“Like your friend Knudson’s? I worked in a municipal police department for five years, and then I quit. There were too many cases where the official version clashed with the facts I knew.”
“Ralph is honest. He’s been a policeman all his life, but he still has a decent conscience.”
“Two of them, probably. Most good policemen have a public conscience and a private conscience. I just have the private conscience; a poor thing, but my own.”
“I was right about you. You do have a passion for justice.” The deep eyes focused on mine and probed them, as if a passion for justice was something she could see and remember the shape of. Or a strange growth in a man that could be X-rayed out.
“I don’t know what justice is,” I said. “Truth interests me, though. Not general truth if there is any, but the truth of particular things. Who did what when why. Especially why. I wonder, for example, why you care whether I’m interested in justice. It could be an indirect way of asking me to drop out of this case.”
She was silent for a time. “No. It isn’t that. I have some regard for truth myself. I suppose it’s a woman’s regard: I want the truth if it doesn’t hurt too much. And I suppose I’m a little afraid of a man who cares strongly about something. You really care, don’t you, whether Reavis is innocent or guilty?”
“Doesn’t Knudson and his decent conscience?”
“He did, but I don’t know if he still does. There are a lot of things going on that I don’t understand.” That made two of us. “My esteemed husband, for instance, has retired to his room and refuses to emerge. He claims that he’ll spend the rest of his life in his room, like Marcel Proust.” Hatred flashed in the ocean-colored eyes and disappeared, like a shark-fin.
I crushed out my cigarette, which tasted acrid on an empty stomach. “This Marcel something-or-other, is he a friend of yours?”
“So now you’re going to play dumb again?”
“I might as well. It seems to be all the rage in this ménage. You’re perfectly willing to talk about abstractions like truth and justice. But you haven’t told me a single damned fact that might help to find the person that wrote the letter, or the person that killed your mother-in-law.”
“Ah, the letter. We’re back at the letter again.”
“Mrs. Slocum,” I said, “the letter wasn’t written about me. It was written about you. You hired me to find out who wrote it, remember?”
“So much has happened since, hasn’t it? It seems unimportant now.”
“Now that she’s dead?”
“Yes,” she answered calmly. “Now that she’s dead.”
“Has it occurred to you that the letter-writer and the murderer may be the same person?”
“It hadn’t. I can’t see any connection.”
“Neither can I. With co-operation, I might; if you’d tell me what you know about the relations between the people in this house.”
She raised her shoulders and let them fall in a gesture of weary resignation. “I can’t claim immunity to questioning on the grounds of extreme youth, like Cathy. I am most frightfully tired. What do you want to know?”
“How long you’ve known Knudson, and how well.”
She gave me a second slow and probing look. “Just the last year or so, not at all intimately.”
“Yesterday you mentioned a friend of yours, by the name of Mildred Fleming. She might be able to tell me a different story. Or don’t you confide in your friends, either?”
She answered coldly: “I think you’re being insolent, Mr. Archer.”
“Very good, ma’am. We’ll play the game according to the formal rules. Unless you want to call it on account of insolence.”
“I haven’t decided about that. I’ll tell you one thing, though, I do know Walter Kilbourne. In fact, I saw him tonight.”
Knudson’s heavy feet came down the hall, his sloping shoulders filled the doorway. “I finally routed the sheriff out of bed. He’ll meet us at the Notch.”
“You,” I said, “not me. Mrs. Slocum has just been kind enough to offer me another drink, and I need it. I’ll give the sheriff a statement in the morning. Take the kid along. His name is Musselman and he’s in my car, probably sleeping by now.—You should get some good tread-marks where the truck pulled onto the shoulder to turn around.”
“Thank you very much for the masterly suggestion.” His tone was ironic, but he seemed to be relieved that I wasn’t going along. He and the sheriff could putter around the scene of the crime, gather up the remains and drive them back to town. Nothing was going to be done.
“See that the kid has a decent place to sleep, will you? And give him this for me, I owe it to him.” I handed him a ten-dollar bill.
“Whatever you say. Goodnight, Mrs. Slocum. I appreciate your co-operation.”
“It was a pleasure.”
Old lovers, I thought again, playing with double entendres. Knudson went out. My initial liking for him had changed to something quite different. Still, he was a man, and a policeman. He wouldn’t push his way to what he wanted over an old lady’s dead body. He’d choose a harder way.
Maude Slocum rose and took my empty glass. “Do you really want a drink?”
“A short one, please, with water.”
“I think I’ll join you.”
She poured me two fingers of whisky from the decanter, four fingers for herself. She took it at a gulp.
I sipped at mine. “What I really want is the dope on Kilbourne. I’ll take that straight.”
“God-damned truthoholic,” she said surprisingly. The idea of the whisky had hit her before it had time to work. She sat down beside me heavily and loosely. “I don’t know anything about Walter Kilbourne, nothing against him I mean.”
“That makes you unique, I guess. Where did you see him tonight?”
“At the Boardwalk restaurant in Quinto. I thought Cathy deserved a change after the dreary day she’d had with the police and—her father. Anyway, I drove her over to Quinto to have dinner, and I saw Walter Kilbourne in the restaurant. He was with a blonde young creature, a really lovely girl.”
“His wife. Did you have any conversation with him?”
“No. He didn’t recognize me, and I’d never particularly liked him. I did ask the headwaiter what he was doing here. Apparently his yacht is in the harbor.”
It was what I needed. Tiredness had drained my body of energy and begun to attack my will. I’d been chinning myself on the present moment, too exhausted to see beyond it. Now I could see myself crossing the pass to Quinto.
But there were more questions to ask. “How did you happen to know him in the first place?”
“He was here a couple of years ago. He made a business arrangement with my mother-in-law, to test for oil on her ranch. This was when they’d made the big strike on the other side of the valley, before they’d touched this side. A crew of men came out with Kilbourne and spent several weeks on our property, drilling holes and setting off explosive charges—I forget the technical name for it.”
“Seismographing?”
“Seismographing. They found the oil all right, but nothing came of it. Mother”—her lips moved round the word as if it tasted strange— “Mother decided that oil derricks would obstruct her precious view, and broke off relations with Kilbourne. There was more to it than that, of course: she didn’t like the man, and I don’t think she trusted him. So we’ve continued to live in genteel poverty.”
“Weren’t other companies interested? Oil’s getting pretty scarce in this part of the world.”
“She didn’t really want to lease to anyone. Besides, there was something in the original contract for the exploration; it gave Kilbourne’s company first refusal.”
“Naturally, it would.”
Her erratic hand reached blindly for a cigarette. I took one out of the box, put it between her fingers, lit it for her. She sucked on it uncontrolledly like a child. The whisky had combined with her fatigue and given her nervous system a hard one-two. Her f
ace, her muscles, her voice, were rapidly going to pieces.
So I asked her the question that would hurt, and carefully watched her face for its effect: “You won’t be living in genteel poverty much longer, will you? I suppose that you and your husband will be getting in touch with Kilbourne. Or is that why he’s up here now?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me,” she said. “I imagine, though, that that’s just what we’ll do. I must talk to James about it.”
She closed her eyes. From the places where it was pinned to the durable bone, the flesh of her face fell in thin slack folds. The folds made dark lines slanting downward from the corners of her closed eyes, the wings of her nose, the edges of her jaw, deep charcoal shadows cartooning dissolution.
I said goodnight and left her.
chapter 18
There was only one light in the lower part of the house, a shaded wall-lamp in the hall midway between the front door and the kitchen. It cast a brownish glow into the alcove under the stairs where the telephone was. A copy of the Quinto-Nopal Valley telephone directory lay on the low table beside the telephone. I flipped through it to the F’s. Only one Franks was listed, a Simeon J. residing at 467 Tanner Terrace. I called his number and listened to half-a-dozen rings at the other end. Then a voice answered, harsh and surly: “Franks speaking. That the station?”
I had opinions to express, but I kept them to myself.
“Hello,” he said, “this is Franks.”
I hung up. And heard the soft susurrus of feet descending the stairs above my head, a whispering amplified by the sounding-board of the stairs and my keyed-up senses. A face like a pale moon against a cloud of hair leaned over the banister.
“Who is it?” the girl said.
“Archer.” I moved out into the hall where she could see me plainly. “Aren’t you in bed yet, Cathy?”
“I daren’t close my eyes. I keep seeing Grandma’s face.” Both of her hands clung to the oaken rail, as if she needed a grip on solid reality. “What are you doing?”
“Telephoning. I’m finished now.”
“I heard Mr. Knudson telephoning before. Is it true that Pat is dead?”
“Yes. You liked him?”
“Sometimes, when he was nice. He was a lot of fun. He taught me how to dance, but don’t tell father. He didn’t really kill Grandma, did he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Neither do I.” She glanced furtively down the hall, which was choked with shadows. “Where are the others?”
“Knudson has gone. Your mother’s in the sitting-room. I think she’s asleep.”
She drew her hand back further into the soft folds of her robe. “I’m glad that he’s gone anyway.”
“I have to go now, too. Will you be all right?”
“Yes, I’ll be all right.” She came down the rest of the way, her forearm sliding on the banister. “I’d better wake mother up and send her to bed.”
“Maybe you’d better.”
She followed me to the door. “Goodnight, Mr. Archer. I’m sorry I was rude to you last night. I must have felt that something was going to happen. I’m very sensitive, you know, at least that’s what people tell me. I’m like a dog that howls at the moon when there’s trouble in the air.”
“But you didn’t see Reavis last night.”
“No. I was kind of afraid that he might come—I hate emotional scenes—but he didn’t.” Her finger described a cross on her silken breast. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” She giggled in sudden strained mirth: “What a ghastly thing to say: ‘hope to die’.”
I said: “Goodnight, Cathy.”
Number 467 Tanner Terrace was a white frame bungalow in one of the cheaper suburbs, standing among a dozen houses like it. They all had slanting roofs, useless green shutters on the two front windows, and the rootless temporary air of a row of trailers in a vacant lot. You told them apart by the numbers stenciled on the curb. Also, Sergeant Franks’s house contained light. It leaked around the edges of the closed Venetian blinds in the front windows and sprinkled the struggling lawn.
I drove on past, U-turned at the first intersection and parked a hundred feet short of the house. Franks was a policeman. In his own territory he could make trouble for me. I wasn’t the one I wanted trouble to be made for. I turned off engine and lights, slid down in the seat, dozed off with my consciousness slightly ajar. The sound of a nearing motor woke me a moment before bright headlights swept the street.
They straightened out and came to rest in front of Franks’s bungalow. There were three blue taxi-lights above the windshield. A man climbed awkwardly out of the back seat and started up the walk. His gait was a little lopsided; in the dim light I thought he was a cripple. The front door opened before he reached the low concrete stoop. He moved forward into the light, a short thick man in a brown horsehide windbreaker. Its right side bulged, and its right sleeve dangled empty. The front door closed on him.
The taxi turned in a driveway and rolled back to the curb in front of the house. Its lights winked out. I waited for a minute or two and left my car without slamming the door. The taxi-driver was stretched out in his seat, waiting for sleep.
I asked him: “Are you busy?”
He answered me with his eyes half-closed: “Sorry. I’m on a return trip.”
“To where?”
“Quinto.”
“That’s where I’m going.”
“Sorry, mister. This is a Quinto cab. I can’t take Nopal fares.”
“You can if you don’t charge me.”
“Then what’s the percentage?” He sat up straight, and his eyes snapped all the way open. They were blue and bulging in a hollow face. “Listen, what goes on?”
I showed him a ten-dollar bill. “Your percentage,” I said.
The bill crackled in my fingers, as if it was taking fire under the intensity of his gaze. “Okay, I guess it’s okay, if the other guy don’t object.” He leaned back to open the door for me.
I got in. “He shouldn’t object. Where is he going in Quinto?”
“I don’t know, where I picked him up, I guess. Down by the boardwalk.”
“Ever see him before?”
It was one question too many. He turned in his seat and looked me over. “You’re a cop?”
“It didn’t used to show.”
“Look’it here, I didn’t take your money. I didn’t say for sure I would take your money. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t touch your money. So how about just getting out and leaving me be. I’m trying to make an honest living, for gosh sakes.”
“All right. I’ll get out, and you beat it back to Quinto.”
“For gosh sakes, have a heart. This is a seven-dollar run.”
“Take it out of this.” I held out the ten-dollar bill.
He shied from it wall-eyed. “Uh-uh. No thanks.”
“Then beat it fast. There’s going to be trouble here, and you don’t want to wait for it.”
Before I got out, I tucked the bill between the cushions and the back of the seat, where taxi-drivers had a habit of looking. The forward motion of the cab closed the door. I went back to my car and waited. The man with the bulky right side and the empty sleeve came out almost immediately. He said goodnight to someone and turned toward the street. He was on the sidewalk before he noticed that the cab was gone.
He looked up and down the road, and I slid lower in my seat. His left hand pantomimed disgust in an outward-pushing gesture. His voice announced clearly that he would be fornicated with. I recognized his voice. When he turned to look at the house, the lights were gone. Shrugging lopsidedly, he started to walk in the direction of the highway. I let him walk a block before I started my motor, and pulled even with him as he reached the second corner. My gun was on the seat beside me.
“You want a lift?” I blurred my voice.
“I sure could use one, Jack.” He stepped off the curb into the road, within the circle of light from the streetlamp overhead. An oil-stained fedora cast a s
hadow over his dark broad face, from which the eye-whites gleamed.
“Quinto?”
“This is my lucky—” He recognized me or my car, and the sentence was never finished. His left hand dropped to the leather-flapped pocket of his windbreaker.
I swung the door wide open and waved my gun. His fingers were twisting at the leather button that held the flap over the pocket.
“Get in,” I said. “You don’t want it to happen to the other arm? I have a passion for symmetry.”
He got in. I drove left-handed in low to a dark lacuna between streetlights, and parked at the curb. I shifted the gun to my left hand and held it low to his body. The gun I took from his pocket was a heavy revolver which smelt of fresh oil. I added it to the arsenal in my glove compartment and said: “Well.”
The man beside me was breathing like a bull. “You won’t get far with this, Archer. Better get back to your hunting-grounds before it happens to you.”
I told him I liked it where I was. My right hand found the wallet in his left hip-pocket, flipped it open under the dashlights. His driver’s license bore the name Oscar Ferdinand Schmidt.
I said: “Oscar Ferdinand Schmidt is a very euphonious name. It will go well in a murder indictment.”
He advised me to commit sodomy. I held my impulse to hurt him. Next to the driver’s license, an envelope of transparent celluloid held a small blue card which identified Oscar F. Schmidt as a Special Officer of the Company Police of the Pacific Refining Company. There were bills in the folding-money compartment, but nothing bigger than a twenty. I tucked the bills in his pocket, and the wallet in mine.
“I want my wallet back,” he said, “or I slap a charge on you.”
“You’re going to be busy fighting one of your own. The sheriff is going to find your wallet in the brush by the Notch Trail.”
He was silent for a minute, except that the horsehide jacket creaked like a bellows with his breathing. “The sheriff will give it back to me, without no questions asked. How do you think the sheriff gets elected?”
The Drowning Pool Page 14