Killer in the Street

by Nielsen, Helen

  The martini was perfect—just the way Kyle liked them. She began to feel mellow. She located Sam’s hi-fi concealed in an old Spanish chest and turned the volume loud enough to carry the music with her into the bedroom while she changed from capris to a simple, form-fitting sheath that would tell Kyle on sight how much she had missed him and wanted him back. When she was dressed, and her hair brushed, and her lipstick and false eyelashes properly applied, she returned to the kitchen and helped Ramon give Mike his dinner. The boy was tired after the drive, and there was no need to keep him up until Kyle appeared. When Mike’s dinner was completed, she saw him off to bed and then went back to the bar for a second martini.

  At seven o’clock Ramon, wearing an immaculate white jacket over his levis, came in and asked when Mrs. Walker would like him to serve the dinner. Dee was startled. Kyle was a fast driver—he never spent more than an hour and a half driving from his office to the ranch. She found the telephone again and called the house in Tucson. There was no answer. Playing a wild hunch, she telephoned Sam’s house in the city and was told by the maid that Mr. Stevens was dining out with friends and—no, Mr. Walker hadn’t called. By the time that conversation was concluded, it was seven-fifteen and Dee knew, with a sudden and dread certainty, that he wasn’t coming at all. He had never meant to come. Call it intuition. Call it a woman’s sensitivity. Whatever it was, it was sharp and clear, and Dee lived with the knowledge until there was no trace of doubt.

  Kyle had deliberately sent her to Sam’s cabin, and he wouldn’t come if she waited all night.

  Dee returned to the bedroom and got a wrap and her handbag. She gave Ramon instructions to look after Mike, and then returned to the little English car. The sun had long since set. The valley was now softened with a mauve afterglow, and the last streaks of flame were fading from the sky. It was a long drive back to Tucson, but she had to learn why Kyle had lied.

  On some nights Van Bryson had a late class at the university. In that event, the lights burned in his laboratory until ten or eleven. On other nights, he fought the monkey on his back, and that might require a wide itinerary and all of the hours up to and including dawn. Van thought too much, and genius doesn’t integrate well. He was a bystander in the strange world of Kyle and Sam. He was a man with an orchestra seat in a theater where the play was annihilation or extinction, and the suspense of the closing act was rough on his nervous system.

  Van’s means of relaxation were various: small avant-garde bars where he could spend the chilly hours listening to a piano player with no expression on his face release his soul through the tips of his fingers; lonely roads leading up to unmarked Indian ruins where he could drive the battered but powerful truck he preferred to a chrome-trimmed status symbol and spend days at a time searching for pottery fragments among the missile bases. Then, too, there were the several apartments of the several women he knew who were versed in an ancient therapy. Of these independent ways, Dee was well aware, but on this night, with the moon riding high in the sky by the time she reached Van’s off-campus apartment, the gods were with her. Van’s light was burning. Van answered the doorbell personally.

  He was sober. He held a highball glass in one hand, but it must have been his first drink of the evening and it was hardly touched. His hair was disheveled, which was a normal condition, and he had changed from the uniform classroom white shirt and tie to a Mexican hand-woven shirt-jacket that established his status as a typical tourist to the streets of Nogales.

  He stared at Dee for several seconds before he spoke. “I don’t believe it. I’ve said my prayers like a good little boy ever since we met, but I never really expected an answer. You’ve actually come!”

  “Van, be serious,” Dee scolded. “I’m looking for Kyle.”

  “I knew it!” He bowed his head abjectly. “I knew it was too good to be true. But come in, anyway. There’s always room for one more.”

  Van wasn’t alone. Dee was aware of that situation the moment she entered the apartment. It was a very ordinary three-room bachelor apartment, but Van’s bizarre taste and archeological collection made it unusual. He had picked up some quite good things, added a few paintings by the better local artists and furnished the place in a unique blend of Spanish antique and army surplus. Seated on a foam-rubber pad covered with a colorful Indian rug was a very young girl with large, round blue eyes and corn-colored hair that hung to her waist. She was attired in bright blue velvet trousers and bullfighter’s shirt and held cupped between her two slender hands a red cut-glass cup. Barely noticing Dee, she looked up at Van. “Darling,” she said, in a low, Southwestern drawl, “this heah drink is awful.”

  “A Marguerite by any other name would still take the varnish off the furniture,” Van said. “It’s an acquired taste. Try it with a little salt on the back of your hand.”

  “Why?” the girl asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe you’ll catch the bluebird of happiness if you sprinkle it on his tail…. Sandra, this lady, my most welcome guest, is Mrs. Walker. Dee, this is Sandra. Sandra is one of my students. She has a 190 I.Q.—in the classroom. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s just leaving. Sandra, honey, go home.”

  Sandra appraised Dee with a glance. Her mind analyzed and categorized quickly. Married. Old … nearly thirty. Worried. Peyton Place format. Smothering a yawn, Sandra came to her feet. She stood five feet-seven in sandals. She stooped, gracefully, and deposited the red cut-glass cup on the coffee table. The cup had clear lettering that read: “Chicago Columbian Exposition—1893.”

  Sandra smiled automatically like a life-size doll. “We’ll have to discuss the Clausewitz concept some other time,” she drawled. “Good night, Professor. Good night, Mrs. Watkins.”

  “Walker,” Van corrected.

  Sandra’s mechanical smile came again and she glided to the doorway. Van closed the door behind her and sighed. “Can I help it if I inspire young genius?” he asked.

  “She’s too young for you,” Dee observed.

  “I doubt that!” Van said. “I really do doubt that! Not too young for me, or for Napoleon, Don Juan or Trujillo the Younger. But that’s beside the point. Can I get you a drink?”

  “I can’t stay for a drink. I’m looking for Kyle—”

  “You said that when you came in.”

  “—and I’ve already had my quota.”

  “Well, I haven’t. Give me a chance to catch up.”

  Van took a generous drag from the glass in his hand and waited for Dee to make her own explanation in her own way. She walked into the apartment and sat down on the divan. Seriously, as if it were a project of immense importance, she took some popcorn from a bowl on the coffee table and began to eat slowly. There was trouble in her eyes. She looked like a little girl afraid of growing up too quickly.

  “Van,” she said at last, “what is Kyle doing?”

  Van put down his glass. “What do you mean?”

  “What is he doing to me and Mike? Why don’t we ever see him?”

  “He’s trying to make a million dollars.”

  “But we don’t need a million dollars! We need him! Van, I know you men have a grand thing about loyalty, but I have to know. Where is Kyle tonight?”

  “Tonight? Am I supposed to know?”

  “I hoped you would. You’re just about my last chance. He isn’t at the office, and he isn’t at home.”

  “Then he must be with Sam.”

  “No, he’s not! Sam’s out and Kyle hasn’t been to his house. Besides, he told Sam this afternoon that he was going up to the cabin. And this morning he practically ordered me to go up there with Mike. He promised to join us this evening, but he didn’t come. Van, I’m frightened. I have to know. Where is my husband?”

  Dee was so intense. Her eyes were pleading for an answer.

  “Do you think I’m in collusion with Kyle?” Van demanded. “I don’t know where he is. Working, I suppose.”

  “No. That excuse won’t hold tonight.”

  “Why not? He’s
ambitious. What’s the matter, Dee? Are you one of those suspicious wives who drives her husband to another woman? Do you think Kyle’s having an affair?”

  “Van, be serious,” Dee said. “I came to you because I’m worried!”

  “Then stop worrying! Kyle isn’t man enough to have an affair any more. He’s turned into one of Sam Stevens’ human computers. On second thought, I’m not sure that he’s human. Wherever Kyle is, you can be sure he’s working, Dee—”

  Van stopped arguing because Dee had buried her head in her hands and was crying softly.

  “Don’t do that!” he ordered.

  “I’m afraid,” she sobbed.

  “Why? And why did you come to me? Do you want me to make love to you?”

  The shock treatment was effective. The tears stopped flowing and she glared at him. “Van!”

  “That’s the usual reaction of the neglected wife, isn’t it? Or have I been watching the wrong television shows?”

  “You don’t understand!” Dee protested. “I’m afraid for Kyle. I want to find him.”

  “Then why not try the police?”

  “Police?”

  “It’s not a dirty word. Kyle might have been in a driving accident.”

  “But I just came down the ranch road. There was no accident—”

  “In the city,” Van said. “It’s not a cow town any more. Those aren’t Texas Longhorns running along the speedway. But you’re all keyed up. Sit tight, Dee. I’ll do the calling—”

  Van started toward the telephone, but Dee stopped him.

  “No,” she said sharply. “Not yet. I want to go home first.”

  “But you’ve already called—”

  “He might have fallen and can’t reach the phone. Come with me, Van. Please.”

  Van gave up on the drink. Under the circumstances, it would have had no therapeutic effect anyway. Dee hadn’t told him everything; but the thing she had told was painfully evident. She was afraid.

  Van did the driving. A city that had developed too fast was like a growing child. It slept soundly at night. There was little traffic to delay them, but he drove slowly because Dee needed time to stop trembling. He shouldn’t have mentioned the police, but no woman who had been Kyle Walker’s wife these past five years could be an easy trembler. Maybe it was just the accumulation of fears. He lit a cigarette from the dashboard lighter and handed it to her. She accepted silently and puffed on it as if it had a direct line to an oxygen tank.

  There were no lights in the house. Kyle parked in the driveway and let Dee unlock the front door. They entered together.

  “Kyle—”

  The house was too small for echoes, but they could feel the emptiness from the doorway. Dee led the way through the living room, the family room, the kitchen, down the hall past the bedrooms to Kyle’s study. They left a trail of light behind them, but only when the wall switch illuminated Kyle’s untidy desk was there a sound from Dee.

  “He’s been here!” she cried. “Look! Kyle never remembers to close desk drawers.”

  She started forward.

  “Wait!” Van said.

  His voice was too sharp. Dee’s ragged nerves were contagious. He lowered his tone an octave and explained, “Don’t move anything. Kyle may have left a message.”

  Skeptically, Dee picked up an airline schedule from the top of the desk. “This?” she suggested.

  Van took it from her hands. “He’s marked a flight to Dallas,” he said. “Did Kyle have any urgent business in Dallas?”

  “Last winter,” Dee said. “Look at the date on the schedule.”

  It was a year old. Van tossed it aside and picked up a road map. “We have here one very fine map of Mexico,” he said, “with the highway to Mexico city traced in blue ink.”

  Dee shook her head. “I did that. We were going to Mexico City on our anniversary—but we didn’t. Uncle Sam got a brainstorm about a new shopping center, and anniversaries went out of fashion. Van—” The edge of panic came back to her voice. “Why did Kyle take these two things out of his desk? Just these two?”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” Van suggested. “He probably took at least one thing with him and neglected to put these back.”

  He was still trying to fight fear with common sense, but he talked too much. Dee made a hurried search of the drawer and then announced brusquely, “He did take one thing with him. His gun.”

  “His gun?”

  Van had to see for himself. He searched the drawer. She was right. There was no gun in it.

  “Are you sure he keeps a gun in this drawer?” he demanded.

  “Of course I’m sure! This is the only drawer that locks. Mike can’t get into it…. Besides, he left the empty holster. See?”

  “Then you’re right. He took the gun.” Van punctuated the statement by slamming the drawer shut. “Dee,” he said quietly, “when did Kyle send you to the mountains?”

  “This morning,” she said. “Early. About eleven.”

  “Did he say why he wanted you to go?”

  “Yes. He said the job was set and he wanted to take a few days’ rest. That’s what he told Sam, too. He was so insistent, Van. It had to be today. That’s why I can’t understand—”

  “I’m probably responsible for that,” Van reflected. “I needled him for neglecting you. And I think you’re upset over nothing. Think now, why wouldn’t Kyle take his gun to the cabin? He’s deathly afraid of snakes, and the mountains are crawling with them this time of year.”

  “But it’s almost nine!” Dee insisted.

  “And he’s probably at Sam’s cabin right now wondering what’s happened to you. Stop being so female, Dee, and give Kyle the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to call the police just to make sure there was no accident, and then I’m going to drive you back up that mountain myself!”

  Van was being very male and decisive. He picked up the telephone and dialed. He asked the public-relations-minded officer who answered for accident information, but the moment he mentioned Kyle Walker he was switched to a Captain Jameson, who was very much interested in Kyle’s whereabouts.

  “It concerns that license number of the car he had me trace for him this morning,” Jameson reported. “There’s something peculiar about it. Those plates were stolen from a car in Phoenix. They don’t belong to this guy Donaldson at all.”

  Van had no idea who Captain Jameson was or what he was talking about, but he meant to find out. “You don’t say!” he responded.

  “It may be just a coincidence, but I’d like to talk to Kyle about it.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Van said. “Mr. Walker isn’t at home right now, but Mrs. Walker is. We’ll be right over.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jimmy Jameson wasn’t a human dynamo. He was a well-balanced, reasonably ambitious man who knew his job and usually managed to do it within the hours of a normal workday. On any other night he would have been at home assembling miniature classic cars for the collection he was creating on the excuse of being a pal to his son. Jameson … junior, who was eight, would have been in bed, thereby giving him a free hand.

  But Kyle Walker’s casual request had turned up a stolen car, and a thing like that made Jimmy Jameson curious. Walker was a good man. A swinger, in Junior’s vocabulary. But he was an outsider, and there was a difference no matter how well a man blended with the landscape. Mores will be mores. Something of the past lingered under Walker’s desert tan openhanded manner. Some inner conflict; some tension; some—Jameson’s mind wasn’t afraid of blunt words—some fear.

  And so, at a quarter past nine when Van Bryson and Dee Walker entered his office, Jameson was still waiting for Kyle to call back and tell him more about Charles Dover of Prescott. Memory was tricky. A man under pressure, and Kyle Walker was always under pressure, could remember a fragment of a thing and barely scratch the whole. And he had mentioned Rumorsville, which was Jameson’s sensitive area. The Las Vegas crowd was always trying to move in. Close the doors and they were coming throug
h the windows. Jameson didn’t like Rumorsville. It had been known to cost a man his career.

  Jameson was tired. His eyes had lost their morning brightness, but none of their interest. He listened to Mrs. Walker’s story and Van Bryson’s embellishments with a minimum of interruptions. Jameson liked to let people do their own talking. They always told him more than they knew they were telling. Mrs. Walker, for example. She was a pretty woman. Smart in more ways than one. She had a mind as well as a body, and it was dangerous for a man to leave that kind of woman in the kitchen too long. Something was likely to burn.

  She was worried, and the worry was more than female emotionalism. It was instinct. Jameson never belittled instinct. A good policeman knew the limitations of physical evidence and that illusion laymen call science. Instinct was basic.

  “I want you to find my husband,” she concluded.

  She meant every word of it.

  “What do you think happened to him?” Jameson asked.

  “Van thinks he may have been in an accident.”

  Van Bryson. Jameson pivoted slowly in his chair and stared at Mrs. Walker’s companion. Another outsider—and yet, not so far out as some people thought. A brain. A man with more under his skull than anyone else Jameson was ever likely to meet, and yet with a certain simplicity that made even that overpriced Mexican shirt he was wearing look just right for the occasion.

  “I’ve sent a man to call all the hospitals in the area,” he said. “If there’s been an accident we’ll soon know about it. If he’s had a flat tire or some other little problem, it may take longer. I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Walker.”