Always Leave ’Em Dying (16 page)

But there was only one man alive who could clear me, and that man was Arthur Trammel. I hadn't the slightest doubt now that it was Trammel. As soon as I'd thought of him as the man responsible for Felicity's pregnancy and death, too many things, even aside from those I'd told Lyn about at Greenhaven and Terry's that night, fitted like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: Trammel's flipping Sunday at that Guardian meeting, and especially the timing of his flip immediately after I'd mentioned Dixon's name; his needling me then until I'd flipped a little myself, and his continuing to ride me in the papers. It even explained why both Felicity's and Dixon's bodies had been in the same grave; and I thought I knew now why I hadn't caught Wolfe that first night when I'd followed him.

Trammel had probably ordered Felicity's murder without thinking twice about it, because of all the men in L.A., he was probably the one man who could least afford exposure of what he really was. If word got around that he was lusting for his young followers, taking advantage of their youth and ignorance to seduce them, practicing the exact opposite of what he preached, he'd fall from Master to monkey overnight and all his loyal Trammelites would feel like spitting on him, just as I did.

Felicity couldn't have been the only one; there must have been plenty of others—like Betha Green, maybe, I thought. Aside from all the other good reasons I had for wanting to get my hands on him, nobody else would know the story he could tell, certainly not all of it. Those missing bodies, for example—Trammel would have moved them himself to a safer spot. But with any luck, tonight I'd find out where they were buried, find out everything. All I had to do was ask him, in the right way.

That was all—just walk down there and kidnap him and then disappear into thin air. Down at the incomplete Eternal House dust swirled again from another explosion and a second later its dull booming sound reached me. As dust settled, there was a sudden flurry of activity among the men. One guy waved his arms. Everybody raced away from the area except the arm-waver and one other guy, who ran up to the mouth of the hole that had been blasted in the cliff and charged about in silly fashion.

I looked at Trammel's house and the area around it. There wasn't much sunlight left and I had to plan my approach while I could still see the grounds clearly. Getting in there and out again wouldn't be any picnic, I knew, but I was looking forward to starting, looking forward to it and itching to get my hands on Trammel. In fifteen minutes more I'd picked my route and everything was settled; there was nothing to do but wait, think about Trammel and Lyn, and itch for both reasons.

I sat in the darkness of Trammel's front room, on the edge of a chair I'd placed before an open window. After dark, I'd waited on my belly near Trammel's house until he'd left it and walked to the Truth Room, waited another minute until the figure of a walking man was far enough away, then had run to Trammel's back door, torn the screen, and used a skeleton key to get in. There'd been no trouble yet, but it was nearly 9 p.m., and the meeting would soon be over.

I could see half a dozen people on the grounds, their figures outlined by light spilling past the raised side of the tent where Trammel was speaking. I'd just watched him complete his standard tour through the crowd, ranting and raving, and now he was up on the stage concluding his address. Ordinarily everybody would have been inside at this time, and my guess was that those figures out there were guards.

The choral group began singing. It would be another ten minutes or so before Trammel would leave the Truth Room and come here to his house—if he repeated his actions of that night when I'd been here before—and the waiting already had me on edge. I wanted to get him, if I got him at all, after he left the Truth Room, because I had to start shaking his followers' faith in his magnificence, had to yank off the halo that Trammelites thought their Master wore.

The way most of them felt about him now, not even a confession from his own lips would shake their confidence and belief in him—unless that confidence and belief were already weakened. I couldn't think of any better way to start the weakening process than to have Trammel off in the hills somewhere, preferably with a few broken bones, when his tape-recorded spiel came to an end in the Truth Room.

Between the Truth Room, close by on my left, and the big tent, farther away, guard ropes were stretched before the mouth of the Eternal House; some "Danger" signs were stuck near them. One man stood about ten yards from the ropes; several other men were motionless farther away. As far as I knew, there was only one man behind this house, though, and I wasn't going to worry about him yet.

The singing stopped, lights came up outside and illuminated the grounds; organ music swelled gloomily in Trammel's theme song. I couldn't see the stage from which the All-High would now be descending, but I could see that the tent itself was jammed; recent publicity, and Monday night's "attack" on their Master, had brought out what might be a record crowd of Trammelites. I could see at least a thousand of them; the total might be three thousand or more.

Then Trammel stepped from the tent, and the tension that had been stretching for hours through my body seemed to concentrate in my stomach. I leaned forward, gripping the windowsill tight as I stared at him. He walked with slow measured steps in time to the pulsing beat of the organ. When he was almost halfway to the Truth Room, walking parallel to the guard ropes, I forced myself to relax, stretched my fingers away from the window, feeling a tremor in my hands—and then all hell broke loose.

The earth seemed to heave out there in front of me, to shake and shudder in sudden sound and light. Almost in the middle of that violent sound and color, completely hidden in swirling clouds of smoke and dust, was—or had been—Trammel. For seconds I was partially blinded; then, on the fringe of that boiling cloud, I saw the man who had earlier been motionless there reel and fall. A rising wail came from his throat.

Dust began to settle, smoke rising into the air above it, and the former bright illumination seemed murky and thick after that shocking glare. There was silence then, a quietness accentuated by the speed with which it had followed that explosion and by the isolated whimpering sound of the man twisting slowly on the ground. And then there was a moan from the tent, from a thousand throats, a noise born in stunned shock and swelling in comprehension.

Movement flowed inside the tent. I saw figures pour slowly past the raised canvas, begin to run forward. Not even thinking about the chance that I might be seen and recognized, I slid through the window to the ground and ran toward the spot where Trammel and the other man lay.

A dozen men were there moments before me; beyond them the mass of the crowd had stopped running, pressed hesitantly closer. Silence had fallen again except for separate gasps or cries of horror as one or another came close enough to see—to see what I had already seen. There was nausea in my belly, numbness in my brain.

The man who had fallen got unaided to his feet, rising slowly, his cries silenced. Not looking at him, but at the focus of all other eyes, I still was aware of his suddenly arrested movement as he turned and saw what all of us had seen.

For Arthur Trammel was dead.

God, he was dead; not just lifeless, but horribly, shockingly, unbelievably torn and ugly, his body shattered, his blood staining the earth. I stood less than ten feet from him—from part of him.

He lay on his back. Blood smeared one side of his narrow face, but the other side was unmarked and almost obscenely white. The black robe he had worn was shredded, torn almost free of his thin body, and a red mass of torn flesh loomed on the side of his chest. Redness drained from it, slid down his side.

One arm was bent awkwardly beneath him, and the explosion's force had ripped his left leg from his body. The leg ended at his knee in a pulp of bone and cartilage and flesh; the bloody, unreal stump lay on the ground two yards from him, thick fluid oozing from both torn parts that seconds before had been one.

For a moment the only thing I could think of was that all my hopes, my chances, had died with Trammel; then, hoping that maybe, somehow, it wasn't he, I moved closer, stood above him, and looked down at the narrow face, tiny eyes staring blankly, his long hooked nose, at the uniquely ugly face of Arthur Trammel. It was unmistakably Trammel, and he was unmistakably dead.

A man raced up with a blanket, threw it over the still figure. The moaning began again. Across from me, a woman cried out softly and slumped, someone's arms going about her and holding her off the ground. Those actions, the first quick movements in the few seconds I had stood here, brought me out of my own shock and I began backing away through the hundreds of others who had pressed near and were massed in a circle that had Trammel as its center. I was suddenly aware of the possibility that someone might recognize me. All eyes, though, were on the blanket-covered figure, and I pulled the hat lower on my forehead, raised the raincoat's collar to hide my face more completely.

Someone bumped into me and I swung around, but it was only a woman turning to push out of the crowd. Keeping my face down, I walked toward Trammel's house, breathed more easily when I reached the shadow at its side. Then somebody near me let out an exclamation, grabbed my arm.

I jerked my head around and in the dimness saw a square chunky man with big eyes in a red face, a Guardian, and he opened his mouth just in time for me to close it with an uppercut I didn't even know I'd started. His teeth clicked together and as he started to fall, I sprinted into blackness. Yards farther, I looked back, but nobody was following me; the picture there was still the same, people edging away from the blanket-covered body.

For a while I walked without purpose or direction, wondering how the accident had happened—and then, slowly, I began wondering if it had been an accident. Plenty of people must have wanted Trammel dead. I remembered the sudden flurry of activity I'd seen this afternoon following one of the explosions. But it didn't make much difference to me now, one way or the other.

I kept walking until I found myself on residential streets, out of habit avoiding lights and hiding my face when I passed other men, and then I became aware that I was on a familiar street, before a familiar place. Automatically I had come back to Lyn.

 

Chapter Eighteen

Lyn was wearing a blue robe when she opened the door. Her face was somber, but when she saw me, she smiled suddenly and said, "Shell, I was worried, so darn worried—" and then she was pressed close to me, her arms around my neck and her head moving against my chest.

In a moment, she stepped back and looked at me, started to say something and stopped. I guess she could tell by my face that things had gone wrong, and she asked, "What happened?"

"Everything blew up. Literally. Hell with it." I tried on a grin. "Come back here. Wait, I'll go outside and knock and we'll try it again. Or maybe—"

"What do you mean, everything blew up?"

I told her. I told her the whole thing. We sat on that lumpy couch and she was quiet until I finished. Lyn knew all that I'd done until tonight, all I'd figured out, and she knew how much this night might have meant to me. She said softly, "I'm sorry, Shell. Are you sure it was Trammel?"

"Yeah, baby, I'm positive. The light was dim, but everybody could see him well enough. His face wasn't messed up much more than usual, just one side. Besides, I walked up and practically stepped on him—and you know what old Squashhead looked like. Nobody could possibly mistake him for any other human being. For any human being, to tell the truth. Nope, Lyn, Trammel's kaput."

"What will you do now, Shell?"

"That's a good question."

I honestly didn't know what I could do now, and my mind was still a little dulled by the suddenness of what had happened. We sat on the couch, not talking, and I leaned back with my eyes closed. A minute later I felt Lyn's breath on my cheek, and after that her lips, soft, warm, and gentle.

I turned toward her and her lips slid over mine, still soft and warm, but in moments they were less gentle, more demanding. I slid my hands beneath her robe, against bare flesh; her skin felt hot under my fingers, and her flesh had the same liquid, yielding softness as her lips and tongue. I pulled her close, held her tight against me. There were soft noises deep in her throat and then, without opening her eyes, she spoke to me in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

I lifted her, held her close against me, and walked toward the bedroom. Her mouth was still moist and parted, her eyes were still closed.

In the morning, the sky was overcast and there was a chill in the air. You'd think I had enough to depress me without the weather's being gray and gloomy too. Still, I was nowhere near as low as I had been several hours earlier, for I was sitting on the couch, which, last night, I had not slept on.

Lyn was sitting on it, too. That is, in a way she was; I sat on the couch, and she sat on my lap. Those weren't the only reasons for my feeling better; the gal had a way with words, and a fine, logical mind, which she used like a woman part of the time, and like a psychiatrist part of the time. Both as woman and as psychiatrist she was terrific, and I was back to normal.

She said, "Look at the worst possible side of the mess, Shell. Even if everybody in the world believes terrible things about you, you know they're not true. And I know it, too."

"That's the best part. So what's next? Find an island, build a cabin, and get a fifty-year sunburn? Think of the fun we'd have peeling each other."

She smiled, dimples popping into delightful prominence in her cheeks. "Don't be silly. There must be something you can do. We know you're innocent, so there must be some way to prove it."

I grunted.

She slid off my lap, saying, "I'll fix us more coffee. You concentrate."

While she made noises in the kitchen, I concentrated, with the usual result. As far as I was concerned, the outside world was on fire. I couldn't roam around, talk to people, ask questions, or even pop anybody on the head. The heat on me had been bad before, but it was really a fire now, an eighteen-alarm inferno. We'd read the morning papers and listened to the news broadcasts; all of them had the latest development.