The Drowning Pool

by Ross Macdonald

  “Yes. We should be there by midnight. We’re in the desert now. Tell the Chief, he’ll want to know.”

  “Okay, Mr. Archer.” The rasping mechanical voice took on a personal note of curiosity. “You take this Reavis?”

  “Keep it to yourself.”

  “Sure thing. You want a car to meet you?”

  “Not necessary. He couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag.”

  I hung up, to meet Reavis’s sullen glare. Back in the car, he went to sleep again.

  “Your friend seems very unhappy,” the boy Musselman said. “Is that a gun you’re carrying?”

  “It’s a gun.”

  “You wouldn’t be a mobster or something, Mr. Archer? I wouldn’t want—” He thought better of the sentence.

  “Something,” I said, “You wouldn’t want —?”

  “Augh, nothing.” He didn’t speak to me again for three hours. But he did his job, driving as if he loved it, pushing the long white headlights across the dry-sea floor. The road unrolled like ticker-tape under the wheels.

  It was just after midnight when we crossed the second mountain ridge and saw the distant lights of Nopal Valley. Our headlamps flashed on a black and yellow road-sign: Dangerous Grade: Trucks Use Lower Gear. We coasted down.

  “Feels like I’m landing a plane,” the boy said over his shoulder. Then he was silent, remembering his distrust of me and my gun.

  I leaned forward in my seat. Reavis had slipped far down, his arms and shoulders sprawled on the seat, his legs cramped under the dash against the floorboards. His body had given up, and he looked dead. For an instant I was afraid that he was dead, that all his life had run out through the wound in his ego. I couldn’t bear the thought, after the trouble I’d gone to.

  “Reavis,” I said. “Wake up. We’re almost there.”

  He moaned and grumbled, raised his heavy head, painfully uncoiled his long sluggish body. Suddenly the boy applied the brakes, throwing him against the windshield.

  I braced myself on the seat. “Watch it.”

  Then I saw the truck parked across the road near the foot of the slope. We traveled a couple of hundred feet with brakes screeching, and came to a jarring halt. The truck was lightless, driverless.

  “What do they think they’re doing?” the boy said.

  On one side the bank rose sharply, studded with boulders, and fell away on the other. No room to pass. A spotlight beam shot out from the side of the truck, wavered and found my windshield.

  “Back up,” I told the boy.

  “I can’t. I stalled her.” His entire body labored with the starter. The motor roared.

  “Douse the glim,” somebody yelled. “It’s him.” The spotlight winked out.

  The car shuddered backward a few feet and stalled again. “Christ, the brake!” the boy said to himself.

  A knot of men waded into our headlight beam: six or seven gunmen carrying their tools. I pushed Reavis aside and got out to meet them. They had handkerchiefs tied over their mouths. “What is this, the great stage robbery?”

  One of the handkerchiefs waggled: “Put your gun down, Jack. We want your prisoner is all.”

  “You’ll have to take him.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Jack.”

  I shot his gun arm, aiming for the elbow. Things were silent. The echo of the shot repeated itself in the narrow valley like a long low titter of despair.

  I said to Reavis, without looking at him: “Better run for it, Pat.”

  His feet scraped on the road behind me. The man I had shot sat down in the road with his gun between his legs. He watched the blood drip off his hand in the moonlight. The other men looked from him to me and back in a quick tense rhythm.

  “There are six of us, Archer,” one of them said uncertainly.

  “My gun holds seven rounds,” I said. “Go home.”

  Reavis was still behind me, uncomfortably still. “Beat it, Pat, I can hold them.”

  “The hell,” he said.

  His arm came around my neck and jerked me backwards. The faceless men came forward in a wave. I turned to grapple with Reavis. His face was a blur in the moonlight, but it seemed to me that the eyes and mouth were wet with satisfaction. I struck at them. His fist came into my face. “I warned you, man,” he said aloud.

  A blow on the back of the neck chilled me down to the toes. I broke away from Reavis and swung my gun at the front man. Its muzzle raked his cheek and tore the handkerchief loose from his face. He doubled over. The others moved into his place.

  “Hold your fire,” the man on the ground called out. “We only want the one.”

  Another blow fell from behind, where Reavis was, and I was out before I hit the road.

  I came back to consciousness unwillingly, as if I knew already what I would see. The boy was on his knees, a praying figure between me and the stars. The stars were in the same place in the sky, but they looked old and stale. I felt coeval with them.

  Musselman jumped like a rabbit when I sat up. He rose to his feet and leaned over me. “They killed him, Mr. Archer.” His voice was broken.

  I got up painfully, feeling dwarfed and despised by the mountains. “What did they do to him?”

  “They shot him, a dozen times or more. Then they poured gasoline on him and threw him down the bank and a match down after him. Was he really a murderer, like they said?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “Down there.”

  I followed him around the car and switched my spotlight on. The charred leavings of a man lay ten feet below the road in a circle of blackened sagebrush. I went to the other side of the road to be sick. The thin scrap of moon hung in a gap of the mountains, like lemon rind in a tall dark drink of Lethe. I brought up nothing but a bitter taste.

  chapter 17

  The man behind the wire partition was speaking into a hand mike in a cheerless monotone: “Car sixteen investigate reported assault corner Padilla and Flower. Car sixteen corner Padilla and Flower.”

  He switched off the microphone and drew on a wet cigarette. “Yes sir?” He leaned forward to look at me through his wicket. “You have an accident?”

  “It was no accident. Where’s the Chief?”

  “He’s out on a case. What’s the trouble?”

  “I called you around nine. Did Knudson get my message?”

  “Not me you didn’t call. I just come on at midnight.” He took another puff and scanned me impassively through the smoke. “What was this here message about?”

  “It should be logged. I called at five to nine.”

  He turned back the top sheet on his board and glanced at the one underneath. “You must of made a mistake. There’s nothing here between 8:45, a drunk on State, and 9:25, prowler over on Vista. Unless it was that prowler trouble?”

  I shook my head.

  “It wasn’t the sheriff’s branch office you called?”

  “I called here. Who was on the desk?”

  “Franks.”

  “He’s a detective. He wouldn’t be doing desk duty.”

  “He was filling in for Carmody. Carmody’s wife is going to have a baby. Now what about this call? Name?”

  “Archer. I’ll talk to Knudson.”

  “You the private dick in the Slocum case?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s out there now. I can call him.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll drive out. Is Franks around?”

  “Naw, he went home.” He leaned forward confidentially, crushing out his cigarette. “You want my honest opinion, Franks ain’t fit to handle this man’s job. He dropped the ball before now. Was the call important?”

  I didn’t say. An ugly shape was taking form in the dreary, austere room, hanging almost tangibly over my head. It dragged on me, slowing my footsteps as I went out to the car. Anger and fear took over when I got my hands on the wheel. I ran through two red lights on the way out of town.

  “We’re not going back there?” the boy said shakil
y.

  “Not yet. I have to see the Chief of Police.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s terrible. You tried to save him and he turned on you.”

  “He was stupid. He thought they were his friends. He didn’t have any friends.”

  “It’s terrible,” he said again, to himself.

  The veranda lights of the Slocum house were on, illuminating the massive walls, the clipped funereal lawn. It was a mausoleum banked with flowers and lit for company. The black police car at the foot of the terraces was fit for death to ride in, quietly and fast. I left the boy in the car and started up the walk. Knudson and Maude Slocum came to the front door together. They moved apart perceptibly when they recognized me. Mrs. Slocum stepped through the door alone, with her hand outstretched.

  “Mr. Archer! Police headquarters phoned that you were coming. Where in the world have you been?”

  “Too far. I could use a drink.”

  “Of course, come in.” She opened the door and held it for me. “You’ll make him a drink, won’t you, Ralph?”

  He glanced at her warningly—the hard and practiced glance of an old enemy, an old lover. “Glad to, Mrs. Slocum. What’s the good word, Archer?” His manner was cumbersome with a false friendliness.

  “The word is all bad.”

  I gave it to them over my drink, in the sitting-room where the Slocums had quarreled the night before and then made up. Mrs. Slocum had a bruise on her cheekbone, barely visible under a heavy coating of suntan powder. She wore a green wool dress which emphasized the luxury of her figure. Her eyes and mouth and temples were haggard, as if the rich hungry body had been draining them of blood. Knudson sat beside her on a chintz-covered settee. Unconsciously, as I talked, her crossed knees tilted toward him.

  “I caught up with Reavis in Las Vegas—”

  “Who told you he was there?” Knudson asked softly.

  “Legwork. I started back with him between six and seven, with a kid I hired to drive. At nine I called your headquarters from a gas stop in the desert, and told the desk to tell you I was coming.”

  “I didn’t get it. Let’s see, who was on the desk?”

  “Franks. He didn’t even bother to log the call. But he leaked the information to somebody else. Seven men stopped me on the Notch Trail, less than an hour ago. They used a truck for a roadblock. I shot one. Reavis thought the men were there to spring him, and he took me from behind. They knocked me out. Then they ventilated Reavis with a dozen slugs and gave him a gasoline barbecue.”

  “Please,” Maude Slocum said, her face closed like a death mask. “How horrible.”

  Knudson’s teeth tore at his thick lower lip. “A dirty lynching, eh? In twenty years in police work I never had a lynching to cope with.”

  “Save it for your memoirs, Knudson. This is murder. The boy in my car is a witness. I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”

  He stood up. Beneath his surface show of excitement, he seemed to be taking the thing much too easily. “I’ll do what I can. Notch Trail is out of my territory. I’ll call the sheriff’s office.”

  “Franks is your boy.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of that. Can you give me a description of these men?”

  “They were masked with handkerchiefs. They looked to me like local products, ranchhands or oilfield hoods. One of them has a bullet hole in the inside right elbow. I’d know two voices if I heard them again. The boy might tell you more.”

  “I’ll let the sheriff talk to him.”

  I stood up facing him. “You don’t sound very eager.”

  He saw my intention of forcing a showdown, decided to stall it off. “These outbreaks of mob violence are hard to deal with, you know that. Even if the sheriff does get hold of the men, which isn’t very likely, we’ll never get a jury to convict them. Mrs. Slocum was one of the town’s most respected citizens: you’ve got to expect some pretty raw feeling over her murder.”

  “I see. Mrs. Slocum’s death is murder now. And Reavis’s death is vigilante stuff, popular justice. You’re not that stupid, Knudson, and neither am I. I know a mob when I see one. Those killers were hired. Amateurs maybe, but they didn’t do it for fun.”

  “We won’t get personal,” he said in a heavy tone of warning. “After all, Reavis got what was coming to him. Amateur or not, the men that lynched him saved the state some money.”

  “You think he killed Mrs. Slocum.”

  “There isn’t any doubt of it in my mind. The medical examiner found marks on her back, subcutaneous hemorrhages where somebody pushed her. And the somebody seems to be Reavis. We found his cap about fifty feet from the pool, behind the trees that mask the filter system. That proves that he was there. He’d just lost his job: motive enough for a psycho. And immediately after the crime he skipped out.”

  “He skipped out, yes, but publicly and slowly. He thumbed a ride from me outside the gate, and stopped off at a bar for a couple of drinks.”

  “Maybe he needed a couple of drinks. Killers often do.”

  Knudson had the red and stubborn look of a man who had closed his mind. It was time to play the card I had been saving: “The timing is wrong. The earliest possible time that Marvell heard the splashing was twenty after eight. It was 8:23 exactly when I picked Reavis up, and it’s a mile or more from the pool to the gate.”

  Knudson showed his teeth. A faint reflection of the grimace passed over Maude Slocum’s face, which was intent on his. “Marvell is a very imaginative type,” he said. “I took another statement from him today, after he calmed down a bit. He couldn’t be certain when he heard the splash, or even if he heard a splash at all. It’s possible that Mrs. Slocum was murdered a full hour before he found her. There’s no way of establishing how long she was in the water.”

  “Still, I don’t think Reavis did it.”

  “What you don’t think isn’t evidence. I’ve given you the evidence, and it’s firm. Incidentally, it’s a little late for you to be telling me when you picked Reavis up, and going to bat for him. What happened, Archer, did he sell himself to you? I understand he was a very convincing guy.”

  I held my anger. “There are other things. They can wait till you’ve done your phoning.”

  With arrogant slowness, he took a cigar from his side pocket, asked the woman’s permission, bit off the end and dropped it in an ashtray, lit the cigar, blew out the match, puffed smoke in my direction. “When I need a door-knocker to tell me how to conduct my official work, I’ll send you a special-delivery letter.” He left the room, trailing cigar smoke; and came back from the hall immediately, holding Cathy Slocum by the arm. She twisted in his grasp. “Let me go, Mr. Knudson.”

  He dropped her arm as if she had struck at him. “I’m sorry, Cathy. I didn’t mean to be rough.”

  She turned her back on him and moved toward the door, her low-heeled white fur slippers scuffing the rug. Wrapped in a pink quilted robe, with her gleaming hair brushed down her back, she looked like a child. Knudson watched her with a curious, helpless expression.

  “Wait a minute, darling,” her mother said. “What are you doing up so late?”

  Cathy stopped inside the door, but refused to turn. Her satin-covered shoulders were stiff and obstinate. “I was talking to father.”

  “Is he still awake?”

  “He couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t either. We heard voices, and he sent me down to see who it was. Now may I go back to bed, please?”

  “Of course you may, dear.”

  “I’d like to ask Cathy a question,” I said. “Do you object, Mrs. Slocum?”

  She raised her hand in a maternal gesture. “The poor girl’s had to answer so many questions. Can’t it wait until morning?”

  “All it needs is a yes-or-no answer, and it’s a crucial question. Pat Reavis claimed her as an alibi.”

  The girl turned in the doorway. “I’m not a child, mother. Of course I can answer a question.” She stood with her feet apart, her
fists thrust deep into the pockets of her robe.

  “All right, dear. As you wish.” I got the impression that the mother was the one who usually gave in.

  I said to her: “Reavis claimed he came out here to see you last night. Was he with you before I found you in my car?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him since that trouble in Quinto.”

  “Is that all?” Knudson said.

  “That’s all.”

  “Come and kiss your mother goodnight,” Maude Slocum said.

  The girl crossed the room with an unwilling awkwardness and kissed her mother on the cheek. The older woman’s arms moved up around her. The girl stepped out of them quickly, and away.

  Knudson watched them as if he was unaware of the tension between them. He seemed to take a simple delight in the forced, loveless transaction of the kiss. He followed Cathy out of the room with a set smile on his face, the glowing cigar held cockily in the middle of the smile.

  I sat down on the settee beside Maude Slocum: “Reavis is sewed up tight. I see what Knudson meant.”

  “Are you still unsatisfied?” she asked me earnestly.

  “Understand me, Reavis means nothing to me. It’s the total picture that bothers me: there are big gaps in it. For example. Do you know a man by the name of Walter Kilbourne?”

  “More questions, Mr. Archer?” She reached for a silver cigarette box on the table beside her. Her hand, badly controlled, knocked the box to the floor. The cigarettes spilled out, and I started to pick them up.

  “Don’t bother,” she said, “please don’t bother. It doesn’t matter. Things in general seem to be going to pieces. A few cigarettes on the floor are the least of my worries.”

  I went on picking up the cigarettes. “What is the greatest of your worries? Is it still that letter you gave me?”

  “You ask so many questions. I wonder what it is that keeps you asking them. A passion for justice, a passion for truth? You see, I’ve turned the tables on you.”

  “I don’t know why you should bother to.” I set the full box on the table, lit her cigarette and one for myself.

  She drew on it gratefully. Her answer was visible, written in smoke on the air: “Because I don’t understand you. You have mind and presence enough for a better job, certainly one with more standing.”