“I’ve known Arn Crown for ten years, buddy. Solid guy, I’d say.”
“He’s acted irrational about Miss Wister.”
“Like following you and phoning you and all that?”
“Yes.”
“Man in love, he’ll do a lot of stirring around. Arn break any laws?”
“No, but …”
“There’s no law about running off and getting married, Kemp.”
“Believe me, that’s the last thing she’d do—marry Arn Crown.”
“I guess it must seem that way to you, you being the one she left behind. Believe me, it happens all the time. And other guys have just as much trouble believing it as you’re having right now.”
“Lieutenant, will you talk to Helen’s mother?”
“Why should I? She lied to you. She could lie to her mother. Now, if she was under age, maybe we could do something about it …”
A heavy-set man came striding into the office. He looked around, spotted Lieutenant Razoner and said, “Lew! On the double!” He turned and hurried out.
Razoner stood up. “We can’t help you, buddy.”
“I’d like to talk to you some more about …”
Razoner shrugged. “Stick around then, but you may have a hell of a long wait.” He hurried out of the room.
Dallas Kemp sat there on the hard chair. It was five of ten. He was trying not to think about Helen too specifically. It made him feel cold and sick to think of her with Crown. He knew he should call Jane Wister. He wondered if it would be all right to use the phone on Lieutenant Lew Razoner’s desk. Just as he had decided to attempt it, the lieutenant came to the doorway and said, “Kemp! Come here!”
He was taken to a smaller office. There were four men there, two of them talking over phones.
To the elderly man behind the desk, Lew Razoner said, “Barney, this is the guy reported him for kidnaping.”
The man called Barney stood up. “Bring him along, Lew. We’ll talk on the way out there.”
They went down to the courtyard. A driver was waiting behind the wheel of a police sedan. The three of them got into the back, Dallas Kemp in the middle.
“What’s happened?” he asked. “Is Helen all right?”
The car sped out through the gates, elbowing its way into traffic. “Give me this kidnaping thing,” the elderly man ordered.
Lew Razoner gave it to him, compacting it neatly and tightly, a professional résumé, uncolored by personal opinion.
“Can’t you tell me what’s going on?” Dal asked.
“Captain Tauss is head of Homicide,” Razoner said gently. “The sheriff’s got a body tentatively identified as Arnold Crown.”
“An accident! Is Helen hurt?”
“What happened to this Crown,” Captain Tauss said, “sounds like on purpose. No accident. I don’t know anything about the girl.”
Dallas Kemp realized that they had turned out of the main traffic arteries and were headed east on Route 813 at a high rate of speed.
“Looks like over the next ridge, sir,” the driver said and began to reduce speed.
They swept over the ridge and Kemp saw the shallow valley ahead of them filled with a confusion of lights and vehicles. State Police were posted to prevent the curious from stopping. Summer bugs wheeled in front of the floodlights and headlights. The generator on an emergency truck throbbed. As they got out, Razoner said, “Stick close to me, Kemp. Don’t wander around.”
“I want to know what happened to …”
“So let’s find out.”
Kemp saw an abandoned barn on the left. On the right, a hundred feet beyond the barn, an Oldsmobile was snugged down into a deep ditch, tilted far over onto its right side, lights still on, turning the weeds in the ditch to a vivid artificial green. Technicians knelt, studying the road surface, making careful scrapings. A man in coveralls stood patiently by a red tow-truck, hands in his pockets, cigar stub in the corner of his mouth. An ambulance was parked parallel to the ditched Olds, rear end open.
Kemp followed Tauss and Razoner as they approached a small group of men who were examining something that lay near the rear end of the Olds, half in the ditch. Hard, white light was focused on the body. Cameras flared.
Kemp got close enough to see the face. He swallowed and took a half step back. The heavy features of Arnold Crown were barely recognizable.
A wide man in khaki was squatting heavily on his heels. He wore a blue baseball cap and a sheriff’s badge. He glanced up and said, “Hello, Barney, Lew,” and came lithely to his feet.
“Evening, Gus,” Captain Tauss said. “Lew should be able to make him.”
“That’s Arn Crown,” Lew said. “He didn’t do all that going into the ditch.”
“Did maybe none of it at all. He got banged around some, and then there was a knife.”
A tidy little man got up off his knees and said tartly, “That’s all I can do with it here. You might as well load it.”
“When can you do the complete job, Doctor?” the sheriff asked.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” the little man said. “Tonight we’re entertaining.” He gave a barking laugh, snapped his case shut, and walked quickly away into the night.
The ambulance people loaded the body. The sheriff signaled the man standing by the wrecker. He went down into the ditch with the hook, clanged it onto the frame, climbed into his cab and yanked the big car up onto the highway, the big red warning lights on the wrecker blinking off and on.
“We got witnesses, Barney. Nice nervous witnesses,” the sheriff said. “Right over there. Come on. We’ll play People Are Funny.”
He strode away toward the silent group on the other side of the road. Tauss and Razoner lagged behind.
Kemp heard Razoner say in a quiet voice to Barney Tauss, “Out here in front of the newspaper people? He should take them in.”
“Usually, yes. Not in an election year. Honest Gus Kurby, the reporter’s pal.”
Somebody shifted lights until the small group was harshly floodlighted. A young couple squinted apprehensively into the lights. The boy was about eighteen. He wore khaki pants and a T shirt. He had huge, powerful, sun-red forearms, a heavy thatch of brown hair, long sideburns, a big, soft, unformed face. He held the hand of a small girl who wore blue-jean shorts and a striped Basque shirt taut across the unfettered abruptness of juvenile breasts. She had tousled dark hair with two white streaks dyed into it, a narrow face with eyes set close together, a wide, slack, pulpy mouth.
A man reached into the open window of the official sedan and brought out a hand mike on a long cord. He handed it to the sheriff, saying, “It’s working good. I checked it twice.”
The sheriff thumbed the button and the small red recording light came on. He held it a few inches in front of his mouth and said, “Twenty-fifth of July. Ten-forty P.M. Sheriff Kurby interrogating witnesses at the site of the Arnold Crown murder. Now let me have your name and address, son.” He stuck the mike in the boy’s face.
“Uh … Howard Craft. I live two miles east of here. Star Route, Box 810, Sheriff.”
“And you, girl?”
“Ruth Meckler,” she said in a thin, childish voice. “Fifty-two Cedar Street, over in Daggsburg.”
“Now, Howard, you tell me in your own words how you happened to be here.”
“Well, I had a date with Ruthie, and we drove around some and we come out here. We … been here before, a lot of times. I pulled around back of the barn there, like always and we … went up the ladder into the loft.”
One of the newsmen snickered. The girl moved closer to her boy friend. Kurby clicked off the red recording light and turned and said, “These kids could have took off and never said a word, but they phoned in. If you people want a story, keep your mouths shut. Otherwise I’ll finish this in my office.”
“Anyhow, we’re engaged to be married,” the girl said.
“Continue, boy,” the sheriff said.
“We were just inside that loading window there,�
� Howard Craft said and pointed. They all turned and looked at the barn glowing in reflected light. The high window was a rectangular hole, about five feet long and three feet high. A fringe of hay lapped over the bottom edge.
“Ruthie and me, we were there maybe only fifteen minutes when that Oldsmobile came along, moving real slow, and parked over there right across from us, and turned off the lights and the engine.”
“What time was that?”
“I’d guess maybe ten to nine, Sheriff. They sat there and talked. A man and a woman.”
“Could you hear what was being said?”
“Not really. It was an argument. It seemed like he was trying to talk her into something she didn’t want to do. We could only catch a word here and there.”
“Like ‘surprise,’ ” the girl said. “He talked about a surprise and money. I heard him say a thousand dollars. We weren’t listening good because we were just hoping they’d go away.”
“He said about getting married a couple times,” the boy said.
“Then all of a sudden the lights came on and they started up real fast,” the girl said.
“We were looking out,” the boy said. “I guess she jumped out when he started up. But not quick enough. She fell, I guess. And he racked the Olds right into the ditch. Then he came scrambling out and ran back to where she was, there on the edge of the road. He was yelling, ‘Helen! Helen! Helen!’ It was hard to see them. Then this other car came from the west. It was wound up real good. When the headlights hit them, we could see them good. A big guy in a white jacket kneeling beside a blond woman.”
“She had a white skirt and a green blouse,” the girl said.
“The car coming braked real good,” the boy said. “It was handled good. It stopped maybe thirty feet from them, where the guy was trying to pick the girl up and got her off the edge of the road. It was a dark Buick, a big one, pretty new, maybe last year’s. Dark-green or dark-blue or maybe even black.”
“Dark-blue, I think,” the girl said.
“Four people got out,” the boy said. “One of them was a girl. They left the doors open and the motor running. They acted … funny.”
“How do you mean, funny?” the sheriff asked.
“Excuse me, Gus,” Barney Tauss said.
Kurby turned irritably. “Yes, Barney?”
“I was just wondering if it wouldn’t be a smart thing to establish road blocks so …”
“That’s been done. After the first informal interrogation, I requested the State Police so to do. All right, son. In what way did they act funny?”
“Well, it wasn’t like they wanted to help. They were laughing and joking around. It seemed to me they were drunk, the four of them.”
“You saw them clearly?”
“When they got out in front of their own headlights, yes. We saw them pretty good.”
“Take them one at a time and give me a description.”
“One was a big, dark, tough-looking guy. The three guys all wore sports shirts and slacks. The big one had his shirt outside his slacks, and the other two had theirs tucked in. Then there was a skinny guy wearing glasses, maybe getting a little bald. He was hopping around all the time, making cracks and laughing in a funny way. The third guy was pretty well built, a big, blond guy with a good tan.”
“He maybe looked a little like Tab Hunter, only bigger and rougher,” the girl said.
“The girl wore brown slacks and a yellow blouse and high heels,” the boy said. “She had long, brown hair. She was pretty, I’d say.”
“She was kinda hippy to be wearing slacks,” the girl said.
“What did they do?”
“They gathered around the blonde and the guy who had put the Olds in the ditch. We couldn’t hear much of what the others were saying, but we could hear the crazy guy with the glasses pretty good. He was saying crazy things, like it was lucky there was a witch doctor in the audience. And he said if people were throwing beautiful blondes away, the country was in worse shape than he thought. Then he got down on his knees and took the blonde’s hand and yelled, ‘Speak to me, darling! Speak to your old buddy!’ That made the guy in the white jacket sore. He pushed the guy in glasses away so hard that he rolled over onto his back, his legs in the air, and he yelled, ‘Let her alone!’ The next second the big, tough one smacked the guy in the white coat and knocked him down. But he scrambled right up again. The big one went after him. He fought—the one in the white coat—like a crazy man. But then they were circling around behind him.”
“Who was?”
“The other three. The girl too. The one with glasses had picked up a rock in each hand. The girl had a knife. There was hardly any sound. Just shoes scraping on the road, and the way they grunted, and the smacking sound when they’d hit him. And the one with glasses laughed some. The fight moved away from the blonde girl. All of a sudden it was a terrible thing. All of a sudden you knew they were killing him. Ruthie started to cry. I whispered to her not to make a sound. I knew they’d kill us too. I knew they’d kill anybody. They weren’t like people you see. I didn’t know people could be like that. I saw something like that a long time ago. I was twelve, maybe. A pack of dogs got after a bull calf. It was a long way from the farmhouse. I didn’t have a gun or anything. The calf kept bellowing and circling, but it didn’t do him any good. The dogs weren’t even barking. They kept circling and snapping and they pulled him down and tore his throat open. It was like that.”
“Can you give us any kind of a sequence, son?”
“Just how it happened? It got pretty confusing. The blond guy knocked him down a couple of times. They’d let him get up. The skinny guy knocked him down with a rock, and he got up slow. By then he wasn’t fighting. He kept yelling, ‘Wait! Wait! Don’t!’ It was a terrible thing. When he could hardly move, the big one got him by the throat and bent him over the back of the Olds. The girl moved in close and I couldn’t see the knife, but I could see her elbow going back and forth, real fast. The guy screamed once. The big guy let go. The skinny guy popped him again with a rock. The blond guy kicked him into the ditch as he slid off the back of the car. Just then the blonde woman sat up. Her face was in the lights. I guess she didn’t know where she was. They went to her. They talked low. We couldn’t hear what they said. But they helped the blonde up onto her feet. She seemed to sort of let them lead her. The girl and the blond guy helped her. They walked her to the Buick and got her into it. They slammed all the doors. The skinny one with glasses got behind the wheel. They scratched off and they were doing I’d say seventy by the time they got to that next ridge.”
“And what did you do then?”
“We got down to my car fast as we could. I drove out and stopped by the ditch. I held my lighter close and looked at his face and I knew he was dead. I didn’t want Ruthie to see him. Sometimes a car won’t come along for a half hour. I drove home fast and phoned. It was about twenty-five after nine when I phoned. Then we came back here to … meet you people and tell you about it.”
“You did not see the plate on the Buick?”
“No, I told you, Sheriff. It was out of state, but I don’t know from where.”
“I want to thank you, Howard, and you, Ruth, for your good citizenship.” The little red light went off.
“Can we go now, Sheriff?” the boy asked.
“Yes.”
“Will I be in the papers?” the girl asked, smiling.
“You sure will, honey,” one of the reporters said. “How about a few more questions before you take off, kids?”
“Sure,” the girl said.
Kemp heard one of the other reporters say, “Al, that dog pack thing writes itself. Wolf pack. Hey, I like that better! Wolf Pack Murder.”
“This is the third score for that wolf pack, Billy. If they’re the same ones.”
“What do you mean—if? It all matches up, Al. Uvalde, Nashville. It’s the same bunch. By tomorrow, boy, the wire services and the networks will be in here like …” The confidential
voice faded away on the summer night. Kemp lengthened his stride to catch up with Tauss and Razoner.
Tauss was saying, “… might as well strut while he has a chance. The FBI is on this one already. But while he’s showing off, old Gus better not slip up on any of it or they’ll peel him good. Kemp? Let’s get on back to town. Get in.”
And he was sitting between them again as the driver turned the car around. Dallas Kemp felt remote and wooden.
“Those people … they took Helen.”
“And they took the honeymoon money, Kemp.”
“But what are you going to do? What’s going to happen?” He heard his voice break.
“Try to stop them. The trick is find them.”
“I heard those reporters talking. It sounded as if those people are … wanted for other things.”
Razoner laughed abruptly, without mirth. “Other murders. Don’t you read the papers?”
“I—I remember something recently. In the Southwest, though.”
“In Texas and then in Tennessee and now here,” Captain Tauss said. “If they weren’t the hottest thing in the country already, they are now. Three men and a girl. And we haven’t made one of them yet. Tonight is the best break yet. Witnesses. Descriptions.”
“I don’t understand,” Kemp said. “What are these people doing? Why? Who are they?”
“They,” said Tauss, “are the kind of people who make police work tough. There’s no rhyme or reason or pattern. Maybe they’re hopped up. They all of a sudden decided to buck society all the way. I don’t know why. I’ll bet they couldn’t tell you why. They’re after kicks, not profit. They’ll do all the damage they can, and if they’re smart it’ll be a lot, and they’ll be caught. That’s the one sure thing. The surest thing in the world. It’s not knowing where and when that makes it rough. From the pattern, they’re heading northeast. Yesterday it was an eight-state alarm.”
“I suppose,” Kemp said, “I’ve got to … go tell Helen’s people.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Lew Razoner said.
“What do you mean?”
“They found her purse in the Olds. It had her identification. Gus is no damn fool. He knows how big the Wisters are. He sent a deputy there first thing, and didn’t spill it to the press. Next he’ll come on the scene with a flock of reporters, and milk it dry.”
The End of the Night Page 8
