by Craig Rice
Bingo thought that over. “The same person committed both murders, in other words.”
“Guess so,” Sheriff Judson said. “Anyways, it looks like the same gun. A rifle. And shot from a considerable distance off. Wonderful aim, this murderer has. I’d sure like to go deer hunting with him sometime, if he wasn’t a murderer, I mean. Caught Gus square in the forehead, just like the other feller was hit.”
“That’s good shooting,” Herb said. Murder or no murder, there was admiration in his voice. “Unless it was an accident, like the time Henry got the moose.”
“You shut up,” Sheriff Judson said. “I tell you, I aimed at that moose.”
“Aimed, hell,” Herb said cheerfully. “That moose came outa the bushes and you were so surprised you dropped your gun and it went off and hit him. I saw it.”
“Well, all right,” the sheriff said. “I’ like to see you get a moose just by dropping your gun. Anyway. In a case like this, it might be an accident one time, but it couldn’t be two times.”
“I’d hardly think so,” Bingo said.
“And there’s the bullets,” Henry Judson said. “They look alike to me. The one that killed poor Gus didn’t go clear through. Charlie Hodges pried it out for me. Maybe that isn’t exactly legal. Only, Art, he’s still on his fishing trip. Anyhow, I don’t think he ever dug out no bullets. And Doc Svensen was out in the country on a baby case. So Charlie, he got the bullet for me. I deputized him, so I guess that does make it fegal.”
Will Sims frowned and said, “I’m not so sure about that.”
“I dunno much about law,” Sheriff Judson admitted. “Figure I should of stuck to the feed-and-seed business. But, anyhow, we got the bullet. I sent the two of ’em—the two bullets, I mean—off to the crime laboratory. The ballistics department can test ’em and see if they came outa the same gun. Not that I got any doubt about it. There can’t be two fellers going around Thursday County shooting folks with rifles, especially with aim like that. But having the dope from the crime laboratory oughta be a help to Will, here, when the case comes to trial, providing, of course, we ever do catch the feller.”
Will Sims stood up. “You objected when I wanted to call in experts,” he said coldly. “Murder has been com mitted in Thursday County. But instead of having men trained in scientific crime detection track down this ruthless slayer, Thursday County has been forced to stand by and watch helplessly, while an incompetent public official, who had the good fortune to be elected sheriff—”
“Now, Will,” Sheriff Henry Judson said mildly. “You were elected too, same time’s I was. Ran on the same ticket, too.”
“—while I protested,” Will Sims roared, “that the help of experts—”
“Will,” Sheriff Judson said. “Shut up.”
There was a sudden silence in the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff Judson said, “Will, you’re a good boy. You always was a good boy. And I’ve knowed you a long time. First time I saw you was at your baptism, where you embarrassed your folks by baptizing the parson first. He was a feller name of Palmer, from some place in Indiana. You done well in school, and you never got in no trouble, and Thursday County’s proud of you. But once in a while you get a trifle too big for your britches.”
The sheriff paused. “Way back when that first feller was murdered, I asked you, should we call in some crime experts from some place. And you said, ‘This is Thursday County’s problem. Thursday County will handle it in its own way.’ Those are your words, Will, and don’t give me no argument about it. I’m Thursday County’s sheriff, and I’m gonna handle this here problem in my own way. A coupla fellers have been killed, and I’m gonna find the feller that killed ’em. And no back talk from you, or nobody else.”
The silence that followed was dead enough to be buried.
“And now.” Sheriff Judson turned to Bingo, smiling and friendly. “How did you pay Gus for them turkeys you thought you bought from him?”
Bingo blinked. “Huh? Oh. In cash.”
“What kind of cash?”
“Ten one-hundred-dollar bills,” Bingo said. He added, “When we’re traveling, I always carry our money in hundred-dollar bills. It doesn’t take up as much room in my wallet that way.”
“Ten one-hundred-dollar bills, huh,” the sheriff said, nodding wisely. “Well, I guess this here money is yours, all right. It was on him when we found him.”
He unlocked and opened a drawer of his desk, slammed it shut again. He looked in a couple of unlocked drawers, and slammed them shut. “Herb,” he said at last, “where the heck did I put that money?”
“Maybe it’s in the safe,” Herb said.
“Can’t be,” Sheriff Judson said. “The lock on the safe’s been busted for the last coupla weeks. I can’t get the doggone thing open.” He sat, thinking, for a minute or two. “Herb, call Ollie.”
Herb yelled, “Hey! Ollie!”
A minute later Ollie came in, a dustcloth in his hand. “Ollie,” Sheriff Judson said helplessly, “where the heck did I put that danged money we took off a Gus? You were here when I counted it.”
“You folded it in half, and then in quarters,” Ollie said, “and placed it in your left-hand pants pocket. You stated that you would take care of it until you could restore it to the rightful owners.”
“So I did,” Sheriff Judson said. He put his hand into his pocket and drew out a neatly folded packet of bills.
“For a half-wit,” Ollie said, “I have a remarkable memory.” He tucked the dustcloth under his arm and said, “I’m going to wash the basement windows this afternoon. And the kitchen sink drain is clogged up again. I think another mouse has gotten into the pipe. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” Sheriff Judson murmured. “Maybe you’d better count ’em yourself, too.”
“If you insist,” Bingo said. He took the bills and began counting. “One hundred, two hundred, three hundred—”
“Also,” Sheriff Judson said, “I figure you ought to sign some kind of receipt or something. Such as. Write this down, Herb, and he can sign it. ‘Received from the Sheriff of Thursday County, the sum of one thousand dollars which was’”—he paused—“‘which was fraudulently taken off me by one Gus’”—He paused again, and said, “Say, doesn’t anybody know what Gus’s last name was?”
“Far’s I know,” Chris Halvorsen said, “he was just Gus.”
“Sheriff Judson sighed and said, “Where was I, Herb? Oh, yes. ‘By one John Doe, otherwise known as Gus. This money having been recovered by the Sheriff of Thursday County from the inside coat pocket of this aforementioned John Doe, otherwise known as Gus, has been restored to me in full, I will therefore not sue Thursday County for the recovery of this thousand dollars, under no circumstances, having already received same.’ There. Got it all down, Herb? Sound legal and binding to you, Will?”
“A trifle unconventional,” Will Sims said sulkily, “but legal.”
Bingo signed the receipt with a flourish. Sheriff Henry Judson picked up the bills from his desk, stacked them neatly, and handed them over. Bingo tucked them into his pocket as though they were a bunch of cigar coupons.
That seemed to wind up the business in the sheriff’s office. Everyone rose.
Sheriff Judson said regretfully, “I guess now you’ll be on your way to Hollywood.”
“Well,” Bingo said. He paused. They had back the thousand bucks from the late Gus. They had back the hundred and seventy-two bucks Henny had “borrowed.” And they’d made a nice little profit.
But there were five escaped convicts hidden in the shanty. And there was Henny—
And there was a quarter of a million dollars in gold buried somewhere in the neighborhood.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Bingo said. “We’re not in any terrible hurry. And this is a pleasant place to spend a few days. Besides, we ought to stay and look after Mr. Halvorsen’s turkeys. I feel kind of responsible for ’em.”
He
thought that, for a moment, a shadow of a smile appeared on Chris Halvorsen’s pale, tired face.
“And we’ve got a few more pictures to print,” he went on. “We took some dandies out at the camp. Say, that certainly is some camp! You ought to be proud of it!” He hoped Will Sims’ wounded feelings felt a little better.
“Anyway,” he said, “I feel interested in this case. I’d like to stick around until Thursday County finds the murderer, if nobody minds.”
“Foolishness!” Chris Halvorsen said unexpectedly. “Damn foolishness!” He jumped up and stood glaring at everybody in the room. His hands shook a little. “A man been murdered. He don’t live here. Nobody know him. Nobody care what happen to him. Then Gus, he been murdered too. That Gus, he good-for-nothing, like sheriff said. Why you bother so much about murderer?”
“Now Chris,” the sheriff began mildly.
“Why,” Halvorsen went on, “Why you don’t look for escaped convicts? They murder, too.” His voice was hoarse and loud. He shook his fist under Sheriff Judson’s astonished nose. “You never mind, waste taxpayers’ good money look for that murderer. Hell with that noise. You find them there convicts, see?”
He strode to the door, paused, turned around, and yelled, “I tell you, damn foolishness!”
Nobody spoke. They could hear Chris Halvorsen’s footsteps all the way along the hall, down the two front steps, and down the cement walk. They could hear the farm truck starting with a rush. Its motor had an indignant roar.
“If Chris don’t watch himself,” Sheriff Judson said calmly, “he’s liable to have a stroke. It’s them big husky fellers do have strokes. Like Bob Hoskins, that used to be postmaster. Never sick a day in his life until he had his stroke. Terrible temper, though.” He paused. “The Halvorsen family, now, was all mild-tempered. I remember Chris’s pa, him that brought Chris over from the old country when he was about six or seven. He had yeller whiskers. Never heard him say a cross word in his life, right up to the day he died. That was only a coupla years ago. He was ninety-seven. Day he died, he was in my place buying a load of laying mash. Talked me down a dollar on the price, too. He was a grand old man.”
“What did he die of?” Bingo asked, fascinated.
“Why,” the sheriff said, “he just died, that’s all. That night after dinner he told old Miz Halvorsen, ‘Ma, I’m an old man, and I’m gonna die.’ That ain’t exactly the way he said it, account of he always had a Svenska accent.”
“Not Svenska,” Herb said. “Norske.”
“Oh, all right,” the sheriff said indulgently. “So old Miz Halvorsen, she called up Doc Svensen and she said, ‘Pa’s gonna die.’ And Doc Svensen came out. But before he got there, old man Halvorsen, he’d gone upstairs and put his nightshirt on and got into bed, and died.” He paused. “Old Miz Halvorsen, she died too, couple days after the funeral. Just pined away.”
The sheriff shook his head thoughtfully. “Can’t figure where Chris gets his temper from.”
“Christine, she’s got a temper,” Herb said.
“She never took that from Chris,” the sheriff said. “She took it from her ma, Chris’s second wife. She was a McCarthy girl, and all them McCarthys had bad tempers.” The problem seemed to bother him. “Now Chris’s boys, by his first wife. They’re all good, easy-going, hard-working boys.” He looked around the room. “Anybody here ever see one of the Halvorsen boys get mad?”
“Not me,” Herb said. Will Sims just shook his head.
“Thing that puzzles me,” the sheriff said, frowning, “is I never saw Chris get mad before, either. I figured, maybe, that mail-order wife of his been worrying him. Only, they been married eighteen years now, come next January, and if she was worrying him it would of showed up before this.”
“Chris Halvorsen’s been married three times, huh?” Bingo said. “I thought Christine was his only child.”
Sheriff Judson chuckled. “He had eleven boys by his first wife. She was one of the Henry girls. The Henrys were fine people. Her uncle was Judge Henry. Not much sense of humor, though. She—Lottie Halvorsen, Lottie Henry before she was married—she made Chris promise they would name all the children for the books of the New Testament. Chris, he figured Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were good names, so he promised. But them Halvorsen boys kept coming along, every year or so. ’Bout the time they got to Second Corinthians, Chris was ready to break his promise, but Lottie was set in her ways, so he was baptized Second Corinthians Halvorsen.” He turned to Herb. “You know him. That’s Seck Halvorsen, he runs a garage over to Cold Spring.”
“Sure,” Herb said. “I been fishing with him.”
“Well,” Sheriff Judson went on, “there were still three more. Gal and Eph were twins. And Philippians, he turned out about the best of the bunch. He manages the ladies’ ready-to-wear in a big store in Des Moines. Rest of the Halvorsen boys, they’re farmers.”
“Except Romans,” Will Sims said.
“That’s right,” the sheriff said. “Romans, he works for the highway department. Well, when Phil was about ten, Lottie she took pneumonia and died. Chris, he married that McCarthy girl. She had Christine.” He chuckled. “Guess Chris got to the naming first, that time. Then she—the McCarthy girl—ran off with an actor, when Christine was about two. Got a divorce. So Chris, he advertised in the papers for a wife, and darned if he didn’t get one. Nice-looking lady. Took good care of Christine, too. They been married eighteen years, so I guess it’ll work out all right. Only, I can’t figure out why he lost his temper like that. Long’s I’ve known Chris, I never saw him get mad before.”
“Is it any of your business?” Will Sims demanded. “Is Chris Halvorsen’s temper any reason why these gentlemen should have to sit and listen while you discuss his whole family history?”
“Well, no,” the sheriff admitted. He grinned sheepishly at Bingo and Handsome. “Figure, maybe I just talk too much.”
“It’s been a fascinating discussion,” Bingo said. “We wouldn’t have missed a word of it.” He rose. “I don’t suppose you have any clues as to who might have murdered Gus.”
“Just them bullets,” the sheriff said. He sighed. “It kind of bothers me. You take most people, now. Somebody gets murdered—you can say right off, you bet so-and-so done it. Account of, you know how so-and-so felt about him. But Gus, that’s different. Near’s I can tell, nobody liked him and nobody disliked him. That’s what makes it difficult.”
“Clues,” Will Sims said feebly. “Alibis. Fingerprints.”
“Yep.” Sheriff Judson said. “If I could just lay hold of that rifle that fired them bullets, we’d have fingerprints.” He rose and said, “Back in a minute, Will. Herb, you watch the phone. Ollie’s getting the mouse outa the drainpipe. I’m gonna get a mousetrap in this jail if I have to pay for it myself.”
He walked down the corridor with Bingo and Handsome.
“You’re nice fellers,” he said. “Been considerable help. Figure it’s safe to show you this.”
He paused at a door just to the right of the main entrance, pulled a big bunch of keys out of his pocket, fiddled around until he found the right one, and opened the door.
A set of shelves had been built into what had originally been a closet. Four of the shelves held books. All the books looked as though they’d been read.
Bingo examined the books, first with surprise, then with a kind of awe. Here, in a remodeled closet of the Thursday County jail was a collection of books on crime detection that would have surprised, and awed, almost anybody.
And not only books. The other shelves held chemicals, cameras, fingerprinting equipment—it was a miniature crime laboratory, set up for anything from making molds of footprints to testing for human blood.
“When I got elected sheriff,” Henry Judson said, “figured I didn’t know a thing about the sheriff business. Been in the feed-and-seed business all my life. I didn’t have time to go to none of them fancy crime-detection schools, so I figured I’d buy some books and stuff and just make
out that way. Well—”
He closed the door, locked it, and put the keys back into his pocket.
“You don’t need to mention this to Will Sims, or anybody,” he said. “The whole thing was a waste of good time and money, anyhow.”
Bingo looked at him. No one would ever have pictured Sheriff Henry Judson, small, thin, gray-haired and rooster-necked, as a student of crime detection. It was even hard to think of him as sheriff of Thursday County, what with his mild, gentle manner, and his blue serge suit that was just a little too big for him.
“Clues is all right,” Sheriff Judson said. “But I figure it this way. For instance. Suppose a professional criminal commits a crime. All right. He’s smart enough that he knows as much about clues as I do, maybe more. He don’t leave no fingerprints or no footprints, or no coat buttons on the scene of the crime. Fast as these experts learn a new trick, them there criminals figure out a way to beat it. That ain’t a bad thing, either. It makes for progress. I got a book in that closet about safes. Fast as the safe-makers would invent one that couldn’t be busted into, the safecrackers would start finding a way to bust into it. That’s the sole and only reason why we got such good safes today.” He paused and said, “That reminds me.”
He stepped into the office and bawled, “Ollie! Did you call up that feller about coming and busting open the office safe for me?”
The answer, of which Bingo and Handsome could hear only a murmur, was evidently satisfactory. Sheriff Judson came back into the hall and said, “As I was saying. Now you take a nonprofessional criminal. He don’t bother about no clues, same time he don’t bother about acting like he ain’t committed a crime. He acts suspicious and you arrest him and ask him, ‘Did you do it?’ and ninety-nine times outa a hundred he’ll start bawling and say, ‘Yes.’ That’s why I figure all this was a waste of money. But it wasn’t the taxpayers’ money, account of I bought the stuff myself. I had a lot of fun studying it, though.”