Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  “What’s he afraid of?” Gray asked himself. “Or maybe—who?” He called through the door, “Ferguson? It’s Gray. Michael Gray.”

  A muffled voice close to the panels said hoarsely, “You alone?”

  “Yes,” Gray told him. “It’s all right. Let me in. I want to talk to you.”

  There was a long pause. Then the man inside gave a quick, small laugh. The lock clicked.

  “Come in. Quick!” the voice said, and the door opened a little way.

  The room inside was harshly lit by a naked bulb that dangled on a cord. Gray could see a stretch of worn brown linoleum, a table with a bottle and glasses on it flanking a battered radio, and the end of a sofa with a man’s relaxed feet and ankles visible stretched out on it. Gray wondered how he could lie there, so reposed and quiet, with that intermittent thunder banging away outside.

  “Hurry up!” said the man beyond the door.

  Gray stepped forward into the room.

  He had only time for one quick look before the light went out, but the moment seemed vivid and endless. He saw the man on the sofa at full length now. And he saw why he lay so quiet in the noise.

  “Ferguson?” he said at first, in a startled voice that faded in the middle of the word, as his mind took in unbelievingly what he saw.

  Ferguson lay on his back, his chin pointed toward the ceiling. His eyes were open and blank. His stained teeth grinned in the open mouth and the stained fingers were stiff like claws. There was a blue hole in his temple, with powder marks around it.

  Gray’s reaction was quick. But not quite quick enough.

  He swung toward the door. There was another click of the light switch in the same instant and the bulb in the ceiling went out, fading to a red ember and dying. The room went pitch-black as the man still hidden behind the door slammed it hard behind Gray. The spring lock clicked.

  Instantly, without a second’s pause for thought, Gray dropped flat and rolled over twice. He expected the crash of gunfire and the impact of a bullet. But nothing happened.

  Puzzled, he gathered himself cautiously and rose to a crouch, placing his feet carefully, making no sound. He knew the man was in the room with him. He could feel his presence and the cold, still presence of the dead man. But there was no sound. The blackness was absolute except for a dim fan of yellow light that spread inward under the bottom of the door.

  Gray tried to remember the layout of the room. He had lost his orientation when he had rolled over, and he wasn’t sure which way he faced now. He put out a cautious hand and touched an upright wooden post. A table leg? No, a chair, a light wooden chair.

  Experimentally he closed both hands on it. Very quietly he straightened, lifted the chair. He hurled it hard into the darkness. It fell with a clatter.

  Nothing happened.

  A long, still moment passed in which Gray breathed through his mouth to keep the silence absolute, and waited tensely.

  Then from outside a heavy, hollow crash boomed through the house, rattling the windows, shaking the floor. The wreckers’ steel ball thundered on a crumbling wall.

  Sharp and bright in the room came the hard bark of a gunshot.

  Gray froze where he was. He thought the bullet had hit the wall, but all he could be sure of was that it had missed him. The gun flash had come from near the door, but now he could hear the soft scrape of feet moving on the linoleum. The room was deadly still again as the echoes of gunshot and wreckers’ weight died together.

  Gray moved a step to the right. He touched something that rattled slightly. He froze again, bracing himself for the impact of a bullet.

  But there was no shot.

  Very carefully Gray reached into his coat pocket, found a pencil, and tossed it across the room. It thudded to the linoleum and rolled noisily.

  Silence and darkness.

  Then the hammering crash of metal smashing brick boomed out again, shaking the house. And again the sharp bark of a gun sounded in the room.

  Again the bullet missed him.

  By now Gray was beginning to get his bearings. His eyes were adjusting to the dark. Against one wall was the lighter oblong of a window. He listened tensely. Nothing moved in the room, but the sense of taut waiting and watching somewhere in the dark was very strong. The sense of murder shut up with him here inside the four walls.

  Who was it?

  Someone he knew? Someone he had talked to in the last twenty-four hours? If he could catch the least sound that seemed familiar, the least betraying scent—of perfume, say, or tobacco or hair oil. Anything to say, “Here is a person you’ve met before…”

  Nothing.

  Gray thought, “If I can keep on dodging bullets until the gun’s empty—” But it wasn’t a good risk.

  Had anyone heard the shots? It seemed unlikely. The killer was timing his fire too well. During the silences, he could not be tempted to shoot. During the crashes of the wrecking ball, he couldn’t be stopped…

  A soft, sliding sound broke the stillness. Gray looked to make sure he wasn’t silhouetted against the window. The killer was moving purposefully—toward what? Perhaps he, too, had been thinking that Gray might be able to outwait the last bullet. This random shooting wasn’t sure enough.

  Gray saw the fan of dim yellow light from under the door darken and then brighten twice—two feet moving quickly past it. A sudden shiver went over Gray. He knew what was about to happen. The light switch. The killer was moving toward the light switch.

  The next time the steel ball smashed against the bricks outside, the light would blaze. And Gray would see the face of the man across the room. He would see it and know who his murderer was, but he would see it only for an instant. Only for as long as it takes to pull a trigger.

  Gray looked up desperately, trying to locate the ceiling bulb. It he could throw something at it, smash it…But he couldn’t locate it in the dark. All he could do was wait—

  No, that wasn’t all he could do.

  There was another way. A bad risk, but better than passive waiting for a certain end.

  Gray moved fast but cautiously, stooping to keep his outline away from the window, his hands groping before him in the dark. How much time he had he didn’t know. Maybe none at all. At any second the next crash might come.

  He was gambling on one thing—that the killer would not fire until the sound of his shot was covered by the noise outside. And he felt the killer was gambling, too—gambling that Gray would continue to make no sound that could pinpoint where he was.

  Gray’s outstretched hand touched a table. His knuckles brushed the bottle and glasses on its top. He closed his fingers on the table edge and heaved up hard. The table overturned noisily. Glasses, bottle, radio, fell crashing to the linoleum. The table thudded after them.

  Gray whirled away, drawing in his breath for a shout.

  “Police!” he roared at the top of his voice. “Police!”

  His skin crawled with the expectation of a shot.

  It didn’t come—yet. The killer must be too startled to react. But he had showed himself a man who recovered fast.

  Gray blundered into a chair. He gripped it in both hands, swung it high and smashed it against the wall, still shouting.

  “Police! Police!”

  If the killer decided to take a chance, switch on the light and shoot now, then Gray was as good as dead. But the thought of the room flooded with light, the thought of showing his face now, must be a terrifying one. Gray heard the man’s breath rasping, almost felt the quick, indecisive twitching of his finger on the trigger. He knew how easily a panic reaction can be set off.

  Some distant part of his mind wondered sardonically if his own behavior was a panic reaction.

  If so, it worked.

  Outside in the hall, someone yelled protestingly. Doors had begun to open. Voices rose, calling out questions, coming closer. Gray shouted again. His hand touched a standing lamp and he swung it up and smashed out with it savagely.

  Someone was pounding on the
door.

  Gray heard a squeaking of wood on wood behind him. He turned sharply. A blurred shape was dark against the window. A blast of cold, dust-smelling air struck his sweating face.

  The noise of pounding on the door filled the room now. Someone was clattering the knob back and forth uselessly.

  Outside, almost too late, the thud of the swinging steel ball crashed upon brick again. The figure in the window fired…

  Gray felt the breeze of the bullet sing past his face. That one was close. Terribly close.

  Then the window was clear again. He thought he heard the sound of footsteps on cement receding outside, but the diminishing echoes of the thunder from the wreckers and the pounding on the door inside drowned out all lesser sounds.

  Gray groped his way to the door. He didn’t turn the light on. Not yet. But he found the lock and turned the knob that released it. Then he opened the door just wide enough and very quickly slipped through the gap into the group of angry people clustering in the hall.

  A curious thought passed through his mind as he shut the door behind him. Suppose a bullet had struck him in the dark room? Would the door have been burst open at last to find him dead in a burning room—as Beverly Bond had been found?

  An angry woman with her hair in pin-curls pushed toward him.

  “What’s the idea of all this? Who are you? I’m going to call the police!”

  Gray said, “Call them quick! Tell them to hurry!”

  She stared at him, open-mouthed, as the booming thunder of the wrecking hammer crashed through the building again.

  11

  The assistant medical examiner glanced up at Captain Harry Zucker, who looked as though he had dressed in a hurry.

  “Shot through the temple,” he said. He held his own extended forefinger, pointing like a gun, a little above his ear and slanting forward. “From an angle like this. The bullet’s still in there. Probably almost instantaneous death.”

  “Any guess when?”

  The man took the cold chin between thumb and finger and moved the jaw hinge gently. “No sign of rigor yet. Find out when he ate last, Captain. I’ll do a stomach-content analysis. Then I can say more.”

  Gray said, “Any evidence that he wasn’t killed less than an hour ago?”

  “No. He could have been.”

  Zucker said glumly, staring around the wrecked room, “If there was any evidence here, you certainly managed to mess it up, Mike.”

  “Sorry.” Gray’s voice was ironic. “Next time I’ll stand still and you can have two corpses to work on.”

  “I didn’t mean that. It’s just—” Zucker glanced around the room again, made a gesture of despair. The crew had finished their work except for one man who was carefully using long-nosed tweezers to pack shattered glass in a cotton-lined box.

  Zucker said, “Let’s go, Mike. Want to drive me to headquarters?”

  He sat heavily beside Gray on the way downtown, chin sunk on chest. He didn’t speak again until the car was rolling smoothly through traffic. Then he let his breath out in an angry sound that was half sigh, half snarl.

  Gray glanced sidewise at him, his face sympathetic.

  “I could have been wrong,” he said. “I was wrong, in a way. I didn’t expect this. At best it was just a hunch, Harry. And I couldn’t give you any evidence.”

  Zucker slammed his fist into his palm. “Don’t give me that crap! It’s my job not to take chances.”

  Gray was silent.

  Zucker hammered his fist steadily into his other hand. He said in a measured, angry growl, “If I could find the son of a bitch who did this I’d—I’d—”

  “You’d arrest him,” Gray said.

  “I’d hope he pulled a gun. Then I could put a bullet right between his eyes. I hope to God he gives me a chance.”

  There was silence in the car for a little while. Then Gray said, “What about the case against Eileen now?”

  Zucker said in a surprised voice, “There’s a connection?”

  “There could be. You know the law of Occam’s Razor? In logic, it’s the idea that of two possible solutions it’s better to choose the simpler. In a way it’s a lot simpler to look for one killer in these three murders. Melissa’s killed, her sister Beverly’s killed. Ferguson confesses to killing Beverly and he’s killed too. I’m investigating the Beverly murder and the killer takes a crack at me. You think there’s no connection?”

  Zucker grunted. “God knows. One thing’s for sure—Eileen didn’t kill Ferguson. That’s about the only thing we do know.”

  Gray smiled. “Have you checked the Saturday night alibis yet?”

  Zucker grunted. “Nobody’s got any alibis for the night Beverly Bond was killed.” He held up a big hand and ticked the names off on his fingers. “Old Man Herrick was home in bed reading. He and his wife have separate rooms. She was alone, too. Not that she could have made it to the Bond place by herself. Pollard—he says he was at the airport waiting for the twelve thirty-eight from Los Angeles. He was there all right, but nobody noticed just when he got there. He claims it was around eleven.” Zucker glanced at Gray. “Anybody else?”

  “Chris Bond?” Gray asked, “the ex-husband?”

  “I’m wrong,” Zucker told him. ’“There’s one guy with an alibi. Air-tight, so far. He was in a card game until eleven, and some of his friends dropped him off at Beverly’s door just before you saw him.”

  Gray thought briefly.

  “Did you check up on Dan Abel for that night?” he asked.

  “Abel?” Zucker sounded astonished. “Why?”

  “No reason. It’s just—well, he keeps popping up in this case. And he gets too damned emotional where Eileen’s concerned.”

  “I’ll check,” Zucker said. “I’ve been wrong once too often today to give you an argument. Anybody else?”

  Gray hesitated.

  “What about the McCreery brothers?”

  Zucker let his breath out noisily.

  “Okay, okay. I’m not even asking what’s on your mind.”

  ‘They’ve got a mantrap in their basement,” Gray told him.

  “The hell they have!”

  “It doesn’t prove anything, but it does suggest a lot. And they knew both sisters. I want to have a talk with McCreery one of these days.”

  Gray turned a corner and punched the low-gear button as an almost vertical hill rose before them. The car slowed and complained as they climbed the steep street.

  Zucker said gloomily, “The only people who confess are the ones with alibis. Eileen couldn’t have killed Ferguson. Ferguson couldn’t have killed Beverly. We’ve got half a dozen witnesses who saw him at the fights that night. Mike, why the hell did he confess?”

  Gray said absently, “Symbolic re-enactment.”

  “And what the hell’s that?”

  Gray laughed. “The same thing that’s bothering Eileen, in some ways. I told you she keeps trying to punish herself for things she feels guilty about. It’s a pattern we learn pretty early in life. A kid gets in trouble, his parents are mad at him and punish him. Then they forgive him and everything’s okay again. He learns it so thoroughly the pattern becomes an unconscious mechanism.”

  “So?” Zucker said.

  “So, later on in life, if a person does something he feels is wrong, he’s uncomfortable if he doesn’t get punished for it. Sometimes he feels so guilty he’ll do his damnedest to get punished. For some other crime, if necessary. That’s why we get phony confessions—like Ferguson’s.”

  Zucker said unwillingly, “Well, maybe. Ferguson got his, anyhow.” He sat in silence for a while.

  “Well,” he said presently, “now we start checking alibis all over again. For tonight.” He turned sidewise, looking at Gray.

  “Mike, who was it in that room with you tonight?”

  Gray said, “I almost know. It’s funny.”

  “I know what you mean.” Zucker nodded. “A man, was it?”

  “I’m pretty sure. And I’m pretty su
re I knew him. You can almost tell without knowing how you know. Subliminal things, really—the tempo of his breathing, or the way he moves around. The—the feel of a presence in the same room. I think he’s somebody I know.”

  “Whoever it was, he knew you.”

  “Because he didn’t let me in until I gave my name?” Gray nodded. “Somebody’s afraid of me, afraid I know more than I do know. So there is more to know.”

  “He’ll probably try again,” Zucker said grimly. They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Zucker said, “Oh hell, Mike, we’re seeing ghosts. Ferguson was a small-time crook who started to squeal. So he got bumped. There’s your Occam’s Razor law. Any one of twenty guys might have done it who never even heard of you or Beverly Bond. Crooks get nervous when their friends start talking to the cops. That’s all.”

  Gray said dubiously, “Maybe.”

  “One thing,” Zucker added. “Whoever it was got Ferguson, Ferguson must have known him. They’d been having a drink together. I don’t think there are any prints—” He stopped, with a quick glance at Gray. He started to speak, and stopped again.

  “Let’s have it,” Gray said. “What’s on your mind?”

  Zucker went on hastily, “Nothing but blurs on the glasses in Ferguson’s room. Maybe the killer wiped them off. Hell! Maybe Ferguson wanted to be punished so God damned much he asked the guy to shoot him through the head.”

  “That’s not what you were going to say,” Gray told him.

  Zucker was silent.

  “Tell me something, Mike,” he said presently. “What do you really think of Eileen’s story?”

  “I don’t like it,” Gray told him promptly. “Some of it isn’t the truth. How much, I don’t know. For one thing, I think her motive’s phony. Have you turned up any evidence that Pollard was really sleeping with Beverly Bond? Were they ever seen together at all?”

  “No evidence so far,” Zucker said. “Not about Pollard.”

  Something in his voice made Gray glance at him.

  “What do you mean?”

  Zucker hesitated only briefly this time.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “No use sitting on this any longer. We’ve already questioned the guy about it, so it’s no secret now. Except we’ll keep it out of the papers if we can.” He shot Gray a sidelong glance. “Remember there were prints in the Bond apartment we couldn’t identify? Well, we know now. They belonged to the guy who paid the rent. So Eileen did have a good, strong motive to break the thing up. Before it broke up her home.”