No, the note was clearly meant for Lieutenant James Reardon of Homicide, and Patrolman Gottlieb had a strong feeling it was important that the lieutenant receive the message as soon as possible. For, among other things, such as the method of delivery, there was something quite mysterious in the manner the vandal had addressed the envelope, what with each letter apparently of a different size and cut from some magazine or newspaper and pasted in place. Patrolman Gottlieb knew this to be suspicious in the extreme, clearly indicating someone’s desire to avoid self-identification.
Convinced that this was only the first step on the sure path to promotion, and subconsciously thanking the vandal for having chosen this particular call box for the leaving of the envelope, Patrolman Gottlieb raised the receiver and pressed the button connecting him to the Hall of Justice, asking that a patrol car be sent around at once to pick the message up and deliver it. He only refrained with effort from adding that Gottlieb was spelled with two “t”s.
Tuesday — 9:45 A.M.
One of the many things that often puzzled Lieutenant Reardon was how his lovely Jan could possibly consider his work dangerous, when 95 per cent of his working day seemed to be spent either in putting words on paper or in attempting to make some sense from papers upon which others had spent hours putting words. If they gave service awards for writer’s cramp, he often thought, or for strained eyesight, a man could retire from the police force after five years with a chest full of medals that would have made a five-star general jealous.
The ringing of the telephone spared him from one more report. He gladly put it aside and picked up the receiver, grunting into it.
“Reardon, here.”
“Hello, Jim? Roy Gentry. How’d you like to get a preview of a report that’s about to go up to the chief?”
“Why a preview?”
“Because the chief is out of the Hall at the moment, and Homicide will be getting a copy anyway after the chief sees it, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to wait.”
And you also have found something you feel you can brag about, Reardon thought; and I hope you’re right. I’ll be the first to kiss you on both cheeks.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, and happily shoved papers aside, coming to his feet. His departure was delayed, however, by a repeat of the telephone ring. Reardon sighed and picked it up.
“Reardon, here.”
“Sergeant Martin, Communications, Lieutenant. We just received a call from one of the foot patrolmen out of Mission. He was checking in at his box and found it broken open. Somebody had left a sealed envelope inside, tucked between the mouthpiece and the wall. It was addressed to you.”
Reardon leaned back against his desk, taking some of the weight off his feet. His eyes were narrowed. “What did it say?”
“He didn’t open it,” the sergeant said. “Like I said, it was sealed. He asked for a patrol car to pick it up and take it down to the Hall for you. We sent the nearest car we had. It ought to be there and back in a couple more minutes.”
“Very gentlemanly not to open other people’s mail,” Reardon murmured.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. I’ll be down in the lab with Roy Gentry when it gets here.”
“Right, sir.”
Reardon hung up the telephone and stared at it a moment in thought, an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew he had been expecting a message from the kidnapper ever since Dondero had disappeared from that bridge that night before, and he wished that knuckle-headed patrolman had had the sense to open the envelope and relay the message. And the kidnapper, whoever he was, remained as cagey as ever. Using the call box would assure him relatively quick delivery — quicker than the post office, surely — and be almost impossible to trace.
Because in Reardon’s mind there was no doubt the message was from the kidnapper. Well, the bastard was still keeping his distance ahead of them all, but he had to slip sometime. They all did, sooner or later, according to the book; although nothing in the book had told him to put Dondero in jeopardy together with Pop. He sighed, hitched himself from the desk, and headed for the door.
He trotted down the steps to the floor below, walked down the corridor to the end, and pushed through the swinging doors to the laboratory. He nodded to the people working at the various benches and continued on through two more sterile-looking rooms to the small private laboratory Roy Gentry usually used to verify results obtained by subordinates in other sections of his department. Gentry was bending over a microscope, his horn-rimmed glasses perched on his head out of the way, while his ever-present cigarette was held as far from his work as possible, as if to avoid contamination of his samples. Reardon came up behind him, plucked the cigarette from the extended fingers, and placed it neatly in an ashtray. Gentry looked up.
“Oh. Hi, Jim. Want to take a look?”
“Sure, but where’s the report?”
Gentry pulled his glasses into place, tucked his cigarette back into one corner of his mouth, and jerked a thumb toward the small office in one corner of the room.
“On my desk,” he said, speaking around smoke. “But this is all part of it. Thought you might be interested.”
So let him show off, Reardon thought. I just hope it’s worth bragging about. He bent over the microscope and adjusted the knob to bring the surface of the slide into focus. In his circle of vision, coming from blur to sharp image, was what seemed to be, in principal, a grayish stain with a series of darker streaks throughout. Reardon changed lenses, bringing up the magnification, since he knew he couldn’t read as much into these mysteries as Roy Gentry.
Now the streaks seemed to have little various colored nodules attached to them, and were in turn attached to each other by little stems. Lighter bluish-colored random shapes were scattered throughout the area of vision, almost as if added as an afterthought. It looks like a moonscape, Reardon thought, and straightened up.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “What is it?”
“Dark air-cured.” Gentry was smiling proudly.
“Dark air-cured what?”
“Tobacco,” Gentry said, not at all surprised by the other’s ignorance. “Tobacco ash, that is.”
“And what’s so impressive about that?” He looked at the cigarette in Gentry’s hand and nodded. “I see. You’re checking the stuff you’re smoking these days. You’re trying to figure out if you can’t come up with something cheaper, using old broom straws or something.”
“No,” Gentry said, not at all disturbed by this Philistinism. “That, my friend, came from the stuff collected from the floor of the back seat of Mike Holland’s Chevy by Frank Wilkins and his crew. It was found on the portion of the back seat behind the passenger side of the car. It indicates that whoever was sitting in the back seat was smoking—”
Reardon stared at him a moment and then broke into a grin.
“For this you need a microscope? My old mother, bless her soul, never smoked a day in her life, but she sure as the devil saw enough cigarette ash on my father’s jacket lapels! She could have saved you scientific geniuses a lot of work. Good grief! A microscope to tell tobacco ash! And as far as it being on the floor of the car in the back,” he added, playing the devil’s advocate, “it was probably from someone Pop gave a lift to fourteen years ago when the car was new, or maybe even a neighbor he took to the ball game last week.”
“No,” Gentry said evenly. He was enjoying himself. “A guest doesn’t usually drop ashes on the floor, not in those quantities; he uses the ashtrays. And the ashtrays were clean, unused. The rest of the car was clean, too, so we can assume Mike kept it that way normally. Therefore, finding ash where it was found clearly indicates to me that the man who dropped that ash dropped it quite recently, and most probably was the man who kidnapped Mike Holland.”