by J. T. Edson
‘There he is!’ Alice said, pointing to where a Boy Scout stood before the window of a fishing tackle store on Trail Street.
‘Hi!’ the youngster greeted. ‘You got here fast.’
‘I’m Speedy Gonzales, and this is Whirl-away,’ Brad replied. ‘Get in the back and tell us. Has he come out yet?’
‘Naw. I’ve been watching for him.’
‘Look through these photographs and show us which one you saw,’ Alice told the boy and passed back an envelope. Then she studied the street ahead. The supermarket was crowded with shoppers and a good number of people used the sidewalk; hardly ideal conditions in which to pick up a desperate, armed man.
Both the deputies expected the boy to show them the photograph with Colismides’ scarred face on it. Several times since the escape people had called the complaints board claiming to have seen the gang leader. On three occasions the suspect had no scar; two more bore scars on the wrong cheek; and, the pick of the lot, one proved to be Gusher City South’s police inspector in full uniform. All of which did not make the investigating officers appreciate the ability of the general public to recognize wanted men from photographs seen on the television or in newspapers.
Skimming through the photographs, the boy did not even stop at Colismides’s mug-shots, but passed on. He ignored the photographs of Mikos Papas and extracted another, showing it to Alice.
‘Him. George Plytas.’
‘Are you sure it’s him?’ Brad asked, looking past the car parked ahead of where he had halted the Oldsmobile.
‘He’s wearing a brown suit, white shirt, green-striped tie and a Stetson,’ replied the boy. ‘I might not have noticed him, but he’s got hunting boots on.’
‘Huh?’ Brad grunted.
‘You know, the calf-high, lace-up, rubber-soled kind you see advertised in the sporting magazines. My pa has a pair, but he doesn’t wear them with his suit.’
‘I don’t wear mine when I’m going formal either,’ Brad admitted.
‘So I looked him over and—Hey! That’s him coming out now.’
Following the direction of the boy’s pointing finger, Alice and Brad saw a man emerge from the supermarket’s main doors. He stood for a moment and looked up, then down the street; but either missed the black deputy car, or failed to recognize it for an official vehicle. Turning, he strolled off along the sidewalk, a loaded bag of canned goods in each hand. Before the man turned and walked away, the deputies had seen his resemblance to the mug-shots of George Plytas.
‘It was too much to hope that he’d come this way,’ Brad breathed.
‘Yes,’ Alice answered. ‘Let’s go pick him up, Brad, and hope he doesn’t know we’re on to him.’
Even without discussing the matter, both deputies had hoped their man would come towards them. Then they might have been able to jump from the car and cover him, taking him by surprise and preventing him making a fight.
‘Might be better this way,’ Brad drawled. ‘It’s lucky I’m still wearing my shoulder holster. I nearly put my gunbelt on this morning, and that shows.’
‘Can I come?’ asked the boy eagerly.
‘Nope,’ Brad replied and saw the disappointment on the young face. ‘When we get out, climb up front. If anything goes wrong, or there’s shooting, hit the radio. Hold the transmission mike like Alice’s doing, then throw this switch and say, “Unit S.O.12, ‘Code Nine’.” Got that?’
‘“Unit S.O. 12. ‘Code Nine’”,’ repeated the youngster. ‘Is that all?’
‘Sure,’ Brad answered. ‘“Code Nine” means send assistance immediately, and giving our car number tells them who’s calling.’
By this time Alice had notified Cen-Con of their proposed course of action and opened the car’s door. On the sidewalk, she waited for Brad to join her, then they moved along side by side, following the man.
‘We’ll catch up and close in on him from either side, Brad,’ the girl suggested. ‘Unless he’s seen us, you grab him and I’ll shove my Cobra into his ribs.’
‘It ought to penetrate up that close,’ Brad answered.
Once Brad laid hands on the man, they might say they had him. Not only did the big deputy possess the kind of strength that made his great grandfather legendary, but his black belt knowledge of karate taught him where to grab so as to render the one gripped helpless, even without the inducement of a Colt Cobra thrust into his ribs.
While there might be some fuss if the man proved to be innocent, with an unfortunate resemblance to a badly wanted criminal, the deputies decided not to take any chances. Having seen Jack Tragg in action, they did not doubt that the sheriff could soothe an irate citizen and explain their motives.
With Brad on the outside, the deputies strolled along like the other users of the sidewalk, but at a faster pace. This brought them closer with every stride to the heavily-laden man. Clearly he did not have any idea that two peace officers were following him.
‘Just a few more steps!’ Brad thought. ‘Just a few more and we have him.’
‘Look, Mary! It’s those two deputies who were on television last night.’
A pair of women stood on the sidewalk ahead of the man, one of them pointing by him, straight towards Alice and Brad. Never had a voice sounded so shocking and loud to the deputies’ ears. Neither could miss hearing the words—nor could the man they followed.
Any doubts Alice and Brad might have felt about the man’s identity were dispelled at that moment. Under different circumstances Brad, a keen student of fast reactions, might have admired the speed with which the man moved. But the next few seconds—especially the next single second—proved to be too action-packed for him to give the matter much thought.
Letting the bags fall, their contents bouncing and scattering around his feet, the man whirled to face the deputies. A snarl twisted his lips and his right hand whisked under his jacket to the butt of a short barreled Smith & Wesson Bodyguard revolver in a waistband holster.
Even if the man was not Plytas, his reaction proved that he had reason to fear peace officers closing in on him.
Never had there been such lousy luck, nor such complete vindication of the normal Rockabye County policy of not publicizing the investigating officers involved on a case. For once the rule had been broken, with a definite purpose it is true, but it put Alice and Brad in a hell of a tight spot.
They were surrounded by people; ordinary, harmless, inoffensive, tax-paying citizens going about their lawful occasion. If the man fired his gun, the bullets might kill an innocent bystander. Though fast enough to prevent the man firing, Brad saw the dangers of doing so. For once in his life, he almost wished to be armed with the much-maligned .38 Special snub-nose many plainclothes officers carried. At that short range, his heavy, hand-loaded bullets had the power to pass through the man and wound, if not kill, anybody standing behind him. Yet Brad knew he must shoot; not only to save his own life, but to prevent the man gunning down some harmless citizen trying to escape.
In one single, blurring instant Brad saw the problem, solved it and accepted the risk he must take. Shooting out his left hand, he sent Alice staggering aside. She crashed into the nearest citizen, knocking him backwards into a shop’s doorway and following him out of the immediate danger zone.
Even while doing so, Brad dropped forward towards the sidewalk. His right hand had already begun to draw the Colt and it was in his grasp before his left hand came down to break his fall.
Just as Brad hoped, the barrel of the Smith & Wesson tracked him downwards. He saw flame lick from the short barrel as his own weapon slanted up in the man’s direction and heard the ‘whap!’ of a close-passing bullet. Striking the sidewalk just ahead of Brad, the bullet flattened and flung up a spray of concrete chips into his face. That was what he was hoping would happen when he took the desperate risk to draw the man’s fire away from the crowd. The only thing Brad did not count on was receiving a stinging cloud of flying concrete splinters in his face.
If possible, Brad hoped
to drive his own bullet into the man’s shoulder and disable him, taking a wounded prisoner who would be able to talk. Using that deadly hand-load devised by the dean of combat shooting masters, Colonel Jeff Cooper, Brad knew one bullet anywhere in the body ought to take all the fight out of its recipient and render him helpless.
Pain caused Brad to flinch at the very moment he pressed the trigger far enough rearwards to activate the Colt’s mechanism. His shot missed its intended mark by a few vital, very important inches. The two hundred and thirty grain, truncated cone-shaped bullet caught the man under his chin, ripped through the roof of his mouth, passed among his brains and burst out of the top of his head. Once again Brad partially achieved his intentions, for on emerging the bullet continued harmlessly into the air and over the heads of the crowd.
For an instant the man stood erect. The Smith & Wesson slipped from his fingers and clattered to the ground, then his body crumpled and went down.
A woman screamed, then another. Voices yelled, feet pounded on the sidewalk as the crowd milled uncertainly, not sure what to do, or even what might have happened. So swiftly had events moved, that the woman whose shout started the whole affair still had not lowered her hand from pointing out the deputies. Her hand flopped to her side limply as she collapsed in a faint. Twisting away, the second woman covered her eyes as she tried to shut out the sight of the hideously torn skull. Falling against the side of a parked car, she began to scream hysterically.
In Unit S.O. 12, the Boy Scout remembered his orders. Grabbing up the microphone, he threw the switch. In a voice high with excitement he yelled his message, repeating the words given to him before the deputies left the car. Although the dispatcher at Cen-Con knew the voice did not belong to either Brad or Alice, she guessed what had happened and wasted no time in giving the word to the three waiting R.P. cars, sending them ‘Code Three’ to converge on Trail Street.
Coming to his feet, Brad looked at the man’s body. He felt sick, but held down the nausea. A man always felt that way when he shot another human being up close like that. It was different from throwing shots at a car speeding by, or mixing lead in a long-range gunfight. Then one did not feel the contact so brutally and instantly: unlike the impact of taking a man’s life when shooting at spitting distance.
Brad stepped forward and eased the Smith & Wesson away from the body, although it would not be used against him. Then he raised his left hand to his cheek and looked at the blood-smear upon it.
‘Are you all right, Brad?’ Alice gasped, jumping forward.
‘Just nicked,’ he replied and looked to where the first of the R.P.’s tore towards him. From there, he turned to the man Alice had knocked into safety. ‘Sorry I roughed you up that way, sir.’
Admiration, not anger showed on the man’s face as he looked first at Brad then to the mark left by the bodyguard’s bullet on the sidewalk.
‘Don’t apologize, buddy,’ he said. ‘I was in Korea and getting roughed-up for that reason’s all right with me. But man, you took a helluva chance to draw his fire.’
Drawing their guns, the patrolmen leapt from the rocking car almost before it halted. With the arrival of the reinforcements, Alice and Brad began the work of restoring order.
‘Hit the radio!’ Alice snapped to the first man, then turned to his partner. ‘Start collecting the names and addresses of witnesses. The rest of you hold back the crowd. If any of you have a rope in your car, rope the area off.’ There was, as Alice well knew, a section of the liberal-intellectual press always ready to blast headlines about trigger-happy lawmen shooting without good reason. So it paid to take statements before the onlookers forgot the details leading to the shooting.
After protecting her partner against abuses by the liberal press, Alice went to deal with the two women, one in a faint, the other hysterical. While doing her part, she saw Brad kneel by the body and go through its pockets, and heard the man she pushed speaking. It became clear that the law, for once, had a mighty fine witness on their side; for he declared in a carrying voice that Brad had acted with great courage and in the only manner possible.
More officers arrived on the scene, including the two policewomen to whom Alice turned over the care of her patients. She walked over to where Brad stood talking with a Patrol Bureau captain.
‘There’s nothing on him to identify him, Alice,’ Brad said. ‘Clothing unmarked, plain wallet with a few used bills in it, key ring with a set of car keys and nothing more on it.’
‘His fingerprints will make him,’ Alice replied. ‘Can you handle things here, captain? We’ll see if we can trace him back to his car, or where he came from.’
‘That’s why I came down,’ the captain replied.
‘Gee, I was getting worried,’ the Boy Scout said, swinging out of the Oldsmobile as the deputies returned. ‘What happened?’
‘We got him,’ Brad replied shortly.
‘Did you have to shoot him?’ said the boy, showing interest.
‘Brad did what he had to do,’ Alice answered. ‘Say, we never asked your name.’
‘Billy Tomkins.’
‘All right, Billy. Did you see where the man came from?’
‘Huh?’
‘Did he walk up, or come in a car?’
‘He was walking when I first saw him,’ Billy replied, eyes on Brad.
‘Where’s the nearest parking lot?’ Alice continued her questioning. ‘He wouldn’t want to walk far in case somebody recognized him, or carrying that load of stuff.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Billy. ‘You’re right. There’s a parking lot just along the street and down a side alley. I’ll show you. Hey, mister, how does it feel to kill a man?’
‘Bad, boy,’ Brad said heavily. ‘Damned bad.’
Fourteen
Guided by the Boy Scout, Alice and Brad found the parking lot and its attendant led them to a green Chevrolet sedan, claiming that it belonged to their man. The first thing to strike the deputies was the car’s very clean appearance, which led them to assume its driver had taken it through a carwash recently. Putting in a call to Cen-Con, Alice requested that the car be collected and taken in for the lab crew to examine it. She had the keys, but decided against taking in the vehicle herself, preferring to leave it as much as possible as when she found it.
Still accompanied by the Boy Scout, who offered to show them the nearest garage with carwash facilities, Alice and Brad drove away from the parking lot. The garage lay on the very edge of town and offered its cleaning-up services to sportsmen returning from a trip. While the wash attendants remembered the Chevy coming in, none could hazard a guess at where it came from; although one did say he thought the vehicle had stood out on the open, but under some trees, for some time. Requesting that they be informed if anybody came inquiring about the Chevy, Alice and Brad rejoined Billy in their Oldsmobile.
‘Not a thing,’ she told the eager boy. ‘Say, how would you like to see around the Department of Public Safety Building?’
‘Gee, I’d dig that,’ Billy grinned.
‘Brad and I have to go back on duty though,’ she warned. ‘But somebody from Public Relations will take you on the grand tour.’
‘And if you give me your address, I’ll take you out to the Rockabye County Combat Club one day,’ Brad promised.
‘Boy. I’ll write it down for you,’ enthused Billy. ‘How about making it at your next Leatherslap?’
‘Why sure,’ Brad smiled. ‘I’ll do just that.’
On reaching the D.P.S. Building, the deputies first took Billy to be congratulated by Sheriff Jack Tragg, and then handed him over to the P.R. man assigned to show him around. Before seeing Billy off, Jack gave instructions that the police car which took the boy home should travel in ‘Code Three’ condition if not at emergency speed.
‘Let me have it,’ Jack ordered after the youngster left.
Quietly Brad told everything that happened on Trail Street and at the end of it, Jack nodded his approval.
‘Is it Plytas?�
� asked Alice.
‘Sure. A special agent from the F.B.I. flew in with the man from British Intelligence and brought a dossier on the Colismides’ gang. They arrived just after you left. Latent Prints compared the body’s with those of Plytas and they match.’
‘What’s the next move?’ asked Brad.
‘The P.R. will give the facts to the press and news services, and you’ll continue the same line as before,’ Jack replied. ‘Check your desk while I have Major Houghton-Rand brought up here to meet you.’
The same lab man was sitting at Alice and Brad’s desk when they entered, a cup of coffee in his hand. Tossing down a report he had been reading, he studied the deputies in a pained manner.
‘Why don’t you pair join the F.B.I.?’ he inquired. ‘They’re long on lab staff. You’ve given us enough work to last us for the next three weeks, not counting all the little odd chores the rest of your Office and the Detective Bureau drop on us.’
‘What’s with Sherlock here?’ asked Brad, glancing towards another deputy.
‘He’s embittered. Held a perfect six no-trumps hand, doubled and re-doubled. Only you pair sent him some work.’
Ignoring the suggestion that the lab staff played bridge during working hours, the technician took a sip at his coffee.
‘That’s why he comes up here,’ Brad guessed. ‘They say the Java down in S.I.B. tastes of chemicals.’
