Burden of Guilt Page 7

  The road up Bald Mountain was on the dark side, so I lost the moonlight. Maybe five minutes later the fork showed up in the headlights’ high beam and I broadsided through it, almost before I’d realized my approach was around thirty miles an hour too fast. The old canyon road meanders around the base of the mountain, and I got bright moonlight again as soon as I was round the first right-angled bend. I slowed the car down to a crawl and switched off all the lights. A couple of seconds later I switched them all on again. At this time of night, two-thirds of the way up the mountain, the sound of a motor could be heard within a five-mile radius, I figured sourly.

  I came around the next sharp bend and there was the shack about fifty yards ahead. There was a car parked just out front of it, the hood directly facing the sagging verandah. As I swung off the road, the parked car was floodlit in the glare of my headlights. You couldn’t mistake that beat-up heap for anyone else’s car but Polnik’s, in a million years. I braked to a stop alongside the sergeant’s car, with the headlights bathing the front of the shack in brilliant light. Then I killed the motor, pushed the car door wide open beside me, yanked my .38 out of the belt holster, and slid out onto the ground in a crouched position. I went around the backs of both cars real fast, and stopped beside the left rear fender of Polnik’s car, still crouched as low as I could get without actually digging a hole in the ground.

  Somewhere, higher up on the mountainside, an owl hooted a mournful protest against another of those stupid creatures that were always disturbing his peace and were too big to eat.

  It felt like I had been waiting a hell of a long time, but logic said not more than a minute, at most. I reached out carefully with my left hand for the door handle, then suddenly pulled the rear door open wide. No gun exploded in my face, no nothing. Maybe five seconds later I made a quick lunge into the back seat of the car. It was empty, the way the front seat was also empty. I got out again, slammed the car door shut, and walked back to my own car.

  The hollow feeling inside my stomach was getting worse the whole time. I lifted the flashlight out of the glove compartment, then headed toward the shack. If there had been anybody inside the shack waiting to kill me, they would have made their play long before this. Polnik’s car was still here, so it figured the sergeant was also still around someplace. I didn’t want to think about that. While there was still the faintest hope to cling to, I was going to cling!

  Rotting boards groaned under my feet as I crossed the front verandah. The front door sagged forward on its hinges, and the flashlight beam showed the narrow hallway beyond. I went in slow, my right index finger tense on the trigger of the .38. A doorway to the left opened up into one of the shack’s three rooms. I played the flashlight beam around the walls, from just outside the doorway, until I was satisfied the room was empty. A couple of yards farther down the narrow hallway another doorway opened off to the right. Just below the cone of light I got a momentary impression of something more solid than the flickering shadows, and quickly lowered the flashlight beam. Somebody’s foot was protruding out of the room into the hallway.

  The room was empty, of course, except for Polnik, who was sprawled face-down on the grimy floor, his gun still clenched in his right hand. The back of his head was a blood-soaked pulpy mass that was half congealed, and included a spidery web that was pale gray in color. I holstered my gun, then went down on my knees beside him. His skin was cool to the touch as I put my hands on both sides of his face, and lifted his head gently until I could support it with one hand under his chin. My free hand fumbled for the flashlight, found it, then directed the beam onto his face. His wide-open eyes stared back at me, impervious now to the flashlight’s dazzling beam, with a look of mild surprise still mirrored in them. I stayed there, supporting his chin with one hand and looking at his face, until the cramps in my legs became white-hot pincers. Then I gently lowered his head back down onto the grimy floor again, and struggled painfully back to my feet.

  There had been two of them. The one who had been the decoy in this room where Polnik had died, and his partner in the other room off to the left, closer to the front door. The decoy had lured Polnik as far as the doorway of the second room, then his partner had catfooted out of the first room where he had been hidden, come up behind Polnik and put two—three—four?—slugs into the back of his head at a range of probably less than three feet.

  I walked back out of the shack and was vaguely surprised to find that I was crying. Right up until that moment, I had always figured that was something grown men never did. Crying was for women and children; a man always shut his mouth tight and bottled it up inside of him. I felt no shame about my tears; they were for my old friend and partner, Sergeant Polnik. What I was beginning to feel was a fast-growing sense of remorse and, in back of that, building up like an avalanche, was the terrifying burden of naked and unshared guilt.

  It should have been me lying dead in that doorway, with half my brains splattered across the back of my skull and slowly oozing down onto my shirt collar. Only sex had seemed infinitely preferable at the moment, so I had sent Polnik in my place. “Take care!” I had said, and somehow believed that was enough in itself; some kind of talisman, generously donated by Wheeler, that was powerful enough to ward off all evil.

  Sitting behind the wheel of my car, I wiped my wet face with a pocket handkerchief, and wasn’t surprised to find that I had stopped crying. The tears had been the easiest part; it would be from here on out that living with it was going to be hard. Two of them? That was the one thing Polnik wouldn’t have expected, but if it had been me going into the front door instead of him, I would have expected it. Because I would have remembered what Kingsley had told me that afternoon: Dana had vanished from San Francisco three days back and Lou Fisher, the head man of the union goon squad, along with him. The sergeant never knew that, because I forgot to tell him!

  I lit a cigarette and smoked it down slowly, alone in the darkness with the headlights switched off, and after a while I realized I could never be alone again. Always, sitting right alongside me, would be my burden of guilt to keep me constant company.

  Sheriff Lavers pinched one of his lesser jowls cruelly between his thumb and two fingers, then stripped the cellophane wrapper from another cigar slowly, exerting a coldblooded restraint. The windows of his office were rapidly brightening as the dawn came hollering in from the East.

  “How about Mrs. Polnik?” I said, in sudden panic. “She’s got to be told!”

  “I’ve already told her,” he said quietly.

  “You know something?” It came as a shock to me, too. “In all those years we worked together, he was always telling me about his old lady, and I’ve never even met her!”

  “It happens,” he said.

  “And now he’s dead, and she’s a widow,” I said savagely. “It should be me lying in the morgue right now, with Doc Murphy probing his sharp little instruments into what’s left of my skull!”

  “Shut up!” Lavers growled. “So your partner got himself killed doing a job you gave him to do. How many men from this office have been killed in my four terms as county sheriff, doing jobs I gave them to do? Five!” He held up one massive hand, with the pudgy fingers spread wide. “You hear me, Wheeler? Five! That’s the way it goes, and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it.”

  “I could have,” I whispered. “I could have gone myself, only I figured I was having too much fun with the girl inside my apartment at the time.”

  “Polnik was entitled,” he said wearily. “He had the night duty, anyway. It would be just as logical for me to blame myself for his death. It was me who gave him the night duty as a form of punishment.”

  “But if it had been me, I would have half expected two of them in the shack,” I grated. “Because of what Kingsley told me this morning. Only I forgot to pass that on to Polnik, and that’s why he’s dead!”

  “We’ve been through all this at least four times already,” he thundered. “Right now you’re so overwrought,
you don’t even know what you’re saying. Go home and get some sleep.”

  “I’m staying,” I said.

  “That’s an order, Wheeler!”

  “I’m still staying,” I snarled.

  Lavers glowered at me for a couple of seconds, then heaved his bulk out of his chair and walked out of the office. He was gone for maybe five minutes; I wouldn’t have given a goddamn if he’d gone forever, the heartless son of a bitch! He came back finally, and for a moment there, I figured he was leading some kind of a procession. In back of him was Doc Murphy, and in back of Murphy were a couple of heavyweight patrolmen.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I asked.

  The next moment the two heavyweight patrolmen were all over me like a couple of steamrollers. When I got my breath back, I was spreadeagled over Lavers’s desk, minus my coat, and one shirtsleeve rolled up past my elbow. The patrolmen had me pinned down like a bug in some butterfly-chasing nut’s prize collection.

  “Take it easy, Al,” Murphy said in a professionally soothing voice. “What you need right now is some sleep.”

  It wasn’t until after the needle had pricked the skin of my arm, I saw the goddamned hypodermic in his hand!

  “Why, you double-crossing quack!” I yelled at him. “You just wait, you miserable corpse-chasing bastard! I’ll tie you down to a slab in the morgue and do an autopsy on you while you’re still breathing!”

  “It almost sounds like the old happy smiling Wheeler himself, doesn’t it?” Murphy said in a mild voice.

  The two patrolmen laughed in unison because anything the Doc said just had to be funny. But something went wrong with the clockwork motors under their blue uniforms, and they couldn’t stop laughing. The sound of it kept on getting louder and louder, until the whole room was too small to contain all that volume of sound, and it started to spin desperately, looking for a way to escape. I got smart! I watched the spinning room carefully, and the moment it dived through a little blue hole into the dense cloud of white smoke beyond, I dived right after it.

  Chapter Seven

  I woke up reluctantly, with the feeling that somebody had their hands pressed against my eyeballs. It took a determined effort to force my eyelids open, then I saw a figure standing beside the bed.

  “Hi, Lieutenant,” an amiable voice said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I just finished second in the great sex marathon,” I growled, “while all the smart guys dead-heated for last place!”

  He chuckled appreciatively. “How about I get you some coffee?”

  The voice was vaguely familiar. I blinked hard a few times and his face suddenly jumped into sharp focus. It was a good face, belonging to a young guy around twenty-five. He had thick curly blond hair, brilliant blue eyes, a nose that had been broken but reasonably reset, and a wide sensual mouth backed by a very determined square jawline. On him, the patrolman’s uniform looked good, and that was a minor artistic achievement all in itself.

  “Don’t I know you from someplace?” I queried.

  “Sure, Lieutenant. I’m Patrolman Stevens. We have a mutual acquaintance, Toni Del Guardo, remember? Like it’s a small world?” He grinned broadly.

  It was somehow a key phrase, and brought everything rolling back into my mind, like a hidden dam had just busted its walls. Some of it must have shown up on my face, because Stevens’s smile faded rapidly.

  “I’ll go get that coffee, Lieutenant.”

  After he’d gone out of the room, I sat up in bed, and realized it was my bed. Then I put my feet down and stood up. There was no pain. In fact, physically, I felt just fine. Even the feeling of being wrapped in cotton was beginning to fade. I got a robe out of the closet, put it on, and walked out into the kitchen.

  “Hey!” Stevens looked a little concerned. “The doc didn’t figure you’d improve this fast, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “Your watch is in your coat pocket.” He checked his own. “A quarter after three.”

  Bright daylight said it had to be P.M. “What happened after Doc Murphy gave me that needle?” I asked.

  “You passed out cold. They put you into an ambulance and sent me along to look out for you, Lieutenant.”

  “That was sometime around five-thirty this morning?”

  “I guess that would be right.”

  “But you were on the night shift.” I stared at him. “You must be dog tired.”

  “The doc said there was no chance of you waking up before two P.M., Lieutenant, so I got me some sleep, too.”

  “I’m sorry the apartment’s in such a hell of a mess,” I apologized.

  “I had a look around, figured you wouldn’t mind. It’s a nice pad you have here. The kind of setup I’m looking for myself.”

  “When you find it, I’ll give you a couple of my etchings to start you off on the right track,” I said generously.

  “Well, thanks, Lieutenant.” He shrugged easily. “You know how it is with etchings. I’ve got a closet full of them, and it seems as fast as I burn them, the closet gets full again.”

  He poured the coffee and we sat facing each other across the kitchen table. “There’s one other thing, Lieutenant.” His eyes carefully avoided mine. “I was up around noon, so I called a girlfriend of mine and she came over and cleaned up the apartment. It was only a little thing, but I figured it was the least I could do.”

  “You did, huh?” I said easily.

  “Hell!” The easy confidence poured back into his voice. “I figure one of these days—not too far off, either!—I’ll be a lieutenant, too. What’s a few chores between buddies?”

  “I shopped around for nearly three years before I found that couch,” I growled. “It is the one personal possession that’s very close to my heart. If I find one spring—just one!—twangs, I’ll make it my business to see you’re put back into the traffic detail for six months, and some place real exciting, like the top of Bald Mountain!”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant!” He swallowed hard. “You want some more coffee, Lieutenant?”

  “Not now.” I got up from the table. “I’m going to take a shower and get dressed. When I get back, I’ll expect eggs, bacon, and fresh coffee. The bacon crisp, and the eggs sunny-side up. Is that clear, Patrolman Stevens?”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant, sir.” He swallowed hard again. “I don’t think you need worry about any springs twanging, Lieutenant. Barbie-Ellen, she’s only an itty-bitty girl, wouldn’t go any more than ninety pounds with her leather boots on.”

  “How much do you weigh?” I snapped.

  “Around a couple of hundred, Lieutenant.”

  “So where were you when that ninety pounds of itty-bitty girl was thrashing around on my couch in her leather boots?” I snarled. “And don’t tell me you were busy doing the chores, or I’ll have you back in the traffic detail before sundown!”

  I shared a cab with what I hoped—but doubted—was a suitably chastened Patrolman Stevens, back to the sheriff’s office. He just vanished the moment the cab drew into the curb, and I figured he was at last learning some respect for his betters, until I realized he’d stuck me with the fare. Annabelle Jackson looked up as I walked into the outer office, and spread her lips in a smile that was so phony, it bordered on the horrific.

  “Hello, Al,” she said in a hushed voice. “How are you?”

  “Just fine,” I said.

  “Oh! That is good news!” If she had been gushing oil instead of synthetic enthusiasm, I would have staked out a claim around her desk right then.

  “Is the sheriff in?” I asked.

  “If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll go find out.” That ghastly smile stretched her lips. “Why don’t you just sit down and rest up awhile, Al, while I’m gone?”

  “Have you been out of the office today?” I asked curiously.

  “Not since lunch,” she said.

  I checked my watch. “It is now twenty of five,” I said. “That means you’ve been sitting he
re for the last three hours, anyway.”

  She made a big production out of counting off on her fingers. “I make it nearly four, Al.”

  “And you don’t know if the sheriff’s in his office, or not?” I gave her my special sadistic smile—the one guaranteed to make elderly matrons clutch their skirts tight around their knees. “What happened to Lavers? Did somebody let a taxidermist get to him?”

  She backed off a couple of paces real fast and, I noted with grim satisfaction, pressed her knees tightly together. “Isn’t that stupid of me?” Her bright falsetto laugh cracked right down the middle. “I just remembered the sheriff is in his office. Would you like me to take a message for you?”

  “Where to?” I snarled. “Garcia?”

  I walked into Lavers’s office without bothering to knock, and his eyes jumped nervously when he saw me.

  “How are you feeling now, Wheeler?”

  “Just fine,” I said. “What’s happened since this morning?”

  “You’re not sore at me about organizing Doc Murphy and that needle?—and the two patrolmen to hold you down?”

  “No.” I looked at him blankly. “Should I be?”

  “Of course not!” There was a thankful look in his eyes. “The autopsy didn’t show up anything we didn’t know already. Ballistics checked out the slugs—”

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Three.” He hurried on. “Thirty-two caliber. The crime lab boys went lint-picking through the inside and outside of that shack, but they didn’t come up with anything.”

  “It’s a good start,” I said bleakly.

  “You know how it is, Wheeler,” he said gruffly. “They can’t find something that isn’t there.”