by Bill Crider
"You get that tank out of the living room and I'll bring him," I said.
"I'll cover it up."
"I'll see you tomorrow, Johnny," I said. "And thanks."
"No sweat," Johnny said.
After he hung up, I called Cathy to tell her that I was going to be a little late but that we still had a date for dinner.
Then I called Patrick Lytle and told him that I was coming over.
It was after dark when I got to the old Lytle mansion. The oaks and magnolias looked even more impressive in the gloom of early evening. The darkness was kind to the old house as well, cloaking the fading paint and the weathered facade. There was only one light that I could see, and that was in the window of Patrick Lytle's room.
I got out of the Jeep and walked through thick shadows and up onto the dark porch. Paul Lytle answered the door again, and I followed him to his grandfather's room.
The old man was sitting silently in his wheelchair. He waited until Paul left the room to begin talking.
"I'm glad you called," he said. "I was hoping you might have some news for me. About Harry Mercer."
I shook my head. "It's not about Harry," I said.
"What then?" he asked. "I'm not a man who likes to waste time, Mr. Smith."
"That's fine. I'm not either. So let me tell you what I know."
He wriggled around in his chair as if trying to find a comfortable position. His blanket slid off his legs, and I reached out to help him put it back.
He didn't thank me. "Please get on with it," he said.
I did. "Here's what I think happened. Your wife was having an affair with Braddy Macklin, and she divorced you because of it. I think your ego couldn't stand the shock, and I think you killed her for it."
I paused and watched him. There was no sound in the room except his wheezing breath.
A full minute passed without either of us saying a word.
Then I said, "I didn't expect you to admit it. However you did it, you must have done a good job. No hint of it ever got out. Everyone thought that she'd gone to Hollywood because she'd told friends that was what she'd like to do, but she never left town. You'd heard what she said, so you took advantage of the situation. You probably even packed her bags after you killed her. Maybe you buried them with her."
I thought about what Sally had told me, that she was sure Patrick Lytle hadn't buried his wife in the back yard. I wasn't so sure now that he hadn't.
Lytle didn't care what I thought, however. He was just sitting there, looking at me, listening attentively, his hands folded on his blanket.
"And do you have any proof of your wild speculations?" he asked.
"No. But there's more. I think you also killed Braddy Macklin."
"Now why would I do that?" He glanced down at his legs. "And how would I do it?"
"I don't know that part of it yet," I admitted. "But the why is easy. Braddy Macklin could have proved you killed your wife. Maybe he even thought about killing you in return, but he decided on something better. He decided to blackmail you. And I can prove that."
I told him about the bank records, which really proved nothing, though maybe he wouldn't realize it.
"There was something I'd been wondering about all along," I said. "How could Macklin afford to buy his daughter the Seawall Courts? That's some very expensive property, and even if the uncles paid Macklin better than I think they did for his body guarding services, he couldn't have afforded something like that motel. You could, however."
Lytle's mouth twisted with bitterness. "Yes, I could have afforded it. At one time. I'm very sorry to say that you're right, Mr. Smith. It was my money that bought that property. Braddy Macklin slowly bled me dry over the years, and he left me with only what you see around you. A decaying house and a useless body."
I didn't know much about the inheritance laws, but there was still a lot of money in Macklin's account. I supposed that Cathy was his only heir, but would the money be considered legally hers?
While I was wondering, Lytle was talking. "But you're wrong about one thing, Mr. Smith. I didn't kill Braddy Macklin."
"Who did?" I asked. "Alex Minor?"
Lytle was genuinely surprised. "What do you know about Alex Minor?"
"Enough," I said. "I didn't know you two were friends."
"Not friends exactly," Lytle told me.
And then it all snapped together. "I'll be damned. Minor wasn't working for any syndicate back East. He was working for you."
Lytle looked regretful. "I really wish you hadn't reached that conclusion, though it is of course true. Or at least partially so."
"You're trying to buy the Retreat. You're not really opposed to gambling at all, not if you're the one making a profit from it."
"Sad but true. Gambling took everything from me. Everything. I thought it was time to see what it could give back."
"But what about the money?"
"I have . . . partners. In a way, you were right about Minor when you said he was from the East. He most certainly was. But the men for whom he worked didn't want to make a direct attempt to achieve a presence on the Island. They wanted a respected local, a man whose reputation was above reproach, to, as they put it, 'front for them.' I was the man they chose."
"Why you?"
He shrugged thin shoulders. "Who knows? I'm sure they did a great deal of research to discover just the right man. Certainly I need the money. I'm known to be rabidly opposed to gambling, but when the right moment arrives, I'll announce my conversion and say that I'm convinced gaming will be good for the Island if the right man is in charge."
"And the right man is you."
"Who could be better?"
I suppose he had a point there. "So you had Macklin killed not just because you hated him but because he was working for the opposition. Your reputation is really going to suffer on the Island after that gets out, Lytle."
"No one will find out about any of the sordid details. That is all in the past."
"The people here have awfully long memories," I reminded him. "And the police have Minor. He'll tell them what happened."
"Minor knows very little, Mr. Smith, and he won't tell about me."
"You can't be sure of that."
"No, I suppose that I can't, but I am convinced that Minor's masters are not the sort of men who would easily forgive him if he talked too much."
"He killed Macklin," I said, though I still found it hard to believe. He'd sounded so convincing. "The cops will get him for that, and he might talk to save himself."
"No," Lytle said. "He won't talk for that reason. A good attorney will get that charge dropped almost at once, even if it is made. You see, Minor did not kill Braddy Macklin."
I was getting confused. I thought I had things all figured out, but apparently I didn't.
"You've already told me that you didn't kill Macklin," I said. "And if you didn't, and Minor didn't, who did?"
"I did," Paul Lytle said from behind me.
I turned and saw him in the doorway. He had a .38 leveled at my chest.
Now I knew who'd been watching me from the window as I drove away on my first visit.
I was just sorry I hadn't figured it out sooner.
Thirty-One
Patrick Lytle smiled. "Paul hated Braddy Macklin even more than I did."
"He stole from me," Paul explained. His voice was curiously toneless. "He took my inheritance. He took money that was rightfully mine, and he had to pay for that. I knew he had a key to the Retreat, and I called him about meeting there to discuss working for us. He didn't want to do that, but who cared? I shot him for what he did to me and my grandfather."
It was a nice little speech, and he probably believed most of it. Maybe he even believed all of it.
But I didn't. I was sure that his grandfather had planted the seed of revenge in his mind so that Paul would do what Patrick couldn't.
Not that it made any difference. Macklin was dead all the same, and he'd been killed by one of the Lytles.<
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"And Harry was there," I said. "He saw you kill Macklin."
"That was unfortunate," Paul said. "If he hadn't yelled out when I shot Macklin, I might never have known he was hiding there. He must have been somewhere in the back and come to see what was going on. I would never have thought he could get through that hold in the floor so quickly."
"He did, though," I said. "And he can still identify you."
"That is also unfortunate," Patrick said. "But we'll find him eventually. He doesn't seem exactly eager to go to the police, which is fine with us but too bad for him."
"If something happens to me, the cops are going to be very suspicious," I said. "They know I was looking for Harry."
"And so does your client, I'm sure," Patrick said. "But suspicions really mean nothing. No one will be able to trace you to us."
"You're wrong about that," I said. "People know where I am."
Paul laughed. "I doubt that. But even if they do, it won't help you. We'll simply tell them that you were here, that you knew nothing of interest to us, and that you left."
"My Jeep's out front," I pointed out.
"I can drive," Paul said. "It won't be there long."
"He's wasting our time," Patrick told his grandson. "Kill him."
"In here?" Paul said.
The old man looked at his grandson with distaste. "No, of course not in here. Take him to the garage."
Paul stepped out of the room and motioned with the gun barrel for me to follow him. I guess he thought that I would, though I couldn't imagine why he'd think I'd want to make things easy for him.
I wished I'd brought along the Mauser. If I'd had it, I would have tried to make things even more difficult for them, but the pistol was outside, under the front seat of the Jeep.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said, standing right where I'd been all along. "If you want to kill me, you'll have to do it here."
Patrick Lytle wheezed a sigh. "It would be messy. But Paul can clean it up. You might at least have a little dignity, Mr. Smith."
I didn't see anything dignified about dying in a garage as opposed to an old man's bedroom.
"Sorry," I said. "I'm just naturally uncooperative."
"Very well. Shoot him, Paul."
Paul might have shot Macklin, but that didn't make him a cold-blooded killer. He still had to take a deep breath before he pulled the trigger of the pistol.
When he breathed in, I dived for him.
He fired a shot that singed the top of my shoulder and we both heard the unmistakable sound of a bullet hitting flesh.
Patrick Lytle gave a weak cry and began flopping around in his wheelchair just as I crashed into his grandson. The two of us hit the floor in a heap, and Paul shoved me aside, swinging the pistol at my head as he did so.
If he'd hit me, it would have been the end of things from my point of view, but I got my arm up in time to intercept the gun, which hit me right on the elbow. A sharp pain shot through my arm, and then the whole arm went numb. Paul jumped up and scooted for the door.
I was a little slower, and I took the time to look back at Patrick Lytle. He was leaning limply over the arm of the wheelchair, and he wasn't flopping anymore.
I didn't think that he'd be going anywhere, so I went after Paul.
I heard a door slam in the back of the house, but I wasn't going after Paul without a weapon.
So I ran to the front and went to the Jeep. By the time I had the Mauser out of the case, Paul was backing the van out of the garage.
I shot three times. The first one missed, but the next two hit the back tire on the driver's side. I put a couple of slugs into the other back tire just for good measure, and Paul brought the van to a stop.
He jumped out and started running toward the back of the house. I thought that there was probably a gate in the fence somewhere in that direction, though I didn't know where it was. Paul did, however. I had to catch up with him before he got to it, either that or shoot him. I didn't want to shoot him. I was afraid I might kill him. I'd been lucky with Minor, but I couldn't be sure my luck would hold.
I started running, hoping that my knee would hold up. And that I wouldn't run into a tree. I dodged the trunks as best I could, but the low-hanging branches kept swatting me in the face.
Paul kept running. The fence was about thirty yards away, and I could see that I wasn't going to catch him before he got there. I was going to have to shoot.
I stopped and gripped the Mauser with both hands. I tried not to shake too hard. Firing a pistol after running is never a good idea. You might hit someone by accident.
My shot glanced off one of the concrete posts of the gate, which was what I'd intended, and it was close enough to Paul to throw a scare into him. He looked back over his shoulder, and that caused him to trip. He landed on his belly and skidded across the damp grass.
But he didn't drop the pistol. He was able to twist around and fire.
None of his shots came close. Falling affects accuracy even more than running.
Before he could get back to his feet, I caught up with him. He fired one more shot, which missed me by ten feet, and I kicked the pistol out of his hand.
He lay back on the ground and looked straight up at the night sky, his eyes blank.
"You can get up now," I said.
After a few seconds, he did.
We went back to the house, and I had Paul sit in the spindly chair in his grandfather's bedroom. I kept the pistol on him while I checked Patrick. There was a dark stain on his shirt, and it looked as if Paul had shot him right in the heart.
Paul didn't even look at the old man. He just sat quietly in the chair while I called the police.
Thirty-Two
I missed my date with Cathy that night, but I promised to make up for it later. She seemed to hope that I would. I didn't tell her that I'd caught up with her father's killer. That could come later too.
I didn't know what to tell her about her inheritance or about the way her father had obtained the money to buy Seawall Courts. I was sure that some of it would come out at Paul Lytle's trial, and Cathy could decide then what to do.
After the police finally got through with me, I went by Dino's house. Evelyn was there, and they were watching Nightline. They turned it off to hear my story, which took a while.
After I was finished telling it, Dino asked me about Harry.
"I haven't found him," I said.
"But don't you think he's all right?" Evelyn asked.
"He probably is. No one was able to find him through this whole thing. This is a small island, but there are plenty of places to hide. Harry's all right."
Dino wasn't so sure. "I hope you know what you're talking about."
So did I.
Jody called me the next day, very early. I was reading the newspaper when the phone rang. Nameless, who had come out of hiding, was asleep on my bed.
"You still lookin' for Harry?" Jody asked.
I said that I was.
"Miz Williams say to tell you where he is. She told him that the man who kill Mr. Macklin in the jail now, but Harry don't believe her. He say he won't come out till he talk to you."
"I'll talk to him," I said. "Where is he?"
Jody gave me the address. "I better go with you," he said.
That was fine with me.
Harry was in a vacant apartment in the housing project near where Mrs. Williams lived. Jody guided me to it without any trouble, and I got the impression that he'd been there before. I didn't ask him, however. I was just glad to have him with me. It cut down on the number of suspicious looks I got, though not by many.
The room was full of things that Harry had brought with him, and there was a strong smell of what I hoped was tuna and not canned cat food. I thought about the cats that lived in the rocks along the seawall. They would have loved Harry.
Harry seemed glad to see me. The first thing he wanted to know was whether the man who'd shot Macklin was really in jail. I told him that it was true.
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"Tha's good," he said. "I didn' like that man. He point that gun at me, and I scoot right back out that hole."
"You should have gone to the police, Harry," I said.
He looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. "Who gonna b'lieve a crazy ole man like me?"
"I would," I said. "So would the police."
"Police don't think much of me," Harry said. "I don't like 'em. 'Sides, I never saw that man in my life. I didn' know who he was."
And that was that. I knew he'd never tell Barnes or any other cop what he'd seen. That wouldn't keep Paul Lytle out of prison, however. My testimony should take care of that.
"Are you ready to get out of here?" I asked Harry.
"You got that right," he said. "I flat tired of bein' cooped up like a chicken. I need to get out where I can breathe."
"Get your stuff together, then," I said. "Nobody's after you anymore."
Harry laughed. "Tha's good," he said. "Tha's real good."
He was obviously quite happy, but he didn't feel any better than I did.
I had another couple of stops to make after Harry was out of the apartment and back on the streets.
Sally West was almost as glad to see me as Harry had been. She'd heard the news about Lytle on the radio and she wanted the straight scoop.
She sipped Mogen David while I told her the whole story. It was just too early for me to drink, but Sally didn't seem to mind.
When I'd finished talking, she said, "Do you really think the police will find Laurel Lytle under the floor of the garage?"
"It's a dirt floor," I said. "That's probably where they were going to put me, so I figured maybe Lytle had used it before."
"You should be proud of yourself, Truman," she said.
"Why's that?"
"Because you found Harry. Because you kept anything from happening to him."
"I got lucky," I said.
She looked at the glass that held her wine. "There's more to it than that. You 'got lucky,' as you put it, because you cared enough about an old man to try to help him. Not everyone would have done that."
