"He denies Art came to see him?"
Palliser smiled bitterly. "You're ahead of me. Sure he does. I don't like him."
"This is where I part company," said Dwyer, "from our brain-trust boy, Lieutenant. I just don't see the Slasher, who we can build pretty easy as a hair-trigger lout with a low LQ., setting up that faked accident."
"You'll have to convince me on that too," said Mendoza, stabbing out his cigarette and immediately lighting another. "Nobody, a hotel desk clerk or anybody else, is collaborating with the Slasher. That's the berserk, unplanned thing."
"So it is," agreed Palliser. "Let George tell you how the Slasher vanished last night. After Number Five. The pretty Negro girl, seven months pregnant. Only she wasn't so pretty by that time. At the corner of Third and Hartley, which is about two blocks from that hotel. The interns said she hadn't been dead fifteen minutes when they saw her, and the squad car couldn't have missed him by more than ten. Where did he go?"
"?Demonios! " Mendoza sat up. "You scoured the neighborhood, George?"
"Sure we did," said Higgins bitterly. "Five squad cars and fourteen men on foot. For six blocks all around. What else? Christ, the blood couldn't have been dry on his knife!"
"Tell me a story about that," said Mendoza to Palliser.
"Of a sort," said Palliser. "Maybe he's just smart enough-hearing the sirens so soon-to threaten the desk clerk into hiding him? Clerk'd be scared afterward to admit it-or there could be some other tie-up between them. Hackett thought the clerk must have noticed more about the man than he admitted. Why was he chary of talking? Look. If Hackett was at the hotel, it'd have been after nine o'clock-the clerk didn't come on until then. The call on Number Five-Loretta Lincoln-came in at ten-sixteen. Say that Hackett had just left the hotel, was heading home. He'd go straight up Third, making for the freeway exchange and the Pasadena Freeway. He could have been at that corner about then, even, my God, spotted the Slasher at work. And followed him when he ran. So you say the Slasher isn't one to set up the faked accident. Maybe not. Maybe Hackett tangled with him, got that knock on the head, there in the hotel, and somebody else got stuck with an assaulted cop and set up the accident. All I say is, it being the same general area-"
"Same general area the Slasher's been roaming right along," said Mendoza. "Nothing says Art was there. He just might have been."
"That's what I say," said Higgins. "God, I don't know how we missed him-he couldn't have been five minutes ahead of us! But on this thing, if Palliser's right, and I don't see what else it could be, it looks the hell of a lot likelier to me that Hackett maybe went to see Mrs. Nestor and caught her talking over Nestor's murder with a boy friend or something. Or went to see Nestor's office nurse-we know he didn't like her either and from what's in his notebook neither do I-and spotted something definite. All I say is, I think it's likelier it was something to do with the Nestor case, not the Slasher."
Mendoza put out his cigarette, looking around the group. His gaze came to rest on Higgins. "Of all of us big tough homicide cops," he said mildly, "you're the biggest, at least, George. Six-three, about a hundred and ninety? Yes. Could you handle Art, boy? Half an inch taller, forty pounds heavier? Barring a fluke, a very lucky first blow that put him out, not very many men-even big men-could put Art down and out very easy. And I really don't see any female doing that. Presumably somebody had to lift him into the car too."
"Which we also thought of," said Palliser sardonically.
"So she-whoever-had a boy friend. Or it was two people together."
"Yes. Damn it, if we only knew definitely where he'd meant to go, who he'd-" Mendoza lit another cigarette with a quick angry snap of his lighter. "All right, I'll go along with your story, John. It was something on a case he was working. Nobody had any reason to want him dead as Art Hackett-only as a cop on a case. Conforme. So,?pues que? On the Slasher's sudden vanishing after Number Five, I might just buy-with a lot of reservations -your little idea of his scaring the desk clerk-or somebody-into hiding him. But I don't buy the idea of one like the Slasher setting up that faked accident. Of course, I will say that whoever set it up didn't take many pains with it. Didn't realize how obviously faked it looked. Which doesn't look like a brain
… You hadn't really settled who was handling which case. I see that. Art had been concentrating on the Slasher, most urgent, naturalmente, and then this Nestor thing came up and he got interested in that, sent you out on routine on the- Yes. All right. He might have gone to see anybody involved in either case. I'll talk to his wife, see whether- But I do not see one like this berserk lunatic-"
The office door opened and Marx came in. He had a couple of still damp five-by-seven prints in one hand. He asked, "How's Hackett?"
"No change. They'll call if- What've you got?"
Marx came up to the desk and laid the prints on the blotter. They were enlargements, a trifle fuzzy that big, of two fingerprints. "I've got a lot of imagination," said Marx. "I think Palliser's got something about that desk clerk. And on principle I don't like cops getting clobbered. Nice to see you back, Lieutenant-you made time home, I guess. These jets. So I did some overtime for you. I thought I recognized that print when I saw it blown up, so I checked."
"Well? What is it?"
"This one",-Max lifted the first print--"is one of the prints we got off that S.P. switch. Whoever tried to wreck the Daylight. And this one, which is the exact same print of, probably, somebody's forefinger, I got off Loretta Lincoln's nice shiny plastic bag last night. After-like we know-our Slasher had rifled it. It's not hers or her husband's or her sister's."
"What?" exclaimed Palliser blankly. "For God's sake-you don't mean-"
Mendoza sat back and said, "?Y que respondes tri a esto? So the Slasher was the X who tried to wreck the Daylight. A hundred to one and no takers against. And that job called for a little planning ahead, didn't it? Pues si. He had to know what time to be there, what trains were coming through before, to throw that switch at the right time. So our Slasher isn't quite the brainless lout he looks, is he? Yes, and maybe somebody who likes to see train wrecks might take it into his head it'd be fun to send a car over a cliff. Maybe, instead of using his knife on a cop who dropped on him, he did set up the faked accident. On a sudden whim." He looked round the group. "Who wants to bet?"
The outside phone rang and all of them stiffened to frightened attention.
It was Rhodes of Traffic, calling from somewhere unspecified to say sadly that they'd done what they could with the wrecked Ford and nothing useful had turned up. Just the lack of prints on anything a driver would touch, which of course said that somebody other than Hackett had last driven it.
"Yes," said Mendoza. He thought somebody had better notify Hackett's insurance agent to put in a claim on the car. He thanked Rhodes. He put down the phone and said, "I don't suppose you've just been sitting around mourning all day, boys. What have you got?"
They hadn't got much. The desk clerk's denial. Neither Mrs. Nestor nor Margaret Corliss had been located to question, nor Ruth Elger and her husband. They had seen about half the people listed in Nestor's address book, all of whom denied that Hackett had called on them last night.
"I went up there and asked around-that canyon road," said Palliser. "I don't know how much it's worth, but the people who live in the place nearest where he went over-a Mr. and Mrs. Roy Baker-say they heard a car evidently being turned around in the road, about ten forty-five. It's rather an exclusive district up there, big places-quiet road. But the houses are set back, and you'd think if they'd heard that, they'd have heard the car go over-though, of course, it didn't hit anything to make a loud crash, just plowed through all that underbrush on the way down. They say the car sounded old and noisy."