Double Jeopardy, page 13
"Oh, but that was just the point! As soon as he saw you here, he knew that you'd probably hold him for questioning. And he couldn't afford that. He said there was something so dreadful going on that a lot of people would suffer and maybe die if he were kept overnight, and he was the only one who could prevent it. I think it was because of Perez. Wesley had some influence over him and was going to prevent him doing something. So he put that—that stuff in the cocktail shaker. He said it wouldn't hurt either of us, and it would give him a chance to prevent what Perez was going to do."
Thinking to himself that a woman in love will believe anything, Jones said : "Perez isn't going to do anything but count bars for a while." He swung to Di Paduano: "Did you know about all this ?"
The banker looked lofty. "If you wish a statement for the record, I shall have to consult my lawyer."
"Damn it!" cried Jones. "If you want to play it that way, go call him up. I've seen you before in company that was more than questionable. In the meanwhile, I'm placing your daughter under arrest and taking her down to be questioned under the lights. I've got a charge of obstructing an officer against her, and, by God, I'll make it stick."
Di Paduano looked as though someone had asked him for a loan. "I resent your methods," he said, "and I shall make complaint against them in due course. My connection with Everett Benson was purely a business matter. However, to avoid unpleasantness, I will inform you that when my daughter informed me that her fiance was missing both from his home and the place where he was supposed to be employed, I retained the Owl agency to find him, with instructions to report to her. She seemed apprehensive over something this Perez person might do."
"Never occurred to you to ask the police, did it?" said Jones. "I suppose it was one of the Owl men who brought Warburton here last night?"
The girl nodded. "I told the Owl men about Wesley knowing Perez when they first came, and they've been looking for him. They phoned me yesterday morning that they had found Perez, and then last night Wesley went to see him, but the police raided the place, and Wesley had to go, so the Owl detective brought him here."
Then Di Paduano hadn't tipped the Owl off about the money. Jones grinned inwardly at the thought that he had reached the right result by the wrong deduction. He stood up and stepped over to the table. "Do you have a piece of flex plastic?" he said. "I'm going to take this tray with me."
"But why?" asked the girl.
"Warburton handled it. I saw him. I'd like to have some record of his prints, that's all."
Dolly's face tightened a little, and Di Paduano said: "I don't think that carved silver will give you any recognizable prints."
"Don't want fingerprints. They're all right for you commercial people, but in police work we haven't used anything but pore prints for about fifteen years now. The pattern's just as specific for every individual, and you don't need a whole set, just a small section from almost any part of the body. But you have to have molecular dust and a micro-camera to bring them out."
Eighteen
George Jones had to live through a good deal of kidding about being caught by paraethyl triazine, but he did that. He arranged for Warburton's pore prints and walk description to be added to the dossier on him, and a lookout to be set for him as wanted for questioning. There wasn't any basis for a charge against the elusive chemist as yet, so a general arrest warning couldn't be put out. Then he arranged for a tap to be put on Di Paduano's wire and a tail on his daughter; that would make the banker sore, but he was sore already, so it didn't matter.
By that time, Dewey O'Neill was back with a report that he hadn't been able to pick up the Warburton trail on 78th Street, but that during the day before he was arrested Perez had called in an expressman and shipped away a big trunk or box, the meaning of which piece of information was obscure, though it must fit in somehow. Where had he shipped it ? Under personal privacy the express company declined to say without a court warrant. Howard would apply for one in the morning on the grounds that the trunk might have contained some of the missing money, but the prospects didn't look too good.
The night plane only took five hours to make the trip, but thank God, they let you sleep aboard until you were ready to get up. Jones stepped out onto the concrete of Oakland airport on a morning milky with fog, and asked for a heli taxi to take him to the landing ground of the rocket express, in the hills at San Ramon. There was a delay and a phone call to make sure that no rocket was due to take off or land immediately; contact with one would be bad for the heli taxi.
At the port itself, a busy official named Baker was glad that the government wasn't giving up on the rocket robbery. Of course, insurance covered most of the loss; "But you understand, Mr. Jones, it isn't the loss itself that disturbs us, half as much as how it took place. The success of our enterprise is built, in a sense, on the fact that we give absolute security to all shipments. Once anything is sealed in the rocket, it can't possibly be tampered with until it has been receipted for at the terminal. And now it has been tampered with. Speaking as an individual, I'd be willing to pay the three million to anyone who can tell us how it was done."
"Make me an offer," said Jones. "In the meanwhile, I suppose that all your people have been over this a dozen times, but I'd like to see the people who handled the shipments when the June 6 rocket arrived—not those who were to get the money, that's all been gone into, but those who handled the other shipments on the same rocket. Also, I'd like to know how the shipments are handled."
''That's easy enough," said Baker, and snapped up the screen from the wall. "See that hill over there, the one that looks as though something had been sliding down it? Well, something has; that's where the rockets come in. The main radar station at Grand Island, Nebraska, picks them up at Brennschluss, coaches them along to the stations at Nephi and Ely, and then the homing station brings them in on this hillside. See? There isn't a chance of substituting another rocket for the one that starts out. You'd have to have powerful radar stations and a landing somewhere, and our own stations would register the difference in flight."
"I wasn't thinking of that," said Jones. "What I want to see is what happens to the shipments after the rocket is opened."
"I'm coming to that. The rockets come down the hill against a baffle which you can't see from here. We always have a truck with a crane waiting, because some of the shipments are pretty heavy. When there's a particularly valuable shipment aboard, there may be someone waiting to receipt for it the moment the rocket is opened. If there isn't, the work crew puts everything into the truck and takes it to the warehouse building, back of this one. Everything has to be logged and registered before being delivered. But the bank people— "
"I'm not interested in the money shipment for the moment," said Jones. "I'd like to talk to the crew that handles the log of deliveries."
"All right," said Baker, "let's go around. You don't mind walking?"
He led the way out of the office to a low building with a crane and loading platform at one end and a heli ramp and another loading platform at the other. Inside the loading platform was an office, where Baker introduced a muscular checker named Hinrich and explained that Jones wanted to look at the records for the day of the rocket robbery.
"It may have been the rocket before or after the one that was robbed," said Jones, and produced the receipt for the shipment to Juan Fernandez. "I'd like to know who signed for this when it was delivered."
"AG-11-87-63," Hinrich read off. "That would be on the rocket that was hijacked all right. I'll see." He snapped open the case containing the records, and began to turn the microfilm. "Here she is—signed for by the addressee. Came for it in person, no delivery."
"Remember anything about it?" asked Jones.
"No—o—o," said Hinrich, gazing at the record. "Wait a minute, though, that was that special handling parcel. Yes, I do remember now. See, we were supposed to deliver it, but he came for it instead. Sure I remember. He came in here while all the yak was going on about the money and put up a stink because he couldn't get his parcel right away."
"What did he look like?" asked Jones. "Would this be a picture of him—if you remember?" He handed the checker identification photos of Perez.
Hinrich turned them around slowly, frowning as he gazed at the three-dimensional images. "No. this don't lock anything like him. I never seen this guy before."
" You couldn't be mistaken?"
"Mister, I certainly couldn't. There was so much yak going on that day that T remember practicallv everything, even what I had for lunch. This picture here looks like a real Mex, see? And this Juan Fernandez that came for the parcel looked about as much like a Mex as the King of Sweden. He was one of them lemon blonds about middle size, and I remember wondering where he got the Mex name."
With a shock Jones realized that the description, while it eliminated Perez or his double, was a pretty good picture of Warburton. He asked : "Do you remember whether he was left-handed?"
"I wouldn't fool you, mister. That I never noticed."
"All right, Avhat about the parcel? What was it like?"
Hinrich closed his eyes, frowning, and then said: "I ain't a hundred per cent on this, but I think it was a big thing, sort of like a coffin, but without any handles. Sorry I can't remember no better, but we handle a lot of parcels."
"You're doing all right. How did it happen you turned it over to him? Can anyone just walk in here and pick up a parcel that's supposed to be delivered?"
Baker said: "We're very careful— " And Hinrich: "I should say not! When a parcel is claimed here, instead of being delivered, we make them put up enough identification to get past St. Peter into heaven. I don't remember what this guy had, but it must of been plenty good."
"The shipping address is 2303 Noriega Street. Would your identification go far enough to make certain he actually lived at that address?"
"With a name like Juan Fernandez? Don't make me laugh; half the Mex in California are named like that. I say I don't remember how I tied it up to the same guy, but I bet I did."
It occurred to Jones that some of his vehemence was for the benefit of the boss, but that didn't make any particular difference. There was somewhere a shadowy connection between Perez, Warburton, the mystrious "coffin," the rocket-express robbery, and, ultimately, the batch of chemicals stolen from the Braunholzer Institute. It seemed fairly clear that Warburton had taken delivery on the box and that Perez had shipped it; but why?
Could it be that the money had been transferred from bag to box by some impossible system of teleportation? His mind played wildly with the thought as he took leave of Baker and got into a heli taxi for San Francisco. The next step was clear enough; it was to go to 2303 Noriega Street, where the police inquiry had been limited to establishing that no one named Juan Fernandez lived there. He wished he had a picture of Warburton, but the missing chemist had evidently taken particular care that there shouldn't be any. On the way to Noriega, it occurred to him to send a message to Washington to have government physiologists asked whether it was possible, by any system of bracings or injections, to protect a human body against an acceleration of 8g, and to have the same question put into an integrator, and he took care of that detail first.
2303 Noriega turned out to be one of the featureless identical houses on the identical streets surrounding the Sunset Reservoir ; a boardinghouse, by its appearance. The proprietor was a thin man with lusterless eyes, who had apparently let all his energy run out into the enormous mustache that flowed across his face. Nope, he didn't mind answering a coupla questions. Nope, nobody named Juan Fernandez ever lived there; the police had asked him that before. Nope, no one got mail there under that name.
Jones tried a description of Warburton, or as much of a one as he could give, with the date. The boardinghouse keeper put his head to one side. "Oh, him. Yeh, I remember him. Only-stayed a short while. Then the other fellow came, and he left. Name of Wharton, or something like that."
"Would it be Warburton?"
"That's it. Funny thing about him. He had dinner sent up to his room, and boy, he et enough for four people, I'm telling you. Then this other fellow came, and they were yelling at each other up in the room, and the next day he was gone. Left some kind of trunk behind him, too."
Jones produced the pictures of Perez again. "Would this be the other fellow ?"
The man let his jaw drop open as he gazed. "Can't say for sure," he finally decided.
"All right. Have you still got that trunk he left behind ? And can I see it?"
"I guess so."
The thin man solemnly led the way to a basement, where an old fashioned bulb light shed insufficient radiance on piles of junk, in the midst of which was an object that could have borne the description of a trunk or a coffin—an oblong box, about three feet high, two and a half feet wide, and five feet long. There was a lock, broken; the lifted lid showed an interior lined with asbestos cloth over some kind of padding, through which projected a series of paired metal rings.
Jones gazed at it blankly, unable even to guess at the purpose of this singular container. But that hardly mattered beside the fact that, after he had borrowed a molecular dust insufflator from the nearest police station, the micro-photos of the lining showed that it bore the pore prints, not only of Warburton, but also of Jesus Perez.
Nineteen
"Our Chief," said Jones, "always has us looking for contradictions—facts that will only add up to an impossibility. He says that a case in which there aren't any can be handled by an integrator, and the only reason for having a human detective on the job is that he can resolve problems where the machine. would reject all proposals as having zero probability." . Case executive Howard said: "And we have some contradictions here." It was a statement.
Jones said: "We don't have anything else. Perez couldn't have been in San Francisco at the time of the robbery, but the case is full of his pore prints."
"That ain't no contradiction," said Dewey O'Neill. "He shipped the case, didn't he ? He could of got the prints in there when he packed it—if he didn't travel in it himself."
"No, he couldn't do that," said Jones. "The box is too short, or too low, to hold a man. And the money couldn't have moved from the bag to the box during flight, but I'm convinced that's what happened, somehow. And we expect to find Perez, or his duplicate, using the name of Juan Fernandez; but it's War burton who uses the name."
"There's still another one," said Howard. "The reply to that request you sent Washington is back. The physiologists say it's absolutely impossible to rig up a man so he can stand 8g."
"I didn't expect much from that, anyway," said Jones. "But there's one other thing. The boardinghouse keeper in 'Frisco couldn't identify Perez as the man who called on Warburton there and quarreled with him. I think it must have been, though, and I suggest that we ask little Jesus not for his alibi for the date of the robbery, but for the following week."
Howard frowned. "We can do that, but I want to point out that clearing up these back details of the case gets us exactly nowhere. It's all five months old now. What we need now is a foolproof method of finding Warburton. And we haven't even got a Locard description of him."
"We have his walk,H Jones pointed out. "I saw it myself. And his pore prints. And we have the fact that he is almost certainly living somewhere under the name of Juan Fernandez."
"That doesn't do us much good right now. We can't very well put out a nationwide alarm for all persons named Juan Fernandez, or for all those with JM 22-16-8 walks, either." He
swung to Swigart. "What did you get on the lists of people who hired electronic chemists in June ?"
The city man made a face. "My contact got a list all right, but it's got about twenty names on it, and they're scattered across the country from hell to breakfast."
Howard took it. "It isn't much," he said, "but it's the best thing we have, and maybe we can parlay it into cracking the case. I see a line; each of you take one of these places and plant himself outside before they open up in the morning. Keep looking for someone going in with a JM 22-16-8 walk, until you're satisfied he's either there or he isn't. I wouldn't lay too much stress on Warburton's blondeness; it's so distinctive that he'll probably have his hair done over, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that's why he took the name of Fernandez."
The phone rang.
"Who is it?" said Howard.
"Mr. Di Paduano calling," came the operator's brassy voice, and the next moment the banker's face flashed on the screen, distorted with emotion.
"My daughter's gone!" he said. "She's gone to join him!"
"Who—Warburton?" asked Howard.
"Yes. She left a note saying that she had to make the choice some time and had decided to make it now, and that though she might be unhappy with him, she'd be more so if she didn't follow her impulse."
"Do you want us to find her?" asked Howard.
"Yes."
Jones asked, "Can I get in the act for just a minute?" and as Howard motioned to him, took his place at the screen. "Mr. Di Paduano," he said, "do you have anything to indicate where your daughter might have gone?"
"Not a thing," said the banker. "When I came home for lunch, she was simply gone, and left this note."
"Did she take your car or heli?"
"No, neither one; not even her own car."
"We'll do our best for you, Mr. Di Paduano. Also, we'll send someone down to get any tri-dls or photos of your daughter you can spare. Good-by."
As the banker's picture faded, Jones turned to the others. "It worked," he said. "Where's that list that Swigart got? Here, Howard, see? Chasing around to all those firms isn't going to be necessary; the place where Warburton is hiding out is right across the river, at the Fairfield Reducing Company in Bayonne, New Jersey."
The other three said "Huh?" simultaneously, and then Swig-art asked, "How do you know?"
"Because I set this up by leaving a hole for it. When I came to from the paraethyl triazine and began questioning that wench, she started out by being just as tight as the skin on an apple, and even proud of helping Warburton make his getaway. Then her father came in, and she got very co-operative. It was one of those contradictions I've been talking about. And the more she told her story about believing in Warburton's innocence, the less convincing it became. I began by thinking that he was putting one over on her; but the farther along I got, the more I began to see that she was putting one over on me. So I left her a couple of easy outs. I kept from asking whether she knew where Warburton was, or raising any discussion about him, to keep papa from getting suspicious. I was pretty sure when she opened up that much, but held out the details, that she'd go right to him and lead us that way."
