One Monday We Killed Them All

by John D. MacDonald

  “Would a man like Miller hook up with an amateur like McAran?”

  “They couldn’t break Dwight at Harpersburg. That would count heavily with a man like Miller. He’s big, quick and tough. That makes him useful. He’s bright enough, and educated, and he’s full of hate. I’d say Miller might wish he had three Dwight McArans.”

  “Will they—try one of the banks here?”

  “Hanaman is a director at the Merchants. But we better not get carried away. If we add two and two and keep getting seven, we may not pay enough attention to four.”

  “Something simpler?”

  “Miller may have something in mind a long way from here. McAran could leave a little gift of arson on his way out of town.”

  “He’s leaving tomorrow?”

  “I’ve gutted all three shifts to keep him under hundred per cent surveillance. Unmarked cars, good men and an emergency communications link. They picked him up this afternoon when he left a repair garage, and they’re standing by right now a half-block from my house. So let’s hope the town stays so quiet I don’t have to pull them off.”

  “But tomorrow he heads for the hills.”

  “Maybe. But we lose him after he crosses the city line. For two years I’ve had a poop sheet in my desk about a gadget I wanted Larry to buy. It’s a short wave battery pack transmitter, about so big. It transmits a standard signal for about sixty hours, with about a two-hundred-mile range. It comes with two directional antennae you can substitute for the fish poles on two police cars, and you can triangulate the location down fine enough for all practical purposes. You can hide that transmitter on the average car in about thirty seconds.”

  “Nice!” he said. “Very nice! But it isn’t the sort of thing you’d have a chance to use very often—”

  “Larry said never. It took me four years to talk him into the wire tap gear, and five years before he’d let me get the smaller interrogation room bugged. There’s no use wishing for something you don’t have. Johnny, thanks for the job at Harpersburg.”

  “That place gets me. I think it’s ready to blow. All day it made the back of my neck feel funny.”

  “Hudson seem nervous?”

  “I think they’re too close to it to sense it. You get the feeling that everybody in every cell knows just what you’ve said thirty seconds after you’ve said it. The men move on command, but they sure God take their time. In the exercise yards there doesn’t seem to be much, and no laughing or horsing around. They all seem to be standing and watching and waiting for something important.”

  “Maybe it’s always like that,” I said, and stood up.

  “You have to go? How about a brew?”

  Mimi appeared in the doorway. “Don’t leave so soon, Fenn. I haven’t had enough chance to be sociable.”

  “I thought I’d just take a run down and—check on the shift.”

  “Mind if I come along?” Johnny asked earnestly.

  “If you want to. You don’t have to.”

  Mimi laughed hopelessly. “He will, Fenn. He’ll come along. And you’ll both find something that needs doing right away. And I’ll say my good nights to Jack Paar.”

  Three minutes after it was reported to me that McAran had left the city at quarter-to-five on Thursday afternoon, heading south toward the hill country on Route 882, Meg phoned me and said, “Dwight left just a little while ago, dear.”

  Somehow I managed to keep myself from saying, “Yes, I know.” I said, “Oh, did he?”

  “He told me to tell you good by, and thank you for letting him stay with us. He was as excited as a little kid. His station wagon was really loaded.”

  I knew that too. I had a partial list of what was in it. “I guess you need a lot of gear if you’re going to camp out.”

  “When are you going to be home, dear?”

  “A little after six, the way it looks.”

  I hung up. I knew McAran had gone on another errand, earlier in the day. And I’d been wondering about it ever since I’d gotten the report. He’d parked near the phone company office and made a call from a drugstore booth. Then a girl matching Cathie Perkins’ description had come to the car where he was waiting. They sat in the car and talked, and then he drove her to her home. He went in with her remained inside for twenty-five minutes, then came out quickly, slammed the car door and screeched the tires as he started up.

  I finally succumbed to curiosity and tried the phone company. I was told she had been taken sick in the middle of the day and gone home. I tried the house. I asked if I could speak to Cathie and the girl’s voice which answered said, “She can’t talk. She’s sick.” I asked to speak to Mr. Perkins.

  “Oh, Lieutenant Hillyer,” he said. “I was wondering if I should call you. I can’t get anything out of Cathie. She isn’t—in very good shape. McAran was—alone here with her today. I’m worried about her. Maybe she might talk to you.”

  I told Rags to phone Meg and tell her I’d be a little later than I promised. Cathie was in her room. It was a two-story frame house. Mr. Perkins stayed downstairs with the two younger girls. Her bedroom door was open. She sat at a small desk, half-turned so that she faced the window, in a pallor of evening light. I coughed and said, “Can I talk to you, Cathie?”

  She did not turn or move. It seemed a very long time before she said in a weak monotone, “Come in and close the door.”

  When I was standing six feet from her, she slowly turned her face toward me. One brown eye stared at me with childish gavity; the other was puffed fat and shut, blue as a plum. There was a scratch on her cheek, a lesser bruise on her chin. She wore a pale blue quilted robe.

  With very little lip movement she said, “Oh, you were so right—you were so right.”

  I sat on a chest in front of the window. “What happened?”

  “He phoned me at work and told me where he was parked, and I came out. He wanted to talk to me. He seemed very happy and excited, not at all like times I talked to him at your house. He said I should secretly pack some clothes so I could be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. He said he was going away today. He said he’d get word to me in a couple of weeks or maybe less about where to meet him. He said to keep cash around so I could buy a ticket to wherever it would be. He said I had to be “cute” about it. He said I should take a bus or an airplane to some other city first, and make sure I hadn’t been followed by going in and out of department stores by different exits, and then go somewhere and dye my hair a different color and pick a new name to use, and go to the city where I’d meet him. I was confused. I said there was no reason for anybody to follow me, and he said by the time I get the message, there’d be a reason, because the police would want to follow anybody who could lead them to Dwight McAran. He said we’d live rich and have a ball. I said I didn’t want to live like that. We sat in the car and we argued, and I had to tell him about ten times before he began to believe me. He said he thought I was in love with him. I said I was. He said then I ought to come running when he called. I said I could love him but I had to respect him too, and respect myself, and that meant being married and having kids and not hiding from the police. He said we’d never be caught, so what difference did it make. He said I was a stuffy, conventional little prude. By then I was crying because he was a different person from the man I thought I was in love with. Then all of a sudden he changed back again and said he guessed he was wrong. His voice even trembled when he told me that. He said he was in a terrible jam and he was going to be forced to do some bad thing that would get the police after him unless I helped him. He said if there was somewhere where we could be alone, he could explain it all to me. So I came here with him, and the very second he was sure the house was empty, he started laughing and humming and pulling my clothes off, saying he was so glad to find out I was willing to give him a little farewell present, seeing as how I wouldn’t join him later on. He said it was a really sincere gesture on my part, and a nice sentimental end to our five-year romance. By then I was sobbing and screaming
and trying to keep away from him. It happened right down there in the living room. It was like the nightmares where you can’t move fast and you can’t make enough noise, and some animal thing is coming at you and nobody will come and help you. He twisted my arms and tore my clothes, and started raping me on the couch, and we fell off, and he finished raping me on the floor, and when I hurt him with my knee, he hit my face with his fist, but he didn’t get mad. He kept laughing and chuckling and humming. I stopped fighting him as soon as he—was actually raping me, and I think I was in kind of a half-faint. Then I was alone and crying without a sound. I crawled up onto the couch and covered myself with the old green Afghan. I heard the refrigerator door shut and in a little while he came in, and he was eating a cold chicken leg. He threw the bone in the fireplace and licked the grease off his fingers and put his clothes on. He smirked at me and said he wished he could have spent more time, but he had a lot to do. I knew he was going away and I would never see him again, and suddenly I realized it meant I would never have a chance to kill him. I didn’t even know I was thinking about killing him until all of a sudden I was able to make myself stop crying and make myself smile at him. It surprised him. I said that now he’d have to take me away with him. He came over and sat on his heels beside the couch and stared at me and told me he had been just about ready to point out how stupid it would be for me to go to the police about this, because I’d brought him here knowing the house would be empty, and he could prove I’d been visiting him at your house, and I should remember that the first thing I did when we walked in was phone the office and tell them a lie about being taken sick. I made myself laugh. I told him I loved him. When you feel the way I do and tell a stinking animal like that you love him, you feel as if the words would rot your mouth and make your teeth fall out. I said I’d join him whenever and wherever he wanted me, and on his terms. So help me God, I think I made him believe it. He said it was a funny way for it to work out, and I said maybe I was just that kind of a woman and couldn’t help it. He was still a little cautious. He didn’t say I definitely would hear from him, but he said maybe I would. I made myself kiss his filthy ugly mouth and say love words to him. You see, I couldn’t let him walk out of my life and never give me any chance to—ever see him stretched out dead and know I helped do it to him. I said I’d be packed and waiting. I never knew I would want to kill anybody. I can’t tell my father all this. I don’t know what he would do. Dwight actually strutted when he walked out, as if he’d done some wonderful thing. I was going to come and see you and tell you all this. He walked out and then I could cry some more. I got up and picked up the clothes he ruined, and did what I could do to try to be sure I won’t have his baby, and I threw up, and then I had a hot bath, and I took two of my father’s tranquilizer pills, and I’ve been sitting here ever since, not really thinking of anything, but just hating him. I want him to send for me. And I’ll go to him. For a little while I thought I wouldn’t say anything to you. But suppose it goes wrong? Suppose he sends for me and it goes wrong and I can’t hurt him? I’ll have to make certain you’ll get him. So if he sends for me, I’ll tell you. If he comes for me, I’ll find some way to leave you a message. Who did I used to think I was? A missionary? A princess? Why did he seem so romantic? I’m not stupid any more, Lieutenant. I’m a deadly weapon. I’m very smart and very strong. Some day he’s going to know he made the most terrible mistake, the most terrible, terrible—”

  The small controlled voice stopped. The mouth moved and crumpled, and she laid her head on the desk blotter, nested in her young arms, and I could not tell whether she was crying again. When I put my hand on her shoulder, she shuddered. I took it away. I looked at her room in the fading light. On a high shelf was a collection of small dolls in different varieties of peasant dress. My little girl has a Mexican doll she adores. A large tortoise-shell cat sat on her shadowy bed, staring directly at me.

  “Cathie?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you get a chance to, I think leading us to him will be enough. We won’t let you endanger yourself. You’re a very brave girl, a very fine girl. I’m going to send a doctor here to check you over. Dr. Sam Hessian. I’ll brief him. He’s a damn nice old guy. I’ll tell your father it’s because that eye should be looked at. I’ll also tell him that you came here with McAran and quarreled with him, and he pushed you and you fell and he walked out, and you’ve been in this daze because you saw him for what he really is, and your heart is broken.”

  “My heart is broken. Yes indeed,” she said, and straightened up. “I thought you had to be insane to really want to kill anybody.”

  “Your father better not come across your ruined clothes.”

  “He won’t.” I stood up and she stood also, her face twisting with the pain of that effort. “Everybody tried to tell me,” she said ruefully. “I wouldn’t listen to anybody. I knew it all. When I went on dates I felt bored and superior because my shining white knight, my poor persecuted hero was in a cell, yearning for the time when they would free him and I would soothe him and mend him with my glorious gift of love. He helped me make a fool of myself, the things he wrote to me. Why did he bother?” Suddenly she looked at me more intently, and said, “Why did you come here? Did my father phone you?”

  “No. We’ve been tailing McAran, right to the moment he crossed the city line and went up into the hills at five o’clock. The report said he was here for twenty-five minutes with you. I wondered about it. I phoned.”

  I stopped at headquarters again before going home. I called Sam Hessian from there, and he said he wanted his nurse in attendance, so he’d take the Perkins girl down to his office and take her back home if he found no reason for hospitalization. He does a lot of police work aside from his duties as coroner. He’s examined a lot of rape victims. He always says his attitude toward the rapist is unworthy of a doctor of medicine. He says they should all go free, after an orchiectomy he would be willing to perform without fee. After talking to him I sat at my desk and knew I was entirely too anxious to tell Meg what her beloved brother had done. But he was gone, and I had the feeling he would never return, that he was going to make it impossible for him to ever come back.

  So all I would be doing would be to sadden Meg, and prove what a flawless fellow I was. Telling her would not change the course of events. And I did not imagine Cathie wanted any more people to know about it than had to know. So I made myself feel somewhat noble by deciding to keep it to myself.

  I thought of McAran up there in the hills, in the night, equipped for some dirty adventure, and I wondered what it would be. He knew that after it had been done we would want him badly.

  In retrospect I could see an increasing merit in the suggestion Boo Hudson had made the day I picked McAran up at Harpersburg. If I’d blown a hole in his head, Cathie Perkins would not be in despair. And I had the sickly feeling that by the time it was all over, Boo Hudson’s idea would look even better.

  But that is dangerous thinking for an officer of the law. And ludicrous thinking as far as I am concerned, because it is something I know I could not do. I could not be an executioner. McAran would have laughed if he knew what I was thinking about. I wondered what he was thinking about at that moment. But the quick dark shapes of his thoughts were beyond my capacity to imagine. Nor can we ever know what visions sweeten the dreams of the crocodile.

  Before I left, all the reports were in, and I had a typed list of what he’d bought—for cash. He’d shopped at a supermarket, Sears, a hardware store, an Army-Navy store and a few other places. Camp stove, ax, hatchet, gasoline lantern, shelter halves, blankets, ground sheets, camp shovel, rope, Japanese binoculars, transistor radio, almost a hundred dollars’ worth of canned food, pots, pans, paper plates and paper cups, a case of bourbon, a half-dozen packs of playing cards, outdoor clothing, saw, hammer, screwdriver, drill, nails and screws, fifteen ten-foot lengths of two-by-four, hinges, builder’s glue, several sheets of quarter-inch plywood, one big flashlight and two small ones, two
air mattresses, two sleeping bags, ten dollars’ worth of magazines and paperbound books, a spinning rod and fresh water tackle, a large first-aid kit, two sheath knives, swim trunks, an extension tape rule, a big canvas water bag, a canvas camp bucket and water purification tablets.

  I took the list to Larry Brint and sat and watched him study it, making small red checks opposite the items which most interested him.

  “Doesn’t expect to be alone,” he said.

  “It doesn’t look that way.”

  “Can’t figure out the tools and materials.”

  “I think there’s some place he knows of, some shack he can patch up with that stuff.”

  “Probably right. Be nice to know where he’s headed.”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “See what Bub Fischer can do for us. See him in the morning, Fenn.”

  “It won’t be much.”

  “Fischer isn’t much of a Sheriff.”