Brett Halliday: Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

There was something about Colleen’s eyes, too. They never showed any expression at all — at least none to speak of. Like right now. Colleen didn’t look one way or another. She just stared at you, or smiled at you, and all you saw were those beautiful blue eyes with their long, sooty lashes, and all you could think about was how pretty they were. You thought so hard about the eyes themselves, you never even noticed that they never had any thoughts in them, that they never said anything.

Colleen smiled at him and gestured toward the house. “In there?” she said. “He killed her in there?”

Henry didn’t say anything. A moment ago he had been sweating. Now he felt cold.

Colleen shook her head wonderingly, then glanced toward the blacktop. “Somebody’s coming,” she said. “I’d better get back before they see me. Pa wouldn’t like it a bit, me being over here this way.”

The deputy sheriff’s pickup truck was already turning off the blacktop. The cage with the two bloodhounds in it rattled and slid toward the tailgate.

“No use going now,” Henry said. “It’s too late.” He moved away from her and waited for the constable and the deputy to climb out of the truck. He couldn’t afford to think any more about Colleen now, he knew. He’d have to watch every word he said, be on guard for every question.

The constable came up to him, his face compassionate. “Henry!” he said. “Good Lord, man, what a terrible thing! What a terrible, terrible thing to happen!” Henry nodded, pretended to struggle for words a moment, then looked away.

“Leave him be, Jim,” the deputy said. “He won’t be feeling like doing any more talking than he has to.”

“Sure, Henry,” the constable said. “You just take it easy now. Me and the sheriff’ll just take a look inside.” He glanced at Colleen and frowned. “Your pa know you’re over here, girl?”

She shook her head and smiled at Henry, and Henry got that cold feeling again. “Pa isn’t home,” she said. “Henry, do you remember what you told me that day over on the knoll? About going to a movie in town?”

Henry stared down at the ground, trying to keep back the panic. “Maybe you’d best go home now, Colleen,” he said. “Your pa may be home.”

“I never been to a movie,” she said quietly. “Never once in my whole life. Pa would never let me.” She was studying Henry’s face, and beginning to frown at what she saw there. “You promised me, Henry,” she said. “You said that if something happened to your wife, you and I could go to the church suppers and the movies. Don’t you remember, Henry?” She stopped, and now the blue eyes held a sheen close to tears.

The constable glanced sharply at the deputy; then both men looked at Henry, with eyes grown suddenly narrow. No one said anything. The seconds pounded away for a small eternity, and then, abruptly, Henry realized that the only sound in the elm grove was his own rapid breathing.

At last, Constable Weber cleared his throat. “You look just a little sick, Henry,” he said. “Maybe you’d best go inside and stretch out a while.”

Henry walked the mile it took to pass the constable, and the second mile it took to pass the deputy, and walked into the house on legs that threatened to collapse beneath him at every step.

They suspect me, he thought. They suspect me — and pretty soon they’ll know for sure. They ain’t fools — now that they’ve got their suspicions they’ll keep at it till they know.

He picked up his shotgun, reloaded it from the box of shells in the kitchen and carried it with him into the bedroom. He was still cold. He took off his shoes and socks and lay down on the bed and pulled the sheet up over him, keeping the gun beside him, pressed close to his body.

He listened to the sounds of the constable and the deputy, as they came into the house and moved about in the parlor. He listened to them leave again. He listened to the grating sound of the bloodhounds’ cage being opened, then to the deep voices of the dogs themselves. He heard them, up in the grove for a long time, making the sounds bloodhounds always did, when they were trying to pick out a scent. Then he heard the grate of the cage again, and the sharp click, as someone secured the hasp on the cage door.

Then, for a long time, there was. no sound at all, until he heard the clump of boots across the floor in the parlor, and along the hall to the bedroom. He lay very still, hardly breathing at all, the shotgun still held tight against his side.

The constable and the deputy came in and shut the door, and stood staring at him. Outside, one of the bloodhounds bayed sadly, then was still.

“Henry,” the constable said, not meeting Henry’s eyes. “Henry, we know what you done.” He took a heavy breath and let it out slowly. “It was the girl that got us started,” he said. “The girl, and what you said about loading your shotgun with birdshot in one barrel and buckshot in the other, just like I told you I’d loaded mine.”

“That man was killed with buckshot,” the deputy said. “But you said you killed him out there in the parlor. That lead in the wall out there isn’t buckshot, Mr. Ferris — it’s birdshot. The buckshot was fired out there in the elm grove. We picked some of it out of a tree trunk.” He paused.

“And we found that blood out there, too. Those leaves should have been scattered around even, not all bunched up like that in one place.” He waited, watching Henry’s face expectantly.

Henry tightened his grip on the shotgun and said nothing.

The deputy shrugged. “We know just how you did it, Mr. Ferris,” he went on, “We even took the dogs up there to the grove. They knew the scent they was after all right, but they couldn’t come near the house, because the man never did. Once we knew you’d done him in, up there in the trees, and carried him down here to the house, we knew all we had to know.”

The constable’s face was gray. He shook his head slowly. “Henry,” he said softly, “I’ve known you all my life. I just thank God I don’t have to take you in.” The deputy took a short step forward. “It’s my territory out here, Mr. Ferris,” he said. “I’ll ask you not to give me any trouble.”

Henry looked at the deputy, but his vision went through him and beyond him, and he smiled at the play of sunlight on Colleen Kimberly’s curving thighs, as she sat there on the knoll beyond the orchard.

He was still thinking of her, when he put the shotgun barrels in his mouth and pressed both triggers with his toe.

The doll turned slowly, its china arms spread, its hard toes stretched taut in the immemorial position of ballet. The tiny music box beneath her played a sad, nostalgic tune. Minor notes tinkled down, then up, then down again through three weeping phrases. Then the box was silent for a moment while the doll kept turning, until the faint little tune began again. It was a gypsy song but, because of the small mechanism, it held no gypsy joy — only hopelessness and a heartbreaking melancholy.

The walls of the room were covered with unframed pictures, experiments in color, style and feeling, groping and unrealized. They might have been dream experiences which, for an instant, the dreamer had understood but had been unable to recapture on awakening.

In one corner stood an easel supporting a half-finished picture of interblending planes, while on a tray at its base lay a palette smeared with daubs of paint and poppy-seed oil from an overturned can.

The little girl with the honey-colored pigtails sat on a chair in front of a flat-topped desk, her round amber eyes fastened solemnly on the dancing doll, her body moving in a small circle which continued for a moment even after the notes slowed and finally stopped. She stared thoughtfully, then picked up the box, wound it and set it back on the desk again.