Always Leave ’Em Dying (15 page)

She proceeded briskly to fix a bed on the couch, called me over, and sat me down on it. "Good night, Shell."

"You sleepy?"

"Ho, ho," she said, and went into the bedroom, and I could hear her preparing for sleep, moving about, rustling and what not, and if you want the whole truth, those sounds disturbed me enormously. Despite my sly queries, like "Sure you don't need these blankets?" and "You don't feel like dancing, do you?" she kept on moving about and humming.

Then her light went out, and bedsprings squeaked. The sound of bedsprings squeaking means nothing all by itself; the squeaks have to be connected in your mind with whoever or whatever is going on before the noise has real significance. If there had somehow been, for example, an old housebroken horse in there, I wouldn't have given those squeaks a second thought. But I knew there was no horse in there.

Well, I lay awake quite a while, but when I finally did fall asleep, my dreams were sensational.

I woke up with a sore back and a stiff neck, but with a feeling that all was well with the world. In a few minutes, I remembered that all was not exactly well, but I still felt good enough.

Lyn was bustling about in the kitchen, humming merrily. In a minute, she came out into the front room. "Hi," she said. "How did you sleep?"

"I don't know myself how I managed it, but I did get a wink or two."

She winked at me. "That makes three, and don't get smart. Get up instead before I pull the covers off you."

"This is a test: I'm not getting up."

"And I'm not pulling the covers off. What do you want for breakfast?"

"Coffee. And toast. That's all."

She shook her head, went back into the kitchen, and closed the door. I got up and dressed.

Over a second cup of coffee she said, "I'd stay here, Shell, but it might look funny if I didn't go to Greenhaven. Have you thought of anything else I could do?"

"We've covered it all, I think."

"Want me to phone you here? I'll be back for lunch."

"That's soon enough."

"What are you going to do, Shell?"

"Just sit. I've got plenty to think about. And for God's sake, you be careful. Don't give anybody an idea of what you're doing. If Trammel's all I think he is, he'd kill half the population to keep it from getting out."

She finished her coffee and got up. "Well, 'by."

I walked to the front door with her and said, "Lyn, be damned careful. Remember, as far as you're concerned, whoever you talk to, Shell Scott is a raving maniac."

She left. I hadn't realized the apartment would seem so empty.

After a while, I went to the phone, looked up Mrs. Gifford's number, and dialed. It was a short conversation. I told her as gently as I could, but the fact of death can never be stated gently. She shrieked and wailed over the sound of the TV blaring in the room behind her, and I explained that Felicity was really dead, that she'd been dead more than a day when I found her body. Before I could finish, she hung up on me. I hadn't even told her that her daughter had left Saturday night for an abortion; I doubt that Mrs. Gifford would have believed me, in any event.

I was aware that my name was synonymous by now with homicidal insanity, but I'd got the impression that Mrs. Gifford had been afraid even to talk to me over the phone. I wondered how many other L.A. citizens felt the same way about me. By noon, I had a rough idea. By noon, I'd read the morning paper that was delivered at Lyn's door, and listened to enough news broadcasts so that I knew how deep the hole I was in had become.

It was worse than I'd thought it would be. Everybody seemed to have taken it for granted that I had suddenly and actually gone insane, murdered Wolfe at Greenhaven, and overpowered a police force. There wasn't a word in type or speech that intimated that I might be the victim of circumstances or a frame. This was open and shut, and I gathered that all the cops for miles around, plus a good number of panting citizens, were looking for me.

I could thank Arthur Trammel and his Guardians for one new development that helped not at all. The morning paper carried Trammel's remarks on the front page. He stated that I had, after escaping from Greenhaven and remaining under cover throughout the day, cornered him in the room where he held his confessional and attempted to murder him. After describing his miraculous escape from death, much distorted with soap-opera phrases such as "Scott's bulging, red-flecked eyes," he declared that simply because he, Trammel, had denounced the madman from the pulpit and in the press, I had sneaked up on him and tried to knock him off. I'd murdered before and last night had tried again; I must be found and destroyed; and so on. Corroboration of his story was supplied, naturally, by all six of the other Guardians.

Shortly after noon, Lyn's key turned in the lock and she came inside. The room brightened considerably.

"Hi," she said. "How's my crazy man?"

"OK. Missed you. Did you learn anything?"

"A little. Come on into the kitchen while I fix lunch, Shell. I want to get back around one."

I followed her into the compact, gleaming kitchen and she buzzed around dropping things into a pressure cooker while we talked. She'd been pretty busy at Greenhaven, and though she hadn't come up with anything that surprised me, she had got corroboration of several things I'd already been sure of in my own mind. She'd talked to the guards I'd put into Greenhaven's hospital and they admitted it was Wolfe who had told them I was a violent nut and that they were to "subdue" me; he'd been the boy who'd sapped me from behind.

Lyn had found no evidence that Wolfe and Dixon had been performing abortions, but I hadn't expected her to, since, after killing Felicity, they'd have made sure there wasn't any around. Lyn had, however, arranged for a test to be run on the residue in Wolfe's syringe. It was potassium cyanide.

I said, "That just about wraps it up. You got a lot done, Lyn."

She frowned. "It doesn't wrap up Trammel. How are you ever going to find out for sure about him?"

I grinned at her. "The logical way. Ask him."

Her mouth dropped open. "Ask him! You don't mean you're going down there tonight—"

"No. Not tonight. No meeting tonight. And for what I've got in mind, the meeting has to be in full swing, which it will be tomorrow. And I didn't say I was going to ask him politely." She looked pretty flabbergasted and I changed the subject. "You have any trouble this morning?"

"No, but . . . a few more policemen talked to me."

"What did you tell them?"

"You're a schizo, and real gone. Big menace, Scott."

"Good. You're sure?"

"I told you I'd do it your way. But . . ." She frowned. "There was a kind of bad break."

She had talked to a reporter who knew that Nurse Dixon had disappeared the same night I'd shot Wolfe and escaped. The reporter had learned from the police that I'd "admitted" having seen the nurse just before I'd plugged Wolfe. He had asked Lyn if it wasn't a reasonable assumption that I might have "killed the nurse because she was a witness to his murder of Wolfe."

Lyn said to me, "I had to tell him it was a possibility."

"Sure, honey. He'd probably have written it that way, anyway, as having come from an authoritative source. The only difference is that now he can quote you."

That was true enough, but I could imagine the upcoming story: "A lovely young Greenhaven nurse, Gladys Dixon, may have been a second victim of the insane killer Sheldon Scott, it was alleged today by Dr. L. Nichols, Greenhaven's chief psychiatrist. Miss Dixon, a young, glamorous, exciting, shapely, sultry, et cetera, et cetera."

She said, "Have you seen the paper?" I nodded. She walked to me and put her hands on my chest. "Shell, wouldn't it help if I did come right out and say I knew you were sane, normal—no matter what you've actually done? Everybody's against you. Pretty soon you won't be able to stop it, won't be able to convince a soul."

I squeezed her hands and said, "No, thanks, Lyn. We settled that, and it's bad enough that I'm here, sticking your neck out. Nobody would hear you now, anyway; your word would be one against an encyclopedia. If this deal ever reaches court, I can use all the high-powered steam you can generate—but not till I say so, and certainly not while Trammel's loose. But thanks."

In almost no time, she was taking pork chops, potatoes, and carrots out of the pressure cooker. The food was so good we didn't let conversation interfere with our enjoyment of it, so it was fairly quiet until we finished. This Lyn was a woman a guy could enjoy twenty-four hours a day. She didn't find it necessary to chatter all the time; she didn't mind silences. I liked looking at her, talking to her, and just knowing she was around even when I couldn't see her.

A little before one, Lyn said, "Well, 'by. See you about three."

"Three? I thought you were going to work."

"I am, but I'll be back." She smiled. "This morning, oddly enough, I developed a splitting headache. I'm sure nobody will expect me to last the day."

"Clever. You're too fast for me."

"Aren't I?" She got up and walked to the front door.

"Wait a minute," I said. "That's too fast."

"Ho, ho." The door closed and she was gone.

Those two hours from one till three were a long, dull afternoon, and when Lyn returned it was a short happy afternoon and evening. Until around 8 p.m.

We got it first on a broadcast, then Lyn went out and bought a late paper and we went over it together. I assumed Mrs. Gifford must have called the cops and that a reporter picked it up from there. It was now common knowledge that I'd informed Mrs. Gifford that her daughter was dead. Most of the rough stuff was between the lines—I might have killed the girl myself, I might merely have been indulging in some heavy sadism directed at the girl's mother. The statement that made up my mind, though, was a quote from Lieutenant French of L.A.'s Missing Persons Bureau; who noted, sensibly enough, that there wasn't even proof yet that the girl was dead; that no body had been found.

I said to Lyn, "Looks like I've got to leave the apartment tonight after all."

"Shell, I don't want you to, and you don't have to."

"I'm not crazy about going out, myself. But I mean to phone French, and I'm not going to phone from here. The main reason I didn't tell the cops about Dixon and Felicity and that grave before now was for fear word would fly around that I'd killed both of them. If they'd dug up Felicity they'd have found Dixon first—and I'm stuck with a damned good motive for killing Dixon. But, hell, it's flying all over anyway. And maybe this will pull me a little way out of the hole."

Half an hour later, I was in a phone booth several miles from Lyn's apartment waiting for French to come on the line. Lyn had insisted on driving me, and was in her Chrysler half a block away. When French answered, I told him I was calling about his statement in the papers and he got interested all of a sudden. When I told him I knew where he could find Felicity's body, there were two or three seconds of complete silence, then he said, "Who is this?"

"I'll tell you if you let me spill the rest of it fast—and forget about tracing the call. I'll be long gone, anyway."

After a short silence he said, "All right."

"This is Shell Scott." In fast, short sentences, I told him that Wolfe and Dixon had killed Felicity, that I'd followed Wolfe and found the grave. "You'll find both Dixon and Felicity in it," I said, "but I didn't kill either of them. Cyanide killed the girl, but your autopsy will show she had an abortion. No matter what else I'm accused of, nobody can stick me with that, so find her and chalk me off—and do it out loud."

"Where are they?"

I told him, and it took too damned long to tell. I wanted off the line and far from this phone—especially with Lyn so close. I said, "You can get the parts I don't have time to tell from Sergeant Meadows and his sidekick, patrolman Al something, on the Raleigh force. And you can get all of it from the guy who sent Felicity to Wolfe and Dixon, Arthur Trammel—the guy who got Felicity pregnant in the first place. He murdered Dixon so there'd be nobody left to spill the beans about him."

I hung up and ran to the car and Lyn gunned the motor. All the way back to the apartment I kept thinking about what I'd said to French, particularly the bit about Trammel. There hadn't been time to explain to French all the little things that made me sure I was right. I told myself that I couldn't be wrong, that I had to be right, but there was still a fragment of doubt in my mind.

The next morning, in Lyn's apartment, we learned that a police crew had gone to the location I'd described, walked up to the top of that hill, and found nothing. No bodies. Just a soft, filled-in spot that might once have been a grave.

After the first shock, that made me feel pretty good. Finally, I was sure about Trammel.

 

Chapter Seventeen

There was less than an hour of sunlight left when I flopped on my stomach on a high rise of land overlooking Trammelite headquarters. I wore my dark clothes, hat, and raincoat.

It was late Wednesday afternoon, and I'd left Lyn half an hour earlier. She'd driven me to within a mile of here and then returned home—after vainly pleading with me not to go through with my plan and get killed. I had informed her, truthfully, that there was no other plan available, and that I would be very careful not to get killed.

That had been in the car, about a minute before I'd climbed out, and Lyn had suddenly scooted toward me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. Her lips had been warm, soft, and hungry; and there must have been more than sixty seconds in that minute, so many things happened. If she hadn't taken her arms away and pushed me, telling me to go on and do whatever I was going to do, I'd never have left; it would never have occurred to me to leave.

My plan was simple: I was going to kidnap Arthur Trammel. Or maybe it was I that was simple. Beyond Trammel's house, between the low black Truth Room and the tent, dust swirled, and the delayed sound of an explosion reached my ears. The boys were still blasting to enlarge the Eternal House. I could see a dozen workmen moving around, but I had also spotted several other guys, in suits, who didn't seem to be working anything except their eyes, and who would probably object to my kidnapping the All-High.