Apparently that shell casing had fallen within the car, for we were unable to find it in the alley.
The ejected cartridges were from a .30-caliber carbine. I emptied the letter from an envelope in my pocket and scooped the brass into it without touching it.
Handing the envelope to one of the uniformed officers, I said, “Appreciate it if you’d drop this off at Latent Prints. He may have left some thumbprints when he loaded the gun.”
“Sure, Sergeant,” the officer said. “Any idea who was shooting at you?”
I shook my head. “The only guy I can think of is too unlikely. He’s supposed to be nuts, but I doubt that he’s stupid enough to pull a stunt like this.”
I led the two officers across the street to the front yard of my own apartment building. The lawn here was as closely cropped as the one across the street, so we didn’t have much difficulty in locating by flashlight the spot next to the tree where one of the bullets had ripped into the ground. It had penetrated a couple of feet beyond the entry point, however, and we had to dig up a considerable amount of lawn with a spade I’d brought from the basement before we found the slug. It was a lead slug, and it hadn’t been battered out of shape at all.
With a pocket knife I also dug out the two slugs imbedded in the tree trunk, but they proved to be somewhat battered. There was no point in even looking for the ones that had struck the building, as I knew they would be too flattened out of shape to be of any use for comparison purposes.
I gave the slugs to the same officer I had given the shell casings and asked him to drop them by the Crime Lab.
The team that had been interviewing neighbors returned with a negative report. Half the people in the immediate area had been awakened by the shooting, but no one had managed to get a glimpse of the suspect. Three people had spotted me stalking the suspect, though, and all had come up with fairly accurate descriptions of me.
Dismissing the two radio units, I went back to my apartment and phoned in a report to the Detective Headquarters Unit. Lieutenant Al Shambra was working the swing shift.
“No point in your coming back down tonight, Joe,” he said. “Make a written report in the morning. Any idea at all who this joker was?”
“The Courteous Killer occurred to me,” I said. “But I can’t believe he’d be crazy enough to stick out his neck while every cop in the country is looking for him.”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Shambra said dubiously. “He’d give Los Angeles a wide berth.”
I said, “Maybe Latent Prints can make him on the casings I sent in.”
“If they can’t, there’s not much to go on, is there? From what you say, he didn’t leave a thing else.”
“Unless you count the three slugs I sent to the Crime Lab.”
I said. “About all we can do is wait for a kickback from Latent Prints.”
“Uh-huh. Meantime, do me a favor, huh?”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Stay away from lighted windows.”
Chapter XX
The next morning I arrived at the Police Building at 8:30 a.m. Before going to Captain Hertel’s office to make a personal report, I stopped by Latent Prints and the Crime Lab. At Latent Prints I learned that the ejected shell casings were so clean it was apparent that they had been wiped carefully before being loaded. At the Crime Lab, Ray Pinker said that the bullet we had dug from the ground was perfect for comparison purposes.
“All you have to do now is bring in the gun it was fired from,” he said.
At Homicide Division I found Captain Hertel in his office. When I had described the shooting incident, he asked, “Any idea who this guy was?”
“I didn’t have last night,” I said. “Sat up a couple of hours mulling over the ex-cons who might have a grudge against me for sending them up. Even thought about the Courteous Killer, because he passed at me once before. Didn’t seem likely, though, that with all the heat on him, he’d come back to the place he’s hottest just to settle a grudge.”
“No,” the captain said. “Los Angeles is the last place in the world that guy would go.”
“That’s the way I figured until I talked to Latent Prints. Remember how careful the Courteous Killer always was not to leave prints?”
“Yeah.”
“This joker was just as careful. Each shell had been wiped before it was loaded.”
Captain Hertel stared at me. “He couldn’t be stupid enough to come back here. He’d have to be crazy.”
I said, “According to that New York mental hospital, he is. Maybe he figures his location doesn’t matter because he’s hot everywhere. Who knows how a nut will think?”
The captain drummed his fingers on the desk, still staring at me. “It doesn’t make sense, Joe. With every cop in the country looking for him, he wouldn’t stick his neck out just to avenge a grudge. He’d stay as far from Los Angeles as he could get.”
“A sane man would,” I agreed. “I don’t think this guy is sane.”
Hertel drummed some more, then decisively pushed back his chair and rose. “Even if you’re guessing wrong, we can’t take a chance on it. Let’s go talk to the chief.”
I followed him down the hall to Chief Brown’s office. The chief of detectives was talking on the phone. He waved us to seats. When he finished his phone conversation, he leaned back in his chair and looked at Captain Hertel inquiringly.
“About this guy who potted at Friday last night,” Hertel said. “Guess you got a report on it.”
Brown nodded. “Any leads?”
“Just a wild hunch. Friday thinks it was the Courteous Killer.”
Thad Brown’s eyebrows went up. He looked at me. “What’s your reasoning, Friday?”
I said, “It takes a zany to deliberately gun down a cop. Whiteman’s a zany. We know he’s got a grudge, because he tried his luck once before. We also know he’s careful about not leaving fingerprints. The ejected casings had all been wiped clean before they were loaded.”
The chief pursed his lips. “Not much to go on. Hot as he is, seems unlikely he’d go out of his way to come back to Los Angeles.”
“He’s hot everywhere,” I said.
“Yeah,” Brown said. “Rather remarkable that he hasn’t been picked up long ago. By now everybody in the country must know what he looks like.”
“I’ve thought about that,” I said. “Trouble is, he’s too average-looking. And he’s got such a pleasant expression, nobody’d suspect he was a killer just to look at him. Probably he’s been spotted by lots of people who thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t place where they saw him. Looks like such a nice guy, wouldn’t occur to them they saw his mug shots in the paper or on television.”
“Uh-huh,” Chief Brown said. He removed his dark-rimmed glasses and thoughtfully polished them with a handkerchief. “Suppose we’d better play it safe, even though it is unlikely. Get out a local and an APB on him. Better take the pressroom reporters into confidence and ask them to withhold publicity for a time. If Whiteman knows that we suspect he’s back in town, he’ll run like a scared rabbit. We’ll put stakeouts on you again, just as we did before. On Harriet Shaffer, too, just to play safe.” He looked at Hertel. “You can call on Metro for stakeouts.”
“Yes, sir,” Hertel said.
Thad Brown turned back to me. “How about this weapon he used? Understand it was a rifle or carbine.”
“Thirty-caliber carbine,” I said.
“Army surplus, maybe?”