Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Ernest Savage Doc Wharton’s Legacy

I read the Chronicle story that evening at dinner; and when I got home and read the letter from Doc Wharton, I read the Chronicle story again.

The newspaper story said that Belcher and Crumb had been shot and killed by two Mountain County deputies named Arkins and Jellicoe. Belcher and Crumb were the two prison escapees and bank robbers every cop north of Bakersfield had been looking for lately. Arkins and Jellicoe, according to the story, had been patrolling one of the Mountain County roads near the Nevada border when they saw the body of a man on a dirt trail winding uphill from the road. He was dead. He’d bled to death from a gunshot wound in the belly. His name was Edward Wharton and he lived in a cabin farther up the trail and he hadn’t been dead long.

Investigating, the two deputies came upon Belcher and Crumb near Wharton’s cabin, and in the ensuing gunfight had shot them dead. In the two-column cut of Arkins and Jellicoe, they looked like the winner and runner-up in an idiot contest, but maybe they were thinking about the $8,000 reward that went with the two dead crooks.

I’d known Doc Wharton for fifteen years. I’d arrested him in the early ’60s for practicing medicine without a license and failing to report a gunshot wound he’d treated. A couple years before that he’d lost his license for performing illegal abortions. The medical board agreed he was a good doctor — when he wasn’t drunk — but that wasn’t often enough to warrant his continued practice.

Personally, I liked the man. He seemed to have an affinity for the underworld, but I liked him anyway. He had style. I got a Christmas card from him every year, but the letter I got that night was the first. And the last. It was typed and full of errors and smears, which I won’t attempt to reproduce. It follows in full:

The enclosure was a Wanted poster, probably ripped from a post-office bulletin board. Guys on the lam have an affinity for their own publicity. It showed the usual pictures of Belcher and Crumb, recited their crimes, and offered $8,000 for them, dead or alive. Lower middle class on the crook scale.

I got up from my desk, poured myself a brandy, and looked in my dictionary. Adutrumque paratus was Latin for “ready for either alternative.” I laughed. As I said, Doc Wharton had style. And a way of screwing things up to the bitter end.

Mitzi Wharton had been dancing topless when I first knew her, and I mean to advise, she was built for the work. In the ’ 60s she got herself picked up two or three times a year, but as far as I know she was never convicted of anything but damn foolishness. She was about five-ten tall, but always carried herself straight with her chest out. Most tall girls tend to slump, but not Mitzi.

Doc Wharton once told me she’d got into a fist fight with a boy her first day in kindergarten, and she’d had her dukes up ever since. She had a face that shifted around between pugnacity and pulchritude. She wasn’t pretty in any ordinary way, but she was good-looking and had a lot of the Wharton style.

I hadn’t seen her for months now and had no idea where she was living, but I didn’t even bother to look her up in the book. I called this desk sergeant I know and asked him to locate her for me and he said he would.

Then I wondered if I should put in a call for the Mountain County Sheriff and tell him he had a couple of cuties on his staff; but I figured he probably knew that already, and was maybe even party to his deputies’ little deception.

Mitzi was in the slammer. When my friend, Mike Phelps, called back at 10:30 he said she’d been picked up around seven that evening for disturbing the peace and hitting a cop in the face with her handbag. “Which wouldn’t have been so bad,” Mike said, “except it had a sixteen-ounce jar of strawberry jam in it.”

“Why’d she do that?”

“She said he called her a hooker.”

“Is she?”

“Well, her means of support lacks a little something in the way of visibility, but she claims she isn’t.”

“How’s the guy she hit?”

“He’ll be eating soft food for a few days, they tell me, but outside of that he’s okay.”

I sighed. “Now what’ll happen?”

“I don’t know, Sam. She’s at Central Station, not here, but it has the makings of a stand-off. Maybe if you call Lieutenant West over there you can get him to drop it. He’s got a lot bigger fish to fry than her.”

I thanked Phelps, then punched out the Central Station number and finally got West. He and I came up together in the Force and had good rapport. I’d quit after the strike, but he’d hung in there. He had two kids in college and couldn’t afford to quit. Now he was having a bad night. The street rats were running and he had two knifings and a half-dozen other happenings on his hands. When I told him I’d pick up Mitzi at 8:00 A.M., he told me I could have her now if I wanted. But I didn’t want.

The next morning, over breakfast, I let Mitzi read her father’s letter and the Wanted poster. She had an interesting face to watch. It had matured some since I’d seen it last, but it had the old mobility I remembered, eyes, brows, and mouth moving with the sense of what she read. She smiled wryly at the end. She knew the Latin, which surprised me.

“Heaven or hell,” she said. “He didn’t care which, did he? He thought it was all here anyway. If he hadn’t been my father, Sam, I would have killed him. I guess. A girl is supposed to have a thing for her father, isn’t she? Maybe we did, in reverse.”

It pleased me she hadn’t mentioned the money first, but she got to it soon enough. “So now I’m an heiress, huh? Eight grand.”

“There’s a problem,” I told her, and showed her the story in yesterday’s Chronicle. Her face displayed hostility, her eyes fire as she read it. “The damn nerve of them!” she exploded. “Typical cops!”

“Don’t generalize, Mitzi.”

“You read it your way, Lieutenant, I’ll read it mine.”

“Drop the title, Mitzi. It’s Sam Train now. I’m private.”

“Couldn’t live with it any longer, huh?”

“Never mind why. Do you want to go up there and get this thing straightened out, or not?”

“Why do I need you?” Her big green eyes flashed animosity at me as the symbol of everything she was accustomed to hold in contempt. It was an automatic reaction. She’d belted a street cop in the face last night with sixteen ounces of strawberry jam and evidently taken a lick or two herself in return. There was a mark under her right cheekbone that wasn’t a makeup smear and wouldn’t wash off with soap and water. And it wasn’t the only knock she’d taken from a cop in her thirty-two or thirty-three years.

“Think of me,” I said, “as administrator of your old man’s estate. This letter gives me both the authority and the responsibility.”

“At just how big a cut, Mister Train?”

“Just pay for the gas.”

“I can get a car somewhere. I don’t need yours.”

“But you need my letter, Mitzi.”

“You guys’ve always got the last word, haven’t you.” She added something in a deep throaty voice and slumped tiredly in her chair. The desk cop at Central had told me she hadn’t slept much last night in the tank, but then nobody does except the drunks. In the moment’s repose her face was lovely and I wondered, as I had wondered before, why some big rangy guy hadn’t taken her in hand long ago. I’ve even wondered once or twice why I hadn’t myself.

She straightened abruptly in her chair, shucking off the fatigue, shoulders back, eyes engaging mine. “Sam, is it real, the eight grand?”

“It’s real, but we’ve got to go there and reclaim it.”

“Fight ’em for it, huh?”

“If it comes to that, Mitzi.”

“It’ll come to that — it always does. Damn it, what a world,” she added, then raised her coffee cup and said, her eyes flashing again, “Well, adutrumque paratus, shamus.” She pronounced it suavely.

“We’ll win,” I said. “Just leave the strawberry jam at home.”

“Not a chance! It’s my shillelagh.”

I took her to her apartment just off Van Ness and she said she was going to take her sweet time getting the stink of jail off her skin and I‘d better come up. If I were still on the Force I wouldn’t have, but I was my own man now.

It was a dump on the outside, but had an almost nun-like neatness inside, as though in defiance of the other circumstances of her life — anyone’s life in this town and time. A cell of quiet in the midst of the storm.

A sleeping alcove behind drapes was off the main room and the drapes didn’t quite meet the center after she’d drawn them. I could see a slice of her bed and bits and pieces of her Bitting around as she got undressed. She didn’t seem to care if I looked and nothing in me told me not to. I’d seen everything there is to see in this town that shows everything there is to show, but that Hitting, segmented display of a spectacular woman was as fresh and touching as a child’s smile. It moved me deeply in a strange new way.

I shook my head. I’d made a quantum leap in a direction I not only didn’t like, but that frightened me. I’m a cop, an ex-cop, but I’m still a cop. I deal in the brute, bloody rubble of civilization. I’m not a lady’s man.

“Hey, Sam,” she hollered before she took her bath. “Make some coffee if you want. I got one of those Mr. Coffee things over there in the kitchen.”

I did. It was a relief. To like her was one thing; to want her something else again. Mr. Coffee talked me out of it. But not for long.

We left town on the Bay Bridge and took 80 to Sacramento where we branched south. She was wearing an expensive denim pants-suit that looked great on her. She’d got it as part of a modeling fee, she told me.

“That cop last night said you were a hooker,” I said flatly, the thing coming alive again.

“And suffered pains for his error, Mr. Train.”

“You’re not a hooker?”

“We’re all hookers, as the man said. But if you mean what I think you mean, I’m not and never have been.”

“Okay,” I blurted, “that’s okay.” It shouldn’t have been important to me one way or the other, but it was and I couldn’t suppress it.

I’d seen Mitzi maybe twenty times in the last ten-twelve years, sometimes on the street just in passing, or in a store, but mostly in the line of work. She’d got picked up more times than a three dollar bill, usually for resisting arrest, or interfering with somebody else’s arrest. She wasn’t a hippie or militant or revolutionary, but she had a sense of right and wrong that was up front and quick to express itself.

Once that I know of, the charge had been drunk and disorderly, but she wasn’t a boozer in the usual sense of the word. She wasn’t anything that I could pin down. Model? Dancer? Stripper? Salesclerk? “No visible means of support,” the charge sheet had said last night; but that’s what they put down when they arrest a mobster.

She had her head back and eyes closed, her long auburn hair draping over the seat of the car. She spoke only when spoken to and I let her rest through most of the first 100 miles while I fought back this rising surge in me. After the orderliness and discipline of nineteen years on the Force I was coming apart at the seams.

At 2000-feet elevation she seemed to respond to the sharply increased freshness of air and sat up straight, her eyes open. The long flat Central Valley had been steeped in its usual haze, cutting visibility to a few miles and turning the mind in on itself.

We crossed State 49 a little west of Fiddletown in the old Mother Lode country and then picked up State 6 for the uphill run to Mountain City. I’d never been this way before and neither had she. She was studying the mountain scene with an alien’s critical eye.

“What brought him up here?” she asked finally. “He was a city man all his life. He needed to live in a place where there’s a bar on every corner.”

“Maybe he grew out of that, Mitzi. Maybe in the end he needed space and clarity and silence.”

“That’s a good definition of death, isn’t it?” She shuddered. “Or maybe it’s what life is supposed to be like, but we just forgot, all of us. Maybe Pop was right.”

She was hugging herself, arms Xed across her chest. She was beginning to mourn him and I felt pleased with her again.

A long time later she laughed briefly and said, “You know the thing about him that was so different? He had manners, he was the last of the courteous men. Even when drunk. I can remember him coming home in the middle of the night, bombed to the brows. I would get up to make sure he didn’t kill himself on the stairs and he would say. ‘Forgive me for disturbing your rest, my dear.’ He must have said that to me a thousand times. ‘Forgive me for disturbing your rest, my dear.’ ”

“And did you?”

“No. Not then. I’m just beginning to now, but then I made him pay. The young are the sternest judges, aren’t they, Sam? They’re the ones who make the bombs. They don’t forgive you, they blow your head off. Poor Pop, poor old Pop! I really made him pay. That’s when I began taking my clothes off in public.”

“He resented that?”

“He thought it was bad manners.” She looked gloomily out the window for a moment. “And he was right.”

We got to Mountain City at 2:30. Mountain City was about ten minutes long and four minutes wide, tucked between two craggy peaks that still had snow on their crowns. One thousand, one hundred forty-four people, elevation 6.480 feet. Wine-sharp air. Main Street was lined with red-brick structures that had been new in 1910. One of them had a name that caught my eye as we drifted past — the Jellicoe Building; it was the name of one of the deputies in the Chronicle story, the tall one.

The Sheriff’s headquarters was on the far edge of town. It was a small, new, handsome structure made of native stone and set in a grove of dowager Douglas firs, the asphalted parking lot spreading between them like a flow of black lava. It was pretty and peaceful-looking.

Mitzi made no move to get out when I’d parked. She was slumped against the door, crying softly now. “I wonder where his body is,” she said huskily. “He told me once he wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered out past the Golden Gate. Maybe he thought it was symbolic of something. I want to do that for him, Sam.”

“We’ll find out where he is,” I said. “Come on in.”

“No, I’ll wait,” she mumbled. “I just want to sit here for a while. You got a tissue?”

“In the glove compartment,” I said, and wanted urgently to draw her into my arms. It was probably not the first time she’d cried in her thirty-three years, but it was the first time I’d seen her cry and it did something to me. “Take your time,” I said feebly.

Inside the building, the woman behind the counter was flanked by communication equipment, all of it silent for the moment. She was reading the latest edition of the Guinness Book of Records and put it down, smiling. A pile of yesterday’s edition of the Chronicle was stacked on the counter between us. I told her my name and that I wanted to see the Sheriff about the reward money, and I let her think I had it in my pants.

Within thirty seconds I was in the Sheriff’s private office being invited to sit down. I didn’t. I waited for the woman to close the door behind me and then handed the Sheriff Doc Wharton’s letter and told him my story. There was a stack of Chronicles on his desk too. They would be an embarrassment to him soon.

Sheriff Mason had one of those faces that seem to be seven-eighths below the cheekbones, like Nixon’s, with long curving jowls hammocked from the ears. He read old Doc’s letter slowly, then caught his face between his hands and pushed it around like a half-inflated volleyball.

“I knew it!” he muttered. “I knew them two jackasses was conning me. I knew damn well it couldn’t be the way they said it was because the hole in that what’s-his-name’s head was a .45 hole if ever I seen one. Grace!” He hollered into his intercom, and I had a vision of Grace casing herself down off the ceiling. “Get Arkins from across the street and tell him to get his butt in here right now and get Jellicoe on the radio and tell him to get his butt in here too — on the double!”

I sat down and watched Mason calm himself enough to read the letter again, his lips moving around like the open end of a hose. “So Doc had a daughter,” he said.

“Did you know Wharton?”

“Hell, everybody knew him. He comes down — usta come down — durin’ the ski season and help Doc Zerbo set bones. Wouldn’t take no fee for it ’cause he said he wasn’t licensed, but Zerbo kept him in booze and food. He’s a real nice man. Was. Dammit, can’t get usta him bein’gone. What about the daughter?”

“You might say she’s a chip off the old block.”

“That’d make her a mighty nice girl, Mr. Train.”

“She’s got it in her,” I said. “What about the cabin, Sheriff? Who owned it?”

“Hell, that place reverted to the State years ago. Nobody owned it. Doc just squatted there, and welcome—”

“Where’s his body?”

“At Madison Funeral Parlor down the street. We use it for a morgue. I suppose she’ll want him.”

“She will.”

Arkins came in after a brief knock on the door, and Mason made him sit down at the desk and read the letter while he and I watched his dark skinny face turn darker. He read it twice, then turned it over and looked at the back, and then stared at the ceiling, sighing.

“We kinda wondered,” he said finally, “what old Doc was doin’ down by the mailbox, but the flag wasn’t up so we—”

Mason smacked the desk. “I s’pose if the flag was up you woulda took the letter outa the box, huh, Arkins?”

“Hell, no, Harry! Fella don’t fool with the mail, that’s Federal. We—”

“So what you done was local, is that it? Just a little County offense, is that it?”

“Hell, Harry, we had no idea Doc Wharton had kin, did you?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Well, it makes all the damn difference, don’t it?”

I was pleased with the way it was going. I’d expected a fight, but not one I could just sit and watch like a tennis match. The Sheriff was boiling but his hand, pawing at the pile of Chronicles as he talked, revealed the basic source of his concern. He could forgive Arkins and Jellicoe their little deception, I thought, but the problem now was what to do about it, how to deal with the publicity that had ensued.

“So now,” Mason snarled, “I got a coupla heroes that oughta be slung in jail. I know why you did this, by God, Arkins, you been sneakin’ over the border into Nevada again and losing at craps, ain’t you?”

“Harry—”

“How much, dammit?”

“About twenty-seven hundred, but—”

“Good Godamighty! How much into Jellicoe?”

“Nothin’, Sheriff. Johnny don’t play no more.”

The Sheriff kneaded his jaws again and asked Grace through the intercom where Jellicoe was, for damn Pete’s sake.

“He drove in the parking lot about five minutes ago,” I heard her say, “but he hasn’t come into the building yet.”

“Probably hit one of the trees out there,” Mason muttered, “and is makin’ out a phony accident report. Mr. Train, I got to apologize for all this, sir. I ain’t never been so embarrassed by my men, and I tell you I’ve been embarrassed by ’em more times than one.”

“Nothin’ wrong with Johnny,” Arkins protested. “Johnny’s a good man, Harry, and you know it. Nothin’ much wrong with me neither that a forty-foot fence along the state line wouldn’t cure. I admit, I got this bug.”

Mason stared at his deputy in astonished incredulity. “So there’s nothin’ wrong with Jellicoe, huh? Mr. Train,” he said, turning to me, “what would you call a deputy who carries skis in his patrol car from November to May and fishin’ gear and a pick and shovel and a gold-pannin’ pan all the rest of the year?”

I was growing wary. “An outdoor man, to say the least.”

“Outdoor man! Hell, he oughta be livin’ in a tree.”

“He don’t do none of them things on duty, though, Harry,” Arkins said. “His ma give him too much what-for after that last time.”

“I saw the name Jellicoe on a building in town,” I said to the Sheriff. “Is that him?”

“His family. His grandpa built it. His ma still owns it.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s a thirty-five-year-old adolescent — goin’ on thirty-four.”

“I don’t care,” Arkins said. “Ain’t nobody I’d rather have with me in a tight place than Johnny.”

“Well, there’s that,” Mason conceded. “But otherwise, he don’t hardly know the time of day, and if he don’t get his butt in here—”

“I’ll go get him,” Arkins said, and picked up his hat from the desk and left the room in a hurry.

I smelled a scam. The Sheriff’s anguish was a bit too theatrical to suit the facts, a bit too diversionary. And he and Arkins had fed each other lines like a veteran comedy team. Arkins I’d judged to be about forty and a long-time deputy — on an easy first-name basis with the boss.

In one corner of the room by an outside door there was a fly-rod and creel and a pair of hip boots, so Mason himself was no stranger to the amenities of the region that he and his minions served. It was then I noticed that Arkins had picked up Doc’s letter along with his hat, but I didn’t let Mason see the sudden awareness in my eyes.

“Sheriff,” I said quietly, “I was a cop in San Francisco for nineteen years and one of the things I learned early was to make copies of any important papers in a case. To save yourself further embarrassment, you’d better make sure Arkins brings that letter back with him when he comes.”

Mason debated for a long moment, then decided to call the bluff. “What letter, Mr. Train?”

“The letter he would have swiped from Doc Wharton’s mailbox if he’d known it was there. Don’t dig the hole any deeper, Mason — it’s just about the depth of a grave right now.”

“No, sir, Mr. Train, you’re bluffin’. But don’t get your hackles up. I needed an edge on you and now I got it. I don’t want no bad publicity out of this thing — that’s all. I knew what the boys was up to and let ’em get away with it because I honestly didn’t think Doc Wharton had a soul in the world to leave nothin’ to and I’d enjoy seein’ the boys get a dollar or two. We get paid up here about as much as a ragpicker down below, and—”

“All right, Sheriff, what’s your deal?”

“Let’s split it.”

“No way.”

“Arkins needs $2700 for them skunks in Nevada. The rest to the girl.”

“No way. Arkins should have known better.”

“Everybody should know better than to gamble with them sharks over there, but nobody does. What’s your deal, Mr. Train?”

“All of it to the girl. Your men can receive it publicly, then they turn it over to the girl, every cent.”

Arkins tapped lightly on the door just then and came in, followed by a tall, good-looking blond man, Jellicoe. Adolescent wasn’t the word, I thought at first glance; naive maybe, a mountain man’s face.

Mason spoke to Arkins. “Did you show him the letter?”

“What letter?” Arkins said blandly.

“The letter, dammit! How many letters we talkin’ about this afternoon?”

“I showed him.” Arkins’ eyes seemed to wince.

Mason said to Jellicoe, “Where in hell you been, Johnny?”

“There’s this girl in the parking lot, Sheriff, crying.” He looked deeply concerned. “I sat down with her in her car. She’s still crying.”

“There’s this girl in the parking lot, Sheriff, crying.” He looked deeply concerned. “I sat down with her in her car. She’s still crying.”

“No damn wonder she’s still crying. Jellicoe, this here’s Mr. Sam Train. He brought out the letter.”

I stood up and traded a firm handshake with him. He was an inch taller than I and I found myself stretching to my fullest height. It had been a long time since I’d looked into eyes as clear and guileless as his, seen a smile as quick and warm. It made me uneasy. “You musta been a good friend of Doc’s,” he said.

“I was, Jellicoe. Were you?”

“Yes, sir! I loved that man. Everybody up here did.”

“Was he dead when you found him?” I asked it almost belligerently. “Or just dying? The story in the paper said he was dead but who knows about papers.”

“He was dead, Mr. Train.” A frown was developing around his eyes.

“How do you know?”

“Well, I didn’t know for absolutely sure, sir, until Doc Zerbo came out and said so. But—”

“You radioed for Zerbo?”

“Yes, sir.”

“While Arkins went up the hill to the cabin, is that it?”

He flashed a glance at Arkins. “Yes, but—”

“And then you heard a lot of gunshots from the cabin area — and then what — ran up to see what happened?”

“Yes, sir, but—” He heaved an exasperated sigh and looked at Arkins again.

“And Arkins told you he’d just shot Crumb and Belcher and you and he would share this nice fat reward?”

“I didn’t want any part of it, but Al—” He broke off and stared at the wall behind me, almost reciting the rest of it. “Al said that since he was going to tell everyone that I shot one of the two rats that killed Doc, because I would have if I hadn’t stayed back to radio Zerbo, that we’d split the reward.”

“So you didn’t know until a few minutes ago,” I said, “that Doc Wharton had killed them and not Arkins?”

“Yes, sir, that’s right, but—”

“What difference does it make?” Arkins said. He had stepped forward and was looking at Mason, not me. “You knew all along that nothin’ that tricky would ever cross Johnny’s mind. But like I said before” — now he was looking at me — “if I’d known Doc had kin, it’d never of crossed mine neither.”

While Mason was staring bleakly at Arkins, Jellicoe was staring in wonder at me. And when Mason started to say something to Arkins, Jellicoe cut him off. “Mr. Train,” he blurted, “do you drive a Dart automobile?” He had a glint in his eye, and something in his voice made us all look at him sharply.

“Yes, I do.”

“Is that — is that Doc Wharton’s daughter sitting in it crying?”

I sighed. “Yes, it is.”

“By golly!” Jellicoe’s tanned face flushed suddenly. “I knew it was! By golly, I just knew it was!”

He was turning back to the door as he spoke, on the run, and the Sheriff stood up and bellowed, “Jellicoe!” and I took three clumsy steps after his retreating back with the idea in mind of tackling him from the rear. I want her, she’s mine! this voice in my head said clearly and I felt my neck grow thick with blood. I stopped after the third step, teetering on my feet, and the three of us stood there in various attitudes, looking at each other and the empty door.

“I had a hell of a time,” Arkins said finally, “gettin’ him to leave her. I never seen him like that before, Harry. I think he’s in love.”

“Good God!” Mason said. “So it’s finally happened.” He sat heavily in his chair again, shrewd eyes on mine, until mine dropped. “How old is she, Mr. Train?”

“In the low thirties.” My voice was a growl.

“A nice age for a lady to be. And how old — if you don’t mind my askin’ — are you?”

“I mind your asking, Mason.”

“You’re not married, are you?”

“I mind your asking that too. We’ve still got this matter to settle, Sheriff.” My breath was audible as I sat down again.

“Well, let’s settle it, then. I’ll take your deal and so’ll Arkins. Al, give him back the letter — and don’t ask me what letter.”

Arkins slipped the letter from inside his shin and handed it to me, and he too was giving me the jaundiced eye as my blood took its own sweet time cooling down. He didn’t seem in the least concerned about his double deception. “I imagine,” he said reflectively, “she’s a handsome girl when her face ain’t all screwed up with grief.”

“Mind my askin’,” Mason said, “what she is to you, Mr. Train?”

“I mind.”

Mason clutched his face again, speaking between splayed fingers. “Maybe somebody oughta go out there and put a hobble on Johnny, Mr. Train. I mean, we frown on claim-jumpin’ up here — any kind.” He eyed me closely. “How much you expect to get from her eight thousand? — now that’s a fair question, sir.”

“I told her I’d bring her up for the price of the gas.”

“Well, that could be a pretty penny, couldn’t it? At least you’re on a commercial basis with her — right?”

I should have said something flat and decisive right then, and cleared the air, but inside I was still waffling around like a wet-eared kid. She’d found a seam in my hide and slipped through to where I used to live, and I shouldn’t have let her. Private eyes shouldn’t allow themselves to make emotional ties with the civilian world. People aren’t people to cops, even to ex-cops — they’re suspects, or victims or perpetrators, present or future; they’re cases. Cops have a terrible divorce rate and their kids are among the first to hit the skids. My mind ticked off the litany. And yet—

Mason bit the end off a cigar and lit it, taking his time giving me time. He was every bit as shrewd as he looked. “Arkins,” he said finally, “maybe you’d better go get them two. We got to work out the details on this thing yet.” When Arkins had gone, he said to me, “I’ve never been in on one of these reward deals, Mr. Train — how long’s it usually take for the money to get here?”

“It varies, but not too long, Sheriff. Three weeks maybe.”

He was making conversation, and I thought vaguely I’d like to come up sometime and go fishing with him. I bet he knows where every-trout in the county is, and how to whistle it up.

Arkins appeared in the door. “They’re gone,” he said.

“What!”

“I said they’re gone, Harry. Took off in Johnny’s jeep.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Mason said, his eyes flicking to mine. But there was no reaction in me now, no inner voice; the seam was sealed tight again, the blood cool. They’re not men and women, they’re cases, open or closed. The perpetrators, I said to myself, have fled.

They’d gone to Madison’s Funeral Parlor, the Sheriff found out, and then to Jellicoe’s house to meet his mother. After that, his mother said over the phone, she didn’t know where they’d gone, but she’d never seen Johnny so excited. And she said she liked the girl right off, a real nice girl — Doc’s daughter, would you believe? — and tall enough for once. She made it sound as though she’d given her blessing to the trip, wherever it went, whatever it led to.

And I let Mason know that it had my blessing too, and I thought that Doc might join in the chorus himself, if he had a way of doing it. And maybe, I thought to myself, he’d left Mitzi more than he knew, more than just a little money.

I asked Mason where Doc Wharton’s cabin was and on my way home I stopped by. It was about a hundred yards off the road, deep in the trees, and a slim finger of late sun touched the peak of the steep-sloped roof as I stood in the small clearing in front. Here the trails of three men had crossed and ended in the inexorable geometry of life.

The silence was a palpable living thing there, full of suppressed sound. You had the feeling it could burst into a mind-stunning roar at any moment and destroy you — as it had destroyed three men.

Doc’s trail had ended here; and turning, to look outward, I thought that maybe Mitzi’s had begun here.

I listened to the layered sound of silence for a while longer and then, in awe and some fear, took the next step along my own inexorable path.

“Adutrumque paraius to you too,” I said cautiously.

And nothing happened.