I caught his jabbing hand and twisted it. For a moment we were perfectly poised and still. Shepherd’s eyes were bright with rage. He couldn’t sustain it, though. His face went through a series of transformations, like stop-time pictures of a man growing tired and old. His hand went limp, and I let go of it.
“Listen, boss, is it all right if I go now? I got a lot of other deliveries to make.”
“What are you delivering? Trouble?”
“No sir. Not me.” He glanced at the Trask house as if its presence on the street had caught him by surprise. “I got a quick temper but I wouldn’t hurt nobody. I didn’t hurt you. You were the one hurt me. I’m the one that’s always getting hurt.”
“But not the only one.”
He winced as if I had made a cruel remark. “What are you getting at, mister?”
“There’ve been a couple of killings. That isn’t news to you.” I reached for the newspaper on the seat of his car and showed him Harrow’s picture.
“I never saw him in my life,” he said.
“You had the paper open at this story.”
“Not me. I picked it up that way at the station. I always pick up my papers at the station.” He leaned toward me, sweaty and jumpy. “Listen, I got to go now, okay? I got a serious call of nature.”
“This is more important.”
“Not to me it isn’t.”
“To you, too. You know a young man named Nick Chalmers?”
“He isn’t—” He caught himself, and started over: “What did you say?”
“You heard me. I’m looking for Nick Chalmers. He may be looking for you.”
“What for? I never touched him. When I found out that Swain was planning a snatch—” He caught himself again and covered his mouth with his hand, as if he could force the words back in or hide them like birds in his beard.
“Did Swain snatch the Chalmers boy?”
“Why ask me? I’m as clean as a whistle.” But he peered up at the sky with narrowed eyes as if he could see a sky hook or a noose descending toward him. “I gotta get out of this sun. It gives me skin cancer.”
“It’s a nice slow death. Swain died a quicker one.”
“You’ll never pin it on me, ’bo. Even the cops at the Point turned me loose.”
“They wouldn’t have if they’d known what I do.”
He moved closer to me, cringing on bent knees, making himself look smaller. “I’m clean, honest to God. Please let me go now, mister.”
“We’ve barely started.”
“But we can’t just stand here.”
“Why not?”
His head turned on his neck like an automatic mechanism, and he looked at the Trask house once again. My gaze followed his. I noticed that the front door was a few inches ajar.
“You left the front door open. We better go over and shut it.”
“You shut it,” he said. “I got a bad charley horse in my leg. I gotta sit down or I’ll fall down.”
He climbed in behind the wheel of his jalopy. He wouldn’t get far without an ignition key, I thought, and I crossed the street. Looking through the crack between the door and the lintel, I could see red tomatoes scattered on the floor of the hallway. I went in, stepping carefully to avoid them.
There was a smell of burning from the kitchen. I found that a glass coffeemaker on an electric plate had boiled dry and cracked. Jean Trask was lying near it on the green vinyl floor.
I pulled the plug of the electric plate, and knelt down beside Jean. She had stab wounds in her breast and one great gash in her throat. Her body was clothed in pajamas and a pink nylon robe, and it was still warm.
Even though Jean was dead, I could hear breathing somewhere. It sounded as if the house itself was breathing. An open door led through the back kitchen, past the washer and dryer, into the attached garage.
George Trask’s Ford sedan was standing in the garage. Nick Chalmers was lying face up beside it on the concrete floor. I loosened his shirt collar. Then I looked at his eyes: they were turned up. I slapped him hard, once on each side of his face. No response. I heard myself groan.
Three empty drugstore tubes of varying sizes lay near him on the floor. I picked them up and put them in my pocket. There was no time for any further search. I had to get Nick to a stomach pump.
I raised the garage door, crossed the street for my car, and backed it into the driveway. I lifted Nick in my arms—he was a big man and it wasn’t easy—and laid him on the back seat. I closed the garage. I pulled the front door of the house shut.
I noticed then that Randy Shepherd and his jalopy had gone. No doubt he was just as good at starting keyless cars as he was at opening locked doors. Under the circumstances, I could hardly blame him for leaving.
chapter 17
I drove down Rosecrans to Highway 80 and delivered Nick at the ambulance entrance of the hospital. There had been a recent auto accident, and everybody on the emergency ward was busy. Looking for a stretcher, I opened a door and saw a dead man and closed the door again.
I found a wheeled stretcher in another room, took it outside and heaved Nick onto it. I pushed him up to the emergency desk.
“This boy needs a stomach pump. He’s full of barbiturates.”
“Another one?” the nurse said.
She produced a paper form to be filled out. Then she glanced at Nick’s face and I think she was touched by his inert good looks. She dispensed with red tape for the present. She helped me to wheel Nick into a treatment room and called in a young doctor with an Armenian name.
The doctor checked Nick’s pulse and respiration, and looked at the pupils of his eyes, which were contracted. He turned to me.
“What did he take, do you know?”
I showed him the drug containers I had picked up in the Trasks’ garage. They had Lawrence Chalmers’s name on them, and the names and amounts of the three drugs they had contained: chloral hydrate, Nembutal and Nembu-Serpin.
He looked at me inquiringly. “He hasn’t taken all of these?”
“I don’t know if the prescriptions were full. I don’t think they were.”
“Let’s hope the chloral hydrate wasn’t, anyway. Twenty of those capsules are enough to kill two men.”
As he spoke, the doctor began to thread a flexible plastic tube into Nick’s nostril. He told the nurse to cover him with a blanket, and prepare a glucose injection. Then he turned to me again.
“How long ago did he swallow the stuff?”
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe two hours. What’s Nembu-Serpin, by the way?”
“A combination of Nembutal and reserpine. It’s a tranquilizer used in treating hypertension, also in psychiatric treatment.” His eyes met mine. “Is the boy emotionally disturbed?”
“Somewhat.”
“I see. Are you a relative?”
“A friend,” I said.
“The reason I ask, he’ll have to be admitted. In suicide attempts like this the hospital requires round-the-clock nurses. That costs money.”
“It shouldn’t be any problem. His father’s a millionaire.”
“No kidding.” He was unimpressed. “Also, his regular doctor should see him before he’s admitted. Okay?”
“I’ll do my best, doctor.”
I found a telephone booth and called the Chalmerses’ house in Pacific Point. Irene Chalmers answered.
“This is Archer. May I speak to your husband?”
“Lawrence isn’t here. He’s out looking for Nick.”
“He can stop looking. I found him.”
“Is he all right?”
“No. He took the drugs, and he’s having his stomach pumped out. I’m calling from the San Diego Hospital. Have you got that?”
“The San Diego Hospital, yes. I know the place, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Bring Dr. Smitheram with you, and John Truttwell.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Tell them it’s a major emergency. It really is, Mrs. Chalmers
.”
“Is he dying?”
“He could die. Let’s hope he doesn’t. Incidentally you’d better bring a checkbook. He’s going to need special nurses.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you.” Her voice was blank, and I couldn’t tell if she had really heard me.
“You’ll bring a checkbook, then, or some cash.”
“Yes. Certainly. I was just thinking, life is so strange, it seems to go in circles. Nick was born in that same hospital, and now you say he may die there.”
“I don’t think he will, Mrs. Chalmers.”
But she had begun to cry. I listened to her for a little while, until she hung up on me.
Because it wasn’t good policy to leave a murder unreported, I called the San Diego Police Department and gave the sergeant on duty George Trask’s address on Bayview Avenue. “There’s been an accident.”
“What kind of an accident?”
“A woman got cut.”
The sergeant’s voice became louder and more interested: “What is your name, please?”
I hung up and leaned on the wall. My head was empty. I think I almost fainted. Remembering that I’d missed my breakfast, I wandered through the hospital and found the cafeteria. I drank a couple of glasses of milk and had some toast with a soft-boiled egg, like an invalid. The morning’s events had hit me in the stomach.
I went back to the emergency ward where Nick was still being worked on.
“How is he?”
“It’s hard to tell,” the doctor said. “If you’ll fill out his form we’ll admit him provisionally and put him in a private room. Okay?”
“That’s fine. His mother and his psychiatrist should be here within an hour or so.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “How sick is he?”
“You mean in the head? Sick enough.”
“I was wondering.” He reached under his white coat and produced a torn scrap of paper. “This fell out of his breast pocket.”
He handed it to me. It was a penciled note: “I am a murderer and deserve to die. Forgive me, Mother and Dad. I love you Betty.”
“He isn’t a murderer, is he?” the doctor said.
“No.”
My denial sounded unconvincing to me, but the doctor accepted it. “Ordinarily the police would want to see that suicide note. But there’s no use making further trouble for the guy.”
I folded the note and put it in my wallet and got out of there before he changed his mind.
chapter 18
I drove south to Imperial Beach. The cashier of a drive-in restaurant told me how to find Conchita’s Cabins. “You wouldn’t want to stay in them, though,” she advised me.
I saw what she meant when I got there. It was a ruined place, as ancient-looking as an archeological digging. A sign on the office said: “One dollar per person. Children free.” The cabins were small stucco cubes that had taken a beating from the weather. The largest building, with “Beer and Dancing” inscribed across its front, had long since been boarded up.
The place was redeemed by a soft green cottonwood tree and its soft gray shade. I stood under it for a minute, waiting for somebody to discover me.
A heavy-bodied woman came out of one of the cabins. She wore a sleeveless dress which showed her large brown arms, and a red cloth on her head.
“Conchita?”
“I’m Mrs. Florence Williams. Conchita’s been dead for thirty years. Williams and I kept on with her name when we bought the cabins.” She looked around her as if she hadn’t really seen the place for a long time. “You wouldn’t think it, but these cabins were a real moneymaker during the war.”
“There’s a lot more competition now.”
“You’re telling me.” She joined me in the shadow of the tree. “What can I do for you? If you’re selling don’t even bother to open your mouth. I just lost my second-to-last roomer.” She made a farewell gesture toward the open door of the cabin.
“Randy Shepherd?”
She stepped away from me and looked me up and down. “You’re after him, eh? I figured somebody was, the way he took off and left his things. The only trouble is, they’re not worth much. They’re not worth ten per cent of the money he owes me.”
She was looking at me appraisingly, and I returned the look. “How much would that be, Mrs. Williams?”
“It adds up to hundreds of dollars, over the years. After my husband died, he talked me into investing money in his big treasure hunt. That was back around 1950, when he got out of the clink.”
“Treasure hunt?”
“For buried money,” she said. “Randy rented heavy equipment and dug up most of my place and half the county besides. This place has never been the same since, and neither have I. It was like a hurricane went through.”
“I’d like to buy a piece of that treasure hunt.”
She countered rapidly: “You can have my share for a hundred dollars, even.”
“With Randy Shepherd thrown in?”
“I don’t know about that.” The talk of money had brightened her dusty eyes. “This wouldn’t be blood money that we’re talking about?”
“I’m not planning to kill him.”
“Then what’s he so a-scared of? I never saw him scared like this before. How do I know you won’t kill him?”
I told her who I was and showed her my photostat. “Where has he gone, Mrs. Williams?”
“Let’s see the hundred dollars.”
I got two fifties out of my wallet and gave her one of them. “I’ll give you the other after I talk to Shepherd. Where can I find him?”
She pointed south along the road. “He’s on his way to the border. He’s on foot, and you can’t miss him. He only left here about twenty minutes ago.”
“What happened to his car?”
“He sold it to a parts dealer up the hike. That’s what makes me think he’s crossing over to Mexico. I know he’s done it before, he’s got friends to hide him.”
I started for my car. She followed me, moving with surprising speed.
“Don’t tell him I told you, will you? He’ll come back some dark night and take it out of my hide.”
“I won’t tell him, Mrs. Williams.”
With my road map on the seat beside me, I drove due south through farmland. I passed a field where Holstein cattle were grazing. Then the tomato fields began, spreading in every direction. The tomatoes had been harvested, but I could see a few hanging red and wrinkled on the withering vines.
When I had traveled about a mile and a half, the road took a jog and ran through low chaparral. I caught sight of Shepherd. He was tramping along quickly, almost loping, with a bedroll bouncing across his shoulders and a Mexican hat on his head. Not far ahead of him Tijuana sloped against the sky like a gorgeous junk heap.
Shepherd turned and saw my car. He began to run. He plunged off the road into the brush and reappeared in the dry channel of a river. He had lost his floppy Mexican hat but still had his bedroll.
I left my car and went after him. A rattlesnake buzzed at me from under an ocotillo, and focused my attention. When I looked for Shepherd again, he had disappeared.
Making as little noise as possible, and keeping my head down, I moved through the chaparral to the road which ran parallel with the border fence. The road map called it Monument Road. If Shepherd planned to cross the border, he would have to cross Monument Road first. I settled down in the ditch beside it, keeping an alternating watch in both directions.
I waited for nearly an hour. The birds in the brush got used to me, and the insects became familiar. The sun moved very slowly down the sky. I kept looking one way and then the other, like a spectator at a languid tennis match.
When Shepherd made his move, it was far from languid. He came out of the brush about two hundred yards west of me, scuttled across the road with his bedroll bouncing, and headed up the slope toward the high wire fence that marked the border.
The ground between the road and the fence had been cleared. I cut across
it and caught Shepherd before he went over. He turned with his back to the fence and said between hard breaths:
“You stay away from me. I’ll cut your gizzard.”
A knife blade stuck out of his fist. On the hillside beyond the fence a group of small boys and girls appeared as if they had sprouted from the earth.
“Drop the knife,” I said a little wearily. “We’re attracting a lot of attention.”
I pointed up the hill toward the children. Some of them pointed back at me. Some waved. Shepherd was tempted to look, and turned his head a little to one side.
I moved hard on his knife arm and put an armlock on it which forced him to drop the knife. I picked it up and closed it and tossed it over the fence into Mexico. One of the little boys came scrambling down the hill for it.
Further up the hill, where the houses began, an invisible musician began to play bullfight music on a trumpet. I felt as if Mexico was laughing at me. It wasn’t a bad feeling.
Shepherd was almost crying. “I’m not going back to a bum murder rap. You put me behind the walls again, it’ll kill me.”
“I don’t think you killed Jean Trask.”
He gave me an astonished look, which quickly faded. “You’re just saying that.”
“No. Let’s get out of here, Randy. You don’t want the border patrol to pick you up. We’ll go some place where we can talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“I’m ready to make a deal with you.”
“Not me. I allus get the short end of the deals.”
He had the cynicism of a small-time thief. I was getting impatient with him.
“Move, con.”
I took him by the arm and walked him down the slope toward the road. A child’s voice nearly as high as a whistle called to us from Mexico above the sound of the trumpet:
“Adios.”
chapter 19
Shepherd and I walked east along Monument Road to its intersection with the road that ran north and south. He hung back when he saw my car. It could take him so fast and so far, all the way back to the penitentiary.
The Goodbye Look Page 10