Man On The Run (2 page)

The other came back. “What is it?”

“Door’s locked. And ain’t no sign it’s been forced. Ain’t a scratch on it.”

“Don’t make sense, though, he’d go back out in the rain when he had a dry place to hide.”

“Wait! He’s in there, all right. Look. The garage door was locked, and so was the window, because he had to break it. So this one probably wasn’t. He just went inside and locked it himself.”

I sighed. I didn’t have a chance now.

“No,” one of the voices said quickly, “wait a minute. This door
was
locked. Remember? We checked it the other day when we made the round. Somebody’d left the garage door open and kids had been playin’ in here, so tried this one before we locked up.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

I wondered how much more of it I could take.

“Sure funny he’d leave without even tryin’ to get in the house. He’d need dry clothes and something to eat.”

“Probably wasn’t anything he could use.”

Oh, sweet Jesus—the hammer! Then I realized I was looking right at it. There on the counter by the sink. I’d carried it inside without realizing it.

“Well, we’re wasting time here. We know he’s around somewhere, so he’s probably broke into one of the others. And we got to search all them shrimp boats.”

Roy climbed out the window, and I heard them drive away. I felt limp as I walked slowly into the living room and collapsed on the couch. When I crushed out what was left of the cigarette I saw it had burned blisters on my fingers.

In about twenty minutes they came back. There was a little comfort in knowing I had anticipated them on that one. They walked around the house trying the windows they had forgotten the first time. I could hear their footsteps and the murmur of their voices, but I couldn’t make out anything they said. They drove away.

I smoked another cigarette and tried to think. I didn’t have a chance. The whole area would be saturated with police now that they knew they had me pinned down in this small town. But maybe I could stay in here and out-wait them. I had food and a warm place to sleep. If I could remain hidden long enough to convince them I must have got out of the area, they might relax. But then what? Where was I going, and what was I going to do? There was no answer, and thinking about it made my head hurt.

The blanket was a nuisance; it kept flapping open. I found a pair of kitchen shears, cut a hole in the middle of it for my head, and put it on like a poncho. In one of the drawers in the kitchen I found some heavy cotton cord to gather it about me at the waist. It wasn’t so bad that way, but I had to start trying to get my clothes dry. I lighted the gas heater and brought in some more of the cord for a clothes line. When I had it strung up in the corner above the heater, I wrung out the clothes in the bathtub and draped them over it. The shoes I put nearby on the floor. My wallet was a soggy ruin. I took the money out and spread it across the top of the desk to dry. It came to one hundred and seventy dollars.

Remembering the radio then, I went over and turned up the gain just enough to hear the station with my ear against the loudspeaker. It was playing some Dixieland jazz. When the record stopped, the disk jockey spieled a commercial and then gave the time. It was nine forty-five. I wound my watch and set it. The music began again. I tried some of the other stations, but there was no news program. Maybe there’d be one at ten o’clock. I switched it off.

The bookshelves were just to the left of the radio. I stood looking at them, and then noticed with surprise that all the books in the top two rows were by the same writer, someone named Suzy Patton. There were at least a hundred of them. They were novels, apparently, in colorful dust jackets. They seemed to be new and untouched, as if they were on the shelves in a bookstore. I started taking them down at random and glancing at them, and I saw they were the same six novels translated into a great many different languages. I could recognize Spanish, French, and Italian, and what I thought was Swedish or Norwegian, but there were some I’d never seen before. They all had the same type of dust jacket, running largely to luscious girls with a great deal of cleavage, bustle, and hoop skirt, and dashing types of men in Confederate uniforms.
Patton? Suzy Patton?
The name was familiar, but I didn’t recall having ever read one of the books; I didn’t care much for historical novels. But this must be her cottage. I couldn’t think of any other reason why all these foreign editions would be stored here.

It was almost ten. I switched on the radio again and hunkered down with my ear against the speaker grill. This time I found a news program. The first half of it was all Washington and Cape Canaveral, and another blizzard in the East. The stock market had opened irregularly lower. “And now for the local news,” the announcer continued. Two people were killed in a freeway crash. Some screwball had tried to hold up a branch bank with a water pistol. The Mayor was laid up with Asian flu. Somebody didn’t like the schools. Somebody else thought the schools were in great shape. Then I tensed up. Here it was.

“According to a bulletin just received, the intensive manhunt for Russell Foley, seaman from this area, has been localized this morning in the vicinity of Carlisle, on the Gulf coast some fifty miles west of Sanport. Police report a brown hat similar to the one Foley was wearing when last seen, and bearing the initials R.F., was found near the railroad station in Carlisle just after dawn, together with tracks and long skid marks in the mud beside the right-of-way, indicating he had leaped from a moving freight train. Police believe he is almost certainly hiding out somewhere in the town. All exits from the area have been closed by roadblocks set up by local police, Sheriff’s Department officers, and the Highway Patrol.

“Foley is sought for questioning in connection with the slaying last night of Charles L. Stedman, Sanport detective, during a savage fight in Stedman’s apartment. Police, summoned by occupants of an adjoining apartment, arrived just minutes after Stedman’s assailant had left the building. When they received no answer to their knocks, they forced the door and found Stedman dead of a knife wound. The assailant, allegedly recognized as Foley by two other tenants in the building, made his way to a bar in the next block, but escaped by way of a rear exit a few moments later.

“Foley, third mate of the Southlands Oil Company tanker
Jonathan Dancy,
was formerly a tenant in the same building. His estranged wife, Denise Foley, is believed to be in Reno, obtaining a divorce. When last seen he was wearing a brown gabardine suit, white shirt, brown striped tie, and the brown hat believed to be that found near the railroad tracks in Carlisle. He is described as being twenty-seven years old, six-foot-one, one hundred and ninety pounds, with coppery red hair, and blue eyes. The police are convinced his face and hands will still bear bruises and cuts suffered in the fight which preceded the stabbing.”

That was all. I turned off the radio, feeling sick. There was no description of the knife or whatever it was he was stabbed with, and no mention of anyone else at all. It had to be somebody who was already in the apartment and knew the back way out, down the service stairs, but I hadn’t seen anybody else or even any sign of anybody. Losing my head and running when I learned he was dead had been stupid—there was no doubt of that—but it hadn’t really made it any worse. It couldn’t be any worse.

I went out into the kitchen and poured another drink of whisky. Then fatigue, exposure, and twelve straight hours of running and being afraid hit me all at once. I grabbed another blanket, and the minute I lay down on the studio couch I melted and ran all over it. When I awoke it was still raining and gusts of wind were shoving at the house. There was about the same amount of light in the room, and for a moment I thought I’d been asleep for only a few minutes. Then I looked at my watch and saw it was after three. I was sweaty and tangled in the blankets as if I’d been thrashing and turning. I was just reaching for a cigarette when I went tense all over, listening. It was the sound of a car door being shut.

Had they come back to prowl around some more? I sprang off the couch and slipped across to the front window. Pulling back the drape a fraction of an inch, I peered out and felt the skin tighten up between my shoulder-blades. It wasn’t the police; it was worse. The car was a blue Oldsmobile, and it was stopped in front of the garage.

There was nowhere I could hide, and I couldn’t run, with nothing on but a blanket. There was nothing I could do but stand there helplessly and watch. No one was in the car, but I could hear the rattle of the hasp as the driver unlocked the garage. Then she came suddenly into view, a tall woman in a dark coat, holding a plastic raincoat over her head and shoulders. She seemed to sway slightly, as if leaning against the wind, as she opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel. One of the doors blew shut, and she had to get out again and prop it open with something. She got back in and drove into the garage.

I ran into the kitchen. The moment she walked in she’d see the open can of food and the coffee, and I had to grab her before she could back out and run. I could hear the car’s engine, still running, and then the click of high heels on concrete. The garage doors slammed shut in a heavy gust of wind that shook the cottage. I waited tensely inside the door. Nothing happened. Maybe she’d gone outside and was going to come in through the front door. I ran back, slipping noiselessly across the tile, and listened beside the window. There was no one on the porch, unless she was standing utterly still. I parted the drape enough to peer. out. She was nowhere in sight. Rain was beating across the porch and against the window.

I hurried back to the kitchen again and stood silently with my ear against the door, waiting for the sound of footsteps. She must be getting something out of the car. It had been several minutes now since she’d driven in. I could still hear the car’s engine running, just barely audible above the sound of the rain. Had she discovered the broken pane of glass in that window and run out? No, that was ridiculous. Anyway, if something had scared her she’d have backed the car out. I waited, growing more puzzled with every minute. There was something spooky about it. Why didn’t she at least shut off the engine? I could smell carbon monoxide beginning to seep in around the edge of the door. Was she trying to commit suicide?

I unlocked the door and gently pushed it open a few inches. Even with the broken pane of glass in the window, the exhaust smell was overpowering. I didn’t see her anywhere. It was almost dark with the front doors closed, but the left-hand door of the car was open, so the ceiling light was on, and I could see she wasn’t in it. Where could she have gone? The car practically filled the garage. I looked farther back then and saw her—or rather, I saw an arm and a hand in back of the rear wheel on this side. She’d fallen between the rear of the car and the garage doors, and was lying right under the tailpipe.

I jumped down the two steps, opened the car door on this side, and shut off the ignition. Already beginning to choke on the fumes, I knelt, caught her by both arms, and pulled her out from under the overhang of the trunks. She was a big woman, and heavy, with the limp, dead weight of the unconscious. I was gasping by the time I got her across my shoulder. I hurried into the kitchen, kicked the door shut, and sped toward the bedroom with her. Rolling her off onto the bed, I turned her on her back just under the window and put a hand on her chest. She was still breathing. I parted the drape. The window was a casement type. I unlatched one side and cranked it open a few inches to catch the wind. Holding the bottom of the drape, I forced the blast of fresh air down across her face. She had on lipstick, so it was impossible to tell whether her lips were blue or not, but the color of the rest of her face seemed to be all right. A few drops of ram blew in on her, and she stirred faintly. She was going to come around, all right, but if I’d waited another five minutes before going out there she’d have been dead.

She’d probably been hit by that door when it slammed shut. Then I remembered the way she’d weaved as she got back in the car the first time, and bent down to sniff her breath. At least part of Suzy Patton’s trouble—if this was Suzy Patton—was that she was crocked to the teeth. I didn’t know how carbon monoxide and alcohol mixed in the human system, but I had a hunch she was going to be a very sick girl in a few minutes. I slipped off the high-heeled sling pumps and kicked open the bathroom door. She began to retch. I half-led and half-carried her and held her up. When she was through being sick, I wet a wash cloth at the basin and bathed her face while she leaned weakly against the bathroom wall with her eyes closed. She didn’t open them until she was back on the bed. She took one look at me and said, “Oh, good God!” and closed them again. She made a feeble attempt to pull her skirt down. I straightened it for her, and she lay still. I went out in the living room and lighted a cigarette. I could handle her all right, but if the police came by again and noticed those garage doors were unlocked, I was dead. I looked at my watch. It would be at least three more hours before it was dark.

I stood in the doorway and looked at her. She was a big girl and a striking one, with blonde hair almost as white as cotton. Close to five-nine, I thought. Probably thirty to thirty-three years old. She wore her hair in one of those short haircuts they used to call Italian; I didn’t know what they were called now. She was dressed in a dark skirt, soft dark sweater, and a rust-colored shorty coat. She wore gold earrings, and an expensive-looking watch, but no rings of any kind. It was a handsome face, and even as sick as she was now there was the stamp of vitality on it.

I went out and heated the coffee. When I came back with a cup of it she was sitting up on the edge of the bed holding her head. “Try a little of this,” I said.

She sighed. “Are you still here? I thought I’d died and gone to hell.”

She didn’t seem to be particularly scared. Probably the way she felt at the moment she considered that anything that could happen to her now would have to be for the better. I held out the coffee, and she took a sip of it. I lighted a cigarette and passed it over.

She took a drag on it and shuddered. “What happened?”

“I pulled you out from under the back of your car. One of the garage doors must have conked you.”

She felt the back of her head. She winced. “I remember now. And the engine was still running, wasn’t it? I tried to get up and passed out.”

“That’s about the size of it,” I said.

She looked up at me and shook her head. “I think you’re out of focus. You look like Spartacus, and sound like Sergeant Friday. Who are you, and how’d you get in here?”

“My name’s Foley,” I said. “And I broke in.”

“Oh. Then you must be the one they’re looking for. Those roadblocks out on the highway.”

“Are they searching the cars?”

“Just slowing them down, I think, and looking in. I was too busy being sober to pay much attention.”

I held out the coffee again. She drank a little more of it. “Why are they looking for you?” she asked.

“They think I killed a policeman.”

She glanced up quickly. “Oh. I think that was in the paper this morning. Something about a fight.”

“That’s it,” I said. I set the coffee on the dresser. “How do you feel now?”

“Terrible. But thanks for pulling me out of there. You saved my life, such as it is.”

“Is anybody meeting you here?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

“I had to know. Is this your cottage?” She nodded.