A Killer is Loose (13 page)

“Yes,” he said. “That was beautiful, Joan. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful piece?”

She nodded, swallowed, flipped her damp curls back, and started to climb down off the bench.

“Play it again,” he said.

She stood there, half off the bench, and looked at him, and the tears began to come.

“Hurry up,” he said. “I want to hear it again. Just play the piano.”

She worked herself back onto the bench and sat there with the tears beginning to spring out of her eyes and trickle along her cheeks. She turned and looked over at me and I looked at the floor.

“Isn’t that a wonderful thing, Steve?” he said. “The way she plays that?”

“Yes. But maybe she’s tired.”

“I’m tired,” she said. “Please, I’m tired. Mommy—”

“Play it again, Joan,” he said. “You’re not tired, you know you’re not. Why, who could be tired? Are you tired, pal?” he said, turning to look at me.

“Yes.”

“Imagination.”

“I’m tired,” she said. “Mommy will be home, and she—”

“Come on, Joan. Play me the piano. Play ‘Dancing in the Dark,’ Joan.”

She glanced over at me again and I nodded. Please, little girl, I thought, play the piano until your fingers are bloody. Don’t stop for anything. Not until he says so.

So she began to play again and it went on and on and on. She would stop and look at him and he would grin and she would begin again. It was pretty awful to watch. Finally it got so she was missing notes steadily, all the time. But it didn’t seem to matter to him any more. Just so long as she played. He sat there watching her and once in a while he would nod his head when it sounded especially good to him. He didn’t look at all tired.

The little girl kept playing and she was sagging over the keyboard now. She was crying and sobbing and playing all the notes cockeyed. You could hear her sobs ring out right along with the tune.

“Look, Ralph,” I said. “Let’s go. Let the poor kid stop playing.” I thought, Maybe if I treat him just like a regular guy … But I had tried that. It didn’t work.

“No,” he said. “Go sit down.”

“But, Ralph—”

“Take it easy. I want to hear her play.”

She heard our voices and stopped playing.

“Play,” Angers said kindly.

She shook her head, staring down at the keyboard. She was shaking all over and you could tell she could hardly sit up on the bench.

Angers rose, lifted the gun, and slammed it down on the top of the piano. She wailed still louder.

“Play!” he shouted. “Play that piano!”

I was on my feet, moving toward him. I couldn’t help it. “Hey, Ralph!” I shouted.

He turned toward me slowly, not startled, and I went right on talking, but not shouting now, talking as calmly as I could.

“What about your hospital, Ralph? There isn’t much time. They’re trying to stop you, and if you want to show them they’re wrong, you’d better get busy on the hospital.”

He walked toward me. His eyes showed nothing. Then he said, “Right, pal, we’d better get going. I want to phone a real-estate office.”

The little girl sat there on the piano bench.

He went over and picked up the roll of blueprints. He looked at her.

“Thank you, Joan,” he said. “It was beautiful.”

She didn’t look up. He motioned to me and we walked on out of the room and out of the house.

There wasn’t a sound. Just the wind blowing in the pines up there.

W
E WERE IN THE SIDE YARD
, walking toward the street, when a car turned in the drive and came along by the other side of the house. It stopped by the front door and the door flew open and the little girl ran down the steps screaming.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

A woman ran from the car and knelt down and the little girl was in her arms.

“Hurry up,” Angers said. “Over here.”

“Where?”

“The house there.”

He kept nudging me along across the lawn, through bushes and trees, then across another spreading lawn. It was the house right next door to where we’d been. It was just as large a place as the other. It was dark. There were no lights at all.

I kept trying to angle my way, so I could maybe jump him and get hold of that Luger. But he wasn’t taking any more chances, like back there in the car. And he was fast, alert. He always had his eye on me. Maybe I was his pal and all that, but suspicion lurked in that brain, I felt sure.

I knew that now the little girl would tell her mother everything and the place would be crawling with cops. It was a big break. I figured it was, anyway.

The only trouble was, I didn’t want to die. You get like that. I was so scared I was living it that way, straight up.

We were over by this house now. ‘Way back, through the trees, we saw lights come on at the other house, blink, blink, blink, as somebody walked through rooms and threw switches. Maybe they thought we were still in the house.

“It’s closed up,” Angers said.

“What?”

“The house, pal. It’s all shuttered, see?”

He was right. Whoever owned the place was probably up North. All the windows were shuttered and the grass needed cutting, too. It was a three-storied house.

“We’ll go in there,” he said.

I thought about how the law might be around here as soon as those people put in an alarm. It was all right. Actually, it didn’t matter, because I was sure he’d get his way.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He grinned at me and said, “That’s better, Steve. I like to hear you talk that way. You were pulling against me for a while there, weren’t you?”

“It was that poor little girl.”

“I don’t mean that. She’s all right, anyway.”

“Well, Lillian, when she—”

“Forget it, Steve. Let’s just go in here. Maybe we can find some clean clothes. They’ve probably left lots of things in the house.”

“How we going to get in?”

“Hell, I don’t know.”

We went over by the door and he tried it. It was locked, naturally, and we stood there a while. He was thinking, or at least it seemed that way.

“You know,” he said, “she could really play that piano. It always gets me when I hear that tune. Always, pal. I can’t stand it. It’s like all the good things that ever happened to me are coming into my head. I remember all sorts of things when I hear that tune. And they’re all good things. It kind of wrings me out. It’s almost like sleeping. I feel as though I’ve just had a good night’s sleep.”

It was all right with me if he wanted to stand here on the porch. I could still see that little girl playing the piano. It was something I would always remember.

I laughed out loud.

“What’s the matter, pal?”

“Nothing, just thinking.” I was thinking how I was in this now, right now. I had thought once that things couldn’t get any worse. It goes to show you.

He walked over across the porch, kind of looked sideways at me, waiting for me to come along, too. I went along. He looked at the windows. They were shuttered. He tried one and the shutter came open. That’s the kind of luck they have. A madman’s luck.

“Well,” he said. “Let’s see, here.”

He opened the shutters all the way. They were cobwebbed. He tried the window and it was locked. So he reached out with the gun, and
clunk
, the pane shattered and tinkled onto the porch floor at our feet. It was all done in a single gesture.

“Well,” he said. He reached inside and unsnapped the catch and slid the window up. It didn’t stick; it went up real easy.

“Pick up the broken glass there, Steve. Toss it inside the house.”

He looked at me as I hesitated. Then I picked up the glass and tossed it inside. It didn’t make any noise when it hit in there. It was like throwing it into dark air and having it vanish.

“O.K.,” he said. “Let’s go in. Go ahead.”

I went in and he came through after me, fast.

“Now, this isn’t any good,” he said. “We aren’t going to be able to see.”

“Not very well,” I said, thinking that maybe this was my chance.

“Well,” he said.

We stood there for a while, like that. Light from the street light lit up the room very dimly, but that was all. If I moved, he’d be able to see it.

“We’ve got to have a light,” he said. “That’s all there is to it. Now, Steve, you walk right ahead of me and try to find the kitchen.”

He dropped the roll of blueprints on a chair. I watched him standing there, facing me, and I wondered just what he was thinking.

“Why do you want to find the kitchen?” I said.

“In a house like this,” he told me, “they’re bound to have a flashlight lying around someplace.”

He knocked me in the back with the gun. It was a friendly gesture, I suppose, that was all. I moved through the room and everything was black or gray, but you could still make out shapes in here. I headed toward an arch that seemed to lead into what looked like a hall. It was real black there, all right. If I could get in there with him, maybe I’d have some sort of a chance. He couldn’t see any better than I could.

We came to the arch and I felt the gun muzzle snuggle up against my ribs.

“I hate to do this, pal,” he said, “but you know how it is.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Makes me feel foolish, pal,” he said. “But you’ve got me jumpy, ever since back there in the car. This way I feel better and neither of us will get excited. All right, pal?”

“Sure,” I said.

I
STARED AT THE DARK
. It seemed as if he would have to start things. I kind of wished he would shoot. Maybe he’d miss, or just graze me. Sure, I thought, just graze the skin—a surface wound. That’s the way they do, then they whirl and smash the gun out of the guy’s hand and wrestle around and dive for the gun and maybe club him over the head with it. Triumphant, that’s what. Sure, I thought. Go ahead, Logan, whirl….

“You saved my life,” he said. “I’ll never forget that. I wish you wouldn’t forget it, either. I’m going to need help and I need somebody to talk with who understands what I’m up against. They’re all trying to keep me from going through with this, you know. Well, we’ll do it, by God!”

“Sure.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I just wanted you to remember. Let’s find the kitchen.”

It was a big room and there were no shutters on the windows, so light from a street lamp down the way took care of any plans I might have made. Not that I made any. But I could feel myself rebel all the time. Maybe rebellion wasn’t enough. All the way down the dark hall, he’d kept that damned gun in my back and breathed against my neck. Off the kitchen was a pantry and there was a lot of drawer space in there. That’s where we found the flashlight. He never missed, that guy. There were three flashlights.

“One will do,” he said.

“Only one of them works,” I told him after I’d tried them.

“Just flash it on when you need it. We’ve got to go back to the front room and close that shutter.”

“All right.”

“The police are sure to be around here,” he said. “But they won’t find us.”

We went back into the front room and I waited while he went over to close the shutters on the window. He just stood there with one hand reaching out for the shutter, kind of keeping his eye on me, too.

He turned to me. “Come here, Steve, quick!”

I went up close to him.

“Out on the porch,” he whispered. “Quick.”

“But—”

“Get out there!” The gun came hard against my side. I climbed through the window out onto the porch and he came through behind me.

“Crouch down by the railing,” he said.

I crouched down and then I began to curse inside. Somebody was coming across the lawn, slowly, coming from tree to tree. And whoever it was wore a white dress. Lillian. I went tense, and that gun of his went into my side.

“You’d like to see her get away, wouldn’t you, pal?”

I said nothing.

“Just be quiet,” he said.

She came along toward the side of the house, staring up at the window we’d broken. She couldn’t see us crouched down in the shadow of the railing. I wondered what she was trying to do. Well, whatever it was, it was all up with her now.

She came by the side of the porch, then along the front of the railing, still looking at the window. She walked right in close, touching the railing of the porch with her hand. She got almost right up to where we were and I could see her face plain. Angers didn’t move.

She stood there with one hand on the porch railing, looking at the window. We weren’t eight feet away. She moved a little closer, still looking, and her face was strained, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. Once something made a noise out on the lawn behind her and she whirled as if she’d been stabbed.

Then she looked at the window again, listening. She moved another step closer and Angers stood and reached over and grabbed her arm.

She screamed. It wasn’t loud. But it was pure fright. I thought she’d faint, but she didn’t, and Angers just held her arm and lifted her straight up from the ground over the railing.

“Oh, God!” she said. She kept saying that. She didn’t try to fight, she knew it was useless. She dragged against the railing, and he pulled her right on over, like a sack of potatoes.

All the time I’d kept an eye sharp for any opening. But he’d been just as careful not to let any opening occur. She was between us and he grinned at me, with his eyes shining a little the way they did when he got excited.

“You followed us!” he said. “Damn you, Lil!”

“Please, please! Let me go!”

“I should kill you, Lil—right now.”

She sobbed hysterically, looking straight into his eyes, sobbing, trying to pull away from him. I could see him strain and grip her arm as hard as he could. She began to make little mewling noises in her throat, broken with the sobs.

“Get in the house,” he said.

He gave her a hell of a push toward the window. It sent her sprawling against the window sill. She was sobbing and shaking all over. She landed on her knees, then suddenly rose up and started to run straight for the other side of the porch.

“Lillian!”