Helen held up the market bag, by its brown-twine handle. “Recognize those brown fibers that clung to the oilcloth, Jerry? From this twine. Goes through the bottom of the bag to give it strength. She used this to carry... them... in.”
“Yair. Yair. That’s why she had to axe them in small hunks. So she could carry the pieces out of here and down to the wharf, without being conspicuous!” He went over, hauled the girl to her feet. “Or maybe it’s you just like cutting up people. Like Agousti.”
Vanya touched the wound in Stefan’s neck, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Stefan went to... see Agousti. I know nothing of that.”
“Don’t, eh? Then it won’t be your prints on that stem-cutter or the doorknob downstairs, eh? You didn’t decide Agousti’d have to be shut up before he prevented your getaway, then?”
Mrs. Kalvak looked up at him. There was murder in her eyes.
Helen hurried to the front room. “I’m going to call the wrecking crew, to take over here.”
“I’ve had all of this I want,” Teccard agreed. “And I’ll sure be glad when you don’t have to muck around in this kind of slop.”
“Man works from sun to sun,” the sergeant twiddled the dial, “but woman’s work is never done. In the police department.”
“Far as that goes,” he got out his twisters, “one cop is enough... in any one family. Don’t you think?”
A Breath of Suspicion
G-Men Detective, July 1948
It really was one devil of a night, “Demon” Ames told himself bitterly. Stinging cold, pitch black — with a gale from the Adirondacks to whip freezing rain off the lake with biting force. Just the kind of night a gun-crazy killer would pick to blast his way free from the Great Meadow pen.
Bad enough for the Demon himself to have to be out in this devil’s brew of sleet and slush — a lot worse for Minnie, his motorcycle, to be here with him. He should have come without her. The ole gal wasn’t used to this rugged exposure. It wouldn’t take much to lay her up for a few days. He patted her rear, consolingly.
“We’ll stick it out five minutes more, Minnie.” He pulled up the cuff of his sheep-lined jacket to glance at the radium dial on his wrist. “If we don’t pick up any scent by ten o’clock, we’ll scoot back to barracks. This Medini gunned his way out of that mess hall at suppertime. Say around six-thirty. Comstocks’ seventy-five miles south of here. If the creep is making his getaway in anything speedier’n an ox cart, he’d be long gone past Crown Point, hours ago.”
He broke an icicle off Minnie’s tail light; removed one leather mitten, warmed the lens to dissolve the film of sleet. Across the road, the three red flares he’d set out flickered fitfully in the gusts lashing westward from the Champlain bridge along NY 46 — died momentarily to thin scarlet tongues tasting the witches’ broth of swirling air, ice and water.
There’d been no traffic for his one-man road block to halt, anyhow, the last half-hour. It was too early for the big sixteen-wheelers thundering through freight up from the south — too late for stray vans or empty tank trucks to be rumbling down US 9 from Plattsburg up north. And nobody with sense enough to shift gears would be crossing the lake into Vermont in weather as foul as this.
The Demon would have put out the flares an hour ago, except his was the last road block between Comstock and the border. If Medini, by any combination of luck and ruthlessness, should get past this point, he might escape clear to Canada.
But the killer would figure the state troopers would expect him to make a dash for the line. Naturally he wouldn’t try to run the blockade by the most direct route. It was silly for the Demon to be freezing his whiskers like this, waiting for nothing. Even supposing Medini was heading this way, the Demon had no idea what the getaway car would look like. And not too much of a picture of Medini.
All the shortwave had given out was a staccato description: — Five-nine, hundred fifty, thirty years, black hair, dark eyes, narrow face, long nose, small mouth, olive skin, no scars, voice high and squeaky.
He wouldn’t be wearing any striped con suit by now, obviously. A hat would be covering that clipped prison haircut. Most likely he’d timed his break to synchronize with outside help, so there’d be somebody with him — maybe several somebodies. Trooper Demon Ames touched his holster by way of reassurance, but the odds were against his needing the .45 tonight.
The troop’s patrol at Whitehall, down at the foot of the lake, would use a fine-toothed comb on everything bigger’n a tricycle that tried to roll northward tonight.
The sheriff’s deputies from Glens Falls and the town constables at Ticonderoga would flag down everything that came their way in case the Whitehall check missed. There really wasn’t any sense in the Demon’s putting on this solo patrol at a godforsaken crossroads that even the Greyhounds avoided.
“It’s my own fat-headed fault, Minnie.” He revved her motor in apology; she answered with a surly backfire. “I know. I know. No trooper is required to take his motorcycle out in rain or snow, unless he volunteers to risk his skull. That’s what the book says.” He slapped mittens against puttees to beat blood into his chilled fingers.
“If I hadn’t been hellbent on squaring myself with the Cap, I’d be warming my feet back at barracks right now — waiting to go out on relief in one of those cozy patrol cars. Yeah. An’ you’d be toasting your mudguards against that big radiator in the garage.”
He pushed his goggles up under the brim of his pinseal cap to squint at distant yellow eyes which winked blurrily at the crest of the hill to the south.
There were no top lights; it wasn’t a truck. The eyes disappeared, took a count of seven to reappear after the dip. That meant the vehicle would be traveling about thirty-five. Probably some farmer bringing the family back from the movies at Ti.
Well, it would be a relief to talk to somebody besides Minnehaha. He’d welcome anything. Anything except another stolen heap that might get past him and give him another black mark in the Ole Man’s book.
Cap Matthews would reduce him to making up barrack bunks if he slipped up on another “Wanted” car. The blistering scorn of his superior still reddened the Demon’s ears. He could remember the Captain’s vitriolic remarks even if he couldn’t manage to memorize all the license numbers on the Hot List:
Called you the ‘Demon’ when you were burning up those motordromes, did they, Ames? Sizzling stuff in those pace races, huh? Hell on wheels stunting up those hill-climb tests? Maybe so, maybe so. But let me tell you something. You may be able to ride that Indian of yours over anything except a lake but you’ll still be a pain in the padukas in this troop unless you can speed up your gray matter when necessary.
“We need men who can remember from one day to the next that there’s an alarm out for a black ’46 Chevvy with Jersey pads and a crumpled left front wing. If you can’t keep the license numbers in mind, if you haven’t brains enough to check your list, we’ll give you a new name around these barracks, trooper. We won’t call you Demon. Around here you’ll answer to Dumb One, Ames.”
He’d been set to scrubbing down the patrol jeeps on account of letting that Chevvy get by him. Cap Matthews hadn’t even assigned him to a patrol unit when the news of this jail break at Comstock had flashed in on the shortwave. The Demon had taken a deep burn at that. When the last of the troop had grabbed Thompsons from the armory racks and piled into the cars, he’d protested angrily.