"What about the car?" asked Wanda.
"I don’t know the-the brand. It was an old car, a two-door. Blue, I guess. Anyway, Sandra got to talking real silly and I was scared then but I didn’t know what to do, I just went in the bedroom and shut the door. I guess I went to sleep. And all next day he was gone someplace and we mostly watched TV. There were Cokes and a lot of stuff to eat there, only by then I-just-wanted-to-go home!" said Stephanie. "And he came back that night and said he’d been talking to somebody he knew about jobs for us, and so Sandra said wait and see. But the next night when he came, he got to talking sort of, you know, dirty, and tried to fool around with Sandra and I got more scared and I ran out the back door without my suitcase or anything, and I just about died till it got light-only I didn’t know where I was or what to do-I had my wallet in my pocket, I still had about four dollars and some change, and pretty soon I found that big public library, I felt sort of safe there and it was warm, but it closed at six and I just sort of walked on and I wanted to go home just the worst way, and so when I found that big railroad station I knew what to do. There were public phones and I got the operator and said to reverse the charges, and called home, and Daddy swore at me the minute he heard my voice, I guess he’d been awful scared about me. But I bet he couldn’t have been as scared as I was."
And with reason, thought Palliser. Kids! If she was immature for her age-unlike the other one-still it was a funny age, a mixture of emotion and ignorance. She’d been lucky to be scared enough to run. "It was Tuesday night when you left Sandra there, wherever it was?" That fitted in; the state of the body yesterday morning, she had probably been killed Tuesday night.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think you could recognize the house where he took you? Did you notice any street names when you ran away?"
She shook her head. "It was dark. Oh, I remember one, Flower Street, just before I came to the library."
Palliser rubbed his nose. That wasn’t much help; by what she said, she could have walked three dozen blocks before that. What was in his mind was that city dwellers tend to be curiously insular, stick to their own little corners: and when Steve Smith attempted to get rid of the body in that derelict building, a hundred to one he lived somewhere nearby, or had lived there. A house. Well, there were enough old streets with ramshackle old houses along them, both sides of San Pedro and other main drags down there.
"Do you think you could recognize him, Stephanie?" asked Wanda. "If you saw his photograph?"
Stephanie nodded doubtfully. "I think so. I tried to make Sandra come with me, I just knew something awful’d happen if we stayed there, but you never could get Sandra to do things. She got you to do things. Only-when Mama told me what happened to her-I mean, I knew Sandra all my life." But this time, in spite of everything, Stephanie was rather enjoying herself, all of them listening to every word and Wanda taking notes.
"Wel1, I’ll tell you," said Palliser, looking at his watch, "suppose Miss Larsen takes you to lunch, Stephanie, and then we’ll take a ride around and see if you recognize any buildings, and then you can look at some pictures."
She agreed almost enjoyably. When Wanda had led her out, Palliser looked at Glasser and said, "Terrifying, no? Kids."
"She was lucky," agreed Glasser sleepily. "Does Harry sound like the kind to have a whole house of his own? Even a ramshackle one?"
"Pay your money, take your choice. Could be his sister’s and the fami1y’s away visiting Aunt Mary. Could be his wife’s just left him. What I’m thinking about right now, he did take some steps to get rid of the body." Palliser picked up the phone and called S.I.D. "That D.O.A. yesterday-you pick up anything else at the scene?"
"Didn’t anybody call you? Well, we would have," said Horder. "It’s busy down here. You’l1 get a report. Yeah, no latents anywhere on the body-you thought it’d been dropped there-but out back of that building we picked up a new-looking suitcase with some female clothes in it about the right size for the corpse, and an overnight bag ditto. We’ve just been over those, and there were some pretty good prints on the suitcase."
"Send the bags up if you’re finished with them, will you? Thanks." Palliser relayed that to Glasser. "There you are. He dumped both her and the luggage there, maybe overlooking the plane case. The damn funny thing is, Henry, if he hadn’t tried to set fire to the corpse she might not have been found until the powers that be finally came to demolish that building, which could be years."
"Fate," said Glasser. "That’s so. Let’s go have some 1unch."
When Wanda brought Stephanie back she identified the suitcase immediately, and Sandra’s overnight bag. Palliser took her prints to compare to those S.I.D. had collected from the suitcase, and they wasted an hour or so cruising around in the Rambler in the vicinity of that building on San Pedro. Stephanie was vague; it had been dark when Steve brought them to the house and dark when she ran away: she didn’t recognize anything but the public library. So he brought her back, down to the Records office, and introduced her to Phil Landers.
"Mrs. Landers will give you some photographs to look at, Stephanie. If you recognize him, you tell her-or if you see any picture that might be him."
"Yes, sir, I’ll look good. You’re pretty sure it was him killed Sandra, aren’t you?"
"Pretty sure." He left her to it, under Phil’s eye.
"Why, yes, sir, I knew Dick Buford, very nice guy. Beg pardon? Oh, my name’s Cutler. I couldn’t believe it, I heard he got killed by a robber, right next door, and we never heard a thing!" Cutler was pleased at finding Landers and Grace on his doorstep, to talk about it. "Last person in the world you’d think-nice quiet fellow, him and his wife just devoted like they say till she passed on-" He rambled on, giving them nothing. He said he was a widower himself, that he’d been at the movies Tuesday night, when Buford had probably been killed.
At the house on the other side of Buford’s they met a Mrs. Skinner who told them they’d just moved in, and if they’d realized it was the kind of neighborhood where murders happened they’d never have rented the house. She and Mr. Skinner had been at her sister’s in Huntington Park on Tuesday night, got home late.
"All very helpful," said Grace, brushing his dapper mustache. "But the brother said he sometimes went up to a local bar for a few beers. Maybe he did that night."
"So what?" said Landers. "He was attacked at home."
"Well, we have to go through the motions."
Up on Virgil Street, in the two blocks each side, were three small bars. It wasn’t quite noon, and only one was open. They went in and asked the lone bartender if he knew Buford. It was a little place, licensed for beer and wine only. He didn’t react to the name or description. Pending the opening of the other two, they went to have some lunch, and Grace said over coffee, "A handful of nothing. It could’ve been any thug in L.A. picking a house at random to go after loot. The brother’s supposed to look and see if anything’s missing. Up in the air, like those damned funny rapes."
"I said we’d be in for another spate of the funny ones," agreed Landers. "And of course, if that kid is as young as those women say, he won’t be in Records, that is to have prints and a mug-shot. Unless one of them happens to spot him on the street, there’s no way to look. That is one for the books all right."
At one-thirty they went back to that block and tried Ben’s Bar and Grill on the corner of Virgil. It was just open, no customers in. A fat bald fellow with a white apron round his middle was polishing the bar; it was just a small place, but looked clean and comfortable, with tables covered in red-checked cloths. "Do for you, gents?" asked the bartender genially.