18-With Option to Die

by Lockridge, Richard

  “He shinnied up,” Susan said. “He shinnies very well, if a little like a lineman climbing a pole. With spikes.” She looked at the big manila envelope under Heimrich’s arm. She said, “Homework again?” and there was reproach in her voice. “I did hope that when you got to be an inspector.” She finished with a quick shrug of slim shoulders. The cat said “Meyaaah,” reproach in his small voice.

  “Only a little,” Heimrich said and took out of the envelope the canceled checks and bank statements Ray Crowley had put in the glove compartment of the Buick.

  The little cat went down Susan’s trousered leg, paw under paw. Susan said, “Ouch, Mite!” Mite crossed to Heimrich’s leg and looked at it thoughtfully. Heimrich moved it out of range by crossing it over the other. The little cat said, “Yah” and sat in front of Heimrich and looked up at him. Then the cat seemed to be looking not at the man but beyond him and it seemed to Heimrich that there was an abstracted expression in the unblinking yellow eyes. It was, Heimrich thought, as if the cat were trying to remember something.

  Then the little black cat said “Yow,” with emphasis and turned away abruptly and trotted toward the kitchen, as if he had remembered an appointment there. After a moment there was a sound of scratching, claws on metal.

  “Toilet pan,” Susan said. “You put in something called, revoltingly I think, Klean Kitty. With K’s of course. Mite has known why, and where, the pan is since this morning.”

  “As a detective,” Heimrich said, “I deduce we’ve got us a cat.”

  “I think so,” Susan said. “We don’t want to hurt Colonel’s feelings, after the trouble he went to.”

  She stood up.

  “I’ve got a book,” she said. “Which is evidently just as well. Will you be long?”

  “I shouldn’t be,” Heimrich told her. “Half an hour ought to do it.”

  The statements, with the canceled checks folded inside them, went back for two years. They showed quarterly deposits of three thousand dollars each and over the two years the monthly balance had not varied much. And the checks tended to repeat themselves—monthly checks to Brown’s Market; smaller checks to Brown’s Liquors; checks to a laundry and to a cleaner and to the Bennington Refuse Service. She had charged the gasoline for her car and paid by check. She had bought cordwood and paid telephone and electric bills and a doctor and a dentist. Until early in the current year she had sent monthly checks to a mortgage company.

  There was nothing at all out of the ordinary in the statements Faith Powers had received from the First National Bank of North Wellwood. She had led a settled life and paid her bills, for the most part by the tenth of the month. She had lived within her means, which seemed to amount to twelve thousand a year plus a small monthly deposit which, at a guess, came from a pension fund.

  Heimrich sat in front of what remained of the fire and gazed into it, without seeing it. The small black cat had curled up in a chair in front of the fire. It was very peaceful, except for the sound of the wind outside. It was also a little puzzling. It was not quite ten o’clock when the telephone bell jangled away the peace.

  Heimrich went to the telephone and said, “Heimrich” and then, “Yes, Charlie.”

  “Somebody,” Lieutenant Charles Forniss said, “has heaved a couple of hand grenades into the Martin house. Through an open window. That man from the network, Strothers, is still in the operating room at the Brewster hospital and he’s full of shrapnel and maybe he’ll make it and maybe he won’t. Shrapnel missed Mrs. Martin but something hit her on the head and knocked her out. Looks like having been a small table. She’ll be all right but they’re keeping her overnight at the hospital, just to be sure. And whoever did it wrecked his car but got away on foot. For now, anyway. A dozen or so cruise cars are looking for him.”

  “When did it happen?” Heimrich asked him.

  It had happened during the storm. It had been one hell of a storm. It had put the lights out—they were back now—and knocked down a lot of trees. It had been a good night to drive up to an isolated house and throw hand grenades into it—a wet night, but a good one for the purpose. If anybody heard the grenades go off they would figure it was a couple of cracks of thunder. If Eric Martin hadn’t happened to be coming up the drive when the grenade thrower was trying to get out of it, and if the drive hadn’t been narrow for two cars, whoever it was might have got away with it. As it happened …

  Forniss told Heimrich what, as far as they had found out, had happened.

  “Why no lights?”

  Probably because the driver had thought he could more or less coast down the driveway and keep his lights off until he reached the road. It was dark, but not all that dark, and there was a lot of lightning. Perhaps, at the last minute, Martin’s lights had blinded the fleeing man.

  “Martin’s all right?”

  “Now that they say his wife is, or will be. Pretty wild before that. Particularly as this guy took a couple of potshots at him. Missed. Martin was behind his station wagon. One of the bullets went through the hood of the wagon. Then this guy …”

  “Martin can’t identify him?” Heimrich asked, after Forniss had finished.

  “Small, he thinks,” Forniss said. “Thin, anyway. Wearing a raincoat and it was blowing all around him. Everything was blowing all around everything just then. Certain he used a handgun, Martin is. Revolver, automatic. He couldn’t be sure which. Revolver, probably, with only two shots, spaced out. The man had a hell of a lot of guns to choose from. In the car he wrecked.”

  There had been two shotguns in the car, and a semiautomatic rifle. There had been three hand grenades and a forty-five automatic in the glove compartment alone. There had also been a portable typewriter in the car. The weapons hadn’t been touched, of course. The fingerprint boys were on their way from the Barracks.

  “Car license?”

  New York plates. Registered owner being checked on. No report as yet. No registration certificate in the glove compartment, but most car owners carry that in their pocket, along with their driver’s permit.

  “This man who ran from the car, after missing with a couple of shots,” Heimrich said. “He wasn’t carrying anything? Except probably a handgun? Under his raincoat, say?”

  “Martin’s pretty sure he wasn’t. Is pretty sure he had both hands free and stuck the gun in his raincoat pocket while he was running. What would—oh.”

  “Yes, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “There wasn’t a twenty-two rifle in the car, was there? Quite an arsenal. Enough, say, for four men who wanted to do a lot of shooting. But no twenty-two.”

  “Four men,” Forniss repeated and then added, “Yep. Could be. Only, the twenty-two could be in one of the other cars.”

  “Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Naturally. Only, it looks a bit as if they—we’re guessing, but we have to guess, don’t we?—had put all their eggs in one basket. Wouldn’t you think? The headman’s car, at a guess. The boss’s car. The others—the fishermen, say—left earlier. Just innocent fishermen, with nothing but tackle in their cars. The boss had one more errand to run.”

  “Why Mrs. Martin, M. L.? And this guy Strothers?”

  “Strothers had interviewed Nagle. Could identify him. But—a lot of other things. The documentary they made in Mississippi, or wherever. I didn’t see it, but I gather it was about bigotry and racism. Right-wing violence, among other things. Call it an exposé. People like these Patriots United probably considered it part of the Communist conspiracy.”

  “The United Broadcasting Network?” There was incredulity in Forniss’s voice.

  “Man running for some office down there a while back called the New York Times a ‘Socialist sheet,’” Heimrich said. “There was a witness in a trial of some Minutemen who said one of its cells had considered putting cyanide in the air-conditioning system at the United Nations. Sanity isn’t involved, Charlie. Root out evil wherever found. With grenades. Beat a civil rights worker to death in his parsonage. And terrorize a village where there may be an
interracial club. Scare off or kill off TV people who might dig into it. And might make the village ashamed to block the club.”

  “I’ll buy that Nagle, if Pederson is Nagle, might go after a man who could identify him,” Forniss said. “Nagle’s wanted. Fugitive from justice. And he could have followed Strothers from the inn. Before the storm broke. The UBN car is easy enough to spot. Strothers did stop by the inn on his way to the Martin house. Made a reservation for tonight. And he and Mrs. Martin had been interviewing people. The whole town knows that.”

  “We’ll ask Nagle when we find him,” Heimrich said. “Which may take a bit of doing.”

  “Moon’s up now,” Forniss said. “Plenty of cruisers looking. And unmarked cars. Picked up four men already. Residents out for a walk. And looking at the damage the storm did. There’s a train out of Brewster about now for New York. It’s a long walk but maybe Nagle likes to walk. There’s a car there. We’ll need luck, yep. Of course, if he and these fishermen are in it together, one of them could have picked him up.”

  Heimrich doubted that. The fishermen had probably taken off; were holed in wherever their holes were. They had had no reason to think that Nagle would wreck his car and need a lift.

  Heimrich said, “Where are you, Charlie?”

  Forniss was at the substation. And—

  “Here’re the fingerprint boys,” he said. “Took them long enough. I’ll call you back when—”

  “No,” Inspector M. L. Heimrich said, “I’ll come over, Charlie. It’s a nice night for a drive.”

  Forniss said, “O.K., M. L.”

  There wasn’t, of course, anything else he could say. He couldn’t say, “If you think I’m not up to the job, take me off it.” He couldn’t say, as Heimrich said to himself, “When you delegate, delegate.”

  Forniss could hang up the receiver in the substation in North Wellwood, and that he did do.

  “So you can’t stop yourself,” Susan said from the bedroom. She had, evidently, opened the door between the rooms when the telephone rang. “You’re supposed to have a desk job, remember? D-E-S-K? And Charles Forniss is a good man. You don’t have to hold his hand.”

  “I know,” Heimrich said, and went into the bedroom. He looked down at his wife, who was wearing a nightgown he particularly liked and a filmy jacket over her shoulders and was lying in her bed and looking up at him.

  “I love you very much,” Susan said. “You are completely impossible. What can you do that Charlie can’t do?”

  “Nothing, probably,” Heimrich said. “But I want to see a man about a gun.”

  He leaned over her and she put her arms around his neck and held him to her.

  “A long time ago,” Susan said. “Before we were married. I used to call you an ‘oaf’ in my mind. Did I ever say it?”

  “No. Why? I mean, probably I am. But specifically?”

  “You were very slow on the uptake,” Susan said. “I love you very much, Merton. I’ll change your ways tomorrow. That’s from a song.”

  “I know,” Merton Heimrich said.

  “There ought to be a law against guns,” Susan said. “Against all guns. We ought to go back to bows and arrows, if anything at all.”

  She watched him strap his shoulder holster on, and button his jacket over it. She held her arms out again and he lifted her up for a moment and held her against him, being careful about the thirty-two revolver on his chest.

  “Take care,” Susan said. “Bring yourself back alive.” …

  The moon was very bright and the wind still high. He turned the heater on in the car. The driveway had not washed badly. There was a large puddle at the foot of it, but nothing the Buick couldn’t splash through.

  It had much splashing to do on the way to North Wellwood. Once, after he had turned off the last main highway and onto one of Wellwood’s side roads, Heimrich had to get out of the car and lug a heavy branch from the roadway. Twice he had to slow to creep around the trucks of repair crews stretching lines the storm had broken. It took an hour and a half to reach the substation.

  “They’ve picked up a man near Brewster who’s maybe the one we want,” the trooper on duty told Heimrich. “He had a gun, anyway. They’re holding him.”

  “The lieutenant?”

  Forniss was at the Brewster hospital. Ann Martin had regained consciousness. Forniss had gone, with medical approval, to see what she remembered. “He left you this.”

  “This” was a typed five lines:

  “M. L. Prints on shotgun and rifle check out. Pederson’s on rifle and gun and typewriter; also on car. FP boys brought along photos of prints from rooms at inn. Fishermen also handled guns. Nothing in from Washington on print ident. Mrs. Martin conscious; gone to see. C.F.”

  The telephone rang on the trooper’s desk, behind which he was, in deference to rank, standing. He picked the telephone up and said, “State police, Trooper Bartoni” and listened and said, “Yes he is, Professor. One moment,” and reached the telephone out toward Heimrich and said, “Professor Brinkley, Inspector.”

  “Your Susan said you might be there,” Brinkley said. He sounded rather excited. “I am afraid I waked her up, Merton. Probably it isn’t really important, but I thought it might have some bearing. The club’s going to get its permit. The zoning board had a special meeting this evening and decided that, and Sam Bennington telephoned Clay Foster. To get the story in this week’s edition. And Clay, thinking I’d be interested—quite rightly, Merton, quite rightly—telephoned me. And I thought you might be and—I suppose the phrase is—tracked you down. I do hope I didn’t worry Susan.”

  “I’m afraid she’s used to it,” Heimrich said. “And I am interested that the club’s permit’s gone through. Rather sudden decision, wasn’t it?”

  “Quite,” Walter Brinkley said. “Quite sudden. Oh, and by the way, Merton. Somebody’s stolen my car.”

  XIV

  Ann Martin said she was perfectly all right, except for a headache, and that she did not want to stay overnight in the hospital. She said there was no sense to it. She said she wanted to go home. Eric Martin, sitting beside her bed—and looking rather more harried than she did—said, “Nonsense, dear. You’ll do as you’re told.” Then he looked up at Forniss, who was standing on the other side of the bed. He said, “You’ve got what you want? You can leave her alone now?”

  “If that’s all she remembers, yes,” Forniss said. “You didn’t see anybody. Just an object in the air coming through the window. Then an explosion and then another object. That’s the size of it?”

  “She’s told you that,” Eric Martin said. He was a very cross man, Forniss thought. Understandably enough, on the whole. A man who comes home in a storm, is almost run down by another car and is shot at; a man who finds an acquaintance lying in blood on the floor of a blasted living room and his wife unconscious under an open window—such a man may well be cross.

  “Yep,” Forniss said. “She has, Mr. Martin. One other thing, Mrs. Martin, and I’ll let you get some sleep. Do you think the network will go ahead with a—what do you call it? A documentary about this club business?”

  “I don’t know. It’s—oh, it’s so much spot news now. What with the blowing up of the newspaper and now this—this blowing up of Roy and me. Lieutenant, is Roy really going to be all right?”

  “The doctors say so,” Forniss told her. “Not as badly hurt as he looked at first. Seems he dropped down behind a chair when he heard the grenade hit the floor and the chair took most of it. In the recovery room now, Mr. Strothers is. Probably out from under the anesthetic. And—”

  Somebody knocked on the door of the hospital room and then opened it. A nurse came in and said, “How are we, Mrs. Martin?” and then, without waiting to be told how they were, said, “You’re wanted on the telephone, Lieutenant Forniss.”

  Ann and Eric watched Forniss go. They watched the nurse stay. She was a stern nurse; she looked sternly at Eric Martin. “We,” she said, “must get our sleep.”

  Ann
was propped up in the hospital bed; propped so she could see Eric’s face. It was a face she was learning to know. She watched it tighten in a way she knew.

  “If you’re so sleepy,” Eric said up to the firm nurse, “why don’t you—”

  “No, dear,” Ann said. “She’s right, really. If all of you won’t let me go home.”

  “You hear the little lady, Mr. Martin,” the nurse said. “We’ll have something to make us sleep, won’t we, dear?”

  Ann looked at her husband’s face. She saw the tightness ebb out of it slowly.

  Eric stood up. He said, “I suppose so. But the first thing tomorrow we’ll go home. Really go home. Back where we belong.”

  He leaned down toward her. The nurse went to the window and looked out it. Even her tact was firm.

  Ann looked up at Eric and then slowly and carefully shook her head. She said, “Ouch!” Then she said, “If you mean go back to New York, darling—” And then, even more carefully, she moved her head from side to side on the pillows.

  Eric Martin stood up and looked down at his wife and for the moment he seemed as stern as the nurse.

  “You,” Eric told his wife, “must be crazy. You don’t mean—damn it, you can’t mean—after all this—”

  “Yes, darling,” Ann said. “I think I do. We don’t want to be pushed around, do we? Pushed out?”

  “For all I care,” Eric said. “They—” But he broke off there and looked down at her, now with wonderment. When he continued, he spoke slowly, each word a careful word.

  “Do you,” he said, “really mean you want to stay here? Where people throw hand grenades at other people? Where— My God, darling! Anyway, the house is a wreck.”

  “We’ll have somebody put it back together,” Ann said. “It was probably all insured. We’ll pick out the furniture ourselves to take the place of whatever is broken. We’ll get things we like. Things we’ll like to live with. We’ll—”

  “You sound,” Eric said, and still made each word a careful word, “as if, after all this, we were going to live in North Wellwood.” He paused and shook his head, rather hopelessly. “As if,” he said, “we were going to exercise our option to buy.”