Detour to Death (16 page)

“She was an evil woman, Danny. A vindictive woman. She wrecked Trace Cooper’s happiness with a lie because he didn’t love her, and she would have destroyed my son with another.”

“If he hadn’t destroyed her first,” Danny said.

“No! You’re wrong, Danny! That statement is a lie!”

Now Danny knew what he hadn’t known before, and being scared wasn’t so bad when someone else was scared along with him. “The only lie I know about is the one you told the sheriff,” he said. “Douglas didn’t fire that gun when I threw the clothes at him, and when he did, he wasn’t shooting at any lamp. He was shooting at me!”

“Because he was excited—”

“Excited enough to set fire to a cabin full of bloodstains!”

Danny saw Laurent’s long fingers tighten on the steering wheel, but the mask didn’t change. “Listen to me, Danny,” he said quietly. “Listen and try to understand. You think that you’ve learned the truth at last, but you’re wrong. The truth is much uglier than it seems. Francy Allen used that cabin for her rendezvous with Jim Rice, and my son knew it. He watched Rice leave that last night, and then went in and ordered her off the premises—much as he ordered you off this afternoon.”

“But with a skillet instead of a gun,” Danny muttered.

“No, not with a skillet or a gun! He simply told her to leave, and she flew into a rage. She hated him, Danny. She would have hated anyone who occupied what she still considered her rightful home. Perhaps, in that twisted mind of hers, she even thought me responsible for Cooper’s losing the ranch and wanted to strike at me through Douglas. Whatever her reasons, she defied Douglas to put her out. She told him she would use that cabin whenever she pleased. She said she would accuse him of attacking her if he interfered again!”

Laurent seemed to choke on his own words. For the first time the great voice faltered.

“Oh, she was clever!” he added. “She could see that Douglas was different. Not just a stranger, Danny, as you were when they threw you in that cell, but a poor unfortunate the wagging tongues of Cooperton could destroy with such a charge.”

“A nut,” Danny said, and the old man’s lips trembled in the moonlight.

“In your vocabulary, perhaps. Nevertheless, he’s innocent of Francy Allen’s murder. She was alive when he left the cabin. Why, Douglas doesn’t even know that the woman is dead! Setting fire to the cabin was just his way of disposing of something ugly and troublesome!”

And dangerous
, Danny thought. But he didn’t want to challenge Laurent yet. The important thing was to keep him talking. And there was always a chance he was telling the truth. That was the trouble with life; every once in a while somebody told the truth and got a guy all confused. “I must have that statement,” Laurent said again, and Danny clutched the leather wallet all the tighter.

“And what happens to me if I give it to you?”

“Nothing. You can let me off at the ranch and take my car.”

“And run for the rest of my life?”

“You don’t have to run. Give yourself up and face the charge. I’ve been working to save you from the very beginning, Danny, and I’ve yet to lose a capital case.”

That did it. Up to a point Danny was just a pair of ears listening to a gifted persuader, but suddenly the voice lost its persuasion and the truth stood out ugly and naked. A capital case! That’s all Danny Ross meant to Alexander Laurent. It was a little hard to take after all these years of thinking he was a human being with feelings and rights. And if that’s all he was, what was old Doc Gaynor? What was a little man in a wrinkled raincoat?

Danny shivered. They were all alone in a moon bathed desert, with the night air rushing in through the open window behind Laurent’s shoulder, and a dark shadow beginning to take form up ahead. The shadow would be the trees at the edge of the ranch-house grounds—the only possible shelter, he suddenly realized, in all this wide loneliness. Trees, and an open window. He bit back his words until the time was right. Funny how these brainy guys who wanted to do everybody’s thinking always overlooked little details like open windows.

“So you’ve been working to save me!” Danny said at last. “Now I’ll tell one! You only sent Cooper to the jail to get a line on that wallet you didn’t find in the old doc’s pocket.”

“Don’t be a fool!” Laurent gasped.

“That’s just what I’m not being any more! You’re trying to make me believe Francy Allen put the finger on Douglas on her deathbed and it was all a lie!”

“She didn’t know it was a lie. She was struck from behind.”

“You seem to know a lot about what happened in that cabin.”

“Douglas told me.”

“You don’t say!”

Danny paused. The trees were looming large now. He couldn’t wait much longer.

“And did Douglas tell you what was in Francy’s statement?” he asked.

It was almost funny to see Laurent change. One minute he was the Great White Father, full of warmth and kindness, and the next he was just a desperate man with a forty-five in one hand and sudden death in his eyes.

“I’ll take that wallet now,” he said.

“Is that what you told the old doc?”

“Doctor Gaynor was a fool! He knew Douglas’s condition. He believed what that woman told him.”

“And what did Malone believe?”

“Malone?” Laurent seemed to have trouble recalling anyone so insignificant. “How could I be sure Malone hadn’t read the statement and would remember when his drunken stupor wore off? Good God, Danny, I didn’t want to kill those men! But that woman reached beyond the grave to destroy my son! I had no choice!”

No choice was exactly what Danny had at the moment. No choice, and the old man’s wallet held high so Laurent could get a good look at it. It could mean a bullet in the belly or a bullet in the back—no choice.

“Go ahead and shoot!” he bellowed, “but you’ll still need this!” The wallet sailed through the open window into darkness.

When Laurent hit the brakes, Danny hit the dirt. The first shot went wild, and then the old man had to go back and retrieve that precious wallet. Time enough then for Danny to reach the shelter of the trees, a shelter that was both friend and traitor. Every crackling branch, every broken twig cried out directions to a desperate old man beyond caution who fired at random and then stood motionless in the moonlit clearing, waiting for the next telltale sound.

For what seemed a very long time, no sound came. Crouched behind a stunted bush, Danny watched and barely dared to breathe. It was all picture-clear in the moonlight—Laurent poised like some silver-crowned executioner, and a few yards away the gray sedan with its long radio aerial pointing like a slender spear toward the stars. Danny remembered that dry riverbank and the car heading south toward Junction City, and then he remembered that car in the alley behind a run-down hotel. He knew all the answers now, except where he was going when Laurent came toward him.

But that was an answer he never had to find. He might have caught the sound sooner if the footsteps behind him hadn’t been in tempo with his own pounding heart. He might have cried out a warning if there had been time. But the time had all run out and the shadows and sounds had no names now. Laurent whirled and fired once more. One shot, one cry, and then the long silence-Danny didn’t emerge from his hiding-place until Virgil and all the others swarmed over the scene. A short distance away Alexander Laurent sat on the ground stroking his dead son’s hair. The gun was forgotten on the earth beside him; he had no use for it now. He had no use for the sheriff and his party, and no ears for Danny’s frantic story. He had been oblivious to every sound and movement since that cry of anguish when Douglas stumbled out of the shadows to fall at his feet, and not until Virgil found the wallet did he return to life.

“It’s all a lie!” he cried out. “I killed that Jezebel! Everything on that paper is a lie!”

Danny almost felt sorry for the old man when Virgil ripped open the wallet. Two and a half days in the flush tank hadn’t left enough ink on Francy’s statement to tell any tales on anyone.

M
URDER WAS AN UNTIDY BUSINESS
. When Douglas, drawn by the sound of gunfire and his own nameless terror, ran into the blaze of his father’s gun, the world ended for Alexander Laurent; but the debris of murder still had to be cleared away. A regiment of questions had to be reviewed like troops marching single file, and for that purpose the lights burned late in the sheriff’s station at Cooperton.

“For a man who was always such a big talker,” Virgil said later, “it was like pulling back teeth to get the full story out of him.”

“Or having a dead man recite his own obituary,” Trace suggested.

“And what an obituary! I think the old guy’s as nutty as his son, at least on one subject. He quit his practice just so he could get Douglas away from people. He knew the boy was dangerous! He even followed him around like a damned nursemaid!”

“Even to Peace Canyon in the dark of night,” Trace murmured.

“That’s the trouble; he followed him there once too often and heard Francy’s threat. After that her life wasn’t worth a nickel!”

Virgil leaned back in the creaky swivel chair behind his desk and rubbed his face with both hands. It was getting on toward midday, and he was missing the sleep all that questioning had stolen. After the confession there had been the long morning ride to Red Rock and back, and then the phone calls to Junction City, and the statements to a press that had just discovered a black dot on the map named Cooperton. He was beginning to wish Charley Gaynor had given Laurent the statement and saved all this trouble—a strange thought for a man who lived so by the law that many wondered how he would know right from wrong if it wasn’t written down.

When Virgil looked up again, Trace was still standing beside the desk. “Exit Francy,” he said. “The rest I can imagine.”

“I’ll bet you can! Do you want to know how Laurent got to Malone? It was easy with the right kind of help. When Francy didn’t die soon enough he got worried; after all, Douglas was the only uninvited guest she saw that night. So he drove down to Mountain View to get to Charley before Charley got to me, killed him when he refused to destroy that statement, and then discovered that a pickpocket had beaten him to it. That’s when Laurent put on his thinking-cap. If he came asking after Danny Ross, I might get suspicious, but some people just naturally fall for fancy language.”

“Is this my biography?” Trace inquired.

“With pictures! What did he do when you told him about Danny’s man in a raincoat?”

“Sent me to Junction City to look for him.”

“Exactly. And then he took the other road down, knowing the road block wasn’t alerted for an old man in a gray sedan, and had no trouble at all spotting that red jeep of yours. That left you to do the questioning and leave the trail.” Virgil paused significantly and then put into words what Trace was thinking. “Who knows? If you’d actually reached Malone first Fisher might be planning a funeral for you.”

“I knew all the time there was something queer about Laurent,” Danny chimed in. “No expensive lawyer gives away free samples.”

It was a little mean of Danny to add to Trace’s discomfort, especially when Trace was the reason he was outside of a cell and not wanted by the law for the first time in three days. Virgil, remembering that pistol blow on his head and the sedan that was even now being hauled out of the dry river bed, was dead set against release; but Trace fixed that. “My client,” he said (sounding as if he’d written the book), “may have a few complaints of his own. False arrest, imprisonment without formal charge, police brutality—” Right about then Virgil decided to be generous, and that was why Danny was gathering up his possessions. He had the canvas zipper bag under his arm, an old jacket of Trace’s to replace the one lost in the fire, and a tight wad of bills in his Levi’s. Two hundred dollars, just like when he’d hit town.

“I suppose now you’ll be telling us that you knew Laurent was guilty all along,” Trace said.

“I didn’t say that,” Danny protested. “I thought it was Malone until he turned up dead. After that I was too busy to think. I didn’t wise up until Laurent started giving me that big pitch in the car last night. I got to remembering something the old doc said when I was riding with him, something about needing another language to say what he didn’t like to say. I figured it must have been Laurent he was talking about, and what he’d have to tell him about his son. And how could Laurent be so sure of what was in that statement if the doc hadn’t told him?”

“While you were finishing a Coke,” Trace muttered.

Trace didn’t like to talk about it. The whole affair made him both sad and angry—sad because death was sad, and angry because he’d been played for a sucker all around. By Francy, by Jim Rice, but most of all by Alexander Laurent. Perhaps his score with Laurent had been settled when Douglas fell before his father’s eyes; but being used for a stooge wasn’t a pleasant experience even when it came under the guise of benevolence.
Noblesse
oblige!
Now that the idol had fallen, Trace could see the flaws in the clay. Laurent’s world was filled with Douglases—childlike creatures to be protected, tolerated, and even used if necessary, but never allowed to mature to their own stature. The Great White Father bestowing life and death as he saw fit!

When Arthur suddenly appeared in the street doorway, Trace spun about and pointed a finger at him. “Where would you be without me?” he challenged.

Arthur didn’t seem particularly impressed. “Are you kidding?” he asked. “Without you I’d be getting some work done. We’ve got a barn roof that needs fixing and—”

“You’re damned right you would!” Trace broke in. “And I’ll tell you something else. All the people here in town, and the ones outside town, would be doing just exactly what they’re doing now if there’d never been a Cooper on God’s good earth. Laurent’s welcome to that pile of rocks my ancestors built. He’s even welcome to my ancestors—and he may be seeing some of them soon. Let’s get at that roof!”

Trace was having such a good time with his self-discovery, he didn’t even notice the telegram Arthur had brought until it was shoved under his nose. He turned his back on Virgil and read it quickly. It was the answer to the one sent from Red Rock the day before, a confirmation actually. But now that he had it, what was he to do? A man likes to make his own decisions, good or bad, and Danny had certainly earned the right.

He looked up and saw the kid turning toward the door. “What’s your hurry?” he asked.

“I see a bus coming in,” Danny said.

It was an understatement. Roads and old motors being what they were, transportation usually came to Cooperton in bunches or not at all. Two busses were pulling up in front of the depot across the street, one heading north and one heading south, and Danny hadn’t mentioned his destination.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the hospitality,” he added, “but I have a sort of a date. Here—” He hauled the language dictionary out of his pocket and tossed it on Virgil’s desk. “You keep this,” he said. “You might need it.”

It was too late to stop him then. Throwing Trace and Arthur a broad wink, Danny sauntered across the street, tall and lanky in his tight Levi’s and with the sun making a golden crown of his stubby hair. For a moment they lost sight of him behind the busses, and then the southbound pulled out and he waved just once before climbing aboard the other.

As soon as they were out of Virgil’s office, Trace made a tight wad of the telegram in his hand. “I think we should wire Danny’s draft board to keep their shirts on,” he said, “and say he’s on his way.”

“Via the scenic route?” Arthur suggested.

“No—”

With the busses out of the way, Trace could see something else in the line of unfinished business. Joyce was just turning in at the drugstore across the street, and he tried to remember the last time he’d bought a girl a drink at a fountain.

“Let’s just say the kid hit a detour,” he concluded. “It happens to the best and the worst of us.”