The Big Witness (A Dragnet Fan Fiction Story) -- Chapter Two

The Big Witness

(A Dragnet Fan Fiction Story)

By: Kristi N. Zanker

Disclaimer: All publicly recognized characters, settings, etc. are the property of Mark VII Limited and Universal. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. I, in no way am associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Dragnet. No copyright infringement is intended.

Warning: This chapter contains brief strong language.

Chapter Two

"What do you think of this one?" asked Ben, after the door closed behind Evie Flowers.

"I don't know. She says it happened five years ago," Joe replied as he shoved the notebook into the inside pocket of his gray tweed jacket.

"There's no statute of limitation on murder."

"I know that."

"Do you think he may have done this to other people?"

"I don't know. What we could do is ask around about his wife's death and if people noticed anything suspicious. We could also see about others who worked at the drugstore at that time."

"It's a start."

"Yeah, let's hope their memories are good."

They were given the go ahead to pursue this case by their superior, Captain Blaine Steve. Exiting the car pool in 80-K, the two men drove over to Flowers Pharmacy. Inside, there were a few shoppers browsing the aisles, and a young boy sat on a stool at the counter, finishing what was left of a banana split. The soda jerk had turned on the malt-mixer to prepare a malt or shake for a female customer that sat near the boy.

"Can I help you with something, gentlemen?" asked a smiling, yet stocky, bespectacled man in a white lab coat over his clothing. His voice rose over the noise of the malt-mixer.

"Are you the propieter of this drugstore?" asked Joe.

"I'm the owner, Bertram Flowers," the man said, and held out his hand. The malt-mixer had then stopped and the pharmacy fell silent.

"We're police officers, Mr. Flowers," explained Joe, showing his badge and I.D. while Ben did the same. Before either of them could shake Mr. Flowers' hand, he had dropped it along with the grin.

"Police? Oh no," he said, quietly, quickly glancing around, hoping no one had heard them. When he looked back, he said with a nervous twitch. "Follow me. I don't want anyone to know you're here."

As per the druggist's instructions, Joe and Ben did as they were told. As they passed an aisle, a woman approached Mr. Flowers and began to ask a question about a product she held in her hand. In his most professional voice he could muster, with the police behind him, he told her he'd be right back after assisting these two. When the three of them went by the lunch counter, they overheard the boy pleading with the soda jerk to make him a root beer float.

"No, Leroy," said the soda jerk. "The banana split was enough. You'll spoil your dinner."

"But I have enough money! I mowed all the lawns in our neighborhood!" The boy who looked over at them and frowned at the empty dish, couldn't been more than twelve years old. His pubescent voice and imploring for more dessert gave everything away.

"Your parents don't like you coming in here all the time."

"You know something?"

"No, what?"

"You really are a soda, jerk!" With that, he jumped off the stool. They could hear the bell tingle as the boy ran out the door.

Ben looked over at Joe with a grin on his face and Joe nodded with a slight grin of his own. Ah, youth! Mr. Flowers ushered them into the back room where the medication was dispensed. It was empty.

"Did she call you?" the druggist demanded.

"Who do you mean, sir," asked Ben.

"I told her not to—" said Mr. Flowers, as he shifted his weight on one foot to the other.

"Told who not to what?" asked Joe, thinking, Hell, this is too easy!

"I had a prescription filled this morning. When I came back from lunch I saw my assistant had typed it out wrong."

"Who was this prescription for?" asked Ben.

"Mrs. Freeman's baby… Did she call you?"

"No one called us," said Joe, impatiently. Nope, this wasn't going to be easy. It never is!

"You see, my assistant had typed out the wrong dosage on the label. It was a dose for an adult, not an infant. I immediately called Mrs. Freeman and told her not to give her baby the dosage that was typed on the bottle. It would kill her baby if she did so! I told her how much to give and to come back in so I can correct the label. I thought maybe something might've happened to the baby."

"We don't know anything about that, Mr. Flowers," said Ben. "We're just on a routine check of the pharmacies throughout the city."

"What kind of a routine check?" asked Mr. Flowers.

"We just want to make sure your poison register is in order," said Joe. His stomach turned to knots.

"Oh! Is that all? Sure, you can see my register. I follow all the rules. I fill out the paperwork myself and double-check, just to make sure everything's correct. I then get their signature."

Mr. Flowers turned and went into his office. They heard him open a filing cabinet, remove a file and then close it.

"How far back do you need to go?"

"Seven years," said Joe. Those knots grew tighter. Oh, he hoped the man hadn't caught on to what they were trying to get at!

"Here we go, I'm always happy to cooperate with the police."

"Do you mind if we stay here and check everything out? It shouldn't take too long," asked Ben.

"No problem. Stay in the office. You had me scared for a moment there. I thought something may have happened to Mrs. Freeman's baby."

After the office door shut, and the footsteps faded away, Joe and Ben settled into chairs and began to sift through the paperwork.

"When did Evie say her mother passed away?" asked Ben.

"Let me see," replied Joe, as he reached into his inside jacket pocket for the notebook and flipped to the page that held the vital information. "She said her mother died on November 7, 1943. Here's the address and phone number of her father's house." Joe placed his notebook on the desk between them.

"We'll have to check all of that year to see if anything about Mr. Flowers is here. I'll start with January. Here's February." Ben passed that month's sheet over to Joe.

After a few minutes, Joe said, "We should probably make Photostatic copies of these and call everyone."

"I don't know, Joe. This was five years ago. How are people going to remember if they bought any poison?"

"Yeah, you're probably right. Let's just see if addresses or phone numbers match the one Evie gave us."

Intervals of silence followed, occasionally being punctuated with the footfalls of customers and employees roaming throughout the drugstore, the sluggish clacking of a nearby typewriter indicating its typist wasn't very proficient, heightened by the dull growl of the malt-mixer. Inside the small office, a rustle of paper and lighted match would also interrupt the stillness from time to time with a few mumbles of "Nothing here." And "Nope." "What about the next month?"

"Who's Rae Waterford?" asked Ben, pointing to a name on one of the past poison registers.

"What?"

"This phone number for a Rae Waterford matches the one Evie gave us. Do you think it might tie into something, Joe?"

"It might. I'll write that name down and we'll call later and see if we can find out who Rae is. Ben, I think we found what we were looking for. What month was that from?"

"April."

"What poison was used?"

"Arsenic."

"Yeah, most of them are either for cyanide, arsenic, or strychnine. The Big Three—in poison."

"Probably one of them was used."

"Okay, Ben. We should talk to the assistant and soda jerk. Maybe they were here around the time of Mrs. Flowers' death."

When Joe and Ben emerged from the office, the druggist was nowhere to be found. They looked in the back, but only could find the assistant, with her back to them, typing a prescription label on a typewriter using the hunt-and-peck method. She looked about sixteen in her brown plaid skirt and cream-colored blouse. Her mass of brown curls were pulled back on either side with two tortoise-shell combs.

"Excuse me, Miss?" asked Ben and the girl immediately stopped typing to turn and see who addressed her. "Is Mr. Flowers around?"

"Oh, he ran out for a minute," she said. "I made a mistake on a label and he went over to Mrs. Freeman's with the right one. I thought I was going to be fired! Can I help you with something?"

"Yes," said Joe, producing his badge and I.D. "We're police officers. Mr. Flowers gave us a file to check, but we're through with it now. We left it in his office on his desk."

"Is anything wrong, Officers?"

"No, nothing's wrong. Just routine," replied Ben.

"That's good. He was so nervous when you arrived earlier. He thought Mrs. Freeman's baby died. I had never been so scared in my life!"

"Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?" inquired Joe.

"What do you want to talk to me for?"

"We just want to know how long you've been working for Mr. Flowers," said Ben. "That's all."

"Oh! I've been here for two years."

"Okay…thank you for your time," said Joe. No help there.

For the second time that day, they saw the soda jerk behind the lunch counter. This time the stools were empty. Joe and Ben walked over to the teen and introduced themselves, again showing their I.D.'s and badges.

"Police?" The thin, dark-haired boy's voice raised an octave, not unlike Henry Aldrich's from radio, upon hearing that nerve-wracking word.

"Everything's all right, son," said Ben. "We were just here on routine. Can you fix us up some milkshakes?"

Oh, sure! Yeah, I can do that!" the young man then smiled and he seemed more at ease than a minute ago. "What kind would you like, gentlemen?"

"I'll have chocolate," said Ben. "Joe? What about you?"

"No thanks, I don't want one."

"But Joe, you love chocolate!" chortled Ben. "Come on, I'll buy you one."

"Well…okay then. What's your name, son?" asked Joe.

"Homer. Homer Franklin."

As the soda jerk prepared their shakes, Joe and Ben made small talk with him. His apprehension continued to wane, but not before he nearly dropped a scoop of vanilla ice cream on his crisp, white apron.

"How long have you been working here, son?" asked Joe.

"Well, let's see. I started in 1942," Homer said, as he now carefully scooped the vanilla ice cream and placed it into two cups of the mint-green Hamilton Beach Triple Head Malt-Mixer. "I was still in junior high then. Mr. Flowers needed a soda jerk. All of the older guys enlisted or were being drafted for the war. Seemed like there was no one left but me. I've been here since then. I just turned seventeen, so I won't be graduating high school until next year. Anyway, I didn't have a bicycle, so I couldn't do deliveries. It was fine with me though. I like being a soda jerk. You meet a lot of people this way—and girls. Besides, I have a horrible sense of direction. I even get lost going home on the streetcar! Missed my stop on more than one occasion," the kid laughed, poured in the chocolate sauce, and flipped the switch.

The malt-mixer drowned out any conversation after that and the three of them waited for it to stop. Once Homer placed the shakes in front of them, the questioning resumed in between milkshake sips.

"You told us you began working here in 1942," said Ben. "Do you remember someone named Evie?"

"Yeah, that's Mr. Flowers' daughter. She doesn't work here anymore," he said, as he began to clean the malt-mixer to get it ready for the next order.

"Why not?" asked Joe.

"She stopped working here when she graduated from high school. Mr. Flowers said she went on to college."

"When was that?" asked Ben.

"Let's see. That was…1946, I think."

"Do you remember when Mrs. Flowers died?" asked Joe.

"Yeah, I remember that. Mr. Flowers said she had been so sick for a long time. He was sad though, but said it was a blessing."

"Did you ever hear him say what she died from?" asked Ben.

"Well, wait a minute. I do remember the doctor coming in here and I overheard the word "cancer." She might've died from that."

"Do you remember the doctor's name?" asked Joe.

"It was Dr. Baird. Everyone around here knows him."

The men thanked the young man for his time and gave him a nice tip. Before the two left, they informed him not to tell anyone they talked with him today. Homer concurred.

Outside the pharmacy, a light drizzle hung in the air as Ben tapped Joe on the shoulder.

"What is it?" he said, thinking his partner may have thought of something that could be related to the case.

"Don't forget," he said, pointing to the flower shop next door, and laughing at the irony of the drugstore's name. "It's Mother's Day."

Joe ended up getting a dozen red roses for his mother, and Ben did the same for his wife.

Ma Friday loved the roses. While Joe set the table for dinner that night, she hummed the Dick Jurgens song 'One Dozen Roses' to herself as she put them into a vase, which was then placed in the center of the kitchen table. The house had no dining room—only two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, living room, and a narrow service porch off of the kitchen where the laundry sink and wringer washing machine were situated. Joe told her about Ben's son singing the M-O-T-H-E-R song and how Amy didn't like the one line about growing old. She chuckled and asked how Dorothy was doing and Joe said he hadn't seen her in a few days. Ma Friday said that they should invite her over for dinner later this week.

She then went on about the day, how she had just finished her spring-cleaning and was going to cook all week so that Joe could have decent meals when he came home from work while she was up in Renton, Washington. At this, Joe protested, explaining that she needn't go through all of that, but the 56-year-old woman persisted, saying that he and Ben ate at too many restaurants as it was. In her eyes, restaurant food was NG—No Good.

When Joe casually told her about his day, during their meal of pork chops, mashed potatoes, and fresh green beans, he talked about interviewing people at the drugstore, to which Ma Friday assumed he had ate there. She then reprimanded him about how eating in drugstores was worse than restaurants and if he kept this up he would get sick. When he informed her that all they had was a chocolate milkshake, she still shook her head. If that wasn't enough, she went on about how he needed his rest and if he kept eating food that was meant for kids and adolescents, and not getting enough sleep, he was going to wind up in the hospital. This drove Joe nuts, but he took it as he helped her with the dishes. For the rest of the night, Joe did his best to avoid his mother. He felt guilty, since it was still Mother's Day, but he couldn't help it. He wondered if other people went through this. He tried so many times to tell her to stop worrying about him and that he was twenty-nine years old, but it was no use.

As Joe lay in bed, trying to fall asleep, he kept thinking about the next day. They could call Evie and meet with her again to see if she knew who Rae Waterford was. Maybe she had a copy of her mother's obituary and that could tell them who they were. It would save him and Ben a trip to the public library. They could also contact Dr. Baird to see what he knew about Mrs. Flowers.

Joe then thought about calling Dorothy, but it was already after eleven. If she lived in her own apartment, he'd give her a call. The house had two extensions-one in the hall and the other in his room. He'd keep his voice low so he wouldn't disturb his mother. With his luck if he were to call now, that landlady of hers would answer and read him the riot act about calling so late. She had to work the next day too, but it would have been nice to hear her voice. Although it was a good idea his mother had tonight about inviting Dot over for dinner, Joe secretly hoped she wouldn't perturb him by throwing in quips about marriage or annoy him by bringing up the war.

He dreaded nights after the last ordeal. Joe had a hard time admitting it to himself, but he was almost afraid to fall asleep. He tried to think of everything else to get his mind off of what had occurred the night before, but it was hopeless. Now, he thought about seriously going to the Chief of Detectives, Thad Brown, and requesting that he and Ben work the night watch from here on out. Of course the man would ask why, and Joe couldn't come up with a rational reason. Perhaps some disgruntled citizen of Los Angeles would decide to go on a murderous rampage, thus calling he, Ben and the entire police force to throw a dragnet around the city. This could and has, in the past, taken many nights. It was often said that they could not go home until a case like that was solved. After working for hours without any breaks, Joe would be so tired, he'd fall into a deep sleep, and the war wouldn't be able to make its way into his dreams then. Oh! This is ridiculous! I'm only thinking of myself! Goddammit, I need to sleep, but I can't!

Copyright © 2017 by Kristi N. Zanker