“I'm sorry, Buck. I didn't mean to go female.”
I squeezed Jeanie's hand. “Don't talk nonsense. You're right. Now's the time to be busy, while the killer's away.”
I was talking too much and too fast, and when I struck another match Jeanie was looking at me and frowning. I found her lighter and gave it to her, and I gave Mildred Flagg a book of paper matches.
“Is there anything down here that might be used as a wrecking bar?” I asked her.
“... I don't think so.”
“Let's look, anyway. Jeanie, take your lighter and search along the front wall. Miss Flagg, if you'll take the end of my right, I'll take the one on my left; we'll look until we find something. Something strong for prying—something heavy but wieldy, that can be used for battering. Something for cutting or hacking, such as garden tools or anything with a metal blade.”
It sounded businesslike and brave, almost as though I actually thought something would turn up. We used up most of our match supply, searching every inch of that crowded, littered cellar. Moving furniture, emptying boxes—finding nothing.
If there had been any tools in the cellar, the killer had removed them.
“Jeanie?”
Dejectedly, she shook her head.
“Miss Flagg?”
“No, nothing.”
I sighed and suddenly felt a hundred years old. We had one tool, one weapon. The Luger.
The three of us met near the cellar stairs. The matches went out. Jeanie snapped out her flickering lighter.
“I guess we'll have to think of something else,” I said. “Miss Flagg, you know the house, you know the man up there. Do you have any ideas?”
“Ideas?” The voice was surprisingly strong. “No ideas, Mr. Coyle. If Fred feels that we must die, then he will kill us. I know him well enough for that. I saw him in that English hospital, refusing to die, astounding the doctors by staying alive one day after another, long after they had given his case up as hopeless. Something stronger than medicine kept him from dying, Mr. Coyle. Perhaps it was hate. Perhaps it was his hate for you. If he is determined to kill you, then nothing will stop him.”
Jeanie's fingers tightened on my arm. “Buck, do you have a gun?”
“Yes, but I don't know how much good it will do us.” Maybe—just maybe—if I went to the top of the steps and shot a hole in that heavy plank door, a hole big enough to put the Luger's muzzle through, there was a slight chance that someone in this quiet neighborhood would hear it.
Jeanie was enthusiastic. “Buck, we've nothing to lose by trying!”
Nothing but our lives. But that had already been decided by the killer. “When you're in a tough spot, do something, even if it's wrong.” It was an old Infantry axiom. Jeanie would have made a good soldier.
Jeanie snapped on her lighter until I got my bearings. “Well,” I said, “we'll give it a try. But you ought to know our chances.”
“A hundred to one?”
“A thousand to one, if we're lucky. Even if someone hears the shots, they'll probably think it's a backfire.”
“One in a thousand is better than nothing.”
I nodded, and she snapped out the lighter. “Stand over to the left of the landing,” I told her. “Miss Flagg, you over to the right.”
At the top of the steps, I tried once more to force the cellar door. It wouldn't budge. All right, I thought, here goes nothing. I drew the Luger and tried to remember if the clip was full. I pulled the clip and counted by feel, counting the cartridge-rim scallops with my thumb. Only six rounds. But they were perfectly clean and wouldn't jam the action. Now if the ammunition just hadn't deteriorated during the fifteen years of storage... With a quick series of finely machined clicks, I put a round in the chamber, held the muzzle about three inches from the door and started firing.
The Luger is a heavy weapon with a lot of power, but I wasn't prepared for the deafening roar, the high-powered muzzle blast that struck my ears like balled fists. The first slug went through the wood, making a near-clean hole, but flattened a little on the sheet-iron covering and must have made quite a hole outside. I took another shot a few inches away, making the inside hole big enough to accept the muzzle, high front sight and all. I jammed the whole length of the barrel through the hole and pulled the trigger one, two, three times. I stopped.
There was one round left and I couldn't make myself throw it away on the thin morning air. Anyhow, for our purposes three shots were as good as four. I withdrew the Luger and shoved it back in my waistband, and then I returned to the bottom of the steps. My ears were still ringing.
“Buck, I didn't realize it would be so loud! Surely someone heard it and will report it.”
“Loud in here, yes, but sound dissipates rapidly in open air.”
Then I thought of something. Now that it was too late, I had a brilliant idea that might very well have got us out of this trap. Instead of wasting that ammunition in a frenzy of wishful thinking, I might as well have located the hinge bolts of the door and shot off the hinges.
I groaned. Hesitantly, Jeanie touched my shoulder. “Buck, what is it?”
“What a fool I am! What an unadulterated idiot!”
“Don't say that!” Usually Jeanie was a highly sensible girl, but there were times when Irish emotionalism got the upper hand, and this was one of those times. I managed a grin to myself in the darkness. I reached for her... And at that moment, the pale halo reappeared above our heads.
“Coyle!” the killer screamed into the vent pipe. “You're goin' to pay for that, Coyle! You'll pay good, before this day's near over! You murderer! You lousy murderer of women and children!”
Then, in an outburst of violence, he began kicking and beating and hammering at the crown top that covered the vent. He must have taken it in his hands and literally ripped it off, for the gauzy halo was suddenly replaced with a shaft of brilliant sunlight.
“You hear me, Coyle? You hear me,Sergeant Coyle?” With heavy, bitter emphasis on the Sergeant. “You'll pay good! All of you!”
“Who are you?” I shouted. “What did I ever do to you?”
We could hear him breathing into the pipe. Long, deep, shuddering breaths, as he fought to control his emotions. “You just think on that a spell,Sergeant Coyle. And think about her. The other one. Remember how she died?”
An old coldness crawled inside me and writhed among my vitals. “What are you talking about!”
Now the voice was grinning. “NowSergeant, you just think a spell on what I've said. It'll all come clear —before you die.”
Unexpectedly, Nurse Flagg squeezed my arm for silence, then she moved directly beneath the ventilator. “Fred... Fred, this is Mildred. Do you hear me?”
The disk of sunlight was dazzling on her white uniform and cap. “Fred...” she called again. With affection and great gentleness. As a mother might call —a fond but grieving mother calling to a mindless child.
“Stay out of this, Mildred. It's got nothing to do with you. Just stay out of it.”
“It's too late for that, Fred. I can't stay out of it, because you plan to kill me, just as you plan to kill Mr. Coyle and Miss Kelly. Isn't that so, Fred?”
He hesitated, but only for a moment. “I've got to, Mildred. If I let you go, you'd want to tell the police —or those doctors. I'm sorry about that, Mildred. I never wanted to hurt you.”
“Didn't you?” I demanded. “Then why did you get her involved in the first place?”
I don't think he heard me. He was thinking of something else. Slowly, he covered the vent pipe, and the shaft of light grew smaller and smaller until it was no larger than a pencil, and at last it vanished altogether. The last thing he said before plunging us into darkness was, “I'm sorry, Mildred. You're my friend. The best friend I ever had.”
Then we were alone again, the three of us, in darkness. Mildred Flagg whispered to herself, “I'm sorry, too, Fred.” And I think she was crying. Crying, not because of the strong possibility that she would be dead befo
re this day was half-finished; for another reason. Maybe she was crying for all the years of loneliness, and the slow realization that anything better was beyond her reach. Or maybe she was crying just because she was a woman.
But she was tougher than she looked.
Mildred Flagg spoke again, her voice steady. “When the time comes for Fred to kill us, he will have to come to us. Fred is not the same person to all of us; we've known him in different lights. We must know the whole man in order to deal with him when the time comes. We should pool our information...”
That had been my notion at first, but now that gnawing sickness wouldn't let me think of anything else.
“Miss Flagg, do you know if Fred was here in Plains City a year ago?”
“Why yes, I think so. But I don't see...”
“This is important to me, Miss Flagg. I want to know when Fred came to Plains City. The exact date, if you know it.”
Miss Flagg hesitated, then said, “I don't remember the exact date, but it was near the middle of August. A little more than a year ago.”
“It couldn't have been September?”
“No. When Fred first called he brought a box of candy for my birthday, the fifteenth of August.”
I tried not to hear the pounding in my chest. “The first week in September was he still here?”
I could barely see her white cap nodding. “Yes, I'm certain of it. He was out of work and I had arranged two jobs for him—Fred is an excellent gardener. But he didn't report for either job. I chided him about it, reminding him that he had been in Plains City almost a month and ought to be working at a steady job.”
“What answer did Fred have to that?”
“That was the strangest thing. He said he had more important things to do. He said that something would soon happen—and when it happened it would be the most important day in his life.”
Now I knew the answer—or part of it. The killer had fed me pieces of the puzzle, wanting me to figure it out for myself. Jeanie, although she couldn't see my face, sensed that something was wrong. “Buck...?” She took my arm. For a moment, I choked on my own rage. Then the rage went cold. I went cold. Even to Jeanie's touch. And I heard myself saying hoarsely, “He killed her. He killed Mary.”
Mildred Flagg didn't know what I was talking about. But Jeanie did. Jeanie hadn't known my wife, but she had known about her. And she knew of the life we had had together. Not that I had talked about it much—Jeanie had a way of sensing those things that affected me.
“Buck... hecouldn't have!”
“Hecould have. He was here at the time of the race. The first week of September.”
“But that doesn't mean...”
“I think it does. Too many pieces fit. And there's always been something about that accident. The brakes failing, the way they did. I checked that Jag the day before we put it on the race course—it was perfect. I know, all brakes fade under race conditions, but they don't go out altogether. Not the ones I've checked and double-checked and even tested on the road.”
Nurse Flagg broke in, her voice trembling. “Please, Mr. Coyle, I don't understand...”
“Mary was my wife. My wife died a little more than a year ago in a racing accident. We thought it was an accident.”
“But now you think that Fred...?”
“Yes, I think he killed her. I don't know how he managed it. Acid on the hydraulic lines, doctored drums or shoes. It could be done a hundred different ways. Of course, a year ago I didn't know there was a madman out to make me pay in kind for those killings that happened so long ago, in a war that's almost forgotten.”
“But why...?” Mildred Flagg began.
“Why did he kill Mary, instead of aiming directly at me? I guess this thing has been eating at him for a long time, and he finally decided that just killing me wouldn't be enough. It had to be done a little at a time, by destroying the ones I loved. First Mary, now Jeanie. Remember what he said, just a few minutes ago?”
Jeanie remembered. I could tell by the convulsive grip on my arm.
“That was just what he said, Buck! That merely killing you wasn't enough. And there was something else. He said that he had known for a year...”
There was a span of silence and no one said anything. A faraway sound worked its way into my brain, and I was vaguely aware that the sound was coming from Miss Flagg and she was crying. Jeanie said something—I don't know what—and felt her way past me to Nurse Flagg. I thought of Mary. That red Jag fluttering through the air like some awkward wounded bird, then bursting into brilliant orange flame. I could almost see it now. The brilliant orange against the deep-blue sky. And the shellburst explosion.
the killer had instructed.
Think about her,
Is that what he had in store for us? Fire? Explosion?
The more I wondered about it, the more certain I became that the killer had finally decided to bring this blood vendetta to an end. In fire and explosive violence. That is the way it would have to be. It was the way the woman and little girl had died.
I had stopped wondering who the madman might be. That no longer seemed important. He had become something more than man—a live nightmare that stalked its victim in broad daylight as well as darkness. And I didn't know how to fight it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We sat mutely in the darkness, Jeanie and I on the bottom cellar step, Miss Flagg off to our right on a bundle of discarded clothing. Suddenly the familiar halo appeared above our heads. Then, as the ventilator cap was removed, a shaft of light stabbed down to the floor.
“It's almost time, Sergeant. The waiting's almost over. I've given you time to think, Sergeant. Have you got it all figured out?”
Something inside me sagged. What was the use of arguing with a hollow, disembodied voice? I heard myself saying flatly, “You killed Mary, my wife. You murdered her. Is that what you want me to say?”
“Part of it.” There was an offhand shrug in the voice. “It was easy. I'm a pretty good mechanic, you know. A few drops of acid on the hydraulic line... Nothing to it.”
I started to yell again, but somehow I knew that if I started yelling now, I wouldn't stop. Jeanie was beside me, holding my hand.
“Fred,” Miss Flagg said thinly, “why... how could you have done such a terrible thing!”
Again, with a shrug of his voice: “You wouldn't understand, Mildred. This is something I had to do. A long time ago, I made a promise, a vow... I swore vengeance for the evil that was done that day. It was the thing that kept me alive after the doctors had given me up for dead. It's the thing that's kept me alive all these years...” The voice trailed off, as though the killer had shut a door on that train of thought. Suddenly he shouted: “Justice! There must be justice! Don't you understand?”
Jeanie, rigid and trembling, shouted back: “Who do you think you are! You're not God!”
And the voice answered serenely: “How do you know?”
I heard Jeanie's breath draw in sharply.How do you know? What are you going to say to a man like that?
“Buck, in the name of Heaven, who is he!”
“... I don't know.”
Jeanie shouted again, “Who are you! Why do you hate us so!”
“Hate you?” He seemed genuinely surprised at the question. “I don't hate you. I don't even hate the sergeant. Please understand, Miss Kelly, what I've got to do has nothing to do with hate.”
“Thenwhy, Fred? Why?”
“... Ask your boy friend, Miss Kelly. Ask Sergeant Coyle.”
He always referred to me as “Sergeant.” That might mean one of two things—either he had actually known me in the Army, or he knewof me through my Army record. That wasn't much help. There could still be a German connection to the woman and little girl. Or he could be just a plain nut who had somehow found out about it—a nut with a “God" complex bent on dishing out his own brand of retribution.
He sighed into the vent pipe, a long, aching sigh filled with bitterness and disappointment. “I'm sorr
y, Sergeant. I was hoping that by this time you'd know me.”
“Why don't you justtell me who you are?”
He sighed again, this time with resignation. “Yeah... I guess I'll have to. It never really meant anything to you, did it? I mean, a little thing like that... A woman shot all to pieces, a dead little girl...”
“What are you getting at?” I asked quietly.
“I was just wondering, Sergeant, what it's like to be a man like you. Tough sergeant. Tank commander. The power of life and death in your hands. I was just wondering. Do men like you ever have nightmares?”
And I said huskily, “Harry Deegan, is that you?”
Jeanie gripped my hand in a small, tough vise. Above us, the killer began to smile. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was smiling.
“Deegan, itis you, isn't it?”
The unseen smile widened. “Now you know, Sergeant. Now you know.”
“You're the one who hired Storch.”
“You're getting it, Sergeant.”
“You paid Storch to kill every man who had been in my tank at Ubach.”
“That's good, Sergeant. Now you're beginning to get it good.” The voice was high-keyed with glee.
I said, “You had Koesler killed. Orlan Koesler, the bow gunner. You had him killed.”
“Yes!” The word came like abrupt laughter.
“And Charlie Roach. You had him killed, too.”
“Yes! Charlie, too!”
“And...” I made myself say it. “And Mary, my wife.”
I heard the breath whistling between his teeth, and I remembered how big his teeth had been, and ugly, with brown speckles on them. “Yes, Sergeant, your wife also.”
For a while—I'm not sure how long—I went off my head completely. Suddenly I was screaming hate into the mouth of the vent pipe, and once I had started I couldn't make myself stop. It seemed to go on and on, a torrent of old fears that over the years had become rotten and vile. Then a white-hot pain exploded like a grenade just above my ankle and raced all the way to my groin. I fell to one knee, holding to the injured leg. The pain didn't last long, but while it did last it was blinding.
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