Brett Halliday - A Taste for Violence

“I’m getting hold of things,” he went on slowly, “and all I need is a hint. You can make it easy for me, or I can do it the tough way. Who was with you last night, Ann? Who saw Roche across the street and phoned Seth Gerald? Was it Angus?”

Speaking the name was a mistake. He knew it as soon as it left his lips. Ann Cornell’s eyes turned aside and the spell was broken. She lifted herself slightly and moved her hand upward toward his face. “Did you say your name was Michael?”

“That’s right.” He took her groping hand in his. It was moist and warm and firm. Her fingers gripped his with the strength of a man’s, and there was a look approaching panic in her eyes.

She said throatily, “None of this is any good, Michael. Drop it. We could have fun, you and me. I knew you’d come back. I wanted to be drunk when you came.” She was pulling his hand down to her lips, parting them to press a finger between them. “Whyn’t you get drunk, too?” Her voice was low and pleading. “There’s plenty liquor. ’Nother jug in the kitchen.”

Shayne straightened up, taking his hand from hers. She leaned back and looked up at him. Her eyes were humid and her breathing was rapid and audible.

Shayne said slowly, “Time is running out, Ann. I have to keep moving. If you won’t give me the truth, I may have to lock Angus up and make him talk.”

“No!” She came to her feet swiftly. “You can’t do that! Jail would kill Angus.”

“Not quite. He’ll just think he’s going to die after about twelve hours without dope. Then he’ll talk. He’ll tell me anything for a shot. Anything I want him to say. He’ll say he saw you shoot Roche if I tell him to.”

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You lousy stinking bastard!” Her face was contorted and she sprang at him with her fingers curved into claws.

He fended her off, flung her back roughly. She fell into the chair, her hips on the edge of the cushion, her feet sprawled out before her. She remained there, her arms clutching the chair arms for support, a stream of obscenity pouring from her lips.

Shayne half-turned from her to pick up the glass he had dropped. She straightened up suddenly and he ducked just in time to dodge the glass flung at his head. It shattered against the opposite wall. Ann Cornell crouched in her chair and startled him with the filth and violence of the epithets she hurled at him.

“Shut up,” Shayne said harshly, “or I’ll have to…”

A slight sound behind him brought him around in time to see Angus slithering across the room, clad only in the bottom half of his red and yellow striped silk pajamas, a six-inch kitchen knife in his hand.

Shayne leaped to one side and swung his left fist in a wide arc as he moved. It connected with the smaller man’s bony chin and Angus dropped to the floor.

Ann Cornell was on Shayne’s back like a wildcat before he could set himself, scratching and biting and screaming shrilly.

He got a hold on one of her arms and jerked her off, clamped a big palm over her mouth, and dragged her across the room toward the door. There was an open hallway and a bathroom at the end of it. He went toward it in long, rapid strides.

Holding her with one arm, he opened the medicine cabinet above the lavatory. He found a large roll of half-inch adhesive tape and a carton of absorbent cotton. He tore off a wad of cotton and forced it between her teeth, taped her lips tightly shut with four strips running from cheek to cheek and four more running from her chin upward.

She was gasping and jerking and writhing, but he worked coldly and methodically, then hoisted her in his arms and carried her into a bedroom where he tossed her in the center of a single bed, spreadeagled her on her back, and with extreme difficulty taped each wrist and ankle securely to the corner posts of the iron bedstead.

He was breathing hard and sweating profusely when he stepped back to survey his handiwork. Her dressing gown had been torn from her in the struggle and she lay nude with arms and legs outstretched.

Shayne wasted only a glance on her voluptuous feminine figure and accouterments before pulling a light spread from the foot of the bed and covering her, while her body writhed and her angry eyes glared venomously.

He lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You asked for this,” he told her harshly. “I told you I was on my way and nothing could stop me. I’m going to leave you here while I take Angus away and store him in a safe place where he won’t get any dope until he decides to talk. You’ll be all right… I hope.”

He got up and looked down at her implacably. She continued to writhe and strain at the tape binding her. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, exuding such hatred that Shayne felt a chill down his spine.

“I’m sorry, Ann,” he said. “We could have had fun together, but now we never will. Take it easy. The less you fight the less sore you’ll be when you’re free.”

He turned and strode back to the living room where he found Angus still crumpled in the middle of the floor, unconscious. He lifted the light body easily to his shoulder and went out, leaving all the lights burning and the radio playing, and closed the front door firmly behind him.

He dumped Angus in the front seat of his car, went around and got in on the other side, connected the wire behind the switch and drove away, straight through the sleeping village and up the steep mountain slope toward the Moderne Hotel.

The cabin at the end of the row was still lighted when Shayne stopped in front of his own. He shut off the motor and snapped off the headlights, went in and turned on the cabin light and took his suitcase from the bed.

Angus was still unconscious, but he breathed regularly and his color was normal when Shayne carried him inside. He stretched him out on his back on the bed, and gagged and bound him, pulled down the shades, got a flat. 45 automatic from his suitcase. He threw a cartridge in the firing chamber and pushed on the safety, and slid it in his hip pocket.

Angus was lying limp, with his eyes closed, when Shayne turned out the light. He locked the door when he went out, then strode down past the row of dark cabins to a point where he could again look through a window into the lighted one.

Persona was sitting on the side of the bed now. His profile was toward the window, and he was leaning over Lucy Hamilton who lay on her back laughing up at him. Persona’s right hand rested on Lucy’s left shoulder, pinioning her to the bed with his weight, but Lucy didn’t seem to mind. Persona had an eager, hopeful look on his flushed face.

It seemed to Shayne that Lucy was shamelessly enjoying herself, and he had a funny feeling in his belly as he crept closer to the window. It was one thing to get a man drunk and try to dig information out of him, but quite another to give every indication of bitchy pleasure in the process. He hadn’t expected her to carry out his suggestion so literally.

As he neared the open window he was able to distinguish Persona’s voice clearly. It was thick with drink and with passion, and he was proclaiming over and over again that Lucy was the most beautiful and the most desirable woman in the world.

Shayne moved swiftly to the door, closing his mind to Persona’s voice, and knocked loudly.

Dead silence inside the cabin followed his knock. Then the creak of bedsprings, and the light went out suddenly. Shayne tried the knob. The door was locked. He pounded on it, and Persona called out, “Who is it?”

“Chief Elwood sent me.” Shayne’s voice was harsh and queer in his own ears.

A key turned in the lock and the door opened a cautious crack. He shouldered it wide and pushed in, reaching for the light switch on the wall and flipping it.