Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (13 page)

           
"Okay," I said. "My
mistake. My apologies, Miss Borden."

           
"Your apologies are not
accepted!"

           
Lorna said, "When you're quite
through snapping at each other, we ought to take another look at the situation.
If Leonard has a substitute holding down the office phone, it seems likely that
Mac is no longer in
Washington
. We can hope that lie got away safely and is sitting out the storm in
his secret hideout, the one you were just told about, Eric. But that means
we're pretty well on our own."

           
I said, "We'll wait until the
stores and restaurants open. We'll need some food, and a car for Lorna, and
clothes for both of you-"

           
"I have my own clothes,
thanks!" Martha snapped.

           
"We're going to try a dramatic
disguise, Miss Borden," I said mildly. "We're going to bathe you and
put you into a nice clean dress so
nobody'll
recognize you. Okay?"

           
She started to protest and stopped,
but her gray eyes hated me.

           
Lorna said, "I suppose we'll be
splitting up here, as soon as we're all well fed and respectably clothed. In
the meantime, does anybody mind if I try sleeping in a bed, just to see what
it's like?"

           
In spite of the late morning start,
Martha and I managed to cross half of
Arizona
and most of
New Mexico
before pulling into a large motel in the
town of
Tucumcari
, near the
Texas
border, around
nine o'clock
that evening. Parking in front of the
office, I started to get out, but remembered something and reached into my
pocket.

           
"Here," I said.
"You'd better put this on, for appearances' sake."

           
Martha glanced at the inexpensive
wedding ring I'd picked up while she was shopping with Lorna in another
department of the
Phoenix
store we'd patronized. She didn't move to take it.

           
"Don't be silly," I said
impatiently. "For your own protection, you're going to have to share a
room with me. Would you rather be my sister, or my daughter, or just a very
good friend? I like you better as my child bride. Take it."

           
Reluctantly she took it and put it
on. "How many 'brides' have you had in the line of business, Matt?"
she asked tartly, and answered her own question. "Obviously, enough that
you can pick the right ring size at a glance. But speaking of protection, who's
going to protect me from you?"

           
I sighed. She was really a pretty
corny young lady. I said, "You certainly do have a high opinion of your
sex appeal! Frisking you is supposed to turn me on like a rampant stallion; and
sharing a room with you is supposed to start me pawing the wall-to-wall carpet
like a prize bull.

           
Relax, Borden. You're a pretty husky
girl, and I'm tired. I think you'll be able to fight me off if you try real
hard."

           
There were three vending machines by
the office doorway, displaying newspapers from near and far-well, as far as
El Paso
,
Texas
. I bought one of each and went inside to register us as man and wife.
Then 1 drove around the landscaped motel maze until I located the second-floor
room with the correct number, facing an asphalt parking area, a chain-link
fence, and weedy vacant lot. It made for a longer walk with the luggage, but I
parked over by the fence where there was plenty of room, so I wouldn't have to
unhitch the trailer.

           
Locking up the station wagon, I
wondered where Lorna was sleeping tonight, if she was sleeping at all. Well,
she had her mission, and 1 had mine. I hoped she'd lay off the drinking and
thinking. It wasn't her job to solve all the problems of humanity, just the one
Mac had sent us. .

           
"Are you all right?"
Martha asked behind me.

           
"What?" I realized I'd
been standing there longer than necessary. "Sorry. Just a little groggy
from all the driving, I guess. That, and keeping track of all the cars behind
us."

           
"Do you think we're being
followed again?"

           
I started across the parking lot.
"Actually, I've seen no indication of it," I said. "Of course,
it doesn't really matter. They don't have to follow us, remember? They know
where we're going.

           
They can figure out the roads we'll
most likely use. They can pick us up anywhere. After all, it was your phony
daddy in
Washington
who ordered me to
Fort Adams
,
Oklahoma
, after Carl."

           
"You mean it's a trap. Then
why-"

           
"Why are we driving into it?
Because we need Carl. Mac didn't put him number six on the list for nothing.
He's presumably supposed to organize the last five agents, as Lorna's handling
the first five, leaving me free to join your dad in
Florida
according to instructions. Of course, I
could do without Carl if I had to, as far as the primary mission is concerned,
but there's also the fact that I've got to get him the hell out of that town.
That's a little problem Mac apparently didn't know about when he briefed you,
that I'm going to have to solve on my own, with Leonard and his agents
breathing down my neck, not to mention the local
polizei
."

           
"I don't understand. What's
going on in
Fort
Adams
, anyway?"

           
I stopped at the foot of the stairs
to rearrange my burdens so I could slip her one of the newspapers I'd bought.

           
"Front page, lower right,"
I said.

           
When I heard her gasp, I knew she'd
found the right item. I headed up the stairs, aware of her coming slowly along
behind me, trying to read as she climbed. I found the right door off the long
balcony above, unlocked it, turned on the lights, went in, and dumped the
luggage on the nearer of the two beds. Martha moved past me and sank down on
the other bed, still reading.

           
Standing there, I regarded the
seated girl thoughtfully. It was the best opportunity I'd had to view the
effect since she'd made herself over with Lorna's help. The grubby, barefoot,
girl pirate was gone, replaced by a civilized young lady. The costume Lorna had
selected for her consisted of white sandals and a sleeveless light blue summer
dress that hung straight from her shoulders to a waistline-if you want to call
it that-located well down on her hips. There was a brief, pleated skirt below.

           
With its pale color and tricky
pleats, I wouldn't have picked it as a sensible travel garment, but apparently,
in clothes as in language, I was way behind the times. Lorna had explained to
me that this type of double-knit cloth, whatever that might be, in addition to
being
wrinkleproof
, was practically dirt proof. If it
did get soiled, a quick rinse and a few shakes would have it clean and dry and
crisp-looking once more. These new synthetic knits, Lorna bad said, were the
answer to a female undercover operative's prayer. I noticed that she'd bought
herself a tailored pant-suit of the same material. .

           
"But this is horrible!"
Martha gasped, looking up from the paper. "If it's your friend Carl who's
doing it, lie must be mad!"

           
"So the local sheriff seems to
think," I said. "Let me read it again. I just gave it a quick glance.
Here, you can get some more background information from these other
papers."

           
I handed them to her, and sat down
on the big motel bed beside her. For a while there was no sound but the
rustling of newsprint. I frowned at the article in the
El Paso
paper, trying to get at not only what the
reporter had written, but what he'd known but hadn't felt free to write.

           
COP-STRANGLER STRIKES AGAIN

           
Fort Adams
,
Okla.
: Two bizarre murders, following on the heels of a violent student riot
that claimed three lives, have brought renewed tension to this college town.

           
This morning, Patrolman Harold
Grumman, 23, of the Fort Adams Police Force, was discovered strangled to death
in his parked patrol car. The murder weapon, found at the scene, was a length
of fine music wire equipped with two short handles apparently sawed from a
broomstick.

           
Local authorities consider the
weapon a significant clue, since an identical
garotte
figured in the violent death of Deputy Sheriff Marcus Wills, 47, whose body was
found in the bushes beside the garage of his home in a
Fort
Adams
suburb, just a few days ago. More force
appeared to have been used in this earlier case, as the body had been almost
decapitated by the thin wire.

           
In addition to the weapon used, the
two crimes also have in common the fact that both officers were involved in the
recent disturbance on the campus of the Fort Adams State College, when all
local law-enforcement agencies were called upon to help deal with a riot in
which three students died as a result of police gunfire. However, the county
sheriff in charge of the murder investigation, Thomas M.
Rullington
,
discounted this as a possible motive.

           
"Those college kids are kind of
wild, sure, but they aren't cold-blooded assassins,"
Rullington
told the press. "We are proceeding on the theory that this is the work of
a homicidal maniac, probably hopped up on drugs. . .

           
There was more on an inside page,
giving further details about the riot, about the two slain officers, and about
Sheriff
Rullington
, who'd apparently been in command
of the forces of law and order at the time of the campus confrontation. There
was also a brief rundown on the three dead students: Charles Dubuque, Mark
Hollingshead
, and Emily Janssen. Only
Dubuque
, it appeared, had been taking active part
in the disturbance when shot. The other two students had fallen some distance
from the scene, victims of stray bullets.

           
A local jury had exonerated all
other law-enforcement personnel involved, the sheriff specifically calling the
death of
Hollingshead
self-defense in the line of
duty-apparently tie youth had been found with a brick in his hand-and the other
two deaths regrettable accidents. I got the impression that the jury's regrets
had not been very deep or very sincere.

           
I lowered the paper and found Martha
looking at me. "What are you going to do now?" she asked. "You
can't possibly-"

           
"I told you what I was going to
do," I said. "I'm going to get him out of there if I can. I've got to
try. For one thing, Herbert Leonard is just yearning to have one of our men get
caught strangling a few cops. You'll note that although he knew where Carl was
heading and why, he apparently never bothered to warn the authorities around
Fort
Adams
. There's no indication that they were
expecting trouble or know who's causing it.
Herbie
wanted Carl to get in good and deep. Then, when I called and seemed to accept
his mimic as the genuine Mac, he saw how he could improve on the picture by
using me instead of killing me. He had me sent after Carl to make it look as if
our whole organization was involved instead of just one grief-crazed agent.

           
Obviously, he's gambling that we'll
both be caught. The publicity will give him the excuse he wants to lower the
boom on us officially, something he's apparently been afraid to do so
far."

           
Martha frowned. "But those men
outside
Tucson
tried to kill you after you'd got the orders
to head for
Oklahoma
."

           
I reminded myself not to forget that
she wasn't dumb. "I think we can blame that on a communications lag,"
I said. "It took us less than an hour to get from
Nogales
to
Tucson
. Even if the word was passed immediately to
let us through, it just didn't have time to get out to the units already in the
field with orders to stop us, dead. That little Ford had no telephone or
two-way radio, remember?"

           
"So. . . so those two men just
died for nothing."

           
"Would you rather it had been
you?" She didn't speak. I said, "The other reason I'm going to get
Carl out of there, as I've already said, is that I need him."

           
"But you can't make use of a
crazy murderer-"

           
"Little girl," I said,
regarding her grimly, "you have a serious identity problem, don't you?
What are you and who are you for, anyway? I thought you'd be weeping for those
college kids brutally shot down by the lousy pigs. I thought in your circles
anything that happened to a cop was just great. So what's a little dead fuzz among
friends, anyway?"