The Archer Files

by Ross Macdonald

  “She was shot with her own gun. By somebody she let into the house, somebody she wasn’t afraid of.”

  “Why? It makes no sense.”

  “She was Cave’s alibi, and she was on the verge of volunteering as a witness. You know that, Harvey—you were the only one who did know, outside of Cave and me.”

  “I didn’t shoot her. I had no reason to. Why would I want my client convicted?”

  “No, you didn’t shoot her. You were in court at the time that she was shot—the world’s best alibi.”

  “Then why are you harassing me?”

  “I want the truth about you and Mrs. Cave.”

  Harvey looked down at the papers in his hand, as if they might suggest a line to take, an evasion, a way out. Suddenly his hands came together and crushed the papers into a misshapen ball.

  “All right, I’ll tell you. Ruth was in love with me. I was—fond of her. Neither of us was happily married. We were going to go away together and start over. After we got divorces, of course.”

  “Uh-huh. All very legal.”

  “You don’t have to take that tone. A man has a right to his own life.”

  “Not when he’s already committed his life.”

  “We won’t discuss it. Haven’t I suffered enough? How do you think I felt when Ruth was killed?”

  “Pretty bad, I guess. There went two million dollars.”

  He looked at me between narrowed lids, in a fierce extremity of hatred. But all that came out of his mouth was a weak denial. “At any rate, you can see I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill either of them.”

  “Who did?”

  “I have no idea. If I did, I’d have had Glen out of jail long ago.”

  “Does Glen know?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “But he knew that you and his wife had plans?”

  “I suppose he did—I’ve suspected it all along.”

  “Didn’t it strike you as odd that he asked you to defend him, under the circumstances?”

  “Odd, yes. It’s been terrible for me, the most terrible ordeal.”

  Maybe that was Cave’s intention, I thought, to punish Harvey for stealing his wife. I said, “Did anybody besides you know that Janet Kilpatrick was the woman? Did you discuss it with anybody?”

  He looked at the thick pale carpeting between his feet. I could hear an electric clock somewhere in the silent offices, whirring like the thoughts in Harvey’s head. Finally he said, “Of course not,” in a voice that was like a crow cawing.

  He walked with an old man’s gait into his private office. I followed and saw him open a desk drawer. A heavy automatic appeared in his hand. But he didn’t point it at me. He pushed it down inside the front of his trousers and put on his suit jacket.

  “Give it to me, Harvey. Two dead women are enough.”

  “You know then?”

  “You just told me. Give me that gun.”

  He gave it to me. His face was remarkably smooth and blank. He turned his face away from me and covered it with his hands. His entire body hiccuped with dry grief. He was like an overgrown child who had lived on fairy tales for a long time and now couldn’t stomach reality.

  The telephone on the desk chirred. Harvey pulled himself together and answered it.

  “Sorry, I’ve been busy, preparing for re-direct…Yes, I’m finished now…Of course I’m all right. I’m coming home right away.”

  He hung up and said, “That was my wife.”

  She was waiting for him at the front door of his house. The posture of waiting became her narrow, sexless body, and I wondered how many years she had been waiting.

  “You’re so thoughtless, Rod,” she chided him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing a guest for dinner?” She turned to me in awkward graciousness. “Not that you’re not welcome, Mr. Archer.”

  Then our silence bore in on her. It pushed her back into the high white Colonial hallway. She took up another pose and lit a cigarette with a little golden lighter shaped like a lipstick. Her hands were steady, but I could see the sharp edges of fear behind the careful expression on her face.

  “You both look so solemn. Is something wrong?”

  “Everything is wrong, Rhea.”

  “Why, didn’t the trial go well this afternoon?”

  “The trial is going fine. Tomorrow I’m going to ask for a directed acquittal. What’s more, I’m going to get it. I have new evidence.”

  “Isn’t that grand?” she said in a bright and interested tone. “Where on earth did you dig up the new evidence?”

  “In my own backyard. All these months I’ve been so preoccupied trying to cover up my own sordid little secret that it never occurred to me that you might have secrets, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You weren’t at the trial this afternoon. Where were you? What were you doing?”

  “Errands—I had some errands. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you—wanted me to be there.”

  Harvey moved towards her, a threat of violence in the set of his shoulders. She backed against a closed white door. I stepped between them and said harshly, “We know exactly where you were, Mrs. Harvey. You went to see Janet Kilpatrick. You talked your way into her house, picked up a gun from the table in the hall, and shot her with it. Didn’t you?”

  The flesh of her face was no more than a stretched membrane.

  “I swear, I had no intention— All I intended to do was talk to her. But when I saw that she realized, that she knew—”

  “Knew what, Mrs. Harvey?”

  “That I was the one who killed Ruth. I must have given myself away, by what I said to her. She looked at me, and I saw that she knew. I saw it in her eyes.”

  “So you shot her?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” She didn’t seem to be fearful or ashamed. The face she turned on her husband looked starved, and her mouth moved over her words as if they were giving her bitter nourishment. “But I’m not sorry for the other one, for Ruth. You shouldn’t have done it to me, Rod. I warned you, remember? I warned you when I caught you with Anne that if you ever did it to me again—I would kill the woman. You should have taken me seriously.”

  “Yes,” he said drearily. “I guess I should have.”

  “I warned Ruth, too, when I learned about the two of you.”

  “How did you find out about it, Mrs. Harvey?”

  “The usual way—an anonymous telephone call. Some friend of mine, I suppose.”

  “Or your worst enemy. Do you know who it was?”

  “No. I didn’t recognize the voice. I was still in bed, and the telephone call woke me up. He said—it was a man—he said that Rod was going to divorce me, and he told me why. I went to Ruth that very morning—Rod was out of town—and I asked her if it was true. She admitted it was. I told her flatly I’d kill her unless she gave you up, Rod. She laughed at me. She called me a crazy woman.”

  “She was right.”

  “Was she? If I’m insane, I know what’s driven me to it. I could bear the thought of the other ones. But not her! What made you take up with her, Rod—what made you want to marry that gray-haired old woman? She wasn’t even attractive, she wasn’t nearly as attractive as I am.”

  “She was well-heeled,” I said.

  Harvey said nothing.

  Rhea Harvey dictated and signed a full confession that night. Her husband wasn’t in court the following morning. The D.A. himself moved for a directed acquittal, and Cave was free by noon. He took a taxi directly from the courthouse to the home of his late wife. I followed him in a second taxi. I still wasn’t satisfied.

  The lawns around the big country house had grown knee-high and had withered in the summer sun. The gardens were overgrown with rank flowers and ranker weeds. Cave stood in the drive for a while after he dismissed his taxi, looking around the estate he had inherited. Finally he mounted the front steps.

  I called him from the gate. “Wait a minute, Cave.”

  He descended the steps relucta
ntly and waited for me, a black scowl twisting his eyebrows and disfiguring his mouth. But they were smooth and straight before I reached him.

  “What do you want?”

  “I was just wondering how it feels.”

  He smiled with boyish charm. “To be a free man? It feels wonderful. I guess I owe you my gratitude, at that. As a matter of fact, I was planning to send you a check.”

  “Save yourself the trouble. I’d send it back.”

  “Whatever you say, old man.” He spread his hands disarmingly. “Is there something else I can do for you?”

  “Yes. You can satisfy my curiosity. All I want from you is a yes or no.” The words set up an echo in my head, an echo of Janet Kilpatrick’s voice. “Two women have died and a third is on her way to prison or the state hospital. I want to hear you admit your responsibility.”

  “Responsibility? I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll spell it out for you. The quarrel you had with your wife didn’t occur on the nineteenth, the night she was murdered. It came earlier, maybe the night before. And she told you who the man was.”

  “She didn’t have to tell me. I’ve known Rod Harvey for years, and all about him.”

  “Then you must have known that Rhea Harvey was insanely jealous of her husband. You thought of a way to put her jealousy to work for you. It was you who telephoned her that morning. You disguised your voice, and told her what her husband and your wife were planning to do. She came to this house and threatened your wife. No doubt you overheard the conversation. Seeing that your plan was working, you left your loaded shotgun where Rhea Harvey could easily find it and went down to the beach club to establish an alibi. You had a long wait at the club, and later at Janet Kilpatrick’s house, but you finally got what you were waiting for.”

  “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

  “Does it seem so funny to you, Cave? You’re guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “I’m not guilty of anything, old man. Even if I were, there’s nothing you could possibly do about it. You heard the court acquit me this morning, and there’s a little rule of law involving double jeopardy.”

  “You were taking quite a risk, weren’t you?”

  “Not so much of a risk. Rhea’s a very unstable woman, and she had to break down eventually, one way or the other.”

  “Is that why you asked Harvey to defend you, to keep the pressure on Rhea?”

  “That was part of it.” A sudden fury of hatred went through him, transfiguring his face. “Mostly I wanted to see him suffer.”

  “What are you going to do now, Cave?”

  “Nothing. I plan to take it easy. I’ve earned a rest. Why?”

  “A pretty good woman was killed yesterday on account of you. For all I know you planned that killing the same way you planned the other. In any case, you could have prevented it.”

  He saw the mayhem in my eyes and backed away. “Take it easy, Archer. Janet was no great loss to the world, after all.”

  My fist smashed his nervous smile and drove the words down his throat. He crawled away from me, scrambled to his feet and ran, jumping over flowerbeds and disappearing around the corner of the house. I let him go.

  A short time later I heard that Cave had been killed in a highway accident near Palm Springs. He was driving a new Ferrari at the time.

  THE ANGRY MAN

  I thought at first sheer terror was his trouble. He shut the door of my office behind him and stood against it, panting like a dog. He was a gaunt man in blue jeans almost black with sweat and dirt. Short rust-colored hair grew like stubble on his hatless scalp. His face was still young, but it had been furrowed by pain and clawed by anger.

  “They’re after me. I need help.” The words came from deep in his laboring chest. “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

  “A sort of one. Sit down and take a little time to get your breath. You shouldn’t run up those stairs.”

  He laughed. It was an ugly strangled sound, like water running down a drain. “I’ve been running all night. All night.”

  Warily, he circled the chair in front of my desk. He lifted the chair in a sudden movement and set it back to front against the wall and straddled it. His shoulders were wide enough to yoke a pair of oxen. His hands gripped the back of the chair and his chin came down and rested between them while he watched me. His eyes were narrow and blue, brilliant with suspicion.

  “Running from what?” I said.

  “From them.” He looked at the closed door, then over his shoulder at the blank wall. “They’re after me, I tell you.”

  “That makes twice you’ve told me. It isn’t what I’d call a detailed story.”

  “It’s no story.” He leaned forward, tilting the chair. “It’s true. There’s nothing they wouldn’t do, or haven’t done.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The same ones. It’s always the same ones. The cheats. The liars. The people who run things.” He went into singsong: “The ones that locked me up and threw the key away. They’ll do it again if they can. You’ve got to help me.”

  He was beginning to disturb me badly. “Why do I have to help you?”

  “Because I say so.” He bit his lip. “I mean, who else can I go to? Who else is there?”

  “You could try the police.”

  He spat. “They’re in on the deal. Don’t talk police to me, or doctors or lawyers or any of the others that sold me out. I want somebody working for me, on my side. If it’s money you’re worried about, there’s plenty of money in it. I’ll be rolling in money when I get my rights. Rolling in it, I tell you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He sprang to his feet, striking the wall a back-handed blow which left a dent in the plaster. His chair toppled. “Don’t you believe me? It’s the truth I’m telling you. I’m damn near a millionaire if I had my rights.”

  He started to pace, up and down in front of my desk, his swivelling blue eyes always watching me. I said:

  “Pick up that chair.”

  “I’m giving the orders. For a change.”

  “Pick up the chair and sit in it,” I said.

  He stood still for a long moment, his face changing. Dull sorrow filmed his eyes like transparent lacquer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fly off the handle. It’s just when I think about them.”

  “The chair,” I said.

  He stooped and picked it up and sat in it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Archer.”

  “I’m not Archer,” I lied. “You’ve got me wrong.”

  His eyes blazed wide. “Who are you then? Archer’s the name on the door.”

  “I keep Mr. Archer’s books, answer his telephone for him. Why didn’t you say you wanted Mr. Archer?”

  “I thought that you were him,” he answered dully. “A friend of mine, back where I came from, told me if I ever sprung myself—if I ever got here to L.A., that Mr. Archer would give me a fair throw if anybody would. Where is he?”

  I countered with a question: “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “He has no name. I mean I don’t remember.”

  “Where did you spring yourself from?”

  “It was a slip of the tongue. I didn’t say that. Anyway, what business is it of yours? You’re not Mr. Archer.”

  “Folsom? San Quentin?”

  He was silent, his face like stone. After a while he said: “I’ll talk to Mr. Archer.”

  “I’ll call him for you.” I reached for the telephone and started to dial a number. “Who shall I say wants him?”

  “No you don’t.” His stormy mind had flashes of intuition. “I know what you’re up to, ringing in the cops.” He leaped across the desk and tore the phone from my hands. “And you are Mr. Archer, aren’t you? You’re a liar, too, like the rest of them. I come here looking for a fair throw and I get the same old dirty deal again. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

  I said: “Put the telephone back on the desk and sit down.”

  “To hell with you. You ca
n’t scare me. One thing, when a man goes through what I’ve been through, I’m not afraid any more. You hear me?” His voice was rising.

  “They hear you in Glendale. Sit down and be quiet now.”

  He threw the telephone at my head. I ducked. The telephone crashed through the window and hung there on its wire. I reached for the upper righthand drawer of my desk, the one that contained the automatic. But he forestalled me.

  “No you don’t,” he said.

  His hand went into his pocket and came out holding a gun. It was a .32 Smith & Wesson revolver, nickel-plated. It wasn’t much of a gun, but it was enough to freeze me where I stood.

  “Put your hands up,” he said. “Give me your word that you won’t call the police.”

  “I can give it. It won’t be worth anything.”

  “That’s what I thought. You’re a liar like the rest. Get away from that desk.”

  “Make me. You’re crazy if you think—”

  He let out a yelp of fury. “I am not crazy.”

  He dropped the little revolver and reached for me. His hooked hands swung together and clamped on my throat. He dragged me bodily across the desk. He was tremendously strong. His pectorals were massively sculptured under the wet blue shirt. His eyes were closed. They had long reddish lashes like a girl’s. He looked almost serene. Then water sprang out in little rows of droplets across his forehead. His iron fingers tightened on my throat, and daylight began to wane.

  His face opened suddenly, eyes and mouth, as if he had wakened out of a walking nightmare. The blue eyes were bewildered, the mouth pulled wry by remorse. “I’m sorry. You hate me now. You’ll never help me now.”

  His hands dropped to his sides and hung useless there. Relieved of their support, I went to my knees. Bright-speckled darkness rushed through my head like a wind. When its roaring subsided and I got to my feet, he was gone. So was the bright revolver.

  I pulled myself to my feet and dragged the telephone in through the broken window. It still had a dial tone, not quite as loud as the singing tone in my head. I dialed a police number. The desk-sergeant’s voice focused my wits, and I hung up without saying a word.