Brett Halliday - Last Seen Hitchhiking

The cape, a square of red plastic with an attached hood, had been folded into a compact parcel and placed beside the body. Shayne shook it open.

“Any bloodstains?”

“We think so. The lab will tell us. My guess is that she’s been dead — oh, about five hours. She was about twenty feet in from the fence.”

After completing one sweep of the body, Shayne brought the light back and examined more closely several dried smears on the insides of the thighs. He looked a question at the lieutenant.

“Semen?” Harmon said. “Probably. The placement of bruises certainly says rape, but the M. E. is going to have to confirm it. You said something about what she was up to. Do you want to expand on that?”

Shayne pulled the sheet up over the body. “There’s no point in bringing you up to where I am, because that’s nowhere. I’ve had nothing but knuckleballs thrown at me the last couple of hours. She was carrying something various people wanted. That doesn’t mean one of them killed her.”

“I’d better get a statement on that, Shayne. Do you want to follow me in?”

“No. At least you have a name to put on the tag, which is more than you had before I got here.”

“You can get it out of the way in twenty minutes. I’d be happier.”

Shayne repeated his refusal. “I think things are about to start happening. I’ll call you in the morning.”

The others were looking at the ground, waiting for orders. Harmon made no attempt to block Shayne when he jumped down and walked toward his own car.

Raising his voice, Harmon called, “Don’t phone, Shayne. Come in. Nine o’clock sharp.”

“I’ll be there.”

He returned to the interstate, driving fast again, with the window flap reversed to send a stream of air into the face. Signs for the Seminole Beach exit rose ahead. His foot lifted, came down, then moved to the brake. He had told Holloway and Tree he had a plan, but it was really an absence of plan, like throwing a handful of confetti into the wind and hoping he could learn something from the way the scraps came down. Before he committed himself, there was one final thing he could try. His usual method, when he knew as little as he did now, was to keep moving and give the appearance of having a destination, to show up where he was least expected with an air of knowing everybody’s secret thoughts. If he had a piece of bad news to spring on somebody, he sprang it and checked reactions. Maxine, Holloway’s ex-wife, might be startled to learn her successor had been found dead — startled enough to tell Shayne a few of the things she had kept to herself that morning.

Some minutes later, he pulled up in front of Maxine Holloway’s deteriorating house on the nonfunctional canal. Artificial lightning flickered in the interior of the dimly lit garage. Maxine’s friend, the found-object sculptor, was working, in spite of the late hour. As Shayne approached, he heard Maxine’s voice.

“Oh, no. Not this time. You aren’t going to fall back on the old bit of the creative artist who can’t be bothered. You’re going to be bothered whether you like it or not. You’re going to be introduced to some harsh reality.”

Metal clanged. “Leave me alone, Max, let me work this off, or goddamn it—”

“Or goddamn it what? You’ll walk out? I’ll give you money for a tankful of gas, Andy. Andy. I want you to look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Shayne stopped on the porch and lit a cigarette. The quarrel was taking place in the workshop, but it had moved there from a different part of the house, and it still had to go through several stages before resolving itself in reconciliation or violence. Andy tried to ignore the strident voice. The welding arc flashed. Some metallic object was thrown, probably a small hand tool. He was a hypocrite, she cried. He was so full of the proletarian-artist crap that he was hateful to her. He believed himself to be irresistible to women. She was glad to tell him that this was a misconception. He had a compulsion about touching female flesh, swaggering and sweating in front of them in those tight pants and that faky belt that he cinched up so hard she wondered why it didn’t give him a hernia. Age and looks didn’t matter, the great Casanova was ready to dip into anybody. Although it was largely pretense, this supersexiness, he talked a great game. But when it came to execution he was definitely second rate, well below even Sam Holloway — though she hadn’t appreciated it at the time.

Such a phony. He pretended not to care about filthy money, and here he was, as corrupt and materialistic as all those people he reviled. Totally without talent. Expected to be fed and licked and petted. She couldn’t stand his smell or his slobby ways—

At that point he began to reply, stammering as he tried to put together the right arrangement of words that would really destroy her. They were stamping about. Much of what they were saying, or gasping, must have been unintelligible even to each other. Deciding that he was learning nothing from this, Shayne opened the garage door and stepped in.

Andy was wearing blue jeans, work boots, and a welder’s helmet, with the face-mask tilted back. He had Maxine by the arms and was bending her back over the bench. He had a weightlifter’s shoulders, and if she had been less angry she would have been overmatched. But he was having trouble holding her. She kicked. She spat. Her hair was flying, and with her color up she was a much better-looking woman than when Shayne had seen her that morning. The unattended torch sputtered, burning a gouge in the bench.

Shayne took Andy’s sweaty middle in both hands and squeezed hard. In a moment he felt a change in the electrical flow, as the sculptor realized that it was no longer a two-person fight. Shayne pulled, and Andy came away from the woman. She struck at his face. The metal mask tipped forward and reverberated when her knuckles rapped against it. Shayne continued to move, pivoting. Letting go, he sent the small angry man tumbling into the embrace of one of his intricate constructions of copper tubing.

He came around swearing. Recognizing Shayne, he went back on his heels and shook the sweat out of his eyes.

“This is no way to live. That tongue of yours, bitch,” he shouted. “It’s all over. There’s no chance anymore.”

“Finally,” she shouted back. “I’m delighted. Get the hell out. Animal. That fur on your body. My next man is going to be perfectly hairless. Let me know when you want to pick up your so-called art works, so I can arrange not to be home. Make it soon, before I put everything out on the sidewalk with the rest of the garbage.”

“One question,” Shayne said reasonably. “How many sales have you had in the last year?”

Maxine answered for him. “Zero! Showing that the art-buying public has a certain amount of taste.”

In an instant they were screaming again. One of the epithets she hurled at him hit home, and he snatched up the torch and darted it at her face. Shayne kicked upward. The flame swung around. He wrenched a length of tubing off the ungainly sculpture, feinted high, struck once at the nozzle and a second time at Andy’s wrists. The torch dropped.

“The fight’s over,” Shayne announced, snuffing out the flame. “It’s the lady’s house, and apparently she wants you to leave.”

“I’m leaving. Emotionally I’ve already left.” He picked up her purse from the bench and rummaged through it, removing a handful of bills. “Severance pay. With that great greeting-card business you’ve got, you can spare it.”

He picked up a blue work-shirt and threw it over one shoulder. He went out. A moment later a car could be heard moving off.

“At least he took his own car,” she observed.