Ross MACDONALD - The Underground Man

“You weren’t a great deal of help.”

His gray eyes flinched a little and then set hard, while his mouth continued to smile. “The word came down from on high about you. And the Forest Service makes me go by the book.”

“What does the book say?”

“You know as well as I do. Where local law enforcement is involved, I’m instructed to respect their jurisdiction.”

“What are they planning to do? Bury this case for another fifteen years?”

“Not if I can help it. But my main responsibility is the fire.”

“The killings and the fire are tied together, and you know it.”

“Don’t tell me what I know.”

He turned and went back into the room with the dead man and the authorized personnel.

When I went outside the rain was coming down harder than ever. Water was running in the street, washing the detritus of summer downhill toward the sea.

The nearer I got to the mountains, the more water there was. Driving up Mrs. Broadhurst’s canyon was very much like making my way upstream in a shallow watercourse. Long before I reached the ranch house I could hear the roaring of the creek behind it.

Brian Kilpatrick’s black car was standing in front of the house. An artificial-looking blond whom I didn’t recognize at first was sitting in the front seat. When I approached the black car I saw that she was Kilpatrick’s fiancée, as he called her.

“How are you feeling today?” I said.

She lowered the electric window and peered at me through the rain. “Do I know you?”

“We met Saturday night at Kilpatrick’s place.”

“Really? I must have been stoned.” Her lips stretched in a smile which asked for my complicity. Behind it she seemed terribly uneasy.

“You were stoned. Also you were a brunette.”

“I was wearing a wig. I change them to suit my mood. People tell me I’m very mercurial.”

“I can see that. What kind of a mood are you in?”

“Frankly, I’m scared,” she said. “I’m scared of all this water. And the mud is coming loose above Brian’s house. He’s got tons of it in his patio already. That’s why I’m sitting here in this car. But I don’t like it here much, either.”

“What’s Brian doing inside?”

“Business, he said.”

“With Jean Broadhurst?”

“I guess that’s her name. Some woman called him and he dashed right over here.” She added as I turned toward the house: “Tell him to hurry, will you?”

I went in without knocking and closed the front door carefully behind me. The noise of the creek was humming through the house, covering the small sounds my movements made.

There was no one in the living room. A light shone from the open door of the study. When I went nearer I could hear Jean’s voice:

“I don’t like this. If Mrs. Broadhurst wants these things, she could have asked me for them.”

Kilpatrick answered her in a throwaway tone: “I’m sure she didn’t want to bother you.”

“But I am bothered. What does she want in the hospital with business papers and guns?”

“I assume she wants to get things shipshape in case anything happens to her.”

“She isn’t planning to kill herself?” Jean’s voice was thin and breathless.

“I sincerely hope not.”

“Then why does she want the guns?”

“She didn’t say. I’m simply trying to keep her happy. After all, she is my business partner.”

“Still I don’t think I should let you–”

“But she just called me.”

“I think I’ll call her back.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

His voice had a threat in it. There was the scrape of feet and a woman’s gasp. I stepped into the doorway. Jean was sprawled on the black leather couch, white-faced and breathing hard. Kilpatrick was standing over her with the telephone receiver in his hands.

“Try someone your own size,” I said.

He moved as if he was going to attack me. I wanted him to, and perhaps he saw that. The color drained from his face, so that the broken veins stood out like abrasions.

He offered me a shameful little smile which didn’t change his reddened apprehensive eyes. “Jean and I had a little misunderstanding. Nothing serious.”

She got up, smoothing her skirt. “I think it’s serious. He pushed me down. He’s taking some of my mother-in-law’s things.”

She indicated the black briefcase standing beside the desk. I picked it up.

“I want that,” Kilpatrick said. “It belongs to me.”

“You may get it back eventually.”

He reached for it. I swung it away from his grasp. In the same movement I leaned my shoulder into him and walked him backward. He came up hard against the opposing wall and slouched there like a man hanging on a nail. I went over him for weapons, found none, and stepped back.

For a moment his face wore the look of terrible disappointment that I had surprised on it the day before. He was losing everything, and watching it go.

“I’m going to take this up with Sheriff Tremaine,” he said.

“I think you should. He’ll be interested in what you’ve been doing to Mrs. Broadhurst.”

“I’m her best friend, if you want the truth. I’ve been looking after her interests for many years.”

“She calls it bleeding her.”

He seemed surprised. “Did she say that?”

“She used the word. Don’t you like it?”

He was still against the wall. His reddish-brown hair was turning dark with sweat and falling over his high freckled forehead. He pushed it back with his fingers, carefully, as if a neat appearance might make all the difference.

“I’m disappointed in Elizabeth,” he said. “I thought she had more sense. And more gratitude. But that’s a woman for you.”

He gave me a tentative look to see if we could get together on an anti-feminist platform.

“No gratitude,” I said. “No gratitude to you for blackmailing her and cheating her out of her land. Women are terrible ingrates.”

He couldn’t stand the unfairness of my remarks. A bright bitterness entered his eyes and changed his mouth. “Anything I did was perfectly legal. That’s more than you can say for her. While she was telling you lies about me, I don’t suppose she mentioned what she did.”

“What did she do?”

I shouldn’t have asked the direct question. It reminded him to be discreet.

“I don’t believe I’ll answer that.”

“Then I’ll tell you. Mrs. Broadhurst shot her husband. You may have put her up to it. Certainly you had a hand in it.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Didn’t you tell her about Leo’s freighter bookings to Hawaii? Wasn’t that what sparked their final quarrel?”

His gaze came up to mine, then moved away sideways. “I thought he was planning to take my wife with him.”

“Your wife had already left you.”

“I was hoping she might come back to me.”

“If you could find a cat’s-paw to get rid of Leo?”

“I had no such intention,” he said.

“Didn’t you? You incited the Broadhursts’ quarrel. You watched the Mountain House that night to see what came of the quarrel. You witnessed the shot, or heard the sound of it. And when it failed to kill Leo, you finished him off with a knife.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“Somebody did. And you were there on the spot. You haven’t denied it.”

“I deny it now. I didn’t shoot him and I didn’t knife him.”

“Tell me what you did do.”

“I was an innocent bystander, that’s all.”

I laughed in his face, though I wasn’t feeling merry. I hated to see a man, even a man like Kilpatrick, go down the tubes. “Okay, innocent bystander. What happened then?”

“I think you know what happened. But I’m not going to say it. And if you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll play along with me. Right now I want my briefcase.”