Ross MacDonald - Strangers in Town - Three Newly Discovered Mysteries

His face opened suddenly, eyes and mouth, as if he had wakened out of a walking nightmare. The blue eyes were bewildered, the mouth pulled wry by remorse. "I'm sorry. You hate me now. You'll never help me now."

His hands dropped to his sides and hung useless there. Relieved of their support, I went to my knees. Bright-speckled darkness rushed through my head like a wind. When its roaring subsided and I got to my feet, he was gone. So was the bright revolver.

I pulled myself to my feet and dragged the telephone in through the broken window. It still had a dial tone, not quite as loud as the singing tone in my head. I dialed a police number. The desk-sergeant's voice focused my wits, and I hung up without saying a word.

A homicidal maniac, or reasonable facsimile of one, had taken me in my own office. That would be a pretty story for the papers, good advertising for a private detective. Clients would be lining up six deep at my door. I sat and looked at the telephone, trying to decide whether to throw it out the window permanently.

There were footsteps in the outer office, too rapid and light for a man's. As I crossed the room, they paused outside my door. I pulled it open. A woman in a dark suit stumbled in, attached to the knob. Her jet black ducktail bob was slightly disarrayed. She was breathless.

"Are you Mr. Archer?"

I looked her over and decided that there was no harm in admitting it.

She swayed towards me, wafting in springtime odors from the young slopes of her body. "I'm so glad you're all right, that I got here first."

"First before what?"

"Before Carl. He came to Dr. Grantland's office — where I work — and said that he was on his way to see you. He demanded money to pay you with. I went back to get the doctor, to see if he could reason with him. As soon as my back was turned, Carl rifled the petty cash drawer in the desk."

"Who is Carl?"

"My husband. Please forgive me, I'm not making much sense, am I?" Her dark blue glance slid over my shoulder and rested on the jagged hole in the window. "Has Carl been here already?"

"Something was. A man on a cyclone."

"A big young man in working clothes? With short blond hair?"

I nodded.

"And he was violent." It wasn't a question. It was a leaden statement of despair.

"He started to choke me to death, but he changed his mind. Flighty. Did you say he's your husband?"

"Yes."

"You're not wearing a wedding ring."

"I know I'm not. But we're still man and wife, in the legal sense. Of course I could have had an automatic divorce, after the trouble." She slumped against the doorframe. Her dark enormous eyes and her carmine mouth provided the only color in her face. "I knew it. I knew he was lying. They'd never let him go in his condition. He must have escaped. It's what I've been afraid of." A few sobs racked her. She swallowed them, and straightened.

"Come in and sit down. You need a drink."

"I don't drink."

"Not even water?"

I brought her a paper cupful from the cooler and stood over her chair while she drained it.

"Where did Carl escape from?"

"He's been in the Security Hospital in Mendocino for nearly five years." She crumpled the cup in her hands, and twisted it. "It's a state institution for the criminally insane, in case you don't know."

"I do know. Is he that bad?"

"As bad as possible," she said to the twisted cup. "Carl killed his father, you see. He was never tried for the murder, he was so obviously — unbalanced. All the psychiatrists agreed, for once. The judge was a friend of the family, and had him committed without a public trial."

"Where did all this happen?"

"In the Valley, in Citrus Junction. It was a tragic thing for all of us. It happened on Thanksgiving Day, five years ago. Carl was home from Camarillo, and we were having a sort of family reunion."

"Was he a mental patient at the time?"

"He had been, but he was out on leave of absence. We all thought he was on his way to being cured. It was almost a happy day, our first for a long time — until it happened. We should never have left him alone with his father for a minute. I still don't think he meant to kill the old man. He simply went into one of his terrible rages, and when he came out of it old Mr. Heller was dead. Choked to death." Her heavy eyes came up to my face. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You have no part in my troubles. Nobody could possibly want a part of them."

It was a hot bright morning, but the draft from the broken window was cold on the back of my neck. "What brought him to me, I wonder?"

"One of the men he knew in — the institution. Someone you'd helped. He told me that this morning. Carl believes that he's an innocent man, you see. He thinks he's perfectly well, that everyone's been persecuting him unjustly. It's typical of paranoia, according to Dr. Grantland."

"Dr. Grantland is your employer?"

"Yes."

"Does he know Carl?"

"Of course. He treated him for a while before — it happened. Dr. Grantland is a psychiatrist."

"Does he think Carl is dangerous?"

"I'm afraid so. The only one that doesn't is Mr. Parish, and he's not a real psychiatrist."

"What is he?"

"Mr. Parish is a psychiatric social worker, in Citrus Junction. He stood up for Carl when they sent him away, but it didn't do any good." She rose, and fumbled at the clasp of her cheap imitation-leather saddlebag. "I'll be glad to pay you for the window. I'm sorry about this — about poor Carl."

"Poor everybody," I said.

She gave me a bewildered look. "What do you mean, poor everybody?"

"Your husband is carrying a gun."

Her mouth opened. When it finally closed, it was a thin red line. Her eyes focused like a blue spotlight on my face. "How do you know?"

"He was kind enough to show it to me. It looked like a Smith and Wesson .32 revolver."

"Did he threaten you with it?"

"It wasn't a water-pistol, and we weren't playing cowboys and Indians. Does he know how to handle a gun?"

"Carl was a rifleman in the infantry." Her eyes were darkly luminous like clouds containing lightning. She held out a five-dollar bill to me. "Will this cover the window? It's all the cash I have with me. I have to go."

"Forget the window. We should call the police."

"No." The word broke like a dry sob from her lips. "I can't turn the police on him. You know what they'll do if they catch him and he resists. They'll shoot him down like a dog. I've got to go myself and warn Jerry that he's out."

"Jerry?"

"Jerry Heller, Carl's brother in Citrus Junction. He blames Jerry for everything that's happened to him. I've got to get to Jerry before he does."

"I'll go along."

She looked at me dubiously. "I couldn't afford to pay you very much."

"I don't put a dollar-sign on people's lives. Let's go."

We left her battered Chevrolet in the parking lot of my building, and took my car. Driving out Ventura into the Valley, she told me her name, Mildred Heller, and something about her background.

She had been very young, just out of Hollywood High, when Carl Heller entered her life. It was 1943, and he was a new young private in the Army. They met at a church canteen. She was susceptible, and he was strong and masculine and handsome in a rather strange way of his own. They fell in love and got married, with her parents' reluctant consent, a week before he was shipped out to the Marianes. When she saw him again in 1945, he was in the disturbed ward of a veterans' hospital.

They picked up the pieces together as well as they could. After his discharge, they went to live on his family's lemon ranch. The years of waiting had been hard, but the next few years were harder. Carl and his family didn't get along. His father was crippled with arthritis, and tried to run the ranch from his wheelchair. Carl's older brother Jerry actually ran it. Carl wouldn't take orders from either of them. And then there was Jerry's wife, who regarded the younger couple as interlopers.