I checked every room. Sure, I was scared — any door I opened might mean I’d get what Dobleen got, but I opened them all. And they were all empty. In the garage, joined onto the house, there were two cars, a Ford and a Cadillac. But no killer. Then I found the back door open, and I realized my arrival must have driven him out the back.
And by now I knew what I was going to do — the only thing that was left to do. Run.
I had twenty dollars in my pocket and that’s all. I had to turn Vince Dobleen’s body over to get to his wallet, and I couldn’t help noticing how his hands were pressed flat and tight against his stomach — why, I don’t know, because he hadn’t been shot there.
There was a hundred and eighty dollars in the wallet.
And now I needed a car.
I took the Ford, because it’d attract less attention. I drove it out, closed the garage door, then I got out of there in a hurry.
4
I drove about a dozen blocks before I spotted the car following me. It looked like a big car, but that’s all I could tell with the headlights in my eyes. I made a couple of turns which were duplicated, and I knew for sure I was being tailed. Police? Then why didn’t they close in? I thought of trying to outrun them, but suppose it wasn’t the police? And that’s when I had a sudden hunch.
I stomped on the gas, stretched my lead out to more than a block before the other car started to close up again; then I skidded the Ford into a dark side street, hit the brakes, dove into the first driveway I came to, and cut the lights.
The other car came around the corner moments later, braked sharply as the driver saw the dark, empty street, and came almost to a stop. It was a Cadillac.
I gunned the Ford back into the street, shifted, gave the motor all it’d take; and in seconds I’d crowded in on the Cadillac, jamming on my brakes as fenders crashed and the bigger car was pinned against the curb. I was out and running the instant the Ford stopped; but the other driver was too fast for me. And he didn’t try to back up and circle the Ford; he poured on the gas, and that Cadillac’s big motor humped it right up over the curb. It skidded across a lawn, just missed a tree, gouged huge holes in a flowerbed without getting stuck, then was back in the street, roaring away.
I’d killed the Ford’s engine when I stopped, and now I flooded it. The starter ground for what seemed minutes — lights were popping on all over the neighborhood — then finally it caught, and I roared out of there myself.
The Cadillac had gotten away clean. But I’d gotten a good look at it — it was black, it had white sidewalled tires, and from the back fender rose the kind of antenna they have when there is a mobile telephone in the car — it was the Cadillac that had been in Vince Dobleen’s garage.
The killer must have been hidden in the gardens back of the house. When I left, he’d jumped into the Cadillac and followed me. Why, I couldn’t make the remotest guess. But I’d been so close to trapping him; if I’d only rammed him instead of — no use thinking about that.
I was ten miles out of town on a highway that would take me clear to New York if I stayed on it long enough, before something occurred to me.
This Ford. Vince Dobleen was the kind of guy who always put up a big front, he wanted the best of everything; and so far as I knew, he never drove anything but a Cadillac. I thought about that until finally I pulled into a side road between a couple of apple orchards, and switched on the interior light to look at the registration slip on the steering post.
It was registered to Joseph T. Rogers, 6127 Purfoy Road, Santa Caralita, California.
This wasn’t Dobleen’s car at all. Then what had it been doing in his garage with the keys in it? Could it be the killer’s car? I could feel the excitement coming up in me now. That would explain his following me.
I looked in the glove compartment and there was a flashlight, a pack of cigarettes, and an almost full box of .38 cartridges. I turned and looked in the back seat, and there was a tan pigskin brief case there. I opened it, looked, and my hands started to shake.
Listen, it looked like half the money in the world in there. My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly count it. If the figures written on the bands were correct, I had just under a quarter of a million bucks stacked on the front seat beside me.
“God Almighty!” I breathed.
Brother, I knew why Dobleen had been killed now. And I knew why the killer had trailed me. And I also knew the only reason I was still alive — the killer had given Dobleen the full clip in his face, and the gun had been empty when I walked in.
For a few seconds I felt good. I was off the hook, and Joseph T. Rogers was on. Then a thought chilled me. Suppose the car was stolen. Sure, I could hand over the money, but the cops might say that I’d just tried a clever move to make it look like I hadn’t killed Dobleen; and I’d be right back where I started.
I thought about that a long time before I started the car and drove back to Santa Caralita.
5
6127 Purfoy Road was on the beach, well out of the settled part of town, a lonely place where sand dunes hid all signs of neighbors, and the surf broke thunderously. In the blowing fog I could tell little about the house except that it was shabby and there were no lights in it.
I hesitated — if Rogers was the killer, he might be in there, and this time the gun might be loaded. But there was no car in front of the house. Finally I walked onto the rickety porch and knocked.
Nobody answered. I walked around the house and the windows were shut and fastened. I tried the back door, and it gave a little, like it might be held only by a flimsy bolt. I hesitated again, then I put my shoulder against it, and it opened with a mild complaint of screws pulling out of old wood. I stepped in then something stopped me stock still. The smell of boiling coffee.
And in the same instant a switch clicked, a ceiling light blinded me, then something socked me hard on the back of my head.
I was on my knees, staring stupidly at dirty linoleum; then this shadow moved on it, and I barely had sense enough to roll my head before another blow smashed into my neck muscles, half paralyzing my right shoulder and arm.
You never know where your strength comes from at a time like that. I guess it was instinct that made me somersault forward, twisting as I rolled, so that I wound up on my back with my feet between me and whoever was slugging me. The guy, his shape enormous against the ceiling light, was driving in again; but my feet caught him in the chest, driving him back and right up onto the top of the stove, yelling as the scalding coffee slopped on him.
I guess it was the coffee and the hot burner that gave me my chance. For a couple of seconds he wasn’t fighting anything but the coffee and the stove; and in that time I grabbed a foot, twisted with all my strength, and he rolled off the stove to land on his face. I dropped my knees into the small of his back, clubbed him at the base of the skull with my fist, and he went limp under me.
I rolled him over.
He was a big man, bigger than me, and he wore slacks and a sweater. He had sandy crew-cut hair and a big jaw; and the scar tissue around his eyes, the bent nose, crumpled ears all said he must have been a boxer at one time. But was he Joseph T. Rogers?
I rolled him back on his face, took the billfold out of his back pocket, and opened it. I looked and almost dropped it. The picture looking back at me from the I.D. card was his, and the card stated that he was Sergeant Chad Vednick, Santa Caralita Police.
Had he been staked out here, waiting for Rogers? No, they wouldn’t stake out just one man to catch a murderer. Besides it was hardly possible that Rogers had left any clues that would bring the police so directly to this place. It might be that Rogers was in some other trouble, but I sure wasn’t going to wait around to ask this cop.