F is for FUGITIVE

by Sue Grafton

  Ann said, “My God.” She rose to her feet, hands cupped across her mouth. Ori was transfixed in the doorway, horrified by what was happening. Royce’s whole body was wracked. I banged on his back, grabbing one arm, which I held aloft to give his lungs room to inflate.

  “Get an ambulance!” I yelled.

  Ann turned a blank look on me and then mobilized herself sufficiently to reach for the phone, punching 911. She kept her eyes pinned on her father’s face while I loosened his collar and fumbled with his belt. Through a rush of adrenaline, I heard her describe the situation to the dispatcher on the other end, reciting the address and directions.

  By the time she put the phone down, Royce was gaining control, but he was soaked in perspiration, his breathing labored. Finally the coughing subsided altogether, leaving him pale and clammy-looking, his eyes sunken with exhaustion, hair plastered to his scalp. I wrung a towel out in cold water and wiped his face. He started to tremble. I murmured nonsense syllables, patting at his hands. There was no way Ann and I could lift him, but we managed to lower him to the floor, thinking somehow to make him more comfortable. Ann covered him with a blanket and tucked a pillow under his head. Ori stood there in tears, mewing helplessly. She seemed to grasp the severity of his illness for the first time and she cried like a three-year-old, giving herself up to grief. He would go first. She seemed to understand that now.

  In the distance we heard the sirens from the emergency vehicle. The paramedics arrived, taking in the situation with a practiced eye, their demeanor so studiously neutral that the crisis was reduced to a series of minor problems to be solved. Vital signs. Oxygen administered and an IV started. Royce was hefted with effort onto a portable gurney, which was angled out of the room to the vehicle at the curb. Ann went with him in the ambulance. The next thing I knew, I was alone with Ori. I sat down abruptly. The room looked as if it had been ransacked.

  I heard a tentative voice from the office. “Hello? Ori?”

  “That’s Bert,” Ori murmured. “He’s the night manager.”

  Bert peered into the living room. He was maybe sixty-five, slight, no more than five feet tall, dressed in a suit he must have bought in the boys’ wear department. “I saw the ambulance pull away. Is everything all right?”

  Ori told him what had happened, the narrative apparently restoring some of the balance in her universe. Bert was properly sympathetic, and the two swapped a few long-winded tales about similar emergencies. The phone started to ring and he was forced to return to the front desk.

  I got Ori into bed. I was worried about her insulin, but she wouldn’t discuss it so I had to drop the subject. The episode with Royce had thrown her into a state of clinging dependency. She wanted physical contact, incessant reassurances. I made her some herb tea. I dimmed the lights. I stood by the bed while she clutched my hand. She talked on about Royce and the children at length while I supplied questions to keep the conversation afloat. Anything to get her mind off Royce’s collapse.

  She finally drifted off to sleep, but it was midnight before Ann got back. Royce had been admitted and she’d stayed until he was settled. A number of tests had been scheduled for first thing in the morning. The doctor was guessing that the cancer had invaded his lungs. Until the chest X rays came back, he couldn’t be sure, but things weren’t looking good.

  Ori stirred. We’d been speaking in whispers, but it was clear we were disturbing her. We moved out through the kitchen and sat together on the back steps. It was dark out there, the building shielding us from the smudged yellow of the streetlights. Ann pulled her knees up and rested her head wearily on her arms. “God. How am I going to get through the next few months?”

  “It’ll help if we can get Bailey cleared.”

  “Bailey,” she said. “That’s all I hear about.” She smiled bitterly. “So what else is new?”

  “You were what, five when he was born?” She nodded. “Mom and Pop were so thrilled. I’d been sickly as an infant. Apparently, I didn’t sleep more than thirty minutes at a stretch.” “Colic?”

  “That’s what they thought. Later, it turned out to be some kind of allergy to wheat. I was sick as a dog… diarrhea, ferocious stomachaches. I was thin as a stick. It seemed to straighten out for a while. Then Bailey came along and it started all over again. I was in kindergarten by then and the teacher decided I was just acting up because of him.”

  “Were you jealous?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. I was horribly jealous. I couldn’t help myself. They doted on him. He was everything. And of course he was good… slept like an angel, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, I was half-dead. Some doctor caught on. I don’t even know now who it was, but he insisted on a bowel biopsy and that’s when they diagnosed the celiac disease. Once they took me off wheat, I was fine, though I think Pop was always half-convinced I’d done it out of spite. Ha. The story of my life.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh hell, it’s almost one. I better let you go.”

  We said our good-nights and then I went upstairs. It wasn’t until I was ready for bed that I realized someone had been in my room.

  Chapter 13

  *

  What I spotted was the partial crescent of a heel print on the carpet just inside the sliding door. I don’t even know now what made me glance down. I had gone into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine. I popped the cork back in the bottle and tucked it in the refrigerator door. I crossed to the sliding glass door and opened the drapes, then flipped the lock and slid the door open about a foot, letting in a dense shaft of ocean breeze. I stood for a moment, just breathing it all in. I loved the smell. I loved the sound the ocean made and the line of frothy silver curling up onto the sand whenever a wave broke. The fog was in and I could hear the plaintive moo of the foghorn against the chill night air.

  My attention strayed to a small kink in the hem of the drape. There was a trace of wet sand adjacent to the metal track in which the door rode. I peered at it, uncomprehending. I set my wineglass aside and went down on my hands and knees to inspect the spot. The minute I saw what it was, I got up and backed away from the door, whipping my head around so I could scan the room. There was no place anyone could hide. The closet consisted of an alcove without a door. The bed was bolted to the wall and quite low, framed in at the bottom with wood strips mounted flush with the carpeting. I’d just come out of the bathroom, but I checked it again, moving automatically. The frosted-glass shower door was open, the stall empty. I knew I was alone, but the sense of that other presence was so vivid that it made my hair stand on my arms. I was seized by an involuntary tremor of fear so acute that it generated a low sound in my throat, like a growl reflex.

  I surveyed my personal belongings. My duffel seemed untouched, though it was perfectly possible that someone had eased a sly hand among the contents. I went back to the kitchen table and checked my papers. My portable Smith-Corona was sitting open as it had been, my notes in a folder to the left. Nothing was missing as far as I could tell. I couldn’t tell if the papers had been disturbed because I hadn’t paid any particular attention to them when I tucked them away. That had been before supper, six hours ago.

  I checked the lock on the sliding glass door. Now that I knew what I was looking for, the tool marks were unmistakable and I could see where the aluminum frame had been forced out around the bolt. The lock was a simple device in any event, and hardly designed to withstand brute force. The thumb bolt still turned, but the mechanism had been damaged. Now the latch lever didn’t fully meet the strike plate, so that any locking capacity was strictly illusory. The intruder must have left the bolt in its locked position and used the corridor door for egress. I got the penlight out of my handbag and checked the balcony with care. There were additional traces of sand near the railing. I peered the one floor down, trying to figure out how someone could have gotten up here ��� possibly through one of the rooms on the same floor, climbing from balcony to balcony. The motel driveway ran right under my room and led to covered parking along the peri
meter of the courtyard formed by the four sides of the building. Someone could have parked in the driveway, then climbed up on the car roof, and from there swung up onto the balcony. It wouldn’t have taken long. The driveway might have been blocked temporarily, but at this hour there was little or no traffic. The town was shut down and the tenants of the motel were probably in for the night.

  I called down to the desk, told Bert what had happened, and asked him to move me to another room. I could hear him scratch his chin. His voice, when it came, was papery and frail.

  “Gee, Miss Millhone. I don’t know what to tell you this time of night. I could move you first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Bert,” I said, “someone broke into my room! There’s no way I’m going to stay here.”

  “Well. Even so. I’m not sure what we can do at this hour.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t have another room somewhere. I can see the Vacancy’ sign from here.”

  There was a pause. “I suppose we could move you,” he said skeptically. “It’s awful late, but I’m not saying we can’t. When do you think it might have happened, this breakin you’re referring to?”

  “What difference does it make? The lock on the sliding glass door’s been jimmied. I can’t even get it to shut properly, let alone lock.”

  “Oh. Well, even so. Things can fool you sometimes. You know some of those fittings have warped over the years. Doors down here, some of them at any rate, you have to ���”

  “Could you connect me with Ann Fowler, please?”

  “I believe she’s asleep. I’d be happy to come up myself and take a look. I don’t believe you’re in danger. I can understand your concern, but you’re up on the second floor there and I don’t see how anyone could get up on that balcony.”

  “Probably the same way they got up here in the first place,” I said snappishly.

  “Unh-hunh. Well, why don’t I come up there and take a look? I guess I can leave the desk for a minute. Maybe we can figure something out.”

  “Bert. Goddamn it, I want another room!”

  “Well, I can see your point. But now there’s the question of liability, too, you know. I don’t know if you’ve considered it in that light. Truth is, we’ve never had any kind of breakin all the years I’ve been here, which is, oh… nearly eighteen years now. Over at the Tides, it’s different of course…”

  “I… want… another… room,” I said, giving full measure to each syllable.

  “Oh. Well.” A pause here. “Let me check and see what I can do. Hang on and I’ll pull the registration.”

  He put me on hold, giving me a restful few minutes in which to get my temper under control. In some ways it felt better to be irritated than unnerved.

  He cut back into the line. I could hear him flipping through registration cards in the background, probably licking his thumb for traction. He cleared his throat. “You can try the room next door,” he said. “That’s number twenty-four. I can bring you up a key. Connecting door might be open if you want to give it a try. Unless, of course, you got some notion that’s been tampered with, too…”

  I hung up on him, which seemed preferable to going mad.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to the fact that my room connected to the one next door to it. Access to room 24 was actually effected through two doors with a kind of air space between. I unlocked the door on my side. The second door was ajar, the room in shadow. I flashed my penlight around. The room was empty, orderly, with the slightly musty smell of carpeting that’s been dampened too often by the trampling of summer feet. I found the switch and turned the light on, then checked the sliding door that opened out onto the balcony adjacent to mine.

  Once I determined the room could be secured, I tossed my few loose personal items into my duffel and moved it next door. I gathered up my typewriter, papers, wine bottle. Within minutes, I was settled. I pulled some clothes on, took my keys and went down to the car. My gun was still locked in my briefcase in the backseat. I stopped in at the office and picked up the new room key, curtly refusing to engage with Bert in any more of his rambling dialogues. He didn’t seem to mind. His manner was tolerant. Some women just seem to worry more than others, he remarked.

  I took the briefcase up to my room, where I locked the door and chained it. Then I sat at the kitchen table, loaded seven cartridges in the clip, and smacked it home. This was my new handgun. A Davis .32, chrome and walnut, with a five-and-a-quarter-inch barrel. My old gun had gotten blown to kingdom come when the bomb went off in my apartment. This one weighed a tidy twenty-two ounces and already felt like an old friend, with the added virtue that the sights were accurate. It was 1:00 A.M. I was feeling a deadly rage by then and I didn’t really expect to sleep. I turned the light out and pulled the fishnet drapes across the glass doors, which I felt compelled to keep locked. I peered out at the empty street. The surf was pounding monotonously, the sound reduced to a mild rumble through the glass. The muffled foghorn intoned its hollow warning to any boats at sea. The sky was dense with clouds, moon and stars blanked out. Without fresh air coming in, the room felt like a prison cell, stuffy and dank. I left my clothes on and got in bed, sitting bolt upright, my gaze pinned on the sliding glass doors, half expecting to see a shadowy figure slip over the railing from below. The sodium-vapor streetlights washed the balcony with a tawny glow. The incoming light was filtered by the curtains. The neon “vacancy” sign had begun to sputter off and on, causing the room to pulsate with red. Someone knew where I was. I’d told a lot of people I was staying at the Ocean Street, but not which room. I got up again and padded over to the table, where I picked up my file notes and tucked them in my briefcase. From now on, I’d take them with me. From now on, I’d tote the gun with me, too. I got back in bed.

  At 2:47 A.M. the phone rang and I jumped a foot, unaware that I’d been asleep. The jolt of adrenaline made my heart clatter in my chest like a slug of white-hot metal on a stone floor. Fear and the shrilling of the phone became one sensation. I snatched up the receiver. “Yes?”

  His tone was low. “It’s me.”

  Even in the dark, I squinted. “Bailey?”

  “You alone?”

  “Of course. Where are you?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I don’t have much time. Bert knows it’s me, and I don’t want to take a chance on his calling the cops.”

  “Forget it. They can’t get a trace on a call that fast,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. How are things there, pretty bad?”

  I gave him a brief rundown on what was happening. I didn’t dwell on Royce’s collapse because I didn’t want to worry him, but I did mention that someone had broken in. “Was it you, by any chance?”

  “Me? No way. This is the first time I’ve been out,” he said. “I heard about Tap. God, poor bastard.”

  “I know,” I said. “What a chump he was. It looks like he didn’t even have a real load in the gun. He was firing rock salt.”

  “Salt?”

  “You got it. I checked the residue at the scene. I don’t know if he realized what it was or not.”

  “Jesus,” Bailey breathed. “He never had a chance.”

  “Why did you take off? That was the worst move you could possibly have made. They probably have every cop in the state out. Were you the one who set it up?”

  “Of course not! I didn’t even know who it was at first, and then all I could think to do was get the hell out of there.”

  “Who could have put him up to it?”

  “I have no idea, but somebody did.”

  “Joleen might know. I’ll try to see her tomorrow. In the meantime, you can’t stay on the loose. They’ve got you listed as armed and dangerous.”

  “I figured as much, but what am I supposed to do? The minute I show up, they’re going to blow me off the face of the earth, same as Tap.”

  “Call Jack Clemson. Turn yourself in to him.

  “How do we know it wasn’t him set me up?”
<
br />   “Your own attorney?”

  “Hey, if I die, it’s over. Everybody’s off the hook. Anyway, I gotta get myself out of here before ���” I heard an intake of breath. “Hang on.” There was a silence. His end of the conversation had reverberated with the hollow echo of a phone booth. Now I heard the metal bi-fold door squeak. “All right, I’m back. I thought there was somebody out there, but it doesn’t look like it.”

  “Listen, Bailey. I’m doing what I can, but I could use some help.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what happened to the money from the bank job you did?”

  A pause. “Who told you about that?”

  “Tap, last night at the pool hall. He says you left it with Jean, but then the last he heard, the whole forty-two thousand had disappeared. Could she have taken it herself?”

  “Not Jean. She wouldn’t have done that to us.”

  “What was the story she told you? She must have said something.”

  “All I know is she went to lay hands on it and the whole stash was gone.”

  “Or so she said,” I put in.

  I could hear him shrug. “Even if she did take it, what was I going to do, turn her in to the cops?”

  “Did she tell you where she’d hidden it?”

  “No, but I got the impression it was somewhere up there at the hot springs where she worked.”

  “Oh, great. Place is huge. Who else knew about the money?”

  “That’s all as far as I know.” He hissed into the phone.

  I could feel my heart do a flip-flop. “What’s wrong?”

  Silence.

  “Bailey?”

  He severed the connection.

  Almost immediately, the phone rang again. A sheriff’s deputy advised me to remain where I was until a car could pick me up. Good old Bert. I spent the rest of the night at the county sheriff’s department, being variously questioned, accused, abused, and threatened ��� quite politely, of course ��� by a homicide detective named Sal Quintana, who wasn’t in a much better mood than I was at that point. A second detective stood against the wall, using a broken wooden match to clean the plaque off his teeth. I was certain his dental hygienist would applaud his efforts when he saw her next.