Vanishing Ladies

Chapter sixteen

That’s the end of Tony’s deposition except for the ‘Sworn to before me on this seventeenth day of July’ business at the end, which I won’t read.

I have to admit that when his call didn’t come at midnight, I began to get a little worried. I’d talked to Simms in his room as soon as I’d finished dinner and checked in. Simms told me that Lois and a redhead had boarded the 9.44 a.m. train to Davistown. From the way the stationmaster had described the redhead to him, and from the way Simms in turn described her to me, she couldn’t have been anyone but Blanche.

I’d seen Blanche in town at about two in the afternoon at the restaurant. If she’d gone to Davistown that morning, she had high- tailed it back in a hurry. And apparently without Lois. Simms was all for scouring the town until we turned up Blanche. I asked him to wait until the call from Mitchell came, and he agreed that would be the best course to follow.

I left him in his room at 11.30. I gave him my room number in case anything important came up, and I told him I’d go back upstairs to him as soon as I heard from Tony. Then I went down to wait. Midnight came too fast. Tony is a punctual guy, and when that phone didn’t ring at midnight, I began to have my first doubts. At 12.15, the phone still hadn’t rung.

Someone knocked on the door instead.

‘Who is it?’ I called.

‘Bellboy, sir,’ the voice answered, and I fell for the oldest gag in the universe and opened the door.

Tex Planett was standing in the corridor. Two deputies I’d never seen were standing behind him. The last time Planett and I had met, he was wearing his .45 in a side holster. This time, he was wearing it in his fist.

‘What for?’ I said.

‘Want to talk to you in my office.’

‘What for?’

Planett shrugged. ‘Suspicion of burglary. How’s that? Get your coat.’

I moved toward my jacket on the bed. Sandy’s revolver was in the inside pocket of that jacket.

‘Hold it, Colby,’ Planett said. He gestured to one of the deputies, and the deputy went to the jacket, frisked it for about half a second, and found the gun. He handed the gun to Planett, and the jacket to me.

‘Now put it on,’ Planett said.

I shrugged into the jacket.

‘Where’s your pal?’ he asked.

For a moment, I thought he meant Mitchell, and my hopes rose slightly. ‘What pal?’ I said.

‘Simms. We were just up to his room. He’s not there.’

‘I don’t know where he is.’

Planett smiled. ‘We’ll find him. One of us is sure to find him. Come on.’

We went down to the waiting police car. The town seal was painted on the side of the car. The car was blue with an orange top. It was, at that hour, the loudest thing in Sullivan’s Corners. We drove to Planett’s office. When we got there, he didn’t bother booking me. He took me straight to the cell block, opened one of the cells, and then locked it behind me.

He was starting off when I called him back.

‘What’s the story, Planett?’

‘The story? No story, Colby.’

‘Why am I here?’

‘You’re waiting for somebody. As soon as I make a phone call, somebody’ll pick you up.’

‘Who?’

Planett smiled.

‘And when I’m picked up, where do I go?’

Planett smiled again.

‘Come on, what’s the story?’

‘The story is simple. We don’t want D.A. trouble. We don’t want State’s Attorney trouble, either. We like the setup the way it is. Sometimes things happen that can foul up a situation. We take care of those things. Simple?’

‘Simple. What happens to me?’

‘I think you die, Colby,’ he said flatly.

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’ Planett smiled. ‘It’s nothing personal, believe me. A setup has to be protected. I earn about $30,000 a year. That’s not so much. A man needs a setup.’

‘I earn $25,000 a year,’ I said, ‘and I don’t have any setup.’

Planett shrugged. ‘You’re the one’s going to die — not me.’

‘All this to cover a whorehouse?’ I asked.

‘All this to cover a murder,’ Planett said, and he wasn’t smiling any more. He turned and started off down the corridor. He unlocked the door at the end, and I watched him, and then he began backing into the corridor again, and he puzzled me for a moment until I saw what he was backing away from.

Johnny Simms was coming through the door. Johnny Simms had a fire ax in his hands. Planett was reaching for the .45 at his hip when Simms swung. He swung as if he were about to fell a tree, except that he used the broad flat side of the ax. His aim was true. He caught Planett on the side of his head, and Planett slammed sidewards into the corridor wall, and then collapsed like a dish rag. Simms stooped and pulled the ring of keys from Planett’s belt. He unlocked the cell door, and I said, ‘You might have killed him.’

‘Maybe I did,’ Simms answered. He grinned. ‘You should see his two deputies out there. I caught them in the middle of a card game.’

‘Where’d you get the ax?’

‘In the hotel corridor, alongside a fire hose. I was coming down to your room when I saw Planett and his boys. I didn’t think he was taking you here for a piano recital.’

‘Where’d you learn to use that ax that way?’

‘I was a Marine,’ Simms said. ‘Remember?’

‘I remember.’ I stooped down and pulled Sandy’s gun from Planett’s belt. Then I yanked the .45 from his holster and handed it to Simms. ‘This should feel familiar to a Marine.’

He took the gun. ‘It does.’

‘Come on.’

We passed through the outer office. The deputies had been playing poker. One of them had obviously been trying to fill an inside straight. He had filled a knock on the head instead.

‘My car’s down the street outside the hotel,’ I said. ‘Let’s get it.’

‘Where we going?’ Simms wanted to know.

‘To the motel.’

‘Good.’

We were walking rapidly, our heels clicking on the sidewalk of the silent town. I turned to Simms. ‘There may be trouble.’

‘I’m just itching for trouble,’ he said. ‘Can’t you tell?’

‘I mean big trouble.’

‘Lois is gone,’ Simms said simply. ‘That’s the biggest trouble I can imagine.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

When we reached O’Hare’s convertible I started the engine and then reached for a knob on the dash. ‘You may get chilly, but I’m putting the top down,’ I said. ‘I want to be able to get in and out of this thing in a hurry.’

‘All right,’ Simms said. He watched the top as it folded back over his head. Then he looked up at the sky. ‘It looks like rain.’

‘Yes,’ I said as I pulled away from the curb.

We didn’t talk much on the way to the motel. When we got there, the grounds were pitch black. I kept the headlights up, splashing across the office door. ‘There’s a flash in the glove compartment,’ I said to Simms. ‘You’d better get it.’

I drew the .38 and went to the door. I banged on the door with the gun butt. There was no answer. Simms was out of the car, splashing light on the ground with the flash.

‘Tire tracks here,’ he said. ‘Leading into the woods.’

I walked over to where the flash made a circle of light on the soft earth just off the gravel court.

‘Truck tires,’ I said.

‘Want to check it?’

‘Yes.’

Simms walked ahead of me, the flash in his left hand, the .45 in his right. The truck had made big ruts in the soft earth. It wasn’t a difficult trail to follow.

‘There she is,’ Simms said.

The truck sat in a clearing ringed with tall pines. The air smelled good. There was no moon and no stars, and the sky was sown with rain clouds, but the pines smelled antiseptic and the silence was pure. The truck sat like a brooding prehistoric monster. Simms splashed the light onto the tailgate.

‘Let’s see what’s inside,’ I said. We were talking in whispers. There’s something about the darkness of night and the silence of woods that makes men automatically lower their voices. Together, we lowered the tailgate. I climbed up into the truck.

‘Want to hand me the light, Johnny?’

He passed the flash to me. I ran it over the floorboards. In one corner of the truck was a burlap sack. It was empty, but it was soggy and limp, wadded into the corner, huddled there like a frightened amoeba.

The sack was red with blood.

I got sick inside.

I stood there for several moments, and I couldn’t say anything or think anything. I finally knelt and touched the sack. The blood was cold. I got up and played the flash over the rest of the truck. Something metallic flashed in the beam of light. I stooped again.

It was a shovel with a broken handle.

There was fresh earth on the blade. There was dried blood on the splintered wooden shaft. I went to the back of the truck, doused the light, and jumped to the ground. I handed the dead flash to Simms.

‘Better leave it out,’ I said.

‘Why?’ He studied me in the darkness. ‘What’d you find?’

‘Blood.’

‘What?’

‘And a shovel that was recently used. Somebody’s dead, Johnny, and somebody was buried.’

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Buried... where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Here?’

‘I doubt it. Probably some place away from here.’

‘It couldn’t be Lois,’ he said. ‘She went to Davistown. She...’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It couldn’t be Lois.’

‘Then—’ He cut himself off. He stuck the flashlight into his back pocket. We walked up the road in silence. The voice came as a complete surprise.

‘Don’t use them guns,’ it said.

I stopped dead, automatically bringing up the .38.

‘I said don’t! My finger’s on the trigger. All I got to do is tighten it.’

He stood in the middle of the road, a giant in a red plaid shirt and earth-stained jeans. Hezekiah. He held a shotgun in his hands. As he’d said, one finger was making love to the trigger.

‘Drop it, Colby,’ he said. ‘You, too, Simms.’

I dropped the .38. I heard Simms’ .45 thud to the ground beside me.

‘Kick them over here.’

I kicked my gun towards him, and then the .45. Hezekiah stooped to pick them up, and then tucked both the .38, and the .45 into his belt, on opposite sides of his waist.

‘Get together,’ he said. ‘Both of you. I want to see you both.’

Simms stepped closer to me. His hands were on his hips, the thumbs cradling his hip bones, the fingers spreading around behind his back.

‘You found the truck, huh?’ Hezekiah said.

‘Yes.’

‘You find what was in it?’

‘What’d you have in mind, Hez?’

‘The sack we carried her in. The shovel we used to dig her grave.’ I couldn’t see his face, but it sounded as if he were grinning.

‘We found them,’ I said.

‘They told me to get you. I figured you’d come back here to look for your detective friend. I figured right, huh?’

The news that they’d tipped to Mitchell wasn’t exactly heartening. ‘You figured right,’ I said disconsolately.

‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘I’m no dope.’

‘Are you smart enough not to get mixed up in murder?’

‘I’m mixed up in it already,’ Hez said.

‘You can still get out.’

‘Can I? With the girl dead and buried?’

‘But you didn’t kill, Hez.’

‘I know I didn’t.’

‘So why be a sucker?’

I honestly wasn’t trying to attract Hez’s attention away from Simms by talking. That was the farthest thing from my mind. I was trying to find out as much as I could from a guy I thought was plain dumb. I forgot all about Johnny Simms and the flashlight in his back pocket, and his fingers spread close to that flash. I forgot all about the fact that he’d once been a Marine, and I forgot what he’d done to Planett and his deputies when he hadn’t even been angry. I forgot, too, how much he loved Lois.

I should have remembered those things.

‘I ain’t no sucker,’ Hez said. The girl’s dead and gone. Ain’t nobody ever gonna know we done it.’

‘Who?’ I said. ‘What girl?’

‘Why, the prosty-tute,’ Hez said. ‘Lois. Who’d you think?’

There was a sudden gasp beside me, and then a deadly cold silence. I remembered Simms then, but I remembered too late.

The flashlight went on suddenly, throwing harsh blinding light onto Hez’s face. And then Simms leaped and the shotgun went off. The flashlight spilled to the ground, rolling in a crazy pattern of uncontrolled light. Hez swore and tried to fire again, but Simms had his hands on his throat. I dropped to the ground, trying to get at Hez, trying to help Simms, and Hez kicked out suddenly, catching me in the groin. I yelled and rolled over, and I heard Simms say, ‘You son of a bitch, you lousy son of a bitch!’ and all the while his hands were tightening on Hez’s throat.

Hez dropped the shotgun, and his right hand went to his belt, and I knew he was reaching for the Smith and Wesson, and then the gun barged into sight and there was an explosion and Johnny Simms bucked with the shocking power of it, but he did not release Hez’s throat.

Hez brought the gun up, trying for a shot at Simms’ head. But Simms clutched his throat and slammed Hez’s head back against the ground and the gun left Hez’s hands, and Simms tightened his fingers on the leathery throat, his thumbs on the big man’s Adam’s apple.

They teach Marines to kill, and Johnny Simms wasn’t playing. Johnny Simms was carrying a .38 caliber slug in his abdomen, but he’d just learned that his girl had been murdered. And maybe he’d attacked enemy soldiers with such ferocity, but I doubted it.

Hez tried to roll over. His eyes were beginning to bulge out of their sockets, and there was a prayer on his mouth, or a gasp, or a curse. He never got it out. His eyes rolled upward, and he tried a last stand effort to free his throat from Simms’ hands, but Simms would not let go. Hez rattled, a deep rattle that started down in his bowels and shuddered up the length of his body and then trembled from between his lips like a cold wind. And then he suddenly relaxed, and he was still, and I said, That’s enough, Johnny.’

Johnny Simms didn’t answer me.

Johnny’s hands were still tight around Hez’s throat, and the blood spilled from Johnny’s belly where the revolver had ripped him open at close range. I felt for his heart. He was dead.

I picked up the .38 from where it had fallen from Hez’s hand. He had said the dead girl was Lois.

Then the girl who’d been put on that train this morning was Ann Grafton, and she’d been taken to Davistown.

Where in Davistown?

There was a man who might know.