Death's Sweet Song (12 page)

It was exactly the way I had figured it. But there was small satisfaction in it for me. I was too sick with fatigue to feel satisfaction or anything else. All I wanted right now was for Ike Abrams to relieve me and give me a chance to get some sleep. And that was the day Ike had to be late. It was almost one o'clock when that Ford of his rattled off the highway.

“Where the hell have you been?” I said. “It's almost one and I haven't even had lunch yet.”

He was a lanky, easygoing guy, but that day there was excitement in his sleepy eyes. “By God, hell's bustin' loose in town, Joe! I guess I forgot what time it was. You heard about the robbery, didn't you?”

“The box factory? It was on the radio.”

“Well, it's the damnedest thing you ever saw, the way it's got the town boilin'.”

I was too tired to care, but I couldn't walk off without showing a normal amount of interest. “I figured most people hated Max Provo's guts,” I said. “Why should they get worked up because he lost some money?”

“It ain't Provo that bothers them, it's old Otto Finney. Half of them say he ought to be caught and lynched. They claim old Otto's the only one could have done it, him having the keys and knowing about the burglar alarm and all. And the other half claim the old man's probably dead somewhere, wherever the burglars buried him after they killed him.”

“And what do you think, Ike?”

Ike shrugged. “Old Otto never cared about money. He never showed it, anyway. But it's goin' to look bad if those fingerprints on the safe turn out to be his.”

“Has the Sheriff got any clues besides the fingerprints?”

Ike grinned faintly. “Otis ain't talking. Half the City Council is pullin' him one way, half the other.”

Just the way I had planned it. I was pleased. “I wouldn't want to be in the Sheriff's shoes,” I said.

And Ike said, “I wouldn't want to be in the
 
burglar's
 
shoes. The harder they make it on Otis, the more determined he'll be to catch them. And he'll do it, too. In spite of the City Council or anybody else.”

I rubbed my face, only half hearing what Ike said. “Well,” I said, “it's the Sheriff's baby, not mine.”

I went to my cabin, too tired even to wash my face and hands. I dropped on the bed and began to sweat in that blistering heat. Almost immediately unconsciousness began closing in like a steaming blanket.

And it was night again.

And there we were, Sheldon and I, racing under the blinding brilliance of floodlights. It was an endless, vacant avenue lighted by a thousand suns, and we were racing up that dazzling stretch where there was no sound, no shadow. That was the thing I noticed, there was no shadow. Just Sheldon and I racing through that shocking brilliance. There was a heavy load on my shoulders. I felt myself falling and I called out to Sheldon but he did not hear. He continued to run, and the load on my shoulders bore me down. Now it seemed that all the lights, every dazzling little sun, turned upon me as I fell. The load was suddenly lifted from my shoulders as I struck the ground, and I lay there for a long while, breathless, as the gathering suns watched and waited. And that was when I saw the eyes, two old eyes, very old and very dead, and they were staring right at me. I awoke staring into the brilliance of the sun, the real sun. Its furnace-like heat reached through the cabin window and struck my face.

I rolled over and lay drunkenly on the soggy bed. The dream was still with me and the terror of it was in the room. Automatically, I shoved myself up from the bed. I stumbled to the bathroom and washed my face. I sloshed cold water on the back of my neck until I was fully awake.

I stood there for a long while, rigidly, waiting for the lingering terror of the dream to slip away. I soaked a towel
 
and wrapped it around my neck, and then I went to the bedroom and then into the kitchen, touching things as I passed in an effort to prove to myself that I was awake and that the dream was gone.

I opened a can of beer and went to the bedroom. A strange thing happened then—or perhaps it wouldn't seem so strange to people who knew about such things. I began to hate Otto Finney.

It came slowly at first, and then with a rush, and within a matter of minutes I hated the old watchman more man I had ever hated a man in my life. I was
 
glad
 
he was dead. I was
 
glad
 
I had killed him. In my mind I had a completely new picture of what had happened, and now Otto was the villain, not I.

I don't know.... Maybe it's what a psychiatrist would call “defense mechanism.” Maybe they would say that turning my hate on Otto was an attempt to “justify my crime.” I don't know....

I only know that hate came when I needed it most. It saved my sanity.

Killing a man was not so difficult—I had learned that. But to go on liking him is not compatible with sanity—I had learned that, too. Killing and hatred are brothers. They go together, they are inseparable. If one is missing, it must be created from what is at hand.

And so it was.

But it came slowly at first. I thought: It should never have happened. If he hadn't shone that flashlight in Any face, it never would have happened. If he hadn't shot at me, it never would have happened.

And the inevitable tangent to this circle of thought was: He had no right to shoot at me! I wasn't trying to take
 
his
money! But he had shot at me. He had tried to kill me. Goddamn him, the whole thing could have been so easy and simple. A pushover, Sheldon had called it. But that watchman had to be a hero, he had to try to ruin everything just at the last minute.

And so hate was created. At the time, of course, I did not look at it objectively and I did not question it. The terror of the dream was too close for objectivity. I welcomed my new hate and held it close. I thought, I'm
 
glad
 
I killed him!

If it is true that hate is a defense mechanism, it is an effective one. It stands head and shoulders above fear. And it has strength, that's the important thing. I could feel myself growing stronger, and it was good to know that I would be able to sleep again and not dream.

The hell with Otto Finney!

The Sheriff's office was in the courthouse basement. I walked down the corridor of dirty marble and was almost sick at the steaming smell of unemptied spittoons and filthy toilets and stale cigar smoke, and I wondered why it was that the sheriffs office was always in the basement, and why it was that small-town courthouses were always so filthy. Near the end of the corridor there was a sign that said: “Otis Miller, Sheriff.”

Ray King was sitting at a desk just inside the front office. “Well, Joe, what brings you down to the courthouse?”

“Hello, Ray. I'd like to see Otis, if he's around.”

“Sheriffs tied up right now, in the back office. He ought to be free in a minute. Take a chair.”

I sat down in a straight-backed hard-oak chair, hoping that coming to the Sheriff wasn't a mistake. Mistake or not, I felt that it would be a good idea if I could find out what Otis thought about the robbery. It had been three days now and the papers had printed the same thing over and over again, and the Sheriff had said nothing, nothing at all, and there was no way of telling what he was thinking or doing. And I had to know. Before I could think of contacting Paula, I had to know.

Ray sat there grinning for a few seconds, then he pulled some papers in front of him and picked up a pen. “Excuse me a minute, Joe. Otis will be on my back if I don't get this report finished.”

“Sure. Sure.”

There was nothing else to do, so I sat back and tried to ignore the heat and watched Ray working on the white form. He didn't look much like a deputy sheriff, but the business was in his blood and it was more or less taken for granted that he would get Otis Miller's job when Otis decided it was time to step down. Ray's dad had been a U.S. marshal when Creston was just a stage stop in Oklahoma Territory, and there was a stone monument out west of town marking the place where he had been killed in a gun fight with two Territory badmen.

So it was natural enough that Ray should take up the law-enforcing business, although he looked pretty light for that kind of work. He was a lanky, easygoing sort of guy, not much older than myself. He looked more like a lawyer or a businessman than a deputy sheriff. Most of the time, when it wasn't too hot, he wore a dark, double-breasted suit. No cowboy boots and white hat for Ray King, and he never wore his gun where it would show, but he knew the business of a sheriff as well as Otis Miller did.

Maybe ten minutes passed, and finally an inner door opened and out came Pat Sully, the guy I'd paid that five dollars to that day at the box factory. That jarred me for a moment. Surely Pat hadn't suspected me! The big red-faced bastard was too dumb to put two and two together.

Still, it was something to think about. It turned me cold for just a moment, until. I heard Sully say, “I hope I've been some help, Sheriff.”

Otis Miller followed him out. “Well, we can't tell about that, Pat, until we put all the pieces together. 'I've called in everybody on old Provo's office force on the long chance that they might know something.” Then they shook hands and Pat turned to leave.

He saw me then. “Why, hello, Joe. What are you doing in this part of town?”

“Got a little business with the Sheriff, nothing important. How are things out at the box factory?”

Sully shook his head. “It's a mess. You never saw such a mess in your life. Old Provo's fit to be tied about this robbery.” He grinned faintly. “Well, I guess I'd better get back to it.”

I breathed easier. Nothing to worry about, I told myself. The Sheriff's talking to the entire office force. A matter of routine.

The Sheriff looked at me and I could see the tight little lines around the corners of his mouth. They were putting the pressure on him, all right.

“You waitin' to see me, Joe?”

“If you're not too busy, Sheriff. It's about that bogus bill I took in.”

“Oh.” He rubbed his face and I could see that he was annoyed. “Well, all right,” he said after a second. “Come on in the office.”

The Sheriff was a short, squat barrel of a man. He wore cowboy boots and the pants and vest of a blue serge suit. He had a big pearl-handled .45 that he wore cowboy style on his right hip, even in the office. Looking at Otis Miller for the first time, you'd think that here was just another small-town politician who had seen too many Buck Jones movies, full of wind and nothing else. You couldn't be more wrong. Otis Miller was as tough as steer hide, and his reputation as a lawman was spotless.

He planted himself behind his desk, as solid as an oak stump. “Well,” he said, “let's see it.”

I gave him the bill and he held it up to the light.

“You've got stuck, all right.”

“It looks like it,” I said. “I guess there's not much to be done about it now,” wondering how I was going to get around to the robbery.

Otis was still squinting at the bill. “When did you say you got this?”

“Four or five days ago. I found it in my cash drawer.”

He grunted. Then he got up and went to a small office safe in the corner of the room. He took another bill from the safe and held them up to the window. “I'm no expert,” he said finally, “but I'd swear these two bills came off the same press.” He handed them to me. “Look at the scrollwork in the upper left-hand corners.”

I held the two bills up to the light, and sure enough, they were exactly the same. The same engraving flaws were in both bills. “Where did this one come from?” I said, holding out
 
the
 
bill he had given me.

He shrugged. “Don't remember exactly. Several of them were passed here in Creston about a year ago. Directly after that the counterfeiters were caught in Tulsa.”

Otis was looking at me. It was just a look, I told myself, and didn't mean a thing, but I felt that chill again.

“They were caught?” It was all I could think to say.

“A year ago. They're in Leavenworth now.”

“How about me plates?”

“They were taken, too. They were so bad that the counterfeiters had stopped using them.” The Sheriff dropped the bill and let it flutter to his desk. “Very few of these bills were passed,” he said thoughtfully, “according to the federal men who were on the case. Look at them. That kind of work wouldn't fool an idiot—no offense, Joe.”

Goddamnit! I thought. Why did I ever think of this bogus bill, anyway? “Well...” I didn't like the way he was looking at me. “Where do you figure this bill came from?”

He shrugged.

“Somebody must have held onto it for a year and then passed it off on me.”

“It's possible,” Otis said.

But not probable. Bogus money as bad as this stuff just didn't stay in circulation. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, if he was thinking anything. He just looked at me and fingered that bogus bill.

“Then,” I said, “I guess there's nothing much we can do about it, if the counterfeiters are already in prison.”