He opened the door and slid in beside her, waving at the bugs. His face oozed heartfelt gratitude and sweat.
Katheren got water, started the motor and drove out on the highway again. Caligula continued to show uneasiness.
George was somewhere ahead, far ahead!
“He didn’t say anything about stopping? My husband, I mean?”
“Not a word.”
“The Tozers, and Nick, and the Beardsleys—they’re all still ahead?”
“Must be.”
“I thought I must be up with the Tozers. Their car has such a load, and I’ve been hurrying. It’s odd. How far ahead, would you say?”
“Search me.”
She did, out of the corner of her eye. A feeling of wrongness, of dismay, came over her. Smalnick was leaning forward slightly, in a strained position and with a peculiarly intent look on his face. He was craning his neck to stare up at the rear view mirror.
“What on earth are you watching back there?”
He started, but he laughed elaborately and relaxed against the cushion:
“Me? I ain’t watching anything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“So you don’t believe me. What of it?”
She was amazed by the hardness and contempt in his voice. She heard him say, “Pretty fast car, this one, ain’t it? Plenty of gas in it?”
Katheren knew then he was running away. She felt the cool desperation in the man. It took only an instant to realize he wasn’t afraid of her, wasn’t bothering to conceal anything from her.
Katheren saw much in that instant. She saw his smile, savage and reckless. She saw his thick, muscular neck. A conviction about the fatal silk necktie suddenly and illogically descended on her. She knew.
She also knew what was in his mind. A lone woman. How easy to overcome! How easy to silence! He would escape in the Packard to Mexico. And Katheren Woar? A shallow grave in the desert, holding her unidentifiable remains. It was a dreadfully familiar idea, horribly convenient, the echo of dozens of crimes she had read about in the newspapers.
The look of his face in the faint light of the dash made it all very clear.
Katheren, sick with fear and trembling from anger, put a foot firmly on the brakes.
“Want to pull up?”
He asked the question in a careless voice, to taunt her. She was quite unable to answer.
“Sure, I’ll drive,” he added cynically. “You can rest. It’s a good idea.”
Her knees shook. Her wrists behaved like limp string. Nevertheless, she brought the car to a crawl and turned it to the edge of the macadam shoulder. It was a wide road. She could just about make it...
He was getting ready to open the door.
She swung the wheel furiously. She jammed her foot down hard on the throttle. Like a frightened colt, the Packard squealed round in a half circle, straightened and lurched up the gentle grade in the direction it had come. The motor picked up speed, biting into those few miles that separated Katheren from Palmyra.
Her husband would be there. Caligula’s restlessness should have told her that before. Now, if only she could keep going!
But Lefty slammed the door shut and grabbed for the wheel. His foot kicked at Katheren’s ankle. She lost the throttle, found it again, thrust all her weight against it. The car balked, surged on, dancing wildly up the road.
For a very brief moment, she thought she might get away with it, might bring the car within shouting distance of the tiny star of yellow light in the black desert. Then Lefty’s arm curved round her neck. Its strength appalled her. At the same time, the motor went entirely mad. Lefty had forced the gears into neutral.
Through the desperate blur and confusion, a small voice kept telling Katheren, “This is how it feels. This is the end of you, my dear!”
The arm doubled like a nutcracker about her throat. The car was losing headway, tilting and slewing in the soft stuff at the edge of the road; Caligula’s tense body struggled behind her head, and his claws caught in her hair; but these matters were relatively unimportant. She fought blindly and hopelessly for life and air...
She could never clearly explain what happened, even to herself. Lefty’s muscles seemed to soften and relax, enough to let her fill her lungs at least. At the same time he cried out in a thin, high voice of terror. Somehow she was free of him, and tumbling down into the desert sand. She scrambled to her feet and ran with all the strength she had.
She ran with the sand sucking heavily at her feet and brittle branches whipping her legs and tugging her skirt. She ran with the thudding sound of pursuit a little way behind her.
Her wind was giving out. Then she lost a shoe and sprawled headlong beside a prickly bush, which was better than nothing in the extremity. She might not be seen in the darkness if she lay very still behind those sparse branches. She made herself flat against the hot earth, and forced her lungs to give no sound.
It might have been three minutes or three times as long that she lay there. Caligula soundlessly discovered her and crouched against her side. She placed a hand over his wet muzzle to silence his panting. He tried to be quiet about it.
She wasn’t being discovered, apparently. What was Smalnick doing?
Eventually she dared to raise herself on her hands and look about.
Faint starlight bathed the horizon and the shapeless floor of the valley. Very far away, the lamp at Palmyra glimmered. Nearer, the Packard loomed on the shallow ridge which the highway followed. It was silent, motionless.
And Smalnick? His silhouette stumbled through the glare of the headlamps. He seemed to be charging aimlessly about, oddly hunched over, searching the ground—looking for her tracks, possibly?
Whatever his intention, he soon went back to the side of the car and sat on the running board. He rested his head in his hands, or seemed to. He turned his face straight towards Katheren, and waited.
She thought he must be waiting for her to move and betray herself.
She cautiously lowered her head, hoping he couldn’t hear the heavy beating of her heart. She waited.
Far away, but not far enough, there rose the ghostly yammer of a pack of coyotes. Caligula trembled. Katheren suffered an eerie prickling along her spine. The desert grew still again. It, too, waited.
2
Caligula had been right.
Behind the Palmyra filling station stood Palmyra Hot Springs, a huddle of mud cabins surrounded by a high wood wall intended to shelter guests from the hot winds. When no wind blew, the wall was stifling. Tonight it was stifling.
Drawn up about a clump of bamboo before the place were the cars: the Lagonda, the Mercury, the Nash and the Chrysler, indications of more guests than Palmyra Hot Springs had enjoyed in years. Enjoyed? Not exactly that; the management, a woman who was evidently the mother of the naked boy in the filling station resented them, and let it be known. Altogether a strange place to take shelter for the night.
Katheren had been nearer to it than she knew, for the neglected road curved in a quarter circle, and the Springs were within calling distance of the place where she had picked up Lefty Shanker, alias Rex Shanley, alias Milton J. Smalnick of Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
Nick Leeds sat on a box before the gate in the wooden wall, staring moodily at the light in the filling station.
He sucked occasionally on a bottle of warmish beer. Woar picked his way round the shallow, eggy-colored puddle which may or may not have been a hot spring and joined him. He spotted a second bottle of beer, availed himself of it and squatted in the sand at Nick’s elbow.
Then Tozer appeared, and Beardsley, and Ray Kemp with one of the Winter twins.
“All’s quiet,” said Beardsley. “Not a sound out of Smalnick, for once.”
Boyd Winter said, “Burnet’s keeping an eye on his cabin, though, just in case.”
Then Nick scuffled a foot in the sand:
“Listen, what good does this do anybody, getting together here? We can’t do anything. This guy’s n
o cop,” and he nodded his head at Woar.
He was still under the effects of a slightly broken heart. He still refused to have anything to do with Ruth.
Tozer and Beardsley looked at Woar, putting the job up to him.
“Nick, you’re an ass,” said Woar quietly, as he dropped his empty beer bottle in the sand. “Shattering, I grant you, to find out that your fiancee has a husband living. But you can’t stay shattered forever. Ruth deserves better than that from you.”
Nick grunted.
“Grunt away,” continued Woar. “You’re going to hear it, whether you like it or not. Fifteen apparent strangers came together in eastern Ohio, and one of them was murdered. Fourteen apparent strangers, on their way to different destinations, stayed very much together for a journey of almost three thousand miles. If you don’t know by now that your cherished Ruth kept us together, you’re being extremely dense.
“The Beardsleys took Ruth under their wing. They’d take in anybody with forty thousand dollars, I dare say. Well, let’s add they have kind hearts. And a romantic young truck inspector followed Ruth. Love at first sight. The Tozers pursued Smalnick, because he represented a golden opportunity for a career for Connie. Ray Kemp pursued Connie. Very well, there are two westbound parties of tourists, one led by the Beardsleys with Ruth, another led by Smalnick, each held together by credible human weaknesses. But what kept Smalnick’s party so close to Ruth’s? That’s the essential mystery.
“What made my presence so undesirable? Who knew I was wanted by the police? That’s secondary, of course, yet not uninteresting to me.
“Why was Shanley murdered?
“Why was Cicely murdered?
“Why was Ruth Shanley in deadly fear?
“Perhaps you remember what she told us that day after her husband was murdered; his going to pieces, drinking, taking up with another woman, and at last promising to start over again in California. I was impressed with her loyalty to a rather loathsome husband, her blind, unquestioning faith in a man whom she couldn’t love, who had asked her to give up her own career of singing, who used her unmercifully for his own purposes. That was the man she refused to give away to any of us. That was the man she tried to shield, even when she was desperately afraid of him. That, in case you don’t know it, Nick, is constancy.
“In the course of feeling sorry for yourself, you might consider that you forced yourself on Ruth most of the way across America. You forced her quite against her will to promise to marry you. The irresistible pursuer, the lover who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, the thoroughly self-centered and stone-blind male, drowning his sorrows in lukewarm beer and soothing a bruised ego, because he fancies his sweetheart made a fool of him. A consequence you bloody well deserve. But which she doesn’t.”
Nick suddenly stood up, hurled his empty bottle into the night. It shattered somewhere, the bits tinkled. The sound touched off a distant, ghostly yelping of coyotes in the wilderness.
“Listen to me, Nick,” and Woar kept his voice low, because he knew Nick was ready to listen now. “She had a bad husband. He wanted to use her in an insurance fraud. He took advantage of her loyalty. She wasn’t told what he had in mind when they set off to the coast in a second-hand car. He must have a very plausible tongue. He persuaded her to accept a passenger somewhere about Uniontown—a drunk derelict, a tramp who wouldn’t be missed. The tramp was established as Rex Shanley, and murdered. After two bungling attempts. Those attempts gave Ruth her first inkling of her husband’s scheme. What she did after that is exactly what any woman would do, constantly threatened, constantly torn between what her husband would do to her and what the police would do to her if she spoke. And you, with your impassioned suit, your refusal to take no for an answer. Can’t you see she had to promise to marry you, or confess to the whole rotten mess?”
Nick’s knee-cap cracked. In a queer, tight voice he demanded, “Why couldn’t she tell me? Why couldn’t she trust me?”
“If she had tried to tell you, she would have gone the way of Cicely.”
“She was in on this too?”
“She was the blonde siren Ruth’s husband had promised to give up. Let’s put it all together as well as we can. The idea probably grew out of Rex Shanley’s admiration and envy for a boyhood friend, Milton Smalnick, who had pushed his way to considerable success. Let’s say he wrote Smalnick one day, asked for an opportunity. Smalnick replied from Hollywood in a helpful vein, even told Rex he could drive an imported car out to California for him and so earn his traveling expenses.
“Rex wanted more. He wanted to get rich quick. He wanted to arrive in California with a fortune in his pocket. He devised what many men have devised before him—an insurance fraud.
“He wanted to start life over again, but with the blonde Cicely, not the faithful Ruth. And he wanted to leave the old Rex Shanley, a debt-ridden failure, far behind in the past.
“He could handle Ruth. He insured his life, told her a tale, started west. In Uniontown, Pennsylvania, he let her know a bit of what she was in for. Cicely showed up in Uniontown with the Lagonda. They threatened her into taking a tramp—you identified him yourself, Nick—to drive the Pontiac. They followed close after her. She knew now she had to do what she was told or be killed.
“She didn’t know her husband’s scheme yet. When attempts were made to kill the drunken tramp, she began to understand. She tried to warn us. We weren’t available. Then he was murdered, and she was in it as deeply as her husband. He or Cicely kept at her side, prompting her, warning her, bludgeoning her into doing what was necessary. You see, the usual insurance fraud is worked this way: one insures another person, and murders him. But to murder one’s own self, counting on an obviously innocent other person to collect the reward—that’s the new twist Lefty devised.
“Ruth saw her only means of putting them off, though. They wouldn’t harm her till she collected the insurance. If she neither collected it nor refused it finally, she was worth forty thousand dollars to them alive. Even when Lefty used physical punishment to force her to sign the claim in Kansas City, she stood fast. He dared not go too far.
“He played his game well. Cicely was the one who began to crack. Impersonating Mrs. Smalnick, originally intended for one night’s disguise, became difficult to keep up for days. The strain began to tell. She was all for disposing of Ruth, calling the whole scheme off and running for safety. Lefty wouldn’t have it.
“He knew who I was. Cicely had spotted me at Migler’s, torn down a handbill with my picture on it, and used the knowledge whenever she could. Lefty put sugar in my gas tank, even wrecked my car and burned it up eventually.
“However, when Cicely smashed completely, tried to kill Ruth and escape with what she could take from the hotel safe in Elm Point, Lefty grew desperate. He murdered her practically under my eyes. I was beginning to suspect him then, and his very convincing appearance of rescuing Cicely had the ironic effect of putting me off.
“I was still searching for a reason for Cicely’s lying in wait for you, Nick, in St. Louis. I connected the two of you, rather to your disadvantage. Only after I talked with you in La Junta did I realize she had been set to lure you away from Ruth’s side. Oh, you’d have resisted her charms, probably. I hope so.
“In any case, I wasn’t sure of much till Ruth balked at the wedding. I knew then she had seen her husband. He had been in Santa Fe, probably in the street under her window, making signs to her.
“I pieced the relationship through the seven-fold necktie, which inadvisably Lefty had been trying to plant on any of us he could. His ideas about disposing of evidence are as crude as his efforts at murder, I’m afraid. At any rate, when Lefty picked up the necktie used to strangle the tramp, and for a moment accepted it as his own, one that Ruth had bought him, he betrayed himself. The death’s head ring he had taken from the finger of the tramp when changing that poor wretch’s identifying properties was intended to surprise him. It didn’t, I’m afraid. It surprised Henry Tozer more th
an anybody. However, the pretended Milton Smalnick is the murderer of Cicely and a nameless tramp—and the question is, which of us is going to turn him over to the police and see to his trial and conviction?”
“You?”
“Sorry. Not I. Though I’m sure I can’t be deported from my bride; I’ll be exonerated in San Francisco, I gather; I happen to be giving up criminal detection this evening. Sorry.”
Beardsley excused himself, and Henry stared pointedly down at Nick.
After a flicker of hesitation, Nick growled, “So it’s me? All right. I’ll turn him over for you—after I get through with him.”
Woar started back into the court. It was he who found Burnet lying on his face in the sand, with a large bump oozing blood at the back of his head.
“Did you catch him?” Burnet asked when he first opened his eyes.
“No.”
“Then he’s wise. He busted loose.”
Out on the desert, the coyotes set up a weird chorus of baying.
3
Katheren heard them bay, and knew they were close.
She stealthily lifted her head. Smalnick still sat crouched on the running-board of the car. He still seemed to be staring at her.
Caligula growled and trembled. He struggled to free himself. Three pairs of moonlit eyes glinted coldly at Katheren from the nearest clump of sage. They had three pale, motionless bodies, like large dogs or small wolves. Her breath caught in her throat. Without a sound, the three beasts vanished.
Instantly there were a dozen of them, giving voice as they ran past her and away. Caligula fought furiously against her hand. It took all her strength to hold him.
When he resigned himself and whimpered uneasily, she was able to look again towards the glare of light from the headlamps.
First one or two, then the whole pack flitted warily through the light. Smalnick never moved. He seemed horribly silent, incredibly unaware...
Somewhere Katheren had once heard that coyotes were cowards, that they never attacked a human. They stalked Smalnick. The gray bodies leaped at him. He never moved, till he fell under the attack. From that strange, small, distant nightmare of movement came no sound but a snarl.
If A Body Page 22