A Killer is Loose

by Gil Brewer

  “Nothing, just thinking.” I was thinking how I was in this now, right now. I had thought once that things couldn’t get any worse. It goes to show you.

  He walked over across the porch, kind of looked sideways at me, waiting for me to come along, too. I went along. He looked at the windows. They were shuttered. He tried one and the shutter came open. That’s the kind of luck they have. A madman’s luck.

  “Well,” he said. “Let’s see, here.”

  He opened the shutters all the way. They were cobwebbed. He tried the window and it was locked. So he reached out with the gun, and clunk, the pane shattered and tinkled onto the porch floor at our feet. It was all done in a single gesture.

  “Well,” he said. He reached inside and unsnapped the catch and slid the window up. It didn’t stick; it went up real easy.

  “Pick up the broken glass there, Steve. Toss it inside the house.”

  He looked at me as I hesitated. Then I picked up the glass and tossed it inside. It didn’t make any noise when it hit in there. It was like throwing it into dark air and having it vanish.

  “O.K.,” he said. “Let’s go in. Go ahead.”

  I went in and he came through after me, fast.

  “Now, this isn’t any good,” he said. “We aren’t going to be able to see.”

  “Not very well,” I said, thinking that maybe this was my chance.

  “Well,” he said.

  We stood there for a while, like that. Light from the street light lit up the room very dimly, but that was all. If I moved, he’d be able to see it.

  “We’ve got to have a light,” he said. “That’s all there is to it. Now, Steve, you walk right ahead of me and try to find the kitchen.”

  He dropped the roll of blueprints on a chair. I watched him standing there, facing me, and I wondered just what he was thinking.

  “Why do you want to find the kitchen?” I said.

  “In a house like this,” he told me, “they’re bound to have a flashlight lying around someplace.”

  He knocked me in the back with the gun. It was a friendly gesture, I suppose, that was all. I moved through the room and everything was black or gray, but you could still make out shapes in here. I headed toward an arch that seemed to lead into what looked like a hall. It was real black there, all right. If I could get in there with him, maybe I’d have some sort of a chance. He couldn’t see any better than I could.

  We came to the arch and I felt the gun muzzle snuggle up against my ribs.

  “I hate to do this, pal,” he said, “but you know how it is.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Makes me feel foolish, pal,” he said. “But you’ve got me jumpy, ever since back there in the car. This way I feel better and neither of us will get excited. All right, pal?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I STARED AT THE DARK. It seemed as if he would have to start things. I kind of wished he would shoot. Maybe he’d miss, or just graze me. Sure, I thought, just graze the skin—a surface wound. That’s the way they do, then they whirl and smash the gun out of the guy’s hand and wrestle around and dive for the gun and maybe club him over the head with it. Triumphant, that’s what. Sure, I thought. Go ahead, Logan, whirl….

  “You saved my life,” he said. “I’ll never forget that. I wish you wouldn’t forget it, either. I’m going to need help and I need somebody to talk with who understands what I’m up against. They’re all trying to keep me from going through with this, you know. Well, we’ll do it, by God!”

  “Sure.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I just wanted you to remember. Let’s find the kitchen.”

  It was a big room and there were no shutters on the windows, so light from a street lamp down the way took care of any plans I might have made. Not that I made any. But I could feel myself rebel all the time. Maybe rebellion wasn’t enough. All the way down the dark hall, he’d kept that damned gun in my back and breathed against my neck. Off the kitchen was a pantry and there was a lot of drawer space in there. That’s where we found the flashlight. He never missed, that guy. There were three flashlights.

  “One will do,” he said.

  “Only one of them works,” I told him after I’d tried them.

  “Just flash it on when you need it. We’ve got to go back to the front room and close that shutter.”

  “All right.”

  “The police are sure to be around here,” he said. “But they won’t find us.”

  We went back into the front room and I waited while he went over to close the shutters on the window. He just stood there with one hand reaching out for the shutter, kind of keeping his eye on me, too.

  He turned to me. “Come here, Steve, quick!”

  I went up close to him.

  “Out on the porch,” he whispered. “Quick.”

  “But—”

  “Get out there!” The gun came hard against my side. I climbed through the window out onto the porch and he came through behind me.

  “Crouch down by the railing,” he said.

  I crouched down and then I began to curse inside. Somebody was coming across the lawn, slowly, coming from tree to tree. And whoever it was wore a white dress. Lillian. I went tense, and that gun of his went into my side.

  “You’d like to see her get away, wouldn’t you, pal?”

  I said nothing.

  “Just be quiet,” he said.

  She came along toward the side of the house, staring up at the window we’d broken. She couldn’t see us crouched down in the shadow of the railing. I wondered what she was trying to do. Well, whatever it was, it was all up with her now.

  She came by the side of the porch, then along the front of the railing, still looking at the window. She walked right in close, touching the railing of the porch with her hand. She got almost right up to where we were and I could see her face plain. Angers didn’t move.

  She stood there with one hand on the porch railing, looking at the window. We weren’t eight feet away. She moved a little closer, still looking, and her face was strained, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. Once something made a noise out on the lawn behind her and she whirled as if she’d been stabbed.

  Then she looked at the window again, listening. She moved another step closer and Angers stood and reached over and grabbed her arm.

  She screamed. It wasn’t loud. But it was pure fright. I thought she’d faint, but she didn’t, and Angers just held her arm and lifted her straight up from the ground over the railing.

  “Oh, God!” she said. She kept saying that. She didn’t try to fight, she knew it was useless. She dragged against the railing, and he pulled her right on over, like a sack of potatoes.

  All the time I’d kept an eye sharp for any opening. But he’d been just as careful not to let any opening occur. She was between us and he grinned at me, with his eyes shining a little the way they did when he got excited.

  “You followed us!” he said. “Damn you, Lil!”

  “Please, please! Let me go!”

  “I should kill you, Lil—right now.”

  She sobbed hysterically, looking straight into his eyes, sobbing, trying to pull away from him. I could see him strain and grip her arm as hard as he could. She began to make little mewling noises in her throat, broken with the sobs.

  “Get in the house,” he said.

  He gave her a hell of a push toward the window. It sent her sprawling against the window sill. She was sobbing and shaking all over. She landed on her knees, then suddenly rose up and started to run straight for the other side of the porch.

  “Lillian!”

  He took a quick step and nailed her hard. He held onto her and she came around like a whip, up against him. Crying, she held her head back and stared into his face.

  “In the house!” he snapped.

  Again he hurled her at the window. I was over there by the window now and I caught her, holding her arms.

  I looked at him. He wasn’t s
miling now, he just stood there pumping that gun up and down like a pump handle.

  “Inside,” he said. His voice was flat and dead again, and the gun kept working up and down in his hand.

  “Do like he says, honey,” I told Lillian. “Come on, now. It’s all right. Climb through the window.”

  She was weak and trembling, trying to say something. Then she gave up and crawled through the window.

  Inside, Angers closed the shutters on the window, and we stood there. All of us were breathing hard. Lillian kept right on crying and it was worse than hearing that little girl. The sobs came up out of her from way down inside and you could tell they hurt.

  “What were you trying to do, Lillian?” Angers said.

  She burst into wild crying and I held her up against me. She was scared and like a little kid. She’d get to sobbing backward in a wild string and you’d wonder if she’d ever stop.

  “Let her go, Steve.”

  I took my arms away from her and she kept crying. I never saw anybody so frightened and crushed as Lillian was right then.

  “I asked you what you were trying to do,” Angers said.

  “Oh! Go away! Please, go away!”

  “Women. They’re all alike,” Angers said. “I thought I could depend on Lil, here, pal. But you see? You shouldn’t think about your wife, either, pal. Hell with them.”

  I said nothing.

  “I—I followed you,” Lillian said brokenly.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “I want him to know!” she said. “I want him to know!”

  “I know without you telling me,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I followed you because— And then I lost you. I couldn’t find you. I followed you from where the car wreck was, but I lost you, and all the time you were in that house next door.” She began carrying on loudly again. “Oh, if I’d only known! I looked all over for you. Then I saw you come out of there and come over here.”

  “That’s enough,” I said. I got it all right, and I didn’t want her to say any more. Likely he got it too. It didn’t matter. But just her saying any more might get him wound up to where he’d blast her with that gun.

  “You could have called the police, then, is that right?” Angers said. “And you were just checking here to make sure we were staying long enough so you could phone the police, right?”

  She said nothing. I could feel her fright, though. It seemed to seep from her to me and the tension in the house became stronger.

  “Too bad,” Angers said. “You went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

  He was right. Leaving the car as she had would have done no real good. She wouldn’t have been able to tell the law anything of value. So she’d taken it into her own hands and tried to follow us, pin-point us. But she hadn’t been able to contact the police.

  She’d lost us when we went into the house next door because of that damned piano.

  Now all of us were dancing in the dark….

  She would have been safe if she’d stayed away. That’s what got me. If she’d just stayed away and not been so bloody brave. She had to go and be a brave one.

  “Anyway—anyway, two are better than one,” she said.

  I looked to see how he’d take that. I’d got what she meant, but he didn’t say a word. You could talk about anything right to his face. Maybe he didn’t do anything because there wasn’t anything to do.

  “Listen,” he said. “I feel funny. I don’t want to kill you two.”

  We watched him. I could feel her stiffen beside me.

  “You’re my pal,” he said. “Aren’t you? Hell,” he said. “Don’t make me kill you. Don’t do it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. His voice sounded as if he were holding himself down.

  “Well, you’re back now, Lil,” he said flatly. “I still like you.”

  It probably wouldn’t matter even if he’d seen the look of fear she shot him right then. I didn’t know what to do. Maybe she thought two were better than one against Angers, but I didn’t. Alone, I might have had a chance. This way, I’d have to be looking out for her. I didn’t like it. It was bad enough just watching out for myself.

  “Why didn’t you keep going when you left the car?” I said.

  “Maybe you should have, Lil. Maybe Steve’s right.”

  “I couldn’t—”

  I didn’t know how to manage it. I had to win his confidence back. If he’d ever really had any confidence in me. There was something about him, the way he was now. It was a little worse than usual. Everything was drawn taut. Probably because of the episode with Lillian, finding her that way. One slip was all he allowed. I’d made mine back there in the car. So had she. But you couldn’t tell with this guy.

  He got his roll of paper, tucked it under his arm.

  “Now, let’s go upstairs and find some clothes,” he said.

  “Sure, Ralph.”

  There weren’t any angles. I hadn’t been able to jump him because he didn’t leave himself open. Even out there on the porch, he’d had that gun on me all the time. We were trapped, as trapped as you can get. And all the time I kept trying not to remember Ruby, because thinking of her drove me wild.

  He waited for us to move, standing there with his roll of paper under his arm, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other. He was too quiet.

  We went into the hall. By the stairway was a small table with a telephone on it and he told us to wait a minute. We stood by the stairs with the circle of light from his flash playing across our feet.

  “I had to do it,” Lillian whispered to me. She had quit sobbing, but her chin was trembling. “I just had to, Steve!”

  Angers was listening at the telephone.

  “It’s working,” he said. “I’ll use that later.”

  Folks left their phones connected when they went away from down here. Otherwise they might not be able to get their phone back from the company. Too much demand.

  Lillian and I started up the stairs. She held my hand and I wished there were something I could do for her. Angers came along behind us.

  “You tried to shoot me, Ralph,” she said, turning and releasing my hand.

  She was getting hold of herself, but I wished she hadn’t said that. Maybe she was rattled.

  “Shut up about that,” he said. He came up behind us and stopped. He held the light on the stairs.

  “Why did you do that, Ralph?”

  “I said for you to shut up about that!”

  I took her arm, trying to warn her. That’s what was the matter, she was so frightened she didn’t know what she was doing.

  “Let’s get on upstairs,” I said.

  “You’ve got to have faith,” he said, jamming his head close to Lillian’s. “Faith in what I’m trying to do. You’ve got to have faith,” he said. “Faith!”

  “Sure,” I said. I pulled at her arm.

  She was staring at him, starting to back up the stairs. Then she turned around and would have run if I hadn’t held to her. Her breathing was fast and shallow. I turned and went along beside her. It was pretty bad when you turned your back on him.

  “We’ve got to get some clothes,” I told her. “We fell in the drink, didn’t we, Ralph?”

  “Yeah, pal.”

  As we reached the top of the stairs, turned to walk down the hall, I heard a car out on the street.

  “We’ll try the closets,” Angers said.

  I heard another car outside on the street, then, and I heard it stop nearby. Then another car came along and stopped. I didn’t say anything, but Lillian had heard, too. She touched my hand with hers. I prayed it was the police. But, maybe that was the wrong thing to pray for. If we could only warn them some way, let them know where we were. Only you never knew what he’d do.

  “Empty,” he said, glancing into a closet, flashing the light around on the floor.

  There were no shutters on the bedroom windows up here. If he didn’t notice the cars out there, he might accidentally flash tha
t light on one of the windows. It would be all they’d need. So far he had used it only to glance inside the closet.

  We went into the hall again and made a tour of the upstairs. In one closet there were plenty of clothes. Suits, dresses, and a pile of white shirts sitting on a shelf. The closet was thick with the odor of moth balls.

  He made us select clothes to wear, even Lillian, and he took a suit for himself.

  We were dressing when the siren moaned. I’ll bet some copper cursed like hell because he’d tripped the button without meaning to. It moaned almost like the wind, but you knew right off it was a siren.

  “They’re here,” Angers said. “It took them long enough.”

  Lillian was dressing right there with us. In the pale light she had a gorgeous body, all right. She had long legs and her underwear was very tight, her breasts thrusting out almost as large as Ruby’s. Angers was watching her, watching her closely.

  “Lil,” Angers said, “I’d almost forgotten. It’s a long time since last night, isn’t it?”

  She was pulling the dress down over her hips now. It was a stretch. The dress had looked red in the light from the flash before he’d turned it off. Now you couldn’t tell what color it was. Only it fitted her very tightly. You could see that.

  She glanced quickly at me, then just sort of looked at him. Then she went back to wriggling into the dress, kind of peeling it down over her hips.

  “You hear me, Lil?” Angers said. “I’d almost forgotten how nice you were. It would be good if you kept reminding me. Funny I’d forget a thing like that.”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  He had on a suit again. He looked just exactly like always.

  He herded us back along the hall to a front bedroom, overlooking the front lawn and the street.

  They were down there, all right.

  “Look,” Angers said. “Look at them.”

  We stood by the window, watching the cops out there. I saw four or five cars, strung down the street, all with spotlights on their roofs. Two of them had their parking lights lit. They went out as we watched. You could see the men walking up and down out there, shining flashlights. They acted as if it was Christmas.