Everybody Had A Gun (20 page)

I could understand that. I said, "Well, honey, it's over. Most of it. If nothing else, Breed's stuck with at least a second-degree murder rap. Forget it."

"I'll never forget it."

I believe that. I'd never forget this business either. I'd been rubbing Iris' wrists, and she winced as the circulation started picking up. But she was lucky there was nothing more than that wrong with her.

I went over to Breed's dark brown desk and used the phone to call Homicide. I told them what was out here, hung up, and went back to Iris.

"The police are coming out, Iris. Be here in a few minutes." I paused as I remembered something. Then I went on. "Honey, you'll have to talk to the cops anyway. Do you mind waiting out front till they get here, then telling them what's happened? The whole thing, starting from yesterday morning?"

"No, Shell, I don't mind. Why?"

"I won't be here. Come on."

We went out front and waited by my old Cadillac, still here from the time Joe-Joe had driven us from the cabin. It seemed like a week ago. I climbed in and Iris waited outside. I sat there till I heard the sirens getting close, then I started the motor.

Iris asked me, "Where are you going, Shell?"

"Some things to do. Unfinished business, honey. I'll be down at headquarters later. Probably see you there. Keep your chin up."

She smiled, and I drove away just before the radio car came up and stopped in front of Breed's building. I wanted out of here not just because I'd get tied up for a long time—that was coming sooner or later—but because I was thinking about the initials on that tiny handkerchief Joe-Joe had found by Marty Sader's desk, and remembering that Kitty was short for Catherine.

Chapter Eighteen

I DROVE FAST, concentrating on the road, keeping my mind on the highway ahead and the wheel in my hands. I didn't want to think about anything else, but the thoughts kept crowding up anyway. The drive didn't seem to take long; all of a sudden I was there.

I parked, cut off the motor, got out of the Cad, and stood looking at the little white house for a moment. It looked the same as it had when I'd been here for the first time. A light burned inside, as it had before, and a few leaves blown by the wind scraped over the cement walk as I went toward the house.

I remembered Kitty's face falling apart while she talked on the phone, and I remembered the fury flashing in her eyes as she hurled a vase at me, and I remembered the silent trembling of her small shoulders when I'd last driven her here. But most of all I thought of her mint-cooled voice and her bubbling laughter, and I had an idea I wasn't going to like this; I wasn't going to like it at all.

But I had to be sure. The door was unlocked. I opened it and went inside, and the funny thing was that the first thing I saw was the gun. It was on the carpeted floor, only two or three inches from her dangling right hand. She had on a pair of bright cotton pajamas and she was lying on her left side against pillows piled at the end of the couch across the room from me. Her head dangled forward, the short, dark hair slightly mussed, and a small, almost dainty hole was in her right temple. The little gun was a .22 and it was under her hand where it would have dropped after she shot herself in the head.

Only, of course, she hadn't shot herself.

I walked over to the couch and looked down at her, and I said softly, "I'm sorry, Kitty. I'm sorry as hell. You were worth ten of her any day." That didn't do either of us any good.

There was a framed picture in her lap and I looked at it. It was of Marty Sader and inscribed, "To my darling Kitty." There was a letter, too, on the floor, but I didn't read it. All the props were there, but there were so many things wrong with it that it screamed out loud.

I went out of the house and shut the door quietly behind me and headed for Nichols Canyon Road and Mrs. Vivian Sader, who had practiced too long with her little .22 revolver.

I drove right up in the driveway and parked. I'd been seething all the way out here and I was looking forward to seeing old horseface inside. I hoped she was inside. If she had a hole in her head, I was going to lose the last of my sanity and crawl gibbering to the nearest asylum.

I got out of the car and trotted up to the door, noticing there was a light on inside, and started to knock, and didn't. There was no hole in her head, but I might wind up with one in mine. Take it back. If anything, I'd wind up without a head at all.

It wasn't a cannon, but it was the monster bore of the lethal piece of machinery I'd seen earlier—yesterday it had been—out behind the house where Mrs. Sader was popping away at Truman's picture tacked onto some bales of hay.

Now it was in Mrs. Sader's right hand, and it looked too big for her hand, but her finger was curled around the trigger.

She said, "Come in, Mr. Scott," in a flat voice, all on one level with hardly any inflection. She had some kind of beads around her neck and she kept playing with them while she spoke.

I shivered at the eerie pitch of her voice, and looked at her, and suddenly I wasn't looking at the beads or the bore of the big gun. I was looking at the madness staring out of her eyes.

"Come in, Mr. Scott."

Mrs. Sader said it again and moved the gun slightly. I went on inside as she backed up. I'd had so many guns pointed at me I was used to it. The one she had was just bigger, that was all.

I said, "I wish it had been you, damn you."

She smiled sadly and said, "Bad, bad, they were bad." She looked right through my eye sockets as she had before, as if there were something unpleasant on the back of my head. After what Lonely had done back there, I guess there was. She hissed, "Sinners! She deserved to die. So did he."

"You didn't really think you'd get away with it, did you?" I was watching her. Just as soon as I got the chance, if I ever did, I was going to jump her and maybe break her neck.

She answered me flatly, "I did what was right. I did what was right."

I laughed at her. "But you sure tried to make it look like murder and suicide. How'd you get Marty to go back to the Pit?"

"I asked him to. It was"—she frowned—"important. It was important."

It had been important to Marty, all right. It didn't really make much difference what she'd told Marty to get him there; she'd done it. I said, "And that sweet little kid. Was she in bed when you went out there? Did you get her out of bed and get her sitting on the couch and shoot her in the head? Then leave that junk around her?"

She looked at me out of those frightening, staring eyes. She didn't say anything, but she was humming. Humming! This was a picnic.

The blood boiled in my head. "If I get my hands on you, I'll kill you, woman." I don't know whether I meant it or not, and it wasn't a smart thing to say, but I hated her in that second. And then I got what she was humming. I couldn't place it for sure, but it was some kind of hymn.

And it hadn't made any difference what I'd said to her. I don't think she even heard me.

"Come," she said.

"What?"

"Come." She waved toward the back of the house. Not with the gun, though. With her other hand. She wasn't that crazy.

I didn't get this. Was she going to take me out back and shoot me? Maybe she had a big grave already dug out there somewhere; she looked like a gravedigger. It was going to be real cute if I shot up a whole roomful of hoods, charged all over hell throwing my weight around, and then was blasted to small pieces by a little old lady with her marbles scattered.

I did what she said.

I walked toward the back of the house as a little dizziness swept over me and I got that hot sickness in my throat again. And the place where I'd been shot throbbed and burned. I noticed that every damn light in the house was on. I kept on walking and she tramped along behind me humming that hymn. I wasn't sure, but maybe I'd heard that hymn at a funeral.

I got clear to the back door of the house before she stopped me. There was a switch on the wall to my left and she said, "Stop there. Turn on that switch, please." She was polite about it.

I started to lift my hand, and pain jumped through my arm and chest. I stopped and reached with my right hand, and she spoke again.

"Wait! Why did you stop?"

I turned and looked at her. "My arm's hurt. I got shot. O. K.?"

She smiled a sweet, sweet smile, and nodded toward the switch. She stayed several feet away from me and played with her beads.

I turned on the switch and light flooded the whole back of the house. I could see the pepper tree under which I'd first seen this witch sitting, the branches bending and whipping now in the high wind.

"Go on out." Then she started humming again.

I went. I kept hoping for a chance to jump her, but I wasn't getting any. Most of the time my back was toward her, and the rest of the time she was too far away. She might not be a very good shot, but all she had to do was nick me with one of the balls from that bazooka, and the impact would probably unravel me.

I kept going and we walked to the tune of her off-key musical accompaniment till we got to the barn. There was a long, heavy ladder lying alongside the barn.

"Pick up the ladder," she said.

"What?" This was a new one. Maybe she thought she was going to climb to heaven. Well, I'd be glad to hold the ladder for her—till she got to the top. I grinned, thinking about it.

She snapped, "Pick it up!"

Apparently she meant it. I'd had time for some of my shock and anger to die down to a dull throb inside me by now, and I was getting increasingly worried about the possibility of getting a hole through my frame. There wasn't any way to figure this cracked gal; she might suddenly take it into her mind to pot at me instead of Truman.

I bent over with no more hesitation, not grinning any more, and got hold of the ladder about the middle. I managed to hoist it off the ground, but the strain sent pain gnawing at my chest and left arm. The dry, stiff wind snatched at the ladder and made it even more unwieldy.

And now I could tell how tired I was. I'd been up since early the morning before, and I hadn't been resting. My heart pounded a little faster with the strain of lifting, and a throbbing began inside my head.

I thought of swinging the ladder around and busting this gal, but it felt as if it weighed a ton, and I barely got the end of it swinging toward her when she said, "Walk away from me. Don't try to get away, Mr. Scott."

She said it calmly and flatly, but the end of the ladder had another ten feet to go and was moving about six inches a second. This was a losing game. I walked away from her toward the house, dragging the rear end of the ladder on the ground behind me. She tripped along, humming her dirge.

Finally it hit me that maybe I wasn't going to get away from here alive. Not without help. And here we were far from town and a good hundred yards from another house, so where the hell would I get help? This was great. Private-eye Scott and a cracked little woman. And I needed help.

At the house she said, "Put the ladder up to the window."

It puzzled me, but I worked on it. I got the ladder halfway up the side of the house and rested it against the wood momentarily. I was probably scratching that brand-new coat of white paint. I was glad.

Mrs. Sader said, "Go on."

I turned halfway toward her. "I'm beat. I'm ready to drop." I wasn't kidding, either. "I told you I got shot, and I'm just plain tired. Let me rest a minute, then up it goes."

She was content to wait. She wanted that ladder up there. I started getting an idea why, and I looked up toward the window. I'd stood there yesterday watching Mrs. Sader at target practice. It was her room. The blinds and curtains were drawn, but I could see there was a light on inside. And right underneath the window were the four bales of hay. My brain started clicking again, slowly.

I said, "Mrs. Sader, I—I'm dizzy." I shook my head and reached into my right-hand coat pocket and wrapped my fingers around my Zippo cigarette lighter.

She raised her voice. "Stop! Stop! Stop! I'll shoot you."

I froze. "I want a cigarette. I told you I'm dizzy." I didn't think she'd shoot unless she had to. Maybe she was nuts, but she had a plan and she'd stick to it all the way if she could. At least I thought she would. Be hell if I was wrong.

"No!" she said. "Put up the ladder."

I moved slowly and brought my hand out of my pocket with care, and reached up and got hold of the ladder. But the lighter was still in my right hand. I shoved the heavy ladder up another six feet and there were only about four feet to go till it hit the window. And I was two feet from those four bales of dry, dry hay, some of it now scattered by the wind.

I looked at Mrs. Sader. "Far enough? Don't know if I can make it."

"No." But she helped. She moved to her left a few feet, watching me, the bore of the gun steady on me. It helped because that put her a little to the left of the bales, and that's where I wanted her.

"O.K.," I said, and made a great show of straining at the ladder. I pushed the top up till it touched the sill of the window and slid the base of the ladder in toward the wall of the house, and strands of hay brushed at my coat.

Mrs. Sader had a clear shot at the middle of my back, but maybe, maybe she couldn't see my right hand, and I moaned, "Dizzy. Christ, I'm dizzy," and leaned up against the bales of hay and shoved the lighter up against the crack at the bottom of the two top bales.

I flipped the damn little flint on the damn little lighter and nothing happened except that Mrs. Sader said, "Come away. Come away now," and I thought merrily, Why zip, zip, zip. . .when one zip does it!

"Come away!" she piped, and I saw I had the lighter backward in my hand and I twisted it around and went zip again, and the most beautiful little flame in all this wide world flared and flickered in my hand. I shoved the lighter, still open and burning, between the two bales of hay and stepped back from them and took a step toward Mrs. Sader so she'd look straight at me.

She did, and she backed up a step and said, "Go in the house."

Maybe she meant in through the back, but just in case there was a little fire smoldering, I didn't want her to spot it yet. I walked around to the front, up on the porch, and inside with her right behind me.