Rosie pulled the cushions off the sofa, turned the TV set down low and, from her reasonably comfortable position on the floor, propped herself on her elbow to see if there were any more game shows scheduled. She used the remote control to move from channel to channel, paying only a moment’s attention to the local news item that showed the photograph of Norman Hastings, whose body had been discovered in the trunk of his dark blue Sedan. He had been beaten to death with some kind of hammer. His wallet was missing. Anyone with any information regarding the dead man was asked to contact the local police, and a number was flashed onto the screen. Fifteen minutes later, she switched off the TV and settled down, with a regretful sigh. Tomorrow was another day, another meeting when she would have to admit she had slipped. She began to recite the twelve AA traditions. She rarely got beyond the sixth or seventh and tonight was no exception, By the third she was soundly asleep. ‘The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.’
Chapter 2
The news bulletins about the discovery of Norman Hastings’s body were repeated on the early-morning television shows, but now included footage of the abandoned blue Sedan and a further request for anyone who had seen him or his vehicle to come forward. The officer heading the murder enquiry at the Pasadena Homicide Division was Captain William ‘Bill’ Rooney.
Directly after the morning shows, Rooney’s department received a phone call from a Don Summers. He was not a hundred per cent certain, but he thought he had seen the blue Sedan in a Pasadena shopping mall car park the previous afternoon.
Rooney did not get around to questioning Summers until the following day. He doubted if Summers’s evidence could help, since he could not be positive that he had seen the exact car, and had not made a note of the registration number. Neither had he had a clear view of the driver, only the woman who had been in the vehicle with him. Rooney was able to ascertain that at the time of Summers’s possible sighting of the blue Sedan, Hastings, according to the autopsy report, was already dead. Rooney also had details of the dead man’s missing wallet, and knew that it contained a few hundred dollars which Hastings had withdrawn from his bank on the morning of his death. He suspected that robbery was the murder motive as they had failed to come up with any other reason. Hastings appeared to be a happily married man, well liked at his work and without enemies or anyone with a grudge against him.
Rooney did not review Summers’s call-in statement until he had further evidence from Forensic and the full autopsy report. Although the interior of the Sedan had been cleaned and no prints found — not even those of the dead man — Forensic had discovered two further blood samples, one on the driver’s seat, the other on the inside of the glove compartment. What prompted Rooney to question Summers personally was the woman’s shoe found rammed beneath the front seat. It did not belong to Hastings’s wife.
Rooney sat with Mr and Mrs Summers, as Summers repeated his statement of how he had seen the blue Sedan parked, heard the man screaming and gone to investigate. He was now more sure that it was the one in the photographs shown to him by Rooney. His wife was convinced that if it was not the same car, it was the identical model and colour.
‘Okay, now, can you tell me about the woman? The one you stated was in the car?’
Summers gave a good description. Tall and thin, she was wearing a bloodstained flower-print dress. She was injured, her mouth was bleeding, and he thought she had a head wound. She was also clutching a purse. She had told him the man had tried to rob her. Summers’s wife interjected that she had thought it was a lie, because when they offered to call the police or for some assistance the woman had refused, insisting that she was all right.
Rooney asked for a more detailed description of the woman. Summers was hesitant, but his wife wasn’t, recalling the thin, wispy, badly cut blonde hair, that the woman was about five feet eight inches tall, but exceptionally thin and sickly-looking. She remembered remarking to her husband that the woman might be a prostitute.
‘What made you think that?’ Rooney asked.
Mrs Summers bit her lip. ‘I don’t know, just something about her, a toughness. She was very rough-looking, sort of desperate — and, of course, she was covered in blood.’
‘That doesn’t mean she’s a whore,’ said Rooney.
Don Summers glanced at his wife. ‘Maybe she wasn’t. All I can say, and I got a closer look than my wife, was that the woman was terrified — and she was really hurt, blood all over her dress.’
Rooney showed them the shoe found in Hastings’s car and they confirmed that the woman had been wearing only one.
‘We need to find our Cinderella,’ Rooney joked, but the Summerses didn’t find his comment amusing. They were overawed by the massive new Pasadena police station, a high-tech palace, the holding cells below computerized.
The building was so spacious that Rooney himself felt uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to so many corridors, rooms and sections, so many clerks. The old days, when a guy could pass a pal in the narrow, paint-peeling corridors, have a chat, smoke a cigarette, were over. Nearly every office had no-smoking signs; some officers had even stuck them on their computers. Only Captain Rooney continued to work in a haze of cigarette or cigar smoke. If the truth was told, he didn’t quite fit the new high flyers who surrounded him, but retirement was looming shortly. He reckoned the Hastings murder would be his last case and he hoped to crack it fast, get a good retirement bonus and then be put out to pasture. The prospect made him uneasy, but then so did the new station. He was unsure about life outside the police, which had been the only world he had known since he was eighteen.
By the time Rooney returned to his office there had been another call in connection with the Hastings homicide. This time the caller was anonymous and refused repeated requests to divulge her name. She did, however, give a detailed description of the man she thought was driving the car belonging to the deceased: around a hundred and eighty pounds, possibly about five feet ten, though she wasn’t sure, blue eyes, rimless gold-framed pink-toned glasses, a straight nose, thick-lipped mouth, wearing a linen jacket and shirt. She described a bite wound in his neck that would be visible above shirt collar level, close to his jugular. It would be deeply inflamed as the teeth had broken the skin and drawn blood. Furthermore, the man was in possession of a claw hammer, which he kept in the glove compartment.
Rooney looked at the duty sergeant’s notes. ‘She said all this over the fucking phone?’
‘Yes, Captain. Then she hung up.’
‘So, you get a trace on it? Shouldn’t take more’N a second with all this new-fangled equipment.’
The call had not been traced, partly because it was felt to be a ‘joke’ call, and when it had been deemed genuine, she had already hung up. Rooney plodded back into his office. He waved the anonymous statement at his lieutenant, Josh Bean. ‘You fuckin’ read this? Whoever she is she wants him caught — she’s even described the weapon. What’s odd, though, is that the only thing she seems unsure of is the guy’s exact height. Everything else, clothes, hair, glasses, mouth, even his weight, she gives it all. But not her name! And the stupid sons-of-bitches didn’t trace the call.’