The Underground Man

by Ross Macdonald

  I thought she was wrong, but I didn’t argue. “Who bled you, Mrs. Broadhurst?”

  “I have no wish to discuss it.”

  I picked up Brian Kilpatrick’s card from the dresser and let her see it. “If someone has been extorting money from you, you have a chance to stop it now.”

  “I said I don’t want to discuss it. There’s no one I can trust. There never has been since my father died.”

  “You want it to go on?”

  She gave me a closed bitter look. “I don’t want anything to go on. Not my life or anything. Certainly not this conversation. This inquisition.”

  “I’m not enjoying it much myself.”

  “Then go away. I can’t stand any more.”

  She grasped the arms of the chair so that her knuckles whitened, and stood up. The action somehow forced me out of the room.

  I wasn’t ready to face the dead man right away. I found the door to the fire stairs and started down to the ground floor, taking my time about it. The concrete stairs with their gray steel railings, set in a windowless concrete stairwell, were like part of a prison structure, ugly and just about indestructible. I paused on a landing halfway down and tried to imagine Mrs. Broadhurst in prison.

  When I returned the boy Ronny to his mother, I had really accomplished what I set out to do. The business left unfinished was bound to be painful and nasty. I had no overriding desire to pin her husband’s murder on Mrs. Broadhurst.

  The hot breath of vengeance was growing cold in my nostrils as I grew older. I had more concern for a kind of economy in life that would help to preserve the things that were worth preserving. No doubt Leo Broadhurst had been worth preserving—any man, or any woman, was—but he had been killed in anger long ago. I doubted that a jury in the present would find his widow guilty of anything worse than manslaughter.

  As for the other homicides, it was unlikely that Mrs. Broadhurst had had a reason to kill her son or an opportunity to kill Albert Sweetner. I told myself I didn’t care who killed them. But I cared. There was a winding symmetry in the case that like the stairs themselves took me down to the sickly green corridor where Dr. Silcox consulted his dead witnesses.

  I went through the office and opened the steel-sheathed mortuary door. What was left of Leo Broadhurst lay under a bright light on a stainless steel table. Silcox was probing at the skull. Its fine curve was the only remaining sign that Leo had been a handsome man in his day.

  Kelsey and Purvis, the deputy coroner, were standing in the penumbra against the wall. I moved past them toward the table.

  “Was he shot?”

  Silcox looked up from his work. “Yes. I found this.”

  He picked up a lead slug and displayed it on the palm of his hand. It looked like a misshapen .22 long. “Where did it pierce the skull?”

  “I’m not sure it did. All I can find is a minor external crease which hardly could have been fatal.” With the bright point of his probe, he showed me the faint groove the bullet had made in the front of Broadhurst’s skull.

  “What killed him then?”

  “This.”

  He showed me a discolored triangle which rang on the table when he dropped it. For a moment I thought it was an Indian arrowhead. Then I picked it up and saw that it was the broken-off tip of a butcher knife.

  “It was lodged in the ribs,” the doctor said. “Evidently the tip of the knife snapped off when the knife was pulled out.”

  “Was he stabbed from the back or the front?”

  “The front, I’d say.”

  “Could a woman have done it?”

  “I don’t see why not. What do you think, Purvis?”

  The young deputy detached himself from the shadows and stepped forward between me and Dr. Silcox. “I think we better talk it over in private.” He turned to me. “I hate to be a spoilsport, Mr. Archer, but you’ve got no right in here. You saw the sign on the door: ‘Authorized Personnel Only.’ And you’re not authorized.”

  I thought perhaps it was just a young man’s officiousness. “I am if you authorize me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Who says so?”

  “The sheriff-coroner gives me my orders.”

  “Who gives him his orders?”

  The young man flushed. His face looked porous and purplish in the raw light. “You better get out of here, mister.”

  I looked past him at Kelsey, who seemed embarrassed. I said to both of them:

  “Hell, I located this body.”

  “But you’re not authorized personnel.”

  Purvis put his hand on the butt of his gun. I didn’t know him well and didn’t trust him not to shoot me. I left with anger and disappointment running hot and sour in my veins.

  Kelsey followed me out into the corridor. “I’m sorry about this, Archer.”

  “You weren’t a great deal of help.”

  His gray eyes flinched a little and then set hard, while his mouth continued to smile. “The word came down from on high about you. And the Forest Service makes me go by the book.”

  “What does the book say?”

  “You know as well as I do. Where local law enforcement is involved, I’m instructed to respect their jurisdiction.”

  “What are they planning to do? Bury this case for another fifteen years?”

  “Not if I can help it. But my main responsibility is the fire.”

  “The killings and the fire are tied together, and you know it.”

  “Don’t tell me what I know.”

  He turned and went back into the room with the dead man and the authorized personnel.

  chapter 34

  When I went outside the rain was coming down harder than ever. Water was running in the street, washing the detritus of summer downhill toward the sea.

  The nearer I got to the mountains, the more water there was. Driving up Mrs. Broadhurst’s canyon was very much like making my way upstream in a shallow watercourse. Long before I reached the ranch house I could hear the roaring of the creek behind it.

  Brian Kilpatrick’s black car was standing in front of the house. An artificial-looking blond whom I didn’t recognize at first was sitting in the front seat. When I approached the black car I saw that she was Kilpatrick’s fiancée, as he called her.

  “How are you feeling today?” I said.

  She lowered the electric window and peered at me through the rain. “Do I know you?”

  “We met Saturday night at Kilpatrick’s place.”

  “Really? I must have been stoned.” Her lips stretched in a smile which asked for my complicity. Behind it she seemed terribly uneasy.

  “You were stoned. Also you were a brunette.”

  “I was wearing a wig. I change them to suit my mood. People tell me I’m very mercurial.”

  “I can see that. What kind of a mood are you in?”

  “Frankly, I’m scared,” she said. “I’m scared of all this water. And the mud is coming loose above Brian’s house. He’s got tons of it in his patio already. That’s why I’m sitting here in this car. But I don’t like it here much, either.”

  “What’s Brian doing inside?”

  “Business, he said.”

  “With Jean Broadhurst?”

  “I guess that’s her name. Some woman called him and he dashed right over here.” She added as I turned toward the house: “Tell him to hurry, will you?”

  I went in without knocking and closed the front door carefully behind me. The noise of the creek was humming through the house, covering the small sounds my movements made.

  There was no one in the living room. A light shone from the open door of the study. When I went nearer I could hear Jean’s voice:

  “I don’t like this. If Mrs. Broadhurst wants these things, she could have asked me for them.”

  Kilpatrick answered her in a throwaway tone: “I’m sure she didn’t want to bother you.”

  “But I am bothered. What does she want in the hospital with business papers and guns?”

/>   “I assume she wants to get things shipshape in case anything happens to her.”

  “She isn’t planning to kill herself?” Jean’s voice was thin and breathless.

  “I sincerely hope not.”

  “Then why does she want the guns?”

  “She didn’t say. I’m simply trying to keep her happy. After all, she is my business partner.”

  “Still I don’t think I should let you—”

  “But she just called me.”

  “I think I’ll call her back.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  His voice had a threat in it. There was the scrape of feet and a woman’s gasp. I stepped into the doorway. Jean was sprawled on the black leather couch, white-faced and breathing hard. Kilpatrick was standing over her with the telephone receiver in his hands.

  “Try someone your own size,” I said.

  He moved as if he was going to attack me. I wanted him to, and perhaps he saw that. The color drained from his face, so that the broken veins stood out like abrasions.

  He offered me a shameful little smile which didn’t change his reddened apprehensive eyes. “Jean and I had a little misunderstanding. Nothing serious.”

  She got up, smoothing her skirt. “I think it’s serious. He pushed me down. He’s taking some of my mother-in-law’s things.”

  She indicated the black briefcase standing beside the desk. I picked it up.

  “I want that,” Kilpatrick said. “It belongs to me.”

  “You may get it back eventually.”

  He reached for it. I swung it away from his grasp. In the same movement I leaned my shoulder into him and walked him backward. He came up hard against the opposing wall and slouched there like a man hanging on a nail. I went over him for weapons, found none, and stepped back.

  For a moment his face wore the look of terrible disappointment that I had surprised on it the day before. He was losing everything, and watching it go.

  “I’m going to take this up with Sheriff Tremaine,” he said.

  “I think you should. He’ll be interested in what you’ve been doing to Mrs. Broadhurst.”

  “I’m her best friend, if you want the truth. I’ve been looking after her interests for many years.”

  “She calls it bleeding her.”

  He seemed surprised. “Did she say that?”

  “She used the word. Don’t you like it?”

  He was still against the wall. His reddish-brown hair was turning dark with sweat and falling over his high freckled forehead. He pushed it back with his fingers, carefully, as if a neat appearance might make all the difference.

  “I’m disappointed in Elizabeth,” he said. “I thought she had more sense. And more gratitude. But that’s a woman for you.”

  He gave me a tentative look to see if we could get together on an anti-feminist platform. “No gratitude,” I said.

  “No gratitude to you for blackmailing her and cheating her out of her land. Women are terrible ingrates.”

  He couldn’t stand the unfairness of my remarks. A bright bitterness entered his eyes and changed his mouth. “Anything I did was perfectly legal. That’s more than you can say for her. While she was telling you lies about me, I don’t suppose she mentioned what she did.”

  “What did she do?”

  I shouldn’t have asked the direct question. It reminded him to be discreet.

  “I don’t believe I’ll answer that.”

  “Then I’ll tell you. Mrs. Broadhurst shot her husband. You may have put her up to it. Certainly you had a hand in it.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Didn’t you tell her about Leo’s freighter bookings to Hawaii? Wasn’t that what sparked their final quarrel?”

  His gaze came up to mine, then moved away sideways. “I thought he was planning to take my wife with him.”

  “Your wife had already left you.”

  “I was hoping she might come back to me.”

  “If you could find a cat’s-paw to get rid of Leo?”

  “I had no such intention,” he said.

  “Didn’t you? You incited the Broadhursts’ quarrel. You watched the Mountain House that night to see what came of the quarrel. You witnessed the shot, or heard the sound of it. And when it failed to kill Leo, you finished him off with a knife.”

  “I absolutely did not.”

  “Somebody did. And you were there on the spot. You haven’t denied it.”

  “I deny it now. I didn’t shoot him and I didn’t knife him.”

  “Tell me what you did do.”

  “I was an innocent bystander, that’s all.”

  I laughed in his face, though I wasn’t feeling merry. I hated to see a man, even a man like Kilpatrick, go down the tubes. “Okay, innocent bystander. What happened then?”

  “I think you know what happened. But I’m not going to say it. And if you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll play along with me. Right now I want my briefcase.”

  “You’ll have to take it away from me.”

  He looked at me as if he was considering it. But he was running short of desire and hope. The aura of success had deserted him, and he was looking more and more like a loser.

  He turned and went as far as the front door before he answered me. Just before he slammed it behind him, he called back:

  “I’m going to have you run out of town.”

  Jean came up to me, moving quietly with one hand out as if darkness had set in and the place was unfamiliar. “Are those things true?”

  “What things?”

  “The things that you were saying about Elizabeth.”

  “I’m afraid they are.”

  She took hold of my arm and let me feel her weight. “I can’t stand much more. How long is this going to go on?”

  “I don’t think there is much more. Where’s Ronny?”

  “He’s asleep. He wanted a nap.”

  “Get him up and dressed. I’m going to drive you to Los Angeles.”

  “Now?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “But why?”

  I had a number of reasons. I didn’t want to go into the main one, which was that I didn’t know what Kilpatrick might do next. I remembered the gun in his game room, and his apparent willingness to use it.

  I took Jean to the big corner window and showed her what had happened to the creek. It had become a turbulent dark river, large enough to float fallen trees. Several of them had formed a natural dam which was backing up the water behind the house.

  I could hear boulders rolling down the creekbed in the upper canyon. They made noises like bowling balls in an alley.

  “The house may go this time,” I said.

  “That isn’t the reason you want to take us south.”

  “It’s one reason. You and Ronny will be safer there. And I have some things to attend to. I’m supposed to report to Captain Shipstad of the LAPD. There are certain advantages in working with him instead of the local law.”

  Those advantages had become clearer in the last hour, and I decided to call Arnie now. I went into the study and dialed his office number.

  His voice was cool and distant: “I expected you to get in touch with me before now.”

  “Sorry. I had to go to Sausalito.”

  “I hope you had a nice weekend,” he said in a flat Scandinavian tone.

  “It wasn’t so nice. I turned up another murder. An old one.” I gave him the facts of Leo Broadhurst’s death.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re telling me that Broadhurst was killed by his wife?”

  “She shot him, but the shot may not have killed him. He had a broken knife blade in his ribs. Of course she could have put the knife in him.”

  “Could she have killed Albert Sweetner?”

  “I don’t see how. Mrs. Broadhurst was in the Santa Teresa hospital Saturday night. It had to be someone else who did the Northridge killing.”

  “Who do you have in mind?”

&n
bsp; I paused for a moment to organize my thoughts, and Arnie spoke impatiently: “You there, Lew?”

  “I’m here. There are three main suspects. Number one is a local real estate man named Brian Kilpatrick. He knew that Elizabeth Broadhurst shot her husband, and I think she’s been paying him off ever since. Which gives him a reason for killing Stanley Broadhurst and Albert Sweetner.”

  “What reason?”

  “He had a large financial interest in keeping the original murder quiet.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Call it disguised blackmail. But it’s still possible he finished off Leo Broadhurst himself. If so, he had an even stronger reason for silencing the other two. Albert Sweetner knew where Leo was buried. Stanley Broadhurst was trying to dig him up.”

  “But why would Kilpatrick want to knife Leo Broadhurst?”

  “Broadhurst broke up his marriage. Also, there was money in it for him, as I said.”

  “Describe him, will you, Lew?”

  “Kilpatrick’s about forty-five, over six feet, around two hundred pounds. Blue eyes, wavy red hair getting thin on top. Broken veins in the nose and face.” I paused. “Was he seen in Northridge Saturday?”

  “Right now I’m asking the questions. Any scars?”

  “None visible.”

  “Who are the other suspects?”

  “A motel-owner named Lester Crandall is number two. He’s heavy and short, about five-seven and one-eighty. Graying black hair with long sideburns. Talks like a good ole country boy, which he is, but he’s shrewd and heavily loaded.”

  “How old?”

  “He told me he’ll be sixty on his next birthday. He had a motive as strong as Kilpatrick’s for knocking off Leo Broadhurst.”

  “Sixty is too old,” Arnie said.

  “It would expedite matters if you laid your cards on the table. You have a description you’re trying to match, right?”

  “A sort of one. The trouble is, my witness may not be reliable, and I want independent confirmation. Who’s your other suspect?”

  “Kilpatrick’s ex-wife Ellen could have done it. Leo broke up her marriage and then dropped her.”

  “It wasn’t a woman,” Arnie said. “Or if it was, my theory goes to pieces. Did any other adult male have motive and opportunity?”