Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

There was one dirty window. Shayne scrubbed the accumulated dirt off one pane with his knuckles and looked out.

The Renault had ended up against a tree. The walled farm was now a quarter of a mile distant. Smelling Shayne, a horse snorted and stamped inside a stall. Nothing moved outside until a man carrying a rifle, crouching, ran toward the trees.

Shayne returned to the stable door. There was another silent building across an empty corral. He gauged distances, but he would be out in the open for five seconds, and it would be a long five seconds. Even if the rifleman held up in the trees before coming farther, he would have a shooting-gallery shot at forty yards. He had been high with his first, startled by the Renault’s sudden eruption through the gate. The second shot had been careful and good. Though he had missed with his third, that had been a difficult, hurried shot downhill.

Shayne picked up a clod of dirt and shied it across the corral. Watching the line of trees, he saw a glint of sun on the rifle barrel.

A farm worker moved slowly across a distant field. Work in the fields was about to resume. When it did, Shayne would be badly outnumbered as well as out-gunned. The horse behind him knocked against the door of the stall. Shayne heard the sound of a truck motor starting and decided he could wait no longer. He thrust his. 38 inside his belt and let himself into the stall, telling the horse to hold still.

It was a gray stallion, enormously tall. He allowed Shayne to pat his flank and slide his hand along his head.

“I hope you understand English,” Shayne said, gentling the horse with both hands. “We’re going for a run and I want you to behave. If you see anybody with a rifle, stamp on the son of a bitch. That’s right, boy.”

The horse shook his head as the bridle came down and began to weave. Shayne talked him into taking the bit. There was no time to hunt for a saddle. He upended a feed tub. The horse shouldered him against the wall and Shayne cuffed him lightly.

“Easy, fellow.”

Somebody shouted in Spanish and the horse jerked back hard. Shayne mounted the feed tub and flung one leg over his back. The horse reared and came forward; the door sprang open. Shayne slid into place, well forward, and gathered the short reins. A sheathed machete hung from a nail outside the door and Shayne snatched it out of its sheath while the horse hesitated, turning.

The shout was repeated and the horse broke forward. Shayne dug in his heels and held on. They went out the door at a hard gallop, with Shayne in a tight forward crouch, his face against the rough mane.

The corral gate was closed. The horse checked and veered.

The man with the rifle had foolishly left cover. He tried to reverse himself and stumbled. The great gray, with Shayne clinging to his back, galloped at him.

Shayne saw a blur of a face, a streak of mustache, heavy black brows. The man coiled, swinging the rifle. Before he could set himself, Shayne threw the machete. The blade flashed as it revolved. The man gave a startled yelp and flung up both hands. The machete came down in front of him and stood quivering in the hard dirt.

A step away, the horse swerved, changing course so suddenly that again Shayne almost lost his grip.

Now they were galloping downhill through thin grass. Shayne had lost the reins. He gripped the mane with both fists-he was going wherever the horse wanted to take him.

For the space of perhaps half a minute he and the horse presented an excellent target. It seemed to Shayne that they galloped in slow motion. His face was spattered with flecks of saliva. There was a broad grassy ditch beside the road. An obstruction loomed ahead and the horse leaped. Shayne’s heels slipped and he went too far forward. If he had been thrown he would have floated down slowly to meet the ground as it rose slowly toward him. Then he was back in balance, the horse was running smoothly and time speeded up.

Once again part of the horse’s rhythm, he managed to glance around. They had the road to themselves. The farm and its outbuildings receded rapidly. The horse settled into a long reaching gallop, no longer excited but still completely outside Shayne’s control. Shayne fumbled for the reins, worked them up slowly, and was able to feel that he and the horse had again made contact.

Houses flashed past. The road forked. The right fork, which the horse chose, dropped into a shallow valley and climbed again to level ground. Gradually Shayne forced the horse to accept the bit.

They passed a group of peasants on foot, then a parked car. It was a green sedan, an Oldsmobile. By the time the color and the make had registered on Shayne-it was Lenore Dante’s borrowed car-the road had curved and it was gone.

To the left he saw two low buildings with tin roofs and a paved airstrip. Ahead, beyond the end of the runway, was a wrecked plane.

Shayne tightened the reins and sawed at the bit savagely. The horse fought for a time, then gave up abruptly and dropped into a canter. Shayne tightened his hold and forced the horse to stop and turn back. He walked the horse along the grassy strip at the edge of the road, stopping again when he came to a kind of bundle in the ditch.

Shayne slid to the ground. It was a man’s body. Crouching, Shayne rolled it over.

It was Andres Rubino, and he had been shot twice. The front of his shirt was clammy with fresh blood. Another bullet had caught him in the temple and blown a large exit hole in the back of his head. The lower part of his face, the mouth and the muscles around it, still seemed incongruously cheerful, as though he had been able to find amusement even in something as serious as death.

Three or four miles now separated Shayne from the man with the rifle, but he was not inclined to linger. He heard an automobile motor and drew his gun. He started for the Olds, but before he reached it an old Ford came out of the bend. The driver’s sombrero was tipped far forward. A woman in the front seat beside him held two chickens and the back seat was jammed with children.

The man saw the gun in Shayne’s hand and the Ford jumped forward.

Shayne returned to the ditch. Stooping, he ripped open Rubino’s shirt to look at the chest wound. It had been made by a high-velocity bullet, which had stayed inside the body. The car, the body and the wrecked plane were on a line. Apparently Rubino had parked and gone in to look at the wreck and had been fired on as he returned. The second shot, in the head, had been fired at close range.

The horse was grazing in the weeds near the paved airstrip. There was a routine to be followed in this kind of death, and it was probably much the same in Venezuela as in the United States. But someone else would have to do it for Rubino. Shayne went through his pockets, taking his keys, his wallet, and a bundle of American and Venezuelan bills, undoubtedly the money he had picked up from Frost.

He started the Olds, found the main Valencia-Caracas road, and drove down into the city.

Stopped by a red light, he flicked through Rubino’s wallet and dropped it out of the window after removing the money. The freeway carried him rapidly downtown.

He knew where he was now, but after leaving the freeway he was caught in a one-way pattern that carried him past the turn to police headquarters on Avenida Universidad. He came back and made the turn and then moved in fits and starts as though jockeying for a parking place. He checked the time. An hour and a half had elapsed since he let Rubino overhear him telling Lenore Dante about his plan to smash the guerrilla movement as part of an overall deal with the police. If Rubino had sold this information to the guerrillas, which was likely, they would be waiting here.

Moving into an intersection as the light changed he jammed on his brakes to avoid hitting a young woman who appeared suddenly in front of his bumper. He snapped off the ignition. As he came to a stop a slender dark youth opened the front door and slipped in.