April Evil (23 page)

“Say the combination, old man. Say it now. Quick.”

The voice was so frail he had to lean close to hear it. “Start at zero. Two turns right to eighteen, left to seventy-nine, three turns right to sixty.” Then he mumbled something else.

“What did you say, old man?”

The voice was stronger. “I said may God forgive me for endangering others.”

Ronnie came to the doorway. “A fat man and a blonde woman. They came through the gate. Their car’s parked outside. They’re looking at the black boy.”

“Shill them in here. Fast.”

He heard Ronnie’s voice clearly. “You, out there! There’s been some trouble. Would you step into the house, please?”

He moved back and Ronnie followed the couple in. They were in the room before they noticed the guns. The blonde woman put her hand to her throat. They both stared at the body. They turned as one and looked with disbelief at the fright mask on Mullin.

“What’s going on?” the heavy man demanded.

“Shut up. Keep them in line. I’ve got the numbers.”

Mullin waited until Ronnie had lined up the two women and the heavy man against the wall, their backs to the room. He went over to the safe. He peeled the mask up and wiped his dripping face on his sleeve. It was awkward using his left hand on the dial. Right to eighteen, left to seventy-nine, right to sixty. He released the dial and grasped the handle. The heavy door swung open easily. The look of the money took his breath away. There was so damn much of it. It made him want to laugh out loud. There was so damn much of it, the situation was ludicrous, absurd.

“I’ll hold them. Yell to her to bring in the bags. All three of them.”

The old man looked better in the chair. He was breathing easier. The girl was crying, softly. The blonde woman stood in a very rigid way. The heavy man shifted from foot to foot. The old man was staring at him steadily. Mullin suddenly realized the mask was pushed up off his face.

They came in with the bags, bumping them against the door frame in their haste.

“Pack it up,” Mullin ordered. “Both of you. It’ll go faster.”

He heard Sal say, “Good God!”

He stood with his back to the safe, hearing the rustlings and thuds as they packed the money. He tried to think clearly about what they should do with these people. He had been able to think very clearly until Preston broke his wrist. His thinking had become fuzzy. There didn’t seem to be any fight in any of them. The big rolls of wide tape bulged his side pocket. Strap them up one at a time. The one out in the yard, too. Haul him in where he wouldn’t be seen. Lock the place up. It didn’t make any difference that there were two more. The safe was open. The only one with any fight was dead. If the shots had alerted anybody, they’d know it by now. He tried to regain the calmness and certainty. He made himself breathe deeply and slowly. The wrist was going to be a bad problem. It was swelling badly.

“All set,” Ronnie said.

“We’ll all leave at once. Get the tape out my pocket.”

“That wrist looks bad.”

“It’s broken, damn it. Get the tape. Take the blonde first.”

He guarded the others. Ronnie made the blonde woman lie face down on the floor. She objected and he cuffed her twice and she submitted meekly. He taped her arms behind her, taped her legs at the ankles and above the knees, and put a wide strip across her mouth. The crying girl was next. She submitted with no protest. Ronnie took no chances with the heavy man. He slugged him brutally across the back of the head with the Magnum, taped him quickly and expertly as the man
lay unconscious. The old man was next to last. They didn’t move him from the chair. They taped his arms to the arms of the chair and put a strip across his mouth. It was a heavy chair. The old man would not be able to move it.

“Now all we got is the one in the yard,” Mullin said.

“Want to check these? Fat boy looks powerful.”

Mullin put the gun in his side jacket pocket and went over to the heavy man. He leaned over to see if the wrists were done properly. As he started to straighten up, something smashed against his head, dropping him across the unconscious man on the floor. He tried to scramble up but his bad wrist would not support his weight. He was struck again. He was not entirely unconscious as Ronnie taped him. The last band of wide tape was slapped across his lips and pressed down hard. He was on his side, arms behind him. He could see Ronnie’s face.

Ronnie smiled down at him. He sat on his heels and smiled. Sal stood beyond Ronnie near the doorway, near the suitcases, her eyes wide, her hands clasped in front of her.

“You were going to be too much trouble with that wrist, old pal. This is a one-sided conversation. Too bad we can’t have a little chat. You told me they’d never put you back in there. Now if you don’t want to go back behind those bars, just shake your head no.”

Mullin shook his head from side to side.

“Now nobody can ever say I haven’t done a favor for an old pal. Nobody can ever say I’m not a thoughtful guy. You’re never going back behind those big gates. Isn’t that nice of me?”

Mullin watched in growing horror as Ronnie tore off a three inch length of tape. Ronnie leaned over and put the tape across his nostrils, pressed it firmly in place. He had taken a deep breath. With a convulsive effort of his lungs he blew enough of the tape loose so that he could exhale. As he emptied his lungs, Ronnie pressed the tape back in place. He could not breathe. He strained to take a breath. His throat and lungs convulsed. Ronnie’s outline grew hazy. The room darkened. He made a last terrible effort then the black blood burst behind his eyes, blotting out the world.

Toby heard the car drive out. He lay still. His hands were full of pins and needles. When the woman had taken the tape off, they had felt numb, as if they didn’t belong to him. Now they hurt and the fingers didn’t work right. He fumbled for the corner of the tape across his mouth. He peeled it free. It hurt to do it little by little, but it was better than yanking it off all at once. He couldn’t make himself yank it off all at once. His mouth was sore.

He sat up, moving more quickly, and stripped the tape off his legs and ankles. It hurt too, but not as much. It took a long time to stand up. He was stiff and he felt high and tall on his legs. They felt wobbly, like a colt he had seen once, newborn. He had to lean against the wall for a while. If they came back, he knew he couldn’t run. He listened to the silence of the house. One of them might be left. He couldn’t be sure. It might be some kind of trick. He went to the windows. The outside air smelled good after the stench of the room. He unlatched the screen and pushed it out. He straddled the sill and tried to let himself down but he fell, jarring himself and biting his lip. He got up on the funny stilt legs and walked slowly across through the late sunshine toward his own home.

He felt strange. He didn’t want to see anybody. He wanted to get clean and then be alone in his room with the door shut and be safe there, and lie there and hear the others moving around the house, and his father laughing and his mother singing, and even hear those dumb records Sue liked to play. He wanted to lie on his bed and look at his models. He wanted to grease his bike, and fish off the pier, and make everything just as it was before. But he sensed that things would not be just the same as they were before. There were dark things in the world. He had known about the dark things from far off, like in a movie or books. But not close by. When you knew about them from far off you could tell yourself that you could lick them. You could be quicker and braver and smarter, so that the dark things were conquered, as in the movies, in the comic books.

But the close look at them was much different. They made
you into nothing. A bug on the sidewalk. They made you small and afraid and somehow dirty.

He walked into his home. He walked into the living room. His mother was on the couch. She jumped up and stared at him for a measureless moment, eyes and mouth wide. Then she was on him with wild cries, with tears that frightened him, rubbing her fingertips over the tape-torn lips, holding him tightly. Sue and his father came. They all tried to talk to him at once. He could not answer. His father silenced the others with a roar of impatience.

In the sudden silence he said in a quiet voice, “Where were you, son?”

“Next door. In the Mather house. They had me all fastened with tape so I couldn’t move. Three men and a woman. The F.B.I. is after one of the men. I saw his picture in a magazine. I looked in their window to make sure. They got me. It was him all right. The woman gave me some milk. They’re gone now, I think.” To his own enormous disgust he began to cry helplessly. His father went to the phone.

The boy returned home at five-fifteen on Friday the fifteenth. Police entered the Mather house at five-twenty-five. The body was discovered almost immediately. The boy’s identification seemed positive enough to merit advising the SAC of the nearest regional F.B.I. office. A description of Mullin and the woman was obtained from Hedges, as well as a sketchy description of the third member of the group obtained from the boy. Hedges fortunately had jotted down the number of the plates on the Buick. In compliance with the F.B.I. suggestion, and in line with normal operating procedure, the cooperation of the State Highway Patrol was enlisted and road blocks were established on Route 41, both north and south of Flamingo, as well as on two secondary roads leading to the interior of the state. These road blocks were in operating position by ten minutes of six, and were reinforced shortly thereafter.

All local radio facilities broadcast spot warnings to the population of Flamingo. A Coast Guard helicopter took off and began a patrol of the highways leading out of Flamingo. The news services picked up the item quickly enough to teletype it to all outlets nationally in time for six o’clock news broadcasts. All police officers in the Flamingo area were recalled to duty and all department vehicles put into patrol operation.
The official assumption was that the group of three planned some unknown local operation, that the woman had released the boy sooner than Mullin had anticipated he would be released. Thus it might safely be assumed that the road blocks had been established in time and that the trio was inside the net. It was hoped that they would be apprehended before darkness made the task more difficult.

It was Lieutenant Dickson, the same officer who had first been advised of the missing boy, who thought of the home of Dr. Tomlin as a possible target for the trio. He was with a Sergeant Moody in Car 6 with Moody behind the wheel. Dickson had been methodically considering the possible targets, the points of vulnerability in Flamingo. Banks, supermarkets, dog track.

“Turn right on Prospect, Lee. Just for the hell of it, I want to take a look at the Tomlin place.”

“The doc? Hey, that’s an idea. My old lady says he probably hasn’t got any dough out there at all. She says people in this town talk too much.”

“We’ll take a look.”

It was ten minutes after six when Car 6 turned down the block toward the Tomlin house.

Ronnie stood up and turned his back on Mullin’s body. Sal stood by the suitcases. Her eyes were wide and they didn’t seem to look at anything. She looked blind. Her lips were parted. Ronnie nudged her arm. “Wake up, kitten.”

She started and focused her eyes on him. She shrank back from him. The reaction irritated him.

“Pick up a bag,” he said. He took the other two. He turned in the doorway and looked back. The tape gleamed white in the dim room. It looked as though they were playing some strange game. He turned and followed the girl out. They went to the car. Suddenly he had a bad feeling about that car. It was a little too easy to spot. It had been used too much. He told the girl to wait. He went out through the gate and looked at the two-tone job at the curb. It was dark blue and light blue and
had dealer plates on it. The key was not in the switch. He went back into the study and got the key out of the heavy man’s side pocket. He had regained consciousness. His eyes were open. He breathed heavily through his nose.

Ronnie went back out. The girl was in the car. She had put the suitcases in the back. He opened the rear door and took two of them out.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You know the route?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll follow you in the other car. Take it slow and easy. I’ll hang back a block or so.”

“Why don’t we both go in the Buick?” She asked the question too casually. She still seemed dazed, unfocused.

“I don’t want it found here. When we get a chance to leave it, a good place, I’ll pass you and stop. Let’s stop yakking. This is taking too long.” He looked at his watch. It was a little after six.

She drove out slowly. He swung the gates shut, ran to the other car with the two suitcases, heaved them into the back seat and got behind the wheel. He was headed in the right direction. When she was a block ahead, he pulled away from the curb. He reviewed the map in his mind. Five blocks ahead she would turn left. That would take her to the boulevard that led over to Route 41 where she would turn north toward Tampa.

He looked in the rear vision mirror and saw the police car coming up behind him. She had passed the intersection ahead. The siren started, shrill and terrifying, a shard of ice through his bowels. He braked and swung left at the corner, leaving the cruiser a choice. He looked back barely in time to see the flash of black and white as the police car sped after the Buick. He drove two fast blocks and then slowed down. If they were after the Buick, if they had it figured this close so quickly, then main highways were going to be no good at all.

He turned and headed slowly toward the center of town. He could hear the dying wail of the siren. He got the first inkling of an idea of how he would leave town, of how it might
be possible to leave town. He adjusted the rear view mirror and drove on, carefully, cautiously.

Sally Leon tightened her hands convulsively on the wheel when she heard the harsh sound of the siren behind her. The siren seemed to awaken her from the daze that had dulled her mind as she had watched Mullin die. Never before had she seen pure nightmare. It was like the grotesque things that happened in dreams. Horror such as that could not be real, nor could Ronnie be a human being. He could not be like other people. He could not be sane. She had watched and she had been unable to cry out or try to stop him. She had been hypnotized by the look of pure evil.