Before Duson had gone a mile, the Cajun was strolling through the stand of young pine on the south side of the road. In another twenty minutes, he risked a snatch of song. He was free of Duson at last!
His feet covered miles of pine plantings, as he thought with wicked glee about Duson’s future. Serve him right, he thought, if that lady there in Templeton kill him dead!
But that was no longer any of his concern.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Myron Duson
The asphalt road was already sticky in the March sunlight, and the damp left from the rain the night before filled the air with a steamy heat. Duson was not in a good mood.
The catnaps he had taken while riding had not rested him, and the demise of the Olds infuriated him. Carrefours was a fool! He had no confidence that the mechanic could fix whatever ailed the car, no matter how long he tinkered with it.
Duson had no intention of wasting another thought on the idiot. Let him stay there in the heat, under the hood of the vehicle. Let him be caught and be damned to him! He knew nothing about Duson, for Myron had taken care not to inform any of his henchmen about anything important in his life. Myron Duson intended to go on alone. He had no need of others to help him finish the job he had begun. If only he could locate a farm, someplace along this god-forsaken road, he would find transportation, and that was the only thing he needed at the moment.
The pines on either hand seemed to hold in the heat, and he took off his jacket and folded it neatly over his arm. His hat was not wide-brimmed enough to keep the sun off his neck, but it helped a bit as he trudged onward, scanning the roadsides ahead for any hint of a driveway.
Forty-five minutes later, he saw a break in the bushes along the fence line, with a muddy drive leading away from the asphalt. Rounding a curve, he could see big trees growing some distance from the road, and beneath their shade huddled a tin-roofed frame house.
He almost grinned, but he saved the energy for later. That would be the break he needed, and he must make it work for him. Nobody must know that he was coming until he sized up the situation.
He turned aside and climbed through a tight, barbed wire fence, catching himself painfully several times on its barbs before he made it all the way through and emerged on the other side. A field of brush and weeds lay between him and the house now, screening his approach, if he stooped and took reasonable care.
He was no woodsman, but he had learned by necessity to move across country. In time, he found himself at the back of a neat yard, where stalks of spring jonquils still stood stiffly under japonica bushes. There was no sign of anyone about, though a rusty pickup sat in a shed, which was a tin roof held up by four untrimmed posts, weathered to a satiny gray.
He ducked under a low sycamore limb and moved across a flowerbed toward the kitchen door, which was screened by a big dogwood. As he came around the bush, an old woman popped through into the back yard, holding a pan of scraps and calling, “Here, kitty-kitty!” at the top of her voice.
She saw him before he could reach her side, and her mouth opened. He didn’t wait to learn whether a greeting or a scream was about to come out of it.
He hit her expertly at the side of the neck. When she went down, legs jerking reflexively, he leaned over and methodically crushed her skull with one of the whitewashed rocks from the edge of the path.
A gruff roar interrupted him, and he straightened to meet the assault of a man who was charging him with a crutch held like a spear. The gray ruffle of hair stood straight up on the old man’s head, and his eyes were wild with fury and grief.
It was no great trick to demolish this one as well. No witness had ever lived to testify against Myron Duson. No witness except a single skinny woman in Texas.
Once he was certain there was nobody else around the place, he went through the house, searching for money or weapons or anything else that might be useful. He found a hoard of dimes in a fruit jar—not worth taking, he decided. He located an ancient ten-gauge shotgun whose load had corroded in its chamber. Worse than no good.
He did find a copy of Sports Afield with a five-dollar bill marking a place in it. Turning through to see if more bills might be inside, he found a familiar name staring at him.
ALLISON FROST VERNIER, breeder extraordinary, was the caption beneath a photo of an elderly woman standing in a run among a half-dozen English setters. An accompanying article was evidently about her breeding kennels and the success of her setters in field trials.
That was the name of those people in Templeton. A coincidence, perhaps, but Duson had not become the feared name it was through ignoring hunches. He noted the location of that farm. Might be a handle on the gun dealer, he thought. You never knew.
When he was done and had finished off a superb custard pie and a quart of milk from the refrigerator, he went out and searched the man’s body for the pickup keys. To his amazement, however, he found the keys in the ignition, the door unlocked, and the vehicle ready to roll. What sort of place was this, where people could leave things so unsecured? But he didn’t worry about that.
Instead, he put the thing in gear and rolled away westward in a cloud of smelly blue smoke. Once he reached civilization, he knew he could find a decent car. This one would last, he hoped, as long as he needed it. If it didn’t, there were always other cars to take and other owners to delete.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Washington Shipp
Washington Shipp was not easy in his mind. The Frosts were well away, staying with a relative. Only he and Amy, the dispatcher, knew where they were, and that should have reassured him, but for some reason he kept thinking about the man who had looked so much like Martin Fewell.
He had a gut feeling he wasn’t through with that gun-stealing bastard, no matter that he had been stopped and almost apprehended across the Louisiana line. Two of his henchmen were in custody, not talking as yet, but the time would come when they would, he felt certain.
For that reason, he asked Amy to keep a special file of any bulletins issued in Louisiana, particularly ones concerning stolen cars, assaults, or burglaries. He hadn’t realized how much paperwork that would entail, but he doggedly plowed through the morning’s stack, watching for anything that rang his internal alarm.
Beside him was a large map of the East Texas-Western Louisiana area, and he had circled the point at which the van and two of its riders had been caught. Now he was plotting the spots at which cars had been stolen, beginning with one that had disappeared only a couple of blocks from the place where Duson and his henchman had disappeared. It was amazing how many vehicles had been stolen in Louisiana in the past day and a half.
He worked for an hour, blessedly uninterrupted by any local catastrophe worse than a cow in Mrs. Blasingame’s garden. When he was done, the map was fairly well dotted with marks, but he could see that three of them lay in a direct line south and east along Interstate 10.
That was a boggler, for the pair might be heading toward New Orleans, where they could disappear easily and permanently. Still, his instinct said otherwise. “They turned west again,” he muttered, staring at the map. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Amy interrupted him with another bulletin. This one had brought a flush of excitement to her round face.
“Here’s one from right across the line. An old couple was found yesterday afternoon near Merriville, Louisiana, beaten to death. Their house was ransacked and their pickup was stolen. A red Chevy, 1973 model, rusty, dent in right front fender. The license number is probably no good, now, but here it is.” She thrust the papers into his hands and watched his face as he read.
Shipp felt a chill go down his spine. This was right. This was it. He had known the predator was coming back to make sure of his kill, and here was the trace he had been waiting for. The brutality of the crime convinced him that it must be Duson’s work.
“Here’s something else,” said Amy, handing him another bulletin. “They found one of the stolen cars a couple of miles east of the murder si
te. The engine was frozen up, and the oil line had been perforated. “The local sheriff thinks that only one man committed the murders, for it had rained the night before and only a single set of tracks crossed the flowerbed at the back of the house. There wasn’t a mark on the mud in the driveway except the tracks where the pickup went out.”
He nodded. “That means the other one has left. He was an expert mechanic, from what I can gather, so if that oil line was holed, he did it on purpose. Now, where is he going? Not here, or he’d have come ahead with Duson. We may be able to scratch him off our list, but that doesn’t do us any good. He wasn’t the dangerous one.”
“Here’s the rest,” she said.
He looked at the report she handed him. “Fingerprints found on the hood latch of the abandoned car matched those of Myron Duson, of Beaumont, Texas, convicted felon now wanted in Texas for robbery and assault, and Septien Carrefours, Grosse Tête, Louisiana, known car thief and associate of Maurice Boulangère, fence and dealer in stolen goods, New Orleans. Six arrests. No convictions.”
He looked up at Amy. “Our boys,” he said, his tone soft. “Headed this way, at least as far as Duson is concerned. We’d better stake out the Frost house. He’ll go there for sure.”
“Who can be spared?” she asked. “Lambert has been sick with the flu. Joseph went out to see about that cow in the garden, but when he gets back he’s supposed to take night duty tonight. Both our late shift people are supposed to be in Austin tomorrow to testify in that DWI/vehicular homicide case.”
“Damn!” Why was it that when you most needed manpower, everyone was out of pocket? Wash chewed at his thumbnail, thinking hard.
“Amy, could you stay here tonight and use the cot in the office, just in case anything comes in that needs handling? I could stake out the Frost house myself. That would leave Joseph free to patrol, and he could come if I needed him. Okay?”
She might groan a bit, but he knew she loved to fill in, when there was a need. She fancied herself a policewoman, he knew, when she could forget her age and her arthritic knees.
“He’s on his way,” he said, looking down at the map. “From Merryville, he could have driven right here into the county before dark last night and be hidden out already. We’d better be on the watch for him. You call Joseph and tell him the drill.”
The day went slowly, after that, filled with paperwork. From time to time, Wash looked up at the clock and wondered where Myron Duson was, what he was planning, and how he would go about ambushing the bastard, if he came to the Frost house that night. He didn’t, of course, know Duson. That meant he would have to be extremely cautious.
But Washington Shipp knew to be cautious. If he got himself into bad trouble, his wife Jewel would kill him for sure.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Martin Fewell
Martin had been driving for hours. His neck was stiff, and his back was cramped, and he needed to pee something awful. The hunch that was sending him westward, along the irregular jogs and windings of Highway 190, was still strong enough to keep him from stopping often, and he put such pauses off until he had to get gasoline.
Only when he had crossed the Texas line did he feel sufficiently at ease to pull over into a logging track beside the highway to relieve himself. To his disgust, there was a shabby pickup truck already pulled up, out of sight of the road behind him. Somebody hunting, he figured, though whatever it was, it was probably illegal in the spring.
He looked about, but nobody was in sight. Then he got out and stretched the cramps out of his joints. A short trip behind a clump of young pine trees got rid of another problem, and he went back to get into his pickup, which, while it was no Porsche, was still better than the wreck blocking the road.
Something made him stop. His old instincts, long dormant, suddenly waked, making him spin on his heel while ducking and letting his reflexes take over. His fist thudded into a hard belly while he still felt the breeze of the blow that had just missed his head. Then he was trying with desperate strength to hold down his assailant.
The man beneath him was as big as he was, harder and younger. Surely he was no match for the nasty tricks Martin had spent a lifetime in learning, in and out of prison.!
Yet he was. Martin fought him all the way, tripping him, eye-gouging, trying for a knee in the groin, but the fellow knew how to counter them all. This was an ex-con, without any doubt.
At last the attacker jerked free of him and hurled himself into the pickup, in which Fewell had left the keys. With a roar, the truck started, and before the older man could reach it, the driver slammed it into reverse and disappeared in a cloud of mud spatters.
Fewell stood in the quiet of the pine woods, his anger growing by the minute. That bastard hadn’t given him a chance, just swung and hoped to kill. He’d met too many of the sort in his criminal career to mistake that. And now he was off in the only thing Fewell owned in all the world, outside of his few clothes, which were in his old suitcase in the camper.
The roar of the engine disappeared westward up 190. Well, by god, he wasn’t one to stand around and let someone take off with his property.
He turned to the stranded truck and looked inside. Well-kept seats, but old. The body was rusty and dented. He opened the hood and peered into the engine. It smelled hot, but he didn’t think it had seized up. Probably the thing was slow and rattly, and its driver had just decided to take the next thing that came along, when it got hot.
It was his own fault for turning off the highway. If he hadn’t, that bastard would have snared somebody in a good car with some hard luck story out on the main road, and would be going west in style. Probably, if his methods held true, leaving the owner dead in a ditch.
He checked the gauges. There wasn’t much gas left. The oil pressure wavered around, once he got the engine started, but it settled down at last. It needed water, and he knew he’d better fill the radiator soon, but he thought he could nurse it along. There was a Mom and Pop grocery and station a few miles up the road, he remembered.
He intended to make it. That character might think he’d left Martin Fewell on foot, but he didn’t know his man. He’d follow him across Texas, if he had to, just to get his own back. The little money in his pocket would buy gas and oil, and if he had to do without food for a while, he’d done that before.
He crept backward out of the logging track, looked both ways carefully, and backed onto the highway. Nobody was in sight. He pulled off in low, feeling out each gear as he shifted, making sure there was nothing badly wrong with the vehicle he now drove.
By the time he reached the store, the radiator was boiling again, but a fill of water and five dollars worth of gas seemed to settle the truck down pretty well. He got an extra can of oil, just in case the thing burned a lot. Then he set off in pursuit of the hijacker.
That sapsucker might think he was tough, but Martin Fewell had invented tough, and he intended to use every bit of it when he found the hijacker.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Myron Duson
He was losing his touch! Even as he pulled away from the scene of his latest disaster, Myron was fretting about that.
Out of his last four encounters, two of the victims had survived. That was a bad average—the sort that could get a man sent to Huntsville for that lethal injection they thought was so humane.
He had no intention of getting caught and even less of dying. But that old guy back there in the woods had been a tough son-of-a-bitch. Learned his stuff in a place with barred windows, he’d bet his life on that.
Just getting away from him uninjured had been a pretty hard thing to do. Killing him would have been something that Myron wasn’t quite certain he could have accomplished. Not without more hassle than he was willing to risk.
The truck he drove was, however, many cuts above the clunker he had stolen after killing the old couple. It had been taken care of, that was clear. As he rattled along the newly widened highway toward Jasper, he watched the oil gauge. Septien had tau
ght him that much at least. But it sat steady, and the gas gauge was what he found he must watch most closely. That truck guzzled gasoline as if it were free.
He hadn’t all that much money with him. He’d depended on being paid for the Frost collection, when he delivered the guns, and his bit left with Linda in Alexandria hadn’t been a lot. That damned Bollivar! But he shook away the thought. Done was done, and there was no point in worrying about it, for Bollivar was no threat to him.
No, the woman: she was the threat. And that man back there, who was still alive to yell assault and robbery when he made it to a town. He had never left so many loose ends before, and Myron was rattled at the thought that his magic touch was failing him.
He passed a highway patrol car, but the driver paid no heed to him. So. There hadn’t been a complaint filed yet. Maybe he’d hurt that old buzzard enough so that he would lie there in the woods and die? That was wishful thinking. He knew the man had come nearer injuring him than the other way around. That sucker had taken his lumps in a prison yard, or Myron was no expert.
He pulled into Jasper and filled up at a big Exxon station on the corner where two main highways crossed. He watched his speed. He stopped at every sign and didn’t slide through. He didn’t want another hick town law to impede him in his business.
When he pulled out again, heading northwest to avoid Toledo Bend Lake, he was a model of propriety. But when he turned on State Highway 63, he sped up a bit. He wanted to get into Templeton just after dark.
He’d find a place to stay, keeping completely out of sight. When it was really late and the burg had rolled up its sidewalks, he would go out to that big old house and he’d finish the job Crowley had started.
He stopped at a café and ate before dark. He idled over coffee, watching traffic whiz past on the road, waiting until it was that lazy hour when everyone was at supper and the police’d had a long day but hadn’t been relieved for the evening. When he was satisfied that everything was to his liking, he paid his tab and got back into the pickup.
Born Rebel and The Guns of Livingston Frost - Two Short Novels Page 12
