“Yeah,” he said; “Wagner here.”
“Sergeant Baxer, Sam. You awake?”
Sam Wagner threw the covers back and put his feet on the floor. He peered at the luminous face of the clock. Two A.M.
“Now I’m awake,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Leon Poole took a walk,” Baxer said. “The chief thought you ought to know. He told me to call you.”
“Leon Poole,” Sam Wagner said. “How’d he do it?”
“He was a trusty on the honor farm. One of the guards took him along as a helper on a truck, late this afternoon. The truck never got to town. Took ’em a while to find it.”
“The guard?”
“Dead. Poole put a knife in his throat.”
After a moment, Sam said, “Any sign of Poole?”
“Not yet. He ditched the truck fifteen miles this side of Winston. The state and county boys are out in force. They want him bad, Sam. That guard was a cold-blooded piece of work.”
“Anything I can do?”
“No. Chief wanted you to know, that’s all. You put Poole in the pen. Sit tight, he says. Keep a sharp eye.”
“O.K.,” Sam said. “Thanks for calling.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the wind rip through the fir trees that stood behind the house. Rain slashed at the windows. The storm the papers had been talking about had finally arrived.
“Sam,” Lila said, “who was that?”
The telephone had awakened her. Sam rubbed the back of his neck and shuffled his feet on the cold floor. He thought if Don Ameche had had a wife like Lila—nervous and a fretful sleeper—he would never have invented the telephone. For Lila, a ring in the night always signaled a major calamity.
“Sergeant Baxer,” he said. “A trusty got loose from the state honor farm. The chief thought I ought to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a cop,” Sam said. “It’s part of my work to know about things like that. Tomorrow’s work.” He swung his feet back into bed, leaned over, found her nose, and twisted it gently. “Remember your condition,” he told her. “Plenty of rest, the doc says. Now turn it off and go back to sleep.”
He put his head on the pillow. Beside him, Lila moved restlessly. Lila was good people, his one true love—ten years of married life had sold him on that a million times. But she was a worry bird, first class. Give her a big item like what dress to wear and she could fret herself into a pink tizzy. Give her a cop for a husband and she really—
She sat up beside him. “Sam, I’m hungry.”
“You had a big dinner.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I’m hungry again.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “We’re hungry.”
“Unfair tactics,” he said. “You’re ganging up on me.”
“Would you deny your son nourishment?”
“Five months before he gets here,” Sam said, “and he’s already got an appetite like a horse. Better send him back. I don’t think I’m gonna be able to afford him.”
“Sam,” she said, “we’re hungry.”
He threw the covers back. “Hot chocolate and cinnamon toast,” he said. “Comin’ up.” He found his robe and slippers and went through the house to the kitchen. He put a pan of milk on the stove. He covered slices of bread with butter, sugar, and cinnamon and put them in the oven.
“What a gal,” he said.
He was thirty-five, an even six feet tall, hardfleshed and lean. His hair was close-cropped. He had big, rough hands and rangy shoulders. His face was not a gentle face. His cheekbones were prominent, his jaw was taut and narrow, his heavy brows grew almost solidly over his blue eyes. But there was kindness in his eyes. Now worry pulled at the corners of his mouth. He turned to find Lila in the doorway.
“What’s this?” he said. “You don’t like the service?”
“I want to talk, Sam.”
She came into the kitchen, pulling tight the belt of her robe. She was tall and underweight—her pregnancy had yet to add a pound. She had a rather long face and large, hazel-brown eyes. A beautiful woman, a sensitive woman and a devoted wife. Sam knew it well.
He knew she had built her life around him, completely and for good, and he called that fine. But there were times when caring too much meant worrying too much. Take that deal about the gun. A couple of weeks ago, all of a sudden, she’d blown up a storm because he had to carry a gun to earn a living. So now he got in and out of his shoulder rig in the closet where she couldn’t see it.
“Two A.M.’s no time for a talk,” he said.
“It’s Leon Poole, isn’t it?”
“You heard me say so.”
“And while you were out here I remembered who he is. He’s the one—I mean, it was his wife you killed, wasn’t it?”
“That’s the guy,” Sam said.
“I remember seeing him in court.” Her lips tightened. “He’s dangerous, Sam. Very dangerous.”
Sam spread his arms in exasperation. “Dangerous,” he said. “To you, even a bicycle thief is lethal. Why don’t you be sensible? This guy is nobody.”
Lila looked at him steadily. She looked past him, back more than three years, and saw Leon Poole again. In the courtroom. She’d been there because it had been Sam’s case, and a big one. Big in the papers, at least, with the wife killed. She saw Poole whisper to his lawyer, saw the lawyer turn and find her, saw Poole turn and find her.
“He frightened me,” she said.
It was hard to know why. He hadn’t been rough-looking. Soft was the word for him, a fleshy man of medium height, with plump hands and cheeks. Features almost feminine—straight nose, large long-lashed dark eyes, thick dark hair. His eyes, she thought. His eyes were liquid, steady and staring.
“He was a thief,” Sam said. “And not a very good one.”
“He says you killed his wife.”
“She wound up with three bullets in her,” Sam said. “Mine and two others. Which one did it? Nobody knows.”
“He says you did it.”
“Because he’s got to stick it on somebody. Just one man, not three. It was my case. I questioned him, I ran him down. So he chose me for the guy that killed her.”
“He said he’d get even.”
“Quit it!” Sam leaned stiff-armed on the table. “If you think Poole will get a chance to take a shot at me, you’re very mistaken. In the first place, he isn’t going to want to. That ‘I’ll get you for this, copper!’ is a lot of blow. We hear it all the time. Nothing comes of it. Second place, he hasn’t a chance of staying loose.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Common sense,” Sam said. “He’s wearing prison numbers on his back a foot high. He’s got no dough, no gun, and he’s afoot. Every cop in the state’s looking for him.” Sam took his hands off the table and thrust them into the pockets of his robe. “A lot of big, tough men try to bust out of Winston. Not one in a thousand gets more than a few miles.”
The milk was boiling, the toast was burning. Sam swore, threw it all away and started over. When he turned to Lila, he found her pale, eyes large and dark.
“Hey, cut it out,” he said.
“You know what I’m thinking?”
“I should,” he said. “I’ve seen that look often enough. And I’ve heard the story often enough too. You don’t want to be a cop’s widow. If I loved you as much as you love me, I’d get out of police work.”
“You think I’m being selfish?”
“Just the opposite.” Sam said it earnestly, meaning and believing every word. “You’re gone on me—why I’m that lucky I’ll never know. You’re scared to death something is going to happen to me. I know you can’t any more stop worrying than you can stop breathing. But the answer’s still no. I’m not going to quit police work.”
“What about him, Sam?�
�� Lila asked. “There’s two of us.”
“That’s not a clean punch,” Sam said.
“I think it is.”
Sam put chocolate and toast on the kitchen table. He did not speak again until he had finished the task. Lila, watching him, knew what he would say. His blue eyes were stubborn, his brows were pulled down in a line she knew only too well.
“There are thousands upon thousands of men in police work,” he said. “They live full and satisfying lives—long lives, most of them. Their wives put up with it. Their kids put up with it. You and the lad will have to do the same. I’ll do any reasonable thing for you. This is not reasonable. I won’t do it.”
Lila said, “I’ll ask again.”
* * *
—
Sam was up at six o’clock. Lila was standing beside the table when he walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were huge. The morning paper was beside his plate, opened upon headlines big and black.
“He killed a guard, Sam. You didn’t tell me.”
“At two A.M.?—no, I didn’t tell you,” he said. “There’s nothing to fret about, Lila. They’ll get him. A guard’s the same as a cop. A cop-killer doesn’t get away.”
“Then cops do get killed?”
Sam wondered if every man was as thickheaded as he was at six in the morning. Cop-killer—what a thing to say. “They’ll get him,” he said.
His breakfast eggs got cold while he explained how a man hunt was organized. The escape routes were blocked—the main highways, side roads, railroads, rivers. Then the enclosed area was searched, house to house, barn to barn, field to field. Poole had killed a guard. He’d get the big treatment—bloodhounds, planes, helicopters, cops by the hundred. More than that, every man, woman, and child would be on watch for him. What chance would a man wearing prison clothes have?
“No chance at all,” Sam said.
“Some do get through.”
“With help,” Sam said. “They have a pal waiting at a certain place at a certain time with money, clothes, and transportation. Poole didn’t have help. How could he have known the guard was going to take him to town? He saw the chance, grabbed it, and ran. He won’t get far.”
The doorbell rang. Sam saw the convulsive closing of Lila’s hands. For all his talking, he’d done very little good.
“I’ll get it,” he said.
There were two uniformed cops on the front porch, a prowl car parked at the curb. Sam Wagner knew both officers, Harris and McNamee. They were both veterans, big and competent.
Harris gave Sam a grin. “We’re on special duty out here,” he said. “We’re goin’ to keep an eye on the place.”
“Poole’s still loose then?”
“But not for long. It’s coming daylight now.”
“Right,” Sam said.
Lila was waiting for him in the kitchen, her hands locked at her waist. “Why are they here?” she asked. “What do they want? Sam, please don’t lie to me.”
“O.K.” He put big hands on her shoulders. “If Poole gets through, he might come here. That’s about as long as a chance can get, but it’s being covered. You see? There’s nowhere Poole can go—nowhere—that he won’t find cops waiting for him.”
“I see,” she said.
But her eyes told him she didn’t see it the right way. Her eyes told him she had taken about all she was able to take.
“Time I went to work,” he said.
Quietly, she said, “Good-by, Sam.”
Sam backed his car out of the garage, drove two blocks to the main east-west freeway, and fell in with the stream of early-morning traffic. He found himself thinking of Leon Poole again. A real odd-ball, that one. Clever as Satan in some ways, very dumb in others. He’d been a building-and-loan teller. He’d rigged a holdup, scheduling it for a time when an unusually large amount of cash was on hand. An accomplice had waved a gun and made off with the loot. A clean score, until it became obvious that only three men had known when the till would be stuffed with money.
An inside job then, clearly. Sam had interrogated and released all three suspects. Leon Poole’s telephone had been tapped. Poole, on the second day, had called the accomplice. That one had confessed quickly enough, naming Poole as the man who’d planned the holdup. Sam and two others had gone to make the arrest, and there the simple job had jumped the rails.
Leon Poole’d had a gun. The plump man with the round face and big smile had opened fire when he heard the police at his apartment door. He’d put a bullet through the arm of a uniformed officer. They’d gone in after him—what else? The rest had been unfortunate. They’d thought Poole was alone. Four of the neighbors had seen his wife leave the building. But when it was done, when the fat and weeping man was handcuffed, Doris Poole, the wife, was dead. Four of the neighbors had seen her leave the building, none had seen her return. Stalking an armed man through strange, dark rooms is uneasy work. Reflex is faster than thought. Doris Poole had simply appeared in the wrong doorway at the wrong time.
Sam Wagner shook his head. Three years and more, and he could still remember the numb despair of that moment.
But you can’t bring a dead woman back to life. And you can’t dwell in the past. You have to go on to the next day and the next. Tough, but there it is. Not heartless, helpless.
Sam parked behind police headquarters. He rode the elevator to the third floor. The bulletin board was on his left. Leon Poole’s mug had been posted there. Some face, Sam thought. Dark, long-lashed eyes; dark, rumpled hair; white, plump cheeks; a wide, full mouth. A malleable face. It had been sullen before the police camera, but Sam could remember it reflecting other moods: full of boyish charm and cheer, crumpled and streaked with tears, loose and torn with grief, snarling with hate—an actor’s face.
A voice said, “Here early, aren’t you, Sam?”
“Only a couple of hours,” Sam said.
He turned. This guy he liked: Chris Gillespie. Chris was big and loosely built, a little overweight, but hard under the padding. He was a cop with an education and better off than most for looks: curly hair, straight nose, white teeth. He liked blue suits, loud blue ties and white shirts. Sam had the seniority—two years—and half Chris’s education, but in four years of working together they’d never had a rumble. Sam wrinkled his nose.
“You smell,” he said.
“New shaving lotion. Like it?”
“Lovely,” Sam said. “Just lovely.”
Chris grinned. “Chief wants to see you.”
“Poole?”
“What else?” Chris said. He took Sam’s arm. Going down the hall, he said, “How’s Lila?”
“Not real happy,” Sam said. “Baxer called me at two this morning. About Poole. Lila got in on it and hit the roof. You know how she’s always after me to quit the cops and get in a safe line of work. Now, with a killer loose, blaming me for killing his wife, wanting my blood, she’s taking it hard.”
“It won’t get better,” Chris said.
“What d’you mean?”
“I’ll let the chief tell you,” Chris said.
The chief of detectives, Bob Brennan, was busy. He had one phone propped on his shoulder, another was ringing. A tape recorder used one corner of his desk, the rest was covered with reports. Jim Snow, lieutenant, state patrol, was waiting with something half said. A pair of sharp young men—FBI, likely—were watching the chief; waiting too. Sam and Chris Gillespie went to stand by a window.
Sam said, “How’d Poole make the honor farm?”
“A model prisoner,” Chris said.
Poole had done three years inside the walls. Cheery, hardworking, eager to please from the first day. The guards had liked him, the brain doctor had liked him, the warden had liked him. Poole was a first offender, determined to pay his debt to society and make a new life. He’d deserved a break; they’d given it to him.
&nb
sp; “A bill of goods,” Sam said.
“They know it now,” Chris said. “Poole was just building for the break. Worked on it a long time and brought it off as smooth as a——”
“Sam.”
It was Bob Brennan, chief of detectives. Sam went over to the desk and Brennan introduced him. “Jim Snow, Fisk and Cassidy, FBI,” he said. “This is Sam Wagner, the arresting officer.” Now he looked steadily at Sam. “Turns out we’ve got a psycho on our hands.”
“Poole’s a psycho?” Sam asked.
“Looks that way.”
Bob Brennan was a cop. He’d been one for thirty-five years and he wore the stamp. A big man, strong and beefy. He had slate-gray eyes, a rough-hewn face and short, stiff gray hair. And he was shrewd. When he gave an opinion, men listened.
“What’s the pitch?” Sam asked.
“He was a short-timer,” Brennan said. “He had only a few years to do, and that on the honor farm. But he broke out the hard way, killing a guard. All to get even with you.”
Sam said, “If I had a dollar for every thief who’s promised me a hole in the head, I’d be a rich man.”
“You and me and a million others,” Brennan said. “But this one’s different. It’s what makes him a psycho. He doesn’t want to put a hole in your head. He wants to kill your wife.”
“My wife!”
“That’s right,” Brennan said. “He blames you for killing his wife, he wants an eye for an eye. I expect he’d settle for you, if he can’t get your wife, but she’s his target.” He flicked the switch of the tape recorder. While the tubes warmed, he said, “The warden of the state prison sent us this tape. After the break, he put Poole’s old cell mate on the carpet, thinking he might get something we could use.” He adjusted the tape reels. “Listen.”
“…the truth, s’help me. He kept saying he was dead. He kept saying he died the day that—that Sam Wagner killed his wife. Only one idea in Poole’s head, just one. If I heard him say it once, I heard him say it a thousand time. Why should Wagner’s wife be alive after Wagner killed Poole’s wife? Was his wife any better? A lot of that—hour after hour. He said he’d bust out someday and kill the cop’s wife. After that, he don’t care what happens to him.”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 37
