CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The phone rang. Danny reached for the bedside extension, saw that he’d passed out on the floor and tripped over dead bottles and file folders getting to it. “Yeah? Jack?”
Jack Shortell said, “It’s me. You listening?”
Danny blinked away wicked sunlight, grabbed paper and a pencil. “Go.”
“First, Breuning’s tails were all fake. I called in an old favor at LAPD Homicide, checked the work sheets for the men Dudley uses regularly and found out they were all working regular assignments full-time. I looked around for Gene Niles to see if I could sweet-talk him and get some more dope on it, but that bastard is nowhere. LAPD canvassed the area where Duarte’s body was found–they caught the squeal and some rookie squadroom dick out of Central hopped on it. Nothing so far. Doc Layman’s grid-searching for trace elements there–he wants complete forensics on Duarte so he can put him in his next textbook. He thinks the rain will kibosh it, but he’s trying anyway, and on the autopsy it’s the same story as the first three: sedated, strangled, mutilated after death. I called the other men on your tailing list, and they’re going on little vacations until this blows over. Danny, did you know that guy Hartshorn you told me about killed himself?”
Danny said, “Yeah, and I don’t know if it plays with our case or not.”
“Well, I went by Wilshire Station and checked the report, and it looks clean–no forced entry, no struggle. Hartshorn’s daughter said Pops was despondent over your grand jury.”
Danny was getting nervous; the scene with De Haven was coming back: she knew, they knew, no more Red Ted. “Jack, have you got anything hot?”
Shortell said, “Maybe a scorcher. I was up all night on the wolverine thing, and I got a great lead on an old man named Thomas Cormier, that’s C-O-R-M-I-E-R. He’s an amateur naturalist, famous, I guess you’d call him. He lives on Bunker Hill, and he rents weasel genus things to the movies and animal shows. He has a batch of individually penned-up wolverines, the only known batch in LA. Now listen, because this is where it gets good.
“Last night I went by the West Hollywood Substation to talk to a pal of mine who just transferred over. I heard the girl at the switchboard ragging you to the watch sergeant, and I played nice and sweet-talked her. She told me she was dragging her heels on her set of dental queries because she thought you were just using her. She gave me a list that had notes on it–negative on the killer’s description, but positive on the animal teeth–Joredco Dental Lab on Beverly and Beaudry. They do animal dentures for taxidermists, and they’re the only lab in LA that works with actual animal teeth–that lead you had that said all taxidermists use plastic teeth was wrong. And Beverly and Beaudry is seven blocks from Thomas Cormier’s house–343 South Corondelet.”
Red hot and biting.
Danny said, “I’m rolling,” and hung up. He put muscling Felix Gordean aside, cleaned up and stashed his files, cleaned up his person and dressed as Daniel T. Upshaw, policeman, replete with badge, gun and official ID. Ted Krugman dead and buried, he drove to Bunker Hill.
o o o
343 South Corondelet was an eaved and gabled Victorian house sandwiched between vacant lots on the west edge of the Hill. Danny parked in front and heard animal yapping; he followed the sounds down the driveway and around to a terraced back yard with a picture postcard view of Angel’s Flight. Lean-tos with corrugated metal roofs were arranged in L-shapes, one to each level of grass; the structures were fronted by heavy wire mesh, and the longest L had what looked like a generator device built onto its rear side. The whole yard reeked of animals, animal piss and animal shit.
“The smell getting to you, Officer?”
Danny turned around. The mind reader was a grizzled old man wearing dungarees and hipboots, walking toward him waving a fat cigar that blended in perfectly with the shit stink and made it worse. He smiled, adding bad breath to the effluvia. “Are you from Animal Regulation or Department of Health?”