An Old Friend of the Family

TWELVE

Of the two uniformed Cook County sheriff’s deputies who had met Joe at the country gas station in response to his phone call, and had then followed him back to this lonely house, one was now outside in their official car, busy with its radio. The other deputy was with Joe in the house, and had begun a more or less methodical questioning of the only other person who had been on the scene when they arrived.

“Now, you say he fired twice at you, Dr. Corday? Where were you standing when that happened?”

“I believe—here.” And Corday moved decisively to a position in the living room not far from the entry. He seemed to have been not in the least shaken by the peril through which, according to his own story, he had so recently passed.

“Uhuh,” the deputy remarked. He was not especially excited either. Following the old man closely he pointed to, without quite touching, a shattery-looking place in the otherwise new-looking plaster wall behind him. “If that is a bullet hole, I guess you weren’t standing exactly where you are right now, when she hit.”

“Approximately,” Corday conceded, turning to look with mild interest at the damage.

The deputy made a note. “You say he fired twice . . . one could be in the carpet somewhere, I suppose.”

“That seems not improbable. As I recall, his arm was shaking.”

“Then he ran out of the house, you say. Did you make any attempt to hold him?”

“I am not as young as I once was, officer.”

“Yessir, I don’t blame you a bit for that. Don’t get me wrong. But first, he did let you load the kidnap victim into a car and drive him out of here? I don’t quite understand that.”

Corday blinked mildly at the deputy. “Perhaps the young man, even though he had a gun, was frightened when Miss Southerland and I broke in.”

“Perhaps. Huh. You say you’re the one who broke the door in? How’d you manage that?”

“Construction standards are not what they were in the old days.”

“Well, that’s for sure.” Scratching his head, the deputy gave Joe a wary look: You know this old guy, huh? You didn’t warn me he was a little crazy.

Corday added: “And it is not always the brave, is it, who bear weapons?”

“That’s for damn sure.” The deputy sighed. “Now, sir, tell me again—how’d you know the Southerland boy was here, as you say he was?”

“I repeat, I am an accomplished hypnotist—” The old man broke off, turning to watch the front door. A few seconds later it grated open. This time a piece of the smashed lock fell completely free.

Deputy Two, wide-eyed, stopped in the doorway. “Carl! I just got the Glenlake chief on the horn. He confirms what our witness here says. Both the Southerland kids are home, they drove up a few minutes ago in someone’s Caddy. The girl says they came from out here. The boy has the little finger missing from each hand. They’re taking him to Evanston Hospital. The FBI and everyone else is gonna be out here on our ass in about ten minutes.”

“Jesus,” said Deputy One, with fervor. He gave the old man a look that showed how little of the old man’s story had been believed, up until this moment. “Well, let’s not screw up anything until they get here.”

“Carl, I’m gonna take a look a round outside. The suspect is supposed to have run out, isn’t he?”

Number One considered. “Right. I guess you better. But don’t screw up anything. Don’t mess up the tracks in the snow, if there are any. I guess there must be, if the guy ran out.”

“I’ll come along,” Joe volunteered. “I can show you which tracks are mine, at least.”

“Thanks, that would be a help.”

Outside, more snow was now falling, in the form of frigidly dry powder. From the front step, Deputy Two’s powerful flashlight swept the yard. “The longer we wait, the harder it’s gonna be to find anything.”

“Those tracks going all the way around the house are mine,” Joe pointed out. “Now there, those are new.” From the front step a narrow, fresh trail led in a straight diagonal across the yard, angling away from the drive.

“I’d say two people.”

“Not side by side, though. One following the other.”

“Or chasing the other, maybe.”

They started across the yard themselves, keeping parallel with the trail they followed. The deputy led with his flash, Joe stepping into the deputy’s tracks.

Joe said: “I think they were both running.”

“Jesus, I think you’re right. Look, can this be one stride, from here to here? It must be ten feet long.”

“I’m no expert at this tracking bit.”

“Hell, I’m not either.”

At the edge of the yard the makers of the double trail had somehow negotiated a decorative, split-rail fence. On the other side of the fence the trail went on, still practically in a straight line, through a patch of young woods and down an easy slope.

Following the deputy over the fence and on, Joe muttered: “Couldn’t have been running to get to a road this way, could they? Highway’s back in the other direction.”

“All that’s down this way is the creek, I think—hey.”

A few yards ahead, the slope flattened into what would be in summer muddy creek-bottom land. The dead stalks of last summer’s growth of weeds made a thin, wintry jungle, more than head-high but fragile and offering no real impediment to progress. Along the trail a number of the dried stalks had been broken down in its direction. Not many yards farther on, the flashlight’s beam now reached the frozen creek itself, a sunken aisle surfaced with plain snow, twisting between overgrown banks.

On the near bank of the frozen creek the double trail ended in a broad, trampled circle, centered on a mound of something that was not entirely snow.

Hurrying forward, looking over the deputy’s shoulder along the brilliant shaft of the flashlight’s beam, Joe could see blood. The trampled space was marked with it in little flecks and splashes, fresh, not yet sanitized by falling snow. And there, a pair of thick-lensed eyeglasses had fallen. As they entered the circle Joe also saw a human finger, its stump-end ragged and gory. Had someone carried one of the poor kid’s fingers out here, meaning to hide evidence? Or—

The central mound was moving in the light. It was sheepskin under newly fallen white. Joe lifted at it with two hands, the deputy with the hand in which he did not hold the light, and it turned over.

“Jesus.”

“He’s still alive, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Joe lifted some more, the deputy held his light and brushed off snow. One arm in a sheepskin sleeve fell dangling.

“Look at his hand.”

“It’s both hands. Jesus God.”

Struggling to move the inert weight back toward the house, Joe found himself stepping on another loose finger. He saw a third. He didn’t look for more. Halfway back to the house, the deputy started blasting on a whistle. In a few seconds his partner came running to them through the snow, gun drawn.

With three to carry they made quick work of getting the hurt man back into the house. Corday watched their entrance without comment, and slowly followed them to the bedroom. There they stretched their burden on the cot, the only feasible place.

Joe was angry. “You’re a doctor, right? This is an emergency case we’ve got here, wouldn’t you say?” But there was more to his anger than the fact that Corday was standing by so passively.

The two of them were at the bedroom doorway. One of the deputies squeezed past and ran out, evidently heading for the car radio again.

Corday said gently, imperturbably: “I will examine him if you wish.” With Joe and the other deputy hovering watchfully, he approached the cot. He bent and touched the young man’s face. The eyes of the supine figure opened, squinting, blinking like a newborn’s in the light of the single lamp. It took those eyes a little while to focus on Corday’s face.

Then the man on the cot raised what had been a hand. A gurgle came from his throat, and with a terrible effort he moved as if to rise, to scramble backward. Joe caught him under the armpits to keep him from falling to the floor, and in that moment the young man’s body ceased to move.

Corday continued to regard the youth intently for a moment, without touching him again. Then he straightened. “Gentlemen, this man is dead.”

“We’re calling for an ambulance,” the deputy argued, as if in contradiction. Meanwhile he was helping Joe lay the man down flat again. “Isn’t there anything you can do? Heart massage . . .”

“It is too late.”

The deputy stood indecisively for a moment. Then, mumbling swearwords, he stalked out after his partner.

The body on the cot certainly looked dead. Joe waited to hear the broken, grating sound with which the front door closed. Then he looked at the old man. “Dr. Corday?” His own voice was tighter than he liked. He felt close to some kind of violence himself. His anger was largely at himself, he realized, for being taken in.

“Yes, Joe?”

“I want you to tell me what happened to this man’s hands. Don’t tell me you should not like to venture an opinion.”

The old man looked again at the figure on the cot. He was still cool, too cool. Only the crazies could be that cool. Joe should have seen it before.

Corday said: “It would appear that his fingers have somehow been—”

“Torn off, goddam it. I can see that. Who did it?”

“Discovering that would seem to be the job of the police. Though not necessarily, I suppose, of the Chicago Pawn Shop Detail?” Corday’s voice was tired, as well as cool. That sounded like a request for a little more comradely co-operation.

No more. “This is the same guy who supposedly fired a gun at you?”

“Oh yes. Yes.”

“He must have had his fingers then, right? Right? Then he ran out of here. Trying to get away? If he had the gun like you say, why was he running? And who chased him?”

A glint of something other than coolness came into the old man’s eyes. Amusement, it looked like. “I would surmise that he ran to get to running water. A forlorn hope, of course. It would not have saved him. But still he was a more knowledgeable young man than some. About some things, at least.”

“Running water, save him? What does that mean?” Joe knew he was losing his own coolness, his own control. The knowledge didn’t help.

“Joe, believe it or not, I am extremely tired. I must rest before I undergo any lengthy questioning.” Corday turned away to seek out the room’s one chair. And pallor, tiredness, age, were indeed all showing in his face at the moment.

“Don’t go to sleep just yet. I don’t like that trick you pulled on me today, sending me off on a wild goose chase. I don’t like a bunch of things about you. I’m not here as a cop tonight, and I can speak my mind.” He immediately felt a little better, calmer, for having spoken that much of it at least. All right, he should have seen before that the old man had to be at least a little crazy.

Sitting wearily erect, hands on knees, Corday made the old chair almost a throne. “As for the wild goose chase, as you describe it, I would not have done that had there been time to win you over by argument. But there was no time. The boy had to be saved at once.”

“You really knew that he was here. But how?”

“You saw.”

Joe, the interrogating officer, stood over the seated suspect. “Let that pass for the moment. Let’s go over again what you say happened here after you sent Judy and Johnny home. You were in the living room with this guy, he shot at you and then ran out. You stayed in the house. How do you suppose his fingers got torn off?”

Corday took a moment to ponder. “Perhaps, Joe, it would be more profitable to start with why.”

“All right, then. If you’ve got a good reason, try it out on me.”

“There is revenge as a motive. You must come across that in your work.”

“Not as often as you might think. Not like this. People do turn each other in to the police, there’s plenty of that. If this was done for revenge, who did it?”

“Some—ally—of the Southerland family?”

“Who?”

“A second common purpose of torture,” said the old man pedantically, “is of course the extortion of information. And a third purpose is to make an example of the victim. Perhaps to warn his associates to desist from a certain course of action—the persecution of a certain family, for instance.”

Watching the old man, listening to him, Joe felt his earlier anger coming back, more coldly now. Eight years on the force, brushing now and then against every kind of evil that the city bred, had not prepared him for a close look at anyone like this. It was not what Corday might have done, or what he was saying, so much as what he was. Just what the old man was, Joe did not know; but the closer he got to it, the more his deepest feelings recoiled.

“Historically,” the old man was continuing, “such frightful warnings have been more effective than many people currently suppose. Then of course, two or even all three purposes may be served by the same act—the same atrocity, if you will. And now, before you ask me another question Joe, will you answer one for me in turn?”

“I don’t know. If I can. Maybe.”

“Who is Craig Walworth?”

Joe blinked, trying to shift gears. “I’ve heard the name. Society. From one of the wealthy families in the city. What’s he got to do with any of this? Don’t tell me this is him?” He gestured at the still figure on the cot.

Corday shook his head tiredly. “I doubt that very much.”

“This guy”—he gestured toward the cot, where blind blue eyes stared up—“ran down the hill to get to running water, huh?”

“Thinking his pursuer could not follow him across the stream. Grasping at a faint hope of that, at least.”

“His pursuer, meaning you. The gun in your hand, not in his.”

The wicked old eyes looked up at Joe were once more amused.

Joe shivered. Words came from him involuntarily: “I think you’re crazy. You’re a maniac. I should never have left Judy alone with you for a minute.”

At last, at last, some basic feeling had been provoked, deep in those dark and ancient eyes that looked, to Joe, not a bit more human for its presence. Joe was suddenly, comfortingly, aware of the weight that rode his shoulder-holster, underneath his jacket. And it was a relief also to hear more cars arriving now, pulling in round the last turn of the long drive from the highway.