Case Pending - Dell Shannon (27 page)

This was it, this was it. Start now. Remember-and as
he went up the first half-dozen steps, sudden sharp panic stabbing at
the back of his mind (the way it had been that time on the
high-school auditorium stage, oh, God, suppose I forget-) that he'd
forget just the one detail of his plan that would bring the whole
thing down like a house of cards on top of him.

Think about what you're doing. You'll be all right,
you're getting keyed up to it now, you know what you've got to do,
you've decided, and now time's run out, you're on—move!

Quick, because you've been watched in, every second
counts now, the timing is the important factor here. You'll be all
right—you can do it.

He went fast up the stairs. There were sixteen steps,
and a tiny square landing, uncarpeted, and then you turned up six
more steps to the left, to the second-floor hall. The door to
the Lindstroms' apartment was just across there, and the next flight
right around from the top of those stairs, left again. He got to the
landing, and his breath was coming too short— God, he'd never do
it, out of condition, another flight and he wouldn't have strength to
aim the damn gun— But he had to hurry, he had to—

A woman screamed ten feet away in the dark hall. And
screamed.

And the third scream shut off sharp and final, cut
off as with a knife. After that it was mostly reflex action for
Morgan. The only conscious complete thought he remembered having was,
Not destiny I should kill Smith: every time something happens to stop
it. That in his mind while the screaming sounded, and then he was
across the landing and plunging up the six additional steps, and in
the hallway-behind that door there, no noise now, no screams, and
then other sounds, and a boy's frantic voice, "
No,
don't, Eddy, don't, please
—"

He expected the door to be locked, he pounded on it
to let them know someone was here, coming. Afterward he remembered it
wasn't until then he realized it was the Lindstroms' door—and now,
no voices inside but a queer grunting, thrashing—around noise that
raised the hair on his neck, and he put his shoulder to the door,
shouting warning.

It was not locked, it swung in under him, almost
threw him head foremost. Feet on the stairs below: a voice
calling something.

He didn't see the woman, not then. Only one lamp
on in the dingy room, a body on the floor, a big dark figure crouched
over it, with hands reaching— "What's going on here, what—"
He was halfway across the room; he stopped, seeing the woman then,
twisted limp figure sprawled across the threshold of the bedroom; he
looked away from her, dry-throated, saw the big figure had
straightened to come at him, lumbering. In the full light then,
coming with guttural mouthings, and Morgan saw what it was, saw—

Blind, instinctive, he clawed for the gun in his
pocket. The butt caught in the pocket lining; hands took hold of
him and slammed him back against the wall and he thought all the
breath was knocked out of him, he couldn't— Animal gruntings, a
fetid breath hot on his face. He tugged desperately at the gun
and it came free, the pocket tearing loose, as he went down full
length on his back, and hands lifting, holding, smashed his head down
against a chair leg.

Dark exploded inside his
head, he was blind, he was done, but the gun in his hand, and he
jammed it into what was on top of him, just at random, and pulled the
trigger.

* * *

Johnny Branahan had been riding patrol cars for
nearly twenty years; he was growing a spare tire around his diaphragm
and he wasn't quite as quick on his feet as he'd been when he was a
rookie. He wasn't a particularly ambitious man, or the brainiest
man in uniform, but he was a good cop, within certain limits: he did
the job he was supposed to do the way it was supposed to be done, and
he wasn't one of those did just as little as he could get away with,
either. He was conscientious about studying the lists of hot
cars and wanted men.

The call came over at six minutes past seven, and
they were quite a way off, so even with the siren going they were the
fourth car to get there. An assault, it was, by the code number, and
must be a three-star business, some sort, with four cars called
in. The ambulance was already there, and quite a crowd—honest
to God, you'd think they grew up out of the ground, let anything
happen—

Wilkinson and Petty, Slaney and Gomez, handling the
crowd: he spotted them as he braked the car, and Gomez caught his eye
and called to him as he and his partner got out. "Upstairs,
Johnny—second floor, the lieutenant's up there."

"Right," said Branahan. He was puffing
a little when he got to the top of the stairs; it was the apartment
right there, door open, and he could see the white-coated interns
inside, just lifting a stretcher.

"This one's a D.O.A.  too," said one
of them. "We'll come back for those— O.K., boy, let's get
the show on the road." Goldstein and Costello were handling the
smaller crowd up here, tenants, trying to get in to see the blood,
see the corpses, honest to God you wondered what got into people—

"All right, folks, let the doctors through,
now—"

As the interns came out with the first stretcher, the
crowd parting reluctantly, he caught a glimpse of another man in
there, one of the downtown men, Lieutenant Mendoza from
Homicide. Quick work, he thought, and moved back himself to give
room to the interns at the top of the Stairs.

That put him at the foot of the stairs to the next
floor, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a man crouched halfway
down those stairs, and got a flicker of movement as the man retreated
a little way, farther into the dark up there.

It wasn't brains made Branahan go up after him, any
conscious process of reasoning. It was just that as an
experienced cop he knew there must be something funny about anybody
who didn't come rushing up to join the crowd when anything like this
was going on.

He started up the stairs, and above him heard sudden
movement, and then the fellow began to run—light and fast—up
toward the next floor; so then of course Branahun ran too, and caught
up with him at a door there, and he was fumbling at, and swung him
around. It was damn dark up there, and he had his flash out
ready; he shot it in the man's face and said, "Hold it, brother,
let's see what you look like."

The man swore and swang on him, so Branahan belted
him one on the side of the head with the flash, and the man staggered
back against the wall. Branahan took a second look and was pleased;
he'd had reason to remember this name and face on the wanted lists
again, because he'd picked this hood up once before, five-six years
back.

"Well, if it isn't Ray Dalton," he
said. "Up on your feet, boy. Hey, Andy, up here! I
got a deal for us! It's just a damn shame, Ray, you so homesick for
California you couldn't wait to head west—but New York's kind of
mad at you on account you spurned their hospitality.

You oughta learn better
manners, Ray— No, you don't, me bucko, just hold it now," and
the bracelets clicked home as Andy came pounding up the stairs.

* * *

By nine o'clock the excitement was about all over;
they were tying up loose ends there at the General Hospital.  If
you could say anything like this really ended, or ended
satisfactorily, maybe this had.  The woman was dead, and the
murderer was dead; the boy wasn't badly hurt; Morgan had a slight
concussion and could go home tomorrow, they said. The reporters had
come and gone, after the usual backchat with the nurses about
flash-shots and noise.  his would make the front page tomorrow
morning, just once, and not as a lead story; people would talk of it
a little and then soon forget it.

"Also," said Mendoza to Hackett, lighting a
fresh cigarette, "we can't claim to have done much about winding
this up, can we? Just the way the deal ran—sometimes you get a
hand you can't do a damn thing with."

"That's the way it goes sometimes. But I
don't know, you'd linked this up, in the process of time—"

"I think so, yes. It only needed somebody
with official excuse to get into that apartment for any length of
time, you know—sooner or later such an outsider would have heard or
seen something to rouse suspicion, and then the lid would have
blown—with what we had already."

"One hell of a thing, who'd have—And danm
lucky in a way it ended like this, nothing worse.  I've got no
sympathy for that woman, that I'll say—she got what she asked for.
But when you think what it must have been like for that kid, for the
husband, all these years— Seven years, the husband said, since
they'd come west away from home where everybody knew.

"Mother love," said Mendoza, and laughed.
They had quite a lot from the husband about that, by now: incoherent,
poured out in sporadic bursts jumbled together with seer-apology. 
I
knew it was awful wrong of me, but I got to a place where I just
couldn't stand no more. An' I thought, it I warn't there, it'd be
bound to come out—they'd make her put him away somewheres—account
it was getting where she couldn't handle him herself, all I could do
to manage him, times, he was so big, you know.
 They
were silent awhile, thinking about it.

Mother love, maybe: also pride, shame, ignorant
conviction of guilt. An obsession: if he was to be put away,
questions, forms, people knowing; and also habit, also familiarity,
saying the doctor back home was wrong, no danger, poor Eddy just like
a little kid, he'd never— A little kid twenty years old,
six-feet-four and stronger than most men.

Ashamed of him, but refusing to send him away. 
And quite possibly aggravating the whole mental state by the
unnatural secret life she forced on him in consequence—on all of
them. Moving in or out of places by night, watching, waiting, so that
none would see. Keeping him in by day, close-watched: if she had
to go out, the husband home from work, the boy home from school, to
keep watch. Taking him out like a dog for exercise after dark,
keeping to unlighted side streets. Training him like a dog, no
noise inside the apartment. Building three lives around the one
unproductive life, everything else subordinate to looking after Eddy
and keeping Eddy a secret from everyone else.

I figured she'd have to give it up, if I wasn't
there. He got into, well, like rages they was, times—any little
thing'd set him off, wanted to smash things, you know, an' she
couldn't handle—Same time, he knew lots o' things you wouldn't
expect, an' it was like that doctor said, when he got to be fourteen,
fifteen, you know, getting to be a man, like, he—It got harder, he
kept wanting get out, away, by himself, an' then when you'd bring him
back, say no, he got just terrible mad, couldn't see why—

Of course Lindstrom had argued with her. Not the kind
of man to be very articulate. Not the kind of woman to listen,
reason, understand clearly what she was doing and why—

And I never did think he'd ever turn on any of
us—on his own Ma! Didn't seem possible, if I'd thought that I'd
never in this world gone off like I did. I knew it was awful bad for
Marty, sleeping same room and all, 'twasn't fair—but she wouldn't
never listen. I just got to a place where—

Mendoza dug his cigarette into the tub of sand in the
corridor there and repeated, "Mother love."

"People," contributed Hackett rather
savagely. The pretty blonde nurse came out and said they could see
the boy for just ten minutes, if they wouldn't let him get too
excited, held been in shock after all and needed rest and quiet.

The boy had tight hold on his father's hand, sitting
up in bed looking at them a little uncertain, a little scared still.
"We don't bite," said Mendoza, smiling down at him.
"There's just a few little questions we want to ask and then
we'll let you go to sleep."

"Yes, sir. I-I
want
to tell you—how it was, it was my fault, I know that—let him get
away, when I knew how he was, he'd maybe get in trouble.  But
I—but I— That first time, it was all account of that doll, it was
awfully silly but he wanted it so bad, he saw it in the store window,
there was a light left on even when it was shut, you know, and times
I took him out, nights, we went past a couple times and I couldn't
hardly get him away from it, he—"

"He took funny notions like that," said
Lindstrom. "Don't you get excited, Marty, I'm right here to
watch out for you now, and all they want to know, I guess, is
about—about today." He looked still a little dazed and shaken,
but his voice was reassuringly stolid.

"But I want to tell—about everything, have it
over. . . .Ma, she'll be awful mad—I made things happen like they
did." He hadn't been told about his mother yet; there was time.
"I-I was scared to tell her, first, that time over on Tappan—and
then I had to, account of knowing what he'd done. Ma said he told him
she'd buy it for him, see—the doll. She'd saved up the money—"

"Waste, waste," muttered
Lindstrom. "Foolish, but she'd do such, whatever he—"

"And then I guess she couldn't, somebody else—
And that night, I was out with him, he ran off and I couldn't catch
up—I looked everywhere, I went to that store but they'd taken the
doll out of the window a while before, he wasn't— And when I
f-found him, he had it, a great big box and inside— I thought he'd
stole it, I shouldn't've let him get away like that—"