Ed McBain - The Empty Hours

Hawes kicked out at his groin.

The blow did nothing to stop the man’s attack. It glanced off his thigh, missing target as the hammer came down, but throwing him off balance slightly so that the hammer struck without real force. Hawes threw a fist at him, and the man grunted and again the hammer came out of the new darkness. The man fought desperately and silently, frightening Hawes with the fury of his animal strength. They rolled over in the snow, and Hawes grasped at the hood, tried to pull it from the man’s head, found it was securely tied in place, and reached for the scarf. The scarf began to unravel. The man lashed out with the hammer, felt the scarf coming free, pulled back to avoid exposing his face, and suddenly staggered as Hawes’ fist struck home. He fell into the snow, and all at once, he panicked. Instead of attacking again, he pulled the scarf around his face and began to half run, half stumble through the deep snow. Hawes leaped at him, missing, his hands grabbing air. The man scrambled over the snow, heading for the pines lining the lift. By the time Hawes was on his feet again, the man had gone into the trees. Hawes went after him. It was dark under the trees. The world went black and silent under the pines.

He hesitated for a moment. He could see nothing, could hear nothing. He fully expected the hammer to come lashing out of the darkness.

Instead, there came the voice.

“Hold it right there.”

The voice startled him, but he reacted intuitively, whirling, his fist pulling back reflexively, and then firing into the darkness. He felt it connecting with solid flesh, heard someone swearing in the dark, and then — surprisingly, shockingly — Hawes heard the sound of a pistol shot. It rang on the mountain air, reverberated under the pines. Hawes opened his eyes wide. A pistol? But the man had only a hammer. Why hadn’t ... ?

“Next time, I go for your heart,” the voice said.

Hawes stared into the darkness. He could no longer locate the voice. He did not know where to jump, and the man was holding a pistol.

“You finished?” the man asked.

The beam of a flashlight suddenly stabbed through the darkness. Hawes blinked his eyes against it, tried to shield his face.

“Well, well,” the man said. “You never can tell, can you? Stick out your hands.”

“What?” Hawes said.

“Stick out your goddamn hands.”

Hesitantly, he held out his hands. He was the most surprised human being in the world when he felt the handcuffs being snapped onto his wrists.

The office from which Theodore Watt, sheriff of the town of Rawson, operated was on the main street alongside an Italian restaurant whose neon sign advertised LASAGNA * SPAGHETTI * RAVIOLI. Now that the snow had stopped, the plows had come through and banked snow on either side of the road so that the door of the office was partially hidden by a natural fortress of white. Inside the office, Theodore Watt was partially hidden by the fortress of his desk, the top of which was covered with Wanted circulars, FBI flyers, carbon copies of police reports, a pair of manacles, a cardboard container of coffee, a half-dozen chewed pencil stubs, and a framed picture of his wife and three children. Theodore Watt was not in a very friendly mood. He sat behind his desk-fortress, a frown on his face. Cotton Hawes stood before the desk, still wearing the handcuffs which had been clamped onto his wrists on the mountain. The deputy who’d made the collar, the selfsame Fred who had earlier pulled the ski pole from Helga Nilson’s chest, stood alongside Hawes, wearing the sheriff’s frown, and also wearing a mouse under his left eye, where Hawes had hit him.

“I could lock you up, you know,” Watt said, frowning. “You hit one of my deputies.”

“You ought to lock him up,” Hawes said angrily. “If he hadn’t come along, I might have had our man.”

“You might have, huh?”

“Yes.”

“You had no right being on that damn mountain,” Watt said. “What were you doing up there?”

“Looking.”

“For what?”

“Anything. He gave you the basket I found. Apparently it was important enough for the killer to have wanted it, too. He fought hard enough for it. Look at my cheek.”

“Well now, that’s a shame,” Watt said drily.

“There may be fingerprints on that basket,” Hawes said. “I suggest ...”

“I doubt it. Weren’t none on the ski pole, and none on the chair, neither. We talked to the two loaders, and they told us the one riding up with Helga Nilson was wearing gloves. I doubt if there’s any fingerprints on that basket at all.”

“Well ...” Hawes said, and he shrugged.

“What it amounts to, hmmmm,” Watt said, “is that you figured we wasn’t handling this case to your satisfaction, ain’t that it? So you figured you’d give us local hicks a little bigtime help, hmmmm? Ain’t that about it?”

“I thought I could possibly assist in some ...”

“Then you shoulda come to me,” Watt said, “and asked if you could help. This way, you only fouled up what we was trying to do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve got six men on that mountain,” Watt said, “waiting for whoever killed that girl to come back and cover his mistakes. This basket here was one of the mistakes. But did our killer find it? No. Our helpful big-city detective found it. You’re a lot of help, mister, you sure are. With all that ruckus on the mountain, that damn killer won’t go anywhere near it for a month!”

“I almost had him,” Hawes said. “I was going after him when your man stopped me.”

“Stopped him, hell! You’re the one who was stopping him from doing his job. Maybe I ought to lock you up. There’s a thing known as impeding the progress of an investigation. But, of course, you know all about that, don’t you? Being a big-city detective. Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry if I ...”

“And of course we’re just a bunch of local hicks who don’t know nothing at all about police work. Why, we wouldn’t even know enough to have a autopsy performed on that little girl, now would we? Or to have tests made of the blood on the chair, now would we? We wouldn’t have no crime lab in the next biggest town to Rawson, would we?”

“The way you were handling the investigation ...” Hawes started.

“... was none of your damn business,” Watt concluded. “Maybe we like to make our own mistakes, Hawes! But naturally, you city cops never make mistakes. That’s why there ain’t no crime at all where you come from.”

“Look,” Hawes said, “you were mishandling evidence. I don’t give a damn what you ...”

“As it turns out, it don’t matter because there wasn’t no fingerprints on that pole, anyway. And we had to get our men up the mountain, so we had to use the lift. There was a hell of a lot of confusion there today, mister. But I don’t suppose big-city cops ever get confused, hmmmm?” Watt looked at him sourly. “Take the cuffs off him, Fred,” he said.

Fred looked surprised, but he unlocked the handcuffs. “He hit me right in the eye,” he said to Watt.

“Well, you still got the other eye,” Watt said drily. “Go to bed, Hawes. We had enough of you for one night.”

“What did the autopsy report say?” Hawes asked.

Watt looked at him in something close to astonishment. “You still sticking your nose in this?”

“I’d still like to help, yes.”

“Maybe we don’t need your help.”

“Maybe you can use it. No one here knows ...”

“There we go with the damn big-city attitu—”

“I was going to say,” Hawes said, overriding Watt’s voice, “that no one in the area knows I’m a cop. That could be helpful to you.”