separated from his luggage, he’d still have plenty of money.
He considered Rudd awhile, and then decided to leave him there and do nothing further to him. What was the point, anyway? No one else would be coming along, not for a while. And there was no need to kill this man Rudd; he wasn’t a threat. None of them were threats, only the leader, the one who’d been living with Ellen. He would follow to the ends of the earth. Yes, but kill him, and the others would all slink off like whipped dogs.
He made two trips down to the car, carrying the suitcases. The second time, he carefully locked the room door behind him. Goodbye, room. He wouldn’t be coming back to that place.
He drove the Ford out 12N, as Rudd had told him, and eventually saw Vimorama on the right. Seeing it, he felt his first moment of doubt; it really did look deserted. But then, going by, staring at the place, he caught a glimpse of a car parked way in the back, behind all the cabins. So Rudd hadn’t been lying.
He couldn’t have been lying, not by then.
He let the Ford glide on by Vimorama and stopped about a quarter mile farther down the road, where there was parking space along the verge. He walked back, feeling the guns in his pockets. The gun he’d been using up till now had only five bullets left in it, as he’d learned when he finally figured out how to get the clip out of the butt. Rudd had been carrying a gun too, a different kind, what they called a revolver. It held eight bullets and was fully loaded. With two guns now, bolstered by the feeling of strength and power, he strode rapidly back down the road toward Vimorama.
Ahead, he saw an old Pontiac take the turn, drive in past the Vimorama sign. He quickened his pace.
There was a gas station on the left, and then a bit of woods before Vimorama began. He walked past the gas station and then plunged into the woods.
The trees were tall old pines, widely separated. A rust-brown mat of dead pine needles covered the ground. It was dark in under the trees, and all sounds were muffled. He took the automatic out of his right-hand topcoat pocket and walked along peering and searching, frightened in spite of himself.
The Vimorama cabins were off to his right. He turned that way and came out from under the trees, and ahead of him were the cabins and people. A short man directly in front of him, maybe ten yards away, was facing the other way. Beyond him, possibly twenty yards farther on, walking along the gravel driveway, were two tall men, and the one on the far side was the leader, the one he wanted.
They were all shouting at each other, and he suddenly saw he was coming into the middle of a situation he didn’t fully understand. The short man had a gun in his hand, and all at once he started shooting at the leader and the other one. The leader ducked away and the other one fell to the ground.
Was the short man on his side? He came running forward, shouting, ‘Get him! Get that tall one!’
The short man spun around, open-mouthed, and fired again.
At him!
He yelled and dove away, rolling the way he’d learned in college, bringing up at last behind a cabin, lying there awhile quivering with fear and rage.
He was enraged at everybody, but mostly at himself. It had happened again, as it always happened, as he knew it always would happen. A gun was fired at him, and he reacted with blind instinctive panic. He lost precious seconds, lost advantages, lost control of situations, only because of this stupid panic, and it hit him every single time.
Out of sight, the shooting was still going on. He crept around the other way, trying to see without being seen, hoping there would be some way to come up on everybody’s flank. The shooting was sporadic, it almost sounded half-hearted in comparison with movie soundtracks, and it seemed to be moving here and there all around the cabins.
He came around the corner of the cabin and there ahead of him, looming in a cabin doorway like a Scandinavian god, was a huge naked blond man wearing nothing but a gun.
Everyone, had guns.
He fired first this time, three shots from the automatic, and the naked man bounced backward into the doorframe and then jacknifed forward and sprawled out on the gravel.
Shooting. Shooting.
It sounded like it was all at him.
He turned and ran.
He ran through the woods and across the gas station blacktop as the attendant there gaped open-mouthed at him, and ran full tilt along the road until he came to the Ford again. He pulled open the door on the passenger side because chat was the side he came to first, and something hit the inside of the door and made a shock wave run up his arm, and a second later he heard the sound of the shot behind him.
He didn’t even look back to see who was shooting at him. The woods were to his right. Leaving the car door open, he turned away and went crashing and blundering in among the trees.
Detective Dougherty could smell it in the air. Tension. Something was about to pop.
His original list of nine names had been expanded by now, and the men still working on the Canaday case reported chat almost everyone they talked to had already been questioned by someone claiming to be from a polltaking company. The descriptions of the pollster varied too widely to be just the normal bad memory of the civilian witness; there had to be more than one man doing the questioning.
The man who called himself Joe had friends with him, then. The others involved in the robbery at the stadium? But why would they stick their necks out for him?
Unless what Joe was looking for was more than his own share of the loot. Unless the Canaday killer had the whole bundle.
Dougherty could think of no other explanation. The man who had murdered Ellen Canaday had also walked off with the entire proceeds from last Saturday’s robbery. Five to eight men had been involved in that robbery, according to the best estimates they could work up, and undoubtedly all of them were still in the city, looking for the murderer of Ellen Canaday.
