`Hold this on him.'
I handed him my revolver and went to look at Harley. His face when I touched it was cold as the night had been. This and the advanced coagulation of the blood that stained his shirt front told me he had been dead for many hours, probably all night.
I didn't try to pull the knife out of his ribs. I examined it closely without touching it. The handle was padded with rubber, striped black and white, and molded to fit the hand. It looked new and fairly expensive.
The knife was the only thing of any value that had attached itself to Mike Harley. I went through his pockets and found the stub of a Las Vegas to Los Angeles plane ticket issued the day before, and three dollars and forty-two cents.
Ben Daly let out a yell. Several things happened at once. At the edge of my vision metal flashed and the mockingbird flew up out of the bush. The gun went off. A gash opened in the side of Daly's head where Otto Sipe had hit him with the spade. Otto Sipe's face became contorted. He clutched at his abdomen and fell forward, with the lower part of his body in the grave.
Ben Daly said: `I didn't mean to shoot him. The gun went off when he swung the spade at me. After the war I never wanted to shoot anything.'
The gash in the side of his head was beginning to bleed. I tied my handkerchief around it and told him to go and call the police and an ambulance. He ran. He was surprisingly light on his feet for a man of middle age.
I was feeling surprisingly heavy on mine. I went to Sipe and turned him onto his back and opened his clothes. The wound in his belly was just below the umbilicus. It wasn't bleeding much, externally, but he must have been bleeding inside. The life was draining visibly from his face.
It was Archer I mourned for. It had been a hard three days. All I had to show for them was a dead man and a man who was probably dying. The fact that the bullet in Sipe had come from my gun made it worse.
Compunction didn't prevent me from going through Sipe's pockets. His wallet was fat with bills, all of them twenties. But his share of the Hillman payoff wasn't going to do him any good. He was dead before the ambulance came shrieking down the highway.
20
A LOT OF talking was done, some on the scene and some in the sheriff's office. With my support, and a phone call from Lieutenant Bastian, and the fairly nasty cut in the side of his head, Ben was able to convince the sheriff's and the. DA's men that he had committed justifiable homicide. But they weren't happy about it. Neither was I. I had let him kill my witness.
There was still another witness, if she would talk. By the middle of the morning I was back at the door of Susanna Drew's apartment. Stella said through the door: `Who is it, please?'
'Lew Archer.'
She let me in. The girl had bluish patches under her eyes, as if their color had run. There was hardly any other color in her face.
`You look scared,' I said. `Has anything happened?'
`No. It's one of the things that scares me. And I have to call my parents and I don't want to. They'll make me go home.'
`You have to go home.'
`No.'
`Yes. Think of them for a minute. You're putting them through a bad time for no good reason.'
`But I do have a good reason. I want to try and meet Tommy again tonight. He said if he didn't make it last night he'd be at the bus station tonight.'
`What time?'
`The same time. Nine o'clock.'
`I'll meet him for you.'
She didn't argue, but her look was evasive.
`Where's Miss Drew, Stella?'
`She went out for breakfast. I was still in bed, and she left me a note. She said she'd be back soon, but she's been gone for at least two hours.'
She clenched her fists and rapped her knuckles together in front of her. `I'm worried.'
`About Susanna Drew?'
`About everything. About me. Things keep getting worse. I keep expecting it to end, but it keeps getting worse. I'm changing, too. There's hardly anybody I like any more.'
`The thing will end, Stella, and you'll change back.'
`Will I? It doesn't feel like a reversible change. I don't see how Tommy and I are ever going to be happy.'
`Survival is the main thing.'
It was a hard saying to offer a young girl. `Happiness come in fits and snatches. I'm having more of it as I get older. The teens were my worst time.'
`Really?'
Her brow puckered. `Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Mr. Archer?'
