The desperate hours, a novel (6 page)

"You heard what Mother read. That newspaper thing about the little girl. What's going to happen when they go, Dad? You know, don't you? You know."

"They're not going to take you," Dan said slowly, his clenched fists straightening into stiffness along his legs as he stood up. The fear in his son's eyes lashed knifelike at the rational control. Perhaps he had known all along and had been afraid to face it. Well, he was facing it now. "They're not taking you, or anyone, Ralphie. I'll see to that. You go to sleep now. And don't worry. Trust me, Ralphie."

"But—what can you do? Now you don't even have a gun."

"You heard me!" Dan took a breath and reached for control of his voice. "I said not to worry. Go to sleep. You ought to know I wouldn't let them take you along, Ralphie. Don't you? Don't you?"

"I'm not afraid," Ralphie said, but a bitterness was in his voice, in his face as it turned away again. "I'm not afraid at all."

Dan stood motionless and stunned. Somewhere in the back of his mind he must have known all along. Was the human mind able to hide the unpleasant simply by ignoring it? Yes.

Dan reached out and took hold of Ralphie's shoulder and held it a brief moment; then he went into the hall, turning off the light, closing the door.

The back stairs, his mind reminded him in panic. You could

get down them easily. They might not miss you for five minutes, perhaps ten.

Yes, but what then? What then?

Dan descended the front stairs slowly, the fierce new hatred choking him. He kept seeing Ralphie's small face with the disillusion written bitterly in it. In the living room again, he looked at Eleanor, sitting quiet, her face wan, paler than he had seen it since that time in the hospital the night Ralphie was born. He saw Cindy whose head was resting on her arm along the back of the sofa, her face hidden, her hair tumbling.

You can't let rage force you into action, he warned himself violently. You can't.

He sat down again. Three minutes to 9. He stared incredulously at his watch, then lifted it to his ear. It was still running.

The electric clocks in the jailhouse and Sheriff's offices had large round faces with stark lettering. The minute hand did not move until the full minute had passed, then it clicked, the sound first, then the black hand jerked forward, stopped and waited for another sixty seconds to pass. Jesse Webb, his long legs stretched out, his ankles crossed on the desk-top, found himself watching the clock so steadily that the intervals between the clicks grew into hours instead of minutes. He had to sit with his head twisted at an angle to see the face of the clock and his neck ached.

Although he had been waiting for the telephone to ring, the sound echoing in the night stillness startled him. He couldn't believe that, finally, something had sounded in the room beside the maddening, spaced clicks of that clock.

He spoke his name into the phone. Then he listened. In less than one minute, he said "Check" and replaced the phone.

Then he stood up, tense but with a high running excitement released at last. He took one step, and it was then that the excitement, which was only the reaction created by the waiting, left him like breath itself.

He had nothing to do. He could do nothing. And, from now on, even waiting was a foolish waste of time.

Helen Lamar had disappeared.

Jesse Webb smashed his right fist into his left palm and thought of Uncle Frank who had telephoned again at 7: 30. He could picture the man standing at a wall telephone in the stench-filled meat-packing plant, the night watchman's mechanism around his neck. He could see the tension in the frail body as the man asked his quiet-sounding questions. At that time, an hour and a half ago, Jesse had assured his imcle that everything was going as expected; if Helen Lamar continued at her present cautious rate of speed, she would arrive in town around.

Now she was not coming. Uncle Frank, having been a pohce-man for nearly twenty years, might understand the reason; but Jesse was damned if he could! It was rank carelessness. Worse. His mind roved over the scene that had been described to him by the FBI man who had just received the ston,- himself.

Helen Lamar, in the maroon two-door sedan, had been sighted east of Columbus, Ohio, approaching the city. It was quite a proposition to follow her progress through a large city, especially when there was always the chance that she might swing north toward Toledo or south toward Cincinnati. But as it turned out, all the precautions, all the hard tedious work had been unnecessary and useless.

Helen Lamar had made one single, simple mistake. She had exceeded the speed limit on the outskirts of the city. And a traffic patrol car had attempted to stop her.

She must have grown panicky then—Jesse could see it clearly—and she stepped on the gas. The patrol car gave chase.

But, damn it, they had their instructions, all of them: do NOT ARREST REPEAT DO NOT ARREST. The order was on every teletype between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.

"Speeding, for God's sake!" Jesse said bitterly in the silent office, tasting the sour irony on his tongue.

She gave the pursuit car the slip. How had she? How could she? Well, she was taking no chances, this Lamar woman, because, unless Jesse missed his guess, she was hauling money, and a lot of it, and she couldn't let herself be stopped. She couldn't answer questions, and how did she know—how could she ever guess—that the fools only wanted to give her a traffic-violation ticket?

She careened into the downtown area, charging into the 8-to-9 o'clock traffic, reckless now, desperate, determined. She whirled into a side street, brought the car to a crazy halt half on the curb, and leaped out. The police had found the car, but not soon enough. Helen Lamar was gone. Swallowed up. Presto.

There you have it, Jess. She's gone. She had slipped somehow, mysteriously, in that snakelike way of the criminal, down a hole, into hiding, protected somewhere by others of her kind. Right now she was probably trying to think of a way—a safe way—to contact Griffin.

And when that happened? What would Griffin do then? No money now, no means of escape in the clever manner he'd planned, all his neatly laid calculations gone haywire—what would he do?

He would have to get money. Maybe this would force him to pull a job. And he would have to devise a new way of escaping now. He couldn't lay low in any one place too long. If he did, he knew he was asking for it. But to try to imagine what Glenn Griffin, his back abruptly shoved against a solid wall, might do—this was beyond Jesse Webb's powers but was the problem with which he was faced.

It might take Griffin some time to learn what had occurred. In the meanwhile, what? This also was Jesse's problem, although there was nothing he could do about it. All the known hiding places had been searched and searched again, all Griffin's friends in town had been questioned at length and without results. Where the hell ivas the man?

Glenn Griffin remained in the Milliard house, but Dan was now out of it. It was fifteen after nine.

His mind was on the house as he sat behind the wheel of the family car while a service-station attendant filled the gas tank and checked the oil and water. He was following orders now. The car was needed for a quick and safe getaway. That much Dan understood. Robish had called Glenn a fool for letting Dan leave the house, but when Glenn had suggested that perhaps Robish would rather go on the errand himself, the big man had subsided with a surly growl. Glenn was confident that Dan would do what he had to do, simply because the others— his wife, his daughter, his son—remained in the house.

Glenn was right, as usual. But Dan's calculations were running ahead of the young man's cleverness this time. He was staring at a telephone on the wall inside the lighted service station. He could speak to the police now in less than thirty seconds. What if he explained the exact circumstances in such a way that they would realize, too, that it would be irresponsible murder of innocent people for them to attempt to move in at once? Could he make them understand this fact?

Perhaps. But even if they did, what precautions would they take? They would have to set up roadblocks in the neighborhood in the hope of stopping Griffin in his escape later, after he had the money and the woman. Their job was to capture or kill the two Griffin boys and Robish. His was to protect his family. And certainly Glenn Griffin had not overlooked any possibility, any danger inherent in letting Dan leave the house. He had certainly looked ahead.

He knew that he couldn't take the dust-spattered sedan in the garage; he needed the Hilliard car. But Glenn must have realized already that, as soon as he had gone, leaving the Hil-liards behind, that blue car would become as well known and as dangerous as the gray one—-once Dan had notified the police. How did Griffin hope to prevent this?

Dan tore his gaze from the telephone and swept the idea, or temptation, violently aside. Glenn hoped to prevent it in the same way that he was now making sure that Dan did not telephone the police: by keeping a member, perhaps several members, of the family with the three men in the escape car. For as long as he needed them.

I
don't want them to take me along, Ralphie had said.

Dan was shaking with an intensified sense of futility. If he brought the police into it, he was running a risk; if he did not, he was no better off and perhaps even more at the mercy of Glenn Griffin's design. Now, instead of looking forward to the time when the money and the woman would arrive, he dreaded it. Only three hours. Less than three hours; perhaps much sooner if the woman hurried. His mind wrenched away from the scene. It was a long time away. It was not inevitable. Nothing was inevitable. Perhaps, in the interim . . .

Perhaps what?

In the interim, he told himself grimly, you will do as you have been told and you will hope that, by the time the moment of departure arrives, you will have thought of some threat to hang over Glenn Griffin's head that will make him change his plans. Right now you don't have time to think of that. Right now you can only do what you have been told to do.

Dan paid the attendant, with whom he was not acquainted because Dan had made a point of avoiding the station in the neighborhood where he had an account. The car purred easily. A fine car. Solid, perhaps a little more expensive than they could afford, a luxury, efficient, fast. Just the kind of a car that could do the job Glenn Griffin had in mind. Dan knew that he was taking his last ride in it, cruising now toward the Broad Ripple shopping district. He had to concentrate very hard on the project before him in order to avoid imagining the stellated holes that bullets would make in the rear window and perhaps the windshield, the dark ugly stain that blood would leave on the upholstery.

If only it was the blood of the men, and not . . .

He concentrated on the high whine of wind around the stores. Not many were still open. But there was a light in the window of the liquor store. He brought the car to a halt at the curb.

The old man behind the counter was counting money, in preparation of closing. He looked up when Dan entered, and he frowned.

"What can I do for you?" The voice was not cordial.

Dan bought a fifth of Old Grandad—Robish had insisted on bourbon—and noticed that the old man did not turn his back when he reached for the bottle. As he paid, Dan caught a glimpse of himself in a mirrored sign behind the counter. His face was ashen-gray, his tie slightly askew, the hat pulled far down over his forehead. He glanced at the man who was still studying him suspiciously, Dan didn't blame him. The broad and craggy face that, under normal circumstances, gave the impression of strength, of pleasant but distinguished restraint, now appeared sick, furtive, perhaps even dangerous to the old man.

Dan tried to force a smile; it didn't come. He saw in a swift final glance, as he turned away, that his eyes were red and inflamed.

When he was in the car again and turning it in the direction of his house, bearing down on the gas in his abruptly renewed anxiety, he wondered whether he was playing the fool. How could he ever be sure, if disaster ultimately struck, that he was not partially responsible himself? How could he be positive that by giving in to their demands, he was going to save anyone?

He couldn't be positive of anything. Perhaps he should have given in to the impulse back there at the gas station. Or perhaps he should have explained hastily but thoroughly to the man in the liquor store. Afterward, after the tragedy, if tragedy came, a man could be haunted forever, if still unmercifully alive, with the cutting realization that he might have, by some sly or bold cleverness at just the right moment, prevented it all.

The man in the liquor store probably had a gun. With the thought, Dan automatically relaxed his pressure on the gas pedal. Should he go back and get it, by whatever means? He would not hesitate, not for a second, to kill. If it were possible to step into the house now, to blast swift and successive bullets into the three bodies without any peril to the others, he would do it. In fact, it might be the only thing to do.

In less than four hours they had brought him to this.

As he caught sight of the yellow flare from the front windows and the bulky shadow of the house itself, he gave up the idea. He didn't dare. He couldn't be quick enough. They had two guns now, and he could not be sure that they would turn them on him. No. He could take no chances. A wave of futility broke over him, smashing at him. Then another—heart-stopping blows that broke over him, washed him under, then lifted him, helpless, and thrust him back again into the void of his own impotent rage. He could only fall back on one certainty: that now, at this moment, he was doing what he considered right from the clouded vantage point of this moment. What more can a man do? What more is there?

He parked the car as he had been instructed to park it: nose pointed toward the boulevard, clear of Cindy's coupe, the side doors unlocked, the key in place. He cut the motor and climbed out, feeling eyes upon him, crawling over him like obscene insects from the primordial slime. But he was not sick now, or faint. He was filled with the knowledge that he, by some 53