Ross MACDONALD - The Underground Man

“You’ll have to take it away from me.”

He looked at me as if he was considering it. But he was running short of desire and hope. The aura of success had deserted him, and he was looking more and more like a loser.

He turned and went as far as the front door before he answered me. Just before he slammed it behind him, he called back:

“I’m going to have you run out of town.”

Jean came up to me, moving quietly with one hand out as if darkness had set in and the place was unfamiliar. “Are those things true?”

“What things?”

“The things that you were saying about Elizabeth.”

“I’m afraid they are.”

She took hold of my arm and let me feel her weight. “I can’t stand much more. How long is this going to go on?”

“I don’t think there is much more. Where’s Ronny?”

“He’s asleep. He wanted a nap.”

“Get him up and dressed. I’m going to drive you to Los Angeles.”

“Now?”

“The sooner the better.”

“But why?”

I had a number of reasons. I didn’t want to go into the main one, which was that I didn’t know what Kilpatrick might do next. I remembered the gun in his game room, and his apparent willingness to use it.

I took Jean to the big corner window and showed her what had happened to the creek. It had become a turbulent dark river, large enough to float fallen trees. Several of them had formed a natural dam which was backing up the water behind the house.

I could hear boulders rolling down the creekbed in the upper canyon. They made noises like bowling balls in an alley.

“The house may go this time,” I said.

“That isn’t the reason you want to take us south.”

“It’s one reason. You and Ronny will be safer there. And I have some things to attend to. I’m supposed to report to Captain Shipstad of the LAPD. There are certain advantages in working with him instead of the local law.”

Those advantages had become clearer in the last hour, and I decided to call Arnie now. I went into the study and dialed his office number.

His voice was cool and distant: “I expected you to get in touch with me before now.”

“Sorry. I had to go to Sausalito.”

“I hope you had a nice weekend,” he said in a flat Scandinavian tone.

“It wasn’t so nice. I turned up another murder. An old one.” I gave him the facts of Leo Broadhurst’s death.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re telling me that Broadhurst was killed by his wife?”

“She shot him, but the shot may not have killed him. He had a broken knife blade in his ribs. Of course she could have put the knife in him.”

“Could she have killed Albert Sweetner?”

“I don’t see how. Mrs. Broadhurst was in the Santa Teresa hospital Saturday night. It had to be someone else who did the Northridge killing.”

“Who do you have in mind?”

I paused for a moment to organize my thoughts, and Arnie spoke impatiently: “You there, Lew?”

“I’m here. There are three main suspects. Number one is a local real estate man named Brian Kilpatrick. He knew that Elizabeth Broadhurst shot her husband, and I think she’s been paying him off ever since. Which gives him a reason for killing Stanley Broadhurst and Albert Sweetner.”

“What reason?”

“He had a large financial interest in keeping the original murder quiet.”

“Blackmail?”

“Call it disguised blackmail. But it’s still possible he finished off Leo Broadhurst himself. If so, he had an even stronger reason for silencing the other two. Albert Sweetner knew where Leo was buried. Stanley Broadhurst was trying to dig him up.”

“But why would Kilpatrick want to knife Leo Broadhurst?”

“Broadhurst broke up his marriage. Also, there was money in it for him, as I said.”

“Describe him, will you, Lew?”

“Kilpatrick’s about forty-five, over six feet, around two hundred pounds. Blue eyes, wavy red hair getting thin on top. Broken veins in the nose and face.” I paused. “Was he seen in Northridge Saturday?”

“Right now I’m asking the questions. Any scars?”

“None visible.”

“Who are the other suspects?”

“A motel-owner named Lester Crandall is number two. He’s heavy and short, about five-seven and one-eighty. Graying black hair with long sideburns. Talks like a good ole country boy, which he is, but he’s shrewd and heavily loaded.”

“How old?”

“He told me he’ll be sixty on his next birthday. He had a motive as strong as Kilpatrick’s for knocking off Leo Broadhurst.”

“Sixty is too old,” Arnie said.

“It would expedite matters if you laid your cards on the table. You have a description you’re trying to match, right?”

“A sort of one. The trouble is, my witness may not be reliable, and I want independent confirmation. Who’s your other suspect?”

“Kilpatrick’s ex-wife Ellen could have done it. Leo broke up her marriage and then dropped her.”

“It wasn’t a woman,” Arnie said. “Or if it was, my theory goes to pieces. Did any other adult male have motive and opportunity?”

I answered slowly, with some reluctance: “The gardener, Fritz Snow, who buried Leo’s body with his tractor. I wouldn’t have said he’s capable of murder, but Leo did give him provocation. So did Albert Sweetner, for that matter.”

“How old is Snow?”

“About thirty-five or -six.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s five-ten, maybe one-sixty. Brown hair, moon face, green eyes which cry a lot. He seems to have emotional problems. Also genetic ones.”

“What kind of genetic problems?”

“Harelip, for one thing.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

Arnie’s voice had risen. I held the receiver away from my ear. Jean was leaning with her hands on the door frame, watching me. Her face was pale, and her eyes were darker than I had ever seen them.

“Where is this Fritz Snow?” Arnie said.

“About a mile and a half from where I’m sitting. Do you want me to pick him up?”

“I better do it through channels.”

“Let me talk to him first, Arnie. I can’t believe he killed three people, or even one of them.”

“I can,” Arnie said. “That wig and mustache and beard that Albert Sweetner was wearing didn’t belong to Sweetner. They didn’t fit him. It’s my hypothesis they belonged to the killer, who put them on Sweetner to confuse the issue. We’ve been canvassing the wig shops and supply houses. To make a long story short, your suspect bought the wig and beard at a mark-down store on Vine Street called Wigs Galore.”

I didn’t want to believe it. “He could have bought them for Al Sweetner.”

“He could have, but he didn’t. He bought them a month ago, when Sweetner was still in Folsom. And we know he bought them for his own use. He asked the salesman for a mustache that would cover the bad scar on his upper lip.”

Jean spoke when I set the receiver down. “Fritz?”

“It looks that way.” I told her about the wig and beard he had bought.

She bit her lip. “I should have listened to Ronny.”

“Did he recognize Fritz on the mountain Saturday?”

“I don’t know about Saturday. He told me several weeks ago that he saw Fritz with long black hair and a mustache. But when I questioned him further, he said that he was telling me a story.”

We went into the bedroom where the boy was sleeping. He woke with a start when his mother touched him and sat up hugging his pillow, wide-eyed and shaking. It was my first naked glimpse of his hurt and fear.

He spoke with an effort: “I was afraid the bogy man would get me.”

“I won’t let him get you.”

“He got Daddy.”