Mankiller (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “When was Sally Grant killed?” she asked. “What time, last night?”

  “Between one and two A.M. This morning, really.”

  This time, her ghetto-smart eyes were narrowed as she looked at Justin. “One o’clock—” She said it thoughtfully, speculatively.

  I turned to look at Justin, who stood above me like an avenging angel. His eyes were wide and wild; the muscles of his throat were drawn tight as twisted rope. His arms were half raised, so that his white-knuckled fists rested against his breastbone. Around his mouth, the sparse sandy hair of his beard was quivering.

  Was he trembling from rage? Or from fear?

  Suddenly he turned on the woman. His voice was hardly more than a whisper as he hissed, “He’s lying, Anya. You know he’s lying.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she simply looked at him, deciding. But now the muzzle of Canelli’s .38 was lowered, pointing down at the floor.

  Still whispering fiercely, Justin said, “They’re out there, Anya. Two cars of them. Maybe more. They’re going to attack us. We’ve got to escape. Now. Right now.”

  “They heard that shot,” I said. “By now, there’re a hundred men. More than a hundred.”

  Justin turned on me. “You’re lying. Lying.” Suddenly, from inside his robe, he withdrew a small radio—a walkie-talkie. “This is proof,” he said, holding the radio in a trembling hand. “Proof that you’re lying. I have guards outside. And they report to me.”

  “Where did you go, last night?” Anya asked quietly. “You left about one-fifteen. A car came down the driveway—a Cadillac, without lights. I saw a woman get out and knock at your window. Then I saw you get in the car and drive away.”

  Now Justin whirled to face her. Standing in a crouch, he lashed her with a voice filled with fury: “Are you accusing me, you black whore?” Crooked into claws now, his hands moved spasmodically, as if he would strangle her.

  Anya’s whole face contracted as she stepped away from him. Deliberately, she raised the revolver. Now her gun, too, was aimed at Justin’s huge sunburst medallion.

  “I already been in jail, Justin,” she said softly. “I spent six months in jail, when I was eighteen. And I didn’t like it. So, sure as hell, I’m not going back. Not for you. Not for anybody.”

  “Guards,” he shouted. “Here. Come here.”

  Silently, the white-robed figures parted to make a corridor for the two guards who stood in front of the closed front door. Facing the guards, I said, “Stay there. Right there. You’re not involved. Keep it that way. Justin’s committed murder. He’s going to jail. If you help him, you’re as guilty as he is. Anya isn’t going to jail for him. You don’t have to go, either.”

  “Kill her,” Justin screamed. “Kill her, the enemy among us. You’ve taken an oath. You’ve sworn to obey me. Me.”

  I saw one of the guards advance a step, two steps. Then he stopped, looking back over his shoulder. He was waiting for his companion to join him.

  The second guard didn’t move. He simply stood at attention, eyes straight ahead. But, beneath the chin strap of his ceremonial helmet, I saw his Adam’s apple bobbing uneasily.

  Slowly the path between Justin and the guards closed. As if they were obeying some silent command, the white-robed figures turned toward Justin, watching him with their empty eyes.

  First Anya had defied him. And now the guards.

  Before the impassive figures, Justin’s authority was threatened. He was on trial.

  Justin screamed.

  It was a primitive, incoherent sound, expressing an agony so pure that it was almost exquisite. He threw up his head, threw his arms wide and spoke directly to whatever gods he worshipped:

  “I did it for them,” he raged. “For them—” He lowered one arm, pointing at the silent circle that surrounded us. “With the money, I’ll start a march that will sweep the world. And they will march with me—beside me. In exchange for three evil, corrupted lives—for three who deserved to die—I gave them everything we needed. Everything—”

  Still with his face upraised, arms spread wide, eyes on fire, panting for breath, he broke off. For a moment he stood silently, lips parted, as if he were intently listening for some distant voice that only he could hear.

  Then, suddenly, he turned to the silent circle.

  “I did it for you,” he said solemnly. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. I’ve shown you the way to reclaim your lost souls. I’ve shown you how to conquer the world. With my visions, I’ve shown you the way. I’ve saved you.

  “And now—” His voice dropped dramatically as he swept them with his zealot’s gaze. “And now, you must save me. I am in your hands. My life is in your hands. Only you can save me from those outside, waiting to kill me.”

  As if his neck had snapped, his chin fell on his chest. His arms fell to his sides, inert. As he shook his head in one final gesture of submission, his hair fell free, covering his face.

  From a rear rank, someone began chanting.

  My—ah My—ah

  In—Tu—Tami.

  One by one, other voices took up the chant. The circle shifted and heaved, tightening around us. Instinctively, Anya and I moved closer together, standing over Canelli and the wounded guard.

  “He did it for himself,” I shouted. “He didn’t do it for you. He—Christ—he killed his stepfather and his stepsister because he hated them. Because he’s insane. He’s a murderer. He could die for what he did. And you could, too, if you help him.”

  The chanting was louder now, more ominously purposeful. Standing in front of me, Justin remained motionless, head hanging, body slack: the Messiah, betrayed and resigned. Waiting for Judgment Day. By abandoning his fate to them, he’d made them a mob. Looking into the cultists’ faces, I saw the empty eyes come alive, focusing purposefully on us. As the circle drew closer around us, hands were raised, fingers were flexing.

  Beside me, Anya said, “Do something, for God’s sake. Do something, or we’ve had it.”

  “Give me the gun.”

  Instantly, she obeyed.

  I raised Canelli’s revolver and fired at the ceiling.

  Momentarily, the chanting broke off, then began again, on a higher, more hysterical note. Beside me, Anya screamed. A cultist was clutching her medallion; the chain was cutting into her neck, pulling her forward. I saw her set herself, and kick for the cultist’s crotch. Instantly, the figure went down.

  I fired in the air again—and again. The chanting was louder, hysterical now. With a gun in each hand, Western style, I crossed a leg over Canelli, standing astride him.

  But the guns were useless. Each shot had made the mindless chanting more frantic—made the faceless figures more frenzied.

  I felt a hand clutching at my shoulder. I slashed backward with a revolver, felt metal strike flesh, heard a grunt of pain.

  “Shoot them,” Anya shouted. “You’ve got to shoot someone.”

  Was she right?

  Or wrong?

  I couldn’t decide.

  Shrieking some unintelligible obscenity, she threw herself on Justin, still standing motionless, head bowed. With one hand she clutched his hair, forcing his head back. With the other hand she gripped the chain of his medallion, twisting it tight around his scrawny neck. One of her dark-brown legs crooked itself around his ankles as she tripped him, threw him to the floor. Still with her hand tangled in his hair, still clutching the chain, both legs around him now, she was trying to kill him.

  Instantly, white-robed figures threw themselves on her. Arms thrashing, fingers crooked like savage talons, they were a pack of murderous savages. The rhythm of the chanting suddenly broke; the incoherent voice of a mob filled the room, screaming.

  The figures thrashed in the center of the foyer, below the big oil lamp. Instinctively—without thought—I aimed at the lamp, and fired. The lamp exploded in a burst of burning oil, cascading down like a fountain on fire. Instantly, the writhing figures turned to flames. A grotesque dance erupte
d as arms flailed at flaming white cloth. The odor of burning oil and cloth and flesh was thick and acrid.

  Something struck me in the back, hard. As I whirled, gun raised, finger on the trigger, I felt my legs buckle as a body struck my knees. A fist clubbed the side of my head, turning the demons of pain loose inside. Suddenly the room tilted as darkness closed in around me.

  As I began to fall, a calm, cool corner of my mind rendered a judgment: the time had come to kill someone. Anyone. The shot should go to the head. An exploding skull, spattering brains and blood on clean white robes, might be my only hope for survival—and Canelli’s, too.

  As I fell across Canelli, I tried to steady my revolver on the nearest target: a shaved skull, close beside me.

  Was it a woman’s skull?

  I couldn’t be sure.

  But, in nightmare slow-motion, I realized that I hadn’t time to choose. Deliberately—regretfully—I tightened my finger on the trigger…

  …when the upper part of the tall oak door and the two windows set high in the outer wall exploded, showering glass and wood and plaster down inside as the sound of submachine-gun fire crashed above us like hailstones from hell. The door swung open, revealing the figure of one riot-clad policeman—two policemen—three policemen. At the same instant, searchlights turned the night outside a bright, blazing white.

  I relaxed my finger on the trigger and tucked both guns under me as I fell on Canelli. Then, gratefully, I closed my eyes and let the darkness come.

  Twenty-four

  SOMEONE WAS IN THE room. Even with my eyes closed, I could sense someone near me.

  So, slowly, I opened my eyes.

  With his full lips curved in his standard impish, owlish smile, Friedman sat beside my bed. I had a fleeting impression of his round body overflowing a small chair: Humpty Dumpty, precariously balanced on a metal hospital chair.

  “You’ve got a concussion,” Friedman announced, “and also a hairline fracture of the skull. You’re not supposed to talk, just listen. And, according to the doctor, you aren’t even supposed to listen too much. However, I persuaded him that you’d recover faster if you were brought up-to-date. Which is why I’m here—to bring you up-to-date in as few words as possible. To which end”—he withdrew a crumpled slip of paper from the pocket of his nylon jacket—“to which end, I’ve made some notes.” He held the paper close to a pale cone of light that came from a lamp somewhere behind my head.

  “First,” he said, “there’s you. You’re in the police ward of County Hospital, as you’ve probably figured out. The time is six o’clock Monday morning—in other words, approximately eight hours after you and Canelli hit Aztecca—or Aztecca hit you, depending on how you look at it. As I said, you’ve got a medium-grade concussion and a negligible fracture of the skull. You’ll be flat on your back for at least two days, and you’ll be in the hospital for a week. After that, you’ll be home for about a week, and then you’ll start working four hours a day. In a month, the doctor guarantees that you’ll be good as new. So much for you.

  “Canelli, too, will be all right. The spear was deflected by his rib cage on the right side, but it tore some muscles under the arm—badly. Canelli is very, very sore, and he was in shock. But he’ll probably be out of the hospital before you will. He says thanks for saving his life, which apparently you did. So much for Canelli.

  “Anya, the black girl, has lots of contusions, and two broken fingers and a badly dislocated shoulder. One of her legs is severely burned. Canelli thinks she’s on our side—that she helped you. I want you to nod once if she helped you a little, twice if she helped you a lot.”

  I nodded twice—then twice more.

  “All right. Good. I’ll tell the D.A.,” Friedman said. “Now we come to Justin Wade. Justin is just down the hallway, under observation. The doctor is mystified about his condition. There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with him, except for minor burns and some of the symptoms associated with shock. Anyhow, for whatever reason, he seems to be out of his head a little. Which turned out to be a real break for us. Because he started to ramble, or else rave, depending on your point of view. Culligan thought he was in one of his patented trances, which is probably a pretty good guess.

  “Anyhow, by the time I got out to Aztecca, the situation was stabilized, more or less. So, after they put you and Canelli in the ambulance, I took Justin in my car, with Culligan and a driver in front, and me in the back, with Justin—and unmarked cars in front and back of us, with machine guns. I told the driver to take the long way around to the Hall, hoping to get a confession before the lawyers arrived. But immediately, it was obvious that Justin was pretty much out of it. So, thinking fast, I decided that his spaced-out condition was a good excuse for not taking him to the Hall at all. So I took him right here, to the hospital, and sneaked him in while the two reporters on duty were following you and Canelli—which was a stroke of luck.

  “And then I got another break—a doctor who turned out to be a real cop buff. He said he helped you interrogate Hoadley, which I must say surprised me a little. Anyhow, he didn’t object to me interrogating Justin, and taping the interrogation, which I did. Whether or not the tape will stand up as evidence is doubtful, since a lawyer could probably maintain that the subject wasn’t in possession of his faculties.

  “However, admissible or not, it all came out—everything. And, Jesus, it was fascinating. Eerie, and fascinating. He talked for at least an hour, nonstop. It was like I pushed the on button, and he started talking, like a wind-up toy.

  “He started where all good stories start—with what happened to him when he was a child. Apparently his mother really screwed him up. Maybe she screwed him, too, for all I know. I kind of think she did. But, anyhow, by the time he was a teen-ager, he was obviously pretty kinky. He was a total misfit—one of those ugly, pimple-faced kids all the other kids torment. That’s when his visions started, I guess.

  “When his mother married Carlton, it apparently tipped Justin over the edge into his own world, and that’s where he’s been ever since. He obviously hated Bernard and Rebecca. He focused all his frustrations on them. If I had to guess, I’d say that, really, he lusted after Rebecca—but that love turned into hate, as the saying goes. Or maybe he really lusted after Cass, and that turned into lust for Rebecca, et cetera, et cetera. However it happened, though, he was also pretty mad at Cass, too—probably because she was screwing her husband, and assorted other men.

  “So Justin apparently decided to tie it all up into one neat bundle. He waited until Cass was off for her weekly roll in the hay with Donald Fay. He took her car, and went to the airport, and jinxed the airplane. He didn’t think it was wrong, not at all. He was doing it for Aztecca. That’s how it all started, apparently—that’s what focused everything for him. See, he’d tried to get money from Bernard, for Aztecca. Bernard declined. So, naturally, he had to die. Rebecca also declined—and died for the same reason. Or maybe the survivorship clause in Bernard’s will sealed Rebecca’s fate. It’s hard to tell. Anyhow, Justin contacted Sally with a straight business proposition. He gave Sally some on account, with more to come when he got his hands on Bernard’s estate.

  “Actually,” Friedman said, “he was pretty damn clever. His so-called efforts to help us were nothing more than a device for throwing us off the track—and throwing suspicion on Sam Wright, who he also considered evil, probably because he’d screwed Rebecca. Ron Massey suffered the same fate, of course, but only after Justin realized that he couldn’t get into Sam Wright’s house, to steal something of his. He was able to get into Massey’s house through the rear door, undetected—just as Massey thought. In fact, talk about your cool customer, he took a cab to Massey’s house, after he’d killed Sally—and even had the cabbie wait for him, and then take him back to the Crescent. There’s an outdoor phone booth less than a block away from the Crescent, so calling the cab wasn’t a problem. He told the cabbie that he’d lost his keys and couldn’t find a spare set at home,
so he had to go back to the Crescent. Then he called another cab and got back to Aztecca. His total cab fare was more than thirty dollars—which he took from Sally’s purse, if you can believe it. And, yes, the gun’s still out there somewhere below the Crescent. He got the gun at a pawnshop, a month ago.

  “So we’ve got a full and complete confession,” Friedman said, for whatever it’s worth after a good lawyer has his innings. And, already, it’s shaping up as one of the trials of the decade, with media coverage like you wouldn’t believe. Cityside reporters and a couple of local TV cameramen came with the reinforcements Culligan ordered, so the whole show at Aztecca is on film. Incidentally, Culligan did a damn good job. He heard your first shot and responded immediately. But he was smart enough to go through the trees, instead of up the driveway, so he didn’t get spotted. And, as soon as he looked in through the windows and saw the situation, he knew it was more than he could handle. So he called for help before he made his move.

  “He also had some luck,” Friedman admitted. “Justin’s troops were inside, it develops. Not outside. But, anyhow, Culligan did a good job. With your approval, I’m putting him in for a departmental commendation. Nod once, please.”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” Friedman said, rising briskly to his feet. “That’s settled. Now I’m going home. I’ll look in on you later today. I’m glad you weren’t badly hurt. When I saw them loading you into the ambulance, I have to admit that I thought maybe you had your brains scrambled.” He dropped a hand on my shoulder and smiled. It was a curiously self-conscious gesture, and his smile was almost shy: a small boy’s smile, embarrassed to show emotion.

  I watched him leave the room, then let my eyes close slowly. The bed was warm and the sheets smelled fresh and clean, recalling sickroom scenes from my childhood. Once, when I’d been six years old, I’d had the flu. I’d had a high fever, and sometimes it seemed that I could hear faraway music. When the fever was highest, I’d thought that the music might have come from heaven. But when the fever dropped, I realized that the music had been an illusion—and heaven, too.