Beware the Young Stranger

15

Vallancourt returned to his home from police headquarters in mid-morning. Ralph Hibbs was waiting in his study.

“I heard a newscast,” Hibbs said. “The search is now state-wide.”

“The police think Keith got hold of a car and slipped through. An incident downstate caused the waste of several hours.”

“What incident?”

“A man was found badly beaten, unconscious, near some dive of a bar early this morning. He was lying in a ditch at the rear of the parking lot and it looked as if he had been there for some time. While he had a driver’s license and auto registration, he had no keys. Looked promising, but turned out a dud — some sordid business involving two men, a prostitute one of them had picked up, and a drinking bout. The man talked readily enough when they finally brought him around.”

“Nancy may phone you, John.”

“I’m hoping so, but I’m not counting on it. There are a number of reasons why she may not.” Reasons he did not care to think about. For the byways of hindsight, Vallancourt thought, are the hiding places for anxiety, and anxiety saps a man. God knows, he thought, I need everything I’ve got.

“Have you heard from Howard this morning?” Hibbs asked.

“Early. He came by police headquarters. He was on his way to discuss arrangements with the mortician.”

“Later, he called me. Looking for Ivy. Seems he got back home and found her gone.”

Vallancourt offered cigarettes from the carved box on his desk. “You’ve known the Ferguson women a long time, haven’t you, Ralph?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Dorcas trusted you. I’ve always had the impression.” Vallancourt struck a match, “that you were more than just her business associate.”

“We all need a father-confessor at times,” Hibbs smiled sadly. “Even Dorcas.”

“Strange that she never married. I wonder why. Dorcas was made for a husband and children.”

“The one man she might have married was killed years ago when his hydroplane flipped during a Miami regatta.”

“I didn’t know that,” Vallancourt said thoughtfully.

“She rarely referred to it. I don’t know the whole story; never pressed her for it — picked it up by bits. I do know that afterward she went away for a long time to try to forget.”

Idly, Hibbs spun the world globe that stood near the vast desk. He watched continents and oceans spin by under his fingers. “She was a rare woman, John.”

“All people are rare to you, Ralph.”

Hibbs looked up slowly. “I suppose they are. Even characters like Sam Rollins.” He made a queerly appealing gesture. “I know how people feel about me. They see a bumbling, naive sort of slob — good old Ralphie. I don’t really mind. I can’t help the way I feel about people, and it doesn’t cost me anything. In fact, if you believe the best of people, you get the best out of them more times than not.”

“How long ago did that hydroplane accident happen to the man Dorcas was in love with, Ralph?” Vallancourt asked slowly.

“I’m not sure.”

“Twenty-two, three years ago?”

“Just about,” Hibbs said with an odd hiss.

“Keith’s age,” Vallancourt said.

The other man stopped the spinning globe with a sudden slap. “So you suspect, too,” he said softly.

“I’m reasonably certain Sam Rollins isn’t Keith’s father. Sam’s always known it. So he’s hated the boy, refused to assume any measure of responsibility. But he never broke the relationship, because Keith is his meal ticket.

“If it had been Sam’s wife, Maggie, who had borne a child by another man, Dorcas could have taken care of her sister and nephew and cut out a brute like Sam Rollins. But she didn’t. It adds up, Ralph.”

Hibbs was pale about the lips. He said nothing.

“I’m speaking of a good woman who was young and full of life and loved a man. It happens every day, Ralph. Dorcas was carrying his child, and they intended to marry — I don’t believe she would have given herself to any other kind of man. But he was killed, and she was building an outstanding business career. She was afraid of scandal and disgrace. And she was human.”

Hibbs stirred. “So you figure that, rather than give the child to strangers, she turned him over to her sister and brother-in-law.” He looked unhappy.

“It would explain several things,” Vallancourt nodded. “The strong physical resemblance between Keith and Dorcas. Same hair, same eyes, same quick intelligence and fighting spirit, which in the boy has been battered and misdirected.

“It would explain Dorcas’s undiscourageable interest in Keith, her providing for him indirectly all these years, even bringing him here after the Florida rape-murder thing. It would explain Sam Rollins’s following Keith here. It would explain Sam’s inside track even after the boy came of age and Maggie died. Need I go on?”

“No,” Hibbs said. “I thought I was alone in suspecting. My case was built on watching Dorcas with him, her eyes, her expressions, little things she said about Keith, the way she said them.”

“You were never sure?”

“I didn’t think it my business to try to confirm my suspicions.” Hibbs wiped his face with a damp handkerchief. “I don’t think Keith suspects at all. Sam Rollins was too solidly real in Keith’s life for the boy to dream he was another man’s son.”

“So what we have done,” Vallancourt said, “is reduce this affair to matricide.”

Hibbs shuddered. “What a ghastly word!”

“It’s in every dime-store dictionary, I’m afraid, Ralph.”

“But John, the boy didn’t know! Anyway, how sure are we that he’s guilty?”

“Not sure at all,” Vallancourt said. “But that’s damn little comfort. The fact is, guilty or innocent Keith is on the run, with the whole world chasing him. With his temperament, that could make him try to bring everything down with him.”

“I know,” Hibbs said miserably. “That’s what I’m most afraid of, John. It keeps haunting me.”

“And time is working against us,” Vallancourt said. “If he did get hold of a car, he’s probably out of reach. If not, we have a chance. He may have returned to the lake cottage.”

“We knew he was there earlier. We almost caught him. It’s the last place he’d choose.”

“Which would make him think of it as the first,” Vallancourt said.

When they reached the lodge, Vallancourt recognized the two cars in the driveway.

Ralph did also. “Howard’s and Ivy’s,” he said. “So Howard’s run her down.” He seemed depressed.

They approached the cottage slowly. Howard Conway had come out on the porch and was waiting, gray and tired. His eyes, however, reflected annoyance.

“She’s in there drunk.” Conway’s heavy lips pulled themselves into a mockery of a smile. “Family skeleton, boys, secret of the country club queen. Once in a great while, when the accumulated pressures of living get too heavy for her, Ivy goes for the bottle. She’ll be fine in a day or so. She always is.”

“It isn’t news to me,” Hibbs said gently. “But I’ve never found it worth talking about.”

“Good old Ralph,” Conway said grimly.

“We were playing a long shot,” Vallancourt said, “coming out here.”

“Keith and Nancy?”

“Any sign of them having returned here?”

“Someone has been here.”

“Are you sure?”

“There are used dishes and a rumpled bed in the first bedroom off the hallway. Butts in an ashtray near the living-room couch. I started noticing after I’d found Ivy and calmed down.”

“Only the one bed mussed up?” Vallancourt asked with an effort.

“I think he spent the night on the living-room couch, John. They both smoked a lot. The butts in the bedroom ashtray show lipstick smudges. Those near the couch don’t.”

Vallancourt gave silent thanks. For the first time he began to realize that he was an old-fashioned father. If they had gone to bed together, did it really matter? All other factors excluded, they were in love with each other — or had been.

“I was searching the place when I heard your car,” Howard Conway said.

“As he must have heard Ivy’s,” Vallancourt said, taking himself in hand. “We can guess his choice of direction. Away from the lake road. An incoming car would present a threat.”

“He must have left fast,” Conway said, “before he found out that it was a lone woman driving the car.”

Hibbs looked around at the hemming hills. “He may be in shouting distance this minute.”

“Not necessarily. He’s got several thousand acres to hide in. It’s my opinion he’s long gone. If he’d stuck close, he’d have made a try for Ivy’s car.”

“But he likes cover,” Vallancourt said. He had been deep in thought. “A cottage. A motel room. An attic.” He started from the porch. Conway glanced inside the house, then fell in beside him.

“Ivy will be out for a long time,” Conway said. “She isn’t going anywhere, and I’m needed here like a boil on my secretary’s fanny. You staying, Ralph?”

Hibbs shrugged. “I’ve been with it this far, Howard. I’ll keep going.”

Vallancourt stopped at the top of the porch steps. “Let’s keep one thing in mind. If Keith’s taken shelter in an unoccupied cottage, we want him to know we’re coming. We have to move openly. Otherwise he may panic and do something foolish.”

Both men nodded.

“Think he’ll bargain?” Conway asked. “I don’t know. But I want him to have the chance to warn us off. I want talking room. As long as there’s talk, hotheads don’t fight.”

“Isn’t it stretching the law,” Hibbs asked, “giving him a chance to get away?”

“Nancy’s welfare is my law at the moment,” Vallancourt said.

“We need luck,” Conway said. “The motel man wasn’t very lucky.”

“He was luckier than he knows,” Vallancourt said grimly. “Keith didn’t lay a finger on the man until he became a threat... Keith might have killed him, but he didn’t. His overriding thought is to hide, to get away. No doubt he’s felt a sense of nemesis, a lack of choice in everything that’s been forced on him.”

“You sound as if you’re defending him!”

“We need to understand him, Howard, if we’re to keep from triggering him. He has a need to rationalize a rightness into everything he does. I want to direct the process until Nancy is safe.”

“He’s been under pressure quite a while now,” Ralph Hibbs said. “What if he’s slipped over the line?”