Ahead, he saw an old Pontiac take the turn, drive in past the Vimorama sign. He quickened his pace.
There was a gas station on the left, and then a bit of woods before Vimorama began. He walked past the gas station and then plunged into the woods.
The trees were tall old pines, widely separated. A rust-brown mat of dead pine needles covered the ground. It was dark in under the trees, and all sounds were muffled. He took the automatic out of his right-hand topcoat pocket and walked along peering and searching, frightened in spite of himself.
The Vimorama cabins were off to his right. He turned that way and came out from under the trees, and ahead of him were the cabins and people. A short man directly in front of him, maybe ten yards away, was facing the other way. Beyond him, possibly twenty yards farther on, walking along the gravel driveway, were two tall men, and the one on the far side was the leader, the one he wanted.
They were all shouting at each other, and he suddenly saw he was coming into the middle of a situation he didn’t fully understand. The short man had a gun in his hand, and all at once he started shooting at the leader and the other one. The leader ducked away and the other one fell to the ground.
Was the short man on his side? He came running forward, shouting, ‘Get him! Get that tall one!’
The short man spun around, open-mouthed, and fired again.
At him!
He yelled and dove away, rolling the way he’d learned in college, bringing up at last behind a cabin, lying there awhile quivering with fear and rage.
He was enraged at everybody, but mostly at himself. It had happened again, as it always happened, as he knew it always would happen. A gun was fired at him, and he reacted with blind instinctive panic. He lost precious seconds, lost advantages, lost control of situations, only because of this stupid panic, and it hit him every single time.
Out of sight, the shooting was still going on. He crept around the other way, trying to see without being seen, hoping there would be some way to come up on everybody’s flank. The shooting was sporadic, it almost sounded half-hearted in comparison with movie soundtracks, and it seemed to be moving here and there all around the cabins.
He came around the corner of the cabin and there ahead of him, looming in a cabin doorway like a Scandinavian god, was a huge naked blond man wearing nothing but a gun.
Everyone, had guns.
He fired first this time, three shots from the automatic, and the naked man bounced backward into the doorframe and then jacknifed forward and sprawled out on the gravel.
Shooting. Shooting.
It sounded like it was all at him.
He turned and ran.
He ran through the woods and across the gas station blacktop as the attendant there gaped open-mouthed at him, and ran full tilt along the road until he came to the Ford again. He pulled open the door on the passenger side because chat was the side he came to first, and something hit the inside of the door and made a shock wave run up his arm, and a second later he heard the sound of the shot behind him.
He didn’t even look back to see who was shooting at him. The woods were to his right. Leaving the car door open, he turned away and went crashing and blundering in among the trees.
Detective Dougherty could smell it in the air. Tension. Something was about to pop.
His original list of nine names had been expanded by now, and the men still working on the Canaday case reported chat almost everyone they talked to had already been questioned by someone claiming to be from a polltaking company. The descriptions of the pollster varied too widely to be just the normal bad memory of the civilian witness; there had to be more than one man doing the questioning.
The man who called himself Joe had friends with him, then. The others involved in the robbery at the stadium? But why would they stick their necks out for him?
Unless what Joe was looking for was more than his own share of the loot. Unless the Canaday killer had the whole bundle.
Dougherty could think of no other explanation. The man who had murdered Ellen Canaday had also walked off with the entire proceeds from last Saturday’s robbery. Five to eight men had been involved in that robbery, according to the best estimates they could work up, and undoubtedly all of them were still in the city, looking for the murderer of Ellen Canaday.
It was as involuted and twisted as a Chinese puzzle. The police were looking for the Canaday killer. A group of professional bandits was also looking for the Canaday killer. And the police, to round it off, were looking for the professional bandits.
If the Canaday killer were looking for either the police or the bandits, then everything would be tied in the ultimate knot.
Well, they all had to start bumping into each other pretty soon. Too many people were milling around in the same restricted area; sooner or later they had to start making contact.
It began shortly after noon, and then it came twice in rapid succession. Two men were picked up when they came to apartments of people on the list Dougherty had given Joe. It had been Dougherty’s idea to put men on duty inside the apartments instead of merely on watch outside. How would they know what they were watching for if the fake polltakers were people other than Joe?
Well, it paid off. Two of the pollsters were nabbed within ten minutes of each other.
But the news was as bad as it was good. Both men had tried immediately, and disastrously, to escape, and both had been shot down. One of them had apparently had some idea of shooting it out, but had died with a gun in his hand that he hadn’t had a chance to use. The other had had an accomplice in a white Chevy II with red upholstery, and had almost succeeded in getting into the car and away. One of the arresting officers fired at his legs, but did so just as the suspect was ducking, and the bullet struck him in the back instead. He was still alive when he reached the hospital, but in a coma and not expected to regain consciousness. The accomplice and the white Chevy II were being searched for.
Also, the ambulance the gang had used in the robbery had finally been found. And, downtown, a truck with a Renault hidden inside it had drawn the attention of a patrolman after it had remained parked in one spot for nearly a week; it seemed certain the truck and Renault had had something to do with the robbery. None of the three vehicles bore a single useful fingerprint.
The new composite drawing of Joe, done by the police artist with Dougherty’s directions, had been identified by a cashier at the stadium as one of the men engaged in the robbery, if they needed any confirmation of that.
Then, at four-thirty, the phone on Dougherty’s desk rang, and when he picked it up it was Engel, the detective who’d taken over on the Canaday case.
Engel said, ‘I think I’ve got something for both of us, Bill. Checking out a report on an old boyfriend of the Canaday woman’s, fresh back in town from Mexico, and the boyfriend’s gone, but he left behind a guy who just might be part of the robbery gang.’
‘Where is this? Is it Joe?’
‘No, it doesn’t look like the drawing. From the looks of things, this guy was doing the poll routine and the boyfriend tumbled and then beat the crap out of him to find out where the rest of the gang was hiding.’
‘The boyfriend’s the killer?’
‘It looks that way.’
‘And he’s after the gang?’
‘Yeah, I know. They’re supposed to be after him.’
Dougherty said, ‘This one’s a lulu.’
‘Yeah. Anyway, this guy, he’s got identification says his name is Peter Rudd, he got beat up pretty bad before he decided to talk, and now all he wants to do is just keep talking. He keeps telling us where the gang is, over and over.’