Brett Halliday: Last Seen Hitchhiking

“Well, it’s lucky I was here — it’s just in his shoulder. Will a doctor come quickly, please?”

A woman’s voice: “Mike Shayne? Is that really you I’m talking to, Mike?”

“Yeah, go ahead. Who’s this?”

“Nobody special, you don’t know me. But this is the one and only chance I’ll ever get to call you by your first name and I intend to take full advantage of it. All the time you-all were talking about gynecologists, Mike, I could feel something tugging and grabbing in the back of my mind. All of a sudden it went off like a bomb!”

Silence.

“Just taking a drink of my warm milk. I have that kind of doctor right across the street from me, Dr. Bertram Ainsworth, and he’s on vacation right now, a honeymoon as a matter of fact, been gone about three weeks. I go to him myself for the menopause. He left his lights burning to discourage thieves.”

“Where are you?” Shayne said quickly.

“I gave them the address when they asked what I was calling about. I’m right here in Lake Worth, and I can’t ever get to sleep before three in the morning. I raised the shade and looked out, and somebody’s using the house, Mike! Sure as you’re born. Because ten or fifteen minutes ago this fattish young man came out in a pair of pants and he took the flamingo in off the lawn. And I thought I’d call you and tell you. I had a terrible time getting through.”

Suddenly Art, on the switchboard, rose straight up, both hands flying. He rapped on the glass and signaled to Shayne, his small hoop-earring shaking.

“Three!” he shouted, holding up three fingers. “Three!”

Shayne cut his caller off abruptly and punched a button.

“Shayne.”

A quiet voice said, “Mike, this is Frieda.”

Like Art, Shayne came to his feet. The room was still.

“Go on.”

“I’m all right,” she said, “and I want everybody to remember that not much is known about rape or how rapists get that way, and I hope all those cops who are closing in on us will use their heads for once instead of their service revolvers.”

“Will Gentry’s here in the studio, and he’s nodding. He understands the message.”

“I’m allowed to ask you only one question, and it has to be quick.”

Gentry had left the engineer’s booth to get a trace started on the call.

“Let me say first,” Shayne said, “that it’s nice to hear your voice.”

“It’s nice to hear yours. The question is this. Was Meri raped?”

“You just made the point that rape is a hard thing to establish. ‘Sexually molested,’ we usually have to call it. We’ll know better after the autopsy. Can you be more specific about what you want to know?”

“Don’t try to drag this out, Mike. It’s a toll call and you can’t trap it. But I think it really is going to be all right. Just answer the question.”

“What sexually molested usually means is that there are traces of male semen on the woman’s labia. Put it like that, and the answer is yes.”

Bruno cut the connection abruptly. He was flushed and sweating, breathing heavily. He picked up the gun he had found in Frieda’s bag, examined it for an instant and put it down.

“He guessed what you wanted him to say,” he said.

“How could he, Bud? How could he know Meri got away before you were able to have any sex with her? I asked him a clear question. This proves you didn’t kill her.”

“Do you think they’ll take a semen sample and make a lab comparison? Do you think if I stand here waiting for them, they’ll really keep those guns in their holsters? For a private detective, you’re pretty dumb.”

“Don’t drink any more, Bud. I want you to listen to me for another minute, and after that decide what to do. I don’t know Anastasia, but don’t you get a picture of a man who’s eaten up with bitterness and resentment? Fakers like Holloway get the good jobs and the six hundred thousand dollars, while Andy Anastasia is supported by a woman and has to work four hours a day in a gift shop, which must be torture for him. Maybe Meri wasn’t as far gone as you thought when she left here. Sometimes a head wound can look really frightening, and after the blood’s washed off it may not even need stitches. Anastasia jumped at the chance to collect some old debts by writing Holloway that extortion letter. But Meri wouldn’t have anything to do with a trick like that. She wasn’t that kind of girl. If she woke up and heard them talking—”

“How can you know all that?”

“I’m like Mike, I’m trying to find an explanation that fits. Not the facts, because we don’t have many of those, but the people. If the money had already been collected, Meri could send both of them to prison, and she’d do it without a qualm.”

At least she had him thinking.

“How easy it would be to kill her, Anastasia would think,” she said. “How safe. One more victim of Bruno Lorenz, the Mad Doctor. Listen.”

On the radio, a voice Frieda recognized as Maxine’s was saying shrilly, “I had nothing to do with that! I went to Miami for the money. That was the one single thing I did, the only thing. I didn’t write the note, that was his idea. He’ll have to admit it. Yes, she kept talking about the flamingo! About the doctor’s table. When I came back she was gone! He told me she got excited and climbed out the window when he went to get an ice bag to calm her down. We looked all over, up and down the streets. We thought she fell in the canal. And she was on the golf course! Where he’d put her! And to make sure the rapist would get the blame, he came on her! The sick bastard. Oh, how he wanted that money.”

Suddenly Bruno muttered, “Watching us. Eyes.”

The gun went off. Frieda stiffened. He had fired at the Toltec eye on the bookcase. Taking more careful aim, he fired again. He hit the fragment, shattering the earth-colored terracotta. The pupil of the eye remained. He fired twice more. It danced to a new position.

“Can’t do anything right,” he whispered.

He went closer. Putting the muzzle less than an inch from the glinting bit of stone, he fired again.

“Now we can be alone for a minute.” He began fumbling at the strap across her chest. “I’ll take you with me. Call him again, call Shayne. Tell him if anybody tries to stop us, if I hear a siren, I’ll kill you. And I will, Frieda! I won’t want to, but I surely will. You’re so lovely, the best of the four.”

He fell on her heavily, kissing her neck, her shoulders.

“You should hurry, Bud,” she whispered. “They have the address.”

He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Yes. We can do this later.”

He pointed the gun at her. “Now you understand? I’ll unfasten the straps carefully. You will come to the garage with me after you make the phone call to Shayne. Remember every minute how dangerous I am.”

“Bud, the gun’s empty. You used up the bullets.”

He looked down, perplexed. To make sure, he aimed the gun at Frieda, then changed his mind and pressed it against his own forehead, and to make a joke out of it, crossed his eyes and put on a goofy look.

“Me worry?”

The hammer clicked.

“I love you, Frieda. Passionately. You handled me very well. I hope you’ll be happy.”

He threw the gun down and ran from the room. In a moment more a car left the garage and went careening away.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, her fingernails digging into her palms. She breathed deeply and relaxed.

Rourke had taken back control of his program. The calls continued to come in. The listener across the street had seen Bruno’s car burst out of the garage. She described it. Another listener spotted it heading toward the interstate. A truck driver left a luncheonette and swung his trailer across the ramp and the approach road. Bruno reversed and darted away. Blocked again, he left the car and ran. He was caught in a cemetery some minutes later by three women, all regular listeners to the Rourke show, the wife of a banker, a waitress on a late shift, and a call girl between calls.