A Nice Girl Like You (Lt. Andy Bastian Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  Over in the corner two men were arguing the Congo situation. There was absolutely no money to be made by joining them; I never understood the Congo situation, and I have a sneaking hunch nobody else ever did, either.

  My wife Olga was arguing with an M.D. about the use of narcosynthesis, which was her business as a psychologist and his, I suppose, as a physician; but not mine. Police officers are forbidden by law to use the so-called truth serums.

  Ellie Adams was presiding over the little group of rapt listeners near the record player. The record they were playing was atonal, dissonant and generally raucous.

  It was a typical Naranjo Vista party. I drifted over to the bookcase and started looking at book titles.

  Since a cop, according to most non-cops, wouldn’t look at a book except in desperation, Ellie and Olga both broke off what they were doing and came towards me. But midway, Ellie got side-tracked by the phone ringing.

  My head came up; a call could be for me, but Ellie waved a finger at the doctor and he took it. As he started telling someone not to be alarmed, and try two aspirin, Olga reached me and put a hand on my forearm. “Andy, we can go home soon.”

  “Don’t be silly, Olga, I’m having a fine time.”

  She grinned. Olga is not beautiful, taken feature by feature, and she simply doesn’t give a damn about hairdos and clothes and so on, but she has the finest grin in the world. “Liar,” she said. She looked around the room. Everybody there was a college graduate or better, and everybody there worked at the real high brain-level jobs – electronics, medicine, teaching.

  I said: “These are the taxpayers. Supposing they vote to try the Marxist system which, according to the Manifesto, states that when all citizens are economically secure and happy in their work, lawlessness will melt away and police will become unnecessary?”

  Olga laughed, wholeheartedly. The doctor – his name, I remembered, was Harold Levy, and he was supposed to be a terrific medico – had finished his phone call, and joined us. Olga told him what I’d said. Just as he started laughing, too, the phone rang again, and both he and I swiveled our heads.

  “Another of my patients with a splinter under the nail of his pinky,” he said.

  But in a moment Ellie Adams said, “You’re wanted on the phone, Andy.”

  The record she and her pals had been playing was an LP; super LP with extension. It was now going through a series of drumbeats, nothing else. But the room was reasonably quiet as I picked up the phone and said my name: “Bastian.”

  “Sergeant McRaine, lieutenant. I got a heavy one; you better come over to Descanso and Walnut.”

  “Right. Break-in?”

  “Assault,” he said.

  “Need a doctor? There’s one here.”

  McRaine said: “No. I called the chief, he said he’d bring some doctor that lives next door to him.”

  A heavy case. Automatically, I looked at my watch, noted the time. Ten forty-eight. I started fishing my notebook out of my pocket; if you have to testify, the time is always important. “Assault and battery, Mac?”

  “Lieutenant,” McRaine said, “it’s criminal assault. For God’s sake get over here.”

  “Right,” I said, and hung up. McRaine was a tough one; he had time on a city police force before he came to us for reason of his kid’s health. When he broke like that, it was bad.

  Manners, Andy. I cut across the room, stood close to Ellie, and said: “I’ve got to go, sweetie. Business. Thanks a lot, and I’m leaving the car for Olga.”

  “Take it,” Ellie said. “Walter will run her – No, Walter will be shot when he gets in. I’ll take Olga home, or Hal Levy will.”

  “Sure.” We were on Magnolia, one block over from Walnut; Descanso was three blocks away. It was an easy walk. But if I said that there was a big crime four blocks from her house, Ellie and all her guests might go with me. So I said: “Tell Olga. I’ll slip out without breaking up your party.”

  I hadn’t worn an overcoat to drive to a party in a closed car; to do so would be an insult to Southern California. But there was a uniform greatcoat in the back seat of the car, and a uniform cap.

  Drew Lasley was out in the middle of the street at Walnut and Descanso, with a flashlight in his hand. “Keep moving,” he said, “there’s nothing to see. Oh, it’s you, Andy. Over there.” He waved the flashlight, unnecessarily, at a knot of men over in one of the rare vacant lots in Naranjo Vista. I could make out the burly figure of our chief, Jack Davis. In fact, I could see the captain’s bars on his shoulders.

  For all its thirteen thousand people and its five thousand families, Naranjo Vista had damn little police work. In the three years since the Bartlett Construction Company built the town, less than a hundred felonies had gone on the blotter.

  I parked my car and crossed the street. Drew Lasley sneezed as I came near him. “I’m going to get a great big whopping cold,” he said. “I was in a hot tub when Mac phoned me.”

  He was in full uniform. “You must have dressed like a fireman.”

  “Or a cop.” A car came along, slowed to see what was happening in the field. “Keep moving,” Drew Lasley said. “There’s nothing to see.” The car went on and I finished crossing Descanso.

  Jack Davis turned his flashlight on my face, and then pointed it down to guide my feet past a clump of foxtails growing out of the raw red clay. He said: “A real bad one, Andy,” and switched the light back to the centre of the group.

  An elderly man was just withdrawing a needle from a girl’s arm.

  It was a girl, all right; most of her clothes had been torn away, and her sex was clearly discernible. She’d been dressed in a sloppy-joe sweater and a plaid skirt. These were rucked around, but still on her; pink panties had been torn away, and so had a white bra, and her tan sandals had been kicked off; both her heels were raw from kicking on the ground.

  As she relaxed from the needle, the doctor said, “This girl should have a hot bath and be put to bed.”

  Jack Davis said: “Leatherwood left to get your evidence case when you got here.”

  I said: “There isn’t much to do till I get the case. Fingernail scrapings, samples of the dirt under her. Whoever is responsible will have left traces on the clay. . . .” I knelt cautiously, and touched the girl’s face. It was chilly with shock. “Who found her?”

  McRaine was – outside of Jack Davis – the heaviest man there. It was strange to hear his voice shaking in that bull throat. “I did, lieutenant.” He usually called me Andy. “I was just making a routine patrol. I turned my white light into the lot here and –” He gulped, pulled out his notebook. “That was at ten-thirty-six. She couldn’t talk; I don’t know her name. Radioed the station, Captain Davis relieved me at ten-forty-one, sent me to the phone. Called Lieutenant Lasley and then had to phone the station to find out where you were, sir, and –”

  “All right, Mac, all right.” I bent over, not to happily. The signs were plain enough.

  Most of these cops would not have seen this very often. Jack Davis and I, with our experience in Occupation Force Constabulary, were hard to shock. I said: “She looks like a high school girl. Mac, take a car – mine if you don’t have one – and go back to that party I was at. Get Walter Adams to come here with you, for an identification.” It was a job for a patrolman, but Mac needed something to do.

  Then I remembered that Walt might not be home yet, and, if home, might have landed in the Scotch bottle, and would be unable to come out. He’d had a rough time, being knocked down in his own high school. I said: “If Mr. Adams isn’t home, ask his wife who his assistant is, and get him over here. I repeat, him. Work down the staff till you get a man’s name. This is not a job for a woman.”

  McRaine said: “Oke,” and wandered away.

  Dr. Barnhart looked after him, and said: “He should have some sort of stimulant.”

  Jack Davis said: “He’s got a daughter just about this girl’s age.”

  “Dr. Barnhart said: “She really shouldn’t be lyin
g there.”

  I said: “We don’t have an ambulance. And I want to get my evidence on the site, before she’s moved. There’s an ambulance on the way from County Hospital, up in the county –”

  Dr. Barnhart said: “I am well aware of where the county hospital is, lieutenant. And I suppose you’re right; if you took her home and there was a mother, she might go into hysterics, which wouldn’t be good for the patient. But can’t someone cover her?”

  I took off my coat and laid it over her.

  Sirens were whining in the night, over towards the freeway that skirted Naranjo Vista. Dr. Barnhart said: “That would be your medical examiner arriving. I was on my way to call.”

  One of us said: “Thanks a lot, doctor, and we’ll call you if we need any testimony,” and he stepped out of the circle of light and was gone.

  Jack said: “Karinsky, go relieve Lieutenant Lasley out there. He’d better get back to the station. There’ll be reporters and so on to handle.”

  Karinsky had just finished his military obligation to his government, as being drafted is now called. He saluted and slapped his thigh with his palm to finish the flourish, did a real right about face and went away.

  Jack and I were alone. He said: “Andy, this is going to raise hell.”

  “We can always go back in the army, captain. Run our twenties up to thirty years apiece and we’ll get two-thirds pay instead of half.”

  He chuckled slightly. “Sure, sure. Only you’re a major and I’m just a captain.”

  We weren’t calloused; we were cops. There was nothing to do till we got my lab outfit, till a medical examiner got there; there was no use beating our heads against the ground.

  Somehow or other we should have prevented this; we were paid to keep Naranjo Vista quiet. City policemen are paid to catch criminals; in fact, a recent New York police commissioner made the rather startling announcement that crime prevention was no part of his department’s duty.

  But we were paid by the Bartlett Construction Corp. to make Naranjo Vista a safe, quiet place in which to live and enjoy life. The corporation had never balked at any expenditure we’d wanted to make. If Jack had asked for more patrolmen, stronger street lights, anything, we undoubtedly would have gotten it.

  The girl lying on the hard, dry ground at our feet was our responsibility. I remembered something, suddenly. I had told Bailey Spratt that three break-and-entries are not necessarily the beginning of a crime wave. Now it looked as if I might have been wrong.

  Chapter Three

  Bill Leatherwood got back before the state and county men. I had a manual in the kit; I opened it to the right page, and Jack Davis read off the check list to me. Quickly I filled little envelopes, boxes and jars with a variety of objects such as earth, skin, and hair. I took a couple of foxtails off the dried clump of wild barley; maybe a botanist could identify any we found clinging to a suspect’s socks.

  “Footprints,” Jack Davis said.

  “None,” I said. “It hasn’t rained since last spring, and this is pure clay.”

  “Red clay,” Jack said. “Not too common.”

  “Did you ever watch them build one of these ready-made towns? They pick up dirt from a highspot here, and dump it in a low spot ten blocks away. A surface geologist would go crazy studying Naranjo Vista.”

  “Are there really guys called surface geologists?” Jack Davis yawned.

  “How do I know? Here comes the county and or the state. Wonder why the sirens?”

  “Si-reens,” Jack corrected me. “Whassa matta, you ’shamed of being a cop? Why, Andy, they have to blow their little horns to express themselves. After being polite all day to the taxpayers, they are all pent up.”

  It was the county and the state, arriving in a dead heat. Their sirens moaned to a final stop, but they left the flashing red lights on; all around us, on Walnut and Magnolia, Oak, Lemon Descanso and Monterey lights were coming on, windows and doors were opening.

  They climbed out of their cars, and walked heavily towards us, the deputy sheriffs with their big guns low on their thighs, like old-time gunslingers, the SHP men neater with their guns on Sam Browne belts.

  If I had been a lawbreaker, I would have been terrified at all that artillery coming towards me, surrounding me. I would have screamed out a confession. In fact, it is funny that suspects don’t scream out confessions, when surrounded by ten or twelve guns, each holding six to eight bullets; but they don’t. At least, I’ve never known one to.

  Jack Davis said: “Here we go,” and his voice dropped an octave, got a growl to it; a cop meeting other cops. “Over here,” he said. “I’m Chief Davis.” He turned. “Leatherwood, you better go help Karinsky keep everyone away from here.”

  Leatherwood went away. He left plenty of law behind him; they were shooting out their names and their ranks and their hands to be shaken like machine guns.

  One of them was in plainclothes, with no visible gun. He’d have one, though, under his clothes, because he would be sworn personnel, just like me; a man who had taken an oath to uphold and enforce the law. I said: “You from the lab? I’m Lieutenant Bastian, of the local force.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sergeant Ernen. What we got?”

  “Over here.” He followed me away from the crowd of uniformed men towards the girl. He said: “Just a kid, huh,” and flashed his light at my case. I turned over to him my envelopes and boxes and bottle, all marked; he would take them to the county crime detection lab, and use his acids and reagents and microscopes and fluorescent lights on them and learn anything that had to be learned.

  He said: “You’ve done about everything that’s to be done, lieutenant.” He looked at me a little curiously, perhaps wondering what a trained man was doing on such a hick force. “Still,” he said, “we’ll make one more try.” He raised his voice: “Jakens.”

  Jakens was in plain clothes, too. He lugged a long cord our way, plugged in a light, yelled: “Juice,” into the night, and heavy floodlighting hit the scene. All the big uniformed men came towards the light, but Ernen said: “Hold it a minute, gents, we’re looking for footprints.”

  When he didn’t find any, or anything else of any significance, he used a camera to photograph all angles of the scene, and called: “Doc, it’s all yours.”

  The medical examiner said: “You can take her away. Use Ernen’s ambulance.” He smiled. “Been cold weather, you couldn’t have kept her here. Makes it easier for you boys. I’ll call your doctor – Barnhart? – and file a report tomorrow.”

  A tall deputy rolled the girl on a stretcher, and started to pick up the stretcher. The edge of it caught on the deputy’s big revolver and they had to start over again. Ernen had gotten a blanket from some place and threw it over her. I took my coat back, put it on.

  I said: “Don’t start your ambulance up yet; I still need an ident.”

  Ernen said: “You heard the man,” and they took the stretcher away. “Quite a mob out there, lieutenant.”

  “The sirens brought them. And the red lights.”

  “Well, don’t blame me. . . . You go to FBI school? Me, too. Want to come see my rig? I laid it out myself. An old ambulance. I can do pretty near anything in the field – double microscope work, chemicals, I even got a darkroom so I can print and develop without going home.”

  “Expensive.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Ernen said. “I did most of the work myself. No county in the state, not Los Angeles or anyplace, has anything like it.”

  We walked around the knot of uniformed officers. They were just talking; there wasn’t anything for any of them to do, but of course, the press might arrive at any moment.

  There were two ambulance-shaped cars. Jakens and the deputy were just stowing the stretcher in one; Ernen took my arm and led me to the other. I was interested; this was my business.

  He’d done a good job. The inside of the hack was enamelled white with several coats of enamel. The generator was at the back, so a man could stand up outside and star
t it by the weight of his arm. It was running now, giving juice to the floodlight and to the interior lights of the truck.

  Ernen opened a drawer and showed me flat-out enlargements of every kind of cloth you could think of, raw silk down to the cheapest wool fibre imitation. There were prints of tyre tracks, domestic and foreign, colour charts of different brands of liquor. “Hold up a labelled bottle to these, and you can tell at once if the liquor’s been tampered with.”

  I said: “Man you’re good.”

  “Sure. And I get the same pay as a sergeant who’s learned how to ride a motor cycle without falling off. Still –”

  McRaine stuck his head in the back of the rig. “Lieutenant, I got your man here.”

  “Thanks, Mac.” I didn’t say goodbye to Ernen; he followed me out. Walter Adams, his face bandaged and his breath smelling of liquor, was standing by Mac. Olga and Dr. Hal Levy were behind him.

  I looked at my watch; eleven seventeen. Thirty-five minutes since I had gotten the call. I said to Walter: “Drew told me about you rhubarb. The department wants to thank you, pal.”

  He gave me a wan look.

  I asked Hal Levy: “Did you bandage him up? This is a sort of rugged case.”

  “He’s all right,” Dr. Levy said. “No concussion, no more shock than a highball could fix. The bandages are mostly for cosmetic effect, as we trade school boys say.”

  Still, I whispered to Ernen: “Tell your man just the face. I don’t want a fainting school teacher on my hands.” Sergeant Ernen slipped over to the other ambulance, and I took Walter’s arm. “Over here, Walter. Party over, Olga?”

  “Hal and I thought we’d drive Walter back, so you wouldn’t have to spare a man. I know how short-handed you are.”