The twisted thing

Chapter 9

Going back to Sidon I held it down to a slow fifty, stopping only once for a quick bite and a tank of gas. Someday I was going to get me a decent meal. Someday. Three miles from the city I turned off the back road to a cloverleaf, then swung onto the main artery. When I reached the state police headquarters I cut across the concrete and onto the gravel.

For once Price was in when I wanted him.

So was Dilwick.

I said hello to Price and barely nodded to Dilwick.

“You lousy slob!” he muttered softly.

“Shut up, pig.”

“Maybe you both better shut up,” Price put in quietly. I threw my hat on the desk and pushed a butt between my lips. Price waited until I lit it, then jerked his thumb toward the fat cop.

“He wants words with you, Mike.”

“Let’s hear ’em,” I offered.

“Not here, wise guy. I think you’d do better at the station. I don’t want to be interrupted.”

That was a nasty dig at Price, and the sergeant took it right up. “Forget that stuff,” he barked, “while he’s here he’s under my jurisdiction. Don’t forget it.”

For a minute I thought Dilwick was going to swing and I was hoping he would. I’d love to be in a two-way scramble over that guy. The odds were too great. He looked daggers at Price. “I won’t forget it,” he repeated.

Price led off. “Dilwick says you broke into the Grange apartment and confiscated something of importance. What about it, Mike?”

I let Dilwick have a lopsided grin. “Did I?”

“You know damn well you did! You’d better . . .”

“How do you know it was important?”

“It’s gone, that’s reason enough.”

“Hell.”

“Wait a minute, Mike,” Price cut in. “What did you take?”

I saw him trying to keep his face straight. Price liked this game of baiting Dilwick.

“I could say nothing, pal, and he couldn’t prove a thing. I bet you never found any prints of mine, did you, Dilwick?” The cop’s face was getting redder. “. . . and the way you had that building bottled up nobody should have been able to get in, should they?” Dilwick would split his seams if I kept it up any longer. “Sure, I was there, so what? I found what a dozen of you missed.”

I reached in my pocket and yanked out the two wills. Dilwick reached a shaking hand for them but I passed them to Price. “This old one was in Grange’s apartment. It isn’t good because this is the later one. Maybe it had better be filed someplace.”

Dilwick was watching me closely. “Where did the second one come from?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I was too slow. The back of Dilwick’s hand nearly rocked my head off my shoulders. The arm of a chair hit my side and before I could spill over into it Dilwick had my shirt front. Price caught his hand before he could swing again.

I kicked the chair away and pulled free as Price stepped between us. “Let me go, Price!” I yelled.

“Damn it, I said to turn it off!”

Dilwick backed off reluctantly. “I’ll play that back to you, Dilwick,” I said. Nobody was pulling that trick on me and getting by with it. It’s a wonder he had the nerve to start something after that last pasting I gave him. Maybe he was hoping I’d try to use my rod . . . that would be swell. He could knock me off as nice as anything and call it police business.

“Maybe you’ll answer the next time you’re spoken to, Hammer. You’ve pulled a lot of shady deals around here lately and I’m sick of it. As for you, Price, you’re treating him like he’s carrying a badge. You’ve got me hog-tied, but that won’t last long if I want to work on it.”

The sergeant’s voice was almost a whisper. “One day you’re going to go too far. I think you know what I mean.”

Evidently Dilwick did. His lips tightened into a thin line and his eyes blazed, but he shut up just the same. “Now if you have anything to say, say it properly.”

With an obvious attempt at controlling his rage, Dilwick nodded. He turned to me again. “Where did you get the other will?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I repeated.

“You letting him get away with this, Price?”

The trooper was on the spot. “Tell him, Mike.”

“I’ll tell you, Price. He can listen in. I found it among York’s personal effects.”

For a full ten minutes I stood by while the two of them went over the contents of the wills. Price was satisfied with a cursory examination, but not so Dilwick. He read every line, then reread them. I could see the muscles of his mouth twitch as he worked the thing out in his mind. No, I was not underestimating Dilwick one bit. There wasn’t much that went on that he didn’t know about. Twice, he let his eyes slide off the paper and meet mine. It was coming. Any minute now.

Then it was here. “I could read murder into this,” he grated.

Price turned sharply. “Yes?”

“Hammer, I think I’m going to put you on the spot.”

“Swell. You’d like that. Okay, go ahead.”

“Pull up your ears and get a load of this, Price. This punk and the Nichols dame could make a nice team. Damn nice. You didn’t think I’d find out about those pictures, did you, Hammer? Well, I did. You know what it looks like to me? It looks like the Nichols babe blackmailed Grange into making York change his will. Let York see those shots and Grange’s reputation would be shot to hell, she’d be fired and lose out on the will to boot. At least if she came through on the deal, all she’d lose was the will.”

I nodded. “Pretty, but where do I come in?”

“Right now. Grange got hold of those pictures somehow. Only Nichols pulls a fast one and tells York that Grange was the one who was blackmailing her. York takes off for Grange’s apartment in a rage because he had a yen for his pretty little niece, only Grange bumps him. Then Nichols corners you and you bump Grange and get the stuff off her, and the will. Now you turn it up, Nichols comes into a wad of cash and you split it.”

It wasn’t as bad as I thought. Dilwick had squeezed a lot of straight facts out of somebody, only he was putting it together wrong. Yeah, he had gotten around, all right. He had reached a lot of people to get that much and he’d like to make it stick.

Price said, “What about it, Mike?”

I grinned. “He’s got a real sweet case there.” I looked at the cop. “How’re you going to prove it?”

“Never mind,” he snarled, “I will, I will. Maybe I ought to book you right now on what I have. It’ll hold up and Price knows it, too.”

“Uh-uh. It’ll hold up . . . for about five minutes. Did you find Grange yet?”

He said nothing.

“Nuts,” I laughed, “no corpus delicti, no Mike Hammer.”

“Wrong, Hammer. After a reasonable length of time and sufficient evidence to substantiate death, a corpse can be assumed.”

“He’s right, Mike.”

“Then he’s got to shoot holes in my alibi, Price. I have a pretty tight one.”

“Where did you go after you left Alice’s apartment the other night?” Brother, I should have guessed it. Dilwick had put the bee on the Graham kid and the bastard copped a sneak. It was ten to one he told Dilwick he hadn’t seen me.

That’s what I get for making enemies. If the Graham kid thought he could put me on the spot he’d do it. So would Alice for that matter.

But there were still angles. “Go ahead and work on my alibi, Dilwick. You know what it is. Only I’ll give you odds that I can make your witness see the light sooner than you can.”

“Not if you’re in the can.”

“First get me there. I don’t think you can. Even if you did a good lawyer could rip those phonies apart on the stand and you know it. You’re stalling, Dilwick. What’re you scared of? Me? Afraid I’ll put a crimp in your doings?”

“You’re asking for it, punk.”

Price came back into the argument. “Skip it, Dilwick. If you have the goods on him then present it through the regular channels, only don’t slip up. Let you and your gang go too far and there’ll be trouble. I’m satisfied to let Mr. Hammer operate unhampered because I’m familiar with him . . . and you, too.”

“Thanks, pal.”

Dilwick jammed his hat on and stamped out of the room. If I wanted to get anywhere I was going to have to act fast, because my fat friend wasn’t going to let any grass grow under his feet finding enough dope to toss me in the clink. When the door slammed I let Price have my biggest smile. He smiled right back.

“Where’ve you been?”

“New York. I tried to get you before I left but you weren’t around.”

“I know. We’ve had a dozen reports of Grange being seen and I’ve been running them down.”

“Any luck?”

“Nothing. A lot of mistaken identities and a few cranks who wanted to see the police in action. What did you get?”

“Plenty. We’re back to the kidnapping again. This whole pot of stew started there and is going to end there. Ruston wasn’t York’s kid at all. His died in childbirth and another was switched to take its place. The father of the baby was a small-time hoodlum and tried to make a complaint but was dissuaded along the line. All very nicely covered up, but I think it’s a case of murder that’s been brewing for fourteen years.”

During the next half hour I gave him everything I knew, starting with my trip to the local library. Price was a lot like Pat. He sat there saying nothing, taking it all in and letting it digest in his mind. Occasionally he would nod, but never interrupted until I had finished.

He said: “That throws the ball to this Mallory character.”

“Roger, and the guy is completely unknown. The last time he showed up was a few days after the switch took place.”

“A man can change a lot in fourteen years.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” I agreed. “The first thing we have to do is concentrate on locating Grange. Alive or dead she can bring us further up to date. She didn’t disappear for nothing.”

“All right, Mike, I’ll do my share. I still have men dragging the channel and on the dragnet. What are you going to do?”

“There are a few members of the loyal York clan that I’d like to see. In the meantime do you think you can keep Dilwick off my neck?”

“I’ll try, but I can’t promise much. Unfortunately, the law is made up of words which have to be abided more by the letter than the spirit therein, so to speak. If I can sidetrack him I will, but you had better keep him under observation if you can. I don’t have to tell you what he’s up to. He’s a stinker.”

“Twice over. Okay, I’ll keep in touch with you. Thanks for the boost. The way things are I’m going to have to be sharp on my end to beat Dilwick out of putting me up at the expense of the city.”

Dusk had settled around the countryside like a gray blanket when I left headquarters. I stepped into the car and rolled out the drive to the highway. I turned toward the full glow that marked the lights of Sidon and pulled into the town at suppertime. I would have gone straight to the estate if I hadn’t passed the library, which was still lit up.

It was just an idea, but I’ve had them before and they’d paid off. I slammed the brakes on, backed up and parked in front of the building. Inside the door I noticed the girl at the desk, but she wasn’t the same one I had spoken to before. This one had legs like a bridge lamp. Thinking that perhaps Legs was in one of the reading rooms, I toured the place, but aside from an elderly gentleman, two school-teacher types and some kids, the place was empty.

Just to be sure I checked the cellar, too, but the light was off and I didn’t think she’d be down there in the dark even if Grange was with her. Not with that musty-tomb odor anyway.

The girl at the desk said, “Can I help you find something, sir?”

“Maybe you can.”

“What book was it?”

I tried to look puzzled. “That is what I forgot. The girl that was here this morning had it all picked out for me. Now I can’t find her.”

“Oh, you mean Miss Cook?”

“Yeah,” I faked, “that’s the one. Is she around now?”

This time the girl was the one to be puzzled. “No, she isn’t. She went home for lunch this afternoon and never returned. I came on duty early to replace her. We’ve tried to locate her all over town, but she seems to have dropped from sight. It’s so very strange.”

It was getting hot now, hotter than ever. The little bells were going off inside my skull. Little bells that tinkled and rang and chimed and beat themselves into shattered pieces of nothing. It was getting hotter, this broth, and I was holding onto the handle.

“This Miss Cook. Where does she live?”

“Why, two blocks down on Snyder Avenue. Shall I call her apartment again? Perhaps she’s home now.”

I didn’t think she’d have any luck, but I said, “Please do.”

She lifted the receiver and dialed a number. I heard the buzz of the bell on the other end, then the voice of the landlady answering. No, Miss Cook hadn’t come in yet. Yes, she would tell her to call as soon as she did. Yes. Yes. Good night.

“She isn’t there.”

“So I gathered. Oh, well, she’s probably had one of her boyfriends drop in on her. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Very well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”

Sorry, everybody was being sorry. Pretty soon somebody was going to be so sorry they died of it. Snyder Avenue was a quiet residential section of old brownstone houses that had undergone many a face-lifting and emerged looking the same as ever. On one corner a tiny grocery store was squeezed in between buildings. The stout man in the dirty white apron was taking in some boxes of vegetables as he prepared to close up shop. I drew abreast of him and whistled.

When he stopped I asked, “Know a Miss Cook? She’s the librarian. I forgot which house it was.”

“Yeah, sure.” He pointed down the block. “See that car sitting under the streetlight? Well the house just past it and on the other side is the one. Old Mrs. Baxter is the landlady and she don’t like noise, so you better not honk for her.”

I yelled my thanks and went up the street and parked behind the car he had indicated. Except for the light in the first floor front, the place was in darkness. I ran up the steps and looked over the doorbell. Mrs. Baxter’s name was there, along with four others, but only one bell.

I pushed it.

She must have been waiting for me to make up my mind, because she came out like a jack-in-the-box.

“Well?”

“Mrs. Baxter?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m looking for Miss Cook. They . . .”

“Who ain’t been looking for her. All day long the phone’s been driving me crazy, first one fellow then another. When she gets back here I’m going to give her a good piece of my mind.”

“May I come in, Mrs. Baxter?”

“What for? She isn’t home. If she didn’t leave all her things here I’d say she skipped out. Heaven only knows why.”

I couldn’t stand there and argue with her. My wallet slipped into my palm and I let her see the glint of the metal. Badges are wonderful things even when they don’t mean a thing. Her eyes went from my hand to my face before she moistened her lips nervously and stood aside in the doorway.

“Has . . . has there been trouble?”

“We don’t know.” I shut the door and followed her into the living room. “What time did she leave here today?”

“Right after lunch. About a quarter to one.”

“Does she always eat at home?”

“Only her lunch. She brings in things and . . . you know. At night she goes out with her boyfriends for supper.”

“Did you see her go?”

“Yes. Well, no. I didn’t see her, but I heard her upstairs and heard her come down. The way she always takes the stairs two at a time in those high heels I couldn’t very well not hear her.”

“I see. Do you mind if I take a look at her room? There’s a chance that she might be involved in a case we’re working on and we don’t want anything to happen to her.”

“Do you think . . .”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Mrs. Baxter. Where’s her room?”

“Next floor in the rear. She never locks her door so you can go right in.”

I nodded and went up the stairs with the old lady’s eyes boring holes in my back. She was right about the door. It swung in when I turned the knob. I shut the door behind me and switched on the light, standing there in the middle of the room for a minute taking it all in. Just a room, a nice, neat girl’s room. Everything was in its place, nothing was disarranged. The closet was well stocked with clothes including a fairly decent mink coat inside a plastic bag. The drawers in the dresser were the same way. Tidy. Nothing gone.

Son of a bitch, she was snatched too! I slammed the drawer shut so hard a row of bottles went over. Why didn’t I pick her up sooner? She was Myra Grange’s alibi! Of course! And somebody was fighting pretty hard to keep Myra Grange’s face in the mud. She didn’t skip out on her own . . . not and leave all her clothes here. She went out that front door on her way back to work and she was picked up somewhere between here and the library. Fine, swell. I’d made a monkey of myself by letting things slide just a little longer. I wasn’t the only one who knew that she and Grange were on more than just speaking terms. That somebody was either following me around or getting there on his own hook.

A small desk and chair occupied one corner of the room beside the bed. A small letter-writing affair with a flap front was on the desk. I pulled the cover down and glanced at the papers neatly placed in the pigeonholes. Bills, receipted bills. A few notes and some letters. In the middle of the blotter a writing tablet looked at me with a blank stare.

The first three letters were from a sailor out of town. Very factual letters quite unlike a sailor. Evidently a relative. Or a sap. The next letter was the payoff. I breezed through it and felt the sweat pop out on my face. Paragraph after paragraph of lurid, torrid love . . . words of endearment . . . more love, exotic, fantastic.

Grange had signed only her initials at the bottom.

When I slid the letter back I whistled through my teeth. Grange had certainly gone whole hog with her little partner. I would have closed the desk up after rifling through the rest of the stuff if I hadn’t felt that squeegy feeling crawling around my neck. It wasn’t new. I had had it in Pat’s office.

Something I was supposed to remember. Something I was supposed to see. Damn. I went back through the stuff, but as far as I could see there wasn’t anything there that I hadn’t seen before I came into the room. Or was there?”

Roger . . . there was! It was in my hand. I was staring at Grange’s bold signature. It was the handwriting that I had recognized. The first time I had seen it was on some of her papers I had taken from that little cache in her apartment. The next time I had seen it was on the bottom of a statement certifying that Ruston was York’s son and not Mallory’s, only that time the signature read Rita Cambell.

It hit me like a pile driver, hard, crushing. It had been dangling in front of my face all this time and I hadn’t seen it. But I wasn’t alone with the knowledge, hell no. Somebody else had it too, that’s why Grange was dead or missing and Cook on the lam.

Motive, at last the motive. I stood alone in the middle of the room and spun the thing around in my mind. This was raw, bitter motive. It was motive that incited kidnapping and caused murder and this was proof of it. The switch, the payoff. York taking Grange under his wing to keep the thing quiet. Crime that touched off crime that touched off more crime like a string of firecrackers. When you put money into it the thing got bigger and more scrambled than ever.

I had gotten to the center of it. The nucleus. Right on the target were Ruston and Grange. Somebody was aiming at both of them. Winged the kid and got Grange. Mallory, but who the hell was he? Just a figure known to have existed, and without doubt still existing.

I needed bait to catch this fish, yet I couldn’t use the kid; he had seen too much already. That is, unless he was willing. I felt like a heel to put it up to him. But it was that or try to track Grange down. Senseless? I didn’t know. Maybe a dozen cops had dragged the river, and maybe the dragnet was all over the state, but maybe they were going at it the wrong way. Sure, maybe it would be best to try for Grange. She was bound to have the story if anyone had, and I wouldn’t be taking a chance with the kid’s neck either.

Mrs. Baxter was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, wringing her hands like a nervous hen. “Find anything?” she asked.

I nodded. “Evidence that she expected to come back here. She didn’t just run off.”

“Oh, dear.”

“If anyone calls, try to get their names, and keep a record of all calls. Either Sergeant Price of the state police will check on it or me personally. Under no conditions give out the information to anyone else, understand?”

She muttered her assent and nodded. I didn’t want Dilwick to pull another fasty on me. As soon as I left, all the lights on the lower floor blazed on. Mrs. Baxter was the scary type, I guess.

I swung my heap around in a U-turn, then got on the main street and stopped outside a drugstore. My dime got me police headquarters and headquarters reached Price on the radio. We had a brief chitchat through the medium of the desk cop and I told him to meet me at the post in fifteen minutes.

Price beat me there by ten feet and came over to see what was up.

“You have the pictures of Grange’s car after it went in the drink?”

“Yeah, inside, want to see them?”

“Yes.”

On the way in I told him what had happened. The first thing he did was go to the radio and put out a call on the Cook girl. I supplied the information the best I could, but my description centered mainly about her legs. They were things you couldn’t miss. For a few minutes Price disappeared into the back room and I heard him fiddling around with a filing cabinet.

He came out with a dozen good shots of the wrecked sedan. “If you don’t mind, tell me what you’re going to do with these?”

“Beats me,” I answered. “It’s just a jumping-off place. Since she’s still among the missing she can still be found. This is where she was last seen apparently.”

“There’ve been a lot of men looking for her.”

I grinned at him. “Now there’s going to be another.” Each one of the shots I went over in detail, trying to pick out the spot where it went in, and visualizing just how it turned in the air to land like it did. Price watched me closely, trying to see what I was getting at.

“Price . . .”

“Yes.”

“When you pulled the car out, was the door on the right open?”

“It was, but the seat had come loose and was jammed in the doorway. She would have had some time trying to climb out that way.”

“The other door was open too?”

His head bobbed. “The lock had snapped when the door was wrenched open, probably by the force of hitting the water, although being on the left, it could have happened when her car was forced off the road.”

“Think she might have gotten out that way?”

“Gotten out . . . or floated out?”

“Either one.”

“More like it was the other way.”

“Was the car scratched up much?”

The sergeant looked thoughtful. “Not as much as it should have been. The side was punched in from the water, and the front fender partially crumpled where it hit the bottom, but the only new marks were short ones along the bottom of the door and on the very edge of the fender, and at that we can’t be sure that they didn’t come from the riverbed.”

“I get it,” I said. “You think that she was scared off the road. I’ve seen enough women drivers to believe that, even if she was only half a dame. Why not? Another car threatening to slam into her would be reason enough to make her jump the curb. Well, it’s enough for me. If she was dead there wouldn’t be much sense keeping her body hidden, and if it weren’t hidden it would have shown up by now, so I’m assuming that Grange is still alive somewhere and if she’s alive she can be found.”

I tossed the sheaf of pictures back to Price. “Thanks, chum. No reflection on any of you, but I think you’ve been looking for Grange the wrong way. You’ve been looking for a body.”

He smiled a bit and we said good night. What had to be done had to wait until morning . . . the first thing in the morning. I tooled my car back to town and called the estate. Harvey was glad to hear from me, yes, everything was all right. Billy had been in the yard with Ruston all day and Miss Malcom had stayed in her room. The doctor had been there again and there was nothing to worry about. Ruston had been asking for me. I told Harvey to tell the kid I’d drop up as soon as I could and not to worry. My last instructions still went. Be sure the place was locked up tight, and that Billy stayed near the kid and Roxy. One thing I did make sure of. Harvey was to tell the gatekeeper what was in the bottle that he thought contained aspirin.

When I hung up I picked up another pack of butts, a clean set of underwear, shirt and socks in a dry goods store, then threw the stuff in the back of the car and drove out around town until I came to the bay. Under the light of the half-moon it was black and shimmering, an oily, snaky tongue that searched the edges of the shore with frightened, whimpering sounds. The shadows were black as pitch, not a soul was on the streets. Three-quarters of a mile down the road one lone window winked with a yellow, baleful eye.

I took advantage of the swath Grange had cut in the restraining wire and pulled up almost to the brink of the drop-off, changed my mind, pulled out and backed in, just in case I had to get out of there in a hurry. When I figured I was well set I opened my fresh deck of butts, chain-smoked four of them in utter silence, then closed up the windows to within an inch of the top, pulled my hat down over my eyes and went to sleep.

The sun was fighting back the night when I woke up. Outside the steamed-up windows a gray fog was drifting up from the waters, coiling and uncoiling until the tendrils blended into a low-hanging blanket of haze that hung four feet over the ground.

It looked cold. It was cold. I was going to be kicking myself a long time if nothing came of this. I stripped off my clothes, throwing them into the car until I was standing shivering in my underwear. Well, it was one way to get a bath, anyway. I could think of better ways.

A quick plunge. It had to be quick or I would change my mind. I swam out to the spot I had fixed in my mind; the spot where Grange’s car had landed. Then I stopped swimming. I let myself go as limp as possible, treading water just enough to keep my head above the surface. You got it. I was supposed to be playing dead, or almost dead. Half knocked out maybe. The tide was the same, I had checked on that. If this had been just another river it wouldn’t have mattered, but this part was more an inlet than anything else. It emptied and filled with the tides, having its own peculiarities and eddies. It swirled and washed around objects long sunk in the cove of the bottom. I could feel it tug at my feet, trying to drag me down with little monkey hands, gentle, tugging hands that would mean nothing to a swimmer, but could have a noticeable effect on someone half dazed.

Just a few minutes had passed and I was already out of sight of the car around the bend. Here the shores drew away as the riverbed widened until it reached the mouth of the inlet opening into the bay. I thought that I was going to keep right on drifting by, and had about made up my mind to quit all this damn foolishness when I felt the first effect of the eddy.

It was pulling me toward the north shore. A little thrill of excitement shot through me, and although I was numb I felt an emotional warmth dart into my bones. The shore was closer now. I began to spin in a slow, tight circle as something underneath me kicked up a fuss with the water. In another moment I saw what was causing the drag. A tiny U-bend in the shoreline jutted out far enough to cause a suction in the main flow and create enough disturbance to pull in anything not too far out.

Closer . . . closer . . . I reached out and got hold of some finger-thick reeds and held on, then steadied myself with one hand in the mud and clambered up on the shore. There were no tracks save mine, but then again there wouldn’t be. Behind me the muck was already filling in the holes my feet had made. I parted the reeds, picking my way through the remains of shellfish and stubble. They were tough reeds, all right. When I let them go they snapped back in place like a whip. If anyone had come out of the river it would have been here. It had to be here!

The reeds changed into scrub trees and thorny brush that clawed at my skin, raking me with their needlepoints. I used a stick as a club and beat at them, trying to hold my temper down. When they continued to eat their way into my flesh I cursed them up and down.

But the next second I took it all back. They were nice briars. Beautiful briars. The loveliest briars I had ever seen, because one of them was sporting part of a woman’s dress.

I could have kissed that torn piece of fabric. It was stained, but fresh. And nobody was going to go through those reeds and briars except the little sweetheart I was after. This time I was gentler with the bushes and crawled through them as best I could without getting myself torn apart. Then the brush gave way to grass. That green stuff felt better than a Persian rug under my sore feet. I sat down on the edge of the clearing and picked the thorns out of my skin.

Then I stood up and shoved the tail end of my T-shirt down into my shorts. Straight ahead of me was a shack. If ever there was an ideal hiding place, this was it, and as long as I was going to visit its occupant I might as well look my charming best.

I knocked, then kicked the door open. A rat scurried along the edge of the wall and shot past my feet into the light. The place was as empty as a tomb. But it had been occupied. Someone had turned the one room into a shambles. A box seat was freshly splintered into sharp fragments on the floor, and the makeshift stove in the middle of the room lay on its side. Over in the corner a bottle lay smashed in a million pieces, throwing jagged glints of light to the walls. She had been here. There was no doubt of it. Two more pieces of the same fabric I held in my hand were caught on the frayed end of the wooden table. She had put up a hell of a fight, all right, but it didn’t do her any good.

When the voice behind me said, “Hey, you!” I pivoted on my heel and my hand clawed for the gun I didn’t have. A little old guy in baggy pants was peering at me through the one lens of his glasses, wiping his nose on a dirty hunk of rag at the same time.

“That’s not healthy, Pop.”

“You one of them there college kids?” he asked.

I eased him out the door and came out beside him. “No, why?”

“Always you college kids what go around in yer shorts. Seed some uptown once.” He raised his glasses and took a good look at my face. “Say . . . you ain’t no college kid.”

“Didn’t say I was.”

“Well, what you guys joining? I seed ya swimming in the crick, just like the other one.”

I went after that other one like a bird after a bug. “What other one?” My hands were shaking like mad. It was all I could do to keep my hands off his shirt and shake the facts out of him.

“The one what come up t’other day. Maybe it was yesterday. I disremember days. What ya joining?”

“Er . . . a club. We have to swim the river then reach the house without being seen. Guess they won’t let me join now that somebody saw me. Did you see the other guy too?”

“Sure. I seed him, but I don’t say nothing. I seed lotta funny things go on and I don’t ask no questions. It’s just that this was kinda funny, that’s all.”

“What did he look like?”

“Well, I couldn’t see him too good. He was big and fat. I heered him puffing plenty after he come out of the weeds. Yeah, he was a big feller. I didn’t know who he was so I went back through the woods to my boat.”

“Just the other guy, that’s all you saw?”

“Yep.”

“Nobody else?”

“Nope.”

“Anybody live in that shack?”

“Not now. Comes next month and Pee Wee’ll move in. He’s a tramp. Don’t do nothing but fish and live like a pig. He’s been living there three summers now.”

“This other one you saw, did he have a mean-looking face, sort of scowling?”

“Ummmm. Now that you mention it, he looked kinda mad. Guess that was one reason why I left.”

Dilwick. It was Dilwick. The fat slob had gotten the jump on me again. I knew he was smart . . . he had to be to get along the way he did, but I didn’t think he was that smart. Dilwick had put the puzzle together and come out on top. Dilwick had found Grange in the shack and carted her off. Then why the hell didn’t he produce her? Maybe the rest of the case stunk, but this part raised a putrid odor to high heaven. Everybody under the sun wanted in on the act, now it was Dilwick. Crime upon crime upon crime upon crime. Wasn’t it ever going to end? Okay, fat boy, start playing games with me. You think you pulled a quickie, don’t you? You think nobody knows about this . . . T.S., junior, I know about it now, and brother, I think I’m beginning to see where I’m going.

“How can I get back to the bridge without swimming, Pop?”

He pointed a gnarled finger toward the tree line. “A path runs through there. Keeps right along the bank, but stick to it and nobody’ll see ya in ya jeans. Hope they let ya join that club.”

“I think I can fix it.” I batted away the bugs that were beginning to swarm around me and took off for the path. Damn Dilwick anyway.