They asked questions and he answered quite openly.
"Well, she always brought her car into the station where I work down on Alvarado. That's how we got to know each other. And since I lost my wife, I didn't fancy getting hooked up again and neither did Rose, she'd had two marriages go sour on her-but sometimes it's nice to have somebody to go out with, know what I mean? Neither of us had the money to go to fancy restaurants or shows, but we went to a movie now and then or to some place for Sunday breakfast. You know, like that." The last time he had seen her was last Sunday. They had gone to a movie in Hollywood.
"Did she mention anything about any trouble with anybody? Any argument?"
Openshaw said, "Nothing like that, Rose was easygoing. She wasn't one for arguments or to go fault-finding. She never said nothing about any trouble."
"Wou1d you know who her closest woman friend was?"
"I guess I'd say Cora Delaney. They'd known each other a long time."
That address had been in the book too, Beachwood Drive. They found it, a modest frame house, but the open garage was empty and nobody answered the bell.
"Anyway," said Grace, "we'd better see what the autopsy report says so we know what we're talking about."
They drove back to Parker Center and called it a day.
HACKETT WAS LATE getting home. The traffic on the freeway was murder at this hour. It was farther to drive, to the rambling old house on a dead-end street high in Altadena, but it was just slightly cooler up there. He came out of the garage to head for the back door, and Mark and Sheila came shrieking a greeting with the monstrous mongrel, Laddie, bounding after them. Hackett hugged the children and was nearly knocked down by Laddie, who seemed to be getting bigger by the day. Fifty-seven varieties all right, and the new higher fence had cost a bundle, but he was good with the children. The only member of the household who didn't appreciate Laddie was the dignified great Persian, Silver Boy, who was a middle-aged cat and resistant to change. After a few indignant claws had connected, Laddie had learned to keep his distance, wistfully. There was nothing Laddie loved more than new friends.
Hackett went in the back door to blessed air-conditioning. Angel was setting the table. "I was just starting to worry about you," she said.
"Traffic," said Hackett, bending to kiss her.
"Murder, I know. Good day, darling‘?"
"Unproductive," said Hackett. "It got up to a hundred, by the radio."
"I know. Thank God I didn't have to go out anywhere, and I've kept the kids in until it started to cool off about an hour ago. Do you want a drink before dinner?"
SATURDAY NIGHT on the Central beat could be busy. But if the heat stirred up the violent emotions, it also kept people ready to stay inside. The night watch got called out only twice the whole shift. The first call was a hit-run on Beverly with a young woman D.O. A, and there had been plenty of witnesses to say the car had run a light and was going about forty, but no one had got the plate number and there was confusion about a description of the car. The consensus was that it had been a medium-sized sedan, not very old, not very new.
Traffic was probably busy writing tickets and dealing with drunks, but the night watch sat and waited until the second call came in at just on midnight. Piggott had finished the report on the hit-run. Schenke was reading a paperback historical novel. Conway was just sitting. When the desk called, it didn't sound like much. A body in the street. Conway went out to look, expecting the drunken derelict, and that was almost what it was. On a quiet, run-down side street, just up from Venice Boulevard, the man dead in the gutter wasn't more than twenty-five. He hadn't been dead long and the minute Conway laid eyes on him in the glare of the squad-car headlights he knew what the autopsy report would say.
"Christ," he said disgustedly to the uniformed man.
"These stupid damn punks. Rotting what brains they have on the dope."
The uniformed man said succinctly, "They've got no brains to start with or they wouldn't."
Conway went over him. There wasn't any I.D., but in one of his pantspockets was a cardboard box with about fifty Quaaludes in it. "My God," said Conway, "if the dope hadn't got him, he might've got taken off for this. Let's have that light closer." The patrolman shifted the flashlight. "I thought so. More of the fake stuff. It's coming in by the ton, by what Narco says. Mostly from South America."
"It isn't the real stuff?" The patrolman was interested.
"Oh, it's the real stuff. It'll kill you as quick as the bona fide American-made, but look at the little stamp mark."
The pills were slightly smaller than a dime and in the beam of the flashlight they could make out the tiny legend stamped on each. LEMMON 74. "The real pharmaceutical company doesn't use that mark, but it looks like a guarantee that these are American-made. Real Quaaludes."
"I'll be damned," said the patrolman. "I suppose we want the morgue wagon?"
"What else?" said Conway. "I'll see these get handed over to Narco, as if they needed any more."
AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, one of the sergeants sitting on the central switchboard at Hollywood Division got a call from a frightened citizen. At first she was rather incoherent, but he calmed her down and got her talking straight. "Now, have I got your name right, Frances Holzer? Yes, Mrs. Holzer. Start out again, it's about your mother?"
"Miss," she said. "Miss Holzer. Yes, I'm just worried to death because she should've been home hours ago, she's a good driver, but an accident-but she's carrying identification, I would've heard about it, somebody would've called. And she was only going to stay a little while, Mrs. Lincoln's been pretty sick and visitors aren't supposed to stay long-"
"Just let me have your address, Miss. 0. K, Del Mar Avenue. What's your mother's name?"
"Mrs. Edna Holzer. She was going to the French Hospital to see Mrs. Lincoln. She left about seven and she should've been home by at least eight-thirty, I've been worried to death. She was coming straight home, she said so, and-"
The sergeant thought rapidly. That was a pretty classy address, up above Los Feliz, and the girl sounded straight.
"What's she driving?"
"A Chrysler Newport-two years old-navy-blue." She was more businesslike now, reassured by the solid masculine voice. "Wait a minute, I've got the license number. It's one-E-D-seven-four hundred."
It passed fleetingly across the sergeant's mind that these seven-digit plate numbers, issued since the state ran out of different six-digit ones, made life a little complicated. He wrote it down. "I'd like a description of her, please."
"Of M-mother?- She's f-forty nine, five six, a hundred and t-t-twenty," and the girl burst out crying.
"Now, Miss Holzer, try to get hold of yourself. Miss Holzer?"
She hiccupped and sobbed once more and said, "I'm sorry. I don't want to sound stupid, but it's just, she was so p-p-proud of herself, she'd been on a diet and lost twenty pounds-she's got brown hair and blue eyes and she's wearing a sleeveless blue nylon dress and bone sandals."
"All right, Miss Holzer. That's fine. We'll have a look around. Check the hospitals, and so on. I'll get back to you.".
He did the obvious things on it. Called the emergency rooms, the Highway Patrol. If the woman had been heading for Hollywood from downtown she'd likely have been on the freeway and the Highway Patrol handled freeway accidents. He drew a blank. So then he called Central Traffic, explained and asked them to look around that area for the car. The woman could have had a heart attack, a lot of things could have happened.
At twelve-fifty, Central Traffic called back. A squad had checked the parking lot at the French Hospital. The Chrysler wasn't there. The squad had looked all around side streets there and it wasn't anywhere. Funny, thought the sergeant. What could have happened to the woman? Of course, without knowing anything but what the girl said she could have stopped for a drink, she could have gone to see a friend and lost track of time, she could have-