Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

Three pairs of eyes sought his questioningly.

“He told me,” he said very low, and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “They’ve got her in a refrigerating-plant out at Brierfield. He told them to take her there, in case he was picked up.”

“How d’ya know he told you the truth?” one of them said, which was just the dick in him being superior to a mere cop in matters of this kind.

“I let him tell me three times before I paid any attention,” O’Dare explained simply. “Three times running it must be the truth; his brain was too busy blowing out fuses to think up a stall, anyway. I read about some Japs doing that, only yesterday in the paper. Gimme back my gun,” he wound up somberly, “I’m going over there and get her back.”

“We’ll get her back for you,” one of the dicks promised, “now that we know where—”

“I’ll do my own getting back.” O’Dare’s voice rose. “Gimme back my gun. I’m facing suspension anyway, for going off my beat while on duty. Don’t try to stop me, any of you; I’m going, with my gun or without it—!”

“We’re not trying to stop you,” the inspector said. “Give him his gun. Go with him, McKee. The rest of us’ll follow. Wait there out of sight for further orders, you two. Don’t make a move until we size the place up. This woman’s life is at stake.”

“And we’ve got thirty-five minutes,” O’Dare said bitterly.

Brierfield lay across the river — which made it an interstate death-penalty kidnaping and put her in just that much more jeopardy of her life. Since they got top prices whether they killed her or not, there was every inducement for them to do away with her rather than be caught with the goods. O’Dare was cursing the day they were born.

McKee ran the car out along the river-drive, with its siren cut off; past the stony cliff-dwellings where Benuto himself lived and had been picked up, past the desolate ash-dumps further on that were the rewards of demotion on the force. They crossed the interstate bridge, slithered through four o’clock, dead-to-the-world, downtown Brierfield, which was just a little annex to the Big Town, and came out beyond in a barren region of scattered breweries, warehouses, and packing-plants. The side-streets quit but the main highway ran on. McKee slowed a little, doused the lights. They skimmed along like a little mechanical metal beetle over the macadam. “They coming?” he asked.

O’Dare wasn’t interested, didn’t even bother looking to see. “Acme Refrigerating Plant it’s called,” he said. “Keep watching. He owns it — one of his lousy rackets.”

McKee slowed to a crawl as the outline of a sprawling concrete structure up ahead began topping a rise of the road. A single dreary arc-light shining down on the highway, bleached one side of it; the rest was just a black cut-out against the equally-black night-sky. Stenciled lettering ran the length of the side that faced the highroad, but too foreshortened by the angle at which they were looking to be decipherable. McKee went over to the side with a neat little loop of the wheel, stopped dead — and soundlessly. O’Dare gestured to him, got out, went up ahead to look. “Keep out of that arc-light,” McKee whispered.

The cop came back again in a minute. “Sure,” he said. “I can make out the first two letters, A and C, and that’s enough.” He looked back the other way, for the first time. “What’d they do, lose their way?”

McKee got out, eased the car-door closed after him. O’Dare couldn’t stand still, took his gun out, put it away, took it out, put it away. “What time y’got?” he almost whimpered. Not a moving thing showed on the long arc-lit ribbon of road they had come over.

McKee hadn’t been there when the phone-call was made to O’Dare. “Five after four,” he answered incautiously.

“Damn them! They’ll kill her!” the agonized cop rasped out. He meant the strangely-delayed follow-up party. He lurched away from the car, struck out alone toward the ominously-quiet building up ahead.

“Hey! Wait!” McKee hissed after him desperately, “Don’t do that, you fool—!” He took a quick step after him, grabbed him, tried to haul him back to the car. They had a brief, wordless struggle there by the roadside, gravel spitting out from under their scuffling shoes. O’Dare, crazed, swung out with all his might at the dick. The blow caught him on the under-side of the jaw. McKee went down, sprawling on his back. O’Dare’s gun was out again, he stood there crouched over him for an instant. “I’m going in there — now, d’ya hear me? I’ll put a bullet in you if you try to stop me again!” He turned and went toward the concrete hulk, bent double, moving along the roadside with surprising swiftness for a man his weight and height. Like an Indian runner.

Caution, concealment, was a thing of the past. His stumbling footfalls echoed in the stillness of that place like drumbeats. Behind him the road, which he could no longer see, stretched empty all the way back into Brierfield. What was that to him, whether they came now or didn’t? In, that was all he wanted, in! He came up to the cold, rough walls, padded against them with one bare hand outstretched to guide himself as he ran along beside them.

The entrance was around on the side, a darker patch in the dark wall that turned solid as he got up to it. Vast and huge, to admit and disgorge trucks, impregnably barred, the lidded bulb over it screwed off so that it was dark. He was like a tormented pygmy dancing up and down there, raging helpless in front of its huge dimensions. Even McKee didn’t come up to help him. Maybe he’d knocked him out.

There weren’t any openings at all within reach of the ground. Higher up, at about third-story level, there was a row of embrasures paned with corrugated glass. He ran down the rest of its length, turned the corner to the back, looking desperately for an outside ammonia-pipe, drain-pipe, anything that would offer a way up. Nothing broke the cream-smooth surface of the concrete, for a length of half a city-block. But there was something else there, a black shape standing out from it. The car in which they’d brought her here, left outside ready for their quick get-away once Benuto was turned loose and they’d gotten rid of their encumbering hostage. O’Dare recognized it. The same hefty Isotta Benuto had gone out to do murder in earlier that night! They must have dropped him off at his own place, then gone straight to O’Dare’s flat to get her, then come direct out here.

He got up on the convexed roof, balanced there erect, saw that even that way he couldn’t reach the height of those embrasures. He jumped down again, got in. They’d left the key in it, so ready were they to start at hair-trigger timing — maybe pick up Benuto at some prearranged place along the way to save time.

He turned it up, roared out away from the walls in a big semicircle, careless whether they heard or not. Over grass and sliding sand and stones, that rocked but didn’t impede it. You only had to handle it to understand why some cars are made in Turin too. Not all are made in Detroit. He wheeled in toward the plant again, straightened out, came at that door diagonally from away off there in the open, fifty yards away, in high. He slid down the seat onto his kidneys, braced his feet. There was a jar that went up his back, exploding in his brain like a blue flash, a boom like a cannon; glass went flying up like powdered sugar from the headlights or something, came down again on the read-end of the roof with a sound like rain — but the car ducked in away from it before it was even finished falling. There was electric light inside, rows of dim spaced bulbs that showed an inner wall rushing at him. He was still stunned, but managed to kick his foot down. The car bucked, went into the wall anyway, but with a less severe jolt than the first time. Behind him, the big doorway looked somewhat like those beaded string-curtains used in the tropics.