The Desperate Hours

by Joeseph Hays

  The thought left Chuck Wright a little faint, his mouth dry, his palms moist. It left him knowing, though, that he had to get upstairs, all the way up to Mrs. Hilliard and the boy. And he could wait no longer.

  The basement steps were solid, and he could see clearly now. In the back hall, he heard, beyond the door leading into the den, the older man moving about. Chuck kept his gun on that door, twisting to back slowly up the rear stairway, one step at a time, not tense, his muscles responding automatically to his desire that he should be alert, ready, but not stiff with tension. In this way he moved until he felt safe to turn fully and continue up.

  The upstairs portion of the Hilliard house was not familiar to him. He crept down the hall, keeping his back close to the wall. A floorboard squeaked occasionally, but he disciplined himself not to stop on this account. He came to the open door of the front bedroom, the one on the southeast corner of the house, across the hall and stairwell from the one in which he judged Mrs. Hilliard was staying with the boy.

  He backed into the bedroom, recognizing it as Cindy’s, having no time for the surprise to reach him. With the gun held in front of him, he used his other arm to search behind. There was silence downstairs now and that quiet took on a sinister meaning in his mind. His hand found a door, then a knob. He edged the door open very slowly until he judged that he could step back and inside the closet. All the while his eyes remained on the bedroom door leading into the hall. Even when he was in the closet, concealed between the dresses with the faint perfume scent that was familiar to him, he kept his eyes and the gun on the hall door.

  He had not been there, silent, listening, for more than ten minutes when he heard that frightening voice from below, this time rising and falling in a savage sort of relief and glee and banked-down anger: “Here they come, Robish. There’s a taxi stopping out front.”

  From the top of the Wallings’ house, Jesse Webb had seen the taxi approaching from some distance. He wore again the yellow coverall and he had to keep busy, tightening the guy wires, stepping back to survey his work, returning to it. But he was conscious, with his stomach twisting, of the men deployed on the edge of the woods below, of the patrol cars down the street in both directions, of Carson across the roof surface from him, the studious young face watching him; he was aware, too, of Lieutenant Fredericks down below, eaten with that impatience of his, striding up and down the side lawn. When he spotted the taxi, Jesse glanced to make sure that the rifle was within reach on the far side of the pitch of roof. He called down the three prearranged words, and he could feel the alertness come into the others. Lieutenant Fredericks stopped walking, peered up at him. He was not scowling now. He even smiled once and lifted his hand in a sort of salute to Jesse Webb, a gesture that said, silently but crisply, I’m with you now, son. The decision’s made. Let’s hope it’s the right one. We’re in it together. Let’s get at it.

  Watching the cab, Jesse wanted to explain something to Lieutenant Fredericks, something that was strange and mystifying to Jesse Webb himself: that there was no personal grudge involved now, that he had not even thought of Uncle Frank’s withered arm for some time—although he was determined that this time Glenn Griffin would not shoot first and then be allowed to surrender—and that in some inexplicable way his sense of responsibility had shifted to this family of strangers in that house, to the man stepping out of the cab now, brief case in hand.

  Dan Hilliard stood with his back to the house, paying the driver. Then, with no hesitation whatever, without a heaved sigh or any discernible reluctance, he walked toward his own side door. Hilliard was, Jesse noted, a larger man than he had thought, big of shoulder, those shoulders square and set now, not sloping, no longer with that haggard droop in them. Hilliard paused, knocked. The door opened. The house swallowed him.

  Jesse could not see the Hilliard garage from his position, so he decided to mount the ladder again, bringing himself higher above the roof where he could command a view of the entire Hilliard house and yard. First, he moved the rifle within reach of his right arm. And as he stared down now at the silent ordinary-looking house, and the wind whipped at his face, cut through his body, he felt a throb as of an old wound. Here he was now, at the time and place he could not have pictured but toward which he had looked forward ever since the first report came two full days ago. Here he was and he was not thinking of Uncle Frank’s arm or even of Kathleen now that she was safe and out of it, but of the look on Dan Hilliard’s face in his office when Jesse Webb introduced himself. Silently he cursed the men who had brought that expression to the face of another human being. They would not get away with it. You couldn’t let them get away with that.

  The longing to know what was happening, what was being said and done in that house at this moment, made him grip the rungs of the ladder and bring his long body full against it, made him feel the effort to pry his eyes away like a twist of pain behind his forehead. What were they doing? The girl wasn’t with Hilliard. He had the money, but he also had that empty gun. What the hell was going on in there?

  Here they come, Robish. There’s a taxi stopping out front. Chuck Wright wondered then if he had waited too long. When he heard Mrs. Hilliard moving in the bedroom across the hall, heard her mumbled instructions to Ralphie, heard that bedroom door close and the lock turn, Chuck came out of the closet, stepped to the hall door, then paused, listening to the swift muffled flutter of Mrs. Hilliard’s footsteps descending the stairs. She was down there now; he was no longer between the men and the family. The family was split up now and he had allowed it to happen.

  They, Griffin had said. That would be Mr. Hilliard and Cindy. Cindy, too. The urgency pulled at his leg muscles but a sick shrinking inside now answered his question: He should have acted when the two men were down there alone.

  With a savage inward gesture, he pushed all that aside and stepped, with extreme caution, to the banister. There was still the chance that, if they started to move too fast, he could go down the back stairs, use the one weapon, surprise, that could mean as much as the gun in his moist palm. Whatever he did now, though, he must do in one headlong spurt without too much careful thought.

  Down below then, the high-pitched and oddly empty voice: “Where’s the redhead, Hilliard?”

  Struck with disbelief, Chuck took a breath, held it. He couldn’t hear Mr. Hilliard’s low-voiced reply—it was a mutter —but a gladness sang in Chuck Wright, deep down, under all thought and tension. At once he was ashamed of it, but he couldn’t stifle it. It didn’t seem possible, but Cindy was not in the house. Chuck tried to dry his palms on his trouser legs and then took a firmer grasp on the automatic.

  “He’s lying,” Robish said. “It’s a Goddamn trick.”

  “The dough’s all here,” Griffin announced, and he sounded bewildered, or surprised, at the feel or sight of it. “Too late for tricks now, Pop.” And some of the light-hearted excitement returned to his tone. “We’re on our way. Only just one more thing, Hilliard. I don’t like the way you’re staring at me. Lay off, see. Put your hands up. Up! Let’s see what you’re carrying.”

  Chuck Wright, straining, listened. Easy now, he told himself again. Not yet, not yet.

  With his hands lifted, legs apart, eyes dead ahead, Dan Hilliard felt Glenn Griffin’s gun working and probing cruelly along his sore ribs while the other hand went through his pockets. He didn’t jump when the gun muzzle found the sore spot. He didn’t flinch when, with a low whistle of amazement and narrowing of rage in his anxious eyes, Glenn Griffin stood back, the deputy’s .38 in his hand.

  “You bastard,” Glenn Griffin said then, and the tone made Dan Hilliard wince inside with an ironic satisfaction. In his astonishment and anger, Griffin was not examining the gun.

  Dan saw the gun going up then, swinging high and sideways; he heard Eleanor’s stifled shriek at his side; then he felt the muzzle across his cheekbone. It took a long moment for him to taste blood. He still had not moved. A tooth began to throb. He could feel the muscles of his f
ace leaping.

  “Say something!” Glenn Griffin shouted, and the tone brought the sweat cold to Dan’s leg and arms under the coat. “Don’t just stand there! What’d you expect to do with this thing?”

  Still Dan Hilliard didn’t answer; he felt the blood along the cheek, inside and out, and he felt Eleanor leaning slightly against him, not weeping but small sounds escaping her. Those sounds, more than the leaping pain, caused Dan Hilliard to keep his eyes on the unloaded gun.

  “Give me that,” Robish said, stepping in. “Give me it and let’s blow. You got the dough. What’re we waiting for?”

  But the gun Robish wrenched from Glenn Griffin’s hand was not the one Dan Hilliard had brought into the house. Robish held the loaded gun.

  “Griffin, snap out of it!” Robish bellowed. “We gotta move!”

  In the hallway above, having heard the ugly smash of metal against human flesh, Chuck Wright had to grip the banister with his left hand to keep himself from plunging down the stairs. The gun’s on Mr. Hilliard, he growled silently. You can’t move. Hold it. That’s an order.

  At the same time he felt caught in the grip of his own helplessness, uselessness. No matter what he did, or how, one of those guns—for there were two now—would be turned on one of the Hilliards.

  “Get the kid,” Griffin said. “Hilliard, the kid and your old lady are going for a ride. Any objections?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Hilliard said, and Glenn Griffin laughed shortly.

  But he listened, too, as Mr. Hilliard explained why—in a low murmur, steady and cold, which Chuck Wright could not make out—and then Mr. Hilliard’s voice rose a notch: “If you don’t want that to happen, Griffin—if you’ve got enough sense to see that I can put a damper on everything for you and get that hired killer nabbed—you’d better take me. Only me.”

  “Listen who’s telling us what,” Robish snarled, with a terrible impatience behind the words.

  “Wait a minute, Robish,” Griffin’s voice said anxiously. “Maybe the guy’s got-”

  “Nothing! That’s what he’s got. Tell him to stuff it! What the hell do I care what happens to your cop? It’s my skin now. We’re wasting time. Christ, those woods out there might be full of Feds for all we know. I’m moving. The kid and the woman!”

  Chuck Wright realized, not quite too late, that Robish was lumbering toward the stairway. He wheeled, stepping in three long strides into the room, Cindy’s room, across the hall from the locked door. He brought the Japanese automatic up and stood flattened against the inside wall of the room as the heavy feet pounded up the carpeted stairs.

  Now? Now, when his back’s to you and he’s trying the door, twisting the knob angrily? One of them now, and fast, and take your chances with the one downstairs?

  But they’re not your chances, Chuck. They’re Mr. Hilliard’s. And his wife’s. The helplessness was a dead weight in him now while he heard Robish’s low mutter of rage and insistence, and then behind it, in the bedroom, the faint but definite voice of the child, crying. Those sobs came to him above the other sounds.

  Then Robish stopped. Chuck took one chance. He eased his head around the door frame, took a look at the heavy head sunken between the steady rise and fall of massive shoulder, the enormous body facing the closed door with indecision.

  What are you waiting for? All you have to do is tighten your finger, pull that trigger, but be careful now to aim high because of the boy beyond. What are you waiting for, Chuck?

  He heard from below a few more words: “Had it all doped, didn’t you, Hilliard?” And now a current of amusement ran liquidly under the voice: “Thought we could make a deal, did you, Pop? You’re getting pretty brave, ain’t you?” Then the tone dropped, changed: “Maybe you better tell me what’s happened to Flick then, Pop. Why he didn’t call me this morning? You better tell me now, Pop, ’cause pretty soon you’re not going to be talking, see? See?” There was a small screech-sound at the end, betraying the fright.

  Pull the trigger, Chuck! Mr. Hilliard’s going to die anyway unless you can-

  But Chuck Wright was not prepared for what happened then. He watched Robish step back, the shoulders still heaving, and he saw him lift his foot.

  Although the jolt of the kick shook the whole frame of the door, the lock held, the hinges held. Behind the door the boy’s sobs stuttered off into whimpers. Spitting an oath then, Robish stepped back and kicked again. This time the wood cracked like the report of a rifle. The violence of the sound seemed to stir the big man, and then he was kicking again and again, a low laugh exploding deep in his bowels, and the wood splintered and shredded and broke with deafening reverberations through the house.

  “Robish!” Griffin shouted from below. “Robish, you Goddamned fool! No noise! No racket now!”

  The last words were spoken as Glenn Griffin himself tore up the stairs. The handsome head appeared before Chuck Wright could draw himself back into the room, but Griffin did not see him because he kept screeching at Robish in that high-pitched and terrible voice, “No noise! You want to wake up the neighborhood? No noise, you dumb sonofabitch!”

  Now Chuck was safe behind the door frame. But he couldn’t wait. The men, both of them, were upstairs. Both of them, facing each other at the head of the stairs. It was the break he’d been hoping for, and now that it had come, he wasted no time whatever. He thought, as he shoved his head around the door, that he heard the front door open and close. He couldn’t be sure of this, but the wonder of it—and the incredibility—held him rigid there a moment before he fired.

  It may have been that split second of time that defeated him. He saw Glenn Griffin’s gun coming up at him, and he swung his own gun to the right, just a little, and fired, expecting to hear the explosion from Glenn Griffin’s gun, but feeling only the jolt along his own arm. The dry stench of gunpowder reached him, and he was in the jungle again, sure of himself, all thought erased, only the moment here and now, immediate. He saw Glenn Griffin dropping or flinging himself down on the stairs. Chuck brought the automatic up again, all very fast now, all sudden and precise, but not quite precise enough because the big man’s mind worked slowly but his instincts were sure. Chuck saw the spurt from Robish’s hand, saw it even in the brilliant sunlight, and he fired once again himself, at the big man, knowing in the thunder that, for some reason, he had missed this time. The reason came to him then as he felt himself clawing at the wall, heard his own gun clattering to the floor, and felt, for the first time, and with surprise, the impact of the bullet against his chest. As yet, even when the first wave of blackness broke over him, there was no pain, but he knew the pain was coming. It always came.

  Even then, slumped down inside the room, wondering a little at the wetness around his chest, he knew what would happen now, knew that the big man would step into the room and finish the job. This didn’t seem so important, though. It was really strange. There was something so much more important. He had failed. He hadn’t even hit the big man. Everything had gone wrong and it was his fault.

  He heard then—from an echoing distance—what he took to be footsteps descending the stairs. But this was not possible. He didn’t believe this.

  Then the burning came, as he knew it would, blanking his mind, forcing him to concentrate on the searing fire deep inside until the black wave broke over him and carried him down.

  Robish plunged down the stairs, tripping over Glenn Griffin but not falling, muttering fiercely. In the hall he brought himself to a halt, his little yellow-green eyes wild. Dan Hilliard waited, the despair packed solid in him now, knowing that his impulse of a few seconds before had saved Eleanor but that Robish would kill him and that Ralphie was still upstairs.

  When Glenn Griffin had rushed up the stairs to stop Robish’s attack on the bedroom door, Dan Hilliard had seen his chance, perhaps the one chance left to him, and he had unlocked and opened the front door; without a word, he had pushed Eleanor through it. She was no sooner outside than the three shots exploded above, and she had paused, tur
ning instinctively, breathing one word: “Ralphie.” Dan had shouted at her in the echoing thunder: “It’s not Ralphie, it’s not Ralphie! Run!” The very savagery of his reassurance had sent her running, but when Dan himself had closed the door and started toward the stairs, he had been sure that, up above, one of those three shots had killed his son. The sight of Glenn Griffin slumping slowly down on the stairs above had stopped him, held him in the hall; he expected to see the figure slide down the steps, but instead it was Robish who stepped over the fallen man and came tripping and cursing and lunging down like a great maddened bear.

  Finally he made out a few of the words that Robish muttered to him: . . wise sonofabitch … got the cops, anyways … smart double-cross … bastard . .

  Dan listened, his eyes on Robish’s clutched gun, not understanding the words. What had the police to do with what had happened up there?

  Then, like a swift jolt of electric current up and down his whole body, he heard a voice, from above, a tentative but uninjured voice, no pain in it: “Dad? Dad?”

  “Stay there, Ralphie,” Dan called. “It’s all right!”

  “All right,” Robish echoed hollowly, but he did not move; he seemed to have no idea how to move. “You sneaked a copper in-” The words seemed to give him the impetus; Dan saw the idea seep upwards in the man, finally reach those opaque eyes. Robish charged to the front door, flung it open heedlessly, driven by fear and rage.