The Killer Is Mine

by Talmage Powell

  The buzzer demanded attention.

  A black car was parked at the curb in front of the house.

  I backed along the wall until I reached the opening giving to the hallway. I pointed at myself and shook my head. Then I pointed at Laura and swung my hand in the direction of the front door. As she nodded, I jabbed my finger toward the empty beer bottle, glass, and plates on the cocktail table.

  She picked the things up quickly and carried them to the kitchen.

  As the buzzer gave a third long, insistent peal, she called, “Just a moment. I’m coming.”

  She walked across the living area, passing by me as I stood in the dark hall well. She didn’t look at me.

  I heard the carpet-muffled touch of her feet come to a halt. I sensed the noiseless opening of the front door. I heard Julian Patrick say, “Good evening, Mrs. Tulman.” “How do you do, Lieutenant,” she said coolly. “Aren’t you working late?”

  “Servant of the people,” Julie said, irony in his voice. “May I come in?” “So this is a business call.” “I’m afraid it is.”

  “Well,” Laura said, “I wasn’t expecting a social call. Yes, you may come in.”

  I heard the soft sound of feet, the click of the front door as it closed. I faded a few steps back in the hallway. “Won’t you sit down, Lieutenant?” “Thank you.” Julie sighed as he sat. “I think we can dispense with all the niceties, Lieutenant,” Laura said. “Just what’s on your mind?” “I’m looking for Ed Rivers.” “Has something come up?” “Something has. Have you seen him?” “I’ve seen quite a bit of him in the past few days.” “Have you seen him in the last hour?” “What makes you think I might have?” “You’re his client.”

  “That’s no reason he should call here at this hour of the evening.”

  Julie was silent. I knew he was studying every flicker of expression on her face, in her eyes.

  I sensed what was coming. Don’t look toward the hall entry, Laura!

  “I think he might have had reason to call here,” Julie said. “Really.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’ve been quite alone the last hour, Lieutenant.”

  Again he was silent. Then he said very quietly, “I don’t believe you, Mrs. Tulman.”

  “That’s your privilege.”

  “We don’t want to see you in trouble, Mrs. Tulman.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “But we do want to know what Rivers told you.”

  “He told me nothing. I haven’t seen him. Was his car outside?”

  “Not at the house.”

  “Any sign of him in here?”

  “Not in this room, Mrs. Tulman.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There are several rooms in this house.”

  “You think I might be hiding him?”

  “I think the idea of getting your husband off has become an obsession. I think you might try to help Rivers for that reason.”

  “I’ve told you—he hasn’t been here.”

  “Mrs. Tulman,” Julie chided, “there is a car. Not here. It’s parked across the street. A rental car. I know that Ed uses rental cars or cabs when he’s on a case.”

  “Anyone can rent a car, Lieutenant. A rental car in the neighborhood doesn’t prove anything.”

  “But it asks for proof,” Julie said.

  “Why should I lie to you?”

  “Because Rivers lied to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About Madeira Beach.”

  “I’m afraid this is all a riddle to me, Lieutenant.”

  “I think not,” he said, steel creeping into his voice. “Two people were killed on Madeira Beach tonight.”

  “How shocking!”

  “Murdered.”

  She didn’t answer that.”

  “Giles Newell was one of them, Mrs. Tulman,” Julie said, his voice holding an insistent ring. “Rivers was going to any length to find him.”

  “To make him tell the truth, Lieutenant!”

  “To make him talk,” Julie said. “I’ll agree with you that far. Truth, falsehood. It wouldn’t matter to Ed. He was out to make Newell say what he wanted Newell to say.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t care what you believe, Mrs. Tulman,” Julie said, now insultingly polite.

  He was reaching a moment of decision, whether or not I’d spotted his arrival in time to get away from the house.

  “We know,” Julie said, “that Rivers went to Madeira Beach tonight.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A phoned tip, Mrs. Tulman.”

  Quinton. From Quinton, I thought.

  “We know further,” Patrick continued, “that Rivers arrived in Madeira and asked directions to Bayside Boulevard, where the double murder took place.”

  I faded back in the hallway, wondering which way his decision would fall. I slid around a door jamb into a bedroom. A big, spacious bedroom. Maybe it was hers.

  As I turned to press against the wall, I wondered if the window and screen could be opened noiselessly. I looked at the window.

  I saw a face there.

  The small, white moon of a face.

  I caught my breath. Before I could move, the face was gone. I crossed to the window, but I couldn’t see or hear him. The lawn muffled the quick scamper of his feet, and the night had swallowed him.

  CHAPTER

  20

  I COULDN’T RISK the screen. It was copper, mounted on an aluminum frame. The frame was set with thumb screws. The screen would either have to be cut or lifted out bodily. Either way, Patrick would hear me.

  It was a long, bad period of time. I stayed close to the wall, the .38 in my hand. I knew the possible results, but if he decided to search the house, forcing his way without a warrant, I’d have slugged him.

  His brittle voice continued to question her. For all his arrogance and quality of mercilessness, Patrick wore his mental dancing shoes when confronted with wealth and power. He didn’t treat Laura as he would have treated a washwoman from Ybor City, or Evie Grove, or a Franklin Street dime-store clerk accused of stealing.

  At last Laura said, “All right, Lieutenant, he was here.”

  “When?”

  “For half an hour or so before you arrived. He was nervous. He kept watching out the front. He saw your car and went out the back way.”

  “What am I to believe?” Patrick said.

  “Whatever you like,” Laura said. Her voice held a careless, don’t-care ring that gave it sincerity. “I’ve kept you talking, Lieutenant, to give him a chance to get away.”

  “That’s tampering with the law.”

  “You wish to arrest me?” “Not until I get my hands on Rivers.”

  “Good evening, Lieutenant.”

  I heard the sounds of his departure. I moved to the hall archway, staying in the shadows of the hall.

  “Don’t look this way, Laura,” I said.

  She was standing a few feet away in the living area. She looked straight ahead.

  I heard Patrick’s car start outside and move off.

  “He’s gone,” Laura said.

  “No, he’s just waiting.”

  I could see the clean, classic profile of her face. A faint quiver came to her chin. “Ed … you didn’t … there’s no truth in Patrick’s accusations?”

  “Do you think so?”

  “No. I had to ask, that’s all. He voiced the question. I couldn’t help but ask. But don’t answer. It wouldn’t show much faith on my part if you had to answer.”

  I looked from the darkness into the light at her. I said, “I’m going to pitch the key to the rented car onto the couch. Sit down. Pick up the key. Stay there a moment. Then get up, go outside, drive the car to the Ajax agency and catch a cab home.” “Will do, Ed.”

  “He’ll follow you. You won’t see him, but he’ll be back there. Until you leave the car at the agency. He’ll decide then that I did get out of t
he house. He’ll throw out a city-wide dragnet.” “Ed—”

  “Don’t talk. We haven’t any time left.”

  She hugged her arms together for a second.

  “Here comes the key,” I said. “If I miss the couch, watch the way you pick the key up.”

  The key was on a short chain attached to an ID tag. I pitched it low and pretty hard. It glinted for a second before it struck the back rest of the couch. It lay almost in the center of the couch.

  She moved to the couch easily, sat down and rested her head against the back of the couch for a moment. She looked like a woman gaining a seed of strength to combat weariness for a little longer.

  When she got up, she had the key in her hand. She walked to a long, low blond table against the wall of the room, picked up a purse.

  Without looking in my direction, she walked toward the front door. She was out of my line of vision now. I heard the door open and close.

  I followed her in my mind. She was outside, trying the door. She would move quickly down the walk, up the sidewalk. A glance around before she crossed the street.

  Patrick would be giving orders to the flunky driving the black, unmarked car now.

  She was walking calmly and swiftly, angling across the street.

  Opening the rented car. It would take her another minute to locate the ignition switch and unfamiliar gear, gas and brake controls.

  She had the car in motion. Half a block. A block.

  Patrick wouldn’t let her get too far before the black car was in motion also.

  I stood waiting, giving them time. Not thinking of what would happen if the guess was wrong, if Patrick pegged her as a decoy. If the black car didn’t leave the neighborhood.

  I went out of the house by the back way. In the patio I paused. I looked at the spot where the little girl’s body had been found.

  Then I went around the back corner of the house. To the window looking into Laura’s bedroom.

  I didn’t find any tracks.

  But I was the only one who knew definitely that no tracks were there.

  I turned and crossed the wide back lawn. I reached the edge of the Collins property. I could hear water lapping softly against the seawall. I passed the private dock where the Collins cruiser bobbed, a sleek creature of the sea chaffing at its moorings.

  There were soft lights in the Collins house. I approached over the long stretch of lawn from the back of the house, the patio side. I could make out a cool white wrought-iron-and-glass table and chairs, a barbecue pit, a gaily colored beach umbrella like a canopy over the little-used outdoor facilities.

  I went around the house, eased to the front door. The place was very quiet.

  I pressed my thumb on the buzzer. I heard it sing. Then Milt Collins opened the front door. He didn’t look good. His hair was tangled. His face was pale, filled with a shadow that gave it a gaunt cast. His eyes were red and sunken into their sockets. He was dressed in slacks and a sport shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest.

  He was a man at war with himself. A man needing a big, stiff drink desperately, and just as desperately needing not to take it.

  He looked at me almost dumbly.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  “No. What do you want?”

  “I want your help,” I said.

  “I can’t help you. Go away. Stay away, Rivers.”

  “You’re the only one who can help me,” I said. “Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll have to help me. You can’t avoid it,” I said.

  “The hell I can’t! Get out of here,” he said.

  He started to close the door. I wedged my shoulder against it.

  “Giles Newell is dead,” I said.

  “What?” His jaw sagged.

  “And Evie Grove.” “No—no! You’re lying!”

  “I wish I were,” I said.

  “How?”

  “Both of them were murdered,” I said. “Tonight.”

  I pushed against the door. He let it yield. I stepped into the living area of the house. He stood looking at me stupidly, his arms hanging.

  From the next room came the voice of old lady Wherry. “Who is it, Milt?”

  “Rivers.”

  She came into the room. Max the Giant drifted in behind her.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, fixing a cold pair of eyes on me.

  “Trying to stay on my feet, Mrs. Wherry. I was asking Milt to help me.”

  “You’re no more concern of ours, Mr. Rivers. I appreciate your getting the pictures back. They’ve been destroyed. If you want more money, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

  “I’m not asking for money, Mrs. Wherry. I’m simply asking for Milt’s help.”

  “You shan’t bother us again, Mr. Rivers. Now leave. Or I’ll call the police. We are preparing to take a trip. Get away from all this. It seems there’s no end to it.”

  Like a destroyer moving to protect a convoy, she crossed the room to the phone.

  I watched her without saying anything. Until her hand was on the phone.

  “I’m not going to stop you,” I said. “Go right ahead. I’ll show them what I have.”

  The enduring pride and tirelessness of her blunt, old face changed to anger. “Mr. Rivers, we are not in the least interested—”

  She broke off as the remaining member of the family came into the room. Young Bryan looked at us all, coolly, calmly, with a detachment not belonging to a thirteen-year-old boy.

  “Is anything wrong, Father?” he inquired.

  “Bryan,” his grandmother said, “it’s past your bedtime.”

  He looked at her as he might regard a not very interesting specimen of bug under a microscope. It brought suffering to the old lady’s eyes.

  He shrugged and went into the den. In a moment, the sound of a television quiz show filtered into the room from the den.

  I looked at Milt Collins and said, “His footprints are under Mrs. Tulman’s window.”

  Milt said nothing. His head drooped a trifle. I could feel it in him. A great darkness, like a death wish.

  “You see,” I said, “you really must help me. The easiest way would have been the honest way in the beginning.”

  “Mr. Rivers!” Mrs. Wherry barked.

  “Shut up,” Milt told her softly. “You know everything, don’t you, Rivers?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How much can you prove?”

  “Enough to get them started. The local police. The D.A.’s office. The state men. Once they know the direction to look, they’ll find proof plenty, and that’s for sure.”

  He passed his fingers through his hair. He dropped his hand and looked at it. Then he half-raised both hands and looked at them together. Big, strong, worker’s hands. The hands of a leader.

  Honest hands, once upon a time.

  “I guess it’s been for sure always,” he said, and I knew he was talking about many things.

  He lowered his hands and looked at me. “Can you understand, Rivers?”

  “Yes—they were your children.”

  “And Stephanie’s,” he said.

  He seemed blind for a moment. Then he asked, “Can it be handled quietly?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ll try—but I can’t make promises.”

  He shivered and pulled in his shoulders. “It will certainly provide a bloody Roman holiday. At our expense. Us. It’s happening to us.”

  “You can’t undo it,” I said.

  “No—and it was such a lousy party that night. They Were all lousy to me. That was one that stunk, even to Stephanie. We were there, while our kids—”

  “Milt,” Mrs. Wherry said in a hoarse whisper, “I forbid you to say another word.”

  He looked at her blankly. “You should never have mothered a daughter by him, Mama Wherry. You should have known.” “Milt-”

  “Old Spicola Wherry. Great lover of freaks. Fine old citizen of Tampa. A freak himself. Only it didn’t show
on the outside. Worst kind of freak. Finding in the company of freaks the only people with whom he could feel at home. It shimmered close to the surface with Stephanie. It grew to full blossom inside of Bryan.”

  The old lady seemed to choke. Milt looked at her with a great weariness. Max the Giant looked at her and shared the suffering in the old lady’s eyes.

  Milt dragged his gaze to mine. “What made you so sure, Rivers?”

  “Newell’s death,” I said. “It meant he had lied at Tulman’s trial. If the time element was wrong, the little girl could not have been killed on the Tulman patio. No one was there to kill her. She had been killed someplace else and carried there.

  “Then I began to think of a strange little boy. A little boy who never plays, who has no friends, who can view the drunkenness of a father and the insanity of a mother with an absolute lack of feeling. It all added up to a little boy who got born with some pieces missing, who would put ammonia in a goldfish bowl to watch the reaction and then describe it as his sister’s doing. A little boy who was such a terror in small, weird ways that you couldn’t keep a house servant. Or do I have to go to the employment agencies, run down servants and get statements as to why they quit?”

  “Why bother them?” Milt asked. “Go ahead, Rivers, tell me about my kid.” Behind his eyes, he was writhing in agony.

  “A little boy,” I said, “living in a world peopled by a population of one. Yet his physical development proceeds at a normal pace.

  “In the company of this boy put a girl nearly his own age. In his world there are strange conceptions—and no conceptions. No conception of right and wrong, of her as a sister, of civilized conduct, or morals—”

  “Stop!” the old lady said. She moved toward me, not with the power and certainty that had been hers. She hobbled. “We are very rich, Mr. Rivers. No price is too high. We’ll give you anything.”

  “I wish I could take it,” I said. “But the only price I can take is a statement from Milt, to save a man’s life. At least, we could save one life out of all this.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Wherry. “I’ll not have it!”

  “Yes,” Milt said. He moved to a blond desk, sat down, got a piece of paper from a drawer and started writing.