Rockabye County 10

  When the members of the Rockabye County Sheriff’s Office spoke of a bad hombre, they usually meant an exceptionally large, tough, vicious and ruthless criminal with a temper as mean as a stick-teased rattlesnake’s.

  The small, slender, meek-looking Oscar Burgenhof was so insignificant in appearance that he might be passed unnoticed on a deserted street. Yet his weird and erotic tastes in entertainment had driven him to a life of crime. By the time Burgenhof was brought to justice, he had killed five people and involved Woman Deputy Alice Fayde in the tightest, most bizarre and perilous situation of her life. No matter how he might look, Oscar Burgenhof was a bad hombre.

  For Sonia Pickers and Melton Mowbray’s members of Weight Watchers, who have helped me regain my sylph-like figure.

  One

  To a student of the Old West, as portrayed by Hollywood in the days when that town made movies for the entertainment and enjoyment of the public, the offices of the Rockabye County sheriff and his deputies in Gusher City would have been a disappointment. Located on the third floor of the modern, six-story Department of Public Safety Building, the rooms looked nothing like the scene to which countless western movies had accustomed their audiences. Only the title of the department remained as visual evidence that the deputies’ squadron, Watch Commander’s and sheriff’s offices were occupied by a traditional type of Texas peace officers. Apart from the name, the whole set-up might have been housing a New York, Chicago or Los Angeles detective squad, or it could even have been a field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Certainly the deputies’ squadron had nothing of the traditional Old West about it. A large, well-ventilated and illuminated room, it had eight modern desks, each with a typewriter and telephone extension, forming two lines across its center. Several filing cabinets occupied much of the wall space, hinting at a more thorough organization than was usually shown by Old West lawmen. On one side of the double doors of the main entrance hung a bulletin board, with wanted posters, routine orders and other items of information pinned to it. At the other side of the doors, beneath the Duty Roster board which allowed the Watch Commander to tell at a glance how many deputies he had at his disposal the Office Log lay open and ready for use on a table. Flanking the door to the Watch Commander’s office, two large boxes held the department’s assault armament Winchester Model 12 riot guns, Thompson submachine guns, telescope-sighted sniper’s rifles and Federal gas-shell dischargers and a supply of ammunition for each type of weapon.

  Times, methods and accommodation might change, but one aspect of Western law enforcement remained constant. On occasion, the jet-age peace officers needed firearms to carry out their duties.

  That need was anything but apparent as First Deputy Ricardo Alvarez stepped out of the Watch Commander’s office at five minutes past eleven on the warm summer’s Monday night and looked around the squadron. Only two of his eight deputies were present; but, fortunately, they were the pair he had hoped to see. As he had listened to the telephone message which brought him into the squad room, Alvarez had known which of his four teams he would send if they were available. Yet he still needed a moment to brace himself for what he had to do. Even though he knew Woman Deputy Joan Hilton was an efficient and capable peace officer with considerable practical experience, he still found difficulty in ordering her to go and face the unpleasant, often nauseating sights to be expected when investigating a homicide. However, personal considerations aside, he felt sure that the buxom blonde and her stocky, college educated, full-blood Comanche partner were the best team to handle the case of homicide which had just been brought to his attention.

  ‘Joan, Sam,’ Alvarez said. ‘Are you free?’

  ‘I wish we could say “no” to that,’ Joan Hilton answered, glancing at the wall clock. In another fifty-five minutes, the Night Watch would be officially over. ‘What’s up, Ric?’

  ‘Lasher have just turned in a “woman down” report,’ the Night Watch Commander replied. ‘Seventeen, Dick Street. Do you know it?’

  ‘It’s in Mockingbird Grove,’ the blonde said quietly. ‘I live out that way. Is there anything more on it?’

  ‘Looks like she was beaten to death and robbed,’ Alvarez answered, trying to keep his voice hard and impersonal. ‘That’s all we have so far.’

  ‘Let’s go, Sam,’ Joan suggested. ‘The sooner we get there, the quicker we’ll know more. How about a photographer, Ric?’

  ‘He’ll be going with the S.I.B. crew,’ Alvarez promised. ‘The M.E. and ambulance have already been dispatched.’

  ‘We may as well get over there, Sam,’ Joan suggested, standing up, and her partner rose from the desk, nodding soberly.

  Barely exceeding the five foot seven minimum height for male peace officers, Sam Cuchilo had the typical coppery brown, somewhat Mongoloid cast of features and thick-bodied, powerful build of a Nemenuh 1 warrior. Dressed in a well-cut dark brown business suit, dark gray shirt and plain blue tie, he carried a .41 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver with a four-inch barrel in a Myers No. 4 cross draw holster at his left side. He could handle the heavy handgun with the dexterity displayed by his forefathers in the use of a bow and arrows, war-axe, lance, or firearms looted from the hated white brother during a war trail.

  Joan Hilton was maybe three inches shorter than her partner. With her blonde hair done in a curly bubble-cut, she had a cheerful, good-looking face. Her black trouser suit set off a buxom, firm-fleshed figure. She moved with a light-footed agility and there was a rubbery robustness about her that told of excellent physical condition. Women belonging to the criminal element of Gusher City warned new arrivals that Miss Hilton was one female badge who should always be treated with politeness and must not be crossed.

  Picking up her Pete Ludwig shoulder bag which held her identification wallet, handcuffs, snub-nosed Colt Cobra .38 Special revolver in a detachable holster, reserve ammunition and other items of official equipment, as well as a woman’s usual articles from the desk, she hooked its carry strap over her left shoulder.

  As Joan and Cuchilo walked towards the main entrance, the double doors opened to admit two more members of the Night Watch. Big, burly Deputy Sheriff Ian Grantley threw a grin at his tall, slender partner, Jake Melnick as they guessed what was happening.

  ‘Go on, grin your fool heads off!’ Joan growled indignantly, knowing that she and Cuchilo would probably be kept busy with their investigation until long after the end of the watch. ‘I just hope that you pair get caught as you’re logging off.’

  ‘I hope you get called out after you’ve logged off and are all tucked up, sleeping cozy, at home,’ Cuchilo supplemented.

  The Sheriff’s Office worked a two-watch rota, from eight a.m. until four p.m. and four until midnight. If anything came up between midnight and eight, the deputies required to handle it would be called from their respective homes by the Gusher City Police Department’s permanently manned Business Office.

  ‘Knowing me and Jake’s luck,’ answered the unabashed Grantley, ‘that’s real likely to happen.’

  ‘Trust an Injun to think up the meanest way to get back at us, though,’ Melnick went on. ‘We should never have let them into our country.’

  ‘Columbus was a rat-fink!’ Cuchilo countered. ‘It’s his lousy navigation that’s caused all the trouble. Us Indians were getting along just fine before he arrived.’

  Despite the levity, Joan and Cuchilo wasted no time. Grantley and Melnick stood aside and allowed the other team to sign out in the Office Log. With that attended to, the blonde and her partner left the squad room. They rode one of the elevators to the ground floor. Going out of a rear entrance, they crossed the official vehicles’ parking lot to their black and white Oldsmobile Super 88 deputy car. Before they reached it
, a black and white panel truck its colors the reverse of their own purred from the lot’s gates and sped away.

  ‘They must know which of us is driving,’ Joan commented dryly, nodding towards the departing Scientific Investigation Bureau’s truck as her partner slid behind the Oldsmobile’s steering wheel.

  ‘If they had,’ Cuchilo replied, ‘they’d have waited and followed me, knowing how safe it would be.’

  While her partner set the car into motion, Joan unhooked the radio’s transmission microphone. She informed the dispatcher at Central Control of their departure and asked to be kept informed of any further developments.

  ‘Do you know the victim, Joan?’ Cuchilo inquired, sensing his partner’s perturbation.

  ‘I could do,’ the blonde admitted, returning the microphone to its hook on the dashboard. ‘I’ve friends all around that area. A lot of us bachelor girls live in Mockingbird Grove.’

  ‘Say,’ Cuchilo remarked, after a brief, uneasy silence. He wanted to divert Joan’s thoughts from the possibility of the victim being a friend. ‘Old Brad’s getting to be a regular television personality.’

  Joan smiled. That afternoon Deputy Sheriff Bradford Counter, of the Day Watch, had won the Rockabye County Department of Public Safety’s Leatherslap, a combat shooting match, against some stiff opposition. Then he had been interviewed by the Gusher City television network’s Local View program that evening, taking part in a debate on the value of such competitions.

  ‘He sure is,’ the blonde agreed and threw a cold glare at the Comanche deputy. ‘Now Alice won’t be fit to know for a week. Why couldn’t you have won that blasted Leatherslap?’

  ‘Something told me you’d be getting around to that,’ groaned Cuchilo. ‘There’s times I wish the town of Hell hadn’t been closed down. 2 Then us Kweharehnuh 3 would still be holding out in the Palo Duro, instead of having to come in and smoke the peace pipe with you blasted palefaces.’

  ‘I wish it, too,’ Joan declared. ‘Then maybe I’d’ve caught me a big, blond, handsome partner who gets to be seen on the television, instead of one who could only win a Leatherslap if they ran it on war-ponies and with bows and arrows.’

  ‘If you was John Smith and I was Pocohantas, I’d have lit the fire,’ Cuchilo sniffed. ‘I just bet the last of the Mohicans didn’t have my kind of troubles with Hawk-Eye either.”

  Arguing briskly, as had become their way of relieving the tensions and apprehension which always arose when they were on their way to commence a homicide investigation, the deputies sped through the streets on the heels of the S.I.B.’s panel truck. There was little traffic and, without needing to augment their flashing red lights with the sirens, the peace officers soon reached the part of the city known as Mockingbird Grove.

  All the trees in which mockingbirds had once congregated and nested had been cut down when the discovery of extensive oil deposits had caused Gusher City to expand its boundaries. In their place had grown a prosperous middle-rent community of small apartment buildings and private residences. It was, as Joan knew, normally a peaceful and law-abiding portion of the city.

  Turning on to Dick Street, the deputies did not need to look at the numbers of the houses to know where they were to start their investigation. Already two black and white G.C.P.D. radio patrol cars, an all black Detective Bureau Ford sedan and an ambulance were parked along the edge of the right hand sidewalk. Patrolmen held back the inevitable bunch of male and female onlookers who had gathered to see what was going on. On the drive, before the open door of Number Seventeen’s garage, stood a Plymouth convertible with its top open and lights still on. Beyond the vehicle, a bulky male figure directed the beam of a flashlight at something on the ground.

  A low sigh of relief broke from Joan as she decided that she did not know the victim.

  Stopping the Oldsmobile behind the S.I.B. truck, Cuchilo remained in his seat while extracting his badge of office and hooking it on to his left buttonhole. Joan climbed straight out, swinging her bag on to her shoulder and walking around to join her partner as he emerged. Together, they strolled over to the truck.

  ‘We’ll help Terry to set up, Joan,’ offered one of the three men who left the truck, indicating a second who had two cameras slung across his shoulders.

  ‘Thanks, Morrie,’ the blonde replied.

  Before the deputies, or even the medical examiner could approach the body, the photographer had to complete his work of recording the scene on film. Joan knew better than try to hurry that aspect of the investigation along. A thorough photographic record was invaluable, but getting it took time. So, leaving the two S.I.B. experts to assist the photographer, Joan and Cuchilo went past the truck, one of the R.P.’s and the D car. A patrolman holding a ballpoint pen and a loose-leaf notepad eyed them in a challenging manner.

  ‘Woman Deputy Hilton, W-101,’ Joan reported and indicated her partner. ‘Deputy Sheriff Cuchilo, 958.’

  ‘“Hilton” as in the hotel, ma’am?’ the patrolman inquired noting the time of the deputies’ arrival on the timetable he had been ordered to keep.

  ‘I’m one of the poor side of the family,’ the blonde explained and nodded to the big, bulky man who was approaching from the convertible. ‘Hi, Denny.’

  ‘Howdy, Joan, Sam,’ greeted Sergeant Dennis O’Toole of the Lasher Division’s Detective Squad. ‘’Tis a bad one.’

  ‘They all are, one way or another,’ Joan said quietly. ‘What have we?’

  Being the senior member of the deputy team, the blonde had to assume command of the investigation. Sam Cuchilo had accepted that from the beginning of their partnership, recognizing Joan’s greater experience in all matters of practical law enforcement. From the prompt way in which O’Toole answered the question, he too felt no qualms about the possibility of having to take orders given by a woman.

  ‘Victim’s name is Amy Willer, thirty, unmarried, P.A. to an exec, down at Euro-Tex,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Lived at home with her folks. Father’s away on a fishing trip. Mother made the identification. She’s in the house now. Got hysterical. One of our girls and the M.E.’s taking care of her.’

  ‘Do we know what happened?’ Cuchilo asked.

  ‘Looks like she was robbed, her handbag’s by her side, open. An R.P. saw the convertible standing like it is now, with the lights on. The shotgun went to check it out and found her. The top of her head’s beaten to a pulp. And that’s not just a figure of speech.’

  ‘Nobody saw or heard anything?’ Joan inquired.

  ‘If they did, they haven’t come forward to say so,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Which, in this kind of neighborhood, they would’ve if they had.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ Joan agreed. ‘They’re not born cop-haters like down in the Bad Bit. Let’s try asking around, anyway.’

  Circulating amongst the onlookers, who lived in the surrounding houses, the deputies and O’Toole tried to obtain some clue that would throw a light on the reason for Amy Willer’s death. It soon became obvious that nobody had seen or heard anything.

  While the residents of Dick Street did not share the antipathy of dwellers in the slum area known as the Bad Bit where peace officers were concerned, they clearly did not mean to present their district in a bad light. So the citizens questioned by Joan, Cuchilo and the sergeant said much of the same thing. The victim had been a pleasant, respectable girl, devoted to her parents and without any known boyfriends. Nobody could recollect having seen a car or any suspicious persons loitering in the vicinity of the Willers’ house that evening.

  ‘Which doesn’t tell us a whole heap,’ Cuchilo stated dryly as the deputies and O’Toole gathered by the Oldsmobile to compare notes.

  ‘Most likely some of them would tell a different story about her if the interview was more private,’ Joan replied. ‘Maybe it won’t come to that.’

  If the victim had been murdered during the course of a robbery, there would be less reason for an extensive examination of her life and background; with the attendant possib
ility of digging up something derogatory to her memory as a further cause of grief to her parents.

  The sudden blaze of light erupting from the photographer’s camera told that he was still working. Floodlights glowed as the two S.I.B. experts commenced their preliminary examination of the surrounding area. From what the deputies could see, the convertible stood in the center of a large square of concrete. It would be unlikely to produce any footprints, but would make the location of other scientific evidence so much easier.

  ‘Let’s go and see if Mrs. Willer can tell us anything, Joan suggested, after studying the scene.

  ‘Sure,’ Cuchilo confirmed.

  Going along the path, the deputies passed the convertible on the opposite side to where the body lay and reached the front door of the house without disturbing the cameraman. At Cuchilo’s knock, the door was opened by a pretty young blonde policewoman. Relief flickered on the girl’s face as Joan showed her I.D. wallet and introduced herself.

  ‘The M.E.’s upstairs with Mrs. Willer,’ the policewoman said, standing aside to let the deputies enter. ‘I don’t know if you’ll be able to get anything from her tonight.’

  ‘Has she said anything so far?’ Joan inquired.

  ‘Nothing much that made sense,’ the policewoman admitted. ‘She just kept repeating what a sweet, good, loving daughter Amy was and why would anybody want to hurt her? Then she kept asking for her husband.’

  ‘I wonder if anybody knows where he’s at?’ Cuchilo remarked, half to himself.

  ‘Catfishing along the Rio Grande, close to where Rockabye Creek flows in,’ supplied the policewoman. ‘I got that much out of her. Then, after the M.E. had taken over, I put in a call to your Euclid Sub-Office and asked if they could locate and bring him in.’

  ‘Smart thinking,’ Joan praised.

  At that moment, the medical examiner came down the stairs.

  ‘I’ve had to put Mrs. Willer under sedation,’ he said. ‘She was so hysterical that I couldn’t do anything else.’