The Doomsters

by Ross Macdonald

  “Mr. Hallman had been shot twice in the back, and apparently died within seconds of the shooting. A pearl-handled revolver, with two cartridges discharged, was found beside the body, lending a touch of fantastic mystery to the case. According to family servants the murder gun formerly belonged to the late Mrs. Alicia Hallman, mother of the victim.

  “Sheriff Duane Ostervelt, who was on the scene within minutes of the shooting, stated that the murder weapon was known to be in the possession of Carl Hallman. Young Hallman was seen on the ranch immediately prior to the shooting. He escaped last night from the State Hospital, where he had been a patient for some months. According to members of the family, young Hallman has been a long-time victim of mental illness. An all-points search is being made for him, by the local sheriff’s department and city and state police.

  “Contacted by long-distance telephone, Dr. Brockley of the State Hospital staff said that young Hallman was suffering from manic-depressive psychosis when admitted to the hospital six months ago. According to Dr. Brockley, Hallman was not considered dangerous, and was thought to be ‘well on the road to recovery.’ Dr. Brockley expressed surprise and concern at the tragic outcome of Hallman’s escape. He said that the local authorities were informed of the escape as soon as it occurred, and expressed the hope that the public would ‘take a calm view of the situation. There is no violence in Hallman’s hospital record,’ Dr. Brockley said. ‘He is a sick boy who needs medical care.’

  “A similar view was expressed by Sheriff Ostervelt, who says that he is organizing a posse of a hundred or more local citizens to supplement the efforts of his department in the search. The public is asked to be on the lookout for Hallman. He is six feet three inches tall, of athletic build, blue-eyed, with light hair cut very short. When last seen he was wearing a blue work shirt and blue dungaree trousers. According to Sheriff Ostervelt, Hallman may be accompanied by Thomas Rica, alias Rickey, a fellow-escapee from …”

  The story was continued on the second page. Before turning over, I took a close look at the picture of the two brothers. It was a stiffly posed portrait of the sort that photographers make to commemorate weddings. Both brothers wore boiled shirts and fixed smiles. Their resemblance was accentuated by this, and by the fact that Jerry hadn’t grown fat when the picture was taken. The caption was simply: “The Hallman brothers (Carl on the right).”

  The dark girl coughed insinuatingly. I looked up and saw her leaning far out over her counter, slightly crosseyed with desire to break the silence.

  “Terrible, isn’t it? What makes it worse, I know him.” She shivered, and hunched her thin shoulders up. “I talked to him just this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “The murderer.” She rolled the “r’s” like an actress in melodrama.

  “He telephoned here?”

  “He came here, personally. He was standing right here in front of me.” She pointed at the floor between us with a fingernail from which the red polish was flaking. “I didn’t know him from Adam, but I could tell there was something funny. He had that wild look they have in their eyes.” Her own look was slightly wild, in a girlish way, and she’d forgotten her receptionist’s diction: “Jeeze, it bored right through me.”

  “It must have been a frightening experience.”

  “You’re not kidding. ’Course I had no way of knowing he was going to shoot somebody, he only looked that way. ‘Where’s the doctor?’ he said, just like that. I guess he thought he was Napoleon or something. Only he was dressed like any old bum. You’d never think he was a Senator’s son. His brother used to come in here, and he was a real gentleman, always nicely dressed in the height of fashion—cashmere jackets and stuff. It’s too bad about him. I feel sorry for his wife, too.”

  “You know her?”

  “Oh yes, Mrs. Hallman, she comes in all the time for her sinuses.” Her eyes took on the waiting birdlike expression of a woman naming another woman she happens not to like.

  “Did you get rid of him all right?”

  “The crazy-man? I tried to tell him doctor wasn’t in, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I called out Dr. Grantland, he knows how to handle them, Dr. Grantland hasn’t got a nerve in his body.” The birdlike expression subtly changed to the look of adoration which very young receptionists reserve for their doctor-employers. “ ‘Hello, old man, what brings you here?’ the doctor says, like they were buddy-buddy from way back. He put his arm around him, calm as anything, and off they went into the back room. I guess he got rid of him out the back way, ’cause that was the last I saw of him. ’Least I hope that’s the last. Anyway, doctor told me not to worry about it, that things like that come up in every office.”

  “Have you worked here long?”

  “Just three months. This is my first real job. I filled in for other girls before, when they went on vacation, but I consider this the real start of my career. Dr. Grantland is wonderful to work for. Most of his patients are the nicest people you’d ever want to meet.”

  As though to illustrate this boast, a fat woman wearing a small flat hat and a mink neckpiece emerged through the inner door. She was followed by Grantland looked professional in a white smock. She had the vaguely frightened eyes of a hypochondriac, and she clutched a prescription slip in her chubby hand. Grantland escorted her to the front door and opened it, bowing her out. She turned to him on the threshold:

  “Thank you so much, doctor. I know I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

  chapter 19

  GRANTLAND closed the door and saw me. The lingering smile on his face gave up the ghost entirely. Shoved by a gust of anger, he crossed the room toward me. His fists were clenched.

  I rose to meet him. “Hello, doctor.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I have an appointment with you.”

  “Oh no you haven’t.” He was torn between anger and the need to be charming to his receptionist. “Did you make an appointment for this—this gentleman?”

  “Why not?” I said, since she was speechless. “Are you retiring from practice?”

  “Don’t try to tell me you’re here as a patient.”

  “You’re the only doctor I know in town.”

  “You didn’t tell me you knew Dr. Grantland,” the receptionist said accusingly.

  “I must have forgotten to.”

  “Very likely,” Grantland said. “You can go now, Miss Cullen, unless you’ve made some more of these special appointments for me.”

  “He told me it was an emergency.”

  “I said you can go.”

  She went, with a backward look from the doorway. Grantland’s face was trying various attitudes: outrage, dignified surprise, bewildered innocence.

  “What are you trying to pull on me?”

  “Not a thing. Look, if you don’t want to treat me, I can find another doctor.”

  He weighed the advantages and disadvantages of this, and decided against it. “I don’t do much in the surgical line, but I guess I can fix you up. What happened to you, anyway—did you run into Hallman again?” Zinnie had briefed him well, apparently.

  “No. Did you?”

  He let that go by. We went through a consulting-room furnished in mahogany and blue leather. There were sailing prints on the walls, and above the desk a medical diploma from a college in the middle west. Grantland switched on the lights in the next room and asked me to remove my coat. Washing his hands at the sink in the corner, he said over his shoulder:

  “You can get up on the examination table if you like. I’m sorry my nurse has gone home—I didn’t know I’d be wanting to use her.”

  I stretched out on the leatherette top of the metal table. Lying flat on the back wasn’t a bad position for self-defense, if it came to that.

  Grantland crossed the room briskly and leaned over me, turning on a surgical light that extended on retractable arms from the wall. “You get yourself gun-whipped?”

  “Slightly. Not every doctor would recognize the mar
ks.”

  “I interned at Hollywood Receiving. Did you report this to the police?”

  “I didn’t have to. Ostervelt did it to me.”

  “You’re not a fugitive, for God’s sake?”

  “No, for God’s sake.”

  “Were you resisting arrest?”

  “The sheriff just lost his temper. He’s a hot-headed old youth.”

  Grantland made no comment. He went to work cleaning my cuts with swabs dipped in alcohol. It hurt.

  “I’m going to have to put some clamps in that ear. The other cut ought to heal itself. I’ll simply put an adhesive bandage over it.”

  Grantland went on talking as he worked: “A regular surgeon could do a better job for you, especially a plastic surgeon. That’s why I was a little surprised when you came to me. You’re going to have a small scar, I’m afraid. But that’s all right with me if it’s all right with you.” He pressed a series of clamps into my torn ear. “That ought to do it. You ought to have a doctor look at it in a day or two. Going to be in town long?”

  “I don’t know.” I got up, and faced him across the table. “It could depend on you.”

  “Any doctor can do it,” he said impatiently.

  “You’re the only one who can help me.”

  Grantland caught the implication, and glanced at his watch. “I’m late for an appointment now—”

  “I’ll make it as fast as I can. You saw a pearl-handled gun today. You didn’t mention that you’d seen it before.”

  He was a very quick study. Without a second’s hesitation, he said: “I like to be sure of my facts before I sound off. I’m a medical man, after all.”

  “What are your facts?”

  “Ask your friend the sheriff. He knows them.”

  “Maybe. I’m asking you. You might as well tell a straight story. I’ve been in touch with Glenn Scott.”

  “Glenn who?” But he remembered. His gaze flickered sideways.

  “The detective Senator Hallman hired to investigate the murder of his wife.”

  “Did you say murder?”

  “It slipped out.”

  “You’re mistaken. She committed suicide. If you talked to Scott, you know she was suicidal.”

  “Suicidal people can be murdered.”

  “No doubt, but what does that prove?” A womanish petulance tugged at his mouth, disrupting his false calm. “I’m sick and tired of being badgered about it, simply because she happened to be my patient. Why, I saved her life the week before she drowned. Did Scott bother to tell you that?”

  “He told me what you told him. That she attempted suicide in this office.”

  “It was in my previous office. I moved last year.”

  “So you can’t show me the bullethole in the ceiling.”

  “Good Lord, are you questioning that? I got that gun away from her at the risk of my own life.”

  “I don’t question it. I wanted to hear it from you, though.”

  “Well, now you’ve heard it. I hope you’re satisfied.” He took off his smock and turned to hang it up.

  “Why did she try to commit suicide in your office?”

  He was very still for an instant, frozen in the act of placing the white garment on a hook. Between the shoul-derblades and under the arms, his gray shirt was dark with sweat. It was the only indication that I was giving him a hard time. He said:

  “She wanted something I wasn’t prepared to give her. A massive dose of sleeping pills. When I refused, she pulled this little revolver out of her purse. It was touch and go whether she was going to shoot me or herself. Then she pointed it at her head. Fortunately I managed to reach her, and take the gun away.” He turned with a bland and doleful look on his face.

  “Was she on a barb kick?”

  “You might call it that. I did my best to keep it under control.”

  “Why didn’t you have her put in a safe place?”

  “I miscalculated, I admit it. I don’t pretend to be a psychiatrist. I didn’t grasp the seriousness of her condition. We doctors make mistakes, you know, like everybody else.”

  He was watching me like a chess-player. But his sympathy gambit was a giveaway. Unless he had something important to cover up, he’d have ordered me out of his office long ago.

  “What happened to the gun?” I said.

  “I kept it. I intended to throw it away, but never got around to it.”

  “How did Carl Hallman get hold of it?”

  “He lifted it out of my desk drawer.” He added disarmingly: “I guess I was a damn fool to keep it there.”

  I’d been holding back my knowledge of Carl Hallman’s visit to his office. It was disappointing to have the fact conceded. Grantland said with a faint sardonic smile:

  “Didn’t the sheriff tell you that Carl was here this morning? I telephoned him immediately. I also got in touch with the State Hospital.”

  “Why did he come here?”

  Grantland turned his hands palms outward. “Who can say? He was obviously disturbed. He bawled me out for my part in having him committed, but his main animus was against his brother. Naturally I tried to talk him out of it.”

  “Naturally. Why didn’t you hold on to him?”

  “Don’t think I didn’t try to. I stepped into the dispensary for a minute to get him some thorazine. I thought it might calm him down. When I came back to the office, he was gone. He must have run out the back way here.” Grantland indicated the back door of the examination room. “I heard a car start, but he was gone before I could catch him.”

  I walked over to the half-curtained window and looked out. Grantland’s Jaguar was parked in the paved lot. Back of the lot, a dirt lane ran parallel with the street. I turned back to Grantland: “You say he took your gun?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t exactly my gun, either. I’d practically forgotten it existed. I didn’t even think of it till I found it in the greenhouse beside poor Jerry’s body. Then I couldn’t be sure it was the same one, I’m no expert on guns. So I waited until I got back here this afternoon, and had a chance to check the drawer of my desk. When I found it gone I got in touch with the sheriff’s department right away—much as I hated to do it.”

  “Why did you hate to do it?”

  “Because I’m fond of the boy. He used to be my patient. You’d hardly expect me to get a kick out of proving that he’s a murderer.”

  “You’ve proved that, have you?”

  “You’re supposed to be a detective. Can you think of any other hypothesis?”

  I could, but I kept it to myself. Grantland said:

  “I can understand your feeling let down. Ostervelt told me you’re representing poor Carl, but don’t take it too hard, old man. They’ll take his mental condition into account. I’ll see to it personally that they do.”

  I wasn’t as sad as I looked. Not that I was happy about the case. Every time I moved, I picked up another link in the evidence against my client. But this happened with such clockwork regularity that I was getting used to it and beginning to discount it. Besides, I was encouraged by the firm and lasting faith which I was developing in Dr. Grantland’s lack of integrity.

  chapter 20

  TWILIGHT was thickening in the street outside. The white-walled buildings, fluorescent with last light, had taken on the beauty and mystery of a city in Africa or someplace else I’d never been. I nosed my car out into a break in the traffic, turned right at the next intersection, and parked a hundred feet short of the entrance to Grantland’s back lane. I hadn’t been there five minutes when his Jaguar came bumping along the lane. It arced out into the street on whining tires.

  Grantland didn’t know my car. I followed him fairly closely, two blocks south, then west on a boulevard that slanted toward the sea. I almost lost him when he made a left turn onto the highway on the tail end of a green light. I followed through on the yellow as it turned red.

  From there the Jaguar was easy to keep in sight. It headed south on the hig
hway through the outskirts where marginal operators purveyed chicken-fried steaks and saltwater taffy, Mexican basketry and redwood mementoes. The neon-cluttered sub-suburbs dropped behind. The highway snaked up and along brown bluffs which rose at a steep angle above the beach. The sea lay at their foot, a more somber reflection of the sky, still tinged at its far edge with the sun’s red death.

  About two miles out of town, as many minutes, the Jaguar’s brakelights blazed. It heeled and turned onto a black top shelf overlooking the sea. There was one other car in the turnout, a red Cadillac with its nose against the guardrail. Before the next curve swept me out of sight, I saw Grantland’s car pull up beside the Cadillac.

  There was traffic behind me. I found another turnout a quarter of a mile further on. By the time I’d made my turn and got back to the first turnout, the Jaguar was gone and the Cadillac was going.

  I caught a glimpse of the driver’s face as he turned onto the highway. It gave me the kind of shock you might get from seeing the ghost of someone you’d once known. I’d known him ten years before, when he was a high-school athlete, a big boy, nice looking, full of fermenting energy. The face behind the wheel of the Cadillac: yellow skin stretched over skull, smokily lit by black unfocused eyes: could have belonged to that boy’s grandfather. I knew him, though. Tom Rica.

  I turned once again and followed him south. He drove erratically, slowing on the straightaway and speeding up on the curves, using two of the four lanes. Once, at better than seventy, he left the road entirely, and veered onto the shoulder. The Cadillac skidded sideways in the gravel, headlights swinging out into gray emptiness. The bumper clipped the steel guardrail, and the Cadillac slewed wildly in the other direction. It regained the road and went on as if nothing had happened.

  I stayed close behind, trying to think my way into Tom Rica’s brain and along his damaged nerves and do his driving for him. I’d always felt an empathy for the boy. When he was eighteen and his unmaturing youth had begun to go rank, I’d tried to hold him straight, and even run some interference for him. An old cop had done it for me when I was a kid. I couldn’t do it for Tom.