Perchance of Death

Book 0: An Ivor Maddox Mystery

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune Helen is eighteen, respectable, modestly pretty; she disappears. Juanita isn't much older, and a stunner; she picks men up in bars and then robs them at gunpoint. Old Mrs Peller's bungalow has been broken into and she is found dead - but she had managed to shoot her assailant too. It's all in a day's work for Detective-Sergeant Ivor Maddox and the rest of the Hollywood police department, who are as richly varied as the cases they investigate.

Release date: October 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Detective-Sergeant and Policewoman Maddox climbed the creaking stairs of the old Wilcox Street (Hollywood) precinct station in silence. On the landing, Sue said,
“It’s not fair.”

“As an experienced cop, you expect life to be fair?” said Maddox. “If at first you don’t succeed—”

Sue gave him a withering look and turned right into the small office she shared with Sergeant Daisy Hoffman. Daisy was there, just uncovering her typewriter. “It isn’t fair, you
know,” said Sue.

“Oh? No luck again, I take it,” said Daisy, cocking her neat blond head.

“When you think,” said Sue, “of all the unwed mothers, and hordes of illegitimate children just to get the welfare money, not to speak of all these obscene abortions—and
one respectable upright couple who want a family can’t seem to get started.” She hung up her raincoat and sat down at her desk.

“The doctor—”

“Don’t tell me what the doctor says. There’s no reason I shouldn’t get pregnant, just relax and don’t worry about it. Which is what Mother says too.”

“Excellent advice,” said Daisy, who was an experienced grandmother.

“It’s all very well for you to talk,” said Sue crossly.

“That’s a good-looking dress—new?” asked Daisy diplomatically.

“On sale.” Having passed the detectives’ exam, Sue was no longer required to wear a uniform. “And the weather’s gone crazy, I think. Rain again, in
September—the first time in sixty-nine years, the paper said. Have we got anything new?”

“Another burglary, possibly tied up to that one last week. And Juanita was out again last night—I can hear the boys cussing.”

“Give them some work to do for a change,” said Sue. The phone rang, she picked it up and said, “Yes, J—” and caught herself. Their erstwhile desk sergeant, Johnny
O’Neill, had finally passed his physical after more surgery and departed happily for a squad car and street action again. His replacement had been on the desk only this week, a taciturn
middle-aged man from downtown named Whitwell. “Yes?” said Sue.

“Some citizens with a missing report. Maybe not just the usual—you’d better hear about it. Mr. and Mrs. Strange, Mrs. Nichols.”

“Send them up,” said Sue resignedly. The rain was drumming furiously against the one window, and the stark single fluorescent lamp made the small office in this shabby, ancient
building look shabbier than ever, with its scarred golden-oak desks and chairs, the one old file cabinet for current paper work. Taxpayers who visited this precinct might conceivably wonder where
their money went, except that they were usually preoccupied with other worries.

The trio who arrived on the landing a minute later didn’t look much interested in their surroundings. Sue said, “Mr. and Mrs. Strange? Would you like to come in here, please?
I’m Mrs. Maddox—Sergeant Hoffman.”

The older couple was in their forties, ordinary-looking solid citizens. He was tall and spare, balding, in a rumpled gray suit, tie askew, an ancient trench coat; she was a little plump,
dark-haired, round-faced, a trifle dowdy in black dress and sturdy cotton stockings. The young woman behind them was in the early twenties, if that, pretty and blond in a navy pantsuit. Daisy
offered chairs and they sat down. Mrs. Strange struggled out of her beige raincoat and let it crumple over the back of the chair. They all looked at the policewomen with something like indignant
bewilderment, a look familiar to Sue and Daisy from the citizens new to any police station.

“We just can’t think what happened to her,” said Mrs. Strange. “She wouldn’t have just gone off somewhere like that—some of these girls, the things you hear,
the things that happen, but Pauline’s not like that—and we called Bill right off but he was staying over with a friend, his mother said—he wouldn’t know
anything—”

“Now, Mother. We’d better tell it in order.” He patted her shoulder. Three pairs of eyes held the same anxiety, but the younger woman looked faintly curious too, at the office,
at Sue and Daisy. “It’s our younger daughter, Pauline, we don’t know where she’s gone, she never left a note or—”

“And she never said a word to me, and she would have. Oh, I’m her sister, I ought to.”

“Mrs. Nichols.”

“That’s right. I won’t say we never had any differences, but we’re pretty close—I’m only two years older. Pauline’s nearly eighteen—”

“And she’s a good girl,” said Mrs. Strange. “Not wild like some young people—a good sensible girl, last year in high and pretty good marks, and”—she
gave a sudden wail—“what could have happened—she just wasn’t there when we got home last night—you tell them, Sylvia—”

“And she should have been,” said her sister. “Now don’t take on, Mama, that doesn’t do any good. You see, she’d been out with Bob and me. We’ve just
joined this square-dancing club, old-fashioned dancing, see, and she said she’d like to go, see what it was like. So we picked her up at home about seven last night. Dad and Mama were going
out for dinner—”

“To the Ballisters’,” put in her mother irrelevantly, “just a quiet evening—old friends—but we got to playing five hundred and it was late when we got home,
way after midnight—”

“We dropped Pauline off at the house a little after eleven,” said Sylvia Nichols. “She had her own key, of course. She was on the porch when we drove off—as far as I knew
she was just going in to bed.”

“And she wasn’t there when we got home,” said Strange. “So we called Sylvia, naturally, and when she said—”

“Are any of her clothes missing?” asked Daisy. “I take it there wasn’t any sign in the house as if she’d been attacked, or hurt, or you’d have called in
then.”

They blanched; that was a new idea, “No—no, of course not,” said Strange. “The doors were all locked just as usual. But no sign of her, and Pauline wouldn’t just go
off—”

“I think all her things are there,” said Mrs. Strange. “She never meant to go anywhere, she left her homework all spread out on her desk for over the weekend—”

“And we couldn’t get hold of Bill—like we said—he’s her boy friend, only fellow she’s ever dated, a nice young fellow, Bill Blackwell—he’ll be in
class now, I guess, he goes to L.A.C.C. But we got hold of Alice, Alice Goodman, that’s Pauline’s best girl friend, and she didn’t know anything at all.” Strange shook his
head. “We just can’t imagine—”

Sue looked at Daisy with raised brows. It might be something; it might be nothing. The girl was eighteen; all this sounded as if she was a fairly responsible girl, but more background might tell
a different story. “You’d better give us a description,” said Daisy. Check the hospitals. Mundane things happened; she could have decided to visit the nearest pizza parlor and
been knocked down by a drunk driver.

“Yes, sure, Pauline’s five-five, about a hundred and twenty pounds, I think—dark brown hair, hazel eyes—”

“She had on a coral pantsuit and a white raincoat,” said Sylvia, “and black loafers and she had a black purse, kind of a little velvet clutch.”

Daisy made quick notes. They’d check the hospitals first, see if anything showed.

Across the hall in the big communal detectives’ office, Maddox was reading the night-watch report and swearing about it to D’Arcy and Feinman. It was Friday, so
Rodriguez was off. Rowan was typing a report; Dabney wasn’t in yet, nor George Ellis. “I swear to God,” said Maddox, “if it wasn’t for females, this damn job
wouldn’t be such a headache. What the hell we’re supposed to do with this I’d like to know. Juanita!”

“I saw it,” said D’Arcy with a yawn. His lank seventy-six inches were draped lazily in the desk chair; he was desultorily looking through yesterday’s
Herald-Examiner. “Nothing much we can do with it. Another ride on the merry-go-round.”

Maddox reread Dick Brougham’s report with annoyance. Over the last four months, twelve men had come in with complaints against Juanita, and it was in the cards she had taken other marks
who hadn’t complained, feeling like idiots. Juanita was described in much the same terms by all of them—five feet to five-one, a hundred pounds or so, good figure, but the typed
descriptions were hardly as graphic as those offered in person. “Brother, but stacked!” was the comment of Dennis Weaver, number one, echoed by all the rest up to William Rutherford
last night. “A real cutie-pie, and dressed real cute, too, kind of far out but cute—real short dress, bright red, and a fur coat some kind, she’s got a swell pair of
gams—kind of Mex-looking, maybe a touch o’ the tarbrush, too, she’s real dark, but brother, stacked! And I mean, it was such a hell of a surprise—I never thought she was no
farmer’s daughter, but I wasn’t expecting a gun, for God’s sake—”

Juanita was a very accommodating girl who quietly picked up the johns in bars—all good-class bars so far, and to date twelve different ones. The johns, all men in well-paying jobs and
looking it, weren’t hard to pick up, not for Juanita. But with the price arranged, they followed her out to the street, to a parking lot, to a parked car, to find Juanita poking a gun in
their ribs. She had taken a respectable haul so far: fifty-eight dollars, an expensive watch, and a diamond ring from Weaver, a hundred and twenty dollars, a watch, and platinum wedding ring from
Rutherford, and similar loot from the other ten in between. There was no way to track her down, short of putting a plainclothes detective on watch around the clock in every middle-class bar in
Hollywood, which was impractical. The bartenders didn’t know her, or the cashiers, or the regular clientele. They would go on asking, just in case; another tedious job and probably nothing to
show for it.

Except for Juanita, it had been a fairly slow night: a hit-run on Sunset, a heist at a liquor store on Van Ness, a knifing in a bar brawl, one D.O.A. At least that didn’t look like making
much work: the body had been found on the sidewalk along Sunset Boulevard by Patrolman Carmichael, and was probably another old wino succumbing to a heart attack or whatever; no I.D., but the
prints might be in their files. Somebody had better go to the morgue to get his prints. Maddox said as much, and Feinman said, “That’s where Dabney is. You were late. He said he might
go on to that liquor store, the owner didn’t think the heister touched anything but you never know, and Dabney likes to be thorough.”

“Thorough!” said Maddox, “Can you quote the statistics offhand, just how often we pick up good enough latents, prints that happen to be on file, to make a case?”

“Not very often,” said Feinman mildly, “I know.”

The rain beat on the windows and D’Arcy folded over a page of his newspaper. “Did you know this is the first time it’s rained in September since 1907? Funny.” A mutter of
thunder sounded in the distance. Nobody commented.

The phone rang on Maddox’ desk and he picked it up. “Wilcox Street Police Station, Sergeant Maddox.”

“This is Dr. Hirschner at Hollywood Receiving.” The voice was young, but sounded tired and faintly cynical. “You’ll be interested to know that we’ve got another
battered child. Just as of now. Not much on it yet but enough to identify her.”

“Oh, fine,” said Maddox. “You’ve got a name—parents’ address?”

“Both. You’ll be getting a formal report,” said Hirschner. “The child’s dead. Ten minutes ago.”

“God,” said Maddox. “We’d better come up and hear about it.” He put the phone down, got up, and prodded D’Arcy. “Come on, we’ve got work to
do.”

They got into their raincoats again; downstairs in the lobby they met Dabney coming in. “I got the drunk’s prints, but not a hope in hell at that liquor store—just a lot of
smudges.”

“As per usual,” said Maddox. It was raining steadily, a hard downpour. D’Arcy folded himself into the passenger seat of Maddox’ little blue Maserati unprotestingly for
the short ride.

Six blocks up Wilcox Street they ducked out of the car, across a flooding parking lot into the solid block of the big hospital, and were directed to Emergency, where they found Hirschner. He was
a fair, rather handsome youngish man nearly as tall as D’Arcy, with shrewd pale blue eyes. “You’d better have a look,” he said. Neither of them particularly wanted to, but
that was part of the job too; they followed him down to a room at the end of the corridor, hardly more than a closet, where a very small form lay still under a sheet on a narrow cot.
“I’ll send her down to the morgue now—you’ll want a full autopsy.” He pulled back the sheet.

“Christ,” said D’Arcy. “People.” The child couldn’t be more than three, and you couldn’t tell if she’d been pretty or not, the face was too
swollen and darkened with bruises. There were more bruises all over the little body, and what looked like partly healed abrasions. Hirschner lifted the body and turned it over, and D’Arcy
said “Christ” again.

“Burns,” said Hirschner. “My guess would be somebody held live cigarettes on her. And its been going on some time—some of these marks are a month or so old.”

Maddox had his notebook out. “So what else can you tell us?”

Hirschner straightened, put back the sheet, and led the way out to the corridor. “She was brought in about forty-five minutes ago by a man. I can’t tell you his name. He said
she’d fallen downstairs and her mother had to go to work, asked him to bring her in. The nurse got the mother’s name—a Mrs. Candy Thomas, address on DeLongpre. The child was
comatose then and there wasn’t much red tape—the nurse called me and we got her into a treatment room. I started oxygen but she died about ten minutes later.” He shrugged.
“Possibly a fractured skull, internal bleeding—the autopsy will say. But you can see she’s been subjected to brutal treatment over a long time.”

“Yes. Have you tried to contact the mother? Talk to the man?”

“When I came out he was gone. Just walked out when the nurse tried to get more information out of him. I haven’t called the mother.”

“Leaving the dirty work to us,” said D’Arcy. “Don’t tell me, it’s our job.”

“Well, it’ll add up to manslaughter at the least,” said Hirschner.

They went down the hall to talk to the nurse at the admitting Emergency desk; she was a slim, dark young woman with alert eyes. “I know, Dr. Hirschner told me,” she said to
Maddox’ badge; her voice was distressed. “A terrible thing—the kind of thing hard to believe, but you wouldn’t believe how often we do see it—”

“Yes, we would. We’re cops,” said Maddox. And even as he questioned her, made a few notes, he noticed irrelevantly that he was having the usual effect on anything female: she
smoothed her neat dark head and her eyes were interested, aware. He would never understand it; thin, dark Ivor Maddox, who had just slid in to the force at five-nine, was a very unremarkable
fellow; it was just peculiar about the females, and a good thing Sue wasn’t given to jealousy.

“He didn’t say much. He told me the mother’s name”—she pushed over a memo sheet—“and I could see she needed immediate attention, I called the doctor,
and he took her right into treatment. Usually we get more details before, but—Then I tried to get more information, it’s just routine, about any medical insurance, which firm, policy
number, if it’s on-the-job insurance covering any minors—you know—”

“All the red tape,” said Maddox, “wound around us these socialistic days. And?”

“He just kept saying he didn’t know, we’d have to ask the mother. He wouldn’t give me his name, just said he was ‘a friend of the kid’s old lady.’ And
that she’d come to get the kid after work and pay us then. Well, you know, it’s customary to ask for a deposit if there’s no insurance—”

“Yes,” said Maddox, and she flared up in momentary resentment, quick to suspect the nuance.

“You needn’t think—I mean, sometimes people seem to think we’re just grabbing for the money before we treat the patient—I saw the child was in a bad way, I called
the doctor at once, but it is customary—after all we’re not running a charity here—”

“All right,” said Maddox. “What did he say when you told him that?”

“He just looked surprised and then he said he didn’t have any money on him. He said he’d call the mother, I’d told him we’d have to have her permission anyway for
anything but strictly emergency treatment—and I assumed he was heading for the public phones down the hall, but when the doctor came out he was just gone, we couldn’t find him any
place.”

“Can you tell us what he looked like?”

“Oh—I’m not very good at describing people. He was taller than you, maybe six feet—late twenties, I guess—sort of sandy hair, pretty long—scraggly, you know,
down past his ears—and he looked sort of shabby, I mean he had on old gray slacks and a brown sweater and a dirty raincoat—but that might not mean anything, I suppose, because people do
put on old clothes to go out in the rain, in California anyway. It’s one thing I noticed right away when I came out here from New York, I suppose it’s because it doesn’t rain
often here and people haven’t got the right clothes for it.”

“Thanks very much,” said Maddox.

“I hope you find him—and whoever hurt that poor child.”

“So do we.”

They got back in the Maserati and drove out to the address on DeLongpre. It was one side of a narrow old duplex, a ramshackle frame house on that shabby, narrow old street. They got no answer
from the one side, but the second door was opened by a tousled-looking young woman in a frayed chenille bathrobe.

“Sure I know Candy,” she said through a yawn, and stared at the badges. “You’re cops? What you want with Candy, for God’s sake?”

“Do you know where she works? Her husband?”

“She hasn’t got a husband, she’s divorced. Yeah, she works at a Woolworth’s, the one out on Santa Monica past Fairfax. What you guys want with Candy, anyway?”

Maddox thanked her. They’d probably be talking to her again. They found a parking slot a block away from the Woolworth store and sloshed back to it through the rain. Inside, they found the
. . .