Kill with Kindness

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times Lieutenant Luis Mendoza is laid low with measles and the Homicide Squad of Los Angeles Police Department has to manage without its Chief of Detectives. There are several off-beat cases to occupy them, like the man tied to a railway and decapitated by a passing train. But, Mendoza does not take his convalescence lying down and he is soon unofficially investigating a case that his colleagues are already pursuing...

Release date: May 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

WHEN he thought about it later, Mendoza realized that it was soon after they’d acquired Mairí MacTaggart that they’d first heard
about the Weavers. He never expected to have anything to do with the Weavers himself; and, very likely, if it hadn’t been for Sally Mawson and a certain chain of circumstances, he never would
have.

Every Thursday and Sunday Mrs. MacTaggart left the house on Rayo Grande Avenue, and in her ancient but sturdy Chevy sedan drove down to a more mundane part of Hollywood to visit her sister,
Janet Cox. Mrs. MacTaggart had emigrated from Scotland only five years before, but Mrs. Cox had lived here for forty-five, and for twenty of them in the modest little frame house on Edgemont Avenue
below Fountain. It was the kind of block where most of the residents had been settled there for long years: Alison had driven Mairí down on a couple of occasions when the Chevy was in the
garage. Old houses, mostly older people. But the Weavers were the oldest, had lived there the longest, in the little house next to the corner across from Mrs. Cox—and everyone admired the
Weavers, and did little errands for them when allowed, and wondered how they managed so well.

“Eighty and eighty-one years they are,” said Mrs. MacTaggart, “and you do have to admire them indeed. How they manage, on just the state pension. And Mrs. Weaver with the
arthritis, she can’t get about just so well—but the both of them always so cheerful and a pleasant word for everybody. On the pension, mind you, they’ve even saved and put money
in the bank. And they like to do for themselves—proud, like.”

And again, “It does make me feel that ashamed, catch myself complaining about this or that, when I think of old Mr. and Mrs. Weaver. So old and managing so well like they do. No chick nor
child nor any folk of their own, and married sixty years this Christmas.”

“Wonderful!” said Alison automatically.

“You know, ’tis a thing I never thought about, achara, but the old gentleman likes you to call him by his first name— Clyde it is. He says he never began to feel old
at all until there was nobody left to call him by name, just mister. And when you stop to think, ’twould be a lonesome thing, that.”

Off and on, they heard about the Weavers. How Mr. Weaver had confided to Janet that they had a thousand dollars in their savings account—“Just think, all saved from the pension, such
thrifty folk they are—” and the little house had been paid for years back, of course. It was old Mr. Weaver who walked to the market a block away, did their little errands, though the
neighbors were good—Mrs. Tuckerby, who had a little dress shop up on Fountain, brought them ice cream in summer, a treat, and Mrs. Oliver next door was always looking in to see if they needed
something. Nice old people, good people, proud and liking to feel responsible for themselves.

Mendoza saw a lot of the other kind of people, of all ages; and when Mairí chatted on about the Weavers, it was vaguely reassuring to him to know there were such people still extant,
outside the violence, irresponsibility, idiocy and malice that he coped with day by day down at Homicide headquarters, LAPD. And beyond that, old Mr. and Mrs. Weaver, down on a shabby block of
Edgemont Avenue, did not enter his ken.

When the chain of circumstances got under way, as it were, he was mainly concerned with the rape-murder of a twelve-year-old girl over on Ducommun, which was keeping them all busy.

Janet Cox had broken her hip in October, Mairí had left them temporarily to look after her, promising faithfully to be back as soon as possible, and Alison had found the little English
girl to fill in until then. Homicide had had a busy time through November, and then in the first week of December they got this rape-murder, a really nasty one, and as Hackett said resignedly they
were shorthanded with two of the boys in love, and what Homicide was coming to—Higgins, he said, going around in a daze half the time; Higgins hadn’t quite assimilated his good fortune
in getting Mary Dwyer to marry him. And all Piggott could talk about was this nice girl in the church choir.

As well as the rape-murder, they had the usual unidentified corpses, suicides, and accidental homicides to sort out, when Sally Mawson suddenly and gratuitously thrust an interfering hand into
Mendoza’s life.

The Mawsons, over in West Los Angeles, had just acquired some new neighbors. “Such nice people,” said Sally to Alison. “You’ll like her, she’s
sweet. And they’ve got twins too—a year older than Johnny and Terry, terribly sweet twins. In fact, their birthday’s next week, Alison, and I thought it’d be cute if we had
a little party—here—and you can bring your two, and—”

With misgivings, Alison finally agreed. Generally, people you were assured you’d like you detested on sight. But Mrs. Darling was not detestable, if a rather silly woman, and Johnny and
Terry were slightly better behaved than the Darling twins, which was gratifying.

And that was on a Wednesday of the first week in December.

Homicide got the rape-murder the next day, and Mendoza put in some overtime on that. They hadn’t got a smell of a lead up to Saturday; and he was not at home that day when Sally
called.

Sounding rather subdued, she asked Alison if the twins had had shots for measles.

“Yes, why?” said Alison. “Sally, you don’t mean to tell me—”

“Well, I’m terribly afraid,” said Sally with a gulp, “the Darling twins have got it. Them. Measles, I mean. The doctor’s just been, and Mrs. Darling
said—because the incubation period—”

“Heavens!” said Alison crossly. “Of all things—the shots don’t always take—”

“Well, you should know fairly soon, anyway,” said Sally. “I am sorry, Alison, but I couldn’t know—”

Alison admitted it grudgingly. And just as she put down the phone, their English girl, Dorothy Swanson, came to tell her that she thought Johnny was running a little temperature, and Terry
seemed awfully fretful.

“Damnation!” said Alison. “They’ve got it—them. Sally and her new neighbors! Why I ever—”

The pediatrician, Dr. Morgan, was of the old-fashioned breed, and promised to come when he could. “It might be this evening,” said the nurse. “He’s awfully busy, but
he’ll be there. Of course they have had immunization shots, Mrs. Mendoza, and that should make it a much lighter case. But the doctor will want to see them, naturally.”

It was evening when he came; and Alison had been sounding off about the whole thing to an abstracted Mendoza who was brooding over a couple of reports on the rape-murder. He nodded at the doctor
when he came, and was still studying the reports when Alison and the doctor came down the hall again.

“Measles all right,” said Morgan cheerfully. Alison was looking resigned.

Mendoza said absently, “Too bad. But I understand, with the shots, it shouldn’t be—”

“No,” said the doctor. “Have you ever had ’em, Lieutenant?” He grinned. “Your wife says she did, when she was eight or nine, and your
nursemaid’s had ’em too. You?”

“Never,” said Mendoza inattentively but rather proudly. Not that he boasted about it, but he never remembered being ill a day in his life.

“Aha,” said the doctor. “So you’d better have an immunization shot. And let’s hope you haven’t already got the bug. Measles can be rough on an adult. Take off
your jacket.”

“¡Disparate! I never pick up bugs. Never mind, I’ll be quite—”

“Luis, I really think,” said Alison, “if you haven’t—it can be pretty serious for an adult, and—”

“I refuse to think about—”

“Take off your jacket,” said Dr. Morgan firmly. “Must preserve our noble law-enforcement officers.” He advanced with a swab of cotton and a hypodermic. Mendoza swore and
began to take off his jacket.

“I only hope,” said the doctor, “it’s in time, that’s all.”

Mairí came visiting on Sunday afternoon. She’d soon be coming back for good; Janet was getting on nicely, a marvel how they could put that steel pin in and the hip
near as good as new. And they heard a little about the Weavers too, though Mairí spent most of her visit hovering over the twins, miserably in bed and sprouting spots already.

Old Mr. Weaver had had a stroke last month, poor man, and was partly paralyzed, but he just wouldn’t hear of the General Hospital and it was Mrs. Oliver had thought of the County Health,
and found a practical nurse to come in. “What with Mrs. Weaver’s arthritis and all, she couldn’t look to him, and the nurse seems to be a good soul, cheerful and all. A motherly
sort of body, a Mrs. O’Rourke, and she says she’s got a son, a minister, though what business anybody with a name like O’Rourke has got with a son a Protestant minister is beyond
me, it is and all— But, achara, you’re sure this English girl has wit enough to take care of them, and the measles and all? I wouldn’t just like—”

They got a new one on Monday morning. It was the manager of the building who called in: an old building over on First Street below the freeway. The kind of building where the
manager called on tenants personally to collect the rent: that kind of tenants. And he’d found this particular tenant dead.

Dead behind a door whose grimy glass top bore the legend in chipped black paint, Dr. William Hodges, M.D. Dr. William Hodges was slumped quietly in the chair behind his scarred old
desk, an elderly man with jowls and a big red-veined nose, and as the Homicide officers looked at him they could all guess that it had been a natural death: coronary, probably. He looked at least
seventy-five.

The manager said nervously, “As a matter of fack, saves me the trouble of tellin’ him to get out. Unnerstand, I don’t know anything, but I heard things
around—an’ maybe when you have a look in here, you’ll find this ’n’ that to show—you know, he was kind of on the crooked side—”

Hackett glanced at Mendoza; Landers’ boyish face wore a slight smile. Experience translated that for all of them. Dr. William Hodges, who had probably lost the right to the M.D. long ago,
had been in the market for the illegal jobs: the abortions, possibly the prescriptions for dope of this and that sort; and the manager had known all about it, but he didn’t want the police to
know that, naturally.

Mendoza was annoyed at the manager and at Dr. William Hodges. He had got up with a headache that morning, which was unheard of for Mendoza; and the weather was nice and cool, overcast and gray,
but this office was stuffy and uncomfortably hot, and he felt sweat on his forehead. “Did he have a nurse?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said the manager. “I just walked in and found him. And called you guys. An’ if that’s all I can—” he backed away. The interns
arrived and said it looked like a coronary, yesterday or the day before maybe.

Mendoza lit a cigarette. The headache was getting worse. He watched Hackett and Landers rummage through the office. They found, among other things, a medical license from the state of
Pennsylvania dated 1915. “So we ask, and find out he got struck off the register thirty years back,” said Hackett, yawning and running a hand through his sandy hair. Landers had found a
set of ledgers. “I wonder if he had a supply of dope here.”

Mendoza couldn’t have cared less. He was still worrying at the rape. A twelve-year-old—a rather messy murder, it had been, and one like that running loose— He wiped his
forehead; it was like an oven in here, though Art and Tom didn’t seem to feel it.

The interns took the body, and they weren’t going to get any more out of the manager. See what the autopsy report gave them; but ten to one it was a natural death and just the paperwork to
be done on it.

Mendoza went back to the office, leaving the mandatory search of the scene to Hackett and Landers. There had been an overnight report of an attempted assault on a teen-ager coming home from the
movies, and Higgins had gone out on that; Mendoza wanted to hear about it. If it was the same one who’d killed the Moreno girl—

“It could be, I suppose,” said Higgins doubtfully. “But also it could not be, Luis. She got away from him without much trouble, it seems, and by the looks of the Moreno girl
he’s big and strong and fast. I don’t think— You feel all right?”

“I’m perfectly all right,” said Mendoza irritably. It wasn’t all that cool that they had to have the thermostat set so high; he was sweating again. “Listen,
George—”

“You just don’t look so hot,” said Higgins.

Piggott wandered in and said they had a new corpse. “No big deal, I would guess. A bum by his clothes—in an alley over on Beverly. Nothing on him but four cents and half a bottle of
cheap vino. So now we spend some time trying to find out who he was—talk about thankless jobs.”

“Lieutenant,” said Sergeant Lake, looking in, “a new one. The squad car just called in. Looks like a suicide, they said. Apartment over on Fourth.”

“¡Caray!” said Mendoza. “So you go and look at it, Matt. All I’m saying, George—George!”

“Hmm?” said Higgins, his eyes focusing slowly.

“I swear to God,” said Mendoza, exasperated, “ever since you married the girl your concentration’s gone all to hell!” Higgins blushed, which was sufficiently
unusual for big tough cop Higgins that Mendoza grinned unwillingly.

“By the way the girl describes him,” said Higgins hurriedly, “I don’t think he’s the boy we want for Moreno, Luis. She got away too easy. We know the Moreno girl
fought that one hard, but couldn’t get away. I think— Look, are you sure you’re O.K.?”

Mendoza said unwillingly that he had a little headache, was all.

They tossed it back and forth a little; Mendoza came to agree that the attempt on the teen-ager probably didn’t connect to the murder of Rita Moreno. Higgins went out to talk to some more
of Rita’s friends, people around where it had happened down on Teed Street. Palliser was on that, too. Mendoza gave in about eleven o’clock and asked Lake to have First Aid send up some
aspirins.

And he was a reasonably intelligent man, Mendoza, not one of those stupid would-be toughs who refused to admit the aches and pains; but the fact was that he’d honestly never had any before
and the thing came as a surprise to him. The aspirins didn’t seem to do much for the headache, and he kept on sweating. He read the autopsy report on the next-but-latest unidentified
corpse—acute alcoholism, and no loss, but if there were any relatives the city would like to locate them to pay burial costs—and when Jason Grace and Palliser looked in at twelve-thirty
he was rereading the reports on Rita Moreno.

“You feel like some lunch?” asked Palliser. “I think I might have turned up a lead on Moreno. One of the nuns at the school—you know, the one we couldn’t talk to
because she was in the hospital—I finally got in to see her and she—”

“Bueno,” said Mendoza. He stood up, and had to clutch at the desk for support as dizziness struck him. And what the hell was wrong— He reached unsteadily for his hat.
“Let’s go—you can tell me on the way.”

“You feeling all right?” asked Grace.

“I’m perfectly— So what’s the lead, John?”

“You don’t look just so hot,” said Palliser. “A lot of flu going around. Maybe—”

Possibly it was the flu, thought Mendoza. He’d never had it; he never picked up bugs. But possibly—because now he was standing up his head felt big as a balloon, and he was sweating
steadily.

Ignore it, he thought firmly, and it would go away. He never—

They took Palliser’s car up to Federico’s on North Broadway; Mendoza listened to Palliser’s concise report on what the ailing nun had told him, but Palliser’s voice
seemed to come and go in waves, and the sense of it didn’t penetrate his mind somehow—“A man who’d followed her, she told the sister, see—a big man, and she’d
been scared. Of course as far as any description, well, it’s worth damn all, but it could be that—”

“Yes,” said Mendoza. “I see.” He’d be reading the written report later.

Federico’s had a liquor license (maybe a drink would pick him up a little—damn it, he couldn’t have the flu, he never picked up things like that) and consequently it was dark,
with the kind of lighting called discreet. (Alison said it was a holdover from the speakeasies in Prohibition, and she could be right.) He stumbled on the step down to the dining room, and Palliser
caught his arm. “There’s Art and Tom. I heard we got handed a new one, anything to work?”

Mendoza opened his mouth to say he didn’t think so— Dr. William Hodges, said his mind vaguely, probably the coronary—and somebody had turned a thermostat too damn high in here,
too—when suddenly the discreet lights went out and he felt himself falling. Damn thick carpets. Earthquake, said his mind belatedly. A big one overdue. Safest place in a
doorway—

There was a hiatus, and he was aware of hands busy about him, pulling his collar loose.

“He’s burning up with fever,” said Grace, sounding businesslike.

“An ambulance—my God, the Lieutenant—what’s wrong?” Adam, one of the waiters.

“For God’s sake, Luis—he didn’t look just so good, but I never thought—”

“—Said he had a headache—”

“Better call Alison. She’ll know the doctor to—”

“He hasn’t got a doctor, damn it, he’s never sick—”

“Well, he is now,” said Grace. “Didn’t he say something about the twins having measles? I’ll just bet you—”

“Measles, for God’s sake!” said Hackett distractedly. “He couldn’t have the—”

“Said the doctor gave him a shot. But it might not have been in time, you know,” said Grace. “And that can be mighty serious for an adult. It—”

Measles. Dios me libre, thought Mendoza muzzily, I’ll never hear the last of it. I’ll never— He passed out again.

There was a longer hiatus, when he was vaguely aware of people around him, starched white nurses, people doing things to him, a bed in a strange room. Alison’s face
bending over him, concerned and serious.

Rita Moreno. Had Palliser really got a lead? One like that—

The poor old slob of a crooked doctor, dying alone in the shabby office. The—

Dying. He was on his deathbed, he’d never felt anything like this before—never hear the last of it, the measles, for God’s sake, him, Mendoza— He felt very sorry for
himself; dying at only forty-four, a damn shame—not fair— And so much unfinished business— A kind of vast outrage rose in him, in what was left of his consciousness; the whole
thing so damn silly—measles— And he could just hear the boys laughing—

Unfinished business—at the office, the largest part of his life, maybe, the job—the thankless job—he couldn’t just give up—

He could just hear the entire LAPD laughing at Luis Mendoza—for the love of God, the measles—

But he didn’t, somewhat to his own surprise, die after all; he came back, to an antiseptic hospital room and a nurse with a face to stop a clock, who called him we. He was weak as
water, and he said faintly to Alison’s serious face bending over him, “All your fault. You and the twins.”

“If you want to know, they’re fine. The shots. A very light case. And you’re going to be all right, too,” said Alison. “Damn Sally Mawson.”

“I can just hear what—the boys—”

“Oh, Luis, everybody’s been so worried, honestly. You were terribly sick for a couple of days there. The office calling practically on the hour every hour, and all the cards, and Art
or George or somebody coming every day to see—”

“Most ridiculous thing I ever heard of,” said Mendoza.

“And all my fault,” said Alison, smiling. “Me and the twins. Hostages to fortune. Blame Sally. You’re going to be all right, amante. Home tomorrow, and
I’ll look after you.”

Mendoza tried to pull himself up. “And what’s happening—that Moreno thing—how long have I been—and John said it wasn’t really a
lead—”

“Mmm,” said Alison. “Richard’s himself again. Lie down and rest.”

He came home ten days before Christmas. Alison told him he could buy presents for her when the doctor let him go out, and it didn’t matter.

Mendoza was still feeling somehow outraged. Such things as illness happened to other people, not him. And the measles—

The twins were as lively and noisy as if they’d n. . .