The Moving Target

31

Graves drove very slowly, as if the sight of the wreck had had an effect on him. It took us nearly an hour to get back to Santa Teresa. I spent it thinking – about Albert Graves and then about Miranda. My thoughts were poor company.

He looked at me curiously as we entered the city. “I wouldn’t give up hope, Lew. The police have a good chance to catch him.”

“Who do you mean?”

“The murderer, of course. The other man.”

“I’m not sure there was another man.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. I could see the knuckles stand out. “But somebody killed Sampson.”

“Yes,” I said. “Somebody did.”

I watched his eyes as they turned slowly to meet mine. He looked at me coldly for a long moment.

“Watch your driving, Graves. Watch everything.”

He turned his face to the road again, but not before I had caught its look of shame.

Where the highway crossed the main street of Santa Teresa, he stopped for a red light. “Where do we go from here?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“It doesn’t matter to me.”

“We’ll go to the Sampson place,” I said. “I want to talk to Mrs. Sampson.”

“Do you have to do it now?”

“I’m working for her. I owe her a report.”

The light changed. Nothing more was said until we turned up the drive to the Sampson house. Its dark mass was pierced by a few lights.

“I don’t want to see Miranda if it can be helped,” he said. “We were married this afternoon.”

“Didn’t you jump the gun a little?”

“What do you mean by that? I’ve been carrying the license for months.”

“You might have waited until her father was home. Or decently laid away.”

“She wanted it done today,” he said. “We were married in the courthouse.”

“You’ll probably be spending your wedding night there. The jail’s in the same building, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. When he stopped the car by the garages, I leaned forward to look into his face. He had swallowed the shame. Nothing was left but a gambler’s resignation.

“It’s an ironic thing,” he said. “This is our wedding night, the night that I’ve been waiting for for years. And now I don’t want to see her.”

“Do you expect me to leave you out here by yourself?”

“Why not?”

“I can’t trust you. You were the one man I thought I could trust–” I couldn’t find the words to end the sentence.

“You can trust me, Lew.”

“Well make it Mr. Archer from now on.”

“Mr. Archer, then. I’ve got a gun in my pocket. But I’m not going to use it. I’ve had enough of violence. Do you understand that? I’m sick of it.”

“You should be sick,” I said, “with two murders on your stomach. You’ve had your fill of violence for a while.”

“Why did you say two murders, Lew?”

“Mr. Archer,” I said.

“You don’t have to take a high moral tone. I didn’t plan it this way.”

“Not many do. You shot Taggert on the spur of the moment, and you’ve improvised ever since. Toward the end you’ve been getting pretty careless. You might have known I’d find out you didn’t call the sheriff tonight.”

“You can’t prove you told me to.”

“I don’t have to. But it was enough to let me know what you were up to. You wanted to be alone with Sampson in that shack for a little while. You had to finish the job that Taggert’s partners had failed to do for you.”

“Do you seriously think I had anything to do with the kidnapping?”

“I know damn well you didn’t. But the kidnapping has something to do with you. It made a murderer out of you by giving you a reason to kill Taggert.”

“I shot Taggert in good faith,” he said. “I admit I wasn’t sorry to have him out of the way. Miranda liked him too well. But the reason I shot him was to save you.”

“I don’t believe you.” I sat there in cold anger. The stars clung like snow crystals in the black sky, pouring cold down on my head.

“I didn’t plan it,” he said. “I had no time to plan it. Taggert was going to shoot you, and I shot him instead. It was as simple as that.”

“Killing is never simple, not when it’s done by a man with your brains. You’re a dead shot, Graves. You didn’t have to kill him.”

He answered me harshly. “Taggert deserved to die. He got what was coming to him.”

“But not at the right time. I’ve been wondering how much you heard of what he said to me. You must have heard enough to know he was one of the kidnappers. Probably enough to be pretty sure that if Taggert died, his partners would kill Sampson.”

“I heard very little. I saw he was going to shoot you, and I shot him instead.” The iron return to his voice. “Evidently I made a mistake.”

“You made several mistakes. The first was killing Taggert – that’s what started it all, isn’t it? It wasn’t really Taggert you wanted dead. It was Sampson himself. You never wanted Sampson to come home alive, and you thought that by killing Taggert you’d arranged that. But Taggert had only one surviving partner, and she was hiding out. She didn’t even know Taggert was dead until I told her, and she had no chance to kill Sampson, though she probably would have if she’d had the chance. So you had to murder Sampson for yourself.”

Shame, and what looked like uncertainty, pulled at his face again. He shook them off. “I’m a realist. Archer. So are you. Sampson’s no loss to anybody.”

His voice had changed, become suddenly shallow and flat. The whole man was shifting and fencing, trying out attitudes, looking for one that would sustain him.

“You’re taking murder more lightly than you used to,” I said. “You’ve sent men to the gas chamber for murder. Has it occurred to you that that’s where you’re probably headed?”

He managed to smile. The smile made deep and ugly lines around his mouth and between his eyes. “You have no proof against me. Not a scrap.”

“I have moral certainty and your own implicit confession–”

“But no record of it. You haven’t even enough to bring me to trial.”

“It isn’t my job to do that. You know where you stand, better than I do. I don’t know why you had to murder Sampson.”

He was silent for some time. When he spoke, his voice had changed again. It was candid and somehow young, the voice of the man I had known in bull sessions years ago. “It’s strange that you should say that I had to, Lew. That was how I felt. I had to do it. I hadn’t made up my mind until I found Sampson there by himself in the dressing-room. I didn’t even speak to him. I saw what could be done, and once I’d seen it, I had to do it whether I liked it or not.”

“I think you liked it.”

“Yes,” he said. “I liked killing him. Now I can’t bear to think of it.”

“Aren’t you being a little easy on yourself? I’m no analyst, but I know you had other motives. More obvious and not so interesting. You got married this afternoon to a girl who was potentially very rich. If her father was dead she was actually very rich. Don’t tell me you’re not aware that you and your bride have been worth five million dollars for the last couple of hours.”

“I know it well enough,” he said. “But it’s not five million. Mrs. Sampson gets half.”

“I forgot about her. Why didn’t you kill her too?”

“You’re bearing down pretty hard.”

“You bore down harder on Sampson, for a paltry million and a quarter. Half of one half of his money. Weren’t you being a piker, Graves? Or were you planning to murder Mrs. Sampson and Miranda later on?”

“You know that isn’t true,” he said tonelessly. “What do you think I am?”

“I haven’t made up my mind. You’re a man who married a girl and killed her father the same day to convert her into an heiress. What was the matter, Graves? Didn’t you want her without a million-dollar dowry? I thought you were in love with her.”

“Lay off.” His voice was tormented. “Leave Miranda out of it.”

“I can’t. If it wasn’t for Miranda, we might have something more to talk about.”

“No,” he said. “There’s nothing more to talk about.”

I left him sitting in the car, smiling his stony gambler’s smile. My back was to him as I crossed the gravel drive to the house, and he had a gun in his pocket, but I didn’t look back. I believed him when he said he was sick of violence.

The lights were on in the kitchen, but nobody answered my knock. I went through the house to the elevator. Mrs. Kromberg was in the upstairs hall when I stepped out.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to see Mrs. Sampson.”

“You can’t. She’s been awful nervous today. She took three grains of nembutal about an hour ago.”

“This is important.”

“How important?”

“The thing she’s been waiting to hear.”

Comprehension flickered in her eyes, but she was too good a servant to question me. “I’ll see if she’s asleep.” She went to the closed door of Mrs. Sampson’s room and opened it quietly.

A frightened whisper came from inside the room. “Who’s that?”

“Kromberg. Mr. Archer says he has to see you. He says it’s very important.”

“Very well,” the whisper said. A light switched on. Mrs. Kromberg stood back to let me enter.

Mrs. Sampson leaned on her elbows, blinking in the light. Her brown face was drugged and sodden with sleep or the hope of sleep. The round dark tips of her breasts stared through the silk pajamas like dull eyes.

I shut the door behind me. “Your husband is dead.”

“Dead,” she repeated after me.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Should I be surprised? You don’t know the dreams I’ve been having. It’s terrible when you can’t quiet your mind, when you’re far enough gone to see the faces but you can’t quite go to sleep. The faces have been so vivid tonight. I saw his face all bloated by the sea, threatening to devour me.”

“Did you hear what I said, Mrs. Sampson? Your husband is dead. He was murdered two hours ago.”

“I heard you. I knew I was going to outlive him.”

“Is that all it means to you?”

“What more should it mean?” Her voice was blurred and empty of feeling, a wandering sibilance adrift in the deep channel between sleep and waking. “I was widowed before, and I felt it then. When Bob was killed I cried for days. I’m not going to grieve for his father. I wanted him to die.”

“You have your wish, then.”

“Not all of my wish. He died too soon, or not soon enough. Everybody died too soon. If Miranda had married the other one, Ralph would have changed his will and I’d have it all for myself.” She looked up at me slyly. “I know what you must be thinking, Archer. That I’m an evil woman. But I’m not evil really. I have so little, don’t you see? I have to look after the little that I have.”

“Half of five million dollars,” I said.

“It’s not the money. It’s the power it gives you. I needed it so badly. Now Miranda will go away and leave me all alone. Come and sit beside me for a minute. I have such terrible fears before I go to sleep. Do you think I’ll have to see his face every night before I go to sleep?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Sampson.” I felt pity for her, but the other feelings were stronger. I went to the door and shut it on her.

Mrs. Kromberg was still in the hall. “I heard you say that Mr. Sampson is dead.”

“He is. Mrs. Sampson is too far gone to talk. Do you know where Miranda is?”

“Some place downstairs, I think.”

I found her in the living-room, hugging her legs on a hassock beside the fireplace. The lights were out, and through the great central window I could see the dark sea and the silverpoint horizon.

She looked up when I entered the room, but she didn’t rise to greet me. “Is that you, Archer?”

“Yes. I have some things to tell you.”

“Have you found him?” A glowing log in the fireplace lit up her head and neck with a fitful rosiness. Her eyes were a wide and steady black.

“Yes. He’s dead.”

“I knew that he’d be dead. He’s been dead from the beginning, hasn’t he?”

“I wish I could tell you that he had.”

“What do you mean?”

I put off explaining what I meant. “I recovered the money.”

“The money?”

“This.” I tossed the bag at her feet. “The hundred thousand.”

“I don’t care about it. Where did you find him?”

“Listen to me, Miranda. You’re on your own.”

“Not entirely,” she said. “I married Albert this afternoon.”

“I know. He told me. But you’ve got to get out of this house and look after yourself. The first thing you’ve got to do is put that money away. I went to a lot of trouble to get it back, and you may be needing part of it.”

“I’m sorry. Where shall I put it?”

“The safe in the study, until you can get to a bank.”

“All right.” She rose with a sudden decisiveness and led the way into the study. Her arms were stiff and her shoulders high, as if they were resisting a downward pressure.

While she was opening the safe I heard a car go down the drive. She turned to me with an awkward movement more appealing than grace. “Who was that?”

“Albert Graves. He drove me out here.”

“Why on earth didn’t he come in?”

I gathered the remnants of my courage together, and told her: “He killed your father tonight.”

Her mouth moved breathlessly and then forced out words. “You’re joking, aren’t you? He couldn’t have.”

“He did.” I took refuge in facts. “I found out this afternoon where your father was being held. I phoned Graves from Los Angeles and told him to get there as soon as he could, with the sheriff. Graves got there ahead of me, without the sheriff. When I arrived, there was no sign of him. He’d parked his car somewhere out of sight and was still inside the building with your father. When I went inside, he hit me from behind and knocked me out. When I came to, he pretended he’d just arrived. Your father was dead. His body was still warm.”

“I can’t believe Albert did it.”

“You do believe it, though.”

“Have you proof?”

“It will have to be technical proof. I had no time to look for it. It’s up to the police to find the proof.”

She sat down limply in a leather armchair. “So many people have died. Father, and Alan–”

“Graves killed them both.”

“But he killed Alan to save you. You told me–”

“It was a complex killing,” I said, “a justifiable homicide and something more. He didn’t have to kill Taggert. He’s a good shot. He could have wounded him. But he wanted Taggert dead. He had his reasons.”

“What possible reasons?”

“I think you know of one.”

She raised her face in the light. It seemed to me that she had made a choice between a number of different things and settled on boldness. “Yes, I do. I was in love with Alan.”

“But you were planning to marry Graves.”

“I hadn’t made up my mind until last night. I was going to marry someone, and he seemed to be the one. ‘It is better to marry than to burn.’ ”

“He gambled on you, and won. But the other thing he had gambled on didn’t happen. Taggert’s partner failed to kill your father. So Graves strangled your father himself.”

She spread one hand over her eyes and forehead. The blue veins in her temples were young and delicate. “It’s incredibly ugly,” she said. “I can’t understand how he did it.”

“He did it for money.”

“But he’s never cared for money. It’s one of the things I admired in him.” She removed her hand from her face, and I saw that she was smiling bitterly. “I haven’t been wise in my admirations.”

“There may have been a time when Graves didn’t care about money. There may be places where he could have stayed that way. Santa Teresa isn’t one of them. Money is lifeblood in this town. If you don’t have it, you’re only half alive. It must have galled him to work for millionaires and handle their money and have nothing of his own. Suddenly he saw his chance to be a millionaire himself. He realized that he wanted money more than anything else on earth.”

“Do you know what I wish at this moment?” she said. “I wish I had no money and no sex. They’re both more trouble than they’re worth to me.”

“You can’t blame money for what it does to people. The evil is in people, and money is the peg they hang it on. They go wild for money when they’ve lost their other values.”

“I wonder what happened to Albert Graves.”

“Nobody knows. He doesn’t know himself. The important thing now is what is going to happen to him.”

“Do you have to tell the police?”

“I’m going to tell them. It will make it easier for me if you agree. Easier for you in the long run, too.”

“You’re asking me to share the responsibility, but you don’t really care what I think. You’re going to tell them anyway. Yet you admit you haven’t any proof.” She moved restlessly in the chair.

“He won’t deny it if he is accused. You know him better than I do.”

“I thought I knew him well. Now I’m uncertain – about everything.”

“That’s why you should let me go ahead. You have doubts to resolve, and you can’t resolve them by doing nothing. You can’t go on living with uncertainty, either.”

“I’m not sure I have to go on living.”

“Don’t go romantic on me,” I said harshly. “Self-pity isn’t your way out. You’ve had terrible luck with two men. I think you’re a strong enough girl to take it. I told you before that you’ve got a life to make. You’re on your own.”

She inclined toward me. Her breasts leaned out from her body, vulnerable and soft. Her mouth was soft. “I don’t know how to begin. What shall I do?”

“Come with me.”

“With you? You want me to go with you?”

“Don’t try to shift your weight to me, Miranda. You’re a lovely girl, and I like you very much, but you’re not my baby. Come with me, and we’ll talk to the D. A. Well let him decide.”

“Very well. We’ll go to Humphreys. He’s always been close to Albert.”

She drove me up a winding road to the mesa that overlooked the city. When she stopped in front of Humphreys’ redwood bungalow, another car was standing in the drive.

“That’s Albert’s car,” she said. “Please go in alone. I don’t want to see him.”

I left her in the car and climbed the stone steps to the terrace. Humphreys opened the door before I could reach the knocker. His face was more than ever like a skull’s.

He stepped out on the terrace and closed the door behind him. “Graves is here,” he said. “He came a few minutes ago. He told me he murdered Sampson.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve called the sheriff. He’s on his way over.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. His gestures, like his voice, were light and distant, as if reality had moved back out of his reach. “This is a tragic thing. I believed that Albert Graves was a good man.”

“Crime often spreads out like that,” I said. “It’s epidemic. You’ve seen it happen before.”

“Not to one of my friends.” He was silent for a moment. “Bert was talking about Kierkegaard just a minute ago. He quoted something about innocence, that it’s like standing on the edge of a deep gulf. You can’t look down into the gulf without losing your innocence. Once you’ve looked, you’re guilty. Bert said that he looked down, that he was guilty before he murdered Sampson.”

“He’s still being easy on himself,” I said. “He wasn’t looking down; he was looking up. Up to the houses in the hills where the big money lives. He was going to be big himself for a change, with a quarter of Sampson’s millions.”

Humphreys answered slowly: “I don’t know. He never cared for money very much. He still doesn’t, I don’t think. But something happened to him. He hated Sampson, but so did lots of others. Sampson made anyone who worked for him feel like a valet. But it was something deeper than that in Graves. He’d worked hard all his life, and the whole thing suddenly went sour. It lost its meaning for him. There was no more virtue or justice, in him or in the world. That’s why he gave up prosecuting, you know.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Finally he struck out blindly at the world and killed a man.”

“Not blindly. Very shrewdly.”

“Very blindly,” Humphreys said. “I’ve never seen a man so miserable as Bert Graves is now.”

I went back to Miranda. “Graves is here. You weren’t entirely wrong about him. He decided to do the right thing.”

“Confessed?”

“He was too honest to bluff it through. If nobody had suspected him, he might have. Anyone’s honesty has its conditions. But he knew that I knew. He went to Humphreys and told his story.”

“I’m glad he did.” She denied this a moment later by the sounds she made. Deep shaking sobs bowed her over the wheel.

I lifted her over, and drove myself. As we rolled down the hill, I could see all the lights of the city. They didn’t seem quite real. The stars and the house lights were firefly gleams, sparks of cold fire suspended in the black void. The real thing in my world was the girl beside me, warm and shuddering and lost.

I could have put my arms around her and taken her over. She was that lost, that vulnerable. But if I had, she’d have hated me in a week. In six months I might have hated Miranda. I kept my hands to myself and let her lick her wounds. She used my shoulder to cry on as she would have used anyone’s.

Her crying was settling down to a steady rhythm, rocking itself to sleep. The sheriff’s radio car passed us at the foot of the hill and turned up toward the house where Graves was waiting.

The End