Felony File by Dell Shannon Read Free Book Online

to himself. "There was that pretty little woman in the
phone booth, not missed at once because she lived alone. That's
probably it." He took himself out to a solitary lunch. Later, he
phoned the lab to send a man to the morgue for her prints.
    * * *
    At five-thirty he was swiveled around in the desk
chair watching the gray rain blotting out the Hollywood hills in the
distance, when Scarne came in with a manila envelope.
    " Higgins was deviling us this morning for what
we got in that Portia Street place. Here's the report. Damn all.
Plenty of prints, but they all belong to the dead man or the
brother."
    " What can't be cured," said Mendoza.
    " Anyway, there's the report. Oh, and I got the
prints off your latest body. Thank God for computers. They're not on
file with us. I sent 'em to the Feds."
    " Probably a waste of time." But of course
the F.B.I. had the prints on file of a good many perfectly
respectable people.
    As Scarne went out, Conway, Palliser and Grace came
trooping in; Mendoza went out to the communal office. "You look
as if you'd done a day's work."
    Conway snarled. "Do you have any idea how many
employees Bullock's has? And we're looking for the ones who quit or
got fired up to six months ago too. I said, it'll take a month of
Sundays, and it won't give us a damned thing."
    " And if you mention routine—" said
Palliser. There was a smear of ink on his handsome straight nose, and
his eyes look strained.
    " At least I haven't been endangering my
eyesight," said Grace cheerfully. "I've finished checking
the guards, and we can forget about them. The outfit they work for is
one of the biggest around, very high reputation, and they screen
their men to hell and back. Also, all of the security men at
Bullock's have been there for a good long time—seven, six, five
years—Masters is the newest and he's been there two and a half
years."
    " It'll end up getting stashed in the dead
files," said Conway wearily.
    Mendoza slid a long hand up his long jaw. "Same
as in Philly and Pittsburgh. I'd like to think not. Because I had a
little feeling—"
    " Hunch?" asked Grace.
    " No sé . Just a
little premonition that these slick operators—"
    " Oh, you too?" said Palliser. "Another
hit?"
    " I just wonder,"
said Mendoza. "Philly in March, Pittsburgh in April. Maybe it's
taken them this long to get rid of the estimated four hundred grand."
    * * *
     
Sometimes Saturday night could get a
little hairy in this part of L.A., but that night the rain seemed to
slow them down, keeping people inside. Piggott and Schenke, sitting
on night watch, didn't get a call until ten-thirty. They both went
out on it.
    It was a dairy store on Virgil, and Patrolman Bill
Moss was soothing the victim, a pretty blonde who had been crying.
She looked about twenty, and her name was Sonia Murphy. She said to
Piggott and Schenke, still tearful, "I'm sorry, but it is, I
wish to heaven they'd called me Sally or Betty or something because
it sounds funny, but I can't help it if Mother's Polish, I've got
kidded all my life. But that woman! I just can't believe it! Didn't,
I mean. I don't like working at night, but I'm not usually alone,
usually Mr. Knight's here, he's the manager, because he doesn't like
the girls being alone at night either. I take three nights a week and
Marge takes three, and usually I'm not here Saturday at all—but Mr.
Knight's wife is sick, it's some kind of emergency operation, she
just went into the hospital today and he called me to ask if I'd come
in because Saturday's usually a good day—"
    " Now, now," said Moss benevolently. "They
just want to hear what happened. Like the old TV show, you know.
Facts."
    She looked at him blankly and they realized that she
was too young to remember Dragnet. Not even reruns?
    "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to— But to
think! To think I was relieved. I was almost going to close early,
there hadn't been many people in on account of the rain I suppose,
and I was just going to lock up and call Bob—that's