I pay your salary.”
The ambulance attendant and driver came from the direction of the drainage ditch, carrying a stretcher. When they reached the road, the taxpayer leaned forward and peered avidly at the girl on the stretcher. “She dead?” he asked.
Nobody answered him. The litter bearers set down their burden on the road, and while one cut away the cloth over the wound to put on an emergency bandage, the other began to start a bottle of blood plasma.
Vance came over and said to me, “How many taxpayers you figure Los Angeles has, Joe?”
I shrugged. “One out of every three population, maybe. Half to three quarters of a million.”
“I been on the force twelve years. How much you figure my salary’s cost each individual taxpayer?”
I grinned at him. “Nickel, maybe. Dime at tops.”
Vance walked back to the lean taxpayer and dropped a dime in his breast pocket. “Now we’re even,” he said. “Go climb in your car and move on before I run you in for hampering a police investigation.”
The man started to open his mouth, then changed his mind when he saw the glitter in Vance’s eyes. Stiffly he crossed to his car, got in and drove off.
The girl on the stretcher stirred, and suddenly her eyes opened. She stared up confusedly at the attendant bandaging her shoulder.
“You’re all right, now, miss,” he said soothingly. “We’ll have you at the hospital soon.”
“Nick,” she whispered. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
The attendant didn’t say anything.
“All right if I talk to her?” I asked him.
“For a minute,” he said. “She’s lost a lot of blood. Want to get her in and pump some back into her as soon as possible.”
Stooping next to the stretcher, I said, “I’m a police officer, miss. Feel up to talking?”
“Is Nick dead?” she asked in a low voice.
“The Marine?” I sidestepped. “Is his name Nick?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Nick Grotto. Where is he?”
“They’ll get to him as soon as they take care of you, miss. Want to tell us your name?”
“Nancy,” she said. “Nancy Meere.”
Glancing up, I saw that Frank was entering the name in his notebook, while Vance Brasher held a flashlight for him.
“Address?”
“Eleven-twenty-two-one Calvert. That’s in North Hollywood.”
“Yes, ma’am. Now, want to tell us what happened?”
“The man beat him with a gun,” she whispered. “Nick shouldn’t have tried to grab it. He hit Nick with it, and when Nick fell to his knees and grabbed the man’s legs for support, he hit him again. He kept hitting him and hitting him. When I tried to stop him, he shot me.”
“What did the man look like?” I asked.
“He looked—well, nice. Sort of friendly and polite. He didn’t even scare me until he hit Nick. Please, mister, is Nick dead?” She started to cry.
The attendant said, “We’d better get her in now,” and I stood up.
We watched as they loaded her into the ambulance and drove off.
CHAPTER IV
12:14 a.m. Lieutenant Lee Jones and Sergeant Jay Allen came out from the Crime Lab. They had Sergeant McLaughlin of Latent Prints with them, and also a civilian photographer.
I showed Lieutenant Jones the Marine’s body, and also pointed out the footprints in the roped-off area. Lieutenant Jones is a big, white-haired man who looks more like an industrial executive than he does a cop. He’s calm and never in a hurry, and if he misses any scientific evidence at the scene of a crime, it isn’t there.
Before doing anything else, Lieutenant Jones had the Photo Lab man photograph the body, the footprints, and the open door of the Ford. Then, as Jay Allen began mixing plaster of Paris in a large bowl, the lieutenant bent some two-inch-wide strips of aluminum into circles of varying sizes, binding each together at the seam with Scotch tape. These were to serve as molds for the plaster of Paris. I had seen the process many times, but it always interested me.
“You get those metal strips made up special somewhere?” I asked him.
Lieutenant Jones grinned at me. “They’re the slats from old Venetian blinds. Couldn’t work better if they’d been made for the purpose.”
Carefully he set one of the rings over a footprint and pressed gently down on it until the bottom edge had been forced about an eighth of an inch into the ground. Sergeant Allen poured it half full of plaster of Paris, and scattered a few nails in it to strengthen it. As the lieutenant set a second ring over a footprint, Frank called from the drainage ditch, “Joe!”
I walked over to the edge of the ditch and saw that he was kneeling next to the dead Marine. Vance Brasher was with him, apparently to assist him in bringing up the body. Frank held up a man’s wrist watch with a gold expansion band.
“Had this gripped in his hand,” Frank said. “Must have jerked it off the suspect’s wrist. He’s wearing one of his own.”
He handed up the watch, and I examined it under my flashlight. It was a gold-filled Gruen with an engraving on its back reading, To Gig from Min, 1944. I carried it over to Lieutenant Jones.
“Ran into some luck,” I told him. “Looks like the victim grabbed this during the struggle, and the suspect didn’t realize it’d been pulled off.”
Jones looked the watch over. “Hmm. This ought to be easy to trace.”
“Got anything aside from the footprints?” I asked him.
“Little visual evidence. Looks like the killing and shooting took place here.” He pointed to the churned-up area. “Then he dragged both victims over and threw them in the ditch. He must have gotten pretty muddied up in the process. We’ll take along some samples of the mud in case you turn up a suspect with muddy clothing.”
Jones and Allen lifted the last of the footprints and told Sergeant McLaughlin he could take over. The fingerprint expert had waited because he couldn’t get to the open door of the Ford without disturbing the ground where the footprints were.
Sergeant McLaughlin went to work on the car door first, the assumption being that if the suspect had touched the car anywhere, that was the most likely place. It would have been natural for him to lay his left hand on the window sill when he pointed the gun at his victims. There was also a possibility that he had pulled open the door himself when he had ordered them out of the car.
McLaughlin is a lean, dark man who looks a little like the TV version of Boston Blackie. There is nothing gentle-looking about him, but he handles a camel’s hair
