Fowley didn’t quite know what to make of that.
“Brownie,” the Hat said, “go see to it that police guards are posted at the ambulance entrance of this fine facility, would you?” To us, the Hat added, “That is how you got in?”
We nodded.
“Do that, Brownie, please, and then get right back here, to take Mr. Fowley’s statement.”
“Sure, Harry,” Brown said, flashing us a couple of dirty looks that would have seemed silly if the fat S.O.B. hadn’t been such a nasty piece of work.
Once Brown had bounded off, the Hat looked from Fowley to me and back again, clapping his hands together. “First, do you boys have any questions? We’re going to cooperate, after all-the Examiner and the LAPD, that is. Two fine institutions with the public’s welfare at heart.” This son of a bitch was so dry, you could never tell when he was pulling your chain.
“Any surprises in there, Harry?” Fowley said, nodding toward the closed door to room number four. He got out his notepad and a pencil and waited for an answer.
It finally came.
The Hat’s tiny mouth puckered a smile. “Of course there are… ‘surprises.’ I’m sure your source in the coroner’s office has already told you that… and I presume he’s also refused to share those surprises with you, or you wouldn’t still be standing here.”
Fowley grinned, tapping his notepad with the pencil. “Fair enough, Harry. What can you give me?”
“Let’s back up a little. Your extra edition has been on the street, what, two hours?”
“Something like that.”
The Hat lifted an eyebrow and the blue fedora rose a tad. “We’ve already had six confessions.”
Fowley smirked. “I guess that’s no surprise-something this splashy… and this friggin’ weird… it’s gonna bring ’em out of the woodwork.”
Nodding, the Hat said, “I anticipate more Confessin’ Sams than you could shake a stick at, making all kinds of work for us, pointless work that can get in the way of actually solving this thing.”
I asked, “What can be done about that?”
Harry held up three fingers. “Let the public know that Detective Hansen is withholding three pieces of information-three things that only that poor dead girl and her killer could know. That may help minimize the false confession problem.”
“Or,” I said, as Fowley jotted that down, “present your ‘Confessin’ Sams’ with a challenge, a guessing game.”
“It will also tell the real killer that we are already breathing down his neck. That we have three pieces of evidence just waiting to put him in the gas chamber.”
I said, “Is this a sex crime, Harry?”
Irritation flashed through the sleepy eyes. “She was mutilated and tortured and left naked, and cut in half. If we’re not dealing with a sex crime, what are we dealing with?”
“I told you at the scene, Harry-her mouth is cut the way mobsters send a warning to squealers.”
“It’s a sex crime. Half the department is interviewing known sex offenders, and our dragnet’s going to be spread statewide by tomorrow morning. Within twenty-four hours, hundreds of sex degenerates and suspected sadists will have been thoroughly interrogated.”
Fowley wrote that down.
I asked, “Was there semen in her vagina?”
Hansen frowned. “Let’s just say it’s a sex crime and leave it at that.”
“I knew it!” Fowley said, slapping the pad with the pencil. “He fucked her in the ass, didn’t he?”
Hansen looked at Fowley a long time; buried in the blank grooves of the cop’s face were ribbons of contempt.
“What?” Fowley asked, wide eyed.
Echoing footsteps announced Sergeant Brown’s return.
“It’s took care of, Harry,” Brown said. “I got a couple sheriff’s deputies to help out.”
“There, you see, gentlemen?” the Hat said to us. “Cooperation.”
“I may advise Richardson to put out another extra,” Fowley said, smirking. “That’s a first for the sheriff’s department and the LAPD.”
With a small, insincere smile, the Hat said, “Mr. Fowley, give your statement to Sergeant Brown, would you?… Mr. Heller, Nate-a word in private?”
Hansen took me by the arm-gently-and walked me down the hallway and stopped; the yellow brick walls and the Hat’s tanned complexion were strangely compatible.
“Nate,” the Hat said, his tiny mouth pursed in its kiss of a smile, “I understand you’ve gone to work for the Examiner.”
“Not as a reporter, just providing some investigative backup. They’re gonna be shorthanded.”
“Richardson is going all the way with this one.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s fine. You tell Jim I’ll be glad to cooperate with him… as long as he cooperates with me.”
I shrugged. “Richardson is his own man, Harry. If you want to know the truth, I think he plans an end run around you boys.”
“That’s not surprising news. Nate, can I trust you?”
“Can I trust you?”
He put a fatherly hand on my elbow. “We worked well on the Peete case, together, wouldn’t you say?”
“Sure.”
Now the hand rose to my shoulder and settled there. “I know you feel I… took credit where perhaps it wasn’t due.”
“I didn’t give a shit-what good would California publicity do me back in Chicago?”
He removed the hand from my shoulder, gesturing as he did. “Yes, but now you’re doing business here, and that changes things… Nate, I want to work out an arrangement with you.”
“What kind of arrangement, Harry?”
The pouchy eyes tightened. “You keep me abreast of what the Examiner is up to, and I’ll do the same for you, where my efforts are concerned.”
“And the point of this is…?”
“To find the fiend who did this awful thing!” Oddly, he was smiling as he said that, revealing just enough teeth to make him look like a big well-dressed rabbit. “And to be the detectives who solved the most notorious murder in the history of California.”
“It’s a little early to be calling it that, Harry, don’t you think?”
“Not really-not considering the crime… not considering the noise Jim Richardson and Old Man Hearst are making, and will make… What do you say, Nate? Is it a deal?”
“All right.”
He offered his hand-it was smaller than a frying pan-and I shook it, firmly.
The Hat sighed, contentedly, as if he’d just finished a big, fine meal. He folded his arms and said, casually, “Now, let’s move on to that other question.”
“What other question?”
“The one about trust. Can I trust you, Nate?”
“I don’t know why people even bother asking that question, Harry-an honest man and a liar will give you the same answer.”
“What about this, Nate, as a show of trust?” He nodded toward coroner’s room four. “I’m going to share one of those three ‘surprises’ with you.”
“Why?”
He raised a lecturing finger. “Because if you tell anyone, if it gets in the Examiner, I’ll know I can’t trust you… and I’ll still have two surprises left.” Yes, sir, the Hat was one crafty son of a bitch.
Grinning in spite of myself, I said, “Okay, Harry-surprise me.”
He glanced down the hall-both ways. Then, very quietly, he said, “That girl… whoever she is… she ingested fecal matter before she died.”
I winced. “What the hell?”
“To put it more coloquially-in words your friend Mr. Fowley could understand-she ate shit, Heller. Someone made her eat shit before killing her… That’s the kind of man we’re dealing with.”
“Holy Christ.”
“Why, Nate-you’ve turned pale on me. Hardcase like you?”
“It’s just… some sick fucker needs to be cured.”
Nodding, the Hat said, “Cyanide pellets would do nicely. Now-do you have anything you can give me, from the Examiner ’s side?”
“Yeah, actually, I do,” I said, and I told him about Richardson using the SoundPhoto to wire the prints to Washington.
“If she’s on file with the FBI,” I told him, “Richardson will be calling you or your boss Donahoe with the girl’s name, in the morning… and using that to get leverage.”
“At this very moment, we have dozens of men going through hundreds of missing persons files,” the Hat said thoughtfully, “and they’re going to work straight through the night… maybe we’ll get lucky and come up with her name before Richardson does.”