Стюарт Стерлинг - The Galloping Corpses

Jane began to sob, quietly. Keene stood up, went to the mantel, examined the charcoal sketch.

“This yours?”

“Yes.”

“You’re quite an artist. Not only with charcoal.”

She stopped crying abruptly.

“That was a real work of art, that recital.” Keene was sympathetic. “Fits most of the facts, in a general way. Two or three things wrong with it, but—”

“What?” she wanted to know.

“Dead people. Clay. Plumnose. Gretsch. Everything you said points the finger at folks who aren’t able to talk back. Your husband was a horse-doper and a bribe-payer. Plumnose was an extortionist and a murderer. Lola Gretsch was a tramp and a blackmailer. None of ’em can deny any of it.”

Jane said crossly, “You can’t, either! It’s all true. It might not be the whole truth. But it’s all I know...” She came close to him.

“Uh, uh.” He managed to back away a little without making it too apparent. “Clay wasn’t in on the dirty work. He found out you were in it, though. I wouldn’t know whether he guessed how you were tipping off Towbee. I admit I didn't catch wise to those roulette chips you put on numbers five and two, until I remembered Hubba Dub was the Number Two horse in the fifth this peeyem. But of course you wouldn’t have had to go through all those shenanigans to get the info across to Towbee, if Clay’d been in on the fix.”

The pupils of her eyes contracted like a cat’s. “You really do know everything!”

He grabbed her shoulder. He wasn’t gentle about it. His nails dug into her flesh. He lowered his head, bull-like.

“Sure. Sure. I’ve got it all. Except a few little, unimportant items. Like — who tried to ready me for a hospital cot in that parking lot last night? Who beat out Lola’s brains? Who—”

Bill Sutterfield came out of the bedroom with a forty-five that seemed to Keene to have a muzzle a foot wide.

“Who... who... who—” the vet mocked. “You sound like a noisy owl, Madden.”

“Yeah,” Keene Madden said. “It had to be you, Doc.”

“Yeh. You certainly resemble one of those hoot-birds. You sound wise. But you’re not.”

“Want to bet?” the Bureau man said. “Or do you only bet on sure things?”

Keene knew there was no sense bracing himself against the blast of a forty-five, but he braced himself just the same...

Thoughts streaked through Keene’s mind faster than memories through a drowning man’s. Probably he only stood there for ten seconds waiting for Sutterfield to pull the trigger, but it was long enough for the turf detective to review every mistake he’d made.

One big mistake was how he had failed to identify that evil odor so closely tied in with his recollections of the remount station at New Guinea — that was a toughie. It was horse medication — for body sores. Who but a vet would have carried a stink like that to the Lake Avenue cottage?

Sutterfield must have gone out there to make sure the waitress hadn’t left any memoranda that might incriminate him. He’d been in the bedroom when Keene got there, and had slipped out while the Bureau man was looking at Clay’s photograph.

The vet strolled toward Keene. “Came up to Jane’s place to make advances to her, huh, Madden? Unwelcome advances, huh? Yeh, I know it’s corny, but after they find out what happened to another girl in your Buick last night — and I’ll see to it they do — it’ll sound pretty plausible.”

There was a way, Keene Madden reminded himself, to take a gun away from a man who walked smack up to you and stuck the muzzle in your middle. He’d seen it in movies, knew how it was supposed to be done, theoretically. The difference between theory and practice, now would be a couple of ounces of lead and some tons of dirt.

Yet there wasn’t going to be any other way out. One look at Sutterfield’s eyes verified that. The vet wasn’t insane or hyped up with drugs. He was stone cold sober and set on shooting a tunnel through Keene simply as a precautionary measure.

You were supposed to be able to tell from a killer’s eyes just when he was about to blast. If the vet’s eyes said anything, they said the time had come. Sutterfield was still a couple of steps away. Too far for the hundred-to-one chance Keene would have to take.

“It may make you feel better to gun me,” Keene said. “But it won’t help you.”

Sutterfield smiled dryly. “It's not goin’ to do you a whole lot of good.”

“No. And what’s in my pocket isn’t going to set you off into gales of laughter.” Keene retreated a half step.

The vet did what Keene expected. He moved still closer. “What you got up your sleeve, owl?”

“Carbon of a statement to the authorities. Original’s on its way to the police right now.”

“K. Madden, Esquire. His last will and testament.” The vet jeered. “Must be a fascinating document.”

“It makes right interesting reacting.” Out of the comer of his eye Keene caught the girl’s casual edging over toward the fireplace. Maybe if he couldn’t dent Sutterfield’s cast iron confidence, he could work on her. “It tells why a couple of thugs tried to put the blocks to me within a couple hours after I hit this town.”

The vet came another step nearer. “Why, owl?”

Keene forced himself to keep from looking at the automatic. If Sutterfield had any idea he was going to make a play, it would really be fatal.

“Only reason that made sense was, somebody was seared I’d recognize him — and by doing that, get wise to the whole setup. Only person who wasn’t vouched for by two or three other people was Towbee. Once I put the pinch on him, taped him in a chair in my office, used a pair of shears and a razor.”

“This here owl—” Sutterfield spoke to Jane, but didn’t turn his head to look at her — “his hoot is beginnin’ to get on my nerves. Bring me a pillah, honey.”

“Don’t, please, Bill!” She was half-stooping to reach for the poker. “Not here! Not now!”

“All right,” the vet didn’t alter his tone in any way, “if you don't bring me a pillah, it’ll be louder.”

She got her fingers on the poker. Keene spoke rapidly to cover any scraping sound.

“Towbee turned out to be Carlos Santos — a West Coast no-good who got six months in Mexico for organizing jockey connivance at Hippodrome del Tia Juana. Later on, according to the flyer in my file, he was convicted of using ephedrine as a seasoning for bran mash, down at the Fair Grounds. He worked with a crooked veterinarian there. Someone named—”

He jabbed with the heel of his hand at the muzzle of the automatic. It was only eight inches away. He’d done what he could, not to give himself away by any telltale flicker of the eyes.

If he could sock that muzzle hard enough, fast enough, jam it back in Sutterfield’s fist, the backward movement of the gun would loosen the vet’s trigger finger for an eye-wink, delay the pull just long enough for the barrel to be deflected downward.

If he couldn’t—

Keene never knew the answer. Jane swung the poker at the precise instant when he jabbed at the automatic’s muzzle.

The gun flared. The slug tore a hole as big as a quarter in the hundred dollar suede jacket. The poker caught Sutterfield where he parted his hair. He folded like a camp stool.

Keene stuck the final inch of adhesive around Sutterfield’s wrists, spoke softly to the unconscious man.

“It had to be you, brother. It couldn’t be anyone else. Only Claybrook horses were acting up. That eliminated any jockey hocus-pocus except maybe on Skit’s part, and he wouldn’t have been dumb enough to keep pulling mounts. Anyhow, he couldn’t be sure, ahead of time, that trainer Frank Wayne wouldn’t yank him and put a new boy up on his entry.”