Henry called at seven and said he might not make it, his ribs were still hurting. I thought Riley might ring, but he didn’t.
At nine I picked up the telephone receiver. My palm was moist and my hand a bit unsteady. My ears seemed unnaturally keen, magnifying the faint traffic noises far below. I lit a cigarette and dialed. The familiar whirring seemed much too loud.
I got the reply I wanted and began talking.
“—this you, Riley? Goody. Remember that talk we had down in your office. I said I’d call you when I had it worked out.”
Silence.
“—Proof? Listen, damn it! I picked up a little in formation here and there, and it all fits. I may have to check out a few things, but I’ve got the kicker.”
Silence.
“—Damn it, I tell you, this is right!” My voice raised.
More silence. It was spooky.
“—No, I won’t tell you—over the phone…I can’t get out—this damn foot is killing me…”
Silence.
“—Don’t come up, then! And take a fly at a wet rope yourself, you pig-headed Irishman. I tell you I can put the finger on this killer, and—”
I swore and banged the receiver down viciously. I cursed under my breath a while, and had another smoke. The room felt stuffy, overheated. I blasted out with another curse, then a low cry of pain. I hobbled over to the daveno.
Sweat began trickling down from under my arms, my ears began an odd, high pitched buzzing. They do that sometimes when I’m weak or scared.
In spite of a dry mouth, I finished my cigarette.
I hobbled into my bedroom, cursing policemen and killers. I made the usual preparations for going to bed. I let one shoe strike the floor. Out in the living room a dim light burned, as usual.
The bedroom door was ajar. I stretched out between the sheets, aware of the comforting resiliency, but not enjoying it. I moved around so the bed squeaked, as sweat from the nape of my neck soaked into the pillow. My teeth were clamped together.
I waited as crazy, nebulous thoughts pranced through my head. Riley wanted proof, did he? Was it snowing outside? The blue color of Rita’s eyes…
Then carefully, breathing cautiously as I turned out the light at the head of my bed, I slid off the bed on the far side. Very quietly. My experience stalking game served me well, now. I knew how to move lightly, even on a gimpy leg. The game I stalked now had two legs, however, instead of four.
Kneeling there, I punched the covers up to fit a mound I would make if I were in there, snoozing.
Enough light came through the half-opened door to make this facsimile appear almost real.
Slowly, ever so slowly and quietly, I retreated to the darkest corner of the bedroom. Like an animal I crouched at the end of the dressing table, my clothes still on—except the shoes. I didn’t want to hide in the closet—I wanted to be able to move, and fast. During the day when I had cleaned out I had unscrewed the bulb in the overhead light fixture.
I waited, my hands clenching and unclenching. Almost like separate entities, they, too, waited for a killer. The radiator gurgled and the pipes rattled. The bulging shape on the bed looked real enough, but very still, too. Had I erred? We would see.
How do you wait for a murderer to move in on you? Your fingers tremble, and you hate and hate until you get crampy in the guts and your groin aches. I could have found myself a weapon of some kind, but I didn’t want one. I wanted that throat under my fingers, as I had dreamed it. I wanted to feel the flesh get pulpy and bloody, hear the voice scream for mercy as my thumbs gouged and jabbed.
Again I had offered myself up as top prize in our little game of blackout. And I might wind up under the bingo table.
What I had worked out in my head was incredible, and without positive proof it was even fantastic. As Riley had told me, he couldn’t arrest anyone on mere suspicion. We had to have evidence—the kind that would stand up in court. And we were dealing with a maniac, a clever schizo who was absolutely in the clear on two murders—and maybe three. Careful, confident and brilliant.
I waited.
I don’t know what time it was when I heard light footfalls outside, near the front door. Blood pounded in my head, my lips were dry. I crouched in my best position for sudden movement. My ears quit humming. All my senses seemed abnormally sharp.
The footfalls were on the front porch. What if I’d flubbed? Suppose this was Marie, or even Rita, slipping up to see me? I didn’t think so. This tread was light, stealthy. My hands knotted.
A scarcely-heard contact of metal on metal—a key being inserted in the front door lock. A simple skeleton key would do the trick, and the intruder must have known it.
The door opened. The floor creaked in my parlor, then in the living room. The visitor was moving swiftly.
I took a deep breath as my bedroom door eased open. A figure silhouetted in the rectangle, alive with vicious motion. A slim shadow that looked like a club detached itself from the central darkness. The smaller shadow swung around in a savage arc, landing on my bed with a soft thud.
A startled, awful curse as the trick revealed itself. The shadow pawed at the wall by the door, searching for a light switch. A paw found it and clicked it up and down. Another burst of profanity as it advanced into the room, toward me, the club poised and ready.
“Where—are you—you dirty—heathen?”
“Right here,” I said, and leaped.
If my legs had been up to par I’d have nailed the character on the first rush. Maybe I had been quiet and inactive too long.
The shadow jumped backward so swiftly I nearly missed. I had aimed at the throat, my fingers like claws, and had to settle for the legs. My own legs had betrayed me again…
The momentum of the leap and my grip on the legs threw my enemy off balance—the figure crashed headlong. The club that had been swung at my head rattled across the bedroom floor and I heard it strike the radiator.
The shape writhed and kicked viciously, scrambling to get away. From its throat came a hoarse whinny of fear. One foot caught me on top of the head. I cursed like a wild man and wrenched the other foot out of kilter.
A thin scream of pain—fists thumped the floor in agony, but still that other foot pummeled me. The shadow wasn’t fighting—just trying to get away…
I snagged the other leg, yanking it hard over, twisting. The cry of agony seemed to burst in my ears. I scrambled forward and flipped the shape over. My good arms and shoulders were with me, now.
Ignoring a savage flail of fists, my hands found their mark—in the killer s throat.
I seized the neck, banging the head on the floor…I banged and gouged as all the accumulated hatred and madness roared through me like a tornado. The protesting arms and fists dropped away. I had the fiend now, I had it dazed, with the throat under my thumbs…
“…Mark!”
…a voice came through to me.
“Mark—don’t! Don’t kill…”
The voice was familiar. I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Some of the madness leaked out of me. My grip eased as a shuddering, gasping breath made the shape beneath me seem more human and less a monster of the night…
I pulled my hands away, the crazy urge to kill now tempered with a touch of sanity.
“I—heard—somethin’—wrong—Mark—from th’ pipes…”
I lurched to my feet, wringing wet.
“—I come on up, Mark—I was—afraid…”
I swallowed convulsively, wiped my face with my hands and found my voice. It was croaky.
“Easy does it—Joe. Thanks! Thanks for coming—”
If he hadn’t arrived when he did I’d have been a killer, too…
Joe moved into the living room and turned on more light. He returned to the bedroom door, blinking across at me.
“You—all right, Mark?”
I nodded. But my legs were shaking so bad I nearly toppled over.
Now my eyes focused on the bedroom floor where our kille
r lay, a trickle of blood seeping out of the contorted mouth, the chest heaving and heaving, as life inched back past the awful bruises in the throat…Over against the radiator, reminding me that the weapon intended for my head had signaled my friend and kept me from killing, lay a baseball bat.
Beneath us lay the one we were after, the dynamiter, the sly loosener of bolts, Henry Dee.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We moved Henry out in the living room, on the daveno.
I was gaining strength now, recovering. The madness cooling inside me left a watery sensation of relief.
I motioned Joe to take a chair and keep quiet. But he had retrieved the weapon, just in case. Henry’s throat wasn’t going to heal right away, but I was hoping he’d come around pretty soon. Before calling Riley, I wanted some answers.
I soaked a towel with cold water and washed Henry’s face. I had a smoke.
Joe squirmed uneasily. “You better—call the p’lice, Mark.”
“Soon, Joe…”
Henry shivered and stirred. He opened his eyes, glanced wildly about. He started to rear up—then fell back with a grimace of pain. Joe’s weapon remained poised.
“I’m—real sorry, Mark…” he muttered. His eyes were closed. His face was twisted with emotion and pain, completely colorless.
“Why, Henry? Why?”
He snickered, very low. “Christ—you know! You’re the bright one. You nosed around…Yeah, you know damn well why! I loved her—I loved Angela. Her folks wouldn’t let her out—we had to sneak around. Then she got pregnant—Christ! We—were going to run away…”
Joe muttered darkly.
I sighed. Henry seemed to fight with himself. A shudder went through his long body.
“Then you killed her!” he screamed.
I shook my head. He stirred, his hands restless. My mind was busy, thinking back, remembering that fatal accident…the white figure coming out of the fog…coming, as if…
“Listen, Henry—listen good. Yes, my car killed her. I tried to miss her and went in the ditch. But what was she doing out there, so late at night? What? Didn’t she purposely walk out there? Didn’t she actually commit suicide?”
I had to know. Maybe if I did the monstrous dreams of her frightened, contorted face would stop hounding me.
“Henry, didn’t her folks raise so much hell with her, she was desperate, and…”
“Awful, awful!” he whispered. “The sinful way…”
Perhaps he was still in shock.
“But you hated me, like an adder,” I went on. “You shifted the blame to me. You tried to return the favor, and nearly made it. I was laid up. So you planned it out very neatly. You wired my bungalow, put a microphone in here, ran a wire down to your cabin. It’s just under the hill. You waited. You wanted to get me with a car, as I’d got Angela. It was a fixation…”
His head moved sideways. His color was bad.
“Why did you kill Louise, Henry?”
That triggered him. “You know that, damn you!” A stream of gutter curses burst from his lips. “I—thought I had found—a girl that would make me forget—then I found out she only cared about me—because I knew you! She kept wanting to come up here! I tried to scare her out of town—but it didn’t work—she called you! I saw her showing herself off in front of you! I knew then she was evil! Not pure, like Angela. Not pure…God damn you, you took Angela, and now you were gonna take Louise, and…”
He fell back, fainting. His throat looked terrible.
I grabbed the phone and used it.
* * * *
“So help me, it was still too risky,” Riley said, rubbing his hand across his heavily whiskered face. He had black smudges under his eyes.
It was nearly eleven on a very long day. Riley had stuck around after an ambulance had taken Henry to the hospital under guard. I had thanked Joe again and sent him on home. And I would be thanking him for many a day to come.
“This foot of yours wasn’t banged up at all, then—”
“I faked it all the way, like I faked a conversation to you. I had to be careful what I said—with his ‘ear’ catching every word…”
“How in hell did you figure this Schmidt girl?”
“That was the toughest to reconcile. Why?—if Henry was following his pattern of torturing me…it was a combination of hatred for her interest in me, and a way to set up his alibi by appearing to be a victim. The dodge isn’t new, at all. He was my friend—I thought—so the ‘killer’ had struck at him! When he found out what she was, interested in m-e-n, period, and maybe anxious to remarry, he wanted her off his back. He was evidently still carrying a torch for Angela. Louise was a born flirt, it stuck out all over her, literally, and when she acted hot for me, Henry acted—and fast. The trip to police headquarters was a nice blind, too—throwing you and everybody else off the trail.”
Riley grunted.
“Everything about the ‘fatal auto accident’ jibed except for the vague suggestion that there didn’t seem to be a car around! He didn’t need one. Naturally, it took guts to bash his own ribs in against a curb and fall down beside Louise—after he’d banged her head on the pavement. The fog was a big help, too.
“Later, he put strands from her coat on a car in a used car lot, fixed it so it would look like it had been ‘hot-wired’ and everybody was sure a car had hit them. The old wino told me about what Henry had, except for the car. He hadn’t heard one at that intersection…”
Riley nodded. “What about this telephone tormenter stuff?”
“He wanted to make me squirm, torture me—and he did…”
“The guy really had you pinned down!”
“When you go over his cabin I think you’ll find all kinds of interesting little gadgets, including a big tape recorder to catch what was going on up here when he was at work or away from home, and also a little battery-powered portable model he used mostly in phone booths. That cackle was probably taped and speeded up and re-taped. It takes all the personality out of a voice. An imitation of a call he ‘received’ should have given me some kind of a hint—but he had me blinded with friendship…
“I’d been thinking a lot about Lewis Cable, naturally. He knew volts and watts. And Henry was dropping hints about Cable, too. Nothing really clicked until I was up the river, and Rita Snell tried to call home one her portable phone. At first I thought somebody had rigged a short-wave receiver that would pick up or intercept telephone messages. I know a ham operator who did that one time and the phone company built a fire under him. You stay on your own frequency, or else. That didn’t jell, so I remembered Joe’s hints about scratching noises the first night I got out. Wires.
“Another lead was the way the calls to me were timed. Real fiendish. How could anyone know what was being said here, in my quarters? Simple—with a mike. Leading to where?
“I had figured it went over to Cable’s apartment—but I couldn’t see him being that subtle, or find any motive. Of course, there didn’t have to be one with a real gone psycho.
“It was quite a jerk to start thinking about Dee. I already told you what he said, earlier…I’d hardly known him, before my accident, when he damn near killed me. But he began coming around, ingratiating himself very carefully. Doing favors, running errands. And waiting. He wanted me to suffer…”
“You’re sure long-winded,” Riley commented.
“Believe me, it’s a relief to get it out of my system. I don’t know when he doctored the steering gear and brakes on the old Chevy—it sat out here in front for months. The dynamite under the Ford looked clumsy—some guy like Cable would have done much better. So perhaps we were dealing with an amateur electrician, not a pro. I considered Chester and Ben Cook, as you did. But it had to be related to Angela Stein. Cook had known the Stein family, and furnished ideas—but why would he be avenging her death? Vently is smart enough, and maybe a little unbalanced, in his own way, but I didn’t think he had enough guts.”
Riley sighed. “If you’re through spou
ting, I got a little information, too. We located Cable in Spokane. He took off because he was behind in his rent at both places, down on his luck, and a skip-tracer got his address.”
“I think he was beginning to suspect our friend, too,” I said. “Henry knew better than to try his taped calls on a professional.”
“It figures.” He chuckled. “Dee musta got an earful now and then.”
I squirmed. Some things are better forgotten.
When he had finally departed, I raised the window blinds. The hulk of Cable’s empty apartment stood out against the glow of neons along Main street. The whir of distant traffic didn’t sound quite so ominous.
I stood up and walked around restlessly. Too late to think about going home tonight—or calling a date. But tomorrow I would. Two lovely gals available…which one?
I took a coin out of my pocket and flipped it in the air. Heads, Marie—tails, Rita.
At that instant the phone rang. I missed the coin, picked up the receiver. A nice, soft voice sent shivers along my spine.
I grinned, staring at the coin shining on the living room carpet.
“You just won, lovely,” I said.
You’ll never know which face of the coin I was leering at, buddy.
MURDER IN LAS VEGAS, by Jack Waer
Copyright © 1955 by Jack Waer.
Chapter One
The light came through the window in a flood when I opened my eyes. I turned away from it and waited for the pain to stop pulsing. I kept getting a dial tone in my head as if a receiver were off the hook. My mouth was dry and full of rusty nails.
Sitting up made me ache down to my toes. I rested my throbbing head in my hands and silently begged it for mercy. The pressure of pain eased as if in response to my pleading and I began to do some unimportant cataloguing: the beige rug, the red curtains, the blonde wood furniture—resort stuff that furnished the living room of my apartment. I had slept out the night on the too-short lounge beneath the windows, and my suit was a mess.
But I felt worse—not with pain; with remorse, with disgust. Some bright morning for Steve Walters, and his revolving head. What sort of gambler could I be to bring myself into a sloppy situation like this? I started to get up, and sat right down again because it was even worse than I thought. And it took several more painful minutes to get on my feet and stay on them with only a little wobbling.
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