Crime On Their Hands

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times When a con-man with many aliases is found shot dead in his car, there is only one clue - a single word that he had scrawled on a memo-pad as he was dying - and the suspects are many. Enter Lieutenant Mendoza and his team at the Los Angeles Police Department, who approach the case with their usual tenacity and a dash of flair . . .

Release date: May 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Mendoza finished his coffee and looked around cautiously for any livestock before shoving his chair back. “Everybody’s in the back yard,” Alison told him.
“And you’re going to be late.”

“I know, I know.” He took up his hat and made for the back door. On the top step of the porch, he surveyed their yard full of assorted pets. Clapping on his hat, he said, “And
for the love of heaven, if you go anywhere, remember to lock the car.”

“Well, really, Luis,” said Alison. “It’s not a thing that’s likely to happen to anybody twice, the stray dog stowing away in their car.”

“I’ll take no bets on you,” said Mendoza gloomily. Cedric, the large shaggy English sheep dog who had stowed away in Alison’s car, was galumphing happily about the yard
after the twins. El Señor, their alcoholic cat, had a wider streak of caution than his mother and sisters and was still keeping a wary eye on Cedric. The other three were ignoring Cedric at
the moment, Bast busy washing, Nefertite stalking a butterfly and Sheba asleep in the African daisies; later, if they didn’t fancy their own lunch, they would scrounge Cedric’s under
his benevolent eye and let him wash them afterward instead of attending to the job personally. “Livestock!” said Mendoza. “What next? A stray hamster—a lost parakeet.
¡Vaya! And you the soft-hearted sucker—”

“I’m only going up to the market,” said Alison. “I’ll lock the car.”

“See you do.” He kissed her hastily, took out his keys and made for the garage. Mrs. MacTaggart, sitting on the bench under the tall alder tree, knitting, rose to corral the twins;
Alison watched the animals as Mendoza backed out the long black Ferrari. He waved to her, the twins waved to him, and Cedric barked.

“Livestock,” said Mendoza to himself. His own fault, saddling himself with a redheaded wife. And he was going to be late at the office; it was a quarter past eight.

He switched his mind from Alison and thought about the case-load they were working. An average-to-middling case-load for Central Homicide, L.A.P.D. Dios me libre, the rape-murders
cleared up: that Rooney, off the Ten Most Wanted list, had come apart and confessed to those. The Garcia thing was thrown in Pending, not a smell of a lead. They now had another liquor store holdup
shooting, and not much on that. They had a two-year-old boy beaten to death, brought to the general hospital by the mother, who said her husband had done it. But when they’d had a look at the
home address—an old apartment over on Boyd—they’d found a five-year-old girl tied to a bed and also bearing marks of beating, and by the few incoherencies they’d heard from
her, Mama hadn’t been backward at mistreating her offspring either. There was now a warrant for homicide on Mama, to be served today; they were still looking for Papa, one Giovanni
Echevarrio. They also had, since late yesterday afternoon, a sixteen-year-old girl dead of another botched abortion. At least that was what it looked like; the autopsy report wasn’t in yet.
There was the usual unidentified corpse, and the latest suicide. While doubtless something new would show up before long, it was an average work load right now. And at least it was nice
weather—as usual in late March, mild and sunny.

He walked into the office at ten to nine, just as Hackett’s tall bulk preceded him. “Better late than never,” said Hackett.

“Pot calling the kettle—you’re just coming in too.”

“I,” said Hackett, “have already been out. The first body of the day. Just more paper work, a guy walked in front of a car over on Temple. Drunk, maybe. Tom and Matt are out
spreading the word we want that Echevarrio.”

Lieutenant Carey was lounging beside Sergeant Lake’s desk, idly chatting. “What do you want?” asked Mendoza. Carey belonged down in Missing Persons. “Don’t tell me
you’ve got a new body for me too?”

Carey grinned. “About six weeks old, but relax, it’s not yours.” He followed Mendoza into his office and Hackett drifted after them, disinclined to start typing up the report
on the traffic victim. “It’s a funny little thing—I don’t suppose it’ll make much work for you, I’m just passing it on as per request. About a month
ago—oh, thanks,” he accepted a cigarette and bent to Mendoza’s lighter “—we had a request in from Dubuque, Iowa. Chief of police there. Seems this young fellow left
town, driving, heading for L.A. to visit an aunt and uncle here. One Howard Hollister, twenty-four—young man of importance, no drifter, inherited a sizable amount of money from the parents.
Part owner of some manufacturing company there. He was driving a bright red Maserati Vignale 3500 convertible, 1963 model. He—”

“¿Cómo?” said Mendoza. “Sufficiently noticeable.”

“Yeah. Well, he never got here, and his sister finally put in a missing report. Nobody’d seen or heard from him since the day he left town, February first. He was coming down through
New Mexico and Arizona, so all the states along the way were asked to look for him. Right off, a pretty firm identification of the car showed up. One of the border examiners at Needles. He noticed
the car, naturally, and he also noticed part of the plate number—the last three figures of it, 777. But if that was Hollister’s car, and Hollister’s plate number is IS-5777,
there’s something a little funny, because the border guard says that was ten days ago it passed over into California. Hollister left Dubuque on February first, was reported missing the tenth.
And now they’ve found his corpse over in Arizona, and the autopsy says he’s been dead at least five weeks, probably nearer six.”

“Where’d they find him? And why not sooner?” asked Hackett.

“Oh, sergeant—Arizona?” said Carey. “All those wide open spaces—prospector stumbled across him, about forty yards off the highway. He’d been shot. No
ballistics report yet. But if he was shot by a hitchhiker, about five miles from the California border—which is where he was found—six weeks ago, why didn’t the Maserati come into
California until ten days ago? Was whoever shot Hollister still driving it? Not that that’s your headache—the sheriff of Mohave County’s responsible for finding out. But
he’s asking the usual cooperation from all metropolitan forces—will we please put out a bulletin on the Maserati.”

“Yes,” said Mendoza. “All right, we’ll put out a call for it and see what turns up. That is a little funny—of course whoever killed him may have sold the
car—”

“Not our job,” said Hackett through a yawn as Carey ambled out. “Thank God. Enough on hand as it is. God, that Echevarrio—and I know, I know, we’ve seen it before,
but I never get used to it. It is simply beyond my imagination how anyone could—”

“Conforme,” said Mendoza absently. “He’ll turn up somewhere. A bum. On the welfare. According to his wife he wouldn’t have had more than ten bucks on him.
The autopsy report on that Delaney girl ought to be in. Maybe Percy Andrews can give us this-and-that on—”

“Abortion ring? He’ll only tell us,” said Hackett cynically, “you want the lock-picker, you can always find one.”

“Where’s George?”

“No idea—he was here when I went out on the traffic call.”

So, something else new in. Mendoza yawned too and lit a new cigarette. Palliser and Grace were off on Tuesdays. He got up to ask Lake to call the morgue and jigger up Bainbridge on that autopsy,
and Matt Piggott and Tom Landers came in.

“So you finally got here,” said Landers.

“Any luck on Echevarrio?”

“Oh, we haven’t been on that. We were starting out on him when a new call came in, so we took that. It—”

“What’s it look like?”

“Well, depending on what the lab might turn up, maybe a mystery,” said Landers. “Though if it was the simple break-in after loot, more often than not they’re not very
smart, and the lab may pick up some prints. And on the other hand, there wouldn’t have been much loot there, which anybody should have known, so—”

“Run-down old place over on Magnolia just off Washington,” said Piggott. “Poor old Negro woman, about eighty. Looked as if she was beaten and strangled. Her grandson found her
about eight o’clock. Doesn’t live with her, just came by. But there were some mighty funny things about that place, you ask me.” His long dark face wore a thoughtful expression.
“I didn’t like that sheep’s heart.”

“Sheep’s heart?” said Hackett.

“That’s what the internes said it was. Sheep, goat, something like that. Raw. With a piece of black velvet ribbon tied around it,” said Piggott. “In the bedroom. On a
chair. Just sitting there.”

“A raw sheep’s heart?” Mendoza was fascinated.

“Well, by the looks she was living pretty close to the bone,” said Landers, “and you know some of them like the outlandish meals—”

“But a black velvet ribbon,” said Mendoza; and Sergeant Lake looked in.

“New call—squad car. Cortez Street. Woman strangled.”

“¡Por Dios!” said Mendoza. “Was I thinking, an average load? Come on, Art.” Hackett got up.

Cortez Street was just this side of the Hollywood freeway, in a huddle of little streets some fifteen blocks from the Civic Center. Not the very oldest part of L.A., it was
still old and shabby and run-down; the blacktop of the streets was cracked and potholed in places, and the single houses and four-family apartment buildings were aged and mostly unpainted. The one
they wanted was probably the oldest house in that street, and the only two-story single house on the block: best General Grant style, a big old house once important, and once, probably, surrounded
by its own lawns and garden, before the city grew up to it. It was a frame house with a porch across the front and down one side, and in the bay window facing on the front porch was a hand-lettered
sign reading “Room For Rent.” There was an ambulance in front of it and a little farther along a black-and-white squad car. One of the uniformed men out of the squad car was standing on
the sidewalk awaiting the men from Homicide, and beside him was a dispirited-looking thin man about forty. Along the block, a few curious knots of neighbors had collected to stare at the
ambulance.

“Lieutenant, sir,” said the uniformed man formally as they came up. “I’m Robinson, sir. My partner’s inside. This is Mr. Heffner.”

“How do,” said the thin man unhappily. He needed a shave, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had a cut over one eye that had bled and formed a dark red scab. He had on an ancient,
ragged pair of tan chino pants and a white shirt without a tie, and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed as he nodded at them. “You deteckatives? I never met any before.” He felt the
cut with an obviously shaking hand. “Honest to God. Mis’ Milliken. Honest to God, take your life in your hands these days, live inna big town. All the punks—the hoods. The
robbers. Don’t care what they do. Honest respectable widow-woman like Mis’ Milliken. Honest to God.”

“We’ll want to talk to you,” said Mendoza. “If you’ll stick around, Mr. Heffner?”

“Sure, sure. Anything you want to know,” said Heffner mournfully. “If I just hadn’t tied one on last night—fool thing to do, but how’d I know this was gonna
happen? Honest to God, when I saw her— These hoods. Comin’ right inna person’s house. I think I’ll go back to Marysville.”

There was a square entry hall, with a thin flowered rug, a plain table by the door with a mirror over it. Stairs straight ahead; a door opening on either side of the hall, and a long straight
hall going back beyond the stairs, probably to the kitchen premises. The right-hand door was open, and voices sounded from that room; Mendoza and Hackett looked in. The two internes were lounging
at the foot of the bed, the uniformed man just inside the door. “So what can you tell us?” asked Mendoza, his eyes on the body on the bed.

“Looks as if she was strangled,” said one interne. “Maybe last night.”

The woman on the bed was elderly, a woman at least in her sixties, possibly older. She had struggled against attack: the chenille bedspread was pulled half off the bed, and a cheap china vase, a
couple of paperback books, a pair of glasses, and an alarm clock had been knocked off the bedside table. The bed had been made up and she had been dressed: she was wearing a faded pink cotton
housedress, thick gray cotton stockings, and one felt houseslipper. The other one was on the floor. The room—probably originally the parlor of the old house—was large, perhaps eighteen
by twenty, and besides the old high-backed bed held a large old-fashioned bureau, a low chest, and an old marble-topped commode. All the drawers had been pulled out and dumped, and the contents
strewed over the floor—clothes mostly.

“There’s another one upstairs,” said the other interne. “Nobody told us about that. Hadn’t found it till after they called in, I suppose.”

Mendoza raised his brows and started out to look. “Room to your right at the head of the stairs,” said the interne.

Upstairs, a thin strip of cheap carpet down the hall: three doors to left, three to right, and a single door across the end of the hall. Once this had been the home of a propertied family, when
the city was young, before these streets down here had become the nearest to a slum L.A. possessed. But everything in the house looked clean, the furniture dusted, the old pine floors polished. He
looked in the open door of the first right-hand room. Hackett came up behind him.

The ordinary furnished room: old threadbare rug, painted bedstead, painted chest, an old sagging upholstered chair, a small bedside table. And a dead man. He had been in bed, the bedspread
folded back, and he was wearing blue pajamas. He lay sprawled half off the bed, legs trailing to the floor. He was not a young man; gray hair, and a china dish on the bedside table held a pair of
false teeth in water. Beside the bed was a pair of shoes, one with a tall built-up sole, a surgical shoe.

“Knocked around some and strangled, for a bet,” said Hackett. “Break-in for the loot.” Drawers were pulled out here too.

“No bets,” said Mendoza. “Let’s find out who they were.” There was a lab team on the way; the internes could take the corpses. Nothing looking very abstruse or
mysterious here; the all-too-common break-in, if it didn’t really often end with homicide. They went downstairs and told the internes to take the bodies. Out on the porch, the melancholy
Heffner was sitting in an ancient rusty glider round from the front door. The uniformed men had already gone, back on tour.

“You found them, Mr. Heffner?” Mendoza offered him a cigarette.

“So why else do I call cops? No, thanks, I don’t smoke. Any sense, I wouldn’t drink,” said Heffner. “Nor I don’t, usual—who’s got the money? Oh, a
beer or two in summer—you know. But yesterday—well, everything at once, know what I mean, first I get fired off my job and it wasn’t no fault o’ mine neither, I was
workin’ at the S. P. an’ they’re layin’ off accounta railroads ain’t doin’ so good, I seen that for myself inna newspaper. So all right, I can prob’ly find
another job O.K., I ain’t particular what I do so long as it’s honest work, only I kinda got thinkin’ about goin’ back to Marysville, that’s my home town, see. I
don’t know. Big town, kinda a rat race like they say. Anyways, then I have the accident. Never had an accident in my life, drivin’ twenny-five years. I’m careful, never had a
traffic ticket, honest to God. Goin’ down Temple about twenny miles an hour, careful, an’ this fool kid in a VW runs into me—an’ now I ain’t sayin’ as
my old Ford was tip-top A-number-one shape, but honest to God that about finished her. An’ the fool kid’s a Mex and he ain’t got insurance. I get into an argument with him,
an’ this cop puts the arm on both of us. Disturbin’ the peace. I like to disturb that kid’s peace all right. An’ then the mechanic says maybe two hundred an’ fifty
bucks, fix up the Ford. Well, it was—you can see.” He felt the cut over his eye. “So I go an’ tie one on. Not that it takes much, me not bein’ a
drinkin’ man. I had maybe five, six whiskies, in at this bar up on Glendale Avenue. I got home O.K.—sorta instinck, I guess, acourse I lived here nearly three years—don’t
remember comin’ home, but I must’ve—an’ then this morning—”

“You rented a room here? From—”

“Mis’ Milliken. Sure. Mis’ Gertrude Milliken. Nice respectable widow-woman,” said Heffner. “It’s a nice place. She kept everything nice an’ clean,
homey, you know. But these days, my God, these hoods, break in, take all you got. Kill you. I think I will go back to Marysville. Kind of peaceful, small town like that.”

“How did you find Mrs. Milliken and when?”

“Oh, well, when I got up about six I had kind of a headache—not bein’ used to drinkin’ like I say—an’ took some aspirin an’ went back to bed. I got up
for good about, maybe eight thirty, an’ she was awful good-natured, you know, nice jolly woman, times when I’d been outta work before or not feelin’ so good she’d invite me
to breakfast, make things for me special—not that she did board, but she was nice, a good woman. And all alone in the world, never had any kids and her husband dead. So I come downstairs, and
well, there her door was open an’ I saw her. Poor soul. These hoods. So naturally I call for cops. An’ while I’m waitin’ for ’em, I think about Nordhammer.”

“Nordhammer?” said Hackett.

“Sure, sure. The right front room upstairs. I got—had—the middle room on the right. Nordhammer on one side, Forstein on the other. Nordhammer—I don’t know his other
name—he’d been here a long time too. Very nice guy, he seemed like. I don’t see much of the others, just sleepin’ here like, mostly. Nordhammer, he kinda worked for you
guys. He—”

“For us?” said Hackett.

“Well, kinda. He hadda job, one o’ the guys like janitors, up at that place in Elysian Park where the young cops get trained. I heard. Learn how to be good cops. He helped clean the
rooms an’ wash windows an’ like that, see. He had to wear this special shoe, he’s got one leg shorter than the other, but it didn’t seem to hamper him none, spry as all
get-out he was. But he’s had the flu, last couple o’ days. Off work. Mis’ Milliken was talkin’ about it just the other day—Sunday. An’ she was an awful
kindhearted lady, she felt sorry, him sick and nobody to look out for him—she’d been takin’ him soup an’ like that. Anyways, I know he was home yesterday, still sick, so I
thought maybe he’d heard somethin’—the hoods—an’ anyways he ought to hear about poor Mis’ Milliken, so I went up an’ knocked on his door an’ when he
didn’t answer I—”

“You opened the door. So we’d better have your prints to compare with any we pick up,” said Hackett. “You weren’t here most of yesterday?”

Heffner shook his head. “Left usual time for work, seven A.M. I got fired about four o’clock—me an’ some other guys—an’ I started home
an’ then the fool Mex kid run into me, an’ what with the cop an’ all, an’ then gettin’ the Ford towed in an’ the mechanic sayin’—I e. . .