The Wailing Frail (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 11

  “Well, I was drivin’ home,” he told the officers. “Seen this here car parked alongside of the road with the door opened. Looked funny, but I thought it was maybe just some kids.” He paused. Then he clicked his tongue against his teeth and said, “You know what I mean, boys.”

  Rawlins said, “Yes, sir. What was it that made you phone us?”

  “Yeah. Well, it was right then I seen the man runnin’ toward the car. Outa the woods there—” He pointed to the spot where Rule's body had been found. “Runnin’ lickety-split. Wasn't quite dark, and I hadn't switched my lights on. When I seen the car settin’ there, I turned on my lights. That's when I got a look at the man runnin'. Didn't even know he was there, but when my lights went on, all of a sudden there he was, goin’ lickety-split.”

  Rawlins said, “You get a good look at him?”

  “Pretty fair. Not so's I could pick him out again, I don't suppose. He wasn't real close—and he flang a hand up and covered his face. That's the part made me suspicious, see?”

  Rawlins nodded. “What'd he look like?”

  “Medium size. Had on a suit. Dark suit I think. Looked sort of stocky. That's about all.”

  “Did you get a look at his face?”

  “Not enough. Just a quick look before he covered it. Anyways, when I got on home I thought about it and figured I'd better call the cops. So I did. After a bit, I come on down to see what was comin’ off.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “My golly, hidin’ a body out there. Who'd of thought it?”

  I'd been listening to the conversation, but not paying a lot of attention to every word. But then Rawlins asked the witness, “Is there anything you can tell us about the man that might help us identify him?”

  “Oh, sure. Almost forgot.” He smiled. I turned all my attention on him. He was nodding his head. “When my lights hit him, he acted automatic, I guess. You know, didn't want me to see his face?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he flang his hand up. Kept it there while I drove on by. Looked like a couple of his fingers was missin'.”

  Five minutes later I was still talking to Rawlins. “That ought to help bolster my theory.”

  “It doesn't.”

  “But it was obviously the same guy that tried to smash me up on the Freeway and blasted at me last night.”

  “I'll go along with that.”

  “And he's probably a hired gunman.”

  “I'll go along with that, too. But it still looks to me like an outgrowth of your investigation of the lobby boys; maybe somebody with blackmail on their schedule, something to hide. Who knows? I'll bet if you make a good check of the dope you and Rule dug up, separately and together, including the bits you handled as a team, you'd come up with something to explain why the same man would try to kill you and Rule. That is, if you can come up with it anywhere.”

  That's where we left it. While I was with Rawlins, a report came in over the car radio that a team of police officers had checked with the director and others at Ravenswood. They'd been informed that nobody except the usual visitors had come to the hospital that afternoon; certainly not anybody answering Joe Rule's description, or of that name. There was no evidence to indicate otherwise.

  After Rawlins and the other police officers left the scene, I sat alone in the Cad, thinking about Joe and about the man who'd killed him. I thought about everything I could remember of my work with Rule, cases we'd cooperated on for the committee, and bits of the same cases which we'd handled separately. I didn't get anywhere. And I always wound up with the same guy: that young, husky sonafabitch with two fingers missing from his left hand.

  And all of a sudden, while I was concentrating on that guy, I had an idea.

  It didn't seem like much at first, but the longer I considered it, the more chance there was that I might have something. I started the car and drove to 1429 Garden Street. That was the address my would-be killer and Rule's murderer had given me after that Freeway accident. And, as my insurance agent had reported, it was a vacant lot. Actually, it was one of two vacant lots in a sparsely settled area of Garden Street.

  But I looked at the house numbers on either side of the vacant lots. On one side was a white house with the number 1427, and on the opposite side of the lots a house bore the number 1433. In other words, the phony address which that truck driver had given was the number that really belonged on the vacant lot, if a house had been there. And a man who knows an area so well that he can put the right number on a vacant lot would seem to know the area very well indeed. He might hang around that area a lot—or even live there.

  I parked the Cad, got out, and started looking.

  Three hours later I'd just about decided that the little flash I'd had earlier had been in the pan. But I'd put in a call to the Police Building and talked to Lieutenant Rawlins, and they hadn't come up with anything. The witness had still been going through the mug books then, but hadn't had any luck, either. I didn't think he would. And I didn't have any other good lead, so I kept looking.

  It was well after midnight when I walked into a bar six blocks from the vacant lots. It was a place called Lane's and it sat all by itself, on Garden, two blocks from the last house on the street. I had knocked on the doors of a lot of houses, hit one other bar and a service station, and so far I'd got nothing but blank looks. So I didn't expect anything different here.

  A few people were at the bar, and couples sat in two of the booths against the wall. The bartender was leaning against the bar down at its far end, his arm on the bar segment that was hinged so he could get in and out. I walked down to that end.

  I said hello and he asked me what I'd have.

  “Like some information,” I told him. “I'm trying to locate a man about five-ten, fairly husky, dark hair. He's got two fingers missing from his left hand.”

  It rolled out by rote, I'd said it or approximately the same thing so many times. But the bartender said, “Him? That sounds like Doe.”

  “Doe? You mean you recognized the description? What's the rest of his name?”

  He grinned. “Take it easy. Doe's the only name I ever heard him called. He doesn't talk much. Don't know whether it's Dough, like money, or Doe, like John Doe.”

  “Probably the last one. You got his address?”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. I was just starting to swear when he added, “But I know where he lives.”

  He explained that Doe had left the bar just as he closed up one night, and pulled out from the curb in his car ahead of the bartender. The bartender had been going in the same direction, and followed him to where the man turned in alongside a small house.

  “ ‘Bout a mile down Garden here,” he said. “Maybe a half mile more. Only house out there, though. You can't miss it.”

  He described the man for me himself, saying that he came in lots of times for a beer, and the description was my boy all the way down the line. And it was funny the way it happened, but the anger I might have felt back there looking at Rule's body, the anger that hadn't touched me yet, started building up in me there, at the bar, when I'd finally found him, when I could finally afford to feel that I'd get my hands on him. I could almost feel him in my hands as I thought about it.

  I remembered that wreck, those shotgun blasts coming out of the darkness at me, a hell of a lot of nice things I knew about Joe Rule, along with the picture of Joe in the dirt with blood matted in his black hair. A red-hot anger bubbled up in me along with anticipation, swelling so big and hot that it felt as if it would lift me off my feet.

  “Hey, mister.” The bartender was looking at me.

  “Huh?”

  He had a kind of sickly smile on his face. “You ain't gonna kill him, are you?” It was half a joke, half a serious question.

  I took out my wallet, found a twenty-dollar bill and started to hand it to the bartender with thanks. He looked at my face again and slowly shook his head. “Thanks. But I—I don't think I want it. Thanks just the same.”

  “Suit yoursel
f.” I put the money and my wallet away. “You say Doe comes in here a lot, huh? Any of his friends hang around here?”

  “No friends. Doesn't seem like a guy that has many friends. Acquaintances, sure. People he yaks with some in here. Like Pat—” He'd started to nod toward a stool at the bar near us. “Ain't that a funny one,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Old Pat there. Must've took off in a hurry.” He looked at me. “Didn't even pay for his beer.”

  Chapter Ten

  I drove right by Doe's house. It was a small, one-story white job, easy enough to find from the bartender's description and directions. There wasn't another house for several hundred yards on either side.

  I drove a mile past it, then cut my lights, made a U-turn and headed back.

  It seemed fairly certain the man called Pat had been well enough acquainted with Doe that he'd taken off to warn him that a guy was asking about him in Lane's Bar. Even if he'd just happened to leave without paying for his drink, I couldn't take the chance on barging up to Doe's in the open.

  And if the guy called Pat even started to describe me, Doe would know right away who I was. That is one of the penalties of looking like I do. But it wouldn't make any difference if I was in one direction and Doe was looking in the other.

  I parked a couple of blocks from the house, and took a big flashlight and a ring of skeleton keys from the car's trunk. I put the keys in my coat pocket and held the flash in my left hand, drew my gun and walked with it in my right hand.

  The house was off the road about fifty feet, surrounded by flat land, with no protection for me except a few trees and shrubs. No light showed inside the house. I was largely depending on Doe's being unaware of the fact that I knew he was most likely warned, and waiting for me. So I left the road when I could barely see the heavier shadow of his house. It was a dark night with only a dim crescent moon. I walked around behind the house, came up from behind and on its left side, just opposite where he should be expecting me to appear.

  Close to the house, I hunched over and scuttled toward its back door, moving as quietly as I could but with the gun pointing in front of me, my finger tense on the trigger. I made it to the back door with no trouble. There was a screen door, latched, and behind it a regular wood door, undoubtedly locked.

  I stuck the flashlight down inside my belt and took the ring of keys from my pocket. These were keys I'd been given by a reformed thief and he'd told me they'd open anything except a bank vault. On the ring, too, were several straight and curved metal pieces, three or four of which would easily go through the screen and lift off the latch.

  I selected one, thrust it through the screen, put it under the latch, and lifted. The latch fell against the door frame with a small clicking sound. I could feel the surge of my blood, the quickened tempo of my pulse. That plus the hot anger that rode at a constant level in me now, made me feel more than normally alive—stronger, wider awake, nine feet tall.

  The screen door came open with a thin squeak of protest. I chose a key by touch, running my fingers over its web, and inserted it in the lock. It wouldn't turn. I felt for and found another and tried it; still another. The fourth key turned in the lock. I grinned, feeling tense, my skin tingling.

  I put the keys back into my pocket and gripped the flashlight in my left hand again, pushed the back door partly open with my gun-weighted right hand. Then I paused and listened, holding my breath. There wasn't any sound except the drumming of blood in my temples. I pushed the door farther open—and something fell over with a sudden, shocking crash.

  Right after it I heard a partly muffled curse from the front of the house, a filthy monosyllable in a man's voice, the word startled from him. For only a second after that sound I hesitated. My mind seemed abnormally clear and I thought, not with any fright—not yet, at least—that he was in there for sure, that he must have been waiting for me to appear, and that he must know I was back here.

  If I turned and ran now I could get far enough away so that I'd be in no danger—but the man inside would have the same benefit, too. He'd have a good chance of getting away, if that's what he wanted. I wanted him bad; but most of all I wanted him alive and talking. And, too, I thought, the advantage was all on my side. I was the man moving, going after him, the man with a dozen good reasons for wanting to get him. He was the one who had to sit and wait—who had been sitting and waiting—with time for fear to build up in him, to constrict his throat and squeeze the cold sweat through his pores.

  It was just the space of a heartbeat that I stood there, maybe a second, then I slammed the door open hard, keeping my grip on the gun and with its butt hooked around the door's edge. The wood hit whatever it was inside there and sent it banging and clattering over the floor. I leaped through the door at the same time, slamming it shut behind me. It made a hell of a racket. I landed four or five feet inside the room, then went down on my knees and lowered my body toward the floor.

  Nothing happened. There weren't any shots. He'd been warned by that first sound. But there wasn't any point in silence now. In the faint light filtering in from outside I could tell that I was in a small kitchen; an open door two or three yards from me led into what must be the living room. So he would have been waiting in darkness by the living room window, watching the road.

  I slid slowly, easily across the floor to the wall. The door was a yard on my left. “Doe,” I said softly.

  There was no answer.

  “Doe. Or Gates, or Sonofabitch. Or whatever your name is. You hear me?” Silence. “I know you're in there, mister. Maybe you can make yourself a deal. You hear me now, Doe?”

  Nothing for a while. Then: “Yeah. I hear you.”

  “I'll make a deal with you, Doe Tell me why you tried to knock me off. About Joe Rule, the kid you shot tonight—the works.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And I won't kill you.”

  “You talk big, Scott.”

  “I'm here. I found you. I ran you down, you bastard.”

  I didn't want to kill him; I wanted him alive. I wanted him talking his guts out, the words stumbling over each other. And right now I wanted to hear him talk again, hear him say something.

  He said, “You're gonna wind up just like him, Scott.”

  It was there. That was why I'd wanted to hear his voice again. He was afraid. The thin edge of fright touched every word. Surprisingly I hadn't felt the dull nausea of fear myself—not yet. I knew what I'd feel like when this was over, though, if I were alive, if I could feel anything.

  I'd be weak, wet with sweat, empty. Because the forces that were keeping me buoyed up now would soon dissipate, grow weak; there'd be the inevitable reaction, the letdown. But right now I was fine, I felt good, and I knew he was scared.

  “Doe,” I said. “This is different, isn't it? Not like riding twenty tons of truck, is it?” I listened after every few words, straining my ears for a sound. But I didn't hear him move. “This isn't like waiting for a guy with a shotgun. How do you like waiting for it yourself, mister?”

  I had slid over almost to the door by then. I got to my feet, stood straight.

  I heard him move then, and I said, “If you try to make it out the door there, you'll get it in the back. Where do you want it, Doe?” After a pause I went on, “The easy way would be for you to toss your gun in here. Then come in with your hands up.”

  He told me what I could do. He was scared, sure, but he wasn't going to pull anything as crazy as giving up his gun. And I knew he had a gun, even though I hadn't seen it. There wasn't any way I could get close enough to him to take him without getting a bullet in me. It looked as if I'd have to shoot him. If I could.

  So I told him I was coming in after him. I told him in two or three different ways, and I told him, too, that it wasn't just words, or an idle threat. I said he'd better get ready, because he'd have time for one shot at me, just one.

  I wanted him even more keyed up and on edge than he was now. Because I was going in there all
right, but not as a target, if I could help it. I kept talking to him softly, knowing that even if he didn't completely believe my words, they'd still have some effect on him; they'd hit his brain and bore into it. I told him that I'd just come from looking at Joe Rule, with a bullet in his head, and that even if he got me, caught me with a slug too, I'd get him because I was going to come in shooting.

  I built it way up, even made it a little melodramatic for his benefit. He swore back at me a couple times, but mostly he just listened. When I thought he was ripe, I said, “All right, you bastard, get ready.”

  I counted off five seconds that would seem a lot longer to him. Then I thumbed on my flash and as the light speared through the darkness I jerked my arm and threw the flash through the open door toward the spot where I knew Doe was. Simultaneously I stuck my gun around through the open door and fired twice, not even stopping to take aim.

  And in the front room a heavy gun boomed once, twice. It was the deep blast of a .45 automatic, and as it coughed the second time I stepped into the open doorway. My flashlight was still in the air, almost against the far wall, and as I looked that .45 blasted again, flame spurting from the gun's muzzle. Doe was half visible behind an over-stuffed chair. He wasn't even looking at the doorway. I pointed the .38 at him and squeezed the trigger.

  I saw his body Jerk when the slug hit him. A .38 doesn't have much shocking power, but it must have hit bone because he lurched heavily to his side, sprawled partly on his back. The thrown flashlight bounced from the far wall and fell to the floor. When it hit the floor it went out.

  I jumped inside the room, took a step to my left and stood motionless in the darkness. I knew I'd hit him, but I didn't know how badly he was hurt. I did know that the last glimpse I'd got of Doe before we were in darkness again, he'd still been hanging onto his gun.

  I heard him groan.

  There was another sound, as if his feet were scraping along the floor. Then his soft, strangled voice cried out, “I'm hit—” then another groan.