The Menacers

by Donald Hamilton

  “That’s right. We’d been out fishing—we’d trailered our boat down here from L.A.—and we came in late. Edie warmed us up something for dinner…”

  “That is your wife, Mrs. Edith Henderson?”

  “That’s right. Except you’re using the wrong tense, aren’t you?” Henderson’s voice was bitter. “Whatever kind of things you’ve got flying around down here, they fixed Edie, damn them! They almost fixed me, too.”

  “They? You saw more than one flying object?”

  Henderson drew a long breath. “No. I guess I was… well, hamming it up a bit. There was only the one. That was enough. That was plenty!”

  “Please tell us what happened.”

  “Sure. Edie was doing the dishes. She told me the garbage can was full, would I empty it so we wouldn’t have to smell it all night. I said sure, and took it out to where we’d dug a pit, out behind the camper. I dumped the can and was kicking some sand over the stuff when I… well, I just kind of felt this thing up there. I mean, it wasn’t making any noise or anything, but I looked up and there it was, coming in from the east, inland. The sun was down by now, but the sky was still light, and I could see it plainly, kind of in silhouette, if you know what I mean.”

  Solana said, “Can you give us a description?”

  Henderson shrugged. “Like I say, it was just a silhouette, kind of flat and round with a dome thing on top, say like half a marble sitting on a fifty-cent piece. Well, the main hull, if that’s what you call it, was thicker than that and kind of tapering towards the edges, but that’s the general idea.”

  “Were there any markings you could see, señor?”

  “No.” Henderson shook his head positively. “It just looked black to me, against the sky. I couldn’t tell you the color, or markings, or anything like that.”

  “And it made no sound?”

  “That’s right. I started back towards the camper to call Edie out so she could see it, and then I realized it was coming straight at me, getting bigger by the second. It was fast as hell; it was on top of me before I knew it. I thought it was going to hit me, and I threw myself face down in a little wash or arroyo. I don’t mind telling you I was scared. Then there was a kind of whooshing noise, and all the heat in the world, and I scrambled up to see the camper burning. All I could think of was Edie, and I tried to get in to her, but I couldn’t make it.” He looked down at his bandaged hands. After a moment, he went on: “There was a little explosion inside and it set my clothes on fire. I had to throw myself down again and roll around to put it out, and while I was doing that, the whole thing blew like a bomb. Maybe it was the butane tanks letting go, or something. I don’t know. I… I don’t remember much else.”

  “Then you did not see the actual attack,” Solana said after a little pause. “You cannot say what kind of weapon was used.”

  “No, I told you. I was flat on my face in the arroyo. If I’d thought Edie was in danger… But it came at me so fast, all I could think of was to duck.”

  Solana frowned. “Mr. Henderson, can you explain why this object picked your camp to attack?”

  “Hell, no!” Henderson said. “Don’t you think I haven’t been wondering about that, myself? Of course, we were parked some distance from the rest of the camp. Like Edie used to say, you don’t go camping to live in somebody else’s pocket. At least we don’t… well, didn’t.” His face was angry. “And now maybe you can tell me just what the hell is going on around here. And just what the hell are you doing to stop it? If innocent American tourists can’t come to Sonora for a weekend of fishing without being attacked by mysterious gizmos from the sky—”

  “Mr. Henderson, we are doing our best to deal with the problem,” Solana said smoothly. “And in the meantime I will make sure that you are supplied with suitable clothes as soon as possible. Now, if you are willing, Mrs. Lujan would like to get a few photographs.”

  We didn’t actually have to twist his arm. In fact, despite his shock and grief, we had a hard time getting out of there with some film left unexposed. He wasn’t exactly camera-shy, is what I’m trying to say.

  Outside again, we followed Solana’s eyeless Oldsmobile out of town. It had a big, blunt rear end derived from current racing practice: the two-hundred-mph boys have discovered some aerodynamic reason for sawing their cars off short these days, and Detroit has climbed right on the bandwagon. Well, it beats the fins we had waving behind us a few years back.

  The campground was a few miles north of Puerto Peñasco. It was reached by an unpaved road through the coastal dunes that gave us no real difficulties; but I had a hunch it was no place to stray from the beaten track without a jeep or beach buggy. The place was called Bahia Choya, and it turned out to be a crowded community of pickup campers and house trailers—excuse me, mobile homes—situated on a blue, sheltered bay diagonally across which, far to the north, could be seen the shimmering white sands of what I guessed to be the real desert, the gran desierto at the head of the Gulf of California.

  The bay itself was pretty enough, for that barren coast. The campground was something else again, cluttered and trashy. I have the old-fashioned notion that camping is something you do to get away from the crowd, and I could sympathize with the late Edith Henderson for preferring a location away from this outdoor slum.

  We spotted the remains of the burned-out rig a short distance back in the dunes, and left the cars at the edge of the solid road, and went in on foot. The fact that Henderson’s truck had made it didn’t guarantee that our low-clearance passenger vehicles wouldn’t bog down in the soft stuff. It had been quite an outfit, I saw; not just one of those little metal cabs you slip onto the ranch pickup after you’ve finished hauling hay to the horses, but a real traveling cottage mounted permanently on a one-ton chassis.

  The interior of the camper unit was pretty well gutted, and the explosion had blown out the roof, door, and windows, and bulged the walls, leaving the blackened bed, stove, and refrigerator, and the half-consumed plywood cabinets, staring at the sky. I walked up thoughtfully and ran my finger along the ribbed aluminum of the side, where it was still bright and shiny. I was aware that Solana had come up beside me. His expression was masked by the large, dark glasses—shades, as we hippies call them.

  “What is your opinion, Señor Helm?”

  “Where was the body found?” I asked.

  “On the bed.”

  I said, “Those little men from outer space are real ingenious, aren’t they?”

  “SÍ, señor. That is my thought. What conclusions do you draw?”

  “I’m no detective, and if I were, I wouldn’t admit it here.” I threw a glance towards Carol, busy with her cameras. “To her, I’m just an innocent bystander, an old friend coming along for the ride. At least that’s the idea I’m supposed to be selling her.”

  “I will keep it in mind. As an old friend, do you mind if I ask her to have dinner with me?”

  I glanced at him quickly. “You’re a fast worker, amigo.”

  “I haven’t asked yet.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll solace myself with the lady in lavender. If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not.” He smiled. “Tastes differ, señor. Personally, I find American women in tight trousers rather unattractive. I merely gave her transportation as a matter of international courtesy.”

  It was a good joke on Priscilla, after the pains to which she’d gone to render herself seductive, but I kept my face straight, and switched the conversation back to business: “Do you have a medical report on the body?”

  “Not yet,” Solana said. “The medical facilities here are limited, but I had a specialist flown in. I had a feeling we might need him. He is working on it now. He has instructions to be very thorough. I’m afraid we have not been investigating certain aspects of these phenomena quite as carefully as we should have. Perhaps we have taken too much for granted.” He glanced at his watch. “The doctor should be finished by the time we get back to town. I do not think there is
anything else for us to learn here. I will see if Mrs. Lujan has all the pictures she wants.”

  He went over to where Carol was changing film. She looked up and asked him something, and he made a little bow of assent, and posed by the blackened wreckage of the truck while she worked around him with the cameras. Priscilla was wandering around kind of aimlessly, as if she wasn’t especially interested in murder from the sky. She came over to me.

  “Do you think there’s anything significant in the fact that the victims were U.S. tourists, Matt?” she asked. “Remember, the same thing was true in Mazatlán.”

  “With the addition of a couple of Mexicans running the fishing boat, who also got clobbered,” I said. “Well, maybe it’s a clue, but I think there have been plenty of incidents involving only natives. Ask Solana.”

  “Señor Solana seems to be busy elsewhere,” Priscilla said dryly.

  “Sure. He’s asking my girlfriend to dinner. He has my permission. I have his permission to ask you to dinner. All the formalities have been complied with. What do you say?”

  She was studying me closely. “Are you being clever, Matt?”

  “No,” I said. “Not very. I’d just like to know what, besides the lady’s undeniable charm, makes our mustached friend so eager for her company at just this point in the investigation. Okay?”

  Priscilla was frowning. “You sound… you sound as if you weren’t quite sure of your snooty blonde. Or Solana either.”

  I grinned. “The last time I was sure of somebody, really positive beyond a shadow of doubt, it cost me three weeks in the hospital… Well, well. It looks as if the Latin charm is working. I hope you don’t mind riding back with me.”

  She watched Solana guiding Carol towards the Oldsmobile, and said a trifle grimly, “Well, it’s obviously either that or walking, isn’t it?”

  I said, “Incidentally, I don’t believe he really pinched your fanny. He says he finds American women in tight pants rather unattractive.”

  She stuck out her tongue at me, and got into the station wagon. We followed Solana’s car back to town. When we arrived at the house doing temporary duty as morgue and laboratory, the doctor had completed his examination and tests. We were allowed to see the body, and it was no treat. We were informed that it was the body of a woman in her late thirties who had burned to death, all right—but only after ingesting enough chloral hydrate to knock out a horse.

  While we were assimilating this information, a man came in, rather breathless, and reported to Solana in rapid-fire Spanish that came too quickly and softly for me to follow it. Solana gave him some orders and turned to us, looking grim.

  “It seems that Mr. Henderson has disappeared, under circumstances that demand my attention,” he said. “Will you be so kind as to escort the ladies to the motel, Mr. Helm?” He turned to Carol. “I am very sorry to have to withdraw my dinner invitation almost as soon as it was given, but you understand and forgive me, I hope.”

  16

  The restaurant of the Beautiful Beach Motel was a smallish, unpretentious room across the lobby from the bar, with six or eight tables served by a single waitress, a pretty little girl in a full-skirted cotton dress who seemed to love her work. At least, something made her happy enough to sing, and after she’d taken our orders and brought us some beer to drink while we waited, we could hear her out in the kitchen, twittering like a bird.

  “But I don’t understand!” Carol said abruptly. “What in the world is chloral hydrate, anyway?”

  I said, “It’s vulgarly known as a Mickey Finn. Knockout drops, to you.”

  “You mean… you mean Mrs. Henderson was drugged?”

  “Uhuh,” I said. “The pink polka dot men from Mars are real tricky little fellows. They apparently slid down a ventilator or something, put the lady to sleep, and planted an incendiary bomb to keep her company. Then they were teleported or rematerialized back up to their hovering space ship, the one that looked like half a marble on top of a fifty-cent piece. At least that’s what Henderson would like us to believe. Of course he undoubtedly hoped that, in a backward community like this, nobody’d spot the fact that his wife had been fed a chloral cocktail before she was incinerated.”

  Carol gulped. “What you’re saying is that Henderson murdered his wife and made up the flying saucer story to cover up.”

  “First being careful to get himself mildly scorched to make it look good. That’s the general idea.”

  Priscilla looked bored, as if she’d had all this figured out hours ago. Maybe she had. She asked, “What put you onto it, Matt?”

  “Well, the guy himself wasn’t too convincing, was he? And the camper had obviously burned from the inside. The outside, in several places at least, was bright and clean. Of course, the hypothetical UFO could have shot an intergalactic napalm missile or something down through the roof, but there wasn’t any hole that looked as if it had been made from outside. Everything had blown out, not in.”

  “What about the bomb? If Henderson did it, what do you think he used?” Priscilla asked.

  I said, “Well, if I were doing it, I’d just put a big saucepan of gasoline on the stove, over a low flame, and run like hell. Sooner or later—probably sooner—the fumes would reach the fire and go boom. What our Greg actually used is for the experts to decide. Probably he was fancier than that. Murderers tend to be more complicated than necessary.”

  Carol said, rather tartly, “For a public relations man, you seem to know a lot about bombs and murder, darling.”

  She was needling me, not entirely in fun, and I wondered what I’d done to annoy her. Then I realized that Solana must have mentioned that he’d cleared the dinner invitation with me, and no girl really likes to be passed from hand to hand, or man to man. Still, it was a childish reaction under the circumstances. She might have been bright enough to realize that I wasn’t just getting her out of the way so I could make passes at another woman.

  I said, “Oh, we image-makers get around. Anyway, it looks as if Henderson felt guilty enough about something to run out.”

  “But why did he do it?” Carol asked.

  “You mean, why did he kill her?” I shrugged. “You heard the medical report. The lady was apparently in her late thirties, a good ten years older than her handsome husband. It makes a picture, doesn’t it? Presumably she had money, money enough to buy him a fancy boat and camper rig, anything his virile young heart desired, but he preferred to have her dough without her company. Maybe he had somebody younger in mind to share the wealth with.”

  Carol shook her head dubiously. “Matt, you’re just guessing!”

  “Sure, but I’d bet on most of it. And it was bound to happen, with all these fatal UFO incidents being played up by the press. Somebody who wanted to get rid of somebody was bound to get the bright idea of ostensibly having them knocked off by a homicidal flying saucer. At least that’s one possibility.” I paused. “The other possibility is that he didn’t just have the idea; that it was given to him.”

  There was a little silence. Carol frowned, not really getting what I was driving at. Priscilla started to speak, but was stopped by the arrival of the waitress with our food. We all waited until the little girl had served us and danced away, humming to herself.

  “What do you mean?” Priscilla asked then, sharply. “Given to him by whom?”

  I said, “Hell, I don’t know. But it comes to mind, doesn’t it? Suppose somebody picked this guy who had a wife he could do without—picked him and helped him to come down here and do the job, on condition that he blame it on a mysterious flying machine of a certain description. Why, it’s a natural! Everybody gains, nobody loses, except Edith Henderson. Gregory gets rid of his marital encumbrance, and the Mexican flying-saucer myth gets another boost for the benefit of whoever’s promoting it.”

  “Myth?” This was Carol, sounding offended. “Matt, you keep talking as if you didn’t really believe in—”

  I said, “I know, I know. You and I saw one once, with a couple of othe
r witnesses along, all sober and reliable. Okay, but do you believe in this one? Do you believe in Henderson’s Folly, and its whooshing weapon that sets things on fire from the inside, simultaneously pumping rich ladies full of chloral hydrate? And if this one is a phony, doesn’t that make you kind of wonder how many other of these recent ‘sightings’ have been rigged? I may believe in flying saucers as a general proposition, but these particular Latin-American UFOs are going to have to put on an air show where I can see them, if they’re going to convince me. I’m not buying any more secondhand reports from anybody.”

  Priscilla frowned. “What about that red-haired girl in Mazatlán? Do you think she actually saw—”

  I coughed, and glanced significantly towards Carol. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, doll. You must be thinking of that other guy you keep getting me mixed up with, the super-spook character.”

  Carol grimaced. “Don’t mind me, kiddies. Just go right on playing your cute little security games. But if this is all a hoax, who’s doing it and why?”

  “That,” I said, “is the big question. Or perhaps I should say those are the big questions. And I can’t answer them. Maybe Gregory can. And I find it rather suggestive that he’s no longer available, don’t you? He’s out in the dunes somewhere, being chased by Solana’s men, and ten will get you twenty they don’t bring him back alive.”

  There was a little silence. Carol had a shocked look on her face. “Matt, what are you hinting at? Surely you can’t suspect Mr. Solana—”

  “Shhh!” said Priscilla quickly. She was facing the door. “Shhh, here he comes now.”

  We turned to watch him approach. It was dark outside by now, and he’d discarded the big sunglasses, but tonight his face looked no less remote and foreign with them off. There are times when you can kid yourself that men of all races and nationalities are basically identical; and then there are the times when the differences count for more than the similarities.