Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

“No.”

“I can’t sell a gun without a permit.”

Joe put a hundred dollar bill on the showcase.

A claw with five talons and broken nails covered the bill. The money disappeared.

“I have a 38 revolver that’s in good working order,” the old man said.

“That will do.”

When he reached the cottage he had rented for Dusty, she was in the kitchenette fixing dinner.

She came to the living room while he was getting some papers out of the kneehole desk and stuffing them in his briefcase.

“Dinner’s almost ready, Joe.”

“I won’t be able to eat. Simpkins gave me a sudden business assignment. I have to drive up to Atlanta.”

“That’s too bad.”

He didn’t look at her. “I’ll be gone several days. Maybe even a week. Do you have enough money to take care of yourself?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I get through this job.” He snapped his briefcase closed. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“Sure, Joe. I might visit my mother.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said.

When he left the central Georgia town where he lived and worked, he didn’t drive north. He drove south by east, toward Colterville and the big swamp that sprawled just north of the Florida state line.

The night was balmy, the moon full. He drove with the windows of the car open.

The most beautiful season of the year. The season of promise and new life.

Spring.

He didn’t find the shack in the swamp right away. He searched for three days before he found the path that led to it.

He walked along the path as the sun was sinking. Blood-red sun, falling into the western edges of the swamp. The heat over the swamp sang with insect life. Cypress reared from the black water on knobby knees and wept Spanish moss over him.

Then as he rounded a bend in the path, the shack stood before him.

He stopped short, his breath catching. He felt the weight of the gun pressing his stomach hard behind the waistband of his pants.

He took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his sweaty, tropical weight suit and wiped his face. Slowly. Almost carefully.

Then he walked forward again.

The door of the shack was standing open. Joe saw a man inside, hunkered over a rusty two-burner oil stove that was set atop an orange crate.

Joe stepped inside the shack, and the man whirled around. She had described Radford well, Joe thought. Young, handsome, if he had been dressed differently and that light of cruelty extinguished in his lean, angular face.

“Hello,” Joe said. The voice didn’t sound like his. It was quiet, with a faint ring of sadness in it.

“What you want?”

“Your name Radford?”

“So what if it is. You a cop or something?”

“No.”

“What you doing out here?”

“Looking for you, Radford.”

“Yeah?”

“You come here every year, I understand.”

“So what? The shack don’t belong to nobody.”

“That’s right.”

Radford stood with eyes narrowed, but confusion showing in his face. “You ain’t a hunter or fisherman that’s lost his way. You ain’t dressed for the part.”

“No, I haven’t been fishing or hunting — except for this shack.”

“What’s the shack to you?”

“I hoped you’d be here.”

“Me? Why me? I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t. But I’m glad you’ve stuck to your habits and stopped off here for a few weeks on your way north.”

Radford scrutinized Joe from head to foot. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

“Enough. More than enough.”

Radford took a forward step. “I don’t like people messing in my business. I don’t like people, period. Least of all guys who come walking in looking at me like I was something to be mashed under their toe. Who are you anyway?”

“The name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“Yeah? Well, what brings you here?”

“You knew my wife,” Joe said.

There was a quick flare of caution in Radford’s eyes. “That don’t seem likely. I don’t move in your circles, bud. You’re sure you feel all right?”

“I feel fine. You knew her before we were married. Her name is Dusty.”

He watched Radford’s face.

“I don’t know any woman by that name,” Radford said.

“Your face says different. Your face says you’re lying.”

“I think you’d better get out of here,” Radford said.

Joe opened his coat and pulled the gun from his waistband.

“I’m going to kill you, Radford, for what you did to her.”

Sweat broke out on Radford’s face. He began walking back from the gun, moving on his toes. The back of his legs struck the edge of the daybed. His legs broke, dropping him to a sitting position. His face was gray beneath its beard stubble. He looked as if he were going to be sick.

Then as he stared at the gun, something deep buried in Radford began crawling to the surface. In a moment he was sitting almost straight.

“Do me any good to beg?”

“No,” Joe said.

“Then the hell with you. Only she ain’t worth it.”

“Shut up,” Joe said.

“You shut me up, son. You’re buggy with the idea of getting back at me, and I guess that’s an inescapable fact of life. She’ll be disappointed when she comes here this spring.”

“This spring?”

“Every spring, since the first one. Like she’s reenacting the first one. I always have to slap her mouth shut.”

Joe’s flesh felt as if it were freezing and burning at the same time. “You’re a liar, Radford.”

“Okay, so I’m a liar. I don’t have to work to convince you. What difference would it make?” Radford sat quietly on the edge of the daybed. Joe held the gun pointed at him. He looked down at his own hand and saw the gun begin to waver and lower, almost of its own accord. The gun pointed down at the floor, and Radford remained, sitting upright, not moving at all.

Maybe he’s telling the truth, Joe thought. Maybe that’s just what happens, every year, every Spring. Dusty comes to this shack, and Radford is here waiting for her...

That’s impossible, he told himself. He thought of Dusty, knowing she would never come to this shack, knowing that what Radford had said was impossible. He lifted the gun again, and it was pointing at the quiet man when he heard the voice.

“Radford...”

There was no fear in Dusty’s voice. Feeling nothing at all, Joe went to the door of the shack and looked out, down the path. Her figure was outlined, clear and sharp, in the light. She saw the shadow of him, not clearly.

She stopped and called: “Radford?”

The minute I was supposed to be out of town, Joe thought, she came running here...

He lifted the gun. He squeezed the trigger and saw the bullet hit her.

She had time only for a very soft, muffled scream as she crumpled and died.

The swamp knew one moment of absolute silence after the crash of gunfire.

Originally published in Manhunt , January 1958.

Connors watched the cheap electric clock on the mantel. It was almost nine o’clock in the morning. He lighted a cigarette. His hands were shaking badly. She would leave at nine o’clock. And he would be alone in the apartment. He hadn’t been alone in over twenty years. He hadn’t been out of her presence since she’d met him at the prison gates yesterday.

She’d kept up a running chatter all the way on the drive into the city. Telling him about the apartment. Her job.

She’d been crying a little. Twenty years is a long time to wait.

They’d had dinner here in the apartment. They’d gone to bed early and he’d clung to her long after she was asleep.

He awoke at six this morning, the habit of twenty years. Early dawn had etched shadows against the window. He’d lain with his heart hammering, because the window was wrong. The window was huge, empty, opening into the vastness of sky and earth and buildings and people. There were no bars over the window.