17-Murder Roundabout

by Lockridge, Richard

  It was too dark to see what she had fallen into. She groped in the darkness. She seemed to be fenced in by brush. She reached up and there was brush above her, too. Into some sort of a gully, then. When I was running I stumbled over something and fell into a ditch and did not catch myself and hit my head on something. And knocked myself out. I was running because I could hear him coming after me, through the dry leaves. I could hear the brush crackling as he came after me. He is still faceless, but I know his face. All the time he drove after me he kept the sun visor down so that it hid his face. Even after he was no longer following me into the sun he kept the visor down.

  She remembered quite clearly now. She remembered her sudden certainty that the big car was following her and not by chance, by coincidence, going the way she went. That certainty came when she became quite sure she had given herself away—given herself away first the afternoon before, when she had hesitated just short of recognition of a voice; again given herself away when she spoke on the telephone in her father’s house and tried, without success, to get an address and a telephone number from a man who said he was J. K. Knight.

  When she had become certain that the big car behind was following her, she had at first increased the speed of the little Volkswagen. That was instinctive, even when she knew it was futile. If one is chased, one tries to run. The big car, she knew, could overtake the Volks whenever the driver wished; could, if that was the way the driver wanted it, force the Volks from the road.

  But the sudden increase in speed momentarily widened the distance between her car and the following car—the car which had followed, matching her speed, from the Taconic to the main road leading west toward the Hudson, into and through the back road she used to cut across to NY-11F. When she turned north on 11F the following car turned after her, as she had known it would.

  The driver of the car which followed her did not try to lessen the gap her speeding up had created. And a car which had been impatient behind the big green car took advantage of the other’s lag and cut around it, and came close enough to the Volks to be tailgating it and was impatient there. It pulled out toward the center of the road to pass, but had to drop back because a car going south on 11F was only yards away and challenged, peremptorily, with its horn.

  There was a narrow road which led to the right and Leslie, without real thought, real plan, jammed the Volks into it. The car behind shrieked its anger and she could hear the screech of its tires on the pavement. She knew, then, that the car which pursued her could not have missed her turning off and that to turn into this little road, which might well dead-end at any mile, had been a mistake—had been the worst thing she could have done. But when one cannot outrun the pursuer, one tries to hide. A mouse tries to hide from a cat, even when there are only loose leaves to hide in. Instinct clings to life.

  The road was steep and winding and very narrow. She stayed near the middle of the road, knowing that she risked collision. But no one else was on the road, and it seemed to climb up into wooded hills which were uninhabited. She might, she thought, be hundreds of miles from the density of New York, from the crowded highways around it. She climbed up into a pocket of wilderness on a road she did not know.

  The big green car climbed behind her. There was no pretense now, if there had ever been.

  She kept the Volks in the middle of the road, so that the following car could not overtake. If the driver of the heavy car chose he could ram into the back of the Volks; if he really wanted that, he could probably knock the Volks out of control and off the road. But that was all he could do, if she did not let him pass.

  She came to the crest of a hill and the road ahead pitched down. Then, far below, she could see a highway, with cars streaming on it. Some of the cars, now, had their lights on and other cars, as she looked down on them, put their lights on. The road seemed to be a mile or so away.

  She had to slow because, as it began to drop down toward the main road, this side road twisted sharply. And it widened.

  The pursuer had been waiting for that, and ready for that. The car in the mirror seemed to leap at her and, involuntarily, with a driver’s reflex, she pulled toward the right. The big car cut in ahead and turned in front of her and she braked, the Volks swerving as she jammed brakes on it. The big car was stopping, blocking her.

  She threw herself across the seat and slammed herself against the door, twisting frantically at the handle. The door opened and she almost fell from the car. But she did not fall, and on her feet she ran, not looking back. But she could hear the heavy chunking sound as a door of the big car opened and then was slammed closed again.

  He’s got out on the wrong side of the car, she thought. On the road side. He will have to come around the cars. He should have done as I did and—

  She ran up a slope toward a stone fence, heavily covered with vines. She threw herself over the fence and did not look back. She was in a field long untouched—a field of bushes tangled together, and of fallen trees. She forced herself into the brush. She could not run; she could only fight her way. She would, she thought, be making a path for the man to follow on. She was making it easy for him.

  But then she came to a clearer section of the field and could run again. She heard the pursuer thrashing after her through the underbrush. He did not seem to be gaining. He was not really good in rough country, she thought. A man may live for years in a semirural place and never venture into open areas more tangled than a golf course.

  Beyond the comparatively clear section of the field there was another wall, and she ran toward it. The light was fading, but in the fading light the wall flared red. Poison ivy matted the wall and in the autumn ivy turns brilliantly to red. There is no mistaking the red of ivy when it has turned from green.

  To her right there was, she thought, a gap in the wall. But if she turned that way and ran toward it the man who thrashed along behind her could move across the open area and cut her off. She ran straight on. She grabbed the heavy, twisted stems of the vine for support, pulled herself over the low, broken wall on the ivy stems. It would poison her, but only a little; she was only a little susceptible to ivy’s stinging oil.

  Beyond the wall the undergrowth was as tangling as it had been before. Here some of the bushes she pulled at, wrenched her way between, had thorns which were spiked fingers clutching her clothing, piercing the light suit to tear at skin. One thorned branch she had pushed away slapped back across her breast, biting deeply through the thin fabric of her blouse.

  For an instant the pain of that stopped her flight and while she worked the thorny branch away she listened for the sounds of the man following her. At first she heard nothing; then, from some distance and from beyond the wall, she heard the thrashing of his progress. He did not seem to be coming any closer; it was almost, she thought, as if he had lost her. But that was not possible.

  She looked back as she finally freed herself from the thorns. She could see nothing. It was now almost dark here, in the heavy shadow of trees. She went on and the underbrush again thinned and she could almost run. Beyond this thinning it closed again.

  She was across the thinned area, a rocky place and had almost reached the denser growth when she caught the heel of one of the city shoes she wore. She plunged forward, holding out hands to check her fall. She went headlong into bushes and through them, her hands clutching, finding nothing. Then, for an instant, the ground seemed very far away. And then memory stopped.

  Now, in the darkness, she struggled to free herself from the brush around her and over her. She could see nothing; touch told her something. She had fallen into a gully which, sometime, a brook had worn for itself. It was dry now after years of drought.

  I am making a noise, she thought. I fell into hiding and the bushes arched over me. But now he will hear my movements and know where I have hidden.

  She half lay, half sat, motionless and listened. She did not hear any sound except the quiet sounds of night.

  She had no idea what time it was and felt for
her watch, although it would be too dark to see the hands of her watch. The arm where the watch should be was bare and stung as she felt along it. Somewhere, as she pushed her way through brush, fought thorns, her watch had been broken from her arm.

  She had no idea where she was. She had been, at a guess, some ten miles from Van Brunt Center when she turned into the narrow road—turned so disastrously from the traveled highway where she would have found lights and people. I trapped myself, she thought. But it was no good thinking what she should have done. She had tried to hide; the instinct to find a hiding place had been too immediate for thought.

  After she had listened and heard nothing, she began again to try to free herself. But when she tried to stand up sharp pain stabbed at her ankle. She swayed, holding to brush for support, and reached down to the ankle pain. The ankle already was puffily swollen. It hurt to the touch.

  I’ll have to crawl out of here, Leslie Brennan thought. I’ll have to crawl my way home.

  It was possible that Leslie Brennan, when she heard during the morning that Annette had been murdered, had linked her husband to the murder. But his lateness in reaching home would hardly, alone, have created such suspicion. If Leslie had thought her husband a killer, if she had fled, hysterically, from the thought and from him, she must have had other reason.

  “Why should she have got that into her head?” Heimrich asked Brennan, who was leaning forward in his chair, his forehead against his hands. Brennan shook his head.

  “Of course,” Heimrich said, “if she had gone to the Weaver house. To show it to this elusive Mr. Knight. If she had heard and recognized your car.”

  “She wasn’t there,” Brennan said. “There was a big car there. It was there when I heard what I guess was a shot. Her car wasn’t anywhere around.”

  Even by his own story, Heimrich thought, Brennan could not be sure of that. The drive at the Weaver house ran around it to a garage in the rear. The Volks might have gone that way, been parked there, out of Brennan’s sight. Assuming that Brennan had done what he said he had done, and no more. There was only his word for that, and he had lied before. But if this last version was another lie Brennan was clearly going to stick to it. As long as he could stick to it.

  “You’re quite sure it was Mrs. Weaver who called you at the office?” Merton Heimrich asked the man who still pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead.

  Brennan said, “What?”

  “Yesterday afternoon,” Heimrich said, patiently. “Mrs. Weaver called you at your office and asked you—told you—to come up to see her. You’re sure it was Mrs. Weaver?”

  Brennan raised his head and looked at Heimrich.

  “Sure, I’m sure,” he said. “What are you getting at?”

  “You recognized her voice.”

  “Of course. Her voice was special. Unforgettable. What are you getting at?”

  Giving you an out, Heimrich thought. A chance to say that somebody imitated Annette Weaver’s voice. To get you to the house in a noisy car which might be heard and identified. To get you there at a bad time for you. But it’s an out you don’t want to take.

  “Nothing,” Heimrich said. “Just wanted to be sure. At that lunch at the Inn. She was elated. Felt like celebrating, you said. Because of new contracts?”

  “I told you that.”

  “Now, Mr. Brennan,” Heimrich said. “You’ve told me quite a number of things, haven’t you? Was that why she was set up that afternoon? Felt like celebrating?”

  “Guessing again?”

  “Partly,” Heimrich said. “It’s part of my job. I gather there’s something to my guess?”

  “Look, Captain, she was a client. Lawyers don’t—”

  “She’s dead, Mr. Brennan. The rule doesn’t hold. Well?”

  Brennan leaned back and looked at the ceiling. He leaned forward and looked at Heimrich. He said, “All right. There was something else. She’d hired a private detective. On her ownnothing we’d touch. The firm, I mean. To get evidence that her husband was playing around. With anybody, I guess. With a girl named Cynthia Williams, specifically. Well, he’d got what she wanted. Or she thought he had.”

  “She wanted to divorce her husband?”

  “On her terms. Anyway, she wanted to put the screws on him. She was sore as hell at him. He was her agent, you know. Her fees got paid to him and he took out his percentage and checked the balance into her personal account. Not the joint account. Only, seems he didn’t check it in. What she said, anyway. Get the goods on him for a divorce. Get a whacking big alimony. Get her money that way. Sort of thing Nettie would think up.”

  “She did get the goods on him?”

  “Thought she had. I didn’t see the investigator’s report. I told you it’s the sort of thing the firm doesn’t get mixed up in.”

  “She needed the money?”

  “Not especially. She made a lot in the old days. Held onto it. She had property in Los Angeles. Actually, she was rolling in the stuff. But it was where she liked to roll.” He paused. “One of the places,” he said. “Leslie couldn’t have thought—”

  He put his head down against his hands again.

  The telephone bell was shrill in the room. Heimrich went quickly across the room to it. In the bedroom, Susan turned a light on. He could see it under the door. Damn it, Merton Heimrich thought and said, “Heimrich,” into the telephone. He listened.

  “All right,” he said, and listened again. “Yes,” he said. “I think I’d better.”

  He hung up and spoke across the room to James Brennan.

  “They’ve found your wife’s car,” he said. “On a side road which doesn’t lead much of anywhere. A road called Shady Lane.”

  “Les—”

  “No, she wasn’t in the car. Her handbag was. The car isn’t damaged. There’s nothing to show there was violence of any kind. It’s just pulled up at the side of this lane. No telling how long it’s been there. But the motor’s cold.”

  James Brennan pushed both hands, hard, on the arms of the chair he sat in. When he was on his feet he kept moving, very fast, with long strides, toward the door. He went through the doorway and the screen slammed behind him and then Heimrich could hear him running outside. Almost at once, the motor of a car started.

  Not so rackety now, the Porsche isn’t, Heimrich thought. And that Brennan knew, or thought he knew, his way to the obscure little road called Shady Lane. Of course, Brennan had lived around Van Brunt, off and on, for several years. On the other hand, Shady Lane did not lead anywhere many people wanted to go.

  Heimrich went into the bedroom for his jacket. The light was on and Susan lay in her bed and looked at him, her eyes wide; her eyes accusing.

  “Again,” Susan said, and her voice accused. “Always and always and always.”

  Merton Heimrich went to her bed and leaned down to kiss his wife. She put slender bare arms around his neck, pulling him down to her. Which didn’t make things any easier. Her lips parted under his. Which didn’t help, either….

  There were a good many cars in Shady Lane, which usually was so deserted. A man waved a flashlight beam at Heimrich, in caution and in rebuff. Heimrich pulled his car to the side of the road, and stopped it behind a Porsche. The man with the flashlight came toward him and, briefly, turned the flashlight on himself—on a trooper in uniform.

  “All right, Johnny,” Heimrich said, and got out of his car. The trooper turned the beam on Heimrich. “It’s only me,” Heimrich said. “Who’s here?”

  “About a dozen of us, Captain,” the trooper said. “Sergeant Forniss. And Ray Crowley. But the sergeant said you were coming and that we’d better wait for you.”

  Heimrich walked on up the road, beside the string of cars—police cruisers, unmarked cars. For some yards behind and in front of the Volkswagen nobody had parked and Captain Heimrich noted this with approval. In front of the Volks, two men held flashlights on the ground and a third man leaned into the light and looked down at the road and what passed, on
such a road as this, for the shoulder.

  “How’s it going, Indian?” Heimrich said to Ray Crowley, who turned from his examination of the ground.

  “Dry,” Crowley said. “Too dry to be certain. But it looks like another car pulled up in front of the Volks and stopped it. And it looks like a woman, I suppose Mrs. Brennan, ran up the slope toward the fence.” He pointed toward the fence he meant. “Tell by the heel marks,” Crowley said. “And that someone else scrambled up after her. Mr. Brennan’s here. Been yelling her name. The sergeant’s holding things up until we’ve had a chance to see if anything shows on the other side.” Again he gestured toward the vine-covered stone fence at the top of the slope.

  “Castings of the tires?” Heimrich asked, and Crowley shook his head. “Dust,” Crowley said, and Heimrich said they might as well see what they could find beyond the wall. Flashlight beams guided them up the slope and over the wall. Forniss stood beyond it, with several troopers. Forniss held onto the arm of James Brennan, and as Heimrich went over the wall Forniss said, “Just take it easy, Mr. Brennan. We’ll find her. Go on by yourself and you’ll maybe foul things up.”

  Brennan did not answer him. Brennan shouted his wife’s name into the darkness.

  “All the light we can get,” Heimrich said, and they got all the light they had. “All right, Indian,” Heimrich said to Ray Crowley, and Crowley turned a powerful flashlight on bent and broken underbrush. Then, slowly, carefully, he moved off into the tangled field. Once a farm, Heimrich thought. Perhaps a hundred years ago a farm, stone-fenced into a farmer’s field.

  “Les!” Brennan shouted into the night. “Les!”

  “Just take it easy, Mr. Brennan,” Forniss said. “We’ll find her if she’s still here.”

  Crowley went on into the field, following brush which was broken and bent, leaning down to look for heel marks in matted leaves. “Go along the other side,” Heimrich told one of the troopers. “Give him light from both sides.”

  The trooper moved off after Crowley, to the right of the trail Crowley slowly followed.