Detour to Death (12 page)

“W
ELL, IF IT AIN’T
the wandering boy!” Rice drawled, as Danny raised up from behind the wheel. “Keep those hands up!”

“I haven’t got a gun,” Danny said.

“Oh, no! What did you do—leave it in Junction City?”

Jim Rice wasn’t going to ease his grip on that rifle no matter what Danny told him, and Danny wasn’t in a position to argue. They were standing just that way, eyeing each other like a pair of strange dogs, when another dust cloud rolled down the trail from Peace Canyon and settled down around the body of a red jeep. Never had company been so welcome. Undoubtedly that blue pickup didn’t carry the only set of tires in the vicinity that would match the tread marks in that barn, but Danny was in no shape to rationalize at the moment. All he could think of were the bloodstains in the cabin, and all he’d heard about the death of a woman named Francy.

“Danny!” Trace called, hopping to the ground. “Are you all right?”

“Is
he
all right! Now isn’t that thoughtful?” Rice said. “I catch an armed killer and you want to know if
he’s
all right!”

“Danny isn’t armed,” Trace snapped.

“How do you know?”

“Never mind how I know. What happened, Danny? What happened back in that cabin?”

It was a question Danny would have liked to answer, complete with descriptive passages, but two things happened to stop him. One was the sudden arrival of Virgil Keep, who wasn’t letting Trace Cooper out of his sight any more, and the other was the delayed reaction of a two-day flight to nowhere that had finally brought him back to the long and strong arm of the law. Danny’s arms weren’t strong at all any more, and his legs were like strings of wet spaghetti. He grabbed the door handle of the truck for support, and saw Rice’s rifle swing toward his head.

“Put that damn gun down!” Trace shouted. “Can’t you see the kid’s done in?”

“What do you want me to do,” Rice demanded, “hold his hand?”

“Just hold your fire! You don’t have to worry about Danny now, Jim. The sheriff’s here; he’ll take charge.”

Danny couldn’t account for it, but somehow even that big ugly sheriff didn’t look too bad. Maybe he was just too far gone to be afraid, or maybe he was just too afraid to know it; but he crawled into Virgil’s borrowed car about the way he would have crawled into a featherbed if there’d been one handy. They were going back to Cooperton now, Danny and the sheriff and Trace following along behind in the jeep; but Jim Rice couldn’t wait for the procession. With a pointed suggestion that perhaps the sheriff should wait until he sent back a few deputies to protect him from so dangerous a prisoner, he tore off down the trail ahead like Paul Revere with a red-hot tip about the British. Jim wanted to be sure the party had a reception committee, and that nobody got the story of this capture secondhand.

Practically all of Cooperton came down to the sheriff’s office to welcome back Danny Ross, and they weren’t there to give him the keys to the city. Danny was still too exhausted to be more than vaguely aware of what was going on, but he gathered that he wasn’t going to win any popularity contest with this crowd. Virgil had picked up a deputy and a photographer at the intersection where the canyon road met the highway, and together with Trace they formed a pretty formidable bodyguard. The photographer was a man from the D.A.'s office, and the intersection, Danny learned on the way in, was the spot where Francy Allen had been found. This piece of information fitted in nicely with what he’d seen in that cabin, and somebody should know about it; but the sidewalk was rolling like a choppy sea, and the steps up to Virgil’s office had about six-foot risers.

“Somebody telephone Doctor Glenn,” he heard the sheriff say off in the distance, and then everybody went away for a while and left Danny in the darkness.

• • •

About the time Danny collapsed, a big black man in a light suit elbowed his way through the crowd outside the sheriff’s office and began asking for Trace Cooper. He might as well have saved his breath, because nobody was listening to anything but the sound of his own anger, anyway; but when Trace suddenly appeared in the doorway, Arthur waved down his attention.

“Trace” he called. “Hey, Trace, I’m back.”

Arthur was like a bonus from fate. Lowell Glenn’s office phone rang without response, and Virgil wouldn’t hear of calling old Doc Gaynor’s residence on a day such as this. It was nice and respectable of Virgil, but in Trace’s book the living took precedence over the dead any day. In very few words he explained what he wanted Arthur to do.

“But don’t you want to hear what I found out in Red Rock?” Arthur protested.

“Just as soon as you get Glenn over here,” Trace said. “I don’t think the kid’s suffering from anything more than sunburn and exhaustion, but it might calm down a few excited citizens if they see he needs a doctor. It’s not much fun to lynch someone too sick to care.”

Trace might have exaggerated the temper of the crowd—it was too early to tell—but it did seem that every man, woman, and child in Cooperton, with two exceptions, were either in front of the sheriff’s office or on the way over. And that old truck coming down the street was Walter Wade’s, with Viola leaning her head out of the cab so as not to miss any of the excitement.

“Okay,” Arthur said, “but in case you can’t wait, the answer is yes.”

Now, of course, Danny Ross didn’t hear any of this conversation, and it wouldn’t have made sense to him, anyway. It wouldn’t have made sense to the crowd, either, who were just being normally curious about a desperate killer with two murder charges hanging over him. Two—and if you listened to Viola Wade (it was quite a feat to avoid listening), maybe three. Cooperton was of a mind to believe anything at this point, considering those two fresh graves in the cemetery and that new addition to the Junction City morgue.

But there were two people in Cooperton who didn’t know a thing about all this excitement until Arthur stuck his thumb on the Gaynor doorbell. Through the fancy glass panels on the old-fashioned door, he saw Joyce rise from the sofa and come forward. Trace was right: she wasn’t alone, and the other occupant of the sofa was young Dr. Glenn. At the hearing of Arthur’s message, he bounded up like a trial lawyer making an objection.

“The sheriff’s office!” he echoed. “Why am I wanted there?”

“Sick boy,” Arthur said. “They just brought in Danny Ross. He’s kind of done in.”

It seemed to be a letdown for the doctor, or maybe a relief, but he wasn’t taking Arthur’s word for anything. “This sounds like some of Trace Cooper’s doings,” he said. “Why didn’t Virgil telephone if he wanted me?”

“He did. You weren’t in.”

“There’s a phone in this house, too!”

“Sure there is,” Arthur agreed, “so why don’t you just ring up the sheriff and see if I’m telling the truth.”

Arthur waited in the hall where the afternoon sun cast long shadows on the faded carpet, and where Lowell Glenn’s struggle for an open line came like an impatient staccato from the old doctor’s study. The telephone operator would be pretty busy for a while helping the countryside catch up on the latest news. Joyce stood by the door, pale and troubled.

“Was he hurt when they took him?” she asked.

“Who-Danny Ross?”

“Yes. Trace thinks he’s innocent.”

“Was Trace here?”

“A few hours ago.”

That accounted for the doctor’s reluctance to leave, Arthur decided. He probably suspected the whole thing was a trick to get him out of the house so Trace could return. “The doctor sure hates to see you two get together,” he remarked, nodding toward the study door. “He must be afraid Trace is going to talk some sense into your head.” He expected Joyce to rare up and protest this intrusion in what she considered a private affair, but all the fight was gone out of Joyce now. She was still wearing black, and her pale blond hair was all done up in a sedate style that suited her about like jodhpurs on a cowpoke. It was the dress of mourning, but there was more worry than grief in her eyes.

“What is ‘sense'?” she asked hollowly. “I’ve given up trying to rationalize anything. I just don’t understand, Arthur. I don’t understand murder, and I don’t understand deceit. Why do people do such terrible things?”

“Maybe they don’t mean the things they do to be terrible,” Arthur said. “Maybe they mean them for good and they turn out wrong.”

“You’re talking about Trace and Francy, aren’t you?”

“I’m just talking about the things people do. Take your grandfather, for instance. I don’t suppose there ever was a finer man, but that didn’t stop him from making a terrible mistake.”

Joyce’s head came up quickly. She was trying to read answers in Arthur’s face, but he was heir to an old silence that volunteered nothing. And he was loyal.
That’s why he holds me in such contempt
, she thought—
he’s loyal and I’m not
.

“You’ve got to tell me,” she said. “You were on the place all the time Francy was there; you must know the truth.”

“I’d be the smartest man on earth if I did,” Arthur muttered.

“Don’t talk like that! It’s all very noble of you to keep silent because Trace does and you respect his wishes, but it’s not for myself that I’m asking. Can’t you see what’s happening? People are beginning to say that Francy was murdered just like my grandfather. If it turns out that Danny Ross isn’t guilty, who do you suppose will be accused next?”

All the fear in Joyce’s eyes had a name now, but Arthur couldn’t protest. He couldn’t answer or make any denial, because now Lowell Glenn had completed his call and was putting down the phone. There was only a moment before he came back into the hall, hat in hand, and in that moment it was Joyce who spoke.

“I wouldn’t blame him if he did kill her,” she said. “If all we’ve suffered is a lie and she let it go on, I wish I had killed her myself.”

• • •

The answer was yes—that’s what Arthur had called back as he edged back through the crowd. Trace took the knowledge back inside with him, but by this time it was more of a corroboration than a surprise. The inkstains on Francy’s fingers had to mean what he now knew: she had regained consciousness before her death; she had been able to use a pen. But Francy had no worldly goods to bestow, and she couldn’t have been writing her memoirs so close to the edge of her grave. What she could have done was sign a statement and name a name only one other person could have known until it was shared with Charley Gaynor.

So it all came back to the old man as Trace knew it must. But where was the statement now? Had the doctor made an extra stop on the road back to Cooperton? Had he posted a letter or made a telephone call? The latter idea Trace abandoned immediately. Any act the doctor might have performed was still a deep secret, and conversations on the Cooperton line were as confidential as a bass drum. Trace pondered that unhappy fact for a moment, and then he began to understand.

But conjecture was foolish until Arthur returned with the details, and even when he returned, with a grumbling Lowell Glenn in tow, the outlook didn’t brighten. No one at the hospital had any knowledge of a written statement. All Arthur had learned was that Francy had been conscious before her death, and that the old doctor was closeted with her until the last. It was like finding a key only to realize that the door was still missing.

“What are you two hanging around for?” Virgil demanded, returning from Danny’s cell. “Lowell says there’s nothing wrong with the kid but some blisters and scratches.”

“Can I talk to him?” Trace asked.

“Why should you?”

What Trace really wanted was to pry out of Danny every word Charley Gaynor had uttered during their brief acquaintance. Words that meant nothing to him might mean a great deal to a man with a key. But he wasn’t ready to share this new-found knowledge yet.

“I’d like to know how that fire started in the cabin,” he said.

“I’ll write you a letter when I find out.”

“Virgil, for God’s sake be reasonable!”

“I am being reasonable! I’m letting you walk out of here instead of throwing you into a cell where you belong. I know how the kid got to that cabin, and you know damn well that I do! If it was anyone else—”

Virgil didn’t get any farther. A cry from the street interrupted his tirade. “Hey, Virgil, what’s the doc for? You going to pretty up the kid for his funeral?”

“Break it up out there!” Virgil yelled. “Everybody go on home!”

The deputy at the door squinted through the glass panel. “Nobody’s going,” he said. “That’s Jim Rice shooting off his mouth. I think he’s been drinking.”

“Well, tell him to go home!”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Trace said. “Ask him to come in.”

Both Virgil and the deputy looked at Trace as if he’d gone mad, but there was nothing wrong with his reasoning. Jim Rice on the inside couldn’t cause any trouble on the outside.

“Get the Wades in here, too,” he ordered. “There’s something I want to ask them.”

Nothing Virgil had said seemed to discourage Trace. Straddle-legged and confident, with his red hair tossed high as a gamecock’s comb, this run-down relic of the past possessed more authority in the lift of his eyebrow than Virgil Keep could command with a scepter. Virgil wasn’t afraid of the crowd, drunk or sober. Crowds were like cattle, docile enough if you knew how to ride herd; but Trace was a maverick who wore no man’s brand, and he wasn’t leaving.

“What do you want to ask?” he queried.

“About murder. You can listen if you wish.”

Trace turned his back on the office and took the few steps to the cell where Lowell Glenn was swabbing disinfectant on Danny’s bruised hands. The kid had been out only a few minutes, but he still had an eerie pallor under his sunburn. He frowned back at Trace’s frown, and then peered over his shoulder at the several people coming into the sheriff’s office. Jim Rice, Viola and Walter Wade—together with Danny they comprised the sole survivors of that last call Charley Gaynor made at Mountain View, and that’s just what Trace wanted. If they rehashed every detail, every word and action, he might pick up some clue; if not, he might at least plant a few doubts in the place of this cocksure acceptance of Danny’s guilt. Walter would be easy to shake; give him an argument and Walter Wade wasn’t certain of his own name; but the other two would be tough customers. Jim Rice because he hated all Coopers, past and present, and Viola because she lived with a big imagination in a little world.