The Will to Kill Page 18

  Softly I said to Sheridan, “I don’t know. Pat may not be so thrilled to learn his friend’s own kid bumped him off.”

  The trooper shook his head. “The bad guys decide who they are, Mike. We don’t.”

  Before the Cohen girl was eased by attendants into the back of the emergency vehicle, she asked to see me. I went over and gave her a rumpled grin.

  “You’re going to be all right, kid,” I said.

  She was already in a hospital gown. “I don’t… don’t know about that. But I do know I owe you… I owe you everything.”

  Then she threw her arms around me and held me tight. I patted her back as she sobbed into my chest. She was going to make it. Even after what those two sorry excuses for male humans had put her through, she could still hug an ugly guy like me. It wouldn’t be easy, but she’d put this nightmare behind her.

  I went inside to see how Dorena was doing and found her still at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, looking pretty shell-shocked.

  I sat with her a while, not saying anything, but with my hand on hers, patting, squeezing, offering occasional inadequate words of support. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying for Chickie. I supposed somebody had to.

  Upstairs, I once again threw water in my face and got into my sportcoat and jammed my hat on my head, making myself borderline presentable. Anyway, it had started to get cold out there. Then I went out into a world bustling with cops and lab boys and such.

  The B.C.I. processed the two crime scenes, in a preliminary fashion at least. Meanwhile, both Sheridan and Bullard wanted to hear my story. As we stood in a three-man huddle near the carriage house, I gave it to them, more or less, though all I said about Chickie was that I found the body. I could tell Bullard wondered if I’d killed the boy/man, but he didn’t come right out and say so. Still, that made him a better judge of character than I’d have given him credit for.

  He didn’t give me a free ride, though. In the same ill-fitting Sears suit and unfortunate Christmas tie, the stocky detective studied me with the skeptical narrowed eyes of a father appraising his daughter’s prom date.

  “So,” he said, chewing on the stub of a cigar that had long since gone out, “you caved the prick’s face in with a shovel, huh? How the hell are you going to make a self-defense plea out of that?”

  I showed him the bruised area on my right wrist, where Willie’s shovel had knocked the .45 from my hand, and said, “He was swinging the goddamn thing at me, and I grabbed it from him and swung back. See if any jury objects to me doing that to a raping kidnapper.”

  Bullard saw my point, and so did Sheridan, who even smiled a little. Cops are all about dark humor.

  “So you kill the prick and rescue the girl,” Bullard said, “and you find the dead kid in bed. But what does that add up to?”

  When I hesitated, Sheridan said, “Isn’t it obvious, Sergeant? Hammer here started sniffing around the Chet Dunbar and Jamison Elder deaths—which we now know are murders—and Willie got spooked. He bumped off his accomplice, young Charles ‘Chickie’ Dunbar, and was getting ready to bury their latest, and last, victim when Mike interceded.”

  Bullard winced in thought. “What, and then Willie would have packed up and left? Just split the scene?”

  The trooper shrugged. “Works for me.”

  Bullard squinted in my direction. “Work for you, Hammer?”

  I shook my head. “All due respect to Jim here, it smells.”

  Sheridan pushed his Stetson back on his head. “Why so, Mike?”

  “Willie was no criminal mastermind, but he was smarter than that. That fresh grave in the garden would get noticed right away. His sudden absence after Chickie’s murder would peg him as the immediate prime suspect. And odds are it was Willie’s gun that was used on Chickie. You’ll find an empty holster and a box of .22 slugs in his closet.”

  Bullard grunted. “Maybe you did the kid, Hammer.”

  So he’d finally turned his suspicion into words.

  “He was no kid, Bullard. He was a man of twenty who’ll go down in the record books as a mass murderer and sex deviant. You want to bet there aren’t at least another half dozen girls buried in that garden?”

  Bullard rolled the cigar stub around in his mouth. “No bet,” he said softly.

  A young trooper came rushing up to Sheridan; his face, with its stunned expression, would have seemed pale even without the moonlight. “Corporal, there’s something you should see…”

  The shaken trooper led us down the gentle slope to the fieldstone guardhouse near the gate, from which Willie had kept watch. A light was on in the little cottage. Another cop was standing outside the door, not as young as the one who’d summoned us, but just as pale. He looked like he was either about to puke or just had.

  Lit by a single hanging bulb, the interior was nothing fancy, a dry-walled space with a wooden floor, home to a well-padded, well-worn armchair, a little refrigerator, a space heater, and a cot. The latter had been pushed aside, when the place was searched apparently, revealing a two-foot by two-foot metal floor hatch. The lid of it was leaned back, opening onto darkness. Wooden basement-style stairs yawned down, swallowed up after a few steps.

  “An old storm cellar?” Sheridan wondered.

  “Storage for preserves maybe?” Bullard suggested.

  “Not any more, I don’t think,” I said.

  As we peered down into blackness, the young trooper held out a flashlight to his corporal. “You’ll need this, sir.”

  Flash in hand, Sheridan descended and Bullard and I followed. When we were down there, we made a crowd in the modest chamber, the floor space similar to the above. Sheridan sent the beam of light around.

  We were in a cement-walled cellar with a hard dirt floor. Hugging one wall was an old, beat-up mattress like something from an army barracks. Two dog dishes, one with some water, the other empty, were near the bed. A bucket was in a corner, redolent of excrement and urine.

  “Lord,” Bullard said.

  Sheridan’s flashlight revealed something even worse. Screwed into the walls were chains and steel cuffs, for wrists and ankles.

  The seasoned trooper shuddered. “I’ve seen enough.”

  We all had.

  Back out in the night, which felt cool and cleansing, Bullard said, “Off the record? If you did kill that ‘kid,’ Hammer, I don’t give a good goddamn.”

  “I still say the caretaker killed his accomplice,” Sheridan said. “If Mike’s right that Willie’s gun is the murder weapon, we may find it on the grounds somewhere—the woods maybe, where it got flung. We’ll search tomorrow.”

  By four a.m., the carriage house had been sealed and the garden roped off. In the daylight, the grim digging would begin. No back hoe for that garden of death, whose crop would be evidence, some of it almost certainly corpses—this job would take men with shovels, muscle, and a lot of care. Also, strong stomachs.

  Vehicles began leaving, in no hurry but glad to go. The firm-jawed trooper was the last. He was about to get in his patrol car when he paused to say, “Look for us around seven.”

  I managed a grin. “With luck, maybe some of you guys can get three hours sleep.”

  “You hold down the fort till then, Mike. As a licensed private investigator in the state of New York, you’re an officer of the court.”

  “Remind your B.C.I. pal of that,” I said.

  Then I was alone, and if you didn’t notice the seal on the carriage house door or the rope on pegs all around the garden, everything seemed the same as it had before I’d gone out for my late-night walk.

  Dorena was asleep at the kitchen table now, her head on her arms like a kid resting at a school desk.

  I leaned in, gave her a gentle nudge and whispered in her ear, “They’re gone. You better get some real sleep—they’ll be back before you know it.”

  She nodded as she sat up. Got unsteadily to her feet. Stretched and yawned. She was still in the robe and, despite it all, looked lovely. We made our way to the fro
nt stairs, which were wide enough for me to walk beside her if I stayed close.

  “Do you need company,” I asked, “or are you all right?”

  “I’m all right.”

  It didn’t sound very convincing, but I didn’t argue with her.

  I walked her to her bedroom door and she gave me a hug, much like the one Linda Cohen had bestowed upon me. Then she slipped into her room with a tiny smile and tinier wave.

  In the bedroom that had been Chester Dunbar’s, I set the .45 on the nightstand and got out of my sportcoat. Slipped off my shoes. Then I pulled up a chair and sat backwards on it, by the window, looking out.

  I should have been dead tired. Hell, I was dead tired. But my mind, my goddamn mind, wouldn’t let me alone. The puzzle pieces had all come together, hadn’t they? What was there to think about? Weren’t the two monsters dead?

  I considered calling Velda, but at this time of night—of morning—I chose not to disturb her sleep. In a few hours, I’d relieve her of her babysitting chores and she would return to the city, while I’d send Dex back out into the cold cruel world where maybe he’d be a drunk again and somebody else would take his gambling money, but he wouldn’t be a murder suspect. Not after I coached him a little and we got our stories straight.

  Not with Chickie Dunbar and Willie Walters on hand to share the gory glory.

  As for me, I’d have to stick around Monticello for a day or two to help the cops, and to get Madeline Dunbar properly sprung. And there would be occasional treks back up here to deal with the legal aftermath. But I would never have to sleep in the murdered father’s bedroom again. I had secured my release from the maelstrom of murder, betrayal, deceit, and madness that swirled about the Dunbar estate.

  Rising, sighing, I figured I’d give the bed a try. That was when I glimpsed the ghostly figure out the window, moving quickly across the vast backyard, apparently headed for the trees.

  I shoved the .45 in my waistband and moved quick, stepping into my shoes. The puzzle pieces shifted and flipped and the picture became as clear, finally, as it was disturbing. I didn’t bother to check Dorena’s room because I knew she wasn’t there.

  She was the ghostly figure, a blonde vision in a pink-pearl gown glowing white in the night.

  When I hit the cool outside air, however, I didn’t run. I didn’t have to. She was gliding up ahead of me across the moon-swept landscape, the robe flowing like a bridal train. On the still-hard ground, in my gum soles, I didn’t make much of any sound at all. She didn’t even hear me till she had reached the edge of the woods and I was right behind her.

  She froze for a moment, then swung around, a hand tucked behind her, her eyes wide with alarm, her mouth making a silent, “Oh!”

  “I like to walk at night, too,” I said.

  “Mike! You scared me.”

  “Sorry. Just wondered what you were doing out here. Haven’t we both had enough excitement for one night?”

  Her smile was as nervous as it was unconvincing. “I suppose we have. But it’s hard to sleep, after…”

  “After killing Chickie?”

  Her eyes got wider yet, and the way she drew her breath in, I might have punched her in the belly.

  One hand was still behind her back; the other came up as a fist that she bit, then lowered. “How can you think that, Mike? I loved that boy. After Daddy died, I was the only one in that house who felt a single thing for him. His death… it’s awful… it’s a terrible, terrible tragedy…”

  I smiled at that. “No one really talked to you tonight, did they? Not the state cops, not the local ones. But you get the picture. You know that the naked, abused girl I dropped in your lap had been tortured by your little brother and was slated by him and his buddy Walters for a garden burial. I mean, you’ve known all along that brother Charles was a sociopath.”

  She shook her head a little. “I… I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Your father trusted you. He knew those two flawed half-siblings of yours wouldn’t understand Chickie’s… condition. But you would, he thought.”

  Her chin was crinkling, tears on the way. “Why would I… why would I kill Chickie? Even if you’re right about what you say he was… socio-something—what is that, like a psycho?”

  “A rose by any other name.” I let out a hollow laugh. “You see, somebody like me—a detective—has to look at every possibility. Has to think everything through. Try to make the puzzle pieces fit. And I thought I’d done that. That I could see the picture clearly. But sometimes puzzle pieces can come together in more than one way.”

  Something indignant came into her expression, though fear remained at its edges. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s cold out here. I want to go back in the house.”

  She took a step and I blocked her.

  “I wonder,” I said, “if you were aware of the sick games Willie and Chickie were playing with the girls they grabbed. I like to think you weren’t. But maybe you got wise to what Chickie and lawyer Hines were up to—working to remove Wake, Madeline, and Dex from their respective shares of the family fortune. And certainly you must have guessed that Chickie was responsible for Jamison Elder’s demise. But what about your father?”

  Her chin came up. “I loved my father!”

  I nodded. “I think you did. Hell, I know you did. That may be what made it possible for you to finally remove his murderer from the face of the earth. Of course, there’s another possibility.”

  She was shaking her head again, more vigorously now. “None of this is right. You’re not getting any of it right…”

  “What if you were planning to kill or otherwise remove your half-brothers from the inheritance sweepstakes? Murdering Wake, pinning it on Madeline, taking them both out of the money. And what if Hines got wise or greedy and you had to get rid of him as well, but did so very cleverly, by eliminating the lawyer and Dex at once, with your half-sib framed for a capital crime? Even if Dex didn’t get the chair, he would become ineligible for his inheritance, having killed the executor of his father’s estate in a scheme to expand his trust fund. And who better to blame for all of this mayhem, should it be found out, than your brother Chickie? Your own handy-dandy in-house psycho, perfect to take the blame.”

  Her hand swung around from behind her back and the gun in it—a .22 revolver—thrust itself at me.

  “Ah,” I said. “Willie’s gun.”

  Her hand with the gun in it was shaking. “Yes, Willie’s gun. But none of the rest of what you’re saying is true!” Tears left her eyes to find her cheeks. “None of it! Yes, yes, yes… I killed Chickie. But I did it with love. Can someone like you believe that, Mike? Can you comprehend such a thing? I loved that boy despite it all!”

  I frowned. “Even though you knew about the abducted girls?”

  “No! No. God, no. I didn’t know! I knew my brother was bad, some would even call him evil, but… capable of something like that? Oh my God, no. If… if only I’d killed him sooner. I thought about it often, but I waited too long. You see, Mike, it wasn’t murder, not really. Not murder at all. It was… a mercy killing.”

  She was sobbing now. Shaking. When I batted the gun from her hand, it was like swatting a mosquito.

  Dorena jumped a little, then fell to her knees and covered her face with her hands. Tears seeped through her fingers.

  “What… what now, Mike? I did it. I did it, I did it, I did it. I admit I did it. I killed my brother Chickie! What next? Hand me over to the police? Or do you kill me, now?”

  I took a step away from her, picked up the .22 and wiped it clean on my shirt, and tossed the gun into the trees, where on its way it broke branches and ruffled leaves before landing with a distant thud for the cops to find.

  Then I went over and put an arm around her and began walking her to the house.

  “No, honey,” I said. “I just wanted to thank you for saving me the trouble.”

  A TIP OF THE PORKPIE

  Because my approach to completin
g Mickey Spillane’s unfinished novels is to set them in the period during which he began them, I find myself working from materials that were contemporary to my famous co-author but which require me to forge a novel that is a period piece bordering on an historical novel.

  I won’t attempt to credit the many Internet websites that provided background on the Catskills area that provides the setting for this novel. But I am nonetheless grateful.

  Some readers may realize a sort of inside joke was afoot regarding the inventions credited to Chester Dunbar and Condon Hale. The actual inventors were the unlikely show business figures of movie star Hedy Lamarr, Groucho’s brother Zeppo Marx, and ventriloquist Paul Winchell.

  Thank you to attorney Steve Kundel, my friend and bandmate, although any legal irregularities in this novel are mine alone.

  I also wish to thank and acknowledge my wife Barb Collins, with whom I write a very un-Spillane-like mystery series about antiquing, who gave me valuable editorial suggestions all along the way. Thanks also to my partner Jane Spillane, Titan editor Miranda Jewess, my lost brother Nick Landau, and my friend and agent, Dominick Abel.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  MICKEY SPILLANE and MAX ALLAN COLLINS collaborated on numerous projects, including twelve anthologies, three films, and the Mike Danger comic book series.

  SPILLANE was the bestselling American mystery writer of the 20th century. He introduced Mike Hammer in I, the Jury (1947), which sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed. The controversial P.I. has been the subject of a radio show, comic strip, and several television series, starring Darren McGavin in the 1950s and Stacy Keach in the ’80s and ’90s. Numerous gritty movies have been made from Spillane novels, notably director Robert Aldrich’s seminal film noir, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and The Girl Hunters (1963), in which the writer played his own famous hero.

  COLLINS has earned an unprecedented twenty-two Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations, winning for the novels True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1993) in his Nathan Heller series, and for “So Long, Chief,” a Mike Hammer short story begun by Spillane and completed by Collins. His graphic novel Road to Perdition is the basis of the Academy Award-winning Tom Hanks/Sam Mendes film. As a filmmaker in the Midwest, he has had half a dozen feature screenplays produced, including The Last Lullaby (2008), based on his innovative Quarry novels, also the basis of Quarry, a current Cinemax TV series. As “Barbara Allan,” he and his wife Barbara write the “Trash ’n’ Treasures” mystery series (recently Antiques Fate).