Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (14 page)

           
"But the horrible way your
friend did it! You can't possibly sympathize-"

           
"What's sympathy got to do with
anything?" I demanded. "Your dad didn't put me here to dish out
sympathy to anybody, certainly not to a guy who's supposed to be sitting
quietly in
New
Orleans
awaiting instructions, instead of stalking around
Oklahoma
with a lousy wire noose. Anyway, a man in
our line of work isn't supposed to indulge in personal vengeance. That's kind
of like the character responsible for a nuclear weapon pushing the red button
because his wife burned the toast that morning." I shook my head.
"The fact is, I need the guy. I've got work for him to do. Sympathy is not
the problem. Understanding is. We know why he's doing this, but we've got to
figure out what he's doing-exactly what he's doing."

           
"Isn't it obvious?"

           
"Not if you know Mr. Anders
Janssen," I said. "He has certain berserker tendencies to go with his
Scandinavian name and blood. In case you're not up on your Viking history: the
Berserkers were the forerunners of the Japanese kamikazes. And any time things
get tough, Carl's instinct is to take a big swig of mead-well, beer will
serve-and grab his big two-handed sword and charge in there to get as many of
the dirty bastards as he can before they chop him down. When we were working
together, I had to sit on him a couple of times to keep him from turning a
simple job into a goddamned suicide mission."

           
"I don't see what you're
driving at," Martha protested. "What has this to do with our . . .
with your problem?"

           
I said, "Well, if he's in his
kamikaze mood right now, we're in real trouble. In that case, he's ready to
die, and his only plan is to keep on killing cops until they get him. But in
that case, I don't think he'd be using a silly weapon like a
garotte
. He'd be sniping at them from the rooftops with a
long-range rifle and laying for them in the alleys with a sawed-off shotgun.
He'd be working towards the big, final, glorious shoot-out when, surrounded at
last, he'd teach those trigger-happy uniformed clowns the difference between
knocking off a helpless young girl and an experienced gent who knows how to
handle firearms. But I don't feel that's the big scene that's shaping up
here." I hesitated and went on: "I think he's got something
altogether different in mind. Three dead kids; three dead cops-"

           
"But there have been only two
so far."

           
"So far," I said. "So
there's one left to go, if he isn't just waging a general war against uniforms
and badges. And if I'm right, there's not much doubt who he's saving for the
big third spot. The question is how we can reach him without pulling Leonard's
gang down on top of him, and us. . . . Get up."

           
Martha looked startled. "What
for?"

           
"Get up. Walk around the room.
Let me look at you in that rig." I watched her as, rather
self-consciously, she rose and walked to the door and back to me. "Did you
think of getting stockings along with all the rest of the flossy
paraphernalia?"

           
"We bought some pantyhose.
Lorna thought I might want to look super-civilized some time."

           
"Put them on."

           
"Why.. . Oh, all right, but
turn your back."

           
Covering her long legs with nylon
didn't accomplish a great deal. She still looked like a tanned tomboy-a tanned
tomboy on her best behavior. Anybody who'd seen her in
Guaymas
,
as some of Leonard's men undoubtedly had, would recognize her instantly,
despite the ladylike dress and hose.

           
"What's the matter, Matt?"
she asked.

           
I said, "You look too damned
much like Martha Borden, that's what's the matter."

           
"Maybe this is what you're
after," she said, turning to the brand-new suitcase on the bed.

           
She got something out, hiding it
with her body, and bent far over to put it on. Then she faced me abruptly,
straightening up and tossing back the long hair of a shining wig that covered
her own cropped hairdo completely. After a moment to let me appreciate the
view, she walked to the mirror and touched some vagrant gold strands into
place. The change was almost shocking.

           
Instead of a boyish brunette, I
suddenly had for a roommate a glamorous and feminine-looking blonde.

           
"Lorna thought I might need a
real disguise," she said calmly.

           
"That Lorna," I said.
"I don't know what we'd do without her."

           
"I feel just like Mata
Hari
," Martha said, regarding her blonde and beautiful
image in the mirror. "And what I can't help remembering is that girl was
shot."

           
After a long time, I felt the car
stop. The door opened and footsteps came around to the rear.

           
Then the trunk lid above me was
lifted, daylight came in, and Martha stood there looking down at me, her tanned
face in shadow, her blonde wig very bright in the sunshine.

           
"Are you all right?" she
asked.

           
I sat up painfully and said,
"It won't kill me, I guess. But keep that air-conditioner blasting unless
you want roast Helm for dinner."

           
I got out of the trunk and
stretched, looking around. We were parked by a small dirt road or lane, under
some cottonwoods that apparently got their water from the underground seepage
of a muddy stock pond nearby. Some bored-looking Herefords stood around the
pond, watching us suspiciously. The lane ran on up across the open range to a
house over a mile away, sheltered by more trees, the only other trees in sight.

           
In the opposite direction, the
ground sloped down gently to the distant horizon. The highway was out there, a
straight streak across the plain, infested with cars and trucks looking like
ants crawling both ways along an endless twig. It was wide-open country, but it
didn't have the spectacular, desolate vistas you find farther west, and there
were no faraway, wind-eroded buttes and mesas to add interest to the flat
landscape.

           
"Where are we?" I asked.

           
"We're still in
Texas
. I thought there might be a roadblock at
the
Oklahoma
border, and I'd better check on you before
we hit it."

           
I said, "I doubt very much the
police will be stopping cars on the highway, particularly cars heading into
Oklahoma
. Hell, they can't go searching every car in
the state for old banjo strings, or a saw and what's left of a broomstick. It's
not the cops I'm worrying about; it's Leonard's people, some of whom probably
know us by sight from Mexico and Arizona, or think they do.

           
Let's hope they're all looking for a
couple in a dark green station wagon with a boat towing along behind, so hard
they'll pay no attention to a lone blonde in an unencumbered white sedan."

           
I glanced at the big car, another
Chevy that Martha had rented that morning in
Amarillo
,
Texas
. It didn't have as much power as the wagon we'd left behind temporarily
at a motel, but then it didn't have as much to pull, either. Actually, she'd
picked it, on my instructions, not for speed, but for its heat-reflecting color
or lack of color, for its large trunk, and for its efficient cooling system
that included some ventilating
louvres
in the trunk
lid that might help a man survive back there on a bright summer day. I
stretched once more, trying to untie the knots in my back and neck. While the
car trunk was about as big as they come, it hadn't really been designed for
comfortable occupancy by gents six-feet-four.

           
Martha was checking her reflection
in 'the car window, touching her bright new hair into place.

           
I said, "Stop fussing with it,
Goldilocks. It's all right. You're beautiful."

           
"Am I?" She turned to look
at me. There was quick mischief in her eyes. "You didn't act as if I were
last night. All you did was snore."

           
"Make up your mind," I
said. "Yesterday evening you were mad because you thought I was going to
rape hell out of you. This morning you're mad because I didn't."

           
She smiled. "I'm not mad. But
you didn't have to sleep quite so soundly. A little insomnia would have been
more well, diplomatic." Embarrassed, she stopped smiling abruptly and
said, "Well, if you're all right, we'd better hit the road again."

           
An endless time later I realized
that we'd left the interstate freeway for a secondary road: the pavement was
rougher, the speed was less, and there was a lot of the braking and
accelerating that goes with driving a two-lane highway. Now and then there'd be
a series of stops and starts indicating that we were passing through a town.
Once I picked up some bruises when she took a set of bumps too fast, presumably
a railroad crossing. Then there was a final town, more country roads, and a
stop. The trunk opened.

           
"I hope you survived all
that," Martha said.

           
"Everything except that damned
railroad track you hit at ninety miles per hour," I said, crawling out of
my metal womb. I looked around. The country had changed. The view was not as
big as it had been. This was more rolling farmland with a stream running
through it. "Did you find the sheriff's house?" I asked.

           
"Back down the road three point
seven miles," she said precisely. "I thought of stopping near a kind
of knoll nearby from which you could have seen the layout for yourself, if you
didn't mind climbing a little, but then I thought somebody else might have the
same idea."

           
"Smart girl." I reached
into the back seat to get a beer out of the cheap plastic-foam icebox we'd
picked up in
Amarillo
, along with the rental car and the address of Sheriff Thomas M.
Rullington
, obtained from a friendly telephone operator.
"Beer or coke for you. . . . Okay, let's go sit on the riverbank while you
tell me what it looks like."

           
Martha laughed. "In these
ladylike clothes you've put me into? My nylons wouldn't last two steps in that
brush. Maybe I can make it to that log over there without casualties." She
made it to the log, and I opened the coke she'd indicated and handed it to her.
She said, "Thanks.

           
Actually, it's a small farm just
outside the town, with a shiny new Cadillac in the yard. You go through some
brand new ticky-tacky suburbs, real
crackerbox
stuff,
and just as you reach open country, there it is, with a mailbox out front that
says '
Rullington
, Route ~3' and a number I didn't
have time to read as I drove by. The house is white clapboard that could use
another coat of paint. In front, a kind of sad-looking, fenced-in flower garden
and mangy-looking lawn with a tricycle and a set of swings. At the side, as I said,
a big Caddy sedan. In back, a barn and corral with a couple of horses in the
corral. Farther back, some fields with cattle in them. That's about all I could
see going by, except that there was a man sitting on the corral fence looking
at the horses as if he didn't like horses much. And fifty yards down the road
was a parked pickup truck-blue, if it matters-with a man in the cab smoking a
cigarette as if he'd had so many they were beginning to taste awful."

           
"Good enough," I said.
"We'll make a secret agent of you yet."

           
"I certainly hope not."
Martha's tone was dry. After a moment, she went on. "What are you going to
do, Matt?"

           
I said, "The real question is
what Carl's going to do, and what Sheriff
Rullington's
going to do-or hopes he's going to do-about what Carl's going to do."

           
"You're certain the sheriff is
next on the list."

           
"It figures that way," I
said. "Apparently nobody knows just whose bullet hit Emily Janssen in all
that shooting, but it's well established who gave the order to fire. But just
how Carl plans to reach him. . . Wait a minute! You said there were some kids'
playthings in the
Rullington
yard?"

           
"Yes. Why?"

           
"Because, damn it, Carl is a
pro. He can figure the opposition as well as we can. The first killing was
easy. Nobody was expecting it. The second was probably almost as simple; nobody
was really looking for an encore. But now the whole state's alert, knowing
there's a systematic cop-killer loose who's more than likely to strike again.
Carl can't help but know he hasn't got a chance of sneaking up on another
policeman, let alone the sheriff himself. What will he do? Hell, it's obvious.
He'll make the sheriff come to him, assuming he can get his hands on the proper
bait. Let's find out just how many kids the
Rullingtons
have and where. .. "I stopped, seeing that she was about to go into one of
her righteous seizures. I said, "Shut up, Borden! Just keep your Goddamned
high-minded disapproval to yourself, so I can get on with my work."

           
"But
kidnaping
children-"

           
"We don't know that's how he'll
work it. Anyway, don't forget, Carl is short one child. Maybe he figures he's
got one coming. If
Rullington
can shoot them, why
can't he kidnap them?"

           
"You can't be serious!"

           
"I'm not talking about me. I'm
talking about the way Carl's mind is working. The more I think of it, the more
I'm convinced that's the way he'll do it: poetic justice or something. . . You
said there was a natural vantage point from which we could have studied the
sheriff's farm, only you were afraid somebody might have beat us to it. Well,
suppose you're right. Suppose Carl's keeping the place under observation while
he learns the
Rullington
family's daily routine. It's
a long shot, but it's worth trying. Let's go."

           
They don't have mountains in
Oklahoma
to amount to anything, at least not in that
part of
Oklahoma
. They don't even have anything you'd call a
real hill, if you were brought up in a more rugged landscape as I was, but
there was a kind of undernourished brushy ridge across the highway from the
sheriff's farm-or where my scout informed me the sheriff's farm was located.

           
I still hadn't seen it for myself.

           
"That little twisted oak or
whatever it is," Martha said as she drove. "Up on the ridge right
next to that bare-looking knob. I think the house is just opposite that,
although it's hard to tell from this side."

           
We were cruising slowly down a
narrow dirt road that left the highway a mile or so outside
Fort
Adams
and kind of wandered behind the ridge in
question. I was in the back seat, ready to hit the floor at the sight of
another person or car. If anybody remembered the white Texas Chevy, I wanted
him to remember it with only one occupant, female.

           
"If there's any kind of a road
leading into that clump of trees to the left, take it," I said.

           
"Right there. . . . What's the
matter?"

           
She had slammed on the brakes an
instant after turning into the trees, throwing me off balance. "There's a
car hidden in there already! What do I do, Matt?"

           
"Sit tight. I'll go take a
look."

           
I was dropping out of the sedan on
the off side as I spoke. I slipped around the rear with my revolver ready, and
made my approach cautiously, working from tree to tree. The vehicle had been
backed into a clump of brush to hide it. To call it a car was an exaggeration.
It was a Ford panel delivery truck, and not much of a truck at that.

           
It was well over ten years old, and
it had led a hard life. Black paint had been sloshed over it when the original
pigment expired. The battered Kentucky license plate was held in place with
rusty baling wire. However, the headlights were clean and intact and the tires
were new.

           
There was nobody inside.

           
I made sure of this, and frowned at
the interior. The upholstery of the front seat had worn out and the owner had
arranged a folded blanket to sit on, driving. There were other blankets, and
some pots and pans, in the rear. Apparently he'd been sleeping in the truck and
doing his own cooking. The doors were locked and I let them stay that way. I
opened the hood instead, and looked at the large and fairly new V8 motor
inside. The original mill had probably been a six and considerably less
powerful.

           
I stood there for a moment,
considering. Maybe my gamble was paying off. An automotive relic with new
tires, good lights, and a muscular replacement power plant in good condition
could easily be Carl's idea of camouflage. With that license, the vehicle
certainly didn't belong to a local squirrel hunter, even if the Oklahoma
squirrel season was open this time of year, which I doubted. I waved to Martha
to drive up.