Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 9, September 1982

Shayne was barely aware of the slamming of Lomack’s door behind him. The oilman ran toward the front door of the house, calling, “Maggie! Maggie, are you all right?”

The running figure ducked behind a shrub, and some instinct warned Shayne. He jerked to one side, and the night was split by a muzzle flash as a pistol blasted. There was a whining in the air next to Shayne’s ear, and then he was throwing himself back the other way, zigzagging toward the shrub that concealed the gunman.

He might have gotten there if his foot hadn’t hit the soft shape on the ground. Instead, Shayne went sprawling to the soft turf of the lawn.

He landed awkwardly, but was instantly rolling to one side. Another bullet chewed up the grass where he had been an instant earlier. As he went over and over, the world spinning crazily around him, he saw a fragmented image of Jack Lomack jerking open the door of his house and pausing there, framed against the light coming from inside.

“Jack!” Shayne roared, knowing that Lomack was a perfect target. “Get down!”

Lomack’s head jerked around as he looked toward Shayne. The danger didn’t come from the gunman in the shadows, though. It came from behind Lomack, from inside the big house.

As Shayne came surging up onto his feet again, he felt as much as heard the heavy, thumping explosion from inside the house. The ground shook in sympathy with it, and noise and flame licked out from the windows. The blast threw Lomack backwards, flinging him off the porch like a discarded doll, sending him hurtling to the ground several feet away.

Shayne’s eyes snapped around. He was expecting a bullet to slam into his body, but the figure with the gun appeared to be gone. Whoever it had been, the work it had come to do was over now.

Shayne started toward the house in a staggering run. The whole place was ablaze now, and the bright glare it threw over the lawn showed Shayne what he had tripped over seconds before as he chased the intruder. It was the body of the security guard, and from the size of the bloodstain on the man’s shirt, Shayne knew he was dead even before he paused long enough to feel for a pulse. Not finding one, he ran on toward the house and Lomack.

Lomack was on his feet now, screaming his wife’s name against the crackling roar of the fire. He was shambling toward the burning building, his face contorted into a frozen, stunned mask, when Shayne reached him. The big redhead threw his arms around his friend and pulled him back. It took all of Shayne’s strength.

They stumbled back, the heat from the blaze beating against them, and as they lost their balance and fell to the grass, Shayne saw Lomack’s lips moving. The man wasn’t screaming anymore, but Shayne knew he was whispering, “Maggie...”

Corpus Christi was a lot like Miami, all right. It was full of sound and fury, death and destruction this night.

Mike Shayne felt right at home. And it was one of the worst feelings of his life.

Shayne’s mood hadn’t improved any by the next morning. It was still as black as the charred beams of the house where Lomack had lived. He stood in front of the ruins, watching as men from the fire department and the police arson squad combed through what was left of the house.

“Think they’ll find anything else?” Shayne asked the man standing next to him.

Lieutenant Travis Aguilar shrugged. He was in charge of the case, and the look on his lean, dark face told Shayne that he didn’t much care for it, either.

“Do I think they’ll find anything that’ll help us?” Aguilar asked. “Not really. We’re sure already that someone set the place to blow up; we found part of the incendiary device that didn’t quite get consumed. And we found the woman’s body.”

Shayne’s mouth quirked in a bitter grimace. He had been there when Maggie Lomack’s remains were discovered, and he was just glad that her husband had been in a hospital room at the time, pumped full of a sedative and knocked out.

It was mid-morning now; the body had been discovered several hours earlier. Shayne said to Aguilar, “Any word yet from your forensic department?”

“Last I heard, they were still trying for a positive make. There’s been some trouble coming up with dental records. The cause of death was pretty obvious, but I’m sure they’ll check that, too.”

“And you’ll let me know what they find?” Shayne prodded.

Aguilar swung his gaze away from the burned house and toward Shayne. “I might,” he said in a flat voice. “Just as a courtesy, you understand. I don’t think I need to remind you Mr. Shayne, that you’re not licensed to operate as a private investigator in the State of Texas. Nor are you licensed to carry a gun.”

“I know that,” Shayne replied in a voice just as flat. “But Jack Lomack asked me to look into this business for him, and I told him I would. I’d like to be able to keep my word.”

“I’ve got no objections to you keeping abreast of the situation. Just don’t try interfering with it.”

Shayne said nothing. He wasn’t going to make any promises he knew he’d have a hard time keeping.

The two men stood in silence and watched the men in slickers and hard hats going through the rubble for several minutes. Then one of the arson investigators came out toward them, slapping ashes and soot off his gloves.

He shook his head as he approached them, saying, “I think we’ve found all we’re going to find. I’m sure no one was in the house except the woman when the bomb went off, just like Mr. Lomack told us. Their maid’s damn lucky last night was her night off. You’ll get a full report from my office, Lieutenant, but I can tell you this much. Whoever torched this place didn’t want it to have any chance to survive. He made sure the bomb had plenty of punch. We’re just lucky we didn’t lose the whole neighborhood.”

Shayne repressed a shudder as the man’s words recalled the moments after the blast when it looked like the whole world was going up in flames. It had taken quick, efficient work by the fire department — and a lot of luck, as the arson man had said — to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring houses. The big lawns and the wide spaces between the houses had helped, but the disaster could have easily been worse.

“Thanks,” Aguilar said to the arson man, then turned and stepped over a police barricade, heading toward his car parked at the curb. Shayne followed.

“What about the security guard?” Shayne asked, his long legs allowing him to catch up easily with the shorter man.

“Killed by one shot to the chest,” Aguilar said. “I’d guess that the murderer got into the house, set up his bomb, then was leaving when the guard spotted him. That must have been just before you and Lomack arrived.”

“You know about the threats that Lomack has been receiving, don’t you?”

Aguilar nodded. “I know. I’ve been handling that, too, which is why I was assigned to this. We hadn’t made any headway on finding out who was sending them. Maybe now we will.”

“Lucky this happened, then,” Shayne said bitterly.

Aguilar spun toward him, a finger stabbing the air. “Look, Shayne,” he grated. “You’ve got no way of knowing this, but I worked for Jack Lomack a few years ago, before I became a cop. He and Mrs. Lomack are friends of mine. We’ll find out who did this, and we’ll find out if whoever did it also sent those notes. And I’m just as sorry as anybody else that this happened. But you stay out of it, understand?”

Shayne returned the man’s intense look for a long moment, then said quietly, “I understand, all right. But you’re wrong about one thing. You’re not as sorry about this as Jack Lomack is.”