To Keep or Kill

Eleven

Sergeant Wiedenbeck emerged from the restaurant to blink in the bright sun and pick his teeth with an oversize toothpick. He paused on the sidewalk, glancing idly up and down the street. Someone sitting in a car across the way sounded a horn.

He waited for the traffic lights to change, and ambled across to the parked car.

“Hi’a, doctor,” he greeted Elizabeth Saari.

She pushed open the door nearest him. “Climb in, sergeant. Busy?”

“Nope. Not now. I’m off duty.”

Doctor Saari started the motor and slipped into the stream of traffic.

“Nice afternoon,” she commented pointlessly. “Let’s take a ride.”

“Don’t mind a bit. Not at all.”

The doctor didn’t fool Sergeant Wiedenbeck. Not an iota. Charles Horne had been missing for four days.

Elizabeth Saari drove steadily away from town. Traffic thinned out and she fed gas to the car, sending it speeding towards the city limits. The sergeant said nothing, knowing that her mental state was still wound in the wrong direction.

When at last they were in the open country, driving aimlessly along first one gravel road and then another, he made a few stabs at opening a conversation. He possessed news, what he considered good news, but how Elizabeth might take it was another matter. He decided to save the best for the last, to work up to it gradually.

“The perfessor and his bodyguard went back to Chi,” he said by way of an opening.

She nodded absently, her eyes on the twisting road but not really seeing it. “That lets the government out.”

“I don’t mind telling you,” Wiedenbeck continued, “that I was scared.”

“Weren’t we all? A thing like that — what we thought it might be, at first, was horrible to contemplate. I was too shocked to be frightened, until I knew for sure there were no fatal aftereffects in our patient. The one who was blown through the window, I mean; not the other.”

He nodded and let her ramble on.

“Eventually, I suppose, some perverted science will be able to reduce such a weapon to portable possibilities.” She paused. “By that I mean, someday, whether we like it or not, the thing will become what the hand grenade and such now are — and every hoodlum in the underground will have it.” Elizabeth shuddered. “I don’t think I want to live to see the day.”

“You probably won’t,” he reminded her dryly. “When every gangster in the country can toss an atomized pineapple into a bookie joint or whatever, there will be damned few of us left.”

“But the problem is how to prevent such a thing! Look how near we thought we were to that very thing, some days ago. We can’t just sit around, hoping regulations and laws will protect us. Practically every weapon invented has found its way into a thug’s hand sooner or later. With telling results.”

“I don’t know.” Wiedenbeck hunched down in his seat. “All I know is, this was something else. And I ain’t scared no more.”

“What was it, by the way? What could have caused such a tremendous explosion?” She was trying to shake off her low mood. Wiedenbeck noticed that, and did his best to help.

“Nitrochloride, we think. Damn ticklish stuff. The ignition of the car heated up the oil in it, and bingo!”

She frowned. “Isn’t that unusual?”

“Unusual as ice water in hell! It gives us something solid to chew on. Most of these bomb-tossing thugs use a powder bomb of some sort. During the war the army developed something like this for the commandomen and paratroopers to use. Y’see, with an ordinary bomb planted under the hood you run the risk of only killing the guy in the front seat. With this type, you can bank on getting everybody in the car and the car. It wipes away its own traces.”

She shuddered. “But you found something?”

“We found the unusual force of the explosion, and certain characteristics of the remains. We’ve been checking the army depots. The government man helped us there. I can only imagine one way for a girl to get into an army depot.”

“The WAG?”

“Yeah. And that gives us something more to work on.”

They drove along in silence. The tires made squirting noises in the loose gravel, throwing up small stones to strike the underside of the car. The country air carried the pleasant odor of a hot sun beating down on vast fields of ripe wheat. A small wind, swirling through the fields, caused the wheat to roll and billow like whitecaps approaching a shore line.

“Pretty,” she commented, pointing. “Those trees seem so lonely over there alone.” They left the gravel road and turned onto the highway.

“When I retire,” Wiedenbeck said dreamily, following her finger, “it’s gonna be to a place like that. That one, over there. A fence to keep the rubbernecks away, and roses all over it. See the two chimneys? That means a fireplace as well as a stove. I’ll bet you a drink that house has got an oil burner.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because it’s modern, that’s why. And there ain’t no ashes scattered along the driveway. Most farmers put ashes there if it ain’t graveled. Tough going in wet weather, y’know.”

She slowed the car. “Would you like to go in and look at it?”

“I would not!” he stated emphatically. “See that dog? That ain’t the kind of dog that welcomes strangers. Keep right on moving.”

The car sped along the highway.

Finally Elizabeth Saari said, “Why don’t you tell me?”

He twisted to look at her. “Tell you what?”

“What you’ve been trying to say for five minutes. You wriggle and squirm like a nervous child. What is it, sergeant?”

“Oh, hell, doctor, I didn’t know it showed.”

“It does. And it concerns Chuck. What is it?”

“Well,” the sergeant began cautiously, “we’ve picked up some news of him. You know that gas station out on the highway the other side of town? The one that has a watermelon stand next to it?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“Well, they sell dirty books. I mean,” he amended hastily, “they sell these books of risky poetry.”

“Like those belonging to Chuck. And—?”

“A party showed up out there and bought some, yesterday morning.”

“Not Chuck!”

“Not Chuck. A redheaded girl. The same redheaded girl.”

Elizabeth’s startled reaction sent the car careening across the safety line in the center of the highway and quickly back again.

“Hey,” the sergeant cried, “watch it!”

“That means Chuck is with her,” Elizabeth declared.

“Now, hold on. Maybe it does and maybe it don’t. She could be getting them for herself, couldn’t she?”

“Did you follow her? Did you—”

He cut in on a string of breathless questions.

“Nope. We didn’t. She got away. That guy at the gas station phoned us as soon as she walked out the door. We had him posted, y’see. But by the time we got a car there, she’d disappeared.”

“But why didn’t he stop her?”

“The damned fool didn’t recognize her. He claimed she didn’t have red hair; he phoned us only because he was supposed to let us know about every sale.”

“A wig!”

“Sure. But the description he gave us fits the redhead. We recognized her. We’ve got a man working there now, and another one in the drugstore. Should have done that in the first place.”

“But if she did buy them for Chuck, that means that...”

“Confidentially, doctor, she did. Because she also tried to get his shirts from the laundry on lower Wilsey Street. The laundryman wouldn’t give them to her. He didn’t know Chuck was missing, of course, but he wouldn’t give the shirts to a stranger. He told Mother Hubbard about it later, and she told us.”

“Chuck must be alive and well!”

“Must be, or he wouldn’t need the shirts. The girl’s next move, of course, would be to buy some. Only,” he added dryly, “there ain’t any to be had at the present time. Not in Boone. We’ve hepped all the clerks, of course. Any time any girl shows up asking for a size fifteen shirt, she’ll be asked to wait while the clerk looks in the stock room.”

“Chuck didn’t voluntarily go with that woman!” she stated heatedly.

“No, I don’t think so, either. Not any more. She must have discovered he was a witness to the killing and came back for him.” The sergeant glanced at her, and continued. “The only thing I don’t understand, the only thing that refuses to fit into a pattern, is why she didn’t kill him on the spot and be done with him.”

Elizabeth winced.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but that’s it. He is alive and well, else she wouldn’t be trying to get him shirts and books. But why is she keeping him alive?”

Elizabeth gritted, “That... that...”

“The word you’re thinking of,” Wiedenbeck supplied, “is bitch.”

“I was,” she admitted.

“Well, just hold onto your patience, doctor. I have a hunch we’ll know a lot more about her before long. I don’t think that guy standing on the steps beneath Horne’s office was there just to watch a screech bomb.”

“No?”

“No. If you can pull him out of that coma, we’ll know a lot more about that redhead.”

“You mentioned that he checked into the hotel from Indianapolis,” she said then. “Find out anything?”

“Only that he carried a round-trip ticket to and from Chicago. In his brief case. We checked with the railroad and that particular reserved seat was used the day the ticket was issued — the day of the explosion — but no one recalls the description we furnished. The man is probably a private dick; perhaps out of Chicago, or perhaps from California. We’ll find out.”

“Do you suppose he’s trailing the redheaded girl — from California, I mean?”

“We’ll know more about that when you revive the guy. We’ll know a lot about that redhead.”

“I certainly hope so,” she whispered between clenched teeth. “Oh, I hope and pray so!”

The sergeant lit a cigarette and offered her one.

“Take me back to town, will you, doctor? I promised my wife I’d cut the grass this afternoon.”