custody in St. Louis, waiting for us to go pick him up.”

His eyes widened to half-dollar size. He stared at the picture again, read the vital statistics in detail, and finally looked up at me with his mouth hanging open. “You mean... you mean—”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “He’s the real Courteous Killer. We made him on his fingerprints. Sorry we had to break it to you in such a roundabout way, but there’s a reason.”

He still couldn’t quite believe it. “Wh... what’s that?”

I pointed to the mug shots. “You positively identified that man as yourself, didn’t you?”

“Why, sure,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? He looks just like me.”

“That’s the way we feel, Mr. Whiteman,” I told him. “You can hardly blame us for making the same mistake you did.”

We continued to talk to George Whiteman for some time. He had no explanation for the remarkable resemblance between himself and the St. Louis suspect. He assumed that being from the same town and bearing the same name, they were probably distantly related, which might account for the similarity of appearance. However, in his youth he had known no other George Whiteman in Columbia, nor ever heard of one.

Afterward we took him up to Chief Brown’s office. In the name of the department, the chief apologized for the mistake. He assured the unfortunate double of the Courteous Killer that full newspaper publicity would be given the error in order to clear Whiteman’s name.

Meantime, Captain Hertel had phoned the new development to the district attorney, and a representative of that office came over to the Police Building. Whiteman was taken before the Superior Court and released from custody.

2:16 p.m. Frank and I went back to Captain Hertel’s office. The captain phoned the St. Louis chief of detectives long-distance and informed him that we had made the suspect on his fingerprints, and that he was definitely the man we wanted. He asked what arrangements could be made to pick up the suspect.

The chief of detectives told him that George Whiteman had refused to waive extradition. However, because of the seriousness of the crimes charged against him in California, he didn’t contemplate any difficulty from the Missouri end. He suggested that if the State of California would petition for extradition immediately, we could probably have the man as soon as the papers were in order.

Captain Hertel phoned the district attorney to relay on this information. This set the wheels in motion.

There is very little red tape connected with an extradition proceeding in a criminal case when the state holding the suspect in custody is as anxious to get rid of him as the petitioning state is to get him. Within twenty-four hours the district attorney’s office had prepared a request for extradition and had sent it, along with a statement of facts concerning the case, to the governor of California.

Twenty-four hours after that, it was back in the district attorney’s hands, signed by the governor. That afternoon we held a conference with Captain Hertel and Chief Brown.

“These just came over from the district attorney’s office,” Chief Brown said, indicating the extradition papers on the desk before him. “We may as well send someone after the suspect at once and wind the case up.”

When none of us said anything, the chief said to Captain Hertel, “Friday and Smith have been in on this case from the first. They may as well finish it.”

“I was going to suggest sending them,” the captain said. He turned to us. “I think we’ve got this guy cold because of the fingerprint makes, but we want to make sure of a conviction. We want to tag him with every bit of evidence we have. It would be nice if he still had in his possession the shoes he wore the night he killed that Marine.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “We’ll check with the St. Louis police and see if we can bring back every pair of shoes he owns.”

“Bring back any guns the St. Louis police found in his possession, too. We’ll want to make ballistic comparisons.”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Hertel said, “A tie-in on the watch the Marine jerked from his killer’s wrist would help, too. Better take it along and see if you can get a make on that in St. Louis.”

“Uh-huh.”

“One other thing. Even more important than the evidence.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Hang on to the suspect.”

On Monday, October 14th, at 8:45 a.m., Frank and I caught TWA Flight Number 24 from International Airport. We landed at Kansas City at 3:17 p.m. Missouri time. Train connections to Jefferson City got us to the state capitol too late to find the governor’s office open that day. We put up at a hotel overnight and were at the governor’s office when it opened on Tuesday morning.

An hour later we were on a train for St. Louis with the signature of the governor of the State of Missouri on our extradition order.

4:56 P.M. We arrived by taxi at St. Louis Police Headquarters on Twelfth Street. We took the elevator upstairs and found the chief of detectives’ office. Chief of Detectives Stanley Helton was expecting us.

The St. Louis chief of detectives was a tall, heavy-set man of about sixty with a square, rocklike face and a clipped manner of speaking. After giving us cordial handshakes, he asked us to sit down. His manner struck me as unusually solemn, and I wondered if he was always that way. But his first words suggested there was an immediate reason for his solemnity.

“Afraid you men have wasted a trip,” he said. “We tried to phone you at Jefferson City, but you’d already left by train.”

“What do you mean, sir?” I asked.

“We’ve been holding Whiteman in the city jail. This morning we started to transfer him to the detention jail in this building, so he’d be all set to go when you arrived.”

“Yes, sir.”

“En route he escaped.”

Frank and I looked at each other.

“We’re still not quite sure how he managed it,” the chief of detectives said. “He was handcuffed to a police officer in the back seat of a police car. Another officer was on his other side, though not handcuffed to him, and a third was driving. We knew the suspect was dangerous, and we weren’t taking any chances.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Somehow he managed to knock out the officer on his left. We think with a judo chop to the Adam’s apple. We’re not certain, because the blow damaged the officer’s vocal cords, and he isn’t yet able to talk.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Whiteman seems to be faster than a streak of lightning because he managed to get hold of the unconscious officer’s gun before the officer he was handcuffed to could get his out. He cracked the second officer over the head and knocked him unconscious, too.”

I said, “I see.”

“Then, at gunpoint, he forced the driver to cross MacArthur Bridge over to East St. Louis. That’s across the river on the Illinois side, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Couple of miles beyond East St. Louis on Route Forty, he had the driver pull over to the side of the road. Forced him to unlock the cuffs and haul the unconscious men out of the car. Left the three officers there. The police car was found abandoned a mile farther on. We figure he pulled some motorist over by using his siren, and commandeered the car at gunpoint. The Illinois police have set up roadblocks all the way to the Indiana border, but haven’t netted him yet.”

Frank asked, “What time did all this happen, sir?”

“Ten o’clock this morning. We started a search for the squad car twenty minutes later, when it didn’t show on schedule and couldn’t be contacted by radio. But it was past noon before it was located over in Illinois. That gave him a two-hour start, and he’s had five more hours to get wherever he’s going since then.”

I said, “Something I don’t understand. Wasn’t the conscious officer able to get to a phone quicker than that, sir?”

Chief Helton stared at me. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“What?”

He scowled. “Even if we catch this guy, you’ve wasted a trip. There won’t be any extradition now.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Before he drove off, Whiteman had the driver drag the two unconscious officers into a ditch alongside the road. So no passing motorist would see them and stop to investigate, we suppose. Gave him more time to make a getaway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then he made sure the driver wouldn’t get to a phone.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“He put a bullet in him. The officer lived long enough to make a statement, but died on the way to the hospital.”

Chapter XVII

5:31 p.m. We talked to the officers who had originally arrested George Whiteman, and were allowed to examine the file on the case. The suspect had been apprehended just before midnight on Tuesday, October 8th. He had been caught in the act during a lovers’ lane robbery on Forest Park’s Art Hill, a favorite parking place for petters. The St. Louis police had no package on him showing a previous record.

The property section had two pairs of shoes that had been found in Whiteman’s room after his arrest. We asked that they be released to us, and were granted the request.

The gun in the suspect’s possession at the time of his arrest was a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. As no other weapons were found either on his person or in the room he had at the time, apparently he had disposed of the gun he took from me the night of the kidnapping.

The St. Louis police did not want to release the .38 to us, as they now wanted the suspect prosecuted for murder in the neighboring State of Illinois in the event that he was apprehended. To policemen everywhere a cop-killing is the supreme crime, and it was understandable that the rewards offered in California now meant nothing to the St. Louis police. Their prime concern was the suspect’s apprehension and conviction for the murder of a St. Louis police officer.

Even though the gun taken from the suspect at the time of his arrest had not been used in the killing, we didn’t argue with them. If a Los Angeles policeman had been killed, we would have wanted to hold onto every possible bit of evidence. However, the lab did furnish us with a couple of bullets fired from the gun, so that we could take them back to Los Angeles for comparison with the bullets that had wounded Nancy Meere and killed Viola Carr.

When we had collected all the information available from the police department, Frank and I left the building to look for a place to spend the night. The nearest hotel was the Jefferson, which was only a couple of blocks north on Twelfth from Police Headquarters. As all we had to carry was a small overnight bag apiece plus the package containing the suspect’s two pairs of shoes, we walked to the hotel.

By the time we had settled ourselves in our hotel room and had had some dinner, it was 7:00 p.m. As we left the dining room, Frank said, “Not much we can do except catch a plane back in the morning, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“At least we accomplished a little,” Frank said. “If either of those shoes match the plaster casts, or the bullets match the ones that killed Viola Carr and wounded the Meere girl, we’ve got that much more evidence against him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Captain told us to get that stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we muffed his most important instruction.”

“Huh?”

“He told us to hang onto the suspect.”

Frank’s mention of evidence reminded me that there was one item we hadn’t checked. The watch with the inscription on its back reading, To Gig from Min — 1944. We had brought along the watch in the hope that by questioning the suspect we might learn the location of the woman who had bought it in North Hollywood.

On a hunch I led Frank to the small room off the lobby where there were twin banks of phone booths. I riffled the pages of a phone book.

“You know somebody in this town?” Frank asked.

I ran an index finger down a page in the “W” section, and stopped near the bottom of the page. “Not yet,” I said. “But I plan to.”

“Huh?”

“There’s a Minerva Warden listed in South St. Louis. Just might be the same Minerva Warden who bought that watch.”

We returned to Police Headquarters and had another conference with the same officers we had talked to before. We explained about the watch and that there was a possibility the local Minerva Warden was the same one who bought it in 1944. We suggested that a St. Louis police officer go with us to interview the woman.

A Homicide sergeant named James Slade was assigned to accompany us.

We decided against phoning Minerva Warden in advance. If she was the woman we were looking for, and was still on intimate terms with the suspect, it was possible he had been in contact with her since his escape. It was even remotely possible that he had doubled back to St. Louis and was hiding at her place.

If he was, we didn’t want to give any advance notice that police officers were on their way.

The address listed in the phone book was 5322 South Thirty-seventh Street, which was down in the Carondolet section. We arrived shortly after 8:00 p.m.

Fifty-three-twenty-two South Thirty-seventh was a four-family flat with a separate outside entrance to each flat. Minerva Warden’s nameplate was on the mailbox of the right-hand downstairs one. There was a light on in the front room.

When Sergeant Slade pushed the bell button, a plump, brisk-mannered woman in her early forties opened the door. Her graying hair was drawn straight back in a tight pompadour, and she wore light-gray horned-rimmed glasses. Her severely tailored suit was gray in color, too. She wore no make-up aside from a touch of nearly pink lipstick.

I glanced at Slade, who indicated with a gesture that he wanted us to handle the matter.

“Miss Warden?” I asked.

“Yes?”

I showed her my I.D. “We’re police officers from Los Angeles, Miss Warden. My name’s Friday. This is my partner, Frank Smith, and this is Sergeant Slade of the St. Louis police. We’re in St. Louis on a case both Los Angeles and St. Louis have an interest in.”

“I see.” The words were brisk and uncommitting, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Her tone was that of a teacher who over the years has been required to deal authoritatively with so many children that a sort of impersonal patience has become second nature. She waited for me to go on.

“We’d like to talk to you,” I said.

“What about?”

“Could we come in?”

She thought this over a moment before saying, “Let me see that badge again.”

I took out my wallet a second time and opened it. She examined the badge carefully. “You really are policemen?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“You could be robbers using a badge to get into houses. Sometimes they use fake badges, you know.”

I looked at Frank, and he said seriously, “No, ma’am. We’re Los Angeles police officers. And Sergeant Slade here is a local officer.”

Sergeant Slade silently exhibited his badge, too.

“I haven’t anything you could steal, anyway,” she decided. “I’m a schoolteacher, and you know how they pay teachers. I’ll tell you in advance that the only money in the house is a dollar seventy-eight cents in a cookie jar in the kitchen cabinet. So if you are robbers, you needn’t ransack the place and mess everything up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Frank said. “We have no intention of ransacking the place. We just want to talk to you.”

She stepped back to let us into a small, square living room, neatly but inexpensively furnished with mid-Victorian furniture. Through a center hallway off the living room, we could see the open door to a kitchen and bedroom. Two other closed doors, I guessed, led to a bath and to basement stairs. Unless he was in the bathroom, it didn’t seem likely the suspect was hiding in the apartment.

Minerva Warden asked us to have seats, and Frank and I sat side by side on a hard mohair sofa, facing the center hall. She seated herself in an easy chair across the room. Sergeant Slade took a chair that also faced the hall.

“Were you in Los Angeles in 1944, ma’am?” I asked.

Her eyes widened. “My goodness! Don’t tell me you came for me after all these years for a little thing like that?”

“What?” I said.

“That jay-walking ticket. I told the policeman I was catching a train home that night, and couldn’t possibly appear.”

I smiled. “No, ma’am, it isn’t that. We didn’t even know about it. You were in Los Angeles during the summer of 1944, then?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Are you the Minerva Warden who purchased this watch?” Taking the watch from my pocket, I rose, crossed the room, and held it so that she could see the inscription.

She let out a gasp. “Where in the world did you find that?” She reached for the watch, but I drew it back. “You recognize it, ma’am?”

“That’s Gig’s watch,” she said in an indignant tone. “What are you doing with it?” Then understanding showed in her face. “That’s why you’re up here all the way from Los Angeles, isn’t it? Because of all this nonsense about Gig Whiteman.”

“Ma’am?” I said.

“It’s all in the evening’s Post-Dispatch. About Gig’s being wanted for murder in California, and killing a policeman when he escaped this morning. I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.”

I glanced over at Sergeant Slade, and he raised his eyebrows. He said, “You don’t believe the man who escaped is the one you know?”

“Of course he is,” Minerva Warden said. “His picture’s in the paper. But there’s been some awful mistake. Gig wouldn’t do any of the things the paper says he has. He’s the kindest, most gentle man I ever knew. Courteous Killer, indeed!”

I said, “There isn’t much doubt he’s done everything he’s accused of, Miss Warden.”

“I don’t believe it! I have it all figured out what must have happened.”

“What do you mean, ma’am?”

“In the first place, his arrest must have been a mistake in identity. According to tonight’s paper, you had another man in jail out in California whom you at first thought was the Courteous Killer. But you let him go when they arrested Gig. Obviously you released the wrong man.”

“We don’t think so, ma’am.”

“Well, I do!”

Frank said, “Even if he weren’t the Courteous Killer, he killed a police officer when he escaped this morning.”

“That’s absurd, too,” she said. “Gig wouldn’t harm a fly. You know what I think happened?”

“No, ma’am,” Frank said.

“I think the real Courteous Killer — that man you had hold of out in California and let go — came up to St. Louis to make sure Gig got the blame for his crimes. I think he got his gang together and staged that escape without poor Gig knowing what was going to happen. He couldn’t let Gig go to trial, you see, because they’d prove he wasn’t the real criminal. So he kidnapped Gig.”

I looked at Frank and Slade, and they looked back at me. There wasn’t much point in arguing with her faith. I changed tack by asking, “How long have you known this man you call Gig, Miss Warden?”

“For more than twenty-five years. He used to deliver laundry to the girls’ dormitory when I was in school at Missouri U. That’s how he got the nickname Gig.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“When he brought clean laundry, instead of saying, ‘the price is a dollar and a half,’ or whatever it was, he used to say, ‘the gig is a dollar and a half.’ All the girls got to calling him Gig.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I suppose I’m the only person in the world who still calls him that. Because I’m the only one of the girls who stayed in contact with him after graduation. We were almost engaged once.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“After knowing a man more than a quarter of a century and almost being engaged to him, I think I’m in a position to judge his character. That’s why I’m sure he’s innocent of these charges.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You gave him this watch in 1944?”

She nodded, then unaccountably blushed a flaming red. I said, “What’s the matter?”

“That’s the year we were almost engaged,” she said, not looking at me. “I took my vacation in Los Angeles that summer at Gig’s suggestion. He was working in a defense plant out there, and we’d been corresponding. We hadn’t seen each other since the beginning of the war, but... well, we’d sort of started a romance by mail. Funny, in a way.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“The way it started. Here I’d known Gig off and on for a dozen years before he went to California. In all that time we never developed into more than casual friends. He had lots of opportunity to make a move, if he wanted to. But he never showed any interest in me. As a woman, I mean. Just as a friend.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then he moved a couple of thousand miles away and began to write. Seemed to get more and more interested with every letter. First thing you know, they were regular love letters. He’d say how terribly he missed me, and how empty his life was without me around.” She paused, and a faraway look appeared in her eyes. “Got so we almost had to see each other. He couldn’t come back to Missouri because of his job, so I went out there.” She sighed. “I guess I was foolish to think it’d amount to anything.”

“Ma’am?”

“I thought we might get married. But it turned out he only knew how to make love at long-distance. Froze right up the minute I appeared in person. He was polite and friendly enough, but we were just like we’d been before the letters started. Just friends. He couldn’t seem to say the things in words that he wrote in his letters.”

I said, “I see.”

“Funny thing, how it worked out. You may not believe this, but it’s the Gospel truth. You know, after knowing Gig for twenty-five years and once being almost engaged to him—”

“Uh-huh.”

“—he never once ever tried to kiss me.”

We continued to talk to Minerva Warden. She said that after her unsuccessful trip to Los Angeles, their correspondence had cooled. During subsequent years she had heard from him only at long intervals, and had seen him only twice, briefly, when he passed through St. Louis. It had been more than two years since she had last seen or heard from him. She had not known he was in town until she’d read the newspaper account of his spectacular escape.

She gave us considerable background material on the suspect, including a list of relatives and past associates. But when we finally left, she was still convinced that he was the innocent victim of some terrible mistake in identity.

After we left, I asked Sergeant Slade, “What do you think?”

“Sounded on the up and up to me,” he said. “I don’t think she’s the type would harbor a criminal, even if she thought he was innocent.”

“Guess not,” I said.

“We won’t take any chances, though,” Slade said. “We’ll stake out the place on the chance that Whiteman tries to get in touch with her.”

Chapter XVIII

The next day, Wednesday, October 16th, Frank and I flew back to Los Angeles. We caught TWA Flight 19, which left Lambert Field at 1:05 p.m. St. Louis time and landed at International Airport at 6:12 p.m. Los Angeles time.

As this was a tourist flight, we hadn’t eaten on the plane. We caught some dinner at a coffee shop and reported in to Homicide Division at 7:30 p.m.

The news of the suspect’s escape had preceded us. Captain Hertel had left word that if we checked in that night, we should take the rest of the night off and report for a meeting in Chief Brown’s office in the morning. We left the two pairs of shoes, the slugs fired from the suspect’s .38, and the watch at the Crime Lab before going home.

At 8:32 a.m. Thursday morning, Frank and I met with Captain Hertel and Chief Brown in the latter’s office. When we had given a complete report of what had happened in St. Louis, Chief Brown thoughtfully tapped the frame of his glasses against his desktop.

“Looks as though we’ll never get this man to trial in California now unless he’s captured in this state,” the chief said. “Too many other people will be fighting for extradition, too. Even the FBI will be in on it now, since the suspect kidnapped those police officers and took them across a state line. They’ll want him on violation of the Lindbergh Law.”

Hertel said, “Why should Missouri care where he’s tried, so long as somebody gets him? Missouri can’t try him, because the murder took place in Illinois. You’d think it would just as soon let us have him as Illinois.”

Thad Brown has the rare capacity of being able to see others’ points of view. He said, “Suppose Whiteman’s shooting had been a little more accurate the night he winged Friday? Would you want to see him tried for some other murder in another state?”

The captain glanced at me and smiled ruefully. “Guess not. Suppose you can’t blame Missouri for wanting him to take the count for that particular kill. This guy’s sure managed to get a lot of people mad at him.”

Thad Brown said, “In any event, I want all the evidence in order in case he does turn up in California. Stick with it until you’ve got every loose end tied up. If we ever do get hold of this suspect, I don’t want there to be a chance of his beating the case.”

Captain Hertel said, “Yes, sir.”

“Hertel, you’ll continue to act as liaison between this department, the police of other cities, and the FBI. The latter will probably jump in with both feet, now that the suspect’s violated the Lindbergh Law. Give them every co-operation.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Hertel said again.

“Above all, if he does return to this area, I want him nailed, and nailed fast. I want to be informed personally at the first whisper that he’s back. No matter what time of day or night you get it. That clear?”

Hertel said, “Yes, sir,” for a third time, and Frank and I echoed him.

When we left the meeting, Captain Hertel paused in the hallway just outside the chief’s door, mopped his brow, and said, “Whew!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

The captain looked at me. “You’ve been in sessions with the corner pocket enough times, Friday. Ever notice how he normally uses terms such as ‘Let’s do it this way,’ or ‘Maybe so-and-so ought to handle such-and-such’?”

“Yeah,” I said, after thinking this over. “Guess he doesn’t usually throw his weight around much.”

“He can throw it around, though,” Hertel assured me. “Brother, he really can. And when the chief says, ‘I want,’ instead of making it sound like a friendly suggestion, he’s getting ready to lay a fire under somebody. It wouldn’t be healthy to be sitting on the pile when he strikes the match.”

I said, “Not much we can do except follow up on the evidence we brought back from St. Louis.”

“Then follow it up. Get every item all set, so if we ever get a chance to use it, we can’t miss getting a conviction.”

I said, “Yes, sir.”

Captain Hertel moved on toward his office. Frank looked at me with a resigned expression on his face.

“What’s eating you?” I asked.

“Just waiting for orders.”

“Huh?”

“The corner pocket told the captain what he wanted, didn’t he? The captain told you. You outrank me. Aren’t you going to pass along the buck?”

I grinned at him. “Let’s see what the Crime Lab came up with.”

We found Ray Pinker in the Crime Lab examining a pair of bullets under a comparison microscope. We waited until he finally raised his head.

“ ’Morning, Joe,” he said. “How are you, Frank?”

We told him we were fine, and I asked if the slug he was checking was one of those we had brought back from St. Louis.

“Yeah,” he said. “The other’s one of those that killed Viola Carr. Take a look.”

I leaned over the twin eyepieces and adjusted the field until the two images came together. The grooves and lands in the slugs matched perfectly. Raising my head again, I said, “Not much doubt, huh?”

“Pay-dirt all along the line,” Pinker told us. “One pair of those shoes you brought back matched the footprints left at the scene of the Grotto killing, too. With the watch traced back to him, we’ve got more than enough for a conviction. All we lack is the suspect.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Only the most important item.”

The scientific police work in the case was now completed. Irrefutable evidence placed the suspect at the scene of at least three crimes, two of them murders. A fingerprint linked him to the robbery and slugging of Harold Green, the first of the Courteous Killer’s victims. One of the pairs of shoes found in his St. Louis room matched the footprints at the scene of the killing of Marine Sergeant Nick Grotto and the wounding of Nancy Meere. Our ballistics expert was prepared to prove in court that the gun in the suspect’s possession at the time of his St. Louis arrest was the same one that had wounded the latter. To cinch matters, we could prove by Minerva Warden’s testimony that the watch clutched in Sergeant Grotto’s hand had belonged to the suspect.

In case the district attorney for some reason might prefer to try the suspect for the murder of Viola Carr, we had equally concrete evidence in that case. The thumbprint on the seat-adjustment knob of the stolen car used in that robbery-murder established George Whiteman as the culprit. And again ballistic comparison proved that the murder weapon was his.

If we ever got hold of the suspect, conviction for at least one capital crime was a certainty. In multiple-crime cases of this sort, the usual procedure is to try the accused for only one crime at a time. If, despite the evidence, Whiteman was acquitted of one murder, he could immediately be tried for the second. If by some remote chance he also beat that rap, he could be extradited to Illinois to face the charge of murdering the St. Louis police officer. If his luck held even then, he would still have to face the Federal charge of violating the Lindbergh Law. As it was hardly likely that he could squeeze by even his first trial, there wasn’t a chance in the world that he could beat the charges all along the line. The only problem remaining was his apprehension.

Frank and I drew up a resume of all the circumstantial evidence against the suspect and submitted it to Captain Hertel. After studying it, the captain relayed it on to Chief Brown. It came back with the terse annotation “Satisfactory.”

A nation-wide manhunt for George Whiteman got underway. Police of every city, town, and village were alerted to be on the lookout for the suspect. He earned the distinction of making the FBI’s exclusive list of “ten-most-wanted men.” Starting with the information furnished by Minerva Warden, Whiteman’s past history was traced back clear to his birthplace in Columbia, Missouri. All close associates he had ever had were contacted and questioned in an effort to locate him. The homes of his only two living relatives — a married sister in Detroit and an aunt in Whittier, California — were placed on twenty-four-hour stakeout.

The investigation of the suspect’s past life disclosed that he did have one previous conviction: for third-degree assault in Buffalo, New York, in 1947. In lieu of a jail sentence, he had been committed to Gowanda State Mental Hospital for a sixty-day observation period. Hospital records indicated he had schizophrenic tendencies, but no deep-seated psychosis at that time. His release had been probationary, its terms requiring him to stay within the state unless he obtained hospital permission to leave it, and to report for an annual psychiatric examination. He had never reported back, and was still on New York’s wanted list.

Gowanda State Hospital authorities expressed the opinion that during the intervening years since his commitment, the suspect’s schizophrenic tendencies quite possibly could have developed into a full-blown psychosis, and that he might now be a dangerous maniac. His crime record indicated that this was probably an accurate diagnosis.

With all the forces of law and order across the nation arrayed against this one man, it would seem that the odds were overpoweringly against him. Yet he continued to evade capture. The usual scores of tips flowed in from every section of the country. All were checked out.

The middle of November arrived. The suspect was still at large.

Chapter XIX

Tuesday, November 19th, I arrived home from my tour of duty at 1:07 a.m. It was a cool, clear night with a bright moon. As I walked from the curb toward the apartment building, I glanced up at the sky and wondered if the nice weather would hold until Thanksgiving.

Something buzzed past my ear and splatted against the brick front of the building. It was followed by a sharp crack similar to the sound of two boards slapping together. Immediately another missile buzzed through the space my head had occupied an instant before, and a second crack sounded. But between the two buzzes I had dropped flat on my face.

I was rolling the instant my palms struck the concrete walk. I made the protection of the lone tree in the apartment building’s front yard just as a third bullet ploughed into the lawn six inches to one side of it. I came to one knee with my gun in my hand as a fourth slug gouged into the tree trunk.

The fourth shot located the sniper for me. The muzzle flash came from the rear of the areaway between two apartment buildings directly across the street. I estimated the distance as seventy-five yards, an impossible pistol shot.

The sound of the shots resembled those of a carbine more than a rifle, yet seemed flatter and heavier than an ordinary carbine. In any event I was certain the weapon was something longer-ranged than a pistol.

There was no point in shooting back, because the distance was three times the effective range of my pistol. It would have been suicide to try to close the gap by rushing him, for he was in the darkness of the areaway, and I would have to cross the moonlit street. I did have one advantage, though. Because he was far back in the areaway, his sweep of fire was narrowly restricted. If I could make it to a point only a few yards to one side, he would be unable to see me.

I tensed myself for a sidewise dash, then suddenly changed my mind. He was probably prepared for just that maneuver, and would fire the moment I left the protection of the tree. I decided on a different strategy.

The shadow of the tree I was behind extended at an angle toward the corner of the building. Dropping to hands and knees, I began to crawl along it. This put me directly into the sniper’s line of fire, but I was hoping the contrast of the dark shadow of the tree against the surrounding moonlight would make me as invisible to him as he was to me.

Apparently it did. Another shot sounded, causing me to drop flat, but it plunked into the bole of the tree. After a moment I resumed my crawl. It seemed to take me forever to reach the edge of the building, but eventually I made it. When I was protected by the corner, I rose to my feet.

I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether to circle around a couple of buildings and then dash across the street at a point beyond his range of vision in an attempt to come up on him from behind, or head for my apartment to phone in a request for assistance. Police training decided for me. You can’t play lone wolf if you want to be an effective police officer. You use every facility available to you. My first duty was to get in a report of the situation. After that I could try a stalking game.

Lights began to come on in apartments on both sides of the street, as neighbors aroused by the shots started to awaken. Unless I wanted my attacker to be scared off before I could get the police into action, I had to move fast.

I made the rear door of the building in nothing flat, and thirty seconds later was dialing the Police Building. The man on the complaint board who answered said that a neighbor had already reported gunfire, not more than a half minute before, and that two radio cars were on the way.

“If you gave them a Code Three, better cancel it,” I said. “He’ll run at the first sound of a siren. Get the block surrounded and maybe we can box him in before he knows what’s happening.”

“Roger,” the complaint-board officer said.

On a routine report of gunfire, with no details, police cars are sent to the scene as rapidly as possible. Normally no more than two would be detailed to investigate. If it developed that more help was needed, one of the investigating teams would broadcast a Code 9.

But now that I had phoned in the details of the shooting, there would be a drastic change in procedure. There is nothing routine about the investigation of a shooting when a police officer is the target. Within seconds of the time I hung up the phone, I knew that a general broadcast would be sending all available units to the area. Ordinarily they would have converged with sirens wide open, but my request to cancel the Code 3 would bring them silently. If the sniper assumed I was still pinned down behind the tree, there was a good chance he could be taken before he realized police were in the area.

Postponing my attempted stalking of the suspect in order to phone in hadn’t delayed it more than three minutes. Grabbing a flashlight from a dresser drawer, I raced down the back stairs and left the building by the same way I had entered. Crossing behind the building next door, I ran along its edge to the street. From this point I couldn’t be seen from the rear of the areaway where the sniper had been — and I hoped still was — stationed. I crossed the moonlit street at a crouching run and sped alongside a building two areaways off from the one from which the gunfire had come.

Alongside the building I was in shadow. But the rears of the buildings on this side of the street were brightly moonlit. Cautiously I poked my head around the edge of the building and peered at the point where the sniper had been. The only sign of life I could see was several apartment-house tenants timidly peering from lighted windows.

With my gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, I walked toward the areaway from which the shots had come. My tension mounted as I neared it, yet at the same time I breathed easier with each step, because closing the gap between us eliminated the suspect’s advantage in range. If I could get within twenty-five yards before he discovered I was stalking him, the contest would be equal.

I had almost reached the areaway that was my destination when a sound from the alley behind the building caused me to spin that way. The sound was the ominous click of a rifle or carbine bolt being drawn back.

The alley was no more than thirty feet away, and garages on its opposite side left it in deep shadow. I dropped sidewise, just as a shot cracked out. The bullet struck the building so close to me that brick dust stung my cheek.

I threw two rapid shots at the muzzle flash, then dived around the edge of the building into the protection of the areaway shadow. I scrambled to my knees and was aiming the flashlight toward the alley, when a car roared off before I could flick on the switch. Apparently he had fired the last shot from the front seat of the car, for not more than a second or two had elapsed since the shot.

By the time I reached the alley, the car had already gunned around the corner and was gone.

There was nothing to do but hope the police units were already in place, and that the sniper would run into one. I wasn’t very confident, though, because events had taken place too rapidly. Although a lot of action had taken place, actually it wasn’t more than ten minutes since the suspect had fired his first shot, and not more than three minutes had elapsed since

I had hung up the phone. Some of the units might already be in place, but it was almost certain that all holes couldn’t have been plugged in the short space of three minutes.

My guess turned out to be right. Later I learned that the block had been surrounded seven minutes after my phone call. While that was commendably fast and efficient action, it wasn’t quite good enough. The suspect had gotten through. Since I was unable to furnish a description of either the suspect or the car, his escape was clean.

About a minute after the sniper’s car roared away, the two radio units originally detailed to investigate the shooting pulled up in the street. I used the radio of one to report the suspect’s direction of flight.

After outlining the situation to the two teams of officers, I detailed one team to interview neighbors and find out if anyone had gotten a glimpse of the suspect. I took the other team with me to examine the point where the sniper had been stationed when he had first opened fire.

The areaway was covered with close-cropped grass, which left no more foot impression than a carpet would have. The only indication that anyone had been there was four shiny shell casings. As there had been five shots from that point, we searched for the fifth until I recalled the sound from the alley that had alerted me to danger from that direction. Then I realized that for some unknown reason the suspect had not ejected the fifth cartridge until he had spotted me from the front seat of his car.

Apparently that shell casing had fallen within the car, for we were unable to find it in the alley.

The ejected cartridges were from a .30-caliber carbine. I emptied the letter from an envelope in my pocket and scooped the brass into it without touching it.

Handing the envelope to one of the uniformed officers, I said, “Appreciate it if you’d drop this off at Latent Prints. He may have left some thumbprints when he loaded the gun.”

“Sure, Sergeant,” the officer said. “Any idea who was shooting at you?”

I shook my head. “The only guy I can think of is too unlikely. He’s supposed to be nuts, but I doubt that he’s stupid enough to pull a stunt like this.”

I led the two officers across the street to the front yard of my own apartment building. The lawn here was as closely cropped as the one across the street, so we didn’t have much difficulty in locating by flashlight the spot next to the tree where one of the bullets had ripped into the ground. It had penetrated a couple of feet beyond the entry point, however, and we had to dig up a considerable amount of lawn with a spade I’d brought from the basement before we found the slug. It was a lead slug, and it hadn’t been battered out of shape at all.

With a pocket knife I also dug out the two slugs imbedded in the tree trunk, but they proved to be somewhat battered. There was no point in even looking for the ones that had struck the building, as I knew they would be too flattened out of shape to be of any use for comparison purposes.

I gave the slugs to the same officer I had given the shell casings and asked him to drop them by the Crime Lab.

The team that had been interviewing neighbors returned with a negative report. Half the people in the immediate area had been awakened by the shooting, but no one had managed to get a glimpse of the suspect. Three people had spotted me stalking the suspect, though, and all had come up with fairly accurate descriptions of me.

Dismissing the two radio units, I went back to my apartment and phoned in a report to the Detective Headquarters Unit. Lieutenant Al Shambra was working the swing shift.

“No point in your coming back down tonight, Joe,” he said. “Make a written report in the morning. Any idea at all who this joker was?”

“The Courteous Killer occurred to me,” I said. “But I can’t believe he’d be crazy enough to stick out his neck while every cop in the country is looking for him.”

“Doesn’t seem likely,” Shambra said dubiously. “He’d give Los Angeles a wide berth.”

I said, “Maybe Latent Prints can make him on the casings I sent in.”

“If they can’t, there’s not much to go on, is there? From what you say, he didn’t leave a thing else.”

“Unless you count the three slugs I sent to the Crime Lab.”

I said. “About all we can do is wait for a kickback from Latent Prints.”

“Uh-huh. Meantime, do me a favor, huh?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Stay away from lighted windows.”

Chapter XX

The next morning I arrived at the Police Building at 8:30 a.m. Before going to Captain Hertel’s office to make a personal report, I stopped by Latent Prints and the Crime Lab. At Latent Prints I learned that the ejected shell casings were so clean it was apparent that they had been wiped carefully before being loaded. At the Crime Lab, Ray Pinker said that the bullet we had dug from the ground was perfect for comparison purposes.

“All you have to do now is bring in the gun it was fired from,” he said.

At Homicide Division I found Captain Hertel in his office. When I had described the shooting incident, he asked, “Any idea who this guy was?”

“I didn’t have last night,” I said. “Sat up a couple of hours mulling over the ex-cons who might have a grudge against me for sending them up. Even thought about the Courteous Killer, because he passed at me once before. Didn’t seem likely, though, that with all the heat on him, he’d come back to the place he’s hottest just to settle a grudge.”

“No,” the captain said. “Los Angeles is the last place in the world that guy would go.”

“That’s the way I figured until I talked to Latent Prints. Remember how careful the Courteous Killer always was not to leave prints?”

“Yeah.”

“This joker was just as careful. Each shell had been wiped before it was loaded.”

Captain Hertel stared at me. “He couldn’t be stupid enough to come back here. He’d have to be crazy.”

I said, “According to that New York mental hospital, he is. Maybe he figures his location doesn’t matter because he’s hot everywhere. Who knows how a nut will think?”

The captain drummed his fingers on the desk, still staring at me. “It doesn’t make sense, Joe. With every cop in the country looking for him, he wouldn’t stick his neck out just to avenge a grudge. He’d stay as far from Los Angeles as he could get.”

“A sane man would,” I agreed. “I don’t think this guy is sane.”

Hertel drummed some more, then decisively pushed back his chair and rose. “Even if you’re guessing wrong, we can’t take a chance on it. Let’s go talk to the chief.”

I followed him down the hall to Chief Brown’s office. The chief of detectives was talking on the phone. He waved us to seats. When he finished his phone conversation, he leaned back in his chair and looked at Captain Hertel inquiringly.

“About this guy who potted at Friday last night,” Hertel said. “Guess you got a report on it.”

Brown nodded. “Any leads?”

“Just a wild hunch. Friday thinks it was the Courteous Killer.”

Thad Brown’s eyebrows went up. He looked at me. “What’s your reasoning, Friday?”

I said, “It takes a zany to deliberately gun down a cop. Whiteman’s a zany. We know he’s got a grudge, because he tried his luck once before. We also know he’s careful about not leaving fingerprints. The ejected casings had all been wiped clean before they were loaded.”

The chief pursed his lips. “Not much to go on. Hot as he is, seems unlikely he’d go out of his way to come back to Los Angeles.”

“He’s hot everywhere,” I said.

“Yeah,” Brown said. “Rather remarkable that he hasn’t been picked up long ago. By now everybody in the country must know what he looks like.”

“I’ve thought about that,” I said. “Trouble is, he’s too average-looking. And he’s got such a pleasant expression, nobody’d suspect he was a killer just to look at him. Probably he’s been spotted by lots of people who thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t place where they saw him. Looks like such a nice guy, wouldn’t occur to them they saw his mug shots in the paper or on television.”

“Uh-huh,” Chief Brown said. He removed his dark-rimmed glasses and thoughtfully polished them with a handkerchief. “Suppose we’d better play it safe, even though it is unlikely. Get out a local and an APB on him. Better take the pressroom reporters into confidence and ask them to withhold publicity for a time. If Whiteman knows that we suspect he’s back in town, he’ll run like a scared rabbit. We’ll put stakeouts on you again, just as we did before. On Harriet Shaffer, too, just to play safe.” He looked at Hertel. “You can call on Metro for stakeouts.”

“Yes, sir,” Hertel said.

Thad Brown turned back to me. “How about this weapon he used? Understand it was a rifle or carbine.”

“Thirty-caliber carbine,” I said.

“Army surplus, maybe?”

I shook my head. “This was a bolt action, not a semi-automatic. I heard him pull back the bolt.”

Captain Hertel said, “A lot of Army carbines were modified to bolt actions after the war so that they could be used for hunting. Most states won’t let you use an automatic or semiautomatic rifle.”

“It still wasn’t an Army carbine,” I said. “I’ve heard those fired plenty of times. This one had an odd sound. Louder and not as sharp.”

Chief Brown said, “If the suspect is Whiteman, he must have acquired the weapon recently. He certainly didn’t have it when he made his escape. We’ll start the pawnshop detail checking for recent sales of .30-caliber carbines. Better check recent theft reports, too, for a weapon of that type.”

I nodded, and Hertel said, “Yes, sir.”

“If it is the Courteous Killer we’re dealing with, I’ve got one final order.”

“What’s that?” Hertel asked.

“Get him.”

A local manhunt of unprecedented proportions was now set underway. Every man on the force was furnished mug shots of the suspect and was instructed to be on the lookout for him. Teams of officers combed the pawnshop district and questioned the proprietors of sporting-goods stores about recent sales of .30-caliber carbines. The purchaser of every such gun was checked out. A week passed with no leads developing.

Meantime, stakeouts were again put on me and Harriet Shaffer every moment we were off duty. This, too, led to no result.

On Wednesday, November 27th, the day before Thanksgiving, Frank and I checked in at Homicide Division at 4:33 p.m. There was nothing in the message book, and no mail in either of our boxes. It looked like the beginning of a quiet watch.

Frank said, “Gonna make it for dinner tomorrow, aren’t you, Joe?”

“Sure,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Just going to be a family party,” Frank said. “Just the six of us.”

“Six?” I asked.

“Sure. Fay and me, the two kids, and you.”

“That’s only five.”

Frank looked at me. “Didn’t I tell you? Armand’s back.”

“Oh,” I said, without much enthusiasm.

Frank smiled a secret little smile. “Got a surprise for Armand this year.”

“Yeah?”

“Remember how he kept needling me last Thanksgiving? About the way I carved.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lot of science to carving. When the host knows how to do it, he feels at ease, and that makes everybody else feel at ease. Fay says it’s a matter of poise. Get all flustered and wrestle around with the bird the way I did last year, everybody feels a little embarrassed.”

I said, “I thought you did all right.”

“Aw, I was a rank amateur. Course, it didn’t help any to have Armand sit there snickering all the time. This year he won’t have a chance to snicker.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“I got it licked. You’re looking at the prize turkey carver in the whole Valley.”

“Yeah?”

“Been practicing up.”

“On what?” I asked.

“A turkey. You know O’Malley, the butcher over our way?”

“I remember the shop,” I said.

“Got one of those papier-mâché turkeys from O’Malley. The kind they put in windows for display. He got a new one this year, because the old one was getting a little beat up. Brown paint was beginning to peel off in spots.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then I got me a set of instructions on carving. Had a diagram of a turkey in it, with dotted lines showing just where you’re supposed to cut. I took a fountain pen and made dotted lines on this papier-mâché turkey in the same places the lines were on the diagram.”

I said, “I see.”

“Then I sharpened up my carving tools and cut the thing up. Worked perfect.”

I looked at him. “And that makes you an expert carver?”

“Why not?” Frank asked. “I’ve got the location of those lines memorized. All I’ve got to do is cut the real turkey in the same places I cut the papier-mâché one.”

“One thing you didn’t think of,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Real turkeys have bones.”

One of the phones rang, and I went to answer it. It was Johnson in Burglary.

“Got a man here I thought you’d like to talk to, Joe,” he said. “I’m sending him over.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Came in to report a burglary. Thinks it happened last week, but he just discovered it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Only one item missing. Thought it might interest you.”

“What’s that?”

“A thirty-caliber Army carbine converted to bolt action. With the barrel sawed off to twelve-inch length.”

A few minutes later a wrinkled little man with a hooked nose and a birdlike manner of cocking his head to one side when he looked at you came into the squad room. He introduced himself as Arthur Morrison.

I said, “Sit down, Mr. Morrison. Understand you had a burglary.”

Morrison took a chair, cocked his head at me, and said, “Certainly did, young fellow. Already told the whole story to the people over in Burglary Division. Don’t understand why I have to do it again.”

“They think the burglar might be a man this division wants,” I explained. “Where’d the crime take place, sir?”

“At my store. Morrison’s Secondhand Store on Main. Come in and try our swap-or-buy. That’s my slogan.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “When did you discover the burglary?”

“Well, I found the busted lock on the back door last week. Monday, the eighteenth. Figured it was busted some time over the weekend. Didn’t find nothing missing in the store, so didn’t bother to report it. Figured it was kids. Just put on a new padlock and forgot it.”

I said, “Then later you discovered something had been taken?”

“Yeah. Silly thing to steal, too. Lots of good stuff in the store he could’ve took. Can’t understand what anyone’d want with a gun like that.”

“Nothing was taken but this sawed-off carbine?”

“Not a thing, near as I could figure. Checked my entire inventory when I found the broken lock. Missed checking the gun because it was in the window.”

“Sir?”

“Didn’t check the window. Same stuffs been in it for years. Junk I’d like to get rid of, mostly. Figured there was nothing in the window worth stealing, so didn’t bother to look.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then this afternoon I was standing out front. Drum up business that way sometimes. Stand out front, a fellow comes along and stops to look in the window. I get him in conversation, invite him to come in and look around. Surprising how many customers I get in the store that way. People that’d pass right by, otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Today I happened to glance in the window myself. Hardly ever do that. Most of the stuff’s been there so long, I’m tired of looking at it. Just happened to today.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Right away I knew something was missing. Couldn’t figure what at first. Just knew the display looked wrong. Then I realized it was that worthless old gun. Fellow didn’t have to steal it. I was only asking five bucks for it, and I’d have come down to two.”

I said, “Would you describe the gun, please?”

“Sure. Thirty-caliber Army carbine. Fellow I bought it from had Winchester Arms convert it to bolt action so he could use it for deer hunting. Then he used it as a lever to move a big rock and bent the barrel. Was gonna cost too much to have it straightened, so he swapped it to me for a fishing rod. I sawed off the bent part and reset the front sight. Figured somebody might buy it for varmint shooting. I tried it out, and it shot pretty good up to a hundred yards. But it was funny-looking with that short barrel. Nobody seemed to want it.”

I looked at Frank, and Frank said, “Maybe the short barrel was what made it sound so funny, Joe.” He turned back to Morrison. “Did sawing off the barrel like that make it sound different when it was fired?”

“Sure did,” the secondhand dealer said. “Didn’t sound like either a rifle or a pistol. Sort of halfway in between. Sharper than a pistol, but flatter than a rifle.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I heard it once.”

Arthur Morrison was unable to give us any further information. He had no idea who the thief had been, and could recall no customer who had shown any particular interest in the missing gun.

After Morrison had left, I phoned Burglary and talked to Johnson again. He said he planned to have Latent Prints go over the display window, but there wasn’t much else that could be done in the way of an investigation. The only bit of evidence, the broken padlock, had been thrown in a trash can by Arthur Morrison, and the trash can had subsequently been hauled off to a dump.

When I hung up, Frank said, “Guess it was the gun he tried to use on you, all right.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Morrison was wrong in thinking no one would want a gun like that. It’s got one big advantage for a guy like the Courteous Killer.”

“How’s that?”

“You can carry it under a topcoat.”

We got out a supplementary bulletin on George Whiteman describing the cut-down carbine with which he was now believed to be armed.

Later that night Johnson of Burglary dropped by and said Latent Prints had been unable to come up with anything from the display window. All prints in it had been old, and all were made by Arthur Morrison.

Chapter XXI

Two nights later, Friday, November 29th, Frank and I were sitting in the squad room discussing the previous day’s Thanksgiving dinner at his house. It was just past midnight. It had been a slow night. We had had one call about a telephone threat, and had gone out on one battery case. Otherwise we had just sat around the squad room.

“You were right about those bones,” Frank said. “According to that dotted-line diagram, the knife should have cut right down to a joint each time. Guess every bird is built different inside, though.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Seems I was always a quarter inch from the joint, one way or the other, when I got down to the bone. No way to tell which way, either, without an X-ray machine.”

I said, “I thought you did pretty good.”

“Well, at least I kept it on the platter. Had an awful time sawing through those bones, though. And Armand didn’t help any, sitting there with that condescending grin on his face.”

“Next time why don’t you let Armand carve?” I suggested.

“Wanted to last year,” Frank said. “But Fay says it’s the host’s place. Says every man ought to know how to carve. It’s one of the marks of social grace.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me something, Joe.”

“What?” I asked.

“You think I lack social grace?”

I looked at him. “Why do you ask that?”

“Well, when Fay told me knowing how to carve was one of the marks of social grace, she didn’t exactly say I didn’t have any. But she knows I’m not very good at carving. So in a way she implied I didn’t have any social grace, didn’t she?”

I said, “Listen, Frank. I want to tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

“Whatever Fay’s opinion of your social grace, I know one thing she thinks.”

“Huh?”

“She thinks you’re the top guy in the world.”

Frank thought this over for a moment and then looked pleased. “You know something, Joe?”

“What?”

“Maybe this sounds conceited, but I think she does, too.”

A young man of about twenty came hesitantly into the squad room and looked from me to Frank. He was a stockily built youngster with a pug nose and flaming-red hair worn in a brush cut.

“They told me downstairs to come here,” he said. “This Robbery Division?”

Frank said, “Right across the hall, son. Room Three-twenty-seven.”

“Oh,” the young man said. “What’s this place?”

“Homicide.”

“I see.” He started out again, then stopped in the doorway. “I should think you fellows would be interested, too. It was just a robbery tonight, but after all, he’s killed a lot of people.”

“Huh?” Frank said.

“The guy who stuck up me and my girl. I recognized him from his pictures in the paper. Good thing I did, too. Looked so easy to take, think I’d have jumped him if I hadn’t known who he was.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“The Courteous Killer. He just stuck me up and took forty-seven dollars out of my wallet.”

He turned and was halfway across the hall, heading for Robbery Division, before Frank and I yelled together, “Hey!” The young man halted and looked back. I reached the door first and crooked an index finger at him. “This is the place you want, son. Come on back and have a seat.”

Shrugging, he returned. I led him over to a table, pointed to a chair, and said, “Sit down, son. My name’s Friday. This is my partner, Frank Smith.”

Formally shaking hands with both of us, he said, “Arnold Reiter is my name. I’m a senior out at U.C.L.A.” He took the proffered chair and looked at me expectantly. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“Go ahead what?” I asked.

“Cross-examine me. Isn’t that the way you do it?”

I smiled at him. “Be better if you just told us about it. We’ll ask questions later.”

“All right,” he said agreeably. “To start off, I can’t tell you the name of the girl I was with.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“She’s in nurses’ training. Wasn’t supposed to be out tonight. Sneaked out the shower-room window. They all do it, you know. Rules are much too strict for this day and age. Can’t expect to keep a girl penned up like she’s a criminal.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

“Give the girls a little freedom, and they wouldn’t sneak out that way.”

“We understand.”

“They’d bounce Georgia right out of school if they knew she was out tonight, you see. So after the robbery, I drove her back to student nurses’ quarters before coming here. Boosted her back through the shower-room window. You can see that she couldn’t afford to have it appear in the paper that she was with me when we were held up.”

I said, “We won’t put her name in the paper. Afraid we’ll have to talk to her, though.”

He looked dubious. “Be just as bad if you went to see her. Old Battle-Ax would want to know why she was being questioned by police.”

“Who?”

“Old Battle-Ax. The nursing supervisor.”

I said, “Let’s table your girlfriend for a while. Where and when did this robbery take place?”

“Mulholland Drive, up near the Outpost Estates. About a quarter to eleven.”

“I see. What happened?”

“We were sitting in the car sort of talking. Didn’t even hear this character come up. We were — well, kind of preoccupied at the time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said quickly. “Georgia’s a nice girl. A really nice one. We’re kind of engaged. She wouldn’t do anything wrong.”

“We understand,” I said.

“All we were doing was a little cuddling. She doesn’t even let me — well, you know. Nothing except kiss her. She’s a nice girl.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Well, all of a sudden we heard this voice say, ‘Sorry to disturb you.’ And there stood this guy on the left-hand side of the car pointing a gun at us. Funniest-looking gun you ever saw.”

“How do you mean?”

“Kind of a snub-nosed rifle. Barrel wasn’t much longer than a pistol’s. About twelve inches, I’d say. But it had a regular rifle stock.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Asked us real politely to get out of the car. Didn’t order us out. Just asked us. Course, the gun made it a pretty definite invitation.”

“Yeah.”

“Backed off a step to let us get out. Soon as we were outside, and I got a good look at him, I realized who he was.”

“You’re sure it was the Courteous Killer?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Wasn’t wearing glasses, and his hair wasn’t gray, but it was him all right.”

“His hair wasn’t gray?” I said.

“Black as the ace of spades. There’s a bright moon tonight, and we could see him good. Guess he must have dyed it.”

I grunted. The suspect was again practicing the same art of simple disguise he’d bragged about to me. With his average looks, even a minor change in appearance would be an effective disguise.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“He had me hand over my wallet, and took the money out of it. Gave the wallet back to me and told Georgia to give him her bag. She only had a dollar and a half in it. He took that.”

“Go on.”

“Then he said he’d shoot us if we made a sound or motion before he got out of sight. Walked up the road and disappeared around a bend. We thought we heard a car pull away after a minute, but neither of us was sure. May have been imagination.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We climbed back in the car, I made a U-turn, and we got out of there. I drove Georgia to student nurses’ quarters and then came here.”

We continued to question Arnold Reiter. Eventually, on our assurance that we would make every effort to keep from getting his girlfriend in trouble, he told us that the name of his companion at the time of the robbery was Georgia Fen. He also gave us the name of the hospital where she was in nurses’ training. He said he would arrange for her to come down to the Police Building the following afternoon, as she got off duty at noon on Saturdays.

We took the victim across to Robbery Division and briefed Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher on his story. Then we drove him out to the place on Mulholland Drive where the robbery had taken place and had him point out the exact spot. The ground was too dry for footprints to show, and we were unable to find any physical evidence of any sort.

Back at the office again, we got out a supplemental bulletin describing the change in George Whiteman’s hair color.

Meantime, while we were taking young Reiter to Mulholland Drive, Lieutenant Newton had phoned Captain Hertel at home to tell him the Courteous Killer actually was back in Los Angeles and had resumed operations. Chief Brown had left instructions to be informed the moment we had definite evidence that Whiteman was in the area, no matter what time of day or night we learned of it.

Lieutenant Newton left the duty of phoning the chief at that time of night to Captain Hertel.

Chapter XXII

The next afternoon we met Georgia Fen in the Homicide squad room at 2:00 p.m. She verified the story Arnold Reiter had told us, but was unable to add any new information. Like Reiter, she said she had immediately recognized the Courteous Killer from his newspaper pictures.

After the girl departed, Captain Hertel came into the squad room. “Meeting in the chief’s office,” he said.

We followed him up the hall to Chief Brown’s office. The chief was alone. He waved us to chairs and waited until we were seated.

Then he said, “Talked to the boss this morning about George Whiteman. The order’s to go all out for him. As of now, all department leave is canceled until he’s caught.” Hertel and Frank nodded, and I said, “Want us to try rolling stakeouts in the canyon-roads area again?”

“We’re going to do better than that this time,” Chief Brown said. “It’s a big area, but we’re going to blanket it with decoys. Hertel, you’ll be in charge of setting up the operation. The suspect’s MO has been to pick cars near bends on the road, so that after he hits, he can disappear around a bend, where he apparently has a getaway car parked. I want an undercover car parked near every bend along Mulholland Drive, and along every canyon road that runs into it.”

The captain emitted a low whistle. “There must be a hundred or more curves in that area, Chief.”

“Then we’ll use a hundred or more cars. It’s been arranged for Metro to furnish as many extra teams as you need. When you run out of radio-equipped undercover cars, ask for volunteers to furnish their private automobiles. This is an all-out operation. The next time this guy sticks a gun through a car window—”

When he paused, Hertel said, “Yes, sir?”

“I want it to be pointing at a cop.”

The captain nodded. “How soon do you want the operation to start? It’ll take a while to line up all the teams we’re going to need and figure out where to spot them.”

“It better not take more than a few hours,” Chief Brown said.

“Huh?”

“The operation starts tonight.”

Captain Hertel looked startled. He glanced at Frank, then at me, and said, “Then we’d better get moving. Friday, you and Smith get a map of that section from Traffic Services Division. Then drive out to the canyon-roads area and mark on the map every point where you think we should set up a decoy. You ought to be able to cover every road in three hours.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s two thirty now. See if you can have the data back here by six thirty.”

I said, “Yes, sir.”

“Meantime, I’ll be lining up teams of officers and extra cars. We’ll hold a mass meeting in the downstairs auditorium at 7:00 p.m. and brief the men on the positions they’re to take. Better get the biggest map of the area Traffic Services has.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll get right on it.” I looked at Chief Brown. “That all, sir?”

“That’s all. Better get going.”

Captain Hertel returned to his office, and Frank and I went upstairs to the Traffic Services Division.

As one phase of traffic control, the Traffic Services Division maintains a constant study of accident frequency in all parts of the city. It employs huge maps for this purpose, which are mounted on spindles reaching from the floor nearly to the ceiling, so that the individual maps resemble the pages of an enormous book. Each time an accident report comes in, a colored pin is stuck in one of the maps at the point the accident occurred. The type of accident is indicated by the color of the pin. This gives a complete and up-to-the-minute visual picture of all spots where accidents are recurrent. The officers responsible for the assignment of personnel can tell at a glance which areas require more police supervision.

One of the girls who worked in Traffic Services got out a map including the area we were interested in and cut out the portion we wanted. Traffic maps are so large, even this small section was bigger than the average road map. It was perfect for our purposes, because it showed every minute twist and turn along Mulholland Drive and the various canyon roads.

With our map we drove out to the canyon-roads area and spent the next two and a half hours driving up one road and down another. At each spot that seemed a possible place for the Courteous Killer to hit, I made a small red X on the map. Many curves and bends were left blank because there were nearby houses, and it seemed unlikely that the suspect would pick such spots when so many more isolated ones were available. Nevertheless we ended up with sixty-six red X’s.

We finished the job in time to grab a quick sandwich before returning to the Police Building.

7:03 p.m. Nearly two hundred officers were gathered in the first-floor auditorium. As our map study indicated only sixty-six teams would be needed, there was a surplus of about fifty officers. Captain Hertel opened the briefing by explaining that a large number of the men present wouldn’t be used, but had been called in because it wasn’t known until only a few minutes previously just how many would be needed to cover the area.

He then had the officers file up onto the stage a team at a time, and pointed out to each team the point on the map where it was to park. When all locations had been assigned, he appointed a half dozen additional teams to act as rolling stakeouts in different areas. Frank and I were assigned the eastern portion of Mulholland Drive from the place Coldwater Canyon intersected it up to the Outpost Estates, where the most recent robbery had occurred.

When this was finished, Captain Hertel released the extra officers and had the ones he had picked file back to their seats.

“The idea is to look like lovemaking couples,” he said. “Each team can decide which one is to play the role of the woman. No elaborate disguises will be necessary, because it will be dark. A woman’s hat and coat should be sufficient. I want every car in its assigned place by eight thirty P.M. The rolling stakeouts will report in by radio when all cars in their sections are in position.”

He paused a moment, then went on. “You all know how dangerous this suspect is. He’s killed three times, and he’s injured several more people. He won’t hesitate to kill again. We’d like to take him alive, but don’t take any chances. We don’t want any dead police officers. If you have to shoot, make sure you don’t miss.” Slowly he ran his gaze over the assembled group, then finished by saying, “Good hunting.” The briefing session had lasted forty-five minutes. It broke up at 7:45 p.m., which gave the officers only forty-five minutes to decide which would act the parts of women, put on simple disguises, and get into position. Some borrowed hats and coats from female employees in the building. Others, who lived nearby or on the way to the canyon-roads area, drove home to get hats and coats from their wives.

8:26 p.m. Frank and I started at the point Coldwater Canyon Drive intersects Mulholland Drive, and began to check the cars in our detail. The eleven cars assigned to us were spotted along Mulholland between that point and the Outpost Estates. Only three were police undercover cars equipped with two-way radios. The remaining eight were privately owned by the officers driving them. We placed one radio car at either end of our area and the third in the center.

As we drove slowly along Mulholland Drive, Frank said, “Moon makes it bright enough now, but it feels like a fog’s coming up.”

I stuck my head out the window to glance up at the clear sky, pulled it back in, and looked at Frank. “What do you mean, feels like it? You got a corn that tells you about changes in the weather?”

Frank shrugged. “I can always feel fog coming up, Joe. Don’t know how. Just feel it in my bones. You watch. By ten o’clock we won’t be able to see a dozen feet in front of us.”

I grunted. Then as we approached the next curve, I said, “Hold it up.”

Frank let the car drift over onto the shoulder and stop. He looked at me inquiringly.

“Ramirez and Emlet aren’t in position yet,” I said. “Ought to be along any minute now. May as well wait.”

Even as I spoke, a green Ford sedan drove past us from behind, drew off on the shoulder, and parked. Frank shifted into drive and pulled up alongside of it.

Tony Ramirez, in the driver’s seat, peered across at us. He grinned and said, “Three minutes late, boss. Jacqueline couldn’t get her lipstick on straight.”

Jack Emlet growled, “Keep it up, Buster. Just keep it up.” He was wearing a woman’s coat draped over his shoulders and a floppy-brimmed woman’s hat. He stared across at Frank and me belligerently, waiting for a comment.

Frank said, “You don’t have to be self-conscious, Jack. I think you look lovely.”

Emlet made an impolite sound. Ramirez said, “With this moon, I don’t think it’s going to work, Joe.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“The suspect gets a good look at Jacqueline’s face, he’ll know we’re plants. He’d know a good-looking fellow like me wouldn’t be out with a hag like this.”

Emlet said, “If he sees your face, he’ll know it’s a phony setup, too. A guy as ugly as you couldn’t even get a hag to park with him.”

Frank said, “Maybe you both better hide your faces.”

“Yeah,” I said. “One thing you better not hide, though.”

“What’s that?” Ramirez asked.

“Your guns. Keep them in your laps.”

We rode on to check the rest of the detail. All the other cars were now in position. I lifted the radio microphone from its bracket and reported that we were all set.

For the rest of the night, up till 2:00 a.m., we rolled up and down Mulholland Drive checking on the decoys. As Frank had predicted, a fog settled down about 10:00 p.m. By eleven it was so thick we had to creep along at ten miles an hour. The Courteous Killer didn’t appear. At 2:00 a.m. we were ordered to close up shop for the night. We made one final run to pass the order along to the decoy cars.

Sunday night was a repetition of the first night. Monday, December 1st, we set up the decoys again. And again Frank predicted fog.

11:21 p.m. We were approaching the Outpost Estates at the eastern end of our assigned territory. Frank’s prediction had been right for the second time. Fog had started to descend about 10:00 p.m., gradually thickened until visibility was cut to a dozen feet.

As we crept along, Frank said, “Got another hunch, too, Joe.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“This one isn’t anything physical. Not like telling the temperature by my feet, or feeling fog in my bones.”

“Uh-huh. What is it?”

“It’s sort of psychological. You believe in psychology?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t know much about it.”

“Fay brought home a book the other day. Talked about the experiments they’ve been running at Duke University. Extrasensory perception, they call it. Sort of like mind reading. Tells about some pretty weird cases. The woman who dreamed her son was drowning, for instance. Didn’t even know he was on a ship. Thought he was in an Army camp in Texas. But next day she got a telegram from the War Department saying his troopship had been torpedoed and he’d drowned in exactly the way she’d dreamed it.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Some of the stuff’s hard to believe. But there must be something to it. These professors aren’t just crackpots. The whole study’s being run like a scientific investigation.”

“Sure,” I said. “You gonna get to the point?”

“Huh?”

“What’s your hunch?”

“Oh, that,” Frank said. “I think he’s going to hit tonight.”

Chapter XXIII

The parking lights of the last car in our assigned territory appeared out of the fog. Sergeant Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher were in this car. Because of the fog we had been moving at only ten miles an hour. Frank slowed to five as we passed the car.

I said, “Okay, Marty?” as we drifted by.

“Quiet as a barrel of butterflies,” Marty’s voice came back.

We rounded the last bend, and Frank stepped up the speed to ten miles an hour again. Suddenly a car, parked on the shoulder without light loomed out of the fog. As we crawled past it, our lights momentarily picked out a mist-shrouded figure standing on the far side of the car.

We were past then, and fog swallowed both the car and the figure. Fifty feet beyond was the entrance to a narrow road that wound up the mountainside to one of the Outpost Estates. We had been using it as our turning-around point at the end of each run. As Frank swung the car into it and backed out again, he said, “Check him out, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Better cut your lights and park. We’ll walk back.”

Frank pulled over on the shoulder and flipped the light switch. I lifted the radio microphone from its bracket and said, “Unit One-K-Eight-Oh to KMA-Three-Six-Seven, Control One.”

A voice from the speaker said, “Go ahead, One-K-Eight-Oh.”

I said, “Suspect parked without lights at stakeout point eleven. Four Adam.”

“Roger, One-K-Eight-Oh.”

Hanging up the mike, I fished a flashlight from the glove compartment and stepped from the car. Frank climbed from the other side, reached into the back seat and lifted out a riot gun. I drew my pistol as we crossed the road and started to walk back toward the parked car.

Visibility was no more than ten feet. We were almost on the car when it suddenly appeared out of the haze. It was a Buick coupe, and the engine was idling. Frank stepped to the window on the driver’s side at the same instant I reached the opposite window. I shone my light into the front seat.

The car was empty.

Flicking off the light, I said to Frank in a low tone, “Looks like it, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said.

Then the night silence was split by a sharp crack I recognized as the distinctive sound of the sawed-off carbine. It was immediately followed by the sound of shattering glass. A whole series of pistol shots answered the carbine.

The gunfire came from about a hundred yards ahead, where Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher were parked. As Frank started to run forward, I called, “Hold it, Frank!”

He stopped and said, “Huh?”

“If Wynn and Brasher didn’t hit him, he’ll head back here at a dead run. We might miss him in the fog if we get too far from the car.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Be smarter, I guess.” He moved back alongside of me.

The bend in the road beyond which Wynn and Brasher were parked was about fifty yards off, and their car was another fifty yards beyond that. As we listened, we heard feet pounding the road toward us. I waited until they neared to ten yards, then flicked on my flashlight and pinpointed the running figure.

“Hold it right there, mister!” I snapped.

He skidded to a halt, dropped sidewise, brought up his short-barreled carbine, and fired, all in one incredibly swift motion. The bullet struck the lens of my flashlight dead center, sweeping it from my hand and stinging my palm, without doing any real damage.

Frank’s riot gun roared, and I pumped three rapid pistol shots at the point from which the carbine had fired. The range was almost point-blank, but we were also firing blind. He must have started to roll the instant he hit the ground, for the sounds we heard during the next few seconds indicated neither of us had hit him. First there was a scrambling noise suggesting he was scurrying to one side on hands and knees, then the sound of feet running to the opposite side of the road.

There wasn’t any point in firing blindly into the fog. Frank and I stood still, straining our ears in an attempt to figure out where he was. The rattle of loose dirt and stones sliding downward told us he was attempting to climb the steep incline across the road.

From off to our left, Vance Brasher’s voice called, “Get him, Joe?”

“Not yet,” I called back. “We’re over here.”

Vance and Marty Wynn appeared out of the fog. Vance had a pistol in his hand, and Wynn carried a riot gun. Wynn said, “The joker smashed the windshield right in my face. Gave me a free shave. Where is he?”

“Over there somewhere,” I said, gesturing toward the opposite side of the road. “Sounds like he’s trying to climb the mountain. In this pea soup we’re going to have trouble finding him.”

Wynn said, “I radioed in. There’ll be roadblocks both sides of here within a couple of minutes. There’s nowhere he can go. A mountain goat couldn’t get out of this area any way except along the road.”

He was probably right. The road here wound along the side of a mountain, so that there was a drop-off behind us and a steep incline a hundred yards high on the side where the suspect was. At some time in the dim past, the ridge of the mountain had broken away, so that the top twenty-five yards was an almost sheer cliff. It didn’t seem likely that the suspect could scale it and get away by crossing the mountain.

I reached through the Buick’s front window, cut the idling engine, and dropped the ignition key in my pocket. “Let’s get some light on the subject,” I said. “Bring your car up, Marty. And switch on our headlights, Frank.”

Marty Wynn said, “Roger,” and started back toward his car. Frank moved off in the opposite direction.

A few moments later Wynn drove his car around the bend and halted in the center of the road. He turned up his highway lights. Frank’s came up, too.

This didn’t help much. We could now see the other side of the road, but the mountainside was lighted only about a dozen feet up. Wynn switched on a spotlight and methodically began to sweep it back and forth over the incline.

From above us the carbine cracked, and the spotlight abruptly winked out.

Vance Brasher and I both fired at the gun flash. An instant later Marty Wynn’s riot gun boomed. His car door slammed, and he walked over to us.

“What the devil’s he think he’s doing up there?” Wynn asked disgustedly. “He must know he can’t go anywhere.”

“Yeah,” I said. Then I thought of something. “Wait a minute. The road Frank and I have been using to turn around leads to one of the Outpost Estates. It must be right above us somewhere. He may be heading for it to make a stand.”

The Outpost Estates are private homes perched along the mountainside. They are beautiful places for the most part, if you like a drop of fifty to a couple of hundred feet at the edge of your front yard.

Wynn said, “Where is this road? Maybe we’d better try reaching the place before he does.”

“We’d never make it in time,” I said. “It probably winds back and forth for a half mile or more to get up a hundred yards.” Cupping my palms in front of my mouth. I shouted, “Whiteman! You hear me?”

The carbine cracked in reply, and we all hit the dirt as the slug slammed into the concrete in front of us and ricocheted off with a whine. Apparently Frank had been waiting alongside our car for another gun flash, for in the wake of the shot a riot gun sounded from that direction.

The three of us near the Buick crowded behind it. I called again, “Whiteman! Why don’t you give it up? You haven’t got a chance.”

This time there was no reply.

From behind Wynn and Brasher’s car, a flashing red light appeared as the first of the reinforcements arrived. A moment later another radio unit arrived from the opposite direction. Within another two minutes squad cars lined the road for fifty yards in both directions.

I sent Frank one way to brief the new arrivals on the situation, and I went the other way. A few moments later a dozen spotlights began to sweep the mountainside. They weren’t very effective because of the fog.

I returned to the Buick, and a moment later was joined by Frank, who still carried the riot gun. He said, “Breeze just started, Joe.”

“What?” I said, wondering why he picked a time like this to make a comment about the weather.

“Gonna blow away the fog. Be clear moonlight around here in ten minutes.”

Glancing at the mountainside, I realized he was right. Already patches of nearly transparent haze were appearing in the thick fog.

Frank’s estimate was wrong. The breeze quickened and swept away the last remnants of the fog within five minutes. Bright moonlight bathed the mountainside, lighting it so clearly that the spotlights were almost unnecessary.

I searched the side of the mountain, but couldn’t see any sign of the suspect. Then Vance Brasher said, “There he is,” and pointed upward.

Following his pointing finger, I saw the man just as he stepped onto the porch of the house perched on the side of the mountain a hundred yards above us. Apparently the gun battle had aroused the household, for every light in the place seemed to be on, including the porch light.

Before anyone could fire, the suspect disappeared from view by moving back on the porch until its floor concealed him from below. Then we heard a crash of glass as he broke either a window or a door, probably with the butt of his carbine.

“Now we’ve got real trouble,” Frank said. “How we going to smoke him out of there without hurting the people who live there?”

I studied the house above us without answering. The mountain rose only about another twenty-five yards beyond it, but the final distance was an almost sheer cliff. If the suspect tried to scale it, he could easily be picked off by rifle.

I called to the drivers of the two radio units nearest us. “Point your spots above the house. We want that area kept lighted, in case he tries some more climbing.”

Marty Wynn said, “Would simplify things if he does.” I glanced at him and saw that he had traded his riot gun for a carbine.

Turning to Frank, I said, “Want to get on the radio and have them send out a sound amplifier?”

“Sure, Joe,” Frank said, and moved off toward 1K80.

I studied the scene above us some more. “Know what’s the other side of the mountain?” I asked Marty Wynn.

“Another mountain.”

“No road?”

He shook his head. “Not for a couple of miles.”

I said, “Then I guess we can’t come down on him from above by trying to cross the mountain from the other side.” Another car pulled up, and Captain Hertel got out of it. He came over to me and asked, “What’s the situation?”

“He’s broken into that house up there,” I said. “Probably holding the family at gunpoint. We’re calling for a sound amplifier to try to talk him out. Meantime, we’re trying to figure a way to get above the house and come down on the roof.”

Captain Hertel ran his gaze over the steep cliff above the house. “Be kind of a rough climb. You’d have to go up off to one side, out of his range of vision, then work your way along that cliff till you got above the house. If he happened to look out a side window and spotted you hanging on the cliff, you’d be a sitting duck.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t see any other way.”

“We’ll try to talk him out first,” the captain decided. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll try it the hard way.”

There was nothing more we could do at the moment except wait for the public-address system to arrive.

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.

Chapter XXV

For a breath-taking instant I thought it was the suspect gazing at me. Then I saw that it was a slim, dark-haired lad of about twenty. Undoubtedly David Grommick’s son, Pete.

My relief didn’t last long, though. In the room behind him, another figure approached the window. And this time there was no doubt. It was George Whiteman, without glasses and with his hair darkened, but unquestionably the Courteous Killer. He was carrying the cut-down carbine in the crook of his arm.

He would have been an easy pistol shot if either Frank or I had been in a position to draw a pistol. Unfortunately it took both hands to cling to the cliff wall. There was nothing to do but remain motionless and hope the boy would have sense enough to divert the suspect’s attention.

I heard Whiteman’s voice growl, “What the devil you looking at out there?” His face appeared over the youth’s shoulder.

In a slightly high voice, Pete Grommick said, “A car just arrived down there.” He pointed down toward the road. “Maybe it’s that official they’re waiting for.”

George Whiteman’s gaze followed the pointing finger. If he had glanced upward, he couldn’t have missed us. After an interminable moment he said, “Which one? There’s a million cars down there.”

“It pulled beyond where you can see from here,” the boy said. “You can probably see it from the front windows.” Without waiting for the suspect’s response, he turned from the window and moved toward the front of the house, disappearing from view. Whiteman gazed downward an instant longer, then followed the boy.

Suppressing a sigh of relief, I moved onward again. This time I deliberately kept my eyes straight ahead, avoiding the sight of the side windows. This was an ostrich-like defense, perhaps, but I couldn’t help it. So close to our goal, I had no intention of stopping again even if the suspect leaned out the window and yelled at us. I wanted the ordeal over, one way or the other.

Abruptly I realized I was in the full glare of a spotlight. My first reaction was a sense of outrage that somebody down below had blundered by swinging a spotlight beam on us. Then I glanced down and got a pleasant shock. The spot hadn’t moved at all. I had simply moved into its beam. I was directly over the roof, safe from the view of anyone in the house.

Carefully I worked my way downward the dozen feet to the roof peak. A moment later Frank joined me.

“Whew!” he said. “I never felt so good in my life.”

From immediately below us, George Whiteman yelled, “Okay, cops! I know Chief Brown’s down there now. His car just pulled up. How about it?”

When there was no immediate answer from below, Whiteman yelled, “I’m tired of waiting. We’re coming down. Either get out of the way, or two more people will be dead!”

I walked to the front edge of the roof and waved down into the glaring lights. At the signal, Captain Hertel’s voice came over the amplifier: “You win, Whiteman. Don’t harm your hostages. You can drive out.”

Behind me Frank whispered, “Where do we go in?”

“At the garage,” I told him in a low voice. “He has to go there for the car.”

I catfooted down the sloping roof to the edge where, from down below, we had seen the open doors of the double garage. Slipping the loop of rope from my shoulder, I noosed one end around a metal air vent protruding from the roof and let the other slither to the ground at the side of the house between two upstairs windows. There were no lower-floor windows at that point, because the lower wall was the side of the garage.

When I slid down the rope, I was standing alongside the garage. Frank followed right behind me. We stepped around the corner and into the garage by its open front doors.

There were two cars in the garage, a Cadillac convertible and a Lincoln sedan. The interior light wasn’t on, and the angle was such that no spotlight beam could probe through the open doors from below. However, there was sufficient reflected glow from outdoors to light the place dimly. It was enough for us to make out the door in one wall that led into the house.

We drew our guns and flattened ourselves against the wall on either side of the door.

Probably no more than a minute passed, but it seemed to drag on forever. Then the garage light flashed on, and the door between us opened inward.

A middle-aged, gray-haired, gray-faced woman in an evening gown stumbled into the garage. She was in such a state of hopeless terror, she didn’t look to right or left. With a zombie-like walk she made straight for the Lincoln sedan and started to open the rear door.

Behind her came the young man we had seen standing in the upper window. His pale face was the only indication of his fright. He must have suspected, or at least hoped, that we were planted either side of the door. But he didn’t let his gaze stray either way a fraction of an inch. Eyes straight ahead, he walked steadily to the front door of the sedan.

Crowding behind the two with his carbine leveled came George Whiteman.

I didn’t bother to say anything. He’d been given enough chances to obey a challenge. Reaching out with one hand, I jerked the muzzle of the carbine upward. With the other I brought my gun barrel down on his right wrist with the force of a striking meat ax.

Whiteman let out a yell and jerked backward through the door he had just entered, leaving the carbine in my hand. Frank went through the door after him in a diving tackle. As I dropped the carbine, I was conscious from the corner of my vision that Mrs. Grommick was toppling into her son’s arms in a dead faint. Then I was jumping through the door, too.

George Whiteman was flat on his stomach on the kitchen floor. Frank, with a knee in his back, had Whiteman’s undamaged left arm twisted up behind his back. The muzzle of Frank’s gun touched the suspect just behind the right ear.

“Make one wiggle, mister,” Frank said. “Just make one wiggle.”

George Whiteman began to curse in a steady, monotonous voice. But he didn’t make a wiggle.

1:15 a.m. The Grommick family had recovered from its ordeal, and was in an almost hysterical mood to celebrate its deliverance. David Grommick was all for breaking out his liquor supply and inviting every officer at the scene to a party. Captain Hertel’s declining of the invitation was a masterpiece of tact.

George Whiteman’s right wrist was so badly broken that his hand dangled from it like an empty sock. A stand-by ambulance was already at the scene. The attendant put a first-aid splint on it and rigged him a temporary sling until he could be gotten to Central Receiving for treatment.

Frank and I drew the privilege of riding in the ambulance with the suspect.

Aside from the string of curses he had uttered when Frank tackled him, George Whiteman had not uttered a word until we turned onto the freeway. Then he looked at me sullenly and said, “You’re the luckiest guy alive, Friday.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Just because you’re alive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t make many mistakes,” he said. “Most guys would be dead the first time I tried. I tried you twice and goofed both times. Think that’s not lucky?”

I said, “Maybe you’re just a natural-born goofer.”

He gave me a cold look. “You know better than that, Friday. I gave you more trouble than anybody you ever been up against. You got to admit that.”

I grunted.

“You got to admit I’ve been pretty smart,” he insisted. “I made every cop in the country look like a dunce.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Well, didn’t I? Look what I was up against. My face known to every cop everywhere. Five grand on my head. And I walked right past every one of you. Talk about dumb. You cops made so many mistakes, I used to lie in bed at night laughing about it.”

“Still laughing?” I asked.

Approaching headlights lighted the interior of the ambulance enough for me to see that his face was growing a little red. “So you finally got me,” he spat out. “Look how long it took you. You even had to catch me twice before I was through. You got to admit you made plenty of mistakes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Lots of them.”

“I outsmarted you all along the way.”

“Not quite,” I said. “Not this time.”

He lapsed into sullen silence. After a moment I said, “One thing you forget to figure.”

He gave me a sidewise glance. “What?”

“The odds against you.”

“You mean because there’s thousands of cops and only one of me?”

I shook my head. “Not just that.”

“What, then?”

“Even if we were as dumb as you think. Even if we made hundreds of mistakes, the odds were still against you.”

“How you figure that?”

I said, “We only had to be right once.”

The story you have just read was based upon official files of the Los Angeles Police Department. Technical advice came from the office of Los Angeles Chief of Police William H. Parker. The names of all persons except members of the Los Angeles Police Department were changed to protect the innocent. In a public statement clearing the innocent George Whiteman of all stigma, the district attorney of Los Angeles County stated that the remarkable coincidence of the suspect and his innocent double having the same name and birthplace was believed to be without parallel in police history.

On January 7th trial was held in Department 92, Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the County of Los Angeles. The suspect was tried and convicted of murder in the first degree without recommendation for life imprisonment, a mandatory death penalty. He was sentenced to be put to death by the administration of a lethal gas.

At the automatically accorded hearing before the State Appellate Court, the date of execution was set for September 4th.

George Clarence Whiteman was executed in the lethal gas chamber at California State Prison, San Quentin, California, on September 4th.

Glossary of Police Terms and Abbreviations

APB — All Points Bulletin.

C.I.I. — Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (located in Sacramento, Calif.).

Code 9 — Radio request for assistance.

Code 7 — Out of service to eat.

Code 3 — Emergency.

D.M.V. — Department of Motor Vehicles.

Form 5.1 — Booking form used in jail sections.

Four Adam — Out for investigation. May need assistance.

ID — Police officer’s identification.

KMA367 — Call letters of Metropolitan Area Station. (West Los Angeles, San Pedro, and Van Nuys have separate call letters.)

MO — Modus Operandi, or method of operation.

R & I — Records and Identification Section.

S.I.D. — Scientific Investigation Division.

Stand-up Mugs — Pictures showing full length of suspect.

Stat’s Office — Statistics section, where punch-card machines are kept.

Triplex Radio — Three-way radio (station to car, car to station, and car to car).

288 — Radio code for mugging.

211 — Radio code for robbery.

WMA — White, Male, American.

Content

Richard Deming
The Case of the Courteous Killer

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Glossary of Police Terms and Abbreviations