Эллери Куин - The Madman Theory

“It’s a good story, all right,” said Collins.

“You don’t believe me?” asked Belva Didrick with a gleam in her eyes.

“I believe you. Did Steve name the man who hired him?”

“No. In fact—” Belva Didrick hesitated.

“In fact what?”

Belva executed an arch little smile. “Nothing, really. Except that Steve was such a terrible flirt... I’d rather thought it was to be a mixed party.”

“It was strictly male.”

“Well, I didn’t know... I can’t believe Steve is dead. It’s a terrible shock.”

“One more question: did you notice Steve driving a new white Ford?”

“Why, yes,” said the truck-driver’s wife. “That Friday night he was driving a new car. It was white, and I’m pretty sure it was a Ford. My husband was out of town, and Steve was nice enough to drive me home. I asked him about the car, but he just acted mysterious.”

“You didn’t notice the registration, or anything in the car which might have indicated who the owner was?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Didrick. Please don’t talk about this to your friends.”

Belva Didrick rose. Apparently she had altered her first impression of Collins, for she walked away very slowly, with an exaggerated swing of the hips. Once she looked back over her shoulder.

Collins poured beer from his bottle and sat watching the bubbles rise. The Didrick woman’s information had merely cleared away some of the underbrush. Collins heaved a sigh. No help for it: he was going to have to climb the Copper Creek Trail to Persimmon Lake and look for the bottle of whisky.

The morning was clear, almost crisp. A few clouds hung in the west. The vineyards and orchards wore their richest green; to the east the Sierras lofted above the near foothills.

Highway 180 unreeled behind him; the foothills became mountains, the San Joaquin Valley spread below. The first Sequoia redwoods appeared, monsters rearing high above the evergreens. A few miles farther, Collins passed the park entrance.

At the lodge he telephoned Park Superintendent Phelps to request the loan of a horse and camping gear. Phelps suggested that Collins might like the company of a ranger, but Collins declined: he would have more freedom if he worked alone. Phelps instructed him to continue to Cedar Grove, where the necessary equipment would be awaiting him.

At Cedar Grove a ranger was waiting for him. They drove to the stables at the road’s end; one horse was saddled, another loaded with gear. The ranger spoke a few words of advice; Collins changed into suitable garments, mounted his horse, and started up the trail.

He was alone except for the horses. The sun burned hot on granite and sand, drew pungent odors from the fir and pine. The trail rose in switchbacks; the horses ambled along. Collins found himself enjoying the expedition, which from the vantage point of the Clover Club had seemed drudgery.

The morning passed. At Suggs Meadow, where the Genneman party had camped the first night, Collins paused to rest the horses and stretch his legs.

From Suggs Meadow the trail rose once more. The timber grew smaller and more redolent of pitch and resin. The sun passed behind the mountain, the far slope glared bright. Collins rode in shadow tinted with cold blue skylight.

The trail rose above the timberline, passed across barren rock and scree, laced and padded with snow. The scarp reared above, the trail rising to Dutchman Pass at an altitude of 10,390 feet, with snowbanks pressing in. Beyond, the land fell away into a great sky meadow. And there, reflecting the sky, lay Persimmon Lake.

When Collins finally dismounted, it was very nearly six o’clock. He was standing a hundred feet south of Steve Ricks’ camp, and two hundred yards north of the Genneman camp, with a cove of the lake between. There was still an hour of daylight. He unsaddled and unpacked the horses, hobbled them, and gave each a quart of oats in a feedbag. Then he took a folding shovel and set out for the north end of the lake.

The directions, as transmitted by Belva Didrick, were vague. But at the north end of the lake a low outcrop of gray granite humped from the ground. On the side facing the lake, freezing weather had cracked apart the highest section so that it stood like a pointed rock indeed. To the front of it lay an area of coarse sand. Collins stood looking at it, the long low sunlight tracing grotesque shadows across the landscape. He bent and began to dig.

The shovel proved unnecessary; the bottle was barely below the surface. Gingerly Collins brought it forth; there might be other fingerprints than Steve Ricks’ on the glass.

He walked back to his camp, gathered twigs and dead branches, built a fire, heated a can of corned beef hash, fried three eggs, and boiled a pot of coffee.

With twilight came chill. The warmth of the fire was comforting. Collins blew up the air-mattress, unrolled his sleeping bag, then sat with his back to a rock, drinking coffee and staring into the fire. When the murder of Earl Genneman might have been ascribed to a madman, the case was a mess of enigmas, contradictions, blind alleys and paradoxes. No less now. There was no clear-cut motive for the killing of Genneman: he had threatened no one, he was hated by no one, and no one gained by his death. Obviously this absence of motive was illusory; someone had gone to great lengths to kill him, and but for a noise in an automatic transmission the murder would have been blamed upon the faceless man who had followed the Genneman party to Persimmon Lake.

But Steve Ricks had driven his own car through the park entrance, paid his two dollars, and in his innocence identified himself. The error had cost him his life.

Collins looked across the fire at the quart of whisky. There must be a message here, information of some kind. What?

It was ludicrously simple — self-evident, in fact. So obvious that Collins had almost passed it by.

Whoever had instructed Ricks to bury the whisky under the pointed rock must previously have visited Persimmon Lake.

Collins poured out the last of the coffee. Why would anyone conceivably involved have made a previous visit to Persimmon Lake — except to locate the optimum site for ambush?

Collins brooded over the matter while the fire flickered in a breeze. The lake shuddered; the reflection of the afterglow dulled.

The killer had visited Persimmon Lake; he had gone on until he came to Lomax Meadow. Why had he chosen that spot? There was cover in the thick grove of firs and cedar, but along the trail there were dozens of spots where the cover was even denser.

True, at Lomax Meadow the roar of the falls would tend to muffle sounds of flight — but the sound was really not that loud; it was, in fact, hardly more than a murmur. Lomax Meadow seemed far from ideal. The forest here, though dense, was narrow; and it quickly gave way to the mountainside. The murderer would be forced to leave swiftly, unless he counted on caution among the survivors to give him the time he needed... A fair enough assumption, Collins decided.

He replenished the fire, and boiled more coffee. The sleeping bag beckoned, but sitting before the fire and watching the twilight fade over the mountains held him fast. His mind wandered at random across the years. Good times and bad, nothing fixed, nothing permanent until the house at Morningside Heights and Lorna.

Had Steve Ricks mused along the same lines as he sat staring into his fire? Probably not, thought Collins. Steve would have been thinking about the two hundred dollars he was earning. He would have been thinking about the Clover Club, maybe working out new tunes in his mind, maybe thinking about Belva Didrick or Molly Wilkerson. One thing was certain — Steve would not have been cogitating the death that was waiting for him three days in the future. Probably when he went to collect his second hundred dollars. Collins grimaced. Poor guitar player. He would have thrown up at what was about to happen to his hands.