The police? Too late now. If he wasn’t home already, he’d be there and safely in bed, the phone unmuffled, by the time I argued them into sending a squad car to wake up respectable citizens in their own home in the middle of the night.
I was shivering, sitting there; the night had turned cool and I’d been sleeping in only shorts. I went upstairs with the dim flashlight and put on slippers and a bathrobe.
2
Down into the basement to fix the upstairs lights. It would be a blown fuse, of course. It was and I replaced it with a new one. He wouldn’t have come down here; he could have done his fuse blowing upstairs when he carried my typewriter up there; all he had to do was screw a bulb out of an upstairs hallway socket and short circuit the socket with a pocket screwdriver or something similar.
I went to the kitchen and started coffee in the percolator. Then upstairs to dress. No use trying to go back to sleep now.
And besides I was afraid to. What if he came back to try again? No, I didn’t think he would, tonight. Some other time. Some other way.
A steering knuckle loosened on my car? Or what? Whatever it would be it would be something that would look like an accident, would leave no positive proof that it hadn’t been. Obie killed only that way. He could easily have strangled me in my bed tonight or he could have beaten in my brains with a hammer or cut my throat with a carving knife from the kitchen. And he was enough bigger and stronger than I that I couldn’t have stopped him from doing any of those things even if I’d awakened in time.
Back in the kitchen I poured myself coffee, and my hand was shaking and some coffee slopped over into the saucer. But why not? This was the first time anybody had ever tried to kill me.
And I’d never be safe again while Obie was free.
But how had he known?
I shoved that thought aside because I thought of something of immediate importance, something I had to do right away, even ahead of calling the police. In fact, calling the police could wait until I’d had time to think out a few angles so I could present them–or rather Joe Steiner personally–with a story that made sense down the line by including a way in which Obie could have known I was investigating him.
Millie. Millie came first. I had to phone her at her sister’s in Rockford and tell her to stay there, not to return until I phoned her again that everything was all right. This was Sunday and she might be taking an early morning train unless I called her right away.
The call went through quickly. Millie must have wakened and come to the phone when her sister did; she came on the line right away when I asked for her.
“Millie, when are you planning to come back?”
“Today, Sam. Nine o’clock train. It’ll get me there at three twenty-two. Will you meet me? I was going to phone and ask you to, if you were back from Laflamme.”
It was all right then; if Millie was asking me to meet her, then things were going to be all right between us. Besides, I could tell from her voice.
I said, “Millie, don’t come. You’ll have to trust me and take my word for it, but I want you to stay there until I tell you it’s all right to come back. It’s something I can’t explain over the phone.”
“I don’t understand, Sam. Don’t you want me to–”
“Millie, I want you to come back more than anything on earth. I love you to hell and back,” I said. And I did, too; I’d found that out only an hour before when I’d first thought the ringing of the bell meant a telegram and that a telegram meant Millie was sick or hurt. “It’s nothing that concerns us. But it’s awfully important that you stay away a little while, maybe just another day or two. And I’ll tell you the whole story when I send for you. Won’t you trust me until then?”
“Of course I trust you. But–are you in any danger?”
She’d come back despite me if I said yes. I said, “No, not in any danger. Trouble yes, but not any danger. And it’s something I’ve got to straighten out before you come back. Love me, Millie?”
“Yes, I learned that, being away from you. I guess our separating for a week was a wonderful idea. But can’t you give me even an idea what this is all about?”
“Honestly I can’t, over the phone. But I’ll promise you this; if it’s going to be more than a few days I’ll come there to tell you what it’s about, the whole story.”
“All right, Sam. Good-by, dear.”
“Goodby, beloved.”
For a moment, after I cradled the phone, I thought of going there, to Rockford, today. I wanted to see Millie, to tell her everything–except one thing that I’d never tell her, of course. And that one thing no longer meant anything or mattered; it had never happened.
But I must wait till after I’d talked to Joe Steiner; his reaction to what I was going to tell him was a damned important factor in deciding how I was going to stay alive. If he took me seriously and started digging, he’d get the truth. And if Obie was a killer he’d get Obie and have him in an institution for the criminally insane before you could say Oedipus complex.
And even if Joe Steiner laughed at me and told me I was crazy, I’d be better off for having told him. I’d see to it somehow, even if I had to go to him and talk to him, that Obie knew I’d told everything I knew and suspected to the police, and that if anything happened to me from now on the police would take a dim view of its being an accident. Also I’d tell Obie that I was through, done, finished, investigating no more, that I’d been investigating him, yes, but that now I’d protected myself and done my duty as a citizen by taking my findings to the police and I was bailing out.
And I was bailing out. I had to, if it was ever going to be safe to let Millie come home. I’d done enough, too much, on my own; from now on it was up to Joe Steiner and I should have gone to him in the first place, no matter how nebulous my suspicions had been then. Why hadn’t I? That sudden violent affair with Nina, maybe, had kept me mixed up, had kept me from thinking clearly.
Sunday morning, a good time to see him, too. Six o’clock now so I’d better wait at least a couple of hours, then I’d phone him and find out what time during the day I could have a talk with him.
At least a couple of hours to wait and that gave me time to think out, or try to think out, answers to the two loose ends my story would have otherwise.
First, who had followed me in a jalopy that afternoon, at a time when Obie had been home? I simply couldn’t believe that Obie had an accomplice. Oh, I know that such things happen. Leopold and Loeb. Morey, Pell and Royal, the three Michigan teen-agers who’d murdered the nurse; I’d recently read the series of articles about them in the Saturday Evening Post. Maybe, come to think of it, that was why the concept of a high school boy as a psychopathic murderer hadn’t seemed too incredible to me. I hoped Chief Steiner had read those articles; if not I’d refer him to them. And there were other cases, not many but a few, in which psycho kills hadn’t been solo jobs. Psychopaths, like birds of a feather, sometimes flock together; if one of them is homicidal he can lead the other or others down the bloody path of murder.
But Obie as a member, even as a leader, of a team? I just couldn’t swallow it. He had to be a lone killer or the whole picture I’d formed didn’t make sense.
I could weasel out of that one easily enough by failing to mention it to Steiner; I had a more coherent story for him without it. But that wouldn’t be fair, and besides he might be able to fit it into the picture even though I couldn’t. It had to fit in somewhere; it just couldn’t be an irrelevant coincidence that someone had trailed me by mistake or for some reason not connected with what I’d been doing.
The other problem was just as puzzling. Why had Obie tried to kill me last night?
I didn’t see how he could possibly know that I was investigating him. Doc Wygand? No, I’d have bet every cent I owned against a last week’s newspaper that Doc wouldn’t have told anyone that I’d asked questions about the Westphal
s. Doc isn’t that kind of a guy. And no one else I’d talked to could remotely have guessed the nature of my interest in Obie. Except possibly—
Nina? It didn’t make sense that Nina would have called or seen Obie yesterday after the parting scene between us. It didn’t make sense, but it could have been. Women do funny things. Maybe for reasons of her own Nina had wanted Obie to know that I knew about the affair between them. Maybe just for an excuse to talk to him again, maybe to try to get him back for a while, even for a one-night encore. But she couldn’t have told him I suspected him of murder, because she didn’t know that herself.
Wait! She could have told him without knowing herself, if there’d been conversation about me. She could have mentioned my interest in him, the questions I’d asked about him, and then mentioned that I’d asked even more questions about the fatal accidents at the school. Those two things would have added up all right, to Obie. He’d have known the real reason for my interest.
Suddenly I got a picture that sickened me a little to think about. Nina phoning Obie, telling him there was something important to tell him that she couldn’t say over the phone. Would he come to see her tonight so she could tell him? Obie sneaking out of his own house after his parents were asleep and spending a few hours with Nina— and why not, once more, even though the affair had ended? Learning, because they would have talked too, that I’d asked a lot of questions both about him and about the accidents. Learning too by a carefully worded question or two that my wife was out of town and that I’d be alone in the house tonight. Getting my address out of Nina’s phone book, probably when she went into the bathroom. Stopping to see me on his way home.
That was the way it added up, the only way I could figure how Obie would know that I was onto him, and I hated it. I hated the thought that he had probably come here from Nina’s bed. The bed I’d slept in the night before—and in which I’d told Nina that I loved her, less than thirty hours ago.
I didn’t want to hate Nina. I tried desperately not to. I told myself that if Obie had come back to Nina when she’d called him, it meant that she had been the one who had broken off the affair originally, a month or so ago, and that her calling him back had been reaction, an act of defiance against me because I’d read her diary and learned about it. And as soon as she regained her senses she’d stop the affair again, for the reasons she’d stopped it in the first place. Thinking that made me feel a little better. Not much.
I poured myself another cup of coffee and it was the last of the pot; it would be my sixth cup since I’d made the coffee. And this time I made myself some breakfast to go with it and another pot of coffee. Daylight out now, and in an hour or so I could make my call to Steiner.
But damn oh damn, what was I going to tell him, without bringing Nina’s name into it, about how Obie could have learned that I was investigating him? For a minute it had me stumped; then I felt better when I realized the question would probably never occur to him if I told him that I’d asked questions of a lot of people who knew Obie. It would seem natural that the news would get back to Obie if only I didn’t stress how careful I’d been to avoid just that.
At nine o’clock on the head I phoned Steiner.
3
A woman’s voice–Mrs. Steiner’s, I guessed–said, “I’m sorry. He isn’t home.”
“Do you know where I can reach him?”
“I’m afraid you can’t today. He went on a fishing trip for the weekend.”
Damn. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“They’re driving back early tomorrow morning. He’s going right to the office. He’ll try to be there by nine o’clock, his usual time.”
Twenty-four hours to wait! I said, “This is very important. Do you happen to know where he’s fishing? I’ll drive out there, even on the off chance of finding him.”
“He mentioned the river, but I don’t know just where. They were going to rent a boat.”
That made it hopeless. You can fish the river anywhere, either side of town for forty or fifty miles, and especially if he was out in a boat, I wouldn’t find him in a week. I thanked her.
“Pardon me, but if it’s police business his office is open, of course. Captain Kuehn is in charge on Sundays.”
I thanked her again and hung up. There was no more use telling my story to Kuehn than in writing it in a letter to Santa Claus. Kuehn is skeptical and sarcastic, and to top it off he doesn’t like me. His mind would be closed even before I started to talk. Of course if I died accidentally a week or two later, he’d remember and do something about it then, but that would be a little late to do me any good.
All right, then, I’d wait till Steiner got back, but I wasn’t going to wait in this house, a sitting duck if Obie decided to try again right away. I’d spend today and tonight at a hotel downtown. Tomorrow morning I’d phone the Herald and tell them I’d be an hour or two late and I’d be at Steiner’s office waiting for him when he showed up.
I went over the house again straightening things and closing and locking windows–there’d been two downstairs windows open so I hadn’t had to wonder how Obie got in–and then I threw a few things into a bag and took off.
Before I took my car out of the garage or even turned on the ignition I raised the hood and looked things over carefully, especially what I could see of the steering mechanism. I couldn’t spot anything wrong or any signs of tampering. Apparently Obie hadn’t thought of that one yet. Or maybe, since he didn’t have a car of his own, he wouldn’t be enough of a mechanic to know how to do a job like that. Just the same I didn’t do any speeding on my way downtown.
I got myself a room at one of the smaller hotels where I didn’t know anybody and wouldn’t have to do any explaining, and put my car in the parking lot next door to it. I got some magazines in the lobby and killed the day reading and with a double feature movie. I didn’t run into anybody I knew.
After an early dinner, around six o’clock, it occurred to me that possibly–contingent on what Joe Steiner did after he’d heard what I had to tell him–it might be advisable for me to stay at the hotel for several days instead of only tonight. I’d been thinking of a one-night stay when I’d tossed a few things into a bag and I’d need a few things more. And this evening, right now, would be the safest time for me to go home to get them.
I got the Buick out of the parking lot and drove home.
Almost home, anyway. As I turned the corner into my block I saw a car parked facing the way I was heading, across the street from my house and a few doors away from it.
And the car was a jalopy, a black coupe, vintage of about 1930. The jalopy that had followed me out of town Friday afternoon.
If I’d had time to think I might have been afraid. But there wasn’t any time; if I was going to pull in and park behind it instead of going past, I had to swing the wheel right away. I swung the wheel and pulled in to the curb behind the jalopy and only a few feet away.
4
The back window of the jalopy was small and not too clean; I still couldn’t see who was behind the wheel. He must have been able to see back, though, well enough to recognize either me or the Buick. I heard the whir of his starter the moment I pulled to a stop behind him. But before he could get the engine going I was out of my car and alongside him.
Hard eyes looked at me from under carrot-colored hair. Pete Brenner, the Dead End kid best friend of Jimmy Chojnacki.
“Hello, Pete,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He tried to stare me down.
“Why did you follow me the other day, Pete? Why were you waiting here tonight?” I kept my voice calm. I just wanted to know; I didn’t want to start trouble.
“You ought to know. Jimmy Chojnacki.”
“What about Jimmy?”
“I got thinking after you and me talked. That accident didn’t sound like one. I think maybe he was bumped off.”
I
said, “I think maybe you’re a smart kid, Pete. I think Jimmy was bumped off too. Would you like to know who did it?”
“Are you kidding? He was my best friend.”
I leaned a hand against the top of the car. “Good,” I said. “Then we can get together on this. But when you got that idea, why didn’t you just come to me? Instead of following me.”
“Why should I trust you? I didn’t know what your angle in it was.”
“My angle? Hell, I showed you my press pass. I’m a reporter.”
“But you’re on vacation this week. I mean last week. You were on vacation the day you talked to me. I know that ’cause I did go down there to talk to you, after I got thinking about Jimmy, see? And then I got wondering about you too. What your angle was, if you wasn’t working. And slipping me that fin–for nothing. That didn’t add up either.”
Yes, that had been a mistake, I saw now. I should have leveled with Pete Brenner and I’d have got more out of him–if he had anything to give me–than for any amount of money. Well, I had a chance to correct that now.
I said, “I see how it must have looked funny to you, Pete. But I was onto something big and I wanted to play it close to my vest. That’s why I gave you the five, rather than explain.”
“But what’s this about vacation?”
“I gambled my vacation on getting a big story, that’s all. Come on in the house with me. We can talk better there.”
“We can talk all right here.” I’d answered his questions but he was still suspicious.
“Sure,” I said, “but we can talk better there. I think Jimmy was murdered. I think I know who killed him. But I’m not going to tell you standing here.”
“All right.” He got out of the car and followed me to the house, up on the porch.
I bent over and put the key in the lock. Something hard pressed into the small of my back. He said, “Stand still. I just want to see if you’re heeled before I go in there with you.”
I stood still and let him reach around me and feel for a shoulder holster, pat pockets. Then I turned the key and went in, snapped on the hall light. I looked around carefully for any sign that I’d had a visitor again before I said, “Let’s go out in the kitchen. I’m going to have a can of beer. Want one?”
The Deep End Page 17