The Moving Target

17

Before we crossed the valley the red sun had plunged behind the clouds over the coastal range. The shadowed fields were empty. We passed a dozen truckloads of field-workers returning to their bunkhouses on the ranches. Crammed like cattle in the rattling vans of the trucks, they stood in patient silence, men, women, and children waiting for food and sleep and the next day’s sunrise. I drove carefully, feeling a little depressed, stalled in the twilight period when day has run down and night hasn’t picked up speed.

The clouds flowed in the pass like a torrent of milk and preceded us down the other side of the mountain, blending with the gradual night and the deepening cold. Once or twice on a curve Miranda leaned against me, trembling. I didn’t ask her whether she was cold or afraid. I didn’t want to force her to make a choice.

The clouds had rolled down the mountain all the way to U.S. 101. From far up the pass road I could see the headlights on the highway blurred enormous by the fog. While I was waiting at the stop sign for a break in the highway traffic, a pair of bright lights came up fast from the direction of Santa Teresa. They suddenly swung toward us like wild eyes. The speeding car was going to try to turn into the pass road. Its brakes screamed, its rubber skittered and snarled. It wasn’t going to get past me.

“Head down,” I said to Miranda, and tightened my grip on the wheel.

The other driver straightened out, roared into second gear at forty-five or fifty, spun in front of my bumper, and passed on my right in the seven-foot space between me and the stop sign. I caught a flashing glimpse of the driver’s face, a thin, pale face jaundiced by my fog lights, under a peaked leather cap. His car was a dark limousine.

I backed and turned and started after it. The black-top was slick from the wet, and I was slow in getting under way. The red rear light hightailing up the road was swallowed by the fog. It was no use anyway. He could turn off on any one of the county roads that paralleled the highway. And perhaps the best thing I could do for Sampson was to let the limousine go. I stopped so fast that Miranda had to brace both hands on the dashboard. My reflexes were getting violent.

“What on earth’s the matter? He didn’t actually crash us, you know.”

“I wish he had.”

“He’s reckless, but he drives very well.”

“Yeah. He’s a moving target I’d like to hit some time.”

She looked at me curiously. Shadowed from below by the dashlights, her face was dark, with huge bright eyes. “You’re looking grim, Archer. Have I made you angry again?”

“Not you,” I said. “It’s waiting for a break in this case. I prefer direct action.”

“I see.” She sounded disappointed. “Please take me home now. I’m cold and hungry.”

I turned in the shallow ditch and drove back across the highway to Cabrillo Canyon. Beyond the plow of yellow light that the fog lamps pushed ahead of us the trees and hedges hung in the thick air, ash-gray emanations abandoned by the sun. The landscape matched the clouded pattern in my skull. My thoughts were blind and slow, groping for a lead to the place where Ralph Sampson was hidden.

The lead was waiting in the mailbox at the entrance to Sampson’s drive, and it took no cunning to find it. Miranda noticed it first. “Stop the car.”

When she opened the door, I saw the white envelope stuck in the slot of the mailbox. “Wait. Let me handle it.”

My tone held her still with one foot on the ground, one hand reaching for the envelope. I took it by one corner and wrapped it in a clean handkerchief. “There may be fingerprints.”

“How do you know it’s from Father?”

“I don’t. You drive up to the house.”

I unwrapped the envelope in the kitchen. The fluorescent tube in the ceiling cast a white morgue glow on the white enameled table. There was no name or address on the envelope. I slit one end and drew out the folded sheet it contained with my fingernails.

My heart dropped when I saw the printed letters pasted to the sheet of paper. The letters had been cut out individually and arranged in words, in the classic tradition of kidnapping. These were the words:

“You were right,” Miranda said, in a half whisper.

I wanted to say something consoling. All I could think of was – too bad for Sampson.

“Go and see if Graves is around,” I said. She went immediately.

I leaned over the sheet of paper without touching it, and examined the cut-out letters. They varied widely in size and type, and were printed on smooth paper, probably cut from the advertising pages of a big-circulation magazine. The spelling pointed at semi-literacy, but you couldn’t always tell. Some pretty welleducated people were poor spellers. And it might have been faked.

I had memorized the letter when Graves came into the kitchen with Taggert and Miranda trailing behind. He came toward me on heavy piston-quick legs, with an iron gleam in his eyes.

I pointed to the table. “That was in the mailbox–”

“Miranda told me.”

“It may have been dropped a few minutes ago by a car that passed me on the highway.”

Graves leaned over the letter and read it aloud to himself. Taggert stayed by Miranda in the doorway, uncertain whether he was wanted but quite at ease. Though physically they could have been sibs, Miranda was his temperamental opposite. Ugly blue patches had blossomed under her eyes. Her wide lips drooped sullenly over her fine, prominent teeth. She leaned against the doorjamb in a jagged, disconsolate pose.

Graves raised his head. “This is it. I’ll get the deputy.”

“Here now?”

“Yes. In the study with the money. And I’ll call the sheriff.”

“Has he got a fingerprint man?”

“The D. A.’s is better.”

“Call him too. They’re probably too smart to leave fresh prints, but there may be latent ones. It’s hard to do cut-outs with gloves on.”

“Right. Now what was that about a car that passed you?”

“Keep it to yourself for now. I’ll handle that end.”

“I guess you know what you’re doing.”

“I know what I’m not doing. I’m not getting Sampson bumped if I can help it.”

“That’s what’s worrying me,” he said, and went through the door so fast that Taggert had to jump back out of his way.

I glanced at Miranda. She looked ready to drop. “Make her eat something, Taggert.”

“If I can.”

He crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator. Her eyes followed him. I hated her for an instant. She was like a dog, a bitch in the rutting season.

“I couldn’t possibly eat,” she said. “Do you think he’s alive?”

“Yes. But I thought you barely liked him.”

“This letter makes it so real. It wasn’t real before.”

“It’s too damned real! Now go away. Go and lie down.” She wandered out of the room.

The deputy sheriff came in. He was a heavy, dark man in his thirties, wearing brown store clothes that didn’t quite fit his shoulders, a lopsided look of surprise that didn’t quite fit his face. His right hand rested on the gun in his hip holster as if to remind him that he had authority.

He said with tentative belligerence: “What goes on out here?”

“Nothing much. Kidnapping and extortion.”

“What’s this?” He reached for the letter on the table. I had to take hold of his wrist to keep him from touching it.

His black eyes glared dully into my face. “Who do you think you are?”

“The name is Archer. Settle down, officer. You have an evidence case?”

“Yeah, in the car.”

“Get it, eh? We’ll hold this for the fingerprint men.”

He went out and came back with a black metal box. I dropped the letter into it, and he locked it. It seemed to give him great satisfaction.

“Take good care of it,” I said, as he left the room with the box under his arm. “Don’t let it out of your hands.”

Taggert was standing by the open refrigerator with a half-eaten turkey drumstick in his fingers. “What do we do now?” he asked me, between bites.

“You stick around. You may see a little excitement. Got your gun?”

“Sure thing!” He patted the pocket of his jacket. “How do you think it was done? You think they grabbed Sampson when he left the airport in Burbank?”

“I wouldn’t know. Where’s a phone?”

“There’s one in the butler’s pantry. Right through here.” He opened a door at the end of the kitchen and closed it after me.

It was a small room lined with cupboards, with a single window over the copper sink, a wall telephone by the door. I asked long distance for Los Angeles. Peter Colton would be off duty, but he might have left a message.

The operator gave me his office, and Colton answered the phone himself.

“Lew speaking. It’s a snatch. We got the ransom note a few minutes ago. The letter from Sampson was a gimmick to loosen things up. You better talk to the D. A. It probably happened in your territory when Sampson left the Burbank airport day before yesterday.”

“They’re taking things slow for kidnappers.”

“They can afford to. They’ve got the operation blueprinted. Did you get anything on the black limousine?”

“Too much. There were twelve of them rented that day, but most of them look legit. All but two came back to the agencies the same day. The other two were taken for a week, paid in advance.”

“Descriptions?”

“Number one – a Mrs. Ruth Dickson, blond dame, around forty, living at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We checked there, and she’s registered but she wasn’t in. Number two was a guy on his way to San Francisco. He hasn’t turned in the car at that end; but it’s only two days, and he has it for a week. Name of Lawrence Becker, a little thin guy not too well dressed–”

“That may be our man. Did you get the number?”

“Wait a minute, I have it here – 62 S 895. It’s a 1940 Lincoln.”

“Agency?”

“The Deluxe in Pasadena. I’ll go out there myself.”

“Get the best description you can, and spread the word.”

“Natch! But why the sudden enthusiasm, Lew?”

“I saw a man on the highway here who could fit your description. He passed me in a long black car about the time the ransom note was dropped. And the same Joe or his brother tried to, run me down with a blue truck in Pacific Palisades this morning. He wears a peaked leather cap.”

“Why didn’t you put the arm on him?”

“The same reason you’re not going to. We don’t know where Sampson is, and if we throw our weight around, we’ll never find out. Put out the word for tailing purposes only.”

“You telling me my business?”

“Apparently.”

“All right. Any more helpful hints?”

“Plant a man in the Wild Piano when it opens. Just in case–”

“I’ve already assigned him. Is that all?”

“Have your office contact the Santa Teresa D. A. I’m turning the ransom note over to them for fingerprinting. Good night and thanks.”

“Uh-huh.”

He hung up, and the operator broke the connection. I kept the receiver to my ear, listening to the dead line. In the middle of the conversation there had been a click and crackle on the wire. It could have been a momentary break in the connection, or it could have been a receiver being lifted on another extension.

A full minute passed before I heard the faint metallic rustle of a receiver’s being replaced somewhere in the house.