“I can understand how you feel. But it’s too soon yet to have anything much. The car was found over on Fulton Street, about three miles from the theatre. One of our squad cars recognized the license as being on the stolen car list, then they found the body. A girl, a Miss — er—”
“Elsie Daniels,” Bauer prompted.
“Yes — was sitting on the porch Monday evening—”
“With her boy friend, Fred Bissell,” Bauer added.
“Yes — when the car was left there.” Conway surmised that that was the extent of Ramsden’s information, for the captain turned to Bauer. “Have you talked to her yet?”
“Sure,” said Bauer, with the air of a man about to take his rightful place at the center of the stage. “We can nail down the time within a couple minutes.” Conway glowed inwardly: this was more than he had hoped for. “They’d been listening to some music on the radio, and then Senator Taft came on. They took a couple minutes of that, and then she went in and switched over to another station. She came back out on the porch and just barely sat down when they heard this scraping noise, and noticed the car parking. Then he—”
“Wait a minute,” Ramsden interrupted. “Senator Taft was on at ten o’clock Monday night — I listened to him myself.”
“I didn’t have time to check it yet,” Bauer said.
“That’s when it was,” Ramsden said. “Somebody introduced him — short introduction, no more than a minute, and then he started speaking. So if she says they listened for a couple of minutes — well, it must have been between ten-two and, say, ten-five.”
“Yeah,” said Bauer, and Conway was unable to tell whether he was disgruntled because of the captain’s firsthand information, or merely because he had been interrupted. “Anyhow,” Bauer continued, “the guy started away from the car, and then went back and locked the door. Then he just walked off.”
“Any description?” Ramsden asked.
“Well, for once it’s not that medium-size guy in a dark suit. He had a dark suit, all right, but at least we got a little something to go on. She says he had a mustache, and was stoop-shouldered, almost hunchbacked.”
Conway was conscious that every pair of eyes in the room had been turned on him as Bauer spoke.
“That’s more than we usually get on one of these cases,” Ramsden said. Conway realized that the remark was addressed to him, and in a more friendly tone than Ramsden had used previously. He also had a moment of sympathy for every round-shouldered man in Los Angeles County, a good many of whom, he knew, would find themselves in the police line-up in the course of the next week.
“And that’s all?” he asked.
“All so far,” Bauer said.
“We’ll have something in the next day or so,” Ramsden said. “We’ve got a good man in charge of this case, Mr. Conway.” He indicated the sergeant. “Sergeant Lester R. Bauer. The R. stands for Right.” He and the lieutenant laughed; the others, who were evidently outranked by Bauer, permitted themselves no more than smiles, and Conway’s face betrayed the fact that he did not get the joke. “ ‘Right’ Bauer,” the captain explained patiently. “You’ll understand if you see much of him.”
Bauer obviously was not amused, and had started for the door when Ramsden stopped him. “Wait a minute, Sergeant,” he said, and turned to Conway. “There’s probably a flock of reporters out there. You’ve had a pretty bad couple of hours — if you don’t feel like facing them right now, the sergeant could take you down the back way, and you’ll miss them.”
“Thanks,” said Conway, genuinely surprised at this consideration. “I’d be very grateful if I could duck them.”
Bauer crossed to a door at the other side of the office, and Conway stopped and held out his hand to the captain.
“I certainly hope you can find him, whoever it was, and quickly,” he said. “I’ll do anything I can to help — you know that.”
“I’m sure of it,” Ramsden said, and then shook hands. “We’ll do our best.”
As he followed Bauer down the corridor to the fingerprint division, Conway was sanguine. He had been treated with more consideration than he had dared hope for; obviously they did not consider him a suspect, although he was, undoubtedly, at least under technical suspicion until they had had time to check his story. When his fingerprints had been taken, they made their way to the car which was waiting, with Larkin at the wheel. As he got into the back seat with the sergeant, Conway decided it would be wise to try to make friends with him, to pump him for whatever information the detective might be able to supply. But Bauer saved him the trouble.
“Wiseguy,” he murmured.
“How’s that?” Conway asked.
“That comic captain. With his jokes.”
Conway was genuinely curious, and, in addition, this seemed too good an opening to be missed. “What did he mean, ‘The R stands for Right’?”
“Some of the boys started calling me that because I’m practically always right about everything.” He said it as a simple statement of fact. “Only he thinks it’s funny or something.”
For the first time Conway looked carefully at the young man whose unimpressive facade concealed this rather staggering ego. His first impression had been justified; Sergeant Bauer did look like one of those ineffectual, already defeated salesmen who plod from door to door, endlessly and aimlessly, all their lives. He was of somewhat less than medium height, with a chin and forehead which receded almost equally; the forehead seemed to have a slight edge, but that may have been because his hairline had reached a point just above the ears. His cheeks were full and his nose broad and flat so that, from a three-quarter angle, his face looked rather like the blunt end of an egg. In his pale eyes there was nothing that remotely resembled alertness or intelligence; rather, there were placidity and self-satisfaction to an unusual degree. Conway decided that in all the world, Sergeant Bauer was the one man he would most like to have assigned to this case. And it shouldn’t be too hard to get on a friendly footing with him.
“The captain must have a pretty good opinion of you, to put you on a case like this.”
“He’s got a good opinion of me all right. But that’s not the reason he stuck me with this one.”
“No?”
“He figures I’m getting ahead too fast, so this will slow me down. There’s not a chance in a million of cracking this one, and he knows it. This was some sex maniac, or plain maniac, and there’s nothing at all to go on. There’s no reason it should have been your wife; might just as well of been any woman who was at that theatre that night, and was left alone a few minutes. It didn’t even have to be that theatre — coulda been any theatre, or any parking lot in town. But I have to go through all the motions, and waste a lot of time and energy and make up a thousand reports, but it keeps me off a case where I might really do something, and maybe get a promotion out of it, and the papers would start asking why Bauer ain’t head of the Homicide Bureau.” It was said without a trace of rancor.
Conway realized that with Bauer, at least, he was not even under technical suspicion. Here was certainly an ally to be cultivated. “If anyone can clear up this case,” he said, “you’re the man to do it.”
“Oh, sure,” the sergeant conceded. “Remember that case the papers called. ‘The White Rose Murder,’ about a year ago?” Conway did. “Well, I cracked that one single-handed. I got promoted to sergeant, and for six months he practically had me investigating overtime parking.” Conway made a sound which he hoped would be interpreted as sympathy.
“At least there’ll be some publicity out of this,” Bauer said. “My girl likes to see my name in the papers,” he added — an explanation which Conway found singularly unconvincing.