Kiss and Kill (5 page)

In his office adjoining the county jail, the Sheriff produced a four-by-five print of the wreck. Barney had seen many accidents, but this was a nightmare: a tangle of metal crumpled almost into a ball; two bodies mingled and minced by jagged steel and broken glass until there was no way to tell one from the other. Ed glanced at the photo and turned away, gulping, looking green.

“Bathroom's down the hall,” said the Sheriff.

Ed left fast. Barney asked: “May I have this print?”

“Why?”

“People are sometimes bashful about talking. I want to show them what kind of lice we're after.”

“Okay,” said the Sheriff. He lowered himself stiffly into a swivel chair. “Maynard called me the night he was killed, said there were some men skulking round in the woods near his house. Figured they were waiting for dark. I told him to turn out his lights and keep a loaded shotgun handy till I got there. I drove out, but he and Sue were gone, the house wide open, no car. I decided he'd made a run for it.

“I started back to town, and this time I noticed the broken guardrail. I radioed the wrecker and ambulance, climbed down, and found what you saw in that picture.

“Afterwards, I went back to Maynard's house. The place had been searched while I was down in the canyon. I got a man from the lab to look it over. He couldn't find any prints, said it was a professional job. They'd used burglar tools to break into a strongbox. But it didn't look like they'd found what they were looking for. They hadn't broke off the search suddenly; everything had been gone over. I thought they might be back, so I planted my beeper.

“Three days later a woman phoned and asked me if I knew where the Bartons were. She'd been trying to reach them—”

Ed Tollman spoke from the doorway; his color was a little better. “A crisp voice, kind of superior?”

The Sheriff looked at him. “I'd've called it kind of stuck-up, yes.”

“Where did she call from?”

“She hung up before I could ask. I put a tracer through. It was from a pay phone in a drugstore in Kansas City.”

Ed nodded. “The same one called me from Kingdom City. A hundred miles or so out of Kansas City.”

The Sheriff turned to Barney. “How do you figure, Burgess?”

“She may have called to make sure the old people were dead. Or to warn them.” Barney said to Ed, “Let's have that list of tourists.”

The lady photographer, Claire English, was from St. Louis. That would be their next stop. “We'd better move on, Sheriff. We're over a week behind the killers now.”

Driving faster than the law allowed, they hit St. Louis. Claire English's apartment was locked; so was her studio.

“Now what?” Ed asked.

“Somebody, somewhere, wonders where she is—friends, relatives, people who work for her. They'll have already checked the obvious places.”

From the building superintendent they learned that the woman photographer's assistant had a key to her studio. He lived on the third floor of a shabby rooming house. They went there.

Although it was nearly noon, Barney's hammering evoked only sleepy grunts. He kept at it, and a girlish voice lisped, “Just a moment, damn it all.” They waited.

Finally the door was opened by a svelte young man whose reddish hair was combed in waves. He wore a silk dressing gown of pale saffron and was smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder. It looked to Barney as if his eyes were made up.

“We're looking for Claire English.”

The youth's face screwed up in pettish disappointment. “Miss English is out of town. The studio's closed.”

“Where'd she go?”

“I haven't a clue.” He was trying to close the door against Barney's hand. “If you
please
—”

Barney pushed. The door flew open, catapulting the youth back into the room. He tripped on a rug and fell, his dressing gown up around scrawny thighs.

“You can't … you can't …”

Barney motioned Ed inside and shut the door. “Now where is she?”

The youth rose, drawing his gown tightly about him. He said sullenly, “I
don't
know. I went to work one morning and found the studio locked.”

“When was this?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“Exactly when?”

The boy wet his red lips. “A week ago last Thursday. Twelve days ago.”

Barney scowled. That would have been the day before the Sheriff got his phone call from the woman in the pay station in Kansas City asking about the Barton couple.

“Did you call the police?”

“Certainly
not
. Why should I? Miss English is thirty years old and quite capable of coming and going as she chooses.”

Barney took the Barton accident photo from his pocket and thrust it under the youth's nose. He took one look at it, gulped, and turned quickly away. “What are you, a sadist or something? Is this supposed to mean something to me?”

“Your boss-lady knew these people. They were murdered. We're looking for the men who did it.”

“I don't know anything about murdered people. Anyway, what do you expect me to do about it?”

“You can open the studio for us.”

“Oh, no, I couldn't do that. Miss English would—”

“Then we'll have to call in the police. Ever see a place after the cops make a search? They'll throw stuff all over the place, negatives, unexposed film, chemicals …”

The young man pouted. “Oh, all
right
. You're a peach, you are. Wait outside till I dress.”

The boy fumbled with the key, then pushed the studio door open. They caught a whiff of death and decay.

The boy drew back as if he had just encountered a snake. “Oh, my
God
.”

He tried to backpedal into the hall. Barney gripped his arm. “Where's the darkroom?”

The youth pointed himself in the right direction, Barney's muscle supplying the motive power. He opened the door of the darkroom and the stench billowed out in waves. Barney heard Ed throwing up behind him; the girlish assistant fainted. Barney dropped him and, trying not to breathe, opened a storage closet. Blood was clotted on the walls and on stacks of photographic paper. A balloon of a man was slumped in the fetal position on the closet floor, so swollen that the seams of his dark blue uniform had split open. Barney tried to drag the body out; it was too heavy.

“Give me a hand, Ed.”

Together they got the hulk out on the floor of the darkroom. Barney found a finger-sized hole in the back of the head; the face was a red-black crater. The stains in the closet told him that the man had been shot at close range while standing in the closet.

Gingerly, Barney drew a wallet from the inside pocket. The chauffeur's license confirmed his guess: Elbert Kiddoo, San Antonio, Texas. Barney studied the body, estimating the rate of decay in the stuffy closet: less than a week, more than three days. And Claire English had pulled out twelve days ago.

“Let's get some air in here,” he said.

He covered the tour driver with a photographer's black cloth and began opening windows. Then they carried the assistant into the bathroom. Ed threw cold water on the unconscious youth's face.

“What made you think of the darkroom, Barney?”

“It seemed the logical first place to look.”

The assistant came to, sputtering. Barney leaned over him. “You. What's your name?”

“Art—Arthur.”

“Well, Arthur girl, somebody hauled a man all the way up here from Texas and killed him in your boss-lady's darkroom.”

“I don't understand …”

“Who asked you to? Now the guys who stowed him in there are hunting for something. I want you to look around and see if anything's missing.”

“Will I have to … to go back in there?”

“Sure.”

“I
can't
.”

“You won't have to look at him. I've covered him up. Besides, there's nothing to see. He's lost his face.”

Arthur gagged, and they waited.

“Come on, Artie,” said Barney. “Make believe you're walking into a butcher shop.”

Arthur gagged again. “The smell …”

“I've opened the windows.” Barney put his hand in the youth's armpit and hauled him to his feet. “You can hold a handkerchief to your nose.”

Arthur dutifully produced a handkerchief and applied it to his rather prominent nose. He braced himself.

“All right,” he said. “If you insist.”

They found evidence of an expert search. Panels had been pried out and hammered back in place. Tiny scratches indicated where locked drawers had been forced open and closed again. An occasional crumpled sheet in the files testified that they had been searched, too.

Barney tried to reconcile the surreptitious search with the fact that the body had been left on the premises. Probably too heavy to take away, he reasoned. Also, had the driver been murdered before the search or after; and in either case, why? Most important of all, had they found what they were after?

He followed Arthur into Claire English's carpeted private office, dominated by a free-form desk. While Arthur searched the desk and filing cabinets, Barney's eye was drawn to a series of nude female studies occupying an illuminated recess in the wall.

“Who took these?”

“Miss English,” said Arthur.

“She's a hell of a photographer.” The photographs were of a slender woman posed in various outdoor settings: in tall grass, beside a stream, in a forest glade, with daggers of light pinning down the nude figure. “But the model's the one I'd like to meet.”

“They're self-portraits,” said Arthur.

Barney was entranced by the lithe, clean beauty of the figure. There was no superfluous flesh; the body was all functional.

“You mean
she
took these photos of herself?”

“Yes. She used a self-timer.”

“How much does she sell them for?”

“They're not for sale,” said Arthur in an outraged lisp, as if Barney had inquired the asking price of the Washington Monument.

Barney tried to recreate the scene in his mind: Claire English—Miss Fashion-Plate, Liz Tollman had called her—driving out into the country, taking off her clothes, setting up her camera, running over to pose, taking the photos, all for the purpose of hanging them in her private office, for her private pleasure. He had never run into that form of narcissism before. He studied the photos closely, but her face was invariably hidden by a shadow, a hat, a leafy branch, or her hair.

“What does she look like? I mean her face?”

“She's called beautiful,” said Arthur, “but really, I'm no judge. I've always thought her features are rather sharp, but I suppose that's because she's so often sharp with me,” and Arthur giggled at his little joke. Then he said, “She's a kind of dark blonde. Personally, I think she uses a rinse.”

“If you say she uses a rinse,” said Barney, “then I'll bet my bottom dollar on it. I understand she spends a lot on clothes.”

“Well, of
course
. She's a businesswoman, and a good one. With a high-class clientele. I could show you more portraits of big shots—Oh! They're gone!”

Barney's eyes narrowed. Arthur was staring panic-stricken at an empty space in one of the file drawers.

“What's gone, Arthur?”

“The studies she made on her Mexican tour. There were hundreds of them.”

Barney glanced at Ed Tollman, who was standing in the doorway silently listening.

“Studies of what?”

“Oh, scenes, natives, the people she was traveling with.”

“The people she was traveling with,” said Ed. “That's it, Barney. That's what they were after here.”

Barney nodded. “And they're picking the whole crew up. At first they were using Kiddoo, the driver, to make identifications. When they found these photos here, they didn't need him any more. I'd give a hell of a lot to know what happened on that tour.”

“They're not picking the whole crew up,” said Ed. “They didn't pick the Bartons up. They killed the Bartons. And now they've killed the tour driver. Where does that leave my wife?”

“In their hands.” Barney avoided the obvious reply that Liz Tollman might well be dead, too. “They must be holding Liz for different reasons.” I hope, he thought, and turned to Arthur, who was listening avidly. “We're leaving, Artie girl. We can't afford any delays right now, so you give us one half-hour's start when we get out of here before you phone the cops about that beached whale in there. Understand?”

“Oh, I understand,” said Arthur quickly.

“You'd better. The cops are going to ask you how you happened to find the body. You tell them that, not having heard from Miss English, you came around here to check the studio. And you're not to mention anything about that gentleman there and me. Do you understand
that
?”

“Oh, yes,” said Arthur, even more quickly.

“If you do,” said Barney, “I'll come back and do something very naughty to you.
Very
naughty, Arthur. What I'll do to you might put you out of the strike zone for a long, long time, and you wouldn't like that, would you, Arthur? Losing all the fun in life?”

“You wouldn't!” cried Arthur, clutching himself.

“Try me. And remember, the best thing to do with cops is not volunteer information. Just answer their questions and keep us out of it.”

They left Arthur still clutching himself.

When they were on the road, Barney said, “We could stop and rest, Ed.”

“Could you?”

Barney laughed. “No.”

“Neither could I. After seeing that driver. At that, I never thought I'd be glad to see a dead man. I thought we'd find Liz.” Ed shuddered.

A few miles later he said, “I've been thinking, Barney. You could go on and check the librarian in Indianapolis, while I look up that male schoolteacher in Detroit.”