“Sarah’s gone and Harry’s at the office. I wonder what you had planned for me, Daisy? Surely you must have made some plans about me, in case it turned out that I knew the truth.”
She stood up again. “I was going to shoot you,” she said. “Shoot you and tell Harry you were the killer, that you’d come to me and confessed, tried to get me to run away with you. That you were an addict yourself.”
“You don’t think he’d have gone for such a whacky yarn, do you?”
“Why not?” She shrugged. “I was going to use the gun I’d used on Hastings, and say I had gotten it away from you during a struggle.”
“Where’s the gun, Daisy?”
“In the drawer.” She started to turn away.
“Don’t go any nearer,” I warned her. “I’ll shoot if you do. I mean it.”
She smiled at me over her shoulder.
I grinned back. “That’s the only thing you didn’t know about, Daisy. Harry forgot to tell you he gave me this gun of his when I saw him this noon.”
She shook her head. “He told me, all right.” She turned away again, walked over to the desk, reached for the drawer.
“Stop!” I snapped. “One more step and I—”
“Go ahead.”
She didn’t even look around. She took the step. She opened the drawer.
I could feel the sweat run down my arm, run down my hand, wet the finger that was pressing against the trigger. I had to press it, there was no other way. In another second she’d have a gun of her own. She’d killed before; she’d kill again. It was self-defense, it was the only way.
I sighted carefully and pulled the trigger.
She took the gun out of the drawer and pointed it at me.
I pulled the trigger again.
“Keep trying,” she said. “It won’t work. I fixed Harry’s gun a couple of days ago. Just in case.”
Her smile was broader now. “Smart operator, aren’t you? So smart you never even bothered to check a borrowed gun. Well, I’ve checked this one. So drop that and get your hands up. Fast.”
I did what she said.
“Sit down,” she told me. “Right there, where I can see you.”
I sat down, staring at the useless weapon on the floor. She was right. I’d never even looked at the gun, just took Harry’s word for it that it was loaded and set. No wonder Joe Dean hadn’t bothered to lift it from me when he knocked me out. It was useless.
It was useless, and I was useless. Everything I’d done was useless, now. She held the upper hand. And her gun was in it.
“You dumb jerk,” she said. “I could have taken you any time I wanted since you came in this room. But I thought I’d wait and hear what you knew, find out if you’d spilled to anybody else. You haven’t, so that makes it perfect.”
“Then I was right about the killings.”
“Yes, you were right, if that makes you feel any better.” She took a step closer, and she wasn’t smiling now. “You’ve got it all pretty straight. Except for a couple of things you wouldn’t know about. Like the reason I shot Ryan.
“I didn’t go to the clinic for appendicitis. I was pregnant. And Ryan was to blame. When I found out for sure, I went to his trailer that night and told him. I wanted him to know. I said I’d divorce Harry and he and I would get married.”
Her mouth twitched. “You know what he did? He laughed at me. He laughed, like it was all a joke. Well, I showed him what kind of a joke it was. I took the gun lying there and...”
Daisy shuddered. “You think it was easy? You’re wrong, Clayburn. It was hell. I went back to the clinic and had a miscarriage. And I quit reefers. That wasn’t easy, either, but I did it. From then on I was going to play straight, with Harry, and with everybody.
“But Hastings wouldn’t let me. Sure, I slept with him. Because he made me. He threatened to tell. About the murder, about the baby. I had to do what he said. And when this other trouble started, he told me what to do then. He killed Foster and he had me kill Trent. That was awful. Not only the risk, but doing it. I felt—dirty—inside.”
She gulped. “You don’t know what it’s like, do you? To feel dirty. To feel murder crawling around in your stomach, making you gag and throw up. I’ve felt that way ever since the beginning. Until today. When I went to kill Hastings today, I felt good again. I was happy to see him die, Clayburn, because when he died, the dirty part of me died with him.
“Now I’m clean again. And I’m going to stay clean. After this is over, after I finish with you.”
I shook my head.
“No, Daisy. You’ll never feel that way, not if you kill me. It’s too late.”
“Too late for you.” She took one more step forward. “I’m sorry. But I can’t stop now. I can’t.”
She wasn’t stopping. I saw the gun come up, noted the silencer attachment for the first time, realized that it explained why no one had heard the shot when Trent died. No one would hear the shot now, either.
This was it. A silly way to die, sitting in an armchair in a big house out in Laurel Canyon, watching a woman’s hand move, watching her finger squeeze the trigger on a gun mounted with a silencer.
She squeezed.
Funny. I heard the shot after all.
No, it wasn’t a shot. Somebody must have thrown a stone through the glass of the front window. Yes, because Daisy was turning to look.
Wrong again. She hadn’t turned to look. She’d turned to fall. And it was a shot after all, but not from her gun. Somebody had fired through the window.
I watched her drop to the carpet, watched the redness run out of her mouth.
Daisy Bannock lay on the floor, her body curled like a question mark.
I stood up. I walked over to her and started to kneel down.
Then the question mark straightened out once and for all, and Al Thompson walked into the room.
Chapter Seventeen
You never feel clean after a murder.
That’s what I’d tried to tell Daisy, and that’s what I found out now.
Hastings’ death had been a mess. Lucky for me, because when they went through his room they’d run across a notebook inside his mattress. Names of clients, including Daisy Bannock.
That’s what brought Al Thompson out to see her, and saved me.
For a while there, I wasn’t even happy about being saved. Not when I had to watch them break the news to Harry. They found him at his office, and he took it hard. The poor guy had never suspected. I felt bad about that.
I wasn’t rejoicing when they managed to pick up Joe Dean and Estrellita Juarez, either. They were traced to San Bernardino, where they’d holed up on a piece of property his brother Andy owned. Yes, they got Andy and this big guy Fritz, too. I had to testify against them.
They made a deal with Kolmar to drop his charges about the gun and the assault, so I was in the clear. And I did what I could to help in the weeks that followed.
It was some consolation to know that this particular reefer pushing outfit was broken up; turned out Dean’s brother Andy and his friend Fritz were both peddling for Hastings, too.
But they never were able to trace Hastings’ source. If there was anyone higher up, the police couldn’t find him.
And of course, I never got any eleven grand from Harry Bannock, either.
I haven’t seen him for months, but that’s my fault, I suppose. I could call him up and ask how’s tricks, sweetheart, and did he ever sell his films to See-More?
But I haven’t, and I won’t.
I just sit here in the office and tend to business. The literary agenting business, where all the murders are on paper and nothing is red except the ink of a typewriter ribbon.
Sometimes, though, when I happen to be working overtime, at night, I stop and stare out the window.
I can see across the city from here, and look down into the streets. And no matter what the hour, the streets are never empty.
They’re always moving down there, moving all over town—this
town and every big town. The pushers and their customers, the big dealers and the little squealers, the future killers and the future victims. Along with a lot of other people: guys like Al Thompson, who do their best, and the anonymous thousands like Harry Bannock who never suspect.
When I stare out the window, I see them all, realize what’s happening outside. And I say to myself, It never ends, does it? What you knew was just a tiny fraction of the whole. Somewhere out there tonight there’ll be another murder. Another chapter in a book that’s never finished, even though it started way back with Cain.
That’s what I say to myself when I look out the window.
And then, I pull down the shades and go back to work.
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