The Motive on Record

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Death is everywhere. A child in a playground. A playboy in a cheap hotel. A John Doe in a freight yard. A nanny and her two charges in a church pew. After twenty-six years in homicide, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza knows death is all in a day's work. But in the heat of a Los Angeles summer, even the predictable becomes bizarre. And for a hard-boiled cop with a decidedly soft centre, nothing is more implausible than human nature - especially when it comes to murder . . . 'A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times

Release date: October 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

NOBODY, SAID ALISON—with a very few exceptions—was writing solid decent mystery novels these
days. She had taken to reading true-crime collections instead. She had been yawning over Murderers’ England for the last couple of hours, and upending it on her lap said to Mendoza,
“All I can say is, it’s so much more plausible in fiction. Some of the things that happen in real life—no self-respecting author would dare put them in a novel. There
doesn’t seem to be anything in between the merely mindless violence—knock the elderly storekeeper on the head for four dollars out of the cash register—and the most unlikely
goings-on imaginable. That Bartlett case, with that idiotic minister running around buying chloroform—and Mrs. Bravo and Dr. Gully—it’s more ridiculous than dramatic. And people
doing murder for no motive at all or the silliest flimsiest motives—it’s all terribly implausible.”

Mendoza grunted sleepily. “I see enough crime reports on the job. Human nature tends to be implausible. Monotonously.”

Alison yawned. “Well, I’m going up to bed—it’s after eleven.” She laid Murderers’ England on the ottoman. “I wonder if some enterprising travel
agency has ever thought of a murderers’ tour—a lot of people are interested in crime—Whitechapel and the East End for Jack the Ripper, and Bognor Regis for George Joseph Smith,
and so on—” She stood up and stretched.

“Not one of your brighter ideas,” said Mendoza somnolently. He put down The Day’s Work and stood up. The old Spanish hacienda with its high ceilings and large rooms
was silent and sleeping around them; the twins would have been asleep for hours, and ten-month-old Luisa; the four cats were in a tangled mass on the long couch, and Cedric the Old English sheepdog
raised a reluctant head at Alison’s feet.

She prodded him out the front door for a last run before bed, and started up the wide spiral staircase. Mendoza stood yawning before the open door to let him in again. And as she reached the
landing, Alison was thinking sleepily, a tour—it’s ridiculous, we never go anywhere, and Luis has weeks of vacation coming to him—Mairí and the Kearneys here to look after
the children, we really ought to take a holiday and go somewhere. A cruise or something. Say in August or September, to get away from the heat. The South Pacific, or Europe, or somewhere— It
would do Luis good to get away from the job, though he’d never admit it. Tomorrow, go and see a travel agency. She thought vaguely, the West Indies?

Unaware that he was about to be uprooted from his daily routine, Mendoza let Cedric in, locked the front door, and proceeded upstairs after her. After twenty-six years at the job, he could put
the current cases out of his mind overnight, but tonight he was thinking about Rosalie Ybarra, and feeling some faint curiosity about the body found in the Southern Pacific yards. But tomorrow was
also a day.

IT WAS the second Tuesday in June, a gray cool morning. June was usually a respite before the long fierce summer struck southern California, lasting
sometimes into mid-October. But the heat would be lurking, ready, and within a month would turn Los Angeles into a little humid hell. Why anybody lived in this climate, and why a great city should
have grown up here, was an unfathomable mystery.

The Ferrari, which had had its nose smashed in when the electric eye on the gate had gone out of kilter, was repaired and running smoothly as Mendoza slid down the hill toward the gates of the
House of Happy People, La Casa de la Gente Feliz. On the way he passed the Five Graces, the woolly white sheep imported to keep the underbrush down; they usually moved en masse,
and were a peaceful pastoral sight grazing on the slope of the hill beyond the house. The concrete-block wall was now up around the house, to keep the sheep from eating all the expensive
landscaping. On the other side of the curving drive Ken Kearney was energetically maneuvering a Rototiller; he waved casually as the Ferrari passed.

What the hell, thought Mendoza resignedly, it was only money. . . Kearney the ex-rancher, recommending the sheep as cheap lawnmowers, had lived for years far north in the state, and had been
disconcerted at the long dry season this far south; unless they wanted to buy supplemental feed, he said— As it was, the two ponies for the twins got through a surprising amount of hay. For
the last couple of weeks, Kearney had been busy installing an underground sprinkling system over a couple of acres, and would sow permanent pasture as year-round grazing for the sheep, and what
that was going to do to the water bill— Only money, reflected Mendoza. Not any of his doing that the money was there; it had been a surprise to everybody, his grandfather unexpectedly leaving
a fortune behind, probably founded on the proceeds of crooked gambling. At least the permanent pasture would look nice and parklike, said Kearney—and hopefully next spring he could shear the
sheep himself, having studied a textbook. He hadn’t been able to find a shearer nearer than Santa Barbara, and the bill for his mileage—

Only money. At least the electric eye on the gate was behaving itself now; Mendoza shoved the gadget on the dashboard and obediently the gates swung open, let him through, and closed smartly
after him. He started down through Burbank for the Golden State freeway, and now he was thinking again, grimly, about Rosalie Ybarra.

The usual run of heisters they were hunting would get dropped on or not; hopefully some time the newest body would get identified; that bank job might get cleared up some time; but the ones like
Rosalie Ybarra they went out to work with a vengeance.

Rosalie Ybarra had been eight years old, and by her picture a pretty, solemnly dark-eyed little girl. She attended St. Ignacio’s parish school on Mozart Street in Lincoln Heights; she had
six blocks to walk from her home on Gates Street. Last Friday afternoon she hadn’t come home, and eventually was reported missing. Neighbors went out looking, the squad car along that beat
hunted, questions were asked. Rosalie and her best friend Alicia Romero had walked together up to the corner of Griffin and Darwin Streets, and Rosalie had turned down Griffin and left Alicia. They
hadn’t found anyone who had seen Rosalie after that, and there hadn’t been any sign of Rosalie anywhere until five o’clock yesterday afternoon.

A couple of scared ten-year-old boys had come home with a tale of a dead kid under some bushes in the playground, and the parents had called in. The squad had called Robbery-Homicide just before
the end of shift, and Mendoza and Hackett had gone to look. By the description, the clothes, it was Rosalie; and no experienced detective needed a formal autopsy report to know what had happened to
her. She had been raped and probably strangled, probably on the day she had disappeared. She had been thrust under a big sprawling juniper bush, naked, and her clothes put in on top of
her—all but her underpants—the cotton slip and blue school uniform jumper, white blouse, white socks and strapped black shoes. The jumper and blouse were torn and bloody; the lab would
be going over those, and some time tomorrow or the next day there’d be an autopsy report.

They would work this one hard, for whoever had killed Rosalie was one of the wild ones who might go looking for another little girl tomorrow or next day or next week.

Mendoza was a little late getting into the office; the morning traffic on the freeway was heavier than usual. He came in past Sergeant Lake at the switchboard, said, “Morning,
Jimmy,” and went down the hall to the big communal detective office, sweeping off the black Homburg. It was Jason Grace’s day off. Palliser and Hackett were missing; Higgins was typing
a report, hunched over his desk scowling. Tom Landers was half sitting on a corner of Henry Glasser’s desk and they were both laughing. Mendoza went on into his office and found the night
report centered on his desk.

It was an expectable one for a weeknight. More of the same, but not as much as it might have been. Another heist, by the description the same boy who had pulled two others in the last ten days,
at a liquor store and a pharmacy: a big blond hulk waving a big gun around, and on this one—at another liquor store just before closing time last night—as on the pharmacy job, the
victim said he thought the heister was high on something, wild-eyed and acting irrational. A body had been found on Skid Row, probably a wino dead of natural causes. There had been a mugging in the
old plaza, the victim sent to Emergency in Cedars-Sinai.

The phone on his desk buzzed and he picked it up. “Yes, Jimmy?”

“I just got a call from Narco. Goldberg wants to see you about something—he’ll be up about ten, he said.”

“Bueno,” said Mendoza inattentively.

“And Art and John are just back with the parents. It’s a positive identification.”

Mendoza got up, abandoning the report, and went out to the other office. Hackett had talked briefly with the parents on Friday; they hadn’t been questioned since. It wasn’t very
likely that the parents could contribute anything helpful, but you never knew.

They were sitting beside Hackett’s desk, with Wanda Larsen and Palliser hovering behind. Hackett said, “This is Lieutenant Mendoza, Mr. Ybarra.”

He was a big, dark, stocky man, clean-shaven, looking uncomfortable in a formal dark suit and white shirt. He nodded heavily at Mendoza. He worked on the janitorial crew at a public elementary
school. The Ybarras were both in the mid-thirties; they had three other children, one older and two younger than Rosalie. Mrs. Celia Ybarra had been crying; she mopped her face with a crumpled
handkerchief. “I told the sergeant,” said Ybarra, “it’s Rosalie. In the morgue down there. Our Rosalie. We were so afraid—ever since she didn’t come home. The
awful things that happen—”

“But we’d told her—about not taking presents or listening to strangers—” Mrs. Ybarra sobbed once, dryly. “Not getting into cars with people she didn’t
know. But I said to Joe, she’s so little—if some man just grabbed her off the street—oh, mother of God!—but somebody would have seen it, all the streets right around with
people—” she rocked back and forth. They were both a type once commoner in California than now, their families probably resident here longer than most Anglos, since before California
was a state. They both spoke unaccented English.

“I don’t know,” he said heavily. “Not so many people around, middle of the afternoon.” He accepted a cigarette from Hackett with a nod. “Naturally we told her
all that—like Celia says—things that happen nowadays, in the city or anywhere— You wouldn’t believe what goes on at that school. Where I work, I mean. It’s why we
skimp ourselves other ways, send the kids to the parish school. It costs, but it’s worth it—the sisters make them behave, they get taught manners and a better education all around. You
got to do the best you can for your kids, you owe it to ’em. But I don’t understand how Rosalie—how anybody could’ve got hold of her—just on her way home from school,
and daylight—she always came straight home—”

“You were pretty upset on Friday when we talked to you before,” said Hackett. “You said your son attends St. Ignacio’s too—wouldn’t he and Rosalie have walked
home together usually?”

“Bob went home with Jimmy Lopez—his best friend. He does that a lot—they do homework together. He got home just before—before we usually have dinner. We’d called
the police by then—” Ybarra was shaking his head blindly. “I don’t understand how anybody could’ve got hold of her—she was a good girl, she knew to be careful of
strangers, she wouldn’t have gone up to any stranger—”

Hackett met Mendoza’s eyes and gave a small shrug of his massive shoulders. The parents didn’t have anything to tell them. Later on it might be different, when they were thinking
straighter; they’d be questioned about family friends, relatives, any adult Rosalie had known. It wasn’t always the wild one coaxing the child into a car, snatching her off the street;
sometimes it was the known, trusted acquaintance. Right now they had what they needed from the parents, the formal identification.

Hackett explained about the necessary autopsy, the release of the body. “We’ll be in touch with you, Mr. Ybarra. You know we’ll be at work on this, try to find out about
it.”

“Yes, sir. You all been good,” said Ybarra. His wife sobbed into her handkerchief as she stood up. Palliser said gently he’d take them home, and shepherded them out.

“There are still a lot of people to talk to,” said Hackett, taking off his glasses to polish them. “All along the way she’d have been walking. It’s a bastard, Luis.
Working-class neighborhood, a lot of people not home. And they’re such nice respectable people, the Ybarras.”

“What’s that got to do— Oh,” said Wanda. “Oh, yes, I see.”

“Words of one syllable.” Mendoza flicked his lighter and ejected a long stream of smoke. “Rosalie was brought up to be a polite little girl. If a car pulled up and somebody
asked which way was Darwin Street, she’d have gone over to answer.”

“It could be as simple as that,” agreed Hackett. “Well, go on working it as we can. Nick’s down in records looking for the local sex freaks.”

“And it could be as simple as that too,” said Mendoza sardonically. “Some nut with the right record let out on parole by the softheaded judge. Or it could be the first time out
for some character nobody’s ever suspected.”

“You needn’t say it,” said Hackett. He stood up, looming over Mendoza, and put his glasses away. “At least it’s nice cool weather for the legwork. I want to see the
sisters at that school—they were going to talk to the kids. It could be one of them noticed something.” Landers and Glasser had vanished, and now Higgins was on the phone. “I
suppose we’d better get with it. You like to help out?”

“I’ve got a date with Goldberg on something, I don’t know what.”

“Well, wish us luck.” Hackett went out with Wanda trailing him.

Higgins put the phone down and sat back looking annoyed. He passed a hand over his craggy face. “We can use everybody we’ve got on one like that, all those damn streets to cover, and
I sit here waiting for this damned witness—that Conover, on the pharmacy heist. He’s very sorry, he overslept, he’ll be in as soon as he can make it. And I waste time taking him
down to look at the books of mug shots and he won’t make a damned one.”

“It can be a frustrating job, compadre. Tom and Henry seemed to be enjoying a joke when I got in. Anything interesting?”

Higgins chuckled. “You hadn’t heard? Matt left a note with the night report. It’s very funny in a way, Luis—all happening at the same time, I mean. You know Tom’s
wife is expecting a baby in December, and now it seems so is Matt’s wife, they just got it confirmed. And the first thing John said this morning was that they think Roberta’s pregnant
too, she’s got a date with the doctor on Thursday.”

Mendoza laughed. “The young people will do it,” he said amusedly, and Sergeant Lake came in with a manila envelope.

It was the autopsy report on Saturday’s unidentified corpse. He took it back to his office to read; but it didn’t tell them much.

The corpse had been found as soon as it was light, last Saturday morning, huddled up against the fence around the Amtrak freight yards along Alhambra Avenue. It was completely naked, with
nothing on or around it to provide a clue to identity: just the body of a man, and all that could be deduced when Higgins saw it was that it had been dead for a day or so, rigor just passing off.
None of the railroad employees had recognized it.

The autopsy said a little more. The corpse, which bore no scars or tattoos or any useful identifying marks, was that of a man between thirty and forty years old. He had been five feet six and
half inches tall, weighed a hundred and forty pounds. He was a white man with thinning brown hair and blue eyes, and he had all his own teeth except for a bridge with three teeth in it in the upper
jaw; he had probably worn that for ten years or so. He had sustained, in lay language, a severe bang on the head, to the left temple, but that wouldn’t have killed him; he had actually died
of manual strangulation, probably sometime between nine A.M. and nine P.M. on Friday. He had eaten a meal about three hours before he died. There was
no evidence of alcohol or any controlled drug present in the body. It was just an anonymous body. Fingerprints had been taken, and a dental chart could be made up if requested, but the doctor
didn’t sound optimistic about the idea: there hadn’t been much dental work evident.

“Así,” said Mendoza to himself, and picked up the phone and asked for SID. He got Marx, and asked about the anonymous corpse’s prints.

“They weren’t on record with us,” said Marx. “I sent them on to the feds, lessee, on Sunday, it may be awhile before you get a kickback. Of course they may not know him
either.”

“Thanks so much.”

“He was a harmless-looking little guy,” said Marx. “He reminded me a little bit of Crippen.”

“Who?”

“You know, Dr. Crippen—I like the true-crime stuff sometimes, classic cases, you know. Crippen’s the one who killed his wife and cut her up. Not that she didn’t deserve
it. He was a mild-looking fellow with gold-rimmed glasses and a sort of apologetic expression, by the pictures.”

“True crime!” said Mendoza. “I haven’t seen the corpse.”

“Well, it just put me in mind of Crippen. I’ll bet he was a henpecked husband.”

“And the lady lost patience because he wouldn’t stand up for himself and strangled him?”

“Oh, was he strangled? I wouldn’t know. You ought to hear from the feds sometime,” said Marx.

As soon as Mendoza put the phone down it buzzed at him.

“Goldberg and Callaghan are here,” said Lake. “And there was a new call—a body. Palliser just got back, he went out on it.”

“Bueno. Both the Narco experts at once? Well, shove them along.”

PALLISER MET LANDERS just coming back after having left one of the heist witnesses poring over mug shots down in R. and I., and
they went out on the new call together.

“Is that right, you’re expecting too?” asked Landers.

“We’re pretty sure. Robin’s feeling what you might call ambivalent about it,” said Palliser with a grin. “On the one hand, Davy’s nearly two and it’ll
be nice spacing between them, but she’s been talking about getting farther out of Hollywood into a better area, and you know what interest rates are.”

“Indeedy,” said Landers with a groan. “We ought to have made a down payment on a house when we got married, but there it is, we didn’t. Phil can go back to work after six
months without losing any seniority, but— Hell, I don’t know, we can look and maybe find some little place we can afford.” Phillippa Rosemary was one of the policewomen in the
Records office. “And then, as she says, there’ll be the baby, and it’d be nice just to stay home and be a housewife for a change. But on just my salary—”

“At least we got in on the lower interest rate,” said Palliser sympathetically.

“Where are we heading for, by the way?”

“Dead body somewhere on Bonnie Brae Street.” They took Palliser’s car.

When they got there, it was an old and shabby apartment house, and the squad car was waiting in front with the uniformed man—Waring—and a civilian in it. The civilian was a paunchy
middle-aged man with an unshaven jowl, wearing a soiled plaid shirt and jeans. “This . . .