The Knave of Hearts (23 page)

"Arturo," said Mendoza dreamily, "do
you feel a little tingling sensation up your spine? Don’t keep us
in suspense, Mr. Lockhart—what evidence did you have?"

"Gentlemen, damn all—except for a bottle of
aspirin. What the hell did that mean? I didn’t think much about it
to start with. Why should I? Gideon Wise—last man to think of in a
thing like that! I went and asked him about the aspirin, because I
was kind of surprised to find it there. They had their own label for
stuff like that, is how I knew where it came from. I didn’t see
Rhoda going into Wise’s for anything. The old man wouldn’t have
served her, probably chased her out, and anyway he never would stock
liquor the way the other drugstore—Bill Green’s place—does.
Green’s was where most people went, because he carries everything
you expect to find in a drugstore. Old man Wise never stocked any
women’s cosmetic stuff, or wine and liquor, or magazines—a lot of
stuff he thought was foolish and sinful, you see."

"
¡Uno queda aturdido
-you
overwhelm me!" said Mendoza. "At least the courage of his
convictions, but why didn’t he starve to death?” Lockhart
grinned. "I often wondered. Funnily enough, though—well, I’ll
come to that in a minute. Like I say, I went and saw Gideon, and he
said—looking me in the eye honest as you please—Rhoda called the
store a couple of nights before she was killed, asked him to bring
her the aspirin. He said he didn’t realize right off who it was
calling, or maybe he’d have said no, but as it was, he’d said
he’d bring it—he was just closing up—and though he knew
Father’d have disapproved, well, a customer was a customer. And he
took it over to her and she paid him and that was that. He said it
was Tuesday night—she was killed on Thursday—and Green’s was
closed, which was why she called him.

And he just couldn’t say why she hadn’t opened
the bottle and taken a couple. That kind, he said, who knew what
they’d do? He’d never had anything to do with that sinful woman
before or after, and that was all he knew.

"And right there, gentlemen, I had a kind of
little tingle up the spine, and I knew. I couldn’t tell you
why—something about the way his eyes looked when he said her
name—something about the way he looked at up me—I don’t know. I
just knew, all of a sudden, he’s the one did it. I couldn’t
figure why—I still can’t. But I went away and thought about it,
and I asked the other girls on that floor in the Crosley, and one of
’em remembered Gideon coming, knocking on Rhoda’s door. She—this
girl—she was just coming out, see, and saw him there. She got quite
a kick out of it, because of course she knew who he was—the holy
Gideon Wise—and was kind of disappointed, she said, when she saw he
had a little parcel with him, so he was probably just delivering
something, not calling on Rhoda for the usual reason. But she
couldn’t remember which night it was, hadn’t been that
interested. She wasn’t the girl who found Rhoda, or maybe she would
have. It was just a little thing she remembered, hadn’t noticed
much at the time—it passed right out of her mind after, until I
asked. It might have been Tuesday night.

"Well, I don’t need to tell you there’s
nothing there. Rhoda being the kind she was, maybe she got to hitting
the bottle and forgot all about the aspirin, sure. But—"
Lockhart spread his hands. "I didn’t think so then and I don’t
think so now. I didn’t see Gideon again, no reason to ask any
more—it was all in my mind, just a feeling. Nothing at all to build
a charge on. I just knew, somehow, sure as death. I couldn’t tell
you why. I can see him going to visit Rhoda, you know—or maybe
just, you might put it, decidin’ to stay once he was there, with
that bottle of aspirin. Not even old Abraham could outlaw human
nature entirely, and for all Gideon was a backward sort I don’t
guess there was anything wrong about him that way. Don’t suppose
he’d ever been in ten feet of anything female, that way, and we
know what they say about the pot with the lid on too tight. I can
see, with the old man gone and nobody to keep tabs on him any more,
Gideon might have found out he still had a little of the old Adam in
him. And maybe when he got there that night, knowing what Rhoda was
and all, he just all of a sudden let go. But I don’t know why he
should have killed her—and if I wasn’t just woolgathering, it
wasn’t anything very sane, because it was a pretty bloody business.
Unless, maybe, he just felt so damn guilty afterward and took it out
on her."

"It could be, it could be. I like this very
much—it could be a big piece of our jigsaw puzzle. The first
one—setting the pattern . . . I don’t suppose you’d be here
telling us all this if Gideon Wise was still behind the counter of
his drugstore in Mount Selah."

"That’s so. I don’t know where he is,
gentlemen. This was three years back last month, like I say. Old
Abraham two months dead. How he’d managed to save that much I don’t
know, but it came out he’d had nearly five thousand in the bank. It
came to Gideon, of course. We’d wondered if he might maybe kick
over the traces some—you know—but he never showed a sign of it,
that couple of months. Before Rhoda. Then,"—Lockhart leaned to
deposit the stub of his cigar in the ashtray—"day after I’d
talked to him about that, he shut the store and left town. They
rented the building—matter o’ fact it belongs to my
brother-in-law—there wasn’t a lease. Gideon just went over to
Bill Green, it came out later, and offered him the stock at his own
price. They’d rented the old place they lived in too, and he never
took any of the furniture—nothing but his clothes, and the money
out of the bank, and got a ride up to the county seat with Jim
Hotchkiss, where he could get a train. To somewhere. And that’s all
I know. What was in my mind, what brought me here today—I saw that
woman, and she wasn’t killed by a sane man. Especially if I’m
right and it was Gideon. I’m no doctor, but they say anything
improves with practice. When I read about this joker you’re after
here, and what you think he looks like, and the way he’s killed
these women—I just wondered. It connected up in my mind. Because in
a kind of way, I never felt very easy about Rhoda and Gideon. Nothing
I could do about it. I don’t know how much this means to you, of
course. Don’t know if you’ll think it worth even mentioning, that
a couple of people—after Gideon’d left and people were talking
about it, you know—remembered him saying once or twice he’d
always wanted to see California.”

"This story I like better and better," said
Mendoza. "Are you offering odds against it, Art?"

"I don’t think so," said Hackett slowly.
"It sounds an awful lot like our boy, Luis. The pattern.
Coincidence is a funny thing, but most coincidences, you look at them
twice and it’s not so random as it looks—good solid reason behind
it. But evidence, my God—"

"The hell with that," said Mendoza, sitting
up with a jerk. "Since when have we had any good legal evidence
on this at all? Mr. Lockhart summed up the situation for us on
that—the dismal truth is, if we picked him up in the next hour,
tell me what we’d hold him on, even for a day!
¡Ay
qué risa!
Over two and a half months since
Pauline McCandless, the latest one—up to twenty-eight months ago on
Anderson. None of them so conveniently clutching a strand of the
murderer’s hair or a button off his coat, to identify him—no nice
footprints or fingerprints—nothing, nothing to say the man who
killed them is this man or that man, nothing to match up to any man
we bring in. Not a soul alive who ever met these charming newly
acquired boy friends—just secondhand reports of what the women said
he looked like. Don’t we know how many men conform to that vague
description! The pattern in more ways than one—we’re stuck for
evidence just the way you were, Mr. Lockhart. For once, I’m not
thinking about the D.A.’s office—we can’t. We’ve got to spot
him, and then look for the evidence to bring him in on."

"That makes sense, Lieutenant, but you may never
get any."

"And if we don’t, maybe there’s another card
up our sleeve. Whether our boy is your Gideon or not, he’s not a
sane man—if he once was, not after four, five, six.
Patterns—patterns, sure—you can go by them some. A lot of
woman-killers, mass killers in general, have the notion they’re
specially appointed executioners, under God’s protection. Sometimes
when they’re caught up with, it sends them all the way over the
edge. We might just get a confession. We might just get a suicide.
But I’ll worry about that when we’ve spotted him, for ninety
percent sure, anyway. And I’m hoping to God, friend, your boy is
our boy too, because if he is, you’re the only witness this side of
the Mississippi who can recognize him. In fact," said Mendoza,
gazing at Mr. Lockhart fondly, "you are worth your weight in
gold here and now, and I’m tempted to give you a bodyguard to see
you don’t get killed in traffic or fall off any ten-storey
buildings until you’ve had a good look at all our possibles—”

Lockhart grinned. "I’ll take good care o’
myself, always have."

"Because just in case you can tell us that one
of our maybes is Gideon Wise, this background rings up a lot more
preponderance of suspicion on him—evidence or no. Especially if
he’s changed his name, which we seem to be taking it for granted he
has. Why? Did you make him a little nervous, possibly? I wonder. Or
maybe he just wanted to make a fresh start .... But I’d like to
know if he’s here, I would indeed."

"How many possibles you got and where are they?"

Mendoza closed his eyes. "I haven’t counted
lately. In round figures, about fifty. With special check marks on a
dozen or so."

"I pried three more names out of Mrs. Andrews
yesterday afternoon," remarked Hackett. "Haven’t located
two of them yet."

"You boys must have been busy,” said Lockhart.
"When and where I do I look at them?"

"Art, you can act as a special escort. Take the
Andrews list fiirst, I think. They’re all scattered, Mr. Lockhart,
miles apart all over the damn town, and we’ve been dodging
reporters and—mmh—1ooking at them from a distance, no direct
questioning yet, because there’s just no solid reason whatever to
connect any of them with any of the murders. So you’ll look at them
one by one, please, in their daily habitats—it’ll make a nice
guided tour of L.A. for you. It may take two days, it may take three.
Because we haven’t been able to tie strings to all of them, of
course—in any way. I’m banking heavily on the Andrews list, which
Hackett’ll explain to you—we’ve got four possibles there who
just it might be a little more possible than any of the rest, and so
there are men keeping an eye on them, sniffing around a little
closer. And of course, our Romeo may have no connection with your
Gideon, and whether he has or not we may not have him anywhere on our
lists of maybes. And just in the event that it is Gideon, and he
isn’t in our lists, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look in the
phone book and so on—he might not have changed his name. We may
find him living somewhere, innocent as day, as Gideon Wise. And even
if he did come to California, there’s a lot of it outside L.A. But
I have a feeling about this—just as I do about Mrs. Andrews’
clandestine roomers. That we’re coming a little closer."

"And suppose I look at all of them and say no."

"Way the cards fall. Like shooting craps
blindfolded, damn it. Sure. We don’t know. If you don’t spot him
among these, that doesn’t say one of them isn’t still our boy—no
link with Gideon. Doesn’t say yes or no—we might not have him
listed at all, as I say. All we can do is 1ook."

"So we go and look," said Hackett with a
sigh, for summer had absent-mindedly overstayed itself into this
month, "and you’ll be sitting here in a nice air-conditioned
seventy-seven-degree temperature, waiting for the green light. Some
day, Mr. Lockhart, I’m going to get to be a lieutenant too."

"You malign me," said Mendoza. "I’m
going to be out chasing a little hare of my own. No, wrong
metaphor—hoping to find one to chase. We’ll see—we’ll see
.... "
 

SEVENTEEN

Say it was or say it wasn’t, thought Mendoza,
sitting behind the wheel of the Facel-Vega waiting for that three-way
signal where Chautauqua ran into the coast highway. If Lockhart
looked at this George Hopper, this John Tewke, this William Bell—at
any one of the fifty, sixty men they had listed in this long,
patient, dull hunt for the maybes—and said, that’s Gideon Wise,
it was (call it) seventy-five percent sure that was their boy. No
more, because there was nothing to say for sure Gideon Wise had
killed Rhoda Vann: just that little tingle up Chief Lockhart’s
spine (and how well Mendoza knew the feeling!) But something more,
nice and definite, to point out Romeo: and then they could go to work
on him, look for the kind of evidence the law demanded. But! The odds
might not be quite astronomical that Gideon and Romeo were the same
man; they were the hell of a lot longer that there’d be any
tangible evidence to be got, even when they’d spotted him.

The light changed at last and Mendoza slid down the
hill behind an old Ford and turned into the slow lane of the Malibu
road. Like roulette, he thought. Cover yourself with the side bets.
Most of your stake on the one chosen number—
por
las malas or par las buenas
, all or
nothing—but the side bet on red or black.

They could use all the little pointers of evidence
there to be found. Maybe to be found.