But she hurried on anyway, as if the time was growing short. “His body was doused with gasoline and burned almost beyond recognition, and yet you told us about the piece of paper found in his pocket. If there were a paper, Sam, the only one who could have found it was the murderer, before he set the body on fire. I guess you killed him, Sam. I guess you killed him yourself, and then came here after the money.” When he didn’t answer, she added, “You must really have hated him.”
Clinton rolled over, trying to see in the dark, trying to hear beyond the all-powerful siren that filled the night around them. “I hated him,” he said, but he didn’t really know if she heard.
“They’re here now,” Jane said as the siren suddenly died to nothing.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked. “Are you going to tell them?”
For a long time she didn’t answer, and it was as if they truly were alone in the world, the only two left in a dark tunnel that led to nowhere. But then there was Mallow’s voice outside, calling her name, searching for her.
And she answered. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Does anybody ever know, really?”
Winter Run
JOHNNY KENDELL WAS FIRST out of the squad car, first into the alley with his gun already drawn. The snow had drifted here, and it was easy to follow the prints of the running feet. He knew the neighborhood, knew that the alley dead-ended at a ten-foot board fence. The man he sought would be trapped there.
“This is the police,” he shouted. “Come out with your hands up!”
There was no answer except the whistle of wind through the alley, and something which might have been the desperate breathing of a trapped man. Behind him, Kendell could hear Sergeant Racin following, and knew that he too would have his gun drawn. The man they sought had broken the window of a liquor store down the street and had made off with an armload of gin bottles. Now he’d escaped to nowhere and had left a trail in the snow that couldn’t be missed, long running steps.
Overhead, as suddenly as the flick of a light switch, the full moon passed from behind a cloud and bathed the alley in a blue-white glow. Twenty feet ahead of him, Johnny Kendell saw the man he tracked, saw the quick glisten of something in his upraised hand. Johnny squeezed the trigger of his police revolver.
Even after the targeted quarry had staggered backward, dying, into the fence that blocked the alley’s end, Kendell kept firing. He didn’t stop until Sergeant Racin, aghast, knocked the gun from his hand, kicked it out of reach.
Kendell didn’t wait for the departmental investigation. Within forty-eight hours he had resigned from the force and was headed west with a girl named Sandy Brown whom he’d been planning to marry in a month. And it was not until the little car had burned up close to three hundred miles that he felt like talking about it, even to someone as close as Sandy.
“He was a bum, an old guy who just couldn’t wait for the next drink. After he broke the window and stole that gin, he just went down the alley to drink it in peace. He was lifting a bottle to his lips when I saw him, and I don’t know what I thought it was—a gun, maybe, or a knife. As soon as I fired the first shot I knew it was just a bottle, and I guess maybe in my rage at myself, or at the world, I kept pulling the trigger.” He lit a cigarette with shaking hands. “If he hadn’t been just a bum I’d probably be up before the grand jury!”
Sandy was a quiet girl who asked little from the man she loved. She was tall and angular, with a boyish cut to her dark brown hair, and a way of laughing that made men want to sell their souls. That laugh, and the subdued twinkle deep within her pale blue eyes, told anyone who cared that Sandy Brown was not always quiet, not really boyish.
Now, sitting beside Johnny Kendell, she said, “He was as good as dead anyway, Johnny. If he’d passed out in that alley they wouldn’t have found him until he was frozen stiff.”
He swerved the car a bit to avoid a stretch of highway where the snow had drifted over. “But I put three bullets in him, just to make sure. He stole some gin, and I killed him for it.”
“You thought he had a weapon.”
“I didn’t think. I just didn’t think about anything. Sergeant Racin had been talking about a cop he knew who was crippled by a holdup man’s bullet, and I suppose if I was thinking about anything it was about that.”
“I still wish you had stayed until after the hearing.”
“So they could fire me nice and official? No thanks!”
Johnny drove and smoked in silence for a time, opening the side window a bit to let the cold air whisper through his blond hair. He was handsome, not yet thirty, and until now there’d always been a ring of certainty about his every action. “I guess I just wasn’t cut out to be a cop,” he said finally.
“What are you cut out for, Johnny? Just running across the country like this? Running when nobody’s chasing you?”
“We’ll find a place to stop and I’ll get a job and then we’ll get married. You’ll see.”
“What can you do besides run?”
He stared out through the windshield at the passing banks of soot-stained snow. “I can kill a man,” he answered. But deep in his heart he wondered if even this was true any longer.
The town was called Wagon Lake, a name which fitted its past better than its present. The obvious signs of that past were everywhere to be seen, the old cottages that lined the frozen lake front, and the deeply rutted dirt roads which here and there ran parallel to the modern highways. But Wagon Lake, once so far removed from everywhere, had reckoned without the coming of the automobile and the postwar boom which would convert it into a fashionable suburb less than an hour’s drive from the largest city in the state.
The place was midwestern to its very roots, and perhaps there was something about the air that convinced Johnny Kendell. That, or perhaps he was only tired of running. “This is the place,” he told Sandy while they were stopped at a gas station. “Let’s stay awhile.”
“The lake’s all frozen over,” she retorted, looking dubious.
“We’re not going swimming.”
“No, but summer places like this always seem so cold in the winter, colder than regular cities.”
But they could both see that the subdivisions had come to Wagon Lake along with the superhighways, and it was no longer just a summer place. They would stay.
For the time being they settled in adjoining rooms at a nearby motel, because Sandy refused to share an apartment with him until they were married. In the morning, Kendell left her the task of starting the apartment hunt while he went off in search of work. At the third place he tried, the man shook his head sadly. “Nobody around here hires in the winter,” he told Kendell, “except maybe the sheriff. You’re a husky fellow. Why don’t you try him?”
“Thanks. Maybe I will,” Johnny Kendell said, but he tried two more local businesses before he found himself at the courthouse and the sheriff’s office.
The sheriff’s name was Quintin Dade, and he spoke from around a cheap cigar that never left the corner of his mouth. He was a politician but a smart one. Despite the cigar, it was obvious that the newly arrived wealth of Wagon Lake had elected him.
“Sure,” he said, settling down behind a desk scattered casually with letters, reports and wanted circulars. “I’m looking for a man. We always hire somebody in the winter, to patrol the lake road and keep an eye on the cottages. People leave some expensive stuff in those old places during the winter months. They expect it to be protected.”
“You don’t have a man yet?” Kendell asked.
“We had one, up until last week.” Sheriff Dade offered no more. Instead, he asked, “Any experience in police work?”
“I was on the force for better than a year back east.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“I wanted to travel.”
“Married?”
“I will be, as soon as I land a job.”
“This one just pays seventy-five a week, and it’s nights. If you work out, though, I’ll keep you on
come summer.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Drive a patrol car around the lake every hour, check cottages, make sure the kids aren’t busting them up—that sort of thing.”
“Have you had much trouble?”
“Oh, nothing serious,” the sheriff answered, looking quickly away. “Nothing you couldn’t handle, a big guy like you.”
“Would I have to carry a gun?”
“Well, sure!”
Johnny Kendell thought about it. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll give it a try.”
“Good. Here are some applications to fill out. I’ll be checking with the people back east, but that needn’t delay your starting. I’ve got a gun here for you. I can show you the car and you can begin tonight.”
Kendell accepted the .38 revolver with reluctance. It was a different make from the one he’d carried back east, but they were too similar. The very feel and weight and coldness of it against his palm brought back the memory of that night in the alley.
Later, when he went back to the motel and told Sandy about the job, she only sat cross-legged on her bed staring up at him. “It wasn’t even a week ago, Johnny. How can you take another gun in your hand so soon?”
“I won’t have it in my hand. I promise you I won’t even draw it.”
“What if you see some kids breaking into a cottage?”
“Sandy, Sandy, it’s a job! It’s the only thing I know how to do. On seventy-five a week we can get married.”
“We can get married anyway. I found a job for myself down at the supermarket.”
Kendell stared out the window at a distant hill dotted here and there with snowy spots. “I told him I’d take the job, Sandy. I thought you were on my side.”
“I am. I always have been. But you killed a man, Johnny. I don’t want it to happen again, for any reason.”
“It won’t happen again.”
He went over to the bed and kissed her, their lips barely brushing. Outside, somewhere, the passing of a nearby train broke the silence of the chill afternoon.
That night Sheriff Dade took him out on the first run around the lake, pausing at a number of deserted cottages while instructing him in the art of checking for intruders. The evening was cold, but there was a moon which reflected brightly off the surface of the frozen lake. Kendell wore his own suit and topcoat, with only the badge and gun to show that he belonged in the sheriff’s car. He knew at once that he would like the job, even the boredom of it, and he listened carefully to the sheriff’s orders.
“About once an hour you take a swing around the lake. That takes you twenty minutes, plus stops. But don’t fall into a pattern with your trips, so someone can predict when you’ll be passing any given cottage. Vary it, and, of course, check these bars along here too. Especially on weekends we get a lot of underage drinkers. And they’re the ones who usually get loaded and decide to break into a cottage.”
“They even come here in the winter?”
“This isn’t a summer town any more. But sometimes I have a time convincing the cottagers of that.”
They rode in silence for a time, and the weight of the gun was heavy on Johnny Kendell’s hip. Finally he decided what had to be done. “Sheriff,” he began, “there’s something I want to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll find out anyway when you check on me back east. I killed a man while I was on duty. Just last week. He was a bum who broke into a liquor store and I thought he had a gun so I shot him. I resigned from the force because they were making a fuss about it.”
Sheriff Dade scratched his balding head. “Well, I don’t hold that against you. Glad you mentioned it, though. Just remember, out here the most dangerous thing you’ll probably face will be a couple of beered-up teenagers. And they don’t call for guns.”
“I know.”
“Right. Drop me back at the courthouse and you’re on your own. Good luck.”
An hour later, Kendell started his first solo swing around the lake, concentrating on the line of shuttered cottages which stood like sentinels against some invader from the frozen lake. Once he stopped the car to investigate four figures moving on the ice, but they were only children gingerly testing skates on the glossy surface.
On the far side of the lake he checked a couple of cottages at random. Then he pulled in and parked beside a bar called the Blue Zebra. It had more cars than the others, and there was a certain Friday night gaiety about the place even from outside. He went in, letting his topcoat hang loosely over the badge pinned to his suit lapel. The bar was crowded and all the tables were occupied, but he couldn’t pinpoint any under-age group. They were the usual representatives of the new suburbia—white-shirted young men self-consciously trying to please their dates, beer-drinking groups of men fresh from their weekly bowling, and even the occasional women nearing middle age that one always found sitting alone on bar stools.
Kendell chatted a few moments with the owner and then went back outside. There was nothing for him here. He’d turned down the inevitable offer of a drink because it was too early in the evening, and too soon on the job to be relaxing.
As he was climbing into his car, a voice called to him from the doorway of the Blue Zebra. “Hey, Deputy!”
“What’s the trouble?”
The man was slim and tall, and not much older than Kendell. He came down the steps of the bar slowly, not speaking again until he was standing only inches away. “I just wanted to get a look at you, that’s all. I had that job until last week.”
“Oh?” Kendell said, because there was nothing else to say.
“Didn’t old Dade tell you he fired me?”
“No.”
“Well, he did. Ask him why sometime. Ask him why he fired Milt Woodman.” He laughed and turned away, heading back to the bar.
Kendell shrugged and got into the car. It didn’t really matter to him that a man named Milt Woodman was bitter about losing his job. His thoughts were on the future, and on Sandy, waiting for him back at the motel.
She was sleeping when he returned to their rooms. He went in quietly and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting until she awakened. Presently her blue eyes opened and she saw him. “Hi, there, handsome. How’d it go?”
“Fine. I think I’m going to like it. Get up and watch the sunrise with me.”
“I have to go to work at the supermarket.”
“Nuts to that! I’m never going to see you if we’re both working.”
“We need the money, Johnny. We can’t afford this motel, or these two rooms, much longer.”
“Let’s talk about it, later, huh?” He suddenly realized that he hadn’t heard her laugh in days, and the thought of it made him sad. Sandy’s laughter had always been a part of her, and he missed it. He wondered when she would laugh again.
That night passed much as the previous one, with patrols around the lake and frequent checks at the crowded bars. He saw Milt Woodman again, watching him through the haze of cigarette smoke at the Blue Zebra, but this time the man did not speak. The following day, though, Kendell remembered to ask Sheriff Dade about him.
“I ran into somebody Friday night—fellow named Milt Woodman,” he said.
Dade frowned and looked down at his hands. “He try to give you any trouble?”
“No, not really. He just said to ask you sometime why you fired him.”
“Are you asking me?”
“No. It doesn’t matter to me in the least.”
Dade nodded. “You’re right, it doesn’t. But let me know if he bothers you any more.”
“Why should he?” Kendell asked, troubled by the remark.
“No reason. Just keep on your toes.”
The following night, Monday, he didn’t have to work. He decided to celebrate with Sandy by taking her to a nearby drive-in where the management kept open all winter with the aid of little heaters supplied to each car. The movie was something about young love. They necked in the front seat all during the sec
ond feature, like a couple of high school kids.
Tuesday night, just after midnight, Kendell pulled into the parking lot at the Blue Zebra. The neoned juke box was playing something plaintive and the bar was almost empty. The owner offered him a drink again, and he decided he could risk it. The night was cold and damp, even in the heated car.
“Hello, Deputy,” a voice said at his shoulder. He knew before he turned that it was Milt Woodman.
“The name’s Johnny Kendell,” he said, keeping it friendly.
“Nice name. You know mine.” He chuckled a little. “That’s a good-looking wife you’ve got. Saw you together at the movie last night.”
“Oh?” Kendell moved instinctively away. He didn’t like the man. He didn’t like anything about him.
Milt Woodman kept on smiling. “Did Dade ever tell you why he fired me?”
“I didn’t ask him.”
The chuckle became a laugh. “Good boy! Keep your nose clean. Protect that seventy-five a week.” He turned and went toward the door. “See you around.”
Kendell finished his drink and followed him out. There was a hint of snow in the air and tonight no moon could be seen. Ahead, on the road, the twin tail lights of Woodman’s car glowed for a moment until they disappeared around a curve. Kendell gunned his car ahead with a sudden urge to follow the man, but when he’d reached the curve himself the road ahead was clear. Woodman had turned off somewhere.
The rest of the week was quiet, but on Friday he had a shock. It had always been difficult for him to sleep days, and he often awakened around noon after only four or five hours’ slumber. This day he decided to meet Sandy at her job for lunch, and as he arrived at the supermarket he saw her chatting with someone at the checkout counter. It was Milt Woodman and they were laughing together like old friends.
Kendell walked around the block, trying to tell himself that there was nothing to be concerned about. When he returned to the store, Woodman was gone and Sandy was ready for lunch.
“Who was your friend?” he asked casually.
“What friend?”
“I passed a few minutes ago and you were talking to some guy. Seemed to be having a great time.”
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