“I’m not sorry,” he said. “I had to do it.”
* * *
—
Sam Wagner drove through the rain-swept streets with care. He watched the traffic behind him, the oncoming traffic and the traffic beside him, with particular attention to cars driven by men alone. Now and then he glanced at Lila.
She was sitting beside him, hands clasped in her lap, watching the beating windshield wipers. She was grimly silent, her lips set and her chin firm. Her silence was a protest. A uniformed officer had let Sam through his own front door. He’d found two plainclothes men in the living room with Lila. There’d been squad cars in the street as they’d driven away. Her silence was a protest against all this, and with Lila silence was far more grim than any words.
“No questions?” he asked.
“One,” she said. “Where are we going?”
“Gillespie’s,” Sam said. “You’re going to stay with Mary until we get our hands on Poole.”
He hadn’t told Lila it was her life Poole wanted. And now, thinking about it again, he decided that this was still not the time. She was keyed, he knew, to the breaking point. Nothing could be gained by frightening her more. After the thing was done, after Poole was dead or behind bars, would be time enough.
She said, “This is not the way to Gillespie’s.”
“A roundabout way,” he said.
“Why roundabout?”
Sam set his narrow jaw. “That’s obvious, isn’t it? The guy’s loose somewhere in town. He might have picked up another car. He might have been waiting and spotted me when I drove away. Not likely, but possible. We’re not taking any chances, Lila.”
She turned on the seat to watch the traffic behind them. After Sam had made two more turns, she said, “Sam, there is a car following us.”
“Black sedan?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a maroon sedan ahead of us, too,” Sam said. “Cops in both of them. They’re clearing us, Lila.”
Lila turned to stare through the windshield again. Silent again, grim again. Sam knew there was an explosion on the way. She couldn’t hold that much anger, that much resentment long without letting it go. When the explosion came Sam knew it would be big. He wondered if their marriage, or any marriage, could be strong enough to stand against it.
Mary Gillespie met them at the door. She kissed Lila and took her coat. Her dark eyes questioned Sam. “Does she know?” Sam shook his head. Mary bit her lips. She didn’t know whether it was right or not.
Sam said, “This is a lot of trouble.”
“Idiot!” Mary said. “If you’d gone to anyone else, you’d have had trouble. I mean real trouble. What good am I, if I can’t help?”
Sam was looking at Lila. She’d gone into the living room, she was standing with her back to him. He looked at Mary Gillespie and shook his head again. Mary knew how Lila felt about police and police work. And she understood clearly what this business of Poole meant.
Sam said, “Lila, I’ll keep in touch.”
She turned. “Sam, why am I here?”
“I told you,” Sam said. “A precaution. We’re not taking any chances. And you’re safe here. All Poole’s got is our phone-book address. If you’re not there, you’re on the moon as far as he’s concerned. He can’t find you.”
“Why should he want to?”
Sam lied a little. “He’s a psycho. I explained that. You never know what a psycho might do. If he can’t find me, he might settle for you.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Going back to the house, Lila,” Sam said. “We’ve got a trap rigged for him. An army of cops out of sight. If things look normal around there—”
“You’re the bait for the trap?”
“In a sense, I suppose. I—”
“You are, Sam.” Her face was white now. “Don’t try to avoid the truth. You’re using yourself as bait. That’s very noble and brave. But it seems to me you have other responsibilities.”
“What would you have me do?”
“If he can’t find me here, he can’t find you here. Or anywhere we care to go. You and I can drive down to the beach, can’t we? And stay at a motel until this is over?”
“No, we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll tell you why.”
And he told her. Not gently. There was anger in him too. His voice was slow, implacable, and cold. Every cop hunting Poole, he said, was laying his life on the line. He was not going to run out on them. More than that, he said, his life and the lives of the other police were not the only ones at stake. He told her where they thought Poole was hiding—in someone’s home, holding them hostage—and that Poole would certainly kill again, unless they caught him soon.
“I’m a member of the human race,” he said. “It seems to me I owe my fellow members something. And I’m not taking any big risk. I’ll be covered. He won’t get through.”
“He won’t get through!” Lila said. “He came from Winston here, didn’t he? An escaped convict, on foot, without a friend—he got through half the police in the state, didn’t he? You said he couldn’t, but he did! He’s smarter than you think. He knows all your tricks. He’ll be watching for them. And you try to tell me there’s no risk.” Her voice turned hoarse. “Go on! Tell me again! Lie to me!”
“I won’t lie to you,” Sam said. “There is risk.”
She covered her face with her hands. She stood that way for a long moment, and when she took her hands away, Sam knew the final time had come. Her face was taut and white.
“I can’t go on,” she said. “I’d go stark raving mad if I tried to. You think your duty lies with your work. I think it lies with me—us. I’m not going to argue. I’m not going to fight. I love you, Sam. Perhaps too much. But I can’t go on wondering if the next footstep I hear will be a man come to tell me you’ve been killed. It will be easier to forget you than to live a nightmare.” Her hands were locked behind her. “Either we drive to the beach now, or we’re through.”
Quietly Sam asked, “Is that final, Lila?”
Mary said, “Sam! Lila! For the love of heaven—”
Lila said, “That’s final, Sam.”
“We’ve had it, then,” Sam said. “Good luck, girl.”
* * *
—
A radio spoke quietly in the living room of the house on Holly Road. In a statement made at five P.M., the radio said, Lieutenant Snow, of the state patrol, had reaffirmed his positive belief that escaped convict-murderer Leon Poole was within the police cordon surrounding the Kretlow Hills. Bad weather and difficult terrain had slowed the search. It would continue, however, throughout the night. Every available man and means was being used. Capture was expected at any hour.
Leon Poole said, “True or false?”
No one answered him, for he was alone in the room. He got out of his chair and turned off the radio. He had slept most of the day, and the rest had done much for him. He looked well and felt well.
He stood for a moment, lips pursed. The body of Otto Flanders lay where it had fallen, blanket-covered. Leon Poole didn’t see it. He listened to the rain slatting against the windows. A night like this would be a good night, he thought. Everyone hurrying through the storm, heads down, collars up.
He thought about the radio announcement. It could be a trick, but it could be the truth too. The police might make a mistake like that. If they had made a mistake, it would be the best thing in the world for him. “I’m tempted,” he said. But still he had to think it through carefully. He thought the odds against him were very high. But hadn’t they always been? Would they ever be better than they were now? No. Every hour, every day increased the odds against him.
“Well, then,” he said, “now is the time.”
He went past the body. The bedroom door was open. He
found the light switch. Grace Flanders was lying on the bed beneath a comforter. There was adhesive tape across her mouth. More tape bound her wrists and ankles. Shock had made her face vacantly ugly; her eyes were dull and puffed with weeping. Leon Poole did not look at her. He went around the bed to open the closet door.
He needed a dress, something plain and dark. Fit was no problem; Grace Flanders was a big woman, her hands and feet were large. He needed a coat with a full collar—fur, if the woman owned one. He needed shoes, a hat and an umbrella. He pawed through the dresses on the closet rack. The blue wool, he decided, would do nicely.
* * *
—
Sam Wagner was at home. The blinds were up, the living room was well lighted. Sam sat beneath a reading lamp, a magazine in his lap. His eyes went to the clock. Eight-fifteen. Outside, the storm still whipped the trees and threw rain in bursts against the windows. It had been a long afternoon and a long evening.
The compact two-way short-wave radio on the floor beside Sam’s chair spoke softly. A man on foot had entered the area. He was watched, checked from one post to another until he entered a house a block away, a family man home from work. A sedan, driven by a woman, turned onto Montgomery from a main east-west artery, moving slowly. It was tracked past Sam’s house almost to Van Brocklin, another main artery, where it turned again, out of the area. A pair of high-school kids ran past Sam’s house, heads down in the rain. Another car, a woman driver, another car, a man driver—checked in, checked out. It had been like that all afternoon and evening. Every approach was covered. Any man who even came close to the description of Leon Poole was followed by a dozen guns.
* * *
—
“A woman,” the radio said. “Fat, middle-aged, carrying an umbrella on Thirty-Fifth.”
“O.K.,” Chris Gillespie said. “Don’t scare her.”
He was in the house directly across the street from Wagner’s. He’d commandeered an upstairs bedroom. The searchlight was there, ready for use. Two riflemen stood behind darkened windows. Gillespie was the center of the radio net, every movement in the neighborhood was plotted and charted in the room where he sat. Brennan, at headquarters, was the center of a net that covered the city.
“Black coupé on Montgomery,” the radio said crisply. “Looks like a high-school kid driving.”
The black coupé was tracked and cleared.
Sam wondered if it would comfort the woman on Thirty-Fifth to know that never in her life would she be safer on a dark street than she was right now. She really had protection.
The radio again, Gillespie’s voice, “Sam, come in.”
Sam opened his microphone. “Sam speaking, Chris.”
“We’ve lost Lila,” Chris said.
“What d’you mean, lost her?”
“She’s not at my house. She walked out.”
“Why?” Sam said. “When?”
“That wife of mine,” Chris said. “She’s good people, all heart, but she can’t keep her nose out of things. She’s Mrs. Fixit, y’know. She’s got to help. She couldn’t stand Lila bein’ mad at you. I’m goin’ to paddle her for this, I promise you that. Sam, she told Lila the score, and I’m afraid she was rough about it. She told Lila you were sitting in for her, playing pigeon in Lila’s place.”
“How long ago did Lila leave?”
“Twenty or thirty minutes ago,” Chris said. “Hard to say exactly. Mary thought she was napping. She looked in the bedroom to check and Lila was gone. Sorry, Sam.” The radio was silent for a moment, then, “Any idea where she’d go? Her sister’s, maybe? Some other relative?”
Sam thought of Lila alone in Gillespie’s bedroom. Knowing now that she was Poole’s target, remembering the words she’d hurled at him. Sam found his hands were suddenly shaking. His voice was oddly thick.
“She’s coming home, Chris,” he said.
“Home?” Chris said. “What makes you think so?”
“She’s my wife, Chris. She’d want to be here.”
“Oh.” Again Chris was silent for a moment. “I think you’re right,” he said. “Lila would, with the chips down.”
Sam said, “Keep an eye out for her.”
“Check,” Chris said. “Will do.”
* * *
—
Lila Wagner was tired. She was sitting behind the driver, on the first seat of the Van Brocklin Street bus, her hands clenched in her lap. She was cold, wet, and she couldn’t remember another time when her head had ached so blindingly. She rubbed mist from the window and peered out into the rain-lashed night. Oak Street. Harrison next. Then the long climb up to Montgomery and she was home. Almost.
She didn’t want to think of the walk from the bus stop to the house—four blocks, and most of it in the thick dark beneath huge and ancient trees. She thought, instead, of Mary Gillespie, a white-faced, big-eyed Mary. She heard again Mary’s hurt and shaking voice.
“Hate me, if you will,” she’d said, “but I can’t wait any longer. You’re being a coward, Lila. A thoughtless, selfish coward.” Blazing anger hadn’t stopped her. “Sam puts his work before you, does he? Risks his life for strangers? Doesn’t care what happens to you? Well, here’s the truth. He’ll trade his life for yours any time. He’s offering to do it now. It isn’t Sam that Poole wants to kill. It’s you!”
There’d been more. And when Mary had left her, closing the bedroom door, there’d been a half hour in the darkness. A long look at Lila Wagner. Yes, she was a coward—that was her only clear decision. But somehow out of it had come the knowledge that she had to go home. Sam was taking her place, and that was wrong. His life was more important than her own. She couldn’t reason why. She knew it because her heart had told her so.
“Harrison,” the bus driver said.
A boulevard stop. The bus halted and a man and woman got aboard. Lila Wagner’s heart lurched. The man was short and fat, wrapped in a sodden trench coat. He dropped his fare in the box and turned. The man was not Poole; he was sixty or sixty-five. He wore a bristling gray mustache, a gray tuft of beard. But Lila, finding she’d held her breath, knew she’d been very much afraid.
“Montgomery next,” the driver said.
The bus crawled up the hill, buffeted by wind and rain. Lila watched the landmarks pass: the haloed neon of David Drug, the Thirty-Mart, the theatre and barbershop. Three blocks to go. Now waves of fear began to flow through her. The man with the beard had started them. Her mind filled with images of Poole—dark, liquid eyes, sodden face. He had stabbed a man in the throat, he was waiting somewhere for her. She looked out the window. Two blocks to go. One block. Now she found she didn’t want to ring the bell. She couldn’t face that dark and dripping tunnel beneath the trees. Not yet.
Her hand went up and pulled the cord.
The bus swung over to the curb, the door sighed open. I can’t get off. Sam, I can’t, I can’t. She was on her feet, going past the driver and down the steps. In a moment, the bus was gone. The service station and garage here were dark. The corner arc light bounced on the wind and long shadows raced across the pavement, clawing at her legs.
She looked down Montgomery Street toward home. Hedges and dripping trees and the wet shining of light on a parked car. Four blocks—four blocks was such an enormous distance. All that darkness, all those shadows, all those trees. A man, a dozen men, could be hidden along here. She couldn’t do it. No matter what the cost, she hadn’t the strength or the courage. And yet she did do it. She crossed the paved service-station lot and went into the dark beneath the trees.
Don’t think, she told herself. Just walk—fast.
Water spilled down the street to roar into the storm drains. At the intersection she had to wade in water ankle-deep. Then she was under the trees that roofed the walk again. “Only three blocks to go,” she whispered. “Just three.”
She saw the lumpy figure then. A
woman standing against a hedge. A fat, middle-aged woman holding an umbrella. Not moving, not doing anything, just standing there. Lila glanced at her. There was darkness and shadow, but light enough to see a wet and pallid face above a coat collar of thin, wet fur. The woman wore a hat, shapeless, mashed and somehow—wrong! A silent shriek of warning rang in Lila’s mind. No woman would ever wear a hat like that. She looked again and saw eyes that were dark, liquid and staring. She knew those eyes.
Leon Poole, she told herself.
She heard his step on the walk behind her. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t look back. She walked steadily down the hill, shocked and numbed with terror. His footfalls exactly matched her own. He didn’t gain, he didn’t lag. The flesh of her back crawled with the waiting—waiting for the impact of a bullet or a sudden overpowering rush. Neither came. A half block and still nothing. Why? He had seen her face. He was following her, he must know who she was.
Then a cold clarity came to her mind. He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen her since the courtroom more than three years ago. She had changed, she’d lost weight, her face was thinner, her clothes were different. He wasn’t sure enough to cut her down. He was waiting for her to reach home. He knew the address. The moment she turned up the walk—
But she didn’t have to turn; she realized that suddenly. She could go past the house. The moment she did, she would be any woman in the world but Lila Wagner. Poole would let her go. He would turn to the house, to the lighted windows. The police were waiting for a man. Poole, in a woman’s clothes, would have time enough to reach a window, to find Sam, to lift his gun and shoot.
“Oh, God,” Lila whispered.
Again she measured her strength, her resolve, the cost. She’d found strength enough to leave Mary Gillespie, to ride the bus and leave the bus. She’d had enough to come this far. But this was the end. She couldn’t turn up the walk toward the house. It was beyond her, hopelessly beyond her.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 39
