“The sheriff’s men think so.”
“Have they run ballistics tests?”
“Apparently. The fact that it was his mother’s gun has generated a lot of heat downtown. They’re going into ancient history. The rumor’s running around that Hallman killed his mother, too, and possibly his father, and the family money got him off and hushed it up.” He gave me a quick, sharp look. “Could there be anything in that?”
“You sound as if you’re buying it yourself.”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I know some things it could jibe with. I went to see the Senator last spring, just a few days before he died.” He paused to organize his thoughts, and went on more slowly. “I had dug up certain facts about a certain county official whose re-election was coming up in May. Spaulding thought the Senator ought to know these facts, because he’d been supporting this certain official for a good many years. So had the paper, as a matter of fact. The paper generally went along with Senator Hallman’s ideas on county government. Spaulding didn’t want to change that policy without checking with Senator Hallman. He was a big minority stockholder in the paper, and you might say the local elder statesman.”
“If you’re trying to say he was county boss and Ostervelt was one of his boys, why beat around the bush?”
“It wasn’t quite that simple, but that’s the general picture. All right, so you know.” Slovekin was young and full of desire, and his tone became competitive: “What you don’t know is the nature of my facts. I won’t go into detail, but I was in a position to prove that Ostervelt had been taking regular payoff money from houses of prostitution. I showed Senator Hallman my affidavits. He was an old man, and he was shocked. I was afraid for a while that he might have a heart attack then and there. When he calmed down, he said he needed time to think about the problem, perhaps talk it over with Ostervelt himself. I was to come back in a week. Unfortunately, he died before the week was up.”
“All very interesting. Only I don’t see how it fits in with the idea that Carl killed him.”
“It depends on how you look at it. Say Carl did it and Ostervelt pinned it on him, but kept the evidence to himself. It would give Ostervelt all the leverage he needed to keep the Hallman family in line. It would also explain what happened afterwards. Jerry Hallman went to a lot of trouble to quash our investigation. He also threw all his weight behind Ostervelt’s re-election.”
“He might have done that for any number of reasons.”
“Name one.”
“Say he killed his father himself, and Ostervelt knew it.”
“You don’t believe that,” Slovekin stated.
He looked around nervously. The little blonde ankled up to the side of the car with my Monarchburger. I said, when she was out of hearing: “This is supposed to be a progressive county. How does Ostervelt keep his hold on it?”
“He’s been in office a long time, and, as you know, he’s got good political backing, at least until now. He knows where the bodies are buried. You might say he’s buried a couple of them himself.”
“Buried them himself?”
“I was speaking more or less figuratively.” Slovekin’s voice had sunk to a worried whisper. “He’s shot down one or two escaping prisoners – shootings that a lot of the townspeople didn’t think were strictly necessary. The reason I mention it – I wouldn’t want to see you end up with a hole in the back.”
“That’s a hell of a thought, when I’m eating a sandwich.”
“I wish you’d take me seriously, Archer. I didn’t like what happened between you this afternoon.”
“Neither did I.”
Slovekin leaned toward me. “Those names you have in mind that you won’t give me – is Ostervelt one of them?”
“He is now. You can write it down in your little black book.”
“I already have, long ago.”
28
I WAITED FOR the green light and walked back across the highway. Chestnut Street was empty again, except for my car at the curb, and another car diagonally across from it near the corner of Elmwood. It hadn’t been there before, or I would have noticed it.
It was a new red station wagon very like the one I had seen in the drive of the Hallman ranch-house. I went up the street and looked in at the open window on the driver’s side. The key was in the ignition. The registration slip on the steering-post had Jerry Hallman’s name on it.
Evidently Zinnie had come back to tuck her baby in. I glanced across the roof of the wagon toward Mrs. Hutchinson’s cottage. Her light shone steadily through the lace-veiled windows. Everything seemed peaceful and as it should be. Yet a sense of disaster came down on me like a ponderous booby trap.
Perhaps I’d glimpsed and guessed the meaning of the blanket-covered shape on the floor at the rear of the wagon. I opened the back door and pulled the blanket away. So white that it seemed luminous, a woman’s body lay huddled in the shadow.
I turned on the ceiling light and Zinnie jumped to my vision. Her head was twisted toward me, glaring at me open-eyed. Her grin of fear and pain had been fixed in the rictus of death. There were bloody slits in one of her breasts and in her abdomen. I touched the unwounded breast, expecting a marble coldness. The body was still warm, but unmistakably dead. I drew the blanket over it again, as if that would do any good.
Darkness flooded my mind for an instant, whirling like black water in which three bodies turned unburied. Four. I lost my Monarchburger in the gutter. Sweating cold, I looked up and down the street. Across the corner of the vacant lot, a concrete bridge carried Elmwood Street over the creekbed. Further up the creek, around a bend, I could see the moving lights of the sergeant and his men.
I could tell them what I had found, or I could keep silent. Slovekin’s talk of lynching was fresh in my thought. Under it I had an urge to join the hunt, run Hallman down and kill him. Because I distrusted that urge, I made a decision which probably cost a life. Perhaps it saved another.
I closed the door, left the wagon as it stood, and went back to Mrs. Hutchinson’s house. The sight of me seemed to depress her, but she invited me in. Before I stepped inside, I pointed out the red wagon: “Isn’t that Mrs. Hallman’s car?”
“I believe so. I couldn’t swear to it. She drives one like it.”
“Was she driving it tonight?”
The old woman hesitated. “She was in it.”
“You mean someone else was driving?”
She hesitated again, but she seemed to sense my urgency.
When her words finally came, they sounded as if an inner dam had burst, releasing waves of righteous indignation: “I’ve worked in big houses, with all sorts of people, and I learned long ago to hold my tongue. I’ve done it for the Hallmans, and I’d go on doing it, but there’s a limit, and I’ve reached mine. When a brand-new widow goes out on the town the same night her husband was killed–”
“Was Dr. Grantland driving the car? This is important, Mrs. Hutchinson.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. It’s a crying shame. Away they go, as gay as you please, and the devil take the hindmost. I never did think much of her, but I used to consider him a fine young doctor.”
“What time were they here?”
“It was Martha’s suppertime, round about six-fifteen or six-thirty. I know she spoiled the child’s evening meal, running in and out like that.”
“Did Grantland come in with her?”
“Yes, he came in.”
“Did he say anything? Do anything?”
Her face closed up on me. She said: “It’s chilly out here. Come in if you want to talk.”
There was nobody else in the living-room. Rose Parish’s coat lay on the couch. I could hear her behind the wall, singing a lullaby to the child.