A Knife in the Back

by Bill Crider

  Jack looked out the window, still holding the useless telephone. The rain hadn’t stopped. You could never be sure about rain when you lived near the Gulf. It might rain for an hour, or it might rain for days.

  Maybe the fact that the phone didn’t work was a sign, he thought. Maybe he couldn’t get in touch with Sally because he was meant to go one-on-one with Stanley Owens and settle things that way. It was crazy, but what the heck.

  On the other hand, he could just drive by Sally’s house and pick her up.

  He heard a noise in his garage. Hector, he thought. Although the cat would never deign to come inside the house, Jack liked to leave the garage door up about eight inches so that Hector could slip under it and have some shelter when it rained. Unfortunately, while Hector wasn’t the least averse to keeping dry, he didn’t know much about how to behave in enclosed spaces, especially one like Jack’s garage, which presented him with a number of temptations to explore. This time he’d probably turned over the cardboard box that Jack used as a recycling bin, putting old newspapers in it until he could remember to dispose of them properly.

  Jack went to the garage door. Maybe just this once, Hector would like to come inside. It seemed highly unlikely, but Jack was willing to risk it if Hector was.

  Jack opened the door, and looked out into the garage. There was no sign of the cat, but then it was dark in there. What with the clouds and rain, not much light was getting in though the small glass windows or the crack under the door.

  “Hector?” Jack said.

  He was reaching for the light switch when someone stepped out of the shadows beside him and stuck something very sharp up under his chin.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in, Neville?” Stanley Owens asked.

  “I don’t think it could be Talon,” Vera said. “He has an awfully good alibi. I still think it’s Fieldstone.”

  “I get the impression you don’t like him,” Sally said.

  “That’s not true. He’s okay for an administrator.”

  Damning with faint praise, Sally thought.

  “I just can’t think of anyone else who might have done it,” Vera continued. “There’s no one else with a motive, unless you count Jorge.”

  “We’re not counting him,” Sally said.

  “Right,” Vera said.

  They had been over the whole sequence of events again, and Sally was sure she hadn’t left anything out. Vera had been eager to help, but she hadn’t spotted anything Sally had missed.

  There had to be something, though. Sally was sure of it. But what?

  “Shouldn’t we just call the police?” Vera asked. “They’re really the ones who should be doing all this.”

  Sally told Vera about Weems and explained why calling the police wasn’t the best of options.

  “Typical of the male power structure,” Vera said. “Men in positions of authority never listen to women. It’s a terrible injustice. If a man takes a car in for repair, for example, the mechanic always accepts his word for what’s wrong, but if a woman takes in the same car—”

  “Hold it,” Sally said.

  Vera’s discussion of auto repair had given Sally the answer. It had come to her just as quickly as it had to Jack.

  “We have to go,” she said.

  “Where?” Vera asked.

  “To see Mae.”

  “Why?”

  “The killer has already eliminated two people who could implicate him in a crime. Both of them were going with Mae. What if one of them talked?”

  “Mae would have told me,” Vera said. “She didn’t know anything.”

  Vera looked almost frightened, another sight Sally had never thought she’d see.

  “The killer won’t know that,” Sally said.

  “What about Jack?”

  “We’ll go by and see him later. Right now, we need to check on Mae.”

  “Call her,” Vera said. “We could call Jack, too. There’s no need to go by and see him.”

  “This isn’t the eighth grade, Vera. It’s not as if we’re planning to ring his doorbell and then run and hide.”

  Vera blushed again. Twice in one day. Sally wished she had a witness. No one would believe her if she told anyone about it, not that she would. Troy Beauchamp would love to know, however, she thought. Good grief. Maybe we never do really get out of the eighth grade.

  “Do you want to come along or not?” she asked Vera.

  “I suppose so. You aren’t going to say anything? To Jack?”

  “About you? No. Just about Stanley Owens.”

  “What does he have to do with this?”

  Sally told her.

  “It makes a lot more sense than what you said about Hal,” Vera said. “Mae has to be told. Calling would be quicker than going over there. I’ll do it.”

  “Good idea,” Sally said.

  34

  Owens stepped behind Jack, twisted his left arm up behind him, and backed him into the house, the point of his knife still sticking Jack under the chin. Jack almost screamed when Owens jerked his arm, not just because of the pain in the arm but because of the pain in his ribs. It was almost like being stabbed, but Jack knew that stabbing would be even more painful.

  Although he couldn’t see the knife Owens was holding, Jack was sure it was a very nice one, no doubt one of Owens’s own custom jobs, all of which were superior to the knife Jack had made by several orders of magnitude. And sharper, too. Much sharper.

  Jack had his head tilted back, but he couldn’t tilt it back far enough to get it away from the knife, which had made a small puncture in the skin. There was a thin trickle of blood running down his neck.

  Following right along behind them as they went into the den came Hector.

  “That’s a nice cat you have,” Owens said. “Real friendly.”

  Great, Jack thought. Just great. For the first time in his life Hector decides to associate a little bit with a human being, and he picks a killer. Jack was bitterly disappointed in Hector’s judgment, but Hector didn’t seem to care in the least. He walked about the house, sniffing around the bottoms of chairs and at small spots on the rug. Then he wandered off and out of Jack’s restricted field of vision.

  Owens forgot about him. So did Jack. The point of the knife was focusing his attention elsewhere.

  “I guess I talked a little too much this morning, didn’t I, Neville?” Owens said.

  Jack couldn’t very well nod, and he didn’t feel like talking, either. It would be painful to open his mouth, what with the point of the knife poking him where it was.

  “That’s all right,” Owens said. “You don’t have to answer. I know I did. I didn’t realize it until about half an hour ago, and when I did, I thought I’d better pay you a visit. You’d figured it out, hadn’t you? Because I’m going to feel like a real idiot if you hadn’t.”

  Jack still couldn’t respond, so Owens moved the knife a fraction of an inch.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “I’d figured it out.”

  “Doesn’t really matter,” Owens said, giving Jack a little jab. “You’d know now, wouldn’t you?”

  What Jack knew was that he’d been completely out of his mind ever to consider paying Owens a visit alone. If he had it to do all over again, he’d take a division of marines. Because he certainly wasn’t capable of dealing with Owens at all.

  John Wayne would have been a different story. Big John would have disarmed Owens and stabbed him to death with his own knife.

  Or he would have shot him with a pistol that he happened to have lying around the house, or concealed in his boot.

  Jack, however, wasn’t John Wayne. He wasn’t wearing boots, and he didn’t have a pistol lying around the house.

  Score one for the NRA, Jack thought. Even Sally had a pistol around the house, while all he had was an old softball bat that he’d used as a kid and that he now kept in the bedroom in case of a home invasion. The handle of the bat was cracked, and there was tape wrapped around it to hold it together, so it
might not have been much of a defense. Jack would have liked to try it, though, just to see how hard he could hit Owens in the head, broken bat or not.

  “I really wish I’d kept my mouth shut today,” Owens said. “I guess seeing you at the dealership shocked me a little bit. I thought you’d be in jail for sure by now. When I stuck your knife in Bostic, I thought you’d be in jail within a day. But the cops never can figure things out. So I guess we’re going to have to help them.”

  Jack didn’t ask how. He wouldn’t have asked even if he could have. He had a feeling he didn’t want to know.

  But Owens told him anyway.

  “You’re going to have to kill yourself,” he said. “After expressing remorse and all that stuff. It’s always better when there’s a note expressing remorse. People these days go for that kind of thing.”

  Jack was pretty sure Owens didn’t have a clue as to what remorse really was. If anything, Owens seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “You’ll need to explain how you were sorry that you killed Bostic and Thomas, but they were robbing the school, and it didn’t look like anyone was going to stop them, so you just took matters into your own hands.”

  “No notes,” Jack mumbled, or tried to. It wasn’t easy with the knife poking him. “People will know they’re fake.”

  Owens seemed to understand him and eased off on the pressure of the knife.

  “Nobody’s going to know that. After all, I haven’t been here.”

  “You’re here. How’d you get in?”

  “You shouldn’t leave your garage door up so high. I slid right under it. And don’t worry about anybody seeing my car. It’s parked down the street in the parking lot of a 24/7 Mart. Nobody will notice it at all.”

  Jack thought someone might have noticed a man walking down the street in the rain, but that wasn’t such an unusual sight in Hughes.

  “Now,” Owens said, “about your suicide. Do you have any preferences?”

  Oddly enough, Jack couldn’t think of a single one.

  “Don’t worry,” Owens said. “I’ll come up with something. Maybe you could just have an accident instead. That might be better. How does electrocution in the bathtub sound to you?”

  Jack didn’t own a hair dryer or a small radio that plugged in. He wondered if Owens would try throwing the stereo into the bathtub. It wouldn’t fit very well, and it certainly wouldn’t look like an accident, not unless the cops thought Jack was trying to wash it.

  “Maybe you could get your hand caught in the garbage disposal,” Owens said. “You could chop it up and bleed to death.”

  Jack didn’t like that idea any more than he’d liked the first one. Less, if anything. It sounded a good deal more painful. In fact, he didn’t like the idea of dying at all, which came as no big surprise to him. Sally might not want to go out with him, but he had plenty to live for. He had to finish his article about the Kingston Trio. And he wanted to play a few more games of Freecell.

  “I think I like electrocution better,” Owens said thoughtfully. “Where do you keep your hair dryer?”

  Jack didn’t answer right away, so Owens gave him a little jab with the knife point.

  “I don’t have one,” Jack said.

  Owens laughed. “Good try. But I know better than that. Everybody has a hair dryer around the house.”

  “Not me,” Jack said.

  Owens gigged him with the knife and jerked Jack’s arm up. Jack winced, bit back a scream, and tried to pretend it didn’t hurt. He wasn’t very successful.

  “Don’t give me that crap, Neville,” Owens said. “Show me where it is.”

  “I really don’t have one,” Jack said when Owens moved the knife away. “You can look all you want, but you won’t find one.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” Owens said. “I’d just have to undress you to put you in the tub. I wasn’t looking forward to that part anyway. We’ll have to think of something else.”

  Jack loved that we. He certainly wasn’t going to think of anything. Let Owens worry about it.

  “Autoerotic death,” Owens said. “I like the idea of that. Poetic justice, right?”

  Jack tried to say he didn’t get the point.

  “Auto,” Owens said. “Pretty funny. We had us a sweet little deal going until you stirred things up. Cars go to Mexico, drugs come back, everybody makes money. But you had Bostic on the run, and Thomas was scared to death.”

  Jack found it hard to believe that he’d scared anyone, but he knew the deal was about to come unraveled, and maybe he’d contributed. He didn’t think Thomas had been scared to death, however, and he said so.

  “No, that was pretty much an accident,” Owens said. “And then you and your friend came nosing around. I should have finished you off right then. Now it’s going to be more complicated. The way we’ll do it is that we’ll get out one of your old Playboy magazines. Maybe a Penthouse. Hustler would be even better. You’ll strangle yourself with your own belt while you’re looking at them and playing with yourself. Where do you keep ’em?”

  Jack said, “I don’t have any magazines like that. How about The New Republic?”

  “The new what? Jesus Christ, don’t tell me you don’t have any girlie magazines around!”

  It was true. Jack restricted his reading to other kinds of magazines, though he did watch an R-rated movie on cable now and then.

  “You’re turning out to be more trouble than you’re worth,” Owens said, “and I think you’re a liar besides. Where’s the bathroom?”

  Jack pointed with his right hand.

  “Let’s go, then,” Owens said. “I think I’ll find a hair dryer in there, don’t you?”

  Jack didn’t think so, not unless someone had sneaked one in while he wasn’t looking. But let Owens search for it. Jack would use the time to come up with a clever plan to escape.

  Or he would have used the time that way if he could only think clearly. All that really came to him was that the knife was really hurting his chin and that his arm felt as if it were about to come apart at the shoulder socket and that his ribs felt as if they might be splintering into his lungs. Aside from that, however, he was doing just fine.

  “My chin,” he tried to say as Owens marched him toward the master bedroom.

  “What’s that?” Owens asked, moving the knife a bit.

  “My chin,” Jack told him. “It’s going to have a hole in it. If you kill me, the cops will wonder how it got there.”

  Owens stopped. He obviously hadn’t thought of that.

  “Besides,” Jack said, “the woman who was with me this morning knows you killed Bostic and Thomas. She saw your face yesterday in the auto shop. She’s probably on her way to the police right now.”

  “Ha ha,” Owens said flatly. “You’ll have to do better than that, Neville. If you haven’t called the cops yet, I know she hasn’t. Women can’t figure stuff like that out. Look how long it took you. I thought about her seeing me, though, and I decided that she didn’t. When the cops didn’t show up at the dealership today, I knew she hadn’t. Hey, if she’d seen me, then I’d have to kill her, wouldn’t I? And you don’t want that. Or do you?”

  Jack definitely didn’t want that, so he didn’t mention that Sally had already solved one murder.

  “Of course you couldn’t very well have called the cops or anybody else,” Owens said. “What with your telephone line down in your backyard. That wind and rain do terrible things.”

  Jack had a feeling it hadn’t been the wind or the rain that had affected his phone line this time, not that it mattered. It had happened so often before that no one would question it.

  “Did you call here last night?” he asked.

  “Spooked you, huh?” Owens said. “I was just checking up in case I needed to get to you, but I figured I could wait. And now we’ve talked enough. Come on. I’m not worried about that cut under your chin. When they find out that you’ve electrocuted yourself, maybe they’ll think you tried cutting your throat and just
chickened out. You’re the kind who would.”

  That remark really bothered Jack, and he would have said something if it hadn’t been so close to the truth. He wasn’t the kind to kill himself, and everyone was going to know it, no matter how good Owens made things look. He didn’t see the point of trying to explain that to Owens, who wouldn’t listen anyway. He heard only what he wanted to hear.

  The bathroom adjoined the master bedroom, and the door was open. Owens dragged Jack over to the bathroom and looked around. There was no hair dryer, but there was something else that Owens noticed.

  “Nice terry-cloth robe,” he said.

  He did something with the knife. It disappeared from beneath Jack’s chin, and Jack relaxed slightly. Owens kept Jack’s arm twisted, so there was no chance to break away.

  Still holding Jack firmly, Owens used his free hand to pull the robe off the hook where it was hanging.

  “Did you steal this at a good hotel, or did you spend money for it?” he asked.

  Jack didn’t bother to answer. Owens yanked the cloth belt from its loops and threw the robe on the bed.

  “I’m going to tie you up while I find that hair dryer,” he said. “This cloth won’t leave any marks.”

  He reached for Jack’s free arm, and in doing so he eased the pressure on the left. Jack pulled his right arm away, did a half-spin, and tried to hit Owens with a balled fist.

  Owens still had a grip on Jack’s left arm, and he nearly pulled it off, or so it seemed to Jack. Owens slammed Jack in the back of the head with the heel of his hand.

  The blow rattled Jack’s teeth and sent him stumbling across the room. He hit the edge of the bed and fell facedown across it. Before he could get up, Owens came over with the belt in his hand.

  “Hold still,” Owens said, “or I’ll hit you again.”

  Owens stood against the bed, straddling Jack and pinning him in place. He pulled Jack’s arms behind his back and began to tie Jack’s wrists together.