Free Cat and Mouse by William Campbell Gault Page A

asked.
    “Mine. Traffic here is a little heavier than it is in Sun City.”
    He sighed. “I get the message. When we go out together my wife always insists on driving.”
    “Why don’t you phone her before we take off?”
    “Later,” he said.
    Two sixty-seven Cervato Way was an old one-story frame house flanked by a small convenience store on one side and an older two-story stucco house on the other.
    A thin white-bearded man who could have been older than either house was putting out his trashcan at the curb in front of the larger house when we got out of the car.
    “You guys cops?” he asked.
    I shook my head. Harley said, “Why do you ask?”
    “There was such a rumpus in there last night, I figured somebody must have complained. Such screaming—!”
    “And you phoned the police?”
    “Not me, mister! I got enough troubles of my own.”
    “Have you seen her this morning?” Harley asked.
    The man shook his head. “But I see her morning paper is still on the sidewalk. She always picks that up early.”
    Harley looked at me and then at the house. I said, “Let’s go up and find out.”
    We went up to the low front porch and rang the bell. No answer. A minute later, Harley rang it again. No answer. He tried the knob. The door was not locked.
    “Should we go in?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    The narrow hallway ran the length of the house. The small living room was on the left as we entered, a smaller guest room on the right. Nobody was in either room. The bathroom on the left farther down the hall was also vacant. The kitchen and a small breakfast nook were at the rear of the house. Nothing.
    There was another door at the left end of the kitchen. Harley opened it and we saw the steps going down. Basements are not common in Southern California. Harley flicked the light switch at the head of the stairs.
    It wasn’t a basement. It was a root cellar, an excavation about eight feet by eight feet with a dirt floor. Two large rats deserted the body they were feasting on and scurried into the area beneath the steps.
    A woman was lying there, a thin woman in a yellow kimono. I couldn’t guess her age by her face; her face was covered with blood.
    “Jesus!” Harley said.
    “We’d better phone the police,” I said.
    We were going down the hall toward the phone in the living room when the front door opened. A uniformed police officer stood in the doorway, a wide and swarthy man with a gun in his hand.
    “Stay right where you are,” he said, “both of you! Turn around and put your hands on the wall and don’t make any foolish moves. Put ’em up high.”
    A younger, thinner patrolman had followed him in. We did as requested as they frisked us.
    “Okay,” the swarthy officer said. “You can put your hands down now—but don’t turn around!”
    “We were heading for the phone when you came,” I said. “My name is Brock Callahan. You can confirm that by my driver’s license. You can also check me out with a phone call to Captain Aram Apoyan at your station. We were about to report to him that there is a dead woman in the root cellar. The doorway to it is in the kitchen.”
    “Phone the captain,” he told the other officer. “I’ll stay here.”
    I said, “If it was her neighbor who phoned you guys, he should have called last night when he heard her screaming.”
    “Did he tell you that?”
    “He did. That’s why we came in. The door wasn’t locked.”
    “We’ll get back to him,” he said.
    The younger man came back to tell his partner that Captain Apoyan had confirmed that he knew me and I was to report to him immediately.
    The old man wasn’t in front when we went out but four neighbors from across the street were standing on the walk, watching the house. Another police car pulled up as we drove away, plainclothesmen.
    “That old coot could have saved her life,” Harley said bitterly.
    I didn’t comment. It was a silent drive to the station.
    Aram smiled at me as we entered his office. “The