“Oh, that,” Gus said. “Sure. Hand over the gun.”
One hour and thirty minutes later, Gus and Lieutenant Bradshaw, a college trained cop who looked like a stevedore, came out of Bradshaw’s office and crossed toward the main desk in the precinct station-house.
Instead of coffee at the bus station, Gus had shared a thermos with Bradshaw after the robber was booked.
“Gus,” Bradshaw gave his head a wry shake, “I don’t know about you. I just don’t know. Maybe we ought to lift your license.”
“On what grounds?”
“Or swear you in as an official member of the police force.”
“Not me,” Gus said. “You guys go around with your lives in your hands. Anyhow, I’d make a lousy cop. I’m a hackie, Lieutenant. Even Gerata is resigned to that fact of life.”
They bellied up to the main desk. The lean young desk sergeant lifted a sandy brow.
“This is getting to be a habit,” he said. He lifted the petty cash box and set it on the desk top.
“That’s right,” Bradshaw agreed. “Gus has brought in four of them in the past two months I guess those darts really sting driven in at least an inch and smeared with that concoction of molasses, salt, iodine, and raw alcohol.”
“What’s the tab, Gus?” The desk sergeant opened Petty Cash.
“From a point on Fielding to the stationhouse, the meter says a buck-eighty,” Gus said. “But don’t forget the tip.”
The Dead Survive
by Charles W. Runyon
The reader should be warned: “The Dead Survive”, the first in our new series, A “DIFFERENT” STORY, is more than a detective tale: in it a young lawyer calls on the services of a strange society and works with their female representative to solve a startling mystery. It is a tale to make your spine tingle, for it is a tale of exorcism and vampirism, a dread tale brought into vivid reality by the extraordinary talents of its author, a truly “different” story!
I
I knew she wasn’t a Gubb’s Knob product. Straight ash-blonde hair combed back from her forehead, long graceful fingers curving around her coffee cup. The pale arch of her eyebrows told me her color was real and not something brewed up in Sadi’s Beauty Saloon.
She sat with her spine straight, legs crossed under the table, powder blue skirt hitting her about eight inches above the knee. She smoked and gazed through the plate-glass window beside the booth, though there wasn’t much to see except a half-dozen cars parked on the asphalt strip outside the motel. Diesel rigs blared past on the two-lane highway, interspersed by an occasional farm truck with an aluminum camper shell mounted on the back. On the river bottom beyond the road, rows of dry broken cornstalks converged to the point of infinity.
Gubb’s knob is country.
I walked into the steamy warmth, through the brewed coffee smell. Standing beside her booth I asked: “Are you Ann Valery?”
She raised her eyes — a dark clouded blue, like some northern ocean. She wore no wedding ring, only a blue sapphire of about four carats surrounded by seven white diamonds. Her nose was thin, narrow, patrician.
“Who are you?”
“Fred Bagram. I called your society—”
“About a man who returned from the dead, right?”
Her voice was calm and conversational, but her words seemed to echo through the place like a Chinese gong. I glanced quickly around: a truckdriver was shoving pie into his face, a salesman scribbled in his order book, Goldie was throwing cups under the counter.
I slid into the seat and leaned across the table. “Tell me, have you ever known of anybody surviving death?”
“An authenticated case? Never.”
“But you think it could happen?”
“In the nature of things, all is possible. But this is one of the least possible.”
“Why do you say that?”
Ann Valery lit another cigaret, clicking a tiny gold lighter with an enameled coat-of-arms welded on its front. “I’d rather not speculate. Why don’t you tell me what you know?” “First I have to know how much your society charges. Since I’m alone in this—”
“The society is merely an information center supported by people like myself. Some charge for services. I don’t.”
“That’s good. I mean, that you give your time.”
“It’s good that I don’t have to waste it on neurotics looking for attention. You’re not one of those, so,” Ann shrugged, “speak. I’m listening.”
I looked out the window, trying to think of a way to begin. My reflection bounced off the glass-square face, blunt features, curly brown hair with thick eyebrows almost meeting across the bridge of my nose. My cheeks were clean-shaven and glossy in the pale light.
“His name’s Robert George. Real-estate agent, heavy drinker, skirt-chaser, mid-thirties, normal in all respects. He had a trailer parked on some property south of town, he used to go there when he got drunk. His old lady, Eunice, had a habit of throwing dishwater on him when he passed out at home. About a month ago his trailer burned down with him inside it. His hair wasn’t even singed.”
“How do you know he was inside?”
“I watched it burn.”
Her brows went up a fraction of an inch. “How well do you know the... non-deceased?”
“We’ve been close friends for years. I’m his lawyer. We hunt and fish together when he isn’t on the bottle.”
“Do you drink?”
“Occasionally. But I wasn’t drinking that day.”
“Please go on. Tell me what you saw.”
“Well, he was on the tail-end of a two week bender, and I drove out to his trailer to see if he was ready to rejoin society. The trailer sits in an open field, hear the edge of the national forest. No houses within a couple of miles. I saw black smoke boiling up from a mile away. When I pulled into the drive the flames were whipping up to the treetops. My hair sizzled before I got within thirty feet of the trailer.
“I wrapped my coat around my head and tried to get closer, but my shirt started smouldering I had to stand back and watch it burn. The steel frame twisted like burnt matches. The aluminum siding peeled off and I saw Robert George’s body lying on the bed. There was heat-warp and smoke but I saw him clearly, believe me.”
“What did you do then?”
“I drove to a service station about three miles away and called the sheriff. Then I drove back to the trailer. Robert George was sitting on a rock, staring at the smoking ruins, I couldn’t believe it. Robert couldn’t remember anything. He didn’t even know what day it was. The sheriff came roaring in and saw Robert sitting there and really blew his screw. He figured we were both drunk and putting him on. Said he’d throw us in jail if we pulled anything like that again. Then he left.”
“And that was a month ago?”
“Yes. Since then I’ve gotten very little sleep. Because I saw and yet I know that crazy people are also sure of what they see.”
I looked down, twisting the gold masonic ring on my little finger. I realized that my hands had been in constant motion while I talked, clenching, flexing, gesturing.
Ann reached out and put her cool hand on mine, looked at me with her smokey blue eyes, and said, “You’re no more crazy than the rest of us, Fred. Can I see the site of the fire?”
II
Nothing remained but a flat slab of blackened concrete, a double axle and wheel rims with the tires burned off, twisted sheets of gray flaking aluminum, a warped metal sink and a tangle of copper tubing.
Ann Valery walked around with her hands in the pockets of her beige carcoat, scraping at the cindery grit with the edge of her brown oxford. She stamped the slab and tilted her head in a listening pose.