The Laughing Gorilla Read Online Free PDF Page B

usually under the bed. He will steal clothes from his victim to sell. He is a necrophiliac and a sadist. Going by his religiosity, I think the huge Bible he carries suggests a possible motive.”
    Dullea recognized some portion of the type—a lust killer. Was the Gorilla Man’s unbridled sadism in itself an object of sexual gratification and their elusive motive? The only thing he was certain of was that the Gorilla Man’s name was not Roger Wilson.

THREE
    A gorilla . . . can make only about 20 sounds—roars, whimpers, screams, soft grumbles. . . . Laughter is not one of them.
    — GORILLA , IAN REDMOND
     
     
     
     
     
    BY 3:30 P.M., April 29, 1930, the day of Officer Malcolm’s murder, Chief Quinn’s patrols were still combing the city for the Whispering Gunman and his swarthy accomplice. “I want every piece of motor apparatus in the department out,” he said. “Scour the highways and alleys for the bandit car. I want a finger on every trigger.”
    Quinn named his Flying Squad after the winged-wheel insignia on the shoulder patches of its fifty-two young members (four from each of the city’s districts). He inaugurated the thirteen Harley-Davidson sidecar motorcycle units shortly after being sworn in as chief on November 20, 1929 (the same day Dullea became captain of inspectors). These “motorized bathtubs” were a mobile reserve capable of reaching any corner of the city within ten minutes. Quinn’s Flying Squad pulled on specially designed uniforms, high polished boots, and goggles. Each driver nudged out the kick starter, rose into the air, and came down hard. The cycles accelerated from the dark mouth of the underground garage, every sidecar equipped with automatic rifles, service pistols, cases of tear gas, light machine guns, and sawed-off shotguns.
    Although the Flying Squad had been specially trained by Quinn’s right-hand man, Detective Sergeant Tom McInerney, it had been under Dullea’s command from its first day. Fifteen years earlier Dullea had been a founding member of the Shotgun Squad. When four masked gunmen knocked over the Claremont Roadhouse, Dullea, then a very young motorcycle cop out of Richmond Station, had joined in the chase down Fulton Street. He fired on the getaway to puncture its tires but, being a famously bad shot, missed completely. Two of the four robbers hunched down in the tonneau of their car and returned fire, narrowly missing Dullea. At Sixth Avenue they veered north, raced past Richmond Station to Lake Street and crashed into a low wall on the Presidio grounds. In the ensuing gun battle, Corporal Fred Cook was killed and three of the robbers escaped. To capture them, the SFPD organized the first proactive motorized anticrime patrols—squads of armed detectives who kept in contact with headquarters by street phone, the only way they could communicate. The search for Malcolm’s killers would be conducted the same way.
    At 4:00 P.M., Corporal Harold Leavy, behind the wheel of his “prowler,” located a light blue Dodge parked at 55 Second Street in the wholesale district a half mile from Pier 26. Leavy felt the engine—still warm—then peered into the backseat. Scattered on the floor were adding-machine tapes, a packet of blank white envelopes, two dimes, and a nickel. Murphy’s empty black leather satchel lay open on the seat. A half hour later, Inspector LaTulipe, the eccentric and wizard criminologist in charge of the SFPD’s I squad, reached the getaway car. He was a striking man—long, thin face; silver hair combed in a high pompadour; and a nose as sharp as a ship’s prow—the better to ferret out clues.
    LaTulipe popped open his battered case of photographic apparatus and fingerprint gear and unpacked sensitive plates, flashguns, bulbs, a heavy Graflex, and a scale ruler. “I began going over the sedan for prints,” he said, “our first step I hoped in identifying the murderous bandit pair and their pretty little companion.”
    LaTulipe swirled a