He had hardly hung up when another call came, relayed through Jimmy. He listened, got up abruptly and said, “Come on. A bad wreck on the Titus road.”
On the way out he told Jimmy, “You heard? Notify the highway patrol, Doc Yak and Felix.”
“Soon as you quit talkin’,” Jimmy said. His hand was already on the dial.
We climbed in the Special and drove away, the tires screeching at turns. “Two kids, both hurt,” he said. “Maybe dead. One-car accident. It happened near Fred Harris’s place. He made the call.”
“No identification?”
“He couldn’t say. Said they missed a curve, hit a telephone pole, turned over and landed right side up, maybe not in that order.”
He sounded the siren and shot past a car. In the siren’s dying wail he said, “Mix kids, alcohol and wheels, cook on an open road, and take out the cake.”
The tires squealed as we braked at the scene. A car, its front end and top mashed in, stood in an unfenced field off the road. Farther on, a shattered telephone pole hung by its wires. A highway patrol cruiser was already on hand. A girl hunched near, screaming.
The patrolman was Sven Svenson, whom we knew. He was a good officer. He was peering inside the door of the wreck. When he saw us, he turned and approached.
“Howdy. Just happened by,” he informed us. “The boy at the wheel looks hurt bad.”
“Doctor’s on the way,” Charleston said.
The girl was pacing back and forth, crying out, “Oh, God, I’m going to die. I hurt. Help me, Jesus! Help, someone!”
“Thrown clear, I would say,” Svenson said with distaste.
Charleston went to her. “Be quiet! Hush up! What’s your name?”
“I’m dying.”
“You’re not. Name, please?”
“God save me! God save poor Linda!”
“Linda Lindstrom?”
“It was. It was. It was.” She collapsed by the roadside and moaned. She could have been pretty, I thought, grade-school pretty, but now her clothes were dirty and torn, and her face swollen and red, like a man’s marked by booze.
A man I had hardly noticed stood at the other side of the road. He came closer and said his name was Fred Harris. Damn shame, young people and cars.
The long cry of the ambulance sounded and died hard. The ambulance braked to a stop. Doc Yak, following close, bumped it and scrambled out.
Some traffic was beginning to build up, both ways. Drivers and passengers peered through the opened windows. Some of them got out but stayed at a distance. Blood attracted people but still held them back. Another patrolman, probably the one Jimmy called, was trying to steer the traffic on by. It didn’t like to move.
I walked with Doc and Felix to the wreck. So did Charleston and Svenson. From the first look I had, I thought the boy driver might already be dead. He drooped against the wheel, his face bloody, his head bashed. Felix unfolded his stretcher.
Doc made a quick examination, mostly just a feeling for pulse. “Might live,” he said.
The girl had got to her feet and come close. Her screams hurt my ears. “I’m dying. I’m going to die. Tell me the truth, Doctor, I’m about dead.”
Doc Yak turned on her, his expression wicked. “Shut up! You won’t die unless somebody kills you.” He flourished his stethoscope. “It might be me.”
We had to yank at the car door. It came open with a screech of tortured metal.
Doc Yak had said, “He won’t get well in there.” Now he told us, “Ease him out. Easy. Careful, now.”
It was Charleston, Svenson and I who gentled the body out and laid it on the stretcher. I saw one leg was angled as no well leg could be.
Doc Yak made a second examination, more thorough but hasty. “Put him in the ambulance.”
“Just a minute, Doc,” Svenson said. “Identification. Can you manage to get his wallet, any papers?”
Doc looked displeased but came up with the wallet.
Charleston, Felix and I carried the stretcher to the ambulance and slid it inside. Carrying it, I noticed what I must have noticed before. The boy smelled rank, as if he had been dipped in a vat.
As a sort of parting shot to the world, Doc Yak said, “Damn fool kids! Nothing but appetites. Nothing but goddamn glands.” Then, to the waiting girl, who was only crying now, “Get in! Get in with your heart’s desire. I’ll examine you at the office.”
Not for the first time, then, I saw the other side of Doc Yak. He climbed into the ambulance himself, the better to stave off death. His car stood abandoned. Felix managed to turn the ambulance around and, with the patrolman’s help, roll by the traffic. I went to Doc’s car, found the key in it and drove it off the road.
Charleston and Svenson had gone to inspect the wreck. From it Charleston removed four bottles, one half full. Three, including the half-full one, were fifths of whiskey. They bore the label, OLD ROSCOE CROMWELL. The one that had held wine said, “Bottled Especially for Roscoe Cromwell.”
Looking at them, Charleston said, “No telling how many they ditched.” An expression of vague dislike came to his face. “A real card, that Roscoe Cromwell. A really funny man.”
Svenson was examining the wallet. “The kid had a driver’s license, if it’s his. Name of Joseph J. Hanks, age nineteen. He lives in Titus, and the car’s registered in that county, so it’s maybe not hot. I’ll get hold of his parents, or try to.” He looked over the scene and the car and made some notes.
He managed to open the back door opposite that through which Charleston had taken the bottles. “Look at this mess,” he said while Charleston nodded. “Tissue wipers, soiled. Half-eaten sandwiches. Spills of booze.” He pulled out a rumpled blanket. With a good officer’s distaste for untidiness he went on, “Christ, not even sanitary. See? They’ve been high-balling around, drinking and diddling, enjoying the best things in life, and to hell with cleaning up.”
Charleston said, “The girl’s under age, reported missing just this morning. The bottles were stolen from a summer cabin. We know that much. So it’s breaking and entering, contributing to delinquency, larceny.”
Svenson put his notebook in his pocket. “Besides driving while drunk.”
The other patrolman, having straightened out the traffic, had come up. He stood listening.
Svenson half-smiled. “You won’t have to worry that Hanks might skip. He’ll be around for a while. Here, you want this?”
He offered the blanket to Charleston, who took it between his thumb and one finger. I did the same when he handed it to me. “Put it in the car, will you, Jase? The bottles, too.”
After I’d done so, we said good-bye to the patrolmen and made for the Special. A car had been pulled off the road behind it. A couple of men moved closer to us, and one of them asked, “How bad, Sheriff?”
“Bad enough. Ask Doc Yak, George.”
Once we were under way, I said, “Two cases solved, anyhow. Missing girl. Break-in. Quick, too.”
“One thing and another. One interruption after another. The life of the law. Start after a wolf and find yourself chasing a rabbit. And just as I get an idea about our two murders, here, on top of other bothers, here comes Mr. Upright and louses things up.”
“You can’t just ignore Mr. Gewald?”
“Not very well, Jase. I can’t say scat to a state inspector.” He sighed. “Well, I’ll let him play out his string.”
“You’ve almost talked me out of it,” I said. “I was thinking about taking some courses in criminology. What about that?”
“If you want to, why not? That’s the only advice I can give you. Not that advice would do you any good. In the end all decisions come from inside.” He took his eyes off the road and gave me a smile.
He pulled the car in at the front of Doc Yak’s office. Only Doc’s office girl was inside, and she wasn’t a girl but a woman of spreading middle age. Charleston asked her, “No Doc?”
“No Doc, Chick. He and Felix took off with that hurt boy, bound for the city a
nd the hospital.”
“What about the girl, Dotty?”
“Linda Lindstrom. Just shaken up. Halvor Amussen took her in charge.” Her head moved in sympathy. “He’s got his hands full.”
Charleston said thanks, and we drove to the office. It might have been the arrival room at an insane asylum. Linda had the shrieks again, and Halvor was trying to soothe her. I figured she wasn’t finding much comfort there, not in an ox however well-meaning.
We took them in as we stood at the opened door. Jimmy was saying, while the girl squawked, “Amussen, for God’s sake make her shut up! Slap her down! Throw her into a cell! Do something!”
Linda threw herself on a chair and put her hands to her face. “Slap me, then. Kill me. What do I care? I’m bad hurt, and you just stand there. You want me to die.”
Jimmy said, “That’s a pretty fair guess.”
Halvor made a cooing sound and tried a pat on her shoulder. She didn’t buy either.
Charleston strode forward, took one hand from her face and slapped her. Then he slapped her on the other side. “Come out of it! Come out of it this minute!”
She looked at him unbelieving, her mouth open. “You hit me!”
“Medicine,” he said. “Cure for hysteria.”
Halvor asked, “No charge?”
“It’s a juvenile case. Judge Todd’s baby.”
“I already called him,” Halvor said.
“What about her parents? Did you phone them?”
“No. I wasn’t sure.”
Charleston said, “Good. The office is madhouse enough as it is. Drive her home, Jase.”
The girl was only whimpering now. She let me lead her to the county car and got in without fuss. She even told me how to get to her home, which was fifteen miles out. The whimpers died. Her eyes stared ahead, out of a sullen face, a hung-over face. She stank with stale drink.
By and by she moved closer to me. “I don’t want to go home. Please don’t take me there.”
“That’s where you belong. I’m under orders.”
A hand touched my shoulder. “I’ll give you anything if you don’t, anything I have.”
“No deal, Linda. And you better guide me there right. Hear?”
“My old man will probably be drunk,” she said in a little girl’s voice. “He’s mean when he’s drunk.”
“What about your mother?”
“She doesn’t need to be drunk, not to be mean. Whatever I tell them, they’ll give me hell.”
I supposed she was right. They’d give her hell. What she might not have realized was that she was giving them hell in her turn. I said, “Tit for tat,” and let the subject rest there.
I helped her out of the car and took her arm as she dragged to the door of home. A stout woman appeared in the entrance, her hands on her hips.
I told her, “We found your girl for you.”
I might not have been there. She said, “You come in, young lady! You come right in.” Her voice sounded like metal being sawed.
I didn’t want to hear any more. I climbed in the car and drove back.
One thing and another, Charleston had said. Today was the day for it.
Entering the office as I walked toward it were Inspector Gewald, Pambrun and Framboise. He was herding them ahead of him.
The door was still open when I reached it, and Jimmy’s voice was saying, “I don’t care who in hell you are. No more charging into the sheriff’s office. What you do is ask me will he see you, and I call and find out. Learn some manners.”
Gewald said, “Call him then.”
Jimmy didn’t have to. Charleston came out.
“I rounded up these two after the funeral,” Gewald informed him. “Tomorrow I’ll get the squaws. I want some questions answered.”
“We’ll go into the spare room,” Charleston said, and I knew he was giving Gewald, if not short shrift, something close to it. The spare room was seldom used except for reference. It had files in it mostly, but a desk and chairs, too. “Come on. You, too, Jase.”
There were just chairs enough.
Gewald addressed Charleston. “You told me these two men found the body?”
“That’s right.”
“So we ask some more questions.”
Neither Pambrun nor Framboise had said a word. They perched on their seats, glancing quick at each other.
“They’re clean,” Charleston said. “We questioned them. It’s in our reports.”
“I’ll do my own investigating, if you don’t mind. Yours seems not to have led anywhere.”
Charleston only sighed. I smiled at the two men, hoping to cheer them.
Gewald switched around to face them. “So you found the body of Eagle Charlie, huh? How come? What were you doing?”
“Just walking outside,” Pambrun answered. “It was morning. We were first to get up. We always are. So there was Eagle Charlie, dead. So tell the sheriff. That’s what we did.”
“You might have thought that was pretty cute—to kill the man and then report to the sheriff. Who would suspect you?”
“It was the right thing,” Framboise said. “You find a dead man, you tell the law.”
“After making sure he was dead?”
The point was lost on Pambrun. “He was dead, all right. We found that out.”
“You ever been in trouble with the law?”
They both shook their heads.
I had to break in then. “Look, Mr. Gewald. I know these men. They are my friends. They are my father’s friends. They’re all right.”
“I find your character references less than convincing,” Gewald said. If he could have snorted with that thin nose and tight mouth, he would have.
He addressed the two men again. “How do you know you were first up?”
“No one around,” Pambrun said. “No one else.”
“But if it wasn’t you, it must have been somebody else, somebody there before you. What do you say to that?”
Framboise replied, “Maybe so. We see no one.”
“More questions, Mr. Gewald?” Charleston inquired.
“Sure. I want to know about relationships.” He spoke now to the breeds. “What did you have against Eagle Charlie?”
With their eyes the two consulted before Pambrun answered. “Nothing. What for we have anything against him?”
Framboise added, “Not against him. For him. Thanks. He let us stay there. We use his water, free. When he had plenty meat, he gave us some. Why kill him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Not from us,” Pambrun told him. “Nothing.”
“Not a little bit something,” Framboise said.
“What about the old squaw? What’s her name? Old Woman Gray Wolf. She quarreled with Eagle Charlie.”
“She fussed. Him and her fussed. That’s all,” Framboise answered.
“You tell me she wouldn’t kill him?”
Pambrun shrugged. “What for? So she could starve. Herself, nothing, that’s all she had.”
“Maybe. We’ll see what she says.”
Framboise might have smiled. “Sure. Ask her. Spend plenty time asking her.”
Gewald threw an inquiring glance at Charleston. It wasn’t answered. Now Gewald took another tack. “Let’s say you’re innocent. Let’s say she is. Then who wanted to kill Eagle Charlie? Who in fact did?”
Pambrun answered this time. “Who knows? Not us. Sure thing not us.”
“Anything more, Mr. Gewald?” Charleston asked.
“Not for now,” Gewald said through his close lips. “I may want to question them again later.”
I accompanied the two men to their old car. “I hope you don’t blame us,” I told them on the way. “That Gewald is a load. We have to carry it for a while.”
They let themselves smile, and Pambrun said, “Buck him off.”
At nine o’clock that night I relieved Amussen and cruised around town until the bars closed. It had been a long day.
Chapt
er Fifteen
“He’s the stone we’ve left unturned,” Charleston said to me. He was talking about Red Fall.
We were driving west, to Guy Jamison’s dude ranch. The morning was clear and soft, kind as a caress too long forgotten. Before us the mountains lifted, sharp as knife cuts. Through the rear window the sun was telling us that all was all right. It might be, if only long enough to make a man forgive our climate.
“Even if there’s nothing under the stone,” I said, “at least we’re away from Inspector Gewald.”
“That was part of my idea,” Charleston said, smiling. “We’ll let him investigate all he wants to. He has the Indian women to question. Maybe Luke McGluke, too. God knows who else. He hasn’t even looked at our reports, which may be just as well. So we stand by. We give him free rein. He just might come up with something. Who knows? Remember, he’s a determined man.”
“Rigid.”
“That and ambitious.”
I said, “Righteous, too. From what I know, he ought to team up with Red Fall.”
We drove along, content with an easy speed. On the rocky slopes to either side the carpet flowers welcomed our coming. I thought they might not like to blush unseen.
“One dividend,” Charleston said presently. “We’ll have a good lunch. Guy insisted we stay for it.”
“I can eat it. Fall in on the party?”
“He’ll show up later.”
The road rose to the foothills. As it climbed, we entered a land of rock, patches of creeping juniper and jack pines. The pines grew tortured, deformed but defiant of the wild winds from the west. Endurance, I thought, hardihood. Against all the odds they survived. They hung tight to home.
We entered the Rose River canyon. Here the cliffs, rising sheer, closed in on us. They were craggy-faced, ominous in the eyes of those who knew only flatlands. Even so, here and there in crevice and cranny jack pines found foothold.
The cliffs opened into a park, and there was the dude ranch with smoke rising from a chimney. I could smell the good smell of woodsmoke. Wild clover grew on this little flat, and native grasses. A milk cow grazed there. The buildings stood tidy and solid, old ones and new included. Two horses looked at us from a corral.
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