Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

The Last Fix by Jack Belck

After forty years on the side of The Law... he’d finally found the courage to turn down a fix.

“See you around, Ward,” the fat, red-faced man said slipping off his stool. He gave the Sheriff’s broad shoulder a hearty thump and puffed over to the cash register to pay his check.

Sheriff Ward Cogan barely grunted in reply, his thoughts wandering through the haze of forty years’ memories, memories of all the other fat men, and the thin ones, the young, the old, the shy, the brash, who had slapped him on the back and called him by his first name because he was the law. And they were all sons, daughters, wives, in-laws and what-have-you of the politicians, the powers in the state. They all wanted the same thing: special consideration.

Cogan stared morosely into his steaming coffee mug, glad the diner’s crowd had thinned out and he could spread his elbows. The fat man was a poker pal of the State Police Captain up at the barracks, so he’d have to remember the name and pass it on to his deputies. They would write it down in their books with “S.C.” after it, and then they’d wave the fat one on instead of stopping him for speeding. “S.C.” rated a smile that turned a cop into a nobody who bowed and scraped to the people with influence.

“About the only citizens you can still pick up if they do something wrong are the migratory farm workers,” Cogan reflected, wondering how long it would be before they had somebody behind them so they could also put in the Fix.

Beyond the noise of clattering dishes, the pulsating racket coming from the chrome-finned jukebox, and the chatter of waitresses above the dinging of pinball machines, the phone rang. Its feeble, tenor bell clawed through the jumble of sounds and caught the ear of the stringy short-order cook, who slipped around the end of the counter and yanked the receiver off the hook.

“It’s for you, Sheriff.”

Feeling the weight of his sixty years, Cogan backed off the stool and took the phone from the cook.

“Cogan... Good God! All right, Fred. Be right there.”

Two and a half minutes would get him to Walker Street if the snow wasn’t too slippery. He nudged the cruiser out of the diner parking lot, flicked on the lights and laid a gentle foot on the gas pedal. Years ago he would have thrown gravel as he took off, blinker light flashing, the siren rising to its nasty screech under the prodding of the floorboard button. Now he made an efficient, quiet departure, lacking drama and reflecting how little excitement there was to a cop’s life.

Walker Street was in the nicer part of town and there would be complaints if the cops were inconsiderate enough to use a siren and disturb folks watching TV. Besides, the damn siren attracted crowds of blood-thirsty vultures, eager gossips, and helpful well-wishers, half of whom would yell, “Hi, Sheriff,” as he tried to do his job.

His lights swung into Walker, catching the red-eyed rear of Deputy Millis’ cruiser. The driver’s door was open, and the beacon spun lazily, throwing a blue pattern on overhanging trees bare of leaves and tinged with a powder of light snow.

Cogan pulled in close, his eyes already sweeping the area until he saw Millis’ white face in the headlight glare. The deputy motioned to him from a clump of high bushes lining the sidewalk.

The girl looked about sixteen, perhaps a little older. She lay under the spindly branches of a bush, her legs drawn up under her as if she were trying to ward off the cold cutting through the policemen’s tan uniforms.

A light coat of snow was her only clothing, except for a shredded pink thing caught around her neck and tangled in her long black hair. She might have been sleeping but for the deep, dark gashes covering her thin frame, their redness softened into a rose color by the sifting snow.

Cogan nodded to his deputy, knelt beside the body, and slipped a practiced hand between the girl’s body and the limp arm that lay over it. A slight warmth.

“Been dead no more than fifteen, twenty minutes, I’d say,” Millis offered, flitting the beam of his flashlight around the spot where the body lay.

“Yeah.” Cogan listened to the deputy’s story about finding her and noted that Millis sounded frightened, although a casual observer would have put it down to the bitter dampness clawing at the young lawman. Cogan knew it was the fright of a cop who made a career of guarding a town like this, where an occasional wife-beating, perhaps a gas station hold-up once every few years, was about the limit of violence.

Millis handed him a purse. “Found this along with her clothes, most of ’em anyway.”

The Sheriff rose awkwardly to his feet and fetched a gray blanket from the trunk of his car. He whipped it open and draped it over the dead girl, then fished into the pocketbook while the ever-observant deputy poked his light to guide the way.

“Martha Eberly.”

“That’s her house over there,” Millis pointed to a gangling, turreted Victorian pile that sat two houses down on the other side of the deserted street.

“Fred, call the office and have Morgan call the barracks. Tell ’em... Hell! You know what to tell them.” He closed the pocketbook slowly. “They won’t show up for twenty minutes, so I guess I’d better go and tell her folks.”

“I’ll go if you want, Sheriff.” Millis was only twenty-four and single, but he could imagine what it was like to be sixty years old, and he felt what it must be like to have a sixteen-year-old daughter, dead.

“No. It’s OK.” He patted the deputy on the shoulder lightly, then wheeled to cross the street.

It was two in the morning before the State Police got through and packed their equipment away, their notebooks jammed with data and measurements, their patience frayed by the press of wide-eyed, questioning onlookers who stood around cold and silent, even after the local ambulance had whisked away the blanket-covered lump that once had been a girl.

Sheriff Cogan was physically tired, but his brain kept functioning. He knew he had to remain alert and in command. If he just stood back and let the state experts work it would become their case, and it had to remain his. The staties could only come in on request of local authority, and he’d be damned if he’d let them take this one out of his hands.

He didn’t even know the girl or her parents, but it had only been necessary to talk to the chalk-faced father and weeping mother for a few moments to know he couldn’t let go of the case. The killer had to be found by the man paid $6846 a year to prevent this sort of thing. And he had promised Mr. and Mrs. Eberly he would find the killer.

Deputy Millis still held his flashlight as he waved a listless arm at the dozen or so onlookers who wouldn’t let go of the tragedy. “All right, folks, all right! It’s all over. Whyn’t you all go home now?”

Without waiting for them to move, he slushed through the four inches of snow and joined his boss in the car, stamping snow off his black boots.

“I gotta hand it to you, Sheriff,” Millis said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“You said this was the first thing like this ever happened in this town since you’ve been sheriff, but you knew just what the State boys were doing, even corrected them once in awhile and showed them a thing or two they might of missed.”

Cogan let a half-smile light his tired face. “Got most of it from reading, the rest from listening.” He lit a small cigar and stared thoughtfully into the night. “You might as well grab a quick bite. I got a feeling things are going to be hectic.”

Millis clambered out of the car, bracing himself against the white-specked cold. He peered back at the Sheriff. “No sleep tonight for anybody, huh?”

“No. I’m going to stop at Chucks’ house and rouse him out of bed. It’s his day off, but we’re going to need the whole crew for the next few days. The state boys are setting up road blocks, but he’s had enough time to clear the county by now.”

At the end of Walker, Cogan turned right onto Terrace Drive. The two-way radio crackled, and Morgan’s voice at the office broke into his thoughts.

“Sheriff? Our friend from the courthouse wonders if we can keep his accident off the blotter.”

Cogan fingered the cold mike at the end of its coiled leash for a few seconds before answering. The goddam city clerk. Cracked up roaring drunk again. And if it wasn’t him, it was his brother-in-law or his grocer wanting something. Everybody wanting the law to be enforced for the other guy, not for him. Put the screws to the other guy, the one without a relative, pal, or debtor with pull.

“OK, leave it off. I’ll fix it up tomorrow.” He dropped the mike onto its hook, then jerked the wheel hard and slithered across the street onto the narrow road leading to his sleeping deputy’s tiny ranch house.

The snow fell a little more thickly now, teasing the windshield wipers as they frantically rushed to and fro, trying to fight the feathery fluff plastering the glass.

Cogan squinted at the clipboard hanging from the instrument panel, trying to read the plate number of the dead girl’s car. Her green and white Ford had disappeared, presumably with the murderer behind the wheel, since she had left the house with it after supper.

Four headlights bore at him through the snow, a blinding whiteness that hid the metal shape behind it. The oncoming car forced Cogan’s to the shoulder as it slipped silently past on the snow-covered road, slewed for a moment, caught hold again and dragged its tail-lights into the night.

It was a green and white Ford.

Cogan slammed to a stop, cutting the wheel sharply with automatic reflexes. The cruiser’s rear wheels let go, and the front ones stood almost still waiting for them to catch up. In a moment, the car was pointed the other way, and the Sheriff tromped on the gas, his hand on the blinker switch, his foot grinding down on the siren button.

He knew the Ford’s driver would have trouble at the end of the road when he had to make the right-angle turn onto Terrace Drive. He was travelling too fast for conditions. Cogan could already picture the fugitive trying to take the corner at speed and spinning out into a utility pole or burying himself in a snowbank. No need to speed after him, really.

Cogan slowed down long before the intersection, peering intently for signs of his man. Just as he spotted the Ford, its nose snuffling deeply into a drainage ditch, he caught a glimpse of the figure racing awkwardly down the wide road that led out of town. The cruiser’s lights caught the short-jacketed, thin back, and a white face turned for a second. Then the lightly-clad runner made a hunched spurt to outrun the car behind him.

Cogan accelerated lightly, passed his prey, then cut the wheel sharply to the right, forcing the runner into the V of car and snow bank. He unlimbered his 38 Special and was out of the car before it had come to a complete stop.

It was just a kid, perhaps seventeen years old. He stared open-mouthed at the Sheriff, then twitched his shoulders as if ready to flee the way he had come.

Cogan closed the gap between them with quick strides. He caught the boy by the arm, whirled him around and drove the gun’s barrel hard into his belly. “Hold it!”

The boy stood still, his mouth still open. Wheezing from the exertion, the big man let go of the tensed arm and fumbled for the flashlight in his belt holster. He caught it in the palm of his hand, flicked it on and poked the beam into the boy’s face.

“You son of a bitch! You goddam rotten kid!”

The kid closed his mouth and let a small, crooked smile show. He said nothing, but caught his thumbs in his wide belt. The probing light caught the bloodstains on his sleeves and pantlegs. He said nothing when the lawman ground the handcuffs hard on his wrists and shoved him into the cruiser.

Familiar with what was in the minds of would-be escapers, Cogan took a large paper bag out of the glove compartment, flapped it open, and dropped it over the boy’s smirking face.

No one got any sleep after that except the boy, shoved into a cell in the basement of the jail. While he stretched his length on the clean-sheeted cot, a look of indifference on his smooth face, the sheriff had to deal with newspapermen from all over the western part of the state. He had to answer the questions of a thousand friends, neighbors, and the many others who always had to know the inside story so they could pass it around — along with their boastful tales of never getting a ticket.

By eleven p.m. the next day, only twenty-four hours after the girl had been found, the initial curiosity had worn off, and Cogan had managed to catch a few hours of sleep at home, while his three deputies basked in the publicity before becoming irritated by the annoyances that went with it.

Long past midnight Cogan returned to his overheated office and dropped wearily into his swivel chair behind the ancient oak desk. Grateful for the quiet finally brought by night, he grunted when Millis shoved a cup of coffee toward him and mumbled something about the life of a small-town cop.

“Thanks. How’s the kid?”

Millis shrugged. “His mother came to see him. She’s getting him a lawyer. The District Attorney talked with him awhile, and we’ve been giving him his three squares a day. That’s about it.”

“What do you think of the little bastard?”

“You know what I think, sir; I just can’t figure out what gets into a kid like that, from a good home and all. I just can’t figure it.”

“Neither can I, Millis.” The sheriff yawned. “Why don’t you knock off for the night? I’ll cover ‘til Morgan comes on at six.” He wanted to be alone.

The deputy hung his keys on the board, signed the book and trudged out of the office, grateful for an understanding boss.

The kid was reading a girlie magazine, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He didn’t look up when the sheriff came downstairs and stood before the bars.

“Kid?”

The boy dropped the magazine on the floor and scratched his chin negligently. “What’s up?”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I dunno, Mr. Dillon. Just sort of happened, I reckon.” The boy laughed at his TV-inspired drawl.

“You want to talk about it?”

“No, but sure as hell you do.”

Cogan gripped the bars until his knuckles turned white. “You’re going to hang for this, you know. It isn’t like the car you stole last year or all the other things you’ve done.”

The boy laughed softly, more to himself than to the somber-faced old man staring at him. He said nothing for awhile, just playing with his cigarette.

“It’s not funny!” The words were hard, icey.

“Mr. Dillon, sir; they ain’t agoin’ to hang me; they ain’t.” Another laugh followed, a hollow, self-satisfied one. “A fellow what kills a girl, he gets hung, but a fellow what cuts her up like Martha was... Well.” He swung to his feet and came closer to his captor. He looked him squarely in the face. “I’d say a fellow was sort of nuts to do a thing like that, wouldn’t you?” He tucked his chin into his long hand and tilted his head to one side. “And they don’t hang people who are nuts, now do they?”

Cogan felt a chill across the back of his neck and turned wordlessly away.

He was poring over the lab reports when the phone at his elbow jumped.

“Hello? Cogan here.” He listened intently for several minutes while the voice at the other end spoke in staccato tones that fled past his ear and seemed to fill the small, cluttered office.

“You’re kidding!” he finally said, half believing, half doubting. “He’s sane as can be. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it!” Cogan ran a heavy hand over his thining, gray hair. He was sweating.

“OK. Thanks.” He slammed the receiver down and buried his head in his hands. No, they wouldn’t hang the little bastard. His mother’s lawyer had already seen Judge Wiznoski and talked him into a quick diagnostic committal to the State Hospital in Farrington. By noon they’d pick him up and by three he’d be under the care of helpful, solicitous doctors and psychiatrists.

Killing someone was one thing, but cutting them up after they were dead... “I’d say a fellow was sort of nuts to do a thing like that, wouldn’t you?” The boy’s words echoed in his head.

Cogan cursed softly and leaned back in his swivel chair to turn on the radio. Perhaps he could drown out his thoughts, drown out the growing knowledge that the killer in the cell below him would probably never see the inside of a prison.

His fingers were at the knob when the chair plunged backwards on its casters. The sheriff clawed for the desk, missed, and crashed hard to the concrete floor.

The blow of his head on the floor made his vision swim, blanking out the present for what seemed like a year. When he finally sat up, he ran an exploratory hand over the back of his head. It came away with an ugly smear of blood that oozed out of a painful, throbbing lump.

He struggled to his feet, righted the chair, and dropped into it cautiously. Suddenly his mind functioned clearly again, and whatever thought pushed its way through brought a broad smile to his ruddy, lined face.

He tugged his revolver from its holster, flipped open the cylinder, and dumped the cartridges into his pocket. Replacing the gun, he lifted the keys off the desk and plodded downstairs.

“Why the hell should I want to escape?” the kid asked warily. “They won’t do anything to me. They’ll be damn nice to me, and all the little old ladies in town will feel sorry for me.”

“You think you can fool a psychiatrist? Don’t you think they’ll see right through you and remand you for trial?”

The boy fingered his magazine, his usual crooked smile darkening into a sullen frown.

The sheriff stood patiently beyond the cell, his heart pounding against the star on his chest. He was careful to say nothing, careful not even to make a sound while the boy thought.

“You may have something there,” the adolescent voice said evenly, the bright blue eyes digging at the light of freedom lying past the heavy steel bars.

“It’s your only chance. Yes or no?”

A question rose in the boy’s throat and was swallowed. He nodded silently, then rose to his feet as the sheriff unlocked the grating.

“Here.” He handed the boy his gun. “It’ll look better.”

Moments later, the cellroom was quiet and empty except for the body of the corpulent lawman which lay sprawled on the damp floor.

In the office, the two-way radio began to sputter as a pinched-nose voice called in. No answer. The voice grew louder, more insistent. Still no answer.

“You’d better go home and take it easy for awhile, Sheriff,” the doctor said as he stuffed his equipment back into his bag. “That was a helluva blow.”

“I know.”

“You might have ended up in the hospital with a concussion. As a matter of fact, I’m not so sure you don’t have at least a mild one.”

The sheriff waved the doctor away, unwilling to argue. He watched as the sleepy-eyed physician worked into his coat, then said, “Thanks anyway.”

Millis, anxiously ready to be needed, waited for the door to close before pleading with his boss to go home like the doctor said. “I’ll drive you.”

“No, no, I’ll drive myself. I’m OK. The Doc is making a big thing out of nothing.”

Millis knew better than to argue after five years with the strange, hard-soft man. “Yessir.” He helped Cogan into his heavy fur-collared jacket and politely escorted him to the cruiser.

Now, where would that little bastard hide out? That was the only question in Cogan’s painful consciousness as he pointed his car up and down the city’s silent, white-rutted streets. Where?

The kid would need a car. He’d want to skip town fast, but where would he find one at three in the morning? Had he found one already and fled out of the sheriff’s reach?

The gas station on Aberdeen Road was a favorite hang-out for the hordes of teenagers who pampered cars that shone on the outside but were sick and tired under their hoods. The dour old Scotsman who ran the place was full of patience, automotive knowledge, and a willingness to let the young pile up bills while they talked of promised jobs or a raise in allowance.

Now the pumps, office and workshop were dark as Cogan ground to a halt a few hundred feet from the white cement building. The snow had let up, and he could just see the red glow of the soft drink machine in the tiny office.

A shadow blotted out the light for a brief moment, then disappeared.

Cogan felt the blood pounding in his head as he cut the engine and slipped a.45 automatic out of his jacket.

The kid had just raised his thin arms to yank down the overhead door when he heard the voice behind him.

“Kid.”

The boy started to turn slowly, then crouched as he reached for the gun tucked in his belt. He had it clear and pointed when the.45 roared and shattered the slope-shouldered youth. He coughed as if something were stuck in his throat, tried to raise the gun, then staggered drunkenly for three steps before collapsing to the ground.

Cogan ran up to the body, stooped over and retrieved his revolver. Despite his gloved hands, he managed to reload the gun before dropping it a few feet from the lifeless hand.

At five a.m., with the sun just beginning its daily task of crawling up the far side of the distant hill, Sheriff Cogan parked in front of a small brick-veneered house in the less comfortable part of town.

He thumbed the doorbell and waited, his breath filtering into the predawn gray.

A gaunt, pinched-looking woman opened the door a crack, peering furtively at the hulking shape before her.

“It’s me, Ward.”

The door opened and the hall light went on. The woman pulled her gaudy wrapper tightly around her and backed up as the sheriff filled the tiny space. “What is it? What do you want?”

“I’ve come about your son.”

“There’s nothing to say. You did what you had to do catching him like that and...” She stared down at the floor. “And I have to do what I can to save him.”

Cogan felt awkward and strange in this stuffy place, wishing he could be somewhere, anywhere, far away.

“You mean, get a bunch of paid-for head shrinkers to declare him insane, so they’ll put him away for awhile and then turn him loose again, all cured?”

The woman leaned against the doorway leading to the dining room, as if trying to block the way. “Nothing is to be accomplished by hanging him. Hanging is killing, no matter who does it, even if some judge and jury says it’s all right.” She sniffed self-righteously.

“Killing is killing too, and the boy murdered that girl in cold blood.”

And then she cried, first dryly and silently, then louder, until she had to dig her hands into her face to stifle her sobs. “My baby! My baby!”

Cogan flicked his glance to the door, longing to flee through it into the inviting quiet cold beyond. He hadn’t been in the house for many years and was glad of it.

“No, he won’t be hanged, Ethel,” he said more loudly than he intended.

She looked up.

“He escaped from the jail two hours ago and tried to get away.” He looked right into the woman’s shining eyes. “I caught him again. He’s dead.”

“You killed him?” The words were no more than a hoarse whisper.

“I had to.” It was true, he thought.

She crossed the few feet between them in her bare feet. She was trembling.

“You killed your own son!”

Sheriff Cogan didn’t answer. He caught the door knob, wrenched it, and left her behind, not hearing her half cries, her accusations mixed with memories.

He’d already written out his resignation and would file pension papers when the court house opened. His weariness fell from his shoulders as he strode to the car. He felt younger somehow. After forty years on the side of the Law, he’d finally had the courage to turn down a fix.

He would never have to face the choice again.