The 1st Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  He lighted one of his lettuce cigarettes, watched the smoke swirl away, enter into, disappear. The river became one with the sea, the smoke one with the air. All things became one with another, entered into and merged, until water was land, land water, and smoke was air, air smoke. Why had she smiled in triumph? Now he could think about it.

  He sat on the bare stone, bent his legs, rested one cheek on his knee. He unbuttoned canvas jacket, suit jacket, shirt, and slid an ungloved hand inside to feel his own breast, not much flatter than hers. He worked the nipple slowly and thought she had been happy when her eyes turned upward to focus on that shining point of steel rushing downward to mark a period in her brain. She had been happy. She wanted the certitude. Everything she had told him testified to her anguished search for an absolute. And then, wearied of the endless squigglings of her quick and sensitive intelligence—so naked and aware it must have been as painful as an open wound—she had involved him in her plan, urging him on, then betraying him. Knowing what the end would be, wanting it. Yes, he thought, that was what happened.

  He sat there a long time—the sky dulling to late afternoon-dreaming over what had happened. Not sorry for what had happened, but feeling a kind of sad joy, because he knew she had found her ultimate truth, and he would find his. So they both—but then he heard the sound of car engines, slam of car doors, and crawled slowly to the edge of Devil’s Needle to peer down.

  They came down the gravel road from Chilton, saw the sign: “One mile to Chilton State Park,” then made their turn onto the dirt road. They pulled up outside the fence. The wings of the gate were leaning crazily. Inside was Daniel Blank’s car. A big man, clad in a brown canvas windbreaker with a dirty sheepskin collar, was leaning against the car and watched them as they stopped. There was a six-pack of beer on the hood of the car; the man was sipping slowly from an opened can.

  Captain Delaney got out, adjusted his cap, tugged down his jacket. He walked through the ruined gate toward Blank’s car, taking out identification. He inspected the big man as he advanced. Six-four, at least; maybe five or six if he straightened up. At least 250, maybe more, mostly in the belly. Had to be pushing 65. Wearing the worn windbreaker, stained corduroy pants, yellow, rubber-soled work shoes laced up over his ankles, a trooper’s cap of some kind of black fur. Around his neck the leather cord of what appeared to be Army surplus field glasses from World War I. About his waist, a leather belt blotched with the sweat of a lifetime, supporting one of the biggest dogleg holsters Delaney had ever seen, flap buttoned. On the man’s chest, some kind of a shield, star or sunburst; it was difficult to make out.

  “Chief Forrest?” Delaney asked, coming up.

  “Yep.”

  “Captain Edward X. Delaney, New York Police Department.” He flipped open his identification, held it out.

  The Chief took it in a hand not quite the size and color of a picnic ham, and inspected it thoroughly. He passed it back, then held a hand out to Delaney.

  “Chief Evelyn F. Forrest,” he rumbled. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain. I suppose you think ‘Evelyn’ is a funny name for a man.”

  “No, I don’t think that. My father’s name was Marion. Not so important, is it?”

  “Nooo…unless you’ve got it.”

  “I see our boy got here,” Delaney said, patting the fender of the parked car.

  “Uh-huh,” Forrest nodded. “He arrived. Captain, I’ve got a cold six-pack here. Would you like…”

  “Sure. Thank you. Go good right now.”

  The Chief selected a can, pulled the tab, handed over the beer. They both raised their drinks to each other, then sipped. The Captain inspected the label.

  “Never had this brand before,” he confessed. “Good. Almost like ale.”

  “Uh-huh,” Chief Forrest nodded. “Local brewery. They don’t go into the New York City area, but they sell all they can make.”

  He had, Delaney decided, the face of an old bloodhound, the skin a dark purplish-brown, hanging in wrinkles and folds: bags, jowls, wattles. But the eyes were unexpectedly young, mild, open; the whites were clear. Must have been quite a boy about 40 years ago, the Captain thought, before the beer got to him, ballooned his gut, slowed him up.

  “Look here, Captain,” Forrest said. “One of your men got some into him.”

  The Chief pointed out a bullet hole in the body of the car and another through the left front window.

  “Come out here,” he continued, pointing to a star-cracked hole in the windshield.

  Delaney stooped to sight through the entrance hole in the window and the exit hole in the windshield.

  “My God,” he said, “by rights it should have taken his brains right along with it, if he was in the driver’s seat. The man’s got the luck of the Devil.”

  “Uh-huh,” Chief Forrest nodded. “Some of ’em do. Well, here’s what happened…I get here about an hour before he does, pull off the gravel road into the trees, opposite to the turnoff to the Park. Not such good concealment, but I figure he’ll be looking to his right for the Park entrance and won’t spot me.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Yep. Well, I’m out of my station wagon, enjoying a brew, when he comes barreling along, pretty as you please. Turns into this here dirt road, sees the locked gate, speeds up, and just cuts right through; hot knife through butter. Then he gets out of the car, stretches, and looks around. I got him in my glasses by now. Handsome lad.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “He starts changing to his outdoor duds: a jacket, boots, and so forth. I got a turn when he ducks into the car with a full head of hair and comes out balder’n a peeled egg.”

  He wears a wig,”

  “Uh-huh. I found it, back there in the car. Looks like a dead muskrat. Also his coat and city shoes. Then he pulls or a cap, packs up his gear, and starts for Devil's Needle. I come across the road then and into the Park.”

  “Did he spot you?”

  “Spot me?” the Chief said in some amazement. “Why no. I still move pretty good, and I know the land around here like the palm of my hand. No, he didn't spot me. Anyways, he gets there, attaches a line to his belt and to his gear, and goes into the chimney. Makes the climb in pretty good time. After awhile I see his line going out, and he pulls up his gear. Then I see him standing on top of Devil’s Needle. I see him for just a few seconds, but he’s up there all right, Captain; no doubt about that.”

  “Did you see any food in his gear? Or a canteen? Anything like that?”

  “Nope. Nothing like that. But he had a rucksack. Might have had food and drink in that.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Captain…”

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “That alert you phoned to the State boys…You know, they pass it on to all us local chiefs and sheriffs by radio. I was on my way out here when I heard the call. Didn’t mention nothing about Chilton.”

  “Uh…well, I didn’t mention Chilton to them. It was just a hunch, and I didn’t want them charging out here on what might have been a wild-goose chase.”

  The Chief looked at him steadily a long moment. “Sonny,” he said softly, “I don’t know what your beef is with the State boys, and I don’t want to know. I admit they can be a stiffnecked lot. But Captain, when this here is cleaned up, you’re going back home. This is my home, and I got to deal with the State boys every day in the week. Now if they find out I knew a homicidal maniac was holed up on State property and didn’t let them know, they’ll be a mite put out, Captain, just a mite put out.”

  Delaney scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his city shoe, looking down. “Guess you’re right,” he muttered finally. “It’s just…” He looked up at the Chief; his voice trailed away.

  “Sonny,” Forrest said in a kindly voice, “I been in this business a lot longer’n you, and I know what it means to be after a man, to track him for a long time, and to corner him. Then the idea of anyone but you takin’ him is enough to drive you right up into the rafters.”
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  “Yes,” Delaney nodded miserably. “Something like that.”

  “But you see my side of it, don’t you, Captain? I got to call them. I’ll do it anyway, but I’d rather you say, ‘All right.’”

  “All right. I can understand it. How do you get them?”

  “Radio in my wagon. I can reach the troop. I’ll be right back.”

  The Chief moved off, up the dirt road, with a remarkably light stride for a man his age and weight. Captain Delaney stood by Blank’s car, looking through the window at the coat, the shoes, the wig. They already had the shapeless, dusty look of possessions of a man long dead.

  He should be feeling an exultation, he knew, at having snubbed Daniel Blank. But instead he felt a sense of dread. Reaction to the excitement of the morning, he supposed, but there seemed to be more to it than that. The dread was for the future, for what lay ahead. “Finish the job,” he told himself, “Finish the job.” He refused to imagine what the finish might be. He remembered what his Army colonel had told him: “The best soldiers have no imagination.”

  He turned as Chief Forrest came driving through the sprung gate in an old, dilapidated station wagon with “Chilton Police Department” painted on the side in flaking red letters. He pulled up alongside Blank’s car. “On their way,” he called to Delaney, “About twenty minutes or so, I reckon.”

  He got from behind the wheel with some difficulty, grunting and puffing, then reached back inside to haul out two more six-packs of beer. He held them out to Delaney.

  “For your boys,” he said. “While they’re waiting.”

  “Why, thank you, Chief. That’s kind of you. Hope it’s not leaving you short.”

  Forrest’s big belly shook with laughter. “That’ll be the day,” he rumbled.

  The Captain smiled, took the six-packs over to his cars. “Better get out and stretch your legs,” he advised his men. “Looks like we’ll be here awhile. The State boys are on their way. Here’s some beer, compliments of Chief Forrest of the Chilton Police Department.”

  The men got out of the cars happily, headed for the beer. Delaney went back to the Chief.

  “Could we take a close look at Devil’s Needle?” he asked. “Why sure.”

  “I’ve got three snipers with me, and I’d like to locate a spot where they could cover the entrance to the chimney and the top of the rock. Just in case.”

  “Uh-huh. This fugitive of yours armed, Captain?”

  “Just the ice ax, as far as I know. As for a gun, I can’t guarantee either way. Chief, you don’t have to come with me. Just point out the way, and I’ll get there.”

  “Shit,” Chief Forrest said disgustedly, “that’s the first dumb thing you’ve said, sonny.”

  He started off with his light, flat-footed stride; Captain Delaney stumbled after him. They made their way down a faint dirt path winding through the skeleton trees.

  Then they came to the out-crops. Captain Delaney’s soles slipped on the shiny rocks while Chief Forrest stepped confidently, never missing his footing, not looking down, but striding and moving like a gargantuan ballet dancer to the base of Devil’s Needle. When Delaney came up, breathing heavily, the Chief had opened his holster flap and was bending it back, tucking it under that sweat-stained belt.

  Delaney jerked his chin toward the dogleg holster. “What do you carry, Chief?” he asked, one professional to another.

  “Colt forty-four. Nine-inch barrel. It belonged to my daddy. He was a lawman, too. Replaced the pin and one of the grips, but otherwise it’s in prime condition. A nice piece.”

  The Captain nodded and turned his eyes, unwilling, to Devil’s Needle. He raised his head slowly. The granite shaft poked into the sky, tapering slightly as it rose. There were mica glints that caught the late afternoon sunlight, and patches of dampness. A blotter of moss here and there. The surface was generally smooth and wind-worn, but there was a network of small cracks: a veiny stone torso.

  He squinted at the top. It was strange to think of Daniel G. Blank up there. Near and far. Far.

  “About eighty feet?” he guessed aloud.

  “Closer to sixty-five, seventy, I reckon,” Chief Forrest rumbled.

  Up and down. They were separated. Captain Delaney had never felt so keenly the madness of the world. For some reason, he thought of lovers separated by glass or a fence, or a man and woman, strangers, exchanging an eye-to-eye stare on the street, on a bus, in a restaurant, a wall of convention or fear between them, yet unbearably close in that look and never to be closer.

  “Inside,” he said in a clogged voice, and stepped carefully into the opening of the vertical cleft, the chimney. He smelled the rank dampness, felt the chill of stone shadow. He tilted his head back. Far above, in the gloom, was a wedge of pale blue sky.

  “A one-man climb,” Chief Forrest said, his voice unexpectedly loud in the cavern. “You wiggle your way up, using your back and feet, then your hands and knees as the rock squeezes in. He’s up there with an ice ax, ain’t no man getting up there now unless he says so. You’ve got to use both hands.”

  “You’ve made the climb, Chief?”

  Forrest grunted shortly. “Uh-huh. Many, many times. But that was years ago, before my belly got in the way.”

  “What’s it like up there?”

  “Oh, about the size of a double bedsheet. Flat, but sloping some to the south. Pitted and shiny. Some shallow rock hollows. Right nice view.”

  They came outside, Delaney looked up again.

  “You figure sixty-five, seventy feet?”

  “About.”

  “We could get a cherry-picker from the Highway Department, or I could bring up a ladder truck from the New York Fire Department. They can go up a hundred feet. But there’s no way to get a truck close enough; not down that path and across the rocks. Unless we build a road. And that would take a month.”

  They were silent then.

  “Helicopter?” Delaney said finally.

  “Yes,” Forrest acknowledged. “They could blast him from that. Tricky in these downdrafts and cross-currents, but I reckon it could be done.”

  “It could be done,” Captain Delaney agreed tonelessly. “Or we could bring in a fighter plane to blow him away with rockets and machine guns.”

  Silence again.

  “Don’t set right with you, does it, sonny?” the Chief asked softly.

  “No, it doesn’t. To you?”

  “No. I never did hanker to shoot fish in a barrel.”

  “Let’s get back.”

  On the way, they selected a tentative site for the snipers. It was back in a clump of firs, offering some concealment but providing a clear field of fire covering the entrance to the chimney and the top of Devil’s Needle.

  The State police had not yet arrived. Delaney’s men were lounging in and out of the cars, nursing their beers. The three pale snipers stood a little apart from the others, talking quietly, hugging their rifles in canvas cases.

  “Chief, I’ve got to make some phone calls. Do I go into Chilton?”

  “No need. Right there.” Forrest waved his hand toward the gate-keeper’s cottage. He pointed out the telephone wire that ran on wooden poles back to the gravel road. “They keep that line open all winter. Highway crews plowing snow use it, and Park people who come in for early spring planting.”

  They walked over to the weathered wooden shack, stepped up onto the porch. Delaney inspected the hasp closed with a heavy iron padlock.

  “Got a key?” he asked.

  “Sure,” the Chief said, pulling the massive revolver out of his holster. “Step back a mite, sonny.”

  The Captain backed away hastily, and Chief Forrest negligently shot the lock away. Delaney noted he aimed at the shackle, not the body of the lock where a bullet might do nothing but jam the works. He was beginning to admire the old man. The explosion was unexpectedly loud; echoes banged back and forth; Delaney’s men rose uneasily to their feet. Two brown birds took off from the dry underbrush alongside the dirt road
, went whirring off with raucous cries.

  The Chief pushed the door open. The cabin smelled dusty and stale. An old, wood-based “cookie-cutter” phone was attached to the wall, operated by a little hand crank.

  “Haven’t seen one of those in years,” Delaney observed.

  “We still got a few around. The operator’s name is Muriel. You might tell her I’m out here, in case she’s got any words for me.” He left Delaney alone in the shack.

  The Captain spun the crank; Muriel came on with pleasing promptness. Delaney identified himself, and gave her the Chief’s message.

  “Well, his wife wants to know if she should hold supper,” she said. “You tell him that.”

  “I will.”

  “You got the killer out there?” she asked sternly. “Something like that. Can I get through to New York City?”

  “Of course. What do you think?”

  He called Blankenship first and reported the situation as briefly as he could. He told the detective to call Deputy Inspector Thorsen and repeat Delaney’s message.

  Then he called Barbara at the hospital. It was a harrowing call; his wife was weeping, and he couldn’t find out the cause. Finally a nurse came on the phone and told the Captain his wife was hysterical; she didn’t think the call should be continued. He hung up, bewildered and frightened.

  Then he called Dr. Sanford Ferguson, and got him in his office.

  “Captain Edward X. Delaney here.”

  “Edward! Congratulations! I hear you got him.”

  “Not exactly. He’s on top of a rock, and we can’t get to him.”

  “On top of a rock?”

  “High. Sixty-five, seventy feet. Doctor, how long can a man live without food and water?”

  “Food or water? About ten days, I’d guess. Maybe less.”

  “Ten days? That’s all?”