A Night for Screaming Read online

  “Two or three minutes,” I said, grinning at her. “An eternity. A bigger headstart than I ever had before. God bless you, you hear me?”

  “God,” she said in a bitter way. “He don’t know yet that I’ve left Salina.”

  I was already moving at an angle through the tables toward the men’s room. I paused, turned, seeing Cotton and Arnie straighten out front, troubled. I stared at her and tried to smile. “If He doesn’t,” I said, “He ought to get on the ball. Damn few saints left on this earth. He ought to keep better track of them.”

  I was running.

  I ran east along that narrow alley, not knowing why. West was my goal; anywhere west. But I tried to figure Arnie and Cotton. When they first spotted me I’d been headed west. Inside the café, I’d admitted coming here from Kansas City which was east. The city limits lay only two blocks to the west. A stranger in town might feel some safety lay beyond the city limits, but I’d been warned these two boys worked for the sheriff and they could trail me as long as I ran their county—a barren, treeless land where you could see a jackrabbit jump a mile away.

  Far behind me, at the west end of the long block, I saw that cruiser whip into the alley, speeding toward me.

  As its front bumper, grill and engine hood came into view, I lunged out of the alley, landing on my knees between two frame shacks.

  The shack on my left was set on brick foundations and under it was the darkness of a cave.

  I went scrambling under the shack, sprawling forward in the breathless darkness. If anybody the length of the alley had seen me duck in here, I was dead. I didn’t waste much time worrying about it. I wasn’t fooling myself. Who could hide in a town this small? And who could hide outside it when there wasn’t a tree or rock to conceal you? It was just a matter of time.

  I lay there, breathing into my palm.

  The cruiser raced past in the alley. I could count the minutes remaining to me now They would go to the end of the block, maybe along the next block, slower, checking the openings, and then they would retrace along here.

  Because there was nothing else to do, I lay in the sand. I couldn’t hope for much now, not anything really.

  These cops would come back, close in, arrest me, check the files at headquarters.

  They would find the wanted dodger on me, and they would call in Fred Palmer, and no matter how hard I’d tried, the whole thing would be over.

  I lay still and grinned coldly in the darkness, thinking about what I hoped would happen when Arnie and Cotton came back looking for me. I hoped Cotton came alone between these two shacks. Sure, he was tough, big, a trained cop. I’d fix that mouth so it’d be a long time before he detailed any more dirt about the little waitress. I owed her so much more than money could ever repay. And it wouldn’t take long.

  I heard the rasp of speeding tires on the pavement alley. The cruiser went speeding along, heading west.

  I pushed deeper under the shack, moving between brick supports, away from the alley, wondering what sort of place this was and if the people in it could hear me wriggling under it.

  I peered through the lattice between the front foundation supports. A short arid yard was bare. The street was silent, swimming in heat waves. Front stoops of other houses were empty, doors and windows gaped open as if the houses were gasping for breath, and no one was in sight either way along the block.

  I heard the cruiser speeding east on this street and I wriggled backwards. I watched the police car race past, Arnie at the wheel, both searching each side of the street.

  Cotton supported his arm on the window frame, a police special gripped in his fist. It was in their faces; they were pleased with me. I had done what they hoped I would do, I had run, resisted arrest.

  The cruiser made a tortuous U-turn at the corner, tires wailing, then straightened and bucked to a stop. As it settled, Arnie got out on one side and Cotton stepped out on the other.

  Cotton leaned against the fender, looking around, gun at his side against his leg. He moved his gaze slowly across the shack I was hiding under, and I felt our gazes clash and lock, even though I knew better. The house sat too close to the ground, and I was too far back. He couldn’t see me. Not yet.

  The street came alive. Men, women and children spilled out of all the doors when that cruiser screamed to a stop. Fort MacKeeney, Kansas saw damned little excitement. When the cops came, everybody turned out to see the fun.

  Arnie moved among them, questioning them, describing me. They shook their heads, but glanced around, eagerly. Nothing is as intoxicating as the smell of blood.

  I looked around. I had to get out of here, and before they started a house-by-house search.

  Something nagged at me. I watched them out on the street, and there was something I should know, but I couldn’t think clearly with the panic eating at me.

  Some of the people turned, went back to their houses. They moved warily. Arnie had gaudied up the story: I was a dangerous criminal, armed.

  But nobody came near this house. Whatever it was, it was vacant. There was not even the whispering of mice above me.

  I crawled toward the rear of the shack. I saw what a fool I had been. I had left a clear trail scraped in the sand as I writhed under this house. Little oversights like that could get me killed.

  I moved my hand around, found a short block of wood, smoothed over the sand. It looked too smooth, but after a couple bystanders ran across it, it would look fine.

  I moved back into the darkness under the house. It was like an oven. My clothing was wet with sweat, thick drops leaked out of my hair and ran down my face.

  I heard them running beside the house, saw their legs when they stopped.

  “Hey, Arnie. Look at this.”

  Cotton’s voice had excitement in it, the kind that’s in the baying of hounds at the foot of a tree. “He’s in this house, Arnie.”

  They tried all the doors. Arnie was telling Cotton he was simple, there were no broken windows, no forced locks. How could anybody get in?

  “It don’t matter. He’s in there, all right.”

  They smashed a window, I heard the crash of stone on the glass, the pieces raining on the floor.

  Then they pushed up the window

  “Push the kid in.” Cotton was the take-charge boy now, excitement crackling in his voice. “Open a door for us, kid.”

  “We’ve fooled around here too long,” Arnie said. I heard them hoist someone through the window, and he ran across the house, opened a door, calling to them.

  The footsteps were loud in the house. I lay there, tried not to breathe. I had run so far. They said I had killed a girl, only she had been dead when I got there. But I couldn’t prove that, and I had run; a lung-bursting, throat-scorching running, and no sense in it. I couldn’t even remember just where and when I’d started running. I felt as though I’d been running all my life. I couldn’t even remember now how it had been before, in that time before I started running. Worse than that, in all these endless hours there hadn’t been a chance that I could make it. They’d been too close behind me all along. Right from the very first, I hadn’t had time to stop long enough to think, to plan. I was bursting with weariness and they weren’t even breathing hard.

  I needed to gasp for air through my parted lips, but didn’t dare open my mouth at all.

  “Hell, that guy doubled back,” Arnie said. “We’ve covered this here alley, just like he figured we would, and he went back through that café, and I bet you he’s ten miles out of town this blessed minute.”

  “The hell.” But there was doubt in Cotton’s voice.

  “You don’t see nothing, do you?” Arnie said. “Not even the dust has been stirred. We’re wasting time in here. Come on, let’s check the highway.”

  “He’s in here,” Cotton said. “I know it. It’s a feeling I got.”

  “You got a feeling, all right. Hell, you’re letting him get away on that highway. If he’s around here, he can’t get away now without somebody seeing him.
They can get word to us. But if he gets away on that highway, we’ve shot it.”

  “Okay,” Cotton said after a moment. “But I’m leaving the Ludkins kid here to watch this place. He’s around here.”

  “Well, damn it, if he’s here, show him to me,” Arnie yelled.

  “Hell with you,” Cotton snarled back at him. “We’ll do it your way. I’m just telling you. I know he’s around here. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Arnie cleared all the bystanders out, but warned a boy to stay around the shack, to watch and listen.

  “Sure I will, Mister Arnie.”

  They walked out, trooping through the front door, going down the steps. I listened to their voices receding, heard the cruiser start up and blast off as if Arnie’s rage furnished the propulsion.

  My throat was raw and I felt as though my lungs would burst if I didn’t drag in one deep breath of air. But before I could even move my legs I heard the Ludkins boy walking around above me, going slowly, all through the shack.

  3

  I lay in the breathless heat and silence.

  I felt myself drawing up in a neat tight knot of panic all over again. For half a second there had been the exhilarating sense of outsmarting the two hick cops, even temporarily. But now I was trapped under this shack and I heard that boy moving around inside it.

  Sweat coursed down my face.

  Suddenly I heard something. It was a strange hissing noise in the silence. It came from east of me along the alley and I sweated trying to think what it could be.

  I waited. Twenty slow minutes crawled past before I heard it again. This time I recognized it. It was the sound of air brakes.

  I nodded, pinning it down. These were the big air brakes of the Greyhound buses. The buses pulled into the depot at the corner east of me, less than a quarter of a block away. I touched the money in my pocket, thinking about the ticket the waitress had urged me to buy. It was as if she were giving me the gift she most wished someone would give her, a way out of this town.

  There was the roar of an engine as the bus pulled out of the station.

  I began to see one chance of getting out of here alive, not only from beneath this shack, but out of Fort MacKeeney.

  There were two ways to work it, and neither of them were very good, but offered the only opportunity I could see. One, I stayed where I was, hoping the cops would not get back here until the kid got tired and left, and that they would overlook checking under this house. There was the slim chance that they would leave again, finally. Then I could lie here until dark, and when I heard a bus enter the terminal at the corner, I could sneak out, wait in the shadows, and board that bus in the last moment before it departed.

  But I couldn’t fool myself that the sheriff didn’t have somebody watching that bus depot by now.

  If I had any hope there, it was that his deputy would be guarding the ticket window. But the loading platform was at the end of the alley, and I could board the bus there, saying I’d arrived too late to buy a ticket. And that would work.

  I mopped more sweat out of my eyes. It occurred to me that I couldn’t figure by the swish of air brakes which bus was going east and which west. But this seemed of no significance. The direction didn’t matter. I could change buses at the first rest stop. The important matter was to get out of this town.

  In the darkness I could hide, I could stay hidden. Night. That was the answer. If only I could somehow hang on in this oven until nightfall.

  I shook my head, beginning to see what was wrong with this plan. Everything was wrong with it. Once Arnie and Cotton checked out the highways and satisfied themselves I was hiding inside town, it wasn’t going to take them long to pin me down here under this shack. And I was as helpless as a turtle on its back under here.

  Wait until? I couldn’t even wait until those two cops returned.

  I held my breath, listening. The next time I heard the sigh of air brakes in the bus terminal, I had to make a run for the loading platform and then leap into the bus in that instant before the driver closed his doors to pull out.

  I waited for the hiss of air brakes. If I could reach that loading platform, I could find a corner and stand there until the bus was ready to leave.

  I accepted the fact the sheriff would have a stake-out in the terminal waiting room. But I was gambling they would never think to cover the loading area.

  I sweated, praying for the hurried beautiful whisper of huge Greyhound brakes.

  I didn’t deceive myself. Somebody would be prowling the alley now. They would see me. Somebody would. I had to count on that. I had to cut it close, so close that I could just make the bus before the alarm went up.

  I had carefully counted the minutes between arrival and departure of buses in that terminal. This was all in my favor. Fort MacKeeney was even smaller than you think, a quick stop for the big Greyhounds. There were not more than six minutes between stopping and starting of those buses.

  Six minutes can be an eternity, but on the other hand, if I shaved it close enough, there wouldn’t be time for anything more than a yell from a bystander in that alley, and I’d be gone.

  The town grew quiet in the hot early afternoon, almost as if it were prostrated from the heat.

  The hiss of air brakes reverberated inside my head.

  I forced myself to remain cold, deliberate. All I had to do was move fast, attract attention of the kid in the shack, and I’d have outsmarted myself.

  I crawled painfully slowly toward the rear of the shack.

  I came out from beneath that shack, paused for the space of a breath and slapped the sand from my clothing. I didn’t even look around.

  I ran along the alley. I heard the terminal P.A. system crackling, but the starter was calling the town names in some foreign tongue. I couldn’t decipher one of them.

  At the corner of the wide drive behind the loading ramp, I stopped. I pressed myself against the wall. There was one little item: I had to know which way this bus was going before I boarded it. Boarding without a ticket was one thing, but being unable to name a destination might be ruinous.

  I pressed hard against the wall, keeping out of view of the waiting room and also pulling myself out of the alley.

  It was the smartest move of my life.

  Pressed there, for the moment concealed, I stared across that ramp toward the bus.

  I went sick.

  I saw where the bus was headed, all right. It was bound for Denver. The last of the passengers were aboard. The driver was checking his manifest, about to step inside. The moment was perfect. All I had to do was to stride across the cement drive, enter that bus and I would be safe again; could rest, could breathe.

  Only it was never going to happen.

  The driver stepped into the bus, and the doors hissed closed. He started the engine, checked his rear-view mirror, straightened his cap, made all those last minute adjustments, scratched his crotch, and engaged the gears.

  I didn’t bother watching him.

  I barely saw the bus at all. Instead I stared at the man leaning against the wall just outside the waiting room exit doors.

  Palmer.

  Sure, the sheriff’s deputy was inside that waiting room, watching that ticket window, just as I’d known he would be.

  But Palmer didn’t work that way. Palmer wasn’t Palmer when he was on a case. Palmer liked to tell you you had to think like a criminal to catch a criminal. Only you had to know in advance what the criminal was going to think; you had to think the criminal’s thoughts, faster. But that was always easy because a criminal had to keep a hundred things in his mind, while the detective on his trail had only one thought on his brain: the criminal.

  I sagged against the wall. I watched that bus pull out into the alley, make a left turn and go toward U.S. Highway 40 West.

  Hammers pounded behind my eyes. Palmer had been on my tail from the first. If he hadn’t been, I’d never have run. I’d have taken my chances with anyone but Palmer. But I knew him too well. I had lost hi
m in Kansas City.

  I panted, my mouth against the brick wall. It didn’t make sense that Palmer could be standing here in this hick burg, this grain depot in the middle of the plains. Why Fort MacKeeney? Why not a hundred other towns?

  I clenched my fists, knowing rage wasn’t going to buy me anything. Palmer was thinking ahead, as I would think. He was standing there, relaxed and cool, going over in his mind what Mitch Walker, fugitive, was going to do next.

  I exhaled heavily. Okay. So now I had to think like Palmer, even if it did make me want to wash my mind out with soap.

  I pressed deeper into the niche between depot wall and adjoining building. I still couldn’t breathe any fresh air, but I calmed down enough to answer one question. Palmer had checked with the railroad detectives this morning. Any tramps booted off the freights during the night? Where? Outside Fort MacKeeney on the Kansas Pacific?

  And here he was.

  4

  He stood there against that doorway for what seemed like a screaming eternity after the Denver bus pulled out. He was smoking a cigar, rolling it on his lips, savoring it.

  Palmer was a big man, in his early thirties, maybe four or five years older than I was. He was square in the shoulders and flat in the belly. This may not seem like anything extraordinary in a man of thirty, but he liked rich foods washed down with beer, and the only exercise he ever took was on the pistol range. He’d go white with rage any time he got more than a half an inch away from dead center on any target.

  He looked at the cigar for a moment and then flipped it across the cement driveway almost as though he were throwing it at me. He straightened up, and I could see he’d finally let the women convince him: he was as handsome as they told him, in that dark, rugged way. He always told them that’s why he’d never married. But I knew why he never married: a wife would be in the way when he started on a case, started hounding some poor devil twenty-four hours a day.

  I stared at him across that twenty feet, thinking he was the reason I’d gone sour on the police department. After I’d completed my probation back home, I passed first man on the detective examination. They made a big thing of assigning me to work with Fred Palmer. With my two years of college, and what Fred Palmer could teach me, I’d be a big man in the department. Fred Palmer was everything a good detective should be. In just three months I had the urge to vomit every time I looked at him, and I knew I’d never make the detective list, and all I wanted was out.