The Galloping Corpses

Chapter VIII Come And Get It!

Thoughts streaked through Keene’s mind faster than memories through a drowning man’s. Probably he only stood there for ten seconds waiting for Sutterfield to pull the trigger, but it was long enough for the turf detective to review every mistake he’d made.

One big mistake was how he had failed to identify that evil odor so closely tied in with his recollections of the remount station at New Guinea — that was a toughie. It was horse medication — for body sores. Who but a vet would have carried a stink like that to the Lake Avenue cottage?

Sutterfield must have gone out there to make sure the waitress hadn’t left any memoranda that might incriminate him. He’d been in the bedroom when Keene got there, and had slipped out while the Bureau man was looking at Clay’s photograph.

The vet strolled toward Keene. “Came up to Jane’s place to make advances to her, huh, Madden? Unwelcome advances, huh? Yeh, I know it’s corny, but after they find out what happened to another girl in your Buick last night — and I’ll see to it they do — it’ll sound pretty plausible.”

There was a way, Keene Madden reminded himself, to take a gun away from a man who walked smack up to you and stuck the muzzle in your middle. He’d seen it in movies, knew how it was supposed to be done, theoretically. The difference between theory and practice, now would be a couple of ounces of lead and some tons of dirt.

Yet there wasn’t going to be any other way out. One look at Sutterfield’s eyes verified that. The vet wasn’t insane or hyped up with drugs. He was stone cold sober and set on shooting a tunnel through Keene simply as a precautionary measure.

You were supposed to be able to tell from a killer’s eyes just when he was about to blast. If the vet’s eyes said anything, they said the time had come. Sutterfield was still a couple of steps away. Too far for the hundred-to-one chance Keene would have to take.

“It may make you feel better to gun me,” Keene said. “But it won’t help you.”

Sutterfield smiled dryly. “It's not goin’ to do you a whole lot of good.”

“No. And what’s in my pocket isn’t going to set you off into gales of laughter.” Keene retreated a half step.

The vet did what Keene expected. He moved still closer. “What you got up your sleeve, owl?”

“Carbon of a statement to the authorities. Original’s on its way to the police right now.”

“K. Madden, Esquire. His last will and testament.” The vet jeered. “Must be a fascinating document.”

“It makes right interesting reacting.” Out of the comer of his eye Keene caught the girl’s casual edging over toward the fireplace. Maybe if he couldn’t dent Sutterfield’s cast iron confidence, he could work on her. “It tells why a couple of thugs tried to put the blocks to me within a couple hours after I hit this town.”

The vet came another step nearer. “Why, owl?”

Keene forced himself to keep from looking at the automatic. If Sutterfield had any idea he was going to make a play, it would really be fatal.

“Only reason that made sense was, somebody was seared I’d recognize him — and by doing that, get wise to the whole setup. Only person who wasn’t vouched for by two or three other people was Towbee. Once I put the pinch on him, taped him in a chair in my office, used a pair of shears and a razor.”

“This here owl—” Sutterfield spoke to Jane, but didn’t turn his head to look at her — “his hoot is beginnin’ to get on my nerves. Bring me a pillah, honey.”

“Don’t, please, Bill!” She was half-stooping to reach for the poker. “Not here! Not now!”

“All right,” the vet didn’t alter his tone in any way, “if you don't bring me a pillah, it’ll be louder.”

She got her fingers on the poker. Keene spoke rapidly to cover any scraping sound.

“Towbee turned out to be Carlos Santos — a West Coast no-good who got six months in Mexico for organizing jockey connivance at Hippodrome del Tia Juana. Later on, according to the flyer in my file, he was convicted of using ephedrine as a seasoning for bran mash, down at the Fair Grounds. He worked with a crooked veterinarian there. Someone named—”

He jabbed with the heel of his hand at the muzzle of the automatic. It was only eight inches away. He’d done what he could, not to give himself away by any telltale flicker of the eyes.

If he could sock that muzzle hard enough, fast enough, jam it back in Sutterfield’s fist, the backward movement of the gun would loosen the vet’s trigger finger for an eye-wink, delay the pull just long enough for the barrel to be deflected downward.

If he couldn’t—

Keene never knew the answer. Jane swung the poker at the precise instant when he jabbed at the automatic’s muzzle.

The gun flared. The slug tore a hole as big as a quarter in the hundred dollar suede jacket. The poker caught Sutterfield where he parted his hair. He folded like a camp stool.

Keene stuck the final inch of adhesive around Sutterfield’s wrists, spoke softly to the unconscious man.

“It had to be you, brother. It couldn’t be anyone else. Only Claybrook horses were acting up. That eliminated any jockey hocus-pocus except maybe on Skit’s part, and he wouldn’t have been dumb enough to keep pulling mounts. Anyhow, he couldn’t be sure, ahead of time, that trainer Frank Wayne wouldn’t yank him and put a new boy up on his entry.”

“Bill claimed it was fool-proof,” Jane said, dully. “He was the only person around the track who could get away with keeping drugs on him all the time.”

“That’s right. Nobody but a licensed veterinarian.” Keene gave the man’s pockets a look-see. “Important thing was, nobody else would be able to get at those saliva and urine tests, to learn what he’d been giving Claybrook horses on those morning inspection trips through the barns. He could substitute samples from other horses, and nobody’d be any wiser. He’d been working that deal down in Florida when they caught him before.”

“That’s where I met him. In Miami.” Jane wandered around the living room restlessly. “I got burned up about Clay's being afraid to call his soul his own, on his mother’s account.”

“Must have been kind of rough, not being able to tell people you were man and wife.”

The girl nodded. “That’s how Bill came to get the idea he could — cozy up to me. Just to goad Clay into doing something about cutting loose from those darned apron-strings, I began to act as if we weren’t married.”

“Do tell!” Keene murmured. “Then Sutterfield thought he had a hold over you, hah?”

“Yes. He followed us north. Kept coming to see me, those nights when Clay had to be at ‘dear Mama’s’.” She flung her hair back from her forehead in a gesture of utter weariness. “I tried to break it up, more than once. Honestly, I did. But Bill had it all schemed out.”

Keene sighed, stood up, straddled the veterinary's limp figure. “You wouldn’t tell all that to the police lieutenant, when he gets here?”

She put her thumbs to her temples as if her head was about to burst. “I won’t have to, now, will I? As long as you don’t say anything.”

“I will, though. I’ll have to There’s a lot of gore to be accounted for. A lot of cash, too.” He felt of the packet he’d taken from Santos-Towbee, wondered how thirsty the man locked up in his office would be.

Jane said, “I can't do anything about the money. I didn’t get any of it. I didn’t want any of it.”

“That's the first thing you’ve said that I completely believe.”

She pretended not to understand.

He put it plainly. “Girl from a nice, respectable middle-class family falls for a boy whose parents have laundry blueing in their aristocratic veins. Boy’s mother balks at taking commoner into royal family. Girl, naturally, gets sore as the devil.”

She came over behind him, put one arm around his shoulders. “I believe you actually do know everything!”

“Have to be a guesser in my line of work. I’d guess she was mad enough to make mamma-in-law pay through the nose, after she did finally rope her blue-blooded mate into a ceremony. Might even have had some wacky notion she could slice enough off the Larmin fortune to cut her husband’s mother down to size. Or at least bring her to terms.”

She leaned her cheek against the back of Keene’s coat. Her hair tickled his neck. “I didn’t figure it that far. I simply wanted to hurt her. Instead, I hurt Clay.”

“Hell!” He turned, so he had to step away from her. “You hurt everyone you touch. You’d have watched Sutterfield plug me a few minutes ago, without a squawk — only you were afraid I really sent in that report.”

Tears streamed down her face. She didn’t weep audibly.

“I had sent it in, too,” he said. “You can read the copy if you want to. It puts the whole thing in your lap, Mrs. Larmin. Right' from the beginning. Clay knew it. The Gretsch girl knew it. He wouldn’t tell on you. He cared too much. But the girl who’d been in love with Clay before you got to him, she couldn't see him suffer without trying to correct it. What she wanted to tell me, there at the Stirrup and Saddle, was how you’d engineered the entire business.”

She began to blubber.

“Don’t bother with it,” he said harshly. “Save all that salt water for the jury. Maybe you can soften them up, make them think you were the injured party.” He touched his own scalp. “Me, I don’t feel that way. I was an injured party once, myself.”

There was a tap at the hall door. He raised his voice.

“Come and get it, Lieutenant.”