Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer 01 - The Moving Target(aka Harper)(1949) (29 page)

 
          
A
highway patrolman with a seamed brown face put his hand on my arm. I shook it
off. “This is my car.”

 
          
His
eyes narrowed, and the sun wrinkles fanned back to his ears.
“You
sure?
What’s your name?”

 
          
“Archer.”

 
          
“It’s
yours all right. That’s who she’s registered to.” He called out to a young
patrolman who was standing uneasily by his motorcycle: “Come here, Ollie! It’s
this guy’s car.”

 
          
The
crowd began to re-form, focusing on me. When they broke their tight circle
around the smashed car, I could see the blanket-covered figure on the ground
beside it. I pushed between a pair of women whose eyes were drinking it in, and
lifted one end of the blanket. The object underneath wasn’t recognizably human,
but I knew it by its clothes.

 
          
Two
of them in an hour were too much for me, and my stomach revolted. Empty of
everything but the coffee I had drunk, it brought up bitterness. The two
patrolmen waited until I was able to talk.

 
          
“
This woman steal
your car?” the older one said.

 
          
“Yes.
Her name is Betty Fraley.”

 
          
“The
office said they had a bulletin on her -.”

 
          
“That’s
right. But what happened to the other one?”

 
          
“What
other one?”

 
          
“There
was a man with her.”

 
          
“Not
when she wrecked the car,” the young patrolman said.

 
          
“You
can’t be sure.”

 
          
“I
am sure, though. I saw it happen. I was responsible in a way.”

 
          
“
Naw
,
naw
,
Ollie.”
The older man put his hand on Ollie’s shoulder. “You did exactly
the right thing. Nobody’s going to blame you.”

 
          
“Anyway,”
Ollie blurted, “I’m glad the car was hot.”

 
          
That
irritated me. The convertible was insured, but it would be hard to replace.
Besides, I had a feeling for it, the kind of feeling a rider has for his horse.

 
          
“What
did happen?” I asked him sharply.

 
          
“I
was tooling along about fifty a few miles south of here, heading north. This
dame in the convertible passed me as if I was standing still, and I gave chase.
I was traveling around ninety before I started to pull up on her. Even when I
was abreast of her, she went right on gunning down the road. She didn’t pay any
attention when I signaled to pull over, so I cut in ahead. She swerved and
tried to pass me on the right and lost control of the car. It
skidded
a couple of hundred feet and piled up in the bank.
When I pulled her out of it she was dead.”

 
          
His
face was wet when he finished. The older man shook him gently by the shoulder.
“Don’t let it worry you, kid. You got to enforce the law.”

 
          
“You’re
absolutely sure,” I asked, “there was nobody else in the car?”

 
          
“Unless
they went up in smoke - It’s a funny thing,” he added in a high, nervous voice,
“there was no fire, but the soles of her feet were blistered. And I couldn’t
find her shoes. She was in her bare feet.”

 
          
“That
is funny,” I said.
“Extremely funny.”

 
          
Albert
Graves had forced his way through the crowd. “They must have had another car.”

 
          
“Then
why would she bother with mine?” I reached inside the wreck, under the warped
and bloody dashboard, and felt the ignition wires. The terminals had been
reconnected with the copper wire I had left there in the morning. “She had to
rewire my ignition to start the engine.”

 
          
“That’s
more like a man’s work, isn’t it?”

 
          
“Not
necessarily. She could have picked it up from her brother. Every car thief
knows the trick.”

 
          
“Maybe
they decided to split up for the getaway.”

 
          
“Maybe,
but I don’t see it. She was smart enough to know my car would identify her.”

 
          
“I
got to fill out a report,” the older patrolman said. “Can you spare a few
minutes?”

 
          
While
I was answering the last of the questions, Sheriff Spanner arrived in a radio
car driven by a deputy. The two of them got out and trotted toward us.
Spanner’s heavy chest bounced almost like a woman’s as he ran.

 
          
“What’s
been happening?” He looked from me to Graves with moist, suspicious eyes.

 
          
I
let Graves tell him. When he had heard what had happened to Sampson and Betty
Fraley, Spanner turned back to me.

 
          
“You
see what’s come of your meddling, Archer. I warned you to work under my
supervision.”

 
          
I
wasn’t in the mood to take it quietly.
“Supervision, hell!
If you’d got to Sampson soon enough, he might be alive now.”

 
          
“You
knew where he was, and you didn’t tell me about it,” he yammered. “You’re going
to suffer for that, Archer.”

 
          
“Yeah,
I know.
When my license comes up for renewal.
You said
that before. But what are you going to tell Sacramento about your own
incompetence? You’re out at the county hospital committing a loony when the
case is breaking wide open.”

 
          
“I
haven’t been out at the hospital since yesterday,” he said. “What are you
talking about?”

 
          
“Didn’t
you get my message about Sampson?
A couple of hours ago?”

 
          
“There
was no message. You can’t cover yourself that way.”

 
          
I
looked at Graves. His eyes avoided mine. I held my tongue.

 
          
An
ambulance with its siren whooping came down the highway from the direction of
Santa Teresa.

 
          
“They
take their time,” I said to the patrolman.

 
          
“They
knew she was dead. No hurry.”

 
          
“Where
will they take her?”

 
          
“The morgue in Santa Teresa, unless she’s claimed.”

 
          
“She
won’t be. It’s a good place for her.” Alan Taggert and Eddie, her lover and her
brother, were there already.

 
          
Graves
drove very slowly, as if the sight of the wreck had had an effect on him. It
took us nearly an hour to get back to Santa Teresa. I spent it thinking - about
Albert Graves and then about Miranda. My thoughts were poor company.

 
          
He
looked at me curiously as we entered the city. “I wouldn’t give up hope, Lew.
The police have a good chance to catch him.”

 
          
“Who
do you mean?”

 
          
“The murderer, of course.
The other man.’

 
          
“I’m
not sure there was another man.”

 
          
His
hands tightened on the wheel. I could see the knuckles stand out. “But somebody
killed Sampson.”

 
          
“Yes,”
I said. “Somebody did.”

 
          
I
watched his eyes as they turned slowly to meet mine. He looked at me coldly for
a long moment.

 
          
“Watch
your
driving, Graves. Watch everything.”

 
          
He
turned his face to the road again, but not before I had caught its look of
shame.

 
          
Where
the highway crossed the main street of Santa Teresa, he stopped for a red
light. “Where do we go from here?”

 
          
“Where
do you want to go?”

 
          
“It
doesn’t matter to me.”

 
          
“We’ll
go to the Sampson place,” I said. “I want to talk to Mrs. Sampson.”

 
          
“Do
you have to do it now?”

 
          
“I’m
working for her. I owe her a report.”

 
          
The
light changed. Nothing more was said until we turned up the drive to the
Sampson house. Its dark mass was pierced by a few lights.

 
          
“I
don’t want to see Miranda if it can be helped,” he said. “We were married this
afternoon.”

 
          
“Didn’t
you jump the gun a little?”

 
          
“What
do you mean by that? I’ve been carrying the license for months.”

 
          
“You
might have waited until her father was home. Or decently
laid
away.”

 
          
“She
wanted it done today,” he said. “We were married in the courthouse.”

 
          
“You’ll
probably be spending your wedding night there. The jail’s in the same building,
isn’t it?”

 
          
He
didn’t answer. When he stopped the car by the garages, I leaned forward to look
into his face. He had swallowed the shame. Nothing was left but a gambler’s
resignation.

 
          
“It’s
an ironic thing,” he said. “This is our wedding night, the night that I’ve been
waiting for
for
years. And now I don’t want to see
her.”

 
          
“Do
you expect me to leave you out here by yourself?”

 
          
“Why not?”

 
          
“I
can’t trust you. You were the one man I thought I could trust -” I couldn’t
find the words to end the sentence.

 
          
“You
can trust me, Lew.”

 
          
“Well
make it Mr. Archer from now on.”

 
          
“Mr. Archer, then.
I’ve got a gun in my pocket. But I’m not
going to use it. I’ve had enough of violence. Do you understand that? I’m sick
of it.”

 
          
“You
should be sick,” I said, “with two murders on your stomach. You’ve had your
fill of violence for a while.”

 
          
“Why
did you say two murders, Lew?”

 
          
“Mr.
Archer,” I said.

 
          
“You
don’t have to take a high moral tone. I didn’t plan it this way.”

 
          
“Not
many do. You shot Taggert on the spur of the moment, and you’ve improvised ever
since. Toward the end you’ve been getting pretty careless. You might have known
I’d find out you didn’t call the sheriff tonight.”

 
          
“You
can’t prove you told me to.”

 
          
“I
don’t have to. But it was enough to let me know what you were up to. You wanted
to be alone with Sampson in that shack for a little while. You had to finish
the job that
Taggert’s
partners had failed to do for
you.”

 
          
“Do
you seriously think I had anything to do with the kidnapping?”

 
          
“I
know damn well you didn’t. But the kidnapping has something to do with you. It
made a murderer out of you by giving you a reason to kill Taggert.”

 
          
“I
shot Taggert in good faith,” he said. “I admit I wasn’t sorry to have him out
of the way. Miranda liked him too well. But the reason I shot him was to save
you.”

 
          
“I
don’t believe you.” I sat there in cold anger. The stars clung like snow
crystals in the black sky, pouring cold down on my head.

 
          
“I
didn’t plan it,” he said. “I had no time to plan it. Taggert was going to shoot
you, and I shot him instead. It was as simple as that.”

 
          
“Killing
is never simple, not when it’s done by a man with your brains. You’re a dead
shot, Graves. You didn’t have to kill him.”

 
          
He
answered me harshly. ‘Taggert deserved to die. He got what was coming to him.”

 
          
“But
not at the right time. I’ve been wondering how much you heard of what he said
to me. You must have heard enough to know he was one of the kidnappers.
Probably enough to be pretty sure that if Taggert died, his
partners would kill Sampson.”

 
          
“I
heard very little. I saw he was going to shoot you, and I shot him instead.”
The iron return to his voice.
“Evidently I made a mistake.”

 
          
“You
made several mistakes. The first was killing Taggert - that’s what started it
all, isn’t it? It wasn’t really Taggert you wanted dead. It was Sampson
himself. You never wanted Sampson to come home alive, and you thought that by
killing Taggert you’d arranged that. But Taggert had only one surviving
partner, and she was hiding out. She didn’t even know Taggert was dead until I
told her, and she had no chance to kill Sampson, though she probably would have
if she’d had the chance. So you had to murder Sampson for yourself.”

 
          
Shame,
and what looked like uncertainty, pulled at his face again. He shook them off.
“I’m a realist. Archer. So are you. Sampson’s no loss to anybody.”

 
          
His
voice had changed, become suddenly shallow and flat. The whole man was shifting
and fencing, trying out attitudes, looking for one that would sustain him.

 
          
“You’re
taking murder more lightly than you used to,” I said. “You’ve sent men to the
gas chamber for murder. Has it occurred to you that that’s where you’re
probably headed?”

 
          
He
managed to smile. The smile made deep and ugly lines around his mouth and
between his eyes. “You have no proof against me. Not a scrap.”

 
          
“I
have moral certainty and your own implicit confession -.”

 
          
“But no record of it.
You haven’t even enough to bring me to
trial.”

 
          
“It
isn’t my job to do that. You know where you stand, better than I do. I don’t
know why you had to murder Sampson.”

 
          
He
was silent for some time. When he spoke, his voice had changed again. It was
candid and somehow young, the voice of the man I had known in bull sessions
years ago. “It’s strange that you should say that I had to, Lew. That was how I
felt. I had to do it. I hadn’t made up my mind until I found Sampson there by
himself in the dressing-room. I didn’t even speak to him. I saw what could be
done, and once I’d seen it, I had to do it whether I liked it or not.”

 
          
“I
think you liked it.”

 
          
“Yes,”
he said. “I liked killing him. Now I can’t bear to think of it.”

 
          
“Aren’t
you being a little easy on yourself? I’m no analyst, but I know you had other
motives.
More obvious and not so interesting.
You got
married this afternoon to a girl who was potentially very rich. If her father
was dead she was actually very rich. Don’t tell me you’re not aware that you
and your bride have been worth five million dollars for the last couple of
hours.”

 
          
“I
know it well enough,” he said. “But it’s not five million. Mrs. Sampson gets
half.”

 
          
“I
forgot about her. Why didn’t you kill her too?”

 
          
“You’re
bearing down pretty hard.”

 
          
“You
bore down harder on Sampson, for a paltry million and a quarter.
Half of one half of his money.
Weren’t you being a piker,
Graves? Or were you planning to murder Mrs. Sampson and Miranda later on?”

 
          
“You
know that isn’t true,” he said tonelessly. “What do you think I am?”

 
          
“I
haven’t made up my mind. You’re a man who married a girl and killed her father
the same day to convert her into an heiress. What was the matter, Graves?
Didn’t you want her without a million-dollar dowry? I thought you were in love
with her.”

 
          
“Lay
off.” His voice was tormented.
“Leave Miranda out of it.”

 
          
“I
can’t. If it wasn’t for Miranda, we might have something more to talk about.”

 
          
“No,”
he said. “There’s nothing more to talk about.”

 
          
I
left him sitting in the car, smiling his stony gambler’s smile. My back was to
him as I crossed the gravel drive to the house, and he had a gun in his pocket,
but I didn’t look back. I believed him when he said he was sick of violence.

 
          
The
lights were on in the kitchen, but nobody answered my knock. I went through the
house to the elevator. Mrs.
Kromberg
was in the
upstairs hall when I stepped out.

 
          
“Where
are you going?”

 
          
“I
have to see Mrs. Sampson.”

 
          
“You
can’t. She’s been awful nervous today. She took three grains of
nembutal
about an hour ago.”

 
          
“This
is important.”

 
          
“How important?”

 
          
“The
thing she’s been waiting to hear.”

 
          
Comprehension
flickered in her eyes, but she was too good a servant to question me. “I’ll see
if she’s asleep.” She went to the closed door of Mrs. Sampson’s room and opened
it quietly.

 
          
A
frightened whisper came from inside the room. “Who’s that?”

 
          
“
Kromberg
.
Mr. Archer says he has
to see you. He says it’s very important.”