“Why, Jake? Why don’t you want anyone to see me?”
“Never mind. I’ve got my reason. Will you do it the way I say?”
“Sure, Jake. If you say so.”
“Don’t forget, now. Promise?”
“Sure, Jake. I promise.”
He turned and started again, and I stood and watched him, watched his long, loping gait eat up the distance to Ivy and Gunner in the barn, and then I went on through the trees to the bank of the creek and sat down. I gathered a handful of pebbles and threw them one at a time into the dark green water, watching the little concentric circles move outward from the place where the pebble went in, and then, after the water had smoothed out, I lay back on the bank and closed my eyes and began to count, and I had counted a long way, I don’t remember how far except that it was a long way, when I heard Obie’s big clod-hoppers thumping the ground, and he came through the trees and sat beside me. He was breathing very hard. His breath was like a whinny in his nostrils.
Without opening my eyes, I said, “You get the fork, Obie?”
“Fork?”
“What’s the matter, Obie?”
He didn’t answer, and I guess he didn’t even hear me, but after a while he said more to himself than to me, “He oughtn’t to have done it. She oughtn’t to have let him.”
I knew then that it was both of them. I knew that he had seen what I’d sent him to see and that he’d done what I’d thought he might do. I couldn’t stand the sight of him sitting there crying, so I rolled over and buried my face in my arms, but I could still see him just the same, and I can still see him now, and I only wish they had, in the place where he is, a field where he could work under the hot sun with his big hands, and a creek where he could go when the work was finished.
The Red Tears
by Jonathan Craig
Mrs. Hallaby had heard a sound she was sure was a gunshot. It looked like just another timewaster — until the cops found the dead girl.
1
It had been one of the slowest mornings we’d had all summer. And one of the hottest. There were a couple of electric fans in the squad room, but they did little good. They kept the desk tops reasonably free of soot, and occasionally whipped a report across the room, and that was about all. It was Fred’s and my morning to grab telephone squeals, but the phone hadn’t rung once since eight A.M., when we’d come on duty. We’d put the time to good use, though, catching up on odds and ends of paper work.
Fred rolled a form into his Underwood and mopped at the back of his neck with a handkerchief.
“I know why we haven’t had any squeals this morning, Jake,” he said. “It’s just too damned hot. No self-respecting criminal would—”
And then, as if on cue, the phone did ring, and I grabbed it.
Fred grimaced. “Now watch that thing make a liar out of me.”
“Sergeant Thomas,” I said. “Eighteenth Squad.”
“I want to speak to the commissioner!” It was a woman’s voice, loud and very high-pitched, and obviously belonged to someone pretty well along in years. “Is this the commissioner’s office?”
“No, ma’am,” I told her. “You have the Eighteenth Precinct detective squad.”
“But I asked that other man for the commissioner. I distinctly told him I wanted—”
I switched the phone to the other hand and fished for a cigarette. “The commissioner is kind of tied up,” I said. “Maybe I can help you.”
“Who was that other man — the one I talked to first?”
“That was the desk officer.”
“Why didn’t he connect me with the commissioner?”
“If you’ll tell me what the trouble is, I’ll be glad to—”
“Well! The trouble is that someone has just been killed in the next apartment... Now will you connect me with the commissioner, young man, or shall I—”
I put the cigarette down on the edge of my desk and reached for a pencil. “How do you know someone’s been killed?”
“Because I heard a shot over there, that’s why. Now will you—”
“What’s your name and address?” I asked.
“Hallaby. Mrs. Edward Creighton Hallaby.”
“And the address, Mrs. Hallaby?”
“Nine-sixty-one West Fifty-fifth. Does that mean anything to you, young man?”
“We’ll be right over,” I said. “Nine-sixty-one.”
“No, no! I’m not referring to the address. I mean the name. Does the name Edward Creighton Hallaby mean anything to you?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “You’re home now, I take it?”
“Yes. Indeed I am. And now I can understand why I wasn’t routed directly to the commissioner. You must be very new to New York, young man, or the name Edward Creighton Hal—”
“We’ll be right over,” I said again, and hung up.
“What’ve we got?” Fred asked.
“Hard to say. Woman over on Fifty-fifth thinks she heard a shot in the next apartment.”
“Thinks? You means she sounded like a crackpot?”
I nodded. “Well, let’s check it out, Fred.” I lifted my jacket off the back of my chair and slipped it on, and then scrawled a message for the squad commander so he’d know where we were.
“Nothing like hot weather to bring out the crackpots,” Fred said. “It never fails.”
2
Nine-sixty-one West Fifty-fifth was an eight-story apartment house on the north side of the street. There was a small foyer with a row of mailboxes along one side and two self-service elevators on the other. We looked at the names under the mailboxes until we found Mrs. Hallaby’s apartment number, and then took one of the elevators up to the sixth floor.
Mrs. Hallaby opened the door at almost the same instant Fred pushed the buzzer. She was older than I’d guessed, somewhere between seventy and seventy-five, but she wore no glasses and her movements were quick and sure. She had alert blue eyes and a lot of white hair wound into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
“I’m Sergeant Thomas, Mrs. Hallaby,” I said. “This is Detective Spence.”
She bobbed her head about an inch to each of us. “And the name Edward Creighton Hallaby — it still means nothing to you, I suppose?”
I shook my head. “Which apartment did the shot come from?”
She indicated the apartment to the right of her own. There were only three apartment doors on this floor, Mrs. Hallaby’s and the ones at either side of it. The other side of the hall had a row of windows opening on an air shaft.
“These apartments have back doors?” I asked.
“No, they don’t. Why do you ask?”
“Because we’d want to cover both doors, if there was more than one.”
“When’d you hear the shot?” Fred asked.
“Why, just a few seconds before I called. I dialed the operator and asked for the police, and she—”
“We’ll be back to talk to you,” I said. “Come on, Fred.”
We walked down to the next apartment. Fred stood on one side of the door while I stood on the other. I knocked. There was no answer, and after a moment I knocked again.
“Police officers!” Fred yelled. “Open up!”
There wasn’t a sound. I glanced at Fred and shrugged. “You’re a better burglar than I am,” I said. “See if you can make that lock.”
He took a strip of celluloid from his billfold, inserted it in the crack between the door and the jamb, and moved it up and down until he located the tongue of the lock. Then he positioned the celluloid against the bevel of the tongue and pushed firmly, meanwhile twisting the knob with his other hand. The entire operation took, perhaps, ten seconds, and then the bolt snapped back and the door swung inward.