There were two other men in the room. One was tall and had a long, thin neck; the other was short and studious-appearing, and wore a large pair of horn-rimmed glasses. They sat on two white metal chairs at the foot of the bed.
The studious-appearing man said, “You’re a damned fool, Cain. You know that, don’t you?”
“Am I?” Cain said briefly. He was looking out of the window; it was a warm, clear day and he could see the Pacific Ocean, glass-smooth in the distance.
The studious man opened a leather briefcase on his lap and removed several sheets of paper filled with neat lines of typing, single-spaced. The man looked at Cain, then looked back at the papers. “Do you know what this is?”
“No,” Cain said.
“It’s a report on one Steven Cain,” the studious man told him. “A very comprehensive report we had compiled.”
Cain continued to look out of the window.
“It says you were a colonel in the Marines during the Second World War, twice decorated for valor on Leyte and Okinawa. It says that you graduated at the top of your class at the University of California, where you majored in law enforcement following the war. It says that you joined the San Francisco Police Force in 1949 and while you were a patrolman in the Mission District you once captured four men in the act of robbing a factory payroll. It says that you were the youngest man in San Francisco police history to be promoted to the Detective Squad, and the second youngest to make division lieutenant.” The studious man paused, looking up at Cain again. “There’s more, a lot more. It’s a very impressive record you’ve got, Cain.”
Cain did not answer.
“Impressive enough to indicate an acute intelligence,” the studious man said. “But I don’t see any sign of intelligence in this crazy stunt you pulled off here. I don’t see anything at all of the man this report covers.”
Again, Cain did not answer.
“It was because of your daughter, wasn’t it, Cain?” the man with the long neck said suddenly, speaking for the first time. “Because of what happened to Doreen?”
Cain brought his eyes away from the window and let them rest on the man with the long neck. He kept his lips pressed tightly together.
“It’s all there in the report,” the man with the long neck said. “About how you raised the girl after your wife died twelve years ago, how you were devoted to her. And it’s in there, too, about how she was run down and killed by a car on an afternoon eight months ago when she was coming home from high school; how a patrol unit nearby saw the hit-and-run and chased the car and caught it a few blocks away; how the driver pulled a gun when they approached and one of the officers was forced to shoot him in self-defense, killing him instantly; how that driver turned out to be a twenty-three-year-old drug addict and convicted felon; and how they found almost half a kilo of heroin under the dashboard of the car—”
“That’s enough!” Cain was leaning forward on the bed, oblivious to the sharp pain that the sudden movement had caused in his chest; his jaw was set grimly and his eyes were flashing.
The man with the long neck seemed not to hear him. “For all intents and purposes, you went just a little crazy when you heard the news, Cain. You needed somebody to strike out at, somebody to blame for your daughter’s death. The kid was dead, so it had to be somebody else. That somebody was James Agenrood, the Organization’s head of narcotics distribution in this area.
“You began a one-man crusade to get Agenrood; at first, you went through official channels and the newspapers agreed to play down the investigation — which was why Agenrood never knew your name. You dug up or bought or intimidated every scrap of knowledge available on Agenrood. But at the end of it all, you hadn’t uncovered a thing on him that could put him away; he was, officially, a respectable citizen, President of Consolidated Trades, Inc., and untouchable. You just couldn’t let go of it, though. Getting Agenrood became an obsession; you neglected your official duties in the pursuit of it. The Commissioner had to call you in finally and order you to cease. But you refused, and he had no alternative but to suspend you. A week later, you resigned. Shortly after that, you moved to Portland to live with a married sister and everybody here was maybe a little glad to see you go because they thought that finally you were through with it.
“But you weren’t through. You had to get Agenrood, one way or another. You couldn’t commit murder; you’d been an honest, dedicated cop too long to resort to that. So you went up to Portland and thought it all out, looking for another way, and then you came back here last Wednesday and stole a car to make the fake attempt on Agenrood’s life look professional. You knew he would never pay the kind of money you asked him for; you knew there was only one other thing he could do. You made sure he would be there when it was tried, and then you contacted us. You knew we were as eager to get something on Agenrood as you were, and you told us just enough to get us interested — but not enough so we knew what you were planning — so that we would agree to send a couple of men up to that road to wait. And it worked out okay, at least to your way of thinking. We’ve got Agenrood on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder, among other things; he’s through with the Organization, because they won’t take the chance of becoming involved by jumping to his defense. So you got him, Cain. You got your revenge, all right.”
Cain had slumped back against the pillows. But his jaw remained grim. He did not say anything.
“But was it worth it?” the man with the long neck went on finally. “Was it really worth it, Cain? Was it worth the prison sentence you’re facing on a list of charges that range from car theft to carrying a concealed weapon? What the hell have you actually gained by all this? Why didn’t you let us handle it? We’d have gotten Agenrood sooner or later. We always get them sooner or later.”
The man with the long neck stopped speaking then, and it became very quiet in the room. After a long time, Cain said, “Maybe you would have gotten him, and maybe you wouldn’t. I couldn’t take the chance, don’t you see? Agenrood killed my daughter, just as sure as if he put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. I had to be the one; it was up to me. I had to get him for Doreen. Don’t you understand that?”
The two men looked at Cain, and then at one another. The room was silent again for several minutes. Then the two men stood, walked to the door.
“Don’t you?” Cain said to them, softly.
“Yes,” the studious man answered, just as softly. He put his hand on the knob and opened the door. “Yes, Cain, we understand.”
Cain, lying in the bed, staring at the closed door after they had gone, wondered if they really understood at all. But after a while, when he had been alone for some time, he decided that it did not matter, one way or the other.
A Lot on His Mind
Arbagast was drunk in bed when the police came.
They told the old lady who had let them in to make some coffee, and then they took Arbagast into the bathroom and put him under a cold shower. They kept him there until he started to come out of it, and by that time the coffee was ready. They fed him cup after cup, hot and black, holding him upright on a straight-backed chair.
When they were certain he was sober enough to understand, they told him they had caught the man who had run down and killed his wife four months before.
Arbagast did not say anything for a long while. When he finally spoke, the sound of his voice made one of the policemen shudder involuntarily. “Who was it?”