Clifton Adams - Death's Sweet Song

I said, “Sheldon, you wait right here.” Then I went down on one knee and lifted the dead watchman to my shoulder. Sheldon looked as though he had been clubbed. He stared dazedly as I hurried out of the garage with the dead man across my back. What I had in mind wasn't going to fool anybody for long, but it would cross the Sheriff up for a while, at least, and maybe that would be long enough.

It seemed, by now, that I had run that gantlet of floodlights a hundred times, but that didn't make it any easier this time. It was pure gambling; I just had to hope that no one saw me. Old Otto Finney had been a frail little man, and I was glad of that as I raced along the front of the building with him across my shoulders. I didn't even look at the highway. I went right up to the door, pressed Otto's palm to the latch and in two or three places along the door frame. Then I dragged him inside and did the same thing there. Finally I went over to the blown safe and made sure that Otto's fingerprints would be found on the door as well as other places.

That was that. I was breathing as though I had been swimming underwater, but I hoisted the dead man to my shoulders again and headed for the door. Just as I stepped outside I heard the sound of a motor, and then the headlights of a car cut a thin gash in the darkness of the highway. I hit the ground. The dead watchman hit and rolled a few feet ahead of me. As the car hummed past and out; of sight, I lay there for several seconds, breathing hard. And Otto was looking at me. Those pale, sightless eyes were wide open and staring right at me.

I said, “I'm sorry, Otto!” And I knew I had to get hold of myself or I was cooked. What was done was done. I wasn't going to crack up about it. That was the one thing in the world I couldn't afford to do. I shouldered the corpse and made another run for darkness.

Sheldon was right where I had left him, there by the garage door. I hadn't been afraid of his running out on me because I still had the key to the Buick. “Get the car door open,” I panted. “The back seat.”

By this time Sheldon had guessed what I was up to.

It won't work, Hooper,” he said tightly.

“I know it won't work for long. But maybe it will buy us time, let the trail cool a little. Now get the door open.”

He did it, and I dumped the dead watchman on the floor. Then the two of us went back to the garage and cleaned the place up. We picked up all the bloodstained rags, the gun, the flashlight. “Now,” I said, “let's go!”

It was a long, long ride back to the tourist court; I hope I never take another ride as long as that one. Every car I met I expected to be the Sheriffs car. I expected something violent to happen every second, but nothing did. Nothing happened at all. What we were going to do with the dead watchman, I didn't know. I was beyond thinking. It took all my concentration just to keep the car in a straight line.

Then at last we reached the cabins, and I pulled the Buick behind the station and into the carport next to Number 2. There were no lights in the cabin, but Paula had the door open the minute we pulled off the highway, and she was right there the second we hit the carport.

She jerked the door open on my side.

“What took you so long? Did anything go wrong?”

I could smell the perfume she wore. Or maybe it wasn't perfume, maybe it was just her.

“Something happened, didn't it?” she said. “Tell me!”

Sheldon hadn't said a thing. But now he turned toward his wife, and his face looked a hundred years old. “The trouble,” he said, “is back there.”

Paula opened the back door and made one small sound when she saw the dead man. Then she looked at me.

“Who did it?”

“I did.”

She frowned. “I might have known it couldn't have been Karl.”

“I guess we need to talk this thing over,” I said, and got out of the car.

Sheldon sat where he was. “Paula,” he said, “we've got to get out of here. Get your things together right now.”

“The three of us?” she asked coldly, glancing at the back seat.

“Oh.” He looked pretty foolish and he knew it, and that did more than anything else to snap him out of it. “Well, maybe Hooper's right, maybe we should talk it over, coolly, calmly.”

There was a moon out that night. I didn't notice it until I got inside the darkened cabin and saw the whitish moonlight pouring through the open door. “Turn the light on,” Paula said.

“It will be safer if we don't,” I said.

“We can't count the money in the dark.”

First things first. I felt a crazy impulse to laugh. The hell with the dead man outside, we had money to count. She turned the light on.

It really didn't make much difference. The cabins, as usual, were empty, and I was too tired to care, anyway. I was having trouble keeping my thoughts organized.

Then I thought: Christ, I've forgotten all about the money! I kicked the door open, went out to the car, and got it. I didn't look behind the front seat; I didn't want to see those pale, wide eyes again. Just don't think about it, I thought. He asked for it, didn't he?

Paula's eyes were alive with excitement as she dug her hands into the green bills. “Thirty thousand dollars!”

Sheldon said, “We don't know how much there is. We haven't, counted it.”

“I can tell! Just by feeling of it!”

“For God's sake,” I said, “stop playing with the stuff and let's count it!”

Then Paula turned on me with a tight little smile. “First,” she said, “tell me about the watchman.” The look in her eyes shook me. “Forget it,” I said. All this talk was rubbing right through to my nerves. “The old man shot at me and I had to kill him. That's all there was to it.”

“I knew it!” She almost sneered, looking now at Sheldon. “I knew it couldn't have been you, Karl!”

I didn't know what she was talking about, but Sheldon must have. He stood rigid for just a moment, his eyes stormy, and then, without a sound of warning, he back-handed her. The back of his fist slammed into her mouth, knocking her across the room and onto the bed. “Now keep quiet, goddamn you!” he said hoarsely.

I felt the muscles become tense in my shoulders. Stay out of it, I warned myself. This is between just the two of them. You can't afford to butt in now—not until we make the split, anyway.

His knuckles had broken Paula's lower lip and a thin little stream of blood dripped down her chin. She didn't come fighting back, as I had thought she would. She felt of her lip. Then she opened a suitcase, took out some paper tissue, and held it to her mouth. She didn't say a word, but there was plenty in her eyes. Sheldon dumped the money on the table and began counting it out. I helped him. It came to $31,042. We cut it right down the middle without a word: $15,521 each. “Not bad,” Sheldon said. “If we live long enough to spend it!” “Oh, yes,” Sheldon said softly, as though he had been trying to forget it too. “The body.”

I glanced at Paula and she was still sitting exactly the way she had been for fifteen minutes, there on the edge of the bed, holding the bloody tissue to her mouth. Now she stood up and I could see that all the fight hadn't been knocked out of her.

“Why did you bring the body with you, anyway?” “Because,” I said, “I went to a good deal of trouble putting the watchman's fingerprints all over the safe before we left the factory.”

“Oh.” She was getting it now, but I stopped her before she had a chance to carry it too far.

“Don't get the idea,” I said, “that the Sheriffs going to be fooled. He's not going to think for one damn minute that Otto Finney robbed that factory. Still, the evidence is going to be there and he's going to have to look into it. And if we can get rid of the body, the Sheriff is going to have to look for it, and that's going to take time.”