Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

Ten minutes later, I drove the Ford slowly past Julie’s apartment, spotted Vednick’s sedan, and drove past it, my face turned away from him. It was dark and foggy, and he wouldn’t spot my face; but if he spotted this gray Ford, that would mean something. And what it would mean was enough to send a prickle of excitement through me.

I drove on, watching my rear view mirror, and there! He’d grabbed the bait. He was coming after me, coming fast; then his sedan cut in front of me, tires squealing, crowding me to the curb.

“Come out of there, Karger,” he barked, gun levelled at me.

I came out, eyes on the gun, set to start yelling for help, to make so big a disturbance I’d get the whole neighborhood out here, and somebody would call the cops before Vednick could get me into a car and take me some place where he could beat the money’s location out of me. And not until that instant did I see the flaw in the whole crazy stack of suppositions I’d built up.

Vednick wasn’t the killer. If it’d been Vednick in the Cadillac the other night, he wouldn’t have run away. He’d have pulled that gun on me, and I’d have done what he said; then when he was close enough, he’d have slugged me with it, dumped me into the Ford, driven out of town, reloaded the gun and given me what he gave Dobleen.

The real killer would have done that too. Unless... unless... God Almighty, the thing had been staring me in the face for two days, and I’d been to dumb to see it! Sure, Vednick was in on it — without him there’d have been no murder — but he hadn’t killed anybody.

I was standing there in the street, fitting the facts together so feverishly that I was only half aware of Vednick’s harsh voice: “Do you turn around and stick out those hands, or do I shoot a leg out from under your”

Almost dazedly I turned and he put the handcuffs on me; then he patted my clothes for weapons. Every single fact fitted. I had the whole works put together without a thing out of place — and no proof for any of it. And no way to get any.

No, there was one way! A longer chance than even the first one had been. I had no business even thinking of it; but maybe I was too tired of running, of being scared, to realize what I was letting myself in for. All I was thinking was that I knew who the killer was, but if I couldn’t find him, I could never prove a thing — and there was only one person who could lead me to him.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t say a word. I got into the car just as Vednick said to. And he drove out of town, the gun held in his left hand in his lap and pointed at me.

“The jackpot, no less,” he grunted. “Brother, are you dumb.”

Nobody knew it better than I did. Maybe I was being dumb now, but it was the only chance I had. We’d just have to wait and see.

8

It was out Purfoy Road again, but not to 6127. This house was a quarter of a mile farther out, but it was much the same kind of a house. And the dunes crowded around in the same way, the same ocean boomed out there to drown any kind of a call for help a man might make.

“Where is the money?” He’d searched the Ford, and now he turned to me.

“I hid it.”

“Where?”

“Go to hell.”

His fist smashed me in the mouth, and I stumbled and fell, my ears full of a louder roar than the surf.

“Get into the house. We’ll see whether you talk or not.”

I stumbled into the house. He wouldn’t kill me before I told him what he wanted to know. Meanwhile I’d find out what I wanted to know.

Lights were on inside the house, the front door was unlocked, the front room was empty but a door to another room was just closing; and I knew who was behind that door just as surely as I knew the sun would rise tomorrow.

“Come out of there, Dobleen!” My yell sounded crazy even to me. “Come on out and join the party.”

And he came out, a slender, frail little man with silver hair and a sharp, half-handsome face that was twisted in tight smile. Vince Dobleen, the cause of everything that had happened to me.

And now was as good a time to make my break as any — Vednick had his back half toward me, closing the door, Dobleen was all the way across the room. I spun and ran for the open hallway, then about ten feet down it to a door — a swinging door, thank God — and I hit it and it slammed back against the wall, and I was in a kitchen. The back door was closed; and, with my hands handcuffed behind my back I just hit it full tilt, my heel slamming in just beside the knob. If it’d been like the door in the other house, my kick would have torn the lock right out of it, but this wood was better stuff.

My foot felt like it was broken, and the door hadn’t budged. I was back to it, fumbling for the knob, when Vednick’s fist drove my head back against the doorjamb; then he grabbed me and swung me around and back into the stove so hard I hung there, the room spinning around me.

I hadn’t had anything planned, except maybe some crazy idea of running around the house, grabbing the keys out of the Ford, and disappearing in the fog among the dunes, and running for a phone at the next house.