Find a Victim (2 page)

“Bullet wound?”

“Unquestionably, I’d say. These lung wounds are murder.”

I looked down at Tony Aquista’s face. It had changed from flesh to wax, and the teeth were grinning.

“Murder is the word.”

I must have said it loudly or strangely. The doctor gave me a compunctious look.

“This man a buddy of yours?”

“No. I just don’t like to see it happen to anybody. Have you called the police?”

“The sheriff’s office. It happened in the county, didn’t it?”

“That’s where they ditched him, anyway.”

He moved to the door, saying over his shoulder: “The sheriff will want you to stick around, I expect.”

I didn’t tell him that waiting in sterile rooms for policemen was my calling. I waited for this one on a metal camp-chair outside the receiving-room. The business of the hospital went on around me. Nurses came and went, clearing the room for the next emergency case. Tony Aquista, featureless under a sheet, was trundled away to the morgue at the end of the corridor.

Part of my mind went with him into the cold darkness. It’s like that sometimes when a younger man dies. I felt as if a part of me had turned to wax under the white lights.

From somewhere in the murmurous bowels of the building an infant’s cry rose sharp. I wondered if it was a newborn baby equalizing the population of Las Cruces.

CHAPTER
2
:
A tall man in a gray business suit
opened the door of the morgue. His dazzling off-white Stetson just missed the top of the doorframe as he came out. He smacked the concrete wall with the flat of his hand and said to the uniformed deputy behind him:

“God damn it, what happened to Tony?”

The deputy shrugged. “Woman trouble, maybe. You know Tony, chief.”

“Yes. I know Tony.”

The sheriff’s striding shadow lengthened toward me. The face under the hatbrim was long and lean like his body, and burned by the valley sun. Though he was young for his job, about my age, I could see the scars of old pain branching out from the corners of his eyes and bracketing his mouth. His eyes were deepset and dark like the windows of a haunted house.

“You’re the one who brought him in?”

“I’m the one.”

“You’re not a Las Cruces man, are you?”

“Los Angeles.”

“I see.” He nodded as if I had made a damaging admission. “Let’s have your name and home address.”

I gave him my name, Lew Archer, and my business address on Sunset Boulevard. The deputy wrote them down. The sheriff dragged a second chair up to mine and sat facing me.

“I’m Sheriff Church. This is Danelaw, my identification officer. And what’s your occupation, Mr. Archer, besides acting as a good Samaritan?” If Church was trying to be genial, he wasn’t succeeding.

“I’m a licensed private detective.”

“Well. This is quite a coincidence. Or is it? What were you doing out on the highway?”

“Driving. I’m on my way to Sacramento.”

“Not tonight,” he said brusquely. “It doesn’t pay to be a good Samaritan nowadays. I’m afraid you’re going to have to put up with a certain amount of red tape. We’ll need you for the inquest, for one thing.”

“I realize that.”

“I’ll hurry it if I can—tomorrow or the next day. Let’s see, this is Thursday. Can you stay over till Saturday?”

“If I have to.”

“Good. Now how did you happen to pick him up?”

“He was lying in the ditch a couple of miles south of the Marine Base. He managed to get up onto his knees and wave at me.”

“He was still conscious then? Did he say anything?”

“He lost consciousness before I got to him. I didn’t like to move him, but there was no way to telephone, no one to send for help. I put him in the back seat of my car and phoned for an ambulance from the first place I came to.”

“Where was that?”

“Kerrigan’s motor court. Kerrigan had quite a reaction to the thing. It seems he knew Aquista, and didn’t want any part of him, dead or alive. His wife called the ambulance for me.”

“What was Mrs. Kerrigan doing there?”

“Holding down the desk, apparently.”

“Wasn’t Kerrigan’s manager around? Miss Meyer?”

“If she was, I didn’t see her. Does it matter?”

“No.” The sheriff’s voice had risen. He brought it under control. “It’s the first time I ever heard of Kate Kerrigan going to work in the place.”

Danelaw looked up from his notebook. “She’s been out there all week.”

Church looked at him as if he had more questions, but he swallowed them. His knobbed throat moved visibly.

I said: “Kerrigan was a little under the weather. Which may account for his manners. He asked me if I shot the man myself.”

A tight smile pincered the sheriff’s mouth. “What did you say to that?”

“No. I never saw the man before. I thought I’d get that on the record, in case he babbles some more.”

“Not a bad idea, under the circumstances. Now if you’ll show me the way to the spot where you found him.”

We stood up at the same time. His bony hand closed on
my shoulder and urged me toward the exit. I couldn’t tell whether it was a gesture of encouragement or command. In any case, I jerked my shoulder free.

His car was a new black Mercury special with undercover plates and no official markings. It followed me south out of town, the way I had come. The twilight lull in the traffic was over. It was full night now. Headlights after headlights stabbed up through the valley from the south, flashed in my eyes and away. From the north we were overtaken by a second official car.

We passed through the deserted camp and I began to watch the roadside. Spotlight beams from the cars behind me dragged in the ditch like broken oars of light. After two false stops I found the place. It was marked by a dribble of drying blood on the gravel shoulder. The bent jimson weeds below the shoulder still held the impression of a spreadeagled body.

Several deputies climbed out of the second patrol car. One of them was a bull-shouldered man with bright quick Spanish eyes moving constantly in an Indian-colored face. He gave the sheriff an impatient salute:

“Communications got in touch with Meyer. Tony was driving today all right, and the truck is missing.”

“What was on the truck?”

“Meyer wouldn’t say. He wants to talk to you about it. When I get my hands on the mother-lovers that did it—” The dark man’s roving gaze rested on me, so hard I could feel its impact.

The sheriff laid a fatherly arm around the olive-drab shoulders. “Take it slow now, Sal. I know how you people feel about blood-relations. Tony was your cousin, wasn’t he?”

“My mother’s sister’s son.”

“We’ll get the ones that did it, Sal, but we’ll make sure that they’re the right ones first. This man here had nothing
to do with the killing. He found Tony and brought him to the hospital.”

“Is that what he says?”

“That’s what I say.” The sheriff’s tone became abruptly official. “Where’s Meyer now?”

“At the yard.”

“Go over to the west side and get the dope on the truck. Tell the old man I’ll be along later. Put out a general alarm on it. And I want roadblocks on every road leading out of the county. Got that, Sal?”

“Yessir.”

The dark-faced deputy ran to his car. The sheriff and the rest of his men went over the ground with eyes and fingers and flashbulbs.

Danelaw, the identification officer, took an impression of my shoe and checked it against the footprints in the ditch. There were no footprints except mine, and no new tire-tracks on the gravel shoulder.

“It looks as if he was dumped from a car,” Church said. “Or maybe from his truck. Whatever it was, it didn’t leave the concrete.” He looked at me. “Did you see a car? Or a truck?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No.”

“It’s possible they didn’t stop, just flung him out and let him lie, and he crawled off the road himself.”

Danelaw spoke up from the side of the road: “I’d say that’s what he did, chief. There’s traces of blood where he dragged himself into the ditch.”

Church spat on the concrete. “A God-damn nasty business.” He turned to me, almost casually. “Can I have a look at your license, by the way?”

“Why not?” I showed him my photostat.

“It looks all right to me. And what did you say you were
going to do when you got to Sacramento?”

“I didn’t say. I have a report to make to a legislative committee.” I named the committee chairman. “He hired me to study narcotics distribution in the southern counties.”

“If I wanted to go to the trouble of checking that story, would it check out?”

“Naturally. I have some correspondence with me.”

I started for my car, but Church stopped me:

“Don’t bother. You’re not under suspicion. Sal Braga’s an emotional bastard, and he happens to be related to Aquista. In this town everybody’s related to everybody else. Which sometimes makes things a little complicated.” He was silent for a moment. “What do you say we go and talk to Kerrigan?”

“It sounds delightful.”

By this time the roadside was lined with cars, official and unofficial. A highway patrolman was directing traffic with a flashlight. He made room for the sheriff’s Mercury to turn, and I followed in my car.

The red glow over the city reminded me of the reflection of the emergency sign at the hospital, infinitely magnified. Beyond the glowing city, in the hills, the rotating beam of an air beacon seemed to be probing the night for some kind of meaning.

CHAPTER
3
:
Kerrigan must have been watching
for the sheriff. He came out of the lobby as I pulled up behind the Mercury.

“How’s the boy, Brand?”

“Good enough.”

They shook hands. But I noticed as they talked that each man watched the other like chess opponents who had played before. Or opponents in a deadlier game than chess. No,
Kerrigan said, he didn’t know what had happened to Aquista, or why. He had seen no evil, heard no evil, done no evil. The man in the car had asked to use his telephone, and that was his sole connection with the case. He gave me a look of bland hostility.

“How’s business, by the way?” Church glanced up at the no-vacancy sign, which was lit. “I guess I don’t have to ask.”

“As a matter of fact it’s lousy. I turned that on because my wife’s too upset to handle the desk. She says.”

“Is Anne on her vacation?”

“You could call it that.”

“Did she quit?”

Kerrigan lifted and dropped his heavy shoulders. “I wouldn’t know. I was going to ask you.”

“Why me?”

“She’s your relative, after all. She hasn’t been on the job all week, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with her.”

“Isn’t she in her apartment?”

“The phone doesn’t answer.” Kerrigan peered up sharply into the sheriff’s face. “Haven’t you seen her either, Brand?”

“Not this week.” He added after a pause: “We don’t see too much of Anne any more.”

“That’s funny. I thought she was practically part of the family.”

“You thought wrong. She and Hilda get together now and then, but mostly Anne leads her own life.”

Kerrigan smiled his soft and ugly smile. “Maybe this week she’s leading her own life a little more than usual, eh?”

“What does that mean?”

“Whatever you want to put into it.”

Church took a long step toward him, his hands clubbed. His eyes were wide and black, and his face had a green patina in the colored light. He looked sick with anger.

I opened the car door and got one foot on the gravel.
The sound of my movement checked him. He stood shivering, staring down into Kerrigan’s evil grin. Then he turned on his heel and walked away from us. He walked like a mechanical man to the margin of the light and stood there with his back to us and his head down.

“Shut my big mouth, eh?” Kerrigan said cheerfully. “He’ll blow his top once too often, and blow himself out of the courthouse.”

Mrs. Kerrigan opened the door of the lobby. “Is something the matter, Don?” She came toward us, wearing a silver-fox cape and an anxious expression.

“Something always is. I told the sheriff Anne Meyer didn’t turn up this week. He seems to think I’m to blame. I’m not responsible for his God-damn sister-in-law.”

She laid a timid hand on his arm, like somebody trying to soothe an excited animal. “You must have misunderstood him, darling. I’m sure he couldn’t blame you for anything she does. He probably wants to ask her about Tony Aquista.”

“Why?” I said. “Did she know Aquista, too?”

“Of course she did. He had a crush on her. Didn’t he, Don?”

“Shut up.”

She backed away from him, stumbling on her high heels as if she had been pushed.

“Go on, Mrs. Kerrigan. It may be important. Aquista died just now.”

“He died?” Her hands went to her breast and wound themselves in the fur cape. She looked from me to her husband, her blue eyes darkening. “Is Anne mixed up in it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “This is enough of this, Kate. Go inside. You’re cold and upset and making a fool of yourself.”

“I am not. You can’t order me in. I have a perfect right to talk to anyone I choose.”

“You’re not going to shoot off your mouth to this bastard.”

“I haven’t been—”

“Shut up.” His voice was quiet and deadly. “You’ve made enough trouble for me already.”

He seized her elbows from behind and half carried her to the door of the lobby. She strúggled weakly in his grasp, but when he released her she went in without a backward glance.

He came back toward me, running his fingers lovingly through his hair. It was clipped in a crew cut, much too short for his age. I guessed that he was one of those middle-aging men who couldn’t face the fact that their youth was over. It gave him an unreal surface, under which a current of cruelty flickered.

“You don’t believe in killing them with kindness.”

“I know how to handle bitches. Purebred bitches or any other kind of bitches. I also know how to handle nosy sons of bitches. Unless you’re here in some official capacity, I suggest you get off my property. But quick.”