Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

Listen, he’d been lying there on his stomach, a small, slender, silver haired figure in a tweed suit, with both hands under him, his face turned toward me. Only it wasn’t a face any more. Somebody had fired God hows how many bullets into it at point-blank range; and — what with the bullet holes, the blood, and the powder burns — it wasn’t anything like a face, it was just a red ruin.

For a while I just stood outside, sick, then it began to come to me — the kind of jam this put me in — and I began to get scared.

That was Vince Dobleen, the guy who’d sent me to prison. That was the guy I’d sworn to get. I had reason to kill him, the cab driver would remember bringing me here, I had no alibi for the last half hour. I thought of all that, and for a second I was on the verge of running; then I went back into the house.

There was a gallon can of gasoline near the body on the red tiled floor. Some of it had been sprinkled on the body and around it, and a lot more was on the piled papers and drapes spotted around the base of the panelled wall, as if the killer had been interrupted in the act of setting fire to the house to conceal his crime.

The whole library was a mess — desk drawers open, papers and books littering the floor, the big wall safe open and empty.

Call the cops? I threw that idea away instantly. This murder fitted me like a glove. I forced myself to feel the body, and it was almost as warm as my own. That meant he’d probably been killed only minutes before I’d arrived. That put me on the scene of the crime at the right time with the right motive and a record of having threatened to murder him. The cops wouldn’t have to look twice to decide who had murdered him.

The killer — where was he? If I’d interrupted him in the act of setting fire to the place, where had he gone? He sure hadn’t passed me out front. He could be still in the house.

I checked every room. Sure, I was scared — any door I opened might mean I’d get what Dobleen got, but I opened them all. And they were all empty. In the garage, joined onto the house, there were two cars, a Ford and a Cadillac. But no killer. Then I found the back door open, and I realized my arrival must have driven him out the back.

And by now I knew what I was going to do — the only thing that was left to do. Run.

I had twenty dollars in my pocket and that’s all. I had to turn Vince Dobleen’s body over to get to his wallet, and I couldn’t help noticing how his hands were pressed flat and tight against his stomach — why, I don’t know, because he hadn’t been shot there.

There was a hundred and eighty dollars in the wallet.

And now I needed a car.

I took the Ford, because it’d attract less attention. I drove it out, closed the garage door, then I got out of there in a hurry.

4

I drove about a dozen blocks before I spotted the car following me. It looked like a big car, but that’s all I could tell with the headlights in my eyes. I made a couple of turns which were duplicated, and I knew for sure I was being tailed. Police? Then why didn’t they close in? I thought of trying to outrun them, but suppose it wasn’t the police? And that’s when I had a sudden hunch.

I stomped on the gas, stretched my lead out to more than a block before the other car started to close up again; then I skidded the Ford into a dark side street, hit the brakes, dove into the first driveway I came to, and cut the lights.

The other car came around the corner moments later, braked sharply as the driver saw the dark, empty street, and came almost to a stop. It was a Cadillac.

I gunned the Ford back into the street, shifted, gave the motor all it’d take; and in seconds I’d crowded in on the Cadillac, jamming on my brakes as fenders crashed and the bigger car was pinned against the curb. I was out and running the instant the Ford stopped; but the other driver was too fast for me. And he didn’t try to back up and circle the Ford; he poured on the gas, and that Cadillac’s big motor humped it right up over the curb. It skidded across a lawn, just missed a tree, gouged huge holes in a flowerbed without getting stuck, then was back in the street, roaring away.

I’d killed the Ford’s engine when I stopped, and now I flooded it. The starter ground for what seemed minutes — lights were popping on all over the neighborhood — then finally it caught, and I roared out of there myself.

The Cadillac had gotten away clean. But I’d gotten a good look at it — it was black, it had white sidewalled tires, and from the back fender rose the kind of antenna they have when there is a mobile telephone in the car — it was the Cadillac that had been in Vince Dobleen’s garage.

The killer must have been hidden in the gardens back of the house. When I left, he’d jumped into the Cadillac and followed me. Why, I couldn’t make the remotest guess. But I’d been so close to trapping him; if I’d only rammed him instead of — no use thinking about that.