Deathwatch (17 page)

Hondurak looked at him coldly and said, “He’s just as much in jail as you are, only he’s been pretty badly shot up and is in the hospital.”

“I should’ve …” Ben started to blurt out that he should have killed him, but stopped.

“Should have—what?” Barowitz asked.

“Never gone out in the desert with a liar like that,” Ben said, getting up out of the chair as Strick beckoned to him.

When he was back in the cell his uncle came to the door and leaned on it, his fingers around the iron bars. “Ben,” he said, “you know you can talk to me. Tell me the truth now. It’s the only way.”

“I told it,” Ben said.

His uncle shook his head slowly from side to side. “It sure didn’t sound like it in there, Ben. It sounded kind of fantastic. Kind of made up, Ben.”

“That’s the way it was when it was happening, too.” Ben went over to the door. “What did Madec tell them?”

“Well, the sheriff and Hondurak won’t talk to me about it, Ben. I guess they can’t, legally. But I talked some to Emma Williams at the Center, and she says that she heard everything Mr. Madec
told them.… It sure sounds bad, Ben. His story is a lot different from yours. And his makes a lot more sense.”

“Like how?”

“Mr. Madec says you got sore at the old man. Claimed he’d run off the bighorn you were after. And that you scuffled around some and the old man hit you in the face with his metal locator and knocked you over a little cliff. That’s how you got all those cuts and bruises.”

“Oh, boy,” Ben said.

“Then Mr. Madec says that after you and he got back to the Jeep, you took your Hornet and went off alone, saying you were going to hunt up the sheep again. And he says he felt pretty sore when he heard a couple of shots because it was supposed to be him out there hunting bighorn, not you. So he went up on the ridge. And you’d shot the old man.”

Ben leaned against the wall. “He makes it sound so simple,” he said.

“Yes, he does, Ben. Then Mr. Madec says you tried to make him believe it was an accident, shooting that old man, but you had shot him twice and when he argued with you about it, you got sore.”

Ben suddenly felt better. “So how does he explain that the man was shot three times, not just twice? And once with a gun a lot bigger than a Hornet. How does he explain that?”

“That’s what makes it so bad, Ben,” his uncle said, in that slow, sad way of his. “Real bad, because
Mr. Madec says you took his gun away from him and shot the old man again, with his gun, claiming that now you could prove it was Mr. Madec and not you who had killed the old man.”

Ben couldn’t stop the feeling that Madec was outwitting him, outthinking him again. “It’s all a lie,” he said helplessly.

His uncle just stared at him, looking as though he was about to cry. “I sure hope so, Ben. Because then Mr. Madec says that when he realized what you were trying to do to him he tried to get away, get back to the Jeep. And that’s when you shot him and kept on shooting him until he stopped running.”

“If I did all that,” Ben said, trying to imagine the scene Madec had created for Hondurak and Strick and Ham. “If I did all that, and that’s the way it really happened, then why was I such a fool? Why did I go to all the trouble to bring him in to the sheriff? If I’d already murdered that old man, what difference would it have made to me to murder Madec too? You see, Unc, he doesn’t make sense. He’s lying.”

“It sure doesn’t sound like it,” his uncle said. “Mr. Madec says that you
had
to bring him in; that you wanted to kill him but were afraid to.”

“Afraid of
what?
” Ben demanded. “Wouldn’t I be more afraid of what he’d say alive?”

“You were afraid of Les and Denny,” his uncle said. “Because, just after you’d shot the old man, they went over you in the chopper and you
couldn’t be sure they hadn’t seen what you’d done, with the old man right there dead on the ground. So you had to blame it on Mr. Madec. You couldn’t kill him because you had to bring him in to make your story look good.”

“To make his look good.” Ben turned away from the door. “I should’ve done it.”

“Now, now, Ben,” his uncle said. “That’s what’s caused all the trouble. You know you’ve got a real hot temper.”

“Not that hot.” Ben turned back. “Unc, it’s all a lie! All of it. They can’t believe that!”

“They do. They can’t say right out they do, but they do. The best thing for you to do is just hush now and wait for Joe McCloskey. Then, Ben—tell him the truth.”

Ben went over to the bunk and sat down. After a moment he raised his head. “Les and Denny came down in the chopper and talked to Madec. How does he explain that?”

“I just told you. You had just shot the old man when they got there, but Madec didn’t know that. He thought you were shooting bighorn, and he griped to them about it. They went off to look for you.”

“In the wrong direction. You know something, Unc,” Ben said quietly, “I didn’t tell Hondurak and Ham all of it. I left out a lot. About how Madec tried to pretend he hadn’t shot that man. About his trying to bribe me. He offered me ten thousand dollars. What about all that?”

“Ten thousand dollars!”
His uncle shook his

head. “It sounds like all the rest of it, Ben. Kind of fantastic. If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything about that. About anything. Wait till Joe gets here and talk to him. He can tell you what to do.”

Ben looked at this man he had lived with for most of his life. “I don’t think you believe me.”

His uncle lowered his eyes. “I don’t think you’d deliberately kill anybody. For no reason. But if a man knocked you down with a locator … well you’ve got an awful hot temper.”

Ben lowered his head. “Okay, Unc,” he said.

“I’ll see you later, Ben.”

“Yeah,” Ben said.

Around one o’clock the deputy and the Boy Scout turned up again. As the boy came in with the food Ben said, “Don, do me a favor, will you? Go down to the Diagnostic Center and ask that kid down there—I think his name’s Souchek—to look in …”

“Now, wait just a minute, fella,” the deputy said at the door. “Nothing like that, fella.”

Ben turned on him. “Who’s side are you on?”

“I’m not on anybody’s side so just you cool it.”

“Okay,” Ben said, “so
you
go ask that guy who cleans up down there to look in the trash and see if there’s a slingshot in it.”

“A slingshot!” the deputy said, disgusted. “You’re asking somebody to root around in the trash for a slingshot?”

Ben walked to the door. The deputy must have
thought he was trying to escape; he stepped over to block the door and put his hand on his gun. Ben stopped in front of him and said, “A man claims I shot him with a rifle. I didn’t. I shot him with a slingshot. If I can find it I can prove it. So I’ll appreciate it if you will help me find it.”

“If I get time,” the deputy said, letting Don out and closing the door.

The long day dragged on and it was well after dark before the deputy and Don Smith came in with the evening meal.

Ben went to the door. “How about that slingshot?”

“I haven’t had time.”

“It would be good if somebody looked before the trash gets picked up,” Ben said.

“Maybe, after I get off duty,” the deputy said, letting Don out and locking the door again.

Ben sat down and put the tray on his knees. He wasn’t hungry, but eating was something to do.

He had seen that slingshot between the Jeep’s front seats.…

He unfolded the paper napkin. Written on the inside of it, in pencil, was:

Can’t find the slingshot. Looked every place. Don

What had Madec done with it? He’d only had a few seconds to hide it.

Ben was still eating, not enjoying the food,
when Strick came and opened the door.

“I’ve got to find that slingshot, Strick.”

Strick stood at the door waiting, his hand on the butt of his pistol. “You walk in front of me,” he said menacingly.

“I’m not some sort of thug,” Ben said.

“Just walk in front of me.”

In the office they were all there again, Hondurak, Sergeant Hamilton, his uncle, Sonja with her machine, Les Stanton and Denny O’Neil, and the two lawyers. Madec was not there.

“Where’s Madec?” Ben demanded.

Nobody answered him, and Strick said, “Sit down.”

“Okay, Strick,” Hondurak said, “what’d you find out there?”

“All the evidence checks with Mr. Madec’s story,” Strick said, going over to Hondurak and handing him two smashed but recognizable full-patch bullets. “We’ll send these in to ballistics but I’m pretty sure they’re slugs from a Hornet. I found them on the ridge where Mr. Madec says Ben killed the old man. There’re plenty of traces, blood all over, looked like somebody had a fight up there.”

“No other slugs?” Hondurak asked. “Ben claims the man was killed with the .358.”

“I already told you,” Ben said. “Madec found that one and put it in his pocket.”

Strick looked over at him and said, “That’s what you did tell us, isn’t it?” Then he held out his hand with the .358 slug lying in it. “I found
this right near the other two. It’s a .358.”

Ben hardly heard Hondurak say, “Was this open ground, Strick? I mean, could Les and Denny have seen the body from the chopper?”

“I’m coming to that,” Strick said. “There is distinct evidence that the body of that old man had been picked up and shoved in under a little overhang of rock so it couldn’t be seen—not from a chopper.”

“That’s where Madec put him,” Ben said.

They all seemed to ignore him. It was as though he hadn’t said anything.

“Next,” Strick said, “we found the old man’s camp. It was a wreck. Somebody had just kicked it all to pieces. His blanket all ripped up, his clothes ripped up. Water can busted in, oven busted. Just a mess. But”—he paused and looked over at Ben—“there was no little tin box. No little tin box anywhere.”

Ben looked over at Hondurak. “Am I allowed to ask anything?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Ben turned to Strick. “You say there was a blanket at the camp. Any shoes?”

“An old pair of boots, real beat-up, though.”

“If they’d been there when I was there, why didn’t I take them?” Ben asked. “I was naked. I could’ve used the blanket. I could have used any kind of boots.”

The lawyer, Barowitz, said pleasantly, “Doesn’t it seem to you, your honor, that this young man is
contradicting himself? If, as he claims,
if
he was as naked and shoeless as he claims he certainly would have taken those boots, no matter in what condition. And, as he just said, he could have used pieces of the blanket. The fact that he left all that stuff there seems to argue that he was not, shall we say, as naked as he claims he was.”

Ben felt as though he were talking inside a box or something. That nothing he said was being heard, nothing was being understood. “That’s what I just
said!
” Ben yelled at them. “Madec went back later and put all that stuff there. When I …”

“For heaven’s sakes, man,
why?
” Barowitz asked. “For what purpose would Mr. Madec maneuver all that junk around?”

“When I went to that camp there was nothing there,” Ben said stubbornly.

“Including, I suppose, that mysterious little box containing that mysterious, vanishing slingshot,” Barowitz said.

“Okay, okay,” Hondurak said. “Let’s don’t get into any arguments, fellas. This is just an investigation.… What about the butte, Strick?”

“I’m not arguing!” Ben said. “I’m just …”

“We’ll come back to that in a minute, Ben,” Hondurak said. “All I want is to get the bare bones laid out, and then we can see what we’ve got. So, about the butte, Strick?”

“Nobody climbed that butte,” Strick said in that loud, positive voice Ben remembered from
high school. “Somebody tried, driving tent pegs in the wall and cutting some footholds, but nobody climbed it.”

“I climbed it,” Ben said.

Strick looked over at him. “Not up those tent pegs you didn’t, they didn’t go high enough.”

“I climbed the other side.”

Strick smiled at him. “First you say you were running around out there naked, and now you say you climbed that butte, bare-handed and buck naked. Well, I tell you nobody without mountain-climbing gear could get up there. Isn’t that right, Les?”

“I couldn’t,” Les Stanton said.

“I did,” Ben said.

“All right, all right,” Hondurak said. “Now, Ben says he walked from the mountains over to the butte. Did you see any tracks of that, Strick?”

“Les says he thinks there’re some tracks, but they sure don’t look like tracks to me.”

“Les?” Hondurak asked.

“There are tracks,” Les said. “I can’t swear to what made ’em, they’re very indistinct. But if Ben was wearing sotol sandals the way he says, he might have made tracks like those.”

“Les is an expert,” Strick said, “but those things didn’t look like man tracks to me, sandals or no sandals.”

Ben watched Les, but he only shrugged his shoulders.

“Now, at the campsite,” Hondurak said.

“They’d been there two or three days,” Strick
said, “so it was pretty messed up, you couldn’t tell nothing from nothing.”

“No slugs from the Hornet?”

“Nobody shot the Hornet,” Ben said.

“If there’re any there it’ll take awhile to find ’em,” Strick said. “We can go back when we’ve got more time.”

“Well,” Hondurak said, “it looks to me like we’ve got evidence that the old man was shot twice by a Hornet rifle up on the ridge and that Mr. Madec was shot by a Hornet rifle down on the desert.” He looked over at the two lawyers sitting together on the bench. “So it looks to me like we’re going to have to prefer some charges here. For the old man, suspicion of murder and, for Mr. Madec, felony-aggravated assault.”

Ben jumped up. “Wait a
minute!
You’re not even listening. You’re not even asking anybody anything. You …”

“Ben! Ben! Ben!” his uncle said to him. “Remember what I told you. Now hush up, Ben.”

Ben ignored him and walked over to where Les Stanton was sitting in a chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He drew them in as Ben came closer.

“Les, did you go up on that butte?”