Brett Halliday - Last Seen Hitchhiking

He waited a moment longer, embracing her, and ran the belt back onto the reel. He cupped one of her breasts. Its weight was lovely in his hand. It was a risky thing, out in the open like this, but he pulled up her sweater. Her breasts were really and truly elegant. On the beach she wore a bikini so small it was possibly illegal. She was in good trim, but not competitive trim like Meri. That had advantages too. She was a bit older than she had seemed on the roadside, but never mind, he distrusted the Virgin Effect.

He rocked her until she slid to the floor. He ran his hand around the curve of her buttocks and between her thighs. The last, the best. The climax. Maybe he would get inside her while she was still in the grip of the anesthetic. Let her wake up from a rape-dream and find it happening. Perhaps she would scream. Only one of the girls had screamed.

Her knees were against her chest in the inside-the-womb position. He worked her down under the dashboard. Her long yellow scarf had caught in the door. He freed it, folded it several times, and put it under her head to keep her face off the floor.

Shayne, a quarter of a mile to the north, checked his tires and the oil level and went into the gas station to draw coffee from the vending machine. After one taste he poured it out and returned to his car.

The phone was ringing. His operator told him she had a call from Professor Sam Holloway in Coral Gables. Did Shayne want it?

“Yeah, put him on.”

“Michael Shayne?” a voice said. “Is Frieda with you?”

“Down the road.”

“She gave me your name and operator’s number. I don’t know how much she’s told you about this—”

“Probably most of it by now,” Shayne said impatiently. “Do you want to talk to her?”

“Not necessarily, if you’ll give her a message. Tell her I’ve just received an interesting communication and she can call off this wild adventure.”

“O.K. Tell the operator where she can reach you. I’ll get back to you in five minutes.”

“But Shayne—”

Shayne hung up. He joined the northbound traffic and blinked his way into the high-speed lane. He set his emergency lights to warn all cars within collision range that he was about to make a forbidden move. As soon as he came to an opening in the divider, he ran off onto the parched grass, down a short incline and up the opposite side.

The southbound traffic was heavy and fast-moving. He used his siren to get in, and stayed in the fast lane, trying to keep track of the cars traveling north in the parallel lanes. He was on the wrong side to see Frieda’s yellow scarf.

At the cloverleaf, he left the expressway and came back underneath. Frieda was gone.

Without hesitation Shayne shot past the spot where he had seen her last and went back to the highway with his headlights on and all the Buick’s attention-getting gadgets in operation. By the time he reached the gas station where he had been waiting, he was doing ninety. He had missed perhaps twenty cars while he was southbound. He had already overtaken four. He continued to count. After reaching forty, he pursued and passed ten more, still without sighting the telltale yellow scarf.

He was swearing. He had known there were too many ways this could go wrong. At the same time, he could only have stopped it at the cost of losing her friendship.

He braked to a stop in the outside lane, set an emergency flare, drove another hundred yards and stopped again, forcing the oncoming traffic to funnel past him. He counted again. After sixty cars passed him, he backed down to the flare and put it out in the dirt.

A highway patrolman arrived, a young man with sideburns and a big mustache. Shayne showed his identification.

“Mike Shayne, sure,” the trooper said. “What’s going on?”

Shayne explained quickly.

“How long was she standing down there?” the trooper asked.

“Fifteen minutes at the most.”

“Hey,” the trooper said, beginning to show excitement. “This is as close as we’ve come to the son of a bitch. Let’s get a few checkpoints on the side roads.”

He jumped to his radio. Returning to his own car, Shayne signaled his operator and had her ring the number Professor Holloway had given her.

“We’ve lost her,” Shayne said abruptly when the connection was made. “But they’re working on it, and it may still be O.K.”

“Lost her!” the professor exclaimed. “How did you manage to do that? She told me you’d worked out a way so there was no chance of a slip-up.”

“Apparently not quite. What may have happened is that after she was picked up, the guy backed down the ramp. Or else he slugged her and put her on the floor so I wouldn’t see her. We’ll have another dozen police cars here in a few more minutes. What’s happened at your end?”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about it on this kind of telephone connection. I suppose it’s all right to say that I’ve heard from Meri Gillespie. Obviously that alters the picture considerably.”

“Yeah. Too bad we didn’t know about it fifteen minutes ago. Heard from her how?”

“By letter. We’ve been acting on a certain theory, namely that Meri was picked up hitchhiking and possibly killed. We know now that didn’t happen. She’s in good health, the greedy bitch. Which makes this thing with Frieda extremely painful. I have something important I must do right now, and you’ll be tied up there for a while, won’t you? Give me an hour and a half, and after that I’ll be home all evening. Will you call me?”

“Before you hang up,” Shayne said, “I have a friend on the News, Tim Rourke. He did a couple of pieces last summer about art objects being smuggled into the United States from Mexico and sold at high prices to museums. He’d be interested in this. He has a radio show. I could fix it for you to go on as a guest.”

After a moment the professor said, “I wasn’t sure Frieda had told you all that. I’d prefer no publicity, naturally. Are you implying that there’s some connection between this kidnapper of hitchhikers and the letter from Meri? I doubt it.”

“You haven’t told me what’s in the letter. All I can do here is stand around listening to calls on the police band. Maybe you can think of a way I can be more useful.”

“I could do with a little advice and assistance,” Holloway said slowly. “How far are you from the International Airport?”

“In Miami? Forty minutes.”

“Meet me in front of the Arrival Building. I know you’re red-haired. I expect I’ll recognize you.”

He clicked off. Shayne weighed the phone for a moment before putting it back.

He had started a cigarette. He threw it down as though it was a bomb that would detonate if it hit the road hard enough, and ground it under his heel. He strapped himself into the Buick and made another illegal U-turn across the grass. Using his siren, he began working his way south at a high speed, slipping back and forth between lanes.

Professor Holloway carried his head tipped well back with his chin out, thrusting a neat beard forward like a challenging question. He was a short man. His eyebrows were bushy, flecked with gray.

Shayne was a smaller audience than he was used to, but he gave it his best. If he had sounded less than sympathetic about Frieda on the phone, he made up for it now. He shook Shayne’s hand and at the same time pressed Shayne’s arm.

“Awful. Awful. I was very impressed with that young woman. Her air. She assured me the danger was minimal.”

“She knew what she was doing,” Shayne said shortly. “What have you got?”

“And yet, it’s ironic,” Holloway said, unwilling to let it go. “My dear Meri took full advantage of this hitchhiking business. She lay low and let just enough time lapse so she knew I’d be pacing the floor gnawing my fingernails. Something’s been left for me here. I’ll nip in and pick it up and then we can talk to our heart’s content over a drink.”