When it returned, he heard Tommy saying: “You're bleeding.”
“Let it bleed,” he muttered.
He levered himself erect. His stomach pitched with the movement of the automobile and, when he moved his head, pain flared, stabbed hot channels down his neck. He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the seat and bled on Piggott’s upholstery until the car stopped. He felt triumphant, in an obscure way.
The door opened. Ralston worked his legs from the car, gingerly hauled himself out. Rain flew against his face. Pain hammered his skull, and nausea still worked in him. He stood swaying, both hands clamped on the car door until his footing steadied.
Buddy stood smirking by the open door.
Ralston hit him on the side of the jaw. The effort threw white fire through his head. He fell to his knees. Buddy tumbled back against the side of the car, striking his head on the fender. He lay in the rain, eyes blinking.
Ralston staggered up, got his hand in Buddy’s pocket, removed a heavy .38 with a walnut handle, a beautiful weapon. He stood swaying as Elmer glided around the side of the car.
Looking down at Buddy, Elmer said, “He never got past the third round, anytime.”
“Let him lay,” Ralston said, with effort.
“Gotta take him in,” Elmer said. He and Tommy hoisted Buddy between them, hauled him loose-legged, foul-mouthed, into the white hall. They flopped him into a chair, walked toward Piggott’s office. The ham-faced youngster bumbled up from his chair, stared round-eyed at them.
“Mr. Piggott’s busy,” he said.
“Go back to sleep,” Ralston said, and pushed the door open.
Piggott was working at his table, shuffling papers with two other men. He looked sharply up as Ralston came in, then began to chuckle. “Ed, it must have been a strenuous morning.” He glanced at the two men. “Boys, let’s chase this around again in half an hour, OK?”
They left silently, not looking around, their arms full of paper.
Tommy, at the table now, looking down on Piggott, asked, “Mr. Piggott, why did you feel it necessary to involve Sue?” His voice was formal and mildly curious. “I mean — I should say, in your efforts to entrap me.”
Glee illuminated Piggott’s face. “Lordy, Tommy, there wasn’t a thing personal. You’re a real nice boy. Sue just completely enjoyed it.”
Amusement shook his shoulders. He added, “Now, don’t you take it too hard. Women just fool men all the time. It’s their way.”
Tommy said in a clipped voice, shoving hands into his pockets, “I blamed her at first. I made a serious mistake. I should have realized that you were responsible. I was most certainly warned. But she would never have turned those cassettes over to you. She loved me, and she wouldn’t have countenanced blackmail.”
Incredulous delight lifted Piggott’s shoulders. “Tommy, my friend, you are one of a kind. You really are.”
“She loved me. We were going to get engaged.”
Piggott’s laughter poured into Tommy’s face, a stream of sound. “Son, she did a real job on you. Not that she didn’t like you. She thought you were grand. You just look here.”
He tossed the engagement photograph across the table.
He said, “I was marrying her next month, Tommy. You were just a mite late.”
“I love her,” Tommy said, looking at the photograph. His voice began breaking up. “You never did.”
The hall door came open hard, and Buddy came into the room, taking neat little steps. In his plaster face the eyes were terrible things. He called, “You, Ralston.” A silver pistol jetted from his clasped hands.
Laughter stiffened on Piggott’s face. In an unfamiliar voice, the texture of metal, he said, “Buddy, did I call…”
“I love her,” Tommy said again.
He executed a fencer’s flowing movement, an arc of graceful force that glided up the leg to the curved body to the extended right arm. His knife blade glinted as it entered Piggott’s throat. His shoulders heaved with effort as he slashed right
Incoherent noise tore from Piggott and a sudden scarlet jetting. He fell back in his chair, his expression amazed. His feet beat the floor. The chair toppled over with a heavy noise.
Gunfire, sudden, violent, repetitious, battered the room.
Tommy was slammed face forward onto the table. Papers cascaded, and a single yellow pencil spun across the pecan carpet.
The gunfire continued.
Pieces jumped out of the tabletop as Tommy’s legs collapsed. He sprawled across the table, right arm extended, body jerking.
Buddy darted forward, the revolver bright in his brown hand, concentration wrinkling his face. He fired into Tommy’s back.
Ralston shot him in the side of the head. Buddy fell over sideways and his gun, bounding across the floor, thudded against a gray filing cabinet.
Ralston whirled, knelt looked down his gunsights into the enormous hollow hole of the .45 in Elmer’s hand.
Confused shouting in the hallway.
Elmer said, white-lipped, “There’s not five-cents profit for more shooting, Ed.”
“No.”
“We’d best put the guns up.”
“All right.”
The thumping of feet behind the table had stopped.
Men poured into the room.
Ralston sucked air, roared, “I’m Ed Ralston of the Sheriff's Department. This is police business, and I want this room cleared.” He paced savagely toward them, face rigid, eyes gleaming, the horror in him intolerably bright.
Their faces glared anger, fear, shock. His voice beat at them. Elmer pushed at them, a confusion of voices and shoving bodies.
After one lifetime or two, the room emptied. Ralston shoved the gun away, said, “I’ll call the sheriff.”
“You might want to give us maybe half an hour. Some of the boys might want to fade. Give them a chance to get packed.”
“Fifteen minutes. It’ll have to be fifteen minutes.”
Elmer nodded. “See you around, Ed.”
The door closed and he was alone with the dead.
The strength leaked out of his body. He dropped into a chair and began to shake. His head blazed with pain. He could not control the shaking, which continued on and on.
Outside, engines began to roar, and he heard automobiles begin to go.
At last he wavered up on fragile legs, took a tissue from his pocket, and approached the table. Splinter-rimmed holes pocked the wood. He removed Tommy’s wallet, took thirty of the sixty-two dollars. When he replaced the wallet, the body shifted and he thought that it would slip from the table to press its tom back against him. He wrenched back, white-faced. The body did not move again.
Piggott’s wallet contained nearly six thousand dollars. Ralston removed four thousand in fifties and hundreds, counting them out slowly. He returned the wallet to a pocket the blood had not touched.
“They can both help bury her,” he said.
His voice sounded stiff and high.
“We’re all dead together,” he said. He began to laugh.
When he heard himself, he became suddenly silent. Hard rain whipped the windows.
At last, bis hand reached for the telephone.
George Sims
Family Butcher
George Sims’s suspense stories are marked by his ability to create an atmosphere in which unusual action is made convincing, as in the postcard-village setting of “Family Butcher.” The author of eleven books, Mr. Sims is a rare-book dealer in Berkshire, England.