Джон Макдональд - The End of the Night

“Like following you and phoning you and all that?”

“Yes.”

“Man in love, he’ll do a lot of stirring around. Arn break any laws?”

“No, but...”

“There’s no law about running off and getting married, Kemp.”

“Believe me, that’s the last thing she’d do — marry Arn Crown.”

“I guess it must seem that way to you, you being the one she left behind. Believe me, it happens all the time. And other guys have just as much trouble believing it as you’re having right now.”

“Lieutenant, will you talk to Helen’s mother?”

“Why should I? She lied to you. She could lie to her mother. Now, if she was under age, maybe we could do something about it...”

A heavy-set man came striding into the office. He looked around, spotted Lieutenant Razoner and said, “Lew! On the double!” He turned and hurried out.

Razoner stood up. “We can’t help you, buddy.”

“I’d like to talk to you some more about...”

Razoner shrugged. “Stick around then, but you may have a hell of a long wait.” He hurried out of the room.

Dallas Kemp sat there on the hard chair. It was five of ten. He was trying not to think about Helen too specifically. It made him feel cold and sick to think of her with Crown. He knew he should call Jane Wister. He wondered if it would be all right to use the phone on Lieutenant Lew Razoner’s desk. Just as he had decided to attempt it, the lieutenant came to the doorway and said, “Kemp! Come here!”

He was taken to a smaller office. There were four men there, two of them talking over phones.

To the elderly man behind the desk, Lew Razoner said, “Barney, this is the guy reported him for kidnaping.”

The man called Barney stood up. “Bring him along, Lew. We’ll talk on the way out there.”

They went down to the courtyard. A driver was waiting behind the wheel of a police sedan. The three of them got into the back, Dallas Kemp in the middle.

“What’s happened?” he asked. “Is Helen all right?”

The car sped out through the gates, elbowing its way into traffic. “Give me this kidnaping thing,” the elderly man ordered.

Lew Razoner gave it to him, compacting it neatly and tightly, a professional résumé, uncolored by personal opinion.

“Can’t you tell me what’s going on?” Dal asked.

“Captain Tauss is head of Homicide,” Razoner said gently. “The sheriff’s got a body tentatively identified as Arnold Crown.”

“An accident! Is Helen hurt?”

“What happened to this Crown,” Captain Tauss said, “sounds like on purpose. No accident. I don’t know anything about the girl.”

Dallas Kemp realized that they had turned out of the main traffic arteries and were headed east on Route 813 at a high rate of speed.

“Looks like over the next ridge, sir,” the driver said and began to reduce speed.

They swept over the ridge and Kemp saw the shallow valley ahead of them filled with a confusion of lights and vehicles. State Police were posted to prevent the curious from stopping. Summer bugs wheeled in front of the floodlights and headlights. The generator on an emergency truck throbbed. As they got out, Razoner said, “Stick close to me, Kemp. Don’t wander around.”

“I want to know what happened to...”

“So let’s find out.”

Kemp saw an abandoned barn on the left. On the right, a hundred feet beyond the barn, an Oldsmobile was snugged down into a deep ditch, tilted far over onto its right side, lights still on, turning the weeds in the ditch to a vivid artificial green. Technicians knelt, studying the road surface, making careful scrapings. A man in coveralls stood patiently by a red tow-truck, hands in his pockets, cigar stub in the corner of his mouth. An ambulance was parked parallel to the ditched Olds, rear end open.

Kemp followed Tauss and Razoner as they approached a small group of men who were examining something that lay near the rear end of the Olds, half in the ditch. Hard, white light was focused on the body. Cameras flared.

Kemp got close enough to see the face. He swallowed and took a half step back. The heavy features of Arnold Crown were barely recognizable.

A wide man in khaki was squatting heavily on his heels. He wore a blue baseball cap and a sheriff’s badge. He glanced up and said, “Hello, Barney, Lew,” and came lithely to his feet.

“Evening, Gus,” Captain Tauss said. “Lew should be able to make him.”

“That’s Arn Crown,” Lew said. “He didn’t do all that going into the ditch.”

“Did maybe none of it at all. He got banged around some, and then there was a knife.”

A tidy little man got up off his knees and said tartly, “That’s all I can do with it here. You might as well load it.”

“When can you do the complete job, Doctor?” the sheriff asked.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” the little man said. “Tonight we’re entertaining.” He gave a barking laugh, snapped his case shut, and walked quickly away into the night.

The ambulance people loaded the body. The sheriff signaled the man standing by the wrecker. He went down into the ditch with the hook, clanged it onto the frame, climbed into his cab and yanked the big car up onto the highway, the big red warning lights on the wrecker blinking off and on.

“We got witnesses, Barney. Nice nervous witnesses,” the sheriff said. “Right over there. Come on. We’ll play People Are Funny.”

He strode away toward the silent group on the other side of the road. Tauss and Razoner lagged behind.

Kemp heard Razoner say in a quiet voice to Barney Tauss, “Out here in front of the newspaper people? He should take them in.”

“Usually, yes. Not in an election year. Honest Gus Kurby, the reporter’s pal.”

Somebody shifted lights until the small group was harshly floodlighted. A young couple squinted apprehensively into the lights. The boy was about eighteen. He wore khaki pants and a T shirt. He had huge, powerful, sun-red forearms, a heavy thatch of brown hair, long sideburns, a big, soft, unformed face. He held the hand of a small girl who wore blue-jean shorts and a striped Basque shirt taut across the unfettered abruptness of juvenile breasts. She had tousled dark hair with two white streaks dyed into it, a narrow face with eyes set close together, a wide, slack, pulpy mouth.

A man reached into the open window of the official sedan and brought out a hand mike on a long cord. He handed it to the sheriff, saying, “It’s working good. I checked it twice.”

The sheriff thumbed the button and the small red recording light came on. He held it a few inches in front of his mouth and said, “Twenty-fifth of July. Ten-forty P.M. Sheriff Kurby interrogating witnesses at the site of the Arnold Crown murder. Now let me have your name and address, son.” He stuck the mike in the boy’s face.

“Uh... Howard Craft. I live two miles east of here. Star Route, Box 810, Sheriff.”

“And you, girl?”

“Ruth Meckler,” she said in a thin, childish voice. “Fifty-two Cedar Street, over in Daggsburg.”

“Now, Howard, you tell me in your own words how you happened to be here.”

“Well, I had a date with Ruthie, and we drove around some and we come out here. We... been here before, a lot of times. I pulled around back of the barn there, like always and we... went up the ladder into the loft.”

One of the newsmen snickered. The girl moved closer to her boy friend. Kurby clicked off the red recording light and turned and said, “These kids could have took off and never said a word, but they phoned in. If you people want a story, keep your mouths shut. Otherwise I’ll finish this in my office.”

“Anyhow, we’re engaged to be married,” the girl said.

“Continue, boy,” the sheriff said.