“Put the earplug on the radio,” I said. “We don’t want that thing squawking and giving us away.”
“Right.”
We went up to the front door, and I rang the bell. Carmen Willowby opened it, without turning on the porch lights. “Anything unusual going on out there?” she inquired.
“Not yet,” I said. “Have you got the key?”
She dropped it in my hand.
“How’s Melinda taking all this?” I asked.
“She keeps asking why you’re so certain the prowler is coming back. When are you going to explain it to her?”
“Just as soon as we have Bill Salyers under wraps,” I said. “Keep the door locked. We’ll let you know when it’s all over.”
The door closed, and the latch clicked.
“Okay, Walts,” I said. “It’s time to visit the rats.”
“Rats?”
“Only little ones.”
We went around behind the house, and I unlocked the basement door. Walts had to stoop to go inside.
I played my flashlight around the dark interior, the center of which was dominated by a sprawling oil furnace. There were bundles of tied-up newspapers and old magazines, shelves of dusty Mason jars and flower pots, and all the other normal refuse that tends to accumulate in a disused cellar.
I pulled a chain hanging from an upstairs floor joist, and the damp basement was bathed in the feeble glow of a forty-watt bulb.
“You’ll have to keep the light out,” I said.
Walts was cautiously probing the dark corners with the beam of his flashlight. He had armed himself with a broom handle.
I hunted up some twine which I tied to the end of the light chain. This allowed Deputy Walts to take a position on a bundle of Life magazines stacked against the far wall, and to turn the light on without moving.
“There you go,” I said. “All comfy?”
If looks could kill, the citizens of Constantine County would have been looking for a new sheriff.
I left the basement, padlocking the door behind me, and pulled a folding lawn chair over among the bushes, where I sat down to wait.
It must have been about forty degrees out, and very damp. I snapped the collar of my coat shut. It was going to be a very long night.
“Sheriff Bigelow?” Walts’ voice came faintly through the earplug. “Sheriff Bigelow?”
I unclipped the radio from my belt, and held it close to my lips. “Yeah? What is it?”
“How long has it been?”
I glanced at the glowing dial of my watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes?” There was a pause. “Jesus — it seems like an hour.”
“Just keep quiet and listen.”
I was getting damned cold. My knees were shaking. I stood up, keeping to the shadows, and shuffled around to keep the old circulation going. At least Walts was warm. I wished I’d thought to bring a thermos of coffee.
I glanced at my watch again, noting that an hour had finally crept by. In the house, the lights downstairs went off. A few minutes later the upstairs lights went out as well. Carmen was doing a good job of keeping up an appearance of normality.
I sat back down.
Two hours. The moon had risen, casting ghostly shadows over the yard. My shoes were wet with cold dew, and my knees had developed a will of their own. The radio had been silent since Walts had last called, save for occasional police transmissions originating from beyond Constantine County.
I suspected that Walts had dozed off in his corner of the basement.
Suddenly there was a familiar voice: “This is Mecklin, calling Sheriff Bigelow. Over.” It was Bernice, our night-shift radio dispatcher. “This is Mecklin. You out there, sheriff? Over.”
I put the walkie-talkie to my lips, not expecting much. The signal from our base station back in Mecklin was weak enough, and my own radio only put out a meagre five watts.
“This is Sheriff Bigelow. Over.”
“That you, sheriff? I can hardly make you out.”
“This is Bigelow. You’re coming through very faintly. Over.”
I cranked the volume up all the way.
“YOU WANTED SOMETHING, SHERIFF?”
It was Walts, in the basement twenty feet away, who had nearly broken my eardrum.
“Keep quiet, Walts!” I whispered fiercely. “I’m trying to talk to Bernice.”
“SORRY.”
Bernice’s voice was fading in and out now, punctuated by bursts of static: “Sheriff? I’m not copying you. If you can hear me, I just wanted to pass this on. We had a DOA a while ago at County General. Doc McIlroy said to tell you it looks like a homicide. He said...” There was a pop and a hiss, then: “... had been dead three or four hours. He was found in a motel room. Doc said to tell you the driver’s license on the body...” Bernice’s voice faded completely away.
“Say again?”
“Doc said to tell you the body has been positively identified as Bill Salyers.”
Damn. Walts and I were lying in wait for a dead man.
“Thanks, Bernice,” I said.
Walts, with his radio below ground level, would have heard only my half of the conversation. I hastily turned down the volume control, beating him by only an instant.
“What’s up, sheriff?”
“I was talking to Bernice. It seems Bill Salyers has gotten himself murdered.”
From somewhere out in the darkness, there came a sharp metallic snap.
“So what are we waiting around here for?” Walts asked.
“Quiet!” I whispered. “I think I heard something.”
A moment passed as I listened intently for an unusual noise. The house and yard remained deathly quiet, save for the rustle of dry leaves in the wind. Then, just as I’d decided there was nothing amiss, there came the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.
It had seemed to come from somewhere around toward the front.
I noticed that my hand was on the butt of my .38, and that I had unconsciously unsnapped the holster. I clipped the radio to my belt, leaving the earplug in my ear, and took my flashlight in my left hand.
I hurried along the side of the house toward the edge of the front porch, and stood listening from just around the corner. A cut telephone wire hung limply at my elbow, slowly twisting in the wind. I pressed my back to the wall and brought my revolver to the ready.
There was utter silence.
Crouching low, I cautiously peered around the corner. The porch was bathed in moonlight. There was no one.
I went around to the front and climbed the steps.
I flicked on my flashlight. Someone had stuck tape across a pane of glass in the front door, then neatly knocked it out.
There was a tiny voice in my ear. “Sheriff Bigelow?” It was Walts. “Sheriff? I think I hear someone moving around upstairs.”
Oh hell. I reached down to shut off the radio, opened the front door, and went inside.
In police work, there’s really no such thing as a controlled situation.
I crossed the unlit foyer, entered the darkened parlor, and stopped at the base of the stairway. There were muffled voices overhead. One was that of Carmen Willowby. I couldn’t make out the words, but there was a note of fear in her voice.
A door opened at the top of the stairs, and light streaming down from the room beyond cast the elongated shadows of two figures across the floor in front of me. I ducked back into the darkness just as the top stair creaked.
They reached the bottom of the stairway. Carmen was in front, her face catching the faint light of the moon that spilled in through the lace-curtained windows. A figure pressed close behind her, drawing her head roughly back by a fistful of blonde hair.
There was a steely glint at her throat.
The blade of a knife.