They came at a fast, steady walk. A soft, regular thudding. Behind Cotton at first and then on the bank above him and to his left. Cotton tensed. He found himself willing, with every fiber of his mind, the hunter to keep walking. Not to stop here to part the brush and look for a hiding man. The footsteps-a barely audible sound-continued past him. And again Cotton heard nothing.
He strained his eyes through the brush, staring at the tree trunk. Adams, too, was probably looking at it now, making his decision. Long seconds dragged past. Red became visible at the west end of the tree trunk. Motionless. Adams was looking, Cotton guessed, upstream and downstream.
"Let him see my wet footprints on the rocks," Cotton prayed. "Let him think I'm upstream."
The hunter walked out on the fallen log and Cotton moved with him. He had already assured his footing under the current. Now he simply placed his feet and stood, swaying away from the willows, pulling line from the reel as he swung the rod tip back for the cast. Any sound he made was covered by the splashing of the current and Adams was still looking upstream. The hunter walked slowly on the log, balancing himself with the rifle. But, as Cotton flashed the rod forward, Adams glanced around.
The hunter was incredibly fast-even on the narrow, rounded surface of the trunk. He had shifted his feet and spun toward Cotton as the spoon reached him. He was raising the rifle as Cotton snapped back the rod to sink the hooks. The snelled hooks caught on the shoulder of Adams's jacket. Adams jerked back the rifle, fighting to keep his precarious balance, lost the battle against the steady pull of the fly line, and jumped.
In all, it took perhaps three seconds. Time enough for Cotton to know that if Adams landed on his feet John Cotton would die. He hauled back on the flyrod with full strength of his shoulders. It was enough.
Adams, with his upper body pulled forward by the jerk, dropped the rifle, flailed his arms frantically, and crashed chest first into the stream.
Cotton was leaping toward Adams even as the hunter fell. But he checked himself after three clumsy, splashing steps. Adams was pushing himself up from the boulders where he had landed-his right arm apparently useless and blood flooding down from his forehead. He was fumbling with his left hand inside his jacket.
Cotton scrambled back behind the willow brush and over the embankment. And then he ran. Behind him he heard the pop of what was probably a small-caliber pistol-an angry, ineffectual sound.
He covered the two miles to his car in less than thirty minutes, running at first and then-when there was no sign that Adams was following-lapsing into a fast walk. The hunter almost certainly had a broken right arm, as well as other injuries. Whatever the case, there was little chance he would be able to follow fast enough for a rifle shot. Cotton paused at the pickup truck parked under the pines near where he had left his car. He plunged his fishing knife through three of the truck's tires. And then he drove away. And while he drove he made his plans.
15
The seventeenth photograph was of a high, balding forehead, close-set eyes and a long, cleft chin. The eighteenth was of a round-face man glowering at the camera. The nineteenth was Adams-looking younger than he had looked across the aisle on the airliner. But the eyes were the same, and the mouth. And the expression was familiar-open, warm, friendly, even when facing a police identification camera. Cotton found himself wondering how badly Adams had been hurt in his plunge onto the boulders in the Brazos, wondering how much trouble he had had making it out to the highway, thinking that if he had needed help there were deer hunters along the road who would have helped him.
"That one look familiar?"
Captain Whan was straightening the stack of police identification photographs with his fingertips, his eyes on Cotton's face.
"This is him," Cotton said.
Whan took the photograph and put it back in its file folder.
"Randolph Harge," Whan said. "That tells us something. You sure this is him?"
"I'm sure, but what does it tell us?"
"I'll read it to you. `Harge, Randolph Allen: Born, Okeene, Oklahoma, March 11, 1930. Sentenced indeterminate term McAlester Penitentiary, May 3, 1946, auto theft. Sentenced, indeterminate term, El Reno Federal Reformatory, July 13, 1949, interstate transportation stolen motor vehicle. Indicted February 9, 1952, armed robbery-assault with intent to kill, acquitted. Sentenced three to ten, Lansing State Prison, May 27, 1954, extortion, assault with intent to kill...." He looked up. "A hard case."
"But it doesn't say why he was coming after me," Cotton said.
"There's more. A charge of murder in Miami. That didn't stick. And held for investigation in a Chicago homicide case, and a kidnapping-extortion charge in Milwaukee in 1969. That one didn't stick either." Whan closed the folder. "The point is these last three felonies were connected to the rackets. Harge worked for the Organization in Chicago. I imagine he still does."
From down the hallway in the Municipal Police Building there came the sound of someone laughing. Captain Whan was straightening the stack of criminal identification folders with his fingertips. Cotton examined his expression. There seemed to be nothing to read, neither hostility nor warmth. Only blank neutrality. How much could he trust Whan? He had decided on the long drive back to Santa Fe to work with him. He had remembered Whan's suspicions of Robbins's death, remembered Whan's suggestion that he-and not Robbins-might have been the target of the accident which sent his car plunging into the river-the accident which was not an accident. Remembering that, he had placed a long-distance call from Santa Fe, reached the captain at his home and told him what had happened. But on the night flight east from Albuquerque the doubts returned. He remembered then how easily the line between police and criminal can be erased by corruption. Waiting for his flight out of Kansas City, he crossed the bridge again. He thought of the burglary ring which had operated in the Denver Police Department, of the involvement of Florida police in the murder of a judge, of the shooting of a West Texas district attorney by Borger police, of rackets flourishing in Chicago, and in Jersey, and elsewhere, under police protection. And when Whan met him at the capital terminal he had told the captain that he had also called Ernie Danilov from Santa Fe and that the managing editor knew Whan was meeting his flight. He had put it bluntly but Whan had simply laughed. "If you're nervous about me, it's a good sign," Whan had said. "Stay nervous about everybody for a little while and maybe we can get this sorted out."
Now it was almost 2 A.M. and Cotton was no longer nervous. He was merely tired, tired almost to exhaustion. Wednesday had been a long, long day. And now it was Thursday.
"We'll presume that Harge was on an assignment from the people he's been working for," Whan was saying. "The question is what you've been doing that concerns the Organization."
"I told you what I think," Cotton said. "I think Mac was after a story somebody didn't want printed. Whoever it involved killed him. I got his notebook. It looks like there's three unfinished projects he was working on. The State Park concession business. Something or other involving that insurance company, and that collusion on highway contracts. Take your pick."
Cotton became aware again that he desperately wanted a cigarette. Why not? He wasn't likely to live long enough for lung cancer. He thought about asking Whan for one, and rejected the thought. Whan was studying him.
"I nosed around some at all three of them," Cotton said. "I told you that. And I told you there was a fairly good story in the highway situation-but not good enough to kill somebody over. And nothing that I could see in the park concessions or the insurance records looked very promising."
"No use going over that again," Whan said. "Let's talk about a couple of other things. About how McDaniels might have got started on this thing and about what you're going to do next."
"I don't know," Cotton said. "First, I think I'm going to go through that damned notebook again to see if I missed anything. And through my own notes, and then maybe I'll see if I can find out anything more about the highway deal."
"How do you t
hink McDaniels got on to it-whatever it was?"
"All I can do is guess," Cotton said. "Usually it would be a tip. Somebody gets pissed off at the boss and calls the pressroom and gives some reporter ammunition."
"That would be somebody who knew McDaniels-or at least knew who he was."
"Not necessarily. The reporters have their own telephones but there's also a phone booth in there and that's the number listed in the book for the pressroom. That phone rings, and whoever's not busy answers it. Usually it's somebody wanting information, and once in a while it's a tip on a story."
Whan looked thoughtful. "A tip, you think."
"Hell, I don't know. Maybe he saw something, or heard something, that made him curious. Or maybe he ran across something while he was doing regular routine checking."
"Let's say it was a tip-off from someone," Whan said. "How would he handle it?"
"The first thing, he'd take a look at whatever records would apply. Bidding forms, purchase orders, pay vouchers, payroll, official reports whatever he could find officially on paper. First you want to find out not just whether there's any truth in your leak but whether you can nail it. Whether you can prove it." Cotton paused. He was so tired it was hard to think.
"Let's say somebody tipped me off that you were cheating on your travel expenses," Cotton said. "First I'd check all your expense vouchers for a few months at the city clerk's office. I'd jot down all the dates you were charging the city for using your own car on city business and the places you claimed to have gone. Then I'd look at the city motor-pool records to see if you had a city car checked out on the same days. And I'd go through the billings from the oil companies to see if any of the credit-card slips had your name on them, and the license numbers on the slips, and the dates, and the places they were signed. And then, if this showed you were cheating, I'd go to you and tell you what I had and give you a chance to lie out of it."
"You always ask the guy you're after for an explanation?"
"Always," Cotton said. "That's the way the game's played. You give him a chance to tell his side of the story."
Whan thought about it.
"If I had about twenty good men with nothing else to do I could try to trace down everybody McDaniels talked to for the past month." He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. "But it probably wouldn't tell us a thing."
Whan stood up. "You're registered at the Southside Inn as Robert Elwood. One of our people moonlights there as the night clerk. He, and I, and your editor are the only ones who know you're back in town-unless you told somebody else. Let's keep it that way."
"I can't work out this story in a motel room," Cotton said. "I've got to be out talking to people."
"We'll keep an eye on the motel during the day and when you have to leave call here and ask for me, or Lieutenant Bierly if I'm out. Most of the time I can have somebody close."
"Most of the time?"
"Look," Whan said, "I've got four unsolved armed robberies to work, and fourteen or fifteen burglaries, and a homicide case to get ready for the District Attorney by next weekend, and we're short four men in the detective division. I can have a man around you part of the time. When I can't, you sit in your motel room with the door locked and be patient."
"That's what the man who called me said," Cotton said. "That I'd get a little police protection but not enough to make the difference."
"Did he say that?"
"That's what he said."
Whan took a long drag off his cigarette and rocked back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. "If it works the way I want it to work, they won't know you've got any protection. You bought the ticket just to Kansas City, and under a phony name. There's no way for them to know you came here. When they find out you did, I'd like them not to know you're working with us." He rocked forward, leaned his elbows on the desk-looking at Cotton. "I think that's the best bet."
"Like bait," Cotton said. "You don't want them to see the trap. Somebody shoots me, you grab 'em red-handed, they talk to get a lighter rap, and you solve the McDaniels killing. Trouble is, I'm dead. But if I had a cop with me, I see Harge, and I point him out, and you arrest him, and I'm still alive."
"You said Harge was hurt. Besides, they wouldn't use him after you got a look at him." Whan opened the door, held it for Cotton. "Next time it will be somebody else."
16
Habit aroused John Cotton from a restless sleep at 6 A.M. He awoke tired, hazily aware at first only that he was in an unfamiliar bed and then abruptly and nervously alert. He showered slowly, examining the collection of scratches and abrasions accumulated in yesterday's desperate scramblings on the West Fork of the Brazos. Only one spot was painful-a bluish bruise on his left thigh which he could not remember inflicting. It was a long, narrow thigh ending at a bony knee. Cotton considered it as he soaped it. A good enough leg attached to a serviceable body. More elongated and thin than popular tastes required, perhaps, but generally satisfactory and usually trouble-free. It didn't tend to fat, which was fortunate because be enjoyed eating, and it would probably last about another forty years. Cotton toweled himself briskly, avoiding thought of the next forty years, dug his shaving gear out of the suitcase, and lathered. The face in the mirror was not the face he would have chosen for himself. The jaw was a little long, the nose bony and slightly bent, and the ears more prominent than necessary. He had once-long ago-made an idle shaving-time effort to capture the face in a paragraph, in a simile and in a single word. The word he had settled on was "nondescript" and the simile "like a plow horse on poor pasture." The face smiled slightly at him now, not resenting the insult.
At the door, he stopped for the automatic backward look at the room of the man who has long lived alone. And then, hand on the knob, he remembered that outside the door there was something to dread. He spent a second telling himself he was safe for a while. And then he went down to breakfast in the motel coffeeshop.
While he ate, he read with practiced speed through the Capitol-Press, the Morning Journal and yesterday's state edition of the Tribune. He read Hall's column in the Journal carefully. Nothing much had happened in politics in his absence.
By seven he was back in his room, on the telephone to Danilov, giving the managing editor his address and number and telling him of the arrangement with Captain Whan. Danilov didn't sound happy or friendly, but then he never did.
"I'm pulling Tom Rickner off that urban-renewal stuff and sending him to the capitol to sub for you," Danilov said. "He'll do any leg work he can for you. And we'll insert a box on the editorial page saying you're on vacation or something like that. What do you think it should say?"
"Why not say I'm on an indeterminate leave because of a sudden illness?"
"O.K. Now, as soon as you can I want you to write a long memo outlining all this and sign it and get it to me."
While he worked his way through McDaniels's notebook again, Cotton considered why Danilov wanted the memo. Danilov would want the written report to keep the story leads alive in case something happened to the reporter. But that wouldn't be the only reason. He would want it because Cotton had become more than a reporter in this affair-and thereby less than a reporter. He had become involved in his own story, which made him suspect. He had lost his official, sanitizing detachment. To Danilov he had become an ambiguous figure. On one hand he was still the reporter-the man the news desk must trust or the system would not operate. And on the other, he was part of the story, a news source from whom information must be automatically doubted. Danilov would decide-would have to decide someday if the story ever could be broken-just who John Cotton was. If he was the reporter, it would be:
After the Tribune's capitol correspondent began investigating he received a call at his apartment. A man Cotton could not identify warned him that unless he left the city by the next morning he would be killed.
Or it would be:
Cotton said, in a signed statement, that a man called his apartment and warned him he would be killed unless he left the ca
pital the next morning. Cotton said...
Notice, reader, we tell you only what John Cotton said. He said this in a signed statement. We certify only that he said it. We do not certify that it happened. We had no disinterested fly on the wall in his apartment, overheard no call. You decide if Cotton lies.
The sound of rushing water. In the next motel unit someone had turned on the shower. Cotton called a rental service and arranged to have a typewriter delivered. Then he went back to his study of McDaniels's notes. Nothing suggested anything. He turned the page. Near the top in McDaniels's neat script was written "Houghton??" He had noticed it once before, and wondered who, and why the underline, and why the question marks. Now he knew who. Houghton was the Second Highway District Maintenance Engineer. Wingerd had mentioned that McDaniels had interviewed him. And he remembered Volney Bowles, at last week's poker game, gossiping about McDaniels's car parked often at the district highway office. But why the question marks? He flipped forward in the notebook, calculating. The name apparently had been written the day before McDaniels tricked Roark into confirming that tip. Had Mac mentally removed the question marks after the Governor's indiscreet confirmation that Houghton was an accurate and informed leak?
Tony Hillerman - The Fly on the Wall Page 12
