The Desperate Hours

by Joeseph Hays

  Tears came to Cindy Hilliard, tears for the first time since it had begun. Tears of rage and frustration and despair. It was over now, all of it; in the little she had been asked to do, she had somehow failed. What would happen if she didn’t return to the house before 11 :30, as Glenn Griffin had insisted? What would happen then to the others?

  By now Dan Hilliard was back in his office. He was waiting for Cindy. He, too, was recalling Glenn Griffin’s insistence that Cindy return to the house with Dan. Griffin made clear that his reason for this was that he wanted to be sure, when he left, that his man—the one Dan knew was named Flick—had already been paid for the job he was to do. But Dan mistrusted this explanation as he mistrusted every word that came from those lips. He had about decided that Griffin would attempt to take Cindy and Eleanor with him, on the theory that two women with two men in a car that was not known would be the safest way to get out of town; Dan was aware also that Griffin possessed no better tool with which to tie Dan’s hands. In that way, Griffin and Robish would have all the time they needed. And Dan was inclined to think—in that deadened cool way he had now—that with that setup the four of them could probably get by those patrol cars that he had seen in the neighborhood last night. And then what?

  It was not going to be that way. Dan was going to see to it. At that point, the value of living dropped into nothing. He realized now, sitting behind his desk, that there is an ultimate juncture at which the question of living or dying loses its meaning and importance. At that juncture, you still fight to live— that’s probably automatic—but your success is measured then not by whether you survive but by what greater catastrophe you prevent.

  And there you have it. That’s where all of it had carried him, down their criminal depths and then up the steep ascent toward the only conclusion that a decent human being could reach. Now he had only to wait, and without impatience, although the sound of his own watch ticking cut into his flesh, through nerves, into the marrow of his bones.

  When the door opened, he stood at once, knowing it was his daughter, that it could be no one else. But the man who entered was very tall, with a narrow head under a battered, water-stained hat, with bloodshot eyes and a slow but definite manner as he crossed to stand in front of Dan Hilliard with his hands jammed down into the pockets of his trench coat. The man looked at Dan Hilliard for a long moment, and Dan’s blood chilled. The man flipped back his coat and Dan caught a quick glimpse of badge, of leather holster, of gun butt.

  Very slowly then, Dan sank back.

  “Morning, Mr. Hilliard,” the man said. “My name’s Webb. Deputy Sheriff, Marion County. I received your letter, Mr. Hilliard.”

  Dan threw back his head, feeling the remnants of pain all through his body, and thinking, stunned: This is the thing you’ve worked against, lied against, fought against. It can’t go like this now, now with the money in your pocket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Deputy.”

  It appeared then that Jesse Webb lost his temper. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rested on them, with the palms flat against the top of Dan Hilliard’s desk, the lean body hunched forward. “Look,” he said in a hoarse, cracked voice. “Look, Mr. Hilliard, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have it, hear? It’s taken a long time, I started from scratch, but I’m here, and we don’t have time to waste, do we, Mr. Hilliard? So let’s have the rest of it now, straight, from the beginning. Then we can decide what we’re going to do about it. Goddammit, start talking, Hilliard!”

  Whatever he saw on Dan Hilliard’s face then stopped him; he straightened, taking a deep breath, and looked past Dan Hilliard, out the windows. “Sorry,” he mumbled. And then in a much softer, gentler tone: “But what are we going to do about it? That’s the question now. What do we do, Mr. Hilliard?”

  It was going on u o’clock! You can’t wait all day for something to happen, Chuck. He was crouched now behind the shrubbery at the corner of the garage, concentrating on the head that appeared, was gone, then inevitably reappeared behind the transparent curtains in Mr. Hilliard’s den. The feeling persisted in him, for some reason that he couldn’t explain, that if he waited too long for an accident or impulse to draw that man out of that room, he might never make it inside in time. He no longer considered the danger; if he used his training and was cautious, he might be able to help. If it came to endangering any of them, he wouldn’t act at all. But that decision could only be made when he was inside the house and knew what was going on, what was being planned.

  You’ve got to create your own diversion, he told himself with savage calm.

  He had selected and then rejected various possible methods. Whatever he chose must serve its purpose by alarming them slightly, alerting them even, but not to the point of action against Mrs. Hilliard or the boy, not to the point of panic. He finally hit upon a way that could be explained, perhaps by Mrs. Hilliard inside, as a perfectly natural occurrence, especially after the wind of the last two days. Whether the two men would respond to the sound itself or, later, to a logical explanation of it—well, that was one of the risks, but comparatively a small one.

  He placed the gun carefully in his hip pocket. Then he took the small key into his left hand and picked up the two-foot length of dead bough that he had been studying for some time. The wood was rotten and crumbling; perhaps it would not make sufficient noise. And it was not as heavy as he would have liked; it might not travel all the way over the pitched roof and strike against the top of the front porch or in that general area where it would have to fall to draw the man from the rear of the house. But if it did, it would certainly be easy to explain. Branches often dropped onto the roof from the large but dying oak to the west of the house. Chuck remembered one night in the living room when this had happened, startling him so that Cindy laughed for minutes. With the sound of that laughter still in his mind, he planted his legs, drew back, and let go.

  The branch twirled and looped far up over the roof, cleared the top of the inverted V by inches and dropped out of sight. Then Chuck fell fiat and waited, listening. The sound came— first a thud, then a scudding as the broken bough tumbled and bounced down the far pitch of roof. Chuck’s eyes were on the window. The thin but transparent curtains flew back; but he couldn’t move. He saw a square block of unshaven face appear, the eyes darting about. Then the curtain swished down and the head disappeared completely.

  It was his chance. He had to take it, knowing, as he ran, in long silent glides, that a bullet might stop him now that he was upright and in full view. He reached the porch, crouching now, not yet breathing hard.

  He slipped the key into the lock. In the distance, deep in the house, he heard two men’s voices, then a woman’s. He edged the door open. There was one small but rather sharp crack of sound. He closed it behind him, made sure it was locked again.

  The back hall was dim, very small. He paused, still listening. He was beginning to breathe heavily now, as he heard footsteps lumbering through the house, coming to the rear. Chuck, moving very slowly in the semi-darkness of the basement stairs, crept down one step at a time. The damp odor of the Hilliards’ basement struck at the hunger in him. He glanced hastily around in the comparative brightness.

  Above, from the direction of Mr. Hilliard’s den, the thunderous steps halted and a deep voice said, “All clear here, Griffin.”

  Farther away, a lighter one—a strangely high-pitched voice —called, “Okay. We take the woman’s word for it. This time.”

  “Who’s jumpy?” the first voice shouted, and a mean, ugly laugh was mixed into the words.

  Chuck took up his position directly under the stairs so that he could cover anyone coming down the steps. He rested against the musty-smelling wall, trying to quiet his breathing. The Japanese automatic had already begun to feel natural in his right hand.

  7

  It didn’t take Dan Hilliard long, perhaps five minutes, to give Jesse Webb the facts, some of which the deputy gestured aside, indicating he was aware of them, some of w
hich he leaned forward to hear with particular intentness. He interrupted only once, to question Dan Hilliard closely about his daughter, Cynthia, and exactly where she had gone, and what the idea behind that could be.

  At the end of his explanation, Dan said, “This man Flick is going to kill you, Deputy. He’s going to do it for the $3,000 my daughter’s giving him now.”

  “So that’s the way of it,” Jesse Webb said, rubbing a hand over his shadowed, unshaven face and glancing around Dan Hilliard’s office for no reason at all. “So that’s the way he was doing it.”

  “We had no choice, Webb.”

  “Who said you did?” The deputy sounded angry. “We’ll take care of Flick, Mr. Hilliard. There’re ways of handling scum like that.” He brushed it all aside then, a short downward handstroke of impatience, but he heard what Dan Hilliard was saying.

  “I wrote this letter a while ago, Deputy. Another anonymous one, but you would have known who wrote it in time, after—“

  That he didn’t finish, but pushed the letter across the desk.

  Jesse Webb read it quickly, then let his eyes drift to Dan Hilliard’s worn and haggard face. “Thanks, Mr. Hilliard. With those two names—mine and Flick’s—I reckon we could have prevented it. Nice thinking. Even now, huh?” Then he twisted the sheet of paper in his hand. “Even at a time like this, huh?” It was Dan Hilliard’s turn for impatience. “What else could I do? Let that killer shoot you in the back some night? Plant a bomb in your car?”

  The anger in Dan Hilliard’s voice made Jesse Webb smile, but only a little and a trifle wanly. “If your daughter went to Flick,” he said, “he’ll be picked up. There’s a city detective following Miss Cynthia Hilliard right now.”

  At this Dan stood up, his knees caving slightly. “You fool,” he cried. “You damned idiot!”

  “All right, all right, let off steam now, Hilliard. Take a swing at me. I’ve been wanting to sock someone for two days myself. How did I know? I was trying to protect your girl. How did I know what they’d send her into?”

  Dan Hilliard subsided, but he did not sit down. He looked ashamed now, behind the new sharp intentness springing into his face—ashamed of the violence. “I’ve been waiting for her, that’s all. It’s late. Those fellows are going to get anxious, Webb. You might not know what that means. I do.” He was climbing into his coat. “I have to get back up there now. Without her. I suppose.” He pulled his hat down low and hard.

  “She’ll be all right, Hilliard. Don’t worry about her. I swear she’ll-

  “Swear,” Dan said in a low ironic whisper. “What can you swear to? That they won’t somehow get word of this, those two, that their man Flick has been picked up? That they won’t jump to the idea that I caused that? Or Cindy? Can you swear they won’t shoot my wife or my son, thinking I double-crossed them? Swear! What can you swear to?”

  “To this, Hilliard. That if there’s one less Hilliard in that house of yours, there’s one less innocent person might be killed in the next hour!”

  Dan picked up the brief case and moved to the door, turned. “Thanks, Webb. I’m sorry I blew up.”

  “Why be sorry? Look, Hilliard”—and he took two long strides toward him—“look, nobody blames you. Not for anything. Get that, hear? Nobody in his right mind can raise a voice against what you’ve done. I’ll see to it. I’ll see to it!”

  Dan Hilliard met the tall young deputy’s gaze. There was a brief moment of silence, during which the two men understood each other and found that understanding a warmth between them. Both felt they had known each other for a long time, and it was a strange but not disturbing sensation, coming at such a time—oddly satisfying.

  “There’s more to it than that, though, isn’t there?” Dan Hilliard asked, glancing at his watch, which read seven minutes after 11.

  The other nodded. “There’s this. That story about the young Griffin kid shouldn’t have broken in the paper this morning. I tried to stop it, but somebody had a job to do. They did that job. I’ve got a job, too, Mr. Hilliard, same as you have. Only mine’s a little different, hear? It’s to keep those two from getting away, killing whatever hostages they take along and then go on to kill others some place else.”

  Dan looked at his watch again. “You’re saying you’ve got them now and you’re going to see they don’t get away, no matter what.”

  “I’m saying,” Jesse Webb went on in that dry, cracked voice of his, “that I don’t want to see anyone killed any more than you do, but we’re both going to have to decide the odds when the time comes. There’s no way to predict, that’s all.”

  Dan Hilliard’s shoulders slumped, but only slightly, and he said, “I’m not blaming you, either, Webb.”

  Then Jesse Webb cleared his throat. “If there’s any way to get them to come out alone, of course, on the run—” But he broke off. “You want a lift?” he asked briskly.

  “I’m supposed to take a taxi.”

  “Oh.” Then: “How about a gun?”

  Dan hefted the brief case and gave his head a negative twist.

  “They search you when you come in?”

  This time Dan Hilliard nodded, but in the middle of the movement, while his hand reached to the doorknob, he went very still and quiet all through.

  “Good luck, Mr. Hilliard,” Jesse Webb said.

  “I’ve changed my mind. About the gun.”

  “You want one?”—a touch of surprise there, an edge of caution.

  “Yes.”

  “So they can have another one in there? You said they had only one now. Listen, Hilliard—if there’s any shooting, we’re coming in.”

  Heavily then, a decision made: “May I have it?”

  Jesse Webb reached into his coat and handed over the .38 from his shoulder holster. The gun was heavy in Dan Hilliard’s tired grasp, heavy and unwieldy and unnatural. He fumbled with it a moment, but only a moment, shifting the brief case under his arm, finally breaking the gun; he shook the steel-jacketed bullets into his big palm. He crossed to the desk again.

  “Are you crazy, Hilliard?” Jesse Webb demanded.

  “Possibly. Only a crazy man’d go into that house with an empty gun, wouldn’t he? Griffin doesn’t think I’m crazy, deputy. That’s a very, very long shot, but I don’t have any short ones in sight. Do you?”

  Jesse Webb shook his head, and as Dan Hilliard crossed to the door again, the deputy said, “One more thing.” It was too late then to stop, but a sense of fairness drove him on anyway:

  “There’s one more card I haven’t mentioned. It’s face down but this is it. A young fellow named Wright. Charles K. Wright—”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t be sure. I don’t know. But there’s a strong chance that he’s hiding near your house somewhere.”

  “Good God,” Dan Hilliard breathed, stunned, surprised too that anything was capable of adding to the solid weight of shock and anguish and fear in him now.

  “As I say, I don’t know. I just thought maybe you ought to have the whole picture.”

  “Thanks, Deputy,” Dan Hilliard said, turning to the door, with all the weight showing in his heavy sloping shoulders and plodding gait as he disappeared.

  “The poor sonofabitch,” Jesse Webb muttered, but with a kind of sad and strange reverence that shone in his own tired eyes.

  Under the basement stairs, Chuck Wright was trying to make his own decision. When do you go upstairs, Chuck? How long do you stick down here listening? His watch read 11:30 now, and above his head this particular time seemed to have, for the two men, a certain importance. The disadvantage of his position, Chuck had decided, was that he could not hear all the conversation that occurred up above, even though most of it was in loud snarled whispers between the dining room and den; and it was hard for him to make any accurate judgments on the basis of what snatches he could decipher.

  By 11:30, he gathered, the young-voiced man toward the front of the house—that would be Glenn Griffin—had expected to receive a telephone
call from a man whom he seemed careful not to name. Perhaps he named the man, but Chuck didn’t hear it. At any rate, his voice was shaking now in a way that Chuck didn’t like at all.

  “Didn’t that gal give him the dough? What’s happening? Robish, what you figure’s happening? Why don’t he call and say it’s fixed like he promised?”

  “I don’t know the guy,” Robish replied from the den. “Wouldn’t catch me paying that kind of dough for a job I could do myself. I’d a-done it for you, Griffin. Give me a gun.” That was, Chuck Wright decided then, the second time the man referred to a gun in that way. Did it mean that he didn’t have one? That there was only one gun up there between the two of them?

  No rushing it now, Chuck reminded himself. No mistakes now. Take it easy. You can handle them both, and easy too, if they have only one gun. But you can’t be sure what would happen to Mrs. Hilliard or the little boy if you tried it. So take it easy and stay where you are for a while.

  But the sound of the younger man’s high-pitched voice continued to work on Chuck’s nerves. It reminded him of something or someone, but he couldn’t remember what or whom. If you could flush them out, both of them, from behind, while Mrs. Hilliard and the boy were still upstairs-

  He began to think of this, listening to the steady pacing in the front of the house now. Those steps were not swift; they reminded Chuck Wright, in their slow, steady rhythm, of wild animals he had seen in cages. And with the memory came the picture of those sad, bewildered but steadily ferocious eyes.

  All at once then, when he heard Glenn Griffin again— “Where’s Hilliard? Why ain’t he back here?”—Chuck realized what the blurred vehemence of that voice recalled to him. The thought struck him with a smashing impact and he felt a renewed urgency tighten through his body. He remembered then, not a wild animal, but a man who resembled one, a certain Sergeant Thomas, one of the toughest, hardest men he had known; he remembered Sergeant Thomas’s hardened sunbaked hulk of body writhing on the jungle floor and those glassy eyes, without recognition in them, and the lifted carbine that seemed a part of the berserk man’s arm. Chuck Wright remembered all this, and the report that had drifted back after Sergeant Thomas was shipped, unknowing and marble-eyed, to a stateside hospital: the sergeant’s condition was improving but he had bashed in the head of a guard in the mental hospital. It was the only time Chuck Wright had witnessed the crack-up of a human being, but he recognized now in that trembling voice upstairs the same tremor, the same uncertain inward terror.