Chase Page 7

  Chase let the brambles go and stripped the cloth from his hands. He had nicked the tips of his fingers in a few places, but he was for the most part unscathed.

  To his right, no more than four feet away, a bullet snapped through the brambles, spraying pieces of vinery, and went on, hissing once as it skipped on the concrete walkway by the cliff railing. Another passed at the level of Chase's head, no more than two feet on his left, and then another still farther along the row. Judge did not have the nerves of a professional killer, and obviously tired of waiting, had begun to fire blindly in hopes of making a lucky hit.

  Chase smiled and began to crawl slowly back toward the right-hand end of the row.

  When he got there, he peered cautiously out and saw Judge standing up, leaning against the car, attempting to reload his pistol. His head was bent over his task, and though it should have been a simple matter, he was fumbling nervously with the magazine.

  Chase stood and ran.

  He had covered only a third of the distance between them when Judge heard him coming. The man looked up, twisted around the edge of the car and started down the highway, running for all he had.

  Still smiling, Chase put his head down, gritted his teeth and made a little more effort. Though he was severely underweight and had not exercised or trained for a year, his muscles responded like well-trained animals. He was gaining on Judge.

  The road began to slope as they went over the crest of the rise, then seemed to plummet, so that its angle forced Chase to put less effort into his pursuit lest he pitch forward and lose his balance. Up ahead, a red Volkswagen was parked along the berm, though there was no one to be seen about it. In a moment it was clear that the VW was Judge's car, for he made after it with a renewed burst of speed.

  ‘No!’ Chase shouted.

  But his voice was weak, nothing more than the soft gasp of dry air escaping from a punctured paper bag, and even he outran the sound of it.

  Judge reached the car, flung the door open and piled inside behind the wheel, swinging the door shut after him in one quick, smooth move. He had either left the keys in the ignition or, possibly, had kept the motor running while he went about passing his ‘judgment,’ for now the Volkswagen pulled away from the edge of the road, screeched as its spinning tyres hit the asphalt and kicked thick smoke out from under them like clouds of white dusting powder. In this one instance, at least, Judge had prepared the way far better than any amateur might be expected to.

  Chase did not even have the opportunity to catch part of the licence number, because he was startled out of his wits by the sound of an air horn close behind him, frighteningly close behind.

  He threw himself sideways off the road, tripped as the ground dropped under him and rolled over and over on the gravel verge, hugging himself for protection against the stones, until the steep bank brought him to a sudden and somewhat painful stop.

  A touch of brakes sounded just once, like the cry of a wounded man. A large moving van - with dark letters against its orange side: U-HAUL - boomed past, moving much too fast on the steep incline of Kanackaway Ridge Road, swaying slightly back and forth as its load shifted. Chase had time to wish that it would catch up with the Volkswagen and plow right over it without slowing down. Then it was out of sight.

  Six

  There was a two-inch scratch on his forehead, just above his right eye, and a slightly smaller cut on his right cheek, both inflicted by the thorns in the bramble row, both of them already crusted with dried blood. The tips of four fingers were likewise scarred by the brambles, but they were the wounds least to be worried about; in the midst of a dozen other pains, they were unnoticeable. His ribs ached from having rolled for some distance on the gravel berm of the Kanackaway Ridge Road - though none of them seemed broken when he tested them with his hands -and his chest, back and arms were bruised where the largest stones had dug in for a prolonged moment as he passed over them. Both his knees had been skinned open and wept thin blood. He had lost his shirt, of course, when he ripped it in two as protection from the thorns, and his trousers were fit only for the trash can.

  He sat in the Mustang by the edge of the park, assessing the damage done, and he was not at all relieved, as some might well have been, that he had got away with minor abrasions when he might have lost his life. He was so angry that he wanted to strike out at something, anything, or, failing that, scream at the top of his voice. Over the course of several minutes, however, as he caught his breath and as the sharpness of his pains settled into many small, dull aches, his urge to action was tempered by his common sense. There was nothing to be gained by running off in a rabbit-quick mood of revenge. Sit still. Settle down. Think it out.

  Already a few cars had arrived at lovers’ lane, driving over the sod to the hedges, where they eagerly took advantage of the first sheets of darkness. The stars were not even out yet, nor the last traces of sunset scoured from the rim of the sky, but the lovers were game. Chase was amazed at their bravura in returning to the scene of the murder while the madman who had knifed Michael Karnes was still on the loose. He wondered if they would lock their car doors tonight.

  Since there well might be police patrols along Kanackaway yet, hoping for the killer to make a second attempt, the most suspicious thing would be a man sitting alone in his car. Chase started the motor, raced the engine once or twice, then turned around and started back into the city.

  As he drove, he tried to recall everything he had seen so that no clue as to Judge's real identity might slip by. Judge owned a silenced pistol and a red Volkswagen. He was a bad shot, but judging from the way he had taken off, a fairly good driver. Judge got nervous easily, as his blind firing had proved. And that was about the sum of it.

  What next? The police?

  But when he remembered Wallace and his patronizing tone, he rejected that right away. He had sought help from Cauvel and been given a form of aid he did not want and could not use, advice that was superfluous. The police had been even less help. That left only one thing for it. He would have to handle the whole business himself, open his eyes and ears and begin to track Judge down before Judge killed him.

  The decision made, he could not imagine how he had ever contemplated handling the situation any other way.

  Mrs Fiedling met him at the door, stepped backwards in surprise when she saw what condition he was in. She put a hand before her mouth and sucked in a breath so nicely that the gesture looked planned. She said, ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I fell down,’ Chase said. ‘It's nothing.’

  ‘But there's blood on your face,’ she said. Chase noted with interest that she hadn't put her hand to her breast in surprise, but to her mouth - and her dress was open the usual three buttons. ‘And just look at you, all skinned and bruised!’

  ‘Really, Mrs Fiedling, I'm perfectly all right now. I had a little accident, but I'm on my feet and breathing.’

  She looked him over more carefully now, as if she might be getting a bit of a charge from the details of his wounds, and said, ‘Have you been drinking again, Mr Chase?’ Her tone had gone swiftly from that of concern to outright disapproval. That was all the more noticeable because this was the first time she had mentioned his fondness for whisky since she had learned that he was a hero.

  ‘No drinks at all,’ Chase said.

  ‘You know I don't approve.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, starting past her for the stairs. They looked a long way off.

  ‘You didn't wreck your car?’ she called after him.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  He started up the steps, looking anxiously ahead toward the turn at the landing which signified escape of sorts. Strangely, though, he did not feel nearly as oppressed by Mrs Fiedling as he did most times he encountered her.

  ‘That's good news,’ she said. ‘As long as you have your car, you'll be able to look for jobs much better than before.’ Her blue fur mules slapped on the hall floor as she walked toward the steps.

  That's right!’ h
e called back to her.

  He turned the landing, steadying himself with a hand on the polished rail. From that point, he took the steps two at a time, even though his legs protested, walked briskly down the second-floor corridor and climbed the attic steps to his own apartment. In his room, he bolted the door and relaxed.

  After he had taken in a glass of Jack Daniel's over ice, he drew a tub of water as hot as he could tolerate it, and settled into it much like an old man with arthritis or worse complaints. It slopped over his open sores and made him sigh both with pleasure and pain in equal measure. It was almost as if the water were pouring through him.

  Forty-five minutes later, clean, he dressed his worst wounds with Merthiolate and put on lightweight slacks, a sports shirt, socks and loafers. With a second glass of whisky in hand, he sat down in the easy chair to contemplate his next move. He looked forward to action with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

  The most natural course seemed to be to speak with Louise Allenby, the girl who had been with Michael Karnes the night he was killed. They had been questioned separately by the police, but there was always the possibility they might be able to come up with something that one or both of them had overlooked that night - especially if they worked together, feeding each other bits of memories to see if anything sparked.

  The telephone book listed eighteen Allenbys in the city, but the problem was not as complex as all that, for Chase remembered Louise telling Detective Wallace that her father was dead and her mother had not remarried. Only one of the Allenbys in the book was listed as a woman: Cleta Allenby on Pine Street, an address in the Ashside district.

  He dialled the number and waited through ten rings before it was answered. The voice on the other end, though less affected by fear now, was clearly the voice of Louise Allenby. There was a languor to it, more of a throaty womanliness than he had remembered or would have imagined. She answered by giving her name.

  ‘This is Mr Chase, Louise,’ he said. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. She sounded genuinely pleased to hear from him, but then perhaps anyone is pleased to talk to someone who saved her life. She said, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, nodding as if she were able to see him. Then he checked himself and said, ‘Well, really, not so fine at all.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice concerned now. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘I'd like to talk to you, if possible,’ Chase said. ‘About what happened Monday night.’

  ‘Well - sure, all right,’ she said.

  ‘It won't upset you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. And from the note of flippancy in her voice, he knew that was the truth. She said, ‘Can you come over now?’

  ‘If it's convenient, I'd very much like to,’ he said.

  ‘Fine. It's ten o'clock now - in half an hour, at ten-thirty? Will that be all right?’

  ‘Just right,’ Chase said.

  ‘I'll be expecting you.’

  She put the phone down so gently that for several long seconds Chase did not realize she had hung up.

  His bruises were beginning to stiffen him, so that he felt bound by a length of flat, waxed cord. He stood up and stretched, found his car keys and quickly finished his drink.

  When it was time to go, he did not want to begin. Suddenly he realized how completely this one act, this assumption of responsibility, would destroy the simple routines by which he had survived in the months since his discharge from both the army and the hospital. There would be no more leisurely mornings in town, no more afternoons watching old movies on television, no more evenings reading and drinking until he could sleep - at least not for a long while, not until this entire mess was straightened out, from the apprehension of Judge through the trial and its aftermath. Yet, if he remained here, in his own room, if he took his chances, he might remain alive until Judge was caught in a few weeks or, at most, a few months.

  Then again, Judge might not miss the next time.

  He cursed everyone who had forced him out of his comfortable niche - Zacharia, the local press, the Merchants’ Association, Judge, Dr Cauvel, Wallace, Tuppinger - but he knew that he had no choice but to get on with it. His only consolation was the certainty that their victory was only a temporary one. When this was all finished with, he would come back to his room and close the door and reorganize his routines, again settle into the quiet and unchallenging life he had established for himself during the past year.

  Mrs Fiedling did not bother him on his way out of the house, and he chose to see this as a good omen.

  The Allenbys, mother and daughter, lived in a two-storey neo-Colonial brick home on a small lot in the middle-income-bracket section of Ashside. Two Dutch elm trees were featured at the head of the short flagstone walk and two tiny pine trees at the end of it. Two steps rose to a white door with a brass knocker. The knocker, when lifted and let fall, not only produced a hollow tok, but activated door chimes as well, a touch which Chase found unpleasant in the same way he found gilt-edged mirrors, souvenir ashtrays and brightly coloured afghans distasteful.

  Louise answered the door herself. She was wearing white shorts and a thin white halter top, and she looked as if she had spent the last half-hour putting on her make-up and brushing her long hair. ‘Come in,’ she said, stepping aside to give him room.

  The living room was what he had expected: expensive Colonial furniture, a colour television set in an enormous and wasteful console cabinet, knotted rugs over polished pine floors - and just the hint of carelessness in the way the house was kept: magazines spilling out of their rack, dried water rings on the coffee table and a trace of dust on the lower rungs of the spindly chairs.

  ‘Sit down,’ Louise said. ‘The sofa's comfortable, and so's that big chair with the flowered print. The rest of them are like cafeteria chairs at school. Mother's crazy about antiques and Colonial styles. I hate all that kind of stuff.’

  He smiled and chose the sofa. ‘I'm sorry to bother you like this, so late at night -’

  ‘Don't worry about that,’ she said, interrupting in a breezy and very self-confident manner. Indeed, he hardly recognized her as the girl he had taken, whimpering, from Michael Karnes's car on Monday night. ‘Since I'm finished with school, I only go to bed when I feel like it, usually around three or three-thirty in the morning.’ She smiled abruptly, changing the subject with her expression. ‘May I get you a drink?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Chase said.

  ‘Mind if I have something?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  He watched her trim legs scissor as she went to the pull-down bar shelf concealed in the wall bookcase. As she took out the ingredients for a Sicilian Stinger, she stood with her back to him, her hips artfully canted, her round ass thrust toward him. It might have been the unconscious stance of a girl with all the attributes of a woman but with only a partial understanding of the effect her pneumatic body might have on men. Or it might have been completely contrived.

  When she came back with what appeared to be a professionally mixed drink, he said, ‘Are you old enough to drink?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ she said. ‘Almost eighteen, out of high school, starting college in the fall, no longer a child.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, feeling stupid. He'd heard her tell this to the detective. What in the world was the matter with him, reacting to her as if he were a parent himself? There was little more than seven years between them, after all, not nearly enough time to permit him to question her codes. It was just that only seven years ago, when he was her age, one was a child at seventeen. Again he had forgotten how fast they grew up now - or how fast they thought they did.

  ‘Sure you won't have something?’ she asked, sipping at the drink.

  He declined again.

  She leaned back against the couch, crossing her bare legs, and she made him aware for the first time that he could see the hard tips of her small breasts against the thin halter.

&
nbsp; He said, ‘It's just occurred to me that your mother may have been in bed, if she gets up early for work. I didn't mean -’

  ‘Mother's working now,’ Louise said. She looked at him coyly. Or perhaps she didn't realize the effect of the look, with her lashes lowered and her head tilted to one side. ‘She's a cocktail waitress. She goes on duty at seven, off at three, home about three-thirty in the morning.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Are you frightened?’ she asked, smiling now. ‘Of being here alone with me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, smiling, leaning back on the sofa, turning sideways to see her. But he knew now that none of her sensuality was unintentional.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘where do we begin?’ She made a distinct try for the double entendre.

  Chase ignored that, and for the following half-hour, guided her through her memories of Monday night, augmenting them with his own, questioning her on details and urging her to question him, looking for some small thing that might be the key or for some change of perspective that might put the madness in a more orderly light. Though they came up with nothing new and though they had little hope, she answered all his questions with a genuine effort to dissect the events of that night. She looked upon them almost as a disinterested outsider, and she appeared to have to make little effort to achieve this tone, as if they really were little more than second-hand stories already.

  ‘Mind if I have another one?’ she asked, shaking her glass.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Want one this time?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said, recognizing the need to keep his head clear, though not the reason.

  She stood mixing her drink in the same provocative pose as before, and when she returned to the couch, she sat down much closer to him than she had been before. ‘One thing I just thought of,’ she said.