The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (6 page)

Walking down to the car I said: “You came all the way back here just because Bernice Struble fell in a well?”

“Yes.” He looked at me and laughed abruptly. “You think that’s crazy?”

“Well, I … Yes. Damn right I do. Especially when you say it’s murder and you don’t have a single measly crumb of evidence—!”

“I have a theory, Velda. To test a theory you have to act as though it’s true. Then you start stacking up the facts and if your theory doesn’t hold them all you throw it out. When Frankie got sent up, I was sure of one thing; there was a killer loose in Sherman. I expected him to strike again, sooner or later, but there were no more murders. That didn’t fit what I’d learned about killers … until it occurred to me that he was clever enough to make them all look like accidents. I started checking, but it wasn’t until Bernice’s death that I had something to work on. It could have been an accident, I’ll admit. But I have to assume it’s murder in order to test the theory. You understand?”

“No.” I stopped at the car and turned. “The trouble is you start with the assumption that Frankie didn’t kill … my sister. I don’t have that faith, you know. He wasn’t my brother.”

Curt pulled out his billfold and gave me a folded square of paper. It was a penciled note faded and smeared from much handling. It began
Dear Angelface:
that was the nickname Curt’s brothers had used when they teased him.

Yr. idea sounds crazy, just between us kids. A good honest cop is worth ten smart lawyers; once the law gets an armlock on a man they quit looking. I got convicted and that’s it; I’d bet my tobacco ration that every speck of evidence that didn’t agree with the verdict has been shoved under the rug. But okay, I’ll answer your questions and shoot this out past the censors. She was dead when I got there.

You know how they feel. I couldn’t have been wrong. I must have got home by instinct after I got hit on the head. I don’t remember. I didn’t black out from booze; Gil Sisk can tell you I wasn’t drunk, and you know how I always remembered everything, even when I was totally paralyzed from drinking. So what happened to the knife the killer used? The sheriff never found it, and it’s rusted away by now. So damn much of this evidence is cold, cold. One thing to look into: Anne was playing some guy for money. I told her once that I’d go back north if I laid my hands on a bundle, and she asked if I’d take her with me. Half shot, I said sure. Maybe I would’ve too. Anyway, she visited me in the can while I was sweating out my thirty days and asked me when I could leave, because she thought she could raise about five thou. I said, anytime baby. Could be she had it the night she got killed; did the sheriff find any money on her? Strap that fat-assed son-of-a-bitch down and apply a pair of wire stretchers to his you-know-what. I don’t think he knows who killed her, but he knows damn well I didn’t. Sandy Matthews might give you something. She said once that Anne should be satisfied with the man she had and not bother me. She wasn’t talking about Johnny Drew, since who’d be satisfied with him? If I think of anything else I’ll shoot it out to you, but I’m not holding my breath, buddy-o. Some birds here plan on sprouting wings and they want me in the covey. They’ll wait six months, so that’s how long you’ve got. After that I’m out of the game, win or lose.
Buena Suerte,
Angelface.

I gave him back the note and started the car. I was biting my lip. “Six months. He didn’t give you long.”

“No.”

“So … that’s why you’ve got Gaby pumping Sandy.”

He nodded.

“Well, I don’t know about Anne’s other man, but I can tell you this. She was found with only seven dollars in her purse.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. The killer would have taken it, assuming be was the one who’d given it to her.”

I turned the car around and drove back toward Curt’s place. He didn’t have to say he wanted my help. He’d been saying it all morning, in a dozen ways. The next move was mine.

“Let’s say Frankie didn’t do it. Why do you think the killers still around’?”

“Several reasons. Bernice is one. Her situation was a lot like Anne’s.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“She had a roving eye, Gil says. A truckdriver friend of his was making it with her for a year. After he left town, Gil went out to see if she wanted a replacement.”

“Gil Sisk?” I felt a hot flush of jealousy. “Gil wouldn’t want Bernice.”

“A feminine viewpoint. Gil said she had a number of interesting … features. No brains, but Gil wasn’t wanting conversation. Anyway, she gave him the cold eye, so he decided somebody had beat him there. Could’ve been Anne’s old boyfriend.”

“Curt, that’s too farfetched.”

“Not if you add up the other similarities. Forget Anne was your sister, look at her objectively. She was roughly the age of Bernice. Had the same kind of passive, unexciting husband. She was known to advertise what she had—like Bernice. And at the end she and Bernice both had a secret lover—”

“Oh Lord!” I gasped. “I just remembered, Bernice was in the store a couple of days before she was.. before she died. She’d been saving trading stamps, but this time she waved them away. She said there were better ways of getting gifts, and besides she’d be leaving town soon. That’s like Anne telling Frankie she could get a big wad of money. What do you think?”

“It fits,” said Curt. We were approaching his place; Gil had gone, probably to lunch. Neither Gaby nor Lou had come back.

“Park behind the house,” said Curt. “I want you to talk to Heine a minute.”

Heine had shut down his drilling rig and was getting ready to leave for lunch. Heine was a living insult to Hitler’s Aryan ideal; short and stooped, with large hairy arms hanging to his knees. He had a dark, wizened face and wiry, tight-curled hair. He also had a local monopoly on well digging, sewer cleaning and plumbing.

“Heine, tell her what you found when you went out to the Strubles’ place the day after she drowned.”

“What I don’t find, you mean?” Heine gave me a black-toothed grin. “My big pipe wrench. Gone. I think somebody steal it. Maybe the sheriff.” He winked at me.

“Did you look in the well?” asked Curt.

Heine’s eyes widened. “Ah, that well, we fill her up.”

“Why?” asked Curt.

“Mister Struble, he said fill up quick, to the top. This is custom, to fill up the wells when people inside fall. Always. Water is no good to drink.”

As he drove away, I said to Curt: “You’re taking a lot for granted, even if the pipe wrench was in the well. Okay, it could have been a weapon. But you don’t know she was murdered, you don’t even know she had a lover—”

“No.” He sat down on the steps of the wooden porch. “Her husband took a room in town and left her stuff in the house. I’d like to go through it, see if there are any notes, flowers, souvenirs from her lover.” He looked up at me. “Struble listed his place with your husband. That means Lou has a key, right?”

I felt my back stiffen. I knew what was coming. “Yes.”

“Can you get it for me?”

“Why not ask Lou?”

“A month from now I could. Right now I don’t know him well enough.”

I looked out, trying to frame my answer. I saw a car approaching, kicking up a long serpent of dust. Gradually I made out the sheriff’s emblem on the side.

“Get in the house,” said Curt.

“But why—?”

“Go on. I don’t want you to cramp the sheriff’s style.”

I went in and looked out the window; I felt resentful, not because I’d been sent inside, though that was part of it, but because Curt had obviously planned this when he had me park behind the house. I was being used as … what? An impartial witness? An ace in the hole? How did he plan things so far in advance?

The car parked at the foot of the hill, near the crumbled foundation of a barn. Sheriff Wade got out, followed by Deputy Hoff. I felt a thrill of fear for Curt as the two men strode up the hill. Deputy Hoff was the sheriff’s nephew, but they looked enough alike to he father and son: hulking thick-necked men, with the deputy slightly taller and broader than his uncle. He’d left off wearing his theatrical forty-fives and now wore a.38 in a holster clipped to his belt, just like the sheriff.

Curt greeted them without rising from the steps. “Howdy, Shurf,” he said in an exaggerated drawl. “What brings you out to these parts?”

The sheriff’s white teeth showed in a humorless smile. “Drop the humor, Friedland. You ain’t Chester and I ain’t Matt Dillon. We came out to look around.”

“Look away,” said Curt, waving at the barren hills. “I see you brought Deputy Hoff, whose fearless gun is all that stands in the way of Franklin County being drenched in the blood of innocents.”

Deputy Hoff hunched his shoulders. “Now listen, Friedland—”

“Easy, Bobby,” said the sheriff. To Curt he said: “You was just a kid when you left. They say you’re smarter than your brothers, but so far you ain’t showed any signs of it. You got a rumor started I railroaded your brother to the pen and I don’t like that a little bit. You got the county saying the Struble woman got shoved in the well, and her old man’s tearing his hair. He ran to me, and I had to go through all the evidence with him again. Now I’d like to know what business you’ve got in this county.”

“That’s none of your business, sheriff.”

The deputy blurted: “Uncle Glen, let me—”

“No Bobby, he’s right. Legally it’s none of my business. One thing that is, Friedland, and that’s if you got any firearms in that house.”

Curt rose slowly. “I didn’t know the state had a Sullivan law.”

“I don’t know what they call it. All I know is I gotta register all the firearms in the county.”

“Well, just out of curiosity, how many have you registered so far?”

The sheriff’s face froze in surprise, just long enough to convince me there was no such law. His features quickly smoothed over. “That’s none of your business, boy. You gonna let us see them guns?”

“I’d like to see something first. Something like a search warrant.”

The sheriff’s neck reddened. “You aim for me to drive to Franklin for a piece of paper while you stash the guns out in the brush?”

“You can leave Paladin here to watch me.” Curt walked slowly down the steps. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice look on a strange, velvety menace. “You’re not afraid to stay, are you Bobby? I’ll set up a target so you can practice with your shootin’ iron. You need it, Bobby. Anybody who hits a man in the back when he’s aiming at his legs—”

“You better shut your goddam trap, Friedland.”

“You did aim for his legs, didn’t you Bobby? That’s what you said at the trial.”

“One more word, Friedland—”

“Go to the car, Bobby,” said the sheriff.

“Let him stay.” Curt stepped onto the graveled area in front of the steps. “He can leave his gun on. It doesn’t scare me. Any son-of-a-bitch who can’t shoot better—”

Bobby tore his gun front his belt and snarled. “I don’t need a gun for you.”

He rushed Curt, starting his wide swing while still a yard away. Curt sidestepped and seized the arm. I saw a blur of movement, then felt the earth tremble as Bobby thumped onto the ground. He lay gray-faced, trying to get his breath. He sounded like a truck trying to start on a cold morning.

Curt backed away as Bobby rose. “The Japanese call it The Gentle Way, Bobby. Judo. The harder you come the harder you land.”

Bobby charged with a roar of rage. This time I heard the air whoosh out of his lungs when he landed. Twin streams of dark blood trickled from his nostrils. As he got to his knees, I saw that the sharp gravel had ripped his shirt. Dark patches showed where the blood had begun to soak through. Bobby stood up and shook his head like an angry bull. Blood smeared his face on either side of his nose, giving him a garish crimson moustache. He took a step toward his gun, but the sheriff snatched it up.

“That’s enough!
Bobby, get the hell back to the car.”

Bobby stumbled off, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The sheriff drew the gun from its holster. “Curt, I’m gonna have to arrest you.”

Curt seemed relaxed, his voice mildly curious. “What’s the charge, Sheriff?”

“Disturbing the peace.”

“Whose peace? Look around. I’m on my own property.”

“You assaulted an officer of the law.”

“Hell! He assaulted me.”

“I doubt the judge will take your word against mine and Bobby’s.” He jerked his head down the hill. “Better get moving.”

Curt didn’t turn his head. “Velda,” he said in a conversational tone.

I drew a deep breath and stepped out onto the porch.

The sheriff was taken by surprise, and in that instant I saw … more than I wanted. I saw the eyes of a man who’d killed more than once, and I saw the same look his victims must have seen. A glazed, animal violence. Something inside me shriveled up and went into hiding.

“Your husband know you’re here, Velda?”

“No … but I suppose he will.”

His face turned cunning. “Not from me, Velda. I know better than to tell a man what his wife does behind his back.” He peered at me as though he’d never seen me before. “I thought your sis was a black sheep, the way she rubbed up against trouble. Now I’m thinking maybe it runs in the family.”

He slid Bobby’s gun back into the holster and looked at Curt. “I arrested you a minute ago. Now I’m releasing you for lack of evidence. You’re free to leave the county any time.”

“I’ll go when I’m ready.”

For a moment the sheriff’s face held a look of sincere regret. “Yeah, I figured that. You want to be pushed.”

I watched the sheriff walk down the hill and drive off. I felt weak and sick at my stomach. I must have staggered because I felt Curt’s arm slide around me. I wanted to lean, and lean hard, but I pulled away. “I’ve got to go.”

We walked around the house to the car, and I said: “You deliberately provoked that fight, Curt. They could have come bearing roses, and you’d still have fought. Why? Just tell me why?”

“I had to see them with the wraps off. I wanted to read them in a hurry.”

“Did you?”

He nodded. “Bobby’s matured some. Twelve years ago he’d have charged me a lot quicker. But still a boob. He’s like a dog the sheriff keeps on a leash, valuable because the honky-tonk cowboys are scared of him. The sheriff is smart, but he’s been in office too long. He’s trapped in details and can’t see the forest for the trees. Honest enough—that is, if you offered him a bribe he’d gun-whip you half to death. On the other hand, if he got the word from a respected citizen—just a calm and thoughtful discussion of a particular case—it could turn him off a suspect without leaving him aware that he’d been influenced.” He opened the car door for me. “They’re typical rural cops, a little on the rough side, a little gun-happy. They’re helping the killer, but they don’t know it.”