The Intriguers

XIII.

In spite of the late morning start, Martha and I managed to cross half of Arizona and most of New Mexico before pulling into a large motel in the town of Tucumcari, near the Texas border, around nine o'clock that evening. Parking in front of the office, I started to get out, but remembered something and reached into my pocket.

"Here," I said. "You'd better put this on, for appearances' sake."

Martha glanced at the inexpensive wedding ring I'd picked up while she was shopping with Lorna in another department of the Phoenix store we'd patronized. She didn't move to take it.

"Don't be silly," I said impatiently. "For your own protection, you're going to have to share a room with me. Would you rather be my sister, or my daughter, or just a very good friend? I like you better as my child bride. Take it."

Reluctantly she took it and put it on. "How many 'brides' have you had in the line of business, Matt?" she asked tartly, and answered her own question. "Obviously, enough that you can pick the right ring size at a glance. But speaking of protection, who's going to protect me from you?"

I sighed. She was really a pretty corny young lady. I said, "You certainly do have a high opinion of your sex appeal! Frisking you is supposed to turn me on like a rampant stallion; and sharing a room with you is supposed to start me pawing the wall-to-wall carpet like a prize bull. Relax, Borden. You're a pretty husky girl, and I'm tired. I think you'll be able to fight me off if you try real hard."

There were three vending machines by the office doorway, displaying newspapers from near and far-well, as far as El Paso, Texas. I bought one of each and went inside to register us as man and wife. Then 1 drove around the landscaped motel maze until I located the second-floor room with the correct number, facing an asphalt parking area, a chain-link fence, and weedy vacant lot. It made for a longer walk with the luggage, but I parked over by the fence where there was plenty of room, so I wouldn't have to unhitch the trailer.

Locking up the station wagon, I wondered where Lorna was sleeping tonight, if she was sleeping at all. Well, she had her mission, and 1 had mine. I hoped she'd lay off the drinking and thinking. It wasn't her job to solve all the problems of humanity, just the one Mac had sent us..

"Are you all right?" Martha asked behind me.

"What?" I realized I'd been standing there longer than necessary. "Sorry. Just a little groggy from all the driving, I guess. That, and keeping track of all the cars behind us."

"Do you think we're being followed again?"

I started across the parking lot. "Actually, I've seen no indication of it," I said. "Of course, it doesn't really matter. They don't have to follow us, remember? They know where we're going. They can figure out the roads we'll most likely use. They can pick us up anywhere. After all, it was your phony daddy in Washington who ordered me to Fort Adams, Oklahoma, after Carl."

"You mean it's a trap. Then why-"

"Why are we driving into it? Because we need Carl. Mac didn't put him number six on the list for nothing. He's presumably supposed to organize the last five agents, as Lorna's handling the first five, leaving me free to join your dad in Florida according to instructions. Of course, I could do without Carl if I had to, as far as the primary mission is concerned, but there's also the fact that I've got to get him the hell out of that town. That's a little problem Mac apparently didn't know about when he briefed you, that I'm going to have to solve on my own, with Leonard and his agents breathing down my neck, not to mention the local polizei."

"I don't understand. What's going on in Fort Adams, anyway?"

I stopped at the foot of the stairs to rearrange my burdens so I could slip her one of the newspapers I'd bought.

"Front page, lower right," I said.

When I heard her gasp, I knew she'd found the right item. I headed up the stairs, aware of her coming slowly along behind me, trying to read as she climbed. I found the right door off the long balcony above, unlocked it, turned on the lights, went in, and dumped the luggage on the nearer of the two beds. Martha moved past me and sank down on the other bed, still reading.

Standing there, I regarded the seated girl thoughtfully. It was the best opportunity I'd had to view the effect since she'd made herself over with Lorna's help. The grubby, barefoot, girl pirate was gone, replaced by a civilized young lady. The costume Lorna had selected for her consisted of white sandals and a sleeveless light blue summer dress that hung straight from her shoulders to a waistline – if you want to call it that-located well down on her hips. There was a brief, pleated skirt below.

With its pale color and tricky pleats, I wouldn't have picked it as a sensible travel garment, but apparently, in clothes as in language, I was way behind the times. Lorna had explained to me that this type of double-knit cloth, whatever that might be, in addition to being wrinkleproof, was practically dirtproof. If it did get soiled, a quick rinse and a few shakes would have it clean and dry and crisp-looking once more. These new synthetic knits, Lorna bad said, were the answer to a female undercover operative's prayer. I noticed that she'd bought herself a tailored pant-suit of the same material..

"But this is horrible!" Martha gasped, looking up from the paper. "If it's your friend Carl who's doing it, lie must be mad!"

"So the local sheriff seems to think," I said. "Let me read it again. I just gave it a quick glance. Here, you can get some more background information from these other papers."

I handed them to her, and sat down on the big motel bed beside her. For a while there was no sound but the rustling of newsprint. I frowned at the article in the El Paso paper, trying to get at not only what the reporter had written, but what he'd known but hadn't felt free to write.

COP-STRANGLER STRIKES AGAIN

Fort Adams, OkIa.: Two bizarre murders, following on the heels of a violent student riot that claimed three lives, have brought renewed tension to this college town.

This morning, Patrolman Harold Grumman, 23, of the Fort Adams Police Force, was discovered strangled to death in his parked patrol car. The murder weapon, found at the scene, was a length of fine music wire equipped with two short handles apparently sawed from a broomstick.

Local authorities consider the weapon a significant clue, since an identical garotte figured in the violent death of Deputy Sheriff Marcus Wills, 47, whose body was found in the bushes beside the garage of his home in a Fort Adams suburb, just a few days ago. More force appeared to have been used in this earlier case, as the body had been almost decapitated by the thin wire.

In addition to the weapon used, the two crimes also have in common the fact that both officers were involved in the recent disturbance on the campus of the Fort Adams State College, when all local law-enforcement agencies were called upon to help deal with a riot in which three students died as a result of police gunfire. However, the county sheriff in charge of the murder investigation, Thomas M. Rullington, discounted this as a possible motive.

"Those college kids are kind of wild, sure, but they aren't cold-blooded assassins," Rullington told the press. "We are proceeding on the theory that this is the work of a homicidal maniac, probably hopped up on drugs…

There was more on an inside page, giving further details about the riot, about the two slain officers, and about Sheriff Rullington, who'd apparently been in command of the forces of law and order at the time of the campus confrontation. There was also a brief rundown on the three dead students: Charles Dubuque, Mark Hollingshead, and Emily Janssen. Only Dubuque, it appeared, had been taking active part in the disturbance when shot. The other two students had fallen some distance from the scene, victims of stray bullets.

A local jury had exonerated all other law-enforcement personnel involved, the sheriff specifically calling the death of Hollingshead self-defense in the line of duty-apparently tie youth had been found with a brick in his hand – and the other two deaths regrettable accidents. I got the impression that the jury's regrets had not been very deep or very sincere.

I lowered the paper and found Martha looking at me. "What are you going to do now?" she asked. "You can't possibly-"

"I told you what I was going to do," I said. "I'm going to get him out of there if I can. I've got to try. For one thing, Herbert Leonard is just yearning to have one of our men get caught strangling a few cops. You'll note that although he knew where Carl was heading and why, he apparently never bothered to warn the authorities around Fort Adams. There's no indication that they were expecting trouble or know who's causing it. Herbie wanted Carl to get in good and deep. Then, when I called and seemed to accept his mimic as the genuine Mac, he saw how he could improve on the picture by using me instead of killing me. He had me sent after Carl to make it look as if our whole organization was involved instead of just one grief-crazed agent. Obviously, he's gambling that we'll both be caught. The publicity will give him the excuse he wants to lower the boom on us officially, something he's apparently been afraid to do so far."

Martha frowned. "But those men outside Tucson tried to kill you after you'd got the orders to head for Oklahoma."

I reminded myself not to forget that she wasn't dumb. "I think we can blame that on a communications lag," I said. "It took us less than an hour to get from Nogales to Tucson. Even if the word was passed immediately to let us through, it just didn't have time to get out to the units already in the field with orders to stop us, dead. That little Ford had no telephone or two-way radio, remember?"

"So… so those two men just died for nothing."

"Would you rather it had been you?" She didn't speak. I said, "The other reason I'm going to get Carl out of there, as I've already said, is that I need him."

"But you can't make use of a crazy murderer-"

"Little girl," I said, regarding her grimly, "you have a serious identity problem, don't you? What are you and who are you for, anyway? I thought you'd be weeping for those college kids brutally shot down by the lousy pigs. I thought in your circles anything that happened to a cop was just great. So what's a little dead fuzz among friends, anyway?"

"But the horrible way your friend did it! You can't possibly sympathize-"

"What's sympathy got to do with anything?" I demanded. "Your dad didn't put me here to dish out sympathy to anybody, certainly not to a guy who's supposed to be sitting quietly in New Orleans awaiting instructions, instead of stalking around Oklahoma with a lousy wire noose. Anyway, a man in our line of work isn't supposed to indulge in personal vengeance. That's kind of like the character responsible for a nuclear weapon pushing the red button because his wife burned the toast that morning." I shook my head. "The fact is, I need the guy. I've got work for him to do. Sympathy is not the problem. Understanding is. We know why he's doing this, but we've got to figure out what he's doing-exactly what he's doing."

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Not if you know Mr. Anders Janssen," I said. "He has certain berserker tendencies to go with his Scandinavian name and blood. In case you're not up on your Viking history: the Berserkers were the forerunners of the Japanese kamikazes. And any time things get tough, Carl's instinct is to take a big swig of mead-well, beer will serve-and grab his big two-handed sword and charge in there to get as many of the dirty bastards as he can before they chop him down. When we were working together, I had to sit on him a couple of times to keep him from turning a simple job into a goddamned suicide mission."

"I don't see what you're driving at," Martha protested. "What has this to do with our… with your problem?"

I said, "Well, if he's in his kamikaze mood right now, we're in real trouble. In that case, he's ready to die, and his only plan is to keep on killing cops until they get him. But in that case, I don't think he'd be using a silly weapon like a garotte. He'd be sniping at them from the rooftops with a long-range rifle and laying for them in the alleys with a sawed-off shotgun. He'd be working towards the big, final, glorious shoot-out when, surrounded at last, he'd teach those trigger-happy uniformed clowns the difference between knocking off a helpless young girl and an experienced gent who knows how to handle firearms. But I don't feel that's the big scene that's shaping up here." I hesitated and went on: "I think he's got something altogether different in mind. Three dead kids; three dead cops-"

"But there have been only two so far."

"So far," I said. "So there's one left to go, if he isn't just waging a general war against uniforms and badges. And if I'm right, there's not much doubt who he's saving for the big third spot. The question is how we can reach him without pulling Leonard's gang down on top of him, and us… Get up."

Martha looked startled. "What for?"

"Get up. Walk around the room. Let me look at you in that rig." I watched her as, rather self-consciously, she rose and walked to the door and back to me. "Did you think of getting stockings along with all the rest of the flossy paraphernalia?"

"We bought some pantyhose. Lorna thought I might want to look super-civilized some time."

"Put them on."

"Why… Oh, all right, but turn your back."

Covering her long legs with nylon didn't accomplish a great deal. She still looked like a tanned tomboy-a tanned tomboy on her best behavior. Anybody who'd seen her in Guaymas, as some of Leonard's men undoubtedly had, would recognize her instantly, despite the ladylike dress and hose.

"What's the matter, Matt?" she asked.

I said, "You look too damned much like Martha Borden, that's what's the matter."

"Maybe this is what you're after," she said, turning to the brand-new suitcase on the bed. She got something out, hiding it with her body, and bent far over to put it on. Then she faced me abruptly, straightening up and tossing back the long hair of a shining wig that covered her own cropped hairdo completely. After a moment to let me appreciate the view, she walked to the mirror and touched some vagrant gold strands into place. The change was almost shocking. Instead of a boyish brunette, I suddenly had for a roommate a glamorous and feminine-looking blonde.

"Lorna thought I might need a real disguise," she said calmly.

"That Lorna," I said. "I don't know what we'd do without her."

"I feel just like Mata Hari," Martha said, regarding her blonde and beautiful image in the mirror. "And what I can't help remembering is that girl was shot."