Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

Mel had been framed once, and now he was out of jail. But somebody was trying to frame him again...

1

I drove the stolen Ford back into Santa Caralita; and when I came to an outdoor phone booth in a service station that was closed for the night, I stopped and called Julie.

There was the chance, of course, that the police had tapped Julie’s phone; but it was a chance I had to take. And after forty-eight hours without food or sleep, I was too tired to care much one way or the other. I knew this last, forlorn scheme of mine had less than a prayer of working, but you have to play out your hand.

“Hello?” It was Julie’s voice.

“It’s Mel.”

I could hear the sharp intake of her breath, then the break in her voice: “Mel — where are you?”

“No matter. Julie, I want you to do something for me.”

“Mel, you’ve got to give yourself up. They’re hunting you — with guns — I’ve been so scared.” She sounded close to tears. “Mel, why did you do it?”

“I didn’t kill Vince Dobleen. You’ve got to believe that.”

“Then who—”

“I don’t know who. There’s a chance, a very long chance, that I can find out. If you’ll help me.”

“I’ll do anything for you, Mel.”

“I want you to get in your car, drive out Twelfth Street to the park, make the loop around the lake, then go straight back to your apartment. That’s all there is to it.”

“But how will that help you?”

“No time to explain. Just do exactly what I said. Start in twenty minutes.”

“All right.” Tears were in her voice now. “Mel—”

“Yes?”

“I love you. Please take care of yourself.”

“Sure, kid.”

I waited until I heard her hang up, I jiggled the hook like I’d hung up too, then I waited, listening. After a while there was a click, but I don’t know enough about wire tapping to tell if it meant anything or not. I hung up.

I sat there a little longer, very tired, not thinking of anything but Julie now. I remembered how the dark hair framed her face — her face with its clear, unmarked quality that made her seem so young. It was a dark-eyed, full lipped, snub-nosed face that was on the edge of being plain, until she smiled. When she smiled, she was beautiful — it was as if somewhere in her a light started to shine, and the warmth and happiness of it came from her to you.

And she loved me. I think that’s all that kept me from going crazy those two long years in prison. And it was all that kept me from running away now.

I drove the Ford to within a block of the park, left it beside a big apartment house where it wouldn’t attract attention, then I walked the rest of the way to the park. At the entrance was a four-way boulevard stop, and a big overhead light. It was late at night, with very little traffic — none at all right now. I crossed the street and slipped into the shelter of the thick shrubbery and eucalyptus trees.

Fog drifted thinly past on a cold breeze setting in from the ocean. The surf was a faint, faraway boom not as loud as the brittle sound of the breeze in the eucalyptus leaves. The fog condensed on the leaves, and the cold drops fell on the back of my neck.

For the time, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait, and remember back to last Sunday and the picnic with Julie. It was the third day after my release from prison...

“Julie, I can’t do it. If I even go near that guy, there’s no telling what might happen. If you knew how many times I’ve dreamed of strangling him with my bare hands—”

“Mel, he’s changed.”

“Well, I haven’t.”

“He visited me several times while you were — away. I believe he is sincere. He wants to make it up to you some way. Help you get a new start.”

I guess my laugh was bitter.

“Please, Mel.” Her face had that earnest, puckered look it gets when she wants something very much. “He has changed a lot. He does a lot of charity work, spends a great deal of his time down at the Rescue Mission — you know, where they work to rehabilitate men who are down—”

“I’m not a charity case, baby.”

“I didn’t mean that. I’m trying to make you see how Vince Dobleen has changed.”

“Listen, that’s the guy who sent me to prison. Maybe he has got religion, but I can’t forget what he did to me. You can’t hate a guy the way I have, and as long as I have, then just—” I shut it off, made myself smile at her. “Heck, we’re spoiling the picnic. Forget Vince Dobleen. I’ll get a job all right, then you and me—”

2

Well, maybe you remember me now — Mel Karger. Mel Karger, the guy who brought home all the medals, who shot down all the enemy planes, the guy they gave the parade and the keys of the city to. Mel Karger, the guy Vince Dobleen turned into the prize chump of the century.

Don’t ask me how he worked it, because I never knew.

All I know is he was promoting a real estate development, low cost housing, that looked good. I sunk all my cash into it; and somehow I wound up as general manager, where I had no business being at all, because I know next to nothing about that end of it. Selling is my line; and with all that war hero publicity I was getting, I was a natural — I pulled money into the deal that ordinarily wouldn’t have touched it with a forty-foot pole.

As a salesman I was hot, but as general manager I somehow always turned out doing what Vince Dobleen advised me to. He showed me how to handle things, what to do, what to sign — brother, how I did sign things.

For a while I was a big shot riding around in a new Cadillac; and the next thing I knew I was in a courtroom watching the prosecution parade all those signatures before a jury, and demanding to know what I’d done with the money.

In the end, even my own attorney believed I was guilty.

Dobleen? He came through without a scratch. He came through with all my money, and God knows how much money belonging to the other sheep I’d led to the shearing.

I remembered that last day in court, with me being led away, yelling I’d get him if it was the last thing I ever did. I remembered that, and the cold shiver that ran through me now wasn’t just the cold wind and the drops of water falling on the back of my neck.

And now I could hear his voice on the phone two nights ago: “Don’t hang up on me, Mel, until you hear what I say. I can’t make up all the money you lost on that deal — I haven’t got that much myself — but I would like to pay back enough of it to give you another start. Say twenty thousand dollars?”

I was too astonished even to answer him.

“Mel? You still there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what do you say? Can you come over to my place tonight and talk it over?”

“I guess so.” He’d knocked the wind out of my sails completely. Maybe the guy had gotten religion.

“Fine. Make it nine o’clock sharp?”

“I’ll be there.”

Vince Dobleen lived in a big, beautifully landscaped, Spanish style place that overlooked the ocean. There were lights behind the curtains when I got there; and, figuring he was home, I paid off the cab driver. I walked up the flagstoned path that curved through the shrubs and trees, and I rang the doorbell.

And nobody answered.

I rang and waited three more times without answer. Evidently he hadn’t called from the house, and he wasn’t home yet. I waited more than half an hour, and there was no doubt now that something had come up to delay him. I’d call him again tomorrow. I gave the bell one last ring, in case he’d been asleep or something; then for the first time I gave the doorknob a try. It turned and the door opened to my push.

I hesitated. Should I go in and wait a while longer?

I leaned inside. “Dobleen? Anybody home?”

There was no sound except the roll of the ocean against the cliff back of the house. I stepped into the entry hall, which was dark except for reflected light from the living room. “Dobleen?” I walked into the living room, and it was empty. The door to the library was closed, and it was barely possible he had fallen asleep in there and not heard the bell.

I opened the door. I looked inside and my heart seemed to stop cold inside my chest. I stared, and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even breathe. Then suddenly my stomach seemed to turn a somersault, I turned and I ran. I made it to the front door, then I got sick.

3

Listen, he’d been lying there on his stomach, a small, slender, silver haired figure in a tweed suit, with both hands under him, his face turned toward me. Only it wasn’t a face any more. Somebody had fired God hows how many bullets into it at point-blank range; and — what with the bullet holes, the blood, and the powder burns — it wasn’t anything like a face, it was just a red ruin.

For a while I just stood outside, sick, then it began to come to me — the kind of jam this put me in — and I began to get scared.

That was Vince Dobleen, the guy who’d sent me to prison. That was the guy I’d sworn to get. I had reason to kill him, the cab driver would remember bringing me here, I had no alibi for the last half hour. I thought of all that, and for a second I was on the verge of running; then I went back into the house.

There was a gallon can of gasoline near the body on the red tiled floor. Some of it had been sprinkled on the body and around it, and a lot more was on the piled papers and drapes spotted around the base of the panelled wall, as if the killer had been interrupted in the act of setting fire to the house to conceal his crime.

The whole library was a mess — desk drawers open, papers and books littering the floor, the big wall safe open and empty.

Call the cops? I threw that idea away instantly. This murder fitted me like a glove. I forced myself to feel the body, and it was almost as warm as my own. That meant he’d probably been killed only minutes before I’d arrived. That put me on the scene of the crime at the right time with the right motive and a record of having threatened to murder him. The cops wouldn’t have to look twice to decide who had murdered him.

The killer — where was he? If I’d interrupted him in the act of setting fire to the place, where had he gone? He sure hadn’t passed me out front. He could be still in the house.

I checked every room. Sure, I was scared — any door I opened might mean I’d get what Dobleen got, but I opened them all. And they were all empty. In the garage, joined onto the house, there were two cars, a Ford and a Cadillac. But no killer. Then I found the back door open, and I realized my arrival must have driven him out the back.

And by now I knew what I was going to do — the only thing that was left to do. Run.

I had twenty dollars in my pocket and that’s all. I had to turn Vince Dobleen’s body over to get to his wallet, and I couldn’t help noticing how his hands were pressed flat and tight against his stomach — why, I don’t know, because he hadn’t been shot there.

There was a hundred and eighty dollars in the wallet.

And now I needed a car.

I took the Ford, because it’d attract less attention. I drove it out, closed the garage door, then I got out of there in a hurry.

4

I drove about a dozen blocks before I spotted the car following me. It looked like a big car, but that’s all I could tell with the headlights in my eyes. I made a couple of turns which were duplicated, and I knew for sure I was being tailed. Police? Then why didn’t they close in? I thought of trying to outrun them, but suppose it wasn’t the police? And that’s when I had a sudden hunch.

I stomped on the gas, stretched my lead out to more than a block before the other car started to close up again; then I skidded the Ford into a dark side street, hit the brakes, dove into the first driveway I came to, and cut the lights.

The other car came around the corner moments later, braked sharply as the driver saw the dark, empty street, and came almost to a stop. It was a Cadillac.

I gunned the Ford back into the street, shifted, gave the motor all it’d take; and in seconds I’d crowded in on the Cadillac, jamming on my brakes as fenders crashed and the bigger car was pinned against the curb. I was out and running the instant the Ford stopped; but the other driver was too fast for me. And he didn’t try to back up and circle the Ford; he poured on the gas, and that Cadillac’s big motor humped it right up over the curb. It skidded across a lawn, just missed a tree, gouged huge holes in a flowerbed without getting stuck, then was back in the street, roaring away.

I’d killed the Ford’s engine when I stopped, and now I flooded it. The starter ground for what seemed minutes — lights were popping on all over the neighborhood — then finally it caught, and I roared out of there myself.

The Cadillac had gotten away clean. But I’d gotten a good look at it — it was black, it had white sidewalled tires, and from the back fender rose the kind of antenna they have when there is a mobile telephone in the car — it was the Cadillac that had been in Vince Dobleen’s garage.

The killer must have been hidden in the gardens back of the house. When I left, he’d jumped into the Cadillac and followed me. Why, I couldn’t make the remotest guess. But I’d been so close to trapping him; if I’d only rammed him instead of — no use thinking about that.

I was ten miles out of town on a highway that would take me clear to New York if I stayed on it long enough, before something occurred to me.

This Ford. Vince Dobleen was the kind of guy who always put up a big front, he wanted the best of everything; and so far as I knew, he never drove anything but a Cadillac. I thought about that until finally I pulled into a side road between a couple of apple orchards, and switched on the interior light to look at the registration slip on the steering post.

It was registered to Joseph T. Rogers, 6127 Purfoy Road, Santa Caralita, California.

This wasn’t Dobleen’s car at all. Then what had it been doing in his garage with the keys in it? Could it be the killer’s car? I could feel the excitement coming up in me now. That would explain his following me.

I looked in the glove compartment and there was a flashlight, a pack of cigarettes, and an almost full box of .38 cartridges. I turned and looked in the back seat, and there was a tan pigskin brief case there. I opened it, looked, and my hands started to shake.

Listen, it looked like half the money in the world in there. My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly count it. If the figures written on the bands were correct, I had just under a quarter of a million bucks stacked on the front seat beside me.

“God Almighty!” I breathed.

Brother, I knew why Dobleen had been killed now. And I knew why the killer had trailed me. And I also knew the only reason I was still alive — the killer had given Dobleen the full clip in his face, and the gun had been empty when I walked in.

For a few seconds I felt good. I was off the hook, and Joseph T. Rogers was on. Then a thought chilled me. Suppose the car was stolen. Sure, I could hand over the money, but the cops might say that I’d just tried a clever move to make it look like I hadn’t killed Dobleen; and I’d be right back where I started.

I thought about that a long time before I started the car and drove back to Santa Caralita.

5

6127 Purfoy Road was on the beach, well out of the settled part of town, a lonely place where sand dunes hid all signs of neighbors, and the surf broke thunderously. In the blowing fog I could tell little about the house except that it was shabby and there were no lights in it.

I hesitated — if Rogers was the killer, he might be in there, and this time the gun might be loaded. But there was no car in front of the house. Finally I walked onto the rickety porch and knocked.

Nobody answered. I walked around the house and the windows were shut and fastened. I tried the back door, and it gave a little, like it might be held only by a flimsy bolt. I hesitated again, then I put my shoulder against it, and it opened with a mild complaint of screws pulling out of old wood. I stepped in then something stopped me stock still. The smell of boiling coffee.

And in the same instant a switch clicked, a ceiling light blinded me, then something socked me hard on the back of my head.

I was on my knees, staring stupidly at dirty linoleum; then this shadow moved on it, and I barely had sense enough to roll my head before another blow smashed into my neck muscles, half paralyzing my right shoulder and arm.

You never know where your strength comes from at a time like that. I guess it was instinct that made me somersault forward, twisting as I rolled, so that I wound up on my back with my feet between me and whoever was slugging me. The guy, his shape enormous against the ceiling light, was driving in again; but my feet caught him in the chest, driving him back and right up onto the top of the stove, yelling as the scalding coffee slopped on him.

I guess it was the coffee and the hot burner that gave me my chance. For a couple of seconds he wasn’t fighting anything but the coffee and the stove; and in that time I grabbed a foot, twisted with all my strength, and he rolled off the stove to land on his face. I dropped my knees into the small of his back, clubbed him at the base of the skull with my fist, and he went limp under me.

I rolled him over.

He was a big man, bigger than me, and he wore slacks and a sweater. He had sandy crew-cut hair and a big jaw; and the scar tissue around his eyes, the bent nose, crumpled ears all said he must have been a boxer at one time. But was he Joseph T. Rogers?

I rolled him back on his face, took the billfold out of his back pocket, and opened it. I looked and almost dropped it. The picture looking back at me from the I.D. card was his, and the card stated that he was Sergeant Chad Vednick, Santa Caralita Police.

Had he been staked out here, waiting for Rogers? No, they wouldn’t stake out just one man to catch a murderer. Besides it was hardly possible that Rogers had left any clues that would bring the police so directly to this place. It might be that Rogers was in some other trouble, but I sure wasn’t going to wait around to ask this cop.

I was a fool to hang around any longer. The only way to beat the jam I was in was to run and keep on running. With all that money I had a chance, if I could just get some distance between me and Santa Caralita. Vednick was stirring as I walked out.

By the time I was five miles inland, the fog had cleared, and that’s all that saved me. I came over a little rise, and half a mile ahead I could see all the red lights and stopped cars. I’d waited too long. Now the roadblocks were up.

I cut the lights, took the first side road I came to, followed it through the orchards and vineyards, up into the hills, and to road’s end against the mountains where a small stream ran through a thick stand of second-growth redwoods.

This was the end of the road. In every way, I cut the motor and just sat there. There was nothing else to do.

6

I was there two days and two nights. Once some kids wandered up the stream, shooting at birds with an air rifle; a couple of parties of picnickers showed up, but nobody paid me much attention.

It seemed like all the will to move had run out of me. I just stayed there in the redwoods where the road ended and listened to the radio as the busy police wove the web around me.

The killer had dropped a match in the library as he ran through the house to jump into the Cadillac and follow me, but the fire was spotted in a matter of minutes by a passing motorist, and the fire department got there before the body was badly charred. Dobleen’s appointment pad had escaped the fire; and the notation there, “Mel Karger, 9:00 P.M.” plus an alert police officer who remembered my trial and threat two years ago, plus a quick check at my apartment, were what had gotten the roadblocks up so fast. The cab driver’s identification, and my fingerprints all around sewed the case up tight. I was guilty.

With the body badly charred and the face ruined, only his fingerprints identified Dobleen. His hands, under the body, had escaped the fire; and there was no question of identification. Dobleen had been arrested a couple of days earlier on a felony drunk driving charge, and booked and fingerprinted. He’d been out on bail.

And that wasn’t all the trouble he’d been in. The Treasury Department had an income tax evasion charge pending. And on the second day an elderly widow demanded an accounting of a hundred thousand dollars she’d given him to invest. Seemed like Dobleen’s troubles had come all at once, climaxing in his death. Anyway, that accounted for the quarter of a million bucks that Dobleen wasn’t trusting to banks.

Julie was picked up for questioning and released. The murder gun had not been found. Joseph T. Rogers’ name was never mentioned. The Cadillac had been found — presumably abandoned by me.

Sergeant Chad Vednick’s slugging was not mentioned.

So far as I could see, I held only one trump. The money. Now that they had it settled I was the killer, the real killer might be sitting tight instead of running. Only he knew I had the money; and he might be greedy enough to risk trying to find me before the police did — he had one advantage over the cops: he knew I was driving a gray Ford, license 1G80838. His best bet would be to watch Julie, hoping I’d contact her. Then he might make a try for the money. Unless the police were also trailing Julie.

That’s how slim my chances were.

And that’s what I was doing hiding there among the shrubs, while the wind rattled the eucalyptus leaves above me, and the cold drops fell on me. One thing I had done: I’d buried the brief case at the foot of a redwood tree before I started out. The killer would never get that.

And finally Julie’s blue coupe came into sight, made the stop, passed less than fifteen feet from where I was hidden. Her eyes were front, her face showing the strain she’d been under these two days. It was all I could do not to call to her as she passed.

And, when she was half a block away, another car made the stop. It was a black Chevrolet sedan, and the man in it was Sergeant Chad Vednick in plain clothes.

Him again. Out of fifty cops on the force, it had to be him again. And didn’t he ever work with a partner? I thought all cops worked in pairs. Then a thought hit me, a thought so crazy I’d have pushed it out of my mind but it wouldn’t go.

Chad Vednick alone on Julie’s trail. Chad Vednick alone in Rogers’ house. Who had arrested Dobleen for drunk driving — Chad Vednick? It was crazy, but just suppose Dobleen, dead drunk or asleep had babbled about all the dough in his house; suppose Vednick had gone there two nights later, forced him to open the safe, then shot him dead; suppose I had lifted the dough right out from under him, he’d gambled on me checking Rogers’ house before I ran...

It was fantastic, but so was everything else about this mess. And what did I have to lose now?

7

Ten minutes later, I drove the Ford slowly past Julie’s apartment, spotted Vednick’s sedan, and drove past it, my face turned away from him. It was dark and foggy, and he wouldn’t spot my face; but if he spotted this gray Ford, that would mean something. And what it would mean was enough to send a prickle of excitement through me.

I drove on, watching my rear view mirror, and there! He’d grabbed the bait. He was coming after me, coming fast; then his sedan cut in front of me, tires squealing, crowding me to the curb.

“Come out of there, Karger,” he barked, gun levelled at me.

I came out, eyes on the gun, set to start yelling for help, to make so big a disturbance I’d get the whole neighborhood out here, and somebody would call the cops before Vednick could get me into a car and take me some place where he could beat the money’s location out of me. And not until that instant did I see the flaw in the whole crazy stack of suppositions I’d built up.

Vednick wasn’t the killer. If it’d been Vednick in the Cadillac the other night, he wouldn’t have run away. He’d have pulled that gun on me, and I’d have done what he said; then when he was close enough, he’d have slugged me with it, dumped me into the Ford, driven out of town, reloaded the gun and given me what he gave Dobleen.

The real killer would have done that too. Unless... unless... God Almighty, the thing had been staring me in the face for two days, and I’d been to dumb to see it! Sure, Vednick was in on it — without him there’d have been no murder — but he hadn’t killed anybody.

I was standing there in the street, fitting the facts together so feverishly that I was only half aware of Vednick’s harsh voice: “Do you turn around and stick out those hands, or do I shoot a leg out from under your”

Almost dazedly I turned and he put the handcuffs on me; then he patted my clothes for weapons. Every single fact fitted. I had the whole works put together without a thing out of place — and no proof for any of it. And no way to get any.

No, there was one way! A longer chance than even the first one had been. I had no business even thinking of it; but maybe I was too tired of running, of being scared, to realize what I was letting myself in for. All I was thinking was that I knew who the killer was, but if I couldn’t find him, I could never prove a thing — and there was only one person who could lead me to him.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t say a word. I got into the car just as Vednick said to. And he drove out of town, the gun held in his left hand in his lap and pointed at me.

“The jackpot, no less,” he grunted. “Brother, are you dumb.”

Nobody knew it better than I did. Maybe I was being dumb now, but it was the only chance I had. We’d just have to wait and see.

8

It was out Purfoy Road again, but not to 6127. This house was a quarter of a mile farther out, but it was much the same kind of a house. And the dunes crowded around in the same way, the same ocean boomed out there to drown any kind of a call for help a man might make.

“Where is the money?” He’d searched the Ford, and now he turned to me.

“I hid it.”

“Where?”

“Go to hell.”

His fist smashed me in the mouth, and I stumbled and fell, my ears full of a louder roar than the surf.

“Get into the house. We’ll see whether you talk or not.”

I stumbled into the house. He wouldn’t kill me before I told him what he wanted to know. Meanwhile I’d find out what I wanted to know.

Lights were on inside the house, the front door was unlocked, the front room was empty but a door to another room was just closing; and I knew who was behind that door just as surely as I knew the sun would rise tomorrow.

“Come out of there, Dobleen!” My yell sounded crazy even to me. “Come on out and join the party.”

And he came out, a slender, frail little man with silver hair and a sharp, half-handsome face that was twisted in tight smile. Vince Dobleen, the cause of everything that had happened to me.

And now was as good a time to make my break as any — Vednick had his back half toward me, closing the door, Dobleen was all the way across the room. I spun and ran for the open hallway, then about ten feet down it to a door — a swinging door, thank God — and I hit it and it slammed back against the wall, and I was in a kitchen. The back door was closed; and, with my hands handcuffed behind my back I just hit it full tilt, my heel slamming in just beside the knob. If it’d been like the door in the other house, my kick would have torn the lock right out of it, but this wood was better stuff.

My foot felt like it was broken, and the door hadn’t budged. I was back to it, fumbling for the knob, when Vednick’s fist drove my head back against the doorjamb; then he grabbed me and swung me around and back into the stove so hard I hung there, the room spinning around me.

I hadn’t had anything planned, except maybe some crazy idea of running around the house, grabbing the keys out of the Ford, and disappearing in the fog among the dunes, and running for a phone at the next house.

And now, sprawled against the stove, what I did next was just as aimless. It was a big, old-fashioned stove, with an open grill top and no pilot lights; my hands were against the handles, and I just turned on as many of them as I could reach, then I lurched back through the swinging door before he’d have time to notice. Maybe later, if one of them went to investigate the smell of gas, I’d get a chance for another break.

9

After that things were pretty bad for a while. I don’t know how long it took; but when Vednick finally stopped to breathe, my left eye was swollen shut and I could barely see through the right. I don’t know how many teeth were loose in my mouth, or whether my nose was broken or just too swollen and clogged with blood to breathe through. “Where,” Vednick demanded, “is that money?”

“Go to hell.” I’d lost track of how many times I’d said that.

Vednick stared at me sprawled against the sofa, as he peeled off his blood-soaked gloves and lit a cigarette.

I couldn’t smell any gas, but it must be getting thick in that small kitchen. When it got thick enough, anything might set it off — the motor in the electric refrigerator starting up, if it was an old enough model; or the doorbell ringing, if the bell was in the kitchen; the spark of the light switch, if one of them went in there to investigate. A lot of things could set it off, but an “if” went with every one of them.

But I couldn’t take much more of this beating. If I could talk, maybe I could stall him a while. I opened my one eye, and Dobleen was still showing that tight little smile, like he was enjoying this part of it. Later on, when and if I broke and told where the money was, he’d probably enjoy emptying his gun into my face too. Now talk. Stall...

“It was those hands tucked so neatly under the guy’s body that cooked you,” I told him.

“Smart,” Dobleen said in his gentle, acid voice. “So smart I got you two years in prison. And framed you for murder.”

“And you’re smart — facing a prison term for income tax evasion, and probably a longer term for swindling an old lady out of a hundred thousand dollars. No wonder you figured it was time you died. You and your charities, your work at the Rescue Mission — that’s where you picked out the guy who was going to do your dying for you, wasn’t it?”

“Get on with it, Vednick,” Dobleen said, bored.

“In a minute.” Vednick drew on his cigarette.

“And you,” I told Vednick. “If I’d known what department you worked in, I’d have tumbled a lot sooner. Fingerprints, isn’t it?”

Vednick laughed like that was funny, blowing smoke out.

“The drunk driving thing was faked for the sole purpose of getting Dobleen’s prints on record — only it wasn’t his prints that went into the record; it was the prints of some poor bum that was unlucky enough to look like Dobleen. After that, it wasn’t hard. The house in the name of Rogers was because he wanted to buy a getaway car under a phony name, and there had to be an address to send the registration certificate and pink slip to.”

“Smart.” Dobleen’s eyes were bright with hate. “Now tell us where the money is. You will sooner or later, you know.”

I knew. There comes a time when death becomes a release, and that time would come for me, as he said, sooner or later. Unless I could stall.

I could smell the gas now, but that was because I was expecting it. Vednick, smoking, probably wouldn’t smell it for a few minutes yet; and Dobleen was on the other side of the room.

“The fire,” I went on in a queer voice that didn’t even sound like mine, “was to burn off the hair, char the skin, but it was important to preserve the fingerprints, so the guy’s hands were put under his belly where the fire wouldn’t destroy them. But what really cooked you, Dobleen, was me grabbing your getaway car with all the dough. Even so, you didn’t lose your head. You lit the fire before you set out to follow me in your Cadillac; and you called the fire department a few minutes later from that mobile phone in the Cadillac. But you didn’t dare trying to bluff me with an empty gun after I ran you to the curb later.”

My laugh sounded crazy. “The bullets were in the Ford. If you tried to reload the gun, I’d jump you. If you’d tried to knock me out to get time to reload, you wouldn’t have had a chance — a dried-up runt like you.”

The smile had twisted to a snarl. “Get on the job, Vednick.”

“Let me finish,” I said. “Let me show you how clever I am. After you got away from me, you phoned Vednick and he hustled down to the Rogers’ house on the off chance that I might check there after reading the certificate in the Ford — if I’d gone to the cops with it, he’d have slipped out the back door when they showed up.”

The smell of gas was bad now. It’s a wonder Vednick didn’t smell it. And I knew something for sure now — it wasn’t going to go off by any accident. Maybe it was thick enough to explode in the kitchen, but Vednick would smell it and put out that cigarette long before the gas would be set off from in here.

“Hey,” Dobleen said suddenly, “I smell gas.”

“Yeah, me too.” Vednick walked over to the hall door, looked down the hall. “Do you suppose—”

I swear, I hadn’t planned a thing until that second. I just saw him standing there, the cigarette still in his mouth, and something clicked in my mind and I was already in motion.

My shoulder drove into his back with every ounce of drive I could put into it. His startled yell was a wild sound in the room as he went plunging ahead of me. I hit the floor and tried to press myself flatter against it; and my last glimpse of him before pressing my face to the floor, was him crashing through the swinging door, arms windmilling.

10

And the cigarette went with him.

It was like the whole universe blew up. There was the blast and the searing lick of flame that seemed to lift me and drive me ahead of it. It seemed a long time later, although it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, that I was pushing my head through splintered wood, some of it burning. The shattered plaster was all around me, walls were tilted at a crazy angle; and dimly I realized I had been blown back into the living room.

There was something I had to do.

Something that was more important even than getting myself out of this burning wreckage.

Dobleen!

If he was cremated in this blaze, I could never prove — I stumbled to my feet, unable to use my handcuffed hands. “Dobleen! Where are you! Dobleen!”

I heard a feeble moan over the crackle of the flames. A figure so covered with plaster dust that you had to look twice to see it was a man, rolled a little, moaned again.

Don’t ask me how I did it. I can remember on a little of it, and that only as a dim nightmare. They say I dragged him out of the wreckage and all the way to the ocean, but I don’t remember the last part at all.

My memory picks up again with the sharp smell of ammonia in my nose, and a voice saying, “He’s coming out of it now.”

Then somebody was kissing my cheek, whispering, “It’s all right now,” and the voice was Julie’s and she was crying. Then I opened my eyes and saw the smile coming through the tears, and I knew she was telling me the truth.