Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

  I didn't even bother to ask if she'd called the police, which would have been a really foolish question, but I did ask if she'd seen anyone or anything when she looked out the window.

  "It was too dark. And the streetlight's out."

  I'd noticed that. Maybe it hadn't burned out after all. A rock would have done the job if someone hadn't wanted to risk an extra shot.

  "Is there anything you'd like to tell me about that spring break party?" I asked. "Anything that you might have remembered since last night?"

  She shook her head, then looked over her shoulder. Turning back to me, she said, "There might be one thing."

  I waited.

  "There was more going on upstairs at that party than I said."

  "More than drugs?"

  "Sex."

  "Excuse me if I'm not shocked," I said.

  "You might be if you knew what kind of sex I'm talking about."

  "There's more than one kind?"

  "Dino always says you're a smart-ass."

  "He meant that I'm flippant. That's the word he prefers. You could ask him."

  "Whatever. Anyway, I'm talking about forced sex."

  That put a new slant on things, all right, but I wasn't exactly sure what she was talking about.

  "You'd better explain that," I said.

  "So you don't know as much as you think you do," she said.

  "I hardly ever do."

  "I believe you. Anyway, I'm really talking about drugs again. Have you ever heard of Liquid X?"

  I'd heard of it. It went by other names, too, Easy Lay and Grievous Bodily Harm were a couple of them. It was really Gamma y-hydroxy butyrate, GHB. It was supposed to be a powerful Mickey Finn, and there were men who slipped it into women's drinks as an aid to date rape. The drug not only made them helpless to fight off an attack, it supposedly wiped out any memory of the experience.

  "Who was using it?" I asked.

  "I don't know for sure. When I found out about it, I got out of there. I wasn't feeling any too good by then, and when some girl told me that it was being slipped into some of the drinks, I knew it was time for me to leave."

  She looked at me with perfect innocence, so perfect, in fact, that I was sure there was more to the story.

  So I looked back at her and said, "Do you want to tell me the rest of it, or do you want me to call Dino in here?"

  "You're worse than I thought," she said.

  "I guarantee it. So tell me."

  "They were getting the drug from Henry J.," she said.

  27

  "I'll kill the son of a bitch," Dino said, raging out of the living room, where he'd no doubt been standing by the door and listening to every word.

  I grabbed his arm as he brushed by me. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that it's not polite to eavesdrop?" I asked him.

  He didn't even slow down. He shook off my hand and went on out the door, letting it slam behind him.

  "Stop him," Sharon said.

  I told her that I'd try and chased Dino down the stairs.

  "Hold on for a minute," I said, making another grab for him. "You don't know that it was Henry J. who fired that shot at Sharon."

  "The hell I don't. She knows about him, and he thinks she sicced us onto him. That's why he's been acting crazy. If Big Al found out he was selling a drug like that, she'd have his balls in a basket."

  I had to agree that Big Al wouldn't like the competition, but Dino said that wasn't the problem.

  "She'd kill him for exploiting women," he said.

  "Exploiting women?" I said. "Dino, Big Al runs whores."

  "It's not the same thing. Whores are in the game by choice. Ask Evelyn sometime."

  As a matter of fact, I had asked Evelyn, and not so very long ago. She would have agreed with Dino, whatever the real truth was.

  "You didn't know my uncles as well as I did, but you must remember they didn't touch dope, right?"

  I remembered.

  "Well, Big Al won't touch anything that exploits women. Topless dancers are OK. Whores are OK. But she draws the line at rough trade. Let anybody get out of line with one of her girls, and he's likely to find himself with a broken arm. Or leg. Or worse."

  I was tired of standing out in the cold and arguing with him. Besides, he sounded as if he might know what he was talking about. It went along with one of my own theories.

  "Look," I said, "I'll make a deal with you. We'll go talk to Henry J. That's all, though, just talk. No killing. Not even any beating. You didn't bring that baseball bat with you, by any chance?"

  "No, damn it. I didn't even think about it. Did you bring anything."

  As a matter of fact, I'd brought the Mauser. It was stuck in the waistband of my pants, in the back, with my sweatshirt hanging down to cover it. I didn't see any point in telling Dino that, however.

  So I changed the subject. "Where do you think Henry J. would be right now? At the Hurricane Club?"

  "That's where I'd go if I'd just shot at somebody. Establish an alibi, just in case."

  "Right. Any number of reliable witnesses at the Hurricane Club. The kind of guys the cops always believe without question."

  Dino thought it over. "On the other hand, besides all those reliable witnesses, Big Al's usually there, too. It might not be the best place to go if you'd done something that she didn't know about and wouldn't approve of."

  "Good thinking. I was hoping to try those enchiladas this time, though."

  Dino shuddered. "Those things would kill you."

  "I don't think so. We could find out."

  "Not tonight. Henry J. wouldn't go there, not with Big Al around. I'll bet he's at home watching TV by now."

  "We could drive by and see. If he's there, we could stop in for a little chat."

  "And if he's not, we could go to the Hurricane Club."

  "Sounds like a plan to me. Your car or mine?"

  "You'd better drive," Dino said. "My hands are still shaking a little, just thinking about that son of a bitch."

  Big Al lived in one of the old nineteenth-century mansions on Avenue N, one that had been restored to more than a vestige of its former glory, but she didn't cohabit with Henry J. He lived alone in a house much less grand, not so very far from where I was staying.

  It was an old ranch house on a couple of acres of land. The pastures that surrounded it belonged to someone else, but there were no cattle in them now. At the current price of cattle, no one but a millionaire could afford to be a rancher, and the millionaires were in it only for the tax losses.

  "Does Henry J. think of himself as a gentleman rancher?" I asked.

  "Henry J. doesn't think," Dino said. "What's a gentleman rancher, anyway?"

  "A guy who wears clean boots," I said.

  Dino didn't laugh, and I turned onto the oyster-shell road leading to Henry J.'s place, which squatted low and dark in front of us. There was only one light burning.

  "What do we do, just go up and knock?" I said.

  "Why not? Just old pals getting together. The son of a bitch."

  I didn't think Dino had the right attitude about things, but at least he wasn't armed. Unless he'd lied to me, which wasn't impossible. After all, I'd lied to him.

  When we got to the house, the truck's headlights showed that there was a black Ford Explorer in the garage.

  "He's home," Dino said. "Good."

  "You'll have to promise to behave yourself," I said. "Remember, we're just going to talk to him."

  "I know it. You don't have to worry about me."

  I hoped I could trust him, but I didn't really think I could. We got out of the truck and started toward the front door. I was walking behind Dino, and I nearly ran into him when he stopped suddenly.

  "Did you hear that?" he asked.

  "Hear what?"

  "Sounded like a door slamming to me. I think the son of a bitch went out through the back. He must've heard us coming."

  I hadn't made any special effort to keep quiet, and I hadn't turned off the headligh
ts as we approached.

  "I think you're hearing things," I said. "Besides, how would he know it's us?"

  "He's got eyes, hasn't he? He might even have been expecting us."

  "I don't think so. If he's really the one who shot at Sharon, he might think she's dead. She told me that she dropped to the floor after the shot. I don't think he's expecting anyone to show up."

  "Why don't you go to the front door, and let me check the back," Dino said.

  I was worried that Dino was trying to separate himself from me so he could try something with Henry J., if indeed Henry J. was anywhere around.

  "I think we should stick together. You never know what we might run into."

  "That's why we need to separate."

  "If Henry J.'s really the one who took a shot at Sharon, he's got a gun."

  It was most likely a handgun, I thought, since that would be easy to conceal. For all I knew, Henry J. had a permit that allowed him to carry a concealed handgun legally. It was now possible to get a permit like that in Texas if you were willing to take a class in handgun safety before getting the permit.

  That's what I'd done, though it had worried me a little to take the class. Most of the other people in it looked as if they were just looking for an excuse to shoot someone. Come to think of it, Henry J. would probably have felt right at home.

  "I'm not scared of Henry J.," Dino said. "Gun or no gun. He's going to get away if we don't stop talking and do something. He can walk across one of those pastures to a road, and we'll never see him."

  "He's not going to walk. He has a car here."

  It was a pretty weak argument, and Dino wasn't persuaded. He didn't wait for me to say anything else. He just jogged away from me before I could get another word in.

  I didn't know what else to do, so I went up to the front door and rang the bell.

  There was no answer, but there was a noise in back of the house. This time, I heard it.

  It wasn't the sound of a door slamming.

  It was the sound of a gunshot.

  28

  The next sound I heard was a yell that sounded a lot like it must have come from Dino. By that time I was running around the house. I pulled the Mauser out as I ran.

  It was very dark in the back yard. There was no light from the house back there, and there were a couple of palm trees that shadowed the lawn. A dark shape lay in the shadows near one of the trees, and I dropped on one knee beside it.

  "He shot me," Dino said, as if he were surprised. "The son of a bitch shot me."

  "Where?" I asked.

  "Right shoulder," Dino said, touching his shoulder.

  I switched the Mauser to my left hand and put the right on Dino's shoulder. He flinched, but he didn't say anything. His shirt was wet, and I wiped my hand on the leg of my jeans.

  "I'm OK," Dino said. "Go after him."

  "Which way?"

  Dino pointed off into the darkness. "Toward the road."

  He didn't mean the road we'd come in on. There was another road parallel to it, and both of them led back to town.

  "I'll be back in a minute," I said.

  "Just don't let him shoot you."

  I didn't intend to. I jogged across the yard, keeping as low as I could. At the rear of the yard there was a wooden fence, and I climbed over it. I wasn't presenting much of a target because the night was darker than the inside of a black cat, and I was wearing jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt.

  On the other side of the fence, the weeds were high and thick and wet. My jeans were carrying five extra pounds by the time I'd gone twenty yards.

  By that time it had occurred to me that I couldn't see anyone moving ahead of me. True, it was dark, but I should have been able to see something if anyone was out there.

  I stopped and crouched down. There was no sign of a moon or stars, just a thick layer of black clouds that slid across the sky above me like a mile-long blackboard.

  In the pasture there were a few bushes that stuck above the surrounding weeds, but they were just vague dark shapes. Nothing was moving.

  I could see the headlights of a car far down the road, coming in my direction. I waited as the lights got closer and closer, finally coming even with me and then going on past.

  They didn't reveal anyone in precipitous flight, and they didn't show me anyone hiding in the bushes, but they did show me something else: a car that was parked on the shoulder of the road.

  I couldn't tell what kind of car it was, but its presence opened up a couple of possibilities.

  One was that the car just happened to have been abandoned in that particular spot. I didn't much believe in that kind of coincidence.

  And if the car wasn't there by coincidence, a second possibility was that the shooter was skulking around one of those bushes ahead of me, waiting to take a shot at me before he made a run for the car.

  The bushes were thick and still had leaves on them. Excellent places for skulking.

  That led to a third possibility: that it wasn't Henry J. who'd shot Dino. It was someone else, someone who had what he, or, to be fair about it, she considered a legitimate reason for skulking around Henry J.'s house.

  Whoever it was had a fine chance of getting to the car before I could do a thing about it. He was between me and the car, and he was carrying something that was either a pistol or a flashlight. I was willing to bet a Big Red that it wasn't a flashlight.

  Of course there was always a fourth possibility: that I could somehow sneak through the weeds, locate the shooter, and prevent him from getting to the car.

  I could also win the Texas Lotto, though even the administrators of that little game had estimated that chances of a person's winning it were roughly the same as that same person's chances of getting attacked by a hammerhead shark on the streets of Lubbock at high noon in July. Or something like that. At any rate, the chances weren't good.

  Still, I thought I had to do something, even if it was wrong, so I dropped to my belly and started inching my way along the ground. I might not be able to see anyone from that position, but no one could see me, either.

  My idea was simply to head for the bush that was closest to the car. That was where I'd go if I were running from someone, which didn't really mean a thing, but it was at least a plan of action.

  The ground was muddy, and I was getting as wet as I'd gotten in the previous day's rainstorm, but I wasn't going to stand up, not until I got near enough to the bush to have a decent shot at anyone hiding behind it.

  It took me a while, but I finally got to within about twenty yards of the bush. I hoped I'd guessed right. If I hadn't, I was about to make a mistake that might get me killed. But it was certainly too late to worry about things if I were wrong.

  I felt the ground around me and came up with a rock about the size of a regulation hardball. It was the oldest trick in the book, but it might work.

  I came up to my knees and threw the rock to my right before ducking back down to wait for some kind of reaction, a rifle shot, the sound of running feet, anything.

  I waited for at least a full minute. There was no reaction at all. Either I'd picked the wrong bush, or no one was anywhere around, or whoever was skulking there was too smart to fall for the oldest trick in the book.

  I thought things over for a second or two. I didn't want to spend the night crouched in the mud, surrounded by wet weeds, and sooner or later I was going to have to take Dino to the hospital, so I had to do something.

  Nothing had worked out so far, so I decided to do something really stupid.

  I stood straight up and fired three rounds as fast as I could at the car that was parked on the road.

  The car was too far for accurate shooting with a pistol, but I heard a kind of twanging sound, and I think I actually hit it once. Hitting it wasn't my real purpose, however. My purpose was to give the skulker something to worry about, not to mention some nice bright muzzle flashes to shoot at, with the hope that he wouldn't hit me.

  If he didn't, then I'd k
now for sure where he was.

  If he did, well, I'd still know where he was, though it most likely wouldn't do me much good.

  I'd been right all along. He was behind the bush.

  It took him just long enough to recover from his surprise at the shooting for me to fall back down in the mud. Almost before I hit the ground, he got off a return shot. It was a near thing, but he missed me. I imagined the bullet tunneling through the air exactly where my heart would have been if I'd remained standing.

  Shooting scares me, especially if I'm the target and especially if the bullet comes close to me, close being defined as about a hundred yards, so I felt a little trembly in the stomach. I ignored the feeling, got to my knees and triggered off two shots at his muzzle flash. The shooter was thinking fast, however, and he'd started to run as soon as he'd fired. I missed by a mile.

  He wasn't going to shoot again. He was in an all out run for the car, so I jumped up and went after him.

  He was faster than I was, and more agile. I didn't know whether he could see better than I could, but he somehow avoided the hole I stepped in. It wasn't a big hole, but it was big enough to swallow my entire foot.

  I fell sprawling, and the Mauser flew out of my hand.

  I was up soon enough, but I fell right back down, having not only stepped in a hole but having managed to twist my bad knee in the process. It felt as if someone were doing surgery on it with a red-hot crowbar. Tears came into my eyes, and I bit down on my lip to keep from yelling.

  There was a kind of roaring in my head, but not so loud that I couldn't hear the car starting, and then I could hear it backing and filling to make a U-ey before it drove away.

  I didn't try to go after it. I just sat there for a while, waiting for the pain to lessen.

  I don't know how long it took, maybe five minutes, maybe more. I tried standing up without putting too much pressure on the knee. It was going to be OK. It didn't feel any worse than it would have if someone had been hitting it with the rounded part of a ballpeen hammer every time I took a step.