Paper Chase

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Lawyer Jesse Falkenstein thought his secretary Miss Williams was a remarkably efficient typist, but he felt she had drawbacks as a legal secretary. She had an earnest face, unfashionable tight curls and she irritated him very much. Jesse wished he could fire her. But she'd been his secretary for nine years, so even when, on a particularly busy day, she called to say that an urgent matter would keep her away from the office, Jesse didn't fire her. He also didn't realise how urgent the matter was until it was almost too late . . . 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: November 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

JESSE WAS just about to take off early at five-thirty of this gray Friday, when Miss Williams bustled in with the Gorman will. He sat down to check it
over and five minutes later buzzed her back in. “Miss Williams,” said Jesse gently—she would probably faint if he ever called her Margaret—“you’ve left out an
entire paragraph on the first page of this.”

“Oh, dear!” said Miss Williams, looking ready to burst into tears. “I have? Oh, dear, what a nuisance. I’m terribly sorry, Mr.
Falkenstein—”

“Yes, well, it’ll have to be recopied. Mr. Gorman’s coming in on Monday to sign it.” Recopied, of course, in triplicate. But Jesse regarded Miss Williams in some
surprise; as a legal secretary she had drawbacks, but she was a remarkably efficient typist. He’d never known her to make such a careless mistake.

“Oh, dear,” said Miss Williams. Her long earnest face, innocent of all cosmetic but very pale pink lipstick, wore a distressed look. “Of all the annoying—I’ll just
have to come back this evening, I can’t possibly Saturday, and—”

“You fussing about this Felton thing?” asked Jesse. “Really needn’t—it’ll come out O.K., if we have to bring suit. Told you that. No reason to
fuss.”

“Oh, heavens,” said Miss Williams, simply casting her eyes to heaven. “That.” Four days ago, a drunken neighbor had smashed his car into Miss
Williams’ in front of her apartment house, and it seemed he’d had three accidents and three citations for drunk driving within the last two weeks, his insurance and license had been
revoked, and the garage’s estimate for repair on the car ran to eleven hundred bucks. “I’m not really, Mr. Falkenstein. It’s just terrible, really I feel sorry for Mr.
Felton, it’s just since his wife died he’s taken to drinking, but of course I couldn’t afford—and eleven hundred, and all the payments still to—”

“Man owns a business,” said Jesse. “We’ll get the money, don’t fuss. But this will, now—”

“Oh, how very annoying,” said Miss Williams vexedly. She bit her lip. Jesse reflected idly that she wouldn’t be at all bad-looking, smartened up a bit. Her dark hair in
unfashionably tight curls, her pale-blue eves unaccented, at the moment she looked rather like an earnest pony. “I can’t imagine how I came to do such a thing. And the first
page. I’ll have to come back this evening, that’s all. I am sorry, Mr. Falkenstein. I’ll just run home and fix Mama’s dinner and come right back. I couldn’t
possibly tomorrow, Sally’s got to have her booster shot, and then the florist—all the flowers for Sunday at the— And I promised I’d pick up the programs, that dreadful
printer—the last minute, and—”

“Well, doesn’t matter as long as it’s copied by Monday,” said Jesse.

“Yes, of course. I’ll come back tonight and do it,” said Miss Williams, looking as nearly cross as he’d ever seen her.

He went out and punched the button for the elevator. Someday, he thought, he’d really have to gird up his loins and fire Miss Williams. Get a really trained legal secretary. Business had
picked up a little over the last few months. Downstairs, he got into the Ford in the lot and started home. The sky looked threatening: this winter had been wet.

It had, in fact, started to rain by the time he got to the house on Rockledge Road. He slid the Ford in beside Nell’s car, shut the garage, and came in the back door to a succulent smell
of pot roast.

“More rain,” said Nell as he kissed her. “Yes, I’m fine. Only getting more enormous every day. Just like a hippo.” The baby was due in April.

“You look fine to me,” said Jesse. His lovely Nell, come to think also pretty unfashionable, her long brown hair never cut and in its usual big chignon—but his beautiful Nell
even so. Athelstane the monster was sitting hopefully beside the stove where she was stirring something. They hadn’t, of course, discovered that Athelstane was a mastiff until after
they’d acquired him; and they’d bought this house chiefly because of the chain-link fence round the back yard.

“And Fran called—they’ve just got back.”

“Oh, good. Where?”

“Well, her apartment, until they find a house. She’s mad to start hunting.” Nell laughed. “I will say for Fran, she doesn’t do things by halves.”

Jesse grinned, building himself a bourbon and water. Miss Frances Falkenstein, at length taking the bull by the horns last month, had finally annexed Sergeant Andrew Clock; they’d been
married three weeks ago and set off for a honeymoon in Hawaii. Clock had said he couldn’t possibly take off that long, and Fran had told him firmly he hadn’t had a real vacation in
years, he wasn’t all that important to the Homicide office at headquarters. Fran usually got her way in the end.

“They’re coming to dinner Sunday, and your father. And, Jesse, what do you suppose Edgar gave them?” asked Nell in awe. “That old—reprobate!”

Jesse grinned at the thought of their shrewd old maestro Edgar Walters. “What?”

“A service for twelve in sterling! What it must have cost— Well, I know he’s got the money, but— Fran said she scolded him like anything, but he just
said—”

“Can guess what he said. Said he tends these days to give people presents they can hock in case of necessity.” Jesse laughed.

“Exactly. But of all the extravagances—”

“Um. He can afford it. I wish,” said Jesse plaintively, “I had more guts.”

“What for?”

“Enough to fire Miss Williams. Poor girl, sole support of a widowed mother, but—A fool is not aware of his folly. I wonder who Sally is. And May. Well, no more dithery than
usual, I suppose, but—”

“Poor woman,” said Nell. “Are you going to get the money to pay for her car?”

“Maybe with a little trouble. Man’s good for it—we’ll get it eventually.”

He went to the office on Saturday morning to look over the statements on that damage suit; the court calendars being full, that probably wouldn’t get to court until next
month. Mr. William Gorman’s will was neatly on his desk, recopied in triplicate, this time correctly. Miss Williams had done her overtime.

And on Sunday Fran and Clock turned up beaming at the Falkensteins’ and Falkenstein senior, Fran moaning about five pounds gained and Clock telling her fondly she’d been too skinny
anyway. And Hawaii had been fine, except for all the exotic rum drinks pressed on you, but it was good to be back. “The daily grind,” he said, accepting a drink from Jesse. “The
thankless job I picked. I wonder if the boys got that heist man.”

“I had to fall for a cop,” said Fran.

“Beauty and the beast,” said Jesse, and Clock said with a grin, “More truth than poetry.” He certainly couldn’t claim any beauty prizes, Clock, with his Neanderthal
jaw and heavy shoulders, and slim, small, svelte Fran could have doubled as a model instead of editor on that fashion magazine. But one good man, Clock; Fran would be safe with him.

“You can’t imagine,” said Fran luxuriously, “what bliss it is to have no job. Just the housework. But I’m starting right out house hunting on Monday.”
The Falkensteins regarded the Clocks benevolently: good to see them settled down together.

“And I also wonder,” said Clock, “whether I win my bet with Pete. I haven’t been seeing any papers. Has that psycho killed anybody yet?”

“What—oh, the Masked Monster,” said Jesse. “Don’t blame me for the name—what the media started calling him. I don’t think so.”

“Lay a bet he will,” grunted Clock. “As I said to Pete. Robbery’s baby right now, but I’ll just bet that eventually he’ll kill one of those women and land it
right in my lap. And of all the shapeless cases to work— Well, I needn’t borrow trouble.” The Masked Monster had been around for a couple of months, and victimized a dozen women
in that time: all women living alone, regularly or temporarily. His M.O. was depressingly simple: ring the doorbell, hold a gun on them. In every case he had forced the woman to drive his car to
some isolated spot where he had beaten all of them severely, raped three of them, and then shoved them out of the car somewhere in downtown L.A. A couple of them had been injured seriously; one was
still in the hospital.

The girls talked houses and furniture. Even as Jesse had before him, Clock said he vetoed only one area: the Valley. “Don’t be silly, darling,” said Fran. “Not so far
away from Jesse and Nell. Somewhere around here, because of baby-sitting.”

“What?” said Clock. Women jumped so.

“Baby-sitting. Us for Nell and Jesse, and of course later on—”

“My God,” said Clock, “talk about being forehanded.”

“She looks so frivolous,” said Falkenstein senior. “Surprises you sometimes. Head screwed on tight, Andrews.”

“I’m finding out,” said Clock. “Same like the rest of the family.” And of course he hadn’t had a family in years, and maybe he was enjoying the feeling.

Clock walked into Parker Center that Monday morning, a little late, with the grateful feeling of coming home. He had been wedded to his job before ever he met Fran. He surveyed
the Homicide office as he came in, and it felt fine to be back—the office looking just as usual; he might never have been away. Petrovsky was on the phone, taking notes. Keene and Dale were
typing reports, and Mantella just starting out the door. Homicide busy as usual.

“Andrew—good to have you back!” Petrovsky put the phone down, beaming at him. “But you ought to’ve brought home a better tan from the islands.”

“In January? Be your age. So what’ve we got on hand?” Clock went into his office and sat down at his desk with a sigh of content. And he growled about the never-ending
thankless job, but he’d be lost without it: it was his job. Mantella and Joe Lopez came in with Petrovsky, echoing his welcome.

“The usual slate,” said Lopez. “Unidentified body in an alley off First. A mugger hitting a little too hard—senior citizen killed over in MacArthur Park. A suicide Johnny
doesn’t like—”

“Not one damn bit I don’t,” said Mantella. “Ordinary respectable young woman, three kids, everybody who knew her said it was impossible, she hadn’t any reason,
she’d never have done such a thing.”

“But what evidence have you got?”

Mantella shurgged. “Nil. It’s Boyd Street—a backwater—everybody away at work mostly. All the near neighbors. I think the husband did it, but there’s nothing to say
so.”

“Note?” asked Clock.

“Oh, for God’s—” Mantella said something pungent in Italian.

“In a kind of way, a note,” said Petrovsky. “Across the mirror in the bedroom, in lipstick. Just I can’t go on. Anybody could have—”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Clock. “That’s a funny one, all right.”

“There is also,” said Lopez, “an A.P.B. out from Denver on this Gerald Eboe. On the run from a murder-first charge. He used to live in L.A. and probably has pals here. And that
heist man pulled another last night—”

“The same boy we were looking for? You haven’t—”

“Oh, a little progress,” said Petrovsky. “We know who he is now. He pulled another three nights after you left us—we know it was him because Ballistics told us it was the
same gun that killed Cameron at that liquor store. He didn’t kill anybody on that job but he took a shot at the clerk when the clerk went for a gun, and the slugs matched. Then last week he
pulled another and left us some nice latents on the cash register.”

“One Henry Nadinger—six months out of Quentin,” said Lopez. “There’s an A.P.B. out on him. And then there is Reba Schultz.”

“So tell me about Reba.” Clock lit a cigarette.

Petrovsky leaned back with his eyes shut, smoking lazily. His round snub-nosed face looked obscurely angry. “Seventeen,” he said. “Apartment on Virgil. Father a mailman. Mother
works part time in a dress shop. And everybody says Reba a nice girl, well-raised, family goes to church, et cetera, et cetera. So Mama comes home from work last Saturday and finds Reba’s
slashed her wrists. She left a note—a nice genuine note, handwriting identified. She’s pregnant, and the note says she’s just too ashamed to live, and it was last November, some
boys she didn’t know dragged her into a car on her way home from school and raped her, only she didn’t know that then because they forced her to take some pills and she was out. When
she came to they let her out of the car and she was ashamed to tell anybody. Then. Only when she found out she was—”

“As Jesse would say. The instruction of fools is folly,” said Clock. “What a— And I suppose she didn’t give us anything useful like a description of said
boys, or the car? Even a charge of accessory before—”

“Just one thing,” said Petrovsky. “She put down that she didn’t know the boys but she’d seen them around school and she thought one of them was named
Jim.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Clock. “Well, we usually end up doing it the hard way, boys. Anything new gone down?”

“I was just going cut to look at it,” said Mantella. “And I don’t know how but that son of Satan we’d like to get. Or those. The playful prankster tossing rocks off
freeway overpasses. He just did it again, onto the Harbor Freeway. One woman killed instantly, the rock smashed through her windshield, and the car crashed into two others.”

“Son of Satan is about right,” said Clock. “I’ll come with you on that.” And of course there’d be nothing in the way of leads. There wasn’t anything to
say, on the half dozen such cases they’d had the last year, that it was the same X throwing rocks onto the freeways. A series of somebodies it could be, probably j.d.’s having the
wanton fun.

He grumbled as they went down to the elevator; but he was glad to be back.

When Jesse got to the office on Monday morning at nine o’clock, to his surprise it was locked and empty. Miss Williams always arrived at eight-thirty on the dot, and had
the mail opened and sorted by the time he came in. This morning he had Gorman coming in to sign the will, and a new client at ten-thirty; he’d be in court most of the afternoon with the
continued Reynolds suit. He was annoyed, gathering up the mail from the basket on the door; really Miss Williams was getting more inefficient by the week, and he’d have to summon up the guts
to fire her. Sole support of widowed parent be damned.

He was looking through the mail when the phone rang out on her desk ten minutes later. He pushed the office button and picked it up. “Falkenstein.”

“Oh, Mr. Falkenstein, I’m just as terribly sorry as I can be,” said Miss Williams breathlessly, “but I can’t come in this morning— It’s an extremely
urgent matter or I wouldn’t dream of— But I simply must tell her and— I’ll come in just as soon as I possibly can, it shouldn’t take more than an hour.
I’m terribly sorry—”

Jesse summoned resolution. “You know you’re supposed to put in a full day’s work. What I’m paying you for.”

“I know, Mr. Falkenstein—” She sounded almost tearful. “I’m so terribly sorry, but I’ve got to—it’s just terribly important—or
of course I wouldn’t—but I’ll be in as soon as I can. It can’t take more than an hour, I had to look up the address, it’s West— I’ll be there as
soon as I can, Mr. Falkenstein! I don’t ever take time off, do I, I’m never ill, and it’s just part of the morning— I’m sorry, but I’ll be in just as soon
as I’ve done it.” She breathed at him heavily for a moment and hung up.

“Women!” said Jesse. He was more annoyed at Miss Williams than he’d ever felt in the nearly nine years she’d been his secretary. Hanging out the new shingle, back then,
he hadn’t had much backlog and couldn’t afford the salary a really trained legal secretary could demand, even that year of grace. But now—he’d got used to the woman, he
supposed, putting up with her. An efficient typist at least. And possibly sorry for her. She tried, did Miss Williams. These days things were a bit different: he had a regular roster of clients,
and the steady income from the legal guardianship of Harry Nielsen, since Mrs. Nielsen’s death— That case had been a funny one, all right, involving him in the detective work again,
which didn’t appeal to him—and even with the house payments, and an ever pressing need to think about a new car, he could afford a more efficient secretary, and he ought to harden his
heart and fire Miss Williams.

Only when it came to the point, with her anxious china-blue eyes on him and her breathless voice apologizing for something, he wondered just where else Miss Williams could get hired. At what.
Well, she tried her best, she muddled through things somehow, and oddly enough besides being the efficient typist she kept an excellent set of files. But he really should—

And it didn’t make for such a good image for the new client, Falkenstein alone in a rather shabby office. Jesse swore. When the new client arrived at ten-thirty (no sign of Miss Williams
yet) he told him casually that his secretary was home with flu, took notes himself. A rather complicated will, that was. There was no sign of Miss Williams up to noon when he left, forced to lock
the office—and he wondered how many phone calls, and possible new clients, would go unanswered.

He was in court until four, and only went back to the office to see Miss Williams. By then he had worked himself up to the proper state of annoyance to feel quite capable of firing the woman
without a qualm.

But as he rode up in the elevator, conscience reminded him that she was quite right about that, at least: in all the time he’d employed her he couldn’t remember that she’d ever
been out of the office for illness. She was punctual and willing, heaven knew: and the efficient typist.

She was also not there. The office was still locked. Jesse swore, his annoyance rising all over again. He went in. No sign that she’d ever been here today, her desk in the outer office
tidy and unburdened. Jesse looked in the office directory, found her home phone number, and dialed. He was quite prepared to fire her over the phone, firmly turning a deaf ear to the voice of his
conscience.

On the seventh buzz of the phone, he remembered that her mother was an invalid in a wheelchair—heart attack, stroke?—and being a little deaf never attempted to answer the phone.

Well. So said old Jeshu ben Shirah, Answer not before thou hast heard the cause.

Jesse went home and told Nell he would really have to get rid of that idiotic woman. “No, she didn’t give any reason—just it was extremely urgent. Dithering
at me. And she never showed at all. Damn it, it’s just too much. I’ve put up with her, but—”

“But, Jesse, that’s funny,” said Nell. “She never came to the office all day? I know she dithers, poor thing, but she’s never done that before, has she? Even when
you’ve complained about her, you’ve always said at least she’s conscientious. I wonder what—”

“That I’ve got to say,” admitted Jesse. “It is funny. But I’m not curious enough to go see her and ask why. Doubtless be offered an involved explanation in
the morning. Maybe Sally needed another booster shot.” He finished his predinner drink, which he had needed.

“Who’s Sally?”

“No idea.”

He was to find out. At eight-thirty the phone rang, and he went down the hall to answer it, pursued by Athelstane, who was deeply curious about the mysterious voices inside. With Athelstane
sitting on his feet and leaning his hundred and sixty-five pounds on him, he said, “Falkenstein.”

“Oh, Mr. Falkenstein, this is Mrs. Hulby. You don’t know me but I’m a neighbor of Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Hortense Williams—her daughter Margaret is your—and Mrs.
Williams asked me to call you. She’s worried, you see, and—well, did you ask Margaret to stay and do some overtime work? She always calls when she stays over—or comes home first
to get Mrs. Williams’ dinner—but she hasn’t, and we—”

“What?” Jesse was startled. “You mean she hasn’t been home today, Mrs.—”

“Why, of course not, she went off to work at the usual time. And she always lets her mother know if she has to stay overtime, and she hasn’t called, and Mrs. Williams called me and
we both—”

“Be damned,” said Jesse. “Look, funny is no word. I’ll come round—I think I’d better talk to Mrs. Williams. Be there in twenty minutes.” He collected
his jacket and went to tell Nell.

“But that’s—” said Nell. “Miss Williams? Vanishing? Dithery horse-faced Miss Williams? It’s impossible, Jesse. There’ll be some ordinary
explanation.”

“And I’d like to know just what,” said Jesse.

Miss Williams and her widowed parent lived on Berendo Street, an old section of it near downtown. It was a small apartment house, perhaps sixteen units, two-storied: a narrow driveway down to a
row of garages in back. The drive was empty: only one parking slot left in front.

The Williams apartment was upstairs, in front. When he shoved the bell push a buzzer sounded angrily and a dog barked sharply once, a rasping tenor bark. In thirty seconds the door opened.

. . .