Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (7 page)

“Doreen, listen—”

“You choked him,” she said.

“Self-defense!” Selvey shouted. “He broke in here, tried to rob the apartment.”

She slammed the door shut, twisted the inside lock. Selvey raced across the carpet and pounded desperately on the door. He rattled the knob and called her name, but there was no answer. Then he heard the sound of a spinning telephone dial.

I
T WAS BAD
enough, without having Vance in the crowd that jammed the apartment. Vance, the assistant DA, who hated his guts anyway. Vance, who was smart enough to break down his burglar story without any trouble, who had learned that Selvey's visitor had been expected. Vance, who would delight in his predicament.

But Vance didn't seem delighted. He looked puzzled. He stared down at the dead body on the floor of Selvey's apartment and said: “I don't get it, Warren. I just don't get it. What did you want to kill a harmless old guy like that for?”

“Harmless?
Harmless?
”

“Sure. Harmless. That's old Arlington, I'd know him any place.”

“You know him?” Selvey was stunned.

“Sure, I met up with him when I was working out of Bellaire County. Crazy old guy goes around confessing to murders. But why kill him, Warren? What for?”

I was doing
about eighty, but the long flat road made it feel only that fast.

The redheaded kid's eyes were bright and a little wild as he listened to the car radio. When the news bulletin was over, he turned down the volume.

He wiped the side of his mouth with his hand. “So far they found seven of his victims.”

I nodded. “I was listening.” I took one hand off the wheel and rubbed the back of my neck, trying to work out some of the tightness.

He watched me and his grin was half sly. “You nervous about something?”

My eyes flicked in his direction. “No. Why should I be?”

The kid kept smiling. “The police got all the roads blocked for fifty miles around Edmonton.”

“I heard that too.”

The kid almost giggled. “He's too smart for them.”

I glanced at the zipper bag he held on his lap. “Going far?”

He shrugged. “I don't know.”

The kid was a little shorter than average and he had a slight build. He looked about seventeen, but he was the baby-face type and could have been five years older.

He rubbed his palms on his slacks. “Did you ever wonder what made him do it?”

I kept my eyes on the road. “No.”

He licked his lips. “Maybe he got pushed too far. All his life somebody always pushed him. Somebody was always there to tell him what to do and what not to do. He got pushed once too often.”

The kid stared ahead. “He exploded. A guy can take just so much. Then something's got to give.”

I eased my foot on the accelerator.

He looked at me. “What are you slowing down for?”

“Low on gas,” I said. “The station ahead is the first I've seen in the last forty miles. It might be another forty before I see another.”

I turned off the road and pulled to a stop next to the three pumps. An elderly man came around to the driver's side of the car.

“Fill the tank,” I said. “And check the oil.”

The kid studied the gas station. It was a small building, the only structure in the ocean of wheat fields. The windows were grimy with dust.

I could just make out a wall phone inside.

The kid jiggled one foot. “That old man takes a long time, I don't like waiting.” He watched him lift the hood to check the oil. “Why does anybody that old want to live? He'd be better off dead.”

I lit a cigarette. “He wouldn't agree with you.”

The kid's eyes went back to the filling station. He grinned. “There's a phone in there. You want to call anybody?”

I exhaled a puff of cigarette smoke. “No.”

When the old man came back with my change, the kid leaned toward the window. “You got a radio, mister?”

The old man shook his head. “No, I like things quiet.”

The kid grinned. “You got the right idea, mister. When things are quiet you live longer.”

Out on the road, I brought the speed back up to eighty.

The kid was quiet for a while, and then he said, “It took guts to kill seven people. Did you ever hold a gun in your hand?”

“I guess almost everybody has.”

His teeth showed through twitching lips. “Did you ever point it at anybody?”

I glanced at him.

His eyes were bright. “It's good to have people afraid of you,” he said. “You're not short anymore when you got a gun.”

“No,” I said. “You're not a runt anymore.”

He flushed slightly.

“You're the tallest man in the world,” I said. “As long as nobody else has a gun too.”

“It takes a lot of guts to kill,” the kid said again. “Most people don't know that.”

“One of those killed was a boy of five,” I said. “You got anything to say about that?”

He licked his lips. “It could have been an accident.”

I shook my head. “Nobody's going to think that.”

His eyes seemed uncertain for a moment. “Why do you think he'd kill a kid?”

I shrugged. “That would be hard to say. He killed one person and then another and then another. Maybe after a while it didn't make any difference to him what they were. Men, women, or children. They were all the same.”

The kid nodded. “You can develop a taste for killing. It's not too hard. After the first few, it doesn't matter. You get to like it.”

He was silent for another five minutes. “They'll never get him. He's too smart for that.”

I took my eyes off the road for a few moments. “How do you figure that? The whole country's looking for him. Everybody knows what he looks like.”

The kid lifted both his thin shoulders. “Maybe he doesn't care. He did what he had to do. People will know he's a big man now.”

We covered a mile without a word and then he shifted in his seat. “You heard his description over the radio?”

“Sure,” I said. “For the last week.”

He looked at me curiously. “And you weren't afraid to pick me up?”

“No.”

His smile was still sly. “You got nerves of steel?”

I shook my head. “No. I can be scared when I have to, all right.”

He kept his eyes on me. “I fit the description perfectly.”

“That's right.”

The road stretched ahead of us and on both sides there was nothing but the flat plain. Not a house. Not a tree.

The kid giggled. “I look just just like the killer. Everybody's scared of me. I like that.”

“I hope you had fun,” I said.

“I been picked up by the cops three times on this road in the last two days. I get as much publicity as the killer.”

“I know,” I said, “And I think you'll get more. I thought I'd find you somewhere on this highway.”

I slowed down the car. “How about me? Don't I fit the description too?”

The kid almost sneered. “No. You got brown hair. His is red. Like mine.”

I smiled. “But I could have dyed it.”

The kid's eyes got wide when he knew what was going to happen.

He was going to be number eight.

He hated the
manager most.

Last night he had come to that realization. This morning, as he entered the department store with the Luger tucked into the waistband of his trousers, he allowed his hatred for the manager to swell up blackly until it smothered all the other hatreds he felt. The manager knew; of that he was certain. And it was his knowledge, this smirking, sneering, patronizing, knowledge that fed the hatred, nurtured it, caused it to rise like dark yeast, bubbling, boiling.

The Luger was a firm metal reassurance against his belly.

The gun had been given to him in the good days, in Vienna, by an admirer. In the good days, there had been many admirers, and many gifts. He could remember the good days. The good days would sometimes come back to him with fiercely sweet nostalgia, engulfing him in waves and waves of painful memories. He could remember the lights, and the applause, and …

“Good morning, Nick.”

The voice, the hated voice.

He stopped abruptly. “Good morning, Mr. Atkins,” he said.

Atkins was smiling. The smile was a thin curl on his narrow face, a thin bloodless curl beneath the ridiculously tenuous mustache on the cleaving edge of the hatchet face. The manager's hair was black, artfully combed to conceal a balding patch. He wore a gray pinstripe suit. Like a caricature of all store managers everywhere, he wore a carnation in his buttonhole. He continued smiling. The smile was infuriating.

“Ready for the last act?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Atkins.”

“It
is
the last act, isn't it, Nick?” Atkins asked, smiling. “Final curtain comes down today, doesn't it? All over after today. Everything reverts back to normal after today.”

“Yes, Mr. Atkins,” he said. “Today is the last act.”

“But no curtain calls, eh, Nick?”

His name was not Nick. His name was Randolph Blair, a name that had blazed across the theatre marquees of four continents. Atkins knew this, and had probably known it the day he'd hired him. He knew it, and so the “Nick” was an additional barb, a reminder of his current status, a sledgehammer subtlety that shouted, “Lo, how the mighty have fallen!”

“My name is not Nick,” he said flatly.

Atkins snapped his fingers. “That's right, isn't it? I keep forgetting. What is it again? Randolph Something? Clair? Flair? Shmair? What
is
your name, Nick?”

“My name is Randolph Blair,” he said. He fancied he said it with great dignity. He fancied he said it the way Hamlet would have announced that he was Prince of Denmark. He could remember the good days when the name Randolph Blair was the magic key to a thousand cities. He could remember hotel clerks with fluttering hands, maitre d's hovering, young girls pulling at his clothing, even telephone operators suddenly growing respectful when they heard the name. Randolph Blair. In his mind, the name was spelled in lights. Randolph Blair. The lights suddenly flickered, and then dimmed. He felt the steel outline of the Luger against his belly. He smiled thinly.

“You know my name, don't you, Mr. Atkins?”

“Yes,” Atkins said. “I know your name. I hear it sometimes.”

His interest was suddenly piqued. “Do you?” he asked.

“Yes. I hear people ask, every now and then, ‘Say, whatever happened to Randolph Blair?' I know your name.”

He felt Atkins's dart pierce his throat, felt the poison spread into his bloodstream.
Whatever happened to Randolph Blair?
A comedian had used the line on television not two weeks before, bringing down the house. Randolph Blair, the ever-popular Randolph Blair. A nothing now, a nobody, a joke for a television comic. A forgotten name, a forgotten face. But Atkins would remember. For eternity he would remember Randolph Blair's name and the face and terrible power.