cards from the table and began to riffle them aimlessly in his hands.
“Oh, my God!” he said softly. “Who’ll believe me now?”
Sylvia West began to cry noiselessly, the tears streaming down her face as she sat and watched Houston.
“Maybe now would be a good time to call Lieutenant Greer,” I said to Hazelton.
“Yes,” he nodded. “I was so wrong about you, Boyd, I don’t know how to apologize. You had more faith in my daughter than I had—your faith couldn’t be shaken the way mine was. That’s a bitter lesson I will never forget.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that too much,” I told him. “When Martha knows the truth, I guess it’ll make you both equal again. You thought for a little while she was a murderer, and she thought the same of you.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said. “I’ll call the Lieutenant right away.”
“I’ll go find Martha,” I said. “The sooner she knows, the better for her.”
I got as far as the door and stopped for a moment to look back at Houston.
“I wouldn’t try running,” I told him. “Greer’s got the whole place surrounded by cops,” I said in a wild exaggeration. “I don’t think you’d get ten yards out the front door!”
Then I realized I was wasting my time. He still sat there staring at nothing, while his hands shuffled and reshuffled the cards in a formless pattern. Mr. Houston wasn’t going any place—he wasn’t going to try and go any place. Mr. Houston was all through.
She was nowhere inside the house. I’d checked every room and there was no sign of her. I went out of the back door and called her a couple of times but she didn’t answer.
The cold moonlight bathed the farm in its brilliance
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and the crisp air was still. Any sound would carry a long way on a night like this—if she was anywhere on the farm at all, she would have heard me. If she heard me, she’d answer, I reasoned, unless she heard me and couldn’t answer.
I walked quickly away from the house with icy fingers tightening around my insides. Houston had Sylvia West working for him inside the house—and Pete working for him outside the house. It could have been either one of them that moved Sweet William around in the pens to fool the cops; but it was Pete who told Greer about the mythical hit-and-run accident where Tolvar had supposedly been killed. So maybe he’d panicked when Martha had come screaming accusations at him?
There were two obvious places to look at first. One was the bam, and the other was the lake. I didn’t want to think about the lake. In her state of mind when she’d rushed,out of the room blindly, Martha could have done anything, including drown herself in the same lake where her sister had been drowned. I preferred Pete, out of the two possibilities.
I got to the bam, then slowed down to a sudden stop. If he did have Martha inside, she might still be unharmed. But if I went charging in like a mad dog, he could panic and maybe kill her before I got to him.
So I moved quietly up to the door of the bam and saw it was open about a foot—enough for me to squeeze through without opening it any further. The Magnum’s weight in my right hand was reassuring as I edged my way inside the bam slowly, making no noise.
Inside, I stood still for maybe fifteen seconds, until my eyes adjusted to the dimness and I could see properly. I remembered from the time before that there had been plenty of light after a while. Slowly, the various planes and surfaces came into focus—the tractor, the mechanical harvester, the vertical white ladder that led up into the hayloft.
A couple of minutes later, I was sure there was no one
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else inside the bam, and that left the lake. I turned toward the door and then froze in my tracks. Someone had laughed. A low, gurgling, sensual sound, so obscene that my ears refused to believe it for a moment.
It had drifted down from somewhere above me_the
only place possible—the hayloft. I catfooted over to the ladder and climbed it cautiously, one rung at a time, holding my breath.
I reached the top and lifted my head over the level of the platform, and they were so close I could have reached out a hand and touched them.
Pete was crouched on his hands and knees, his back toward me. The shaft of moonlight that Sylvia had used so effectively spilled a cone of light onto the straw, and in the center of the cone was Martha Hazelton.
She lay on her back, one arm flung across her face, and she was whimpering softly. The silk shirt had been ripped open down the front, exposing her smallish, high-peaked breasts that looked both virginal and defenseless.
Pete gave an animal grunt deep in his throat, then lunged forward, his fingers digging into the waistband of her peon pants, ripping them downward with a savage force. She moaned desperately then raised herself up on one elbow, her eyes staring wildly—and looked straight at me.
For a long moment she just stared, and her dark eyes seemed to get larger and larger.
“Danny?” she sounded as if she wasn’t sure I was real.
“Danny,” she said again in an urgent whisper. “Help me! Please, help me!”
“All right, Pete!” I said slowly. “One wrong move and I’ll put a hole through your spinal column!”
He didn’t even stop to think about it. He lashed out savagely with his right leg in a backward kick, and the heel of the polished boot smashed into my face.
I went backward, losing my balance, losing my hold on the Magnum, off the ladder in a slowly turning arc, then hit the bam floor flat on my back.
There was no air left in my lungs and I figured I’d broken my spine or something. Whatever it was, I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe.
I heard Pete’s harsh, ragged voice say, “You double-crossing bitch!” Then the staccato sound like a pistol shot as he hit her, and afterward the thin, wavering scream as she felt the shock and pain.
His boots scraped on the ladder as he came down, making a rasping noise, but for me it was the bell tolling. He thudded onto the floor of the bam, and a second later, his bulk loomed over me.
“What’s the matter, buddy?” he said thickly. “Break your back?” A boot hammered into my ribs. “Too bad!” he jeered. “Now I don’t get the fun of doing it myself.” The boot emphasized the way he felt again.
Maybe it was going to happen anyway, or maybe the boot in the ribs helped along, but suddenly I was breathing again. I sucked in air like next week it was rationed, and moved my arms experimentally. The boot came into my ribs again, but this time I made a grab and caught his ankle. I hung on while he cursed wildly, then tugged sharply, pulling him off balance so he sprawled on top of me. We rolled across the floor and broke apart.
I came up on my knees quickly and then more slowly up on my feet. Pete was already up, standing ready, waiting for me.
“This I like, buddy!” he said sofdy. “We had this coming from the first time!”
He came toward me slowly, a shadowy, menacing bulk that looked larger than life-size. When he got within reach I swung at him with a chopping right toward his head. He ducked under it easily, and the next moment two pulverizing fists hammered into my chest directly over the heart. He danced out of range again, moving iighdy on his feet. I remembered the tiny white scars on his eyebrows and that I’d figured him for an ex-pro the first time I ever saw him.
He moved in again, weaving and bobbing, and I knew 114
he’d kill me if I tried to fight him his way, so the only thing I could do was fight him my way. I took a punch in the mouth which split my lower lip like it was paper, and another one over the heart that nearly stopped it in its tracks, but I got in a high-stepping kick which made a crunching noise when it connected just below his right knee.
The wild howl he gave while he hobbled away from me made the torn lip almost worthwhile. I figured I’d slowed him down a little and went after him. He backed off slowly, circling all the time and I kept after him, trying to crowd him back against the wall. Then his back touched the wall and I got overanxious and careless. A vicious uppercut came out of nowhere, and bright lights exploded inside my head as I went staggering backward onto my knees.