The Killer Is Mine

by Talmage Powell

  “Do I know you?” she rambled, frowning suddenly.

  “I’m Ed Rivers,” I said.

  “Are you a friend of Max the Giant’s?”

  “Well, I’ve met him.”

  “Are you a freak like the others?”

  “No, Mrs. Collins.”

  “Did you know Father’s a freak?”

  “I didn’t know him,” I said.

  “Oh, not outside.” She thought a moment and giggled. “It doesn’t show with Father. He’s a freak inside. Like me … like me …”

  The flame abated in her eyes. For a moment her eyes were almost sane. She moved against the strait jacket. But she didn’t struggle. She simply seemed to realize that it was there and something was horribly wrong. Her moan was worse than any scream could have been.

  She closed her eyes and began sobbing brokenly. The wet hair lay delicately, wispy gold, against the soft skin of her forehead.

  I heard footsteps in the hallway. Laura and Milt Collins came into the room.

  The big, outdoorsy, handsome man looked at his wife and years of time crept over his face.

  “I’ll help you get her home,” I volunteered.

  He nodded and gestured vaguely with his hand as if too tired to speak.

  I picked up Stephanie Collins. I was ready for an outburst, but she lay draped across my arms as light and supine as a child.

  Milt Collins started out of the room. As I followed him, I looked at Laura. “I’ll still have that beer.”

  She brought a weak smile to her lips and nodded.

  I trailed Milt Collins across the wide lawns separating the two houses. He held the door for me and I carried Stephanie Collins inside her own home.

  Young Bryan was standing sturdily in the middle of the living area. He looked calmly at his mother’s face.

  “Go watch the television in the den,” his father told him shortly.

  “Yes, Father.” He turned and marched out of the room.

  “We’ll put her in bed,” Milt Collins said, “and I’ll call the hospital.”

  The phone rang.

  “Just a minute,” Collins said.

  He picked up the ivory living-room extension phone. From his end of the conversation, I knew it was the hospital calling him.

  He shook off some of the lethargy that gripped him. He was a driving, hard-boiled man for a few minutes. He gave them hell. He called them incompetents and gave orders for someone to stay with her night and day. Yes, his wife was here, safe, no thanks to them. If they permitted her to escape again, he’d not only sue the pants off them, he’d take the place apart a plank at a time, personally.

  He cradled the phone, pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket, and wiped his face.

  “They’re on their way, Rivers,” he said. “Just put her on the couch.”

  I put her on the couch. He moved as if he would touch her. But he didn’t. He looked at her a minute, raw hell in his eyes.

  Then with an effort of will, he turned his face from her.

  “Thanks, Rivers,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  He looked me over. Sober now, he looked me over as if he were seeing me for the first time.

  “I suppose I made a fool of myself at the Yacht Club bar,” he said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I apologize,” he said simply.

  I liked the apology. It was laid on the line without insolence or undue humility.

  I nodded. Then I briefed him on what had happened in the Tulman house. He listened without changing expression.

  “I suppose,” he said, “it’s a good thing you stayed on the case this long. Stephanie might have killed Laura Tulman.”

  He walked over to a blond portable bar and poured himself a drink. “I owe you something, Rivers.”

  “My charges are seventy-five dollars a day and expenses.”

  “I’ll send you a check for a day’s pay tomorrow morning.”

  “All right,” I said, “in this instance I believe I’ve earned it. Here’s my card.”

  He took the card, looked at it, downed his drink and returned to the bar to pour himself a second. “I could make the check much bigger, Rivers.” “No, thanks.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not dropping the Tulman case,” I said. “I’m getting tired of explaining that to people.”

  His face pinked. “I’m accustomed to getting my way, Rivers.”

  “You ought to get over that. It can lead to frustration.”

  His color got a shade hotter than pink. “And what do you think you’ll get out of all this?”

  “I don’t know. A fee.”

  “If it’s a fee you’re interested in—”

  “A fee is what I work for. It isn’t the whole end that I live for.”

  “Oh,” he sneered. “An idealist.”

  I laughed aloud. “I’ve been called everything else, Collins. Never that.”

  “Damned if I understand you.”

  “Skip it. Maybe you never will. People pile up fees because they’re afraid of tomorrow. But I’m not afraid of tomorrow, Collins, and I’ve got a job to do today.”

  “You’re asking for plenty of trouble. You’re not dealing with an Ybor City punk!”

  “Well, that’s all right,” I said. “I hope your wife gets along better after this.”

  I started out of the room.

  “Rivers!”

  I stopped and turned.

  Collins was standing spread-legged in the middle of the room. A struggle showed in his face. Then the lines of his face went loose and he looked tired and old.

  “I’ve never said please in my adult life, Rivers. I’m saying it now. Please. Let it lie. Let my family alone.”

  “I don’t want to hurt your family,” I said. “You must know that.”

  “You’ve hurt them already. All that rehash of the case in the papers this morning. And for what? So you can earn a fee? That’s all you’ll ever find. They’ve got the right man in Raiford. They’ve found out everything that can be found out. So, please. I can’t have my family …”

  He broke off. Looking at my face, he twisted his lips in a spasm of helplessness. “Damn you to hell,” he said softly.

  He threw the highball glass with all his strength. I ducked it. It smashed against the wall and its broken bits tinkled to the floor.

  The sound roused Stephanie Collins. She began straining against the makeshift strait jacket.

  Milt Collins dropped on the couch beside her. She was whispering meaningless words, her eyes wide and staring at images of their own. He pressed her face against his chest and held her body tightly against him. After a few seconds I realized he was crying.

  When I went outside, a black Caddy limousine drew to a stop in the driveway. Max the Giant got out and opened the rear door for Mrs. Wherry. The old lady stepped from the car briskly.

  She gave me a dour look as she brushed past me. She and the mountainous man with the pink seal’s head went inside the house. I guessed the hospital had called her, along with their call to Collins.

  CHAPTER

  10

  LAURA opened beer and set it before me. Then she sat beside me on the couch, her legs tucked under her. The soft lighting in the living room brought shadows to her face. Or maybe the day had put them there.

  “She was resting quietly and the hospital had somebody on the way,” I said.

  Laura looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the general direction of the Collins house. Then she got up and drew the drapes closed over the windows.

  She stood before me, the light at her back. A sudden choked sound came from her throat. “I need somebody, Ed! My God, how I need somebody!”

  She stood, and a shudder ran over her body.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “For, years I’ve had to have strength. I had to be a businesswoman. I had to be a snug haven for a gentle man-child. I had to be his source of strength. I had to do the spiritual fighting fo
r him all during the trial. I was brought up on hard discipline, a sense of duty, Ed Rivers. Maybe that part of me attached me to Wally. But now I’m tired. The strength is gone and the spirit’s drooping.”

  She put her hands over her face. But she didn’t make a sound. She stood swaying.

  I set the beer down and stood up. I took her wrists in my hands and pulled her hands away from her face.

  “Stephanie Collins upset you.”

  “Yes, she did. But it’s more than that.”

  The sweat heat of my body rose between us. We stood without saying anything. Then I put my fingers in the shiny black wealth of her hair and kissed her.

  She didn’t struggle. She flowed against me and her arms went around my neck. Her lips had a heat of their own, and I could sense and feel something stirring deep inside of her. Somehow I knew it was something that had never been touched before, never stirred before.

  It was exactly as I had known it would be. Maybe in the back of my mind I’d known it from the first. I hadn’t consciously thought of it before. But now I did. My blood was thick and heavy. And I knew this conscious thought was only the visible part of a thought that had been in my mind from the minute I’d laid eyes on her.

  I could feel her fingernails savage on my shoulders. Not the touch Wally had known.

  “You’re elemental, Ed.”

  “I guess.”

  “An animal. A bear. A cross between a swamp panther and a bear.”

  “I don’t need protecting—by a woman.”

  “You sure as hell don’t,” she said.

  Then she broke away from me. She stood with her face flushed and the hair tumbled about her cheeks.

  I took a step toward her. “No, Ed!”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No,” she said, almost wildly. “Leave, Ed. Now.”

  “Laura—”

  “Don’t talk,” she said. “Just leave. That wasn’t a cheap play I made just now. I didn’t mean it as a cheap play.”

  “I know it wasn’t. And I’m not playing cheap, Laura.”

  She was gasping. “Then leave. If you mean that, get out. For the sake of mercy, Ed, get out before I start begging you to stay!”

  I walked to the door, opened it, walked through the doorway and closed the door behind me.

  Then I walked hard and fast. I began to sweat hard, but I didn’t care about the heat. I walked halfway to downtown Tampa. Then a taxi passed and I whistled him.

  I rode over to the corner below my apartment building. I walked into the all-night market, and I must have looked okay.

  The lean, dark, young night man said, “Hi, Mr. Rivers.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Ice?”

  “That’s right.”

  I paid for the twenty-five pound block of ice and carried it up to my apartment.

  I put the ice in a dishpan and the dishpan on a table near the day bed. Then I set an electric fan behind the ice and turned the fan on.

  I stripped to my shorts and lay down on the day bed. I didn’t want to think.

  But the ice had gone to water before I went to sleep.

  I slept late. The ringing of the phone woke me. I rolled to a sitting position, heavy with sleep and the heat. I clicked the fan switch and stopped the useless effort of stirring humid air.

  I picked up the phone. “Rivers speaking.”

  “Laura here,” she said.

  “How are you this morning?”

  “I’m fine, Ed,” she said, keeping her voice impersonal. “I wanted to mention something to you last night, but with Stephanie Collins showing up, I forgot.”

  “Okay,” I said, “shoot.”

  “I was going to ask what you intended to do about Carrie Hofstetter.”

  “Put a shadow on her from one of the other agencies. She’s smart, but she knows where Giles is, and I believe she knows more than that. The expense of putting on a man she doesn’t know, wouldn’t recognize—”

  “I wouldn’t mind the expense. But it’s too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “Have you seen the morning papers?”

  “No.”

  “Carrie Hofstetter had an accident late last night. She fell out of her apartment window. The—the alley below was asphalt, Ed.”

  “Then she didn’t live long?”

  “She was killed instantly,” Laura said.

  I heard the intake of her breath. “Ed …”

  “Yes?”

  “This means a great deal, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it means she got drunk and fell out the window.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to see Patrick. And the remains. And wonder if Giles Newell might have done that to his own sister.”

  “I’m sure he couldn’t have, Ed. I didn’t know him well, but I’m certain he couldn’t have.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then this might still make him turn up.”

  “You mean …”

  “He might show up to claim the body,” I said. “She didn’t have anybody else. And I guess he didn’t either when you come right down to it.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  PATRICK was as polite as ice waiting in a highball glass. “Hello, Ed. Sit down.”

  I sat down. His desk was between us. He pushed a file folder toward me.

  I picked up the folder. In it was a report on the death of Carrie Hofstetter.

  I glanced at Patrick. His smile made his dark, slender face handsome. But it was a saturnine face—if you knew him.

  “You’d get to the information one way or another,” he said. “Why let you annoy me any more than I can help? Take all the time you need digesting it, Ed.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  I read the report over. Carrie Hofstetter had been found dead in the alley beside her apartment house. The discovery had been made by a workman employed by a building contractor. The man had stepped from his ground-floor apartment into the alley to put out some garbage as he was leaving for work. He had seen the crumpled body. His call had reached headquarters at 8:05. A squad car and ambulance had arrived on the scene at 8:13. Carrie Hofstetter had been dead about two hours. She died with the rising sun.

  And no one had seen or heard a thing.

  Her apartment was the messy nest of an alcoholic. There were no signs of struggle in the apartment reported. A window overlooking the alley was open, and a shag throw rug was crumpled on the floor near it.

  “You got the picture?” Patrick said.

  “I got what it says here,” I said.

  He smiled, clasped his hands, laid them on the desk, and leaned toward me. “Is that an insinuation?”

  “No. I think the department is too smart to doctor the report.”

  “Why, thanks,” he said thinly.

  “You know she was Giles Newell’s sister?”

  “I can’t see that it makes any difference.”

  “You know I was over there last night to see her?”

  “Business or pleasure?” he said with a sneer.

  “There wasn’t much pleasure in her,” I said.

  “So maybe it wasn’t accidental after all.” Patrick raised his brows. “Could have been suicide. She suddenly got sick of it all. Drunk, depressed, she took a dive.”

  “You got it all fixed, haven’t you, Julie?”

  “I don’t know what you mean “

  I could feel the heat beating in my throat. “The hell you don’t. By this time there must be a question in your mind. But you won’t admit it. You’re the great Julian Patrick. You’re going to have an iron hand over all the hoods and politicians in this city. King of Tampa—and you don’t give a damn how you get there.”

  “I might have known you’d get hotheaded, Ed. It’s going to be your undoing one of these days.”

  “But not yet, Julie. Not for a long time. Not until I do what I’ve been paid to do.”

  “Bravo,” Julie said.

&nbs
p; “Okay,” I said. “But remember one thing, Julie. You got born with a part of you cannibal. The death of Wally Tulman wouldn’t mean a thing to you. You closed a sensational case quickly and successfully. It put old lady Wherry solidly behind you, and she’s quite an ally in your dealings with City Hall. It’s a real bargain for Wally Tulman’s death, hey, Julie?”

  “Especially since he’s guilty,” Patrick said placidly.

  “I don’t believe it, Julie. Not any more. He’s no friend. If he died, it would be a stranger dying. But it’s up to me to undo what’s been done to him.”

  “Well, you just go right ahead and do that, Ed. Now I’ve got some work to do.”

  He pulled some papers on his desk toward him. I stood up. My hands were shaking. You couldn’t reach Julie. And you can’t fight a guy you can’t reach.

  I mopped some sweat off my face and headed for the door.

  “Take care of yourself, Ed.”

  “I intend to.”

  “You’re barking at shadows, of course. But if what you say is true, you’d better be careful. You could get killed, you know.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “It isn’t a warning. Just some simple, honest advice. Come back any time the department can co-operate with you, Ed.” “I’ll do that, Julie.”

  “Fine.” He raised his face and smiled at me. “I’ll let the reporters know how we stand now. They’ll want follow-ups for those stories they ran on your tip.”

  I resisted the impulse to slam the door behind me. But when I was outside headquarters, I still wanted to break something. There’s nothing harder to beat your head against than shadows. I was ridden with the feeling that Julian Patrick was indestructible and whatever he wanted he would get.

  I did a routine check at the morgue and took a taxi out to the Estates.

  Laura answered my ring.

  “Just in time for a late lunch,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Don’t be a bear.” She smiled.

  Our eyes met, and the TNT that had almost gone off last night began quivering again.

  “What did you find out?” she asked, turning away.

  I followed her into the dining area where she set out sandwiches.

  “They haven’t had the inquest yet,” I said, “but they’ll rule it accidental death, sure as anything. The body is still in the morgue. Giles Newell hasn’t claimed it yet.”