Call Me Killer (Prologue Crime)

by Harry Whittington

  Milligan looked at the evidence on the Lambart case piled on his desk, evidence that didn’t agree with the things Barney Manton was saying. He supposed that now it was all scraps of paper, even though he didn’t see how he could stop working on it, despite all Manton said, and still live with his own conscience.

  “I don’t know it all,” Milligan said drily. ‘If you want it published — ” he walked back around his desk and sat down. “Get it from Mr. Manton while the newsmen are still here. By the way, Barney, what about those two you arrested, Mrs. Elsa Gowan and Hal Slimer? What are we to do with them?”

  Barney Manton waved his hand. He knew he looked heroic with that turban of bandages around his head. He suspected the nurse had made it purposely.

  “Let ‘em go,” he said largely. ‘Tell ‘em to stay in town, and keep their noses clean. The thing is almost over, but we’ll need ‘em as witnesses. That’s all.”

  Milligan nodded and pressed the buzzer On his desk. As Manton talked to the Commissioner and the press, Milligan gave the order releasing Barney’s prisoners, Mrs. Gowan and Hal Slimer.

  “I won’t bore you with a lot of the details,” Barney Manton was saying. “It was like this — and you fellows will want to play down this angle, since Lambart was pretty well revered in the City — Lambart was mixed up with Gowan’s wife.” He looked at the Commissioner. “I guess you could even say there was nothing to it as far as Mr. Lambart and Mrs. Gowan were concerned. But this Gowan was jealous. He went off his nut, shot Lambart and returned home.

  “I won’t say too much now. Just that I have witnesses every step of the way, from the murder room into Gowan’s home. I traced his path, and found where he had foolishly tried to dispose of the murder weapon, a .32 automatic of popular make — those fellows don’t like you to name their guns when they’ve been used in murders, and I also found the coat he was wearing. Blood stains on the coat will be proved to belong to Ross Lambart.”

  “Will that be enough to hold him, convict him?” the Commissioner asked. There was no doubt implied in his voice. He was asking for the benefit of the press.

  “That would be enough, sir. But I’ve still an ace in the hole. But I don’t mind having it published. This Gowan was such a low rat that he was not above robbery. You know, his defense might try to say he was driven temporarily insane by jealousy. Well, he wasn’t so jealous that he didn’t rob Ross Lambart after he killed him.”

  “How do you know that?” Milligan demanded across the desk.

  “Leg work, sir.” There was contempt in Manton’s tone as he replied. “I found out that on the afternoon of April 25th, Ross Lambart wrote a voucher for $1000 against the charity of which he was head, fie deposited it nowhere, so it is safe to say he was carrying it with him when he was murdered. That money has not yet been found, but I know that I’ll find it on Sam Gowan, and that money will cook him!”

  15

  IT’S UP to you, now, Sam told himself. She got in this mess trying to help you. Only God Himself could have helped her if she’d missed Manton with that bottle back in her room. Or if Manton ever got his hands on her again.

  He looked at her. Clearly, she was frightened. But it was as plain that Marion trusted him to get them out of this. He smiled as the sleek Buick purred out onto Mission under his sweating hands. She had done all she could, at least he could match her effort. The dashlight played across her. The radio blared into sudden life.

  Marion closed her fingers on his arm.

  “Slow, Sam. Take it slow. We’ve only Helen Dugan’s driver’s license between us.”

  She tuned down the radio so that the music of some string orchestra caressed them. They tried to relax against the cushions of the comfortable car.

  Sam kept his eyes forward. They were moving through a business district. A theatre was lighted up boasting two cowboy thrillers and the tenth chapter of a stupendous serial. There were dress shops, closed, their windows bright, and dimly lighted markets, ten cent stores. An open street car clanged by them going in the opposite direction.

  He kept both hands on the wheel. But the faint smile continued to play across his mouth. My God, he thought, I feel like a human being again. For the first time in ten years — at least for the first time that I remember.

  He felt Marion slide nearer to him. Her cheek rested against his shoulder.

  “You know something,” he said softly. The pulse in his throat moved. Maybe David had talked this way to her, but he was Sam now — with Sam’s habits from a dull and prosaic life. “You know what I wanted — back there in our room. I wanted you.”

  “You were reading my mind,” she assured him. After a moment, she laced the fingers of both her hands over his arm, and whispered, “Don’t you know, David, you’ve always got me?”

  “That isn’t what I mean,” he heard himself saying. “I want you — in a way we’ll never forget, either one of us!”

  “I’ve never forgotten anything,” she said. “It’s been so lonely — so awful with you gone, after I’d had you — ”

  “I can’t get you out of my mind,” he said. “That’s all I’m thinking about. Maybe Manton is back there behind us — maybe he’s got the police looking for us. I don’t know where we’re going — whether we’re going to Fisherman’s Cove, or whether we’re going to drive through to San Ortnec — ”

  She’d pulled her slender body as tightly against him as she could get, and her head was against the back rest. He could see her reflected in the windshield, her brown skirt awry above her smooth knees, the soft upthrust of her breasts against his arm, the clean line of her throat with the light from the dashboard across it.

  She held to his arm and talked softly to the top of the car. “Let’s go to the Cove, David. Tom surely ‘phoned ahead. His friend will be waiting for us.”

  “But do you even know his name?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we drive to San Ortnec, we can sell the car there, and catch a plane,” he said.

  “We can’t sell this car now, David.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’d have to sign over the title. Our names are on it Don’t you think the police have already broadcast our names? We’ll never get away if we try to sell it. They’d get us. I don’t want that.”

  “What are we going to do for money?”

  “I don’t know, darling.” She pressed against him. “But we can’t sell this car. In fact, we ought to get rid of it as soon as we can.”

  He looked at her. “What do you want me to do? Steal one? My God, Marion. I’m not going to park this thing, and drive off in somebody else’s car.”

  “They’ll catch us if we don’t, David.”

  He patted her hands laced on his arm. “They’re not going to catch us, baby. Not after we’ve come this far.”

  “Then we’ve got to get rid of this car.” She sat up and looked at him. “It’s the police I’m afraid of. They may stop us any moment now. They’ll surely stop us before we get out of town. If we do manage to slip through, they’ll radio ahead to every hamlet along the road to San Ortnec — or Fisherman’s Cove.”

  He began to sweat. “We can’t be caught now, Marion. What can we do? Where can we go?”

  She shook her head. He felt the movement against his arm. She shivered slightly. He felt that shiver all the way through him.

  “You’re the doctor, Marion. What do we do? I can’t think.”

  “Keep driving,” she said. “At least for a little while. But when we hit the highway south, if there’s a roadblock, turn off before you get to it. No matter what else, we can’t be stopped. And we’ve got to get rid of this car before daylight.”

  He looked at the fuel indicator. “Well, there’s plenty of gas, anyway.”

  “It isn’t gas we need, my sweetheart. It’s help. And we need it bad.”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, God.”

  She sat up. “What is it?”

  He nodded toward the red blinkers in the center of the st
reet ahead.

  “Turn east,” she directed, “they’ll probably send a cop after us, but turn anyway.”

  “If it’s a dead end street?”

  “Stop worrying about things like that,” she laughed hollowly. “We’re in trouble enough without that.”

  He tooled the big car easily left into a winding drive. He laughed sharply.

  “We’re through, Marion,” he said. “You know where this thing goes, don’t you?”

  “It can’t go far,” she replied. “It’s not much of a mountain, is it?”

  “Well, we knew they wouldn’t throw up a roadblock anywhere there was a way around it.”

  She shrugged. “Keep driving, darling,” she said. He looked at her. She was smiling.

  “What in God’s name is there to smile about?” he demanded.

  “You. I’m with you.”

  “A short life,” he said.

  “And a merry one. What do you want to get old for?”

  “I’d liked to have grown old with you,” he said seriously. ‘I’m no good at things like this. I guess I’m just a guy wants to have a home somewhere and be loved. By you. In a place far away from here. We could have sat under a tree. We could have had grapes. And when we got tired of grapes, we could walk around in ‘em, and make wine.”

  She smiled. “And then you’d get drunk and beat me. Or you’d begin to wonder what was going on back up here.”

  He looked at her again. “I’d make you love me until I forgot about it,” he said.

  “Yes. For a little while. And then you’d have hated me. You’d wished you had never seen me.”

  He looked out of his window. The car line had ended. The houses, more widely spaced now, were built almost flush with the street, terraced high above it with stone blocks. Beyond, he could see the bowl of the bay, ink black and spotted with the feeble lights of small craft, ringed by the brightness of Inland City on the far side, with mountains steep and dark as a feudal wall in the background. And the car, sending its probing headlights ahead to open the narrowing corridor ahead of them, continued quick-turning on the sharpening curves as it climbed. There were no more houses, and a stone wall had been piled a foot or two high as embankment against the sheer drop into the bay. There was a wagon trail slicing through a grove of stubby pines, and into this, Sam maneuvered the Buick. Against a rock-walled rim overlooking the Bay, he threw the engine out of gear, Snapped off the lights, and cut the ignition.

  “Roll up your window,” he said. He turned up his own glass, locked his door. He watched her lock hers. “Well, we’ve come to a pretty pass, haven’t we?”

  She put her arms about his neck. “You did beautifully, darling. You did just what I’d have done if I’d been driving. I might have hurried it a little, that’s all.”

  His mouth covered hers hungrily. They forgot everything in the world but each other. They’d run as far as they could run. They’d made their fight. All that was left to them was each other. His hands trembling, he pulled her clothes from her, slowly, lingeringly, whispering that he wanted to see her, he hated night, and wished they could turn on the dash lights. Her body was feverishly warm under his hands. In a moment, she was lying on the seat with her head at the steering wheel, her hair free and black across the width of the cushion.

  She was wild. Moving against him, she was at once sweetly wicked and wantonly heavenly. He thought fleetingly that more than ever now he doubted that he’d ever lived with her as any David Mye. No man, he told himself, ever had such a paradise-in-hell and forgot it. There were no such mental quirks.

  Her teeth were sunk into the soft flesh of his shoulder. He might never have known she bit him, he had no idea even how long they’d lain there, spent, replenished, but unyielding. There was a sharp, searing glare of red light across his shoulder outside the right window.

  She saw it as he did.

  He went cold, relaxed. The police, he thought, they did send somebody. He sprang up, spinning Marion out from beneath the wheel with one hand. He fell in under it.

  He switched on the ignition as he moved. But by now, she’d put her cool fingers on his trembling arm.

  “It’s all right, David,” she whispered.

  “I’m getting us out of here,” he said. “If I have to run over him.

  “It’s nobody,” she told him.

  His breathing subsided. She was laughing softly. “It was nobody, my wonderful angel. In your excitement, you stepped down on the brake pedal. We saw the rear light”

  “I couldn’t have!”

  “But you did.”

  “Way over here? I couldn’t have.” His heart was still pounding, but bowing to her cool logic, he touched the Drake pedal with his toe. The red light flared again. Not so frighteningly this time, but surely.

  He sank against the seat. “Well, that’s that for tonight It’ll take me ten years to ever want you again.”

  She lay her cheek against his bare arm. “You’ll get over it before that,” she teased.

  • • •

  By daybreak, they reached the fishing camp on the bay side of the mountain. They left the car with keys in the ignition. They had clambered down the narrow trail to the edge of the water, sending out small avalanches of rocks and stones before them.

  There was an elderly man out on the end of the little pier. He stared at them as they came across the brown sand of the littered beach.

  At the approach to the catwalk wharf, there were morning papers for sale with a cigar box of change on top. Headlines screamed: POLICE DRAGNET OUT FOR MURDER PAIR. Promise Early Arrest of Lambart Slayer and Moll. Robbery Motive Revealed. $1000 Taken From Dead Man.

  Sam bought two of the papers and was staring at the headlines. Marion preceded him out to the end of the pier where the old man still stood leaning against the railing, regarding them silently.

  “Hello, Mister,” Marion said. “Could you run us down to the pass at Fisherman’s Cove?”

  “Well, reckon that wouldn’t be hard, Miss. Cost you four five dollars…. apiece.”

  “All right.” She fished in her purse and handed him a ten dollar bill.

  She turned to Sam. “Come on, darling. It’s going to be all right. We’ll be in Fisherman’s Cove in an hour — ”

  “Might take two hours,” reckoned the old man.

  “I can’t go,” Sam said. “Marion, listen to me. I know I didn’t kill Ross Lambart. I don’t know who did, yet — or why. But I know this: I’ve got to go back!”

  16

  “DAVID!” Marion ran back to him on the wharf. She caught his arms in her tense fingers. “David, have you gone completely mad? How far do you think you could get? Who do you think would listen to you?”

  “But if I run away like this — ”

  “If you run away, you can live and breathe and go free. You’re guilty of no crime, darling. But no one will ever believe that. I tell you, not even the people who loved you best, and owed you most, doubt for a minute that you killed Ross Lambart.”

  “But I didn’t. And if I run away, I admit I’m guilty — I can never come back.”

  “Would you come back, David? Would you ever want to?”

  He looked at her. The sun cut a bright swath behind her across the placid bay and lighted up the curling ends of her black hair. He shook his head. “Probably not — but if we run away, I never can come back. That’s different.”

  “It’s no different! You’ve seen Barney Manton, and I promise you all the rest of them are no different. You mustn’t let them get you in their hands again.”

  “I’ll always be afraid.”

  She released him and stepped back. “Remember last night, David? When we had run as far as we could run? When there was nothing else we could do to save ourselves? We still had each other!

  “You can go back, David — and we’re lost forever. Or you can go with me, and keep going until we can find freedom and decency and a little human kindness. And no matter what else — we’ll always have each other.”


  • • •

  Everytime the small inboard motor boat passed near other craft, it bobbled crazily in the choppy waves. There was the strong smell of oil, gasoline fumes and burning paint about the round bellied old whale launch.

  The old man sat stolidly up forward. His eyes were fixed on the open sea through the pass and he did not even glance toward the stern where Marion sat close against Sam’s shoulder.

  Something was happening inside him, and Sam sensed it. He’d had no warning of the break — at least no sign that he could read — last November. He had blanked out. And even when he’d come out of it, brought back by the shock of seeing Lambart dead and bloody before him — a shock of greater intensity than the awful tensions that had driven him into the breakdown — even then, he had not been well. Sam knew that now.

  For, sitting there with Marion close beside him, knowing that for the first time in his life he had found the one woman God must have intended for him alone, Sam felt sure of himself. Not since the police had beaten the will, the spirit and the urge to self-respect out of him in his boyhood had he really ever been whole and completely well.

  He knew, sitting there, that he had sneaked through the past ten years, working at a job that demanded nothing but stupid conforming to rules laid down by other unwell, frightened minds.

  Never daring to talk back, never daring to lift his voice, or to assert himself in any manner. Obeying, with a cur-like cringing. Going through a life with Elsa that wasn’t a life at all, but some sort of existence of denial, sanctioned by Church, Law and Society because it sold electric refrigerators and installment loans and cheap cars.

  But since last night, since those wonderful hours in Marten’s arms, he had been sensing the qualitative change that was coursing through his body like vigorous, fresh new blood.

  No longer was there need to listen in awe and doubt and rueful envy to the story of the life that David Mye had led for six months. In a way David Mye had been well, more whole than the Sam Gowan he had been running from. David Mye had had something of the kid in him that Sam had been: the ideals, the hot temper, the feeling of self assurance and pride that Sam had possessed at nineteen.