The desperate hours, a novel

by Hayes, Joseph, 1918-2006

  Then he plunged sideways, throwing himself violently as the void reached for him, feeling a thorny prickling against his face and the jolt of hard earth under his body. Then the whole world filled to bursting with the thundering descent of the car. Dan lay curled in the underbrush as that sound echoed and reverberated, gnashing, crushing and ugly. He knew that the car had rolled, and it seemed now never to stop rolling. The splash was abrupt—first, the soHd slap-sounding smack, then a series of gurgles and gasps, as though some living monster were battling for life below the edge of the bluff. Finally the bubbhng slackened into utter stillness.

  Dan rolled onto his back, breathing shallowly.

  Had it gone under? He crawled to the precipice. The sapling quivered with a faint rusty crackle of leaves. Below, there was nothing. Sheer dark.

  Dan stood up unsteadily, shaking. He couldn't know whether the car had gone under. He couldn't tell what daylight—and perhaps some hunter in the surrounding woods—would discover.

  He was faced now with the hours-long walk back to the house. The trick now, he knew without thought, was to keep from thinking, from wondering. The trick now was to get away from this spot as fast as possible and to make one leaden foot follow the other over those miles, all the while forcing his mind ahead, all the while peering forward to that inevitable moment tomorrow when they would leave. What was he going to do then? How was he going to prevent their taking anyone along in the car?

  Perhaps, before he arrived home, he would have the answer to that.

  "Supposin' you're right then," Lieutenant Fredericks of the State Police was saying to Jesse Webb. "Supposin' this guy's in the fix you think he is. I agree with that much. But why then are they stickin' around? And when they're ready to take off, is he going to be any better off? He says it right here in his letter, doesn't he? If those sonsabitches take his wife along, f'instance, how's he going to be any better off'n if we start searching all those houses right now? And stop shaking your head that way. You're givin' me the fidgets."

  Jesse hadn't known that he was shaking his head, but he made a conscious effort to stop it. This Lieutenant Fredericks had already given him the fidgets, if that's what you called them. He didn't like being called into a man's office, in the first place; Fredericks had no authority over him and he was taking a lot on himself to question him about his procedure. Co-operation was one thing; this superior-speaking-to-underlmg was something else again. Jesse had to admit that, on the face of it, it didn't look as if he was accomplishing much. He'd answered the questions civilly enough, sitting hunched forward in the State House office, trying to explain, over and over, to the short, crisp elderly man in uniform just why he was not trying to close in, that as yet he had no house to close in on.

  "Maybe he's not going to be any better off," Jesse drawled. "But that's a decision I reckon the man's got a right to make on his own now."

  "The hell he has! This is poHce work, son. Nobody wants to see innocent people hurt. But we can't sit on our cans forever waiting for them to make the move. You got the list of that trashman's customers "

  "Mr. Patterson," Jesse suggested.

  "Sure, the old garbage collector. Hell, son, it was your deduction that the old boy had seen the car, not mine. But you got to follow through. The garbageman's dead "

  "Mr. Patterson," Jesse corrected again.

  "What's the chip on your shoulder, Webb? It ain't becoming, son. We got to work together on this. So you got cars planted up there around the neighborhood. You know how easy it'd be for that gray sedan to slip out of that? I'll tell you. Any man with reasonable intelligence could do it if he never had any experience, that's how. For all we know they've done it already. Up and gone. Your telephone hunch played itself out, didn't it? Maybe this one will, too. But son, we'll never know unless we try. Let's get men moving up there. Knock on a few doors, ring those bells, ask about the car—about this Mr. Patterson. Innocent questions. What can we lose?"

  "We can force their hand," Jesse said with slow patience running thin.

  "Now you're talking!"

  "And they can jump to the idea that this guy, whoever wrote this letter, tipped us off. They can plug him, or his wife, or his kid or kids."

  "You can't put off a showdown, son."

  Jesse stood up. "Look. Nobody wants a showdown any more'n I do. Not you or every trooper in Indiana. But by all the rules, with my superior out of town now, I reckon this comes under my jurisdiction—unless the FBI has other ideas. Carson doesn't—because we've talked about it. It'd take us all night and part of tomorrow to work our way through that whole damn neighborhood, ringing doorbells. No thanks. I want 'em flushed. Lieutenant, but not if they're going to shoot up somebody's family just because I can't wait."

  "While you're waiting," the lieutenant said testily, "an old man gets three in the back. Nothing I can see's going to stop that happening again."

  Jesse stopped in the office doorway; he was shaking his head again. "We weren't waiting when that happened, Lieutenant —I mention that just for the record. We didn't have anything then, remember?"

  "Webb, let me tell you something. Let me give you a little advice. How long since you've had any sleep?" And as Jesse

  waved a hand, he nodded. "Okay. It might be a dead-end guess and it might pay off. I'll get you as many men as you want on this, Webb. Put 'em all over the streets, anywhere. But I tell you, Webb, this slob that wrote this don't have the chance of a snowball in hell and I, for one, thinks he needs help, and plenty of it. Don't take it personal, what I just said. Deputy. I'm a sour old man and I hate to see you young punks make fools of yourselves. If they are up there and they slip away, you'll be looking for work, son."

  "I'll take that chance," Jesse Webb said, feeling raw all through. "But I could use some men. Thanks."

  Lieutenant Fredericks stood staring after the young lanky deputy. He spat into a brass cuspidor alongside his desk. Raring to go all day, he thought, and now he's stopped dead in his tracks. Hell, he was ringing doorbells himself this morning!

  Jesse emerged on the high State House steps. It was a dull night, with a few ugly clouds drifting pale gray against the bitter dark sky. He felt a little faint. Not enough food and too much coffee and too many blind alleys, he thought; and the thought brought to mind Kathleen. She was in another movie now, her third today; then one of the deputies was to take her to Jesse's mother's house on the south side for the night. Remembering his own curled fear about Kathleen, Jesse was reminded again of the unidentified man's pitiful, pleading letter. For a moment, as he paused there staring into the city streets where only a few people moved, secure and unafraid and not even conscious of the Griffin brothers and a man named Robish, Jesse Webb thought, with envy of them, that maybe it would be a good idea to get another job, anyway. But by the time he was in his car again and cruising northward to the area that had become the neighborhood in his mind, an area defined on the surface of his brain by the same red mark he had drawn on that city map in his office this afternoon, he felt a slow return of the banked-down excitement.

  Griffin was in town. Jesse's hunch on that had been right, he'd swear to that much. Then this other guess, that they were hiding in the neighborhood, might not be too far-fetched. It was amazing, when you came to think of it, how big a part plain hunches played in police work. Oh sure, you have hints and clues—the license number scribbled in an old man's blocky writing before he was shot, a carefully worded anonymous letter from a worried husband and father. But you put the two together and the connection was slight, really. Damned slight. Yet it was all you had, and on the basis of it, you lost another good night's sleep.

  The sour taste that had been in Jesse Webb's mouth since the telephone number list had played itself out on him was now a poison all through him. He was tired, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that he had a slim chance, but a chance, to reach Glenn Griffin before morning. Somehow. The hatred he had felt all along, remembering the shapeless hang of Uncle Frank's arm, had swol
len in him each time he recalled the look of death on the face of harmless little Mr. Patterson; now, with the desperate unsigned letter in his pocket, he felt the hatred expand, choking him, till he could hardly breathe.

  Nothing mattered but finding Glenn Griffin, his brother and another man named Robish, and wiping the earth clean of their slime. That and nothing less.

  That same need, more aching hunger than savage rage in him now, kept recurring to Dan Hilliard as he walked; it clogged his mind, averting his thoughts from the one decision he had to make before morning—how to tie Griffin's hands if the young hoodlum attempted to carry anyone along in his escape. Dan was crossing the river bridge, returning on foot by the same route he had traveled an hour ago in the gray sedan. He had

  made up his mind not to try to estimate the number of miles he had walked, how many more lay ahead of him. He wasn't sure, though, that he would make it. Griffin, grinning, had been cruelly specific: "No cabs, Pop. Walk it. Do you good."

  All along, from the first few minutes when Glenn Griffin had brought the barrel of his gun whipping down on his shoulder, Dan had been aware of the sadistic strain in the young convict. This ugly warping was deep in him, stronger even than his judgment or his need to escape. He wanted revenge; he was going to have murder committed by paying for it with the money that was in the mail, on its way to Dan's office. This held him in town, kept him in Dan Hilliard's home. Some police officer, who was probably unaware of Glenn Griffin's general whereabouts, who had perhaps forgotten Glenn Griffin completely, had been marked for death because of some old twisted grudge in the boy's mind.

  The whole idea of revenge had been foreign to Dan Hilliard, not a part of his nature at all—until now. Now he comprehended, even while loathing, the twist in the young criminal. He understood because he himself had begun to feel the same dark urge. While it was still uppermost that he get those men out and away from his family, Dan Hilliard, his chest aching and each step driving shocks of pain up his legs and into his groin, became acutely aware for the first time that he wanted to see Glenn Griffin dead—dead for death's own sake as well as for the safety of his family.

  It was this realization, as he forced one leg forward, planted it, then lifted the other, that added the last tightening to his unreal, walking nightmare. Whether it came an hour from now or ten years, he wanted to see Glenn Griffin dead.

  Then why not now? Why not tonight and get it over with? Get a gun, conceal it, walk in the house, draw it, shoot.

  Eleanor's pale face drifted at him across the blackness again. Dan, I'm pleading with you. Promise me, Dan, darling, promise me.

  He sagged against the stone buttress of the bridge looking ahead, picturing the dark wet miles ahead, asking, in a whisper, "What can I do, Ellie? I promised, but you don't know, dear. You don't see what I see."

  He was under a garish street lamp that cast his shadow before him. He caught a glimpse of the slump-shouldered figure of himself, outlined darkly on the wet pavement, small-looking and shriveled. He frowned and, with great effort, twisted his head to make sure that he was staring down at his own shadow. He was. He was alone on that bridge.

  He straightened, his breath a turning blade in his chest, and plunged forward again. At this moment headlights swept toward him, approaching from behind. A car careened by, a young girl's face appeared in the rear window, and a boyish voice echoed back at him as the car gathered speed and continued on: "Have another drink, old man."

  Dan missed a step. They thought he was drunk. He didn't blame them. He wanted to smile. He envied those kids; he even loved them. All the safe people, unfrightened, living their unknowing lives.

  He hit the rhythm again: one foot, then the other. He found that if he swung his legs forward, attaining a certain balance, he didn't drive the shafts of burning pain so high up into his body.

  Without warning, then—he didn't even see the flash of headlights—a car screamed to a stop across the gleam of dark pavement. It looked familiar in a misty sort of way, as Dan stared at it. The police? A giddiness rose in him. They might lock him up for being drunk. Drunk! But when the door opened and a man stepped out and strode across toward him, he thought only that he must run. He had no strength or breath in him, but he knew that he should turn and run through the streets, down alleys, behind garages, anything, anywhere, rather than let this man reach him. He couldn't move.

  "Mr. Hilliard. Let me take you home."

  Dan recognized the voice, and finally, by peering through the three feet of dimness that separated them now, he put the voice to a face. Chuck Wright.

  Incredibility struck him; he went hollow and empty, staring.

  "Come on, sir, I'll give you a lift."

  Dan didn't reply. The impossibility of the encounter still held him and he was without wDl as he crossed the damp pavement, opened the door of the car and sUd into the seat. The leather was cold, penetrating to the chill inside him; but the seat was soft, incredibly soft and giving, and he lowered his body into it with gratitude only slightly edged with the knowledge that somehow, in some way, he had made or was making a horrible mistake.

  He closed his eyes then, and for a long time—he had no idea how long—he gave himself over to the luxury of softness and the close warmth of the car. Blankness.

  The young man's voice lifted him from it. "I'll have to know now, you see," Chuck Wright was saying.

  Dan opened his eyes reluctantly. Chuck Wright drove a miniature sports car of foreign design. This was a larger car.

  "I'm going to take you home and go mside, Mr. HilUard, and one of you—you or Cindy—is going to tell me what gives."

  Behind the level flatness of the boy's voice, even while he heard the words, Dan felt this other, somehow more vital question working its way up in him.

  "I'll do anything I can to help, sir. You're in some kind of trouble, aren't you?"

  Then the question took a double-shadowed shape: Why was Chuck driving this car and where had Dan seen it before?

  "No trouble," Dan said, and his voice, in the canvas-enclosed interior of the car, sounded normal, absurdly normal. "Is this your car?"

  "My father's, I borrowed it."

  "Why?"

  Chuck shrugged. "Carburetor on mine's acting up."

  A lie, Dan Hilliard's mind cried, with renewed alertness. He had it now. This large car, a convertible, was the one that had followed him earlier, the one he'd eluded back there before he crossed the river in the gray sedan. Chuck Wright had been following him then. Why?

  "If you don't want to talk, sir, it can wait till we get to your house."

  The significance of the young man's intention struck Dan for the first time then. What did the boy know? How much had he guessed? And what would it mean? Of one thing Dan was staunchly certain: Chuck Wright must be prevented, at all costs, from taking him all the way home.

  Dan was tempted to close his e)'es again, to stretch his knotted muscles, pushing aside everything. He had done his part. He had done everything within his power. Wasn't it only fair now that he should have these few minutes of blankness?

  But even as he thrust the temptation aside—with an effort summoned from some deep recess of his character that he had not known existed in him—a slyness took over his thoughts. The boy wanted an explanation. He had to have one. He was stubborn and he would go into the house and demand to know what this was all about. Very well, then Dan would give him an explanation.

  The idea came to him from nowhere. "You haven't got a little drink on you, have you?" Dan asked.

  He heard the abrupt catch of breath; he watched covertly the young man's rather blunt-looking profile as the lips opened, then closed, then opened again.

  "Not a drop," Chuck Wright said quietly.

  Dan was careful not to let his words blur. "Damnation," he said. "Thought you were the drinking type. Chuck. You never know, do you? Can't make snap judgments, can you?"

  "No, you can't," Chuck agreed thinly, an incongruous disapproval replacing the surpr
ise in his tone.

  "Shows to go you," Dan said. "Tell you what, Chuck, old

  fellow—now that you're into my little family secret, y'see, you can skip taking me home. Just drop me off at that liquor store in Broad Ripple and I'll walk rest of the way."

  "Anything you say, Mr. Hilliard."

  "Not shocked, are you. Chuck? You won't hold it against Cindy, will you, fellow? Man in my position . . . discreet. I'm always discreet about it. Notice the neighborhood I was in tonight? Nobody knows me there, of course. Nice people, though. Can't afford to be snobbish." He halted himself, for fear of going too far. He had made his point; the effect was in young Wright's set face and manner.

  But what had he forgotten? His mind wasn't working properly. Something

  Then it came to him, in the long silence, and he spoke again, minutes later: "Lost my car tonight. Parked it in front of a bar. Thought I did. Gray car." In what he vaguely hoped was a man-to-man manner, he lowered his voice: "Own private car, y'know. For own private pleasures. You sure you don't have a drink?"

  "Positive."

  After that, more silence as the corners rolled by, the blocks, the miles. Had he covered everything now? Did Chuck believe him?

  The stiff and unnatural silence held until Chuck brought the long convertible to a stop along the curb in front of the lighted store in which, only last night, Dan had bought the whisky for Robish.

  "It's a long walk from here to your house," Chuck said at last as Dan opened the door.