The Lime Pit (26 page)

He walked over to the table and sat down on a chair.

In a minute I heard Laurie's footsteps. "Hon?"
she said sleepily. "What is it?"

Then she came through the door and saw him at the
table and I said, "Hello, precious."

"Hello, Harry," she said sweetly. "We
thought you were in the hospital." She turned in the doorway and
smiled at me.

She was a shameless enough thing. She didn't cover
herself. She didn't even blink. She just smiled whitely and stood
there, glowing in the sunlight. And she was certainly a voluptuous
sight to behold.

"Get over to the table." I waved the gun at
her and she stuck out a pouty lip.

"I thought you had more imagination," she
said in a hurt little voice. She sashayed to the table. "Tray
certainly had his share. We're going to have to have a little talk
with him after this is settled." She looked down icily at Lance.

"Jus' shut up," he said to her.

"Now we don't want to wake the little ones,"
I said. "So let's do this quick. You"--I pointed to
Laurie--"get some twine."

She went straight to a drawer by the sink and pulled
out a ball of hemp twine. "Now tie him up, Laurie. And I mean
good. I know you can do it, honey. You've had lots of practice."

She smiled devilishly and went to work on Lance. It
was something to see. When she was through, he was hog-tied face down
on the floor, his hands stretched behind him and his legs bent at the
knees.

"I have a few fillips of my own," she said.
"Want me to show you?"

I shook my head. "Gag him."

She took a dish cloth from the sink and gagged Lance
with it. When she finished, he looked like a trussed bird. "Sit
down," I told her.

She sat at the table, while I examined the knots.

She'd done a good job. It might have fooled someone
who couldn't tell a slip from a square. But I'd been in the Boy
Scouts, so I knew better. He'd be loose in five minutes, and I'd be
dead in six. For some reason that little piece of treachery
infuriated me.

I stepped back and kicked Lance hard in the jaw. His
head snapped to the left and fell forward on the tile. A dark blood
bruise sprang to his cheek.

As soon as I'd kicked him, Laurie shrieked and bolted
for the door. I shot a foot out and tripped her as she went by. She
sprawled indecently to the floor.

"My God, my God," she moaned.

"Shut up!" I said viciously.

I walked over and grabbed her by her pretty blonde
hair.

"Don't hurt me!" she shrieked again.

"I thought you liked that sort of thing, honey.
Clothes pins and darning needles and the sound of some kid in agony."

I pulled her by her hair to her feet. And perhaps,
for the first time in ten years, Laurie Jellicoe put an arm across
her sweet breasts and a hand in front of her sex and stood, knees
shaking and face contorted with terror, like a modest Eve.

I shoved her against the wall and she let out a yelp.
"Now we're going to talk, precious." She nodded
spastically. "Talk."

"I'll skip over the personal stuff. Jones is
dead, anyway. What I want to hear you tell me is what happened to
Cindy Ann Evans?"

"Preston killed her," she blurted out.

I shook my head and slapped her across the mouth.
Laurie Jellicoe urinated on the floor.

"Let me go to the bathroom," she pleaded.
"I'm going to be sick."

"Is that what Cindy Ann said, Laurie? Did she
dirty her drawers when you killed her?"

For a second she couldn't catch her breath. "Didn't,"
she sputtered. "Didn't kill her."

"Who did." .

She shuddered and I slapped her again.

"Who did?"

"At the party," she moaned, clutching her
belly. "Someone at the party."

"Who?"

"Bascomb. Howie Bascomb."

"The real estate man?"

She nodded. "I'm going to be sick. Please."

"Be sick," I said to her. "Why did you
set Preston up?"

Her face grew bright red. She couldn't hold it any
longer. And she stooped a little and evacuated on the tile. When she
looked back up at me her face was bloated with hatred. And I didn't
blame her a bit. But I wasn't about to lay off, either. She deserved
it. Maybe not at my hands. But, she deserved it and I was the only
one around who knew how much.

"Answer me, Laurie," I said to her. "Or
I swear to God I'll make you eat that mess."

"I didn't set him up," she said between her
teeth. "We got there after he was dead."

Her eyes glittered like razors. "I'm going to
kill you for this. Somehow I'm going to kill you. And it won't be
quick. I'll do it like I used to do Cindy Ann. Only worse." Her
voice throbbed. "So much worse!"

"I believe you would, too.

"Who set Preston up? Who brought the pictures to
his apartment?"

She glared at me.

I slapped her again so hard that her nose gushed
blood.

But she just glared. The indignity she'd suffered had
put iron back in her spine. And I knew that I could kick her around
from now till tomorrow and she wouldn't tell me another thing.

I dragged her over to the chair and tied and gagged
her. I should have blindfolded her, too. She never stopped glaring at
me--torturing me with her eyes. When I'd gotten her tied down good, I
retied Lance and left them both in the kitchen while I went house
hunting.

Six beautiful children-two boys and four girls-were
on the second floor, hiding in a bedroom. They'd heard the fracas
downstairs and banded together. They were very frightened, but then
they were used to being frightened. Several of them had cigarette
burns on their round little tummies and ugly scars on their wrists
and ankles. Not one of them was older than sixteen. And they were all
rather waif-like and ascetic-looking. Pale, thin, blondish children
with the look of refugees.

Eventually I got one of them--the oldest one--to talk
to me.

She was Cindy Ann's age. Blonde-haired and milk-white
in the face. With very regular features and large, beautiful green
eyes. She had a little swagger about her, where the others were timid
and featureless. And her name was Cissy Hill.

Cissy spoke with a nasal Kentucky twang. She had no
parents, she told me. All the children were parentless. And,
unbelievable as it sounded, that clean white farm house was licensed
by the Commonwealth as a halfway house for homeless children. Which
helped explain the new paint.

"We ain't orphans exactly. We had folks. All of
us but Becky. But they done died or got killed like mine in an auto
crash. When we went on the state, they sent us here. It ain't half
bad, 'cept when Laurie gets riled. Then it's bad. The rest of the
time it's mostly fun. Hell, I was gettin' poked 'fore I was thirteen.
Don't make me no never mind whether I do't for fun or for Laurie and
Lance. We get to dress up nice."

I asked her to show me the rest of the house.

And she smiled cunningly. "You mean where they
keep the pictures, don't you."

I said that was exactly what I meant.

She said O.K., but warned me to lock the rest of the
kids in the bedroom or they'd go downstairs to be with Lance and
Laurie. So I locked the five of them in the bedroom and followed
Cissy downstairs and down a hall to a paneled room, hung with photos
of Laurie and furnished with black vinyl furniture. There was a desk
on the east wall. Cissy walked over to it and said, "In there.
But it's locked."

I tried the handle on the file drawer. It wouldn't
budge. So I told Cissy to stand back and she said, "Oh, good.
You're going to shoot it!"

And I did shoot it with the magnum.

The gun made a terrific roar and the desk drawer
exploded. "Far out!" Cissy said.

I walked back over and pulled out what was left of
the drawer. It was filled with pictures and several tins of eight
millimeter film and a fat black address book stocked with names and
notes. All of the stuff that the Jellicoes held over the heads of
their clients. It was a perfect haul that would put them out of
business and behind bars. I asked Cissy to find me a bag. She got one
out of a closet and I dropped all the evidence into it. And then we
sat down on the black vinyl couch, with Laurie Jellicoe peering down
at us from every wall, and had our chat about Cindy Ann.

"Were you at the party the night she was
killed?" I asked her. Cissy got a sad look on her face and said,
"Oh, yes. It was awful."

"How did it happen?"

"I ain't for sure, exactly. They was in a
different room from us, and it was real late. And we heard this
explosion, like when you shot the desk. Then Lance come out all
upset. And Laurie kept talking to him, trying to calm him down. He
didn't like what happened none. He's always been a soft touch. But
she sure ain't. I ain't for sure what happened. I liked Cindy Ann.
She was 'bout my age, you know. And some of them others is just
kids." She was older than the others and, in a few years, those
beautiful green eyes would become lively green predators in a
predatory world. She caught me studying her and smiled raffishly.
"They made us leave real quick after that explosion. And I ain't
seen Cindy Ann since then."

I stared at the desk and thought, suddenly, that I
would never know. Not if this eager girl couldn't tell me. That
Hugo's darling might as well be drowned in the river. So lost was she
from the world. Buried, burned. Gotten rid of after the embarrassment
of her death--after some drunken realtor had killed her for fun or in
rage--by the Jellicoes or their silent friend.

"Does anybody else come out here and talk with
the Jellicoes?" I asked Cissy.

"Aw, him," she said disgustedly. "He's
just a dumb old cracker."

"Who?"

"That man. He come out here with a mean nigger
once and awhile. Most times just the nigger comes out. He stays with
us while Lance and Laurie ain't around. That old cracker don't like
Lance much. He talks to Laurie mostly."

"What's he look like?"

"Just an old man. With glasses."

"O.K., Cissy. I guess that's it."

She looked at me curiously. "What's going to
happen to us, mister? What you going to do?"

"I'm going to call the police," I said.
"And see that they get you to some decent homes."

"Aw, shucks," she said morosely. "I
was afraid of that. There goes all our fun."

I laughed at her. "You'll still have fun, Cissy.
There's lots of girls and boys your age at high schools."

"They may be my age. But they ain't lived. "

"You can teach them."

"Hey!" she said, brightening. "That's
a thought!"

There was a phone on the desk. I picked it up and
called the Highway Patrol. The local cops would probably have been
thoroughly bribed. Judging from what Leach had said about the
clientèle at the Jellicoes' party, I wasn't even sure that the state
troopers were safe. Just to be sure, I called the F.B.I., too. I told
them both where I was--about six miles west on the Belleview road.
And told them a little of the situation. They said they'd dispatch
cars right away. And then I went out to the kitchen to check on Lance
and Laurie.

He'd come around a little. And she was still sitting
there, murdering me in her mind.

Cissy peeked through the door and said, "What a
smell!"

At ten A.M., the highway patrol arrived. And ten
minutes later a khaki-colored government car pulled up outside the
farm house. After a few minutes of hassling about jurisdictions, the
cops joined hands and began the long process of legal action against
Lance and Laurie Jellicoe.
 
 

25

I WAS in the Highway Patrol station at Belleville for
three hours, explaining my part in the business. The kids, especially
Cissy, were eager to cooperate. And, soon, they had a whole bank of
stenographers working double time. It was a very ugly bust, and it
had statewide ramifications. Someone had certified the Jellicoes to
house wards of the court and someone had been sending selected
children to them. Disentangling the mess was a job for the federal
district attorney and for the attorney general at Frankfort. By two
in the afternoon, the little office was buzzing with prosecutors and
special investigators from the capital.

"Boy, to look at 'em, it sure is hard to
believe," one of the troopers said to me.

I nodded. "They're a handsome pair."

The last time I saw the Jellicoes, they were being
loaded into a station wagon. Lance's jaw was bruised and swollen and
Laurie had a split lip, but, outside of that, they were indeed a
handsome pair. They held their manacled hands in front of their faces
when the photographers started shooting. Then a deputy stepped in and
whisked them away.

Cissy, who had developed a mild crush on me, started
to cry. "Damn!" she said. "There goes the easy life."