Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

“Who’s that you got with you, Colby?” he said. “It looks like Snuffy Cleaker.”

“That’s who it is,” I said. “I’m taking him back to town.”

“What for? He been getting himself into trouble again?”

“Chances are he’s getting someone else into trouble this time, Crawley. He was down there at the creek yesterday when Faye was killed. He set the stack on fire.”

“Why would he want to do a thing like that?”

“He didn’t aim to. It was an accident. The point is, he saw something before the fire.”

“Is that right? What did he see?”

“He saw Faye being choked.”

“You mean he saw who killed her?”

He was looking across at Snuffy in the car, not at me, and his expression was calm and tired, no anger in it — not even, it seemed to me, much interest. After a while, he sighed and rubbed the back of a hand across his eyes.

“Who was it, Colby?” he said.

“I’m not ready to say yet. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

He didn’t protest, and I still had the strange impression that he really wasn’t very interested, but then I had the sudden notion that it wasn’t really lack of interest at all. It was only, I thought, that he’d already guessed. Crawley was no fool, and it was entirely possible that he had known, or guessed, that Faye had been meeting Fergus Cass down by the creek, and it was almost certain, if he had, that he’d also guessed who’d killed her. Some deep and distorted anger and shame and sense of pride had kept him from making any accusation or showing in any way the knowledge of her affair. It was Crawley’s way. He’d either keep quiet and do nothing, or he’d kill Fergus Cass himself, when he was completely sure, in his own time.

“Besides, Crawley,” I said, “You don’t need me to tell you. You know as well as I do who it was.”

“Sure, Colby.” He sighed again, rubbing his hand across his eyes as if they pained him. “I know.”

I turned and started back for the car, and when I was almost there he called after me.

“Thanks, Colby,” he said.

I didn’t answer.

Rudy was in the office with his feet on the desk. When I came in with Snuffy, he dropped his feet and stood up looking as guilty as a kid caught in a cookie jar. Between Snuffy and Rudy, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to choose. Rudy was cleaner, but not much brighter.

“I’ve got a guest for you, Rudy,” I said. “Tell Lard there’ll be another one for dinner.”

“Snuffy?” Rudy said. “You mean Snuffy Cleaker?”

“That’s right. Lock him up.”

“What for?”

“Never mind what for. Just pick out a nice cell and put him in it.”

“Sure, Colby, if you say so.”

“I say so. Where’s Virg?”

“He went up north in the other patrol car to investigate a brawl. Someone got cut up.”

“Okay. We had any word from Emil Coker?”

“I was going to tell you about that. Emil called and said he figured Faye Bratton was strangled before she was burned in that fire. He says he’ll have a doctor work on her.”

“Good old Emil. Tell him to take his own sweet time if he calls again. No hurry at all.”

“I’ll do that, Colby. You going away somewhere again?”

“I’m going out to the Cass place.”

“What for?”

“Never mind what for.”

“Where you been, Colby? I’ve been wondering.”

“Never mind where I’ve been.”

“All right, Colby. If you say so. You got any orders or anything?”

“Yeah. Take care of Snuffy and keep your God-damn feet off my desk.”

I went out and got in the patrol car and drove west again. This time I turned off before reaching Crawley Bratton’s and drove around the country square to the front of the Cass place. I didn’t really figure Fergus would be there, to tell the truth. I thought I’d have to swear out a warrant and put out an alarm and have him brought back from wherever he’d got on the way to wherever he was running. That was my mistake, to my surprise. He was there. I found him sitting on a block of wood in the sun in front of a corn crib. He was dressed in a clean white shirt and a pair of blue jeans, his feet, in heavy white socks, shoved into a pair of soft black loafers. He looked lean and dark and handsome and mean. He had the cut of cruelty in his thin face, and I saw what Dolly meant by the glaze of blindness in his eyes. It was in them as he watched me approach.

“Hello, Sheriff,” he said. “Uncle Elmo said you were looking for me last night.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I waited till midnight.”

“That’s too bad. I didn’t get home till two.”

“You mind telling me where you were?”

“Unless you’ve got a good reason for knowing, I do.”

“I’ve got a good reason, but let it go. I’m more interested in knowing where you were in the afternoon. Between three and five, say.”

“I suppose you’ve got a good reason for knowing that, too?”

“The best. I figure Faye Bratton was killed sometime during those two hours.”

“I heard about Faye. Too bad. She was a common little bitch, but a looker. I hate to think of her being dead.”

“Do you? I can understand that. Seems to me you’d hate it more than most, having been so close.”

“Oh.” He shrugged and smiled at a secret joke. “I thought you’d probably found out about that. I couldn’t think of any other reason why you’d want to talk to me.”

“Such things have a way of being found out.”

“I guess they do. It’s a shame, too. Causes a lot of unnecessary trouble. We did our best to be discreet.”

“You must have been, to tell the truth. Only two or three people knew about it, apparently. One of them told me you wanted Faye to run away to St. Louis with you. Is that right?”

“Who told you?”

“No matter. I was told.”

“So I wanted her to go away with me. She wouldn’t. I thought she’d jump at the chance to get the hell away from here and see what living could really be. My mistake. She was just as stupid as she was good-looking. No imagination. She wasn’t about to fly out of that soft nest Crawley Bratton kept for her on the other side of the creek.”

“Was that what you had the fight about yesterday afternoon?”

“What fight?”

“The one you had down by the creek. The one that ended with you strangling her to death.”

He had been looking over my shoulder, talking to me but acting all the while as if I wasn’t really there. Now he looked at me directly in sudden stillness, but I had a feeling that he couldn’t see me at all through his bright glaze of blindness.

“That’s a lie,” he said. “I didn’t strangle her to death.”

“I didn’t expect you to admit it. It doesn’t matter. There was a witness. You might be interested in knowing that there was a witness to a lot of what went on between you and Faye down there.”

“I didn’t strangle her to death. Anyone who says I did is lying.”

“Next thing you’ll be telling me you didn’t even see her yesterday afternoon.”

“No. I saw her, and we had a fight, and I choked her. But not to death. I wanted to, and I thought for a few seconds that I had, but I didn’t. I let her go alive. The last I saw of her, she was leaning against a tree and breathing easy. I came up here and got the car and went off on a drunk. I never wanted to see her again, and that much was given me. I never will.”

“Well, you never know. Could be you’ll wind up in the same place pretty soon.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’ll stand trial for murder. Maybe you’ll hang.”

He sat there staring at me with his blind eyes, and I had an uneasy notion that he was going to spring at me any second, but he didn’t. He took a deep breath and looked away, over my shoulder again.