Detour to Death

by Helen Nielsen

  “Goddamit, don’t just stand around with your fool mouth open!” he roared at the deputy. “Get outside and move that crowd along—and see that Jim Rice gets headed for home. I don’t want any trouble from that hothead tonight.”

  Watching an underling scamper to carry out his orders brought Virgil’s ego up a peg, but he was still uneasy. Damn Laurent, anyway! Damn Ada and her nighttime wanderings! Damn that charred cabin in Peace Canyon! He had to do something with his fists, so he brought one down like a sledge hammer on the desk top. The gun Laurent had brought in danced to the accompaniment of the blow, reminding him of a simple truth. One shot had been fired, but the other chambers were filled. With a loaded gun in his hand Virgil felt better. He could even sit down and quietly contemplate the closed door to that cell block. The office afforded a good vantage point to a man on the alert.

  “Ada!” he bellowed, and moments later the door pushed open a crack.

  “I’ll have my supper in here tonight.”

  Ada nodded absently.

  “I’ll have my pillow and blanket in here, too. And you keep that back door locked, you hear?”

  “As you say, Virgil.”

  “And no walking out tonight!”

  “No, Virgil, not tonight.”

  The door closed again, and she was gone, but Virgil’s anger remained. He could shout at a deputy, he could shout at his wife; but he couldn’t shout down the doubt. He walked over to the window and stared out at a street now emptied of human life. Cooperton was quieting down after a troubled day. The dusk had turned to darkness and the darkness to silence, and the only reminder of the day’s fury was a pair of vehicles nosing the curbing in front of the Pioneer Hotel: a long gray sedan he’d seen at Laurent’s ranch and a dusty red jeep. So they were still at it, those two. They were still cooking up schemes to make a fool of Virgil Keep!

  “The way I look at it,” Murph remarked, depositing a couple of beers beside the steaks Trace and Laurent were having in a rear booth of the bar, “nobody’s ever going to know just what happened to Francy. Accident, murder—who can say? Francy sure can’t, and nobody else is going to.”

  “The dead have been known to speak,” Laurent murmured.

  “Oh, I don’t go for that spirit stuff! You live a while and then you die, that’s it.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Laurent was referring to spirits,” Trace said. “You must know more about what goes on after hours than anybody else in town, Murph. Who would you say had the most reason for wanting Francy dead?”

  “You mean outside of Trace Cooper?”

  “I never wanted her dead.”

  “You should have. She played you for a sucker, Trace. She knew you were an easy touch.”

  “Never mind that!”

  “Okay, okay!” Murph finished his chore and rubbed a restless hand over his bald dome. “I can think of a lot of wives who might have wanted her dead,” he mused, “and I can think of one young lady who isn’t a wife on account of Francy.”

  “Do you really believe a woman could have killed Francy?”

  Murph shrugged. “Why not? Ain’t you heard of equal rights? Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I think, or what you think, or what Mr. Laurent thinks, because nobody’s ever going to know what happened to Francy. Asking questions about that gal could stir up a lot of trouble for a lot of people, and it just ain’t going to be stirred.”

  Murph delivered his judgment and sauntered back to the bar with an air of complete confidence. The weight of his words could not be denied. Despite the questionable circumstances of her death, Francy had been shoveled out of sight in an awful hurry—like the carcass of some stray cat that required no inquest and no mourning.

  “The voice of the people,” Trace observed. “How do we fight it?”

  “With doubts,” Laurent said.

  “If you mean that ‘any one of us could have done it’ routine you don’t know this town. That only draws everybody closer together.”

  “That’s just the way we want them—close together. So close they’re peering over each other’s shoulders and reading each other’s eyes.” Laurent smiled over the rim of his beer glass. There was a kind of excitement in his eyes, like that of an old soldier returning to the wars. “The bartender’s judgment on Miss Allen’s death might well apply to the doctor’s as well. Carrying the assumption further, we may see the force of public opinion acclaiming Mr. Malone the culprit of the crime as an easy out.”

  “But Malone’s dead.”

  “By gunshot—quite a different method from the other deaths, as I pointed out to the sheriff a short while ago. If we are going to ignore Miss Allen’s inkstained fingers and young Ross’s illusive piece of paper, we must also ignore the motive for murdering Malone. We can then reach the conclusion that his death was the result of a drunken brawl by some person unknown and totally unrelated to the case at hand.”

  Trace could hardly believe his ears. “That’s fantastic!” he protested.

  “Not if properly presented to a carefully prepared jury. I assume you’re still interested in defending Ross.”

  “Why not? He’s innocent.”

  “Now we don’t really know that, do we?”

  “He didn’t kill Malone!”

  “I just told you how Malone was killed.”

  “Surely you don’t expect me to believe that?”

  “I do—if you’re interested in saving Danny Ross. You must believe it. You must thoroughly convince yourself of an argument before you can convince a jury, Mr. Cooper.”

  Now Trace began to understand what Laurent was doing. He was outlining a way out if worst came to worst. The important thing was to save the innocent even if the guilty went free. The important thing was to find an alternative for Danny, even if that alternative never had a face or a name. For Laurent that might be enough, he had no score to settle, but Trace hadn’t stayed sober this long for nothing.

  “Malone might satisfy some people,” he said, “but not me. Steve Malone didn’t cause those bloodstains in that cabin!”

  “But we have no bloodstains.”

  “We have Danny’s eyewitness story, and your son was there. He must have seen something.”

  “My son—” Laurent’s face grayed before Trace’s eyes, and he retreated into a momentary silence that had to give way to the inevitable. “You may as well know the worst before building up false hopes,” he said. “My son will never make a witness for Danny Ross. By tomorrow, by the time Ross comes to trial of a certainty, he will have forgotten everything that happened in Peace Canyon today. He will have forgotten a cabin ever stood in that spot.” Laurent spoke slowly, groping for words. “Douglas has a peculiar filter on his mind that strains out the unpleasant things. I don’t know whether to pity or envy him.”

  Trace tried to understand what the old man was telling him. He fitted the words to the recollection of a boyish figure with an aging face, and the anguish in Laurent’s eyes took on a name. “Then Douglas—” he began.

  “Is perfectly rational! He’s a child, Mr. Cooper, a strange child I only learned to know five years ago when his mother died and I was reminded of a life beyond the courtroom. He must not be brought into this affair! Can’t you see what your fine townspeople would do to him? A stranger, an outsider—even more of an outsider than poor Danny Ross!”

  Laurent’s voice was quiet and intense, but his eyes were the eyes of an eagle. “Poor Danny Ross,” he repeated. “That unfortunate little fool who always does the wrong thing at the very worst time. Now he sits in that cell like a clay pigeon at a shooting-gallery, and your fine sheriff won’t even listen to reason!”

  Trace thought he was beginning to understand a few things now: why a man gives up his career at the height of success, why he buries himself in a lonely desert. Laurent glanced nervously at the watch on his wrist. “I dislike being away from the ranch so long,” he murmured. “Douglas isn’t fond of the place, you know, and when he’s upset his first instinct is to run away.”
/>   “But you do think Danny knows where to find that paper?” Trace asked.

  “It’s quite possible. It could happen just that way—some little thing remembered, some gesture or word. It isn’t just what he knows that makes the lad’s position so precarious; it’s what everyone who heard his words thinks he knows.” The frown on the old man’s face made a deep ravine between his eyes. “What are you going to do about Danny Ross?” he demanded.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “You’re the only one who can do anything. The sheriff won’t listen to me—I’m an outsider, too—but you—” A faint smile touched the corners of Laurent’s mouth. “You are a Cooper. Oh, I’ve watched Virgil Keep’s most expressive face this evening long enough to guess that his ancestors must have been lackeys to some ruling prince. He may hate your guts, Mr. Cooper, but he envies your blood. He’ll listen to you.”

  “And if he does?”

  “Then you get in to see Danny. Talk to him, reason with him. He was excited and frightened a little while ago, but he’s had time now to calm down and face the facts. He must confide in someone, and you do have an honest face.”

  “And a stupid mind,” Trace muttered.

  “Not at all—a curious mind. That’s why you’ll never be satisfied with a hung jury even if it would set Danny free.”

  The truth of Alexander Laurent’s words was as obvious as the cut of Trace’s jaw. Doubt was no companion to live with. It was easy to shrug off the kid’s challenge as a manifestation of hysteria, but did Danny Ross have the imagination to dream up such a bluff? He must have remembered something.

  Trace could feel Laurent’s eyes without looking at them. What was this turn all about, anyway? What was the old boy trying to prove? He didn’t want to go back across the street and argue with Virgil again—he’d carried this thing too far already; but he couldn’t very well refuse to co-operate as long as he occupied the number-two spot for suspect of the hour. That theoretical deathbed statement of Francy’s was his baby, anyway. A man who dug up trouble should be able to face it.

  “All right.” Trace sighed. “I’ll go back to the lion’s den and see what I can do, but I don’t think Virgil’s going to be very happy to see me—”

  Trace didn’t have time to slide out of the booth before his words turned sour. The bar of the Pioneer Hotel was virtually empty until the double doors to the lobby swung open. The place seemed to get crowded with the sudden entrance of just one man.

  “Trace!” Virgil yelled. “Where’s Trace Cooper?”

  Virgil’s face was beet red and his huge chest heaved as if he’d just broken the record at the high hurdles. He looked about wildly before that rear booth came into focus, and then his expression changed to one of awe and bewilderment. “Mr. Laurent!” he gasped. “I thought you went with him! I saw your car pulling away from the curb, and I thought you went with him!”

  “My car?” Laurent echoed. “What in the name of heaven are you talking about?”

  “Danny Ross. Somebody unlocked his cell door and Danny’s gone!”

  CHAPTER 18

  ESCAPING FROM THE COOPERTON JAIL was easy; all that was needed was a friend with a key to the cell door. Danny didn’t catch on to what was happening until after Ada’s third or fourth trip down the hall to Virgil’s office. She brought in a tray of supper; she brought back the empty tray. She brought in an armful of bedding; she brought back a frightened expression and something hidden under the folds of her long apron. Danny was polishing off the last of the meal she’d left him earlier. He might be on the brink of the scaffold, but his stomach didn’t know it, and Ada was a wonderful cook.

  “That was swell apple pie,” he said. “I never ate such apple pie.”

  “Didn’t you, Danny?” The woman’s face brightened like a kid with a Christmas box. “Doesn’t your mother make apple pies for you?”

  “My mother works. She’s got no time for making pies.”

  Danny could have bitten off his tongue for saying that. He wasn’t supposed to have a mother, or any family at all, but Ada wasn’t looking for inconsistencies in his story. She was just looking at Danny with a peculiar sort of sadness in her eyes.

  “How old are you, Danny?” she asked.

  “Eighteen,” he said.

  “Eighteen! I might have had a son eighteen—or is it twenty, or twenty-five? I can’t seem to keep track of the years any more.”

  “What happened, did he die?”

  Danny wasn’t interested in the woman’s memoirs; he was just making conversation. But the novelty of being encouraged was more than Ada could resist. “No, not that,” she said. “I didn’t have the baby, you see—it was a mistake. But I didn’t know. I was frightened and I didn’t know until after Virgil quit his schooling so’s we could get married.” She stopped talking abruptly, as if belatedly aware of hanging soiled linen on the line. But she didn’t move away from the cell.

  “Cages!” she said, glaring at the row of bars before her. “People shouldn’t be kept in cages!”

  “You can say that again!” Danny concurred.

  “But we are—in one way or another.”

  Ada’s hands were getting restless under the apron, and Danny caught a glimpse of metal that suddenly made this exchange of small talk the most interesting repartee in the world. The metal was a huge ring, and on that ring hung the keys to the cells. What she was leading up to he didn’t dare to guess, but now he was a most attentive listener.

  “But there’s a way out, Danny. There’s always a way out,” she said. “Even I am getting out soon.”

  “Out of what?” Danny asked.

  “My cage. I shouldn’t tell you this, but when something really important happens to a person they have to tell someone. And you won’t repeat it, will you?”

  With that key on his mind Danny would have agreed to anything. “Not a word,” he vowed.

  “Because I don’t want Virgil to know I’m going to die soon.”

  For a moment Danny forgot all about that key. “Die!” he echoed. “Where’d you get a crazy idea like that?” But it wasn’t crazy, as he could see by taking a long look at her face. She was almost smiling, and her chin came up a little higher the way it had when she dropped the boom on Jim Rice.

  “I know,” she said firmly, “and Charley Gaynor knew, too, but he promised not to tell Virgil. Virgil would feel bad about the way he’s treated me.”

  “Maybe he’d treat you better,” Danny said.

  “That’s just it! He’d feel sorry and start being nice to me, and then when I’m gone he’d just remember how nice he was and forget all the mean things. I want him to remember!”

  Danny didn’t know why he trembled. It wasn’t like seeing Virgil coming toward him with one of those big fists cocked. Anger he could understand, and a blow he could take, but such cold hatred as he glimpsed in Ada’s eyes was enough to put a frost on the air. This mousy little woman, scampering at Virgil’s beck and call—and all the time with her own terrible revenge simmering in her mind! This bit of understanding hit him like a cold shower, and then he got the big idea, the colossal idea that was going to get him out of that cell.

  “He probably wouldn’t believe you if you did tell him,” he said. “He’d laugh at you. He’d tell you to shut up.”

  “He won’t laugh,” Ada insisted.

  “Sure he will. That big ape hasn’t got feelings enough to worry about anything. He’s probably laughing at you right now because of what you said about Jim Rice and Francy. He probably thinks you made it all up.”

  “But I didn’t!”

  “Of course you didn’t, no more than I made it up about knowing what Malone did with that paper Francy signed. Wouldn’t you like to see that paper, Mrs. Keep? Wouldn’t you like for Virgil to come in here in the morning to get me and find you with that paper? Nobody’d laugh at you then. They’d talk about how smart the sheriff’s wife was to find the real murderer right under his nose!”

  Danny had to be careful
not to overdo this act. Ada might be slow but she wasn’t simple.

  “But I don’t know where to find the paper,” she said.

  “I do. I saw Malone running for that bus, remember? I saw where he came from—” Danny stopped. He didn’t want to blurt out everything until that door opened. “Let me out of here and I’ll be back before morning,” he promised.

  It was Danny’s big pitch, and he put all he had into it, so that he was a little off balance when Ada gave her answer. And she didn’t give it with words, but with the scratching of the key turning in the lock. Then she smiled at him as if to say this was what she’d intended doing all the time.

  “Run away, Danny Ross,” she said. “Run fast as you can and don’t come back. It doesn’t matter about Francy, or the doctor, or about me—but you’re just eighteen years old. Run away!”

  She smiled at him, and Danny ran.

  • • •

  He could think about those things racing out to Mountain View. He had a high-powered car in hand and a head start on the sheriff, who’d seen him roar away from the curbing. Maybe Ada was right, and he should keep going, because there was nothing certain about that hunch of his, but it did seem strange that nobody had found the old doc’s wallet in that search of the grounds. Malone wouldn’t have kept it a minute longer than was needed to whip out that two hundred dollars, and the logical place for that business was inside the men’s room just a few steps from where the old man hung his jacket on the spotlight. And then what? Was he likely to step outside in broad daylight with the wallet on him? With the hood up on the sedan Malone couldn’t have known the doctor was already dead or dying; for all he knew he was poking in that jacket pocket for his missing wealth. Danny knew what he would have done, and that was good enough for a gamble when the odds were so long and the pay-off so big.