I handed them to her, and sat down on the big motel bed beside her. For a while there was no sound but the rustling of newsprint. I frowned at the article in the El Paso paper, trying to get at not only what the reporter had written, but what he'd known but hadn't felt free to write.
COP-STRANGLER STRIKES AGAIN
Fort Adams, Okla.: Two bizarre murders, following on the heels of a violent student riot that claimed three lives, have brought renewed tension to this college town.
This morning, Patrolman Harold Grumman, 23, of the Fort Adams Police Force, was discovered strangled to death in his parked patrol car. The murder weapon, found at the scene, was a length of fine music wire equipped with two short handles apparently sawed from a broomstick.
Local authorities consider the weapon a significant clue, since an identical garotte figured in the violent death of Deputy Sheriff Marcus Wills, 47, whose body was found in the bushes beside the garage of his home in a Fort Adams suburb, just a few days ago. More force appeared to have been used in this earlier case, as the body had been almost decapitated by the thin wire.
In addition to the weapon used, the two crimes also have in common the fact that both officers were involved in the recent disturbance on the campus of the Fort Adams State College, when all local law-enforcement agencies were called upon to help deal with a riot in which three students died as a result of police gunfire. However, the county sheriff in charge of the murder investigation, Thomas M. Rullington, discounted this as a possible motive.
"Those college kids are kind of wild, sure, but they aren't cold-blooded assassins," Rullington told the press. "We are proceeding on the theory that this is the work of a homicidal maniac, probably hopped up on drugs. . .
There was more on an inside page, giving further details about the riot, about the two slain officers, and about Sheriff Rullington, who'd apparently been in command of the forces of law and order at the time of the campus confrontation. There was also a brief rundown on the three dead students: Charles Dubuque, Mark Hollingshead, and Emily Janssen. Only Dubuque, it appeared, had been taking active part in the disturbance when shot. The other two students had fallen some distance from the scene, victims of stray bullets.
A local jury had exonerated all other law-enforcement personnel involved, the sheriff specifically calling the death of Hollingshead self-defense in the line of duty-apparently tie youth had been found with a brick in his hand-and the other two deaths regrettable accidents. I got the impression that the jury's regrets had not been very deep or very sincere.
I lowered the paper and found Martha looking at me. "What are you going to do now?" she asked. "You can't possibly-"
"I told you what I was going to do," I said. "I'm going to get him out of there if I can. I've got to try. For one thing, Herbert Leonard is just yearning to have one of our men get caught strangling a few cops. You'll note that although he knew where Carl was heading and why, he apparently never bothered to warn the authorities around Fort Adams. There's no indication that they were expecting trouble or know who's causing it. Herbie wanted Carl to get in good and deep. Then, when I called and seemed to accept his mimic as the genuine Mac, he saw how he could improve on the picture by using me instead of killing me. He had me sent after Carl to make it look as if our whole organization was involved instead of just one grief-crazed agent.
Obviously, he's gambling that we'll both be caught. The publicity will give him the excuse he wants to lower the boom on us officially, something he's apparently been afraid to do so far."
Martha frowned. "But those men outside Tucson tried to kill you after you'd got the orders to head for Oklahoma."
I reminded myself not to forget that she wasn't dumb. "I think we can blame that on a communications lag," I said. "It took us less than an hour to get from Nogales to Tucson. Even if the word was passed immediately to let us through, it just didn't have time to get out to the units already in the field with orders to stop us, dead. That little Ford had no telephone or two-way radio, remember?"
"So. . . so those two men just died for nothing."
"Would you rather it had been you?" She didn't speak. I said, "The other reason I'm going to get Carl out of there, as I've already said, is that I need him."
"But you can't make use of a crazy murderer-"
"Little girl," I said, regarding her grimly, "you have a serious identity problem, don't you? What are you and who are you for, anyway? I thought you'd be weeping for those college kids brutally shot down by the lousy pigs. I thought in your circles anything that happened to a cop was just great. So what's a little dead fuzz among friends, anyway?"
"But the horrible way your friend did it! You can't possibly sympathize-"
"What's sympathy got to do with anything?" I demanded. "Your dad didn't put me here to dish out sympathy to anybody, certainly not to a guy who's supposed to be sitting quietly in New Orleans awaiting instructions, instead of stalking around Oklahoma with a lousy wire noose. Anyway, a man in our line of work isn't supposed to indulge in personal vengeance. That's kind of like the character responsible for a nuclear weapon pushing the red button because his wife burned the toast that morning." I shook my head. "The fact is, I need the guy. I've got work for him to do. Sympathy is not the problem. Understanding is. We know why he's doing this, but we've got to figure out what he's doing-exactly what he's doing."
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Not if you know Mr. Anders Janssen," I said. "He has certain berserker tendencies to go with his Scandinavian name and blood. In case you're not up on your Viking history: the Berserkers were the forerunners of the Japanese kamikazes. And any time things get tough, Carl's instinct is to take a big swig of mead-well, beer will serve-and grab his big two-handed sword and charge in there to get as many of the dirty bastards as he can before they chop him down. When we were working together, I had to sit on him a couple of times to keep him from turning a simple job into a goddamned suicide mission."
"I don't see what you're driving at," Martha protested. "What has this to do with our . . . with your problem?"
I said, "Well, if he's in his kamikaze mood right now, we're in real trouble. In that case, he's ready to die, and his only plan is to keep on killing cops until they get him. But in that case, I don't think he'd be using a silly weapon like a garotte. He'd be sniping at them from the rooftops with a long-range rifle and laying for them in the alleys with a sawed-off shotgun. He'd be working towards the big, final, glorious shoot-out when, surrounded at last, he'd teach those trigger-happy uniformed clowns the difference between knocking off a helpless young girl and an experienced gent who knows how to handle firearms. But I don't feel that's the big scene that's shaping up here." I hesitated and went on: "I think he's got something altogether different in mind. Three dead kids; three dead cops-"
"But there have been only two so far."
"So far," I said. "So there's one left to go, if he isn't just waging a general war against uniforms and badges. And if I'm right, there's not much doubt who he's saving for the big third spot. The question is how we can reach him without pulling Leonard's gang down on top of him, and us. . . . Get up."
Martha looked startled. "What for?"
"Get up. Walk around the room. Let me look at you in that rig." I watched her as, rather self-consciously, she rose and walked to the door and back to me. "Did you think of getting stockings along with all the rest of the flossy paraphernalia?"
"We bought some pantyhose. Lorna thought I might want to look super-civilized some time."
"Put them on."
"Why.. . Oh, all right, but turn your back."
Covering her long legs with nylon didn't accomplish a great deal. She still looked like a tanned tomboy-a tanned tomboy on her best behavior. Anybody who'd seen her in Guaymas, as some of Leonard's men undoubtedly had, would recognize her instantly, despite the ladylike dress and hose.
"What's the matter, Matt?" she asked.
I said, "You look too damned much like Martha Bo
rden, that's what's the matter."
"Maybe this is what you're after," she said, turning to the brand-new suitcase on the bed.
She got something out, hiding it with her body, and bent far over to put it on. Then she faced me abruptly, straightening up and tossing back the long hair of a shining wig that covered her own cropped hairdo completely. After a moment to let me appreciate the view, she walked to the mirror and touched some vagrant gold strands into place. The change was almost shocking.
Instead of a boyish brunette, I suddenly had for a roommate a glamorous and feminine-looking blonde.
"Lorna thought I might need a real disguise," she said calmly.
"That Lorna," I said. "I don't know what we'd do without her."
"I feel just like Mata Hari," Martha said, regarding her blonde and beautiful image in the mirror. "And what I can't help remembering is that girl was shot."
Chapter XIV
After a long time, I felt the car stop. The door opened and footsteps came around to the rear.
Then the trunk lid above me was lifted, daylight came in, and Martha stood there looking down at me, her tanned face in shadow, her blonde wig very bright in the sunshine.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
I sat up painfully and said, "It won't kill me, I guess. But keep that air-conditioner blasting unless you want roast Helm for dinner."
I got out of the trunk and stretched, looking around. We were parked by a small dirt road or lane, under some cottonwoods that apparently got their water from the underground seepage of a muddy stock pond nearby. Some bored-looking Herefords stood around the pond, watching us suspiciously. The lane ran on up across the open range to a house over a mile away, sheltered by more trees, the only other trees in sight.
In the opposite direction, the ground sloped down gently to the distant horizon. The highway was out there, a straight streak across the plain, infested with cars and trucks looking like ants crawling both ways along an endless twig. It was wide-open country, but it didn't have the spectacular, desolate vistas you find farther west, and there were no faraway, wind-eroded buttes and mesas to add interest to the flat landscape.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"We're still in Texas. I thought there might be a roadblock at the Oklahoma border, and I'd better check on you before we hit it."
I said, "I doubt very much the police will be stopping cars on the highway, particularly cars heading into Oklahoma. Hell, they can't go searching every car in the state for old banjo strings, or a saw and what's left of a broomstick. It's not the cops I'm worrying about; it's Leonard's people, some of whom probably know us by sight from Mexico and Arizona, or think they do.
Let's hope they're all looking for a couple in a dark green station wagon with a boat towing along behind, so hard they'll pay no attention to a lone blonde in an unencumbered white sedan."
I glanced at the big car, another Chevy that Martha had rented that morning in Amarillo, Texas. It didn't have as much power as the wagon we'd left behind temporarily at a motel, but then it didn't have as much to pull, either. Actually, she'd picked it, on my instructions, not for speed, but for its heat-reflecting color or lack of color, for its large trunk, and for its efficient cooling system that included some ventilating louvres in the trunk lid that might help a man survive back there on a bright summer day. I stretched once more, trying to untie the knots in my back and neck. While the car trunk was about as big as they come, it hadn't really been designed for comfortable occupancy by gents six-feet-four.
Martha was checking her reflection in 'the car window, touching her bright new hair into place.
I said, "Stop fussing with it, Goldilocks. It's all right. You're beautiful."
"Am I?" She turned to look at me. There was quick mischief in her eyes. "You didn't act as if I were last night. All you did was snore."
"Make up your mind," I said. "Yesterday evening you were mad because you thought I was going to rape hell out of you. This morning you're mad because I didn't."
She smiled. "I'm not mad. But you didn't have to sleep quite so soundly. A little insomnia would have been more well, diplomatic." Embarrassed, she stopped smiling abruptly and said, "Well, if you're all right, we'd better hit the road again."
An endless time later I realized that we'd left the interstate freeway for a secondary road: the pavement was rougher, the speed was less, and there was a lot of the braking and accelerating that goes with driving a two-lane highway. Now and then there'd be a series of stops and starts indicating that we were passing through a town. Once I picked up some bruises when she took a set of bumps too fast, presumably a railroad crossing. Then there was a final town, more country roads, and a stop. The trunk opened.
"I hope you survived all that," Martha said.
"Everything except that damned railroad track you hit at ninety miles per hour," I said, crawling out of my metal womb. I looked around. The country had changed. The view was not as big as it had been. This was more rolling farmland with a stream running through it. "Did you find the sheriff's house?" I asked.
"Back down the road three point seven miles," she said precisely. "I thought of stopping near a kind of knoll nearby from which you could have seen the layout for yourself, if you didn't mind climbing a little, but then I thought somebody else might have the same idea."
"Smart girl." I reached into the back seat to get a beer out of the cheap plastic-foam icebox we'd picked up in Amarillo, along with the rental car and the address of Sheriff Thomas M. Rullington, obtained from a friendly telephone operator. "Beer or coke for you. . . . Okay, let's go sit on the riverbank while you tell me what it looks like."
Martha laughed. "In these ladylike clothes you've put me into? My nylons wouldn't last two steps in that brush. Maybe I can make it to that log over there without casualties." She made it to the log, and I opened the coke she'd indicated and handed it to her. She said, "Thanks.
Actually, it's a small farm just outside the town, with a shiny new Cadillac in the yard. You go through some brand new ticky-tacky suburbs, real crackerbox stuff, and just as you reach open country, there it is, with a mailbox out front that says 'Rullington, Route ~3' and a number I didn't have time to read as I drove by. The house is white clapboard that could use another coat of paint. In front, a kind of sad-looking, fenced-in flower garden and mangy-looking lawn with a tricycle and a set of swings. At the side, as I said, a big Caddy sedan. In back, a barn and corral with a couple of horses in the corral. Farther back, some fields with cattle in them. That's about all I could see going by, except that there was a man sitting on the corral fence looking at the horses as if he didn't like horses much. And fifty yards down the road was a parked pickup truck-blue, if it matters-with a man in the cab smoking a cigarette as if he'd had so many they were beginning to taste awful."
"Good enough," I said. "We'll make a secret agent of you yet."
"I certainly hope not." Martha's tone was dry. After a moment, she went on. "What are you going to do, Matt?"
I said, "The real question is what Carl's going to do, and what Sheriff Rullington's going to do-or hopes he's going to do-about what Carl's going to do."
"You're certain the sheriff is next on the list."
"It figures that way," I said. "Apparently nobody knows just whose bullet hit Emily Janssen in all that shooting, but it's well established who gave the order to fire. But just how Carl plans to reach him. . . Wait a minute! You said there were some kids' playthings in the Rullington yard?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because, damn it, Carl is a pro. He can figure the opposition as well as we can. The first killing was easy. Nobody was expecting it. The second was probably almost as simple; nobody was really looking for an encore. But now the whole state's alert, knowing there's a systematic cop-killer loose who's more than likely to strike again. Carl can't help but know he hasn't got a chance of sneaking up on another policeman, let alone the sheriff himself. What will he do? Hell, it's obvious. He'll make the sheriff
come to him, assuming he can get his hands on the proper bait. Let's find out just how many kids the Rullingtons have and where. .. "I stopped, seeing that she was about to go into one of her righteous seizures. I said, "Shut up, Borden! Just keep your Goddamned high-minded disapproval to yourself, so I can get on with my work."
"But kidnaping children-"
"We don't know that's how he'll work it. Anyway, don't forget, Carl is short one child. Maybe he figures he's got one coming. If Rullington can shoot them, why can't he kidnap them?"
"You can't be serious!"
"I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the way Carl's mind is working. The more I think of it, the more I'm convinced that's the way he'll do it: poetic justice or something. . . You said there was a natural vantage point from which we could have studied the sheriff's farm, only you were afraid somebody might have beat us to it. Well, suppose you're right. Suppose Carl's keeping the place under observation while he learns the Rullington family's daily routine. It's a long shot, but it's worth trying. Let's go."
They don't have mountains in Oklahoma to amount to anything, at least not in that part of Oklahoma. They don't even have anything you'd call a real hill, if you were brought up in a more rugged landscape as I was, but there was a kind of undernourished brushy ridge across the highway from the sheriff's farm-or where my scout informed me the sheriff's farm was located.
I still hadn't seen it for myself.
"That little twisted oak or whatever it is," Martha said as she drove. "Up on the ridge right next to that bare-looking knob. I think the house is just opposite that, although it's hard to tell from this side."
We were cruising slowly down a narrow dirt road that left the highway a mile or so outside Fort Adams and kind of wandered behind the ridge in question. I was in the back seat, ready to hit the floor at the sight of another person or car. If anybody remembered the white Texas Chevy, I wanted him to remember it with only one occupant, female.
Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 Page 10