The Devil's Only Friend (31 page)

“You should worry,” I said. Everything was buzzing and trembling. My lips tingled. It occurred to me that Lloyd might have had some kind of button to press or some kind of booby trap set up near his desk, and so I held the scruff of his suit and dragged him across the floor next to Mrs. Bates. I turned his head so his face could get well smeared with the old woman's blood.

“Are you certain she's safe?”

“I told you—”

“Detective, it's not right.”

Walker came close enough to block the fist I was fixing to slam into the back of Lloyd's neck.

“The rest of your life in prison, Walker,” said Lloyd, struggling for enough breath to speak at all.

I put my thumb hard into Lloyd's ribs below his shoulder blade until he gave a spasm of response.

“She's a plump one, Caudill.”

I twisted Lloyd's arm enough to begin to separate the ball of his shoulder bone from the socket, and put enough weight onto the center of his back with my knee to prevent him from pulling in enough air to get by.

Walker stepped close and laid a firm hand on my shoulder. He was still holding Lloyd's pistol.

It felt good to be able to hurt Lloyd. His lips were pulled back, and though he was suffering to breathe, his teeth were clamped tight.

“Detective, it's over now,” Walker said. “You can't just go on and kill this man.”

I eased up a bit on my knee and let Lloyd's shoulder slip back into its joint.

“Can't you see the trouble he'll give us?” I said.

“We've been through trouble before,” Walker said.

“You should check the furnace building,” whispered Lloyd. “If you want to see something. Your friend Federle has been busy.”

“He's just talking,” Walker said.

I felt the space between the two bones of Lloyd's lower arm with my thumb. I found I could make the broken fingers of his right hand jump and wiggle by squeezing hard.

“Can't you stop?” Lloyd said. “I was never cruel, Mr. Caudill. Have I ever lied to you before?”

I began to settle myself. As I looked down on Whit Lloyd, I felt something for him. I could have loved him. He had suffered so much, and he had gone so far beyond any hope of redemption that he was utterly lost. He had been broken and bloodied, and he was now completely helpless except for the puffery of his words. What he had done to the women and to Chew could count against him if he went before the Lord, but there was no necessity for me to make him suffer.

“Can you keep him pinned down here until somebody comes, Walker?”

“I'm willing to have a go at it,” he said.

“You'd be willing to shoot him dead if he won't go along?”

“He won't get loose from me. But if he did, I'd let him run rather than shoot him dead,” Walker said carefully. “I'd be willing to shoot out his other leg.”

“Put your weight down here and take the arm,” I said. “Put the gun down to the small of his back and let the trigger go if he starts up.”

Lloyd could not see what I was doing because his face was shoved up close to Mrs. Bates's bloody hair. I knew that he would start to talk to Walker as soon as he could hear that I'd gone out of the room, but I also knew that Walker could be as patient as any man could be.

“I'll send somebody up, Walker. I'll let them know not to plug you right off.”

“I'd appreciate it sooner rather than later.”

“I'd better try to find Federle before somebody else does.”

“You should finish me, Caudill,” Lloyd said.

“No,” I told him. “I feel sick of all of it. You make me sick.”

I stepped out of the office and the outer office and into the hall, holding to the weak notion that I would be able to feel it somehow if Eileen had been brought to the massive plant. Lloyd had tried to steer me toward the furnace, but as I stepped through the hallways that glowed still with dimming emergency lighting, I couldn't tell where I wanted to go. I moved my flat feet along, wishing for something more substantial than my own bloody hands and my wreck of a face to help me.

CHAPTER 29

The floor containing Lloyd's offices seemed utterly empty. I thought that Lloyd might have stopped the elevators somehow, and I was not sure that any staircase could open to the floor without a special key. I heard nothing but the wail of sirens moaning up and down the scale over and over.

I came to the elevator that had taken us up, and pressed the only button, but there was no response. There was a door close by that looked like a janitor's closet, but from its position I thought it might lead to a stairwell. I tried the handle slowly, and when it turned, I eased the door open with my foot. Though it was almost completely dark inside, I could tell by the feel of it that there were stairs. I pulled down a small painting that had been attached to the wall and used it to keep the door from closing after me.

The stairway was windowless, and the emergency lights inside were no brighter than fireflies, and so I had to feel my way downward, holding on to the rail. The staircase only went down one floor. From the inside, I was able to pull open the door with no difficulty. I peered around the corner into the hallway and found another area of gleaming floors and a maze of doorways. Again I pulled something from the wall to prop the door open, and then I stopped to listen carefully.

I don't know what it was that made me turn one way instead of another. As my senses were reeling, I might have heard something, even the rustle of paper or a tight breath, or I might have noticed a shadow moving at the corner of my vision. I want to say that I could feel even some slight change in temperature, a waft of heated air coming from the hall to the right of me. But since I was turned around, since my sense of direction had gone the way of my common sense, I just turned right and stepped down the hall.

The whole floor seemed quiet, which was odd enough, but there was something, something that drew me on. Most of the offices had nameplates carved out of wood tacked up outside them, but I did not recognize the names until I came to the end of that hall:
CHARLES HARDIMAN, ELLIOT HARDIMAN
. I opened the door and stepped inside.

There was an outer office, a quarter the size of Lloyd's, that led back to a pair of offices at the window end.

“It's Caudill,” I said softly. “Who is it?”

This brought some movement from inside one of the offices but no words.

“It's all right,” I said.

“Don't come in, Pete.”

It was Federle's voice, I thought.

“I'm coming.”

“You'd better not.”

“Will you shoot me?”

“Sure, I will,” he said. “Ain't I crazy?”

I stepped beyond the secretary's desk and stood before the window at the back of the outer office. Federle half-sat on the long desk in Charles Hardiman's office, holding the pistol over his leg. He was facing the long bank of windows, and the light that came over him seemed to make him blue.

He didn't turn to look at me. Something thrashed and bumped on the floor before his feet, and he waved the gun softly.

“
Hnnnn!
”

“Quiet,” Federle whispered.

I took just a step to get me into the frame of the door to the office. The Hardiman boys were trussed on the floor under the windows.

Federle lifted up his shaky hand and pulled a long drag from a cigarette that was almost gone. His breath was so deep that he burned the fag down to his fingertips. He brought the butt close to his face and considered the glowing end of it. Then he pressed his fingers together and put out the fire.

“I was trying to help you, Pete. You know I was only trying to help.”

“Sure. You were helping me.”

“You can see about these Hardimans, right?”

“A couple of bastards, all right,” I said.

Federle's face was slack, his jaw soft, and his eyes stared out at nothing.

“You should kill them, then,” I said.

“I don't want to kill them! I didn't want to kill anyone!”

“They haven't done anything wrong, is that it?”

“
Hnnn!
”

“Quiet, you!” Federle turned to me and saw that I was covered with blood. “Walker?”

“He's all right,” I said.

“I shouldn't have run off on you. But I had to—”

“
Hnnn!
”

“Jesus, you stupid pansy, shut your yap!” Federle sprang up from the desk and was across the floor and at Elliot's throat with the gun in a flash. “You keep quiet!”

I was still at the door, but after Federle got up from the desk, I could see a woman's hand and arm glowing white. It was too slender to be Eileen's, wasn't it? I could see polished nails and a tiny jeweled ring on the fingers.
Her new beau's given her a ring,
I thought.
Or is it Patty's hand?

“Who's this, now, Ray? Whose arm do you have here?”

He stood up abruptly and gave Elliot a short kick to the belly. Then he turned toward me and waved the gun stiffly. “She's— I know it was wrong, Pete. She's nobody now.” He was wound up tight. His arms came up and then down, and the fingers of his free hand splayed out and curled up like he couldn't control them.

“Come on, Ray, it's all over now. Walker's got Lloyd upstairs.”

“All I wanted was to help you. From that first time I saw you, that's what I had to do.”

“You've been helping. You did good. But this girl…”

“It had to be the Hardimans.
It had to be.
You said so yourself. Their father was a piece of work. Their mother—those goons—”

“It's all right, Ray.”

“She was just … she was like the other girls, Pete. She was bringing shame to her family.”

“I know, I know.”

“I knew it was wrong.”

“You put the arm here to make it easier to pin things on the brothers.” Ray had been so certain that the Hardimans had killed the girls that he had killed another woman just to frame them up. “But who is it, Ray?”

His face broke into a manic smile and he began to sob.

“You got me pinned down, Pete,” he said.

“Hand over that pistol,” I said. “That belongs to me.”

“That's just a bad idea.”

I did not take a step but I shifted my weight a bit to judge how Federle would react. His gun hand went up to train the piece on me without any hesitation, and I leaned back. I could see the four glittering eyes of the Hardiman brothers. They were both working at the cords that held their hands and feet. Charles had worked off one of his burnished oxblood shoes.

Federle brought himself together a bit and leveled the gun at my belly. He picked up the arm from the desk and stood facing me.

“Get down on the floor with them, Pete.”

“I won't let you tie me up like a hog.”

“Just step out of my way.”

Charles Hardiman worked his gag down with his jaw and said, “You're wrong about us, Mr. Federle. You're wrong about Elliot.”

The sharp crack of a billy rapping on a door came from far down the hall, followed by a shout.

“Let's sit down here and talk this over,” I said.

“It's no use, Pete. I'm through. You should— Can you help Patty out? Can you do anything for her?”

“She needs you, Ray. She needs a husband.”

His bitter smile let me know that I had spoken poorly.

“It isn't fair, Mr. Federle. It isn't moral.” Charles used his voice patiently, quietly.

“Lloyd tried to tell me that Eileen was here,” I said. “He said I should look in the furnace building. We'll go together.”

Federle considered it. Then he skipped toward me quickly and planted his foot on the middle of my chest. It was enough to knock my feet from under me, and I went backward and bounced into the doorway of Elliot's office. Federle blew past me and was gone.

“
Hnnn! Hnnn!
”

I righted myself and tried to stand up, but the dizziness put me back to my knees. I heaved to get some of my wind back, and then started off again after Federle.

“
Hnnn!
”

A couple of uniformed Lloyd security men were far down the hall, knocking on doors, yelling to find anyone who had been left in the building when the power fell. One of them saw me as I turned down the broad open stairway that led as far as the third floor, but he was far enough away for me to ignore his shouting. I came down to where the staircase opened to an impressive open area toward the rear of the administration building, and I could see that the security men had rounded up all the stragglers in suits and white shirts in the courtyard outside. Covered in blood as I was, I could only hope to slip any contact with the security men or bluff my way through. I did have my gold badge, after all, and I was in fact performing some duty.

I knew that Lloyd had been suckering me with his talk of Eileen. It was not possible that he could have done anything to her. If I had any confidence left in me at all, it made me sure at least of so much. I knew that my heart would not quit seizing in my chest until I could put my hand on her shoulder, but for now my mind was on Ray Federle.

The elder Lloyd had set up the facility so that he could see the whole process played out before him; near the river, where freighters could slide in and turn to dump their loads of ore and coke and scrap, they had built a mess of rail lines and spurs to transport material inland to the furnaces and the rolling mills. Lloyd could watch from his window as the raw earth was dumped and hauled and charged and blasted into steel; he knew how everything moved toward the end of the line, where in better days new automobiles rolled into great lots close to the river. These cars were loaded onto freighters and shipped across the country, to all ports, to all cities where the Lloyd name was known.

It was all laid out in a squared-off circle, and the administration building, where Jasper Lloyd had kept his office before turning it over to his son, looked over it all. I knew I could get to the open hearth furnace building through the rolling mill, which was adjacent to the building I had just left. For Federle it would be the natural end. I huffed my way past the gaggle of men and women who smoked and joshed each other outside the buildings, not yet released to go home. They were lolling on the grass, and I didn't pay any mind to what the sight of me might do to them.