The Desperate Hours

by Joeseph Hays

  No time for all that now, Dan told himself harshly; no time now for all those unlooked-for cross-currents that in themselves might prove more treacherous than anything the police or the family could do. He decided to turn around: he had passed the deep part, the hollowed-out pool that he had known as a boy. But when he stopped, nosed into a clump of trees and underbrush that lay between the road and the river’s high edge, he saw that there were car ruts penetrating the thicket. Did they lead to the edge of the bluff?

  After he had satisfied himself that he could maneuver the car through the wet and black-shadowed grove, Dan climbed back into the seat and sat for a split second behind the wheel. He was breaking the law. He, Dan Hilliard, was guilty of committing a crime. The thought had no meaning to him, and he was not even surprised. He edged the sedan into the trees, the branches scraping and crying against the metal. At the edge of the bluff, he set the brake and clambered out again, stood listening in the silence, with the headlight beams stabbing the darkness over the water. Down below the river was almost soundless. Far downstream he caught the occasional glitter of other headlights striking across the water’s surface from the highway he had just traveled. He studied the grassy and bush-tangled shelf; there were no obstacles. Then his eyes came upon a wiry-looking sapling that jutted out angularly just below the drop-off. He cursed himself for not anticipating this; he should have brought along a saw from the garage. Clinging with one hand to the roots of a bush outjutting from the black earth, he climbed down the muddy bank a few feet and tested the tension of the small tree. Would the sapling deflect the car’s downward plunge? And in what way?

  But he was helpless without a tool of some sort; the thin tree was securely rooted.

  The car had to go all the way down. It had to reach the water. The crash would be loud and there was the chance that it would attract attention. But Dan Hilliard, at this point, had grown accustomed to calculating risks; he knew that a certain recklessness, backed by careful consideration of the odds, was necessary. This recklessness seemed to have become a part of his life. He even wondered, pulling himself up onto the level ground and standing upright again, whether this recklessness had been a part of his nature forever.

  When had the men come? Only last night? Impossible! The intervening time had taken on an endless quality. Sliding into the seat, his body wet and his shoes clogged with mud, Dan wasn’t able to look ahead to tomorrow morning, to the 9:30 mail tomorrow morning. The past and future did not exist now. He threw the gears into reverse, backing into trees and stumps three times before he felt that he was far enough away from the edge of the cliff to gain the necessary momentum on the wet grass to shoot the car out and over the sapling.

  He didn’t hesitate now. He plunged into the moment heedlessly, his mind working in that automatic way again: he threw the car into forward gear, tapped the accelerator experimentally, racing the motor, his left foot holding down the clutch. He felt with his left elbow to make sure the door was open and warned himself that his left hand must let go that door handle at the same instant that his right hand tore itself away from the steering wheel. He bore down on the gas, released the clutch, held the wheel steady, saw the black void rushing toward him and in it Eleanor’s face floating toward him. His ears filled with the crackling of the tree limbs and roar of motor and the angry grind of tires in soggy earth.

  Then he plunged sideways, throwing himself violently as the void reached for him, feeling a thorny prickling against his face and the jolt of hard earth under his body. Then the whole world filled to bursting with the thundering descent of the car. Dan lay curled in the underbrush as that sound echoed and reverberated, gnashing, crushing and ugly. He knew that the car had rolled, and it seemed now never to stop rolling. The splash was abrupt—first, the solid slap-sounding smack, then a series of gurgles and gasps, as though some living monster were battling for life below the edge of the bluff. Finally the bubbling slackened into utter stillness.

  Dan rolled onto his back, breathing shallowly.

  Had it gone under? He crawled to the precipice. The sapling quivered with a faint rusty crackle of leaves. Below, there was nothing. Sheer dark.

  Dan stood up unsteadily, shaking. He couldn’t know whether the car had gone under. He couldn’t tell what daylight—and perhaps some hunter in the surrounding woods—would discover.

  He was faced now with the hours-long walk back to the house. The trick now, he knew without thought, was to keep from thinking, from wondering. The trick now was to get away from this spot as fast as possible and to make one leaden foot follow the other over those miles, all the while forcing his mind ahead, all the while peering forward to that inevitable moment tomorrow when they would leave. What was he going to do then? How was he going to prevent their taking anyone along in the car?

  Perhaps, before he arrived home, he would have the answer to that.

  “Supposin’ you’re right then,” Lieutenant Fredericks of the State Police was saying to Jesse Webb. “Supposin’ this guy’s in the fix you think he is. I agree with that much. But why then are they stickin’ around? And when they’re ready to take off, is he going to be any better off? He says it right here in his letter, doesn’t he? If those sonsabitches take his wife along, f’instance, how’s he going to be any better off’n if we start searching all those houses right now? And stop shaking your head that way. You’re givin’ me the fidgets.”

  Jesse hadn’t known that he was shaking his head, but he made a conscious effort to stop it. This Lieutenant Fredericks had already given him the fidgets, if that’s what you called them. He didn’t like being called into a man’s office, in the first place; Fredericks had no authority over him and he was taking a lot on himself to question him about his procedure. Co-operation was one thing; this superior-speaking-to-underling was something else again. Jesse had to admit that, on the face of it, it didn’t look as if he was accomplishing much. He’d answered the questions civilly enough, sitting hunched forward in the State House office, trying to explain, over and over, to the short, crisp elderly man in uniform just why he was not trying to close in, that as yet he had no house to close in on.

  “Maybe he’s not going to be any better off,” Jesse drawled. “But that’s a decision I reckon the man’s got a right to make on his own now.”

  “The hell he has! This is police work, son. Nobody wants to see innocent people hurt. But we can’t sit on our cans forever waiting for them to make the move. You got the list of that trashman’s customers-”

  “Mr. Patterson,” Jesse suggested.

  “Sure, the old garbage collector. Hell, son, it was your deduction that the old boy had seen the car, not mine. But you got to follow through. The garbageman’s dead-”

  “Mr. Patterson,” Jesse corrected again.

  “What’s the chip on your shoulder, Webb? It ain’t becoming, son. We got to work together on this. So you got cars planted up there around the neighborhood. You know how easy it’d be for that gray sedan to slip out of that? I’ll tell you. Any man with reasonable intelligence could do it if he never had any experience, that’s how. For all we know they’ve done it already. Up and gone. Your telephone hunch played itself out, didn’t it? Maybe this one will, too. But son, we’ll never know unless we try. Let’s get men moving up there. Knock on a few doors, ring those bells, ask about the car—about this Mr. Patterson. Innocent questions. What can we lose?”

  “We can force their hand,” Jesse said with slow patience running thin.

  “Now you’re talking!”

  “And they can jump to the idea that this guy, whoever wrote this letter, tipped us off. They can plug him, or his wife, or his kid or kids.”

  “You can’t put off a showdown, son.”

  Jesse stood up. “Look. Nobody wants a showdown any more’n I do. Not you or every trooper in Indiana. But by all the rules, with my superior out of town now, I reckon this comes under my jurisdiction—unless the FBI has other ideas. Carson doesn’t—because we’ve talked about
it. It’d take us all night and part of tomorrow to work our way through that whole damn neighborhood, ringing doorbells. No thanks. I want ’em flushed, Lieutenant, but not if they’re going to shoot up somebody’s family just because I can’t wait.”

  “While you’re waiting,” the lieutenant said testily, “an old man gets three in the back. Nothing I can see’s going to stop that happening again.”

  Jesse stopped in the office doorway; he was shaking his head again. “We weren’t waiting when that happened, Lieutenant —I mention that just for the record. We didn’t have anything then, remember?”

  “Webb, let me tell you something. Let me give you a little advice. How long since you’ve had any sleep?” And as Jesse waved a hand, he nodded. “Okay. It might be a dead-end guess and it might pay off. I’ll get you as many men as you want on this, Webb. Put ’em all over the streets, anywhere. But I tell you, Webb, this slob that wrote this don’t have the chance of a snowball in hell and I, for one, thinks he needs help, and plenty of it. Don’t take it personal, what I just said, Deputy. I’m a sour old man and I hate to see you young punks make fools of yourselves. If they are up there and they slip away, you’ll be looking for work, son.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” Jesse Webb said, feeling raw all through. “But I could use some men. Thanks.”

  Lieutenant Fredericks stood staring after the young lanky deputy. He spat into a brass cuspidor alongside his desk. Raring to go all day, he thought, and now he’s stopped dead in his tracks. Hell, he was ringing doorbells himself this morning!

  Jesse emerged on the high State House steps. It was a dull night, with a few ugly clouds drifting pale gray against the bitter dark sky. He felt a little faint. Not enough food and too much coffee and too many blind alleys, he thought; and the thought brought to mind Kathleen. She was in another movie now, her third today; then one of the deputies was to take her to Jesse’s mother’s house on the south side for the night. Remembering his own curled fear about Kathleen, Jesse was reminded again of the unidentified man’s pitiful, pleading letter. For a moment, as he paused there staring into the city streets where only a few people moved, secure and unafraid and not even conscious of the Griffin brothers and a man named Robish, Jesse Webb thought, with envy of them, that maybe it would be a good idea to get another job, anyway. But by the time he was in his car again and cruising northward to the area that had become the neighborhood in his mind, an area defined on the surface of his brain by the same red mark he had drawn on that city map in his office this afternoon, he felt a slow return of the banked-down excitement.

  Griffin was in town. Jesse’s hunch on that had been right, he’d swear to that much. Then this other guess, that they were hiding in the neighborhood, might not be too far-fetched. It was amazing, when you came to think of it, how big a part plain hunches played in police work. Oh sure, you have hints and clues—the license number scribbled in an old man’s blocky writing before he was shot, a carefully worded anonymous letter from a worried husband and father. But you put the two together and the connection was slight, really. Damned slight. Yet it was all you had, and on the basis of it, you lost another good night’s sleep.

  The sour taste that had been in Jesse Webb’s mouth since the telephone number list had played itself out on him was now a poison all through him. He was tired, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had a slim chance, but a chance, to reach Glenn Griffin before morning. Somehow. The hatred he had felt all along, remembering the shapeless hang of Uncle Frank’s arm, had swollen in him each time he recalled the look of death on the face of harmless little Mr. Patterson; now, with the desperate unsigned letter in his pocket, he felt the hatred expand, choking him, till he could hardly breathe.

  Nothing mattered but finding Glenn Griffin, his brother and another man named Robish, and wiping the earth clean of their slime. That and nothing less.

  That same need, more aching hunger than savage rage in him now, kept recurring to Dan Hilliard as he walked; it clogged his mind, averting his thoughts from the one decision he had to make before morning—how to tie Griffin’s hands if the young hoodlum attempted to carry anyone along in his escape. Dan was crossing the river bridge, returning on foot by the same route he had traveled an hour ago in the gray sedan. He had made up his mind not to try to estimate the number of miles he had walked, how many more lay ahead of him. He wasn’t sure, though, that he would make it. Griffin, grinning, had been cruelly specific: “No cabs, Pop. Walk it. Do you good.”

  All along, from the first few minutes when Glenn Griffin had brought the barrel of his gun whipping down on his shoulder, Dan had been aware of the sadistic strain in the young convict. This ugly warping was deep in him, stronger even than his judgment or his need to escape. He wanted revenge; he was going to have murder committed by paying for it with the money that was in the mail, on its way to Dan’s office. This held him in town, kept him in Dan Hilliard’s home. Some police officer, who was probably unaware of Glenn Griffin’s general whereabouts, who had perhaps forgotten Glenn Griffin completely, had been marked for death because of some old twisted grudge in the boy’s mind.

  The whole idea of revenge had been foreign to Dan Hilliard, not a part of his nature at all—until now. Now he comprehended, even while loathing, the twist in the young criminal. He understood because he himself had begun to feel the same dark urge. While it was still uppermost that he get those men out and away from his family, Dan Hilliard, his chest aching and each step driving shocks of pain up his legs and into his groin, became acutely aware for the first time that he wanted to see Glenn Griffin dead—dead for death’s own sake as well as for the safety of his family.

  It was this realization, as he forced one leg forward, planted it, then lifted the other, that added the last tightening to his unreal, walking nightmare. Whether it came an hour from now or ten years, he wanted to see Glenn Griffin dead.

  Then why not now? Why not tonight and get it over with? Get a gun, conceal it, walk in the house, draw it, shoot.

  Eleanor’s pale face drifted at him across the blackness again. Dan, Pm pleading with you. Promise me, Dan, darling, promise me.

  He sagged against the stone buttress of the bridge looking ahead, picturing the dark wet miles ahead, asking, in a whisper, “What can I do, Elbe? I promised, but you don’t know, dear. You don’t see what I see.”

  He was under a garish street lamp that cast his shadow before him. He caught a glimpse of the slump-shouldered figure of himself, outlined darkly on the wet pavement, small-looking and shriveled. He frowned and, with great effort, twisted his head to make sure that he was staring down at his own shadow. He was. He was alone on that bridge.

  He straightened, his breath a turning blade in his chest, and plunged forward again. At this moment headlights swept toward him, approaching from behind. A car careened by, a young girl’s face appeared in the rear window, and a boyish voice echoed back at him as the car gathered speed and continued on: “Have another drink, old man.”

  Dan missed a step. They thought he was drunk. He didn’t blame them. He wanted to smile. He envied those kids; he even loved them. All the safe people, unfrightened, living their unknowing lives.

  He hit the rhythm again: one foot, then the other. He found that if he swung his legs forward, attaining a certain balance, he didn’t drive the shafts of burning pain so high up into his body.

  Without warning, then—he didn’t even see the flash of headlights—a car screamed to a stop across the gleam of dark pavement. It looked familiar in a misty sort of way, as Dan stared at it. The police? A giddiness rose in him. They might lock him up for being drunk. Drunk! But when the door opened and a man stepped out and strode across toward him, he thought only that he must run. He had no strength or breath in him, but he knew that he should turn and run through the streets, down alleys, behind garages, anything, anywhere, rather than let this man reach him. He couldn’t move.

  “Mr. Hilliard. Let me take you home.”

&nbs
p; Dan recognized the voice, and finally, by peering through the three feet of dimness that separated them now, he put the voice to a face. Chuck Wright.

  Incredibility struck him; he went hollow and empty, staring.

  “Come on, sir, I’ll give you a lift.”

  Dan didn’t reply. The impossibility of the encounter still held him and he was without will as he crossed the damp pavement, opened the door of the car and slid into the seat. The leather was cold, penetrating to the chill inside him; but the seat was soft, incredibly soft and giving, and he lowered his body into it with gratitude only slightly edged with the knowledge that somehow, in some way, he had made or was making a horrible mistake.

  He closed his eyes then, and for a long time—he had no idea how long—he gave himself over to the luxury of softness and the close warmth of the car. Blankness.

  The young man’s voice lifted him from it. “I’ll have to know now, you see,” Chuck Wright was saying.

  Dan opened his eyes reluctantly. Chuck Wright drove a miniature sports car of foreign design. This was a larger car.

  “I’m going to take you home and go inside, Mr. Hilliard, and one of you—you or Cindy—is going to tell me what gives.”

  Behind the level flatness of the boy’s voice, even while he heard the words, Dan felt this other, somehow more vital question working its way up in him.

  “I’ll do anything I can to help, sir. You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?”

  Then the question took a double-shadowed shape: Why was Chuck driving this car and where had Dan seen it before?

  “No trouble,” Dan said, and his voice, in the canvas-enclosed interior of the car, sounded normal, absurdly normal. “Is this your car?”

  “My father’s. I borrowed it.”

  “Why?”

  Chuck shrugged. “Carburetor on mine’s acting up.”

  A lie, Dan Hilliard’s mind cried, with renewed alertness. He had it now. This large car, a convertible, was the one that had followed him earlier, the one he’d eluded back there before he crossed the river in the gray sedan. Chuck Wright had been following him then. Why?