DRAGNET: THE CASE OF THE COURTEOUS KILLER (Novel Sample)

If you’re a fan of the original Dragnet radio and TV shows, this is the book for you. You can hear almost hear Jack Webb’s voice in every word.

INTRODUCTION, by Richard Deming

Because of the popularity of the “Dragnet” TV show, the Los Angeles police officer has become symbolic of all municipal police officers. Simultaneously the show has enormously increased the public’s interest in police work and its respect for policemen.

In doing the research for this book, it was my privilege to spend considerable time working with the Los Angeles police department and studying its methods. Prior to this assignment my only knowledge of the department was what I had seen of it on the “Dragnet” TV show, and I approached the study with the preconceived notion that the TV interpretation was probably a highly glamorized one. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I am not a novice at this type of survey. Los Angeles was the fourth major city in which I had made similar police studies. I know what to look for beneath the public-relations hand-outs in order to get a true picture of how efficiently a department functions. I talked and worked with policemen of all rank levels. I drew them out on their feelings about their work, the department, and their superior officers. And I came away from Los Angeles convinced that it probably has the finest, most modern, and most efficient police department in the country, and possibly in the world.

I base this opinion not only on its superb police equipment and up-to-the-minute methods of investigation and law enforcement, but also upon such intangibles as department morale. I was surprised and pleased to discover that the average Los Angeles policeman’s attitude toward the department is approximately equivalent to a career Marine’s feeling for the Marine Corps. Everywhere, from uniformed policemen to deskbound captains, I found an almost fierce loyalty to the department, a deep pride in membership, and an unshakable conviction that Los Angeles has the best force in the world.

Much of the credit for this must go to Chief W.H. Parker, a dedicated police officer who has been with the department for thirty years and who instituted many of its modern methods. Part of the credit must go to the people of Los Angeles themselves, however, for their recognition that policemen, like other citizens, have to eat and pay rent and buy clothing for their children. J. Edgar Hoover has called the salary levels of this country’s major police forces a national disgrace. This condemnation doesn’t apply to Los Angeles, where, on the principle that you get what you pay for, the police salary scale is above that of many other cities.

The result is what you might expect: a high caliber of applicants, and a resulting high caliber of officers.

The reader may be assured, therefore, that in reading this book he is not being given a glamorized picture of police in action. This is the way the Los Angeles police actually operate, and the way they did actually operate in the case presented. As in the “Dragnet” TV shows, the case you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Grateful acknowledgment for their co-operation in helping me obtain the material for this book is made to Chief W. H. Parker; Chief of Detectives Thad Brown; Captain Stanley Sheldon, Commander of the Public Information Division; Ray Pinker, Chief Forensic Chemist of the Criminalistics Laboratory; and the many other police officers who put up with my prying into their work methods. Last, and most important, acknowledgment is made to Jack Webb, the creator of “Dragnet.”

CHAPTER I

It was Wednesday, June 19th. It was warm in Los Angeles. We were working the night watch out of Homicide Division. My partner’s Frank Smith. The boss is Captain Hertel, and the night watch commander is Lieutenant Newton.

My name’s Friday.

Nine men are on duty with the Homicide night watch. In addition to the watch commander, there are three sergeants, four policemen, and one civilian hearing reporter. In a city that averages only one murder every three days, this may seem like a lot. It isn’t. Homicide Division has twenty-two separate functions in addition to murder investigation. It’s responsible for the investigation of kidnapping, train wrecking, treason, rape, bigamy, and unlawful assembly, to mention a few. Some of these may sound unrelated to our basic function of homicide investigation, but we get them for the sound reason that murder may stem from such cases, and if it does, we’re in on the ground floor. Bigamists, for example, sometimes try to dispose of extra wives by violent means. By getting in on bigamy cases from the start, we’re a jump ahead when and if a body turns up.

Some nights we wish we had eighteen men. Other nights we sit around and look at each other. Wednesday, June 19th, was one of the latter.

Until 12:28 a.m.

There is no swing shift in Homicide Division. From 12:30 a.m. until the day watch starts, homicide calls are taken in the Detective Headquarters Unit. If Homicide officers are needed, they’re routed out of their beds at home. For this reason we don’t much like after-midnight activity. But we get it. People go on committing crimes twenty-four hours a day.

Which means police officers have to be on call twenty-four hours a day, even when they’re asleep.

The Homicide gang detail, which cruises in undercover cars, had already made its final check-in by radio and had been ordered out of service for the night. The sergeant in charge of the gang detail had closed his log and gone home. The civilian reporter had left. The lieutenant was in his office, across the anteroom from the squad room. Frank and I sat in the squad room waiting for the last few minutes of the watch to tick off.

The deadliest phase of police work is waiting for something to happen. After eight hours of inactivity, we’d exhausted all possible subjects of conversation. Frank had even stopped complaining about traffic. He lives in the Valley with his wife, Fay, and two kids, and has to fight the four-to-five-P.M. traffic on his way to work each day. Next to fishing, it’s his favorite subject of conversation.

At 12:28 a.m. we heard the phone ring in the lieutenant’s office. Frank gave me an inquiring look.

“Must be a personal call,” I said. “Anything urgent would come over that.”

I nodded toward the hot-shot speaker on one of the tables. The hot-shot speaker is tied into a special panel on the complaint board. When a call concerning Homicide comes in, the policeman on the board flips a switch and we hear the phone conversation over the loud-speaker as it takes place, then hear any messages issued to radio units.

Frank said, “Uh-huh.”

I glanced at my watch, saw it was 12:29, and stood up. “Let’s call it a night,” I said.

Frank stood up, too. We both had our hats on when Lieutenant Newton crossed the anteroom between his office and the squad room and grinned at us from the doorway.

Frank said, “Oh, no, Lieutenant. Not after nothing stirring all night.”

“You’ve had your rest,” the lieutenant said. “Now you can earn your salary. Just got a call from the new Central Receiving Hospital.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Woman brought in a man with a fractured skull. She was in a state of mild shock. They assumed it was an auto accident, and didn’t ask questions until they’d given both emergency treatment. She’s quieted some now, and they’ve just learned it was no accident.”

I asked, “What was it?”

“On purpose. Somebody bounced a pistol barrel off his skull.”

That made it our baby. Battery is one of the twenty-two things aside from murder that Homicide Division investigates.

“Let’s roll,” I said to Frank.

* * * *

12:52 a.m. Frank and I drove over to the new Central Receiving Hospital at Loma and Sixth Streets. The Hospital Division duty officer told us that the injured man, a Mr. Harold Green, was still in Emergency, but that the woman who had brought him in, a Mrs. Wilma Stenson, would be available for questioning shortly. He said the doctor in charge had decided her state of shock was not severe enough to require hospitalization, and she was being released. We could see her as soon as she finished being checked out.

Just off the intake desk was a little alcove, which had been furnished with chairs, sofas, and smoking stands to serve as a waiting room. Frank and I waited there.

Frank looked around approvingly at the brand-new furniture and shining, modern smoking stands. “Everything in this building is brand spanking new,” he said. “They didn’t move a bit of the old equipment over from Georgia Street. Pretty nice, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Most modern hospital equipment you can get throughout the building. They even got conductive floors and furniture in the operating rooms.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Drains off static electricity,” he explained. “Ordinary floors and furniture, the surgeon’s apt to build up a lot of static electricity in his body. Spark jumps from him to the patient, and bingo.”

“How you mean?” I asked.

“Ether. Inflammable. The guy’s lungs are full of a mixture of ether and oxygen. Spark hits it, the flame travels right down into his lungs. He goes off like a bomb.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Where’d you learn all this?”

“Couple of weeks back. June 6th. Day the hospital was dedicated. Fay and I came to the ceremony.”

I looked at him. “You taking in hospital openings for kicks now?”

“Well, Fay wanted to see it. She worries about Armand.” Armand is the cross Frank has to bear. He’s Frank’s brother-in-law, and as nearly as I can tell from what Frank says, he’s never held a job for more than a few days at a time. He floats from relative to relative, making his living by sponging. Currently it was Frank’s turn to support him.

I said, “What’s Armand got to do with it?”

“Well, when he’s out late, Fay always thinks he’s been run over or something. He never has been, but Fay says you never can tell. Now that this place is open, accident victims will be brought here instead of to Georgia Street. She wanted to see what kind of treatment he’d get.”

I didn’t say anything. Frank didn’t either for a moment. Then he said broodingly, “Probably never happen.”

The Hospital Division duty officer came along the hall accompanied by a slim, attractive brunette of about thirty-five who had a definite air of wealth about her. This was indicated not so much by her dress as by her soft, well-cared-for look, which suggested little work and much expensive beauty treatment. There wasn’t a line in her face or a sag in her body. She wasn’t satisfied just to be well-preserved, though. She was one of those women who fight chronological age as hard as they fight physical age. She wore a cotton print suitable for a teen-ager and had her hair done up in a pony tail.

Frank and I rose when they neared. The duty officer said, “These police officers want to talk to you, Mrs. Stenson.” Then he said to me, “Want to use the Hospital Division room, Sergeant?”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll make out here.”

The Hospital Division is a branch of the Detective Bureau, and has a man on duty at Central Receiving on all watches. It was the duty officer who had made the preliminary investigation and had called Lieutenant Newton. Now that we were there, we were in charge of the case, however.

When the duty officer had moved off, I said to Mrs. Wilma Stenson, “My name’s Friday, ma’am. This is my partner, Officer Smith.”

“How do you do?” she said, with a nervous nod.

“Want to sit down, Mrs. Stenson?” I suggested, indicating one of the sofas.

“Will this take long?” she asked. “I really ought to be getting home.”

“Depends,” I told her. “Sooner we get your story, sooner we’ll know how long you’ll be held up.”

She thought this over, obviously wondering what I meant by “held up.” Finally she decided to take my invitation, and seated herself on the sofa. Fumbling in her bag, she brought out a silver cigarette case, selected a gold-tipped cigarette and put it between her lips. I held a match to it for her.

“Thanks,” she said, after inhaling deeply and blowing thin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “What is it you gentlemen want to know?”

I said, “We understand this Mr. Harold Green you brought in was hit over the head by a gun. Like to know what it’s all about.”

She took two nervous puffs on her cigarette before saying, “There is a kind of delicate problem connected with this—ah—is it Lieutenant Friday?”

“Sergeant, ma’am.”

“Well, Sergeant, I’ll have to have your guarantee that I won’t be dragged into this as a witness before I can tell you anything.”

I said, “We can’t guarantee anything at all, Mrs. Stenson, until we hear your story.”

She shook her head determinedly. “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse to co-operate. I can’t possibly have my name connected with this.”

I said patiently, “Afraid you’ll have to co-operate, ma’am. Our information is that a crime’s been committed, and that you’re a witness. We don’t put innocent people’s names in the paper if we can keep them out, but if you’re the only witness, you may have to appear in court.”

She raised her nose a trifle. “And if I refuse?”

“Afraid we’d have to take you over to the Police Building and hold you as a material witness until we can find out what happened from somebody else.”

She chewed at her lower lip indecisively, looking from me to Frank and back again.

Frank said, “Maybe there won’t have to be any publicity. Can’t tell till we know what happened. Want to tell us about it?”

She took another deep drag on her cigarette, punched it out in one of the smoking stands, and immediately took another from her case. I held a second match for her.

“Thanks,” she said. “The thing is, you see, I’m a married woman.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“My husband is Dr. Carter Stenson. The psychiatrist. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

I shook my head, and Frank said, “No, ma’am.”

In a hesitant voice she said, “Well, he’s in San Francisco at a psychiatric convention at the moment. And I—well, he doesn’t know about Harold.”

“The injured man?” I asked. “Harold Green?”

“Yes. It’s perfectly innocent, you understand. A purely platonic friendship. Carter is busy evenings so much—if it isn’t office hours, he’s addressing a banquet somewhere—sometimes I get bored. So now and then I spend an evening with Harold. I’m sure you understand, but I’m equally sure Carter wouldn’t.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Tonight was so beautiful, we decided just to take a drive. You know where Laurel Canyon Road is?”

“Yeah,” I said. Laurel Canyon is one of the several canyon roads crossing Mulholland Drive that serve as local lovers’ lanes.

“Well, we parked for a few minutes near Mulholland Drive. Just to smoke a cigarette, understand. I was behind the wheel, and I don’t like to smoke when I’m driving.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Suddenly this man appeared alongside the car and pointed a gun at us. He ordered us out of the car.”

“A stickup?” Frank asked.

“Yes. He was very polite about it. Almost ludicrously polite. I remember, for instance, he said, ‘Step from the car, please.’ ‘Please,’ mind you, from a holdup man. He had a soft, quite pleasant voice.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“He was about forty-five, with a round, cheerful face and rimless glasses. About five feet eight and stockily built. I’d guess about one hundred seventy-five pounds.”

Frank entered the description in his notebook. “You get a real good look at him?”

“Oh, yes. There’s nearly a full moon tonight, you know. Then, too, I examined him quite carefully, because I wasn’t in the least frightened, you see. Not at first, I mean. Later I thought I’d have hysterics.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“He seemed so gentle and so courteous. He wasn’t frightening at all. It just didn’t seem possible that so nice-acting a man would hurt anyone. Even the gun wasn’t frightening. Matter of fact, it seemed kind of ridiculous for him to be pointing it at us.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I guess he impressed Harold the same way. The man was so unassuming, I suppose Harold thought he could take the gun away from him. All of a sudden he grabbed for it.”

“Go on,” I said.

“I never saw anyone move so fast. The gun flashed out like a—well, I hate clichés, but the only simile that fits is, like a striking snake. It landed alongside Harold’s head, and Harold dropped like a—this is another cliché, but he dropped like a poled ox. I opened my mouth to scream, but the holdup man stopped me.”

“How?” I asked.

“His voice changed. All of a sudden it was cold as ice. He said, ‘Madam, if you utter one peep, I’ll put a bullet in your—ah—intestines.’”

“Intestines?” Frank asked, with raised brows.

Wilma Stenson flushed. “I guess the actual word he used was ‘guts.’ Anyway, I saw he meant it, and I just froze. He took the bag from my hand, took out the money in it, and quite courteously handed back the bag. Then he leaned over Harold, emptied his wallet—I don’t believe Harold had more than two or three dollars—and dropped the wallet next to him. He said, ‘Please don’t make any disturbance now, or I’ll have to return.’ Then he walked off down the road.”

“He didn’t have a car?” I asked.

“He may have had one farther along. But he was still walking when he disappeared from sight. I’m not sure exactly what happened then, because I was almost in hysterics. Harold was unconscious and a dead weight, but somehow I got him into the car and drove here. I don’t remember much about it. It was like moving in a dream.”

Frank said, “They tell you how bad Mr. Green is hurt?”

“They said a probable fractured skull. He won’t die, though, I’m sure. He has a marvelous constitution. Then, too, youth is on his side.”

“Huh?” I said.

She dimpled prettily. “He’s somewhat younger than me, you know. I don’t know why younger men find me so attractive, but they do. Perhaps it’s because they so often mistake me for much younger than I am. How old do you think I am, Sergeant?”

I grunted.

“You may not believe it, but I’m nearly thirty.”

“Oh?” I said. “How much younger is Mr. Green?”

“Several years. He’s just eighteen.”

CHAPTER II

1:38 a.m. We continued to question Wilma Stenson. She told us that the holdup had occurred at approximately eleven o’clock, and that she and her fellow victim had been in her car, a 1957 Thunderbird. She had arrived at the hospital about midnight. She said the bandit had taken about a hundred and fifty dollars in bills from her purse.

She also told us that in the confusion of the moment she had neglected to pick up Harold Green’s wallet, which the bandit had dropped to the ground after he emptied it. She offered to show us the spot where she and the injured man had been parked.

Frank phoned Robbery Division to acquaint them with the facts in the case, as this was a robbery case as well as one for Homicide, and we would work together on it. Robbery said they would send over a team to meet us at the hospital.

Frank also phoned the description of the suspect and MO to R & I and arranged for a local and an APB broadcast giving the suspect’s description. As Wilma Stenson was quite certain the bandit had not touched the car at any time during the robbery, we didn’t call Latent Prints. If we managed to locate the wallet the robber had handled, we could take it in for examination instead of requiring a man to go to the scene.

We didn’t call the Crime Lab at this point, either. If we found any evidence at the scene of the crime for S.I.D. to work on, we could call for a man from the lab by radio. Frank did request Robbery to bring along a camera man, however, in case we required photographs of the scene.

The doctor who had treated Harold Green told us the victim was now conscious, and that while X-rays showed a definite skull fracture, there didn’t seem to be any brain damage. We would not be able to question him for at least twenty-four hours, though. The doctor said Green would be transferred to County Hospital in the morning, and that we would probably be permitted to talk to him there the following night.

The team from Robbery consisted of Sergeant Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher. They brought along a civilian photographer from the Photo Lab.

After introducing the Robbery team to Mrs. Stenson and briefly going over the situation with them again, we all drove out to Laurel Canyon Road. Mrs. Stenson rode with us in the back seat of Unit 7K10, while the Robbery unit followed.

A couple of hundred yards from where Laurel Canyon Road crossed Mulholland Drive, Wilma Stenson told us to slow down. I plugged the cord of the hand spotlight into its dashboard socket and directed the beam at the shoulder. Frank let the car creep along at five miles an hour while Mrs. Stenson and I examined the ground alongside the road. Behind us the other car also switched on its spot.

At intervals along the road, cars were parked with dimmed lights—couples taking advantage of the romantic moon. As soon as our spots went on, engines came to life and the cars hurriedly pulled away. Within seconds we had the road to ourselves as far as we could see.

We had moved at this snail’s pace about a hundred yards when Wilma Stenson said dubiously, “I don’t think it was this close to Mulholland Drive.”

Frank halted the car, and behind us Vance Brasher halted the one he was driving. Ahead we could see the lights of an occasional car moving along Mulholland Drive.

Swinging in a U-turn, Frank started back the way we had come, driving on the left side of the road and turning on his red blinker to warn any oncoming traffic, even though there wasn’t any at the moment. The other car swung around also and continued to follow.

Only a few yards beyond where Mrs. Stenson had first told us to slow down, I suddenly spotted the leather wallet lying next to the road. Simultaneously Wilma Stenson said, “There it is!”

Frank pulled over to the right and parked on the shoulder. The Robbery unit parked behind us.

All six of us crossed the road and stood looking at the wallet without stepping off the concrete. Marty Wynn and I both illuminated the scene with flashlights. Tire marks showing where the car had been parked were faintly visible in the dirt of the shoulder. Six gold-tipped cigarette butts lay on the edge of the concrete, where they had been tossed from the driver’s side of the car. Six untipped butts lay near the wallet, where they had been dropped from the other side.

Wilma Stenson flushed when she saw me looking at the butts. In a faint voice she said, “Maybe we were here a little longer than I thought.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Marty Wynn and I stopped at the edge of the road and carefully examined the ground. While the tire marks, though faint, were clear enough, the ground was too hard and dry to show footprints. There wasn’t an indentation in it other than the tire marks.

Rising, I instructed the photographer in what pictures I wanted, and he shot several of the scene from different angles. Wilma Stenson looked on puzzledly while this was going on.

When he had taken the last picture, she asked, “Why are photographs necessary?”

I didn’t tell her that policemen are naturally suspicious, that tentatively we accepted her story at face value, but that on the off-chance that the holdup man was pure fabrication on her part and she had actually fractured Harold Green’s skull herself, we wanted pictorial evidence of the scene. I just said, “Routine, ma’am.”

Marty Wynn said, “Guess there isn’t any evidence to disturb,” stepped off the concrete, and lifted the wallet by thrusting, a pencil inside it.

“Why is he doing that?” Mrs. Stenson asked.

“Fingerprints,” I said succinctly.

When we had collected the butts and dropped them into a plastic bag, we were finished.

We requested Wilma Stenson to meet us at the Police Building at 1 p.m. the following afternoon in order to look at mug shots. She said she would. We then drove her back to the Central Receiving Hospital, where her car was parked, and let her go home.

* * * *

The next day, Thursday, June 20th, I arrived at the Police Building at a quarter of one. Before going up to 314, I stopped on the second floor to see what R & I had come up with. I learned that on the basis of our description and MO, the Stat’s Office had pulled a hundred and forty-three possibles. By weeding out those known to be in jail, out of town, or impossible for other reasons, R & I had reduced this to twenty-two. I took the mug shots of these twenty-two up to Homicide with me.

Frank was on the phone when I walked into the squad room. I raised my hand in a general salute to the day-watch men present, then sat on the edge of the table and waited for Frank to finish his phone conversation.

When he hung up, Frank said, “Hi, Joe. Just talking to Latent Prints. They brought out a couple of sets of prints they think must belong to the owner of the wallet. Plus one partial print that doesn’t match any of the others. Think maybe it was left by the suspect, since it’s superimposed over one of the others.”

I grunted. This was as much as we could have hoped for, but it wasn’t very helpful. It would be helpful if we ever got a suspect whose prints we could compare with the partial, but it was useless for comparison with the thousands of sets of prints in the fingerprint file. It takes the prints of at least three fingers to make a search of records feasible. Theoretically it’s possible to match a single print against a similar one in the fingerprint file, but it would take the entire staff a year to do it.

I tossed Frank the R & I report. “Twenty-two possibles,” I said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to have Mrs. Stenson identify one of the mugs.”

“Bet a Coke?” Frank asked.

I looked at him. “Against a case, maybe. I was just doing wishful thinking.”

Vance Brasher came in then, bringing Mrs. Wilma Stenson with him. She was chatting animatedly into his ear as they entered the room, and Vance was replying with polite monosyllables. Last night Mrs. Stenson had been too upset to pay much attention to Vance, but today she seemed to have become aware of his charm.

He wasn’t reciprocating very well. He was polite, but his expression indicated their relationship was going to stay strictly one of witness-police officer.

When Vance led her over to us, Wilma Stenson reluctantly tore her attention from him long enough to say, “Oh, hello, Sergeant Friday. And Officer Smith.”

Frank said, “Afternoon, ma’am,” and I said, “How are you, Mrs. Stenson?”

After this exchange of greetings, she was all set to return her attention to Vance, but I distracted her by saying, “Like you to look at some pictures, ma’am.”

“Of course, Sergeant,” she said, without much enthusiasm.

I showed her the mug shots of the twenty-two possibles R & I had come up with first. She stated positively that none was the man who had held up her and Harold Green. Then we brought out the mug books, and she spent a full hour going through them.

When she closed the last book, she shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Some of the faces bear a faint resemblance, but I’m sure the man who held us up isn’t here. I’m quite certain I’d recognize his picture.”

That was that. We thanked her for her time and told her we’d call her if there were any developments in the case.

“Any time at all,” she said enthusiastically. “Phone me any time you wish.” She was looking at Vance when she said it.

After she left, I phoned County Hospital and inquired about the condition of Harold Green. The doctor I talked to said he was resting nicely, and while it was still a little early to say, it was believed he was probably out of danger. He was not yet allowed visitors, but the doctor felt that if we dropped by about eight p.m., it would be all right to talk to him for a few minutes.

I told him we’d be there.

* * * *

8:11 p.m. Frank and I drove over to County Hospital and talked to the victim. He was a well-built young man with a handsome, narrow-jawed face and long sideburns, which showed beneath the bandage covering his head. The nurse said we could have five minutes with him.

After identifying ourselves as police officers, I said, “How do you feel, son?”

“Headache,” he said in a weak voice, gingerly touching the bandage.

“Won’t bother you long,” I said. “Just want verification of what happened last night.”

He looked up at me inquiringly. “Didn’t Wilma tell you?”

“Like to hear it from you,” I said.

“Oh? Well, it was just a stickup. We was parked out on Laurel Canyon Road, and this joker come along and poked a gun at us. Told us to get out of the car. He looked easy, so I tried to take him. That was a mistake.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“He wasn’t. Easy, I mean. Never saw a guy move so fast. Batted my brains out before I knew what happened.”

Frank said, “Get a good look at him?”

“Yeah. There was a pretty bright moon. Somewhere between forty and fifty. Not too tall—five seven to nine, maybe—but well built. Round, friendly face and rimless glasses. Looked the kind of guy would be afraid to talk back to his wife. Surprised the devil out of me when he batted me.”

I said, “How much money did he get from your wallet?”

He grinned a little mockingly. “Three singles. Some deal, huh? Take a busted head trying to defend three bucks.”

I asked, “Where do you work, son?”

“Me?” he asked, surprised. “Who works?”

“In school?”

He snorted. “Naw. Quit at sixteen.”

“Live with your parents, huh?”

He gave me a sardonic smile. “My parents are a couple of drunks. I got an apartment over in Crescent Heights.”

I looked at him for a minute. “Independent income?”

He grinned again, a weak grin, but a man-to-man one. “Might call it that. Wilma picks up the tab.”

The nurse stuck her head in the door and said our time was up.

CHAPTER III

Two nights later the lovers’ lane bandit struck again. He held up a couple in a parked car on Benedict Canyon Drive and robbed them of seventy-four dollars. There was no violence in this case, but the suspect’s description and MO were the same. The victims particularly stressed the bandit’s politeness and unassuming manner. The male victim stated that he had seriously considered attempting to grab the suspect’s gun, and felt that he could have succeeded in disarming him, but had decided not to take the risk.

The following week the suspect struck three more times, in each case using the same MO. He would approach a parked car on foot, rob the victims at gunpoint, warn them not to make any outcry, then walk away. In each case he picked couples parked out of sight of any other parked car, and a short distance from a curve. He would disappear after each, robbery by walking around the curve. None of the victims saw him enter a car.

Robbery Division kept us informed of these incidents, but as there was no further violence, the case was gradually being taken over entirely by Robbery. As Harold Green was now reported out of danger, the case became of less and less concern to Homicide Division. With Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher working on it, there was no point in tying up a Homicide team also. Frank and I became involved in a couple of murder cases and virtually forgot the bandit.

Friday, June 28th, Frank and I checked in at 4:30 p.m. Frank checked the message book while I looked in my mail box. There was nothing there but a couple of bills. “Anything?” I asked Frank.

“Captain wants to see us.”

I stuck the bills in my pocket, and we crossed the anteroom to Captain Hertel’s office. He looked up from the report he was reading and said, “Friday, Smith. Come in.”

Frank said, “Hi, Captain,” and I said, “What’s up, Skipper?” He pointed at chairs, and we seated ourselves. Captain Hertel is a solidly built man with a square, calm face and stubby gray hair cut close to his head. He waited until we had cigarettes going, then said, “About this lovers’ lane bandit. Not doing much on it, are you?”

I said, “Well, Robbery’s got a team doing all it can. The guy hasn’t killed anybody, and the boy he pistol-whipped is well on the way to recovery. Doesn’t seem much point in duplicating Robbery’s effort.”

“Yeah, I know,” the captain said. “But I had a talk with Chief Brown today. He’s concerned about this joker, and wants an all-out effort to get him.”

I hiked my eyebrows. “What’s so important about a minor stickup man?”

“You’ve questioned some of the victims,” Captain Hertel said. “And have seen Wynn’s reports on the others. What’s the one characteristic that stands out in all of them?”

I thought this over, finally said, “Well, they all describe him as polite and unassuming. He doesn’t scare anybody much.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Captain Hertel said. “Every male victim so far has stated that the guy impressed him so little, he was seriously tempted to try taking him. Remember what happened to the only one who did try it?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “He got a cracked skull for his trouble.”

The captain nodded. “Somebody’s going to get brave again one of these nights. The guy’s appearance and manner seem to invite resistance. I think Chief Brown’s right in his prophecy of what’s going to happen if we don’t net him fast.”

“What prophecy’s that?”

“That he’s going to kill somebody.”

* * * *

5:02 p.m. We got together with Sergeant Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher of Robbery in order to outline the strategy of an all-out effort to take the lovers’ lane bandit. Chief Brown had passed down the word that we could call for whatever extra help we needed.

We were going to need a lot of it. The suspect had struck over a wide area of the Santa Monica Mountain district. Twice he had hit couples parked on Mulholland Drive, which starts west of Cahuenga Pass in the Hollywood district and follows the rim of the mountains past Beverly Hills clear to Ventura Boulevard, and the two robberies had been nearly ten miles apart. The other three robberies had each been along a different canyon road crossing Mulholland Drive.

The area of operation was too large to attempt the decoy system. The only stakeout system that had a chance of success was to cover the area with cruising undercover cars and hope one would spot him in the act. We requested and got six undercover teams from Chief Brown. The teams of Wynn and Brasher and of Frank and me brought the total to eight. We arranged to have all eight cars cruise the bandit’s area of operations from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. nightly, the hours during which all previous robberies had taken place.

Despite these precautions, the bandit hit twice more over the weekend.

* * * *

Monday, July 1st, at 11:26 p.m., Frank and I were cruising along Nichols Canyon Road in a 1955 Chevrolet undercover car. There had been a hard summer rain earlier, unusual for this time of year, but now the night was clear and warm.

Dozens of couples were parked alongside the road, taking advantage of the nice weather.

Frank said, “This would be a good night for him to hit. For us, I mean.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Rain softened up the ground. Might leave some footprints.”

I grunted. “Way things are going, we better bring in more than footprints soon. Captain’s getting a little short of patience.”

“Well, we’re doing the best we can,” Frank said. “It’s a pretty big area.”

Up ahead our lights picked out a new Ford sedan parked alongside the road. As we neared it, I noticed that the door on the right-hand side hung wide open, and that no one seemed to be sitting in the car.

“Slow it down,” I said to Frank.

He braked to a crawl as we passed the Ford. I peered in and saw that both the front and rear seats were empty. I motioned Frank to pull up on the shoulder in front of it.

I lifted a flashlight from the glove compartment as we got out of the car. We walked back, staying on the concrete, and I flashed the light into the car’s interior. It was still empty.

I walked around behind the car and shined the light on the ground near the open door. There were clear impressions of both a man’s and a woman’s shoes, showing where they had stepped to the wet ground from the car. A churned-up area, halfway between the car and a drainage ditch that paralleled the road a few yards away, suggested that some kind of struggle had taken place. A man’s footprints led away from this spot around the front of the car onto the concrete.

I walked over to the edge of the drainage ditch, being careful not to disturb any of the footprints. The ditch was only about three feet deep, and had a bare trickle of water in it. When I turned my light downward, I saw that it also contained something else.

“Frank,” I called softly. “Chief Brown was right.”

“Huh?” Frank said.

“He finally got around to killing somebody. Two of them.”

Frank came over to the edge of the drainage ditch, carefully stepping in my footprints, and gazed down at the two figures lying there. The man seemed to be about twenty-five. He wore a Marine uniform with sergeant’s stripes. He lay on his back, his eyes gazing sightlessly straight upward. The top of his head had literally been beaten fiat. It was nothing but a red, pulpy mass. Even at the distance of several feet, there was no question that he was dead.

The girl lay on her side, half across his chest. She was a slim redhead of about twenty. She wore a white-and-green summer dress, and the top right corner of it was stained with blood. I slid down into the ditch and felt the girl’s pulse.

I called up to Frank, “She’s still alive. Get an ambulance rolling.”

He moved away toward the undercover car, while I bent over the girl to give her a closer examination. The bullet seemed to have passed entirely through her shoulder, and though she had shed considerable blood, both the entry and exit wounds had now stopped bleeding. She was unconscious, but breathing regularly.

The first rule of first aid is to do nothing that isn’t necessary. Making injured persons “more comfortable” as often as not only aggravates the injury. Since the girl’s bleeding had stopped of its own accord, there was nothing I could do for her until the ambulance arrived. I left her where she was.

Frank came back to the car just as I climbed to the top of the ditch.

“I radioed for an ambulance,” he said. “Also got the other seven cars blocking all roads out of the area. Maybe we can still net him.”

“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.