A Touch of Death hcc-17 Read online

  We had to park the car far enough away so they wouldn’t hear it or see the headlights. And still we couldn’t walk around on the streets.

  “Is there another street or road in back of that one directly behind the house?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll show you where to turn. There are no street lights there, and it’s mostly vacant lots.”

  She’d grown up in that house. I wondered how she felt about going back to it for the last time and knowing she’d never see it again if we got away. But whatever she felt, she kept it to herself. Then it occurred to me she had never seemed particularly bothered by the fact that her husband wasn’t around any more, either, or why he wasn’t. She wasn’t exactly the gushy type.

  “Where did they find him?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “You don’t know?” I asked unbelievingly.

  “That’s right.” She appeared completely unconcerned. “You were the one who heard the news report. Remember?”

  It just didn’t add up. I had to believe her. She sounded as if she were telling the truth, and she had no reason to lie about it now. And she hadn’t known that his car had been abandoned right in front of the James girl’s apartment, either. An odd thought struck me then. Had she really killed him? But that was stupid. She’d as much as admitted it. She was paying me $120,000 to get her out of there and hide her from the police. For what—a parking ticket?

  “You don’t make much sense to me,” I said.

  “Really?” She lit a cigarette, and for an instant the flame of the match lit up the still, intensely beautiful face.

  “I wasn’t aware I was supposed to.”

  “Did you kill Butler?” I asked.

  “Perhaps you should read the terms of our contract

  again. I recall nothing in it about submitting to an inquisition.”

  “Have it your way,” I said. “I just work here.”

  “An excellent appraisal of your status. Incidentally, I might say that you have done very well so far, with only one or two exceptions.”

  “What exceptions?”

  “In the first place, you should have killed them instead of turning them loose. They can describe you; And in the second place, you have thrown away the only key I have to the house. It was attached to the car keys.”

  “We don’t need a house key,” I said. “We go in through one of the basement windows. And as far as their describing me, you know as well as I do they’re not going to the police. They can’t.”

  “Yes. But has it occurred to you they might be captured

  by the police?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But it’s just a chance we have to take.”

  “Needlessly.”

  “All right. Needlessly. But I’m doing the job, and I’ll do

  it my own way.”

  She said nothing. We came up the grade out of the river bottom.

  I’d had plenty of warning about her. But I didn’t realize it in time.

  Chapter Ten

  We were nearly there. I could see the glow of lights against the sky.

  “Slowly,” she said. “We pass a cemetery on the right. And just beyond it there’s a road on the left. Turn there.”

  In a moment I could see the evergreen hedge of the cemetery. Two cars were coming up behind us. I slowed and let them go by.

  “Now,” she said. “On the left.”

  I made the turn. It was a gravel road with a field off to the left beyond a fence. We passed a lighted house. A dog ran out and chased us, barking furiously. I cursed, feeling the tension build up inside me.

  Coming back here like this with the police after her was insane, and I knew it. Suppose we ran into them? We might get away from them in the dark, but that wasn’t the thing. They’d know where we were, and all the roads in this end of the state would be bottled up before we could get out.

  But there was nothing else to do. We had to have the keys to get into those boxes. Maybe, under ordinary circumstances, you could have them opened without the keys if you had plenty of time and absolutely foolproof identification. In her case it was utterly impossible. She’d rented them under a phony name, she was a fugitive, and the slightest irregularity or one suspicious move would

  bring the whole thing down on top of us.

  While I was on the subject, I thought of something else.

  “Have you got any cash with you?” I asked. “Or at the

  house, where you can get it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have nearly a thousand dollars in my handbag.”

  “Good,” I said. I didn’t ask why she was carrying around that much. It was obvious. She’d known she

  might have to make a run for it someday, and she was ready.

  We turned right and went up a slight grade with trees on both sides of the road. I was driving slowly, drawing a map of it in my mind. We might be in trouble when we came out. There were no houses, no lights. A cat ran across the road, its eyes shining.

  “In the next block, where that power line crosses the road,” she said.

  “Right.” I swung the car sharply around, facing back the way we had come, and backed off the road under the overhanging trees. I cut the motor and lights, and we sat still for a moment, letting our eyes become accustomed to the darkness.

  We got out, and I gently closed the door. I was conscious of my shallow breathing and the fluttering in my stomach, the way it always was just before the opening kickoff of a football game. The night was overcast and still, the air thick with heat and the smell of dust.

  I had changed into the white shirt again back at the camp, but I had on the coat to cover it. I turned the collar up to hide any gleam of white. The gun and flashlight were in the pockets. I looked at her. She was all right, except for her feet. I could see the faint blur of that white trim around her slippers. It couldn’t be helped.

  I held her arm for another minute while we listened. There was no sound. “All right,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

  We cut across the lot, following the dark shafts of the power-line poles. There was a path of sorts, and we made no sound. In a minute or two we came out onto the next street, the one directly behind the house. I felt a sidewalk under my feet. There were no cars in sight.

  She tugged at my arm. “This way,” she whispered. We hurried along the sidewalk, and then cut diagonally across the street. I knew where we were then. I could see the high, shadowy pile of the oleanders. Out the gate, cut left diagonally, half a block, I thought, writing it down in my mind in reverse, the way it would be coming back. I might be in a hurry. And I might be alone.

  I eased the gate open, an inch at a time. We slipped through and stood in the dense shadow of the oleanders. I put my lips down next to her ear and whispered.

  “Wait here. I want to see if there’s a car around anywhere.”

  She nodded. I could see the faint blur of her face as it moved.

  I slipped off across the lawn toward the dark mass of the house, cutting a little to the right to pass around the south side near the garage. Stopping beside the shrubs near the corner, I searched the driveway. It showed faintly white in the gloom. I could see no car.

  Keeping on the grass to muffle any sound, I eased around the side of the house until I could see the front. There was no car here. The night was empty and silent except for the faint sound of music coming from somewhere across the huge expanse of front lawn and the street beyond it. It was a radio in some house on the other side of the street.

  I remained motionless for a minute, thinking. They might be parked out on the street, sitting in a car and watching the drive. Or they still might have a man inside. We just had to chance it.

  I started back. I came around the rear corner and past the back porch by the kitchen, moving silently on the grass. As I neared the break in the shadowy mass of the oleander hedge where the gate was, I could just make out the little blur of white at her feet. She was moving. She was coming slowly to
ward the house. I turned a little to meet her, watching the small bits of white fur move across the formless darkness of the lawn. Then they disappeared. They winked off, like a light going out.

  I stopped, feeling my heart pound in my throat. She had passed behind something. But there wasn’t anything there. There couldn’t be. Now I could see them again. She had stopped too. I strained my eyes into the night. I could see nothing at all. Then the blur of white at her feet winked off again. Something was between us, and it was moving.

  There was no way to warn her. I wanted to cry out to her to run, but I knew the stupidity of it. The man knew she was there; he could see her feet. But he didn’t know I was behind him. I was tense. My mouth was dry.

  I could run. I could circle them, get behind them, and make it to the gate and the car.

  I didn’t run. I couldn’t quit now. I started moving toward them, keyed up and scarcely breathing.

  Then it happened. She had seen him, or heard him, or somehow sensed that he was there, and thought I was coming back. She whispered, “Here I am.” It was like a shout.

  Light burst over her face and the upper part of her body. She wasn’t twelve feet away, exposed in the glare of the man’s flashlight like a floodlighted statue. I was coming up behind him, very fast and as silently as I could, pulling the gun from my pocket, when I heard her gasp. I could see him quite plainly, silhouetted against his own light. I raised the gun and swung.

  “All right, Mrs. Butler,” he said. “Stand right where you are. You’re under ar—”

  He grunted, and his arms jerked. The light fell out of his hand as he buckled back against me and then slid to the grass. I lunged for it and snapped it off. Night closed around us again, black as the bottom of a coal mine.

  I was scared as I felt for him. Maybe I’d hit him too hard. I located an arm and fumbled at his wrist, trying to feel the pulse, but my hands were shaky and numb and I couldn’t tell. I put a hand on his chest. He was breathing normally. The fright began to leave me.

  She was leaning over me in the darkness. “I thought it was you,” she whispered.

  I didn’t answer. I was too busy thinking. What did we do with him? He was merely knocked out, and might come around at any time. To go on in the house and leave him lying here would be suicide. She’d have to go alone; I could stay here and watch him. But suppose there was another one inside?

  We didn’t have all night. Every minute we stayed here made it more dangerous. I had to do something, and fast.

  I reached down, took the gun out of his holster, and threw it over into the oleanders. As I did so I heard something rattle. It was metallic, something fastened to his belt. I had the answer then. Running a hand along the belt, I located them and took them off. They were handcuffs.

  “Stay where you are,” I whispered to her.

  Grabbing him by the shoulders, I dragged him across the grass into the deeper shadows under the hedge. I rolled him up against the bottom of a clump of oleanders, pulled his hands behind him, and shackled them together around a couple of the big stems. Then I took his handkerchief out of his pocket, wadded it into his mouth, took off his tie, and made it fast around his head to hold the handkerchief in. He was still out, as limp as a wet shirt. I knelt and listened to his breathing. He was all right.

  I hurried back. Leaning close to her, I whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here fast. You won’t have time to change. So just throw some clothes in a bag when we get

  inside.”

  She nodded.

  I led the way to the window where I’d gone in before. Pulling the screen back, I raised the sash and dropped in; then I helped her. We stood in darkness in the basement, listening. There was no sound except that of our own breathing in the hot, dead air.

  “Where are those keys?” I whispered.

  “In the kitchen.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  I flicked on the small flashlight and we went up the stairs. I was tense again, and wanting to get out. I felt like a wild animal reaching for the bait in a trap. We stepped into the kitchen. I cut the light, and we listened. There was dead silence. I tiptoed over to the other door and stared through the darkness of the dining room toward the front of the house. I could see only more empty blackness.

  I switched on the light again. “Where?” I whispered.

  She took my hand and directed the beam. It splashed against one of the white cupboards at the end of the sink, moved slightly again, and came to rest on the end of it. I saw it then. A big ring hung from a nail driven into the wood, a ring filled with a dozen or more of the old, unmarked, and useless keys that a house accumulates in its lifetime—extra car keys, cellar-door keys, trunk keys, front-door keys, and keys to nothing at all. While I stared, she lifted it down.

  I held the light for her while she snapped the ring open, slid off three of the keys, and put the others back on the nail. She held the three in the palm of her hand for a moment, looked up at me in the reflected glow of the light with that cool, serene smile of hers, and dropped them into her handbag. I thought of $120,000 hanging there in plain sight among a bunch of discarded and useless junk. She was a smart baby.

  The urge to hurry was getting to me again. There could have been two of them out there. One would miss the other, and start looking. Or he might work the gag out of his mouth.

  I grabbed her arm and went through the dining room. In the short hallway that led to the stairs I gave her the flashlight. “Make it as fast as you can,” I said. “Throw some shoes and a dress in a bag or grab ‘em under your arm. Lets get out of here.”

  I watched her go up the stairs. She turned at the top, and the light was gone. I tried to stand still in the darkness so I could listen, but my feet kept moving. I had the cop’s flashlight in my pocket, but didn’t take it out. I didn’t need a light; all I wanted to do was get out of there.

  Why didn’t she hurry? She’d been gone a week. What was she doing? Standing in front of a closet full of clothes trying to make up her mind what to wear? Did she think she was going to a dance? I cut it off coldly, forcing myself to realize she’d hardly had time to walk down the hall to her bedroom yet. I waited, shifting from one foot to the other.

  Minutes dragged by. At last I saw the beam of light cut through the darkness above me and turn at the head of the stairs. She was coming down. She had a small overnight bag in her hand and had on shoes instead of the fur-trimmed slippers. I grabbed the bag and fell in behind her, hustling her along.

  We hurried back through the kitchen and down the stairs. The heels of her shoes clicked on the concrete floor of the basement. We turned and started toward the window. In another minute we’d be in the open and on our way.

  I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and went prickling cold all over. In one motion I grabbed her arm, snatched the flashlight out of her hand, and shut it off. I jammed it in my pocket and put my hand over her mouth before she could even cry out or gasp at the suddenness of it. We remained locked together and suspended in the darkness and I felt her turn her head and look toward the windows. She saw it too. She stiffened.

  It was another flashlight, outside. The beam hit the first window. It probed through dirty glass and screen and cobwebs to spatter weakly against the basement wall behind us. She moved a little, and I realized I still had my hand over her mouth. I took it away. The light dropped a little. It hit the floor not five feet away. Then it went out.

  I breathed again. Pulling her by the arm, I began backing up. After two or three steps I turned and cut toward where the furnace should be. We had to get behind something. I felt the solid metal of it against my side just as the light snapped on again in front of the second window, the one I had broken. I pulled her quickly after me and we were behind the furnace.

  I looked around the edge. Light splashed against the window, steadying up on the place where I had broken the glass. I was squeezing her arm. If it was another cop, he might come in. He’d see the tape and broken glass and realize someon
e had forced a way in there.

  The screen was being drawn back. The window rose.

  We couldn’t get out. The light was swinging across the basement now, and if we tried to run back he’d see us. Our only chance was to sweat it out, trying to keep the furnace between us and him. The light was pointed down. He dropped in on the concrete floor. He lost his balance and fell. The light dropped and rolled, coming to rest with its beam reflected off the whitewashed wall. I stared. I was looking at high-heeled shoes and a pair of nylon-clad legs that had never belonged to any cop in the world.

  She reached for the light and for an instant I saw her face. It was Diana James.

  I felt Mrs. Butler start beside me. Then, strangely, she pushed up against me, as if she were scared. She clung to me, gripping my arm. I was too busy to think about it. I didn’t know what it was until it was too late.

  Diana James was straightening up, reaching for the flashlight. Then, abruptly, Madelon Butler pushed away

  from me and walked out into the open. I tried to grab her, but it was too unexpected. She picked up the light and shot it right into the other’s face.

  “Really, Cynthia,” she said, “I would have thought you’d have better sense than to come here yourself.”

  Cynthia? But there wasn’t time to wonder about that. The whole thing was like trying to watch the separate stages of an explosion and knowing all you were ever going to see was the end result and that all in one piece. Diana James straightened in the merciless glare of the light, her eyes going bigger and bigger in terror. Her mouth tried to form something, but just opened and stayed there.

  It was at exactly this moment that I felt the lightened weight of my coat and knew why she had pressed up against me in the dark. I lunged for her, still knowing there was nothing I could do, that I was just trying to catch pieces of something that was happening all at once.

  She shot. The gun crashed. It roared and reverberated back and forth across the concrete-walled sound chamber of a basement where I’d been afraid of the tapping of her heels against the floor. Before I could grab her, she shot again, the sound swelling and exploding against my eardrums with almost physical pain. In all this madness of noise I saw Diana James jerk around, one hand going up to her chest, and then spill forward onto the floor like a collapsing column of children’s blocks. Just as I reached Madelon Butler and got my hands on her, the light tilted downward and splashed across the fallen dark head and the grotesque swirl of skirt and long legs and arms already still.