Strangers in Town: Three Newly Discovered Mysteries

The Angry Man

I thought at first sheer terror was his trouble. He shut the door of my office behind him and stood against it, panting like a dog. He was a gaunt man in blue jeans almost black with sweat and dirt. Short rust-colored hair grew like stubble on his hatless scalp. His face was still young, but it had been furrowed by pain and clawed by anger.

"They're after me. I need help." The words came from deep in his laboring chest. "You're a detective, aren't you?"

"A sort of one. Sit down and take a little time to get your breath. You shouldn't run up those stairs."

He laughed. It was an ugly strangled sound, like water running down a drain. "I've been running all night. All night."

Warily, he circled the chair in front of my desk. He lifted the chair in a sudden movement and set it back to front against the wall and straddled it. His shoulders were wide enough to yoke a pair of oxen. His hands gripped the back of the chair and his chin came down and rested between them while he watched me. His eyes were narrow and blue, brilliant with suspicion.

"Running from what?" I said.

"From them." He looked at the closed door, then over his shoulder at the blank wall. "They're after me, I tell you."

"That makes twice you've told me. It isn't what I'd call a detailed story."

"It's no story." He leaned forward, tilting the chair. "It's true. There's nothing they wouldn't do, or haven't done."

"Who are they?"

"The same ones. It's always the same ones. The cheats. The liars. The people who run things." He went into singsong: "The ones that locked me up and threw the key away. They'll do it again if they can. You've got to help me."

He was beginning to disturb me badly. "Why do I have to help you?"

"Because I say so." He bit his lip. "I mean, who else can I go to? Who else is there?"

"You could try the police."

He spat. "They're in on the deal. Don't talk police to me, or doctors or lawyers or any of the others that sold me out. I want somebody working for me, on my side. If it's money you're worried about, there's plenty of money in it. I'll be rolling in money when I get my rights. Rolling in it, I tell you."

"Uh-huh."

He sprang to his feet, striking the wall a back-handed blow which left a dent in the plaster. His chair toppled. "Don't you believe me? It's the truth I'm telling you. I'm damn near a millionaire if I had my rights."

He started to pace, up and down in front of my desk, his swivelling blue eyes always watching me. I said:

"Pick up that chair."

"I'm giving the orders. For a change."

"Pick up the chair and sit in it," I said.

He stood still for a long moment, his face changing. Dull sorrow filmed his eyes like transparent lacquer. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fly off the handle. It's just when I think about them."

"The chair," I said.

He stooped and picked it up and sat in it. "I'm sorry, Mr. Archer."

"I'm not Archer," I lied. "You've got me wrong."

His eyes blazed wide. "Who are you then? Archer's the name on the door."

"I keep Mr. Archer's books, answer his telephone for him. Why didn't you say you wanted Mr. Archer?"

"I thought that you were him," he answered dully. "A friend of mine, back where I came from, told me if I ever sprung myself — if I ever got here to L.A., that Mr. Archer would give me a fair throw if anybody would. Where is he?"

I countered with a question: "What's your friend's name?"

"He has no name. I mean I don't remember."

"Where did you spring yourself from?"

"It was a slip of the tongue. I didn't say that. Anyway, what business is it of yours? You're not Mr. Archer."

"Folsom? San Quentin?"

He was silent, his face like stone. After a while he said: "I'll talk to Mr. Archer."

"I'll call him for you." I reached for the telephone and started to dial a number. "Who shall I say wants him?"

"No you don't." His stormy mind had flashes of intuition. "I know what you're up to, ringing in the cops." He leaped across the desk and tore the phone from my hands. "And you are Mr. Archer, aren't you? You're a liar, too, like the rest of them. I come here looking for a fair throw and I get the same old dirty deal again. You're one of them, aren't you?"

I said: "Put the telephone back on the desk and sit down."

"To hell with you. You can't scare me. One thing, when a man goes through what I've been through, I'm not afraid any more. You hear me?" His voice was rising.

"They hear you in Glendale. Sit down and be quiet now."

He threw the telephone at my head. I ducked. The telephone crashed through the window and hung there on its wire. I reached for the upper righthand drawer of my desk, the one that contained the automatic. But he forestalled me.

"No you don't," he said.

His hand went into his pocket and came out holding a gun. It was a .32 Smith and Wesson revolver, nickel-plated. It wasn't much of a gun, but it was enough to freeze me where I stood.

"Put your hands up," he said. "Give me your word that you won't call the police."

"I can give it. It won't be worth anything."

"That's what I thought. You're a liar like the rest. Getaway from that desk."

"Make me. You're crazy if you think—"

He let out a yelp of fury. "I am not crazy."

He dropped the little revolver and reached for me. His hooked hands swung together and clamped on my throat. He dragged me bodily across the desk. He was tremendously strong. His pectorals were massively sculptured under the wet blue shirt. His eyes were closed. They had long reddish lashes like a girl's. He looked almost serene. Then water sprang out in little rows of droplets across his forehead. His iron fingers tightened on my throat, and daylight began to wane.

His face opened suddenly, eyes and mouth, as if he had wakened out of a walking nightmare. The blue eyes were bewildered, the mouth pulled wry by remorse. "I'm sorry. You hate me now. You'll never help me now."

His hands dropped to his sides and hung useless there. Relieved of their support, I went to my knees. Bright-speckled darkness rushed through my head like a wind. When its roaring subsided and I got to my feet, he was gone. So was the bright revolver.

I pulled myself to my feet and dragged the telephone in through the broken window. It still had a dial tone, not quite as loud as the singing tone in my head. I dialed a police number. The desk-sergeant's voice focused my wits, and I hung up without saying a word.

A homicidal maniac, or reasonable facsimile of one, had taken me in my own office. That would be a pretty story for the papers, good advertising for a private detective. Clients would be lining up six deep at my door. I sat and looked at the telephone, trying to decide whether to throw it out the window permanently.

There were footsteps in the outer office, too rapid and light for a man's. As I crossed the room, they paused outside my door. I pulled it open. A woman in a dark suit stumbled in, attached to the knob. Her jet black ducktail bob was slightly disarrayed. She was breathless.

"Are you Mr. Archer?"

I looked her over and decided that there was no harm in admitting it.

She swayed towards me, wafting in springtime odors from the young slopes of her body. "I'm so glad you're all right, that I got here first."

"First before what?"

"Before Carl. He came to Dr. Grantland's office — where I work — and said that he was on his way to see you. He demanded money to pay you with. I went back to get the doctor, to see if he could reason with him. As soon as my back was turned, Carl rifled the petty cash drawer in the desk."

"Who is Carl?"

"My husband. Please forgive me, I'm not making much sense, am I?" Her dark blue glance slid over my shoulder and rested on the jagged hole in the window. "Has Carl been here already?"

"Something was. A man on a cyclone."

"A big young man in working clothes? With short blond hair?"

I nodded.

"And he was violent." It wasn't a question. It was a leaden statement of despair.

"He started to choke me to death, but he changed his mind. Flighty. Did you say he's your husband?"

"Yes."

"You're not wearing a wedding ring."

"I know I'm not. But we're still man and wife, in the legal sense. Of course I could have had an automatic divorce, after the trouble." She slumped against the doorframe. Her dark enormous eyes and her carmine mouth provided the only color in her face. "I knew it. I knew he was lying. They'd never let him go in his condition. He must have escaped. It's what I've been afraid of." A few sobs racked her. She swallowed them, and straightened.

"Come in and sit down. You need a drink."

"I don't drink."

"Not even water?"

I brought her a paper cupful from the cooler and stood over her chair while she drained it.

"Where did Carl escape from?"

"He's been in the Security Hospital in Mendocino for nearly five years." She crumpled the cup in her hands, and twisted it. "It's a state institution for the criminally insane, in case you don't know."

"I do know. Is he that bad?"

"As bad as possible," she said to the twisted cup. "Carl killed his father, you see. He was never tried for the murder, he was so obviously — unbalanced. All the psychiatrists agreed, for once. The judge was a friend of the family, and had him committed without a public trial."

"Where did all this happen?"

"In the Valley, in Citrus Junction. It was a tragic thing for all of us. It happened on Thanksgiving Day, five years ago. Carl was home from Camarillo, and we were having a sort of family reunion."

"Was he a mental patient at the time?"

"He had been, but he was out on leave of absence. We all thought he was on his way to being cured. It was almost a happy day, our first for a long time — until it happened. We should never have left him alone with his father for a minute. I still don't think he meant to kill the old man. He simply went into one of his terrible rages, and when he came out of it old Mr. Heller was dead. Choked to death." Her heavy eyes came up to my face. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You have no part in my troubles. Nobody could possibly want a part of them."

It was a hot bright morning, but the draft from the broken window was cold on the back of my neck. "What brought him to me, I wonder?"

"One of the men he knew in — the institution. Someone you'd helped. He told me that this morning. Carl believes that he's an innocent man, you see. He thinks he's perfectly well, that everyone's been persecuting him unjustly. It's typical of paranoia, according to Dr. Grantland."

"Dr. Grantland is your employer?"

"Yes."

"Does he know Carl?"

"Of course. He treated him for a while before — it happened. Dr. Grantland is a psychiatrist."

"Does he think Carl is dangerous?"

"I'm afraid so. The only one that doesn't is Mr. Parish, and he's not a real psychiatrist."

"What is he?"

"Mr. Parish is a psychiatric social worker, in Citrus Junction. He stood up for Carl when they sent him away, but it didn't do any good." She rose, and fumbled at the clasp of her cheap imitation-leather saddlebag. "I'll be glad to pay you for the window. I'm sorry about this — about poor Carl."

"Poor everybody," I said.

She gave me a bewildered look. "What do you mean, poor everybody?"

"Your husband is carrying a gun."

Her mouth opened. When it finally closed, it was a thin red line. Her eyes focused like a blue spotlight on my face. "How do you know?"

"He was kind enough to show it to me. It looked like a Smith and Wesson .32 revolver."

"Did he threaten you with it?"

"It wasn't a water-pistol, and we weren't playing cowboys and Indians. Does he know how to handle a gun?"

"Carl was a rifleman in the infantry." Her eyes were darkly luminous like clouds containing lightning. She held out a five-dollar bill to me. "Will this cover the window? It's all the cash I have with me. I have to go."

"Forget the window. We should call the police."

"No." The word broke like a dry sob from her lips. "I can't turn the police on him. You know what they'll do if they catch him and he resists. They'll shoot him down like a dog. I've got to go myself and warn Jerry that he's out."

"Jerry?"

"Jerry Heller, Carl's brother in Citrus Junction. He blames Jerry for everything that's happened to him. I've got to get to Jerry before he does."

"I'll go along."

She looked at me dubiously. "I couldn't afford to pay you very much."

"I don't put a dollar-sign on people's lives. Let's go."

We left her battered Chevrolet in the parking lot of my building, and took my car. Driving out Ventura into the Valley, she told me her name, Mildred Heller, and something about her background.

She had been very young, just out of Hollywood High, when Carl Heller entered her life. It was 1943, and he was a new young private in the Army. They met at a church canteen. She was susceptible, and he was strong and masculine and handsome in a rather strange way of his own. They fell in love and got married, with her parents' reluctant consent, a week before he was shipped out to the Marianes. When she saw him again in 1945, he was in the disturbed ward of a veterans' hospital.

They picked up the pieces together as well as they could. After his discharge, they went to live on his family's lemon ranch. The years of waiting had been hard, but the next few years were harder. Carl and his family didn't get along. His father was crippled with arthritis, and tried to run the ranch from his wheelchair. Carl's older brother Jerry actually ran it. Carl wouldn't take orders from either of them. And then there was Jerry's wife, who regarded the younger couple as interlopers.

Carl loafed around the house for two years, alternately brooding and raging. Finally he became impossible to live with, and his father had him committed to the state hospital. A year later Carl came home, ate a Thanksgiving dinner, and strangled his father with the rope from the old man's bathrobe. Now Mildred was afraid it was Jerry's turn.

I shifted my eyes from the road to look at her. Huddled in the corner of the seat, she seemed thinner and smaller and older than she had.

"Aren't you afraid of what he'll do to you?"

"No," she said, "I'm not. He's never tried to hurt me, never laid a hand on me. Sometimes I've almost wished he would, and put an end to it. What does my life amount to, after all? I can't even have a child. What have I got to lose?"

"You're a loyal girl, to stick to him."

"Am I? My people don't believe in divorce."

"And you don't either?"

"I don't believe in anything any more. Good or bad."

She turned her face away, and we drove in silence for another hour. The spring color of the hills was like Paris green. Gradually the hills slipped back into hazy distance. The highway ran smooth and straight across the citrus flatlands. Geometrically planted lemon trees stretched out like deep green corduroy around us. At her direction, I left the highway and turned up a county road.

A weatherwarped sign, Jeremiah Heller Lemons, marked the entrance to a private lane. It led us through nearly a mile of lemon groves spotted with yellowing fruit. At its end a tile-roofed ranch house sprawled in the sun. When I switched off my engine, the silence was almost absolute.

The house was an old adobe which must have stood for several generations. Each new generation had added a wing of its own. A station wagon and a dusty jeep were parked on the gravel in front of the garages.

The silence was broken by a screen door's percussion. Mildred jumped in her seat. She was strung as taut as a fiddlestring.

A striking blonde came out on the verandah and stood with her arms folded over her breasts, watching us as we got out of the car. She wore black satin slacks, a white silk shirt, and green enamel earrings in the middle of the day. Her eyes were the color and texture of the earrings.

"Why Mildred. What brings you here? Long time no see. I thought you had a job in Los Angeles, darling. Or did you lose that one, too?"

"I took the day off."

"Well, that's nice, isn't it? Who's the boyfriend?"

"Mr. Archer isn't my boyfriend."

"No? Don't tell me you're still burning a vestal candle for Carl. Isn't that one pretty much of a forlorn hope?"

"Please, Zinnia. Don't." Mildred moved slowly up the verandah steps, as if she had to force herself to approach the blonde woman or enter the area of the house. "I came to tell you about Carl."

"How fascinating. Let's get out of this bloody sun, then, shall we? It plays hell with my complexion."

Her voice was low and dry and monotonous, the voice of a vicious boredom. It affected me like a rattlesnake's buzzing signal. We followed her switching hips into a cavernous living room walled with adobe, roofed with black oak beams. The breeze from a cooling system chilled me, or perhaps it was the blonde. She said:

"What's your poison, Mr. Archer? I've been trying to think of an excuse to have a drink, anyway. I'm Zinnia Heller, by the way, since Milly has forgotten her manners as usual."

I mislaid mine, deliberately. "I'd go easy on her, Mrs. Heller. She came to warn you—"

She turned to Mildred, her thin plucked eyebrows arching. "To warn me, dear? Aren't we getting a little melodramatic?"

"Carl has escaped," the younger woman said. "He hitchhiked to Los Angeles last night and turned up this morning at the office where I work."

"Escaped from Mendocino?"

"Yes. And he's violent, Zinnia. He made some wild threats against Jerry."

"You called the police, I hope." The blonde's low buzzing voice had risen at least an octave.

"Not yet. Mr. Archer here is a private detective. Carl attacked him this morning."

"And you think he's coming here?"

"I know he is. He's always believed that Jerry railroaded him."

"You thought so yourself at one time, if memory serves me."

"I never did, Zinnia, and you know it. All I ever claimed was that I had a right to some of the money, no matter what Carl did."

"Well, the law disagreed." Zinnia went to a bar in the corner of the room, poured herself a stiff brown drink from a cut-glass decanter, and gulped it straight. "Speaking of the law, I'd better call Ostervelt about this. Wasn't that the idea?"

"Yes. Of course. The Sheriff knows Carl. He won't hurt him unless he absolutely has to."

Zinnia picked up a portable telephone and sat down with it in her gleaming satin lap. Her sharp red fingertip hesitated in the dial hole. "You're sure all this is true, what you've been telling me? Carl really did escape? You're not just trying to throw a scare into me, for old time's sake?"

I said: "I saw your brother-in-law, Mrs. Heller. He's disturbed, and he's got a gun. You'd better tell the Sheriff about the gun. And your husband should be warned."

"Will do." She had recovered her composure. She talked to the duty deputy like a brigadier giving orders to a lieutenant colonel. I was once a lieutenant colonel, and I knew.

"Where is your husband?" I said when she put down the phone.

"Somewhere around the place. He putters. Do all men putter, Mr. Archer? Do you putter?"

I let the curve go by. "We ought to find him and tell him about his brother."

"It shouldn't be hard to find him. Jerry never goes anywhere. Coming, Milly?"

"I don't feel very well." The girl looked badly wilted from the strain. Her dark head drooped on the white stalk of her neck.

"Will you be all right here?" I said.

"Of course I will. I'll keep a lookout for Carl."

"He won't be here for a while, unless he has a car."

"He may have, though. He may have stolen one. I think he drove away from Dr. Grantland's."

"Did you see him?"

"No. But I heard an engine start up just after he ran out."

"That's bad."

"Nothing good ever happens," Zinnia said. "Not to this precious family, anyway."

She put on a wide-brimmed Mexican straw hat, and we went out into the sun. It struck me like a slap across the eyes.

She led me around the side of the adobe. "Jerry's probably in his greenhouse. Flowers, he grows. Cymbidiums. He's got a green thumb that goes all the way up to his armpit. Well, I suppose everybody's got to be good at something."

In the narrow breezeway between the house and the garages, she suddenly turned to face me. Under the white shirt, her breasts were sharp and aggressive. "What are you good at, Mr. Archer?"

"Investigation."

"What kind of investigation?" Her intent hot face gave the question a double meaning.

I assumed both meanings. "I gather evidence in divorce cases, for example."

"Do you ever provide that kind of evidence personally?"

"Not when I'm conscious," I said. "I'm conscious now, in case it doesn't show."

"Oh but it does. What a pity. You're kind of cute in an ugly way, you know."

"You can have that compliment back if you want it, in spades."

That didn't faze her. She said: "Why don't you come back some time, minus bleeding-heart Milly? I still owe you a drink."

"I like to buy my own drinks."

"Oh? Are you loaded? I am."

"You're very flattering, Mrs. Heller." I wouldn't have touched the body coiled in my path with a forked stick, but it wouldn't have been tactful to say so. "What about Mr. Heller?"

"What about him? Don't ask me." She shrugged her shoulders. "Ask his damn cymbidiums. They know him better than I do."

"I don't know the language of the flowers, and we're wasting time."

"So what? There's plenty of time. Time is what hangs heavy on my hands." She raised her hands, turning them slowly on their slender wrists. "Pretty?"

"I've seen prettier."

Her eyes hardened, gleaming like chips of copper ore in the shadow of her hat. "What language do you speak?"

"You wouldn't know it."

"Don't you like women?"

"Women," I said, "I like. I have my own definition."

"God damn you." She leaned towards me, almost falling. I held her up. Her teeth nicked my chin, and her mouth moved like a small hot animal under my ear. Her hat fell off.

I pushed her away, partly because she was another man's wife and partly because the other man was standing at the rear end of the breezeway, watching us. He had a pair of garden shears in his hand, which gleamed like a double dagger.

I picked up Zinnia's hat and handed it to her. "Calm yourself, blondie," I whispered. "Here's the cymbidium king."

She whispered back. "Did he see us?"

"Ask the cymbidiums."

He moved towards us, an older, smaller, heavier version of his brother. His coloring was similar, red hair and pink complexion. It was his eyes that made the difference. They were sane, cynically and wearily sane. I looked down at the shears in his hand. He had a firm grip on them, and they were pointed at the middle of my body.

"Out," he said. "Get out."

"You don't know who I am."

"I don't care who you are. If you don't want to be gelded, get off my property and stay off my property. That includes my wife."

She was standing flat against the adobe wall, holding the hat in front of her like a flimsy shield. "Take it easy now, Jerry. I got something in my eye. This gentleman was trying to remove it."

He stood with his short legs planted wide apart, peering at me out of pale eyes. Their whites were yellowish from some internal complaint: bad digestion or bad conscience. "Is that how he got the lipstick on his face?"

"He didn't get it from me." But her hand went to her mouth.

"Who did he get it from then?"

"From Milly, probably. They came up here together. She's in the house now."

"You're a liar, Zinnia. You always have been a liar. It's a wonder you're not better at it with all that practice."

"I'm not lying. Milly is in the house."

He turned to me. "Are you a friend of Milly's?"

"I suppose I am."

"He's a detective," Zinnia said. "She hired him."

"What for?"

He looked from one to the other of us, still holding the shears rigid in his hand.

"Carl's out of the asylum. He's got a gun, and he's threatening to kill you."

His face turned blotchy white. "Is Carl here now?" The words whistled in his throat.

"She thinks he's on his way."

"What else did she say?"

"Nothing else. Talk to her yourself." She went on the offensive suddenly: "You always used to like to talk to her. Didn't you? Which reminds me you've got your nerve accusing me of playing around, after all I've got on you."

He brushed the quarrel aside with a weary gesture. "You've been drinking again, Zinnia. You promised me you wouldn't drink in the daytime."

"Did I?"

"A dozen times."

"This was a special occasion."

"Why? Because you think that Carl is going to shoot me? Were you celebrating ahead of time?"

"You're crazy."

"Sure. Sure. I don't suppose you even called the police."

"Naturally I did. Jake Ostervelt's on his way out."

"Well. That's something, anyway." He turned to me. "Then we won't be needing you, will we, Mr. Detective?"

"I hope not," I said.

"I'm telling you we don't need you." He huffed and bristled, trying to recapture his anger, without success. His voice was dead: "So you get off my property like I said. This place belongs to me and as long as I'm alive and kicking I don't need any L.A. sharpie to look out for me or my wife."

"All right." There wasn't any other answer.

I went back to my car and drove towards Citrus Junction. A couple of miles from the Heller ranch, I passed a radio car headed in the opposite direction. It had two uniformed men in the front seat, and it was burning the asphalt.

The windowless packing plants of the lemon growers' cooperatives were major landmarks on the outskirts of town. The highway became the main street of the business section, which was composed of one new hotel and several old ones, bars and chain stores, a Sears, a giant drugstore whose architect had been inspired by hashish, four new-car agencies, three banks, and a couple of movie houses, one for bracero field-hands.

It was a slow town, clogged with money, stunned by sun. I made inquiries for Mr. Parish. His office was over the Mexican movie house. The stairs were as dark as a tunnel after the barren brilliance of the street. I groped my way along a second-floor corridor and through a battered door into a waiting room. Its sagging furniture and outdated magazines might have belonged to an old-fashioned dentist with a lower-income practice. An odor of fear and hopelessness hung in the air like a subtle gas.

An inner door opened. A young man appeared in the doorway. He had soft brown eyes, hardened by spectacles. He wore a threadbare tweed jacket patched with suede at the elbows, and a very cheerful smile. In my mood, an offensively cheerful smile.

"Dr. Parish?"

"Not doctor, thanks, though I'm working on my doctorate." He looked at me with professional solicitude, still smiling. "You've been referred to me? May I have your name?"

"Lew Archer."

"Sorry, I don't recall it. Should I have your file?"

"I'm not a patient," I said, "though I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm a private detective."

"Oh. Sorry." He seemed to be disappointed in a flustered, sensitive way. "Won't you come in?"

He seated me in a cubbyhole of an office containing two chairs, a desk, a grim green filing cabinet. There were holes in the uncarpeted floor where I guessed a dentist's chair had once been bolted. Under the floor, a remote passionate voice was declaiming in Spanish. I caught the words for love and death. Amor. Morte.

"It's the matinee in the theater downstairs. I hope it doesn't disturb you." He sat behind the desk and began to knock out a pipe in a brass ashtray. "Has one of my people got into some kind of trouble?" he said between the pipe-banging and the Spanish.

"Your people?"

"My clients. Actually they're more like a family to me. I think of them as my family, the whole hundred and fifty of them. They make a fairly hectic family group on occasion." He paused, filling his pipe. "Well, let's have the bad news. I can see bad news on your face. Is it klepto trouble again?"

"That enters into it, probably. He's carrying a gun, and they didn't give it to him as a going-away present from Mendocino."

"Just who are we talking about?"

"Carl Heller. Remember him?"

"I ought to. You don't mean to tell me they let him out?"

"I mean he escaped. He got to Los Angeles somehow, and turned up at my office this morning. Some friend of his at the institution had given him my name. Some enemy of mine."

"You saw Carl, then? How is he?" He leaned across the desk in boyish eagerness, tinged with anxiety.

"In bad condition, I'd say. I not only saw him, I also felt him."

I lifted my chin to show him the bruise on my neck.

Parish clucked with his tongue, irritatingly. "Carl's violent, eh? Too bad. How was his orientation?"

"If you mean is he off the rails, the answer is yes. I've seen paranoia before and he has the symptoms."

"Delusions of persecution?"

"He's full of 'em. Everybody's against him, including the cops. He seems to have delusions of grandeur, too. Claims he's the rightful heir to a million dollars."

Parish said softly through smoke: "Maybe he is at that. Oh, he's paranoid all right, I don't know how extreme — haven't seen him for years. He may also be rightful heir to a million dollars."

"You're kidding."

"I never kid about my people."

"Where would he get a million?"

"He didn't. That's the point. I can't help feeling he was cheated out of it, in a way. His father meant him to have half the estate. Of course Carl wasn't fit to handle it. Old Heller left the whole thing to his other son Jerry, with the understanding that he would provide for Carl. Then when the accident happened—"

"The old man's murder, you mean?"

"Accident," he said sharply. "Murder involves willful intention and knowledge of what you're doing. If Carl killed his father, he didn't know what he was doing. He was morally and legally not guilty."

"By reason of insanity."

"Of course. As it happened, the case never came to trial, and he was never convicted of anything worse than mental illness. But Jerry, his older brother—"

"I know Jerry. I went out to his ranch to offer him protection. He kicked me off the place. He had a wild idea that I was making advances to his wife. I hate to say this, but it was the other way around."

"Typical behavior from both of them. He's terribly jealous, and she gives him plenty of cause." He smiled with reminiscent grimness. "I was going to say, when I was interrupted, that Jerry took advantage of the tragic situation. As you probably know if you're a detective, there's a legal tradition which forbids a murderer to profit from his victim's death. Jerry shipped Carl off to Mendocino, and kept the whole estate for himself."

"And the estate is really worth a million dollars?"

"Double that. The old man bought up thousands of acres of lemon land during the depression. The family's much wealthier than you'd think from the way they live."

"You said an interesting thing a minute ago, Mr. Parish. You said if Carl killed his father. Is there any doubt that he did?"

"It was never proved. It was simply assumed."

"I thought he was caught in the act."

"That was his brother's statement to the coroner's jury. I tried to get the sheriff, who is also the coroner — I tried to get him to let me cross-examine Jerry Heller. He wouldn't permit it. I was new in my job, and that afternoon's work almost got me fired."

"You think Jerry was lying."

"Don't jump to conclusions. It's my job, as I see it, to keep people out of Mendocino, unless they're proven dangerous. If we sent away everyone with a paranoid streak, and locked them up for what amounts to life, the mental hospitals wouldn't begin to hold them."

"What about the cemeteries?" I said. "They'd soon be overflowing if we let all the Carl Hellers run around loose."

"I wonder. Carl was in pretty good shape when they let him out five years ago. Naturally the accident upset him again, threw him back into illness. It made him look very bad. He was tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty of homicidal mania. But I'm not completely convinced that he killed his father. He told me himself that the old man was lying dead when he entered the room. Then Jerry came in and caught him leaning over the bed, trying to untie the rope from his father's neck."

"Did Jerry frame him, in your opinion?"

"Please. I didn't say that. Carl may have killed him. Or Jerry may have believed that he did, sincerely. A million dollars can be a powerful motive for believing something. Myself, I've never known Carl to be really dangerous."

"He was this morning."

"Perhaps. After five years behind the walls. I'd like to see him for myself."

"You're a braver man than I am."

"I know him better than you. I like Carl."

"Evidently. But if he didn't kill his father, who did?"

"There were other people in the house. The servants had no reason to love old Heller. Neither had Jerry or Zinnia, for that matter. Sheriff Ostervelt was there, too, eating Thanksgiving dinner with the family. He's Heller's brother-in-law, and the old man owned him lock, stock and barrel." He caught himself up short, and his brown eyes veiled themselves behind the spectacles. "For heaven's sake, don't quote me to anyone. I'm a public employee, you know, and the Heller family has political pull."

"All this is off the record then?"

"I'm afraid it has to be, though I'd dearly like to do something for Carl and Mildred."

"The best thing we can do for him is find him before he hurts somebody."

"Yes. Of course. I agree."

The telephone on his desk rang jarringly. He picked it up and identified himself. I watched his brown eyes grow round and glassy.

"This is dreadful," he said. "Dreadful." He bit his lip. "Yes, I'll come right out. It happens that Mr. Archer is here with me. Of course, Sheriff. I'll bring him along."

He set the receiver down, fumblingly, and ran his fingers through his thinning hair.

"Somebody else has been killed," I said.

"Yes. Jerry Heller. Shot in his greenhouse. They have the gun."

I murdered scores of insects on the ten-mile stretch of road between the town and the ranch. Parish sat beside me, watching the speedometer and gripping the door-handle. "This is dreadful, dreadful," he kept repeating.

We found Jerry Heller lying peacefully in the center aisle of his greenhouse. Cymbidium sprays in most of the colors of the rainbow, and some others, made a fine funeral display. The light fell muted through the transparent roof onto his dead face. A round red hole in his forehead made him appear three-eyed.

A big man in a wide-brimmed hat got up from a bench in one of the side aisles. He had a pitted nose and little uneasy eyes. His belly moved ahead of him down the aisle.

"Looks like your boy has gone and done it again," he said to Parish.

"It appears so, Sheriff." Parish was still upset, his voice high and wavering. But he stuck to his guns: "This time I hope you'll conduct a decent investigation, anyway."

"Investigation, hell. We know who killed Jerry. We know the motive. We got the weapon, even. It was stuck down in the dirt under one of these plants." He stepped over the body, heavily, and pointed at a ragged hole in the peat-moss. "All we got to do now is find him. You know his habits, don't you?"

"I knew Carl five years ago."

"He hasn't changed much, has he? Where do you think he is?"

"I haven't any idea." Parish looked up into the filtered light. "Hiding on the ranch?"

"It's possible. I'm having a posse formed. I want you to go along with them. You can talk to him better than I can. He may have another gun, and we don't want any more killings."

"I'll be glad to," Parish said.

"Go and report to Deputy Santee, then. He's in the house telephoning." Parish went through an inner door which led through a covered passageway into the house. Before he closed it behind him, I caught a glimpse of Zinnia standing in the shadows of the passageway.

The sheriff turned a fish eye on me. "You Archer?"

"That's my name."

"I'm Ostervelt, the sheriff of this county. Remember that and we'll get along just fine. Mrs. Heller, Mildred that is, tells me you saw him this morning."

"He came to my office to try and hire me."

"What for?"

"Apparently he thought that he'd been framed—"

"He wasn't," Ostervelt said. "If you need any proof, look down at what's in front of you."

"I have."

"A nice piece of work, isn't it? Why in God's name didn't you grab him this morning and hold onto him?"

"I tried to. He got the drop on me."

"He wouldn't of got it on me. I'm older and fatter than you, but he wouldn't of got it on me." By way of illustration, he flung his suitcoat back and reached for his hip. A service forty-five hopped up in his hand. He thrust it back in its holster, smiling sleepily with rubbery lips. "You saw his gun?"

"Yes."

"Can you identify it?"

"I should be able to."

"Wait here, then. I'll go get it."

He went outside. As soon as the sound of his footsteps had receded, Zinnia Heller came out of the passageway. Her face was carved from chalk, but her pull-taffy hair was lacquered smooth and trim, with not a curl out of place. She stopped about ten feet short of the body, as if she'd come up against an invisible barrier. The long black butt of a target pistol protruded from the waistband of her slacks.

"Congratulations," I said.

"What do you mean?"

I moved towards her, sidestepping her defunct mate. "You're really loaded now."

"You mustn't talk like that." Genuine anguish, or something very like it, pulled downwards at her mouth. "Okay, so we weren't a perfect married couple. That doesn't make me glad the poor guy got killed."

"Two million dollars should."

"Who have you been talking to?"

"The flowers," I said. "The flowers and the birds."

She took hold of my coatsleeve. "Listen. I wanted to ask you a favor. Don't tell them that we quarreled before he died."

"Why? Did you shoot him?"

"Don't be crazy."

"I'm not. Everybody else seems to be. But I'm not."

"It just wouldn't look right," she said. "It might make them suspicious. Ostervelt has a down on me, anyway. He was married to the old man's sister, and he always thought he should have a piece of the property. We did enough for him already, canceling his debts."

"You canceled his debts?"

"Jerry did, after the old man died."

"Why would Jerry do that?"

"He did it out of pure generosity, not that it's any of your business. You make me sick with your suspicions. You're suspicious of everybody."

"Including you," I said.

"You are crazy. And I was a fool to try and talk to you."

"Talk some more. How did this happen?"

"I wasn't present, is that clear? I didn't even hear the shot."

"Where were you?"

"Taking a shower, if you want to know."

"Can you prove it?"

"Examine me. I'm clean." Her green eyes flashed with never-say-die eroticism.

I backed away. "Where was the sheriff?"

"Searching the stables. He thought maybe Carl was there. Carl used to spend a lot of time in the stables."

"Has he been seen at all?"

"Not to my knowledge. If I do see him, you'll know it. So will he." She patted the target-pistol stuck in her waistband.

Returning footsteps crackled in the gravel. She smoothed her face and tried to look like a widow. She went on looking like exactly what she was: a hard blonde beauty in her fading thirties, fighting the world with two weapons, sex and money. Both of her weapons had turned in her hands and scarred her.

The sheriff entered the greenish gloom, with Mildred trailing reluctantly at his heels. She was pale and anxious-eyed. When I approached her, she looked down at the packed earth floor of the greenhouse. Her mouth trembled into speech:

"It wasn't any use after all. Why did you go away?"

"I was forced to. Your brother-in-law ordered me off the ranch. He must have been shot within a few minutes after that."

"Did Carl really do it, do you think?"

"That's the idea the sheriff is trying to sell. I haven't taken an option on it yet."

She raised her eyes from the brown earth, and managed a small grateful smile. Sheriff Ostervelt tapped my shoulder. "Here. I want to show you."

He had a black enameled evidence case in his hands. He carried it as if it was full of jewels. Setting it down on a bench, he unlocked it and opened it, with the air of a magician. It contained a .32-caliber Smith and Wesson nickel-plated revolver — the gun that Carl had flourished in my office.

"Don't touch it," Ostervelt said. "I can't see any prints with the naked eye, but I'm going to have it tested for latent ones. Is this the gun that Heller pulled on you?"

"That one or its twin."

"You're sure about that? You know guns?"

"Yes. But you still haven't proved it fired the shot that killed Jerry Heller. Where's the slug?"

"Still in his head. Don't worry, I intend to run ballistics tests. Not that it ain't wrapped up already. This revolver was left at the scene of the crime with one shell empty that had just been fired."

"How do you know it had just been fired?"

"I smelled it. Smell it yourself."

I leaned down and caught the acrid odor of recently expended smokeless powder. Mildred, who had been standing in the background with Zinnia, moved up behind me. Looking down into the black metal box, she let out an exclamation of surprise and dismay.

"What's the trouble, Milly?" Ostervelt said.

She didn't answer for what seemed a long time. She looked at him and then at me, her mouth drooping dismally.

"What is it?" he repeated. "If you know something, speak up."

"I've seen that gun before. I think I have, anyway."

"Does it belong to Carl?"

"No. It's Dr. Grantland's. My employer in Beverly Hills. It looks exactly the same as the one in his desk."

"How did it get here, then?"

"I haven't any idea," she answered faintly.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You told me Carl rifled his cash drawer this morning. Did the doctor keep his revolver in the same drawer?"

"I think he did. I've seen it there. I couldn't swear that it's the same revolver."

Zinnia pushed forward between us, her sharp elbow jabbing my side. "Maybe you better talk to Bobby Grantland."

"Do you know him?"

"I ought to. He's spent enough weekends here. He and Jerry went to school together."

I turned to Mildred. "Didn't you say Grantland was Carl's psychiatrist?"

"He was for a while after the war. That's why he gave me a job, I guess."

Zinnia snorted. "Like hell it is. Jerry got you that job with Bobby Grantland. Now that Jerry's dead, it's time you showed a little gratitude for all he's done for you."

"Gratitude for what?" Mildred turned on her in a thin white fury. "For giving me a chance to go to work for fifty dollars a week?"

"He sent you money as long as you needed it, didn't he?"

"He sent me a little money, for a while. You put a stop to that."

"You're right. I did. There's no reason why he had to support every female bum that married into the family."

"He supported you," Mildred said. "Speaking of female bums. You've got it all to yourself now. Aren't you satisfied?"

They were on the verge of hair-pulling. Zinnia reached for her. I put a hand on her arm, and she drew back. The sheriffs little eyes squinted stupidly at us, as if the quick turn of events had befuddled his brain. Mildred backed away and stood against a raised planter, plucking idly at the tiny shell-like blossoms on a young cymbidium spray.

"Let me get this straight," Ostervelt said. "You said something just now, Zinnia, that Jerry made the doc give Milly a job. How could Jerry do that?"

"Bobby Grantland owed him money, that's how. Jerry lent him the capital to set up in practice after the war."

"Does he still owe him the money?"

"I guess so, most of it. I think he's been paying it back a little at a time."

"Was Jerry pressing him for it?"

"I wouldn't know. Ask him."

I said: "Was Grantland here five years ago? The day that old Mr. Heller was strangled?"

Mildred answered: "Yes, he was. He came up to observe Carl. But this is ridiculous. He couldn't have had anything to do with any of this."

"Did he testify at Carl's sanity hearing?"

"Of course he did."

"What did he say about Carl?"

"I don't know. I wasn't there. I couldn't face it."

"I was," Zinnia said. "I don't remember the two-dollar words, but they added up to the fact that my esteemed brother-in-law was as nutty as a fruitcake. Was and is."

"Maybe. I'd like to talk to the good doctor, about that and other things."

"Me, too." Sheriff Ostervelt snapped his black case shut and tucked it under his hamlike arm. He went to Mildred, walking like a bear on its hind legs, and laid a large red paw on her shoulder. "Coming along with me, little girl?"

She shrank at his touch. "I'll ride with Mr. Archer. He brought me here."

"Now don't be like that." His hand slid round her shoulders in a gesture that was more than paternal. "I'd enjoy your company, Mildred. Besides, I need you to show me the way. I'm just an old hick from the sticks. I don't know those Los Angeles streets the way he does. Of course I got to admit I'm not as young and pretty as he is."

His belly nudged her. She leaned away from him against the plants. "I'll go with you if you don't touch me," she said in a tiny voice. "Promise that you won't touch me."

"Sure. Of course." He took a backward step and said with jovial lechery: "You got me wrong, Mildred. You never understood me. I wouldn't hurt a hair on your little head. And nobody else is going to, either, not while you got old Ostie to protect you."

They left the greenhouse together. Mildred dragged her feet. The sheriff turned at the door and cocked his chins at me. "You coming, Archer?"

"In a minute. I'll follow your car."

When they were out of earshot, Zinnia said: "A pretty couple, eh? I'd like to see the old goat marry her. She's just what he deserves."

"I thought he was married, to your father-in-law's sister."

"He was. She died before the old man did. Ostie never got over it."

"I can see that. He's the typical grief-stricken widower."

"Oh sure. I mean he never got over her dying before the old man. It cut him off from any part of the estate. Personally, I think he did all right for himself, getting Jerry to wipe out all he owed him."

"How much?"

"I wouldn't know. Ten thousand dollars or more."

"For services rendered?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you back on that kick again? You make me tired."

"The sheriff helped to send Carl up, didn't he? That could have been worth a lot of money to Jerry."

"Nuts," she said. "You're completely off the beam. Maybe Ostie did want Carl out of the way, but if he did it had nothing to do with Jerry. Ostie's been after Milly to divorce Carl and marry him for a long time."

"He hasn't been very successful in his wooing."

"No." She laughed raucously, like a parrot. "Well, climb on your horse, big boy. Don't let me keep you."

"Why don't you come along?"

"So I can listen to you some more, telling me how Jerry framed his brother? No thanks." She turned and looked at the body. "This little guy wasn't much use to me, but he had his points. I'll stay here with him."

"Are you all right by yourself?"

"I won't be by myself. There's a deputy inside" — she jerked a thumb towards the passageway that led into the house — "and more on the way. What's the matter, can't you make up your mind? A minute ago Carl was framed, to hear you tell it. Now he's a lurking menace again. Come on now, which is it."

"I don't know," I said. "You're right. I haven't made up my mind."

I left her keeping her unlikely vigil. Looking back from outside, I saw her hefting the light target-pistol in her hand. She waved it at me derisively.

The sheriff drove inconsistently, slowing gradually on the long dull straightaways and speeding up on the curves. I was tempted to pass him more than once, but I wanted to keep an eye on him and the girl. She sat on the extreme righthand side of the front seat, as if to avoid any possible contact with him.

I followed his undercover plates over the Pass, down Sunset and across to Santa Monica Boulevard. He parked eventually on a side street near the center of Beverly Hills. I parked behind his radio car and got out.

Ostervelt and Mildred went up a flagstone walk which led to a low pink building standing well back from the street. It was flat-roofed and new-looking, walled with glass bricks in front and masked with well-clipped shrubbery. A small bronze plate on the doorpost announced discreetly: J. Robert Grantland, M.D.

I followed them into a bright waiting room furnished in net and black iron. A receptionist's desk was set at an angle in one corner. There were several abstract paintings on the walls. I touched one and felt the brushmarks. Originals. Everything about the place said money, but meant front.

Mildred opened a heavy white door. We went through into a smaller room furnished with white oak office furniture. I pointed at the wide low telephone desk against one wall:

"Is this the desk he took the money from?"

She had assumed a professional mask as soon as she entered the office. "Yes. Please keep your voice down. I think the doctor has a patient with him."

I listened, and heard a drone of voices behind an inner door. One of them was a woman's. It said:

"Is that why I fall in love with Terry's friends?"

A lower voice, as rich and thick as molasses, answered her. I couldn't hear what it said.

"Break it up, will you, Milly?" the sheriff said. "We can't wait here all day."

She looked at him primly, her finger to her lips. "Dr. Grantland hates to be interrupted. And promise me you won't say anything nasty to him. He couldn't help it if Carl took his gun."

The sheriff grunted. "We'll see." He put his evidence case on top of the desk and pulled out the top drawer.

Looking over his shoulder, I saw that it was empty, except for a little silver in a coin compartment at one end, and, shoved far back in the drawer, a carton of .32 shells.

"Is this where the gun was kept?"

"I think so. I've seen it there."

"What was Grantland doing with a gun?"

"I don't know. I never asked him. Some of his patients get pretty — excited sometimes. I suppose he kept it for protection."

There were footsteps in the inner room. The door clicked sharply, and opened. A heavy man in English tweeds came out. The artificial light gleamed on his head, which was prematurely bald, and flashed on his spectacles.

"What is this, Mrs. Heller? Who are these men?"

She cringed and stammered. Ostervelt answered for her:

"Remember me, Doctor? Jack Ostervelt, sheriff of Buena County. We met at the Heller place a couple of times."

"Sure enough, we did. How are you, Sheriff?"

He closed the door behind him, but not before I caught a glimpse of a dark-haired woman with a raddled face, putting on a hat.

"I'm well enough myself. Your friend Jerry Heller is pretty poorly, though. In fact he's dead."

"Jerry dead?" The doctor's jaw dropped so far I could see the gold in his molars.

"He was killed with this gun a couple of hours ago." The sheriff opened his black box. "Take a good look, but don't touch it. Recognize it?"

"Why, it looks like my revolver."

"That's what I thought," Ostervelt said flatly.

"Surely you don't imagine that I shot Jerry?" The doctor glanced anxiously at the door behind him, and lowered his voice with an effort. "My revolver was taken from my desk this morning. I reported it stolen to the police."

"Who stole it?"

He looked at Mildred. Her gaze met his, and dropped. Her face was miserable.

"Carl Heller did," he said. "He also took about fifty dollars in cash, which I kept in the same drawer."

I said: "Do you know for a fact that he took your gun?"

His fat chest pouted out, and he looked at me with hostility. "You can take my word for it. Just who are you, by the way?"

"The name is Archer," I said. "Have you been here all day, Doctor?"

"Certainly I have."

"Can you prove it?"

"Of course I can. Mrs. Monaco has been here with me for the past two hours, if you insist on proof."

"That won't be necessary," Ostervelt said. "You're absolutely certain that Carl Heller took your gun?"

Grantland's face flushed. "This is ridiculous. Of course I am. I saw him run out of here with the gun in his hand. I did my best to stop him, but he was too fast for me." He turned to Mildred. "You saw him, didn't you?"

"I guess so," she said hopelessly. "Yes, I saw him."

Her body began to slump. Thinking that she was going to faint, I started for her. Ostervelt got to her first, circling her slender body with his arm. She leaned against him, with her eyelids fluttering.

Dr. Grantland brought her a glass of water. "You'd better go home, Mrs. Heller. You've been under quite a strain. You need a rest."

"Yes." Her voice was like a tired little girl's.

"I'll take her," Ostervelt said. "Be glad to. With that crazy husband of hers still on the loose, she needs somebody to look out for her."

Grantland looked him up and down, sardonically. "No doubt."

"Sorry to bother you, Doctor. I guess when it comes to trial, we'll be needing you as a witness."

Ostervelt closed the evidence case and picked it up in one huge hand. He and Mildred went out, his thick possessive arm still supporting her. Grantland said to me:

"Is there something else?"

"Just a little matter of your professional opinion. It's been suggested to me that Carl Heller wasn't really dangerous."

"I thought so myself at one time. Obviously he is, though. He's killed two people, and the proof of the pudding is always in the eating."

"I don't quite follow."

"No, I suppose not. You wouldn't." He looked at me with intellectual distaste. "I'll spell it out for you. Five or six years ago I formed the opinion, based on observation and interviews, that Carl Heller wasn't likely to become dangerous. He was ill, of course, no question about that — definitely a victim of paranoid schizophrenia. But shock therapy seemed to do him a lot of good. He was released from the state hospital, not as cured, you understand, but as an arrested case, who needed supportive treatment. Schizophrenia isn't really curable, you know. We psychiatrists hate to admit failure, but that's the simple truth. Still, I concurred in the institution's fairly hopeful prognosis, and I was glad to see him let out on indefinite leave of absence."

"This was before his father was killed?"

"Of course. His father's death naturally altered my opinion. When theory collides with fact, you change the theory."

"I understand you were in the house that day?"

"I was. I drove up to see Carl, and the family asked me to stay for Thanksgiving dinner. Jerry and I are old friends."

"So Zinnia said—"

"Oh. You've been talking to Zinnia. What else did she say?"

"She mentioned that you owed money to Jerry Heller."

"Zinnia would. But she's a little behind the times. I paid Jerry off in full last year." His eyes glinted ironically behind the spectacles. "So if you're looking for a motive for murder, you'll have to look elsewhere. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

"Just a minute, doctor. Why did you give Mildred Heller a job?"

"Why not? I needed a receptionist, and she's a pleasant little creature. I suppose I felt sorry for her. Besides, Jerry asked me to. I had a number of reasons."

"What were his reasons?"

"For finding her a job? No doubt he felt he should do something for her. Zinnia made him cut off her allowance, and she had to live somehow."

"On fifty dollars a week."

He said with some complacency: "I've been paying her sixty since the first of the year."

"Don't you feel she got a pretty lousy deal from Jerry?"

"I've always thought so, yes, though I didn't blame Jerry entirely. Zinnia ran him since his father died."

"How did she get along with the old man before he died?"

"Not too well, I'm afraid. None of them did. He was a German patriarch, a hard-fisted domineering old curmudgeon. A typical arthritic."

"You know the family better than I do, Doctor. Could Zinnia have killed him?"

"Do you mean is it morally possible? Or physically possible?"

"Both."

"I thought Jerry was your suspect."

"He still is. They both are."

"Well, as far as physical possibility is concerned, either one of them could have strangled him. He was helpless with his arthritis, and alone. His room was accessible to all of them, and the family was scattered that evening. Jerry was in his greenhouse, I believe, but there's a passage from it directly into the house. I don't really know where Zinnia was. She said later that she was taking a walk."

"And Ostervelt?"

"The sheriff left early, I think, before it happened. He got drunk at dinner and made some kind of a pass at Mildred. She slapped his face and stomped off to her room. That's how Carl happened to be left alone."

"Where were you?"

"I played a couple of hands of canasta with Carl. He lost, and quit. He was in an unpleasant mood, probably the aftermath of the trouble between Ostervelt and his wife. Anyway, he wandered off and I picked up a book. The next I saw or heard of him, he and Jerry were fighting in the old man's room. The old man was dead, and Jerry said he'd caught him in flagrante."

"But it could have been the other way around?"

"Not in view of what's happened since," he said.

"I don't know. Jerry profited from his father's death. Nobody else did. Zinnia profits from Jerry's, and nobody else does."

"You're suggesting that he killed his father, and then she turned around and killed him?"

"I'm saying it could have happened that way. Carl's escape may have been the opportunity she was waiting for."

"That's an ingenious story you've made up. But it doesn't fit the facts. Not if I know Zinnia, and I think I do. She's a hard-nosed bitch, but she wouldn't kill. And not if Jerry was shot with my revolver. There doesn't seem to be any question that Carl killed them both."

"Would you swear that he had your revolver?"

"How many times do I have to tell you?" He rapped the top of the white oak desk with his knuckles. "He took it out of the drawer in this desk. I saw him with my own eyes."

"So did I. At least I saw a nickel-plated revolver. Maybe it was your revolver and maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was the murder weapon and maybe it wasn't. It's interesting that Mildred didn't see him take it."

"She did, though. You heard her say so."

"A few minutes ago, she did. Not this morning. When she came to me this morning, she didn't even know he had a gun."

"On the contrary. She knew it very well. She was right here in this room with me. She saw him run out that door with the gun in his hand." He pointed at the closed white door of the waiting room. "She even pleaded with me not to call the police about it, but naturally I did, as soon as she left."

"That's not her story."

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"Somebody is a liar."

He took an awkward boxing stance and raised his balled fists. "I've taken enough from you. Now you get out of here or I'll throw you out."

"I wouldn't try it, Doctor. You look out of training. Just tell me where she lives, and I'll go peacefully. I want to check your stories against each other."

"Do that," he snapped. "She has an apartment in the Vista Hotel. Number 317. It's not far—"

"I know where it is, thanks."

I went out into the quiet residential street and got into my car. A sprinkler on the lawn across the street had caught a rainbow in its net of spray. Above the treetops in the distance, the tower of the city hall stood whitely against the sky, a symbol of law and order and prosperity. I kicked the starter savagely. Behind its peaceful facade, the afternoon was swollen with disaster. Like a monster struggling to be born out of the vast blue belly of the sky.

The Vista Hotel was an old three-story building which stood on a green triangle near the Boulevard. It was swept by waves of sound from the unceasing traffic. An iron fire escape wept long yellow tears down its stucco sides. I drove by slowly, looking for a parking place.

Above the sound of my engine, the remoter roar from the boulevard, something cracked in the air. I stopped my car and looked up at the sky. If it had split like an eggshell, I wouldn't have been surprised. But the sky was serene enough.

I left the car where it was, in the middle of the street. Before I reached the sidewalk, the cracking noise was repeated. Somebody said, "No," in a high voice which sounded barely human.

A man appeared on the hotel fire escape, outside a third-floor window. He hung over the railing for a moment, like a seasick passenger on a ship. His short hair shone like wheat stubble in the sun. His mouth was bright with blood.

He started down the fire escape, holding on to the railing, hand-over-hand. Ostervelt came out on the iron platform above him, his forty-five in his fist. He pointed it at Carl Heller's head and sighted along the barrel.

I shouted at the top of my lungs: "Don't shoot!"

Ostervelt was as oblivious as a statue. The flash of his gun was pale in the light, but in the open air the crack was louder. It sounded like something breaking, something valuable which could never be replaced.

Carl stood on the iron steps, leaning against the railing, perfectly still, as if he had been transfixed by a terrible insight. Anguish was radiant on his face. Then his head and his knees went loose, and he somersaulted to the second-floor platform. He lay there like a bundle of blue rags.

I climbed up to him. The drag of gravity was powerful on my legs. When I got to him he was dead. There was a hole in the back of his head, another hole in the middle of his back, a third hole in his belly. He was barefooted.

Above me, Ostervelt replaced his gun in its holster with the air of a good workman putting away a tool. He sat down heavily on the iron steps:

"Too bad. I had to do it. He was hiding in the kitchenette in Milly's apartment. I figure he was waiting until I left, so he could get his crazy hands on her. I heard a noise in there. I pulled my gun and opened the door. He came at me with a knife in his hand."

"Where's the knife?"

"He dropped it when I plugged him the first time. Dropped it and made for the window."

"Did you have to shoot him twice more?"

"Maybe not. I usually finish what I start. He wasn't much use to himself alive, anyway. You might say that I saved him a lot of grief."

"I think he had it all," I said. "All the grief there is."

"Maybe so. Well, it's all over now."

"Not quite." I looked down at the ruined head.

A prowl car rounded the corner and squealed to a stop behind my double-parked car. Two uniformed cops with outraged faces got out. Ostervelt yelled in a big cracked voice:

"Up here."

The men in uniform ran across the lawn towards the fire escape. Their feet were silent in the grass.

"You handle them, Sheriff," I said. "I want to talk to Mildred."

He rose with a sigh and stood against the wall to let me pass him on the narrow steps. I didn't want to touch him. But his belly protruded like a medicine ball under his clothes, and I had to.

Mildred's room was cheaply furnished with a studio bed, a threadbare rug, a couple of chairs, a record-player on a rickety table. The sheriff's evidence case was on the table beside it. Mildred was hunched over on the edge of the studio bed with her face in her hands. When I stepped over the windowsill, I saw her eyes sparkle between her fingers:

"Is he dead?"

"Ostervelt saw to that."

"How dreadful." She dropped her hands. Her face was white and intent. There were no tears on it. She said: "Yet I suppose it had to be. It's lucky for me that Ostie came up here with me. He might have killed me."

"I doubt that, Mrs. Heller."

"He killed the others," she said. "It would have been my turn next. You should have seen him when he came lunging out with that knife in his hand."

A long knife gleamed on the worn rug outside the open door to the kitchenette. I picked it up and tested its edge with my thumb. It was a wavy-edged bread-knife, very sharp. A few small bread crumbs clung to its shining surface.

"I wish I had been here," I said. "I'd have taken the knife away from him. Your husband would still be alive."

"You don't know what you're saying. He was terribly strong—"

"Not as strong as you, Mrs. Heller. He was like a child in your hands. So was I for a while."

"What do you mean?"

I didn't answer her. I turned on my heel and went into the kitchenette. It was a tiny cubicle containing an apartment stove and refrigerator, a sink and a small cupboard. A loaf of bread and an open jar of peanut butter stood on the masonite work-board beside the sink. A slice of bread, half-severed, hung on one end of the loaf. A pot of coffee was steaming on the stove.

On a towel-rack above the stove, a pair of grey cotton socks were hanging limply. I took them down and stretched them out in my hands. They were clean and very large, about size twelve — a pair of men's work socks which someone had washed and hung up to dry. They were nearly dry.

Mildred appeared in the doorway. Her blue eyes were inky, almost black in her white face:

"What are you doing in here? You've got no right to interfere with my things."

I held up the grey socks. "Are these your things? They're pretty big for you."

"What are they? How did they get here?"

"They're your husband's socks. He wore them here. Apparently he took them off and washed them and hung them up to dry. He must have done that quite some time ago, because they're just about dry. Feel them."

She backed away, her arms stiff at her sides.

"He must have been here in your apartment for quite a long time," I said. "In fact, I'll give you odds that Carl was here all day."

"But that's impossible. He was at the ranch. There was the gun."

"Yes, there was the gun. But there was no evidence that he carried it there or used it on his brother."

"I saw him there." Her face was grim and haggard, as if a generation of years had fallen on her in the past five minutes. "I went out in the greenhouse to see if Jerry was all right. Carl was with him. I actually saw him shoot Jerry."

"Where were you?"

"In the passageway between the house and the greenhouse."

"That much I believe."

"It's true. It's all true."

"Why didn't you tell us before?"

"I hated to. After all I am his wife."

"His widow," I said. "His merry little widow. You didn't tell us because it didn't happen. You went out in the greenhouse, no doubt, but Jerry was alone. And you were carrying the revolver yourself."

"I couldn't have," she said. "You know I couldn't have. Carl had the revolver. I saw him take it from Dr. Grantland's desk."

"Why didn't you tell me that this morning?"

"Didn't I? It must have slipped my mind. Anyway, he had it. He showed it to you in your office this morning. You told me that yourself."

"I know I did. Is that when you got your big idea?"

"What big idea? I don't understand."

"The big idea of shooting Jerry and using Carl's escape for a coverup. The same way you used him to cover you when you strangled his father."

Her breath was quick, and loud in the hidden passages of her head. "How did you know?"

"I didn't know for certain, until now."

"You tricked me." She spat the words.

"That's fair enough. You conned me nicely in my office this morning. When I told you Carl was carrying a gun, you put on a very good act. Surprised alarm. It took me in completely. The gun was in your bag at that very moment. I suppose you met him coming out of my office, and talked him into giving you the gun. Talked him into coming here to your apartment and lying low. He was the sucker of the century, but I was a close second. I even gave you transportation to the scene of the crime. And you went through the same routine that worked five years ago, and almost worked again."

Her mouth twisted in a ghastly mimicry of a coaxing smile. "You wouldn't tell anybody on me, would you? You don't know what I've been through, how awful it was to marry a man and have him turn out crazy. And then we had to go and live with his family. You don't know how I suffered from that family. I thought if the old man died, we'd be able to get some money and break free. How was I to know they'd lock Carl up for it? Or that Jerry would cut me off the way he did?"

"Is that why you killed Jerry?"

"He deserved it. Besides, I was afraid they'd open the case again when Carl escaped."

"Did Carl deserve what you did to him?"

"I didn't do it," she said. "It was Sheriff Ostervelt."

"You set him up for Ostervelt. You knew he was here. You knew that Ostervelt was trigger-happy, and stuck on you besides. You brought him up here and sat and let it happen."

"Carl was no great loss to anybody. None of them was."

"They were human beings," I said. "Somebody has to pay for them."

Her face brightened. "I'll pay. I don't have a great deal, but Carl had several insurance policies. I'll go halves with you. Nobody has to know all this. Do they?"

"You've got me wrong. Money won't pay for lives."

"Listen to me," she said rapidly. "Twenty thousand dollars, that's what I'll give you. It's more than half of the insurance money that's coming to me."

"You've got more than that coming to you, Mrs. Heller. A private room made of concrete, without any windows."

She took in my meaning slowly. It hit her like a delayed-action bullet, disorganizing her face. She turned and ran across the living room. When I came out of the kitchenette, she had the black case open, the revolver in her hand like a silver forefinger pointed at my heart. It gleamed in the long shadow that fell across the room from the single window.

I glanced at the window. Ostervelt was there, his elbow propped on the sill. His forty-five roared and spat. Mildred took three steps backwards and slammed against the wall like a body dropped from a height. The blood gushed from her breast. She tried to hold it in with her fists. She said, "Ostie?" in a tone of girlish surprise. Then the rising blood gagged her.

She covered her mouth politely with her hand, and fell down dead. Ostervelt clambered awkwardly through the window. His face was solemn. His eyes were little and hard and dry.

"You didn't have to kill her, Sheriff. You could have shot the revolver out of her hand."

"I know I could."

"I thought you were fond of the girl."

"I was. I heard what you said about the gas chamber. I also heard what she said. It was cleaner this way." He was thoughtful for a minute, listening to the clatter of footsteps on the fire escape. "Anyway, she shouldn't have let me shoot Carl. I don't like that. It wasn't fair to him or to me. It wasn't fair to the law." He looked down at the heavy gun. "What did the crazy fella think he was doing, coming out like that with the knife in his hand?"

"He was cutting bread," I said. "He was going to make himself a peanut butter sandwich."

Ostervelt sighed deeply. Policemen started to come into the room.