Dark clouds had started moving in from the west. Though the day was dying, the heat had not relented. Lawns without sprinklers looked naked. Hoses were still the preferred choice of fun for giggling kids. Women wore straw hats with brims as wide as an eagle’s wingspread. Old couples sat on old porches, intimate in their silence.
Traffic was slow because factories and businesses and shops had just closed. When I got on the secondary road leading to the Bennett place, I added twenty miles an hour to the speed limit.
When I was near the estate, I pulled over to the side of the road and cut the engine. I wanted to find out if something was wrong in the house. Announcing myself was not the way to do it.
Adjacent to the estate was a forest of pine and oak. The estate had no fence around it. It would be possible to work my way parallel to the back of the house through the trees and then run for the house without being seen. Possible, but no guarantees.
The trail I found was so narrow that I had to fight low-hanging branches all the way. Any good the sponge bath had done me was quickly lost. I streamed with sweat, both from walking and swatting at any number of flying things that seemed to find me tasty. I tripped once over an extended tree root and was dropped to my knees. Amazing that you can feel humiliated even when you’re alone. I was really pissed at that tree.
All the time I walked, I could see the estate house as a dim form broken by various tree parts. At the point where I planned to sneak across to the back door, I left the pitiful trail and battled my way through branches that were ready for the contest. By the time I reached the edge of the woods, I had cuts on my forehead, my cheek, and my throat. Something had ripped into my right sleeve and cut a hole in it. Sweat had filled the bottoms of my shoes again. Comedians called it flop sweat, but I didn’t like the implications of “flop.”
I crouched beneath a pine tree and gazed out past the heavy shadows to the estate grounds. I checked every window facing me. Empty. The rear of the place was static; it could have been a still photograph. The three-stall garage, the barn, the stable, and the black car William Hughes drove stood in the fading sunlight, their colors dimming now in the lingering plunge into dusk.
I took my handkerchief from my back pocket and tried to wipe myself dry, at least dry enough to hold off any more irritation about the weather. I needed to think clearly and act quickly. Without sweat in my eyes, I scanned the rear of the estate again and decided to make my move.
The run was simple. No problem at all. I stood at the back door, my hand on the knob. I checked the back yard in case somebody was watching from one of the buildings; but seeing nobody, I turned the knob. The door wasn’t locked.
I took a deep breath and eased my way inside. I closed the door behind me with exaggerated care, a pantomime of caution. Stairs led straight down to the basement. On my left were two steps. These led to another closed door that would open on, most likely, the kitchen area. I took the first one and leaned my head against the door. All I could hear was the chatter of the house itself. The plumbing was particularly noisy at the moment. No human noise.
I took the second step, turned the knob. Only then did I become aware of the air conditioning. My impulse was to just stand there and appreciate it.
The kitchen would have served a big-city hotel very well. Two large stoves, a wall of small appliances, a refrigerator that could hold a water buffalo, and a butcher block table running down the center of it all that resembled the deck of an aircraft carrier. Lou had taken his food very seriously.
A red sun was creeping down the window by the sink. A haze was settling across the land. In all those Hammer movies I saw at the drive-in, this is when we saw Dracula’s eyes come open in his coffin. My eyes were wide open now, too, because somewhere in the house somebody was speaking.
I pulled the. 38 from my belt. I moved forward one quiet step at a time, drawn by the voice. All I could tell from here was that a male was speaking.
The kitchen led me to a hallway that stretched from front to back of the place. Near the vestibule I could see the bottom of a staircase that curved out slightly. The voice was coming from a room in that area.
Getting in had been easy enough. This was where it became real work. I didn’t like the exposure that being in the hallway forced on me. If somebody peeked out of that room, I’d have no place to hide. I started walking on tiptoe.
When I got close enough to make sense of the words being spoken, I stopped and listened.
“You weren’t her friends. You said you were. But you lied. I was the only real friend she had. I tried to let it go. I took long trips to try and forget about it. I wanted to get on with my life, but I couldn’t. Then when her birthday came this year-
“I took care of Bennett and Davenport. I would’ve taken care of Raines, too, but the law got to him first.” Then: “You’re going to open that safe for me and you’re going to do it right now.”
I still couldn’t identify him. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t put a name or a face to it. Not anybody I knew well.
A closet door on my right was open a few inches. Glancing inside, I saw her slumped against the wall. The gray maid’s uniform was distinctive.
I jammed the. 38 back down into my beltline and then tended to her as best I could.
This was used as a storage closet. Boxes lined the opposing walls. The center where she lay was open.
I knelt down next to her. When I touched her wrist, her eyes opened. I put a finger to my lips and shook my head. Recognition showed in the blue eyes. The smells were a mixture of perfume, talcum powder, and blood. Her pulse was stronger than I’d expected. She started to sit up, but her body spasmed with pain. She started to fall back against the wall, but I grabbed her before she hit. She didn’t need any more pain, and neither of us needed any noise. I still didn’t know who was ranting on in the living room.
She exhaled in a shaky burst, then began searching her skull with trained careful fingers. She found the wound. When she took her fingers away, they were stained with blood. She examined them without any emotion I could see, like a nurse assessing a patient’s injury. She scowled then. Anger. Good. Right now, that was the most appropriate emotion of all.
We reverted to pantomime. I jabbed my finger in the direction of the kitchen. She gave a slight nod. Even that caused her to wince. I pantomimed standing up. She gave me a shrug. Maybe, maybe not. I got to my feet and then reached down and took her hand. The flesh was callussed and very cold. We started her long, painful trip upward. She rose by a few inches at a time. When she was halfway up, she started to slump against the wall. I got my arm around her waist to steady her and kept it there for the rest of the journey. She was a thin woman of maybe fifty. I’d made the mistake of thinking she was frail. But as she rose, I could feel her strength pushing against the damage that had been done to her head and her senses. There were a lot of prairie people like her. They’d brought their strength out here from the East. Without that kind of backbone, they would never have survived the daily perils of the frontier.
I let her lean against me as we shuffled into the hallway. The man in the living room was still ranting. And ranting it was, a fuming harangue about how they’d betrayed Karen. The words filled the hall. I thought of the Boris Karloff picture Bedlam and how the asylum inmates screamed threats and curses as they flung themselves against the bars of their cages.
We had to stop halfway to the kitchen because she thought she was going to be sick. But she raised her head and opened her mouth, taking in gulps of air. She clutched my arm as she did this. The tough grasp got even tougher for a moment. Then she exhaled and took a step forward. We moved slowly on to the kitchen.
I got her seated in the breakfast nook and went to get her a glass of water. As she took her first sips, I yanked the. 38 from my belt. She’d been looking at it. I spoke in a voice a bit higher than a whisper.
“What happened?”
She set the glass down and wiped her mouth with her fingers, leaving a ghost of blood on her lower lip. “Mrs. Raines and William and Lynn Shanlon were in the living room talking about everything that had happened lately. They were wondering who killed Mr. Bennett and Roy Davenport. Lynn said all this had to have something to do with her sister’s murder. That’s what she called it this time. Murder. Somebody rang the front bell, and I opened the door and it was a man with a gun. He was standing right next to me when you called. He kept pushing the gun into my back. Then he knocked me out and put me in the closet.”
“Do you know him?”
“No. I’d never seen him before. But he looked-insane. Very crazy. His face. Even without his gun, he would have scared me.”
“So he’s got all three of them in the living room?”
Her answer was to grab the edge of the table for support. Her face had gone pale and her blue eyes had dimmed. I’d estimated her age at fifty. Right now she looked seventy.
“I think I need to see a doctor.”
“I think you’re right.” I was up and getting her more water. She’d drained the first glass. “Is there any whiskey around in the kitchen?”
“That’s all right. I can’t stand the stuff anyway.” She rested her head against the back of the nook. She closed her eyes. I brought her water to her. Her breathing came in torrents.
I didn’t sit down again. “I’m going to see what I can do in the living room. I’d call the police but I don’t know what he’d do if he heard a siren.”
“He’s insane, I know that much. I told you about his eyes.”
Put my hand on her shoulder. “You just rest.”
She patted my hand. She still hadn’t opened her eyes. “You be careful.”
The lunacy in his voice was compelling. He was like a deranged Pied Piper. By the time I reached midpoint in the hallway, I realized what he wanted. If he had all the money in Lou’s safe, he would be able to flee. And he would let them live. Well, that was bullshit, and I knew they knew that was bullshit. As soon as he got his money, they’d all be dead.
Linda’s voice was calm. “I’ve told you, Jimmy, I don’t have the combination. You don’t know anything about my father if you think he’d trust anybody with it.”
“Then the colored fellow here, he knows it.”
William Hughes’s voice was steady, too. “We’ve been over and over this, Mr. Adair. Mr. Bennett would never give that combination to anybody. And I mean anybody. He wasn’t what you’d call trusting.”
Jimmy Adair, Lynn’s next-door neighbor.
“You wouldn’t even help your own sister, Lynn. You would’ve let them get by with it. That’s why I had to step in.”
He was jumping subjects. When he spoke to Lynn, his voice went up an octave and the madness was clearer.
Lynn wasn’t as calm as Linda or Hughes. She sounded as if she was ready to snap. “You killed two people, Jimmy. You think that’s what Karen would have done? You killed two people for nothing. It didn’t bring her back, did it? And now you’re going to kill us. You need help, Jimmy. Even if you had money, you’re in no condition to get away. You’re-upset. You’re not thinking clearly.” Then, “William and I spent most of the day talking to a fire investigator in Cedar Rapids. We wanted him to go over the whole report again, see if we could get the investigation reopened. William and I never believed that fire was accidental. That’s what Karen would have wanted us to do-not kill people.”
“I killed the people who killed her-why is that so hard to understand?” His voice cracked; tears rattled his words. “I loved her. If she’d lived, I would’ve asked her to marry me. And she would have, too.” He turned to Linda. “Your father took away the one woman I ever really loved, so I figure he owes me-that’s why I want every dollar in the safe. Every single dollar. Then I’m leaving this town and never coming back.”
They didn’t dare argue with him. Not when he was in the midst of his frenzied fantasy.
The gun blast was so loud, I felt it as well as heard it. And almost directly on top of the blast, I heard a grunt and then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. And on top of that came Lynn’s shriek and Linda’s sob. Linda cried: “You killed him! You killed him!”
“He shouldn’t have thrown that ashtray at me. He was stupid.”
Hughes, a military man, had waited for what he considered his best opportunity. He’d taken the calculated risk of trying to injure or at least distract Adair. Then he would rush in and tackle him. It had been a long, long shot. But it was preferable to just sitting there listening to the madman as he worked himself into the kind of rage it would take to slaughter three people.
In the confusion of screams and shrieks, I was able to run the rest of the way down the hall without being heard. Adair was shouting at the two women to sit back down, sit back down. There were tears in his words; he was coming undone. He might turn on the women at any point.
Lynn saw me before he did. In fact, it was her recognition that made him spin toward me and fire twice. The second shot ripped into my shoulder and jerked me backward two or three feet. I fired my. 38, but the shock of being wounded marred my aim. My own two shots ripped into the wall behind him. Glass shattered.
Lynn was on him now, fighting for his gun. She slapped at him and shoved him and got her hand on his gun wrist.
I started to move, the pain in my shoulder exploding now. This time, the sweat covering me was cold. I managed to get within six or seven feet of him, but that was when he slipped his arm around her throat and swung her around to face me. He’d managed to get himself a hostage.
From where I stood now, I could see William Hughes flat down on the surface of a Persian rug. Linda Raines was crouched next to him, tears glazing her cheeks.
The pain from my wound ran the length of my gun arm. I was having trouble holding the. 38. Bad enough he had Lynn. It would be even worse if he had Lynn and I dropped my gun.
“You listening to me, Lynn?” He increased his grip on her throat. She made a choking sound, her upper body surging instinctively as her breathing was cut off. “We’re going outside and getting in your car. And we’re going to drive out of here. Do you understand me?”
I called on all the private-eye writers I read. I needed their encouragement and guidance. They were always getting clubbed, stomped, stabbed, burned, drowned, and shot, but nothing stopped them from their appointed vengeance. Sure, they had six shots in their chest and one in their head, but by God they always managed to get the job done.
I was falling a little short of their record of accomplishments. All I had was a wound in my shoulder, and here I was dizzy, cold, and losing strength. I was afraid I was going to pass out. I wasn’t going to get a private-eye merit badge for this one.
I had a gun, but Adair had Lynn. “You could’ve helped, too, McCain. People always say you help when they’re in trouble. You should have figured out that that fire was arson. You owed it to Karen.”
“I didn’t know Karen.”
“Everybody knew Karen, and everybody loved her, too.”
Any other time, his madness would have made him a forlorn figure living out some impossible romance in his mind. But he had the gun and he had Lynn and he had already killed two and maybe three times, depending on how William Hughes was. Pity him afterward, Samuel Johnson had said of hanging killers in old London. That applied here too.
He began moving in small jerky steps toward the hall. He wasn’t having an easy time of it. Shuffling along with a hostage in tow isn’t easy. You have to keep a tight grip on her while always keeping track of what the other guy is doing. The hostage could make a break for it; the other guy could make a sudden move you couldn’t respond to quickly enough.
Then I realized his plan. He wasn’t going to take her with him. He was going to use her to get to the car and kill her before he got in it. Nobody was guiltier than Lynn, by his logic. Karen had been her sister. She’d betrayed Karen by not avenging her death. He’d killed the men involved. Now he would have to kill her too.
“God, stop him, Sam! Stop him!” Lynn’s voice was raw, her face a portrait of confusion and shock. Spittle ran down the left side of her mouth. Her knees kept buckling. Adair had to redouble his grip every thirty seconds; otherwise, she’d slide out of his grasp. She slipped into the low moan I’d heard many times in people who were starting to withdraw from reality following a traumatic event. She was coming apart. I had to help her.
I forced myself to stand up straight. For the moment, Adair was wrestling with her to keep her upright. She had to cooperate. If he had to drag her, he’d leave himself open. I’d get an easy shot at him.
I took two steps and started weaving. A new layer of freezing sweat caused me to shiver. Just moments ago I’d been boiling despite the air conditioning.
As I righted myself, my eyes met Adair’s. He had Lynn back under his control. He was watching me closely. I assumed that to him, I might have been trying to distract him, give Lynn a chance to bolt. He couldn’t be sure whether I was for real or just acting.
“God, McCain, are you all right?” Lynn said.
“Doesn’t look like your savior’s going to save you.” Adair vised her neck even tighter.
The worst of the cold was gone, one large convulsion of it that had nearly knocked me down. My palm was so sweaty, I had to squeeze the gun so tight that it hurt. I was still dizzy. I needed to move with great deliberation.
Adair started moving again. They went three or four steps and she kicked him. Both his face and his voice registered the pain. For a millisecond his grip loosened, just enough time to take a single unencumbered step. But he was quick and he was pissed. He swung her back to him and smashed the side of her head with the bottom of his gun. She slumped in his arm. Blood snaked down from her temple. He was better coordinated than I’d guessed. His eyes had never left me.
But he paid a price for knocking her out, and as he started moving again, he discovered what the cost was. Conscious, she walked with him. Unconscious, she was dead weight. An ungainly hundredpound bag of flesh, bone, blood, and water. He cursed. He couldn’t just hold her now, he had to hold her and drag her.
Another convulsion rocked me. I needed to reach out for something to lean against, but there was nothing. A drunkard’s walk as I tried to move forward. One step, two steps, three-
This time I couldn’t stop myself from starting to fall. I didn’t sprawl, though. I was able to hold my descent to one knee.
And that was when it happened. I wasn’t sure of anything until it was over. Instinct guided me. I was too weak to think anything through.
When I dropped to my knee, he opened fire. But he hadn’t been fast enough to follow me down. Two blasts went over my head and tore into some kind of glass in the living room.
He got so intent on killing me that he loosened the arm that held Lynn. She slipped from his grasp to the floor, leaving him unprotected.
I fell sideways because of sheer weakness. He blasted at me again but again he wasn’t quick enough. He’d fired just as I slumped over.
I had a target and I took it. Somehow before it all came crashing down, I got a shot off. I was conscious long enough to see him start to crumble, an expression of complete surprise on his face.
Then Linda Raines called my name and I was gone.