The desperate hours, a novel

by Hayes, Joseph, 1918-2006

  his mind: What had become of that kid, that Charles Wright, and that funny-looking automatic of his? It was Jesse Webb's hunch—and he still played hunches when they were this strong —that that gun w'as also in the Hilliard house.

  If HiUiard wanted him, HiUiard would call. That is, he would call if he was still alive.

  Jesse looked down, only for a moment then, to see Carson leading Mrs. Hilliard from the woods into the Walhngs' house; the studious-looking young man had one arm around her. But Mrs. Hilliard was not crying.

  Get in there, now, Jesse Webb ordered himself furiously. And then he answered himself, just as furiously: Let Hilhard try it his way.

  Because Jesse Webb had already begun to suspect that it was Dan Hilliard who had pushed the woman from the house. What that meant exactly, he didn't know. But he decided then, arbitrarily, to give Hilliard another five minutes. He would wait at least until Carson had Mrs. Hilliard's report of what was happening in there, until he had a report on what Robish had shouted out the doorway.

  Dan Hilliard mounted the stairs, his tread heavy and determined, hearing instead of the police fusillade he had expected, the motor of his car grinding over outside. As he reached the head of the stairway, where Glenn Griffin had been lying a few moments before, he saw a streak of blood on the carpet and heard, outside, the spit of gravel and the mounting roar of motor that receded toward the street. He paused.

  But only briefly because, while he heard Griffin's voice on his right, behind the smashed door—"In here, Hilliard"— he saw something in the door of Cindy's room that drew him

  there instead. He looked down, with the ugly bleakness returning in him, into the gray face of Chuck Wright. His whirling mind took in the dark stain on the floor, the twisted and lifeless-looking body, the blood-spattered and odd-shaped gun. In one fluid movement, Dan Hilliard stooped, picked up the automatic, the blood warm against his hand, and turned to cross the hall. It flickered through his mind that Robish had taken Chuck Wright to be a policeman; this had brought him downstairs in terror. Dan HilHard thanked Chuck Wright silently and stopped in front of the splintered door of his own bedroom.

  He knew what he was going to do now. Before the police came in, before anything else, he was going to do it. It was simple, really. But the thought of Ralphie in that room made Dan Hilliard slip the gun into his coat pocket, with his hand closed over it. He would shoot through the coat. He would empty it into Glenn Griffin, and that then would be the end of it.

  He stepped into the room. Ralphie was on the bed, huddled in one corner, and in the corner behind him stood Glenn Griffin. His dark, unnaturally bright eyes turned from the window and fixed glassily on Dan. But Dan was looking at the icy-white and frozen terror on the face of his son.

  It would not be so easy. The boy's eyes returned at once, in sickened fascination, to the muzzle of the gun that Glenn Griffin kept fixed on him. The gun was empty, but still it was not going to be so simple.

  "You got to get me out of here, Pop." But the insolence was gone; the attempt at arrogance thin and worn. "That copper over there nicked me. You got more of 'em outside?"

  Dan saw, with a twist of pleasure that he did not like, the blood-edged furrow along the side of Glenn Griffin's scalp, and he realized that Chuck Wright's first shot had stunned but not seriously wounded the convict. Well, he'd finish the job, now. He, Dan Hilliard.

  First, though, he had another job. One more. "Ralphie," he 237

  said quietly, his voice a dry whisper, "Ralphie, look at me. Listen."

  "No time now, no time!" Glenn Griffin cried, licking at his lips, and he moved his gun closer to the boy's head.

  Dan Milliard became aware of something else then, recorded it, worked around it. He couldn't startle Griffin into lifting that gun, bringing it down in desperate frustration on the boy's skull.

  "Son," Dan said slowly, very low and definite, the word spreading a hypnotic effect over the quiet room, "listen to me. Nothing's going to happen to you. That man is not going to shoot you. Do you hear me?" Ralphie nodded, but a flicker of uncertainty appeared in his bloodshot eyes. Dan's heart twisted. "He's not going to shoot you, Ralphie, and I'll tell you why, son. Believe me, because "

  "Lay off, HilHard! You don't lay off, I'll get it over with. You got to get me out of here, see!" The frantic note was clear, and ii was this that Dan feared.

  Dan's hand was on the butt of the automatic, his finger looped over the trigger. Ralphie was between him and his target. "I wouldn't lie to you. Have I ever lied to you, Ralph?"

  The boy's head shook, once.

  "Christ!" Griffin screamed. "Will you stop it! Are there any more cops out there, Hilliard? Why didn't they knock off Robish? There ain't any more, are there? They'd be in here by now!"

  Still, Dan ignored him, concentrating on his son. "Ralphie, that man's gun is not loaded. It doesn't have any bullets in it. Do you believe me?"

  He was conscious of the start in Glenn Griffin, the quick grin of disbelief, but he was studying his son's face.

  "Do you believe me?"

  Then, very slowly, the boy nodded his head.

  "What's going on here?" Griffin shrilled. "Hilliard, you

  deaf? It's loaded, Hilliard. You wouldn't have brought it back with you if "

  Griffin stopped then, the eyes brightening into a glazed stare.

  Dan said, as slowly as before: "Ralph, you're a very big boy. I want you to mind me, understand? I want you to do whatever I say now."

  "Stop it!" Griffin yelled. "Stop the talk! My head hurts. I

  got to " He broke ofT, and somewhere in his reeling mind

  a suspicion took root. He lowered his voice. "You wouldn't a-come in here with a empty "

  That moment of self-doubt was what Dan had been playing for. "Ralphie!" he barked suddenly. "Run!"

  The shout brought the boy up off the bed m one bound before Griffin could move.

  "Get downstairs and outside!" Dan Hilliard shouted.

  And then he saw Glenn Griffin hfting the gun, swinging it after the boy. Dan had to break his first impulse with a great and terrible effort of will that cracked like pain through his body. He kept the automatic in his pocket even when he heard the empty gun clicking, but he was more certain, hearing those frantic fruitless cficks, what he was going to do now. He heard Ralphie on the stairs, skittering down. The boy was gone. He would not see this. Dan had made sure of that.

  He watched the dazed bleak horror in the face across the room; he saw the white teeth bared; he heard the faint boylike cry in the back of the young man's throat as he brought the deputy sheriff's gun up to point directly at Dan Hilliard. Dan heard the cUcks, over and over, and then, above this, a stranger sound than any: the short explosion of his own laughter.

  It was then that he brought the automatic from his coat pocket. The rage was cold in him now, and he continued to think of that gun muzzle pointed at his son's back. He could feel his grip on the automatic climb like a pain up to his shoulder. He was going to do it now.

  Whatever Glenn Griffin saw on Dan Hilhard's face then— 239

  the pitiless eyes, the set of jaw, the purple swelling of the bruise that Griffin himself had put along one cheek—whatever it was, it caused him to back into the corner, his tongue darting wetly from between his lips. His eyes dropped, but they appeared not to see, not quite to comprehend the meaning of that gun in the white-knuckled hand that moved closer.

  Dan Hilliard had no control over what he was going to do now. They had put the people he loved through two days of nightmarish hell; they had beaten and threatened and terrified; they had brought violence and the smell of blood and filth into his home. There was only this now, this one final act, and it would be over.

  Glenn Griffin was sliding down against the wall, the saliva dribbling in little bubbles down his jumping chin. His mouth opened and closed and opened again, working loosely, but no sound came. He pleaded with those fluttering hands at his neck. The grotesque pantomime of frenzy did not tou
ch Dan Hilliard's icy intention.

  Now. Now. Why don't you pull the trigger? Why don't you get it over with? Why should anything hold you back? Why should you, Dan Hilliard, live by scruples these men never felt? Why should you hesitate when they

  But Dan Hilliard was not one of them. This was his room, the bedroom in which he and his wife slept. This was his home. And down below, his wife and daughter and son were waiting, wondering, not knowing any of this, still trembling with the fear this scum had brought into the house. Across the hall lay the young man who loved Cindy, who must love her deeply; and he, perhaps, was dead now. He needed help, and quick. In the electric brilliance of this moment, Dan Hilliard lowered the gun slowly until the muzzle pointed at the floor. He didn't have the right. He was not one of them.

  The quivering mass of animal-being crumpled in the comer before him sickened Dan Hilhard. He turned away slightly, looking out the window.

  "Get out," he said softly. He felt dirty all over, as though some of the slime had wiped off on him somehow, "Get out of my house," he said, but still quietly.

  Then, staring out of the window, seeing in the distance a man on a ladder against the roof of the Wallings' house, he heard the scrabbling behind him, as Glenn Griffin, whimpering, clawed his way across the bed, staggered toward the hall; Dan heard the quick drum of steps on the stairway and the opening of the front door. Dan tossed the automatic to the floor. He had almost murdered a man; he had almost become one of them.

  He threw open the window. "Webb!" he shouted, and a blade seemed to turn over in his throat. "Webb! Get a doctor and ambulance, fast!"

  Then he whirled about and strode swiftly toward his daughter's bedroom where Chuck Wright still lay crumpled and unconscious. Dan was bending down, kneeling in the blood, when he heard two shots outside. They seemed to come from a distance, with a whine in them.

  Jesse Webb lowered the rifle.

  In his mind that slender, dancerlike figure of a young man was still spinning down there on the Hilliard lawn; but he knew, of course, that the figure lay quite still now, quite lifeless. Two minutes before, he had received the report on Robish: the big man had smashed up the blue sedan in the chase and the police had pulled him from the wreckage, badly injured, but alive. Alive for a while, anyway, Jesse thought grimly. Until after the trial.

  It's all over, Jesse thought then, and rubbed the back of his very tired neck. 241

  But he was remembering, as he climbed slowly down the ladder, his legs aching and stiff, the way he had Hfted the rifle when he saw that figure emerge from the front door of the Hilliard house. Griffin had been running at full tilt, arms raised, hands working convulsively, the mouth shouting indistinguishable words. Had those words been a plea for mercy? Across the tops of the sun-tinted trees, Jesse Webb could not hear them. Did he remember then that other time when, after using a gun himself, Griffin had thrown it to the pavement and demanded the privilege of giving himself up? Or was Jesse Webb concentrating only on fixing the head dead center in the crossbars of the rifle sight? He had fired, feeling only the recoil of the rifle, seeing the figure stop, twist, sink to one knee on the grass, remain balanced there until the second bullet reached him. It spun him about and he wobbled upright a moment, but only a moment, and then plunged forward, arms and legs outstretched, face down in the grass.

  Jesse was on the Wallings' lawn now, leaning the rifle against the ladder, feeling the heat that remained in the barrel. After violence, he had learned to expect a certain secret shame, an appalling sense of failure that amounted almost to nausea. If matters had to be settled so, someone had failed. He didn't know who, or what. But he wished there was some way to keep that feeling from creeping through him.

  He made his way into the Wallings' house, hearing the siren wails in the distance, picturing the confused scene on the Hilliard lawn. He sank into a deep chair alongside the telephone table. He could already hear the soft note of relief in Kathleen's voice, even though she'd try to cover it. And he could imagine, too, the grim, curt satisfaction in Uncle Frank's voice when he phoned him later.

  But Jesse Webb did not share the satisfaction. That other feeling, almost disgust, was in him, and strong. Not because he'd killed a man; he no longer looked upon Glenn Griffin as a man in that sense. The feeling was in him because life should

  not be so. And then, as he picked up the phone, he was glad for the feeling. It set him apart from men like Griffin and Robish, who also killed. He still clung to a hope that someday it would not be necessary to settle matters in this manner. Until then, he had a job, and he had done one part of it in the last two days. Except for some unpleasant but necessary details, that part of the job was over. Somehow, along the way, he'd lost the idea of personal revenge. That, too, was good, wasn't it? Maybe getting over an idea like that, as Lieutenant Fredericks had suggested, made you a better cop in the end.

  Jesse Webb didn't know, for sure, and when he heard Kathleen's voice, he forgot it all, completely, until he had replaced the phone two minutes later.

  Everyone, including Eleanor, had insisted that Dan stay home. Cindy was at the hospital with Chuck, and there was certainly nothing more Dan could do now. He needed his rest, and his swollen jaw looked terrible. But here he was, sitting stubbornly in the white and sterile waiting room, and Eleanor was beside him, quiet, on the wicker couch. Their hands did not touch, but both were aware of the closeness, a closeness that was not new, really, but newly recognized.

  Dan saw the deputy sheriff—the tall, lanky one named Webb—approaching along the silent, tile-floored corridor with a trim nurse trotting soundlessly at his elbow, trying to keep up with the long strides. Jesse Webb removed his hat then, in the waiting room, and he stood there, a trifle awkward, a little shy, with his lean head shot forward.

  "Miss Standish here," he drawled, "will give you the details. The kid'll be out of here in two weeks. I reckon that's enough for me. Your daughter's in the room with him, Mr. Hilliard. 243

  She just apologized to me about something. It seemed to bother her a lot, that business about earning the money to Flick. Not that Flick can do much about it, where we got him. Or that she could have done anything different, then. I guess that's all. Now will you go home?"

  Dan stood up. "If the boy's conscious, I'd like to see him."

  "Room 402," the nurse said, "but "

  Jesse Webb touched her arm and she stopped. A little crookedly Jesse was grinning down at Dan Hilhard. "I want to say something."

  "Yes?"

  "Now it's gone. Well, no matter. Something about—you ever want a job, sir, just look me up." It was not what he'd intended to say. It didn't even come close, being utterly foolish and meaningless, but it was the best Jesse Webb could manage.

  Dan Hilliard was smiUng, too, and his eyes made Jesse forget the lopsided shape of the face before him, with the jaw ridged and puffed along one side. The eyes were blue now, just like the daughter's, not black as he had imagined in the time he'd known Dan Hilliard. But there was a warmth in them, a knowingness, that it might take the girl a lifetime to acquire. Embarrassed then, Jesse turned to Mrs. Hilliard: she still wore the housedress, her hair was light, her face small and oval. Mrs. Hilliard's eyes were soft and they seemed to look into him, and he thought of Kathleen.

  "The same to you," Dan Hilliard said, and he offered the deputy his hand. "You're steahng my thunder, though. That's my work—handing out jobs. Pretty dull, compared to yours, but " He shrugged.

  "Room 402, sir," Jesse Webb said, releasing Dan Hilliard's thick-muscled hand. "Then listen. You get some sleep, hear?" He said that last a little louder, a trifle more gruffly, than he'd intended. But he grew uncomfortable under Mrs. Hilliard's eyes, wondering whether she could read his thoughts.

  He watched Dan Hilliard moving down the corridor, step-

  ping lightly and briskly now, his body upright and confident. And the nurse began to explain to Mrs. Hilliard, in some detail, just what had taken place in the surgery.

  It's a fu
nny thing, Jesse Webb was thinking, how you never get said what you feel or think. He rubbed the back of his neck, blinking back the sleep that threatened to catch up with him now. You never seem to say what's in you. He was thinking of a word, and even the word itself sounded odd in his mind. Magnificence. That was the word. You'd never think of applying it to Dan Hilliard, or people like Dan Hilliard and his wife. But it applied. Maybe you didn't think of it normally because the chips weren't down; but when the chips were down

  He saw Dan Hilliard turn into a room far down the hall.

  What Dan found in that room was a young, full-bodied man stretched out flat on a bed with a very white sheet drawn up to his blunt-looking chin, his head turned away from the door. Beyond the man, framed in the early afternoon sunlight spilling through the high windows, was a slim, red-haired girl whose shoulders were set at an angry cant.

  The young man's head turned slowly as Dan entered, and the gray eyes opened wider.

  Dan stepped to the bed.

  "You tell him, Dad," Cindy said. "I've been trying to make him see. Wasn't he foolish, Dad? I was nearly crazy in that police station, suspecting he was up to something, thinking he might be in there, too. Tell the man. Dad, so he'll learn not to be such a reckless fool."

  Her anger might have fooled Chuck Wright, although Dan doubted even that as he fought down a smile. He noticed the bright spots of color high on his daughter's cheeks.

  "You were a reckless fool. Chuck," Dan said. "It came in handy."

  Chuck Wright looked very pale, not much like himself at all, but some of the grayness had gone from his face. "I couldn't do anything else, I guess." His voice was weak. 245

  Dan cleared his throat. "Yes," he said brusquely. "Yes, I know the feeling." He turned to the door. "Don't let her rag you, son. Make her invite you to Thanksgiving dinner. I understand you'll be out of here by then."