Exploit of Death by Dell Shannon

Author:Dell Shannon [Shannon, Dell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-06T20:32:48+00:00

SEVEN

ON SATURDAY, Palliser finally got around to looking up Toby Wells. The rest of the Coffey family had come in to have their prints taken and these had checked out with the other prints the lab had picked up. Wells worked at a Thrifty drugstore on Hollywood Boulevard, and he was an ordinary-looking young black fellow, round-faced, slow-spoken, and he was frank on answering questions. "You were in a little trouble a couple of years ago," said Palliser.

Wells said a little nervously, "Well, yeah, that was kind of a damn' fool thing to do—steal those clothes—but I like nice clothes, and I had a new girl then and I guess I wanted to show off to her. My grandma paid up for me and I never been in any trouble since. Oh yeah, it's an awful thing about Grandma." He shied a little when Palliser asked him about that Friday night, but answered readily, —"I was out with my girl, Mae Weaver. We went to a disco down on Jefferson Boulevard. I guess it was about midnight when I got home, we both had to go to work the next day, a course." He lived with a couple of other young fellows at an apartment on Virgil Avenue. It wasn't worth writing a further report on. Half of them were now doing the legwork on that heister, the rest winding down the investigation at the hospital. That had been a bastard of a thing to work. They must have chased down over a hundred people, trying to identify all the visitors, looking into personal backgrounds, and all for nothing. There was no way to find out who might have done that queer killing—why or when. It was another case that would wind up in the Pending file.

On Sunday morning, the lab report came up on the Holzer car and there was nothing in it at all. The steering wheel had evidently been wiped clean and the only other prints in the car belonged to Edna Holzer and the girl, Frances. The

autopsy report came in that afternoon too and she hadn't been raped, just knocked around and strangled manually. The lab hadn't picked up anything significant from her clothes.

Mendoza took the reports out to the communal office to pass on and said to Hackett, "Just damn all on everything we' re working—nothing."

"Well, that's the way it goes sometimes, and then all of a sudden we'll get some breaks."

"Don't philosophize at me," said Mendoza irritably. He sat down at Higgins' desk and added abruptly, "And we're never going to hear anything from France, you know. I've got a strong hunch on that."

"I don't see that, Luis. The girl must've had friends. There's the fiancé."

"Es cierto, sé. But that's my hunch." He was silent for a moment and then said, "The only way we'll get anything from France is for somebody to go over there and look."

Hackett took his glasses off to stare at him. "You're not serious."

"I might be, Art. At least I've got a passport in order.

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