The Moving Target
Page 21
“Dead,” she repeated after me.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Should I be surprised? You don’t know the dreams I’ve been having. It’s terrible when you can’t quiet your mind, when you’re far enough gone to see the faces but you can’t quite go to sleep. The faces have been so vivid tonight. I saw his face all bloated by the sea, threatening to devour me.”
“Did you hear what I said, Mrs. Sampson? Your husband is dead. He was murdered two hours ago.”
“I heard you. I knew I was going to outlive him.”
“Is that all it means to you?”
“What more should it mean?” Her voice was blurred and empty of feeling, a wandering sibilance adrift in the deep channel between sleep and waking. “I was widowed before, and I felt it then. When Bob was killed I cried for days. I’m not going to grieve for his father. I wanted him to die.”
“You have your wish, then.”
“Not all of my wish. He died too soon, or not soon enough. Everybody died too soon. If Miranda had married the other one, Ralph would have changed his will and I’d have it all for myself.” She looked up at me slyly. “I know what you must be thinking, Archer. That I’m an evil woman. But I’m not evil really. I have so little, don’t you see? I have to look after the little that I have.”
“Half of five million dollars,” I said.
“It’s not the money. It’s the power it gives you. I needed it so badly. Now Miranda will go away and leave me all alone. Come and sit beside me for a minute. I have such terrible fears before I go to sleep. Do you think I’ll have to see his face every night before I go to sleep?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Sampson.” I felt pity for her, but the other feelings were stronger. I went to the door and shut it on her.
Mrs. Kromberg was still in the hall. “I heard you say that Mr. Sampson is dead.”
“He is. Mrs. Sampson is too far gone to talk. Do you know where Miranda is?”
“Some place downstairs, I think.”
I found her in the living-room, hugging her legs on a hassock beside the fireplace. The lights were out, and through the great central window I could see the dark sea and the silverpoint horizon.
She looked up when I entered the room, but she didn’t rise to greet me. “Is that you, Archer?”
“Yes. I have some things to tell you.”
“Have you found him?” A glowing log in the fireplace lit up her head and neck with a fitful rosiness. Her eyes were a wide and steady black.
“Yes. He’s dead.”
“I knew that he’d be dead. He’s been dead from the beginning, hasn’t he?”
“I wish I could tell you that he had.”
“What do you mean?”
I put off explaining what I meant. “I recovered the money.”
“The money?”
“This.” I tossed the bag at her feet. “The hundred thousand.”
“I don’t care about it. Where did you find him?”
“Listen to me, Miranda. You’re on your own.”
“Not entirely,” she said. “I married Albert this afternoon.”
“I know. He told me. But you’ve got to get out of this house and look after yourself. The first thing you’ve got to do is put that money away. I went to a lot of trouble to get it back, and you may be needing part of it.”
“I’m sorry. Where shall I put it?”
“The safe in the study, until you can get to a bank.”
“All right.” She rose with a sudden decisiveness and led the way into the study. Her arms were stiff and her shoulders high, as if they were resisting a downward pressure.
While she was opening the safe I heard a car go down the drive. She turned to me with an awkward movement more appealing than grace. “Who was that?”
“Albert Graves. He drove me out here.”
“Why on earth didn’t he come in?”
I gathered the remnants of my courage together, and told her: “He killed your father tonight.”
Her mouth moved breathlessly and then forced out words. “You’re joking, aren’t you? He couldn’t have.”
“He did.” I took refuge in facts. “I found out this afternoon where your father was being held. I phoned Graves from Los Angeles and told him to get there as soon as he could, with the sheriff. Graves got there ahead of me, without the sheriff. When I arrived, there was no sign of him. He’d parked his car somewhere out of sight and was still inside the building with your father. When I went inside, he hit me from behind and knocked me out. When I came to, he pretended he’d just arrived. Your father was dead. His body was still warm.”
“I can’t believe Albert did it.”
“You do believe it, though.”
“Have you proof?”
“It will have to be technical proof. I had no time to look for it. It’s up to the police to find the proof.”
She sat down limply in a leather armchair. “So many people have died. Father, and Alan—”
“Graves killed them both.”
“But he killed Alan to save you. You told me—”
“It was a complex killing,” I said, “a justifiable homicide and something more. He didn’t have to kill Taggert. He’s a good shot. He could have wounded him. But he wanted Taggert dead. He had his reasons.”
“What possible reasons?”
“I think you know of one.”
She raised her face in the light. It seemed to me that she had made a choice between a number of different things and settled on boldness. “Yes, I do. I was in love with Alan.”
“But you were planning to marry Graves.”
“I hadn’t made up my mind until last night. I was going to marry someone, and he seemed to be the one. ‘It is better to marry than to burn.’ ”
“He gambled on you, and won. But the other thing he had gambled on didn’t happen. Taggert’s partner failed to kill your father. So Graves strangled your father himself.”
She spread one hand over her eyes and forehead. The blue veins in her temples were young and delicate. “It’s incredibly ugly,” she said. “I can’t understand how he did it.”
“He did it for money.”
“But he’s never cared for money. It’s one of the things I admired in him.” She removed her hand from her face, and I saw that she was smiling bitterly. “I haven’t been wise in my admirations.”
“There may have been a time when Graves didn’t care about money. There may be places where he could have stayed that way. Santa Teresa isn’t one of them. Money is lifeblood in this town. If you don’t have it, you’re only half alive. It must have galled him to work for millionaires and handle their money and have nothing of his own. Suddenly he saw his chance to be a millionaire himself. He realized that he wanted money more than anything else on earth.”
“Do you know what I wish at this moment?” she said. “I wish I had no money and no sex. They’re both more trouble than they’re worth to me.”
“You can’t blame money for what it does to people. The evil is in people, and money is the peg they hang it on. They go wild for money when they’ve lost their other values.”
“I wonder what happened to Albert Graves.”
“Nobody knows. He doesn’t know himself. The important thing now is what is going to happen to him.”
“Do you have to tell the police?”
“I’m going to tell them. It will make it easier for me if you agree. Easier for you in the long run, too.”
“You’re asking me to share the responsibility, but you don’t really care what I think. You’re going to tell them anyway. Yet you admit you haven’t any proof.” She moved restlessly in the chair.
“He won’t deny it if he is accused. You know him better than I do.”
“I thought I knew him well. Now I’m uncertain—about everything.”
“That’s why you should let me go ahead. You have doubts to resolve, and you can’t resolve them by doing nothing. You can’t go on living with uncert
ainty, either.”
“I’m not sure I have to go on living.”
“Don’t go romantic on me,” I said harshly. “Self-pity isn’t your way out. You’ve had terrible luck with two men. I think you’re a strong enough girl to take it. I told you before that you’ve got a life to make. You’re on your own.”
She inclined toward me. Her breasts leaned out from her body, vulnerable and soft. Her mouth was soft. “I don’t know how to begin. What shall I do?”
“Come with me.”
“With you? You want me to go with you?”
“Don’t try to shift your weight to me, Miranda. You’re a lovely girl, and I like you very much, but you’re not my baby. Come with me, and we’ll talk to the D.A. We’ll let him decide.”
“Very well. We’ll go to Humphreys. He’s always been close to Albert.”
She drove me up a winding road to the mesa that overlooked the city. When she stopped in front of Humphrey’s redwood bungalow, another car was standing in the drive.
“That’s Albert’s car,” she said. “Please go in alone. I don’t want to see him.”
I left her in the car and climbed the stone steps to the terrace. Humphreys opened the door before I could reach the knocker. His face was more than ever like a skull’s.
He stepped out on the terrace and closed the door behind him. “Graves is here,” he said. “He came a few minutes ago. He told me he murdered Sampson.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve called the sheriff. He’s on his way over.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. His gestures, like his voice, were light and distant, as if reality had moved back out of his reach. “This is a tragic thing. I believed that Albert Graves was a good man.”
“Crime often spreads out like that,” I said. “It’s epidemic. You’ve seen it happen before.”
“Not to one of my friends.” He was silent for a moment. “Bert was talking about Kierkegaard just a minute ago. He quoted something about innocence, that it’s like standing on the edge of a deep gulf. You can’t look down into the gulf without losing your innocence. Once you’ve looked, you’re guilty. Bert said that he looked down, that he was guilty before he murdered Sampson.”
“He’s still being easy on himself,” I said. “He wasn’t looking down; he was looking up. Up to the houses in the hills where the big money lives. He was going to be big himself for a change, with a quarter of Sampson’s millions.”
Humphreys answered slowly: “I don’t know. He never cared for money very much. He still doesn’t, I don’t think. But something happened to him. He hated Sampson, but so did lots of others. Sampson made anyone who worked for him feel like a valet. But it was something deeper than that in Graves. He’d worked hard all his life, and the whole thing suddenly went sour. It lost its meaning for him. There was no more virtue or justice, in him or in the world. That’s why he gave up prosecuting, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Finally he struck out blindly at the world and killed a man.”
“Not blindly. Very shrewdly.”
“Very blindly,” Humphreys said. “I’ve never seen a man so miserable as Bert Graves is now.”
I went back to Miranda. “Graves is here. You weren’t entirely wrong about him. He decided to do the right thing.”
“Confessed?”
“He was too honest to bluff it through. If nobody had suspected him, he might have. Anyone’s honesty has its conditions. But he knew that I knew. He went to Humphreys and told his story.”
“I’m glad he did.” She denied this a moment later by the sounds she made. Deep shaking sobs bowed her over the wheel.
I lifted her over, and drove myself. As we rolled down the hill, I could see all the lights of the city. They didn’t seem quite real. The stars and the house lights were firefly gleams, sparks of cold fire suspended in the black void. The real thing in my world was the girl beside me, warm and shuddering and lost.
I could have put my arms around her and taken her over. She was that lost, that vulnerable. But if I had, she’d have hated me in a week. In six months I might have hated Miranda. I kept my hands to myself and let her lick her wounds. She used my shoulder to cry on as she would have used anyone’s.
Her crying was settling down to a steady rhythm, rocking itself to sleep. The sheriff’s radio car passed us at the foot of the hill and turned up toward the house where Graves was waiting.
ROSS MACDONALD
Ross Macdonald’s real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the United States as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britain’s Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983.
Books by Ross Macdonald
Blue City
The Dark Tunnel
Trouble Follows Me
The Three Roads
The Moving Target
The Drowning Pool
The Way Some People Die
The Ivory Grin
Meet Me at the Morgue
Find a Victim
The Name is Archer
The Barbarous Coast
The Doomsters
The Galton Case
The Ferguson Affair
The Wycherly Woman
The Zebra-Striped Hearse
The Chill Black Money
The Far Side of the Dollar
The Goodbye Look
The Underground Man
Sleeping Beauty
The Blue Hammer
BOOKS BY ROSS MACDONALD
THE BARBAROUS COAST
The beautiful, high-diving blonde had Hollywood dreams and stars in her eyes but now she seems to have disappeared without a trace. Hired by her hotheaded husband and her rummy “uncle,” Lew Archer sniffs around Malibu and finds the stink of blackmail, blood money, and murder on every pricey silk shirt. Beset by dirty cops, a bumptious boxer turned silver-screen pretty boy, and a Hollywood mogul with a dark past, Archer discovers the secret of a grisly murder that just won’t stay hidden.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27903-3
THE IVORY GRIN
A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he’s being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He tracks the wayward maid to a ramshackle motel in a seedy, rundown small town, but finds her dead in her tiny room, with her throat slit ear to ear. Archer digs deeper into the case and discovers a web of deceit and intrigue, with crazed number-runners from Detroit, gorgeous triple-crossing molls, and a golden-boy shipping heir who’s mysteriously gone missing.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27899-9
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Lew finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands—including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a six-figure ransom, and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach. Here is Ross Macdonald’s masterful tale of buried memories, the consequences of arrogance, and the anguished relations between parents and their children.
Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70866-4
THE DOOMSTERS
Hired by Carl Hallman, the desperate-eyed junkie scion of an obscenely wealthy political dynasty, detective Lew Archer investigates the suspicious deaths of Hallman’s parents, Senator Hallman and his wife, Alicia. Arriving in the sleepy town of Purissima, Archer discovers that orange groves may be where the Hallmans made their mint but they’ve been investing heavily in political intimidation and police brutality to shore up their rancid riches. However, after years of dastardly double-crossing and low down dirty dealing, the family seems to be on the receiving end of a karmic death blow. With two already dead and another consigned to the nuthouse, Archer races to crack the secret before another Hallman lands o
n the slab.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27904-0
THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE
In a rundown house in Santa Monica, Mrs. Samuel Lawrence presses fifty crumpled bills into Lew Archer’s hand and asks him to find her wandering daughter, Galatea. Described as ‘crazy for men’ and without discrimination, she was last seen driving off with small-time gangster Joe Tarantine, a hophead hood with a rep for violence. Archer traces the hidden trail from San Francisco slum alleys to the luxury of Palm Springs, traveling through an urban wilderness of drugs and viciousness. As the bodies begin to pile up, he finds that even angel faces can mask the blackest of hearts.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27898-2
THE GOODBYE LOOK
Lew is hired to investigate a burglary at the mission-style mansion mansion of Irene and Larry Chalmers. The prime suspect, their son Nick, has a talent for disappearing, and the Chalmerses are a family with money and memories to burn. As Archer zeros in on Nick, he discovers a troubled blonde, a stash of wartime letters, a mysterious hobo. Then a stiff turns up in a car on an empty beach. And Nick turns up with a Colt .45.
Crime Fiction/978-0-375-70865-7
THE INSTANT ENEMY
At first glance, it’s an open-and-shut missing persons case: a headstrong daughter has run off to be with her hothead juvenile delinquent boyfriend. That is until this bush-league Bonnie and Clyde kidnap Stephen Hackett, a local millionaire industrialist. Now, Archer is offered a cool 100 Gs for his safe return by Hachett’s coquettish heiress mother who has her own mysterious ties to this disturbed duo. But the deeper Archer digs, the more he realizes that nothing is as it seems and everything is questionable. Is the boyfriend a psycho ex-con with murder on the brain or a damaged youngster trying to straighten out his twisted family tree? And is the daughter simply his nympho sex-kitten companion in crime or really a fragile kid, trying to block out horrific memories of bad acid and an unspeakable sex crime.
Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27905-7
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Black Money, 978-0-679-76810-4
The Blue Hammer, 978-0-679-76810-4
The Chill, 978-0-679-76807-4
The Drowning Pool, 978-0-679-76806-7
The Far Side of the Dollar, 978-0-679-76865-4
Find a Victim, 978-0-375-70867-1