“You’ll pay hell proving anything,” Lee said, calmly relighting his cigar stub, “without a body.”
“Not in a court of law,” Pitt said casually. “Innocent until proven guilty, but the story is a worn classic. Kill thy neighbor for profit; there’s your title. Suppose we begin at chapter one with an eccentric inventor named Charlie Smith who was testing his latest brainstorm, an automatic fishing-pole caster. On one cast the sinkers took the hook deep and it snagged on an object. Charlie, an experienced angler, thought he had
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hooked a submerged log and expertly worked the line until the tension gave and it pulled free. But he felt a drag; something was surfacing with the hook. And then he saw it: an aircraft oxygen tank. Its mounts had torn loose, eroded over the years of submersion, and Charlie’s tugs were all the tank needed to break away and rise to the lake’s surface.
“The practical course would have been to call the sheriff. Unluckily for Charlie, he was the curious sort. He had to prove to himself there was a plane down there, so he scrounged a rope and grappling iron and began dragging the lake bottom. On one pass he must have caught and yanked up the shattered nose gear, which must have broken out of its housing. Suspicions confirmed, Charlie then became greedy and sniffed the sweet smell of treasure. So instead of playing Honest John Citizen and reporting his discovery, he headed straight for Lee Raferty.”
“Why would Charlie come to me?”
“A retired Navy man, a deep-water diver; you were made to order. I venture to guess the diving equipment and air compressor you and Charlie scrounged are sitting in your garage right now. A hundred-and-forty-foot dive must have been child’s play for a man of your experience, wearing hard-hat gear. The strange cargo in the aircraft stirred the juices of your imagination. What did you expect to find inside the canisters? Old atomic bombs, perhaps? I can only envision the backbreaking work it took for two men nearing seventy to dive in frigid waters and wrench weights of two thousand pounds from the lake depths to shore. I give you both credit for guts. I can only hope I’m in half the physical shape when I reach your age.”
“Not so tough.” Lee smiled; he seemed to have no fear of Pitt at all. “Once Charlie devised a small explosive charge to enlarge the already cracked opening on the fuselage, it was a simple matter for me to attach a cable to a canister while he towed it to shore with the four-wheel-drive.”
“Where there’s a will,” Pitt said. “What then, Lee? Once the canister was removed, it was obvious to an ex-Navy man and a former demolitions expert that you were looking at a prize that could have only warmed the cockles of an old battleship admiral’s heart. But what was the value at today’s prices? What was the demand for an outdated naval shell, except for scrap?”
Lee Raferty casually resumed filing the rough edges of the pipe. “Pretty slick guesswork, Mr. Pitt. I admit it. Not one hundred percent, mind you, but a passing grade. You underestimated a pair of foxy veterans, though. Hell, we knew them things in the canisters weren’t
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armor-piercing projectiles the minute we laid eyes on one. Took Charlie all of ten minutes to peg it as a poison-gas carrier.”
Pitt was stunned. Two old men had made fools of them all. “How?” he asked tersely.
“Outwardly it looked like standard naval ordnance, but we saw it was rigged the same as a star shell. You know the kind: after reaching a preset altitude, a parachute is released while a small explosive charge splits the head, igniting a wad of phosphorus. Except this devil was set to unleash a bundle of tiny bomblets filled with lethal gas instead.”
“Charlie figured they contained gas merely by looking at it?”
“He discovered the parachute-escape-hatch cover. That gave him his first clue. Then he came around front, dismantled the head, disconnected the charge, and peeked inside.”
“Dear God!” Pitt murmured in near despair. “Charlie opened the warhead?”
“So what’s the big deal? Charlie was a master at demolitions.”
Pitt took a deep breath and pitched the obvious question. “What did you do with the warheads?”
“The way I saw it, it was finders, keepers.”
“Where are they?” Pitt demanded.
“We sold them.”
“You what?” he gasped. “To whom?”
“The Phalanx Arms Corporation, in Newark, New Jersey. They buy and sell weapons on an international front. I contacted the vice-president, a screwy sort of duck, looks more like a hardware peddler than a death merchant. Name’s Orville Mapes. Anyway, he flew out to Colorado, checked over the projectile, and offered us five thousand bucks for every one we could ship to his warehouse. No questions asked.”
“I can guess the rest,” Pitt said. “It occurred to Charlie that if those shells were detonated, he would be responsible for thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of deaths. You were more callous, Lee. The money meant more to you than conscience. You two argued, then fought, and Charlie lost. You hid his body in the sunken aircraft. Then you set off a few sticks of dynamite, tossed a boot and his thumb in the debris, and cried all the way to his funeral.”
Raferty displayed no reaction to Pitt’s accusation. His mellow eyes never left the pipe. His hands slowly, placidly filed away at the threaded ends. He was far too nonchalant, Pitt thought. Raferty wasn’t acting like
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a man about to be turned in for murder. The look of a cornered rat was nowhere apparent.
“A shame Charlie didn’t see things my way.” Raferty shrugged almost sadly. “Contrary to what you may think, Mr. Pitt, I am not a greedy man. I did not attempt to sell off the projectiles in one swoop. You might say I looked upon them as a sort of savings account. When Max and I needed a few dollars, I’d make a one-at-a-time withdrawal, you might say, and call Mapes. He’d send a truck to pick up the merchandise and pay me in cash. A clean-cut, nontaxable transaction.”
“I’d like to hear how you murdered Charlie Smith.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Pitt, but I don’t have it in me to take a human life.” Raferty leaned forward and his wrinkled face seemed to leer. “Max is the stronger one. She handles the killing. Shot old Charlie in the heart as neat as can be.”
“Maxine?” The shock that swelled within Pitt did not come so much from the sudden disclosure as it did from the realization that he had committed a sad mistake.
“Throw a dime in the air at twenty paces and Max will make change,” Raferty continued, nodding over Pitt’s shoulder. “Let Mr. Pitt know you’re there, honey.”
Two metallic clicking sounds answered Raferty, followed by a gentle thud.
“The cartridge striking the floor should tell you Max’s old lever-action Winchester is loaded and cocked,” said Raferty. “Any doubts?”
Pitt braced both feet squarely on the floor and flexed his hand under the Windbreaker jacket. “Nice try, Lee.”
“Then see for yourself. But I warn you-no sudden moves.”
Pitt gradually turned to face Maxine Raferty, whose kindly blue eyes were staring over the sights of a repeating rifle. The barrel was pointed, rock steady, at Pitt’s head.
“Sorry, Mr. Pitt,” she said sadly. “But Lee and I ain’t of a mind to spend our few remaining years in jail.”
“Another murder on your hands won’t save you,” said Pitt. He tightened his leg muscles as he gauged the distance between himself and Maxine. It was five feet. “I brought my own witnesses.”
“Did you see anybody, honey?” asked Lee.
Maxine shook her head. “He came up the road alone. I kept watch after he entered the house. No one followed him.”
“I figured as much,” Lee Raferty said, and sighed. “You’ve been
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playing a bluffing hand, Mr. Pitt. If you had any solid evidence against Maxine and me, you’d have brought the sheriff.”
“Oh, but I did.” Pitt smiled and appeared to relax. “He’s sitting in a car about half a mile away, with two deputies hanging on our every word.”
Raferty tensed. “Damn you, you’re lying!”
“He taped a transmitter to my chest,” Pitt said, his left hand loosening the top button of his shirt. “Right here, under my-“
Maxine had dipped the rifle no more than a fraction of an inch as Pitt launched himself sideways and pulled the trigger of the Colt automatic he held under the folds of his jacket.
The Winchester and the Colt seemed to explode at the same instant.
Al Giordino and Abe Steiger had arrived minutes before Pitt and taken up a prone position beneath a stand of blue-spruce trees. Through field glasses Steiger observed Maxine hanging out the wash. “Any sign of the husband?” asked Giordino.
“Must be in the house.” The glasses angled slightly in Steiger’s hands. “Pitt is approaching her now.”
“That Colt forty-five must stick out like a third arm.”
“He’s got his Windbreaker draped over it.” Steiger bent a branch out of the way to clear his field of vision. “Pitt’s going inside the house now.”
“Time to move closer,” said Giordino. He was in the act of raising up on his knees when Steiger’s trunklike arm pinned him back down.
“Hold it! The old broad is hanging back to see if he was followed.”
They stayed quiet and motionless for several minutes while Maxine walked around the yard, her eyes probing the surrounding trees. She took a final look up the road and lumbered around a corner of the house and out of Steiger’s view.
“Give me time to make my way around back before you move on the front door,” said Steiger.
Giordino nodded. “Watch out for bears.”
Steiger threw him a tight grin and slipped off into a small ravine. He was still a good fifty yards short of his goal when he heard the shots.
Giordino had been marking time when the roar echoed through the windows of the house. He leaped to his feet and sprinted down a small hill, hurdling a lean-to fence into the yard. At that moment, Maxine Raferty burst backward through the front door like an out-of-control Patton tank, tumbled down the porch steps, and crashed to the ground.
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Giordino halted in his tracks, surprised by the sight of her bloodstained dress. He stood rooted as the elderly woman scrambled back to her feet as agilely as a gymnast. Not until it was too late did Giordino notice what looked like a battered rifle clutched in her hand.
Maxine, ready to charge back in the house, spotted Giordino standing dumbly in the yard. She gripped the Winchester awkwardly, with one hand under the breech, the other over the barrel, and snapped off a shot from the hip.
The force of the bullet spun Giordino through the air in a half turn and smashed him to the grass, his left thigh exploding in a spray of red through the cloth of his pants.
To Pitt, everything had seemed to grind into slow motion. The muzzle of the Winchester flashed in his face. At first he thought he had been hit, but when he collided with the floor, he found himself still able to move his limbs and body. Maxine’s shot had nicked his ear while his bullet smashed the stock on her Winchester, ricocheting into an antique kerosene lamp, shattering its glass shade.
Lee Raferty growled like an animal and swung the pipe. It caught Pitt on the shoulder and grazed his skull. Pitt grunted in pain and swung around, fighting off blackness and trying desperately to clear his fogging vision. He aimed the Colt at the blurred figure he knew to be Lee.
Maxine brought her rifle barrel down on the Colt, pounding it from Pitt’s fingers into the fireplace.
Maxine hastily labored to recock the mangled gun as Lee advanced, swinging the plumbing pipe. Pitt raised his left arm to fend off the blow and was surprised not to hear the bone snap. He lashed out with his feet and caught Lee on the knees, spilling the scarecrow-bodied man on top of him.
“Shoot, dammit!” Lee yelled to his wife. “Shoot!”
“I can’t!” she shrieked back. “You’re in my line of fire.”
Lee dropped the pipe and violently fought to disentangle himself, but Pitt locked him around the neck with the good right arm and hung on. Maxine danced around the room, excitedly pointing the Winchester, frantically trying for a safe shot. Pitt held on and kept Lee turned in front as a shield while struggling to regain his feet. Then Lee abruptly twisted, kneed Pitt in the groin, and broke free.
Through the burning haze of agony Pitt managed to grab the kerosene lamp and hurl it at Maxine, catching her across the chest. She screamed
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as the glass splintered into fragments, slicing her dress and penetrating one immense sagging breast. Then Pitt thrust his weight upward and charged, hitting her harder than he had ever hit anyone in his life. For a woman of advanced age, Maxine was hard, but she was no match against Pitt’s brutal onslaught. She soared backward with such force that she flew through the front door of the house and vanished.
“You bastard!” Lee screamed. He threw himself into the fireplace, snatched the Colt from among the ashes, and swung to face Pitt.
A window suddenly disintegrated and Abe Steiger tumbled into the kitchen, collapsing the table beneath him. Lee spun, giving Pitt the instant he needed to snatch the pipe on the floor. A dazed Steiger never forgot the sickening sound of the pipe’s crushing the bone of Lee Raferty’s temple.
Giordino sat on the ground, his eyes staring numbly at his punctured leg. He looked up at Maxine, not fully grasping what had happened. Then his mouth went slack and he watched helplessly as she deliberately ejected the spent shell and recocked the rifle. Maxine took careful aim at his chest and curled her finger around the trigger.
The blast was deafening and the slug tore the breastbone away, catapulting gore and marrow in a grisly pile at Giordino’s outstretched feet. Maxine stood inert for almost three seconds before she folded limply to the yard in a fat, grotesque heap, her blood spilling out between her breasts and staining the grass.
Pitt leaned against a porch railing, his hand wielding the Colt, barrel poised in the recoil position. He lowered the gun and walked stiffly toward Giordino. Steiger came out to look, paled, and threw up into a flowerbed.