Grindle and Costa had decided to eliminate every possible risk. The old watchman was lying on his stomach in a puddle of blood in the center of the tiny office's floor. His leather holster was empty, and his cap was half-on, half-off his head to reveal a slow trickle of blood through matted gray hair.
With a shaking hand Day picked up the telephone on the desk and dialed Headquarters. He asked to he put through to the Eighth Precinct and heard desk sergeant Hap Kramer's pleasant voice.
"This is Lieutenant Day, Hap. The Bain warehouse on Palmer Road is being hit right now. Get somebody over here."
"Yes, sir."
"There are two men in on it, Bill Grindle and Rich Costa. When
they leave they'll he heading east on Palmer in a stolen car with a
trunkload of amphetamines. Set up roadblocks around the area." "Narcotics in trunk, heading east. . .
"How do you know east, sir?"
"Because I helped them set up the job."
"Yes...
You what?"
"I'll try to stop them here. They've already killed the watchman, and they'll try to kill anybody who gets in their way. Put out an 'armed and dangerous' on them. Now get busy!"
"Yes, sir..." The sergeant's voice was unsteady, puzzled.
Day hung up the telephone with a quick, silent motion and stared down once again at the old watchman.
Then cursing, near sobbing, Day ran from the office into the darkened warehouse. Staying low, he felt his way silently toward the other end of the building, toward the loading dock.
They were working by moonlight. Grindle and Costa were just about to close the overhead door and leap from the dock when they turned and saw Day.
"Hold it where you are!" Day shouted, leveling his revolver at them. "Both of you, Grindle!"
Grindle screamed something Day didn't understand, then the slug struck Day in the right side, slapping him to the cement floor. He shook his head and saw that only the gray nighttime sky was visible through the open loading door. Both men had dropped from the dock. Day struggled awkwardly to his feet, fell, dragged himself to the doorway.
They'd closed the trunk. Costa was already inside the car, on the passenger's side, and Grindle was just opening the door to get behind the wheel. Day aimed carefully and squeezed off two shots. Grindle fell without a sound, into the limp posture of a dead man.
Day saw Costa shooting frantically across the seat to get behind the wheel of the idling car and tried to aim the revolver again, but the gun was too heavy. The barrel wavered and dropped, and a reddish darkness enveloped Day as the car sped away and turned east. In the instant before his death Day saw that the left rear wheel had passed over the gun in Grindle's lifeless hand.
"I
t doesn't make sense," Captain Harold Weston said, looking down at Day's body.
The detective standing next to him nodded in agreement.
Captain Weston continued to look down at Day, a puzzled concern in his dark eyes. "He was a good, honest cop, one of the best, and with a future in the department. Then, bang, he goes bad all of a sudden!" Captain Weston shook his head slowly, like a man who has bet and lost. "I just don't understand it..."
"Probably nobody could explain it to you but Lieutenant Day," the detective said.
"Probably not," the captain agreed. "But what I can't understand is how he went bad in so short a time. All these years, not a black mark on his record...then all of a sudden this. They fool you sometimes, I guess...and fool themselves."
M
iss Simms looked at the house and considered the possibilities. It was a small frame house in a very scenic country setting, in a flat green clearing almost surrounded by tall sycamores. Behind the house was a small, peaceful looking pond, still and green.
"I'll take it," Miss Simms said with decision.
"All right," Mr. Blacker, the surprised owner, said. "The, uh, priceâ“
"The price is fair," Miss Simms said in her clear, high voice.
"I don't advise it," her Uncle Dan said. "Why, a woman like you, all alone way out here. Ain't another neighbor in sight."
Mr. Blacker looked at Uncle Dan with faintly disguised irritation. "Will be, though," he said. "Mile or so down the road some contractor's puttin' in five houses."
Miss Simms stood calmly as Uncle Dan turned to look at her, his gray mustache seeming to droop more than usual. "A mile away, he said, Marybelle. Now, why do you want to live alone, anyway, much less as alone as this? You can stay with Grace an' me, an' you know it."
"I know, Uncle Dan, but this is a beautiful house. I've lived with Mother so long, took care of her for over fifteen years, and now I think I'd like to try living alone."
Mr. Blacker's blue eyes squinted in his seamed face as he watched Miss Simms. Though he wanted to sell the house, he had to agree with her uncle. She was, he judged, in her mid-forties, a spinster who would still be attractive to many men. The formless print dress did little to hide her still rounded and firm figure, and her graying blonde hair still caught the sunlight as it hung below her shoulders.
Uncle Dan sighed surrender. "I hope you know what you're doin', Marybelle. You've led somethin' of a protected life, and I don't think you realize the dangers to a woman like you who lives alone in an isolated spot."
Miss Simms smiled a slight smile. "A woman like me?"
"Yes," Uncle Dan said, embarrassed by her direct, questioning stare. "I mean to say, you're still an attractive woman, an' the wrong kinds of men are liable to get ideas."
"For the last
fifteen
years, Uncle Dan, I've been able to take care of both Mother and myself. I think taking care of just myself should be easier than the task I've completed."
Uncle Dan hooked his sausage-like thumbs into his belt. "Well, I'll help you all I can, Marybelle, with buyin' the place an' movin' in an' all."
Miss Simms' delicate face broke into a grateful smile. "I know, and I thank you, Uncle Dan."
"
Come on an' follow me to my place in your pickup," Mr. Blacker said. "We'll sign the papers an' get things in order. We'll have to go into town to the title company tomorrow, too.”
As they walked away from the picture-book frame house with the steep roof, Miss Simms could tell what Mr. Blacker was thinking. He was surprised and glad to find someone who'd actually pay cash for his house without having to arrange for a loan, and like most of the men she knew, he was wondering why a woman like herself hadn't married by her age despite an invalid mother.
Uncle Dan wondered about that too, Miss Simms could tell. As far as he knew there had never been any men in her personal life, not even a casual beau.
Well, let him wonder,
she thought, glancing away from her uncle's thick red neck and behind her at her new
home. Let them all wonder.
When the transaction was completed, Uncle Dan came out and helped her direct the movers. It was pleasant for a change, to be able to afford most everything she needed. Her mother's insurance money had enabled her to buy this home and, if managed properly, should provide for her for life. So there was no longer money to worry about, and of course there was no longer Mother.
Mr. Blacker was at the house too, the day Miss Simms moved in. He walked about in the yard with her after the movers had left, puffing on a long, foul-smelling cigar and explaining to her just where
the boundaries of her property were, showing her the old unused barn concealed by the trees beyond the house. As he talked, Miss Simms was deciding where to plant her garden.
The first night in the new house was quiet; quiet in a lonely way. Mother had never made noise, crippled as she was, but at least she had been...well, she had been
there. Now,
when the wind moaned about the house or the floor creaked, only Miss Simms' ears heard.
She told herself it would have been twice as lonely if she'd stayed in the big old house in town, and she made herself ignore the creaks and the wind and the loneliness; but it was a long time before she slept, curled up in the center of the wide double bed.
Miss Simms had always been an immaculate housekeeper, and now with her own home, and her home only, she took even more pride in her housework. Everything was scrubbed or painted to gleaming cleanliness; every picture, every lampshade, every throw rug, was as straight as if it had been aligned with a ruler.
For the outside of the small frame house she hired professional painters. The color she chose was white, a marshmallow, cloud-like white that seemed to shine with a brightness of its own against the backdrop of green hills and far blue skies. It was the picturesque white of souvenir postcards; pure white.
There was a handyman whom Mr. Blacker sent around now and then to repair little things he'd agreed to fix. His name was Carl Orton. He was a big man with filthy hands who drank too much, sometimes even on the job, but he was a capable worker, with all his faults. Sometimes when he was supposed to show up, the day would pass and Miss Simms would find out that he'd disappeared again, driven away in his old truck to wherever he went, Saint Louis, maybe, to get drunk and stay drunk for long spells. Then, sometimes weeks later, he'd come back and act as if it all hadn't happened.
Carl Orton continued to come around and offer Miss Simms his help even after he'd finished all the jobs Mr. Blacker had given him, and he'd even gone so far as to fix the porch steps for her and not charge her. Miss Simms didn't like that. It made her feel indebted to him.
Once when Carl Orton had come to fix something, he'd brought another man with him, a younger, long-nosed man named Floyd, who did more staring at Miss Simms than work. Miss Simms sat on the porch and watched them as they sweated and toiled to put in more gravel on her long driveway. From the shade of the porch she would watch Floyd plunge his shovel roughly into the pile of gravel and glance at her with one dark eye from behind his extended shoulder.
Quite
a few men from the nearby towns (nearby meaning sometimes over twenty miles away) somehow found excuses to come to knock on Miss Simms' door, offering to work or selling something. She would talk to them coolly but politely and let them know just what the result of any improper advances would he. She talked to most of the men on the shaded front porch, explaining that it was warmer in the house, though if they listened hard they could hear the soft hum of the air conditioner from around the back of the house. All that hot spring none of them ever got past the front porch to enter Miss Simms' immaculate white frame house.
One day Sheriff Brogan came to call on her. He was a very fat man who perspired a lot beneath his gray uniform, and he wore high-topped heavy boots, the thick soles of which were usually caked with mud. Miss Simms was cordial to him and served him lemonade on the front porch.
"I wondered if you'd been havin' any problems up here," Sheriff Brogan said as he sat ponderously in a small, webbed lawn chair and sipped his lemonade.
"Problems, Sheriff?"
"I mean, livin' alone an' all."
"I assure you, Sheriff, I'm quite capable. And there's always help to hire for any heavy work."
"Yes, ma'am, but that's not exactly the kind of trouble I meant. You know, an attractive woman like yourself, livin' all alone, can give some of the wrong kinds of men some pretty dangerous ideas. I just wondered if you'd been...well, threatened or anything."
"Threatened with what?" Miss Simms watched the sheriff's broad face redden slightly as he nervously reached down and adjusted his heavy belt and holster so he could sit more comfortably.
"What I mean is," he said, "over the past month or so, much as I get around, I heard a few things mentioned in the taverns an' such. Nothin' uncomplimentary or insultin', understand, but it's just that it seems pretty well-known by a lot of the rougher element that you're livin' up here all alone. I think maybe you ought'a be kinda careful with the men that do come up here and do odd jobs for you an' such."
"Oh, you needn't worry about me, Sheriff. I never even let them into the house. Usually I just pay them for their labor right here on the porch."
"Yes, ma'am."
"But if it will make you feel any better, Sheriff, I'll be sure to let you know if anything... suspicious happens."
"I think that'd be a good idea, Miss Simms. That way maybe we could stop trouble before it starts."
"More lemonade, Sheriff?" Miss Simms smiled her very fetching smile at him.
"Another glass would taste good, ma'am, hot as it is out here."
Sheriff Brogan drank two more glasses of lemonade, and as they sat and talked, Miss Simms discovered that he was gossipy. Though he told her some very shocking things, before her he was always careful to keep his language gentlemanly and polite.
When the sheriff did leave, Miss Simms stood and watched him strut pompously in his ridiculously heavy hoots toward his car. She wondered if Uncle Dan had sent him around to look after her.