The desperate hours, a novel (22 page)

This hope was based on the interesting fact that at 3:22 this morning, barely an hour after Hank Griffin was killed, someone at the Hilliard number had placed a prepaid person-to-person call to a Mrs. Dixon in Cincinnati, Ohio. Did this mean that Glenn Griffin knew or suspected that something had happened to his brother? Did he want to make sure that this Mrs. Dixon —who was undoubtedly Helen Lamar—was still waiting, that she was carrying through with her part of some scheme? Whatever the answer to that, Jesse Webb now had hopes that the FBI and the Cincinnati police would soon have Helen Lamar under arrest.

He stomped down the attic stairs of the Wallings' house, then down another flight and into the kitchen. "Would you mind if I made some coffee?" he asked Mrs. Walling who was at the stove.

Mrs. Walling, a plump woman with large, soft brown eyes, still puzzled at the sudden invasion of her house by police who kept entering with great caution from the east, turned and looked at the tall deputy. What she saw made her shove a kitchen chair in his direction and say, "I have some made, Sheriff. My, you do need it, don't you? You look almost sick. Why don't you lie down on the sofa a little?"

But Jesse was unable to finish the first cup before Tom Winston pushed in from outside and leaned against the table. "A man and a red-headed girl just left the house, Jess. They're walking along the boulevard, toward the bus line probably. The man has a big freckled face and he looks worse than you do—which is saying something. The girl's a beauty and she looks sore at the world."

"That would be Dan Hilliard and his daughter, Cynthia," put in Mrs. Walling.

"Cocky, aren't they?" said Jesse. "Letting 'em out of that house even now. Getting real cocksure now, aren't they,

the " He stopped. "Pardon me, Mrs. Walling." Then to

Tom Winston: "That leaves the wife and the little boy, huh? I reckon they figure that's enough. And I reckon it is, too."

Chuck Wright also witnessed the departure of Dan and Cindy Milliard on foot at 8:30. He crept, his muscles stiff, hugging the wall low, around the far side of the garage and watched them walking down the driveway. She's not in there now, he said to himself, with a lifting in his chest. Now there're only two Hilliards in the house, and the two men. The sight of Cindy's slender back and the defiant swing of her shoulders sent a warmth charging through him. Now, he thought, if you can get both of those guys to the front of the house for half a minute or so

On the bus ride downtown, Dan Hilliard noted without interest that the day promised to brighten; a crisp golden sunlight occasionally appeared, then vanished. It was four minutes to 9— after a long ride in almost total silence, their closeness intensified by that silence—when Dan stepped off the rear door into the early morning crush, held his hand for Cindy. Then, on the sidewalk of Monument Circle, with the shoulders jostling them from all sides, Cindy continued to clutch her father's hand as though she were reluctant to let go of the reassurance it held for her.

"About Chuck," she whispered, her head thrown back and the wind sharp against their faces, "about Chuck, Dad: don't worry about him. I know exactly what I'm going to tell him now. He'll believe me." 

Dan only nodded, a haggard sort of agreement with no heart in it because he had almost, but not quite, forgotten his encounter with Chuck Wright last night. Then Cindy rose up on her toes, and Dan was astonished to feel his daughter's lips on his. He was aware that several heads turned, grinning, and while he would normally have been embarrassed by such a public display, he found that instead he was grateful. Grateful and humble and shot clear through with the despair that had been growing in him all night.

Walking along the familiar streets in the direction of his office, Dan tried to look at everything with a keen but unemotional eye. He knew that panic was his enemy; and as 9:30 moved slowly closer, he had to force himself to look ahead and yet to let the numbness inside—or hopelessness—deaden his emotions. The long night had worked a narcotic spell on him in that sense, and he felt fortunate this morning.

On the corner he stopped, out of habit, and bought a morning paper from the blind newsdealer. He went on, rolling the paper and placing it in the pocket of his coat. The plan he had devised in those sleepless hours now seemed a shadowy impossible figment of his sickened imagination. The scheme was a form of blackmail, really, but its success depended on something that, through the night, had disappeared: the cold, cruel but fundamentally rational mind of Glenn Griffin. After the stupefying metamorphosis that had taken place in Glenn Griffin after his brother's desertion, could he be expected to comprehend the meaning of Dan's threat in those last frantic minutes after the money was in hand and he was ready to leave the house? Dan still intended to use the idea, for what it was worth. Look, Griffin, he would say then, you are not going to take anyone along with you in that car. And when Glenn Griffin grinned at this, with his gun pointing, after he imagined that he had won a point and that Dan had nothing more to say about it, Dan would go on: "Then you had better take me. Griffin, and only me, because I'm the one who can set the

police on the man you're paying to kill that policeman." Would the grin flicker, fade? "/ know both the killer's name and the name of the policeman now, Griffin. You let them both slip out last night when you were yelling at your brother. None of the others will remember those names, but I do. And if you take anyone but me on this ride, I'll put the police on the killer, and then all your sticking around here will have been for nothing." Would that do it then? Or would Griffin insist on taking someone else along, too? In that case: "All I have to do is speak the two names. Griffin, to whoever stays behind, and you can't take all of us." What Griffin could do then, if he dared risk the noise, was to kill Dan Hilliard outright and do whatever he wished with the others.

Dan turned into the side entrance of the department store. The killer-to-be was named Flick, the man to whom Cindy, a half-hour from now, was to deliver $3,000 of that money that was even now approaching this building in the 9: 30 mail. The policeman, whom Griffin was set on murdering in this manner, was named Webb. Last night, in that nightmarish scene between the brothers, the two names had lodged in a corner of Dan's retentive brain.

But as he rode up on the elevator, Dan was disturbed by the coolness of his own thinking. In view of the altered facts of the day, it didn't seem to make good sense. Yesterday, the threat might have forced Glenn Griffin, out of fear that his warped revenge would not be carried out, to do as Dan insisted. But today the cool intelligence was gone from the young man. He appeared to be cracking up. There was a blurred look about his eyes, a harsh red line on his underlids, a loose wetness about his lips. His brooding wildness this morning threatened, given the proper stimulus, to become more unpredictable and violent than Robish's.

Dan was at his desk now, sitting as he sat yesterday morning, waiting for the hands of his watch to reach 9: 30. He was recalling, though, the way Glenn Griffin had snatched the phone from his hands last night—it must have been 2 o'clock—and the way he had spoken into it, with mounting alarm, over and over: Hello, hello, who is it? But there had, apparently, been no answer from the other end, and as Glenn Griffin replaced the phone, his eyes a great distance from that hallway, Dan had realized fully that he was then, and from that point on, dealing with another and quite different young man.

This realization, in focus now, frightened him; he felt some of the numbness wear away and he could feel his heart hammering at his ribs. There was also that other telephone call last night, much later, the one placed by Glenn Griffin to someone in Cincinnati. Griffin had made that call himself, the crazy desperation reaching such proportions that he risked snarhng and cursing at the operator. After the conversation, which Dan had not been able to hear, Glenn had shouted from the front hall to the den: Hey, Robish! She's still there. She's waiting. There's someone won't let a man down. Hear me, Robish?

Twenty-one minutes after 9.

Dan stood up and dabbed at the wetness that had gathered under his chin. He went to the files, stood uncertainly before them, knowing that there was work to be done, people to interview today, orders to be given. But he couldn't seem to move. Standing there, his eyes fell on the morning paper in the pocket of his topcoat. He reached for it, flipped it open, and looked directly into the face of young Hank Griffin. Over the photograph were the words:

FUGITIVE killed: TROOPER WOUNDED IN GUN BATTLE

There was a knock on the door; it seemed to come from a great and hollow distance. Then Dan Hilliard's bluff and middle-aged secretary said, "Letter for you, Mr. Hilliard. It came Special Deliver)- during the night. The night watchman signed for it." She broke off, frowning. "Mr. HilHard, if you ask me, you're catching the flu. Why don't you let me cancel appointments and you go home to bed?"

"Do that," Dan said, accepting the envelope, which was

surprisingly light in weight. "I'll be leaving for a while. After I've taken care of some business at the bank I'm going home."

"If it's something I can "

"No."

"Yes, Mr. Milliard."

The door closed gently and Dan made it back to the desk with difficulty. He leaned there, slack and spent, remembering one more astonishing fact about Glenn Griffin, the one that explained the others: he had spent much of the night with his ear close to the radio. Glenn Griffin knew then—and had known all morning—what had happened to his brother. And it was this knowledge that had turned him into the hysterical stranger who was beyond reason. And in the house now with Eleanor and Ralphie.

Dan slit open the envelope and counted five one-thousand-dollar bills and one five-hundred-dollar bill. He slid three of the one-thousand-dollar bills into a plain white envelope from his drawer, carefully placed both envelopes in his breast pocket. The action brought back some of the numbness, and as he stood up, he was grateful for that. But fiis thoughts remained with Eleanor.

Eleanor was upstairs with Ralphie, at 9: 30, acutely aware of the time. While she played rummy with the boy, she could hear what was said below. There was the steady hum of the radio, and then, above it, Glenn Griffin's voice—higher now, different somehow: "Robish. Stick to the window but Ksten. There're a couple of guys up on the roof of the house next door."

Robish swore heavily from the direction of the den, where he was watching the side and rear yards. "Coppers?" 

"How the hell do I know? They got on yellow coveralls. They're working on one of those television things."

"Then what you crying about?"

"Who's crying? You just can't tell, that's all. You had more sense, you'd know that."

"I got sense," Robish replied from the distance. "Me, I got more sense'n you think. Griffin. No gun, but a lot of brains."

"That supposed to mean something?"

When Robish didn't answer at first, Ralphie said, to his mother, "Your play." But she held up a hand, straining to hear.

"Means," Robish called at last, "that your kid brother got his last night cause he got scared, that's all. You been gettin' jumpier ever since. An me, I figure the heat's off us for a while. All depends on Hilliard now."

"HilHard?"

"You think that big bastard's gonna "

"Hilliard pulls anything now "

"Now I guess you're wishing you'd let me keep that there gun, huh. Griffin?"

Above, Eleanor sensed, rather than concluded, that in this brief and broken exchange she had heard the command shift from Glenn Griffin, who possessed the only gun, to Robish, who had none. It was the Griffin boy who was nervous and unstrung this morning, Robish who remained calm and sure of himself, as though he were making his own separate plans now. All this Eleanor realized without being able to grasp the meaning this shift might hold for her and her family.

Glenn grumbled again, on a lower key: "If that Hilliard tries to pull anything. If he ain't doing just what I told him "

Dan Hilliard, at this point, was doing exactly what he had been instructed to do: he was handing over to his daughter, Cindy, an envelope containing $3,000. They were in the corridor of the building in which she worked, speaking together quietly in one corner while the old elevators groaned up and down.

"Careful now," he said quietly, his eyes holding hers.

Then he walked down the three flights of stairs, and at ten minutes to 10 he entered his bank, where he was well known. He carried a leather brief case, empty now. He spoke to a teller who had served him for ten years.

The teller complied without question, but after Mr. Hilliard, whom the teller had had some little difficulty recognizing this morning, had left the bank with the brief case bulging, the teller examined the two one-thousand dollar bills, which were quite good, and allowed himself to wonder where a man hke Mr. Hilliard had obtained them and why he would need that much small cash.

Three minutes later he was wondering even more because in that time he had spoken through the grilled window to a fat deputy from the Sheriff's office who simply asked him to place those large bills aside until he received further instructions regarding them.

Less than five minutes later, Tom Winston was speaking by radio from his office to an FBI agent, not Carson but a new man who had appeared this morning, in the cold attic of the Wallings' residence. This agent, whose name was Merck, went downstairs and outside and motioned to Deputy Sheriff Jesse Webb from the lawn.

Jesse was on the topmost rungs of a high ladder placed 203

against the front of the structure and in clear \dew of the windows in the Milliard house; the ladder was much taller than the highest peak of the Wallings' roof, and Jesse, wearing a yellow coverall with printing across the back, seemed to be measuring the upright antenna and giving instructions, with gestures, to two assistants who stood off to one side, their backs turned carelessly to the Milliard home.

Actually, Jesse was studying the Milliard house and garage— he could see it all from this vantage point—and in this way was working off some of the tension that was eating in him steadily like a hungry, vicious animal he could not control. Me was thinking, too, of the long-range rifles with telescopic sights and of the binoculars that must be kept out of sight.