Find a Victim

by Ross Macdonald

  “They can’t frame an innocent man.”

  “But you’re not innocent. You took the truck and we know it. That makes you accessory to the driver’s murder, even if you didn’t shoot him yourself. Your only out is to turn state’s evidence.”

  He thought about it. “What do you want me to say?”

  “The truth. How did it happen?”

  He wagged his head in melodramatic despair. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway. What’s the use of telling you what I saw?”

  “Try me.”

  “You’ll call me a liar. I waited for the truck out on the highway. Kerrigan said it would be along around six o’clock. It went past me on schedule, in a breeze, rolling along about sixty. It stopped a half a mile or so down the road, and I followed along on foot as fast as I could.”

  “What stopped it?”

  “There was a car there. A green Chevvy sedan. The Chevvy drove away, and that’s all I saw.”

  “You saw it drive away from the truck?”

  “Yeah. I was still a piece up the highway.”

  “Was Aquista in it? This man?”

  “Yeah. He was sitting in the front seat. I guess it was him.”

  “Was he driving the Chevvy?”

  “No. There was somebody else with him.”

  “Who was it, Bozey?”

  “You won’t believe me,” he said. “I know it don’t make sense.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  He lifted his arm and pointed to the stretcher where Anne Meyer lay. “Her. I think it was her.”

  “You saw that woman drive Aquista away from the truck on Thursday afternoon?”

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Treloar shook his head from side to side in sad tolerance. “You’ll have to do better than that, boy. This woman has been dead for a week.”

  “You saw her body Monday night,” I said.

  Bozey began to talk in a high, rapid voice: “What’s the use? You don’t believe me when I tell you the truth. You’re all a bunch of creeps.” He raised his handcuffed arms and shook them at us. “You’re all in cahoots with the sheriff, tryin’ to railroad me and cover up for yourselves. Go ahead and gas me. I’m not afraid to die. I’m sick of breathing the same air you bastards breathe.”

  The guard struck him across the face with the back of his hand. “Knock off now, guy. You’re getting loud.”

  I pushed between them. “What’s that about the sheriff?”

  “He was there in the pass when I broke out with the truck. He sat there in his God-damn Mercury and let on he didn’t see me—didn’t even turn his head when I went by. He was setting me up for the murder rap. I can see it now.”

  “There won’t be any murder rap if you’re leveling.”

  “Won’t there? He’s got you all on a string.”

  “Not me. And I’ve cut down bigger ones.”

  “Who did they fall on? People like me?”

  It was a hard question.

  Danelaw opened the door and looked in. “What’s the trouble?”

  “No trouble. Is Westmore out there?”

  “He left.”

  “Left?”

  “That’s right. He’s got some official business.”

  I stepped out into the corridor. “This is a hell of a time for Westmore to leave.”

  “He has a hell of a reason. Meyer’s waiting for him at the courthouse.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked complacent. “I just arrested Meyer.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Murder. I went over to Meyer’s house last night and got his permission to look around. I let on I was searching for traces of his daughter. He made no objection, probably didn’t know what could be done with old bullets. There were plenty of old bullets in that shooting-gallery of his down in the basement. I dug some out of the boards where he pins the targets.

  “Most of them were too beat up to be any use to me. A few were in pretty good shape, though—good enough for the comparison microscope. It took me until now to sort them out and make my case, but I made it. Some of the slugs in Meyer’s basement were fired from a .38 revolver. And the ones that were good enough to compare came from the same revolver as the murder slugs. That includes the one that killed Anne Meyer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can prove it in court. Wait until you see my blown-up microphotos. I can prove it even if we never find the gun. You see, Meyer has a .38 revolver registered under his name. I asked him for it when I arrested him. He told me a cock-and-bull story, claimed he didn’t have it any more.”

  “What was his story?”

  “He said he lent it to his daughter last fall and never got it back. Of course he’s lying.”

  “I thought so yesterday. Now I’m not so certain.”

  “Sure he’s lying. He has to lie. He’s got no alibi for any of the shootings. He was by himself all day Sunday, when Annie got it, and he had plenty of chance to drive up to the lake. On Thursday afternoon, he claims his other daughter for an alibi. But she was right there in his house from five o’clock on, and he didn’t get home until after seven. He admits that himself, he claims he went for a drive when he left the yard. The same for the Kerrigan shooting. No alibi.”

  “No motive, either.”

  “He had a motive. Aquista and Kerrigan both went with Annie at one time or another.” His thin nose wrinkled, as if it detected an odor worse than iodoform. “And Meyer had some kind of an insane crush on his own daughter.”

  “It’s a pretty story,” I said. “Did you tell it to the sheriff?”

  For the first time Danelaw seemed uneasy. “I haven’t seen him. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to put him in the position of arresting his own father-in-law. I went over his head for once and laid it out for Westmore.”

  “And Westmore bought it?”

  “Sure he did. Don’t you?”

  “I’ll take an option on it. But I want to do a little more shopping around. Meyer drives a Lincoln, doesn’t he?”

  “That’s right. He has another car, too, an old Chevvy he uses for transportation.”

  “A green Chevvy sedan?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to work on those cars next shot out of the box. One of them must have been seen around the time and place of one of the shootings.”

  “I can save you some trouble there. Talk to the prisoner inside. Ask him about the car Aquista drove away in on Thursday.”

  Danelaw turned to the door. I went the other way.

  CHAPTER 31: Hilda Church opened the front door and looked out shyly. In her quilted cotton housedress she might have been any pretty suburban chatelaine interrupted at her morning work. But there was a tight glazed look around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes were translucent and strange, a clear pale green like deep ocean water.

  “Is your husband home, Mrs. Church?”

  “No. I’m afraid he isn’t.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “But I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I have things to discuss with you.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t feel like talking to anyone. Not this morning.”

  She tried to close the door. I held it open.

  “You better let me come in.”

  “No. Please. Brandon will be angry if he comes home and finds you.” She leaned her weight on the door. One side of her breast bulged around its edge. “Please let me close it. And go away. I’ll tell Brandon you called.”

  “I’m coming in, Mrs. Church.”

  I set my shoulder against the door and forced it open. She retreated to the doorway of the living-room and stood in it, her arms stiff at her sides, her fingers working at the ends of them. She looked sideways at me, with a kind of fearful coquetry. The cord in the side of her neck was strung taut like a thin rope.

  I moved toward her. She retreated farther, into the living-room. She walked with a queer cumbersomeness, as if her body was lagging far behind her thought. Stopping beside a bl
eached mahogany coffee table, she leaned over and moved a white clay ashtray a fraction of an inch, into the table’s mathematical center.

  The ashtray, the table, the rug, everything in the room was clean. The white and black-iron furniture was bleakly new, and geometrically placed around the room. Through sliding glass doors I could see out into a white-walled patio blazing like an open furnace with flowers. A circular brick planter overflowed with masses of purple lobelia, in the middle of which a dwarf lemon tree held its wax blossoms up to the sun.

  “What do you want with me?” she whispered.

  The light reflected from the patio wall fell stark across her half-averted face. She looked so much like the dead woman in that instant that I couldn’t believe in her reality. Death had aged Anne Meyer and made them almost twins. Time jarred to a stop and reversed itself. The helpless pity I had felt for Anne went through me like a drug. Now I pitied the unreal woman who was standing with her head bowed over her immaculate coffee table.

  She had acted beyond her power to imagine what she had done. I had to drive the truth home to her, give her back reality, and regain it for myself. I’d rather have shot her through the head.

  “You killed your sister with your father’s gun. Do you want to talk about it now, Mrs. Church?”

  She looked up at me. Through her tide-green eyes I could see the thoughts shifting across her mind like the shadows of unknown creatures. She said: “I loved my sister. I didn’t mean, I didn’t intend—”

  “But you did.”

  “It was an accident. The gun did. The gun went off in my hand. Anne looked at me. She didn’t say a word. She fell on the floor.”

  “Why did you shoot her if you loved her?”

  “It was Anne’s fault. She oughtn’t to have gone with him. I know how you men are, you’re like animals, you can’t help yourselves. The woman can help it, though. She shouldn’t have let him. She shouldn’t have led him on.

  “I’ve done a great deal of thinking about it,” she said. “I’ve done nothing but think about it since it happened. I haven’t even taken time to sleep. I’ve spent the whole week thinking and cleaning house. I cleaned this house and then I cleaned father’s house and then I came back here and cleaned this house again. I can’t seem to get it clean, but I did decide one thing, that it was Anne’s fault. You can’t blame Fath—you can’t blame Brandon for it, he’s a man.”

  “I don’t understand how it happened, Mrs. Church. Do you remember?”

  “Not very well. I’ve been thinking so much. My mind has been working so quickly, I haven’t had time to remember.”

  “Did it happen on Sunday?”

  “Sunday morning, early, at the lake. I went there to talk to Anne. All I intended to do was talk to her. She was always so thoughtless, she didn’t realize what she’d done to me. She needed someone to bring her to her senses. I couldn’t let it go on the way it had. I had to do something.”

  “You knew about it then?”

  “I’d known for months. I saw how Brand looked at her, and how she acted. He’d be sitting in his chair and she’d walk close to him so her skirt would brush his knee. And then they started to go on weekend trips. Last Saturday they did it again. Brand said that he had a meeting in Los Angeles. I called the hotel and he wasn’t in Los Angeles. He was with Anne. I knew that, I didn’t know where.

  “Then Tony Aquista came here Saturday night. It was very late, past midnight. He got me out of bed. I wasn’t asleep, though. I was thinking already, even before it happened. When he came to the door and told me, I could see everything all at once, my whole life in a single instant—the city and the mountains and the two of them in the cabin with each other, and me by myself, all by myself down here.”

  She raised her hands to her breasts and gripped them cruelly.

  “Go on,” I said. “What did Aquista tell you?”

  “He said that he followed her to Lake Perdida and saw her with Brand. He said that they were on the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace. The fire was burning and they had no clothes on. He said that she was laughing and calling out his name.

  “Tony was drunk, and he hated Brand, but he was telling the truth. I knew he was telling the truth. I sat all night after he left, trying to think what to do. The night went by like no time at all. And then the church bells started ringing for early Mass. They came as a sign to me, they sounded like my own wedding bells, and all the way driving up to the lake they kept on ringing. All the time I was talking to Anne, they were ringing in my ears. I had to shout so I could hear myself. They didn’t stop until the gun went off.”

  She shuddered, as if she could feel its fiery orgasm penetrating her own flesh.

  “Where was your husband when it happened?”

  “He wasn’t there. He left before I got there.”

  “Where did you get the gun? From your father?”

  “It was Father’s revolver. But he didn’t give it to me. Anne did.”

  “Your sister gave it to you?”

  “Yes.” She nodded her fine small head, birdlike. “She must have. I know she had it. And then it was in my hand.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly. I can’t remember.” Her face went completely blank. “I try to think back and it’s just a blur with Anne’s face in it, and the sound of the bells. Everything moves so fast, and I’m so slow. The gun went off and I was terrified, there by myself with her body. I thought for a minute that it was me, lying dead on the floor. I ran away.”

  “But you went back?”

  “Yes. I did. On Monday. I wanted to—to give Anne decent burial. I believed if I could bury her I wouldn’t have to be thinking constantly of her lying there.”

  “Was Kerrigan there at the lodge? Or did he walk in on you and find you with her body?”

  “Yes, he came when I was there. I was trying to drag—to carry her out to her car. Mr. Kerrigan offered to help me. He said he couldn’t afford to leave her there, that he’d be suspected of shooting her himself. He drove me to a place where I could bury her, in the woods. Then that awful old man came spying on us.” Anger darkened her eyes, fleeting and meaningless as a child’s anger. “It was the old man’s fault that I couldn’t give my sister decent burial. He made me fall and hurt my knee.”

  “And lose your heel?”

  “Yes. How did you know? Anne and I wear the same size and style of shoe, and Mr. Kerrigan said if I changed shoes with her, no one would ever know the difference. I left her shoes at her apartment when we went to destroy the evidence.”

  “What evidence?”

  “Mr. Kerrigan didn’t tell me. He just said that there was evidence against me in Anne’s apartment.”

  “More likely evidence against him. Your sister was blackmailing him.”

  “No, you must be mistaken.” Her tone was both defensive and superior. “Anne was incapable of anything like that. She was thoughtless, but she wasn’t consciously evil. She didn’t mean to be bad.”

  “Nobody ever does, Mrs. Church. It creeps up on people.”

  “No. You don’t understand. Mr. Kerrigan was helping me. He said it wasn’t fair that I should have to suffer for Anne—for Anne’s mistake. She was in the trunk of her car, and he offered to drive it out and leave it where it wouldn’t be found, not for a long time.”

  “And what did he want from you, in return for all his help? Another accident?”

  “I don’t remember.” But her look was evasive.

  “I’ll remember for you,” I said. “Kerrigan told you to be out on the highway Thursday afternoon along toward evening. You were to stop Aquista’s truck and get him out of it somehow. You went to your father’s house, partly to get an alibi started, and partly to borrow his old Chevvy. Why did it have to be your father’s car?”

  “Mr. Kerrigan said that Tony would be certain to recognize it.”

  “He thought of everything, didn’t he? Nearly everything. But he didn’t know that you had a reason t
o kill Aquista. Or did he?”

  “What reason? I don’t understand.”

  “Aquista could figure out, if he hadn’t already, that you had murdered your sister.”

  “Please don’t use that word.” She looked up wildly, as if I had released something fearful and blind in the room, a bat that might dive and cling to her hair. “You mustn’t use that word.”

  “It’s the correct word, Mrs. Church. For all three shootings. You murdered Aquista in order to silence him. You pushed him into the ditch and drove back to your father’s house to complete your alibi. That left one witness against you—Kerrigan.”

  “You make it sound so evil,” she said, “so planned. It wasn’t that way at all. When Tony got into the car, I told him the first thing that came into my head: that Father had had an accident. I didn’t intend to shoot Tony. But he saw the gun on the seat and it made him suspicious. He made a grab for it. I had to pick it up before he got it, I didn’t trust him. Then I couldn’t drive and watch him and hold the gun all at the same time. He grabbed for it again.”

  “And it went off again?”

  “Yes. He slumped down in the seat and began to breathe queerly.” Her shoulders sagged in unconscious mimicry, and her breath rustled in her throat. “I couldn’t stand the sound of him, the sight of the blood. So I put him out of the car.” She thrust her arms out violently, against thin air.

  “The gun went off once more,” I said. “Do you remember the third time? In Kerrigan’s office?”

  “Yes. I remember.” Her voice was firmer, her look more definite. It seemed to have strengthened her, in some secret way, to re-enact her murders and confess. “The others were accidents—I know you don’t believe me. But I killed Mr. Kerrigan because I had to. He had told Brand about the others. Everything. I had to prevent him from telling other people. Brand locked me in that night, but then he had to go out again. I broke a window and went to the motor court. Mr. Kerrigan was in his office, and I walked in and shot him. I hated to do it, after all the help he gave me. But I had to.”

  I looked into the shadowed depths of her eyes, unable to tell if the irony was intended. She was as stern and unsmiling as a judge with his black cap on.