New Hope for the Dead by Charles Willeford

Author:Charles Willeford [Willeford, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller
ISBN: 9780312567613
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1985-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

13

Slater and the two girls were at the lieutenant’s desk. The executive officer was showing them slides of homicide victims on a viewer he had set up. Some of the slides were in color and others were in black and white, but the photos were graphically clear on the lighted, eight-by-ten-inch glass screen.

“I’ve been showing the girls some pictures, Hoke,” Slater said. “Explaining some cases. You worked on the Merkle shotgun case, didn’t you? The one we called the ‘Laura’ case because her face was unrecognizable?”

“That was Quevedo’s case,” Hoke said, “but I did some legwork for him. I think we all did. They caught the perp when he tried to sell the gold chain. It was a driveway killing, girls. This guy followed Mrs. Merkle home from the supermarket because she was wearing a heavy gold chain around her neck. He shot her for the chain and about forty bucks worth of groceries. Any woman who wears a gold chain is asking for it in Miami. And if she wears it every day, she can count on somebody snatching it eventually. But this guy was a crazy. He didn’t have to kill her. You girls don’t wear neck chains, do you?”

Sue Ellen and Aileen, still staring wide-eyed at the gory face on the screen, shook their heads.

“Don’t do it, girls,” Slater said. “They usually work in pairs, driving around town till they spot someone. Then one guy jumps out, snatches the purse and chain, gets back in the car, and they drive off. They’re hard to catch because the woman usually gets hysterical and can’t remember, half the time, whether the perps were black or white. Our problem with Mrs. Merkle was that even though we knew who she was, we couldn’t prove it for a while. There were no fingerprints of hers on file either, so we couldn’t get an ID. She was unrecognizable, as you can plainly see, and we were trying to identify her from an oil painting—a portrait—instead of a photo. But the people who knew her said the painting didn’t look like her, and they wouldn’t give us a positive ID. That’s why we called it the ‘Laura’ case, from the old movie with Clifton Webb. It was a pretty good movie, too. If it comes back on late TV some night, you girls oughta see it.”

Hoke laughed. “We kidded Que vedo about falling in love with the oil painting. Eventually he got so pissed we had to stop. What made it so funny was that Que vedo had never heard of the movie, so he didn’t even know what we were kidding him about. Besides, no one could’ve loved that face in the painting.”

Slater laughed. “I remember now. I’d forgotten about that part of it.”

“I appreciate you looking after the girls, Lieutenant. But I’ll take ’em off your hands now.”

“Your partner okay, Hoke? No trouble?”

“No, no, she’s fine. She just wanted me to take a look at a guy she thought she recognized at the supermarket.

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