Always Leave ’Em Dying

by Richard S. Prather

  Shortly after noon, Lyn's key turned in the lock and she came inside. The room brightened considerably.

  "Hi," she said. "How's my crazy man?"

  "OK. Missed you. Did you learn anything?"

  "A little. Come on into the kitchen while I fix lunch, Shell. I want to get back around one."

  I followed her into the compact, gleaming kitchen and she buzzed around dropping things into a pressure cooker while we talked. She'd been pretty busy at Greenhaven, and though she hadn't come up with anything that surprised me, she had got corroboration of several things I'd already been sure of in my own mind. She'd talked to the guards I'd put into Greenhaven's hospital and they admitted it was Wolfe who had told them I was a violent nut and that they were to "subdue" me; he'd been the boy who'd sapped me from behind.

  Lyn had found no evidence that Wolfe and Dixon had been performing abortions, but I hadn't expected her to, since, after killing Felicity, they'd have made sure there wasn't any around. Lyn had, however, arranged for a test to be run on the residue in Wolfe's syringe. It was potassium cyanide.

  I said, "That just about wraps it up. You got a lot done, Lyn."

  She frowned. "It doesn't wrap up Trammel. How are you ever going to find out for sure about him?"

  I grinned at her. "The logical way. Ask him."

  Her mouth dropped open. "Ask him! You don't mean you're going down there tonight—"

  "No. Not tonight. No meeting tonight. And for what I've got in mind, the meeting has to be in full swing, which it will be tomorrow. And I didn't say I was going to ask him politely." She looked pretty flabbergasted and I changed the subject. "You have any trouble this morning?"

  "No, but . . . a few more policemen talked to me."

  "What did you tell them?"

  "You're a schizo, and real gone. Big menace, Scott."

  "Good. You're sure?"

  "I told you I'd do it your way. But . . ." She frowned. "There was a kind of bad break."

  She had talked to a reporter who knew that Nurse Dixon had disappeared the same night I'd shot Wolfe and escaped. The reporter had learned from the police that I'd "admitted" having seen the nurse just before I'd plugged Wolfe. He had asked Lyn if it wasn't a reasonable assumption that I might have "killed the nurse because she was a witness to his murder of Wolfe."

  Lyn said to me, "I had to tell him it was a possibility."

  "Sure, honey. He'd probably have written it that way, anyway, as having come from an authoritative source. The only difference is that now he can quote you."

  That was true enough, but I could imagine the upcoming story: "A lovely young Greenhaven nurse, Gladys Dixon, may have been a second victim of the insane killer Sheldon Scott, it was alleged today by Dr. L. Nichols, Greenhaven's chief psychiatrist. Miss Dixon, a young, glamorous, exciting, shapely, sultry, et cetera, et cetera."

  She said, "Have you seen the paper?" I nodded. She walked to me and put her hands on my chest. "Shell, wouldn't it help if I did come right out and say I knew you were sane, normal—no matter what you've actually done? Everybody's against you. Pretty soon you won't be able to stop it, won't be able to convince a soul."

  I squeezed her hands and said, "No, thanks, Lyn. We settled that, and it's bad enough that I'm here, sticking your neck out. Nobody would hear you now, anyway; your word would be one against an encyclopedia. If this deal ever reaches court, I can use all the high-powered steam you can generate—but not till I say so, and certainly not while Trammel's loose. But thanks."

  In almost no time, she was taking pork chops, potatoes, and carrots out of the pressure cooker. The food was so good we didn't let conversation interfere with our enjoyment of it, so it was fairly quiet until we finished. This Lyn was a woman a guy could enjoy twenty-four hours a day. She didn't find it necessary to chatter all the time; she didn't mind silences. I liked looking at her, talking to her, and just knowing she was around even when I couldn't see her.

  A little before one, Lyn said, "Well, 'by. See you about three."

  "Three? I thought you were going to work."

  "I am, but I'll be back." She smiled. "This morning, oddly enough, I developed a splitting headache. I'm sure nobody will expect me to last the day."

  "Clever. You're too fast for me."

  "Aren't I?" She got up and walked to the front door.

  "Wait a minute," I said. "That's too fast."

  "Ho, ho." The door closed and she was gone.

  Those two hours from one till three were a long, dull afternoon, and when Lyn returned it was a short happy afternoon and evening. Until around 8 p.m.

  We got it first on a broadcast, then Lyn went out and bought a late paper and we went over it together. I assumed Mrs. Gifford must have called the cops and that a reporter picked it up from there. It was now common knowledge that I'd informed Mrs. Gifford that her daughter was dead. Most of the rough stuff was between the lines—I might have killed the girl myself, I might merely have been indulging in some heavy sadism directed at the girl's mother. The statement that made up my mind, though, was a quote from Lieutenant French of L.A.'s Missing Persons Bureau; who noted, sensibly enough, that there wasn't even proof yet that the girl was dead; that no body had been found.

  I said to Lyn, "Looks like I've got to leave the apartment tonight after all."

  "Shell, I don't want you to, and you don't have to."

  "I'm not crazy about going out, myself. But I mean to phone French, and I'm not going to phone from here. The main reason I didn't tell the cops about Dixon and Felicity and that grave before now was for fear word would fly around that I'd killed both of them. If they'd dug up Felicity they'd have found Dixon first—and I'm stuck with a damned good motive for killing Dixon. But, hell, it's flying all over anyway. And maybe this will pull me a little way out of the hole."

  Half an hour later, I was in a phone booth several miles from Lyn's apartment waiting for French to come on the line. Lyn had insisted on driving me, and was in her Chrysler half a block away. When French answered, I told him I was calling about his statement in the papers and he got interested all of a sudden. When I told him I knew where he could find Felicity's body, there were two or three seconds of complete silence, then he said, "Who is this?"

  "I'll tell you if you let me spill the rest of it fast—and forget about tracing the call. I'll be long gone, anyway."

  After a short silence he said, "All right."

  "This is Shell Scott." In fast, short sentences, I told him that Wolfe and Dixon had killed Felicity, that I'd followed Wolfe and found the grave. "You'll find both Dixon and Felicity in it," I said, "but I didn't kill either of them. Cyanide killed the girl, but your autopsy will show she had an abortion. No matter what else I'm accused of, nobody can stick me with that, so find her and chalk me off—and do it out loud."

  "Where are they?"

  I told him, and it took too damned long to tell. I wanted off the line and far from this phone—especially with Lyn so close. I said, "You can get the parts I don't have time to tell from Sergeant Meadows and his sidekick, patrolman Al something, on the Raleigh force. And you can get all of it from the guy who sent Felicity to Wolfe and Dixon, Arthur Trammel—the guy who got Felicity pregnant in the first place. He murdered Dixon so there'd be nobody left to spill the beans about him."

  I hung up and ran to the car and Lyn gunned the motor. All the way back to the apartment I kept thinking about what I'd said to French, particularly the bit about Trammel. There hadn't been time to explain to French all the little things that made me sure I was right. I told myself that I couldn't be wrong, that I had to be right, but there was still a fragment of doubt in my mind.

  The next morning, in Lyn's apartment, we learned that a police crew had gone to the location I'd described, walked up to the top of that hill, and found nothing. No bodies. Just a soft, filled-in spot that might once have been a grave.

  After the first shock, that made me feel pretty good. Finally, I was sure about Trammel.

  Chapter
Seventeen

  There was less than an hour of sunlight left when I flopped on my stomach on a high rise of land overlooking Trammelite headquarters. I wore my dark clothes, hat, and raincoat.

  It was late Wednesday afternoon, and I'd left Lyn half an hour earlier. She'd driven me to within a mile of here and then returned home—after vainly pleading with me not to go through with my plan and get killed. I had informed her, truthfully, that there was no other plan available, and that I would be very careful not to get killed.

  That had been in the car, about a minute before I'd climbed out, and Lyn had suddenly scooted toward me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. Her lips had been warm, soft, and hungry; and there must have been more than sixty seconds in that minute, so many things happened. If she hadn't taken her arms away and pushed me, telling me to go on and do whatever I was going to do, I'd never have left; it would never have occurred to me to leave.

  My plan was simple: I was going to kidnap Arthur Trammel. Or maybe it was I that was simple. Beyond Trammel's house, between the low black Truth Room and the tent, dust swirled, and the delayed sound of an explosion reached my ears. The boys were still blasting to enlarge the Eternal House. I could see a dozen workmen moving around, but I had also spotted several other guys, in suits, who didn't seem to be working anything except their eyes, and who would probably object to my kidnapping the All-High.

  But there was only one man alive who could clear me, and that man was Arthur Trammel. I hadn't the slightest doubt now that it was Trammel. As soon as I'd thought of him as the man responsible for Felicity's pregnancy and death, too many things, even aside from those I'd told Lyn about at Greenhaven and Terry's that night, fitted like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: Trammel's flipping Sunday at that Guardian meeting, and especially the timing of his flip immediately after I'd mentioned Dixon's name; his needling me then until I'd flipped a little myself, and his continuing to ride me in the papers. It even explained why both Felicity's and Dixon's bodies had been in the same grave; and I thought I knew now why I hadn't caught Wolfe that first night when I'd followed him.

  Trammel had probably ordered Felicity's murder without thinking twice about it, because of all the men in L.A., he was probably the one man who could least afford exposure of what he really was. If word got around that he was lusting for his young followers, taking advantage of their youth and ignorance to seduce them, practicing the exact opposite of what he preached, he'd fall from Master to monkey overnight and all his loyal Trammelites would feel like spitting on him, just as I did.

  Felicity couldn't have been the only one; there must have been plenty of others—like Betha Green, maybe, I thought. Aside from all the other good reasons I had for wanting to get my hands on him, nobody else would know the story he could tell, certainly not all of it. Those missing bodies, for example—Trammel would have moved them himself to a safer spot. But with any luck, tonight I'd find out where they were buried, find out everything. All I had to do was ask him, in the right way.

  That was all—just walk down there and kidnap him and then disappear into thin air. Down at the incomplete Eternal House dust swirled again from another explosion and a second later its dull booming sound reached me. As dust settled, there was a sudden flurry of activity among the men. One guy waved his arms. Everybody raced away from the area except the arm-waver and one other guy, who ran up to the mouth of the hole that had been blasted in the cliff and charged about in silly fashion.

  I looked at Trammel's house and the area around it. There wasn't much sunlight left and I had to plan my approach while I could still see the grounds clearly. Getting in there and out again wouldn't be any picnic, I knew, but I was looking forward to starting, looking forward to it and itching to get my hands on Trammel. In fifteen minutes more I'd picked my route and everything was settled; there was nothing to do but wait, think about Trammel and Lyn, and itch for both reasons.

  I sat in the darkness of Trammel's front room, on the edge of a chair I'd placed before an open window. After dark, I'd waited on my belly near Trammel's house until he'd left it and walked to the Truth Room, waited another minute until the figure of a walking man was far enough away, then had run to Trammel's back door, torn the screen, and used a skeleton key to get in. There'd been no trouble yet, but it was nearly 9 p.m., and the meeting would soon be over.

  I could see half a dozen people on the grounds, their figures outlined by light spilling past the raised side of the tent where Trammel was speaking. I'd just watched him complete his standard tour through the crowd, ranting and raving, and now he was up on the stage concluding his address. Ordinarily everybody would have been inside at this time, and my guess was that those figures out there were guards.

  The choral group began singing. It would be another ten minutes or so before Trammel would leave the Truth Room and come here to his house—if he repeated his actions of that night when I'd been here before—and the waiting already had me on edge. I wanted to get him, if I got him at all, after he left the Truth Room, because I had to start shaking his followers' faith in his magnificence, had to yank off the halo that Trammelites thought their Master wore.

  The way most of them felt about him now, not even a confession from his own lips would shake their confidence and belief in him—unless that confidence and belief were already weakened. I couldn't think of any better way to start the weakening process than to have Trammel off in the hills somewhere, preferably with a few broken bones, when his tape-recorded spiel came to an end in the Truth Room.

  Between the Truth Room, close by on my left, and the big tent, farther away, guard ropes were stretched before the mouth of the Eternal House; some "Danger" signs were stuck near them. One man stood about ten yards from the ropes; several other men were motionless farther away. As far as I knew, there was only one man behind this house, though, and I wasn't going to worry about him yet.

  The singing stopped, lights came up outside and illuminated the grounds; organ music swelled gloomily in Trammel's theme song. I couldn't see the stage from which the All-High would now be descending, but I could see that the tent itself was jammed; recent publicity, and Monday night's "attack" on their Master, had brought out what might be a record crowd of Trammelites. I could see at least a thousand of them; the total might be three thousand or more.

  Then Trammel stepped from the tent, and the tension that had been stretching for hours through my body seemed to concentrate in my stomach. I leaned forward, gripping the windowsill tight as I stared at him. He walked with slow measured steps in time to the pulsing beat of the organ. When he was almost halfway to the Truth Room, walking parallel to the guard ropes, I forced myself to relax, stretched my fingers away from the window, feeling a tremor in my hands—and then all hell broke loose.

  The earth seemed to heave out there in front of me, to shake and shudder in sudden sound and light. Almost in the middle of that violent sound and color, completely hidden in swirling clouds of smoke and dust, was—or had been—Trammel. For seconds I was partially blinded; then, on the fringe of that boiling cloud, I saw the man who had earlier been motionless there reel and fall. A rising wail came from his throat.

  Dust began to settle, smoke rising into the air above it, and the former bright illumination seemed murky and thick after that shocking glare. There was silence then, a quietness accentuated by the speed with which it had followed that explosion and by the isolated whimpering sound of the man twisting slowly on the ground. And then there was a moan from the tent, from a thousand throats, a noise born in stunned shock and swelling in comprehension.

  Movement flowed inside the tent. I saw figures pour slowly past the raised canvas, begin to run forward. Not even thinking about the chance that I might be seen and recognized, I slid through the window to the ground and ran toward the spot where Trammel and the other man lay.

  A dozen men were there moments before me; beyond them the mass of the crowd had stopped running, pressed hesitantly closer. Silence had fallen again excep
t for separate gasps or cries of horror as one or another came close enough to see—to see what I had already seen. There was nausea in my belly, numbness in my brain.

  The man who had fallen got unaided to his feet, rising slowly, his cries silenced. Not looking at him, but at the focus of all other eyes, I still was aware of his suddenly arrested movement as he turned and saw what all of us had seen.

  For Arthur Trammel was dead.

  God, he was dead; not just lifeless, but horribly, shockingly, unbelievably torn and ugly, his body shattered, his blood staining the earth. I stood less than ten feet from him—from part of him.

  He lay on his back. Blood smeared one side of his narrow face, but the other side was unmarked and almost obscenely white. The black robe he had worn was shredded, torn almost free of his thin body, and a red mass of torn flesh loomed on the side of his chest. Redness drained from it, slid down his side.

  One arm was bent awkwardly beneath him, and the explosion's force had ripped his left leg from his body. The leg ended at his knee in a pulp of bone and cartilage and flesh; the bloody, unreal stump lay on the ground two yards from him, thick fluid oozing from both torn parts that seconds before had been one.

  For a moment the only thing I could think of was that all my hopes, my chances, had died with Trammel; then, hoping that maybe, somehow, it wasn't he, I moved closer, stood above him, and looked down at the narrow face, tiny eyes staring blankly, his long hooked nose, at the uniquely ugly face of Arthur Trammel. It was unmistakably Trammel, and he was unmistakably dead.