Death's Sweet Song (13 page)

He smiled faintly. “Maybe the experience will be worth five dollars to you, Joe. From now on you'll look at your bills before ringing them up.”

I had an almost irresistible impulse to wipe the sweat from my forehead. It was nothing. I was just imagining things. The Sheriff said, “Was there anything else on your mind, Joe?”

“No. No, that's all,” and got up. “I guess this robbery thing has got you pretty busy,” I added.

“Yes. In fact, there are some people I want to talk to right now. So if you don't mind ...”

That was a dismissal. He stood up and hitched his holster. “Well, take it easy, Joe,” and he walked out of the office.

I hadn't learned a thing. That didn't occur to me until I had reached the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. I had been on the defensive every minute; I hadn't had a chance to ask questions.

I was tempted to go back and talk to Ray King and see if I could get anything out of him, but that would be too risky. If Otis
 
did
 
get to wondering about that bogus bill, everything I did would begin to mean something to him. He was a bulldog when he got hold of a thing. Let well enough alone, I told myself. Give Otis no reason to believe that I tried to fool him with that piece of counterfeit and everything will be all right.

I looked at my watch and it was three o'clock. Three days, almost four, since the robbery, since I had seen Paula. It seemed like a lifetime.

Across the street from the courthouse there was a bar, and that's where I headed. I stood there with my foot on the rail for maybe fifteen minutes, nursing a schooner of beer and wondering what I was going to do next. I was free; Ike was taking care of the station for the afternoon. Free to visit with my dad, free to do anything I wanted, and I wanted to do nothing. I didn't even want the beer. Then a paper boy came in with the afternoon paper, the only paper Creston had, and I took one. It was in the headlines.

FINGERPRINTS ON PROVO SAFE

IDENTIFIED AS MISSING WATCHMAN'S

Otis Miller, Creston County sheriff, said this morning that the fingerprints found on the blown door of the Provo Box Company safe had definitely been identified as those of Otto Finney, missing company watchman. Finney has been missing since the night of the robbery....

I read it and felt myself smile. The paper, without coming right out and saying it, made it sound like an open-and-shut case against Otto. Now I knew why the Sheriff had been annoyed at my bothering him with that bogus bill. He knew perfectly well that the old watchman was innocent, but that wouldn't keep the political wolves off his back. There was only one thing for him to do, and that was to find Otto. By the time he did that, if he ever did, the details of the case would be so fogged that the trail would never be picked up again.

Suddenly I felt good. I felt fine. I had another schooner of beer and this time I enjoyed it. It was strange, the way that story in the paper affected me. It was difficult to believe that it had anything to do with me, anything at all. A factory had been robbed. An old watchman was missing. That was all. I could even think back to the night when Paula Sheldon and I had dumped the body over the rock ledge into the lake and feel nothing but a kind of cold savagery. The old bastard had tried to kill me! He got what was coming to him!

I had another beer, and this time the bartender leaned over the bar to look at the paper. “Well, I'll be damned,” he said. “That makes it look bad for old Finney, don't it? But you want to know what I think? I think the old man's dead.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

“Just a hunch, maybe.” He shrugged. “That's the way I've got it figured, though. I've been thinking about this thing, and I just don't believe the old man could have done it. I don't give a damn about the fingerprints. I think the robbers killed him and dumped his body in the lake.”

I must have jumped.

“What's the matter?” he said. “You look kind of funny.”

“Nothing's the matter. But what made you think of the lake?”

“Well, it just seems like the logical place to me. I ask myself how would be the best way to get rid of a body in a hurry, and I think right away of the lake. I don't know why; it's just the obvious place, I guess.”

It
 
was
 
obvious, if this stupid bartender had thought of it. Dangerously obvious.

“It's my guess,” he went on, “that the Sheriff would be dragging the lake right now if he could get the officials together on it. There are too many damn fools in town, though, that think the old man actually took part in the burglary and is hidin' out somewhere. But they'll come around in time. Then you'll see I'm right.”

I wanted to get out of there. I was beginning to realize that the lake hadn't been such a fine idea after all, and if it weren't for the wrangle in the City Council I'd be in a hell of a mess. I said, “Well, I guess the Sheriff knows what he's doing.”

“Sure, if they'd just let him do it. You know, I've got another theory about this thing. I'll bet somebody right here in Creston took that money and killed Finney. Otis Miller will get them, though. I'll bet on it.”

I downed the beer and got out of there. I'd heard enough.

I got back to the station around sundown and Ike Abrams said, “Anything new in town?”

“Not much. I talked to the Sheriff about the counterfeit bill. We'll have to chalk it up to experience.”

“I heard on the radio that the fingerprints on the safe belonged to Otto Finney. That's hard to believe, isn't it?”

“You can't ever tell about people, I guess. Anything new out here?”

“Everything's about the same.” Then he grinned. “By , golly, there
 
is
 
something. You remember the guy with the blonde wife, the ones in the blue Buick?”

An anvil dropped in my stomach.

“Well,” Ike said, “they're back.”

I couldn't believe it. It was impossible! They couldn't be stupid enough to come back here at a time like this!

But they had. That blue Buick was parked in the carport beside Number 2, like the returning of a nightmare. “I don't know what we've got,” Ike said, “but they must like it. This is the third time they've stopped here, isn't it?”

“I don't remember.”

“Sure, two times before. I remember the last time was the night the box factory was robbed.”

I was about to blow up. Why had they come back? “Maybe you're right,” I said, and my voice was surprisingly calm. I felt like yelling.

“You goin' to town tonight?” Ike asked.

“No. There's no need of your staying on; I'll close the station myself.”

“I don't mind staying.”

“Ike, take the night off. I want to go over the books, anyway.” He stood there grinning, and I could have slugged him. “What's the matter with you? What are you grinning at?”

“Why, nothing, I guess. Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing's wrong. Go on, Ike, take the night off.”

“Whatever you say, Joe.”

I was tingling all over. I wanted to get that Sheldon by the throat and beat some sense into his stupid skull. And Ike wouldn't leave. He kept puttering around for maybe five minutes while I tried to keep from yelling.

“Well, if you're sure you won't need me tonight...” he said finally.

“I won't need you, Ike. That's the truth.”

I was as tight as a drum. Just about another minute of Ike and I would have exploded. But he left. I was never so glad to get rid of anybody in my life.

Now that he was gone, I didn't know what to do. I had to see Sheldon. I had to find out if he had completely lost his mind. He
 
must
 
have lost his mind, coming back here at a time like this! At least Paula should have known better.

I was afraid to leave the station untended, but it looked like the only way. As soon as Ike was out of sight, I headed for Number 2. There was a coldness inside me; I was ready to take somebody's throat in my hands and start squeezing.

Paula was at the door when I got there, and the sight of her jarred me. She looked as though she hadn't slept for a week. That blonde hair wasn't as blonde as it had been before, and it looked as though it hadn't been combed since the night of the robbery. I jerked the door open and said, “What the hell do you mean, coming back here?”

She took two steps back, like a sleepwalker, and glanced at the bed. Sheldon was stretched out on the covers, his face flushed, his lips tight. One shirt sleeve had been ripped off at the shoulder and his left arm was bound with what looked to be dirty rags.

“Hooper?” he almost whispered.

“Goddamn you, why did you—”

“I've got to have a doctor,” he said, talking through clenched teeth.

I wheeled on Paula, who still hadn't made a sound. “What's wrong with him?”

She smiled then, without humor. “He's been shot.”

The full implications still didn't hit me. “How did it happen?”

“We'll go into that later.”

“We'll go into it now!”

She shrugged. “All right We were in Texas. We saw this drugstore, a little hick drugstore in a little one-horse town in Texas. I was buying some aspirin and I saw the druggist go to the safe, and I saw the money there. It looked easy.” She sighed wearily. “There must have been a week's take there in a safe that I could have opened myself.”

“And then what happened?”

“For God's sake,” Sheldon said hoarsely, “don't stand there talking. I've got to have a doctor!”

“And then what happened?” I said again.

Again Paula smiled that smile that wasn't a smile at all. “We took the drugstore that night. Or we almost did. The town marshal, a hick town marshal, just happened to see us as we were leaving. The whole town was asleep, but not that hick marshal. He was a hero. He had been wearing that six-shooter for God knows how long, just waiting for a chance to use it. And he used it oil Karl.”

“But why come here, all the way from Texas?”

“Karl's got blood poisoning, I think.”

“But why did you come here?” I insisted. She sank to a chair beside the kitchen table.

“Because,” she said, “Karl has to have a doctor. And because doctors don't treat gunshot wounds without reporting them. And,” she added, “because I remembered that your father was a doctor and I thought maybe he would overlook the report if it was for a friend of yours.”

That stunned me. It had been obvious all the time, but she had to spell it out for me before I got it.

“You're crazy!”

She shrugged, very lightly.

“You must be insane,” I almost yelled. “Or maybe you just don't know what an honest man is like. Well, that's what my father is. Nothing in the world could make him take a case like this and not report it!”

“Not even to save his son from the electric chair?”

She had me.

She knew she had me, and she could start turning the screw any time she felt like it. And she felt like it right now. She stood up suddenly, and she didn't look so tired now. She pushed her hair back and looked straight at me with those cool blue eyes. “I'm not going to argue about this. Karl has to have a doctor.”

“Then get one of your own!”

“You know that's impossible. Your father is the doctor we want, the one we're going to have.”

And then a car honked outside and the sound made me jump.

“What's that?” Her eyes brightened just a little.

“Somebody at the station. A customer. I've got to get back.”

“Have you got a telephone at the station?”

“No.”

The corners of her mouth turned up again. “Sure you have. Well, call your father and tell him to get out here, understand?”

The car honked again and we stood there staring at each other, and even then, at a time like that, I kept thinking what a hell of a woman she was. She had looks, she had brains, and she could set a man on fire. I hated her guts at that moment, and it was all I could do to keep my hands off her.

“For God's sake!” Sheldon groaned.

“You'd better go, Joe,” she said, and fatigue crept back into her face. I turned on my heel. “And don't forget to call your father,” she added as I went out the door.

I was shaking with rage when I got back to the station. The guy was just beginning to honk the horn again as I rounded the corner. “All right!” I yelled.
 
“All right!”

They were tourists, a fat old geezer of about sixty and a little pinch-faced woman. I looked in the car window and said, “Fill her up?”

“No, we just want a cabin,” the man said.

Of all the times to get business! “I'm sorry,” I said, “we're full up.”

“You've got a 'Vacancy' sign out,” the little old woman said peevishly.

“I just forgot to take it in, ma'am. Sorry.”

“Don't look like you're full,” the man complained. “There ain't but one car back there. I looked as we drove up.”