Роберт Колби - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

It was the nagging memory of that word ‘satisfaction’ that finally drove me to the public library. I kept thinking of Mrs. Kiley’s use of the word, the expression on her face in the food shed, and her one mention of the other white dog.

So last night I took a run down to the library and asked for the bound copies of the town newspapers of fifteen years ago. I started with January and worked my way through the months. It was May before I found it. It was on the front page of the Courier, and there was a fuzzy picture showing a Kiley Kennels sign much like the one that’s still standing, pens in the background and several police cars around a covered figure on the ground. The story was short and to the point:

Samuel F. Kiley, owner of Kiley Kennels, was shot and killed last night as he apparently attempted to prevent the theft of his prize-winning dog, an unusual pure-white German shepherd.

According to police, Kiley went outside shortly before midnight to investigate a disturbance among the dogs. He took with him a .38 caliber revolver which is assumed, pending ballistics tests, to be the murder weapon. It was found on the ground near his body and examination shows no fingerprints, leading police to believe the killer wore gloves.

The white dog was discovered dead in a pen from which the lock had been broken. A small scrap of hamburger in the pen was found to be heavily saturated with a barbiturate, and it is believed that the would-be thief had intended only to render the animal unconscious.

Mrs. Kiley told police that she had heard loud voices from the office earlier in the evening, and had seen a dark, late-model car drive off rapidly. Her husband told her that a young man had insisted on buying the dog and had become violently angry upon being refused. He did not mention the man’s name, but only that he had sworn to “get that white devil or one just like it, if it took him the rest of his life,” according to Mrs. Kiley.

There was a little more about the lack of any solid clues in the case, but I didn’t read it. I just sat there and thought for a long time.

I thought about Mrs. Kiley saying that Nemesis had “served his purpose,” and I shuddered as I remembered the way she handled the cleaver, and the sound of those long, slender bones screaming through the grinder. But who’d ever believe the weird story that was taking shape in my mind? Talk about a lack of solid clues!

I slowly folded the newspaper, handed it in at the desk and walked outside. I sure don’t have much sympathy for a guy who shoots an old man and feeds doped hamburger to a fine dog. Besides, like I said, I never knew many people I wouldn’t swap for a good dog.

I got in my car and drove home to Nemesis. I’d never given his name an awful lot of thought, but you can bet old Mrs. Kiley did.

There is nothing quite so gratifying as having the last word.

I have an orderly mind. Loose ends bother me a lot, especially when I have a personal interest. Everybody should pay the piper — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that sort of thing. Nobody believes in capital punishment more than I do. That’s why I follow Jack Hall.

A little over a year ago Hall killed my wife. Nobody can prove it, not the best lawyers alive, because there just isn’t any proof. Hall saw to that before he killed her. Adelaide was having an affair with him that was getting out of hand, that threatened to break up his marriage. Hall couldn’t have that happen for financial reasons, so he carefully arranged things and strangled Adelaide, and witnesses swore that he was a thousand miles away at the time.

I knew differently because I followed Adelaide that night and saw her meet Hall. He killed her, and I’ll see that he pays. Oh, she was having an affair with him, but she was my wife, and he did kill her. A man ought to love his wife.

I’m walking behind Hall now in Denver. He travels all over the country on his job, and I follow him on my savings account. He’ll go into that cocktail lounge, I know. He frequents places like that.

I go into the lounge too, and find a booth where I can watch him sitting at the bar. He knows I’m there. I’m always careful to let him see me. His handsome, beefy face is red as he catches sight of me for a moment in the bar mirror as he orders his drink. It’s beginning to bother him more and more lately, me following him.

Hall will probably come over and try to talk again, try to bring things out in the open where he can deal with them, but I see to it that our conversations never take the pressure off him. I know what’s bothering him, and he has real reason to fear.

He’s standing over me now, his drink in his hand, paunchy but athletic-looking in his dark slacks and tailored gray sport coat. Quite a lady’s man.

“When are you gonna give it up, Brewster?”

“I think you know by now, Jack, that I’ll never quit.” I always call him by his first name. It annoys him.

He sits down across from me, uninvited. “But I don’t get it! What do you think you’re gonna accomplish by followin’ me all over the country?”

I keep my voice calm. “You’re going to pay for killing my wife.”

“But I didn’t kill your wife!” Hall looks at me with angry puzzlement, trying to convince himself that I’m just a harmless nut. “Besides,” he says, “that’s a closed issue as far as the police are concerned. I was a suspect and I was cleared.”

“As far as the police are concerned, not I.”

He gives a hollow laugh. “It’s the police that count, buddy boy. I was cleared and there’s not much you can do about it.” He raises his glass and takes a big swallow. “Just between you and me, Adelaide was going to leave you anyway. Why waste your time eatin’ your heart out over a dead broad that hated your guts?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, what you don’t understand is that the whole thing is over. You can follow me till the cows come home and it won’t change a thing. If you so much as even threaten to harm me I’ll have you arrested, and if you did kill me you’d fry for it.”

“I know, the letter.” Hall had informed me earlier that he’d left a letter with his lawyer to be opened in the event of his death. The letter explained how I’d been following him and named me as his probable killer. Besides, I had a good motive; it was no secret that I thought he killed Adelaide.

“You can’t prove anything,” Hall says. “You know you can’t prove anything.”

“Do I?” I sip my drink slowly. “I think you should get the electric chair, Jack. I think for killing Adelaide you should spend the long months on death row while your appeals all come to their predictable deadends, while you count your days, your meals, your minutes, your steps to the execution room. I think you should count your seconds while they fasten the metal cap to your shaved head.”

“Knock it off!” Hall is sweating and his knuckles are white where he grips his glass.

I shrug. “As you observed, I can’t prove anything.”

His dark brows knit in anger as he stares hard at me. “Then why keep followin’ me?”

“I just happen to go where you go.”

He clenches his jaws, still staring at me, then stands and walks out. I wait a few seconds, then I get up and follow him.

Hall is right, of course. I can’t prove he murdered Adelaide, or I would have a long time ago. Still, I know a way to make him pay. Justice demands that a murderer pay for his crime.

I’m staying at the same hotel that Hall is. I always do it this way so I can keep a closer eye on him. Not that it’s necessary anymore. He doesn’t bother to try to get away from me. He knows that even if he does manage to lose me I’ll just pick him up at his next stop. I know his business itinerary and I know all his clients. If worse came to worst, I suppose I could just wait by his home until he showed up and then start following him again. But it’s never come to that.