“Anything else?”
“Well, he had a cut on his hand. It was bleeding a little when he came in. I noticed it and asked him about it. He was halfway upstairs, and he said something about rats. Later, in court, he told them he’d caught his hand in the window-glass, and that’s why there was blood in the car. One of the windows was cracked. They analyzed the blood, and it wasn’t his type. It checked with Pete Taylor’s blood-type record.”
Rusty took a deep drag. “But he didn’t tell you that when he came home. He said a rat bit him.”
“No—he just said something about rats, I couldn’t make out what. In court, the doctor testified he’d gone upstairs and cut his hand open with a razor. They found his razor on the wash-stand, and it was bloody.”
“Wait a minute,” Rusty said slowly. “He started to tell you something about rats. Then he went upstairs and opened up his hand with a razor. Now it’s beginning to make sense, don’t you see? A rat did bite him, maybe when he was getting rid of the body. But if anyone knew that, they’d look for the body some place where there were rats. So he covered up by opening the wound with his razor.”
“Maybe so,” Helen Krauss said. “But where does that leave us? Are we going to have to search every place with rats in it around Norton’s Center?”
“I hope not,” Rusty answered. “I hate the damned things. They give me the creeps. Used to see them in Service, big fat things hanging around the docks…” He snapped his fingers. “Just a second. You say, when Pete and Mike were fishing, they borrowed a boat from the neighbors. Where did the neighbors keep their boat?”
“They had a boathouse.”
“Did the cops search there?”
“I don’t know—I guess so.”
“Maybe they didn’t search good enough. Were the neighbors on the property that day?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure enough. They were a city couple from Chicago, name of Thomason. Two weeks before the payroll robbery, they got themselves killed in an auto accident on the way home.”
“So nobody was around at all, and Mike knew it.”
“That’s right.” Helen’s voice was suddenly hoarse. “It was too late in the season anyway, just like now. The lake was deserted. Do you think…?”
“Who’s living in the neighbors’ place now?” Rusty asked.
“No one, the last I heard. They didn’t have any kids, and the real estate man couldn’t sell it. Pete Taylor’s place is vacant, too. Same reason.”
“It adds up—adds up to fifty-six thousand dollars, if I’m right. When could we go?”
“Tomorrow, if you like. It’s my day off. We can use my car. Oh, darling, I’m so excited!”
She didn’t have to tell him. He could feel it, feel her as she came into his arms. Once more, he had to force himself, had to keep thinking about something else, so that he wouldn’t betray how he felt.
He had to keep thinking about the money, and about what he’d do after they found it. He needed the right answer, fast.
He was still thinking when she lay back, and then she suddenly surprised him by asking, “What are you thinking about, darling?”
He opened his mouth and the truth popped out. “The money,” he said. “All that money. Twenty-eight gees apiece.”
“Does it have to be apiece, darling?”
He hesitated—and then the right answer came. “Of course not—not unless you want it that way.” And it wouldn’t be. It was still fifty-six thousand, and it would be his after they found it.
All he had to do was rub her out.
If Rusty had any doubts about going through with it, they vanished the next day. He spent the morning and afternoon with her in her room, because he had to. There was no sense in letting them be seen together here in town or anywhere around the lake area.
So he forced himself to stall her, and there was only one way to do that. By the time twilight came, he would have killed her anyway, money or no money, just to be rid of her stinking fat body.
How could Mike have ever figured she was good-looking? He’d never know, any more than he’d ever known what had gone on in the little jerk’s head when he suddenly decided to knock off his best friend and steal the dough.
But that wasn’t important now—the important thing was to find that black metal box.
Around four o’clock he slipped downstairs and walked around the block. In ten minutes, she picked him up at the corner in her car.
It was a good hour’s drive to the lake. She took a detour around Norton Center, and they approached the lake shore by a gravel road. He wanted her to cut the lights, but she said there was no need, because nobody was there anyway. As they scanned the shore Rusty could see she was telling the truth—the lake was dark, deserted, in the early November night.
They parked behind Pete Taylor’s shack. At sight of it, Rusty realized that the body couldn’t possibly be hidden there. The little rickety structure wouldn’t have concealed a dead fly for long. Helen got a flashlight from the car. “I suppose you want to go straight to the boathouse,” she said. “It’s down this way, to the left. Be careful—the path is slippery.”
It was treacherous going in the darkness. Rusty followed her, wondering if now was the time. He could pick up a rock and bash her head in while she had her back to him.
No, he decided, better wait. First see if the dough was there, see if he could find a good place to leave her body. There must be a good place—Mike had found one.
The boathouse stood behind a little pier running out into the lake. Rusty tugged at the door. It was padlocked. “Stand back,” he said. He picked up a stone from the bank. The lock was flimsy, rusty with disuse. It broke easily and fell to the ground.
He took the flashlight from her, opened the door and peered in. The beam swept the interior, piercing the darkness. But it wasn’t total darkness. Rusty saw the glow of a hundred little red cigarette butts winking up at him, like eyes.
Then, he realized, they were eyes.
“Rats,” he said. “Come on, don’t be afraid. Looks like our hunch was right.”
Helen moved behind him, and she wasn’t afraid. But he had really been talking to himself. He didn’t like rats. He was glad when the rodents scattered and disappeared before the flashlight’s beam. The sound of footsteps sent them scampering off into the corners, into their burrows beneath the boathouse floor.
The floor! Rusty sent the beam downward. It was concrete, of course. And underneath…?
“Damn it!” he said. “They must have been here.”
They had—because the once-solid concrete floor was rubble. The pick-axes of the sheriff’s men had done a thorough job. “I told you,” Helen Krauss sighed. “They looked everywhere.”
Rusty swept the room with light. There was no boat, nothing stored in corners. The beam bounced oft bare walls.
He raised it to the flat roof of the ceiling and caught only the reflection of mica from tar-paper insulation.
“It’s no use,” Helen told him. “It couldn’t be this easy.”
“There’s still the house,” Rusty said. “Come on.”
He turned and walked out of the place, glad to get away from the rank, fetid animal odor. He turned the flashlight toward the roof.
Then he stopped. “Notice anything?” he said.
“What?”
“The roof. It’s higher than the ceiling.”
“So what?”
“There could be space up there,” Rusty said.
“Yes, but…”
“Listen.”
She was silent—both of them were silent. In the silence, they could hear the emerging sound. It sounded at first like the patter of rain on the roof, but it wasn’t raining, and it wasn’t coming from the roof. It was coming from directly underneath—the sound of tiny, scurrying feet between roof and ceiling. The rats were there. The rats and what else?
“Come on,” he muttered.
“Where are you going?
”
“Up to the house—to find a ladder.”
He didn’t have to break in, and that was fine. There was a ladder in the shed, and he carried it back. Helen discovered a crowbar. She held the flashlight while he propped the ladder against the wall and climbed up. The crowbar pried off the tar-paper in strips. It came away easily, ripping out from the few nails. Apparently the stuff had been applied in a hurry. A man with only a few hours to work in has to do a fast job.
Underneath the tar-paper, Rusty found timbers. Now the crowbar really came in handy. The boards groaned in anguish, and there were other squeaking sounds as the rats fled down into the cracks along the side walls. Rusty was glad they fled, otherwise he’d never have had the guts to crawl up there through the opening in the boards and look around. Helen handed him the flashlight, and he used it.
He didn’t have to look very far.
The black metal box was sitting there right in front of him. Beyond it lay the thing.
Rusty knew it was Pete Taylor, because it had to be, but there was no way of identification. There wasn’t a shred of clothing left, or a shred of flesh, either. The rats had picked him clean, picked him down to the bones. All that was left was a skeleton—a skeleton and a black metal box.
Rusty clawed the box closer, opened it. He saw the bills, bulging in stacks. He smelled the money, smelled it even above the sickening fetor. It smelled good, it smelled of perfume and tenderloin steak and the leathery seat-cover aroma of a shiny new car.
“Find anything?” Helen called. Her voice was trembling.
“Yes,” he answered, and his voice was trembling just a little too. “I’ve got it. Hold the ladder, I’m coming down now.”
He was coming down now, and that meant it was time—time to act. He handed her the crowbar and the flashlight, but kept his fingers on the side of the black metal box. He wanted to carry that himself. Then, when he put it down on the floor, and she bent over to look at it, he could pick up a piece of concrete rubble and let her have it.
It was going to be easy. He had everything figured out in advance—everything except the part about handing her the crowbar.
That’s what she used to hit him with when he got to the bottom of the ladder…
He must have been out for ten minutes, at least. Anyway, it was long enough for her to find the rope somewhere. Maybe she had kept it in the car. Wherever she got it, she knew how to use it. His wrists and ankles hurt almost as much as the back of his head, where the blood was starting to congeal.
He opened his mouth and discovered that it did no good. She had gagged him tightly with a handkerchief. All he could do was lie there in the rubble on the boathouse floor and watch her pick up the black metal box.
She opened it and laughed.
The flashlight was lying on the floor. In its beam, he could see her face quite plainly. She had taken off her glasses, and he discovered the lenses lying shattered on the floor.
Helen Krauss saw what he was staring at and laughed again.
“I don’t need those things any more,” she told him. “I never did. It was all part of the act, like letting my hair go black and putting on all this weight. For two years now, I’ve put on this dumb slob routine, just so nobody’d notice me. When I leave town, nobody’s going to pay any attention either. Sometimes it’s smart to play dumb, you know?”
Rusty made noises underneath the gag. She thought that was funny, too.
“I suppose you’re finally beginning to figure it out,” she said. “Mike never meant to pull off any payroll job. Pete Taylor and I had been cheating on him for six months, and he had just begun to suspect. I don’t know who told him, or what they said.
“He never said anything to me about it beforehand—just went downtown with his gun to find Pete and kill him. Maybe he meant to kill me too. He never even thought about the money at the time. All he knew was that it would be easy to pick Pete up on payroll day.
“I guess he knocked Pete out and drove him down here, and Pete came to before he died and kept saying he was innocent. At least, Mike told me that much when he came back.
“I never got a chance to ask where he’d taken Pete or what he’d done with the money. The first thing I did, when Mike came home and said what he’d done, was to cover up for myself. I swore it was all a pack of lies, that Pete and I hadn’t done anything wrong. I told him we’d take the money and go away together. I was still selling him on that when the cops came.
“I guess he believed me—because he never cracked during the trial. But I didn’t get a chance again to ask where he hid the dough. He couldn’t write me from prison, because they censor all the mail. So my only out was to wait—wait until he came back, or someone else came. And that’s how it worked out.”
Rusty tried to say something, but the gag was too tight.
“Why did I conk you one? For the same reason you were going to conk me. Don’t try to deny it—that’s what you intended to do, wasn’t it? I know the way creeps like you think.” Her voice was soft.
She smiled down at him. “I know how you get to thinking when you’re a prisoner—because I’ve been a prisoner myself, for two years—a prisoner in this big body of mine. I’ve sweated it out for that money, and now I’m leaving. I’m leaving here, leaving the dumb waitress prison I made for myself. I’m going to shed forty pounds and bleach my hair again and go back to being the old Helen Krauss—with fifty-six grand to live it up with.”
Rusty tried just once more. All that came out was a gurgle. “Don’t worry,” she said, “they won’t find me. And they won’t find you for a long, long time. I’m putting that lock back on the door when I go. Besides, there’s nothing to tie the two of us together. It’s clean as a whistle.”
She turned, and then Rusty stopped gurgling. He hunched forward and kicked out with his bound feet. They caught her right across the back of the knees, and she went down. Rusty rolled across the rubble and raised his feet from the ground, like a flail. They came down on her stomach, and she let out a gasp.
She fell against the boathouse door, and it slammed shut, her own body tight against it. Rusty began to kick at her face. In a moment the flashlight rolled off into the rubble and went out, so he kicked in the direction of the gasps. After a while, the moaning stopped, and it was silent in the boathouse.
He listened for her breathing and heard no sound. He rolled over to her and pressed his face against something warm and wet. He shivered and drew back, then pressed again. The unbattered area of her flesh was cold.
He rolled over to the side and tried to free his hands. He worked the rope-ends against the jagged edges of rubble, hoping to feel the strands fray and part. His wrists bled, but the rope held. Her body was wedged against the door, holding it shut—holding him here in the rank darkness.
Rusty knew he had to move her, had to get the door open fast. He had to get out of here. He began to butt his head against her, trying to move her—but she was too solid, too heavy, to budge. He banged into the money box and tried to gurgle at her from under the gag, tried to tell her that she must get up and let them out, that they were both in prison together now, and the money didn’t matter. It was all a mistake, he hadn’t meant to hurt her or anyone, he just wanted to get out.
But he didn’t get out.
After a little while, the rats came back.
MOONFLOWER
by HOPE FIELD
I never knew loneliness before coming here to live with Jim. I never knew a loneliness like this that gnaws into the vitals like a hunger.
It’s wintry March weather. The fields are frozen and after the stock is fed and the house tidied there’s naught to do till supper time. And after supper—there’s only Jim.
I’ve reread the two books in the parlor and I know the new nineteen hundred and year one seed catalogue by heart. It’s easier reading than the Bible, what with the pretty pictures and all. There’s a beautiful new moonflower vine in it that I’m going to order.
I’ve heard tell
that moonflowers are bad omens and death comes certain sure to the house round which they’re planted. Only I can’t believe that anything so white and lovely as the moonflower could bring death. Or maybe I want death to come to this house…
If anyone had told me I’d be feeling this way about Jim Skaggs when we were first betrothed, I’d have said they were plumb daffy. I was jay proud and carried my head high as the topmost tree on Old Gauley. I’d got me a man with a fine log cabin and a room on second story!
Mom did caution me against marrying with him. “You ought to wait for Matt Parker to come back for you,” she said, gentle like always.
At that name my blood was cold in me. “He’ll not come back.”
Matt Parker was my chosen one since I’d been woman grown. We’d plighted our troth before he went off to Charleston City saying he’d come back for me before first frost was on the ground. But he’d been gone for nigh a year, and no word from him the last six months, and everyone casting pitying glances at me and saying behind my back that I was jilted sure.
“He’ll not come back,” I said again, hard of voice and hard of heart.
Mom answered soft. “Wait for Matt. Don’t marry this man who’s come a stranger to us.”
I said quick that the Lord had surely smiled on me to send such a good man and a good provider.
But mom just shook her head. “You can’t tell the worth of a man till you’ve been with him alone. You’ve got to see the look in his eyes when he’s eating and after he’s been hunting. You’ve got to note how he handles joy and how he stands up to sorrow.”
I should have hearkened to mom. I should have listened to my own knowing heart. But my folks were mountain poor, and a great family of us. I was a woman, well past my fifteenth year. And Jim Skaggs was the catch of all Martin County, West Virginia, after he bought up the old Huddleston place and cleared the rocky slopes and built his fine cabin with a room on second story.
Jim had a jolly way with folks. He made me feel then like a pretty bubble and I floated in rare air until his cabin door closed on us the night we wed.
And still away from here Jim is exactly as he used to be. He laughs and cozens up to everybody till the girls do envy me my lot… It’s only pa who looks at me queer sometimes after he’s been off talking to Jim alone. Pa’s mouth is straightened and his eyes fretted as though I might be sickening with fever.
Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve Page 13
