Ticket to Ride (27 page)

I let her lean against me as we shuffled into the hallway. The man in the living room was still ranting. And ranting it was, a fuming harangue about how they'd betrayed Karen. The words filled the hall. I thought of the Boris Karloff picture Bedlam and how the asylum inmates screamed threats and curses as they flung themselves against the bars of their cages.

We had to stop halfway to the kitchen because she thought she was going to be sick. But she raised her head and opened her mouth, taking in gulps of air. She clutched my arm as she did this. The tough grasp got even tougher for a moment. Then she exhaled and took a step forward. We moved slowly on to the kitchen.

I got her seated in the breakfast nook and went to get her a glass of water. As she took her first sips, I yanked the .38 from my belt. She'd been looking at it. I spoke in a voice a bit higher than a whisper.

“What happened?”

She set the glass down and wiped her mouth with her fingers, leaving a ghost of blood on her lower lip. “Mrs. Raines and William and Lynn Shanlon were in the living room talking about everything that had happened lately. They were wondering who killed Mr. Bennett and Roy Davenport. Lynn said all this had to have something to do with her sister's murder. That's what she called it this time. Murder. Somebody rang the front bell, and I opened the door and it was a man with a gun. He was standing right next to me when you called. He kept pushing the gun into my back. Then he knocked me out and put me in the closet.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. I'd never seen him before. But he looked—insane. Very crazy. His face. Even without his gun, he would have scared me.”

“So he's got all three of them in the living room?”

Her answer was to grab the edge of the table for support. Her face had gone pale and her blue eyes had dimmed. I'd estimated her age at fifty. Right now she looked seventy.

“I think I need to see a doctor.”

“I think you're right.” I was up and getting her more water. She'd drained the first glass. “Is there any whiskey around in the kitchen?”

“That's all right. I can't stand the stuff anyway.” She rested her head against the back of the nook. She closed her eyes. I brought her water to her. Her breathing came in torrents.

I didn't sit down again. “I'm going to see what I can do in the living room. I'd call the police but I don't know what he'd do if he heard a siren.”

“He's insane, I know that much. I told you about his eyes.”

Put my hand on her shoulder. “You just rest.”

She patted my hand. She still hadn't opened her eyes. “You be careful.”

The lunacy in his voice was compelling. He was like a deranged Pied Piper. By the time I reached midpoint in the hallway, I realized what he wanted. If he had all the money in Lou's safe, he would be able to flee. And he would let them live. Well, that was bullshit, and I knew they knew that was bullshit. As soon as he got his money, they'd all be dead.

Linda's voice was calm. “I've told you, Jimmy, I don't have the combination. You don't know anything about my father if you think he'd trust anybody with it.”

“Then the colored fellow here, he knows it.”

William Hughes's voice was steady, too. “We've been over and over this, Mr. Adair. Mr. Bennett would never give that combination to anybody. And I mean anybody. He wasn't what you'd call trusting.”

Jimmy Adair, Lynn's next-door neighbor.

“You wouldn't even help your own sister, Lynn. You would've let them get by with it. That's why I had to step in.”

He was jumping subjects. When he spoke to Lynn, his voice went up an octave and the madness was clearer.

Lynn wasn't as calm as Linda or Hughes. She sounded as if she was ready to snap. “You killed two people, Jimmy. You think that's what Karen would have done? You killed two people for nothing. It didn't bring her back, did it? And now you're going to kill us. You need help, Jimmy. Even if you had money, you're in no condition to get away. You're—upset. You're not thinking clearly.” Then, “William and I spent most of the day talking to a fire investigator in Cedar Rapids. We wanted him to go over the whole report again, see if we could get the investigation reopened. William and I never believed that fire was accidental. That's what Karen would have wanted us to do—not kill people.”

“I killed the people who killed her—why is that so hard to understand?” His voice cracked; tears rattled his words. “I loved her. If she'd lived, I would've asked her to marry me. And she would have, too.” He turned to Linda. “Your father took away the one woman I ever really loved, so I figure he owes me—that's why I want every dollar in the safe. Every single dollar. Then I'm leaving this town and never coming back.”

They didn't dare argue with him. Not when he was in the midst of his frenzied fantasy.

The gun blast was so loud, I felt it as well as heard it. And almost directly on top of the blast, I heard a grunt and then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. And on top of that came Lynn's shriek and Linda's sob. Linda cried: “You killed him! You killed him!”

“He shouldn't have thrown that ashtray at me. He was stupid.”

Hughes, a military man, had waited for what he considered his best opportunity. He'd taken the calculated risk of trying to injure or at least distract Adair. Then he would rush in and tackle him. It had been a long, long shot. But it was preferable to just sitting there listening to the madman as he worked himself into the kind of rage it would take to slaughter three people.

In the confusion of screams and shrieks, I was able to run the rest of the way down the hall without being heard. Adair was shouting at the two women to sit back down, sit back down. There were tears in his words; he was coming undone. He might turn on the women at any point.

Lynn saw me before he did. In fact, it was her recognition that made him spin toward me and fire twice. The second shot ripped into my shoulder and jerked me backward two or three feet. I fired my .38, but the shock of being wounded marred my aim. My own two shots ripped into the wall behind him. Glass shattered.

Lynn was on him now, fighting for his gun. She slapped at him and shoved him and got her hand on his gun wrist.

I started to move, the pain in my shoulder exploding now. This time, the sweat covering me was cold. I managed to get within six or seven feet of him, but that was when he slipped his arm around her throat and swung her around to face me. He'd managed to get himself a hostage.

From where I stood now, I could see William Hughes flat down on the surface of a Persian rug. Linda Raines was crouched next to him, tears glazing her cheeks.

The pain from my wound ran the length of my gun arm. I was having trouble holding the .38. Bad enough he had Lynn. It would be even worse if he had Lynn and I dropped my gun.

“You listening to me, Lynn?” He increased his grip on her throat. She made a choking sound, her upper body surging instinctively as her breathing was cut off. “We're going outside and getting in your car. And we're going to drive out of here. Do you understand me?”

I called on all the private-eye writers I read. I needed their encouragement and guidance. They were always getting clubbed, stomped, stabbed, burned, drowned, and shot, but nothing stopped them from their appointed vengeance. Sure, they had six shots in their chest and one in their head, but by God they always managed to get the job done.

I was falling a little short of their record of accomplishments. All I had was a wound in my shoulder, and here I was dizzy, cold, and losing strength. I was afraid I was going to pass out. I wasn't going to get a private-eye merit badge for this one.

I had a gun, but Adair had Lynn. “You could've helped, too, McCain. People always say you help when they're in trouble. You should have figured out that that fire was arson. You owed it to Karen.”

“I didn't know Karen.”

“Everybody knew Karen, and everybody loved her, too.”

Any other time, his madness would have made him a forlorn figure living out some impossible romance in his mind. But he had the gun and he had Lynn and he had already killed two and maybe three times, depending on how William Hughes was. Pity him afterward, Samuel Johnson had said of hanging killers in old London. That applied here too.

He began moving in small jerky steps toward the hall. He wasn't having an easy time of it. Shuffling along with a hostage in tow isn't easy. You have to keep a tight grip on her while always keeping track of what the other guy is doing. The hostage could make a break for it; the other guy could make a sudden move you couldn't respond to quickly enough.

Then I realized his plan. He wasn't going to take her with him. He was going to use her to get to the car and kill her before he got in it. Nobody was guiltier than Lynn, by his logic. Karen had been her sister. She'd betrayed Karen by not avenging her death. He'd killed the men involved. Now he would have to kill her too.

“God, stop him, Sam! Stop him!” Lynn's voice was raw, her face a portrait of confusion and shock. Spittle ran down the left side of her mouth. Her knees kept buckling. Adair had to redouble his grip every thirty seconds; otherwise, she'd slide out of his grasp. She slipped into the low moan I'd heard many times in people who were starting to withdraw from reality following a traumatic event. She was coming apart. I had to help her.

I forced myself to stand up straight. For the moment, Adair was wrestling with her to keep her upright. She had to cooperate. If he had to drag her, he'd leave himself open. I'd get an easy shot at him.

I took two steps and started weaving. A new layer of freezing sweat caused me to shiver. Just moments ago I'd been boiling despite the air conditioning.

As I righted myself, my eyes met Adair's. He had Lynn back under his control. He was watching me closely. I assumed that to him, I might have been trying to distract him, give Lynn a chance to bolt. He couldn't be sure whether I was for real or just acting.

“God, McCain, are you all right?” Lynn said.

“Doesn't look like your savior's going to save you.” Adair vised her neck even tighter.

The worst of the cold was gone, one large convulsion of it that had nearly knocked me down. My palm was so sweaty, I had to squeeze the gun so tight that it hurt. I was still dizzy. I needed to move with great deliberation.

Adair started moving again. They went three or four steps and she kicked him. Both his face and his voice registered the pain. For a millisecond his grip loosened, just enough time to take a single unencumbered step. But he was quick and he was pissed. He swung her back to him and smashed the side of her head with the bottom of his gun. She slumped in his arm. Blood snaked down from her temple. He was better coordinated than I'd guessed. His eyes had never left me.

But he paid a price for knocking her out, and as he started moving again, he discovered what the cost was. Conscious, she walked with him. Unconscious, she was dead weight. An ungainly hundredpound bag of flesh, bone, blood, and water. He cursed. He couldn't just hold her now, he had to hold her and drag her.

Another convulsion rocked me. I needed to reach out for something to lean against, but there was nothing. A drunkard's walk as I tried to move forward. One step, two steps, three—

This time I couldn't stop myself from starting to fall. I didn't sprawl, though. I was able to hold my descent to one knee.

And that was when it happened. I wasn't sure of anything until it was over. Instinct guided me. I was too weak to think anything through.

When I dropped to my knee, he opened fire. But he hadn't been fast enough to follow me down. Two blasts went over my head and tore into some kind of glass in the living room.

He got so intent on killing me that he loosened the arm that held Lynn. She slipped from his grasp to the floor, leaving him unprotected.

I fell sideways because of sheer weakness. He blasted at me again but again he wasn't quick enough. He'd fired just as I slumped over.

I had a target and I took it. Somehow before it all came crashing down, I got a shot off. I was conscious long enough to see him start to crumble, an expression of complete surprise on his face.

Then Linda Raines called my name and I was gone.

T
HREE
D
AYS
L
ATER

The second day, the doc let me have roast beef and mashed potatoes for dinner. My mother visited twice and told me that my father was a bit stronger than when I'd last seen him. Molly and Doran stopped by to tell me that they were off to New York to meet his editor and to find the nastiest lawyer available for his false-arrest suit against Cliffie. Jamie brought me the new issue of Ellery Queen and informed me that Turk wouldn't be suing me after all, because his lawyer wouldn't do anything until Turk paid off his bill. And since Turk was broke and Jamie wouldn't loan him any money, the suit was off.

Judge Whitney appeared all imperious and immediately began telling the nurses on the floor how to rearrange my room and complained that they weren't stopping in to check on me often enough. And Wendy brought me the newspaper that told of Reverend Cartwright's second failed attempt to destroy Beatles records.

LOCAL PASTOR NEARLY DROWNS; SAVED BY PROTESTOR

Yes, it seemed that Cartwright's attempt to start tossing albums and 45s off Indian Creek Hill turned disastrous when a strong wind came up and blew him right off the cliff and into the water sixty feet below. The only person thinking quickly and clearly enough to help him turned out to be one of the high-school boys who'd shown up to taunt him. The fifteen-year-old dove off the cliff, located the drowning pastor in the choppy water, and then swam him to the narrow shoreline, where he administered CPR. All that would be left for Cartwright now would be to order a nuclear attack on his ever-increasing mountain of Beatles material.