Deathwatch

by Robb White

  “I asked you! Does Ham know I’m in here?”

  “He knows,” the deputy said, letting Don out and closing the door.

  It was an hour later before Sergeant Hamilton came and unlocked the door. “I’m sorry to see you in all this trouble, Ben. Come on in the office.”

  “There wouldn’t be any trouble if you’d been here last night, Ham,” Ben said. “Things are just all fouled up.”

  “Yeah,” Ham said, closing the cell door. “How you feeling, Ben?”

  “Fine.”

  “Can you walk okay?”

  “Sure. Look, Ham, what’s Madec saying? What kind of story is he telling?”

  “We’ll go into it,” Ham said as they walked slowly across the hot pavement.

  “Whatever it is, it’s a lie, Ham.”

  There was a crowd in the office. His uncle, Les Stanton, the game warden, Mr. Hondurak, the justice of the peace, Strick, Denny O’Neil, the chopper pilot, and two men in suits Ben had never seen before. He looked around for Madec, but he wasn’t there.

  “Sit down, Ben,” Ham said.

  There was silence in the room for a moment as everybody stared at him and then the justice of the peace, Mr. Hondurak, said, “All right, Ben. First, these are Mr. Madec’s attorneys. Mister …”

  The older of the two men in suits pointed with his thumb at the younger one and said, “Alberts, and I’m Mr. Barowitz.”

  Ben nodded to them but neither of them even glanced at him. He studied them a moment as they sat, looking pale and bloated among all these leather-skinned, desert-dry men.

  “Now, Ben,” Hondurak said, “Officer Strick tells me you’ve been informed of your rights, and here’s the waiver you signed.”

  Ben nodded.

  “If you want to, I’d like to hear your version of this thing,” Hondurak said.

  As Ben started to speak he noticed Sonja O’Neil for the first time. She was sitting at Strick’s desk, her hands poised over a stenotype machine.

  Sonja and that machine made him nervous, but he told his story slowly, trying to remember each detail, trying to keep everything in sequence. No one said anything, but just sat looking at him, as Sonja kept making soft clicking noises with the machine, the paper folding itself up neatly as it came out.

  When he got to the point where they had found the old man on the ridge the sheriff spoke for the first time. “Was he dead?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Shot?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many times?”

  “Once.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “In the chest.”

  Ben went on with it, telling them only what had happened after that, leaving out what he had thought and felt; leaving out both his fear of Madec and his anger.

  The sheriff was the only one who asked any questions. “What did you shoot Mr. Madec with?”

  “The slingshot, sir.”

  “The one you found in the old man’s camp?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where is that slingshot, Ben?”

  “In the Jeep.”

  Ben saw Ham glance over at Strick, who shook his head.

  “Isn’t it in the Jeep?” Ben asked.

  “There’s no slingshot in the Jeep.”

  “Then it must have fallen out when we took the old man out,” Ben said.

  “It didn’t,” Strick said.

  “It’s either out on the ground in the parking lot or back behind the Diagnostic Center,” Ben said. “Because it was in the Jeep when I got here. I saw it.”

  “There’s no slingshot,” Strick said. “Anywhere.”

  “Go ahead, Ben,” Hamilton said.

  “It’s around somewhere. A hunting slingshot with a brace that comes down on your arm.”

  “I mean, what happened then?” the sheriff said.

  “That’s about all,” Ben said. “I got the gun away from him and tied him up. Then I went back and got the old man and brought him in.”

  The sheriff looked over at the justice of the peace, who said, “Les, how about you and Strick going out there in the chopper, and check some of these details, will you? See if you can find where the old man was shot. Pick up any slugs you find. Check on his camp. You might look that butte over a little, too, just in case. And if you can find where Ben shot Madec, pick up any slugs there, too.”

  “Let me go along,” Ben said. “I can show you.”

  “That’s all right, Ben,” Ham said. “You just stay here.”

  Ben looked around at them, and suddenly he felt as though the hot, stale room was ice cold. None of them would look at him. It was frightening.

  He turned to Hondurak. “What did Madec tell you? What’s his story?”

  “Well, that isn’t exactly relevant, Ben,” Hondurak said.

  “It is to me,” Ben told him. “If you believe what he says, I can be in trouble.”

  “It isn’t a question of whether I believe what he says, or what you say. This is just a preliminary investigation into the death of one man and an assault on another. I’m just trying to get all the details so I can decide whether there’s a basis for a felony-aggravated assault charge and perhaps a suspicion of murder charge.”

  “Nobody got murdered,” Ben told him. “It was an accident.”

  For the first time one of the lawyers, Barowitz, spoke. “Shooting a man three times is an accident?” he asked in a dry, low voice.

  “Shooting a man after he’s dead isn’t a murder,” Ben said.

  The lawyer just shrugged and smiled at Hondurak.

  “Ben, listen,” his uncle said, “don’t say any more. I’ll get you a lawyer.”

  “I don’t need a lawyer,” Ben said. “I told you how this thing happened, and you can go out in the desert and see where it happened. If Madec told you something else, he’s a liar.”

  “All right, all right, calm down,” Hondurak said. “Okay, lock him up, Strick, and then you guys get going.”

  “Why do I have to stay in jail?” Ben asked, trying to keep his voice down. “Where’s Madec? He’s not in jail!”

  Hondurak looked at him coldly and said, “He’s just as much in jail as you are, only he’s been pretty badly shot up and is in the hospital.”

  “I should’ve …” Ben started to blurt out that he should have killed him, but stopped.

  “Should have—what?” Barowitz asked.

  “Never gone out in the desert with a liar like that,” Ben said, getting up out of the chair as Strick beckoned to him.

  When he was back in the cell his uncle came to the door and leaned on it, his fingers around the iron bars. “Ben,” he said, “you know you can talk to me. Tell me the truth now. It’s the only way.”

  “I told it,” Ben said.

  His uncle shook his head slowly from side to side. “It sure didn’t sound like it in there, Ben. It sounded kind of fantastic. Kind of made up, Ben.”

  “That’s the way it was when it was happening, too.” Ben went over to the door. “What did Madec tell them?”

  “Well, the sheriff and Hondurak won’t talk to me about it, Ben. I guess they can’t, legally. But I talked some to Emma Williams at the Center, and she says that she heard everything Mr. Madec told them.… It sure sounds bad, Ben. His story is a lot different from yours. And his makes a lot more sense.”

  “Like how?”

  “Mr. Madec says you got sore at the old man. Claimed he’d run off the bighorn you were after. And that you scuffled around some and the old man hit you in the face with his metal locator and knocked you over a little cliff. That’s how you got all those cuts and bruises.”

  “Oh, boy,” Ben said.

  “Then Mr. Madec says that after you and he got back to the Jeep, you took your Hornet and went off alone, saying you were going to hunt up the sheep again. And he says he felt pretty sore when he heard a couple of shots because it was supposed to be him out there
hunting bighorn, not you. So he went up on the ridge. And you’d shot the old man.”

  Ben leaned against the wall. “He makes it sound so simple,” he said.

  “Yes, he does, Ben. Then Mr. Madec says you tried to make him believe it was an accident, shooting that old man, but you had shot him twice and when he argued with you about it, you got sore.”

  Ben suddenly felt better. “So how does he explain that the man was shot three times, not just twice? And once with a gun a lot bigger than a Hornet. How does he explain that?”

  “That’s what makes it so bad, Ben,” his uncle said, in that slow, sad way of his. “Real bad, because Mr. Madec says you took his gun away from him and shot the old man again, with his gun, claiming that now you could prove it was Mr. Madec and not you who had killed the old man.”

  Ben couldn’t stop the feeling that Madec was outwitting him, outthinking him again. “It’s all a lie,” he said helplessly.

  His uncle just stared at him, looking as though he was about to cry. “I sure hope so, Ben. Because then Mr. Madec says that when he realized what you were trying to do to him he tried to get away, get back to the Jeep. And that’s when you shot him and kept on shooting him until he stopped running.”

  “If I did all that,” Ben said, trying to imagine the scene Madec had created for Hondurak and Strick and Ham. “If I did all that, and that’s the way it really happened, then why was I such a fool? Why did I go to all the trouble to bring him in to the sheriff? If I’d already murdered that old man, what difference would it have made to me to murder Madec too? You see, Unc, he doesn’t make sense. He’s lying.”

  “It sure doesn’t sound like it,” his uncle said. “Mr. Madec says that you had to bring him in; that you wanted to kill him but were afraid to.”

  “Afraid of what?” Ben demanded. “Wouldn’t I be more afraid of what he’d say alive?”

  “You were afraid of Les and Denny,” his uncle said. “Because, just after you’d shot the old man, they went over you in the chopper and you couldn’t be sure they hadn’t seen what you’d done, with the old man right there dead on the ground. So you had to blame it on Mr. Madec. You couldn’t kill him because you had to bring him in to make your story look good.”

  “To make his look good.” Ben turned away from the door. “I should’ve done it.”

  “Now, now, Ben,” his uncle said. “That’s what’s caused all the trouble. You know you’ve got a real hot temper.”

  “Not that hot.” Ben turned back. “Unc, it’s all a lie! All of it. They can’t believe that!”

  “They do. They can’t say right out they do, but they do. The best thing for you to do is just hush now and wait for Joe McCloskey. Then, Ben—tell him the truth.”

  Ben went over to the bunk and sat down. After a moment he raised his head. “Les and Denny came down in the chopper and talked to Madec. How does he explain that?”

  “I just told you. You had just shot the old man when they got there, but Madec didn’t know that. He thought you were shooting bighorn, and he griped to them about it. They went off to look for you.”

  “In the wrong direction. You know something, Unc,” Ben said quietly, “I didn’t tell Hondurak and Ham all of it. I left out a lot. About how Madec tried to pretend he hadn’t shot that man. About his trying to bribe me. He offered me ten thousand dollars. What about all that?”

  “Ten thousand dollars!” His uncle shook his

  head. “It sounds like all the rest of it, Ben. Kind of fantastic. If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything about that. About anything. Wait till Joe gets here and talk to him. He can tell you what to do.”

  Ben looked at this man he had lived with for most of his life. “I don’t think you believe me.”

  His uncle lowered his eyes. “I don’t think you’d deliberately kill anybody. For no reason. But if a man knocked you down with a locator … well you’ve got an awful hot temper.”

  Ben lowered his head. “Okay, Unc,” he said.

  “I’ll see you later, Ben.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said.

  Around one o’clock the deputy and the Boy Scout turned up again. As the boy came in with the food Ben said, “Don, do me a favor, will you? Go down to the Diagnostic Center and ask that kid down there—I think his name’s Souchek—to look in …”

  “Now, wait just a minute, fella,” the deputy said at the door. “Nothing like that, fella.”

  Ben turned on him. “Who’s side are you on?”

  “I’m not on anybody’s side so just you cool it.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, “so you go ask that guy who cleans up down there to look in the trash and see if there’s a slingshot in it.”

  “A slingshot!” the deputy said, disgusted. “You’re asking somebody to root around in the trash for a slingshot?”

  Ben walked to the door. The deputy must have thought he was trying to escape; he stepped over to block the door and put his hand on his gun. Ben stopped in front of him and said, “A man claims I shot him with a rifle. I didn’t. I shot him with a slingshot. If I can find it I can prove it. So I’ll appreciate it if you will help me find it.”

  “If I get time,” the deputy said, letting Don out and closing the door.

  The long day dragged on and it was well after dark before the deputy and Don Smith came in with the evening meal.

  Ben went to the door. “How about that slingshot?”

  “I haven’t had time.”

  “It would be good if somebody looked before the trash gets picked up,” Ben said.

  “Maybe, after I get off duty,” the deputy said, letting Don out and locking the door again.

  Ben sat down and put the tray on his knees. He wasn’t hungry, but eating was something to do.

  He had seen that slingshot between the Jeep’s front seats.…

  He unfolded the paper napkin. Written on the inside of it, in pencil, was:

  Can’t find the slingshot. Looked every place. Don

  What had Madec done with it? He’d only had a few seconds to hide it.

  Ben was still eating, not enjoying the food, when Strick came and opened the door.

  “I’ve got to find that slingshot, Strick.”

  Strick stood at the door waiting, his hand on the butt of his pistol. “You walk in front of me,” he said menacingly.

  “I’m not some sort of thug,” Ben said.

  “Just walk in front of me.”

  In the office they were all there again, Hondurak, Sergeant Hamilton, his uncle, Sonja with her machine, Les Stanton and Denny O’Neil, and the two lawyers. Madec was not there.

  “Where’s Madec?” Ben demanded.

  Nobody answered him, and Strick said, “Sit down.”

  “Okay, Strick,” Hondurak said, “what’d you find out there?”

  “All the evidence checks with Mr. Madec’s story,” Strick said, going over to Hondurak and handing him two smashed but recognizable full-patch bullets. “We’ll send these in to ballistics but I’m pretty sure they’re slugs from a Hornet. I found them on the ridge where Mr. Madec says Ben killed the old man. There’re plenty of traces, blood all over, looked like somebody had a fight up there.”

  “No other slugs?” Hondurak asked. “Ben claims the man was killed with the .358.”

  “I already told you,” Ben said. “Madec found that one and put it in his pocket.”

  Strick looked over at him and said, “That’s what you did tell us, isn’t it?” Then he held out his hand with the .358 slug lying in it. “I found this right near the other two. It’s a .358.”

  Ben hardly heard Hondurak say, “Was this open ground, Strick? I mean, could Les and Denny have seen the body from the chopper?”

  “I’m coming to that,” Strick said. “There is distinct evidence that the body of that old man had been picked up and shoved in under a little overhang of rock so it couldn’t be seen—not from a chopper.”

  “That’s where Madec put him,” Ben said.

  They all seemed to igno
re him. It was as though he hadn’t said anything.

  “Next,” Strick said, “we found the old man’s camp. It was a wreck. Somebody had just kicked it all to pieces. His blanket all ripped up, his clothes ripped up. Water can busted in, oven busted. Just a mess. But”—he paused and looked over at Ben—“there was no little tin box. No little tin box anywhere.”

  Ben looked over at Hondurak. “Am I allowed to ask anything?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Ben turned to Strick. “You say there was a blanket at the camp. Any shoes?”

  “An old pair of boots, real beat-up, though.”

  “If they’d been there when I was there, why didn’t I take them?” Ben asked. “I was naked. I could’ve used the blanket. I could have used any kind of boots.”

  The lawyer, Barowitz, said pleasantly, “Doesn’t it seem to you, your honor, that this young man is contradicting himself? If, as he claims, if he was as naked and shoeless as he claims he certainly would have taken those boots, no matter in what condition. And, as he just said, he could have used pieces of the blanket. The fact that he left all that stuff there seems to argue that he was not, shall we say, as naked as he claims he was.”

  Ben felt as though he were talking inside a box or something. That nothing he said was being heard, nothing was being understood. “That’s what I just said!” Ben yelled at them. “Madec went back later and put all that stuff there. When I …”

  “For heaven’s sakes, man, why?” Barowitz asked. “For what purpose would Mr. Madec maneuver all that junk around?”

  “When I went to that camp there was nothing there,” Ben said stubbornly.

  “Including, I suppose, that mysterious little box containing that mysterious, vanishing slingshot,” Barowitz said.

  “Okay, okay,” Hondurak said. “Let’s don’t get into any arguments, fellas. This is just an investigation.… What about the butte, Strick?”

  “I’m not arguing!” Ben said. “I’m just …”

  “We’ll come back to that in a minute, Ben,” Hondurak said. “All I want is to get the bare bones laid out, and then we can see what we’ve got. So, about the butte, Strick?”

  “Nobody climbed that butte,” Strick said in that loud, positive voice Ben remembered from high school. “Somebody tried, driving tent pegs in the wall and cutting some footholds, but nobody climbed it.”