Detour to Death (15 page)

“But Malone’s dead.”

“By gunshot—quite a different method from the other deaths, as I pointed out to the sheriff a short while ago. If we are going to ignore Miss Allen’s inkstained fingers and young Ross’s illusive piece of paper, we must also ignore the motive for murdering Malone. We can then reach the conclusion that his death was the result of a drunken brawl by some person unknown and totally unrelated to the case at hand.”

Trace could hardly believe his ears. “That’s fantastic!” he protested.

“Not if properly presented to a carefully prepared jury. I assume you’re still interested in defending Ross.”

“Why not? He’s innocent.”

“Now we don’t really know that, do we?”

“He didn’t kill Malone!”

“I just told you how Malone was killed.”

“Surely you don’t expect me to believe that?”

“I do—if you’re interested in saving Danny Ross. You must believe it. You must thoroughly convince yourself of an argument before you can convince a jury, Mr. Cooper.”

Now Trace began to understand what Laurent was doing. He was outlining a way out if worst came to worst. The important thing was to save the innocent even if the guilty went free. The important thing was to find an alternative for Danny, even if that alternative never had a face or a name. For Laurent that might be enough, he had no score to settle, but Trace hadn’t stayed sober this long for nothing.

“Malone might satisfy some people,” he said, “but not me. Steve Malone didn’t cause those bloodstains in that cabin!”

“But we have no bloodstains.”

“We have Danny’s eyewitness story, and your son was there. He must have seen something.”

“My son—” Laurent’s face grayed before Trace’s eyes, and he retreated into a momentary silence that had to give way to the inevitable. “You may as well know the worst before building up false hopes,” he said. “My son will never make a witness for Danny Ross. By tomorrow, by the time Ross comes to trial of a certainty, he will have forgotten everything that happened in Peace Canyon today. He will have forgotten a cabin ever stood in that spot.” Laurent spoke slowly, groping for words. “Douglas has a peculiar filter on his mind that strains out the unpleasant things. I don’t know whether to pity or envy him.”

Trace tried to understand what the old man was telling him. He fitted the words to the recollection of a boyish figure with an aging face, and the anguish in Laurent’s eyes took on a name. “Then Douglas—” he began.

“Is perfectly rational! He’s a child, Mr. Cooper, a strange child I only learned to know five years ago when his mother died and I was reminded of a life beyond the courtroom. He must not be brought into this affair! Can’t you see what your fine townspeople would do to him? A stranger, an outsider—even more of an outsider than poor Danny Ross!”

Laurent’s voice was quiet and intense, but his eyes were the eyes of an eagle. “Poor Danny Ross,” he repeated. “That unfortunate little fool who always does the wrong thing at the very worst time. Now he sits in that cell like a clay pigeon at a shooting-gallery, and your fine sheriff won’t even listen to reason!”

Trace thought he was beginning to understand a few things now: why a man gives up his career at the height of success, why he buries himself in a lonely desert. Laurent glanced nervously at the watch on his wrist. “I dislike being away from the ranch so long,” he murmured. “Douglas isn’t fond of the place, you know, and when he’s upset his first instinct is to run away.”

“But you do think Danny knows where to find that paper?” Trace asked.

“It’s quite possible. It could happen just that way—some little thing remembered, some gesture or word. It isn’t just what he knows that makes the lad’s position so precarious; it’s what everyone who heard his words thinks he knows.” The frown on the old man’s face made a deep ravine between his eyes. “What are you going to do about Danny Ross?” he demanded.

“What am
I
going to do?”

“You’re the only one who can do anything. The sheriff won’t listen to me—I’m an outsider, too—but you—” A faint smile touched the corners of Laurent’s mouth. “You are a Cooper. Oh, I’ve watched Virgil Keep’s most expressive face this evening long enough to guess that his ancestors must have been lackeys to some ruling prince. He may hate your guts, Mr. Cooper, but he envies your blood. He’ll listen to you.”

“And if he does?”

“Then you get in to see Danny. Talk to him, reason with him. He was excited and frightened a little while ago, but he’s had time now to calm down and face the facts. He must confide in someone, and you do have an honest face.”

“And a stupid mind,” Trace muttered.

“Not at all—a curious mind. That’s why you’ll never be satisfied with a hung jury even if it would set Danny free.”

The truth of Alexander Laurent’s words was as obvious as the cut of Trace’s jaw. Doubt was no companion to live with. It was easy to shrug off the kid’s challenge as a manifestation of hysteria, but did Danny Ross have the imagination to dream up such a bluff? He must have remembered something.

Trace could feel Laurent’s eyes without looking at them. What was this turn all about, anyway? What was the old boy trying to prove? He didn’t want to go back across the street and argue with Virgil again—he’d carried this thing too far already; but he couldn’t very well refuse to co-operate as long as he occupied the number-two spot for suspect of the hour. That theoretical deathbed statement of Francy’s was his baby, anyway. A man who dug up trouble should be able to face it.

“All right.” Trace sighed. “I’ll go back to the lion’s den and see what I can do, but I don’t think Virgil’s going to be very happy to see me—”

Trace didn’t have time to slide out of the booth before his words turned sour. The bar of the Pioneer Hotel was virtually empty until the double doors to the lobby swung open. The place seemed to get crowded with the sudden entrance of just one man.

“Trace!” Virgil yelled. “Where’s Trace Cooper?”

Virgil’s face was beet red and his huge chest heaved as if he’d just broken the record at the high hurdles. He looked about wildly before that rear booth came into focus, and then his expression changed to one of awe and bewilderment. “Mr. Laurent!” he gasped. “I thought you went with him! I saw your car pulling away from the curb, and I thought you went with him!”

“My car?” Laurent echoed. “What in the name of heaven are you talking about?”

“Danny Ross. Somebody unlocked his cell door and Danny’s gone!”

E
SCAPING FROM THE
C
OOPERTON JAIL
was easy; all that was needed was a friend with a key to the cell door. Danny didn’t catch on to what was happening until after Ada’s third or fourth trip down the hall to Virgil’s office. She brought in a tray of supper; she brought back the empty tray. She brought in an armful of bedding; she brought back a frightened expression and something hidden under the folds of her long apron. Danny was polishing off the last of the meal she’d left him earlier. He might be on the brink of the scaffold, but his stomach didn’t know it, and Ada was a wonderful cook.

“That was swell apple pie,” he said. “I never ate such apple pie.”

“Didn’t you, Danny?” The woman’s face brightened like a kid with a Christmas box. “Doesn’t your mother make apple pies for you?”

“My mother works. She’s got no time for making pies.”

Danny could have bitten off his tongue for saying that. He wasn’t supposed to have a mother, or any family at all, but Ada wasn’t looking for inconsistencies in his story. She was just looking at Danny with a peculiar sort of sadness in her eyes.

“How old are you, Danny?” she asked.

“Eighteen,” he said.

“Eighteen! I might have had a son eighteen—or is it twenty, or twenty-five? I can’t seem to keep track of the years any more.”

“What happened, did he die?”

Danny wasn’t interested in the woman’s memoirs; he was just making conversation. But the novelty of being encouraged was more than Ada could resist. “No, not that,” she said. “I didn’t have the baby, you see—it was a mistake. But I didn’t know. I was frightened and I didn’t know until after Virgil quit his schooling so’s we could get married.” She stopped talking abruptly, as if belatedly aware of hanging soiled linen on the line. But she didn’t move away from the cell.

“Cages!” she said, glaring at the row of bars before her. “People shouldn’t be kept in cages!”

“You can say that again!” Danny concurred.

“But we are—in one way or another.”

Ada’s hands were getting restless under the apron, and Danny caught a glimpse of metal that suddenly made this exchange of small talk the most interesting repartee in the world. The metal was a huge ring, and on that ring hung the keys to the cells. What she was leading up to he didn’t dare to guess, but now he was a most attentive listener.

“But there’s a way out, Danny. There’s always a way out,” she said. “Even I am getting out soon.”

“Out of what?” Danny asked.

“My cage. I shouldn’t tell you this, but when something really important happens to a person they have to tell someone. And you won’t repeat it, will you?”

With that key on his mind Danny would have agreed to anything. “Not a word,” he vowed.

“Because I don’t want Virgil to know I’m going to die soon.”

For a moment Danny forgot all about that key. “Die!” he echoed. “Where’d you get a crazy idea like that?” But it wasn’t crazy, as he could see by taking a long look at her face. She was almost smiling, and her chin came up a little higher the way it had when she dropped the boom on Jim Rice.

“I know,” she said firmly, “and Charley Gaynor knew, too, but he promised not to tell Virgil. Virgil would feel bad about the way he’s treated me.”

“Maybe he’d treat you better,” Danny said.

“That’s just it! He’d feel sorry and start being nice to me, and then when I’m gone he’d just remember how nice he was and forget all the mean things. I want him to remember!”

Danny didn’t know why he trembled. It wasn’t like seeing Virgil coming toward him with one of those big fists cocked. Anger he could understand, and a blow he could take, but such cold hatred as he glimpsed in Ada’s eyes was enough to put a frost on the air. This mousy little woman, scampering at Virgil’s beck and call—and all the time with her own terrible revenge simmering in her mind! This bit of understanding hit him like a cold shower, and then he got the big idea, the colossal idea that was going to get him out of that cell.

“He probably wouldn’t believe you if you did tell him,” he said. “He’d laugh at you. He’d tell you to shut up.”

“He won’t laugh,” Ada insisted.

“Sure he will. That big ape hasn’t got feelings enough to worry about anything. He’s probably laughing at you right now because of what you said about Jim Rice and Francy. He probably thinks you made it all up.”

“But I didn’t!”

“Of course you didn’t, no more than I made it up about knowing what Malone did with that paper Francy signed. Wouldn’t you like to see that paper, Mrs. Keep? Wouldn’t you like for Virgil to come in here in the morning to get me and find you with that paper? Nobody’d laugh at you then. They’d talk about how smart the sheriff’s wife was to find the real murderer right under his nose!”

Danny had to be careful not to overdo this act. Ada might be slow but she wasn’t simple.

“But I don’t know where to find the paper,” she said.

“I do. I saw Malone running for that bus, remember? I saw where he came from—” Danny stopped. He didn’t want to blurt out everything until that door opened. “Let me out of here and I’ll be back before morning,” he promised.

It was Danny’s big pitch, and he put all he had into it, so that he was a little off balance when Ada gave her answer. And she didn’t give it with words, but with the scratching of the key turning in the lock. Then she smiled at him as if to say this was what she’d intended doing all the time.

“Run away, Danny Ross,” she said. “Run fast as you can and don’t come back. It doesn’t matter about Francy, or the doctor, or about me—but you’re just eighteen years old. Run away!”

She smiled at him, and Danny ran.

• • •

He could think about those things racing out to Mountain View. He had a high-powered car in hand and a head start on the sheriff, who’d seen him roar away from the curbing. Maybe Ada was right, and he should keep going, because there was nothing certain about that hunch of his, but it did seem strange that nobody had found the old doc’s wallet in that search of the grounds. Malone wouldn’t have kept it a minute longer than was needed to whip out that two hundred dollars, and the logical place for that business was inside the men’s room just a few steps from where the old man hung his jacket on the spotlight. And then what? Was he likely to step outside in broad daylight with the wallet on him? With the hood up on the sedan Malone couldn’t have known the doctor was already dead or dying; for all he knew he was poking in that jacket pocket for his missing wealth. Danny knew what he would have done, and that was good enough for a gamble when the odds were so long and the pay-off so big.

He was tired of running, anyway. Running was a big joke, because life was going to get you wherever you went. It was going to hit you with one thing or hit you with another; but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be easy and soft like the pictures in your daydreams. A cage, Ada said. Everybody lived in a cage, and maybe she was right. But a big cage was better than a little cage, and a risky life was better than no life at all.

The road was unfamiliar in the darkness. He slowed down for a crossing ahead, but it wasn’t Mountain View. It was that narrow road winding down from Peace Canyon, the one he’d come over with Virgil a few hours earlier. By this time Danny knew what that crossing meant. It was where they had found Francy Allen with the life ebbing out of her. The place she’d been dumped for dead in the darkness. He had about five miles more to go, and about five minutes to plan what he’d do if this hunch turned sour.

Five minutes wasn’t much time to pin a face on a murderer. The killer might be waiting for him at Mountain View with a shotgun again. He might be joining in the chase Virgil would have under way by now—or he might be a hundred miles away having a good laugh on everybody. But Danny didn’t think so. Out here alone, with nothing but the road, and the moonlight, and a windshield spattered with stars, he could think clearly. Of all that talk back at the jail, one thing stood out. One lie that only Danny himself could catch. One lie could lead to another—

And then he was scared, thinking maybe the killer had struck upon the same inspiration that was taking him back to where this whole grisly affair had started. Maybe he would be too late. But this time the crossing was Mountain View, and the cluster of faded yellow buildings was like a ghost town in the moonlight.

Walter and Viola must have gone to bed; there wasn’t a light showing anywhere. Danny switched off the head lamps and let the motor ease to a whisper. A sweet-running job like this would be nice to have handy for a quick escape if worst came to worst. There was one obvious hiding-place. He wheeled the sedan around to the far side of the old shed back of the café, and now he was conscious of a strange excitement much stronger than a hunch.

There were times when something was done that seemed to have been done before. That was a moon riding high in the sky now instead of the sun, and there was no ageing sedan rattling down the highway from Red Rock. But everything was familiar; everything was plain. Danny crawled out from under the steering wheel and came cautiously around the end of the shed. A few feet ahead was the spot where old Doc Gaynor had parked his ailing vehicle, and a few steps beyond was the door of the men’s room. A company station would have locked up for the night, but the only lock on that door was the rusty bolt inside that Danny slid home when he went in. He listened to the night sounds for a few long moments before switching on the naked bulb over the lavatory. A light was risky but necessary. If Malone actually had left the doctor’s wallet in the men’s room, any risk was justified. If he hadn’t, it would take more than darkness to cover Danny, now.

But where, in this tiny cubicle, would a thief hide the evidence of his theft? A loose floor board? A crack in the wall? A high shelf? In his anxiety, Danny kicked over the waste basket and then held his breath when the phone began ringing inside the café. That would be someone in Cooperton calling to warn Walter of a big gray sedan barreling north. He could even catch the low rumble of a sleepy voice on the other side of the thin partition.

But where could Malone have dropped the wallet? It was time to douse the light and run, but Danny couldn’t make himself give up the search. Giving up meant running and being hunted again, and the wallet had to be here! Charley Gaynor’s killer hadn’t found it. Why else was Malone dead? There was only one place left to look when he heard the siren screaming up the highway, and then the shriek of brakes and the flail of gravel on the drive. A barrage of headlights hit the side of the building just as Danny switched off the bulb.

“Come on out, Danny! Come out with your hands up or I’ll start shooting!”

That was Virgil’s baritone bawling at the bolted door, but he wasn’t alone. It sounded like a parade turning off onto the gravel. “Better come out, Danny,” Trace called, and then Viola began a shrill demand to know what was going on, what was all the excitement. How many more? Danny stood on tiptoe and peeked through the tiny window. He could see them all swarming before the headlights like a convention of moths at a lamppost, only this time it wasn’t the moths who were going to get burned. The party was complete—nobody missing. No body and no thing, because the last place to look had been the right place. Danny had heard about the man who brought his harp to the party and nobody asked him to play, but here he was with an eager audience and a harp without strings. There was only one chance—

“Save the fireworks!” he yelled. “I’m coming out! I’m coming out with the wallet!”

It was like ground zero the moment before an A-bomb test. The silence could have been boxed up and wrapped for mailing. With one hand Danny reached up and unscrewed the light bulb. It was still hot, but not nearly so hot as that limp leather fold in his other hand. “Stand away from the door! I’m coming out!” he cried, and at the instant the door flew open the bulb hit the cement floor like a pistol shot.

Fire at random into a crowd of spectators and everybody scampers—that’s what Danny counted on and that’s what he got. Just a moment of confusion, a precious moment for a head start, and he was off for the sedan like an all-American back heading for pay dirt. He wasn’t sure if there were footsteps behind him, beside him, or ahead of him. He wasn’t sure if there was shouting, or if the only sound was the pounding of his own heart. The shed, that’s all he could think of—the far side of the shed and a gray sedan waiting in the moonlight. But he hadn’t counted on a chauffeur.

When the car door swung open in his face, Danny tried to reverse his field; but there was no escaping the hand that dragged him into the front seat, and no crying out against the roar of the motor as the sedan leaped into motion. At the crossing the car swung left. The unpaved side road rushed up to meet them like a narrow tunnel opening in the moonlight, and there was only a cloud of dust for the watchers behind. There were times when something was done that seemed to have been done before.

• • •

“You knew where to look for the car all right,” Danny said. “It must have been a long wait for the old doc to show up the other day—and with a passenger yet!”

Danny was a long way from being as calm as he tried to sound, and he wasn’t going to get any response while the pursuing headlights showed dimly through the dust in the rearview mirror. But all those horses under the hood were paying off. The lights grew smaller by the second.

“What happens to me now? A bullet in the head like Malone?”

“Don’t be a fool!” Laurent answered. “All I want is that piece of paper.”

Alexander Laurent’s face was like a white mask in the moonlight, and his eyes never left that tortuous road they were using for a speedway. “A piece of paper,” he repeated, “that contains nothing but a hideous lie. Surely you don’t want to convict an innocent man, Danny. You know what it is to be falsely accused.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Danny began.

“Of course you don’t. You never knew Francy Allen.”

Laurent hit the brakes, but only long enough to make the turnoff to the ranch. Danny recognized the place from the morning he’d watched the jeep swing out of sight and leave him alone with Virgil Keep. It had been a lonely feeling, but nothing like the feeling he had now. There were no lights left in the rearview, and Laurent went on talking as if they had been sitting in somebody’s living-room swapping yarns before the fire.