Pulp Crime
Page 346
Now the ideas began to marshal themselves in Buzz’s head. Same Washout Board, killed the same day, in the same way. Buzz ground his knuckles into the top of his desk. Altogether too many similarities.
Suddenly, in Buzz’s mind, two and two added up to murder. But knowing that he had a murderer on his hands was no help. Who did it and why? Would he try it again? The questions nagged at him.
Then Buzz thought of a way to check his murder theory. He had to have some definite proof and this might give it to him. He grabbed at his hat as he left the office.
“Listen, Tommy,” Buzz told him an hour later, “you’re grounded for the rest of the day. No more flying.” Tommy all but jumped him. “What the hell do you mean, grounded? I’ve got a flight of students who have to finish here next week. Knock off the baloney.”
Buzz pulled a length of control cable from his desk drawer. “Since that last crash I’ve been checking up a little. You’ve been flying a spare plane all day, haven’t you?”
Tommy nodded. “My own plane was getting a new set of spark plugs and having the radio checked.”
“Well, I went down to have a look at your own plane. That cable came from the ailerons. Have a good look at it.”
Tommy fingered the cable carefully. At one point it was frayed almost to the breaking point. Someone had taken a sharp instrument and had worked on it.
“When you took off you would have made a turn as soon as you were clear of the end of the runway,” Buzz told him. “And when you turned, the strain would have broken the cable. You would have joined Nichols and the others. See what I mean?”
Tommy whistled. “Jeez, Buzz, that was a narrow one. I owe you a lot for catching this before it caught me. But how do you know someone else isn’t going to get it? It looks like sabotage to me. Better cancel flying for the day, until you can have every plane carefully checked.”
Buzz shook his head. “Hope. I don’t think we have to worry. There were four marked men on this base. All of you sat on the Washout Board together. The other three got it, and you were the next victim.”
“Okay, okay,” Tommy said hastily. “Consider me grounded until further notice. But how about catching the guy who’s doing all of this. Do you know who it is?”
Buzz shrugged his shoulders. “I wish I knew the answer to that one myself, but I don’t. I haven’t even got a lead in that direction, except that it’s probably someone you washed out, and who has a grudge.”
“Hell,” exploded Tommy. “There are a lot of people in that group. And I don’t think any of them are around here now. That doesn’t make too much sense to me.” Buzz shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Maybe you’re right. But what else can we work on? It’s got to be somebody on the base. And from the way things look, it might have been anyone. Any man aboard this station could have gotten near those planes without arousing suspicion.”
Tommy frowned, which was an unusual facial display for him. “I can’t think of any enemies I have who’d go so far as to want to kill me. And I damn sure can’t think of any that all four of us might have made, unless some of the boys we washed out resented it. But as I said, they shipped out of here after the board meeting.”
Buzz sat down again and stared at the point of his pencil, concentrating until his eyes crossed. He threw the pencil down quickly. “That’s enough of that,” he told himself. “Better forget it for a while.”
“Hey Tommy,” he said suddenly. “What happened to the guy in his underwear? Did you ever find out?”
Tommy grinned. “Yeah, I heard that they checked his identification through his fingerprints. He was stationed here all right. Then I guess they checked his story in town, and it seems to fit. Some guy actually sapped the kid and stole all of his stuff.”
Buzz laughed, thinking of a man standing in the middle of the street in nothing but his skivvies, hailing a taxi cab. “I wonder why the hell anyone would want to steal . . .” He stopped, his hand poised in midair. “Hey, wait a minute! That might be the answer,” he yelled.
Tommy jumped, a puzzled expression playing about his features. “Whaddayamean—answer? Are we playing games now?”
Buzz left his desk and walked over to his friend. “Don’t you see, Tommy.
Somebody stole that kid’s uniform and ID card. He could get on the base with them. And he could be running around loose on the base now. He could have gone down to the planes and fixed those cables, and nobody would have noticed him. He would look like anyone of the two hundred students we have here. That must be it.”
Tommy placed a thoughtful finger at the point of his chin and nodded slowly. “Yeah, Buzz. That could be.” He thought for a while longer. “Say, maybe this ensign has some idea as to what his attacker looks like. I’ll tear over and have a little talk with him.”
“Okay,” Buzz answered. “And call me when you have the dope, so I can start working on it down here.”
Tommy left without saying more, while Buzz continued to ponder the thing. He alternately rocked violently in his swivel chair and paced the floor in long, nervous strides.
Spun in? Buzz knew how that had been worked. The murderer had nosed around the ready room until he discovered which planes his intended victims were to fly. Then he went down to the flight line and fixed the cables in those planes. It was customary for student pilots to examine the planes thoroughly before their first flight. And anyone seeing him in an ensign’s uniform would take it for granted he was familiarizing himself with the control mechanisms of the plane.
The beauty of the setup was that when the planes hit from a hundred feet they exploded, leaving no traces. Fortunately Buzz had the cable from Tommy’s plane for evidence. And then, when the murderer had finished his business, he would go out the same way he came in. Through the main gate on the stolen pass and in the stolen uniform. He would just disappear.
Buzz reached for the phone again. “There’s one sure way to stop that.” He dialed the number of the Marine Guard at the gate.
“Hello, Marine Guard? This is the Operations Officer. What was the name of the ensign who came in without his uniform today? R. J. McDaniels? Well, I want all officers leaving the base checked very carefully. Compare the pictures on their ID cards with the men themselves. And when Ensign R. J. McDaniels attempts to go through the gate, stop him at all costs, even if you have to shoot. Got that?”
When he put down the phone, Buzz looked up into the ugly muzzle of a small automatic.
“Very clever, sir,” the man behind the gun snarled. He was dressed in the uniform of an ensign. His face was young, clean shaven, and masculine looking. Buzz thought that he could almost have been called handsome. But his eyes changed that. They were the wild, glazed eyes of a mad man.
“What the hell do you want?” Buzz demanded and started to his feet.
The man laughed and then his laugh faded into a snarl. “Don’t move yet, sir.” The “sir” came out as a bitter, sarcastic slur. “I wouldn’t want to have to kill you too. You’re not on my list.”
Buzz had felt the cold fear of death before going into battle many times, and he felt it again when he first looked up the businesslike muzzle of the gun. But now, as always happened, the fear wore off quickly and his nerves became as taut and tough as piano wire. He settled back in his chair nonchalantly.
“So I was right,” he said calmly to the man with the gun. “I don’t know your name, but I know how you got here. I know you murdered three men this morning. I can’t tell you why you murdered them, but I have a pretty good idea.”
The man sat opposite Buzz, so that he could watch the door of the office and the Operations Officer. “You are clever, sir.” Again the “sir” was heavily accented. “I may have to kill you too. You know that four men decided to sit judgment on me, and decided that I wasn’t fit to be a Navy flier. They washed me out and I was made a civilian again. I’m going to be drafted soon as a private in the army, thanks to them, and I wanted to square things before I went. So I came back to show the
m that they weren’t as smart as they thought.”
“When the Navy washes a man out there’s always a good reason for it,” Buzz reminded him. “It was probably better for you that way.”
The man waved his gun. “That’s for me to decide. And I decided that they didn’t give me a fair break.” His eyes gleamed dangerously. “I think you know too much,” he said, squinting, “so I’d better put you on my list too. And as long as you’re going to die, you might as well have the satisfaction of knowing my name. I’m Bill DeWitt.”
“I can’t say that I’m glad to meet you, DeWitt,” Buzz answered. “But I promise you that you’ll never get away with this.”
DeWitt grinned. “No? Well, we’ll see. You threw a monkey wrench into my original plans, but I think I can change them and still accomplish my work.”
Buzz was silent, memorizing the features of the man in front of him.
DeWitt consulted his watch. “Time to start,” he said. “Stand up!”
Buzz shrugged his shoulders and did as he was told.
“Now pick up the phone,” DeWitt ordered, “and tell the line chief to warm up a fighter for you. Make it one of those parked right in front of the building here.” So that was his plan of escape! Buzz had thought that he had his man trapped, but now he saw that he was outwitted. He whirled and plunged for the figure standing half way across the room from him.
“I will like hell,” he shouted as he plunged.
Flame spewed from the gun, and Buzz felt his shoulder rip open. At the same time De Witt brought his foot up and caught Buzz in the stomach. The distance between them had been too great for Buzz. He fell back against the wall, hit his head against it, and slouched down, groggy and winded.
One thing stayed in his mind. No help would come to the office because most likely the sound of the shot had been drowned out by the roar of the planes warming up and taking off. He tried to move as he saw DeWitt pick up the phone, but he couldn’t. His arm was nearly paralyzed, and his head was spinning.
“This is the Operations Officer,” DeWitt said in low tones into the phone. “I want a fighter warmed up in front of my office, ready to go in five minutes. Put a parachute in it.”
He looked over at Buzz as he hung up the phone. “I see that I didn’t need your help after all. As soon as I said Operations Officer that boy was ready to jump. Now I’ll wait here a few minutes, until my plane is ready to take off, and then I’ll leave you to your dreams. They will probably be very nice dreams, full of hot lead and things like that, because you’ll be dead.”
Buzz was furious. He had been outwitted and beaten. Now he was cringing on the floor before the man who had beaten him. He felt his anger rising in his throat. Rage blinded him. Summoning his last bit of strength, he pulled himself from the floor and started for DeWitt. DeWitt backed away and pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired. Buzz tackled him.
They rolled around on the floor.
Buzz flailed his fists into his opponent as hard as he was able, but he was still groggy and his left arm was almost useless, while DeWitt was fresh and whole. DeWitt got his right arm free and planted a terrific uppercut under Buzz’s chin. The flyer went down in a heap, still fighting for consciousness.
DeWitt got up and brushed himself off. He checked his gun to see that the faulty round was out. But before he could get the round changed, he heard footsteps in the corridor outside of the office. Without waiting for anything else, he jammed the gun deep in his pocket and walked from the office. Two men were at the far end of the hall, approaching. He walked away from them quickly, came to a stairway, and started running for the plane.
It was several minutes before Buzz was able to rouse himself again. His stomach hurt and his jaw hurt. His vision was fuzzy and his left arm screamed whenever he moved it. But finally he was able to drag himself over to the squawk box.
“Tower from Operations,” he said into the box. “Radio the crash truck at the end of the runway that the field is closed. No more planes will take off until further notice.”
The voice of the tower operator came back filled with amazement. “Aye aye, sir,” he answered, but he meant, “You’re nuts, sir.”
Just then there was a roar in front of the hangar. Buzz staggered to the window in time to see DeWitt start to taxi out to the takeoff strip. When he was part of the way out, DeWitt noticed that the crash crew was stopping all planes from taking off. The taxiway he was on was only twenty degrees out of the wind, so he gunned his plane and took off down the taxiway.
Buzz chewed his lip. Damn it, couldn’t anything stop that madman?
His senses were beginning to return again, and he knew that there was only one thing to do. He called and had another fighter warmed up. “And see that the guns are loaded,” he added before he hung up.
Then he called the tower again on the squawk box. “Keep an eye on that plane that just took off from the taxiway. I’m going after him and I’ll want to know which direction he went in.”
While he waited for the plane crew to warm and load his ship, he went into the washroom and bathed his head in cold water. He moved his left arm gingerly, found that it responded but that the movement was painful. He wrapped a towel around the wound to stop the flow of blood.
He got into his flight gear without once remembering that he was grounded for three months. All he thought of was the fact that here at last he had the answer to the questions the court martial board would ask.
Before leaving the washroom he took a long pull from the refrigerated fountain. The cold water took the heavy taste of blood from his mouth, and his head cleared a little.
Once ready for flight, Buzz dashed back into the office before going to the plane, and made a hurried call to the Marine Guard. “This is the Operations Officer again,” he said. “I’ll be taking off in a few minutes in an F6F, and I want a jeep with four fully armed marines to follow the plane as rapidly as possible.”
He stopped while the information was passed around the gate house.
“I’m going to have to shoot down a plane,” he went on, “and if the pilot gets out alive I want him caught. So I want the men to be on the spot as soon as they can. I’ll fly low over the gate house and rock my wings so that you can identify me. Got that?”
He slammed the phone into its cradle and went down to the plane.
Within five minutes Buzz was buckled into his plane, with the engine turning over. The chocks were pulled and he moved away from the flight line. He didn’t taxi all the way out, but followed DeWitt’s example, and took off down the taxiway. As soon as he was off the ground, Buzz horsed back on the stick and headed for altitude. He passed over the gatehouse and saw the jeep start out. “Navy Monroe Tower, this is Ford.
Over.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Ford,” the tower returned.
“What’s the position of that runaway plane now?” Buzz asked.
“Take a heading of three-three-zero, sir. He’s about fifteen miles ahead of you on that course. We had the glasses on him until he disappeared.”
“Wilco from Ford.”
Buzz moved his throttle to the full position after setting his prop at maximum RPM. The Hellcat began to pick up speed. Then he brought the RPM back to its most efficient point for a climb. He leveled off at 5000 feet, and his eyes scanned the horizon.
A speck appeared ahead and slightly below him. Buzz glued his eyes to it, sure that here was his quarry. Two Hellcats, he thought, tangled up in a dogfight, with the same speed and maneuverability. That meant it would be strictly a question of pilots. Buzz knew that he had the experience on his side.
He adjusted the throttle and mixture control to get the most speed from the two thousand horses that were pulling him along. He hoped that the pilot of the other plane didn’t know a Hellcat too well. A man with a lot of hours in it can always make fine adjustments in the trimming of the ship and in the engine to squeeze a few extra knots out of it. Otherwise the chase would go on until they both ran low on fuel.
Wait a minute, Buzz thought. I can’t kill him. If I do I won’t have any proof. If he dies I won’t be able to tie up the crashes with the incident at the gate. No, he’s got to come back alive, so that he can tell the Skipper all about it. Okay, brother, you’re going to get winged where it won’t hurt, but you aren’t going to be able to fly any more.
The speck ahead of him was growing larger. Buzz coaxed a few more knots from his ship. Then his eye caught the cylinder head temperature gauge. The engine was getting hot from running at maximum speed for so long a period. The red pointer on the dial had already gone into the zone marked “danger.” Buzz knew that in a few minutes the engine would start running rough, and then would cut out altogether.
But he couldn’t cut down his speed. He couldn’t afford to lose his man now, just when he had him. Too much depended on him.
“I’ll have to risk it,” Buzz told himself. The speck was now another plane and Buzz could see the markings clearly. He picked up another thousand feet of altitude, and then nosed over into a shallow dive. The added speed of the gentle dive brought him up to his opponent quickly. Buzz charged his guns and gave them a test burst.
The pilot of the other plane saw him now, and began evasive maneuvers. He made a sharp turn toward Buzz, and before Buzz could react the other plane had passed below him. Buzz pulled his nose up and made a tight nose-high turn. His opponent attempted to turn back into him again, but he had waited too long. Buzz made another tight turn as DeWitt passed under him for the second time, and was on his tail.
He grinned. DeWitt didn’t know much about the fundamentals of dog-fighting. After he made his first turn he had flown in a straight line too long before turning again, and had given Buzz the opportunity he was waiting for. It was a common mistake of beginners.
“O.K., guy, you’re through now,” Buzz yelled over the roar of his engine. He followed the flipper turn that DeWitt executed and pulled his nose inside of the turn. Through his illuminated gunsight he computed the lead necessary to hit the engine of the other plane without injuring the pilot.