The desperate hours, a novel (10 page)

"I laugh when I feel Hke it. Hank," Glenn said evenly, in hollow tones. "You got nothing to say about it. That right, Hank?"

A moment passed. Dan wished he had gone; he didn't want to witness this.

"That right, Hank?"

"That's right," Hank said, but a sullen growl of rebellion sharpened the defeated words.

Hank crossed into the hall, passed them there, his face blank, but his e)es challenging and dull with hatred and confusion. He reminded Dan of fighters he had seen: having been beaten in the ring, they defied you disdainfully afterwards, their faces reading. Could you do any better? Want to make something of it, chump?

"Wake up Robish," Glenn called after him with a laugh that might have carried his forgiveness in it. "I need some shut-eye. And you, Hilliard—what are you waiting for? Wouldn't want to be late and get docked down there at that store, would you?"

Dan was looking past Glenn; then he took a step toward his son. It had to be said. Impatience rose in him and the cut on his forehead beat hotly. "Ralphie, you heard what Mr. Griffin said. You stay with your mother. And mind her. Stay upstairs and out of trouble." He heard the firm but inadequate words and suddenly he wanted to shake the boy, to force by pressure his own years of experience and knowledge into that ten-year-old body and mind. Beneath the weariness and blankness, he felt a twist as the words came up in him: "Ralphie, you've got to understand!"

Ralphie only nodded, and of a sudden Dan wondered whether it was sheer terror that held the boy or whether he was still blaming Dan for not acting against the impossible. Dan's throat tightened. His heart cried: What else can I do, Ralphie?

Abruptly he raised a hand in brief salute and went out into the bone-chilling rain, giving his hat a tug as he crossed sloshing through puddles toward Cindy's car. Cindy joined him at once, sHding under the wheel, shooting the coupe forward and down the driveway and away from the house. Dan didn't look back.

He was struggling with too many swift and formless impressions. What, for instance, had that brief clash between the brothers meant? And did that young one, that Hank, fancy himself in love with Cindy? If so, it would explain what happened last night when Robish stopped her in the dining room. If there had been any room in him for pity, Dan might have felt sorry for the boy. God knows what sort of life might bring a kid to this.

He pulled his mind away from that. He was only glad that he hadn't shot Hank last night when he had possession of the automatic. Why hadn't he? Too civilized? He didn't feel civilized, not in the least; throbbing below the numb, sleepwalking deadness in him was the aching impulse that he had felt before: the need and desire to kill. But something had held his hand last night. And if it had not, what? 

Ralphie. He hadn't known Ralphie was out there, gripped between Glenn Griffin's hands. What if he had shot? What had held him back?

The jagged end of memory cut and sickened him.

The coupe followed a familiar route, along the curve of creek, under the maples, into the traffic.

Robish would wake up now. Drunk, groggy, with a hangover —then what? Would he turn on Glenn? Could Glenn control him?

And some time during the night another fear had slipped into Dan's mind, vague, formless; he could not bring it into focus then and it hovered now, elusive and shadowy.

"Don't worry about Chuck, Dad," Cindy said. "I'll take care of him, I guess I acted a little funny to him last night, but I'm better this morning. I don't want you worrying about that, too."

Dan had not been worrying about that; he had not thought of Chuck Wright. Perhaps another slip. You never knew where the loose chink was, the one uncertain stone that could bring down the whole structure of lies and deceit.

Today's mail, he was thinking; there's one at 9:30, another around 2:45. Let the envelope arrive in the first mail. Let it come soon.

Then the drugged blankness of the night returned momentarily, and in it hovered the disturbing thought that had been evading him: the telephone call. The woman had telephoned.

// seems some coppers tried to pick her off.

Then she telephoned. She called the Hilliard number. What if the police caught her then, perhaps while telephoning or immediately after? If they had the number, what would they do, how proceed? Dan was ignorant of police procedure, but in his mind he could picture them approaching the house with caution, guns drawn, shouting. He could picture Eleanor and Ralphie inside, Glenn turning wrathfully from the window,

satisfied that Dan had sent the police; he could picture the loutish, dull-witted Robish not waiting, leaping, his hands going out

And what could Dan do about that? What power did he have over something Hke that?

He heard a deep groan in the steamy interior of the car as it stopped along the curb by the side entrance of the department store. It took him a moment to realize that the sound had come from his own chest.

The black sedan with a siren perched on the roof and two red lights on the fenders, the word "Sheriff" printed in block letters along its sides, was north of the city limits, and only five blocks from the Hilliard house. Behind the windshield wipers Jesse Webb had begun to sense that the day would be a waste. At first, several hours ago, he had been sure, or had at least convinced himself that the long list of names, addresses and telephone numbers would turn up something. But now he had worked his way through the first half dozen, all but one of the collect calls that had been placed at pay-station phones in Columbus, Ohio, to Indianapolis, Indiana, between lo last night and 3 o'clock this morning. He had narrowed down the time in his office while his mind leaped ahead to the activity involved. Now, however, he had only one name, address and telephone number left of the first group: not many people placed collect calls. If, by some chance, Helen Lamar had paid for the call at a pay station, he had two more numbers to investigate. Then, if all this failed, he would check with the deputies and city police who had been making inquiries at the numbers in the city where prepaid calls had been received from private numbers in Columbus. This group seemed the least 83

likely of all to turn up anything, but Jesse was plugging all the holes from this end.

He had to remind himself over and over, because of the twists of disappointment, that he was only stabbing about blindly in the dark, anyway. All he had to go on was the statement of the woman who had hidden Helen Lamar in Columbus; as far as that woman knew, Helen Lamar had gone out to buy a car and make a phone call. She hadn't bought a car in any legitimate sense, from any dealer: that much was easily checked. And she hadn't made the call from a phone in the neighborhood: that much had been even more quickly established.

Of course it was more than possible that if she had telephoned Glenn Griffin—and even this was a guess—she might have called New Orleans or Denver or New York or Chicago. Why Indianapolis? How can you be so sure?

Jesse Webb was not sure at all. It was only an idea he had, one that he held to with bulldog tenacity because he wanted Glenn Griffin to be in his home town. Even Kathleen, at breakfast, had shaken her head at the irrational theory, or hope. But at that time Jesse was remembering Uncle Frank's withered arm and even more withered spirit. He was picturing again the arrogant way the boy had shot first, then tossed his gun into the street and demanded mercy. He was remembering, too, the words, spit at him in the bare jail corridor: You got yours coming, copper.

But great God, Jesse told himself irascibly as he whipped the wheel and began to crawl to his stop, you can't bank on some wild hope, or flimsy intuition! You're a trained policeman, man. Stick to the evidence at hand.

All right, he was sticking to it. He was doing all that was in his power to do. He pulled the car to a halt, reached under his jacket, touched the gun with one hand, and started to climb out. There was always a chance, although it appeared slimmer now, that he would walk up a sidewalk or driveway directly

into the ambushed gun of Glenn Griffin behind a window. That was a chance he had to take. Better that than to alert Griffin by making inquiries on the telephone. You had to figure the odds and then work from there. The odds were certainly in his favor: there was little likelihood of an ambush simply because there was damned little likelihood of finding Glenn Griffin.

His narrow head shot forward, the water pounding and dripping off his hat brim, he started toward the house. It was not until he was almost on the front porch that he saw what he should have noticed from the car: a floral piece, lavender in color, hanging on the glass front of the door. He stopped. The folding chairs of an undertaking establishment were leaning in neat stacks on the porch.

The explanation of a midnight telephone call was too obvious. Jesse retraced his steps, clambered back into the front seat, and after touching his pencil to his tongue in a schoolboy habit he had picked up, he crossed the number BR (for Broadway) 8470 and the name Reilly, James, off the list.

Then, glancing automatically at the clock on the dashboard, he started the motor. Twenty-seven minutes after 9. It was going to be a long day.

The mail arrived in three large canvas bags at 9:31. The mail clerks worked fast, faster perhaps because Mr. Hilliard was standing in the door of the mail room. He remained there, square and still, until all of the mail had been sorted and dispatched by messenger to the various departments. Handing him all the envelopes addressed to Personnel Dept. or to Mr. Daniel HiHiard personally, the elderly senior mail clerk was unable to guess from the taut and drawn face with the adhesive 85

strip across one comer of forehead that Dan Milliard had begun to give in to despair. Memories still crowded sharp and broken through his mind; it was not memory but the recognition of the return addresses on every envelope in his hand that caused Dan to turn away abruptly, his whole body packed solid with defeat.

The next mail was at 2: 45.

Five hours and ten minutes away. And no power on earth could hurry it.

He rode to the sixth floor on the employees' elevator. He tossed the mail to his secretary's desk, went into his office, sat down behind the famihar desk and considered slowly and with great anguish all the things that could happen in his home in five hours' time. Of one thing he was certain: they would not leave under any circumstances, without taking along Eleanor or Ralphie or both. So even when they had the money, he would be faced with that.

But there had to be a way around that. If not to prevent it, at least to make certain that when it happened, the police would be aware of the facts of the case. But how? Without bringing them into it sooner than that time.

Acting without thought after that, working on some calculating impulse that he dared not take time to question, he reached for a blank piece of paper and his pen.

To Whom It May Concern, he wrote in a back-handed scrawl. Innocent people will be in the automobile with the three escaped convicts you want. If you shoot, you will be responsible for taking the lives of people who have done no harm. To attempt to trace this letter will endanger these same people and will not accomplish what you hope to accomplish.

He sat back and studied what he had written. Then he folded the paper without signing it, drew a plain envelope from his desk drawer, sealed it over the note and addressed it: Police Headquarters, South Alabama St., City.

He picked up the phone, dialed 9, waited for an outside line, then dialed his home number.

"Ellie? Where are they?"

"Downstairs. I'm with Ralphie. Are you all right, dear?"

"Anything happen? Anything at all?"

"No. Only Mr. Patterson came to the back door. You know, the little man who collects our trash. He wanted to get in the garage, but I told him we'd lost the key and not to bother. He seemed awfully disappointed in a funny way, but that's all."

"He didn't notice anything odd?"

"No. I'm sure not. But Mr. R. thought he did. I was worried for a few minutes."

"That's all?"

"That's all, Dan."

On the other end of the line Dan heard a familiar taunting laugh: Glenn Griffin listening on the downstairs phone.

"Nothing in the morning mail," Dan said. "Perhaps this afternoon. 2 :45. It'll soon be over, Ellie," he lied. "Don't think about it."

"Good-bye, dear."

Click. Then another click: the downstairs phone at home. Dan replaced the instrument on his desk. He sat bent forward, longing for a return and deepening of the blank, sleepwalking mood. At the same time he recognized it for what it was—his enemy. Like sleep, inviting but fatal, to a man lost in a freezing forest. He listened to the rain driving against the windows. Almost gratefully then, he felt the tugging insistence in his muscles: every nerve cried out for him to stand up, to go home, to murder those men. Quickly. No more of this. Efficiently. Get it over with. But all he could do was sit trying to devise a way to have that anonymous note delivered to the police without answering any questions about it.

Then his phone jangled. His heart stopped and he picked it up. The metal was still warm and moist from his palm.

"Dad?"

"Cindy!"

The cold blue gleam was still in Cindy's eyes this morning, but farther back, less immediately apparent. Chuck Wright sat at his desk and looked through the open door into the outer office where Cindy was talking on the phone, the instrument pushed hard against the dehcate line of cheek. She held the phone with two hands. The Ught from above caught in the mass of mahogany hair.

What the devil is the pitch? What does it all add up to?

She had smiled at him and apologized for last night.

"You still want a gun?" he had asked.

That did it. She turned away. And for the rest of the morning she had stayed turned away.

Chuck was not angry now, only baffled.

None of your business. Chuck, he told himself. This is the brush-off. It was never in the cards, anyway. Look at the way she's talking on that phone—no silence there, no withdrawing and twisting away.

A gun, a gun, a gun: that was the part that made no sense whatever. He could have added up the rest: the brush-off, the intensity now on the phone with another fellow, the decision to follow her father's good advice. But what did any of this have to do with a gun? And what exactly was she saying on that phone? If he knew that, perhaps . . .

What Cindy was saying to her father on the phone was direct and, to her, simple: the idea had just come to her, so please listen and don't interrupt. Suppose she and Dan, no matter how, found some way to raise the money, quite a lot of money, perhaps five or six thousand dollars. Then, if the money Glenn Griffin was expecting didn't arrive this afternoon, rather than have them around another night, she would take this other

money to them, in the house. She, not Dan. What about it? Didn't it make sense? They weren't waiting for the woman now, only the money. Then they could leave and go to wherever the woman was—although Cindy devoutly hoped they wouldn't get that far.

"How much money, Cindy? Even assuming we could raise that much, how do we know he doesn't know the exact amount that the woman mailed to him yesterday? If ours was too much or too little, he'd know it was a trick. And if you took it to him, not me, he'd be sure it was."

"Oh, but that's part of it. We wouldn't have to pretend it came from her. But listen. Suppose I explained to him that you were in the woods, out of pistol range, with a rifle. That all they could do was go. And if they tried to use Mother or Ralphie or me as a shield, you'd be there, waiting for them, ready to pick them off. Would they risk getting shot, any of them, if they thought they had the money and could get away without trouble?"

"Cindy, Cindy," Dan's voice said faintly, almost sadly. "Yes, they would risk it." He sounded patient and tired. "Why? Because they don't have any choice. They know I wouldn't shoot, no matter how good a shot I was if there was a chance of their killing any of you. So they've got us there and we'd better face it. Even after a man's been shot himself, he can pull a trigger. That's why they had Ellie read that news story to us—-to impress us with that fact. And, Cindy, on top of all this, they never figure they're going to be killed. Not them. So far they've been lucky and in their own eyes they have a sort of immortality. They always figure it'll be the other fellow. They have to figure it that way. It's the way you think in a war. It's one way of getting through." He paused and took a heavy deep breath.

"You've thought of it all, haven't you?"

"I'm sorry, Cindy. No one can think of everything. That's

the thing that can " He broke ofT. "I'll call you when the

next mail comes in." 89

"Yes."

"Eat some lunch, Cindy. You had no breakfast."

"Yes."

When she replaced the phone, Cindy sat staring at it, but seeing instead the house ten miles away. In five hours the money would arrive. Would or would not. Until then, she prayed silently, please God make them all stay away. Everybody. The police most of all, but also peddlers, salesmen, insurance men, everyone, everyone.

"I saw him snooping around those damn windows," Robish said, and he was trembling. "We got to grab him, Griffin. Listen! He was up on his toes, looking in the garage. Just before he got back in the truck. Don't you believe me?"

"Mr. Patterson?" Eleanor said, still seated at the kitchen table. "He just came to collect. He picks up the trash every Thursday morning and then he comes back just after lunch every other Thursday to collect."

"You always pay him with a check, Mrs. Hilliard?" Glenn asked, speaking first.

"Yes. Almost always. It prevents my having to have a lot of

cash around the house, and being out here like this " She

had almost said it was safer not to have cash in the house, but a giddiness rose in her and she stopped herself.

"I know what I seen," Robish said, his voice murky. "He saw the car. I'm going to get him. Let me have your gun."

"Hank," Glenn shouted into the dining room, "where'd the old guy go?"

"House next door. Behind the trees. I can see the back end of the truck at the curb down there."

"Calling the cops!" growled Robish.

"No," Eleanor said hastily. "The Wallings aren't home. I know."

"Then maybe I can catch him, Glenn."

"Glenn," Hank called from the next room, "why take any chances anyway? Let's just blow."

Eleanor's eyes were fixed on Glenn's face, which was locked in indecision.

"Mr. Patterson wouldn't be suspicious. He . . . you saw him ... a man like that."

"Shut up," Glenn Griffin said and extended his gun toward Robish. "Mrs. Hilliard, you want the old guy to bring the cops up on your lawn? Use your head. What else can we do?"

Robish shoved the gun into the side of Dan's gray jacket. He took a step toward the back door. Glenn's voice halted him.

"If you get into trouble, don't come back here, Robish."

"Me? I don't know what trouble is."

Just before she collapsed over the table, Eleanor thought that she had never heard Robish's voice so light-hearted, so pleased and excited and not in the least menacing or

At approximately this time—which was the peak of the noon hour in the downtown area—Dan Hilliard stepped into a hotel where he was not likely to be known, asked for a messenger, then spoke quickly but quite distinctly and directly to a middle-aged man who wore a maroon-colored uniform with brass buttons; the man nodded, showing no surprise but taking a closer, longer look at Dan Hilliard as he accepted from him a white envelope and a five-dollar bill. Then the messenger went to put on a raincoat and Dan Hilliard walked briskly out the side door into the steady but now windless downpour. In less than a minute the messenger was walking west on Washington Street toward Alabama, toward the offices of the city police department, directly across the street from the Marion County jail and the offices of the Sheriff.

The Wallings were not at home, which was no surprise to Mr. Patterson because Mrs. Walling was an active clubwoman, pictures always in the paper, that sort of thing. Mr. Patterson returned to his truck and started to climb in, a little stiffly because this rain raised merry hell with his arthritis; then he saw the man sitting in the cab of his truck.

"Just get in. Jack," the man said.

Mr. Patterson saw the revoher, and he frowned as he lifted himself up.

"Drive, Jack, and no hurry. Drive out east."

Mr. Patterson started the motor and glanced sideways at the huge man slouched down in the seat beside him. The man wore an expensive suit that didn't fit him. Mr. Patterson recognized the face, after perhaps ten seconds, and then he remembered the car parked in the Hilliard garage and the radio reports and the pictures in this morning's paper.

Why did I wait? he asked himself. What was I waiting for? Why did I stop at the W allings'?

"Good Lord," he said aloud, in a cracked breath. "Good Lord, those poor people."

The man seemed pleased by this; he even chuckled heavily. "I was right, wasn't I, Jack?"

Mr. Patterson had forgotten everything but Mrs. Hilliard's face as she wrote out his check a few minutes ago at the kitchen table while he waited, as usual, in the small back hall. The gun had been pointed at her then, from the next room. Why hadn't he guessed that? Why was his mind so slow nowadays?

If he'd gone straight to a drug store and called Jesse Webb, he might have helped them. Those poor people. Mr. Patterson had even jotted down the license number on a scrap of paper that was now in his pocket; he meant to ask Jesse Webb, who would remember him because many was the night he'd played pinochle with young Jesse's father, whether the license was the one Mr. Patterson suspected it might be. Being deputy sheriff now, Jesse'd have that sort of information; and if Mr. Patterson had made a mistake, well, he was an old man, getting crotchety, getting suspicious.

But it was no mistake. And he had done nothing. If anything happened to those people, he'd never forgive himself.

It was then that he realized that what was going to happen now was to happen to him. His breathing became irregular and the arthritis pain clenched in his right knee. In the drafty cab of the truck, behind the steady swish-swash of the windshield wipers, Mr. Patterson heard a strange sound: the man beside him was humming, softly, a blurred sort of tune, but with a mounting excitement in it, a pleasure-filled anticipation. Mr. Patterson even guessed the meaning of the excitement.

He didn't shudder. He didn't grow panicky. He made a silent plan.

They were east of the city now, on a country road. With his left elbow, but very quietly and cautiously, he pressed his weight down on the door handle. Timing the click, he spoke simultaneously with it, and in a loud tone: "Mister, I swear to God I'm not going to say a word to anybody! I'm an old man. I didn't do anything to you."

The man beside him laughed then. "Why don't you get down on your knees and pray, Jack?"

Mr. Patterson had not liked saying those words, but they seemed the ones a man might say under the circumstances. The door was open now. Ahead, he saw two blue gasoline pumps set alongside the road, fairly close to the edge. There was a weathered, clapboard service-station building, too. He gauged 93

his distance carefully, tried not to take the deep breath that his lungs ached for.

Mr. Patterson waited till he was almost abreast of the pumps, then in one movement that was co-ordinated through his frail old body, he whipped the wheel to the right, trounced hard on the accelerator, and fell from the truck just as its nose struck the first pump. He hit the gravel and rolled, twisting, with the stiffness of his right leg forgotten, hearing the metallic crash above and behind him. He kept his body crouched low and ran toward the building, feeling the rain cold and pleasant against his face, wondering why there was no explosion, no burst of flame.

He was within two yards of the weathered wood when the first bullet reached him; then he heard the cracking, ear-bursting sound. He knew he had been hit; in his mind he could see the big man standing back there, legs planted apart in the gravel, levehng the gun. But what surprised Mr. Patterson, in the only moment he had left for surprise or any other emotion, was that the bullet did not burn or sear or scorch. It was more like a paralyzing but painless blow against his back. He didn't feel the second bullet at all. Nor the third.

No one but the killer and the killed heard those shots, and as a result almost an hour passed before the report of the murder, which was thought to be an accident, reached Deputy Sheriff Jesse Webb. He kept asking for more facts on the two-way radio in his car, but he could learn very little, only that the truck had, apparently, gone out of control in front of the old deserted and boarded-up fiUing station, had plowed into the pumps which were no longer in use; there had been no explosion. The body, evidently, had been thrown clear. As yet it had

not been identified, no police officer had reached the scene, and perhaps it wasn't worth his time to drive all the way across the city to make a personal investigation.

But Jesse had worked his way by now through the important telephone numbers on his list, with no results, and he was coming to the conclusion, reluctantly, that Helen Lamar had made no telephone call to Indianapolis from Columbus, Ohio, last night. Even more reluctantly he was concluding that Griffin was not in or near the city.

In his office, Dan Hilliard received a phone call from home. He listened, frowning, a coldness climbing his legs.