Killer in the Street (11 page)

Dee was so intense. Her eyes were pleading for an answer.

“Do you think I’m in collusion with Kyle?” Van demanded. “I don’t know where he is. Working, I suppose.”

“No. That excuse won’t hold tonight.”

“Why not? He’s ambitious. What’s the matter, Dee? Are you one of those suspicious wives who drives her husband to another woman? Do you think Kyle’s having an affair?”

“Van, be serious,” Dee said. “I came to you because I’m worried!”

“Then stop worrying! Kyle isn’t man enough to have an affair any more. He’s turned into one of Sam Stevens’ human computers. On second thought, I’m not sure that he’s human. Wherever Kyle is, you can be sure he’s working, Dee—”

Van stopped arguing because Dee had buried her head in her hands and was crying softly.

“Don’t do that!” he ordered.

“I’m afraid,” she sobbed.

“Why? And why did you come to me? Do you want me to make love to you?”

The shock treatment was effective. The tears stopped flowing and she glared at him. “Van!”

“That’s the usual reaction of the neglected wife, isn’t it? Or have I been watching the wrong television shows?”

“You don’t understand!” Dee protested. “I’m afraid
for
Kyle. I want to find him.”

“Then why not try the police?”

“Police?”

“It’s not a dirty word. Kyle might have been in a driving accident.”

“But I just came down the ranch road. There was no accident—”

“In the city,” Van said. “It’s not a cow town any more. Those aren’t Texas Longhorns running along the speedway. But you’re all keyed up. Sit tight, Dee. I’ll do the calling—”

Van started toward the telephone, but Dee stopped him.

“No,” she said sharply. “Not yet. I want to go home first.”

“But you’ve already called—”

“He might have fallen and can’t reach the phone. Come with me, Van. Please.”

Van gave up on the drink. Under the circumstances, it would have had no therapeutic effect anyway. Dee hadn’t told him everything; but the thing she had told was painfully evident. She was afraid.

Van did the driving. A city that had developed too fast was like a growing child. It slept soundly at night. There was little traffic to delay them, but he drove slowly because Dee needed time to stop trembling. He shouldn’t have mentioned the police, but no woman who had been Kyle Walker’s wife these past five years could be an easy trembler. Maybe it was just the accumulation of fears. He lit a cigarette from the dashboard lighter and handed it to her. She accepted silently and puffed on it as if it had a direct line to an oxygen tank.

There were no lights in the house. Kyle parked in the driveway and let Dee unlock the front door. They entered together.

“Kyle—”

The house was too small for echoes, but they could feel the emptiness from the doorway. Dee led the way through the living room, the family room, the kitchen, down the hall past the bedrooms to Kyle’s study. They left a trail of light behind them, but only when the wall switch illuminated Kyle’s untidy desk was there a sound from Dee.

“He’s been here!” she cried. “Look! Kyle never remembers to close desk drawers.”

She started forward.

“Wait!” Van said.

His voice was too sharp. Dee’s ragged nerves were contagious. He lowered his tone an octave and explained, “Don’t move anything. Kyle may have left a message.”

Skeptically, Dee picked up an airline schedule from the top of the desk. “This?” she suggested.

Van took it from her hands. “He’s marked a flight to Dallas,” he said. “Did Kyle have any urgent business in Dallas?”

“Last winter,” Dee said. “Look at the date on the schedule.”

It was a year old. Van tossed it aside and picked up a road map. “We have here one very fine map of Mexico,” he said, “with the highway to Mexico city traced in blue ink.”

Dee shook her head. “I did that. We were going to Mexico City on our anniversary—but we didn’t. Uncle Sam got a brainstorm about a new shopping center, and anniversaries went out of fashion. Van—” The edge of panic came back to her voice. “Why did Kyle take these two things out of his desk? Just these two?”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Van suggested. “He probably took at least one thing with him and neglected to put these back.”

He was still trying to fight fear with common sense, but he talked too much. Dee made a hurried search of the drawer and then announced brusquely, “He did take one thing with him. His gun.”

“His gun?”

Van had to see for himself. He searched the drawer. She was right. There was no gun in it.

“Are you sure he keeps a gun in this drawer?” he demanded.

“Of course I’m sure! This is the only drawer that locks. Mike can’t get into it…. Besides, he left the empty holster. See?”

“Then you’re right. He took the gun.” Van punctuated the statement by slamming the drawer shut. “Dee,” he said quietly, “when did Kyle send you to the mountains?”

“This morning,” she said. “Early. About eleven.”

“Did he say why he wanted you to go?”

“Yes. He said the job was set and he wanted to take a few days’ rest. That’s what he told Sam, too. He was so insistent, Van. It
had
to be today. That’s why I can’t understand—”

“I’m probably responsible for that,” Van reflected. “I needled him for neglecting you. And I think you’re upset over nothing. Think now, why wouldn’t Kyle take his gun to the cabin? He’s deathly afraid of snakes, and the mountains are crawling with them this time of year.”

“But it’s almost nine!” Dee insisted.

“And he’s probably at Sam’s cabin right now wondering what’s happened to you. Stop being so female, Dee, and give Kyle the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to call the police just to make sure there was no accident, and then I’m going to drive you back up that mountain myself!”

Van was being very male and decisive. He picked up the telephone and dialed. He asked the public-relations-minded officer who answered for accident information, but the moment he mentioned Kyle Walker he was switched to a Captain Jameson, who was very much interested in Kyle’s whereabouts.

“It concerns that license number of the car he had me trace for him this morning,” Jameson reported. “There’s something peculiar about it. Those plates were stolen from a car in Phoenix. They don’t belong to this guy Donaldson at all.”

Van had no idea who Captain Jameson was or what he was talking about, but he meant to find out. “You don’t say!” he responded.

“It may be just a coincidence, but I’d like to talk to Kyle about it.”

“I don’t blame you,” Van said. “Mr. Walker isn’t at home right now, but Mrs. Walker is. We’ll be right over.”

Jimmy Jameson wasn’t a human dynamo. He was a well-balanced, reasonably ambitious man who knew his job and usually managed to do it within the hours of a normal workday. On any other night he would have been at home assembling miniature classic cars for the collection he was creating on the excuse of being a pal to his son. Jameson … junior, who was eight, would have been in bed, thereby giving him a free hand.

But Kyle Walker’s casual request had turned up a stolen car, and a thing like that made Jimmy Jameson curious. Walker was a good man. A swinger, in Junior’s vocabulary. But he was an outsider, and there was a difference no matter how well a man blended with the landscape. Mores will be mores. Something of the past lingered under Walker’s desert tan openhanded manner. Some inner conflict; some tension; some—Jameson’s mind wasn’t afraid of blunt words—some fear.

And so, at a quarter past nine when Van Bryson and Dee Walker entered his office, Jameson was still waiting for Kyle to call back and tell him more about Charles Dover of Prescott. Memory was tricky. A man under pressure, and Kyle Walker was always under pressure, could remember a fragment of a thing and barely scratch the whole. And he had mentioned Rumorsville, which was Jameson’s sensitive area. The Las Vegas crowd was always trying to move in. Close the doors and they were coming through the windows. Jameson didn’t like Rumorsville. It had been known to cost a man his career.

Jameson was tired. His eyes had lost their morning brightness, but none of their interest. He listened to Mrs. Walker’s story and Van Bryson’s embellishments with a minimum of interruptions. Jameson liked to let people do their own talking. They always told him more than they knew they were telling. Mrs. Walker, for example. She was a pretty woman. Smart in more ways than one. She had a mind as well as a body, and it was dangerous for a man to leave that kind of woman in the kitchen too long. Something was likely to burn.

She was worried, and the worry was more than female emotionalism. It was instinct. Jameson never belittled instinct. A good policeman knew the limitations of physical evidence and that illusion laymen call science. Instinct was basic.

“I want you to find my husband,” she concluded.

She meant every word of it.

“What do you think happened to him?” Jameson asked.

“Van thinks he may have been in an accident.”

Van Bryson. Jameson pivoted slowly in his chair and stared at Mrs. Walker’s companion. Another outsider—and yet, not so far out as some people thought. A brain. A man with more under his skull than anyone else Jameson was ever likely to meet, and yet with a certain simplicity that made even that overpriced Mexican shirt he was wearing look just right for the occasion.

“I’ve sent a man to call all the hospitals in the area,” he said. “If there’s been an accident we’ll soon know about it. If he’s had a flat tire or some other little problem, it may take longer. I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Walker.”

“Why did Kyle have you trace a license number?” Van demanded.

Jameson knew then that he wasn’t going to get rid of his visitors so easily. He related the story of Kyle’s midmorning call. Mrs. Walker seemed to hold her breath all through the explanation.

“Kyle didn’t say anything to me about recognizing a man on the street,” she said, “and it must have been right after he stopped talking.”

Now it was her turn to explain.

“When he stopped talking?” Jameson repeated.

“Kyle telephoned from the station wagon,” she said. “He hadn’t been home all night because he had to finish the specs for the new job. This morning, after he had breakfast with Van and Sam Stevens, he called and told me the job was all set. Then he started to tell me something that he wanted me to do for him and stopped in the middle of the sentence.”

“He broke the connection,” Van explained.

“No—not right away. He just stopped talking. I could hear traffic noises through the receiver and thought he was in some kind of traffic trouble. I called to him but he didn’t hear. After a few minutes he did break the connection. I tried to get him back through the special operator but there was a delay so I called his office. He wasn’t in.”

“But you did get him,” Jameson remarked. “You said that he sent you to the mountains.”

“Yes. But that was later when he called me from the office. He did say he was caught in traffic, but he didn’t mention seeing an old friend on the street. Don’t you understand, Captain? It must have been at the time Kyle called me that he saw this person—what was his name?”

“Dover,” Jameson answered. “Charles Dover of Prescott.”

Dee Walker’s face was one tight, worried frown. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I know Kyle had never been to Arizona before we left New York, and we’ve never been to Prescott. And, Captain Jameson, I’ve never heard Kyle even mention a Charles Dover. Van, have you—?”

Jameson had a container of coffee somewhere on his desk. He pivoted his chair about to reach for it and found it on top of the filing case under the wall calendar. The coffee was cold by this time and somebody had floated a cigarette in it, but at the moment neither of these things seemed important. The wall calendar had been hanging on the same nail for months, but not until this moment had that one word “Dover” reached out and grabbed his imagination.

“What’s your friend’s name?” he had asked Kyle Walker, and Kyle, with a glance at the wall behind Jameson’s head had answered: “Dover. Charles Dover.”

Jameson replaced the coffee container on the cabinet and swung slowly about to face his visitors. Mrs. Walker hadn’t seen a thing. He wasn’t sure about Bryson. Bryson didn’t have his thoughts branded on his forehead.

“Did you tell Mr. Walker where Donaldson was registered?” Van asked.

“I did,” Jameson admitted. “He didn’t seem interested. Mrs. Walker—” Jameson came to his feet. He might not think any better standing up, but he could at least face these sophisticated Easterners at somewhat higher than eye level. Everybody has an ego. “—why don’t you just get on back to Sam Stevens’ cabin and get some sleep?” he said. “Your husband’s a busy man. He’s probably tied up right now in some conference he just couldn’t foresee.”

“I called Sam,” Dee protested. “But he was out to dinner.”

“Well, Sam’s a busy man too. You know he’s somewhere, Mrs. Walker. A grown man in a station wagon just doesn’t disappear!”

Jameson tried to grin, but it wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t soothing the feelings of some anxious housewife who had been watching too many daytime video serials.