Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

The idiotic eye closed entirely in a frozen wink; she peered at my face with the wise one. “Jack knew where too many bodies were buried. The north county’s rough territory, mister, and he was the king of it. Anyway, what could they prove? The woman Laurel said the body didn’t belong to her husband. Said she never saw him before in her life. The head was all smashed up, unrecog–” She stumbled over the word “–unrecnizable. They put it down as just another accidental death.”

“Do you know for a fact it wasn’t?”

“I know what I know.” But her one closed eye seemed to mock her seriousness.

“Are you willing to pass this on to the police?”

“What would be the use? Jack’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”

“You’re not.”

“I wish I was.” The statement surprised or alarmed her. She opened both eyes and glared at me, as if I’d threatened her with loss of life.

“And Davy Spanner isn’t dead.”

“He soon will be. There’s a fifty-man posse out after him. I talked to Rory Pennell on the phone this morning. He promised they’d shoot to kill.”

“You want them to?”

“He killed Jack, didn’t he?”

“But you said you hardly blamed him.”

“Did I?” The question was directed to herself as well as me. “I couldn’t have. Jack was my husband.”

This was where I came in. Her single life and mind were as deeply split as her marriage had been. I got up to leave.

She followed me to the door. “What about the tapes?”

“What about them? Do you have them?”

“I think I can put my hands on them.”

“For a thousand?”

“It isn’t enough,” she said. “I’m a widow now, I have to look out for myself.”

“Let me play the tapes. Then I’ll make you another offer.”

“They’re not here.”

“Where are they?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Okay, sit on them. I’ll be back, or I’ll phone you. Do you remember my name?”

“Archer,” she said. “Jack Archer.”

I left it at that. She went back into the artificial twilight of her living room.

BEFORE I LEFT Santa Teresa I called Henry Langston’s house from a gas-station telephone booth. His wife answered, formally: “This is the Langston residence.”

“Is your husband at home?”

“Who is calling, please?” But she probably knew my voice. Her voice was hostile.

“Lew Archer.”

“No, he isn’t here, and you’re responsible. He’s still up in the north county, trying to save that precious murderer of his. He’ll end up getting shot himself.”

She was semi-hysterical, and I tried to soothe her. “That isn’t very likely, Mrs. Langston.”

“You don’t know,” she said. “I have this terrible feeling of fatality, that nothing will ever go right for us again. And it’s your fault, you got him into this.”

“Not really. He’s been involved with Davy Spanner for years. He made a commitment to him, and he’s trying to follow through.”

“What about me?” she cried.

“Is there something specific bothering you?”

“There’s no use telling you,” she said in a kind of angry intimacy. “You’re not a doctor.”

“Are you ill, Mrs. Langston?”

She answered by hanging up on me. I was tempted to go to her house, but that would only lead to further involvement and loss of time. I sympathized with her but I couldn’t help her. Only her husband could do that.

I got onto the freeway headed north. My body was beginning to rebel against continuous action without enough rest. It felt as if my right foot on the accelerator pushed the car uphill all the way to Rodeo City.

Deputy Pennell was in the back room of his office, listening to his dispatcher’s radio. I gathered he had been sitting there ever since I talked to him in the middle of the night. His mustache and his eyes gave the impression that they were taking over his face, which was paler and thinner and needed a shave.

“What’s the word, Deputy?”

“They lost him.” His voice was edged with disgust.

“Where?”

“There’s no telling. The rain washed out his tracks. It’s still raining in the north pass.”

“Where does that lead to?”

“He’d have to come back to the coast. Inland there’s nothing but more mountain ranges. It’s snowing in the back country above five thousand feet.”

“So?”

“We head him off when he hits the highway. I’m requesting the highway patrol to set up roadblocks.”

“Is there any chance that he’s still in the valley?”

“Could be. The p-professor seems to think so, anyway.”

“Do you mean Henry Langston?”

“Yeah. He’s still hanging around the old Krug ranch. He’s got a theory that Spanner is kind of cracked on the subject of that place, and that he’ll head back there.”

“But you don’t buy that theory?”

“Naw. I never saw a p-professor yet that knew what he was talking about. They get soft in the head from reading too many books.”

I didn’t argue, and this encouraged Pennell to go on. Langston had upset him, it appeared, and he needed reassurance.

“You know what the professor tried to tell me? That Spanner had j-j-justification for doing what he did to poor old Jack. On account of Jack putting him in the orphanage.”

“Didn’t that happen?”

“Sure, but what else could Jack do with the kid? His father got killed by a train. Jack wasn’t responsible for him.”

I could hear a little slippage, a trace of double-talk. “Jack wasn’t responsible for what, Deputy?”

“For either of them, father or son. I know there were dirty rumors at the time, and now this Langston is trying to start them up again, before old Jack is even in his grave.”

“What kind of rumors?”

He raised his hot sorrowful eyes. “I wouldn’t even pass them on, they’re so crazy.”

“Rumors that Jack killed the man himself?”

“Yeah. That’s all a lot of malarkey.”

“Would you swear to it, Deputy?”

“Sure I would,” he said with some bravado, “I’d swear to it on a stack of Bibles. I told the p-professor that, but he wasn’t satisfied.”

Neither was I. “Would you take a lie-detector test?”

Pennell was disappointed in me. “So you think I’m a liar. And that poor old Jack was a murderer.”

“Who killed Jasper Blevins if he didn’t?”

“Plenty of people could have.”

“Who were the suspects?”

“There was a wild-looking character with a beard hanging around the ranch. He looked like a Russian, I heard.”

“Come on now, Deputy. I’m not buying any bearded anarchists. I know Jack hung around the ranch. Later, I’ve been told, he stashed the woman at Mamie Hagedorn’s place.”

“What if he did? Blevins didn’t want his wife; he made that clear.”

“Did you know Blevins?”

“I saw him once or twice.”

“Did you see him after he was dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it Blevins?”

“I couldn’t swear to it, one way or the other.” He added with a shifty look in his eye: “Mrs. Blevins said it wasn’t. She ought to know.”

“What did the little boy say?”

“Never said a word. He couldn’t talk; he was just a dummy.”

“That was convenient, wasn’t it?”

Pennell stood up with his hand on his gun butt. “I’ve heard enough of that kind of t-talk. Jack Fleischer was like an older b-brother to me. He t-taught me to shoot and drink. He g-got me my first woman. He m-made a m-man of me.”

“I was wondering who to blame.”

Pennell cursed me and got his gun out. I retreated. He didn’t follow me out of the office, but I was a little shaken. This was the second gun that had been pulled on me today. Sooner or later one was bound to go off.