“Then why did he go on the lam at all?” The word sounded strange in her prim mouth.
“I think he saw me discover the body, and realized he’d be blamed.” She considered this, bending the long nail file between her fingers. “If the old tramp didn’t do it, who did?”
“You may be able to help me answer that question.”
“Me help you? How?”
“You know Frank Connor, for one thing.”
“I know him. I’ve seen him about my sister’s grades a few times.”
“You don’t seem to like him much.”
“I don’t like him, I don’t dislike him. He’s just blah to me.”
“Why? What’s the matter with him?”
Her tight mouth quivered, and let out words: “I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He can’t keep his hands off of young girls.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard it.”
“From your sister Alice?”
“Yes. The rumor was going around the school, she said.”
“Did the rumor involve Ginnie Green?”
She nodded. Her eyes were as black as fingerprint ink.
“Is that why Connor’s wife left him?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I never even laid eyes on Mrs. Connor.”
“You haven’t been missing much.”
There was a yell outside, a kind of choked ululation. It sounded as much like an animal as a man. It was Green. When I reached the door, he was climbing out of his convertible with a heavy blue revolver in his hand.
“I saw the killer,” he cried out exultantly.
“Where?”
He waved the revolver toward the lumberyard across the road. “He poked his head up behind that pile of white pine. When he saw me, he ran like a deer. I’m going to get him.”
“No. Give me the gun.”
“Why? I got a license to carry it. And use it.”
He started across the four-lane highway, dodging through the moving patterns of the Sunday traffic as if he were playing parcheesi on the kitchen table at home. The sounds of brakes and curses split the air. He had scrambled over the locked gate of the yard before I got to it I went over after him.
5.
Green disappeared behind a pile of lumber. I turned the corner and saw him running halfway down a long aisle walled with stacked wood and floored with beaten earth. The old man of the mountain was running ahead of him. His white hair blew in the wind of his own movement. A burlap sack bounced on his shoulders like a load of sorrow and shame.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” Green cried.
The old man ran on as if the devil himself were after him. He came to a cyclone fence, discarded his sack, and tried to climb it. He almost got over. Three strands of barbed wire along the top of the fence caught and held him struggling.
I heard a tearing sound, and then the sound of a shot. The huge old body espaliered on the fence twitched and went limp, fell heavily to the earth. Green stood over him breathing through his teeth.
I pushed him out of the way. The old man was alive, though there was blood in his mouth. He spat it onto his chin when I lifted his head.
“You shouldn’t ought to of done it. I come to turn myself in. Then I got ascairt.”
“Why were you scared?”
“I watched you uncover the little girl in the leaves. I knew I’d be blamed. I’m one of the chosen. They always blame the chosen. I been in trouble before.”
“Trouble with girls?” At my shoulder Green was grinning terribly. “Trouble with cops.”
“For killing people?” Green said. “For preaching on the street without a license. The voice told me to preach to the tribes of the wicked. And the voice told me this morning to come in and give my testimony.”
“What voice?”
“The great voice.” His voice was little and weak. He coughed red.
“He’s as crazy as a bedbug,” Green said.
“Shut up.” I turned back to the dying man. “What testimony do you have to give?”
“About the car I seen. It woke me up in the middle of the night, stopped in the road below my sanctuary.”
“What kind of car?”
“I don’t know cars. I think it was one of them foreign cars. It made a noise to wake the dead.”
“Did you see who was driving it?”
“No. I didn’t go near. I was ascairt.”
“What time was this car in the road?”
“I don’t keep track of time. The moon was down behind the trees.” Those were his final words. He looked up at the sky with his sky-colored eyes, straight into the sun. His eyes changed color.
Green said: “Don’t tell them. If you do, I’ll make a liar out of you. I’m a respected citizen in this town. I got a business to lose. And they’ll believe me ahead of you, mister.”
“Shut up.”
He couldn’t. “The old fellow was lying, anyway. You know that. You heard him say yourself that he heard voices. That proves that he’s a psycho. He’s a psycho killer. I shot him down like you would a mad dog, and I did right.”
He waved the revolver.
“You did wrong. Green, and you know it. Give me that gun before it kills somebody else.”
He thrust it into my hand suddenly. I unloaded it, breaking my fingernails in the process, and handed it back to him empty. He nudged up against me.
“Listen, maybe I did do wrong. I had provocation. It doesn’t have to get out. I got a business to lose.”
He fumbled in his hip pocket and brought out a thick sharkskin wallet. “Here. I can pay you good money. You say that you’re a private eye; you know how to keep your lip buttoned.”
I walked away and left him blabbering beside the body of the man he had killed. They were both victims, in a sense, but only one of them had blood on his hands.
Miss Brocco was in the HP parking lot. Her bosom was jumping with excitement.
“I heard a shot.”
“Green shot the old man. Dead. You better send in for the meat wagon and call off your bloody dogs.”
The words hit her like slaps. She raised her hand to her face, defensively. “Are you mad at me? Why are you mad at me?”
“I’m mad at everybody.”
“You still don’t think he did it.”
“I know damned well he didn’t. I want to talk to your sister.”
“Alice? What for?”
“Information. She was on the beach with Ginnie Green last night. She may be able to tell me something.”
“You leave Alice alone.”
“I’ll treat her gently. Where do you live?”
“I don’t want my little sister dragged into this filthy mess.”
“All I want to know is who Ginnie paired off with.”
“I’ll ask Alice. I’ll tell you.”
“Come on, Miss Brocco, we’re wasting time. I don’t need your permission to talk to your sister, after all. I can get the address out of the phone book if I have to.”
She flared up and then flared down.
“You win. We live on Orlando Street, 224. That’s on the other side of town. You will be nice to Alice, won’t you? She’s bothered enough as it is about Ginnie’s death.”
“She really was a friend of Ginnie’s, then?”
“Yes. I tried to break it up. But you know how kids are — two motherless girls, they stick together. I tried to be like a mother to Alice.”
“What happened to your own mother?”
“Father— I mean, she died.” A greenish pallor invaded her face and turned it to old bronze. “Please. I don’t want to talk about it. I was only a kid when she died.”
She went back to her muttering radios. She was quite a woman, I thought as I drove away. Nubile but unmarried, probably full of untapped Mediterranean passions. If she worked an eight-hour shift and started at eight, she’d be getting off about four.