the hallway forced on me. If somebody peeked out of that room, I’d have no place to hide. I started walking on tiptoe.
When I got close enough to make sense of the words being spoken, I stopped and listened.
“You weren’t her friends. You said you were. But you lied. I was the only real friend she had. I tried to let it go. I took long trips to try and forget about it. I wanted to get on with my life, but I couldn’t. Then when her birthday came this year-
“I took care of Bennett and Davenport. I would’ve taken care of Raines, too, but the law got to him first.” Then: “You’re going to open that safe for me and you’re going to do it right now.”
I still couldn’t identify him. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t put a name or a face to it. Not anybody I knew well.
A closet door on my right was open a few inches. Glancing inside, I saw her slumped against the wall. The gray maid’s uniform was distinctive.
I jammed the. 38 back down into my beltline and then tended to her as best I could.
This was used as a storage closet. Boxes lined the opposing walls. The center where she lay was open.
I knelt down next to her. When I touched her wrist, her eyes opened. I put a finger to my lips and shook my head. Recognition showed in the blue eyes. The smells were a mixture of perfume, talcum powder, and blood. Her pulse was stronger than I’d expected. She started to sit up, but her body spasmed with pain. She started to fall back against the wall, but I grabbed her before she hit. She didn’t need any more pain, and neither of us needed any noise. I still didn’t know who was ranting on in the living room.
She exhaled in a shaky burst, then began searching her skull with trained careful fingers. She found the wound. When she took her fingers away, they were stained with blood. She examined them without any emotion I could see, like a nurse assessing a patient’s injury. She scowled then. Anger. Good. Right now, that was the most appropriate emotion of all.
We reverted to pantomime. I jabbed my finger in the direction of the kitchen. She gave a slight nod. Even that caused her to wince. I pantomimed standing up. She gave me a shrug. Maybe, maybe not. I got to my feet and then reached down and took her hand. The flesh was callussed and very cold. We started her long, painful trip upward. She rose by a few inches at a time. When she was halfway up, she started to slump against the wall. I got my arm around her waist to steady her and kept it there for the rest of the journey. She was a thin woman of maybe fifty. I’d made the mistake of thinking she was frail. But as she rose, I could feel her strength pushing against the damage that had been done to her head and her senses. There were a lot of prairie people like her. They’d brought their strength out here from the East. Without that kind of backbone, they would never have survived the daily perils of the frontier.
I let her lean against me as we shuffled into the hallway. The man in the living room was still ranting. And ranting it was, a fuming harangue about how they’d betrayed Karen. The words filled the hall. I thought of the Boris Karloff picture Bedlam and how the asylum inmates screamed threats and curses as they flung themselves against the bars of their cages.
We had to stop halfway to the kitchen because she thought she was going to be sick. But she raised her head and opened her mouth, taking in gulps of air. She clutched my arm as she did this. The tough grasp got even tougher for a moment. Then she exhaled and took a step forward. We moved slowly on to the kitchen.
I got her seated in the breakfast nook and went to get her a glass of water. As she took her first sips, I yanked the. 38 from my belt. She’d been looking at it. I spoke in a voice a bit higher than a whisper.
“What happened?”
She set the glass down and wiped her mouth with her fingers, leaving a ghost of blood on her lower lip. “Mrs. Raines and William and Lynn Shanlon were in the living room talking about everything that had happened lately. They were wondering who killed Mr. Bennett and Roy Davenport. Lynn said all this had to have something to do with her sister’s murder. That’s what she called it this time. Murder. Somebody rang the front bell, and I opened the door and it was a man with a gun. He was standing right next to me when you called. He kept pushing the gun into my back. Then he knocked me out and put me in the closet.”
“Do you know him?”
“No. I’d never seen him before. But he looked-insane. Very crazy. His face. Even without his gun, he would have scared me.”
“So he’s got all three of them in the living room?”
Her answer was to grab the edge of the table for support. Her face had gone pale and her blue eyes had dimmed. I’d estimated her age at fifty. Right now she looked seventy.
“I think I need to see a doctor.”
“I think you’re right.” I was up and getting her more water. She’d drained the first glass. “Is there any whiskey around in the kitchen?”
“That’s all right. I can’t stand the stuff anyway.” She rested her head against the back of the nook. She closed her eyes. I brought her water to her. Her breathing came in torrents.
I didn’t sit down again. “I’m going to see what I can do in the living room. I’d call the police but I don’t know what he’d do if he heard a siren.”
“He’s insane, I know that much. I told you about his eyes.”
Put my hand on her shoulder. “You just rest.”
She patted my hand. She still hadn’t opened her eyes. “You be careful.”
The lunacy in his voice was compelling. He was like a deranged Pied Piper. By the time I reached midpoint in the hallway, I realized what he wanted. If he had all the money in Lou’s safe, he would be able to flee. And he would let them live. Well, that was bullshit, and I knew they knew that was bullshit. As soon as he got his money, they’d all be dead.
Linda’s voice was calm. “I’ve told you, Jimmy, I don’t have the combination. You don’t know anything about my father if you think he’d trust anybody with it.”
“Then the colored fellow here, he knows it.”
William Hughes’s voice was steady, too. “We’ve been over and over this, Mr. Adair. Mr. Bennett would never give that combination to anybody. And I mean anybody. He wasn’t what you’d call trusting.”
Jimmy Adair, Lynn’s next-door neighbor.
“You wouldn’t even help your own sister, Lynn. You would’ve let them get by with it. That’s why I had to step in.”
He was jumping subjects. When he spoke to Lynn, his voice went up an octave and the madness was clearer.
Lynn wasn’t as calm as Linda or Hughes. She sounded as if she was ready to snap. “You killed two people, Jimmy. You think that’s what Karen would have done? You killed two people for nothing. It didn’t bring her back, did it? And now you’re going to kill us. You need help, Jimmy. Even if you had money, you’re in no condition to get away. You’re-upset. You’re not thinking clearly.” Then, “William and I spent most of the day talking to a fire investigator in Cedar Rapids. We wanted him to go over the whole report again, see if we could get the investigation reopened. William and I never believed that fire was accidental. That’s what Karen would have wanted us to do-not kill people.”
“I killed the people who killed her-why is that so hard to understand?” His voice cracked; tears rattled his words. “I loved her. If she’d lived, I would’ve asked her to marry me. And she would have, too.” He turned to Linda. “Your father took away the one woman I ever really loved, so I figure he owes me-that’s why I want every dollar in the safe. Every single dollar. Then I’m leaving this town and never coming back.”
They didn’t dare argue with him. Not when he was in the midst of his frenzied fantasy.
The gun blast was so loud, I felt it as well as heard it. And almost directly on top of the blast, I heard a grunt and then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. And on top of that came Lynn’s shriek and Linda’s sob. Linda cried: “You killed him! You killed him!”
“He shouldn’t have thrown that ashtray at me. He was stupid.”
Hughes, a military man, had waited for what he considered his best opportunity. He’d taken the calculated risk of trying to injure or at least distract Adair. Then he would rush in and tackle him. It had been a long, long shot. But it was preferable to just sitting there listening to the madman as he worked himself into the kind of rage it would take to slaughter three people.
In the confusion of screams and shrieks, I was able to run the rest of the way down the hall without being
