Detour to Death

by Helen Nielsen

  Danny could feel the tension in the streets as soon as they pulled up to the sheriff’s station. He’d gotten his ride to Cooperton after all, a fast, easy ride in a smooth-running sedan with an emblem painted on the door; but he hadn’t noticed how the motor sang or how the shock absorbers took the dips. It was a short ride, ten miles by the meter on the dashboard, and a couple of miles beyond Mountain View the sheriff slowed down a bit and seemed to be watching Danny’s face as they passed an angling side road that forked in out of a pass through the hills. Danny trembled without knowing why.

  But in Cooperton he knew why. The streets weren’t exactly crowded, but they were busy. They whispered as the sedan drove by, and they murmured when it parked. And then down the highway behind them came the racing ambulance with its silly siren clearing the way for an old man who wasn’t in a hurry any more.

  “Get along inside,” the sheriff said, and Danny didn’t need a second invitation.

  The sheriff’s office was the front room of a long, flat-roofed building that served the disciplinary needs of the community. Behind the office a short hall led to a few cells for the overnight guests (seldom used unless the boys got too free with their bottles), and the rest of the building was given over to the simple living-quarters of the sheriff and his wife. There was the smell of frying food coming from someplace beyond that hall, and then a scrawny little woman in a long percale apron appeared in the doorway with a bread knife in her hand. Maybe the knife was accident, but Danny couldn’t help feeling the woman was disappointed when she looked at him. She wiped her free hand on the apron skirt and murmured, “Why, he’s just a boy!”

  They were the first words Danny heard from Ada Keep, and they were sad and regretful like her eyes.

  Virgil shoved a straight-backed oak chair at Danny and muttered a terse, “Sit down.” Then he went back to lock the front door against the group of curious spectators already clustered about the entrance. “Go on home and eat your suppers,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do here.” Maybe that would send them away, maybe not. Virgil didn’t much care, because with that bolt shot home he wasn’t going to be disturbed, anyway. Danny watched the whole procedure with unbelieving eyes. It couldn’t be true. In a minute he’d come out of this nightmare and stop sweating, but in the meantime that giant in the suntan twills had shoved the wide-brimmed hat on the back of his head and was telephoning a man named Jim Rice. Rice drifted into focus again—the tall man with the too easy laugh.

  “You did? Two hundred. Yes, that’s what Walter said.” The sheriff was talking about that money again, and Danny was at the edge of his chair. “All right,” Virgil finished. “That’s what I wanted to know. You’d better get down here right away, Jim, and see if you can identify that money.”

  “How can he identify my money?” Danny screamed. “It’s my money! I’ve been trying to tell you, it’s my money!”

  Virgil hung up the phone and sat down behind his desk. He pulled Danny’s billfold out of his pocket and dumped the contents on the table top. It came to about two hundred and seven dollars altogether—money sure didn’t last long on the road. There were a few other things, too. A driver’s license, a couple of snapshots of cute, empty-faced girls, a social security card.

  “I worked for that money,” Danny said. “I worked in a garage—after school, Saturdays, Sundays. When school was out I worked all day.”

  “And saved your pay,” Virgil added. He’d heard all this before.

  “I saved what I could.”

  “You didn’t spend it on these pretty girls?”

  “What girls? They don’t mean anything.”

  “Vernon Halsey works in Claymore’s garage,” Ada said eagerly. “I don’t reckon he’s any older than this boy.”

  Ada always sounded excited when she spoke, as if speech was a new art she had just mastered and was showing off. But the eagerness in her face faded as Virgil raised his head. It was wrong again. Everything she said was always wrong.

  “Why aren’t you getting supper?” he demanded, and she began backing toward the hallway.

  “I just wanted to know about the doctor—”

  “You know about the doctor! Thanks to your big mouth the whole town knows about the doctor, and if they come down here and take this prisoner away from me you can be thanked for that, tool”

  “But they wouldn’t do that! Why would anybody do that?”

  Danny didn’t need an answer. He’d felt it in the street. He was a stranger in the midst of a hostile people. The whole world had suddenly gone crazy, nothing would surprise him now. And then, while Ada stood there with one red hand clasping her own throat and that long bread knife dangling from another, somebody began to rattle the doorknob and kick against the door. The timing was perfect. Danny’s face turned as pale as skim milk.

  “Hey, Virgil, what the hell’s the idea?”

  It was the deputy again. They’d left him back at Mountain View to ride in with the body in the ambulance, and now Virgil had to unlock the door and let him in. Another man was with him, a man not so young as the deputy and not so old as the sheriff. He had the white skin of an indoors man and the clothes of somebody who doesn’t worry about paying the rent.

  “Doctor Glenn was at the mortuary when we drove in,” the deputy explained. “He examined the wound—”

  “Not examined,” the doctor corrected. “Just a quick look. It’ll take time for an autopsy. Messy business.”

  “Real messy,” Virgil agreed. “What about the rock?”

  The deputy had the rock in his hand. It was wrapped up in newspaper now, but there were stains coming through and a rough, jagged edge that poked up from the parcel when he placed it on the sheriff’s desk.

  “Apparently that was the weapon,” Dr. Glenn said. “We’ll know more after a fuller examination.”

  “And what about him?”

  The quick nod was toward Danny. He pried his eyes away from the rock and looked up at the doctor. A flat-faced man, he was. Nothing seemed to stand out about him, not his nose nor his mouth, and his eyes were somewhat hidden behind a pair of unobtrusive glasses Danny didn’t even notice until they reflected the light. But there was nothing wrong with his voice. His voice was really sure of itself.

  “He could have done it, if that’s what you mean—What’s that on his hands?”

  The woman out at Mountain View had done a lot of hollering about what was on Danny’s hands, but he hadn’t really noticed. He had been too busy trying to make himself believe what was going on, and then trying to make all the others not believe it. But now he could take the time to look down at his hands and see the dark stains for himself. “It’s the old man’s blood,” Virgil said, and Danny almost fell off the chair.

  “He was dead when I found him!” he yelled. “I told you already a dozen times!” But the men went right on talking, just as if he hadn’t been there at all.

  “I heard there was some money passed,” the doctor said.

  “There was,” Virgil admitted. “I’m waiting now for Jim Rice to come in and make a statement.”

  “Well—” The doctor moved back toward the door. “I don’t think I’ll wait around any more. I hate leaving Miss Gaynor alone. She’s taking her grandfather’s death pretty hard.”

  “Everybody is,” the deputy said.

  “Just about everybody.” The doctor hesitated, one hand on the doorknob, and then he came back to the sheriff’s desk. “Look, Virgil,” he said, “isn’t there anything you can do about Trace Cooper? I picked up Joyce—Miss Gaynor—the minute I heard the news, and we went down to the mortuary to wait for the ambulance. Trace came in while we were there. You’d think he’d have some decency at a time like this!”

  “I’m not Trace’s keeper,” Virgil growled.

  “Well, he needs one! He’d been drinking again, of course, and I had to practically drive him off. Then he insisted that he wasn’t there to see Joyce, that he’d come to see Francy Allen.”

  “Maybe he ha
d. They were pretty friendly.”

  It was an awfully thin smile that touched the sheriff’s lips. Danny liked him better without an expression.

  “Is that anything to flaunt in Joyce’s face?” Dr. Glenn demanded.

  “I really wouldn’t know, Lowell. This is a sheriff’s office, not a court of human relations. Does Miss Gaynor want to file a complaint against Trace?”

  “Why, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Then it doesn’t concern me, does it?”

  Danny kind of hated to see the doctor leave. As long as he was there, the conversation didn’t turn back to Danny Ross. As long as just anybody was there, he wasn’t left alone with this frightening man—the sheriff. All the time he sat there, crowded on the edge of that hard oak chair, he kept telling himself this was no time to go chicken; but every now and then Virgil Keep would look at him for just a second, and Danny’s argument was lost.

  But he wasn’t going to be alone with the man for quite a while yet. There was more phoning to do, and then more deputies and more questions. Always more questions, and always the same ones. What’s your name? Danny Ross. Where are you from? Back east. Where are you going? No place. Just seeing the country. Where’d you get the money? I worked for it in a garage. Where? Back east. Where back east? It was a trap, and Danny wasn’t walking into a trap. He was running away from the trap. Make it St. Louis, make it Detroit.

  “Different places,” he said. “I move around a lot.”

  “You have a home, don’t you? Where’s your family live?”

  Danny started to sink his face into his hands, and then drew back from the terrible sight of them. If only they would let him wash the blood off his hands!

  “I don’t have a home!” he yelled. “I don’t have a family!”

  After a while he looked up and saw the tall man, Jim Rice, standing beside the sheriff’s desk. He couldn’t remember seeing or hearing him come in, but there he was. He wasn’t laughing any more.

  “Well, it looks like the money I gave Doc Gaynor,” he said hesitantly. “I didn’t take any serial numbers or anything.”

  “Same denomination?”

  “Hell, Virgil, I don’t remember. I just peeled off some bills. Mostly twenties, I guess.”

  It was mostly twenties on the table. Twenties are good to carry when you’re traveling. Not so bulky and not too hard to cash.

  “Do you remember seeing this boy with the doctor?” Virgil asked.

  There wasn’t a bit of laughter about Jim Rice now. He seemed uncomfortable, but that question was easy to answer.

  “Sure, he came in with Charley. The old man bought him a Coke. You know how Charley is about picking up riders on the road—I mean, how he was.”

  By this time even Danny knew how he was. He was old Charley Gaynor, the country doctor who loved everybody and was loved by everybody. Who would kill a man like that except a stranger? Who but a worthless bum mooching free rides and free drinks, and ready to kill any man for a few dollars? Danny had tried to explain about the jalopy breaking down so he wouldn’t seem such a moocher, but nobody was going to swallow a yarn like that. Do you shove a car off the road because it won’t run? You do if you’re leaving the country and burning all your bridges behind you, but Danny couldn’t tell them that.

  “I can’t positively identify this money,” Rice added thoughtfully, “but I did pay the doctor the two hundred I owed him. If it isn’t on him now, I don’t know where else it could have gone.”

  Danny came to his feet in a hurry. “The man in the raincoat!” he yelled. “He’s the one that took the money! The man in the raincoat!”

  “What man?” Rice frowned. “What raincoat?”

  “At the café. Sitting next to me at the counter. There was another guy in there.”

  How could Rice forget? The little guy with the soiled hat and the suitcase. The little guy waiting for the bus.

  “I don’t know,” Rice said. “Maybe there was someone else at the counter. I didn’t pay any attention until Charley came in, and when he left I went back to my marketing. A raincoat, you say?” The sun-dried skin began to stretch around Rice’s wide mouth, and then that sharp laugh came once more. “Fine time to be wearing a raincoat,” he said. “It ain’t rained around here for three months!”

  • • •

  Darkness had drawn a blanket over Cooperton, but in some places there wouldn’t be much sleep. Places like the sheriff’s office, where the last deputy finally went home and Danny was left alone with the man he feared; or the old frame house where Joyce Gaynor waited for a sedative—administered by an attentive young doctor—to wash away the ceiling and the pain. And over at the bar of the Pioneer Hotel, a ridiculous relic of past glory, Trace Cooper was holding a wake.

  Trace was a young man with an oldish face, or maybe an old man with a youngish face—he’d forgotten which. He had red hair, red as the copper that didn’t come out of the Cooper mines any more, and blue eyes and a straight nose. All of the Coopers for generations and generations had red hair, blue eyes, and straight noses, and the Coopers went right back to the Revolutionary War. Where they went before that, Trace didn’t know or care. Where they were going now he did know and cared less.

  “A funeral,” he repeated gravely to the man behind the bar, “—we have to have a funeral for Francy. Will you come to Francy’s funeral, Murph?”

  Murph’s head was shinier than the top surface of the bar, and it nodded like a lantern in the semidarkness. “Sure, I will, Mr. Cooper. But maybe you should get some rest now.”

  “No rest, Murph. No rest for the wicked.”

  What Murph lacked in scalp adornment he made up in eyebrows, thick and curly like little black wires, and now they were all meshed together with worry. Mr. Cooper was worse than usual tonight, much worse. It was this terrible business with Francy and now the old man, enough to upset the whole town. But the whole town wasn’t at the Pioneer bar—only Trace Cooper—although from some of the talk Murph had picked up they would have been better off here.

  Then Murph looked up and caught sight of a shadow coming forward out of the darkness, and he relaxed a bit. Ordinarily he couldn’t have let Arthur come into the bar—not that Murph had anything against Arthur, but some folks might and you had to keep up appearances even if the Pioneer wasn’t all it had once been. But Arthur was the only one in town who could manage Mr. Cooper when he got like this, so Arthur could go anywhere.

  “Here’s Arthur come to take you home,” Murph said.

  “Home?” Trace pulled his face out of the latest shot of bourbon he’d just poured from the bottle on the bar, and peered at Murph with glassy eyes. “How’s he going to do that, I wonder. I don’t have a home.”

  “Sure you do, Mr. Cooper.”

  “Stop calling me Mr. Cooper!”

  There was nothing puny about the fist Trace slammed down on the bar top; nothing puny about Trace at all. “I told you a dozen times—”

  “Sure, Trace. Sure,” Murph said.

  By this time Arthur stood at Trace’s shoulder like a big slice of the darkness in a white suit. Sometimes Murph wondered if Arthur wore a white suit out of defiance. You could never tell about Arthur.

  “Come on, Trace, time to hit the sack,” he said.

  Trace turned about slowly. “Francy’s dead, Arthur.”

  “I know. Let’s go home now.”

  “Old Charley Gaynor’s dead, too.”

  “That’s right, old Charley Gaynor’s dead. Come on—”

  “Get your hands off me, you black bastard!”

  Arthur had taken hold of Trace’s arm, the one hanging limply at his side, but suddenly it wasn’t limp any more. Suddenly it had lashed out and landed a blow across his chest, and although Arthur was a big man, he wasn’t prepared for that. He fell backward, taking a couple of bar stools with him, and for a moment he just sat there on his pants on the floor, and stared up at Murph. Then he got up and walked out of the bar.

  “You shouldn’t have said t
hat, Mr. Cooper,” Murph said. “You shouldn’t have yelled at Arthur that way.”

  “ ‘The good that I would I do not,’ “ Trace murmured, “ ‘and the evil that I would not, that I do….’ “ Sometimes, when the sadness came over his face, Trace Cooper looked like a poet; but the next moment he was pounding the bar again and shouting for the devil himself to hear, “Mr. Jackson! You got that, Murph? If I’m Mr. Cooper, then Arthur’s Mr. Jackson!”

  “Sure, Mr. Cooper. Sure.”

  With Arthur gone it was going to be a rough night; now Murph was really getting worried. It wasn’t as if Trace Cooper was a bum to be thrown out on his ear. Trace was—well, he was a Cooper, and this was Cooperton. Maybe it wasn’t much of a town, and maybe Trace wasn’t much of a Cooper, but you had to keep up appearances. Besides, Murph liked Trace. Crazy as hell, he was, and always had been, but he couldn’t help liking him—except for the times he hated his guts. Like now, for instance, when he wanted to close up and call it a day. There was no trade tonight with the town at the edge of its nerves.

  But just as he was thinking this, another customer came into the bar, and the sight of this particular customer made Murph’s big Irish mouth drop wide open. At first he thought he was seeing things, but no, not another man in these parts could approach a bar like an ambassador entering an official reception, and not another man wore English-made suits with a folded handkerchief nosing up from the breast pocket.

  “Yes, sir,” Murph said, squaring his shoulders, “what’ll you have, Mr. Laurent?”

  That brought Trace away from the bourbon bottle. He turned around with his back against the bar and attempted a bow that, fortunately, didn’t end in disaster. “Senator Laurent!” he said.