"What'd they tell you?"
"First that he was going pretty fast. You see, the faster a man is walking, the narrower and longer will be the blood drops and the teeth on those drops. They look something like a small gear, if you can picture that, Steve."
"I can."
"Okay. These were narrow and also sprinkled in many small drops, which told us that he was moving fast and also that the drops were falling from a height of somewhere around two yards or so."
"So?"
"So, if he was moving fast, he wasn't hit in the legs or the stomach. A man doesn't move very fast under those conditions. If the drops came from a height of approximately two yards, chances are the man was hit high above the waist. Ballistics pried Hank's slug out of the brick wall of the building, and from the angle—assuming Hank only had time to shoot from a draw—they figured the man was struck somewhere around the shoulder. This indicates a tall man, I mean when you put the blood drops and the slug together."
"How do you know he wasn't wounded superficially?"
"All the blood, man. He left a long trail."
"You said he weighs about 180. How ..."
"The hair was healthy hair. The guy was going fast. The speed tells us he wasn't overweight. A healthy man of six feet should weigh about 180, no?"
"You've given me a lot, Sam," Carella said. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it. I'm glad I'm not the guy who has to check on doctors' gunshot wound reports, or absentee mechanics. Not to mention this hair lotion and talc. It's called 'Skylark,' by the way."
"Well, thanks, anyway."
"Don't thank me," Grossman said.
"Huh?"
"Thank Hank."
Chapter SEVENTEEN
the teletype alarm went out to fourteen states. It read:
XXXXX APPREHEND SUSPICION OF MURDER XXX
UNIDENTIFIED MALE WHITE CAUCASIAN ADULT BELOW FIFTY XXXXX
POSSIBLE HEIGHT SIX FEET OR OVER XXX
POSSIBLE WEIGHT ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY XXX
DARK HAIR SWARTHY COMPLEXION HEAVY BEARD XXXX
USES HAIR PREPARATION AND TALC TRADENAME "SKYLARK" XXXX
SHOES MAY POSSIBLY CARRY HEELS WITH "O'SULLIVAN" TRADENAME XXXX
MAN ASSUMED TO BE SKILLED MECHANIC MAY POSSIBLY SEEK SUCH WORK XXXXX
GUNWOUND ABOVE WAIST POSSIBLE SHOULDER HIGH MAN MAY SEEK DOCTOR XXXX
THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS AND ARMED WITH COLT .45 AUTOMATIC XX
"Those are a lot of 'possiblys'," Havilland said.
"Too damn many," Carella agreed. "But at least it's a place to start."
It was not so easy to start.
They could, of course, have started by calling all the doctors in the city, on the assumption that one or more of them had failed to report a gunshot wound, as specified by law. However, there were quite a few doctors in the city. To be exact, there were:
4,283 doctors in Calm's Point
1,975 doctors in Riverhead
8,728 doctors in Isola (including the Diamondback and Hillside sectors)
2,614 doctors in Majesta and 264 doctors in Bethtown for a grand total of COUNT 'EM!
17,864 DOCTORS 17,864
Those are a lot of medical men. Assuming each call would take approximately five minutes, a little multiplication told the cops it would take them approximately 89,320 minutes to call each doctor in the classified directory. Of course, there were 22,000 policemen on the force. If each cop took on the job of calling four doctors, every call could have been made before twenty minutes had expired. Unfortunately, many of the other cops had other tidbits of crime to occupy themselves with. So, faced with the overwhelming number of healers, the detectives decided to wait—instead —for one of them to call with a gunshot wound report. Since the bullet had exited the killer's body, the wound was in all likelihood a clean one, anyway, and perhaps the killer
would never seek the aid of a doctor. In which case the waiting would all be in vain.
If there were 17,864 doctors in the city, it was virtually impossible to tally the number of mechanics plying their trade there. So this line of approach was also abandoned.
There remained the hair lotion and talc with the innocent-sounding name "Skylark."
A quick check showed that both masculine beauty aids were sold over the counter of almost every drug store hi the city. They were as common as—if higher-priced than —aspirin tablets.
Good for a cold.
If you don't like them...
The police turned, instead, to their own files in the Bureau of Identification, and to the voluminous files in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And the search was on for a male, white Caucasian, under fifty years in age, dark-haired, dark-complected, six feet tall, weighing one-hundred-eighty pounds, addicted to the use of a Colt .45 automatic.
The needle may have been in the city.
But the entire United States was the haystack.
"Lady to see you, Steve," Miscolo said.
"What about?"
"Said she wanted to talk to the people investigating the cop killer." Miscolo wiped his brow. There was a big fan in the Clerical office, and he hated leaving it. Not that he didn't enjoy talking to the DD men. It was simply that Miscolo was a heavy sweater, and he didn't like the armpits of his uniform shirts ruined by unnecessary talk.
"Okay, send her in," Carella said.
Miscolo vanished, and then reappeared with a small bird-like woman whose head jerked in short arcs as she surveyed first the dividing railing and then the file cabinets and then the desks and the grilled windows and then the detectives on phones everywhere in the Squad Room, most of them in various stages of sartorial inelegance.
"This is Detective Carella," Miscolo said. "He's one of the detectives on the investigation." Miscolo sighed heavily and then fled back to the big fan in the small Clerical office.
"Won't you come in, ma'm?" Carella said.
"Miss," the woman corrected. Carella was in his shirt sleeves, and she noticed this with obvious distaste, and then glanced sharply around the room again and said, "Don't you have a private office?"
"I'm afraid not," Carella said.
"I don't want them to hear me."
"Who?" Carella asked.
"Them," she said. "Could we go to a desk somewhere in the corner?"
"Certainly," Carella said. "What did you say your name was, Miss?"
"Oreatha Bailey," the woman said. She was at least fifty-five or so, Carella surmised, with the sharp-featured face of a stereotyped witch. He led her through the gate in the railing and to an unoccupied desk in the far right corner of the room, a corner which—unfortunately—did not receive any ventilation from the windows.
When they were seated, Carella asked, "What can I do for you, Miss Bailey?"
"You don't have a bug in this corner, do you?"
"A... bug?"
"One of them dictaphone things."
"No."
"What did you say your name was?"
"Detective Carella."
"And you speak English?"
Carella suppressed a smile. "Yes, I ... I picked up the language from the natives."
"I'd have preferred an American policeman," Miss Bailey said in all seriousness.
"Well, I sometimes pass for one," Carella answered, amused.
"Very well."
There was a long pause. Carella waited.
Miss Bailey showed no signs of continuing the conversation.
"Miss ... ?"
"Shhl" she said sharply.
Carella waited.
After several moments, the woman said, "I know who killed those policemen."
Carella leaned forward, interested. The best leads sometimes came from the most unexpected sources. "Who?" he asked.
"Never you mind," she answered.
Carella waited.
"They are going to kill a lot more policemen," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan."
"Whose plan?"
"If they can do away with law enforcement, the rest will be easy," Miss Bailey said. "That's their plan. First the police, then the National Guard, and then the regular Army."