A Killer is Loose (14 page)

He took a quick step and nailed her hard. He held onto her and she came around like a whip, up against him. Crying, she held her head back and stared into his face.

“In the house!” he snapped.

Again he hurled her at the window. I was over there by the window now and I caught her, holding her arms.

I looked at him. He wasn’t smiling now, he just stood there pumping that gun up and down like a pump handle.

“Inside,” he said. His voice was flat and dead again, and the gun kept working up and down in his hand.

“Do like he says, honey,” I told Lillian. “Come on, now. It’s all right. Climb through the window.”

She was weak and trembling, trying to say something. Then she gave up and crawled through the window.

Inside, Angers closed the shutters on the window, and we stood there. All of us were breathing hard. Lillian kept right on crying and it was worse than hearing that little girl. The sobs came up out of her from way down inside and you could tell they hurt.

“What were you trying to do, Lillian?” Angers said.

She burst into wild crying and I held her up against me. She was scared and like a little kid. She’d get to sobbing backward in a wild string and you’d wonder if she’d ever stop.

“Let her go, Steve.”

I took my arms away from her and she kept crying. I never saw anybody so frightened and crushed as Lillian was right then.

“I asked you what you were trying to do,” Angers said.

“Oh! Go away! Please, go away!”

“Women. They’re all alike,” Angers said. “I thought I could depend on Lil, here, pal. But you see? You shouldn’t think about your wife, either, pal. Hell with them.”

I said nothing.

“I—I followed you,” Lillian said brokenly.

“Never mind,” I said.

“I want him to know!” she said. “I want him to know!”

“I know without you telling me,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I followed you because— And then I lost you. I couldn’t find you. I followed you from where the car wreck was, but I lost you, and all the time you were in that house next door.” She began carrying on loudly again. “Oh, if I’d only known! I looked all over for you. Then I saw you come out of there and come over here.”

“That’s enough,” I said. I got it all right, and I didn’t want her to say any more. Likely he got it too. It didn’t matter. But just her saying any more might get him wound up to where he’d blast her with that gun.

“You could have called the police, then, is that right?” Angers said. “And you were just checking here to make sure we were staying long enough so you could phone the police, right?”

She said nothing. I could feel her fright, though. It seemed to seep from her to me and the tension in the house became stronger.

“Too bad,” Angers said. “You went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”

He was right. Leaving the car as she had would have done no real good. She wouldn’t have been able to tell the law anything of value. So she’d taken it into her own hands and tried to follow us, pin-point us. But she hadn’t been able to contact the police.

She’d lost us when we went into the house next door because of that damned piano.

Now all of us were dancing in the dark….

She would have been safe if she’d stayed away. That’s what got me. If she’d just stayed away and not been so bloody brave. She had to go and be a brave one.

“Anyway—anyway, two are better than one,” she said.

I looked to see how he’d take that. I’d got what she meant, but he didn’t say a word. You could talk about anything right to his face. Maybe he didn’t do anything because there wasn’t anything to do.

“Listen,” he said. “I feel funny. I don’t want to kill you two.”

We watched him. I could feel her stiffen beside me.

“You’re my pal,” he said. “Aren’t you? Hell,” he said. “Don’t make me kill you. Don’t do it.”

I didn’t know what to say. His voice sounded as if he were holding himself down.

“Well, you’re back now, Lil,” he said flatly. “I still like you.”

It probably wouldn’t matter even if he’d seen the look of fear she shot him right then. I didn’t know what to do. Maybe she thought two were better than one against Angers, but I didn’t. Alone, I might have had a chance. This way, I’d have to be looking out for her. I didn’t like it. It was bad enough just watching out for myself.

“Why didn’t you keep going when you left the car?” I said.

“Maybe you should have, Lil. Maybe Steve’s right.”

“I couldn’t—”

I didn’t know how to manage it. I had to win his confidence back. If he’d ever really had any confidence in me. There was something about him, the way he was now. It was a little worse than usual. Everything was drawn taut. Probably because of the episode with Lillian, finding her that way. One slip was all he allowed. I’d made mine back there in the car. So had she. But you couldn’t tell with this guy.

He got his roll of paper, tucked it under his arm.

“Now, let’s go upstairs and find some clothes,” he said.

“Sure, Ralph.”

There weren’t any angles. I hadn’t been able to jump him because he didn’t leave himself open. Even out there on the porch, he’d had that gun on me all the time. We were trapped, as trapped as you can get. And all the time I kept trying not to remember Ruby, because thinking of her drove me wild.

He waited for us to move, standing there with his roll of paper under his arm, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other. He was too quiet.

We went into the hall. By the stairway was a small table with a telephone on it and he told us to wait a minute. We stood by the stairs with the circle of light from his flash playing across our feet.

“I had to do it,” Lillian whispered to me. She had quit sobbing, but her chin was trembling. “I just had to, Steve!”

Angers was listening at the telephone.

“It’s working,” he said. “I’ll use that later.”

Folks left their phones connected when they went away from down here. Otherwise they might not be able to get their phone back from the company. Too much demand.

Lillian and I started up the stairs. She held my hand and I wished there were something I could do for her. Angers came along behind us.

“You tried to shoot me, Ralph,” she said, turning and releasing my hand.

She was getting hold of herself, but I wished she hadn’t said that. Maybe she was rattled.

“Shut up about that,” he said. He came up behind us and stopped. He held the light on the stairs.

“Why did you do that, Ralph?”

“I said for you to shut up about that!”

I took her arm, trying to warn her. That’s what was the matter, she was so frightened she didn’t know what she was doing.

“Let’s get on upstairs,” I said.

“You’ve got to have faith,” he said, jamming his head close to Lillian’s. “Faith in what I’m trying to do. You’ve got to have faith,” he said. “Faith!”

“Sure,” I said. I pulled at her arm.

She was staring at him, starting to back up the stairs. Then she turned around and would have run if I hadn’t held to her. Her breathing was fast and shallow. I turned and went along beside her. It was pretty bad when you turned your back on him.

“We’ve got to get some clothes,” I told her. “We fell in the drink, didn’t we, Ralph?”

“Yeah, pal.”

As we reached the top of the stairs, turned to walk down the hall, I heard a car out on the street.

“We’ll try the closets,” Angers said.

I heard another car outside on the street, then, and I heard it stop nearby. Then another car came along and stopped. I didn’t say anything, but Lillian had heard, too. She touched my hand with hers. I prayed it was the police. But, maybe that was the wrong thing to pray for. If we could only warn them some way, let them know where we were. Only you never knew what he’d do.

“Empty,” he said, glancing into a closet, flashing the light around on the floor.

There were no shutters on the bedroom windows up here. If he didn’t notice the cars out there, he might accidentally flash that light on one of the windows. It would be all they’d need. So far he had used it only to glance inside the closet.

We went into the hall again and made a tour of the upstairs. In one closet there were plenty of clothes. Suits, dresses, and a pile of white shirts sitting on a shelf. The closet was thick with the odor of moth balls.

He made us select clothes to wear, even Lillian, and he took a suit for himself.

We were dressing when the siren moaned. I’ll bet some copper cursed like hell because he’d tripped the button without meaning to. It moaned almost like the wind, but you knew right off it was a siren.

“They’re here,” Angers said. “It took them long enough.”

Lillian was dressing right there with us. In the pale light she had a gorgeous body, all right. She had long legs and her underwear was very tight, her breasts thrusting out almost as large as Ruby’s. Angers was watching her, watching her closely.

“Lil,” Angers said, “I’d almost forgotten. It’s a long time since last night, isn’t it?”

She was pulling the dress down over her hips now. It was a stretch. The dress had looked red in the light from the flash before he’d turned it off. Now you couldn’t tell what color it was. Only it fitted her very tightly. You could see that.

She glanced quickly at me, then just sort of looked at him. Then she went back to wriggling into the dress, kind of peeling it down over her hips.

“You hear me, Lil?” Angers said. “I’d almost forgotten how nice you were. It would be good if you kept reminding me. Funny I’d forget a thing like that.”

She still didn’t say anything.

He had on a suit again. He looked just exactly like always.

He herded us back along the hall to a front bedroom, overlooking the front lawn and the street.

They were down there, all right.

“Look,” Angers said. “Look at them.”

We stood by the window, watching the cops out there. I saw four or five cars, strung down the street, all with spotlights on their roofs. Two of them had their parking lights lit. They went out as we watched. You could see the men walking up and down out there, shining flashlights. They acted as if it was Christmas.

A
NGERS TURNED AWAY
from the window.

“You might as well sit down,” he said. “We can’t do anything till they leave.”

“Maybe they won’t leave, Ralph,” Lillian said. She wasn’t sobbing any more now. There was that old ring to her voice, reminding me of how well she’d acted at the Grahams’.

“They’ll leave,” he said.

“You can’t tell,” she said. “Maybe they’ll come in here.”

“It would be a shame.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll bet they come right in here.”

He kind of chuckled in his throat.

“She’s right,” I said.

“You know why they won’t?” he said. “Because I haven’t finished my job yet. There’s a lot to do, pal.”

Lillian and I sat on a bed, where we could look out of the window. Out there the cops kept prowling around, mostly off to the left, over by the house where the little girl had been.

Angers half sat against the window sill, holding the gun on his knees. You could see the black outline of his face against the paler shadows. He had quite a jaw, too. He leaned down and set the roll of blueprints on the floor by the wall.

“I wanted to show you those,” he said, tapping the paper. “But it’ll have to wait a while.”

Lillian and I sat there. I had a comb from my other clothes and I’d transferred the wet money to the clean pants. I wore a white shirt that was too tight and a pair of expensive gabardine pants. I didn’t know what color they were. I combed the muck out of my hair as best I could, and dropped the comb on the floor.

Lillian sighed and lay back on the bed and I looked at her. She had her eyes closed. It was very quiet and peaceful in the house. From outside you could hear an occasional voice and once in a while a car hissed along up the street.

“We’ve had quite a day, haven’t we, pal?”

“Yes.”

Lillian moved on the bed. She moved until she was over against me, her leg and her hip against me, and she put her arm around me, her breast pressed tight against me as she lay there on the bed. It was good to feel her there. It was reassurance that there was still good in the world; that the whole world hadn’t gone off its bat.

Angers glanced at us, then away. He began to tap the muzzle of the Luger against his knee, kind of half watching out the window, and half watching us. Lillian’s breathing was slowing down now, evening out.

“I hadn’t planned it this way,” he said. “It makes things harder now, this way. But we’ve only wasted a day, pal—one day is all.”

“That’s right.”

Lillian stirred against me and it was quiet for a time. Then
bang—
they were using the spotlights. One shone straight in the window. The room lit up like day, bright and clear, and Angers dropped fast. The spotlight passed right on by. It had been there only a brief instant. They were shining them all around the streets out there, up into the trees and at all the houses all around.

Angers chuckled a little and sat up on the window sill again.

A car started, one of the police cars, and it backed up until it was right in front of this place, then it stopped. You could see a cigarette glowing in the car. The engine was turned off and nobody got out.

The spotlights flashed around for about five minutes, then they quit that. One of the cars started up and drove away, hissing in the night.

Two cops were standing out on the sidewalk, talking. Then they went and got into a car and drove away, too.

“Here they come,” Angers said.

Lillian moved against me and I heard her say, “Please.”

I looked out of the window and three cops were coming across the lawn toward this house. They walked between the trees and they weren’t talking. One had a flashlight, but he turned it off as they came nearer.

Angers stood up by the window.

I watched them come along through the trees. My heart started pounding. If Angers would only turn his back, let me have a chance at him. But he was too damned wise for that.