Strange Felony

Book 0: An Ivor Maddox Mystery

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Ivor Maddox and his men of the Hollywood police department face, as ever, a formidable load of tricky and puzzling cases. An unknown woman walks into a lawyer's office and shoots him dead: who is she and what is her motive? A housewife in a reputable neighbourhood is found slaughtered. And, perhaps oddest of all, a woman uses her alleged psychic powers to reveal that a missing schoolgirl is being held captive in the Hollywood area. 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: October 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Maddox had been out on the legwork most of this Friday, and came back to the Hollywood division station about three o’clock. D’Arcy had just turned into the parking
lot ahead of him. Maddox looked into Ellis’ office as he came down the hall; it was empty, but there were a couple of manila envelopes on Ellis’ desk. He collected them and went on down
to the communal detective office. D’Arcy was just settling down to his typewriter, looking gloomy.

“George hasn’t been in.”

“So I deduce,” said Maddox.

D’Arcy leaned back and stretched his long lank form in the desk chair. “You know,” he said seriously, “I think he’s looking worse than just after it happened,
Ivor.”

Maddox sat down at his desk. “It can’t be a thing to get over quick or easy,” he said, passing a hand over his jaw, and his tone was somber.

A terrible thing had happened to the Ellises a couple of months ago. Their only child, bright and good-looking twenty-year-old Roy, in his second year at UCLA, on his way home from a date with
his girl one Saturday night, had met a drunk driver on the Hollywood freeway. The drunk, of course, had sustained minor cuts and bruises; Roy had died in surgery an hour later. These days,
Administration and everybody at Hollywood division was looking the other way and giving Ellis time, not taking official notice of his absences.

Maddox thought about his very new son, John Ivor, at home, and said sadly, “Not an easy thing, D’Arcy.” Bad enough to lose a baby, a child, but a son you had raised—the
memories of babyhood, of childhood—a grown son on the verge of adulthood and an adult career— He said heavily, “I don’t suppose you got anything.”

“Need you ask?” said D’Arcy. “Not one damn thing.”

“It’ll go into Pending. We’ll never get anything on it.”

It was César Rodriguez’s day off. The other detectives were all apparently out on other things; they had the usual heists to work, the burglaries, and this new homicide, which
wasn’t going to come to anything.

“This’ll be the last report on Burton,” said D’Arcy dispiritedly. “It’s a dead end.” He rolled the triplicate forms into the typewriter and contemplated
them without starting the report immediately.

That rather messy homicide had showed up on Monday, the corpse of a young woman in a cheap apartment on Oakwood Avenue. The manager had noticed the apartment door was open halfway, hadn’t
thought much about it for a couple of days, finally investigated and found the woman dead. He didn’t know anything about her. She had rented the apartment two weeks previously, paid him in
cash, and given the name of Rose Burton. She looked to be about twenty-five, dark-haired, Caucasian, a nice figure, and he said pretty good-looking; that, you couldn’t judge now; she’d
been strangled and beaten. And there’d been nothing in the place to give them any leads at all. Anonymous clothes, costume jewelry, no identification at all, no Social Security card, no
record of a bank account, credit cards, no address book. She had told the manager she had just come to California from Ohio. There were a lot of towns in Ohio. N.C.I.C. hadn’t any record of a
Rose Burton reported missing from Ohio or anywhere else. And, they had learned just this morning, nobody knew her fingerprints, the FBI didn’t have them. If she’d had a criminal record
anywhere, ever served in the armed services, ever had a security clearance, the Feds would have had her prints. But there were millions of citizens still who had never been printed, living humdrum
respectable lives. Her name might have been Rose Burton or it might not have been. Among the few possessions in the cheap apartment had been no letters, no personal items at all.

“It’s a dead end,” repeated D’Arcy, lighting a cigarette. “I talked to all those tenants again, and it was a waste of time.”

“Yes,” said Maddox. “It’ll go into Pending, we’ll never get any further on it.” They didn’t know anything about the woman and never would. The absence
of a Social Security card made it look as if she could have been a hooker; it could have been the casual pickup who’d killed her; but there was really nothing to back that up either. It could
have been a personal motive, the killer removing all her identification. It was all up in the air.

D’Arcy started to type the report, which would probably be the final one, and Sergeant Feinman came in looking disgruntled; he slouched into his desk chair. Maddox asked disinterestedly,
“The same ring? It sounded that way.”

“Oh, say it in spades,” said Feinman grouchily. “And no leads at all.” His lean dark intellectual face wore a morose expression.

“The mysteries,” said Maddox, and yawned. The only mysteries they generally had—contrary to the tenets of popular fiction—were like that one: just the blank crimes with
no leads from the lab or street informants, nothing complex. The burglary ring Feinman had been working on for three months was one like that, and frustrating.

“They knocked out the electricity again. It was an appliance store down on Vermont. They got away with a couple of air conditioners, some calculators, and tape recorders and radios. I left
Garcia dusting for prints but you know he’ll get damn all.”

The burglaries, of course, went on forever, but this ring was a little different from the general run of burglars. The consensus was that there were two or three of them, considering the size of
the stolen merchandise. Comparing the M.O. with other divisions, Hollywood had come to the conclusion that their first hits had been out in Valley division back in March, where they had hit a
garden supply store for lawn mowers, and then a big hardware store for air conditioners and small appliances. Since then they’d been operating in central Hollywood. The M.O. tied all the jobs
to the same ring, and it was a fairly smart operation. Burglars tended to be rather simpleminded, but these operators were halfway smart. A good many businesses these days had burglar alarms
connected to the local police divisions, and all but one of the places hit had had those. But where many newer buildings had all the electric connections, the box of circuit breakers, inside the
premises, a good many older buildings still had those outside, at the rear of the building. The burglars had simply tripped all the circuit breakers, knocking out the alarm systems, and jimmied the
rear doors at their leisure.

It was another blank, where they would probably never come up with any useful lead, and Feinman, who had an orderly mind, was feeling annoyed about it.

“Well, just one of those things,” said Maddox. He sat up and looked at the two manila envelopes from Ellis’ desk. Somebody ought to look at the mail.

“George hasn’t been in?” said Feinman. “A hell of a thing—he’s looking worse than just after it happened.”

“Yes. Not a thing to get over quick or easy.” Maddox slit open the first envelope, and it contained the autopsy report on Rose Burton. He looked it over and said without emphasis,
“Hell. Nothing.” He handed it to D’Arcy.

The coroner gave them a handful of nothing. She had been in the mid-twenties, she hadn’t been a virgin but had never borne a child, healthy young woman with no evidence of drug or alcohol
abuse. Cause of death manual strangulation, evidence of beating before death, not by any weapon but probably male fists. There had been no prior sexual intercourse. Estimated time of death between
six and midnight last Saturday. All of which was not much help. Nobody in the apartment house had known her, and the chances were they would never find out anything else about her.

Feinman started reluctantly to type a report.

Sergeant Daisy Hoffman drifted into the communal office from the smaller office across the hall and asked, “How’s the family?” Trim and blond, she didn’t look like the
grandmother she was.

“Oh, fine,” said Maddox.

“We had another molestation case show up this morning. People. Janitor at a public school. Helen’s still out talking to the parents.”

Administration had sent them a fill-in for Sue, who was off on maternity leave: Detective Helen Waring. She was a tall thin blonde in her mid-thirties, serene and very efficient, a
divorcée with a ten-year-old daughter, and they all liked her. Having got burned once, she wasn’t remotely interested in another man, and was all business.

Maddox yawned again and said, “The rate’s up. Satan finding work for idle hands.”

“And making one hell of a lot of paperwork,” said Daisy.

And the weekend approaching, there would probably be a few new heists and assorted mayhem coming up for the detectives to work. Maddox felt tired. As expectable in July, the heat was beginning
to build in Southern California, and from now on they could expect the usual foretaste of hell until the middle of October. Cars and buildings were air-conditioned, but in the nature of things
there was always the legwork to do on the street. They had four recent heists to work, the remainder of the paperwork on a suicide and an unidentified body, the burglary ring and a few other more
anonymous burglaries as well, and inevitably there would be other things coming up.

Daisy drifted back to her own office, complaining about paperwork, and Bill Nolan came in. “We’ll never get anywhere on this Burton thing,” he said. “I’ve been
talking to some of those other tenants again. Nobody knows a damn thing about her.”

“I know, I know,” said Maddox. “Dead end.” Indolently he slit open the second manila envelope. It had been sent up from the Public Relations office at Central
Headquarters downtown. He looked at the contents and said, “Oh, for God’s sake. For God’s sake.”

“Don’t tell me something new,” said Nolan.

“My God,” said Maddox. He read it all over again with slightly more attention. The covering letter from the PR director was rather dry in tone, and brief. Maddox could imagine the
polite, brief letter he had sent to this woman, pithily thanking her for her intended help. Conceivably he had passed on copies of her letter to Hollywood and Hollenbeck divisions to give everybody
a little laugh. There wasn’t, of course, anything they could do about it.

The first Xerox was a flyer issued by the sheriff of Jefferson County, Montana. It had been issued last February, and it was about a missing juvenile: Alice Robard, fourteen, presumed abducted
on the way home from school. She lived on a farm outside Centerville, and had about a mile to walk from the school bus stop. At that time of winter her father or older brother would usually meet
her there to drive her home, but on February 3 the farm pickup truck had broken down and her father had been about thirty minutes late meeting her. There had been no sign of her since. She was not
presumed to be a runaway, a sensible family-oriented girl of religious bent, involved with the 4-H program, not yet dating any boys. Presumably it was fairly empty country around there; no one had
seen her, no one knew what had happened to her, no body had been found.

The second Xerox was a letter to the Chief from a Mrs. Doris Ratcliff in Wakefield, Massachusetts. It was a very literate letter, neatly typed, almost apologetic in tone. “Dear Sir, I do
not know whether you are familiar with my name or sympathetic to psychic matters but through my psychic gifts I have been instrumental in assisting a number of police departments in locating
missing bodies and persons. I enclose letters from several police officers attesting to this, if it should be of interest to you.” The letters were from various high-ranking officers in New
Jersey, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri, all warmly praising the psychic assistance of Mrs. Ratcliff in locating a crashed private plane, a runaway juvenile, two bodies of a homicide, and a suicide.
“The parents of Alice Robard had heard of my abilities and requested that I try to pinpoint her whereabouts through psychic means. I have attempted to do so, and feel quite positive that the
girl is still alive. She was abducted the day she vanished, and is being held captive, subjected to sexual abuse. I have the very strong conviction that she is in the Los Angeles area, somewhere in
the city of Hollywood. I hope that this may be of assistance to the Los Angeles police in searching for her.”

“For the love of God!” said Maddox, passing all that over to Nolan.

Nolan looked it over and grunted disgustedly. “A psychic, for God’s sake. Why in hell the PR office bothered to send it on—”

“Oh, don’t knock the psychic bit, Bill,” said Maddox seriously. “These people do sometimes get things, all right. In fact, I’ve heard of this woman—I think
somebody wrote a book about her—she’s helped some departments in locating people, as she says. But for the Lord’s sweet sake—I don’t know how big a town she’s
living in, but does she have any conception what’s she’s talking about, the city of Hollywood?” He thought of the thousands of streets, the backwaters, the main drags running
through this big town, just part of the even vaster area that was greater Los Angeles. “On top of all our other business, drop everything to look for this kid—and no way to do that
anyway.”

There wasn’t, of course, anything to do about it at all. The psychic lady might be right, Alice Robard might be here, but there was no way—physically or legally—the police
could try to find out.

“You don’t mean you really buy this psychic bit?” said Nolan.

“Oh, it’s there. With some people. But not always reliable, and even if she’s right there’s nothing we can do about this.”

Nolan shrugged. “I’ve been going round and round on this heister, too. The funny one. The latest victim couldn’t make any mug shots downtown. If you ask me, whatever pedigree
he’s got it’s somewhere else, he’s just landed here, and we haven’t got enough on him to ask N.C.I.C.”

“That one,” said Maddox, not much interested. Sometimes the legwork, and persistence, turned up the heisters: not always. By the description, this one had hit three times in the last
six weeks, and they had turned up no leads on him at all.

Nolan started typing a report. Feinman was on the phone. It was nearly three-thirty, and nobody seemed to have accomplished a damn thing today, but that was often par for the course. The phone
rang on Maddox’s desk and he reached for it resignedly.

“Sergeant Maddox.”

The dispatcher down in Communications said, “You’ve got a new homicide. The squad just called in.”

“So what’s the location?” Maddox reached for a pen.

It was an address out on Wilshire. Maddox stood up and said to D’Arcy, “No rest for the wicked. We’ve got a new body.”

“Oh, hell,” said D’Arcy, unfolding his lean long self from the typewriter. “They might have let me finish this damn report.”

They took Maddox’s Pontiac. It was one of the high-rise office buildings on that main drag, and there were two black and white squads in a loading zone in front. One of the uniformed men,
Dunning, was waiting for them, a stocky, fair, serious-faced young fellow. “It’s the ninth floor, sir,” he said to Maddox. “A lawyer—a Leonard Coldfield. By what we
heard—Gonzales and I got chased out here about half an hour ago—some woman just came into the office and shot him. There are a couple of secretaries, they’re both in a tizzy and
couldn’t tell us much. Gonzales is up there trying to preserve the scene for you.”

“All right, thanks,” said Maddox, “we’ll take it from here, you can get back on tour.” But the Traffic shift was just about to change at four o’clock, and the
two uniformed men would be heading back to the station to go off duty.

They rode the elevator up to the ninth floor and found a little crowd being held at bay, efficiently, by Gonzales. Most of the tenants in a building like this would be professional people. The
shots had brought them out to the hall and there were fifteen or twenty people there asking questions and excitedly comparing notes, both sexes and all ages.

Gonzales was looking a little harassed. “I’ve kept everybody out,” he told Maddox and D’Arcy, “but the secretaries are still in there. I haven’t started to
get any names—Don and I only got here about twenty minutes ago.”

“And you’re coming to end of shift,” said Maddox. “All right, leave it—we’ll get the names.”

Offices here would run to some money; all these tenants would be successful professional people. This door bore the gold-painted identification Leonard Coldfield, Attorney at Law. Maddox raised
his voice to the little crowd. “We’d be obliged if you’d all go back to your own offices, we’ll want to talk to you eventually but not right now.” They began to
disperse reluctantly. The outer office door was half open and he asked Gonzales, “Was it like that when you landed here?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you’d better call the lab from the squad, there just might be some prints.” He and D’Arcy went in, to find themselves in a square anteroom rather elegantly
furnished, with a small reception desk, a love seat and two upholstered chairs, a cheerful landscape painting above the love seat. Two women were huddled together on the love seat. One was plump
and dark, about forty, the other one younger and blond. Both had been crying, and they both looked shocked and scared.

“All right, we’re detectives,” said Maddox. “May we have your names, please? What can you tell us about what happened?”

The older one said, “I’m Marion Haskell. I’m Mr. Coldfield’s secretary. This is Harriet Fowler, she’s the receptionist. But she just walked in and shot
him! She just came in—a perfectly strange woman—and Harriet tried to stop her—”

“She didn’t say a word!” said the younger woman. “I couldn’t believe it—she came in, and I started to say good afternoon and did she want an appointment
and—you know, the usual things— And she barged right by me and started for Mr. Coldfield’s office—he was dictating to Marion—and I said, excuse me, but you can’t
see Mr. Coldfield now—and she said, just like that she said, you go to hell, and she opened the door and barged right in, and the next thing, just the next second, there were all the
shots—”

“He was dictating Mrs. Albrand’s will, and all of a sudden this woman came in, and she wasn’t more than inside the door when there were all these shots—I didn’t
believe what was happening—and Mr. Coldfield fell out of his chair and I saw she had a gun in her hand—I didn’t believe it—and then she ran right out—and Harriet
started to scream and I went to see if Mr. Coldfield was hurt—and he’s dead! He’s dead! I couldn’t believe it—” She began to sob. “I’d worked for him
for fifteen years, such a fine man, a good man—”

Maddox and D’Arcy went into the inner office. It was handsomely appointed with a big flat-topped mahogany desk, a couple of upholstered chairs for clients, the large window presenting a
view over the city and the Hollywood hills to the north, brown and dry-looking at this time of year. There was a little sheaf of papers on the desk blotter, and the secretary had dropped her
notebook and pen on the other side of the desk. The dead man was lying crumpled at one side of his desk chair; he had fallen from that and died flat on his back on the thick carpet. He was a man in
late middle age, rather a good-looking man with a thick crop of silver-gray hair, regular features. His glasses had fallen off and lay unbroken beside him. He was wearing a tailored gray suit,
white shirt, and dark tie. The suit jacket was heavily stained with blood.

They looked at him and D’Arcy said, “Fairly heavy caliber. Two or three body shots, maybe more. Needn’t have been a marksman at that range and with a big gun.”

“See what the lab says.”

They went out to the anteroom again. “Had either of you ever seen the woman before?” asked Maddox.

They shook their heads at him numbly. “Neither of us had ever laid eyes on her. She wasn’t a client, nobody who’d ever been to the office.”

“Could you describe her?”

“It all went so fast,” said Harriet Fowler agitatedly. “It just happened—all in about a minute—all I can say is, she wasn’t a young woman, maybe in the late
forties, around there— But I don’t really know— She had on a pink dress, sort of light pink, and her hair was blond—that’s all I can say, I’m sure I’d
never seen her anywhere before—I never saw the gun, she must have been getting it out of her purse when she went past me—”

“I saw it, just about for two seconds,” said Marion Haske. . .