‘How did it happen?’ she said in a whisper.
‘Nobody knows. A truck hit him, someone said.’
‘A truck?’
The policewoman nodded. ‘He was down on Sixteenth Street, visiting one of his sick ladies. We don’t have any more details right now.’
Perri buried her face in her hands, and then suddenly the whole pain of it collapsed on top of her, and she sobbed and sobbed until her throat felt raw, and she could hardly cry any more. She looked up at the policewoman with reddened eyes. ‘Oh God, why did it have to be him ? He was so good. He was so perfect. He could have been a saint.’
‘I don’t really like to ask you this so soon, but do you think this accident could have been deliberate?’ the policewoman said.
‘Deliberate? What do you mean?’
‘I mean that Father Leonard was very mixed up in politics. Especially this row at the Woman’s Liberation League convention this morning. We have to consider that someone might have wanted him injured or dead.’ Perri thought for a moment, and then slowly shook her head. ‘It just isn’t possible. I mean, Hilary Nestor Hunter’s a pretty tough cookie but she wouldn’t kill anyone for the sake of politics. I mean, who kills people for the sake of politics?’
The policewoman gave her a gentle, lopsided smile. ‘It happens.’
‘But Hilary Nestor Hunter?’
‘It didn’t have to be her. It could have been any of her supporters. Is there anybody who comes to mind?’
Perri thought again, and then said, ‘No. Nobody does anything without Hilary’s express permission. If anybody killed him on purpose, then it was her.’
Ten
As they drove south on Interstate 5, the car filled with sunshine, Mel went through the morning’s newspapers, drawing a red ballpen circle around anything that looked like an inexplicable death. A twenty-four-year-old mother had been shot dead on the driveway of her house in Watertown, South Dakota. A seventy-two-year-old grandfather had been shot from a passing car in Rolla, Missouri. A thirty-year-old teacher had died in Virginia when his car was forced off the road near Lake Barcroft.
‘A heavy crop today. Maybe ten or twelve of ’em,’ Mel said.
‘All similar?’ asked John.
‘Most of them,’ said Mel. ‘It looks like our friends have been busy.’
They were approaching San Juan Capistrano. John pulled out to overtake an empty southbound fruit truck, and for a moment he glimpsed the beige Plymouth Fury in his rear-view mirror. He saw a brief flash of reflected light in the Fury’s windshield, and didn’t realise that it was the sun glancing off mirrored sunglasses.
Mel opened another newspaper, and began to comb through it. ‘You remember we were talking about Carl X. Chapman this morning?’ he said. ‘Here’s a picture of him in Vegas. Looks like he’s just made some kind of multimillion dollar development deal.’
‘Good for him. Do you want to pour some coffee? The flask’s on the back seat.’
‘Oh, sure.’ Mel reached over and found the Thermos flask. He held the plastic cup between his knees as he opened up the flask, and carefully filled it with steaming black coffee.
‘Say, here’s another killing,’ he said, as he passed the cup over to John.
‘What does it say?’ asked John, taking a quick scalding sip. He felt more like a shot of liquor than a cup of coffee, but he knew what would happen if he started on the whisky. All the sadness for Vicki that he was keeping suppressed in the back of his mind would well up again, all that desperate, lonesome sadness, and that would mean the finish of their day’s work. He needed to keep on going, or else he’d wind up on the funny farm. And apart from that, he wanted to track down Professor Aaron Sweetman more than he wanted to give way to his grief. He wanted to avenge Vicki, really avenge her and his father. He could begin to understand someone who killed out of fury, or passion, or jealousy. But to kill for votes?
Mel read: ‘“Private Eye in Probable Gang Slaying?” How does that sound?’
‘Not particularly promising. Tell me more.’
‘A private detective was found dying in his car in Pahrump Valley, Nevada, last night-victim of a shooting that police are convinced is connected with recent gang struggles over in Las Vegas gambling.’
‘There you are,’ said John, ‘it’s explicable. We’re looking for the inexplicable.’
‘Will you wait a minute? It goes on to say: “The private eye’s last words, however, are still puzzling the Las Vagas P.D. According to 54-year-old Alphonse Rippert, a passing truck driver who discovered the detective dying in his vehicle, they were: ‘Election, it’s an election. Road sign.”’
‘Road, sign?’ asked John.
‘Yeah,’ said Mel. ‘It says here: “The only road sign within six miles of the dying detective was a Dangerous Curve sign just fifty feet away.”’
John was silent for a long while. They drove through San Juan Capistrano, past white-painted houses and palms and rooftops, and under Del Obispo Road. The highway curved southwest towards Capistrano Beach, and the distant glitter of the ocean.
John said, ‘I gather you’re trying to draw some kind of inference here.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mel told him. ‘I really don’t know. But look at what we have here. He’s been shot for no apparent reason, he’s talking about elections, and he mentions a dangerous curve. Also, he’s a private detective. Maybe he’s discovered something about the Sweetman Curve, and maybe somebody caught up with him in the way they’ve been trying to catch up with you.’
‘Docs it mention his name?’ asked John.
‘David Radetzky. A private detective well-known in California for his divorce work for famous TV and movie stars.’
‘A divorce detective getting himself mixed up in Las Vegas gambling? That doesn’t ring true. Not unless he was looking into the private life of one of those gangster types.’
‘That’s possible,’ said Mel, folding the newspaper. ‘But there’s no reason for him to mention elections or dangerous curves, is there, unless he’s into something political?’
‘Las Vegas is always political,’ remarked John. ‘Any big-time hoodlum has to be well-connected with Washington to survive these days.’
They passed a supermarket truck and a pick-up stacked with chairs and tables like something out of the Grapes of Wrath. They glided over the intersection with the Pacific coast highway, and kept on south through the bright misty morning. A half-mile behind them, the battered Plymouth Fury kept up its dogged pursuit.
Mel circled the David Radetzky story and turned back to the front page. There, grizzled and grinning, was the face of Senator Carl X. Chapman during his visit to Las Vegas. Mel looked at it, and didn’t say anything for a minute or two, but scratched at his beard and frowned.
‘What’s the matter with you? You look like you just remembered you left the gas on,’ John remarked.
‘It’s just one of those funny kind of feelings,’ Mel said. ‘The sort of feeling I first had when your father was shot.’
‘More analytical thinking?’
‘Just a coincidence, that’s all. Here’s good old Carl X. Chapman, the ambitious right-wing Republican senator from Minnesota, the man who says he’s going to be President in 1980. And here’s poor young David Radetzky, a private detective who’s been killed because he seems to know something about elections. And they’re both in Las Vegas on the same day.’
‘You think Chapman could be ordering these killings?’
‘It would figure,’ said Mel. ‘I mean, how many politicians do you know that are as hawkish as Chapman, and at at the same time are as likely presidential candidates as Chapman?’
‘Walstrom?’
‘Oh, sure, Walstrom, but I can’t imagine Walstrom doing anything as systematically heartless as this, can you? He’s hawkish, all right, but he’s all bluster and brimstone. Chapman’s always controlled.’
John finished his coffee and handed the plastic cup back to Mel. He saw the Plymouth Fury closer now, slowly overtakin
g him on the outside; He said, ‘I think Chapman’s a possible, but I don’t like to jump to conclusions. Not without some real hard evidence.’
‘That’s going to be hard to find. Chapman was under investigation by two special senate committees a few years back, because they thought he was taking backhanders from the oil industry, but they never proved anything. I mean, if a senate committee can’t nail him, how the hell can we?’
‘Maybe Professor Sweetman will tell us.’
‘And maybe he won’t. And maybe he doesn’t even know.’
The Fury was almost alongside. John glanced across at it, and saw its dented fender, and its patched-up paintwork. Its tyres made a sizzling noise on the concrete highway.
‘We still have to admit the possibility that what we really have here is a national craze for shooting people. Nuttier things have happened,’ Mel said.
John looked sideways at the Plymouth again. His mind registered what he saw like a camera. Click-snap. Behind the wheel was a dark-haired man with mirror sunglasses. One arm was raised, and he was pointing straight towards John’s face.
John screamed, ‘Mel – get down!’ and hauled the Lincoln’s wheel over so that the huge white car slewed across two lanes of traffic. Horns blared on all sides, but he made it through to the inside lane, and then punched bis foot down on the accelerator. With a deep whistling roar, the engine surged power through the car, and they took off along the freeway in clouds of burned rubber and exhaust.
The Lincoln reached ninety in seconds. John flicked his eyes up towards his mirror, and saw that the Fury was after him, but it had lost almost a quarter of a mile.
Mel raised his head cautiously and looked behind them.
‘Was that guy after us?’ he asked, a little shakily.
‘It’s the same one,’ John said, tersely. ‘The one with the mirror sunglasses. The one who shot my father.’
Mel opened the glove compartment arid took out the .38 revolver. He opened the chamber to check that it was loaded, then snapped it shut and gave John a nervous grin.
‘I never used one of these before.’
‘Let’s hope you won’t have to.’
They were flashing along the highway now at a hundred-and-ten. They weaved in between the traffic, tires howling on the hot concrete, rousing up an angry flurry of car horns behind them. John checked his mirror again. The beige Plymouth was almost within a hundred feet of them now, leaving a trail of oily smoke behind it as it chased them. He saw the glint of those sunglasses again, and he felt both vengeful and scared.
Up ahead of them, all three lanes of the highway were blocked by two slow-moving trucks and a family camper. John muttered, ‘For Christ’s sake, get out of the way,’ and flashed his headlights. The trucks and the camper continued to trundle down the long incline through San Clemente, growing larger and larger as the Lincoln zipped along the highway towards them.
The Plymouth was close on their tail now. John leaned on the Lincoln’s horn and flashed his headlights again, but he knew that the trucks hadn’t even seen him. He was doing a hundred-and-fifteen, and the trucks were only two hundred feet away. They came towards him like a solid wall.
With seconds to spare, the camper overtook the truck on its nearside. Spinning the steering-wheel, John piloted the hurtling Lincoln right up behind the camper, and then zig-zagged through the narrow gap in between the truck’s front bumpers and the camper’s tail. The Lincoln’s suspension bounced and kangarooed, and its tyres wailed on the road surface, but John held it through the skid, and pushed his foot down on the gas again as they straightened up.
Behind them, the camper had slowed in surprise, and the Fury was boxed off. John seized the moment to build up his speed again and put as much highway between them as he could. The needle strayed back up to a hundred-ten, a hundred-fifteen, a hundred-twenty. The highway flashed and wriggled beneath them like a rushing river of concrete.
Mel said, ‘He’s still after us. He’s cleared the trucks. I can see his smoke.’
John looked in his mirror. ‘Let’s give him a damned good run for his money. If we can beat him into San Diego, we can lose him. This is his favourite killing ground, the open highway. Let’s get him into the streets.’
‘If you say so,’ said Mel. ‘But I hope he doesn’t start shooting.’
‘Me too. But shoot back, if he does.’
Mel examined the .38 unhappily. ‘I never did like cowboys, when I was a kid. I was always the fat unpopular one who went off on nature walks.’
‘Well, now’s your chance to change all that.’
It was over forty miles into San Diego. They slammed along the highway with the Plymouth Fury burning along behind them. The traffic was sparser now, and John could really let the old car out, speeding past San Onofre beach like a meteoric reminder of 1958.
‘How are we doing for gas?’ asked Mel.
‘Okay,’ John told him. ‘We’ve got a tank the size of the Dodgers Stadium.’
In spite of their speed, the gap between the Fury and the Lincoln was gradually closing. As they sped through Camp Pendleton, the man in the mirror sunglasses was only two hundred feet behind. They sped past a long convoy of Marine Corps trucks with only a hundred feet between them. With Oceanside just a couple of miles away, the Fury began to overtake them again.
John swerved from lane to lane, trying to keep away from their pursuer. The Lincoln’s tyres screeched and squittered on the highway, and the car’s heavy tail slewed from side to side. But the Fury kept close, only feet away, even though it was blowing out black smoke now, and it must have been burning oil like an Exxon refinery.
‘Mel!’ shouted John. ‘You’re going to have to use the gun! See if you can hit his tyres, or his engine!’
‘Supposing I hit him?’
‘Supposing you do? What do you think he’s trying to do to us?’
Mel put down his window, and the slipstream roared into the car, blowing his hair up into a fright wig. ‘Okay!’ he yelled. ‘If you say so!’
He knelt on his seat, and held the revolver in both hands. The man in the Fury saw what he was doing, and swerved out of his line of fire, coming up on John’s side of the car instead. In answer, John put down the rear windows, so that Mel could shoot across the car diagonally. The rush of air at a hundred miles an hour was so loud that they could hardly hear each other.
‘Shoot!’ John insisted, in a harsh scream. ‘For Christ’s sake, shoot!’
Mel fired. The bullet must have dinged off the front of the Fury’s hood, because the car kept going, nosing up beside them and almost touching the side of their long-finned fender.
‘Again!’ screamed John.
Mel fired, and the bullet pierced the Fury’s radiator. A spray of water enveloped the front of the car, and then a blast of steam.
‘Again!’ John shouted.
The Fury nudged against them, with a screeching of metal. The Lincoln skidded and slithered, but John twisted the wheel and held it steady. The Fury nudged against them again, and this time he almost lost control. For a moment, the huge car was sliding sideways, its front fender locked against the Fury’s bumper. Then John nudged the brakes, and the Lincoln spun free. Mel tried another shot, but the bullet went wild.
The two cars banged and collided against each other one more time. But then the Plymouth abruptly slowed, and fell back. Within a few seconds, they had left it far behind, and they could see it limping off the highway with steam rising from the hood. Mel’s second shot had ruptured the cooling system, and the motor had overheated.
John put up the windows. Mel sat back in his seat, brushing his hair with his hand, and breathing heavily. He opened up the .58 and emptied out the spent cartridges. For a while, neither of them spoke.
‘Do you think we ought to turn around and go back?’ said Mel. ‘I mean, do you think we ought to finish him off for good?’
‘I wish we could. But the best thing we can do is to stop in Oceanside and call the cops.’
/> Mel raised the .38 and stared at it. ‘You know something, I never knew what a feeling of power a gun could give you. It’s frightening.’
They pulled off the road on the outskirts of Oceanside in a cloud of drifting dust, and John went across to a telephone booth and called the police. He waited for a long time for a laconic detective to come on the line.
‘It’s about the guy who’s shooting people on the L.A. freeways,’ he said.
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Well, my name’s John Cullen and my father was shot last week. The same guy that did it tried to shoot me today on Interstate Five a couple of miles out of Oceanside.’
‘Are you spelling Cullen with a “K” or a “C”?’
‘A “C”. Listen, the guy’s out there now, just a couple of miles out of town. His car broke down. A beige or a tan Plymouth Fury. Kind of beaten-up.’
‘His car broke down?’
‘That’s right. He was tailing me out of Los Angeles, and he had a gun, but his car broke down. If you get out there fast enough, you’ll catch him.’
There was a lengthy silence while the detective wrote all this down. Then he said, ‘Are you making a charge against this man, whoever he is?’
‘A charge? He’s a mass murderer! He’s the guy they’ve been looking for in L.A. for months!’
There was another silence, and then the detective said, ‘Okay, we’ll check it out. Where are you?’
‘In a telephone booth just outside of town.’
‘Stay right where you are. We’ll have a couple of officers along in a short while.’
The line went dead. John stared at the receiver a moment, then set it back in its cradle. He walked slowly back to the car.
‘Did you get through?’ asked Mel.
‘Oh, sure. I spoke to some half-assed detective. He talked like shooting people on the freeways was about as criminal as driving a Winnebago with bald tyres.’ They waited for almost a half-hour, listening to the radio and drinking the rest of their coffee. It was nearly eleven o’clock before a blue-and-white police car pulled off the road behind them, and stopped. A cop climbed out and walked up to the Lincoln at a leisurely pace. He leaned in to the window with his big freckled face, and said, ‘How do. Are you the folks who called about the L.A. freeway killer?’
The Sweetman Curve Page 26
