He didn’t reply at once. Then he said, very softly, “You and I have been friends too damn long for you to just shrug me off, Mike. You backed me up in a shoot-out twice and I damn well saved your ass when Gorcey had a gun in your neck and was going to blow your damn head off.”
There was something hanging in the air I couldn’t quite make out.
Finally I said, “Okay. So I owe you. You probably owe me, too, but forget that. I know you have good instincts. Hell, great instincts. But so do I. There’s more to this.”
“There is.”
“Then spit it out.”
Dave nodded slowly, then pushed his chair around with his good leg and stared out the window at the complex of buildings that sprawled out to the west.
His voice was distant as he said, “Remember that little teenage girl whose family got killed when Thaxton burned down his building to collect the insurance?”
“Sure. She was a sweet kid. Doris something, right? Doris Wilson? You had me enlist Velda to put her up for a month before you found somebody to take her in. Nobody back in those days on the department ever knew how much of a soft-hearted slob you really are.”
His head half-turned, then he looked back out the window. “Nobody else ever took her in, Mike. I gave her a place to stay, saw to it she stuck out school and made sure she had whatever she needed. Helen and I, we never had any kids, you know. We couldn’t.”
I let him talk. My gut told me where this going, though I prayed I was wrong.
“When Doris graduated, she went to business college and wound up with a job right here in Wilcox. Here at the plant.”
“Damn,” I said.
“We stayed close. And if your dirty mind is thinking I was anything more than a father figure to her, then screw you, Mr. Hammer. After Helen died, I never wanted another woman. Maybe I was still doing things for the kid we never had. It wasn’t any trouble. More like a pleasure. Taking this job here was sort of like coming home for Doris and me, you know what I mean?”
I nodded, but he didn’t see me.
“That’s why I called you,” he said.
I still didn’t say anything. Slowly, he swung around in his chair and got another photo from his desk. Something had happened to his face-it looked gaunt and tired now. He handed me the photo.
It was another crime-scene shot, this one of the girl on the beach with the nylon stocking around her neck and her eyes popping and her tongue bulged out and her body arranged in an obscene spread-eagle that made a mockery of her beauty.
I hadn’t seen her since she was a kid, but it was Doris, all right.
I stabbed my Lucky out. “It’s a damn shame,” I said. “But I barely knew this girl. I’m not saying this doesn’t make me sick to my soul, but I’m already on that other Sidon killing.”
“This is another Sidon killing, Mike. And I’m telling you with every fiber of cop instinct left in this fouled-up body of mine, it ties in. And you’re the one to settle the score.”
Softly, I said, “Me?”
Those pale blue eyes were as hard and cold as ball bearings, but with a flaming rage at their core so intense I could hardly meet them.
“You. You’ll do it because we’re friends. And you’ll do it because you’re as professional a cop as any could hope to be, but you aren’t hampered by rules and regulations.”
That wasn’t fair-he’d heard me say that often enough and now he was feeding it back to me.
“And, Mike-you’re the goddamnedest, most cold-blooded killer I have ever seen in my life. And… you’re good at it.”
I looked down at my hands and suddenly the weight of the. 45 under my left shoulder seemed a little too heavy. When I looked up my face felt tight.
“I’ve had judges tell me that more than once. I can’t say I liked it.”
He didn’t back off an inch. “Well, tough shinola, sport! Because it happens to be true. I know you. Any time you pull the trigger, you are in the right. The bleeding hearts will never understand people like us. So feel flattered instead of getting touchy about it. I’ve killed people too and never lost sleep over it.”
That was more than I could say.
“Anyway,” he said with an awful casualness, “you’re a killer, not a murderer… and murderers need killing. Somebody has to do it. And I am electing you.”
“If you didn’t have one leg I’d knock you on your ass,” I said, halfway meaning it. “Even you being an old man wouldn’t bother me any.”
“You’re the one going soft, Mike,” he said with a grin. “You should’ve done it already.”
“Soft my ass. You pull me in here by the short hairs and expect me to like it?” I slammed a fist on the beach photo. “I was around that nice kid for a month before you got her squared away, and I can remember back. You’re a bastard, Dave. Laying this crap on me.”
Those pale blue eyes watched mine again and he said, “Okay. Blow the whistle and cry foul. All I ask is, play your hand out in Sidon. If it ties in, it ties in. If it doesn’t, we’ll talk again, and maybe get you to look into these kills. Because if somebody doesn’t step in, there will be others, Mike.”
He was right-whoever had been behind that torture kill in the barn was not going to stop. The hunger of whatever sick sexual satisfaction he felt in expressing his power and savagery over these innocents would want feeding again, and again…
Outside, the sun was heading higher, throwing an orange glow on the tops of the buildings, sparkling off the trees behind them. I stood up and shoved on my hat.
“Okay, Dave.” I stopped halfway to the door. “But lay off on the cold-blooded killer stuff, okay?”
He leaned back in his chair and nodded solemnly. “Sure, Mike. We’ll let some sick bastard find it out for himself.”
Like Sidon, Wilcox counted on the tourist trade, but unlike its neighboring community, it had the look of a real, quietly prosperous town. A block of storefronts had attractive display windows with apartments above, all the buildings uniformly white brickwork with bright, shiny metal trim. And on the corner at the end of the business district was a two-story white-brick building with a fresh, post-war look and, over the entrance, big metal letters that spelled out
SUFFOLK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.
I parked the heap at the curb, went in, and walked up to a counter that kept civilians away from a busy bullpen of tan-uniformed officers. Despite Dave’s misgivings, this place had a professionalism that underscored the joke that the Sidon PD had become.
Behind the counter, a tall, slender but curvaceous policewoman rose from a desk to greet me. With her short dark hair and black-framed glasses, she seemed to be working at not looking attractive but not making it. Even the lack of lipstick and the disinterest in her eyes couldn’t dull her appeal. There was just something about a girl in uniform…
“My name is Mike Hammer. I’m a detective from New York City. Private operator working on a case. Is Sheriff Jackson in?”
“Well, Mr. Hammer, you obviously don’t have an appointment with the sheriff. I can check his book. He might be available this afternoon.”
“What time do you get off for lunch?”
That flustered her. “Uh, what do you mean?”
“I mean what time do you get off for lunch. If I have to kill a few hours in your lovely burg, I might as well pass them pleasantly. A nice long lunch with you would make the time just fly. You know the town and I don’t. Where shall we go?”
“Let me check with the sheriff,” she said, and she didn’t mean about her lunch hour. Her cheeks were flushed as she reached for the phone. Somebody needed to tell her she could be a professional without trading in her
