against self-destruction inside them. Know what I mean? The way colored people have an instinctive fear of dogs, or the way you never see a drunk Jap.'
'Granny talk,' Ferris said. 'Come on. Why didn't he kill himself?'
'Because he was afraid,' I said. 'I don't mean of life- catching VD or losing his money on the stock market. It was a physical fear for his life. I've seen guys like him in Korea. They're usually the ones who break and run. And a scared man who is running for his life doesn't stop to take it himself.'
'And Terry Orme was scared?'
'Yeah. I had a long talk with him a couple of nights back. He didn't say it but he was scared witless. Don't ask me what of. I don't know. Then early this morning he came into the tree house and tried to wake me. Said he had to talk to me. Said he had trouble. It doesn't add up to suicide within the same hour.'
'Too bad you were such a drunken slob you couldn't help him.' Ferris said it the way he meant it. Disgusted.
I said nothing. I took out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingers. He strolled over and thumbnailed a match for me.
'What don't you like about the second one?' he asked.
'That's the easy way out for you,' I said. 'Nobody would ever question it because it seems so logical. He was always climbing trees, and everybody knows that if you climb trees long enough the odds are you'll finally fall on your ass.'
'So what's wrong with it?'
'One thing-the little bastard was good at it. He could climb like a monkey, and I've never heard of a monkey having an accident.'
'Let's not go into the statistics again, huh?'
I knew what he was trying to do. Bait me. The way the inspector of police had played the student-murderer in _Crime and Punishment_. He was pretending to seek my assistance, hoping I'd reveal one card too many in my hand. I turned clam.
'All right, you tell me. Why didn't he fall-accidentally?' Ferris switched tactics in midstream. Now he was the harassed dick in the middle of a bewildering case.
'Maybe he did. Goddammit to hell I don't known. If it hadn't been for Cochrane's murder I'd never give Orme's death a second thought. Accident. Period. But…'
'But Cochrane's murder looks like a frame for his wife and I used to be married to his wife and I have a five-yearold strike against my name and Terry Orme and I were roomies up in the tree house and I've admitted we were both up there alone just before he took the big leap. Right?'
He looked at me. 'Food for thought, ain't it?'
I actually admired Ferris. That's the truth. Plenty of dicks would look at poor little Terry Orme's body and write it off as an accident. These same hotshots would glance at the evidence against May and haul her off on a Murder One rap, and sit back to collect their medals.
But Ferris wasn't satisfied with the easy way. There was something about the whole thing that had a red- herring smell to it and his nose didn't much like the scent.
'So how much thought have you given it?' I asked him.
'Quite a bit,' he admitted. He took a short circular stroll and came back to me again.
'Funny how handy you are whenever a body turns up. Have you noticed that too?'
I smiled and shook my head at him.
'You're trying to put the cart before the horse, Ferris. I'm never found standing by my lone over the body. Somebody else always spots bingo before I arrive. There must have been twenty ghouls gawking over Orme's body before I made my grand entrance. Who was it by the way who drew the lucky ticket this morning?'
'An old friend of yours. William H. Duff.'
The initial haunted me but I couldn't think why just then.
'Bill? What was he doing around here in those wee hours?'
'Said he was looking for you. Wondering what you were up to. Said he'd found you out in the middle of the Swamp Ride a few hours earlier, snooping around with a flashlight.'
Ferris' voice turned casual.
'Any special little thing you were looking for, Thaxton?'
'Good old Bill,' I said. 'We should make a team.'
'I said-'
'I heard you. No, nothing special. Just working out an idea I had.'
Ferris spread himself with sarcasm.
'Oh, well, don't tell me about it. I'm only struggling on a mere murder case. The more information that's withheld from me the better I like it. Makes my little chore more interesting. Creates more of a challenge.'
I told him about my rowboat and lake theory.
He just grunted and nodded but I could see it appealed to him. I could also see that he felt like saying a dirty word because he hadn't thought of it himself. And I knew I was right when he went to the door and told one of his storm troopers to scout him up a map of the place.
'You were talking about how somebody else always finds the bodies before you do,' he said to me. Funny thing- that Jimmy Bently, the freckle-faced kid who found Cochrane's body? He's not around any more.'
'No? What happened to him?'
'Dunno. I wanted to check with him on some little point last night. So when I send a cop to go find him he comes back and says they say Bently up and quit yesterday. No notice, nothing. Just gone.'
Ferris hadn't decided to lead me by the ear to the nearest jail, so I was still a free agent. I should have been working at my shell stand but nobody around there seemed to take much notice of me one way or another, so I had something I wanted to do on my own.
I went over to the payroll office and asked for Freckles' home address. They didn't want to give it to me at first, but after a bit of con I convinced them I was a friend of his and owed him a sawbuck and I wanted to be certain he got it before he took off for parts unknown.
The address they forked over didn't mean a thing to me and a nice young thing explained to me that it was back in the pine woods near some swamp or other. Not far from Neverland.
I went around to the rear of the nautch show and knocked on the door and a raven-haired, sloe-eyed piece in bra and panties and highheels opened the door and stood there patiently while I filled up my eyes and then she asked, 'Finished?'
I said yes and thanked her and asked could I now see Billie for a minute?
'Billie! Man to see you. Better bring your boxing gloves.'
Billie was wearing the same next to nothing outfit except that she had a kimono over it. I told her I wanted to borrow her MG for a couple of hours.
'Date?' She said it kidding, but I could see she really wanted to know.
'Uh-uh. I want to look up one of the Swamp Ride ops who quit yesterday. Just an idea I'm playing around with.'
'You mean about the murders, Thax?'
'The law hasn't said it's plural yet, Billie. Terry might have had an accident, you know.'
'Sure, I know. But the word is already around that it wasn't an accident. That he was pushed.'
'Who's spreading the word? Bill Duff?' I was feeling mean and it must have showed. Billie gave me an odd look.
'Thax-what's wrong, honey? You act funny.'
I shrugged. 'Beats me. Though something's wrong all right, but I'm damned if I know what. At first it was pretty obvious that someone was out to make a patsy of May. But lately I've got the feeling that I'm being slowly pushed into a blind corner.'
'Wait for me,' Billie said 'I'll put on some clothes. I'm going with you.'
'What about your job?'
'What about it? I'm quitting, aren't I? To hell with 'em.'
I had a smoke while I waited for her. One of the rummy sweep-up men shuffled up and bummed one off me
