John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“What! What the hell are you saying? There wasn’t a thing in the paper about—”

“Believe me, she went out the window. I heard the sound of the impact and I know she didn’t walk away. I thought the workmen would find the body, but it seems to be gone.”

“What the hell do you mean — gone?”

“Today I learned from Biddy that her old friend, Mr. McGee, told her at the party that he saw Maureen sneaking out alone. Assume he knows the terms of the trust funds. So I think he’ll get in touch with me to sell me a little information. Your next job is to get to him first, David, and see if you can encourage him to tell you all about it.”

Broon did not respond. I found it hard to relate the voices that came over the little speaker to the two men standing under a distant tree across the sunny pastureland.

“You poor damned fool,” Broon said.

“It’s really quite imperative to get going on it,” Tom Pike said, “because even if he hadn’t interfered, it will take several months before they’ll close out the trust and transfer the principal directly to Bridget.”

“Somebody steals a body and you think it’s some kind of an inconvenience! You damned fool!”

“Why get in an uproar, Broon? Body or no body, nobody can ever prove a thing.”

“You don’t even realize it’s all over, do you? I’ll tell you, there’s only one way I can walk away from this one, partner.”

Quite suddenly there was a grunt of effort, a gasp of surprise, over the speaker. The distant figures had merged abruptly, and as they spun around it looked, at that distance, like some grotesque dance. The taller figure went up and over and down, and we heard the thud of impact. Both of them were down and invisible. The grass concealed them. Dave Broon stood up, stared down for a moment. Stanger lowered the binoculars quickly. Broon made a slow turn, all the way around, eyes searching the horizon.

“Shouldn’t we—”

“Shut up, Lew,” Stanger said.

Broon trotted out of the shade and across the sunlit grass to his car. He opened the trunk. Stanger put the glasses on him as he came back.

“Coil of rope,” he said. “Tie him up and tote him away, maybe.”

“But if he drives off—” Nudenbarger started to say.

“If I can’t punch that engine dead at this range with that there carbine, Lew, I’m not trying.”

Broon squatted over Tom Pike for a little while, then straightened and took Pike under the armpits and dragged him about fifteen feet. He dropped him there and went quickly to the tree, jumped and caught a limb, quickly pulled himself up and out of sight in the leaves.

“Son of a gun!” Stanger said.

“Why is he climbing the tree?” Lew asked plaintively.

“He took the end of the rope up with him. What do you think?”

Nudenbarger looked baffled. I comprehended the shape and the sense of it. And soon it was confirmed when Tom Pike sat up in the grass quite slowly, slumping to the side in an unnatural way.

Then he rose slowly up from a sitting position.

“Oh, God!” cried Nudenbarger.

“Keep your damned voice down to a soft beller!” Al snapped.

Over the speaker came a strange sound, a gagging, rasping cry. Pike ran a few steps in one direction and was snubbed to a halt. He staggered back. He tried the other direction and did not get as far.

Stanger said, not taking his eyes from the glasses, “Got the fingers of both hands into that loop now, holding it off his throat.”

“Broon!” the deep voice cried, cracked and ragged.

He seemed to run in place and then he moved up a little bit. Straight up. And a little bit more. His legs made running motions. He began turning. Then his shoes were above the highest blades of grass. Dave Broon dropped abruptly into view. Nudenbarger raised the carbine and Stanger slapped the barrel down.

Broon got into the red wagon and swung it in a quick turn and parked it close to where Pike hung.

He got out, backed off, looked at Pike, and then ran for his car.

“Now!” Al Stanger said. He snatched up the carbine and vaulted the fence with an agility that astonished me. By the time we were over the fence, he had a twenty-yard lead. As the green Ford began to roll, picking up speed, Stanger stopped, went down onto one knee, and fired four spaced, aimed shots. At the fourth one the back end of the car bloomed into a white-orange poof of gasoline, and as the car kept moving, Broon tumbled out the driver’s door, somersaulting in the grass. He got up and started to run at an angle toward the far side of the pasture but stopped quickly when Stanger fired his fifth shot.

He turned, hands in the air, and began to walk slowly toward the tree. The car had stopped in tall grass, tinkling, frying, blackening. He walked more quickly. And then he began to run back toward the tree.

“Head him off, Lew. Grab him.”

Lew had good style. He loped in that loose deceptive stride of a good NFL end getting down for the long bomb. Stanger and I headed for the tree. He jogged. I started to run by him and he blocked me with the barrel of the carbine extended.

Thus we all got to the red wagon at about the same time. Nudenbarger was taking no chances with Dave Broon. He had one meaty hand clamped on the nape of Broon’s neck and had Broon’s arm bent back up and pinned between Broon’s shoulder blades by his other paw.

Broon was hopping up and down, grunting, struggling, yelling, “Cut him down! Al! Hey, Al! Cut him down!”

We looked up at Tom Pike. He turned slowly toward us. His clenched fists were on either side of his throat, fingers hooked around the strand of rope that crossed his throat. He looked like a man chinning himself, face blackening with total effort.

I saw that I could swing him over and up onto the roof of the station wagon and get the pressure off his throat immediately. As I moved toward him quickly, Stanger clanked the carbine barrel against the back of my skull. The impact was exquisitely precise. It darkened the day without turning the sun out completely. It loosened my knees enough to sag me to a squat, knuckles against the turf, but not enough to spill me all the way. I turned and stared up at Al, blinking away darkness and the tear-sting of skull pain.

“Don’t go messing with the evidence, boy,” he said.

“Don’t do this to me, Al!” Broon begged. “Please, for God’s sake, don’t do it like this.”

Nudenbarger, with Broon firmly in hand, was staring slack-mouthed at Tom Pike. “Jesus!” he said softly. “Oh, Jesus me!”

And Tom Pike continued the slow turn. He lifted his right leg slowly, the knee bending. Classic shoes, expensive slacks, navy socks of what looked like brushed Dacron. The leg dropped back.

“See him twitching any, Lew?” Stanger asked mildly.

“Well... that leg moved some.”

“Just reflex action, Lew boy. Posthumous nervous twitch, like. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

Broon said, “You’re killing me, Al. You know that.”

“You’re all confused. You killed Tom Pike, Davey.”

“You’re miserable, Al. You’re a mean bastard, Al Stanger.”

Slowly, slowly, Tom Pike turned back to face us. He had changed. The look of muscular tension had gone out of his fists and wrists. They were just slack hands, pinned there by the loop, fingers pressing into the flesh of the throat. His chin had dropped. His toes pointed downward. His face had become bloated and the eyes no longer looked at anything at all.

“See now how it was just the nerves twitching some?” Al asked gently.

“You were right, Al. He’s dead for sure,” Lew said.

I pushed myself up and fingered a new lump on the back of my head. “How long would you say he’s been dead, McGee? All things considered.”