Ричард Деминг - The Copper Frame

“It did,” Vic Burns said, coming over to the desk. “The chief and I had just stepped from the car when the guy started banging away. The chief was down and I had a numb arm before I could reach for my gun.”

Lieutenant Vic Burns was a stocky, open-faced man of about Saxon’s age: thirty. A former member of the Buffalo Police Department, he and Ted had met at the F.B.I. school in Washington three years before, where they had taken an instant liking to each other. It was Ted Saxon who had talked him into transferring to the Iroquois force.

“Just how’d it happen?” Saxon asked.

“It must have been a setup,” Burns said. “The guy must have been some old con with a grudge against the chief. It was in the paper that your father planned to attend the county law-enforcement officers’ meeting, so anyone could have known he’d be on Route Sixty about that time. Sam says he followed us clear from the out-skirts of Iroquois.”

Saxon glanced at Lennox, who said, “I could see his lights in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t think anything of it until afterward, because the way the roads and the weather were, nobody was passing anybody else.”

“That’s why we stopped him,” Burns said. “All of a sudden he cut around us, nearly putting us in the ditch, and gunned off at about sixty. With road conditions what they were and visibility cut by falling snow, that was about thirty too fast for safety. The chief told Sam to give him the siren. I guess that’s what the guy wanted, because he pulled right over. When Sam parked behind him and the chief and I got out, the shooting started. Then he took off again.”

Sam Lennox said, “I tumbled out and emptied my gun at his taillights. I think I hit him a couple of times, but it didn’t slow him down.”

“Neither of you got any glimpse of the man’s face?”

“My headlights were on the back of his car,” Lennox said. “But he had on a hat with the brim turned down. It all happened too fast. He just leaned out the driver’s window and started shooting, then took off. All I know is it was a man.”

“Sure he was alone?”

“Unless someone was crouched on the floor,” Burns said. “There was only one head showing.”

At that moment a radio call came from the state police. The wanted car had been found, abandoned on a side road off Route Sixty only a mile from the murder scene, with three bullet holes in its trunk. The dispatcher added that a report had been received from the Buffalo police that the car had been stolen in Buffalo earlier that day.

When the state-police dispatcher signed off, Saxon said heavily, “I guess it was a setup, all right. He must have had a getaway car planted in that side road.”

“Or an accomplice waiting for him in one,” Burns suggested.

Belatedly Saxon remembered that Vic Burns had been wounded, too. Glancing at him, he saw a singed area on the upper right sleeve of his overcoat. There was a tiny hole in the center of the area and another a couple of inches behind it where the bullet had come out. The exit hole was ringed with dried blood.

In a tone of apology Saxon said, “I haven’t even asked how you are, Vic.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Burns said. “It’s only a nick about an eighth of an inch deep.”

“How do you know it wasn’t you the gunman was after?” Saxon asked. “You got shot, too.”

Burns said, “We thought of that. But the item in the paper didn’t mention me. I decided to go at the last minute.”

Sam Lennox said diffidently, “Want me to take over the rest of your trick, Ted? You probably don’t feel much like sitting here all alone.”

Saxon shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d hang around anyway to hear what reports come in. I’ll be all right. What about Dad’s body?”

Burns said, “We phoned the coroner. He’s having the autopsy performed at Rigby Memorial instead of shipping the body back here. You’ll have to contact whatever funeral director you want to pick it up when the coroner’s through with it.”

“Okay. I’ll call Alstrom in the morning,” Saxon said. “Thanks for stopping in, fellows.”

After Burns and Lennox left, police headquarters became oppressively silent. At 11 P.M. a radio call came from the state-police barracks reporting that the killer’s car had been towed in and dusted for prints. There had been none because the interior of the car had been wiped clean.

At eleven-fifteen Saxon was standing with his arms resting on the counter, simply waiting for time to pass, when Emily Vane came in, her cheeks bright from the cold and her face smiling. In his preoccupation over the death of his father, Saxon had forgotten that she was coming by. When Emily worked the three-to-eleven trick at the Iroquois General Hospital on the same nights he worked the desk from four to midnight, she always stopped by to while away the last forty-five minutes of his duty with him, after which he drove her home.

Kicking the snow from her boots, Emily slipped off her coat. Under it was her white nurse’s uniform. She untied her headscarf and hung both on a wall hook near the door. She was a slim, attractive girl of twenty-five with dark, wavy hair worn to her shoulders, big pale-blue eyes, and a milky Irish complexion.

“Coffee ready?” she asked brightly, moving toward the counter. Then she saw his expression and her smile faded. “What’s the matter?”

“Dad was killed tonight,” he said quietly.

Her eyes widened and her face lost color. “Oh, no! I’m so sorry, Ted.”

“One of the hazards of police work,” he said bitterly. “He was shot on his way to the county law-enforcement officers’ meeting at Rigby. We don’t yet know by whom, but it may have been some ex-con with a grudge.”

He told her what he knew of the affair. When he finished, she reached across the counter to lay her hand on his. “I know how much he meant to you, Ted. I was pretty fond of him myself. I wish there were something I could do.”

“You can make the coffee I forgot to make.”

They had finished their coffee and Emily had washed the cups by the time Saxon’s relief came on. Then there was the delay of repeating what had happened to Jack Dow, the relief desk man, and listening to his words of sympathy. It was twelve-fifteen before they got away from headquarters.

They made little conversation as Ted drove Emily home. He was conscious of her silent tenderness as she sat snuggled up against him. The three-room apartment Emily shared with Julie Fox, another nurse, was at the northeast edge of town. Julie was already in bed asleep when they got there. Sitting on the sofa in the tiny front room, they conversed in whispers so as not to disturb her.

Lying in the crook of his arm with her head on his shoulder, Emily said, “We’ll have to postpone our plans, of course, but I don’t want you to have to worry about it. I’ll take care of contacting everyone.”

They had planned to be married December twenty-first; the reception hall was already reserved and the invitations had gone out. Emily’s parents had made reservations to fly from Seattle on the nineteenth, only four days away.

Saxon said, “Dad wouldn’t want us to delay our wedding on account of him. He was pushing me to set the date six months ago. I think he was afraid I’d let you escape.”

“I know, Ted. I’m proud of the way he approved of me. But we just can’t go ahead now. The whole town would be shocked. We’ll have to leave plans indefinite until some time after the first of the year.”

“I suppose,” he said gloomily. “But the old man wouldn’t agree with you. He’d tell the town to go soak its collective head.”

Raising her lips, she kissed the edge of his chin. “Maybe, but he wouldn’t want the townspeople thinking badly of you, either. You’d better go home now. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”