James Chase: The Guilty Are Afraid

I heard the long wailing blast of a police siren ahead of me. The bends in the road prevented me seeing the two cars, but every now and then I caught the flash of their headlights as they whipped into the turns.

Then suddenly I saw them ahead on the higher level of the snakeback road and I slammed on my brakes. I wouldn’t have believed it possible for Margot to have driven so fast, for she was now a good mile ahead of me. I jumped out of the car and stood on the grass verge, looking up. The road wound up the hill and long stretches of it were in sight.

The prowl car was only twenty yards or so behind the Buick: its headlights blazing on the Buick’s bumpers, its siren screaming.

No one could hold that speed on such a road for long. Ahead I saw the first of the hairpin bends. Margot must have seen it too. The prowl car driver knew the bend was ahead for he had already cut speed and had dropped a hundred yards or so behind the Buick. Margot came to the bend at something like sixty miles an hour. I heard the screaming of tortured tyres as she crammed on the brakes. The long white fingers of light from the headlamps swung out into the black void like antennae of some huge insect sensing danger.

I felt my heart suddenly lurch as the Buick left the road and shot off into space. For a brief, unbelievable moment it seemed to be driving through the air. In the silence I heard Margot’s terrified scream: a sound that chilled my blood, then the Buick turned over, and a moment later it struck an enormous boulder, bounced away from it, slithered in a fog of dust, uprooting small trees and loosening rocks, sending them banging down the hillside. Then, with a loud, dull crash, it came to rest not two hundred yards from where I was standing.

I ran as I had never run before. My one thought was to get her out before the wreck caught fire. The car lay on its side, wedged against a huge boulder. As I started the short climb up to it, I could smell the gasoline fumes.

I reached the car. It was too dark to see into the broken interior. With a shaking hand, I took out my flashlight and sent the beam probing into the car.

Margot lay curled up against the driver’s door: a little trickle of blood ran from her mouth and down her chin. Her blonde silky hair hid most of her face. I saw her fingers move: then slowly close into fists, then open again.

I reached inside and gently pushed aside the soft gold hair. Her eyes were closed, but at the touch of my fingers, she opened them and we looked at each other.

She tried to say something: her lips moved.

“I won’t leave you,” I said. “They’ll get you out without hurting you . . .”

Futile words, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She moved her head slightly; then her face stiffened. She tried once more to say something, then she made a pathetic little grimace and died.

As I stepped back, the headlights of a car came sweeping up the road. A Lincoln pulled up and Frank Hepple tumbled out and came running over to me.

“I spotted you following her and I came after you” he said. “Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

He went over to the shattered Buick, took a flashlight from his pocket and peered into the car. I sat down on a rock, took out a cigarette and lit it. I felt pretty bad. Maybe she had killed Sheppey, but that was over and paid for now.

Hepple came back. He went to his car, took a camera and flashlight from the back seat, returned to the Buick and took a couple of shots of her. Then he came back.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive you back. I guess you’re ready to talk now.”

I looked up the mountain road. The patrol car had turned and was coming down the snakeback road fast. I got into Hepple’s car.

Creedy wasn’t going to escape the publicity he feared, I told myself. The Courier had the gun that had killed Thrisby. The police couldn’t hush that up. Hepple would be able to prove it was Creedy’s money that had financed Cordez and Hahn. When the story of the drug organization came out with Creedy’s name linked to it, it would finish him in St. Raphael City.

I drew down a lungful of smoke and leaned back.

“Yes,” I said. “Now I’m ready to talk.”