Obit Delayed

by Nielsen, Helen

  11

  MITCH HAD A LOT of new things to think about now, but no time. He had taken too much time already. This realization came to him when he looked up and saw that Ernie and Kendall Hoyt were gone. The other policemen were gone, too, and with them that miserable little man in the tattered shirt. He was left all alone in the dirty-yellow room with nothing but an empty corridor reaching out toward the street where even now the sounds of motors split the silence of a far-spent night. And then Mitch remembered what Hoyt had said about a ride in the country. This was one excursion he didn’t intend to miss, and he ran all the way to the coupé.

  With a set of taillights to follow, knowing where he was going wasn’t too important. As long as he kept them in sight he was all right, and keeping them in sight was no great feat at an hour when only the Diesels plied the highway. After a mile or so Mitch began to catch on. Now he remembered things about Frank Wales that hadn’t seemed important before. Wales had been a migratory worker. Wales knew his way around the local ranches as well as his friend Mitch had met back in the police station, and that meant that he knew every camp and workers’ settlement in the valley. Some were abandoned now. Between crops they were nothing but ghost towns, miserable shacks that never provided more than the barest necessities, and were usually placed well off the highway where their squalor wouldn’t disturb the tourists and nature lovers. A man who knew his way around could find at least temporary shelter, and that must have been what Ernie had in mind all this time. Ernie Talbot did his thinking with his head.

  After a while the taillights left the highway and took off down a narrow side road threading its way alongside an irrigation ditch. It was flat country, except for the distant rim of mountains holding off the dawn, and following the lead cars was easy. There would be no more turn-offs now, no place to go except straight ahead. Mitch could drive with his hands and feet, leaving his mind free to grope among the ruins of a blasted theory. What if it really was Frank Wales after all? What if Singer and Costro were as innocent as babes, and Rita Royale just the victim of her own intoxication? If these things were true, then Mitch Gorman had built himself up for an awful fall in more ways than one, and the fall was coming fast.

  Suddenly he yanked his foot off the accelerator and braked to a stop. It was too dark to see what had halted the lead cars, but their taillights winked a warning and then, moments later, the bright finger of spotlight raked out across a row of weathered shacks.

  “Come on out, Wales! We know that you’re in there!”

  That was Kendall Hoyt’s big voice waking up the echoes, and only the echoes answered. Suddenly Mitch was scared. If Wales really was in one of those buildings and was foolish enough to try making a break, this story would have a sudden and inconclusive ending. Already men were pouring from the cars—two city vehicles and a state job Ernie had picked up along the way—but it was impossible to tell whether they had actually sighted anyone from such a distance. There was only one thing to do about that. Mitch followed suit.

  Now the rude buildings took on features, broken windows, sagging steps, and gaping doorways. Behind one of them stood an old shed, and that was where Kendall Hoyt had headed, gun in hand. It was nice figuring on his part, because the shed was just the right size for hiding a station wagon and Wales, if he was on the premises, wouldn’t get far without it.

  “Shoot that light over this way,” he shouted, going to work on the double doors. They were old and their hinges protested loudly against being put to work, but Kendall Hoyt was a determined man. The light swung into place just as he pulled back the first panel, and there, for everybody to see, was the dusty nose of an old station wagon.

  Not a pile of twisted wreckage in the bottom of some canyon. Mitch had been running, now he walked forward slowly. The shed was alive with torches by the time he got there, and Ernie was scrutinizing something he’d picked up from the earthen floor—a newspaper.

  “He’s been here, all right,” he said, “and not long ago.” And then, looking up to see the new arrival, made. Mitch a present of his find. It was a copy of the Independent, the latest issue. “This dead man not only writes, he reads. Find anything else back there?”

  “Here’s a couple of empty beer cans,” called a voice from the rear of the shed, “and some bread and some cheese.”

  “Cozy!” Ernie muttered. “Downright cozy! A loaf of bread, a jug of beer, and the daily paper! Where the hell’s that Mexican?”

  Now Mitch could see why Ernie had brought along so many men. They were combing the shacks and beating the bushes, and one of them, a big fellow named McMahon, who had been holding down the softest lounge chair in the El Rey lobby for the past two days, came forward pushing the little man before him.

  “Where is he?” Ernie roared. “Where’s the man who gave you that note?”

  He wasn’t going to get an answer that way because the man was too frightened to speak.

  “Don’t you know you’ve been running errands for a suspected murderer? Don’t you know what the law can do to you for that?”

  Ernie was standing directly in the glare of the spotlight, and his fat face was livid with anger. A few minutes ago he’d been bringing to a successful conclusion the biggest man hunt in his career, and now all he had were a couple of empty beer cans and a wrinkled newspaper. He had good reason to be upset because, from what Mitch could gather, the man in the tattered shirt had told him that Wales was waiting here for an answer to that undelivered note. Now he wasn’t saying anything at all; he was just blinking at the light and looking scared and bewildered, as if this whole situation was as much a puzzle to him as to everybody else.

  “Wales can’t be far away,” Hoyt broke in, “not without his car. He must have seen our headlights and lit out running.”

  It was a logical conclusion, and just the kind of crazy thing a frightened man might do. Crazy because the night wasn’t going to last much longer, and being afoot in the valley with the sun blazing down from above and the police closing in from all sides wouldn’t contribute to longevity. And then Mitch thought of something. They had driven a good five miles from Valley City, but that late newspaper indicated that Wales’s man Friday must have been a mighty busy boy if he made all those trips on foot.

  And if he had walked into town for a paper, why not deliver that note to Norma at the same time? At that hour she might have been able to cash a check; and at that hour the lobby of the El Rey wouldn’t have been bright and empty, except for McMahon who was big enough to be spotted from the sidewalk. Mitch felt a little sick even before he asked the question.

  “No, this bird didn’t walk in,” McMahon answered. “He was driving a beat-up old truck, and squawked his head off because he had to leave it parked in front of the hotel when I took him to headquarters.”

  “In front of the hotel?” Mitch echoed. “Do you mean that this man walked in the front door? I suppose he even asked the room clerk for Mrs. Wales’s room!”

  Ernie Talbot had stopped muttering to himself. Now he was listening to Mitch, and this time he wasn’t laughing. “What’s on your mind?” he demanded.

  “I wonder who’s on duty at the El Rey now,” Mitch said.

  He was peering out at all those busy torches poking everywhere, all those busy men who had come to give a surprise party for Frank Wales and couldn’t find the guest of honor. And he was thinking of Norma standing before those opened windows last night, staring down at the street with wide, frightened eyes.

  Ernie swore softly under his breath, and then started a stampede toward the cars.

  Mitch wasn’t more than a car’s length behind the city police all the way back to town. The highway patrol could go on beating the bushes if they wanted to, but back in Valley City the woman Frank Wales wanted to reach had nothing between her and the street but a virtually empty lobby and a flight of stairs. And on that street was a battered old truck that nobody had thought to search.

  It was still parked there when the three automobiles screamed
to a stop at the curbing. The night was beginning to tear loose at the seams and the wide windows of the El Rey glowed yellow in the paling darkness; but there didn’t seem to be a living soul in the lobby.

  Hoyt was the first man to reach the desk. “There’s nobody here—” he began, and then gave a yell. “He’s behind the counter! Hey, Ernie, look at this!”

  And then they were swarming all over and around the registration desk toward a crumpled body on the floor. The body groaned, and somebody began to yell for water, but Mitch had seen all he could wait to see. From the looks of that night clerk something had hit him hard, and, unless Mitch was very much mistaken, not too long ago. A lot of good planning had gone into this stunt, and Wales wouldn’t have risked ruining it all by storming the lobby until he’d seen and heard those police cars tearing out of town.

  At this hour the elevator wasn’t manned, and Mitch took the stairs two and three steps at a time. At the second-floor landing he heard the elevator begin to whine—somebody downstairs knew more about the mechanism than he did—and at the top floor he stopped to gasp for breath. The management didn’t waste too much electricity lighting the halls, but a rectangle of light was coming from an open door and a shadow, no, two shadows, struggled against it. Mitch ran forward, and he never knew whether he was yelling as he ran or if it was the sound of the elevator that put Frank Wales to flight.

  For a moment he saw him clearly, a huge, hulking man with a three days’ growth of black beard and a pair of wild eyes. He’d swung around, one hand still grasping Norma’s arm, and she was as white as the robe she wore. There was no time now for exchanging introductions; Mitch threw a blocking tackle that missed by inches as Wales rushed past him into the hall. He seemed to hang there, spinning first one way and then another, because now the stair well was alive with the sound of running feet and just behind him an elevator door was bursting open. Like an enraged bull, Wales whirled and charged into the blazing gun of Officer Hoyt.

  12

  HOW FAR could a man run with a belly full of lead, and where could he hide from the morning? Mitch still didn’t believe it. He’d seen it all happen right before his eyes, but he still didn’t believe it. Hoyt’s gun might have been a toy, and Hoyt himself, all six feet of him, a doll tossed aside. Wales went down the way the officer had come up, down in the elevator with his pursuers chasing one another through a maze of empty halls. But there was a pool of blood on the floor of the car when they found it, and a trail of blood across that smooth tile floor of the lobby. How far could he run?

  Upstairs in Norma’s room Ernie Talbot was asking questions. When had he come? What had he said? What had he done? Like rounds from a rapid-fire rifle they came, and all the while Norma huddled pale and haggard in the arms of a small lounge chair.

  “I don’t know!” she cried. “I don’t know! What have you done to him?”

  Nobody knew the answer to that, but the swarm of police combing through the dawn-gray streets were working on it.

  “Do you mean to tell me that he didn’t say anything at all?”

  “I think what she means to tell you,” Mitch broke in, “is that he didn’t have a chance to say anything. He was standing in front of the open door when I got here. He must have just come up.”

  It was easy to let it go at that, and Ernie had no time for argument with a fugitive at large in the streets below. Now it was hurry, hurry, with everybody shouted to the search except McMahon—posted in the hall—and Mitch Gorman who was left alone in the room with a frightened woman. Just Mitch and Norma and the lie.

  He closed the door on Talbot’s retreating back and slowly turned around. “What did he say?” he asked. “Where was he going?”

  She hadn’t expected that; her surprise was showing badly. Apparently she’d forgotten that moment when the hall exploded into fury and Mitch caught in his arms a frantic woman with no remembrance of any small thing in her hands. Now it was hidden in a nervously knotted handkerchief, until Mitch came forward and took it from her. When the knots were undone, he held in his hand a small key on a chain bearing a tiny replica of a license plate.

  “You didn’t come to the door with this in your hand,” he explained. “What’s more, your husband wasn’t on his way in; he was just leaving. Where did he think he was going in your car?”

  Being a lady in distress wasn’t going to help her any now. “I don’t know,” Norma said. “I really don’t know.”

  “Did he kill Virginia?”

  “No! She was dead when he reached the house.”

  “Then why did he run away?”

  “Because he was afraid no one would believe him!”

  Norma put her heart into those words, but Mitch wasn’t moved. There was quite a difference between being arrested on the suspicion of murder and rushing headlong into gunfire. Then Norma’s back stiffened and her shoulders began to tremble.

  “Oh, my god,” she cried. “I’ve killed him!”

  “Stop it!” Mitch ordered. “It wasn’t you!”

  “But it was! I told him to go. I said we had a clue to the real murderer, and if he could hide out a few more days we might learn the truth from that Singer person. I sent him away.”

  It wasn’t going to do any good to try to talk her out of that idea. Now it was all her fault, right from the beginning, because now was the time for confessing and crying out old regrets.

  “You may as well know the truth,” she sobbed, dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief. “That letter from Virginia wasn’t the first one. Ever since Frank stopped in to see her last fall she’d been writing. First it was to thank us for the money for her operation, and how she was going to pay it back. Then she wrote how hard things were and could she send a little at a time? We don’t have much, Mr. Gorman, but I asked Frank to write and tell her to forget about it. He did but she kept on writing.”

  Norma’s voice was almost a whisper now. Mitch had to kneel beside her to catch the words.

  “She wrote about anything and nothing—chatty letters full of ‘do you remember the time?’ Oh, they were addressed to me, too, but I knew what she was trying to do and I couldn’t stand it any longer. When that special-delivery came I refused to read it. I told Frank to ignore it—that I’d leave him if he didn’t make her stop writing those letters! I didn’t know, I just didn’t know!”

  “What didn’t you know?” Mitch asked gently.

  “What was in that special. She was afraid, desperately afraid. She asked Frank to help her get away from Valley City because something terrible would happen to her if she didn’t. Can’t you see, Mr. Gorman? She was afraid for her life!”

  Mitch wanted to see but the magic was gone. It was daylight now, broad daylight and he could see a lot of things that didn’t show in the dark. The best he could do was ask a question, and the answer was exactly what he’d expected. No, she hadn’t seen the letter. Her husband had burned it in the fireplace at home. That was convenient, Mitch thought, because, although she didn’t seem to realize what she’d done, Norma had just destroyed the last island of doubt. Frank Wales did have a motive for murdering his ex-wife.

  When an island disappears there should at least be a little driftwood or a floating log to cling to. Mitch left the El Rey clinging with both hands, and that was one of the reasons he decided to breakfast at Pinky’s before going home to the shower and shave that would have to substitute for a lost night’s sleep. It was still early. All over town people were turning off their alarms, yawning, and cursing the fate that had hindered their being born rich. They’d perk up soon enough when they heard the news. Murder was always a stimulant. First the crime, then the chase, then the capture. When it was all over the dead were just as dead, and maybe better so, but some gesture had been made against the force of evil. The people had to win once in a while.

  Pinky was an ambitious lad. He opened early to catch the breakfast trade and then stuck a “Closed” sign on the door and grabbed a little sleep until eleven. After that he was open straight
through until after the dinner hour, with a heavy play from the malt and Coke crowd after school for good measure. Just thinking about Pinky made Mitch tired, so he concentrated on the stack of wheats and coffee before him. Pretty soon the door opened and Kendall Hoyt walked in and dropped down on one of the stools.

  “Jesus, what a night!” he said.

  Pinky hadn’t heard, so of course he had to have it all spelled out in blood. “He sure as hell can’t get far this time,” Hoyt declared, “and I’ll lay odds he’s dead when we find him.”

  “Dead-Eye Hoyt always gets his man,” Mitch muttered in his coffee cup.

  “And Gorman rides again,” Hoyt retorted. “I suppose you think I should have shaken my finger at Wales and said, ‘Naughty, naughty!’ Why is it I don’t see you volunteering for the force, Mr. Gorman? A brave man like you should be able to clean up this town without even carrying a gun.”

  Hoyt had a few licks coming to him; Mitch knew that. It was a touchy morning after a trying night and the less said the better, but Pinky had big ears. “What’s this about?” he asked, sliding across the counter the cup of coffee Hoyt didn’t have to ask for. “Don’t you two like each other?”

  “Ask Gorman,” Hoyt said. “He’s been making cracks ever since I shot Mickey Degan.”

  “That punk!” Pinky looked incredulous. “The way I figure, you just save the taxpayers money when you get a bad egg like Degan. Sooner or later he was bound to go the hard way. Do you know what I heard, Mr. Gorman? I get a lot of teen-agers in here afternoons, and they tell me he was peddling reefers around the high school. Yeah, that’s the kind of up-and-coming young man Mickey Degan was!”

  “And there’s plenty more like him in this town,” Hoyt added. “I don’t know what gets into kids these days. They must be tired of living.”

  “Maybe they can’t see much future in it,” Mitch said. “Speaking of up-and-coming citizens, Pinky, what’s all this with you and Dave Singer?”