Holly swallowed once or twice, and said, “What it amounts to is, you went to the garage to make Russ talk, and there was a fight and you don’t know whether you shot him or not.”
“What it amounts to,” Ken said, “is what you get when you skin a zero.”
Bill muttered, “Maybe you’d better call the cops, Holly.”
“Now just one moment!” she said. “It seems to me you give up very easily. Just as a start, nobody denies they shot you that time in China, do they?”
Ken rattled out a laugh. “Meet nobody, sister. I wasn’t even there when he was shot. Ask the other five, only of course you can’t ask Russ now, and they’ll tell you the same thing. We were away and came back to the field and the dope had got himself shot.”
“The hell you weren’t there,” Bill said.
“Yeah? Prove it.”
Holly said angrily, “You know he can’t prove a thing, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Who shot at him in Philadelphia?”
“He made that up.”
“He made up a new scar on his left side,” she said. “I saw it today when we were in swimming.”
“Speaking of swimming,” Bill said, “where’s that lake where you ditched the plane?”
“I never ride in airplanes,” Ken said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Don’t get so tough with me, Ken.”
“Why not? You aren’t going to shoot me with this dame watching. You won’t even beat me up as long as she’s around. Why don’t you dust out of here? I’m not going to tell you anything. I don’t even know my own name.”
“When you call the cops they might want to know it.”
“I gave up that idea,” Ken said. “I gave it up when I saw you’d lost your nerve about shooting me. So now I don’t want cops. You don’t want cops. If the girl don’t want cops either, let’s just sneer at each other and call it a night.”
“You could be making an awful mistake.”
“Yeah? As how?”
“If I did shoot Russ I might sneak back here to shoot you.”
“I’ll take the chance.”
“Then,” Bill said softly, “there’s the possibility that I didn’t shoot Russ. And if I didn’t, you may have another visitor. You won’t need cops after he leaves. But you may need an undertaker.”
“You can’t scare me into talking. Go haunt somebody else.”
The girl leaned forward and looked earnestly at Ken and said, “You might be able to clear up the whole horrible mess by talking.”
“I don’t get your angle at all,” Ken said. “Not unless you’re shopping for a husband and figure this guy’s better than nothing.”
She took a deep breath and said, “I think I understand why people might want to shoot you.”
“Ah, run along,” Ken said. “You’re wasting time you could use holding hands with him.”
Bill got up. “Let’s go, Holly,” he said. “Unlock the front door.” He dug out the revolver and reloaded it while she opened the door. Then he said, “Don’t try following us, Ken. They haven’t raised the price of murder yet. I can still knock off two guys for the price of one.” He pushed the girl through the doorway and backed out after her, watching Ken. As he closed the door he caught a final glimpse of Ken sitting motionless on the floor, a puppet waiting for somebody to pull the strings.
He walked rapidly along the side street toward U.S. 40, hardly conscious of the girl’s efforts to keep up with him.
“Things haven’t changed much,” she gasped, “since I was that fat little girl with bangs and a Dutch bob. I still seem to be tagging after you. I still can’t quite keep up.”
“You’d be smart to run on ahead and stay away from me,” he said bitterly. “You’d be smarter to call a cop. I’m in a bad jam and you’re trying to get in it with me.”
“You didn’t kill that man in Cheyenne.”
“How do you know? I don’t even know if I did it or not.”
“I know, that’s all. And you need help.”
“I can’t imagine why you bother.”
“It started a long time ago,” she said, almost angrily. “Just a silly kid idea of wanting you to notice me, of wanting to do something important for you that would make you take notice. I don’t seem to have got over it. I get so mad at myself for feeling like that. Take those times I played up to Carson Smith. When I thought about it I realized I just wanted to irritate you into paying attention to me. It—”
He stopped, grabbed her shoulders. “Look here,” he said. “You’re not going to do anything idiotic like getting serious about me, are you?”
“Please don’t worry. It’s merely a sort of challenge, like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle. Once I finish the job I’ll be delighted to kick the thing to pieces. I—”
A sound slapped their ears. A flat ugly sound that lashed through the night and picked up tumbling echoes. Her shoulders went rigid under his hands.
“Stay here,” he said.
“Bill! It was a car backfiring!”
He didn’t waste time arguing. He turned and raced back toward the tourist court. The place was a quarter-mile away and as he came closer he saw other figures running from neighboring houses and converging on it. He ran into the driveway. Several people were already in front of Ken’s office. They were looking down. What they looked at was sprawled on the office steps.
It didn’t look as if Ken had moved a foot after the bullet hit him. He seemed more than ever like a puppet as he sprawled on his office steps, but this time you could jerk all the strings in the world and he wouldn’t move.
Eight
He stared at the dead man and didn’t feel very alive himself. The fact that somebody else had shot Ken proved that somebody else killed Russ in Cheyenne. In one way that was a relief. But in another way it put him in a worse spot than ever. The police wouldn’t agree that somebody else had done both killings; they had every reason to pin both on him, if they got a chance.
And on top of that it meant that his vague hunch was correct. Frankie or Domenic or Cappy had trailed him from Philadelphia to New York, and to Chicago. One of them knew all about the Treasure Trip tour and the route he was following. One of them had waited in Cheyenne for him to visit Russ, and had waited here for him to visit Ken. The same guy would be waiting for him farther along the route. He was providing Frankie or Domenic or Cappy with a license to murder.
He said to one of the men standing around Ken’s body, “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” the man said. “I live down the street. Earlier tonight I heard a scream and thought it came from here, but I walked by and nothing seemed
wrong. Then I heard the shot and I was on edge from the scream earlier so I ran out. Funny how fast people can gather, isn’t it? Did somebody call the police?”
“My wife is phoning them,” another man said.
There was no use hoping one of the spectators had seen Frankie or Domenic or Cappy. Whoever did the shooting was too smart to make any mistake like running wildly away down the street.
He eased away from the little group and walked back along the street and bumped into Holly. “All right,” he said harshly. “Beat it. Fast.”
“Was it…was it…”
“It was. He’s dead.”
She stared up at him. Her face had a pale drowned look and she touched his arm to steady herself. “Dead,” she said in a wondering tone. “Dead.” Her mind seemed to be circling the idea the way you might tiptoe around a sleeping tiger. “You did say…dead?”
He was in an impatient mood and wanted to get her out of the way. “D for done in, e for extinct, a for assassin, and d for dear departed. Now beat it, will you? I’m going back there.”
“But what for? What can you do now? The police might ask you questions and get suspicious. You can’t afford that. Don’t you understand, this proves it was somebody else who shot that man in Cheyenne. You’ve got a real chance to clear yourself. But you can’t do it if the police grab you.�
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“Quit arguing, will you? The cops will be here any moment and I don’t want you involved. I’ll keep you out of it. I haven’t seen you all evening.”
For some odd reason she began to look angry instead of stunned and scared. “I like to get things straight,” she said. “Do I understand that you’re going to wait for the police and give yourself up?”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t think they’ll believe your story, do you? Without a single witness to back you up?”
“They wouldn’t believe my story with a witness, if you’re thinking of trying to be one.”
“But Bill, you’re giving up without a fight.”
He said patiently, “I’m not letting you get into this any deeper. There’s a guy loose around here who’s better at murder than you are at first-grade spelling.”
“I don’t like murderers. I don’t like them when they’re in jail and I like them even less when they’re loose.”
“You don’t understand! I’m this guy’s license for murder. I’m his alibi. I’m the decoy who lures ducks into his shooting gallery. As long as I’m walking around free, he can knock off anybody remotely involved in the case and I’ll get tagged for it. He could shoot you right now and send the bill to me. So I’m going to the police.”
“All right,” she said grimly, “then so am I. You were with me that whole evening in Cheyenne, except that we had a quarrel downtown and you went off to get drunk and picked a fight with Carson Smith. We’ve been together every minute this evening. You’ve had a nervous breakdown and aren’t responsible for anything you say.”
“You wouldn’t dare lie like that!”
“Wouldn’t I? Just wait and see if I don’t. Now are you going to be sensible?”
He was certainly not going to break his record by starting to be sensible now. He was going to tell off this vixen and…and…wait a moment! Why was he allowing her to take his arm and lead him down the street away from Ken’s place? What was he thinking of, to let her get away with this? Why was he allowing that police car to go wailing by without yelling for it to stop and pick up a quick solution to the case? How—
“Oh, stop dragging back on my arm,” Holly said. “You act like a lamb being led to the slaughter. Actually you’re being dragged away from it.”
“I hope,” he grumbled, “the man you marry is a good tough superintendent of schools who can keep you in your place. Do you realize you’re likely to get tagged as an accessory after the fact, if I get arrested?”
“But Bill, in this case exactly what is the fact?”
“I’m not prepared to answer that question, teacher.”
“You’re not prepared for anything! Here you’ve got a problem and it looks hard and you throw up your hands and say you can’t do it. I’ve known first-graders who didn’t give up that easily. Now let’s put all the figures down on a blackboard and see if we can’t make sense out of them. Which one of your crowd could have done the shootings?”
“There are only three left. Frankie Banta in Reno and Cappy Judd in Frisco and Domenic Ferrante in L.A. I can’t quite see Frankie as a gunman. That narrows it down to Cappy and Domenic.”
“All right. Now which of them was the leader of the crowd?”
“What do you mean, the leader?”
“Let’s take the trouble in China,” she said. “Which one of your crowd was capable of working out the plan for stealing that gold? Which one was smart enough to talk the others into it and to explain away any doubts and fears they had? Who made all the big decisions? Back in China, who realized you had to be shot, and did it right then? When you got back home safely this spring, who decided to get rid of you right away?”
“I never thought of it like that. I can’t quite fit any of them into that pattern.”
“But Bill, one of them had to be the leader. You must have known them very well. Pick the leader and you have the murderer.”
That was odd. Come to think of it, none of them had been a real leader. They had always waited for him to make the plans and decisions. “I can’t pick the right one,” he said.
“Well, who was the other man who used to hang around with your crowd?”
“What other man? There were only five besides me. I named them all for you.”
“Then why did that man who was just killed talk as if there was one more? I remember very distinctly what he said. He claimed that he wasn’t even present that time in China when you were shot. He said to ask the other five and they’d tell you the same thing, except that of course you couldn’t ask Russ. The other five! Russ, and the man in Reno, and the one in San Francisco and the one in Los Angeles. That’s only four. So who else could you ask?”
“Ken must have made a mistake. Slip of the tongue. There isn’t anybody else. There—”
He paused. The idea was prowling through his head like a burglar. It was a disturbing idea and he didn’t want it around. Perhaps if he didn’t give it any trouble the idea would go away.
Holly watched his face, and said, “Wouldn’t that be an odd mistake for Ken to make? If only five men were involved in shooting you and stealing that money in China, Ken must have thought thousands of times about the other four. Were the other four playing fair with him? Would any of the other four get drunk and talk too much? The other four this, the other four that. It would be fixed so firmly in his mind that he couldn’t make a slip, any more than he could forget his own name. But if there were five others besides Ken, that number would be fixed just as firmly in his mind. He would find himself talking about five others even when he didn’t mean to.”
“It’s crazy,” he muttered. “My five pals were the only ones in that operations shack we had at the airfield. I finished telling them off, and walked out of the office and took a few steps toward the plane and—”
“Couldn’t somebody have been outside the office, lounging against the wall and listening to the quarrel? Somebody who had tipped off your bunch about what the black market man had in those boxes? Somebody who wasn’t going to let you mess up his plans?”
“I didn’t see anybody.”
“You were angry. Maybe you weren’t keeping your eyes open.”
“No,” he said, “I can’t go for your idea. You’re trying to make a lot out of very little. Give you a splinter and you want to build a house.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s called scientific method. I admit I’m only a grade school teacher but I certainly know how to apply scientific method to a problem. It’s no different than finding a fossil tooth and reconstructing a prehistoric man from it.”
“You don’t have a tooth and you’re constructing a superman.”
“Not at all. He merely thinks faster than you do. That doesn’t make him a superman. Oh. I thought of one more argument. You said you had a feeling somebody was trailing you back in New York and Chicago. If it was one of the five men in your bunch, wouldn’t you have spotted him?”
“Yeah, I should have been able to spot any of the boys. But don’t try to sell me your mystery man on that basis. I’m just not as good at spotting people as I thought. Look at the way I let you trail me to Ken’s place tonight, and never realized it.”
“But you weren’t looking for me, Bill. You were so upset you weren’t thinking that somebody might be following you.”
He said irritably, “You worry about your mystery man. I’ll worry about Cappy and Domenic. One of them did the shooting.”
“All right,” she said with a small sigh. “I was just trying to help.”
They walked on silently for a while. When they passed the opening of a storm sewer, Bill took out the revolver and wiped it carefully and dropped it in the opening. He didn’t want to be caught with a weapon that had belonged to Ken. Thinking about pistols reminded him of his own .45, and he asked, “Did you close my suitcase and shut the door when you left my room?”
“I think I did, Bill. Anyway I remember throwing your clothes back into the suitcase to hide
that gun.”
“I’m glad you have that much sense. But did you ever think what might have happened to you tonight? You trailed a guy who might have been a murderer to that closed and deserted tourist court, and you hung around outside in the dark and—”
“I admit I was scared. But you didn’t have a gun and I felt sure you weren’t a murderer and were in trouble and needed help.”
He said in a wondering tone, “How you’ve managed to live so long…”
They reached their tourist court on Main Street and turned in the entrance. He thought of something, and said, “Did you wipe off my forty-five after you touched it?”
“Well, no. I didn’t think of it.”
“If you’re going to play around with murder, don’t leave prints on murder weapons. Let’s get them off right now.” He opened the door of his cottage and switched on the light.
“I just thought of something,” Holly said. “The man in Cheyenne was shot with a bullet from your gun, of course. But the man tonight was shot with a bullet from another gun. So the police can’t possibly connect the two cases. And if they ever ask, I can swear your gun was here all evening.”
He fumbled through the suitcase. “You can?” he said.
“Why, of course.”
“Then you’ll be lying,” he said, straightening slowly and painfully. “The thing is gone.”
Nine
The bus tires sizzled over the blacktop surface of U.S. 40, rolling west. The sound drilled into his head and buzzed around as if somebody were holding a roller derby up there. He stared glumly out of the bus window. North of the road the white tablecloth of Bonneville Salt Flats stretched tight across the land, covering everything but a toothpick line of telephone poles in the foreground and the blue scallops of mountains in the distance. The country was just about as blank as his mind.
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