A Night for Screaming Page 11

  They did not even look back.

  I swung off Highway 40, going south on the secondary road. I passed no cars on this road at all. I braked down when I got to the Wild Horse turn-off, checked the highway both ways. There was not a car in sight.

  I went off the secondary road onto the almost invisible ruts across Bart Cassel’s far sections. Ahead of me I could see the twisting growth of trees in the dry creek. I stared ahead at it as if it were the last hiding place on earth.

  Once I was past that creek, I was safe. I kept whispering this to myself.

  I approached the sump where Cassel had told me to bury the satchel until it was safe for us to bring it out and share the loot.

  I was almost to the sump when the small nagging sense of wrong in my stomach became a big, deviling weakness. I had been going along trusting Bart Cassel, and I had no reason to trust him. Anyhow, I trusted myself more than I trusted him.

  Why should both of us know where that money was hidden?

  I swallowed hard, feeling a little better, a little more secure, and relieved that my mind was beginning to click again.

  I drove right into the sump where the stones were, where trees, stones, the contour of the land itself made a natural pocket for the satchel of money.

  I stopped the jeep, got out, walked to the spot Cassel and I had agreed upon. I was careful to leave heel prints in the sand.

  Then I ran back to the jeep, got out of there. I drove back to the twisting rutted road through the plains and followed it to the creek bed.

  I pulled the jeep into the concealment of the willows in the creek, then I got out, ran along the grassy bank until I found the spot I wanted. Lightning had marked a cottonwood for me, scarring it so it looked like no other cottonwood on earth.

  I knelt with the satchel and tried to scoop out the ground near the tree. I couldn’t do anything but scrape hide off my fingers. The earth was crusted, like rock. I had to break the top layer before I could dig any kind of hole at all.

  I looked around, saw nothing. Then I slapped my pocket, looking for the switchblade knife I’d taken from that kid on the tenement roof.

  I cursed. I didn’t have the knife. Just when I finally needed the damned thing, I didn’t have it with me. All these weeks of carrying it, and now I must have left it in my room at the farm. I hadn’t been thinking clearly when I took off from there this morning. This morning? It seemed like a thousand years ago since I’d started out on this trip.

  I ran back to the jeep, found a tire iron. I broke the ground in as large chunks as I could, setting them aside carefully in the grass. It wasn’t likely anybody would be snooping around here, but if they did, I didn’t want the ground to look broken.

  I dropped the satchel in the small hole, covered it and set the chunks of rock-hard earth back in place. I found some of the heavy topsoil and spread it around with my palm so the sand seeped into the crevices between the chunks, filling them. In a moment or two even I was satisfied. The ground looked baked hard, untouched by human hand. Carrying the tire iron, I ran back to the jeep.

  I drove the jeep up the ramp into the machine hangar. Some of the mechanics glanced up, but went right back to work.

  I wanted to peg it down that I hadn’t left the farm so when the shop foreman came over, I said, “Hell, I don’t know what Barton M. Cassel thought was wrong over there in the lower sixty. I sure as hell couldn’t find anything.”

  He smiled, shrugging. “You know Barton M. Cassel,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “By the way, Mrs. Cassel just called from the house. She sounded upset. Wants you to come up there right away.”

  I nodded and walked out into the sunlight. I turned toward the bachelor quarters, thinking to hell with her and her messages.

  Then I stopped. This was no time to play solitaire. I didn’t want to be sitting alone in my room now. I wanted witnesses to the fact that I was on this farm today. Even a witness like Eve Cassel.

  I went striding toward the house. Chick was grinning and holding the gate open even before I got to it.

  Jerkins opened the front door when I rang.

  He nodded toward the parlor to the right of the foyer. “In there, Mr. Walker,” he said. He walked away toward the rear of the house. From back there I could hear the faint sounds of servants at work, talking in a subdued way to each other.

  I walked through the parlor door, stopped.

  Eve was lounging on a deep divan, sporting a martini in her right paw. She was wearing the same knit dress she’d slunk up to my room in earlier, but she’d put her hair up in one of those loose-looking French rolls across the crown of her head.

  But I really didn’t even give her more than a glance.

  “Hello, Mitch,” Fred Palmer said. “Long time.”

  I felt the backs of my legs go weak. It seemed to me somehow it had to be like this. It wouldn’t play any other way. I could run a thousand miles, but when Fred Palmer caught up with me it just had to be because Eve Cassel set it up for him.

  “Don’t blame me,” Eve said, as if reading my thoughts. She took a long drink of her martini. “Mr. Palmer said he already knew you were here.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Have a drink, Mitch,” Eve said. “I need somebody to drink with me. Your friend Mr. Palmer doesn’t drink at all.”

  “My friend.” The bitter words tore out of me.

  “I am your friend, Mitch,” Fred Palmer said. “I’ve always liked you, Mitch. From the day they assigned you to work with me. You never liked me, but I was sorry about that. I always liked you, Mitch.”

  I watched Eve get up and pour me a martini. Then she got an olive very carefully from an iced container, touched it against her mouth with a faint smile on her face, and dropped the olive into the glass.

  “Sure, Palmer. You always liked me. You liked me so much you were willing to railroad me for murder.”

  Palmer winced. “That’s not true, Mitch.” Eve brought the martini to me where I stood unmoving. Maybe I couldn’t have moved if I tried. I took the drink, held it without looking at it “I know how you feel about me. I know that you always hated my tactics, the way I did things. I never offered any apology. I been a cop a long time. After a while you get so you hate the guts of every criminal. You look in their sneaking, sniveling, lying faces and you feel like you can’t stand to hear them mouth one more lie. But I never railroaded anybody, Mitch.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “No, Mitch. Never. They were guilty. They were always guilty. It was something inside me. I could feel it, Mitch. I knew they were guilty no matter what they said, no matter what anybody else thought I just had to make them say so, that was all, Mitch.”

  Now I took a drink.

  “I never tried to railroad you, Mitch. No. You were with that girl. Once she had gone out with me, but after you came along, Mitch, she fell for you. Wendy fell for you—”

  “A hell of a motive for killing her.”

  “But she wasn’t faithful, Mitch. Not even to you. Oh, I found out—after she stopped seeing me, I began to watch her. I spent a lot of time watching her, and I found out she was crossing you, Mitch. With several guys.”

  “Look, get this straight. It might be the last time I ever get to talk to you outside your torture chamber—”

  “My God, Mitch—” he sounded deeply offended and hurt

  “—so get this straight. She was never crossing me because I never gave a damn. I never wanted her. She was never anything to me. Never. Nothing. I went there that night to tell her I didn’t want her calling me any more, I didn’t want to see her any more because I’d never cared anything about her, and it was no use kidding her. Only when I got there she was already dead. But you wouldn’t believe that. You wouldn’t believe anything except that I had killed her. I had seen what you could do to men once you got them in your torture racks, so I cleared out. That’s the truth, and the hell with you.”

  He said, softly, “You never should have run,
Mitch.”

  “No. I ought to have stayed there and gotten the rubber hose treatment, the scalding water enema. No thanks, it made me sick just to watch that happen to other poor devils.”

  “I never would have tried to railroad you, Mitch.”

  I took another drink “For God’s sake, you talking for Mrs. Cassel’s benefit, or mine? You can save your breath.”

  “No, Mitch. I’m talking to you. I came after you, because the FBI could have got you for unlawful flight across state lines. You made a lot of mistakes, Mitch. I knew I had to take you back.”

  “The hell you say. Torture. That’s all you live for. That’s why you chased me out here where Eve Cassel could tell you who I was, where I was.”

  Eve laughed. “Oh, I’m a real hellion, Mitch. But don’t give me any medals. He knew you were here.”

  “That’s right, Mitch,” Palmer said. “I got into Fort MacKeeney. I talked to a waitress at the Fort MacKeeney Café. A young blonde lady named Dot. I told her I was a friend of yours, looking for you, trying to help you. I showed her your picture. After she was sure I wanted to help you, she said you had been in—”

  “Oh, this boy has got a way with the women,” Eve Cassel said, moving the cocktail glass along her lips.

  “So then I had to think what you’d do. And I kept hearing about this place. It seemed like an answer. I came out, and first Mr. Cassel said he didn’t know you. I suppose that’s because he has hundreds of migrants working for him. But then I told Mr. Cassel in town today to be sure and tell you—if he did see you—that a man named Mel Long confessed last night to the murder of Wendy Parker. So there’s no charge against you any more, Mitch. You are free.”

  The room spun. One moment Palmer was on the couch and Eve was standing there jawing at me. The next moment Eve was on the ceiling and Palmer was sailing around with her.

  I reached out, caught the back of a chair with my hands. That was the first I realized I had dropped the martini glass.

  From somewhere I heard Eve saying, “You’re messy, Mitch. Breaking glasses, spilling gin on my rug. Barton M. Cassel won’t approve of that at all.”

  Barton M. Cassel. I stared at them wheeling around the room before me and suddenly it seemed that Barton M. Cassel was already in the room, skidding around it with them.

  I hung on, gripping the back of that chair.

  “He doesn’t take freedom with any grace, does he?” I heard Eve saying to Palmer.

  “Mitch. Mitch, what’s the matter?” Palmer said. “Are you sick?”

  Sick? I didn’t know what I was. All I could think was that Bart Cassel had known before I slugged him, before I took that satchel from him, that I was cleared of the charge of murder. That I was not guilty.

  “Sit down, Mitch,” Palmer was saying. “Everything is all right.”

  All that time I had walked across that street, gotten in that station wagon, Cassel had sat there, knowing I was not guilty of any crime. What had he said? Something about how long I took getting there.

  “Mitch can do anything he wants to now, can’t he?” Eve was saying.

  “I hope he’ll go back with me. It would be much better if he cleared everything up.”

  I pushed the back of my hand across my numbed mouth. I had been free. For a few hours this morning I had been an honest man, guilty of no crimes. But that was no good now. Now I was a man who’d stolen a hundred and forty thousand dollars.

  I heard the front door open, but I didn’t even turn around. I was staring at nothing. All I was thinking was that I had hidden that money where Barton M. Cassel was never going to find it.

  I leaned against that chair and watched Eve Cassel run across the room, like a loving, dutiful wife. Sheriff Mason helped Barton M. Cassel in, let him down in a big chair.

  Cassel’s head was swathed in tape and gauze, and the bandages were tinted red. He sat down heavily and looked about, still groggy. But he was conscious enough that he didn’t want Eve fluttering around him, and he spoke to her sharply: “Let me alone, Eve. Get away from me.”

  “Why, Bart, what’s the matter?” She played the aggrieved wife very well.

  Mason said, “Mr. Cassel was held up and robbed, Mrs. Cassel. In town. We been warning him for years about his habit of walking around with so much cash.”

  “Hell. He sneaked up. Nobody could take me,” Cassel said. He rubbed his hands across his eyes.

  “Did you catch the thief?” Palmer said.

  “No. We might of got him, but Mr, Cassel took out after him, head banged up and all before he reported the crime to my office. We put an all points out, but so far we’ve drawn a blank.”

  “What kind of car was it?” Palmer said.

  “Hell. I don’t know. A Ford. I know that. Light blue, I think.” Cassel put his hands over his face. “Sure dirty car. Four or five years old. I chased it, but—my head—”

  “How about the license number?” Palmer said.

  “I don’t know. Mason’s asked me all this, Palmer. I didn’t get that close—”

  “Not even to see what state the license belonged to?”

  “No. I told you no. What difference would it make? Most of the time they steal a license when they’re going to pull a job like that, don’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” Palmer said. “Do they?”

  Cassel glanced up at him, face rigid and white.

  Palmer gave him an odd smile, turned away, looking at Mason. “You know, somebody robbing him like that in town. Funny. I was just talking to him. I was telling him I no longer had any charges against Mitch Walker here. I didn’t see any blue car around.”

  “You mean you didn’t notice one.” Cassel’s voice was cold with contempt.

  “Well, yes,” Palmer said. “I guess that’s what I mean. I didn’t notice one.”

  But I knew what Palmer meant. He meant that if there had been a blue car he would have noticed it. Routine.

  He looked straight at Mason. “I did see one of his own jeeps across the street when I talked to him.”

  I felt, more than saw, Eve’s face move, her gaze stabbing at me.

  “So what?” Cassel said. “My jeeps are in town all the time, Mason knows that.”

  “That’s right,” Mason said. “But I see Mr. Palmer’s point, Barton. It could have been one of your employees.”

  “Who else would know more about you carrying cash in big amounts, and when?” Palmer said.

  “Nobody even knew when I was going to collect this money, Palmer, except me and the man that paid it through the bank. They got in the cash to handle the deal, and we closed it today. Now which one of my employees could know a thing like that?”

  “You never know,” Palmer said. “You never know how word like that can get around.”

  “I know it didn’t get around, Palmer,” Cassel said. “I don’t operate that way. It was some guy figured to jump me for whatever I had on me—”

  “And just happened to hit the jackpot,” Palmer finished.

  “That’s right. Everything except your tone,” Cassel said. “I don’t like that.”

  “Now, now, take it easy, Bart. I’m sure Mr. Palmer is trying to help. But I admit that I go along with his idea that the robbery might have been committed by somebody right on this farm.” The sheriff turned and looked at me. “We better question them, Bart.”

  “If you want to waste time,” Cassel said, snarling. He pressed his hand against his head. He didn’t have to act about that head wound. I had really clobbered him. But the way I felt at that moment, I hadn’t hit him hard enough.

  The sheriff had not pulled his gaze from me. “How about you, Walker? That your name? You were here on a fugitive rap.”

  “I was cleared of it,” I said. My voice was weak. “Remember?”

  I was staring at Cassel, but he didn’t even glance my way.

  “Still, the temptation of money is a big item in the mind of a man on the run,” the sheriff said. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to accoun
t for where you were all morning.”

  “He was here on the farm,” Cassel said. “He was here when I left.”

  “I saw him here,” Eve said. “An hour or more after Barton had left the farm.”

  “He wasn’t around when I got here,” Palmer said.

  “Thanks,” I told him. “Any time I can do you a favor. Mr. Cassel had me ride out to check an irrigation flow in the wheat fields.”

  “That’s right,” Cassel agreed.

  “I’m not trying to get you in trouble, Mitch,” Palmer said. “I’m trying to help.”

  “Who needs enemies,” I said, “when they’ve got you?”

  “I was just thinking,” Palmer said. “You could prove that you never left the farm ... Do you keep a mileage record on the jeeps, Mr. Cassel?”

  “No, we don’t. That’s for towns, and small runs. Besides, what in hell would mileage prove? It’s farther from one side of this farm to the other than it is from here to Fort MacKeeney. You wouldn’t prove a damn thing with mileage. I’ll tell you how you can prove if Walker left the farm. Call down at the gate. Check with Lefty. He’ll tell you if Walker was through there today.”

  “Good idea.” Mason was already lifting the phone. He spoke into it, listened a moment, replaced the receiver. “Lefty says Walker never left the farm through that gate.”

  “And there are no other exits from this farm?” Palmer said.

  “My good buddy,” I said.

  “It’s going to come out sooner or later,” Palmer said. “If we pin it down now, we can clear you, Mitch. And you can go back home with me.”

  “Well, I can answer that for you,” Eve said. “There are no other gates off this farm. I’d know.”

  Palmer shrugged. “Well, that’s fine. What do you say sheriff? You want to hold Walker?”

  “We might want a few more questions answered,” Mason said. “But I don’t see why he couldn’t leave here with you if he wants to.”

  “Leave?” Cassel sat up. “Where you going?”

  “He’s cleared of that murder charge, Mr. Cassel,” Palmer said. “I explained that to you in town. He can go anywhere he wants to.”