The Moving Target

25

I caught Taggert’s limber body as it fell, and laid it out on the grass rug. The dark eyes were open and glistening. They didn’t react to the touch of my fingertips. The round hole in the right temple was bloodless. A death mark like a little red birthmark, and Taggert was thirty dollars’ worth of organic chemicals shaped like a man.

Graves was standing over me. “He’s dead?”

“He didn’t fall down in a fit. You did a quick, neat job.”

“It was you or Taggert.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t like to quibble. But I wish you’d shot the gun out of his hand or smashed the elbow of his gun arm.”

“I couldn’t trust myself to do that kind of shooting any more. I got out of practice in the Army.” His mouth twisted wryly, and one of his eyebrows went up. “You’re a carping son of a bitch, Lew. I save your life, and you criticize the method.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“Enough. He kidnapped Sampson.”

“But he wasn’t alone. His friends aren’t going to like this. They’ll take it out on Sampson.”

“Sampson is alive, then?”

“According to Taggert he is.”

“Who are these others?”

“Eddie Lassiter was one. Betty Fraley is another. There may be more. You’ll be calling the police about this shooting?”

“Naturally.”

“Tell them to keep it quiet.”

“I’m not ashamed of it, Lew,” he told me sharply, “though you seem to think I should be. It had to be done, and you know the law on it as well as I do.”

“Look at it from Betty Fraley’s point of view. It won’t be the legal one. When she hears what you’ve done to her sidekick she’ll beeline for Sampson and make a hole in his head. Why should she bother keeping him alive? She’s got the money–”

“You’re right,” he said. “We’ve got to keep it out of the papers and off the radio.”

“And we’ve got to find her before she gets to Sampson. Watch yourself, too, Bert. She’s dangerous, and I have an idea that she was gone on Taggert.”

“Her, too?” he said, and after a pause: “I wonder how Miranda’s going to take it.”

“Pretty hard. She liked him, didn’t she?”

“She had a crush on him. She’s a romantic, you know, and awfully young. Taggert had the things she thought she wanted, youth and good looks and a hell of a combat record. This thing is going to shock her.”

“I don’t shock easily,” I said, “but it took me by surprise. I thought he was a pretty sound kid, a little self-centered but solid.”

“You don’t know the type like I do,” Graves said. “I’ve seen this same thing happen to other boys, not to such an extreme degree, of course, but the same thing. They went out of high school into the Army or the Air Corps and made good in a big way. They were officers and gentlemen with high pay, an even higher opinion of themselves, and all the success they needed to keep it blown up. War was their element, and when the war was finished, they were finished. They had to go back to boys’ jobs and take orders from middle-aged civilians. Handling pens and adding machines instead of flight sticks and machine guns. Some of them couldn’t take it and went bad. They thought the world was their oyster and couldn’t understand why it had been snatched away from them. They wanted to snatch it back. They wanted to be free and happy and successful without laying any foundation for freedom or happiness or success. And there’s the hangover.”

He looked down at the new corpse on the floor. Its eyes were still open, gazing up through the roof at the empty sky. I bent down and closed them.

“We’re becoming very elegiac,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“In a minute.” He laid his hand on my arm. “I want you to do me a favor, Lew.”

“What is it?”

He spoke with diffidence. “I’m afraid if I tell Miranda about this, she won’t see it the way it happened. You know what I mean – she might blame me.”

“You want me to tell her?”

“I know it’s not your baby, but I’d appreciate it.”

“I can do that,” I said. “I suppose you did save my life.”

Mrs. Kromberg was running a vacuum cleaner in the big front room. She glanced up when I entered, and switched it off. “Mr. Graves find you all right?”

“He found me.”

Her face sharpened. “Anything wrong?”

“It’s over now. Do you know where Miranda is?”

“She was in the morning room a few minutes ago.”

She led me through the house and left me at the door of a sun-filled room. Miranda was at a window that overlooked the patio. She had daffodils in her hands and was arranging them in a bowl. The yellow flowers clashed with her somber clothes. The only color on her body was a scarlet bow at the neck of her black wool suit. Her small sharp breasts pressed angrily against the cloth.

“Good morning,” she said. “I am expressing a wish, not making a statement.”

“I understand that.” The flesh around her eyes was swollen and faintly blue. “But I have some moderately good news for you.”

“Moderately?” She raised her round chin, but her mouth remained doleful.

“We have some reason to think that your father is alive.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know he’s alive?”

“I didn’t say I knew. I said I thought. I talked to one of his kidnappers.”

She came at me headlong, clutching at my arm. “What did he say?”

“That your father is alive.”

Her hand released my arm and took hold of her other hand. Her brown fingers interlocked and strained against each other. The daffodils fell to the floor with broken stems. “But you can’t trust what they say? They’d naturally claim he’s alive. What did they want? Did they phone you?”

“It was just one of them I talked to. Face to face.”

“You saw him and let him go?”

“I didn’t let him go. He’s dead. His name is Alan Taggert.”

“But that’s impossible. I–” Her lower lip went slack and showed her lower row of teeth.

“Why is it impossible?” I said.

“He couldn’t do it. He was decent. He was always honest with me – with us.”

“Until the big chance came. Then he wanted money more than anything else. He was ready to murder to get it.”

A question formed in her eyes. “You said Ralph was alive?”

“Taggert didn’t murder your father. He tried to murder me.”

“No,” she said. “He wasn’t like that. That woman twisted him. I knew she’d ruin him if he went with her.”

“Did Taggert tell you about her?”

“Of course he told me. He told me everything.”

“And you still loved him?”

“Did I say I loved him?” Her mouth was firm again and curved with pride.

“I understood you did.”

“That stupid gawk? I used him for a while. He served the purpose.”

“Stop it,” I said violently. “You can’t fool me, and you can’t fool yourself. You’ll tear yourself to pieces.”

Yet her hands were motionless in each other, her tall body was still. Still as a tree bent out of line and held there by a continuous wind. The wind pushed her against me. Her feet trampled the daffodils. Her mouth closed over mine. Her body held me close from breast to knee, too long and not long enough.

“Thank you for killing him, Archer.”

Her voice was anguished and soft, the kind of voice a wound would have if it could speak.

I took her by the shoulders and held her off. “You’re wrong. I didn’t kill him.”

“You said he was dead, that he tried to murder you.”

“Albert Graves shot him.”

“Albert?” Her giggle passed back and forth like a quick spark between laughter and hysteria. “Albert did that?”

“He’s a dead shot – we used to do a lot of target-shooting together,” I said. “If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

“Do you like being here with me now?”

“It makes me a little sick. You’re trying to swallow these things without going to pieces, and you can’t get them down.”

Her glance traveled down my body, and she grinned as much like a monkey as a pretty girl could. “Did it make you sick when I kissed you?”

“You could tell it didn’t. But it’s confusing to be in a room with five or six competing personalities.”

“Sick-making, you mean,” she said with her monkey grin.

“You’ll be the sick one if you don’t settle down. Find out what you feel about this business, and have a good cry, or you’ll end up schizo.”

“I always was a schizoid type,” she said. “But why should I cry, Herr Doktor?”

“To see if you can.”

“You don’t take me seriously, do you, Archer?”

“I can’t afford to put my hand in a cleft tree.”

“My God,” she said. “I’m sick-making, I’m schizo, I’m split wood. What do you really think of me?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’d have a better idea if you’ll tell me where you went last night.”

“Last night? Nowhere.”

“I understand you did a lot of driving in the red Packard convertible last night.”

“I did, but I didn’t go anywhere. I was just driving. I wanted to be by myself to make up my mind.”

“About what?”

“About what I’m going to do. Do you know what I’m going to do, Archer?”

“No. Do you?”

“I want to see Albert,” she said. “Where is he?”

“In the bathhouse, where it happened. Taggert’s there, too.”

“Take me to Albert.”

We found him on the screened veranda sitting over the dead man. The sheriff and the District Attorney were looking at Taggert’s face, which was still uncovered, and listening to Graves’s story. All three stood up for Miranda.

She had to step over Taggert in order to reach Albert Graves. She did this without a downward glance at the uncovered face. She took one of Graves’s hands between hers and raised it to her lips. It was his right hand she kissed, the one that had fired the gun.

“I’ll marry you now,” she said.

Whether Graves knew it or not, he’d had his reason for shooting Alan Taggert through the head.