Deathwatch (15 page)

“Not your version of it,” Ben told him. “So keep quiet now, will you? I’m busy.”

Madec sat for a long time just staring out at the desert. At last he said, “Ben, listen to me, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars if you’ll stop right here and bury the old man and say nothing about it. I’m willing to bet ten thousand dollars that you’ll keep your word. I’ll write you a check for that amount right this minute. And I’ll go with you to the bank and see that you get it—in cash.”

“What’ll you write it on?” Ben asked.

Madec snapped his head around and looked in the back of the Jeep. His voice was furious as he said, “Where’s my suitcase?”

“Gone.”

“Gone
where?
”

“It was in the tent. Where you left it.”

Madec slumped in the seat. “Oh, you stupid yokel,” he said. Then he straightened and said, “Forgive me, Ben. I’m really in great pain and don’t mean what I say.”

“I believe it,” Ben said.

“Then believe this, too. I can go with you to any bank in the country and get ten thousand dollars—cash—in ten minutes.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ben said. “Just sit there and count your money.”

F
OR THE LAST
seven hours Ben had thought how happy he was going to be when he pulled that Jeep up in front of the sheriff’s office. Only then would this thing finally end, only then would he be back among decent people.

The sheriff’s office was in a small wooden building with some palo verde trees around it. As Ben swung the Jeep off the street, he saw three sheriff station wagons parked in the combination jail and garage behind the office.

He felt no happiness at all as he braked the Jeep to a stop. Instead, the ending of movement seemed to let a great weight of weariness fall on him. It took an effort to reach out and turn the ignition off. As he got out he staggered a little, holding the Jeep for balance. He ached all over and felt a little sick, cold spit running around his teeth.

“You’re out of your mind!” Madec said in a choked, angry voice. “I have to go to a hospital, a doctor! Get
in!
”

Ignoring him, Ben walked stiffly across the dark parking lot.

The air-conditioning unit on the roof of the office was running rough, and he wondered why they didn’t get it fixed—it seemed to be shaking the little building.

The sheriff’s office was one large room with some closets and toilets on the right, a long wooden bench near the door, three desks and a businesslike radio built into one wall. To Ben the air felt very cold and dry and thick with stale cigarette smoke.

Ben had expected to find Sergeant Hamilton, the sheriff in charge, but the only person in the room was a young deputy named Strick who was sitting at one of the desks filling out some sort of form.

Strick—his full name was Eugene Strick but no one ever called him anything but Strick—had been in Ben’s class in high school. A good-looking, rugged guy who, for as long as Ben could remember, had always wanted to be a sheriff. That alone had set him a little apart from the others in the class and no one, including Ben, really knew Strick very well.

Behind Strick on the wall was a big electric clock. They had made pretty good time; it was only a little past nine.

As Ben closed the door, Strick looked up and then stared at him. “Holy mack-e-rel, Ben, what happened?” he asked.

Ben had thought Hamilton would be there.
Ham was an old friend, a good hunting and fishing buddy and a warmer; more understanding man than Strick.

“What hit you, Ben?” Strick asked, getting up and coming over to look at him.

“Couple of mountains,” Ben said. “Is Ham here?”

“No, he’s gone home. Look, you go see the doctor and you can fill out any accidents reports when he gets through. You’re in bad shape, Ben.”

“I’ve got a dead man out in the Jeep,” Ben told him. “And I’ve got the man who killed him.”

“You got
what?
”

“Trouble,” Ben said. “But he needs a doctor worse than I do so how about calling the D & T and see if anybody’s there.”

As Strick went back to his desk for his belt, he said, “The doc’s there, I just sent him a head-on.” He buckled on his belt. “You’ve got a dead man, you say. Who is he?”

“I don’t know. An old man out on the desert. It was an accident.”

Strick adjusted his belt, feeling for the butt of the pistol. “Let me just have a look, Ben, before we do any talking. With all these rules we’ve got to be real careful in things like this.”

Strick put on his wide-brimmed hat, and Ben followed him out the door.

Outside in the dark they walked together over to the Jeep.

“Who’s this?” Strick asked, pulling a flashlight out of a leather case on his belt and shining it in
on Madec. Then he backed off. “Oh,” Strick said. “It’s you, Mr. Madec. How are you?”

“I’ve been shot. I need a doctor,” Madec said.

“Yes, sir. You want to get out and come inside, sir?”

“How can I,” Madec asked coldly. “My hands and feet are tied with a rope.”

“What?”
Strick said and then turned to Ben. “What’s going on, Ben?”

“It’s a long story, and he needs a doctor first.”

Strick raised the flashlight and shone it in Ben’s face. “Where’s the dead man?”

Ben walked around to the back and unfolded the tarpaulin. Strick shone the light in on the old man’s face. “Ugh,” he said. “No idea who he is?”

“No. Just an old man. A prospector.”

“You’d better come back inside,” Strick said.

“Look, Strick, I’m hurt and so is Madec. I’ll leave the old man here, and we’ll go down to the Center.”

Strick hesitated and then went back to Madec. “Where are you hurt, Mr. Madec?”

“Ben almost killed me,” Madec said in a weak voice. “He broke my hand and broke my leg and just cut me to ribbons.”

“What’ve you got him tied up for, Ben?” Strick asked, his voice unpleasant.

“Because he’s dangerous.”

“Who you kidding?” Strick said. “Untie him, and we’ll take him down to the Center. I’ll get a car.”

As Strick went toward the garage, Ben leaned
in and pushed Madec forward so he could reach the rope.

“This is your last chance, Ben,” Madec said in a low, quick voice. “Ten thousand dollars. Take it and your troubles are over. If you don’t take it I’ll see to it that you spend the next ten years in jail. I can do that to you, Ben, believe me, I can.”

“I believe you,” Ben said, untying his ankles.

“You won’t take it.”

“No.”

“All right,” Madec said as the station wagon moved toward them. “If you thought I was tough in the desert, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Strick came over and gently helped Madec into the back seat of the wagon. “Just lie down there, sir. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

“Thank you, officer,” Madec said.

As Strick got in he said, “You bring the Jeep, Ben. Take it around to the back where they can get that body out.”

Ben followed the white wagon down to the brand-new Diagnostic & Treatment Center, which was the closest thing the town had to a real hospital.

As the station wagon drew up under the lights of the emergency entrance Ben drove on around to the back, parked and went over to the door. It was locked so he rang the bell and stood leaning against the wall until the door opened and a kid about nineteen named Souchek looked out. “You got the wrong door, Ben.”

“I got a dead man in the Jeep.”

“Wrong address, too,” Souchek said. “We don’t take ’em in, we carry ’em out.”

He started to close the door, but Ben held it open. “Strick said bring him in.”

“Who does Strick think he is! Yes, sir, Mr. Strick, anything you say, sir. Okay, I’ll get something. What happened to him?”

“He got shot.”

Souchek came back with a big canvas laundry basket on a dolly, and they lowered the old man, still wrapped in the tarpaulin, down into the basket and wheeled him into the building.

In the light Ben saw that the tarpaulin had fallen back and the old man’s face, gray and shriveled-looking, was exposed, his mouth and eyes open.

Souchek flung a soiled sheet over the basket and said, “What happened to you?”

“I slid,” Ben said. “Is Doc Myers here?”

“No, he’s in Phoenix.”

“Nobody here?”

“The Boy Genius is here.”

That bothered Ben. All the way across the desert he had expected that Doc Myers would be here and would, in that way he had, take charge of everything. Doc Myers had seen it all, life, death, sickness, accidents; you couldn’t shake him.

Everybody in town called this new doctor in the Center the Boy Genius. Ben had heard that he was the youngest man ever to graduate from the medical school at the University of California
and had made the highest marks in the school’s history, or something. And everybody in town wondered why such a genius had decided to come to work in this little dry and drying-up town on the edge of the desert. A doctor like him, a boy genius … There must be something wrong with him, the town decided, and there was a lot of talk, a lot of speculation and a lot of rumors.

His name was Saunders, and he was a thin, dark, intense man who had nothing to say to you if you weren’t sick or hurt.

Ben had only met him once when his uncle had broken a finger in a Jeep transmission and didn’t have any feeling about the doctor one way or the other. A little cold, maybe, a little haughty, but he seemed to know what he was doing.

He followed Souchek down the corridor to the emergency room and went in. Dr. Saunders, in a bloodstained green smock, and a nurse were in there and had Madec up on the table.

Under the bank of hard lights Madec looked pretty bad. His leg from the knee down was a mess of blood and dirt, and both his hands and arms were covered with blood.

Ben started over to the doctor but Strick saw him and put his hand on Ben’s chest, pushing him back toward the door. “You stay outside,” Strick told him. “You too, Souchek.”

Outside the room, Ben pushed the laundry basket out of the way and sat down on a bench, stretching his legs out, his heels sliding along the
floor. Souchek rolled the basket into a closet and came out with a big floor polisher. As he started unraveling the cord he said, “What’d you shoot him for, Ben?”

“I didn’t,” Ben said.

“Then who did?”

Ben motioned with his thumb toward the emergency room. “He did.”

Souchek stared at him. “Shot
himself?
”

“Oh, him,” Ben said. “No, I shot him.”

“What for?”

“To keep him from shooting me.”

“Oh, boy! What’d you guys do, find a gold mine or something, and then get into a fight about it?”

“Something like that,” Ben said, letting his eyes fall shut. He had never felt so tired, so drained out in his life.

“You mind moving your feet so I can polish?” Souchek asked.

Without opening his eyes, Ben pulled his feet back, lifted them wearily and put them down on the bench.

The polisher made a hideous, screaming noise.

He must have fallen asleep, for it seemed that it was only a few seconds later that the door opened and Dr. Saunders wheeled Madec out on a rolling bed and took him down the corridor.

Then Strick came out and beckoned to him. “Your turn,” he said and then followed Saunders and Madec into a room across the hall.

Ben had known the nurse, Emma Williams, all his life and as he came in said, “Hello, Emma.”

She was putting a clean sheet on the high, narrow table and didn’t say anything until she finished. Then she turned and looked at him. “That just goes to show you never can tell,” she said and went on fussing around.

She must be as tired as I am, Ben thought, as he sat down on a little stool.

“Don’t sit there,” Emma said sternly.

Ben thought he wasn’t going to make it up off the stool.

The doctor came in, glanced at him, and said, “Take off your clothes. Down to your shorts.” Then he went over to a glass-doored cabinet and began taking things out of it.

“I haven’t got on any shorts,” Ben said.

The doctor glanced at him with a cold and disgusted look but didn’t say anything. Emma, as though holding out a live snake, handed him a towel.

It was painful getting his shoes and socks off and his bare feet began to bleed on the floor as he got his pants off, wrapped the towel around himself and started to take off his shirt.

The cloth felt as though it had become his skin and, when he pulled at it, it felt as though he were ripping his skin off. It made him dizzy and he had to stop and hold on to the edge of the table to keep from falling down.

The doctor came over and with one quick,
painful yank stripped the shirt away. “Hmmm,” the doctor said. “All right, get on the table. Face down.”

The cool, clean sheet and hard table felt delicious. The doctor’s hands touching him here and there hurt, but they were cool, gentle and strong. Ben heard him say crisply, “All right, nurse, before we start I want you to write this down.”

“You better say it so those sheriffs can understand or you’ll have to do it all over again,” Emma said disagreeably.

“I know that,” the doctor said, and Ben could feel the ice in it. “General abrasions across back, shoulders, buttocks and legs. Minor lacerations in same areas. The same condition on knees, hands, arms, and tops of feet and …”

“Not so fast!” Emma said. “… arms and tops of what?”

“Feet,” the doctor said, and began to talk more slowly. “Both feet cut, abraded and bruised, swollen but not infected. Two-inch-long, clean cut on left cheek just below the eye. Entire body sunburned but with negligible blistering.” Then he flicked Ben on the shoulder with his fingertips and said, “Turn over.”

Lying on his back, Ben looked at the doctor as he went on examining him and reciting to Emma what was wrong with him.

The doctor was so cold, so remote that it made Ben feel uncomfortable, as though, to the doctor, he wasn’t even human.

Then he suddenly seemed interested as he picked up Ben’s arm and looked at where Madec had shot him. “Hello, what’s this?” he said, and turned the arm over. He clamped down with his fingers. “Hurt?”

“Yes, it does,” Ben said, “but not much.”