Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

“As bad as possible,” she said to the twisted cup. “Carl killed his father, you see. He was never tried for the murder, he was so obviously – unbalanced. All the psychiatrists agreed, for once. The judge was a friend of the family, and had him committed without a public trial.”

“Where did all this happen?”

“In the Valley, in Citrus Junction. It was a tragic thing for all of us. It happened on Thanksgiving Day, five years ago. Carl was home from Camarillo, and we were having a sort of family reunion.”

“Was he a mental patient at the time?”

“He had been, but he was out on leave of absence. We all thought he was on his way to being cured. It was almost a happy day, our first for a long time – until it happened. We should never have left him alone with his father for a minute. I still don’t think he meant to kill the old man. He simply went into one of his terrible rages, and when he came out of it old Mr. Heller was dead. Choked to death.” Her heavy eyes came up to my face. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You have no part in my troubles. Nobody could possibly want a part of them.”

It was a hot bright morning, but the draft from the broken window was cold on the back of my neck. “What brought him to me, I wonder?”

“One of the men he knew in – the institution. Someone you’d helped. He told me that this morning. Carl believes that he’s an innocent man, you see. He thinks he’s perfectly well, that everyone’s been persecuting him unjustly. It’s typical of paranoia, according to Dr. Grantland.”

“Dr. Grantland is your employer?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know Carl?”

“Of course. He treated him for a while before – it happened. Dr. Grantland is a psychiatrist.”

“Does he think Carl is dangerous?”

“I’m afraid so. The only one that doesn’t is Mr. Parish, and he’s not a real psychiatrist.”

“What is he?”

“Mr. Parish is a psychiatric social worker, in Citrus Junction. He stood up for Carl when they sent him away, but it didn’t do any good.” She rose, and fumbled at the clasp of her cheap imitation-leather saddlebag. “I’ll be glad to pay you for the window. I’m sorry about this – about poor Carl.”

“Poor everybody,” I said.

She gave me a bewildered look. “What do you mean, poor everybody?”

“Your husband is carrying a gun.”

Her mouth opened. When it finally closed, it was a thin red line. Her eyes focused like a blue spotlight on my face. “How do you know?”

“He was kind enough to show it to me. It looked like a Smith & Wesson .32 revolver.”

“Did he threaten you with it?”

“It wasn’t a water-pistol, and we weren’t playing cowboys and Indians. Does he know how to handle a gun?”

“Carl was a rifleman in the infantry.” Her eyes were darkly luminous like clouds containing lightning. She held out a five-dollar bill to me. “Will this cover the window? It’s all the cash I have with me. I have to go.”

“Forget the window. We should call the police.”

“No.” The word broke like a dry sob from her lips. “I can’t turn the police on him. You know what they’ll do if they catch him and he resists. They’ll shoot him down like a dog. I’ve got to go myself and warn Jerry that he’s out.”

“Jerry?”

“Jerry Heller, Carl’s brother in Citrus Junction. He blames Jerry for everything that’s happened to him. I’ve got to get to Jerry before he does.”

“I’ll go along.”

She looked at me dubiously. “I couldn’t afford to pay you very much.”

“I don’t put a dollar-sign on people’s lives. Let’s go.”

We left her battered Chevrolet in the parking lot of my building, and took my car. Driving out Ventura into the Valley, she told me her name, Mildred Heller, and something about her background.

She had been very young, just out of Hollywood High, when Carl Heller entered her life. It was 1943, and he was a new young private in the Army. They met at a church canteen. She was susceptible, and he was strong and masculine and handsome in a rather strange way of his own. They fell in love and got married, with her parents’ reluctant consent, a week before he was shipped out to the Marianes. When she saw him again in 1945, he was in the disturbed ward of a veterans’ hospital.

They picked up the pieces together as well as they could. After his discharge, they went to live on his family’s lemon ranch. The years of waiting had been hard, but the next few years were harder. Carl and his family didn’t get along. His father was crippled with arthritis, and tried to run the ranch from his wheelchair. Carl’s older brother Jerry actually ran it. Carl wouldn’t take orders from either of them. And then there was Jerry’s wife, who regarded the younger couple as interlopers.

Carl loafed around the house for two years, alternately brooding and raging. Finally he became impossible to live with, and his father had him committed to the state hospital. A year later Carl came home, ate a Thanksgiving dinner, and strangled his father with the rope from the old man’s bathrobe. Now Mildred was afraid it was Jerry’s turn.

I shifted my eyes from the road to look at her. Huddled in the corner of the seat, she seemed thinner and smaller and older than she had.

“Aren’t you afraid of what he’ll do to you?”

“No,” she said, “I’m not. He’s never tried to hurt me, never laid a hand on me. Sometimes I’ve almost wished he would, and put an end to it. What does my life amount to, after all? I can’t even have a child. What have I got to lose?”

“You’re a loyal girl, to stick to him.”

“Am I? My people don’t believe in divorce.”

“And you don’t either?”

“I don’t believe in anything any more. Good or bad.”

She turned her face away, and we drove in silence for another hour. The spring color of the hills was like Paris green. Gradually the hills slipped back into hazy distance. The highway ran smooth and straight across the citrus flatlands. Geometrically planted lemon trees stretched out like deep green corduroy around us. At her direction, I left the highway and turned up a county road.

A weather-warped sign, Jeremiah Heller Lemons , marked the entrance to a private lane. It led us through nearly a mile of lemon groves spotted with yellowing fruit. At its end a tile-roofed ranch house sprawled in the sun. When I switched off my engine, the silence was almost absolute.

The house was an old adobe which must have stood for several generations. Each new generation had added a wing of its own. A station wagon and a dusty jeep were parked on the gravel in front of the garages.

The silence was broken by a screen door’s percussion. Mildred jumped in her seat. She was strung as taut as a fiddlestring.

A striking blonde came out on the verandah and stood with her arms folded over her breasts, watching us as we got out of the car. She wore black satin slacks, a white silk shirt, and green enamel earrings in the middle of the day. Her eyes were the color and texture of the earrings.

“Why Mildred. What brings you here? Long time no see. I thought you had a job in Los Angeles, darling. Or did you lose that one, too?”

“I took the day off.”

“Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? Who’s the boyfriend?”

“Mr. Archer isn’t my boyfriend.”

“No? Don’t tell me you’re still burning a vestal candle for Carl. Isn’t that one pretty much of a forlorn hope?”

“Please, Zinnia. Don’t.” Mildred moved slowly up the verandah steps, as if she had to force herself to approach the blonde woman or enter the area of the house. “I came to tell you about Carl.”

“How fascinating. Let’s get out of this bloody sun, then, shall we? It plays hell with my complexion.”