Уильям Макгиверн - Odds Against Tomorrow

“Not dumb,” Ingram said, shaking his head. “Just not smart. There’s a big difference. Let’s have a drink on it, okay?”

As he was looking for Earl’s glass Crazybone came in from the kitchen humming softly under her breath. “The fox hunters are coming,” she cried merrily. “I just saw one of their hounds in the meadow. Oh, there’s a fine sight.” She pirouetted slowly, patting the back of her head with both hands. “The gentlemen in their red coats, and the ladies so calm and fine leaping over the fences.” She laughed shrilly. “Sometimes the ladies fall on their fine round tails, too. Oh, dearie me, it’s a sight.”

The old man stirred under the blankets. “You’ve woke me,” he muttered petulantly.

“I better let Lorraine come down,” Ingram said. “We’ve been gabbing here more than an hour.”

Crazybone stared at the parts Ingram had removed from the radio. “Won’t do you no good to fix it,” she said, shaking her head firmly. “She’ll just break it again.”

“Who?” Ingram said.

“The woman. She’s bad-tempered and destructive, qualities you don’t find in true ladies. Ladies are sweet and gentle.”

“What’s she talking about?” Ingram said to Earl.

“She’s crazy. It was an accident. Lory stumbled against the table.”

“Ha, ha,” Crazybone laughed gaily. “That’s her story. But she picked it up and threw it down. And I know why.”

Ingram stared at the cracked plastic case of the radio. It was pretty banged-up for a fall from a table... The tiniest of doubts nagged at him. “Why did she break it?” he said slowly.

“She doesn’t like music,” Crazybone said promptly and cheerfully. “She isn’t gentle and sweet. What a curse for a good man!”

Ingram sighed and smiled sheepishly at Earl; the suspicion he had almost entertained made him warm with embarrassment. “Rumors every hour on the hour,” he said. “She’d go great in the Army.”

But Earl wasn’t looking at him; he was staring through the windows at the layers of white fog rolling over the wet fields. “You better go on upstairs,” he said slowly. “Keep an eye out for those fox hunters.”

“All right. Sure, Earl.”

The day cleared slowly and by the middle of the afternoon a patch of thin sunlight brightened the faded carpet in the living room of Doctor Taylor’s home in Avondale.

Kelly stood at the window with his hands in his pockets, and the sheriff sat heavily on a straight-backed chair holding his wide-brimmed hat on his knee. They were alone but they had nothing to talk about, no speculations to exchange; the silence between them was a mark of their failure.

They had been working here on and off since dawn, questioning the doctor and his daughter, then returning to Crossroads to feed the information to the teams of agents and police working on the case. But so far they hadn’t got on a definite lead.

They had learned a number of significant things, however. They knew the condition of the white man, they knew the Negro was feverish and ill. And they knew they were holed up in an old house somewhere in the country. And that they had disposed of the station wagon and were using a sedan now.

From the other sources they knew that the sedan belonged to a woman named Lorraine Wilson, a friend of Earl Slater’s. Frank Novak had been picked up by police in Baltimore, and he had talked; he had given them Slater’s name and address, and that had led them to the drugstore where the girl worked in Philadelphia. The counterman remembered that a Negro had come to the store the night before and talked with her. She had left the store after him. Now her car was gone, and her apartment was empty. The inference was obvious; the Negro had brought her back to the hideout. Then he had driven to Avondale for the doctor. Quite a boy, Kelly thought with reluctant respect.

The doctor was co-operating with them, Kelly thought. Trying his best, anyway. He had used his pulse beat to time the trip, and in his judgment it had taken the Negro almost an hour to drive them to the old house. But he couldn’t recall the turns and backtrackings on the way. And his estimate of how long they had driven over concrete and dirt roads was no more than a thoughtful guess.

But with these facts and impressions a dozen police cars were probing the countryside southwest of Crossroads, in close co-operation with FBI agents in jeeps and commandeered delivery trucks. They had pinpointed the plane the doctor had heard; a commercial flight flying a southeasterly course toward New York. If the doctor’s memory was accurate he had been west of the federal highway when it passed over his head.

But they still couldn’t reach out and put their hands on the men. It was an exasperating and dangerous failure, Kelly knew. Slater and Ingram could probably make their move when it got darker, and that would mean trouble for anyone who got in their way.

Kelly glanced at his watch: two o’clock. If his assumption was right they didn’t have much time left. The doctor had gone upstairs a moment or so ago to wake his daughter. He had put her to bed with a sedative, after they had questioned her. Kelly wanted to talk to her again because he had suspected something that hadn’t occurred to the sheriff; the doctor and his daughter were unconsciously protecting the Negro. Without knowing it, they were in collusion to save him.

He strolled restlessly across the room to the fireplace. “It’s clearing up,” he said, looking at the sunlight on the carpet. “Be a nice day to go gunning.”

“There’s more rain coming,” the sheriff said. Then: “You like hunting?”

“I don’t have much opportunity anymore.” They had talked about the case so long it was a relief to talk about something else. “But I went after turkeys last year in Georgia. That’s pretty special. They run as fast as a horse, and can hear a twig break a thousand feet away. They settle into an oak or a pine twenty feet above your head looking as big as cargo planes. Then they disappear. Vanish. Their markings are green and gold and black, and they just fade out of sight before you can raise your gun.”

“Sounds interesting,” the sheriff said, taking out his pipe. There was both hope and skepticism in his tone, the reaction of a true hunter. “Our pheasants aren’t anything special, but some pretty good shots go season after season without getting their limit.”

“Your daughter told me about them. She’s quite a booster for the area.”

Kelly had stopped at the sheriff’s house early that morning, and Nancy had made a quick breakfast for him...

“I used to take her gunning when she was little,” the sheriff said slowly. “I didn’t know she was still interested. She was a nice shot.” He rubbed the bowl of his pipe slowly between his big hands. “I thought she’d put all that away with her jeans and boots. Girls get into ribbons and skirts and they’re not so keen about tramping through the fields with a gun anyhow.”

“That’s true, I guess.” Kelly was tactfully noncommittal; he had sensed the stiffness between the sheriff and his daughter, and he wasn’t planning to blunder into that personal area. This morning she had been at ease with him, attractive and confident in a white sweater and dark slacks, with her blond hair tied back in a pony tail. This was Saturday and she wasn’t going to the office. They had talked about hunting and fishing, and places they knew in New York, and several other matters, the kitchen warm against the cold morning, their cigarette smoke mingling pleasantly with the aroma of bacon and coffee. He had listened to her with a stranger’s capacity for direct, relevant compassion. She had wanted to talk, he realized. So he had listened...