Ross Macdonald - The drowning pool

“Hold your fire,” the man on the ground called out. “We only want the one.”

Another blow fell from behind, where Reavis was, and I was out before I hit the road.

I came back to consciousness unwillingly, as if I knew already what I would see. The boy was on his knees, a praying figure between me and the stars. The stars were in the same place in the sky, but they looked old and stale. I felt coeval with them.

Musselman jumped like a rabbit when I sat up. He rose to his feet and leaned over me. “They killed him, Mr. Archer.” His voice was broken.

I got up painfully, feeling dwarfed and despised by the mountains. “What did they do to him?”

“They shot him, a dozen times or more. Then they poured gasoline on him and threw him down the bank and a match down after him. Was he really a murderer, like they said?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Where is he?”

“Down there.”

I followed him around the car and switched my spotlight on. The charred leavings of a man lay ten feet below the road in a circle of blackened sagebrush. I went to the other side of the road to be sick. The thin scrap of moon hung in a gap of the mountains, like lemon rind in a tall dark drink of Lethe. I brought up nothing but a bitter taste.

The man behind the wire partition was speaking into a hand mike in a cheerless monotone: “Car sixteen investigate reported assault corner Padilla and Flower. Car sixteen corner Padilla and Flower.”

He switched off the microphone and drew on a wet cigarette. “Yes sir?” He leaned forward to look at me through his wicket. “You have an accident?”

“It was no accident. Where’s the Chief?”

“He’s out on a case. What’s the trouble?”

“I called you around nine. Did Knudson get my message?”

“Not me you didn’t call. I just come on at midnight.” He took another puff and scanned me impassively through the smoke. “What was this here message about?”

“It should be logged. I called at five to nine.”

He turned back the top sheet on his board and glanced at the one underneath. “You must of made a mistake. There’s nothing here between 8:45, a drunk on State, and 9:25, prowler over on Vista. Unless it was that prowler trouble?”

I shook my head.

“It wasn’t the sheriff’s branch office you called?”

“I called here. Who was on the desk?”

“Franks.”

“He’s a detective. He wouldn’t be doing desk duty.”

“He was filling in for Carmody. Carmody’s wife is going to gave a baby. Now what about this call? Name?”

“Archer. I’ll talk to Knudson.”

“You the private dick in the Slocum case?”

I nodded.

“He’s out there now. I can call him.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll drive out. Is Franks around?”

“Naw, he went home.” He leaned forward confidentially, crushing out his cigarette. “You want my honest opinion, Franks ain’t fit to handle this man’s job. He dropped the ball before now. Was the call important?”

I didn’t say. And ugly shape was taking form in the dreary, austere room, hanging almost tangibly over my head. It dragged on me, slowing my footsteps as I went out to the car. Anger and fear took over when I got my hands on the wheel. I ran through two red lights on the way out of town.

“We’re not going back there?” the boy said shakily.

“Not yet. I have to see the Chief of Police.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s terrible. You tried to save him and he turned on you.”

“He was stupid. He thought they were his friends. He didn’t have any friends.”

“It’s terrible,” he said again, to himself.

The veranda lights of the Slocum house were on, illuminating the massive walls, the clipped funereal lawn. It was a mausoleum banked with flowers and lit for company. The black police car at the foot of the terraces was fit for death to ride in, quietly and fast. I left the boy in the car and started up the walk. Knudson and Maude Slocum came to the front door together. They moved apart perceptibly when they recognized me. Mrs. Slocum stepped through the door alone, with her hand outstretched.

“Mr. Archer! Police headquarters phoned that you were coming. Where in the world have you been?”

“Too far. I could use a drink.”

“Of course, come in.” She opened the door and held it for me. “You’ll make him a drink, won’t you, Ralph?”

He glanced at her warningly—the hard and practiced glance on an old enemy, an old lover. “Glad to, Mrs. Slocum. What’s the good word, Archer?” His manner was cumbersome with a false friendliness.

“The word is all bad.”

I gave it to them over my drink, in the sitting-room where the Slocums had quarreled the night before and then made up. Mrs. Slocum had a bruise on her cheekbone, barely visible under a heavy coating of suntan powder. She wore a green wool dress which emphasized the luxury of her figure. Her eyes and mouth and temples were haggard, as if the rich hungry body had been draining them of blood. Knudson sat beside her on a chintz-covered settee. Unconsciously, as I talked, her crossed knees tilted toward him.

“I caught up with Reavis in Las Vegas—”

“Who told you he was there?” Knudson asked softly.

“Legwork. I started back with him between six and seven, with a kid I hired to drive. At nine I called your headquarters from a gas stop in the desert, and told the desk to tell you I was coming.”

“I didn’t get it. Let’s see, who was on the desk?”

“Franks. He didn’t even bother to log the call. But he leaked the information to somebody else. Seven men stopped me on the Notch Trail, less than an hour ago. They used a truck for a roadblock. I shot one. Reavis thought the men were there to spring him, and he look me from behind. They knocked me out. Then they ventilated Reavis with a dozen slugs and gave him a gasoline barbecue.”

“Please,” Maude Slocum said, her face closed like a death mask. “How horrible.”

Knudson’s teeth tore at his thick lower lip. “A dirty lynching, eh? In twenty years in police work I never had a lynching to cope with.”

“Save it for your memoirs, Knudson. This is murder. The boy in my car is a witness. I want to know what you’re going to do about it?”

He stood up. Beneath his surface show of excitement, he seemed to be taking the thing much too easily. “I’ll do what I can. Notch Trail is out of my territory. I’ll call the sheriff’s office.”

“Franks is your boy.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of that. Can you give me a description of these men?”

“They were masked with handkerchiefs. They looked at me like local products, ranchhands or oilfield hoods. One of them has a bullet hole in the inside right elbow. I’d know two voices if I heard them again. The boy might tell you more.”

“I’ll let the sheriff talk to him.”

I stood up facing him. “You don’t sound very eager.”

He saw my intention of forcing a showdown, decided to stall it off. “These outbreaks of mob violence are hard to deal with, you know that. Even if the sheriff does get hold of the men, which isn’t very likely, we’ll never get a jury to convict them. Mrs. Slocum was one of the town’s most respected citizens: you’ve got to expect some pretty raw feeling over her murder.”

“I see. Mrs. Slocum’s death is murder now. And Reavis’s death is vigilante stuff, popular justice. You’re not that stupid, Knudson, and neither am I. I know a mob when I see one. Those killers were hired. Amateurs maybe, but they didn’t do it for fun.”

“We won’t get personal,” he said in a heavy tone of warning. “After all, Reavis got what was coming to him. Amateur or not, the men that lynched him saved the state some money.”