The inspector, when he’d told him, said: “We’d better get over there in a hurry, see that he’s turned out. Always can pick him up again later.”
“Not always,” thought O’Dare bitterly. And the next time he’d have a whole battery of legal talent short-stopping him. This wasn’t the way to bring her back, anyway. He’d never be able to look her in the face again if he let himself be blackmailed into— He went running down the stairs after the inspector, sprinted for the running-board; they didn’t say anything. He was a man before he was a cop, after all.
Benuto was in the basement of an out-of-the-way suburban precinct-house, where they rarely handled anything more than traffic violations. If they’d begun sweating him already, he didn’t look it; sat there glowering in the corner on a stool. He was, they admitted to the inspector, a hard nut to crack. They hadn’t gotten anywhere much.
“His crowd are holding this man’s wife, we have reason to believe,” the inspector said. “Afraid we’ll have to pull in our horns for the time being.”
“Lemme talk to him,” O’Dare pleaded. “Lemme talk to him alone! Lemme just find out where they’ve got her! Gimme a break.”
The inspector nodded. One of the dicks took the precaution of slipping O’Dare’s gun out of its holster first, then they let him go in there by himself. He closed the door. The walls were thick down in that basement. That was why they brought suspects down there for questioning. They couldn’t hear a sound for awhile. In about ten minutes O’Dare stuck his disheveled-head out and asked for the loan of a fountain-pen. One of the dicks passed him his.
“You mean you’re getting him to sign?”
“I’m not asking him about the murder,” O’Dare said quietly. “Just my wife, now.” He went in again. When he came out a second time he was wiping off the gold nib of the pen by pinching it between his fingers. He returned it to the lender. Beyond him, in the murky room, Benuto lay on the floor in a dead faint. Ink discolored his fingernails, there was a purple blob of it in underneath each one. It was O’Dare, not he, who was doing the shaking, as though it had been pretty much of a strain.
Three pairs of eyes sought his questioningly.
“He told me,” he said very low, and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “They’ve got her in a refrigerating-plant out at Brierfield. He told them to take her there, in case he was picked up.”
“How d’ya know he told you the truth?” one of them said, which was just the dick in him being superior to a mere cop in matters of this kind.
“I let him tell me three times before I paid any attention,” O’Dare explained simply. “Three times running it must be the truth; his brain was too busy blowing out fuses to think up a stall, anyway. I read about some Japs doing that, only yesterday in the paper. Gimme back my gun,” he wound up somberly, “I’m going over there and get her back.”
“We’ll get her back for you,” one of the dicks promised, “now that we know where—”
“I’ll do my own getting back.” O’Dare’s voice rose. “Gimme back my gun. I’m facing suspension anyway, for going off my beat while on duty. Don’t try to stop me, any of you; I’m going, with my gun or without it—!”
“We’re not trying to stop you,” the inspector said. “Give him his gun. Go with him, McKee. The rest of us’ll follow. Wait there out of sight for further orders, you two. Don’t make a move until we size the place up. This woman’s life is at stake.”
“And we’ve got thirty-five minutes,” O’Dare said bitterly.
Brierfield lay across the river — which made it an interstate death-penalty kidnaping and put her in just that much more jeopardy of her life. Since they got top prices whether they killed her or not, there was every inducement for them to do away with her rather than be caught with the goods. O’Dare was cursing the day they were born.
McKee ran the car out along the river-drive, with its siren cut off; past the stony cliff-dwellings where Benuto himself lived and had been picked up, past the desolate ash-dumps further on that were the rewards of demotion on the force. They crossed the interstate bridge, slithered through four o’clock, dead-to-the-world, downtown Brierfield, which was just a little annex to the Big Town, and came out beyond in a barren region of scattered breweries, warehouses, and packing-plants. The side-streets quit but the main highway ran on. McKee slowed a little, doused the lights. They skimmed along like a little mechanical metal beetle over the macadam. “They coming?” he asked.
O’Dare wasn’t interested, didn’t even bother looking to see. “Acme Refrigerating Plant it’s called,” he said. “Keep watching. He owns it — one of his lousy rackets.”
McKee slowed to a crawl as the outline of a sprawling concrete structure up ahead began topping a rise of the road. A single dreary arc-light shining down on the highway, bleached one side of it; the rest was just a black cut-out against the equally-black night-sky. Stenciled lettering ran the length of the side that faced the highroad, but too foreshortened by the angle at which they were looking to be decipherable. McKee went over to the side with a neat little loop of the wheel, stopped dead — and soundlessly. O’Dare gestured to him, got out, went up ahead to look. “Keep out of that arc-light,” McKee whispered.
The cop came back again in a minute. “Sure,” he said. “I can make out the first two letters, A and C, and that’s enough.” He looked back the other way, for the first time. “What’d they do, lose their way?”
McKee got out, eased the car-door closed after him. O’Dare couldn’t stand still, took his gun out, put it away, took it out, put it away. “What time y’got?” he almost whimpered. Not a moving thing showed on the long arc-lit ribbon of road they had come over.
McKee hadn’t been there when the phone-call was made to O’Dare. “Five after four,” he answered incautiously.
“Damn them! They’ll kill her!” the agonized cop rasped out. He meant the strangely-delayed follow-up party. He lurched away from the car, struck out alone toward the ominously-quiet building up ahead.
“Hey! Wait!” McKee hissed after him desperately, “Don’t do that, you fool—!” He took a quick step after him, grabbed him, tried to haul him back to the car. They had a brief, wordless struggle there by the roadside, gravel spitting out from under their scuffling shoes. O’Dare, crazed, swung out with all his might at the dick. The blow caught him on the under-side of the jaw. McKee went down, sprawling on his back. O’Dare’s gun was out again, he stood there crouched over him for an instant. “I’m going in there — now, d’ya hear me? I’ll put a bullet in you if you try to stop me again!” He turned and went toward the concrete hulk, bent double, moving along the roadside with surprising swiftness for a man his weight and height. Like an Indian runner.
Caution, concealment, was a thing of the past. His stumbling footfalls echoed in the stillness of that place like drumbeats. Behind him the road, which he could no longer see, stretched empty all the way back into Brierfield. What was that to him, whether they came now or didn’t? In, that was all he wanted, in! He came up to the cold, rough walls, padded against them with one bare hand outstretched to guide himself as he ran along beside them.
The entrance was around on the side, a darker patch in the dark wall that turned solid as he got up to it. Vast and huge, to admit and disgorge trucks, impregnably barred, the lidded bulb over it screwed off so that it was dark. He was like a tormented pygmy dancing up and down there, raging helpless in front of its huge dimensions. Even McKee didn’t come up to help him. Maybe he’d knocked him out.