Dead Run

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Dead Run

  A Captain Heimrich Mystery

  Richard Lockridge

  for Hildy

  Chapter 1

  Inspector M. L. Heimrich, Bureau of Criminal Investigation, New York State Police, walked out of the barracks of Troop K in Washington Hollow to its parking lot. It was raining, more resolutely than the United States Weather Service had expected. The weather service had contemplated partial cloudiness, with a chance of showers, and continued mild temperatures, turning colder late in the day. The pressure systems had not, apparently, been listening, at least not intently. Well, not much can be expected of the weather on the twenty-third of December.

  It was not only wet as Heimrich walked across the lot to his car. It was also cold. He had checked the temperature before he left the office. Thirty-five it had been then. At a little after noon it had been thirty-eight and partly cloudy. Still, it could have been worse. At the latitude of Washington Hollow, it usually was at this time of year. Often, in late December, snow lay heavy in mid-New York state.

  As he got into the Buick with its excessively long radio antenna, Heimrich looked up at a nearby tree. The light from the overhead floods reached it. The bare twigs glistened wet in the light. Water dripped from them, which was consoling. Of course, the temperature usually dropped after sundown. But the weather service had predicted an overnight low in the upper thirties. (It had also, of course, forecast a chance of “showers.” Rain had started falling around three in the afternoon and continued to fall. Weather Service could call that a shower if it wanted to.)

  The engine caught at the first try. Heimrich turned the heater up and cold air blew from the vents. He should, of course, have worn a heavier coat. Put not your trust in meteorologists. But the car would warm up when the engine did. And at home Susan would have the fire going. Perhaps Michael and his friend had already got to Van Brunt. Quite a drive down from Hanover, New Hampshire, but not too long a trip the way kids drove. And, while the snow was a couple of feet deep in Hanover, the roads were clear. Michael had assured his mother of that when he called the night before.

  His call had been a pleasant surprise for Susan. Michael had not expected to make it home for this Christmas. The junk heap would never make it, he had written them a week earlier. He might try to make it to Boston. He might just stay in Hanover and try to do something about his skiing, which remained lousy. “But you both have a fine Christmas.”

  But then, last night, he had called. A friend of his, whose car was not a heap of junk, was going to New York for the holidays and had offered to drop him off at Van Brunt. Heimrich had answered the telephone and had been greeted as “Dad.” The days were long gone when he had been “sir” to young Michael Faye, who had been so grave and formal a child when Heimrich first met him and, a little later, became his stepfather.

  Heimrich braked carefully at the stop sign before turning south on U.S. 9. The car felt as if it had thought of skidding but had changed its mind. Under the headlights the road looked merely wet. But under headlights a wet road and an icy road look much the same—too much the same. If it really iced, the traffic patrol cruisers would be having a rough time of it. And so would ambulance drivers. People didn’t bother much with chains anymore. They relied on snow tires, which do not repay trust, even when they have metal studs set in them.

  Heimrich drove slowly. He turned on the radio to the police channel. He cut in on a cruiser talking to traffic headquarters at Troop K. “People sliding all over the goddamn roads,” the trooper was reporting. The dispatcher said, “Yeah, there’s a ‘hazardous driving conditions’ warning out.”

  “You’d think the damn fools would have sense enough to stay home,” the cruiser responded.

  Heimrich braked a little, carefully. The car did not skid. Ice heavier farther north, apparently. And he was going south. Sometimes a few miles make a lot of difference. Probably changed to snow by now at Washington Hollow, only a few miles behind him. As if answering his thought, a few flakes melted on the windshield. Better than freezing rain—at any rate for people who yearned for a white Christmas. That was not among Merton Heimrich’s yearnings.

  But there were no more snowflakes on the windshield and none swirled in the headlight beams. Instead, rain beat on the glass and on the Buick’s roof. Getting warmer? Anyway, the car was. There wasn’t much traffic. It seemed the trooper’s damn fools were having sense enough to stay home. Slowly, the car continued south on U.S. 9, which is wide but no longer has three lanes, as it once had, with the disasters to be expected. A middle lane to use as a passing lane—for drivers going either way.

  Heimrich pulled to the right and set his direction light blinking. He eased onto NY 11F and crept toward Cold Harbor. The shopping center just north of the village was busy; cars, confident of a right of way they did not have, pulled out of it. Heimrich pleaded no contest. One of the cars pulling out skidded as it turned, but came out of it and went on briskly. Of course, cars can skid on merely wet pavements, particularly on blacktops, which 11F was. Making sure nobody was tailgating, Heimrich braked gently. The car swerved just perceptibly. Then the studs dug in. Yes, ice building now. He hoped Michael’s friend knew how to drive on icy roads. Probably he did. Natives of Hanover, New Hampshire, or students at Dartmouth there either learned or quit driving. Michael would be graduated in the spring. Would he really, then, try his hand at being a tennis pro as, last summer, he had speculated that he might? Of course, playing in the number-one spot for Dartmouth, he had just beaten the number one of another Ivy League college in straight sets, the last at love. That might have given him ideas.

  But, on another day of last summer, Michael had talked of law school and been thoughtful about Columbia. Maybe he could work his way through, or partly through. Maybe as a tennis instructor. Michael had no illusions about the income of policemen, even those with rank. Nor about the profits from susan faye, fabrics, on Van Brunt Avenue. Five miles or so on, NY 11F would, on passing “VAN BRUNT CITY LIMITS,” become “VAN BRUNT AVENUE” and hold that tide for a little over three miles. Only, of course, Van Brunt wasn’t a city. It was not even a village. It was merely a gathering, in the town of Cold Harbor.

  Heimrich passed VAN BRUNT CITY LIMITS, 35 MPH, and so entered Van Brunt. He was doing thirty. There was no doubt about the ice now. But the metal studs were doing their job. They had a heavier one coming, of course. Even on dry pavement, High Road presents some problems—twists and climbs its way into them.

  Heimrich signaled for a right turn, although there were no following lights in the mirrors, and began to climb the narrow, twisting road toward the long, low house which had been a barn before it was the residence of Mrs. Michael Faye, née Upton, who had “married beneath her.” In the old days, long before Heimrich had come to live in Van Brunt, or had even heard of it, almost everybody in Van Brunt had been “beneath” the Uptons. Oh, except the Jacksons and a few others, most notably, of course, the Van Brunts themselves.

  The car skidded slightly on a steep curve. Heimrich recalled his mind from wandering and confined it to the task at hand, which was to get to the fire at home and to his wife, who probably had married beneath her for a second time. Uptons do not, habitually, marry policemen any more than they marry men with Irish names who come from the Flats.

  The car skidded on another, even steeper, curve. Heimrich coaxed it back. The steel studs bit again. He ground up on High Road. He turned between two boulders into the driveway, which was even steeper than the road but had a gravel surface, which—so far, at any rate—gave better traction. Tomorrow, if this kept on, probably would be another story.

  As he climbed the drive, the floodlight over the garage went on. Susan had been listening. She always listened. And the light had gone on, which was consoling
. Heimrich drove into the garage, keeping well to the right. There would be room for Michael’s friend’s car, if it was a Volks. If it turned out to be a Cadillac, it would have to wait outside. Heimrich’s Buick just grazed the wheelbarrow, which also lived in the garage.

  When he came out into the breezeway between house and garage, the rain beat on him. The cement under his feet was glazed over. Cautiously, but still slithering a little, he reached for the wood stacked against the garage wall. It would be frozen together. It was frozen together. He should have put the tarp over it. He wrenched four logs loose and Susan opened the door for him. It was warming to have her so anticipate. Merton Heimrich could do with warming.

  He carried the logs through the kitchen and piled them on the hearth. Flames were leaping in the fireplace. He had known they would be. He said “Hi” to Susan, who was wearing a red pantsuit, and she said, “Hi, darling.” He started to reach toward her and remembered his wet raincoat and shed it. Then he reached for her. Eight years—a little more than eight years—they had been together. The years had not diminished the comfort, or the delight, they felt in each other’s arms.

  “I’ll get them,” Susan said. Heimrich sat in his chair in front of the fire and listened to the rattle of ice from the kitchen. Susan put the mixer on the table and sat beside him. He poured martinis into iced glasses, rubbed twisted lemon peel on the edges of the glasses, tossed the exhausted peels into the fire. They were just lifting their glasses to click them together when there was a splintering crash from somewhere outside. But the lights did not flicker. The glass jumped a little in Susan’s hand. She steadied the hand and they clicked glasses. Then they sipped from the glasses and put them on the table, and Heimrich put his hand over the one of his wife’s which had jumped with the sound of the falling tree. “He’ll be all right,” he told her. “Probably seem like nothing after New Hampshire. Anyway, they’ll have the sand trucks out by now.”

  “Of course they’ll be all right,” Susan said. “I’m not worried. Not worried at all.” She smiled at him what he knew to be a lie. And the hand which steadied the cigarette between her lips as he lighted it almost didn’t tremble at all.

  “But it’s going to be a bad one, isn’t it?” Susan said. “It’s raining hard, isn’t it? You can hear it on the roof.”

  There was no denying they could hear it on the roof. They could also hear it slashing against the windowpanes.

  “Raining this hard, it usually warms up,” Heimrich said. “Probably getting the wind shift. Gets around to the southwest and we’ll be—”

  Another tree crashed. The sound seemed closer. This time the lights flickered briefly. Then they steadied again.

  “It’s this damn waiting,” Susan said. “You know it’s going to happen and then it doesn’t and then you just—go on waiting.”

  Mite, a black cat whose size belies his name, jumped to her lap and began to circle, adjusting it to his preference. He settled after only two turns. Susan put a hand on him and he began to purr. She said, “Where’s Colonel, Mite?” A very large Great Dane stood up from behind the log cradle. He stood up slowly, as became his size and advancing years. One tries not to notice that pets lose sprightliness as they age. Heimrich said, “Good evening, Colonel,” and the big dog moved to stretch in front of the fire. He thumped his tail twice on the floor. He was a dog of few words nowadays.

  Susan and Merton Heimrich finished their drinks slowly. Between sips, Susan rested her glass on Mite’s back, which happened to be uppermost. Each time she did so, Mite resumed his purr.

  Heimrich looked at his watch. It was getting on toward seven. It had taken him almost twice as long as usual to get home from Washington Hollow.

  “I’d planned a casserole,” Susan said. “It’ll take about an hour and then it will start to dry out. And the kids will be starving, of course.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said and was looked at with a smile. He said, “Sorry, dear.” (When they had first met, “naturally” had amounted to a verbal tic in Heimlich’s speech, even when he spoke of events not at all natural. Susan had winced him out of the habit—well, almost out of it.) He said, “When aren’t they?”

  “Never,” Susan said. “And, more to the point, when are they going to get here? And the casserole has to cook, not just warm up. And we both know what’s going to happen, sooner or later.”

  They both knew. Heimrich looked at the log cradle; at the slightly steaming logs on the hearth. Better do something now.

  “I could make us another round,” Susan said. “You start to mix drinks and people always come. Just when you’re measuring. And you forget whether you’ve already put the vermouth in.”

  She stood up, and another tree crashed down somewhere. The somewhere sounded some distance away. Heimrich stood up, too. Maybe the wind has shifted, he thought. Maybe the center has gone north of us to badger Maine or Vermont. Or, of course, New Hampshire. It will badger them with snow. And in the city, perhaps even as far up as Hawthorne Circle, it will be only rain. We’re caught in the middle, as usual.

  He went to a window on the east side of the long room. Rain was beating on it, which answered that. It was also beating on the thermometer fixed to the window jamb. It was hard to read the column, with water streaming on it. The water was freezing on it. Thirty. Maybe twenty-nine. Which answered that. The floodlight above the garage was on—was still on. The power lines from the road sagged under the heavy coating of ice. A young pine tree near the drive was leaning down disconsolately, heavy with its burden.

  Heimrich put his wet raincoat back on. He found a rain hat on the upper shelf of the coat closet and put it on. He thought of changing his shoes for heavier ones with ribbed soles. Instead, he went to the kitchen and lifted a bag of Mite’s cat litter. Enough in it for Mite’s immediate needs and also for his, Heimrich decided.

  Susan was measuring gin into a mixing glass of ice. She looked at him. “Wood,” Heimrich said, and she nodded her head. He opened the door to the breezeway, which was earning another name—“galeway,” at a guess. Wet wind poured into the kitchen. Heimrich, edging out, scattered cat litter on the ice between door and woodpile. Until it washed away, or froze in, it would provide a nonskid surface much superior to sand.

  He wrenched logs apart. They were more tightly frozen together than they had been a little over half an hour before. One by one, and sometimes frozen together two by two, he skidded logs across the ice until they were near enough to be reached from the door. He skidded a dozen or so and thought that ought to last the night.

  He inched his own way back. His foot slipped on the last step. Missed that part with the litter, he thought, and was close enough to grab the doorknob.

  Susan helped him carry logs to the hearth, where at once they began to drip. Heimrich put one of the still-damp logs he had brought in earlier on the fire. The fire hissed its disapproval. Colonel got up, with condescending reluctance, and went back to where he had been before—in the warm airflow from the Heatolater vent which they had had installed the year before, a few weeks after the January ice storm.

  They sat facing the fire again, and again clicked glasses. “To us,” Susan said. “And to that wind shift of yours, darling.”

  The martinis were tart and cold. Susan had not forgotten the soupcon of vermouth.

  “Only,” she said, “it ought to be hot buttered rum on a night like this. Or mulled wine. Only, I never mulled any—”

  She stopped. Merton heard it, too. It was loud enough to be heard over the angry wind.

  A car with chains on it was clanking up the steep drive. One of the chains had a loose link banging against a fender.

  They went to the kitchen door, Susan reaching it first. It was a Volks. Michael was driving it. His friend in the passenger seat was, only glimpsed through the driving rain, merely a blur—an unexpectedly small blur. Most of his friends were near his own six-foot height. “Standard tennis size,” Susan had called them.

  Michael drove the Volks into
the garage; drove in slowly and carefully. Heimrich hoped he had left room enough. There was the power mower to consider. Michael was a careful boy. He would be considerate of the mower, and of his friend’s Volks.

  Merton reached around Susan, opened the door, and pulled her back against him, partly out of the driving rain. As the garage door began to open, he called “Watch the ice!” into the storm’s roar.

  They came out of the garage door, huddled figures in heavy short coats. Michael’s friend was indeed small, stepping carefully on the ice, steadied by Michael’s hands. Michael’s friend wore a knitted cap, and hair streamed from it, lashed by the wind. Of course, boys wore their hair long these days.

  Heimrich felt his wife stiffen just perceptibly in his arms and then his mind caught up with hers.

  Michael’s friend was not only small. Michael’s friend was a girl.

  Chapter 2

  In front of the fire, with her heavy coat off, Michael’s friend was most definitely a girl. The sweater she wore was loose; her slacks, of darker yellow than the sweater, did not cling to her slender legs. She did not, in costume, make a point of being a girl. She did not, Susan thought, need to.

  “This is Joan Collins, Mother, Dad,” Michael said, and stood beside the girl—stood close to her in front of the fire, but did not touch her. Although, Susan thought, he looks as if he wants to; as if, at any moment, he may put an arm around her. Susan said, “Good evening, Joan. Not that it is, obviously.”

  Joan Collins smiled at that. She had rather a wide smile on a somewhat thin face—an oddly decisive face. She’s not over twenty, if that, Susan thought. But, she’s a grown person, all the same. As she smiled, she shook her head slightly. Her long, straight brown hair flowed as she moved her head. What did Mother say when I was a little girl about somebody? “Her hair’s so long she can sit on it.” Something like that, in a tone of admiration. Hair had come full length again. She looked at her son, who was looking down at the girl beside him, and smiling that grave smile of his. His hair came only to the collar of his jacket. It was molded to his head. His sideburns reached only to his cheekbones. He didn’t have a beard. Which were silly things to be thinking of, under the circumstances.