Patton got up from his chair and went out on the porch. He came back wiping his lips with his tan handkerchief. He sat down again, and eased himself over on his left hip, on account of the hip holster on the other side. He looked thoughtfully at Degarmo. Degarmo stood against the wall, hard and rigid, a stone man. His right hand still hung down at his side, with the fingers curled.
Patton said: “I still ain’t heard who killed Muriel. Is that part of the show or is that something that still has to be worked out?”
I said: “Somebody who thought she needed killing, somebody who had loved her and hated her, somebody who was too much of a cop to let her get away with any more murders, but not enough of a cop to pull her in and let the whole story come out. Somebody like Degarmo.”
40
Degarmo straightened away from the wall and smiled bleakly.
His right hand made a hard clean movement and was holding a gun. He held it with a lax wrist, so that it pointed down at the floor in front of him. He spoke to me without looking at me.
“I don’t think you have a gun,” he said. “Patton has a gun but I don’t think he can get it out fast enough to do him any good. Maybe you have a little evidence to go with that last guess. Or wouldn’t that be important enough for you to bother with?”
“A little evidence,” I said. “Not very much. But it will grow. Somebody stood behind that green curtain in the Granada for more than half an hour and stood as silently as only a cop on a stakeout knows how to stand. Somebody who had a blackjack. Somebody who knew I had been hit with one without looking at the back of my head. You told Shorty, remember? Somebody who knew the dead girl had been hit with one too, although it wouldn’t have showed and he wouldn’t have been likely at that time to have handled the body enough to find out. Somebody who stripped her and raked her body with scratches in the kind of sadistic hate a man like you might feel for a woman who had made a small private hell for him. Somebody who has blood and cuticle under his fingernails right now, plenty enough for a chemist to work on. I bet you won’t let Patton look at the fingernails of your right hand, Degarmo.”
Degarmo lifted the gun a little and smiled. A wide white smile.
“And just how did I know where to find her?” he asked.
“Almore saw her—coming out of, or going into Layery’s house. That’s what made him so nervous, that’s why he called you when he saw me hanging around. As to how exactly you trailed her to the apartment, I don’t know. I don’t see anything difficult about it. You could have hid out in Almore’s house and followed her, or followed Lavery. All that would be routine work for a copper.”
Degarmo nodded and stood silent for a moment, thinking. His face was grim, but his metallic blue eyes held a light that was almost amusement. The room was hot and heavy with a disaster that could no longer be mended. He seemed to feel it less than any of us.
“I want to get out of here,” he said at last. “Not very far maybe, but no hick cop is going to put the arm on me. Any objections?”
Patton said quietly: “Can’t be done, son. You know I got to take you. None of this ain’t proved, but I can’t just let you walk out.”
“You have a nice big belly, Patton. I’m a good shot. How do you figure to take me?”
“I been trying to figure,” Patton said and rumpled his hair under his pushed back hat. “I ain’t got very far with it. I don’t want no holes in my belly. But I can’t let you make a monkey of me in my own territory either.”
“Let him go,” I said. “He can’t get out of these mountains. That’s why I brought him up here.”
Patton said soberly: “Somebody might get hurt taking him. That wouldn’t be right. If it’s anybody, it’s got to be me.”
Degarmo grinned. “You’re a nice boy, Patton,” he said. “Look, I’ll put the gun back under my arm and we’ll start from scratch. I’m good enough for that too.”
He tucked the gun under his arm. He stood with his arms hanging, his chin pushed forward a little, watching. Patton chewed softly, with his pale eyes on Degarmo’s vivid eyes.
“I’m sitting down,” he complained. “I ain’t as fast as you anyways. I just don’t like to look yellow.” He looked at me sadly. “Why the hell did you have to bring this up here? It ain’t any part of my troubles. Now look at the jam I’m in.” He sounded hurt and confused and rather feeble.
Degarmo put his head back a little and laughed. While he was still laughing, his right hand jumped for his gun again.
I didn’t see Patton move at all. The room throbbed with the roar of his frontier Colt.
Degarmo’s arm shot straight out to one side and the heavy Smith and Wesson was torn out of his hand and thudded against the knotty pine wall behind him. He shook his numbed right hand and looked down at it with wonder in his eyes.
Patton stood up slowly. He walked slowly across the room and kicked the revolver under a chair. He looked at Degarmo sadly. Degarmo was sucking a little blood off his knuckles.
“You give me a break,” Patton said sadly. “You hadn’t ought ever to give a man like me a break. I been a shooter more years than you been alive, son.”
Degarmo nodded to him and straightened his back and started for the door.
“Don’t do that,” Patton told him calmly.
Degarmo kept on going. He reached the door and pushed on the screen. He looked back at Patton and his face was very white now.
“I’m going out of here,” he said. “There’s only one way you can stop me. So long, fatty.”
Patton didn’t move a muscle.
Degarmo went out through the door. His feet made heavy sounds on the porch and then on the steps. I went to the front window and looked out. Patton still hadn’t moved. Degarmo came down off the steps and started across the top of the little dam.
“He’s crossing the dam,” I said. “Has Andy got a gun?”
“I don’t figure he’d use one if he had,” Patton said calmly.
“He don’t know any reason why he should.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.
Patton sighed. “He hadn’t ought to have given me a break like that,” he said. “Had me cold. I got to give it back to him. Kind of puny too. Won’t do him a lot of good.”
“He’s a killer,” I said.
“He ain’t that kind of killer,” Patton said. “You lock your car?”
I nodded. “Andy’s coming down to the other end of the dam,” I said. “Degarmo has stopped him. He’s speaking to him.”
“He’ll take Andy’s car maybe,” Patton said sadly.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said again. I looked back at Kingsley. He had his head in his hands and he was staring at the floor. I turned back to the window. Degarmo was out of sight beyond the rise. Andy was half way across the dam, coming slowly, looking back over his shoulder now and then. The sound of a starting car came distantly. Andy looked up at the cabin, then turned back and started to run back along the dam.
The sound of the motor died away. When it was quite gone, Patton said: “Well, I guess we better go back to the office and do some telephoning.”
Kingsley got up suddenly and went out to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of whiskey. He poured himself a stiff drink and drank it standing. He waved a hand at it and walked heavily out of the room. I heard bedsprings creak.
Patton and I went quietly out of the cabin.
41
Patton had just finished putting his calls through to block the highways when a call came through from the sergeant in charge of the guard detail at Puma Lake dam. We went out and got into Patton’s car and Andy drove very fast along the lake road through the village and along the lakeshore back to the big dam at the end. We were waved across the dam where the sergeant was waiting in a jeep beside the headquarters hut.