“Doubt it,” I told him. “The girl’s wound isn’t bleeding. This must have happened some time ago if her blood is beginning to clot. Call for the Crime Lab?”
“Yeah. And Latent Prints, just in case he touched the car.”
Walking back onto the road, I scraped some of the mud from my feet off on the concrete. Sirens began to sound in the distance. The sound grew in volume, its direction indicating the vehicles were coming up the freeway.
The first vehicle to the scene was a black-and-white squad car. I motioned the driver to park on the far side of the road. When the two uniformed officers got out of the car, I took them over to the Ford and pointed out the footprints made by the victims and the suspect.
“Happen to have a rope in your car?” I asked one of the officers. A rope is not standard equipment in squad cars, but many officers furnish their own equipment for their personal convenience.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ve got one.”
“Then I want this area roped off,” I instructed. “Be a million people around here to trample over the evidence before long.”
As the policemen were getting the rope from the squad car, a Buick convertible pulled off on the shoulder behind them. A tall, lean man wearing horn-rimmed glasses got out and walked over to me. Simultaneously, an ambulance rolled to a stop.
“Accident?” the lean man asked me.
“No, sir,” I said. “Police business.”
“You a detective?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
I turned toward the ambulance, and the lean man started around the front of the Ford. I changed direction and caught his arm just as he raised a foot to step off the concrete. “Sorry, sir,” I said. “Have to ask you to go back to your car.”
Shaking off my hand, he stared down his nose at me. “Your badge doesn’t give you the right to manhandle private citizens, Officer.”
“No, sir,” I said. “Just go back to your car, please.”
The ambulance attendant and the driver had gotten out of the ambulance meantime, and Frank was leading them in a wide arc around the rear of the Ford toward the drainage ditch. The two uniformed policemen came over and began roping off the area. Another car parked across the road, and Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher got out of it. The lean bystander started to follow the ambulance attendants.
I said to Vance, “Get that joker to go back to his car and move on,” then turned to Marty Wynn. “Any luck?”
He shook his head. “Got every road out of here blocked off, and the boys are checking every parked car. We don’t even know that he was driving a car, though, do we?”
The lean man’s voice came to us, high and indignant. “Listen, Officer, this is a public road and I’m a taxpayer. Don’t forget 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