Джон Макдональд - The End of the Night

By the time he had begun to question the wisdom of what he was doing with his life, there were Ann and the kids and the house in Falls Church and the increasing comfort of seniority, and the prospect of retirement. So he had accepted the nagging feeling of waste and boredom as a part of his life. When he was not on a field assignment, when he was working civil service hours in the Statistical Analysis Division, Domestic Crime Section, he had the time to make fine reproductions of Early American furniture in the tidy workshop in the basement of the brick house in Falls Church. Sometimes, as he worked, he thought of the other life he could have lived. In that life he was a lawyer in a small Southern city, working on civil cases and estate work, serving on boards and committees, taking an active interest in local politics.

He asked Sheriff Gustaf Kurby to wait in his temporary office while he made certain that his people were establishing the proper routines, setting up the communications net, analyzing the obsolete roadblocks, evaluating the police work already accomplished.

He went back and closed his office door and sat at his desk and looked at Sheriff Kurby. Another showboat sheriff, with the displaced ranch hat and the inlaid ivory grips on the inevitable .38 Special, and the big, bland, meaty, political face.

Dunnigan tapped the Sunday paper on his desk and said, “You took the ball and ran with it, Sheriff.”

“Murder day,” the sheriff rumbled. “Gus Kurby day.”

The big man looked indolent, smug, content. Dunnigan felt a sharp twinge of annoyance. “Are you as stupid as you’ve acted, Sheriff?”

Kurby shifted in his chair to face Dunnigan more directly. “Let’s have your professional opinion, mister.”

“Let’s assume these people can read. We haven’t made them yet. Now they read that a pair of hot-pants country kids can pick them out of a lineup, and those kids have given a detailed description. Let’s assume they have a little sense left. What do they do, Sheriff?”

“Kill the girl and bury her deep. Ditch the car. Split up and run.”

“You surprise me, Sheriff. Will you surprise me some more by admitting you’ve made a mistake?”

“No,” Kurby said. His eyes were unexpectedly shrewd and aware. “You come in with your slide rule and see one side of it, Dunnigan. It’s a good safe bet the girl was dead before the papers were on the street this morning. It would fit the pattern. Agreed?”

“I’ll go along with that.”

“A little over three months from now a hell of a lot of people in Meeker County are going to go behind the green curtains and pull the little levers. Kurby is a name they should remember, but you have to keep reminding them. They’ve got short memories. This will put me in for four more years, Dunnigan.”

“And if it’s at the girl’s expense?”

“Don’t look as if you tasted something bad. This will be a fifth term. I’m not a politician who happened to get to be sheriff. I’m a law man who has to mess with politics. This is a big county, Mr. Dunnigan. I’ve fought like an animal for a big budget. There isn’t a dime of it goes to waste. You won’t find a cleaner county in the state. Monroe has exploded way beyond the city limits. Satellite communities all over hell and gone. It’s all my baby, and I mean to keep on taking care of it, keeping the sharpshooters out, keeping the lid on. So I had to get to be a legend, sort of. Hell, that’s why that Craft kid called me. He feels he knows me. If some hungry boy beats me at the polls, the organization will be shot. He won’t know law work. I do. I’ve built up the finest lab this side of the state capital. This is one murder, Mr. Dunnigan. One stolen girl. There’s almost exactly a million people in Meeker County. So don’t use hard words unless you know the whole picture.”

“My job is to...”

“Hold it one minute. We aren’t so far apart in age. Let’s you hold it one minute and give a little thought to how you’d handle things if every four years you had to get voted back into your job by a lot of people who pay your budget out of taxes. Would that change the way you handle your job?”

Dunnigan looked at Kurby’s knowing grin and found himself liking the man, liking him very much. He grinned back. “Okay, Sheriff. It just shouldn’t be an elective office.”

“I could do a better job if it wasn’t. Now it’s your baby. I got in there, front and center, while I had the chance. Now anything you want, we’ll do our damnedest to do it for you, and do it right.”

Under Dunnigan’s direction, the investigation proceeded swiftly and logically. It was poor country for effective roadblocks. There were too many secondary and tertiary roads. It could be assumed that, through luck or cleverness, the Buick had slipped through one of the holes in the net. The possibility that they had holed up inside the roadblock area was not entirely discounted, but the chance was considered sufficiently remote to permit disbanding the roadblocks.

Scores of tips came in. The Buick, containing people matching the description, had been seen in forty different places, heading in every possible direction. These tips were reassigned to appropriate agencies to be checked out. As it seemed logical that the criminals might travel by night and hole up by day, state police in three states ran a motel and cabin check.

The autopsy on Crown was completed, showing that either the knife wounds or brain injuries were in themselves of sufficient gravity to cause death. Measurement of the abdominal wounds showed that a rather small-bladed knife had been used, a blade about four inches long and a half inch wide, with one sharp edge, possibly a switchblade.

Howard Craft and Ruth Meckler were brought in and questioned again by Dunnigan and his people. They had told their story so many times that the facts had begun to be obscured by fantasy. Through adroit questioning the known facts were isolated. Additional fragments of description were pried out of the memories of the young pair. A commercial artist, following the pair’s corrections and changes, tried to come up with pictures that would satisfy them. They were quite satisfied with the rendition of the husky one, and a little less satisfied with the drawing of the balding one with glasses. The other two would not come through. The two usable drawings were sent by wire transmission to thirty cities in the Southwest, with an urgent request for help in identification.

Of the dozens of photographs of Helen Wister available, Dunnigan selected the one he thought most satisfactory. The pictures were spread out on his desk.

“She is a beautiful girl,” Dunnigan said.

“A one-time queen of the Dartmouth Winter Carnival, I understand,” the agent standing at his elbow said. “A blond doll. With the faintly chilly look. A lady.”

“A lady in bad company. Use this one,” Dunnigan said. “Ask the wire services to use this one exclusively. Feature it. Get TV coverage. I don’t think anybody will ever see the lady alive again, but there is a ten thousand-to-one chance.”

When the Buick had braked hard, one tire had stubbed and chattered on the road, leaving, in black rubber, the distinctive tread pattern of a Goodyear Double Eagle, sharp enough to indicate low wear. It was not a tire that would come on the car, so either the owner had had the tires installed before taking delivery, or he had worn out the original set and replaced them. In any case, it was a potentially valuable clue.

In mid-afternoon the car was identified, almost beyond doubt. It had been stolen on Friday evening in Glasgow, Kentucky, from a bowling alley parking lot. It was a dark-blue ’59 Buick with low mileage, owned by a plumbing contractor. He had Goodyear tires installed before delivery. The car had been left unlocked, with the keys behind the sun visor. The plate number was put on the teletype circuits immediately, plus the more positive description of the vehicle.