I could sense the shriveling of her self-confidence when
nothing happened. "You beginning to get the idea he's not coming?" I needled her. "He's not splitting with you, Lucille. He's splitting with me. Your boy friend's sold you out. I'm supposed to bury you twenty yards off this side road."
It shook her to her round heels, but she was too smart to go for it completely. "He'll k-kill you," she rasped. She tried to look over her shoulder.
"Where is he, then?" She was silent. "Get smart, woman. It's lucky for you I like you. Get on the ball now and steer me to the money. I'll take care of Franklin for you."
There was only one thing she could think. Even if Franklin hadn't sold her out, he'd flubbed his end of the deal, and she had to protect herself. Her steel-trap mind should have been telling her she was in perfect position to play it cool right down to the finish line and then choose up sides with the winner.
I couldn't understand why she hesitated.
"We—we never found the money," she said at last. Her voice was husky. "Only the—the thousand in the envelope, and a f-few thousand on—on him." She drew a quivering breath. "If only I'd never mentioned to Blaze the odd-looking man who mailed such odd-looking—" Her voice died away.
So that was why Franklin wanted me alive.
He hoped I knew where to find the cash.
The funny thing was that I did.
Now.
I tightened my grip on Lucille's arm. "Franklin killed him before he found out where the money was?"
"Hell yes," she whispered.
It wasn't too surprising that Franklin hadn't been able to crack I Bunny. I started up the Ford. "Tell me where he was staying, Lucille." She didn't say anything. I turned my head to look at her. Her face was an indistinct pale oval. "Tell me," I said impatiently. "Franklin might not have been able to find it, but I can."
She told me.
She had difficulty in getting it out.
Her directions would have put Bunny's place north "I town. I switched on the dashlight. She was watching me,
and she backed away in the seat as far as she could get. I lowered my hand over my chest and drew my .38. Her face
crumpled in fear. I pulled her toward me, reversed the gun, and slashed her across her soft inner arm with the gunsight. She cried out in pain and shock as the blood welled. "I'm giving you one chance to change that story,' I told her. "Because if there's nothing there, the gunsight is what happens to your face till my arm gets tired."
She changed her story.
The new one put Bunny's place east of town, which sounded a lot more reasonable to me.
I rammed the Ford out. Lucille sat huddled beside me. I hadn't expected her to go to pieces so completely. She
should have had no difficulty riding with a foot on each addle until either Franklin or I got dumped.
II was odd riding east on Main Street past the shack with its sign, "Airboat For Hire." The side road which Lucille reluctantly directed me to turn on couldn't have been more than three-quarters of a mile beyond the point where I'd so painfully slogged over brambled trails. No wonder Franklin had been getting itchy.
11 was a small cabin way out in the middle of nowhere. I got out of the Ford and ran a flashlight around the building. There were no telephone wires. I circled it cautiously. A mound of cut branches loomed up in the light. I pulled away a handful. There sat the blue Dodge, up on blocks.
So Lucille hadn't lied to me this time. I returned to the Ford. She sat in it, motionless. I had to take her by the arm again to get her out. She didn't want to come with me.
I got a chisel and maul from the trunk of the Ford, herded Lucille up to the door ahead of me, and smashed the lock. A wave of dry heat rolled out at me as the door shivered open, a musty, long-closed smell. Lucille was still dragging her feet, but I kept a good hold on her arm.
I moved her away from the door inside before I closed il. I walked through the place quickly. A skillet was still on the two-burner stove. The flashlight picked out Bunny's clothes, neatly arranged on hangers. There were two more locked doors. A couple of swings of the maul disposed of the first. There was nothing at all in the room. Bare walls, bare floor. I smashed the lock on the second door. I beamed the flash around the interior rapidly, and then it hung, motionless.
I'd found Bunny.
He was face down on the rough pine flooring. His wrists were handcuffed to ringbolts in the floor at right angles to his head. The ringbolts were new. Fresh pine sawdust was still visible where the holes had been drilled for them.
Despite the dry air in the place, there was an almost overpowering odor. Bunny had been in the cuffs for a long time. Not even his great strength could achieve leverage with his chest flat on the floor and his arms spread-eagled. He had thrown himself onto his right side in a final contortion. The bone in his left knee glistened at me from raw-looking meat, trousers and flesh long since abraded away in his ceaseless struggle against the flooring. His upper left arm was mincemeat where he'd gnawed at himself.
Bunny had lain in the cuffs till he died.
Which kills first, hunger or thirst?
1 couldn't remember.
I couldn't think.
The game had dealt Bunny a rough hand. He must have temporized, looking at Franklin's gun, thinking he'd find a way to turn it around. He hadn't counted on the cuffs. How do you break a stubborn man? You starve him. When he's out of his mind with hunger and thirst, he'll tell you what you want to know.
If he's not too far out of his mind.
Willi the hunger, the thirst, and the maddening heat, Franklin had returned to the cabin one day and found a mindless animal who could never tell him anything.
I stooped and examined the head, cruelly battered from endless, raving contact with the floor. There had been no merciful bullet.
Franklin had left him to die.
Blaze Franklin and Lucille Grimes had left him to die
I knew now why the blonde had been so afraid to tome in here with me. She'd known exactly what I was going to find.
I turned to her. "Blaze did it!" she screamed when she saw my face. "Blaze did it! I wanted to let him—"
I pulled the .38 and shot her in the throat, three times. "Tell your story in hell, if you can get anyone to listen," I told her. She thrashed on the floor, blood pulsing between the fingers of the hands clasped to her neck. "If they can patch up your lying voice."
I stepped over her.
I had work to do.
I went outside, into the clean darkness. I looked up at the stars to orient myself. I knew where the sack with the money was. Bunny and I had always followed a pattern for a cache in the country. I stepped out due north as accurately as I could figure it. I knew it wouldn't be more than thirty or forty feet from the front door of the cabin.
It would have been a cinch in the daylight, and even in the darkness it wasn't hard. My feet told me when I arrived at softer earth. Bunny had planted something green. I ripped it up, pulled the chisel—the only tool I had— from my pocket and dug into the loose ground. A foot below the surface I ran into the sack.
I hauled it up and by the light of the flash made sure the bulk of the swag was still in it. Then I buried it again, stamping down the loose earth. There was no sense in lugging it around with me. I'd come back for it. I'd come back for it when I brought Blaze Franklin out here and roped him to Bunny's body and left him to die the same way he'd left Bunny.
I went back inside for a look around. Lucille was unconscious. Bubbles of blood pulsed gently instead of jetting with each ragged breath. She wouldn't last long. She was lucky. If I'd stopped to think instead of going off hair-trigger when I found Bunny, I'd have figured something different for her. She was just as guilty as Franklin.