The Girl in the Trunk

By Bruce Cassiday

His fellow detectives on the Honolulu force didn’t like Egan. They couldn’t stomach his sick brutality, the unholy glee with which he trapped and roughed-up mugging suspects and other victims for his sadistic fists. But Egan had a reason for the way he was. Five years before, his wife had been raped, carved and killed by an unknown mugger. Now there was a new case for the force to tackle. The victim was blonde and female...and she was bloody and dead. And the case was dumped in Egan’s lap.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005956196

Bruce Cassiday

A prolific author of fiction and nonfiction, Bruce Cassiday’s career spanned five decades and various mediums. His early career was rooted in radio drama. Soon afterward he was an author and editor of pulp fiction magazines.Bruce Bingham Cassiday was born in Los Angeles, in 1920. He graduated in 1942 with a B.A. in journalism from the University of California, and spent the next four years in the Air Force, receiving battle stars and rising to staff sergeant. He engaged in North Africa and Italian theatres, and later in the West Indies and Puerto Rico. From 1946 he became a professional writer, scoring a big success with radio dramas and big CBS shows, including Grand Central Station, and Suspense. He became an editor at Popular Publications, heading both Western and Crime pulps, and published some three dozen short stories and novelettes in the late forties and early fifties, in such magazines as All-Story Detective and Dime Detective. As well as editing numerous Popular magazines into the 1970s, Cassiday also served as fiction editor for Argosy from 1954 until 1973.He penned the adventures of agent Johnny Blood, a continuing character in Popular’s F.B.I. Detective Stories magazine. The series ran from 1949 to 1951, until the magazine’s demise. Then, bonding investigator Cash Madigan appeared in two novels — Murder Trail and The Buried Motive — in 1957.Cassiday married Doris Galloway in 1950, and they had two children, Bryan and Cathy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he diversified into paperback novels, excelling in crime noir thrillers for numerous publishers, such as Ace, Beacon, Belmont, Lancer and Monarch Books. Throughout the 1960s, whilst still working as an editor, Cassiday continued to produce an astonishing flood of paperback originals including private eye, police procedurals, action, war and spy thrillers, medical novels, gothics and science fiction, as well as numerous adaptations of TV shows and movies, such as Marcus Welby, M.D., General Hospital, The Bold Ones, Flash Gordon and Gorgo. They were written under his own name and personal pseudonyms such as Carson Bingham and Annie Laurie McAllister.His output was diverse and prodigious, including numerous non-fiction books on many subjects from landscaping to carpentry, and ghosting Film Star biographies. He also held Administrative posts with the Mystery Writers of America and the International Association of Crime Writers.He died in 2005, in Stanford, Connecticut.

Book preview

THE GIRL IN THE TRUNK

His fellow detectives on the Honolulu force didn’t like Egan. They couldn’t stomach his sick brutality, the unholy glee with which he trapped and roughed-up mugging suspects and other victims for his sadistic fists. But Egan had a reason for the way he was. Five years before, his wife had been raped, carved and killed by an unknown mugger. Now there was a new case for the force to tackle. The victim was blonde and female…and she was bloody and dead. And the case was dumped in Egan’s lap.

THE GIRL IN THE TRUNK

Bruce Cassiday

Produced under license from

Cosmos Literary Agency

Bold Venture Press

Contents

Copyright

The Girl in the Trunk

7:44 A.M., August 7

2:55 A.M., August 7

3:05 A.M., August 7

9:00 A.M., August 7

9:15 A.M., August 7

2:35 P.M., August 7

4:46 P.M., August 7

6:35 P.M., August 7

About this author

Books by this author

About the publisher

Copyright © 2020 by the Estate of Bruce Cassiday

Produced under license from Cosmos Literary Agency

(First published by Ace Books, 1973)

Bold Venture Press edition October 2020

Published in print and eBook

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, or places or events is purely coincidental.

This eBook is licensed for your own use. If you did not purchase a copy, please purchase your own. Thanks for respecting the hard work and copyright of this author and his estate.

THE GIRL IN THE TRUNK

7:44 A.M., AUGUST 7

(CHILE TIME)

In the Chilean Andes, at precisely 7:44 a.m., August 7, millions of tons of rock that made up the base of the Southern Andes near Osorno slipped suddenly along a subterranean geological fault, producing a catastrophic shaking of the earth. Whole villages disappeared under clouds of dust. Cliffs stable for centuries buckled and instantly crushed hundreds of square miles of vegetation and wildlife beneath them. Cracks appeared in the earth’s crust. The cacophony of the earth’s shuddering movement drowned out the screams of men, women and children caught helpless in instant and agonizing death.

The shifting of the earth at the epicenter of the quake in turn sent shock waves through the lower layers of the earth’s outer crust, causing a disturbance in the suboceanic Continental Shelf running along the Chilean Coast. A rift on the brink of the shelf widened, precipitating a landslide of considerable proportions, and tons of rock slipped over the edge to plunge 20,000 feet into the bottom of the Peru-Chile Trench.

The landslide agitated tons of sea water and gigantic waves hurled themselves at the Chilean shore, sending towering jets of water into the air. When the ocean’s bed finally settled, the water above sank back quickly, creating shock waves that radiated out from the suboceanic landslide over the entire Pacific Ocean.

2:55 A.M., AUGUST 7

(HAWAIIAN STANDARD TIME)

In Honolulu, Hawaii, eleven minutes later, most all the lights on Kalakaua Avenue had been extinguished. Only an occasional bar showed any signs of life. The hotel windows across Kalakaua on the makai side of the street were mostly dark, indicating that the occupants had gone to bed already. The restless sound of surf breaking on Waikiki Beach beyond created a strumming ukulele-like counterpoint to the occasional rustling of the fronds of coco palms lining the Avenue.

A tall man dressed in a loud aloha shirt and fawn-colored slacks came out of the door in the middle of the block across from the Moana Hotel. He was in his forties, with a dour, lined face and a lean, whippet body. The sign over the door through which he came said BAR in orange neon.

He started down the sidewalk in the direction of Diamond Head, the extinct volcanic crater recognized by the civilized world as the identifying feature of the Hawaiian Islands, now half-obscured by high-rise apartments and hotels, but still visible in the distance crouched like a hunkered-down lion. The aloha shirt man seemed a bit unsure of himself, his shoes stumbling now and then on the sidewalk as he navigated uncertainly along.

He glanced at his wristwatch. Two fifty-five. He was humming a tuneless song. It was difficult to tell what he intended it to be. He stifled a hiccup.

Halfway down Koa Street, which paralleled Kalakaua and was out of sight of the hotels, two men waited. Crouching down behind the porch of an old wooden bungalow, vintage 1920, they held their breaths and listened as the man turned the corner of Kaiulani and came toward them, his staggering steps sounding clearly in the night. A car passed swiftly on Kalakaua, heading towards downtown Honolulu, its hum gradually diminishing.

The walking man chuckled to himself, reliving some pleasant memory of the evening. The pair in the shadows did not move. The faltering steps drew closer, unevenly, painstakingly placed on the sidewalk one after the other in search of security.

"Night and you, the man in the loud shirt sang, and Blue Hawaii…."

The tallest of the crouching men rose quickly and stepped into the middle of the sidewalk, confronting the softly singing man. He held his hands at his sides. His hair was yellow and longer than average. He had deep-set eyes, and was wearing a tee shirt that bulged against his biceps. An anchor was tattooed on his lower right arm. He was holding something at his side, something that caught a glint of light from the street lamp far down the way.

"Light, mister?" asked the tattooed man politely.

Startled, the singing man stopped dead still, rocking back and forth on his toes. The smell of alcohol fumes rose from him. His face was loose and his mouth open; he looked the fool.

"Hey, you scared me, you know that?" He spoke in accents easily identified as of the mainland rather than of the islands.

"Sorry, man, said the tattooed man in easy camaraderie. Have you got a light?"

The aloha shirt man peered about, trying to maintain his balance. You alone?

"Does it matter?"

Before there was time for an answer, the aloha shirt man heard a movement behind him. He did not have to turn around to know that a second man now stood in back of him. He felt a chill of apprehension. He smiled stupidly. I guess it doesn’t matter. He reached into his pocket. A light? Is that it?

The tattooed man’s voice was harsher now. What I really want, man, is your wallet.

The aloha shirt man hesitated. He appeared to sober up, and tried to stand straighter, tried to draw on reserves of strength long submerged within himself.

"Hey, what is this?"

The second man from the shadows moved forward. The aloha shirt man felt the blade of a knife in his back. It’s a sandwich, man. And you’re the cheese. Hand over the wallet.

So it was a mugging. The aloha shirt man fumbled in his pocket and appeared to pull something out. With a sudden light-footed turn, he jumped out from between the two men, and stood facing them in a crouch. It was clear now that he had not gathered into his hand a wallet but a handgun.

"Police officer, he snapped. Throw those blades on the sidewalk. Quick!"

The tattooed man seemed stunned. His right hand opened slowly, and the knife slipped to the sidewalk. He raised his hands tentatively, momentarily taken aback.

The second man from the shadows froze for a split second. He was shorter than the tattooed man, with curly black hair, and a round, hard body. He was dressed in skivvies and faded jeans.

"It’s Egan! he growled angrily. I seen his pictures in the paper! He’s bad news, Whitey!"

"Hurry it up," snapped Egan. Wiki-wiki!

Without thinking, the curly-haired man darted at Egan, slamming his blade forward as he leaped. Egan twisted away, directed his right foot toward the mugger’s throat. The mugger went over backwards, struck by the blow, and smashed to the sidewalk.

Egan backed up quickly, trying to regain his balance and cover the tattooed man, who dropped to the sidewalk immediately and grabbed up in a lucky sweep the knife he had dropped. Coming in with it hard, he sent it curving directly toward Egan’s throat.

Egan slammed the pistol barrel against the tattooed man’s knife hand. The knife spun through the air and landed in a purple hibiscus bush down the street.

The tattooed man shook himself and jumped up, grabbing Egan’s gun hand, smashing it hard across his raised knee. Egan’s weapon disappeared into the dirt beside the walk.

Egan lunged desperately for the tattooed man, hitting him in the chest. He could hear a whoosh of breath and a cry of pain.

The curly-haired man slowly drew himself up, staggering backward, trying to draw air into his chest through his bruised throat.

Egan turned and cracked the curly-haired man in the chin with a doubled fist. The mugger, half-dazed already, went down limp. At that instant, the tattooed man came toward Egan with his head lowered, like a bull attacking a matador’s cape.

The mugger smashed Egan’s stomach with the top of his skull. Egan was driven back toward the curb, but regained his balance and began slugging hard at the mugger’s chest, stomach and groin. In silence the two grappled for perhaps seven agonizing seconds, until Egan gradually gained mastery and drove the tattooed man back, one, two, three, hitting hard and viciously, four, five, six, into the bushes that bordered the walk. He was—still methodically pummeling the tattooed man against the wall of the small bungalow when he became aware that the mugger was completely unconscious and sliding down to the ground.

Egan pulled a pencil torch from his pocket and flashed it in the face of the tattooed man. The face was barely touched. One cheek was bruised. The lower lip was bleeding where it had been hit. Dried blood stained the torn jeans.

Egan turned and flashed the light in the face of the curly-haired man. He was pale and still. Both muggers were out cold.

Removing a large ring of keys from his hip pocket, Egan strode rapidly, cat-like, down the sidewalk to the nearest police box, unlocked it, and reached H.P.D. Communications.

"Egan, he snapped. Kalakaua and Kaiulani. Send a squad car. I’ve got two muggers."

When the squad car purred up a half minute later, Egan was standing by the captives, smoking a cigarette.

The uniformed driver got out of the squad car. He was a handsome Chinese. Egan had seen him before. He looked down at the two unconscious men, and flashed a large torch in the blond man’s face. He sucked in his breath. What happened to this man?

"He tried to mug me."

"I mean, afterward."

"He tried to resist arrest."

"But you didn’t have to roust him, Egan."

"He came at me. I guess he tripped and fell."

The second patrolman joined the driver and they lifted the blond mugger to his feet. He was coming to now, groaning and holding his bleeding mouth.

"He must have fallen in front of a truck," growled the second patrolman.

The Chinese driver snapped quickly, Forget it. If Egan says he fell down, he fell down.

"Yeah. That’s why they call him Earthquake Egan. Whenever he’s around, somebody falls down. Badly."

"Everybody’s heard about Egan," muttered the Chinese.

The blond mugger started cursing in a mushy, indistinguishable way. …get you…you mother…

The Chinese driver pushed the tattooed man into the rear set of the squad car. When he turned around he was staring coldly at Egan, who smoked in silence. But nobody does anything about Egan.

Egan grinned.

The two patrolmen picked up the other mugger, supporting him, and lifted him into the back seat too. The Chinese came and stood in front of Egan. They ought to bust you off the force, Egan.

"Just doing my duty, Egan said mildly. I’m headed for Beretania. I’ll write up the reports. See you guys."

"Aloha," said the Chinese, making it sound like a four-letter word.

* * * *

Egan walked down the street toward Diamond Head. It was cool and clean out now. He dismissed the thought of the two muggers from his mind.

The memory of Bernice lingered, like death, like love, like hate. Fifteen and sixteen, Egan counted to himself. Now sixteen muggers had paid for what had happened to Berenice.

Not a bad night. Not a bad night at all.

He climbed in his two-year-old Mustang and drove along Kalakaua, watching the sidewalk for any loiterers who did not seem to belong there. He passed a car parked down the road with a man and a woman inside, locked in an awkward embrace. Grinning, Egan drove on to Beretania and turned into the H.P.D. parking lot.

3:05 A.M., AUGUST 7

(HAWAIIAN STANDARD TIME)

In the Communications Room of Coast and Geodetic Survey Headquarters at Honolulu Observatory, the night watch was mulling over a series of three teletypes which had just come in on the Pacific Tsunami Warning System communicator.

COS HQ HONOLULU OBSERVATORY

STAND BY.

EARTHQUAKE OF 8.5 TO 8.9 INTENSITY ON RICHTER SCALE OBSERVED THIS MORNING AT 1244 GMT, AUGUST 7.

LOCATION: 40.8 SOUTH 72.6 WEST.

HAINES

SEISMOLOGICAL STATION, CAL INSTTECH PAS

CGS HQ HON OBS

AT APPROXIMATELY 1244 A.M. GMT AUGUST 7 OUR SEISMOGRAPH DETECTED A LARGE EARTHQUAKE IN THE REGION OF SOUTHERN CHILE.

INTENSITY: FROM 8.3 TO 8.7 RICHTER SCALE.

LOCATION: APPROXIMATELY 40.5 SOUTH 73.1 WEST.

SUTHERLAND

BERKELEY SEISMOLOGICAL STA, BERK CAL

CGS HQ HON OBS

A LARGE EARTHQUAKE SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHERN CHILE THIS MORNING AT 1244 AM GMT AUGUST 7. INTENSITY NEAR 8.6 ON THE RICHTER SCALE. LOCATION ABOUT 40.6 SOUTH 72.5 WEST, VICINITY OSORNO VOLCANO.

OGLE

TUCSON SEIS STA, TUC ARIZ

The night watch glanced at the enormous plexiglass map of the Pacific, checking the location of the quake’s epicenter, and saw that the System had at least three tide stations in the vicinity of the quake: Puerto Montt, Talcahuano, and Valparaiso.

An earthquake of that magnitude, he knew, would in all probability inaugurate some kind of tsunami disturbance, which was what he was there to observe and report. However, as yet—

The teletype machine began clicking:

CGS HQ HON OBS

EVIDENCE OF SOME TSUNAMI ACTION OBSERVED ALREADY OFF COAST OF CHILE NORTH OF PUERTO MONTT, ALTHOUGH DISTURBANCE HAS NOT YET REACHED OUR TIDAL INSTRUMENTS.

STAND BY FOR FURTHER INFORMATION. FIRST REPORTS OUT OF OSORNO AND VALDIVIA INDICATE THAT AN EARTHQUAKE OF GREAT SIZE MAY HAVE CAUSED SUBMARINE UPHEAVALS OFF THE COAST ON THE CONTINENTAL SHELF.

GOMEX

PUERTO MONTT TIDE STA

4:40 A.M., AUGUST 7

(HAWAIIAN STANDARD TIME)

The dog was whining mournfully, the kind of whine bayed at the moon, except that the moon had already set and only the mercury vapor lamps above the roofs of the cars shone now.

The old man saw the dog and the car beside which the dog sat. The dog was one of the few things stirring in the vast Trans-Pacific parking lot of the Honolulu International Airport. Oh, the breeze was stirring, coming in off Keehi Lagoon, but not much else, animate or inanimate.

Perhaps, the old man thought, someone had left the dog behind and was even now inside the airport waiting for a night flight from the Orient. The old man shivered. It wasn’t really cold, but his shirt was torn and his windbreaker was damaged and very old. And he was an old man who shivered sometimes simply for the sake of doing something.

There was a refuse can nearby. The old man shuffled toward it, feeling the blacktop of the parking lot through the holes in the soles of his shoes. He didn’t care about the hurt. There were callouses there, after all these years, to protect him from pain. And pain was a constant companion these days.

Once there used to be a kind of dignity to being a beachcomber, but not anymore. The beaches were all combed, and now there were guards—young hotshots just out of college—keeping out the wandering people so as not to ruin the sand for the well-heeled tourists.

Pushing open the swinging top of the refuse can, the old man reached inside. It was surprising how many people in the affluent society dumped good food into the trash can these days. It was a gesture of contempt to the losers; at least, that was the way the old man saw it: a gesture of contempt to him and those like him. To him and to the kids who called themselves hippies not so long ago, flower people, later, and now earth people.

Oh well. There was nothing in the refuse can.

The dog was whining again. The old man leaned down to pet the short hairs on the dog’s neck. The dog—a mongrel of no known extraction, mighty like most Islanders he knew—started wagging his stub of a tail.

The old man grinned. Good dog, he said. Good dog.

The dog licked his hand, a good omen, and stood there, his paws on the trunk of the car.

The old man glanced around. The dog had a most winning way about him. Maybe he wanted to get inside the car. If the car was open, what could be the harm?

The old man walked around and gently tugged at the handle of the car. No. It was locked. The dog looked up at him, again standing and putting his paws on the trunk of the car.

The old man came back to the rear of the car and gripped the trunk handle and lifted. The lid of the trunk came up, the lock clasp apparently damaged and not secure. Then the man saw what had happened. A piece of canvas tarpaulin had gotten wedged in between the slot in the car frame and the grippers of the trunk lock.

The old man pushed the canvas edge away from the lock. The whole piece of canvas slid slowly down into the rear of the trunk. The mercury vapor lamps cast a yellow light and strange greenish shadows in the well of the trunk.

The dog whined.

The old man recoiled. There was a stench beginning, even now. But it was the sight that met his eyes that made him sick.

A human being was coiled inside the trunk of the car, huddled in a fetal position, naked in death, obscene and vulnerable and quite inhuman in its cold, remote unresponsiveness.

It was the body of a young woman, the old man saw, steadying himself on his suddenly wobbly feet; had been a young woman. Not old, anyway, not