Detective Ben Glasser and his partner Detective Judy Milner were sitting in the cruiser behind a hotdog stand on La Brea having lunch when the call came. One of the North Hollywood patrols was at the scene of an apparent homicide. Judy started the engine while Ben choked down the rest of his chilidog and called in that they were responding. Glasser was a transported New Yorker who never felt totally at ease behind the wheel. Judy, born and raised in L.A., had been driving half her life. As senior officer, the choice was Ben’s so he happily rode the action seat, staring out the window as she guided their unmarked cruiser expertly to a residential street off Melrose. Two black-and-whites were parked in front of a medium-size frame home. The area had already been cordoned off with the wide yellow ribbon used to nark crime scenes. Four uniformed officers from the patrol cars stood in front of the house, talking quietly. A small cluster of curious onlookers who, judging from their attire, had come out of their homes to find out what was going on, milled about outside the yellow ribbon. Judy pulled up behind the last patrol car and they walked over together. Ben nodded to the men he recognized and said, "What’ve you got for us?" A policeman with corporal’s chevron’s on the blue sleeve of his shirt said, "A white male, forty to fifty years old. The neighbors say his name was Charles Norton. That checks with the driver’s license in his wallet. Been driving here about a year," "That’s it?" The uniform shrugged. "Whoever did it used a shotgun. Made a real mess." "Where’s the body?" Judy asked as she wrote the victim’s name in her notebook. "Spread all over the front seat of his car," the officer answered, leading the way around the corner of the house. A tall hedge ran along the property line. A late-model Cadillac had run off the concrete and stalled with the rear-end buried in the hedge. It couldn’t have been going very fast or it would have plowed through the barrier easily. "It looks like he was backing out of he driveway this morning, " the officer said, reading the crime scene. "Someone was waiting for him on the other side of the hedge and let him have it with a shotgun as he went past." Ben nodded. Judy made a couple of more notes. "Who found him?" Ben asked. "The man across the street noticed the car when he came out to pick up his newspaper at about nine-thirty this morning. When it was still there at eleven, he came over to look. Then he called us." Ben grunted. "Anyone see or hear anything?" "No one we’ve talked to so far. The nearest neighbor is away on vacation, and all this foliage probably did a good job absorbing the sound of the blast." The forensic team and the Coroner’s man arrived at the same time. While the specialists got to work, Ben and Judy walked around to the far side of the hedge. They quickly located the place where the murderer had waited for his victim. There were no cigarette butts or cartridge casings to mark the spot, but the grass was heavily trampled showing someone had waited patiently--perhaps hours--for the victim to appear. Next, they entered the house to look around. They walked through the rooms to get a fast, general impression, then sat on the living room couch. Ben placed the dead man’s wallet on the coffee table in front of them. "Notice anything strange about this place?" Judy asked. " What do you mean?" "The furniture--it’s all new. And there are no photographs. Everyone has pictures of friends or relatives, but this guy didn’t." "There are no snapshots in the wallet, either," Ben said. "There are plenty of credit cards though. They all look fairly new, and his driver’s license was issued last year." "What do you make of it?" Ben made a face. "It’s too soon to tell , but the killing has all the markings of a professional hit. Maybe the forensics experts will come up with something we can use--or the Medical Examiner. In the meantime, we’d better get positive ID on the dead man--wire his thumb print to Sacramento and a full set of prints to the FBI. Then finish talking to his neighbors. One of them may have noticed something." But none of them had. No suspicious strangers had been in the area, and no one knew anything about the dead man. No one knew what he did for a living though he seemed to have plenty of money. He had moved into the neighborhood the year before and kept to himself. Almost everyone suggested they talk to Mrs. Forster, a widow whose house was three down from the victim’s. "She sits on her porch with her cat most of the day," they said. "Maybe she saw something." They rang the woman’s bell, but there was no answer. By then the sun was low in the western sky and they decided to quit for the day. They both had families to go home to. The next afternoon, reports from the Medical Examiner and forensics team arrived. The Medical Examiner didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know except that Charles Norton had received two close-range blasts from a shotgun. The forensics report was a bit more interesting, a trace of blood was found on the side of the right front tire of the dead man’s Cadillac. Upon further examination it proved to be animal blood. The murder weapon had been a 410 gauge shotgun. Ben Glasser called the forensic lab. "I just read your report on the Norton homicide," he said, "but you didn’t say anything about the shotgun shells. Were you able to determine anything about the manufacture?" "Oh, sure, but it won’t do you any good. You’ll never be able to trace them to the store where they were sold," he was told. "Too common?" "No, too old--at least twenty or thirty tears old. They were made with cardboard wads. Modern shells use plastic wadding and the shot is held in a small plastic cup to keep the pattern tight.: Ben and Judy didn’t get nut time to think about that. A report came back from Sacramento confirming the thumb print belonged to Charles Norton who had been issued his first California driver’s license a year before. That was quickly followed by a call from the Justice Department. An FBI Agent was on his way to talk to them. "You sent those prints to D.C.?" the agent asked without preliminaries. "What’s it all about?" "Just routine," Judy explained. "We wanted a positive ID." Then she went on to describe the circumstances. The agent made a sour face and sat down. "His name wasn't Charles Norton. It was Aldo Fermi. He had been a syndicate man for over twenty years, but he bought himself immunity in exchange for his testimony. He had been furnished a new identity under the Federal Witness Protection Program and moved to Los Angeles a year ago. Most of his associates are in New York , so we figured California would be far enough. Apparently it wasn’t." "Any idea who killed him>":Ben asked. The agent shook his head. "That guy has more enemies than the Vietnam War. And when he finished testifying even his friends hated him. The killer was probably a pro brought in from Chicago or new York for the one job. I’ll bet the man was on a plane for home an hour later. That’s the way they work. You can dust off a place in your unsolved file for this one." "Well," Ben shrugged philosophically, "I guess we can’t expect to solve them all." The following morning another investigation brought them within a few blocks of Mrs. Forster’s home. Judy reminded Ben she was the only neighbor they hadn’t talked to yet. They parked in her driveway and rang the bell. The door was answered by a frail little gray-haired woman who had to be at least seventy years old. She wore a wrinkled cotton house dress. Her pale eyes were red rimmed, and her hair was in disarray as though she hadn’t run a comb through it in days. "Mrs. Forster? We’re from the police. May we come in?" Judy asked, then moved forward without waiting for a reply. The living room was old fashioned but neat. Several framed photographs of a gray and white alley cat sat on tables. Another shared the mantle above the fireplace with a row of trophies. "What’s wrong, Mrs. Forster? You seem distressed," Judy said placing a reassuring hand on the woman’s arm. "My cat," the old woman said, "Prettyboy was run over on the street a couple of days ago. It was terrible!" "That’s too bad," Judy said. "I know how hard it is to lose a pet. They become part of the family." Prettyboy was all the family I had," the woman said. "The worst thing was the driver did it deliberately. I saw it all. He didn’t try to avoid hitting him--he had to swerve make it happen. He did it out of pure meanness." Ben walked to the mantle. "Is this a picture of Prettyboy?" he asked. "Yes. He was a fine cat. A good companion." "And who won the trophies?" he asked. "My husband, Arthur, won most of them. A co[le of them are mine. That was a long time ago. Before he died we used to follow the skeet-shooting circuit every summer." "It’s getting late, Ben," Judy said. "We’d better be going. Nice to have met you , Mrs. Forster." "Err… right," Ben agreed. "Nice meeting you." As they walked back to their car, Judy said, "Are you chinking what I’m thinking?" "Sure," Ben answered. "That’s what makes us such a good t4am. We think alike." "That’s right.," Judy said, "But we can’t solve them all." #### This story was originally published in "Woman’s World" Copyright. All rights reserved