Meet Me at the Morgue Page 3

  “Howard Cross. I’m County Probation Officer.”

  “Abel’s mentioned you, I think. Aren’t you with the police?”

  “I work with them, but under a different code. I’m a sort of middleman between the law and the lawbreaker.”

  “I don’t think I understand you.”

  “I’ll put it another way. The criminal is at war with society. Society fights back through cops and prisons. I try to act as a neutral arbitrator. The only way to end the war is to make some kind of peace between the two sides.”

  “I’m not a service-club luncheon,” she flared out. “Is that how you feel about this case? Neutral?”

  “Hardly. There’s no probation on a kidnapping conviction. It carries the death penalty, and I think it should. On the other hand, I feel as you do, it’s dangerous to jump to conclusions. My office helped to keep Fred Miner out of jail, and I may be prejudiced. But I don’t think he’s the type. It takes a cruel mind to plan and execute a kidnapping.”

  “That’s what’s driving me crazy. I can’t imagine what happened. Why would he take Jamie away like that, without even telling me?”

  “I can’t guess his reason, though I’m pretty sure he had a reason, or something that appeared to be a reason. Fred’s not very bright, you know.”

  “He’s not a genius. But he is goodhearted, and responsible. At least I’ve always believed that he was, in spite of his—accident.” She ended on a vague and questioning note. “What is your opinion, Mr. Cross?”

  “I have none.” The possibilities that occurred to me, another accident, or foul play, would only add to her worry. “Whatever happened, we’re wasting time. I think you should call the police.”

  “I’ll show you why we haven’t.”

  Moving quickly and rather blindly, she crossed the room to a table in the corner and brought me a folded sheet of typewriter paper.

  “The ransom note?”

  She nodded. I unfolded the letter, which had been printed in block capitals with a pencil:

  MISTER JOHNSON. WE HAVE YOUR BOY. NO HARM WILL COME TO HIM IF YOU OBEY ORDERS. FIRST NO CONTACT WITH POLICE REPEAT NO POLICE IF YOU WANT HIM BACK ALIVE. SECOND THE MONEY. FIFTY THOUSAND IN BILLS FIFTIES AND SMALLER. PURCHASE SMALL BLACK SUITCASE. PLACE MONEY IN SUITCASE. PLACE SUITCASE OUTSIDE NEWS STAND AT PACIFIC POINT RAILWAY STATION BEHIND OUTSIDE NEWSPAPER RACK BETWEEN RACK AND WALL. THIS TO BE DONE BY YOU PERSONALLY AT 2 MINUTES TO 11 THIS SATURDAY MORNING. SAN DIEGO TRAIN LEAVES STATION AT 11:01. YOU LEAVE ON IT. ANY ATTEMPT TO SPY ON SUITCASE WILL BE FATAL TO BOY. TREAT US RIGHT WE TREAT HIM RIGHT WILL RETURN HIM TODAY.

  “Miner didn’t figure this out,” I said.

  “I know he didn’t.” She flung herself into a low square-cut chair. “The question is, who did. It reads to me like a letter from hell.”

  “A professional criminal or more likely a gang of them. It’s very carefully cased and set up. The lettering was done with a ruler, to minimize handwriting characteristics. The whole thing shows experience.”

  “You mean they’ve done this before, and got away with it?”

  “I doubt that. Kidnapping’s a pretty rare crime since the federal law was passed. Successful kidnappings are practically unheard of. I mean that you’re dealing with hardened criminals. And I strongly urge you to call the police.”

  “I daren’t. I promised Abel.”

  “Let me, then. The F.B.I. has the organization and equipment to find your son. Nobody else has. Jamie has a better chance of coming home safe with them than he has any other way. Why do you think they’re so insistent about not bringing in the law?”

  She shook her head rapidly. For a moment her face was a white blur under whirling red hair. “I don’t know. I can’t make any decision. You mustn’t ask me to. If Abel comes home and finds officers in the house, it might kill him.”

  “Is he that vulnerable?”

  “He’s quite ill. The doctor expressly warned him about emotional shocks. You see, Abel had a coronary thrombosis in 1946. I didn’t even want him to go to town this morning. But he was bound to do it himself.”

  I looked at my watch: it was half past twelve. “He’ll be in San Diego by now, if he got that train.”

  “No, Larry was going to follow the train in his car. It stops at Sapphire Beach, about ten miles down the line.”

  “Larry?”

  “Larry Seifel, my husband’s lawyer. We got in touch with him right away.”

  “He defended Miner on the hit-run charge, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.” She shifted uneasily. “I wonder what’s keeping them. Abel said he’d be back by noon.”

  I held the ransom letter up by one corner. “Mrs. Miner told me this came in the morning mail. What time was that?”

  “About half past nine. We were just sitting down to breakfast. I’d been calling Jamie, and got no answer. Jamie always wakes up so early. I’m afraid I fell into the habit of letting Fred look after him in the mornings.” Guilt pulled at the corners of her mouth and made her grimace. “They seemed to get along so well.”

  I brought her back to the point: “They didn’t give your husband much time. From nine thirty to eleven is only an hour and a half. Where’s the envelope, by the way?”

  “The one that came in? I’ll get it.”

  She rose and fetched a plain white envelope from the table. It was addressed in the same square penciled letters to Mr. Abel Johnson, Valley Vista Ranch, Ridgecrest Road, Pacific Point. The postmark was: Pacific Point, 6.51 P.M., May 9—the previous day.

  The implications of the postmark struck me suddenly. The ransom letter had been composed and mailed at least fourteen hours before the actual kidnapping. Someone had been very sure of his timing.

  “Excuse me.” Leaving the letter and envelope on the table, I went back to the kitchen. At the table, Mrs. Miner was arranging a plate of sandwiches, and Ann was mixing salad in a wooden bowl.

  “Where was your husband last night, Mrs. Miner?”

  “I don’t know. He went out. He had to drive the Johnsons into town.”

  “What time did he leave here?”

  “I’m not sure. Some time after seven, it must have been. I gave him supper a while before he left.”

  Mrs. Johnson spoke from the doorway behind me: “It was seven fifteen. We had a dinner engagement, and I asked for the car at that time. Before that, he was in the patio all afternoon cleaning the pool. Jamie helped him. So he couldn’t have mailed the letter. I thought of that.”

  “Who stayed with Jamie last night?”

  “I did,” said Mrs. Miner. “Poor lamb.”

  “And your dinner engagement, Mrs. Johnson?”

  “It was with Larry Seifel and his mother. Why?”

  Ann dropped a fork on the enameled steel tabletop. We all looked at her. She was blushing helplessly, for no reason I could see. Then wheels churned the gravel in the drive.

  CHAPTER 5: There were pounding footsteps outside. Mrs. Johnson brushed past me and ran to open the back door. A man’s voice, breathless and thin, cried: “Has he come back, Helen? Is he here?”

  “Not yet.” She assumed a cool professional tone. “You know you shouldn’t run, dear. Now come in and sit down and be quiet.”

  “It’s hard to hold myself back. I should be out looking for him.”

  “No, Abel. There’s a friend of yours here. Come in and talk to him.”

  Johnson came through the back kitchen, his wife’s solicitous arm around his shoulders. I had a queer twinge of pity, or some other feeling, when I saw the two together: the handsome fire-haired woman supporting the aging man. He needed support. His white head, darkened with perspiration, drooped on his shoulders. Hatless and coatless and unshaved, he looked smaller and older than I remembered him.

  As soon as he saw me and Ann, he straightened up and pushed his wife away with a weak impatient gesture. I suspected that he was drawing on his last reserves of energy. “Cross? What brings you here? That courthouse grapevine working overtime?”
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br />   “Mrs. Miner came to my office about an hour ago.” I explained why.

  While I was talking, Larry Seifel came in behind him and paused in the doorway. Tall and young and broadshouldered in a double-breasted gabardine suit that accentuated his build, he made a curious contrast with his employer. Mrs. Johnson’s familiar glance at him seemed to take note of the contrast. Except that his eyes were a shade too sharp and bright in his tanned face, his square crew-cut a shade too consciously youthful, Larry Seifel was a very presentable young man.

  A look of recognition passed between him and Ann Devon. Her blush was still burning like the glow from an inner fire. On the other side of the table, Mrs. Miner seemed to be trying to make herself small.

  Before I had finished talking, Johnson turned on her. He shouted in a terrible, broken voice: “What are you trying to do? Get Jamie killed? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  Her brown eyes rolled in apprehension: “I thought if I could find Fred.”

  “You thought! Nobody told you to think. I left strict orders that nobody was to go to the authorities.” He was breathing fast. His face was swollen tight with blood and anger.

  His wife laid a hand on his shoulder. “Abel, please. She meant well. Please don’t excite yourself, darling.”

  “How can I help it? Why did you let her go?”

  “I didn’t know she’d left. Anyway, it’s done no harm. Mr. Cross isn’t the police. But he’s half convinced me that we ought to call them.”

  “I agree, Abe,” Seifel said from the doorway. “There’s no sense in fooling around with a gang of kidnappers.”

  “I absolutely forbid it.” Johnson took a few faltering steps and leaned on a corner of the table. “I’m not taking any chances with my boy’s life. Anybody who thinks he’s going to is going to have to do it over my dead body.”

  His wife regarded him anxiously. His mention of death was uncomfortably close to the literal truth. He looked very ill. She said, in the tone of a nurse humoring a patient: “Don’t upset yourself, dear. We’ll do as you say. Nobody’s going to call them.”

  Seifel came up beside me and spoke in my ear: “Ask him how long he intends to wait. This is serious.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “He won’t take suggestions from me. When I try to argue, he blows his top. It’s a pretty mess, I’m telling you.”

  I said: “How long do you want us to wait, Mr. Johnson?” His wife gave me an appealing glance, and I added: “I think you’re making a mistake, but I won’t act until I have your go-ahead.”

  “You’re damned right you won’t.” He lifted his sagging head. “They said in the letter they’d have him back today. I’ve done my part in the bargain. If there’s any justice or any mercy, they’ll do their part. We’ll give them until midnight tonight.” He threw a fierce look at Mrs. Miner: “You hear that?”

  “Yessir, I hear it. I promise I’ll stay right here. But what about Fred?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gone, too.”

  “I know that, Mrs. Miner. If I thought that he was responsible for this, I—” Johnson choked on his emotion.

  Mrs. Johnson took his arm and led him to the door. “Darling, you should lie down. You’ve had such a hard morning.”

  “I won’t lie down. I couldn’t possibly rest.” But the heavy voice had faded into querulousness. He went along with her.

  Seifel’s bright satiric glance followed them out. “Brother, what a situation. Abe’s carrying a coronary, you know. This stuff is murder. I practically had to lift him into the car at Sapphire Beach, when he got off the train.”

  He took a fresh white handkerchief from his breast pocket, unfolded it, and wiped his forehead. He had a lot of forehead.

  “Shouldn’t he be seen by a doctor?”

  “Helen will know what’s best. She’s an ex-nurse. As a matter of fact, she nursed Abe through his coronary. Helen’s a very wonderful girl, in my opinion.”

  I disliked his proprietary tone. The wire Helen Johnson walked was higher and thinner than most people’s, but she seemed to have somebody ready to catch her if she fell.

  Mrs. Miner left the kitchen, carrying a silver coffee-service on a tray. Her red-rimmed eyes gazed straight ahead, fixed on some desolate scene in the distant regions of her mind.

  Ann came around the table with the plate of sandwiches. She thrust it under Seifel’s nose. “Have a sandwich, Mr. Seifel. You look hungry.” Her furious blush had dwindled to oval patches on her cheekbones.

  “Hi there, Annie. Thanks, I will.” He took a sandwich and lifted the top to examine its contents. “Salmon I like. What are you doing in cette galère? Hired yourself out as a cook? I hear there’s money in it.”

  “Mrs. Miner made the sandwiches,” she answered primly. “I’m Mr. Cross’s assistant, or had you forgotten? I understand your memory is abominable.”

  He patted her shoulder, simultaneously taking a bite of his sandwich. “At least the salmon is good,” he said in a sandwich-thickened voice. “What’s the beef, Annie?”

  Ann lost her poise completely. She thrust his hand away like a hurt adolescent: “Don’t you call me Annie. I hate that name.”

  “Miss Devon, then. Did I do anything?” He made a deprecatory face, but he seemed to be enjoying the situation.

  “You know what you did. Your memory’s not that bad. It’s not as bad as your morals.”

  “Hey, wait a minute.”

  “I won’t. You lied to me last night. You said you had a client from out of town. You stood me up so you could entertain Mrs. Johnson.”

  “Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Johnson. They’re clients, aren’t they? And they’re from out of town. This is outside the city limits, isn’t it?”

  “Go on,” she said. “Talk like a lawyer. You won’t change the fact that you lied. I hate lawyers.” A single tear ran down her cheek and dropped from the point of her chin into the plate of sandwiches she was holding.

  I reached across Seifel and took one. “If you two want to finish this off in private, I’ll go and sit in the car.”

  Seifel turned on a smile. “Sorry, old man. Don’t mind us. Miss Devon and I are old sparring-partners.”

  “There are better times and places.”

  Ann left the room with a backward look at Seifel which was meant to be withering and was only pathetic. She seemed to have fallen hard, and nobody had caught her. My dislike of Seifel was turning acute.

  “Women!” he said, with a humorous lift of his shoulders.

  “Ann Devon’s my favorite young woman.”

  “Mine, too. In my book she’s the complete darling. But even the best of them let their emotions get out of kilter now and then. They can never understand that business is business. They want to make everything into a personal issue.”

  “A lot of things are.”

  “Come on now,” he said heartily, “let’s have a little masculine solidarity here.”

  I didn’t smile.

  He changed his manner with an actorish facility and became the earnest young lawyer: “What do you propose to do, Mr. Cross?”

  “Wait.”

  “It’s a long time till midnight. Can we afford to wait? Can the boy afford it?”

  “We have to. Johnson could easily die of chagrin if we don’t. In any case, it won’t affect the boy’s chances much. If they intended to kill him, he’s dead now.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “I’m afraid I am. He’s a keen, observant boy. Jamie knows who snatched him, if he’s alive. He’d make a good witness, and they must be aware of that.”

  His face registered horror, but Seifel was watching me coolly from some internal center of self-love: “I hope to heaven Fred Miner isn’t in it. I defended him, you know, on the manslaughter charge. Johnson asked me to do it.”

  “I share the hope. I guess we all do. Incidentally, I’d like to get the complete dope on that charge. There’s no doubt he was guilty?”

  “Non
e at all. He never denied it.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure it was an accident?”

  He regarded me quizzically. “I’m never absolutely sure of anything. Beyond a reasonable doubt, is the test we lawyers use. I have no reasonable doubt about it.”

  “Have they identified the victim yet?”

  “Not so far as I know. I haven’t been in touch with Dressen lately.” Sam Dressen was the sheriff’s identification officer. “Anyway, he’s a bit of a weak-willie in his job, if you want my opinion. Washington sent back the prints he took from the corpse. Apparently they were too smeared and faint for classification. By the time they shot them back, the body was buried. Last time I talked to Dressen, he was trying to trace the man through the cleaner’s marks on the suit he was wearing. He promised to let me know if anything came of it.”

  “But nothing has.”

  “I guess not. For all we know, the fellow dropped from the sky. Which was fine for our case, of course. Fred wouldn’t have got off so easy if the man he killed had had friends and relatives bringing pressure.”

  “It’s a strange thing nobody claimed the body,” I said. “Wasn’t there any identification on it at all? No wallet? No driver’s license?”

  “Nothing like that. You’d think the guy deliberately wiped out his own identity.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Yes, I took a look at him in the morgue.” Seifel’s gaze turned inward. “I’ve seen prettier sights. There wasn’t much left of his face. The fog-lamp smashed right into it as he fell. The pathologist said he died instantly. It was rather a shaking experience, I can tell you. I don’t do much work in that line, you know. Seems he was a young fellow, about my age.” His eyes sharpened again: “You don’t suppose there’s some connection between that accident and this?”

  “Miner’s in both. The things a man does are always connected in some way.”

  He raised his palm: “Let’s not get into philosophy. Afraid I have to shove off now, old man. I have a luncheon engagement and I’m half an hour late already. I’ll be in my office this afternoon.”

  “I’ll probably drop by.”