Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

The Wheeler’s marriage seemed to be a case of a weak but idealistic man marrying a strong, dominating woman. Elaine and her father had tried to change Wheeler, but he had been too rigid to conform and too weak to stand up for himself. The strain of being in the middle like that had turned him into a man who hit his kids and looked for comfort to another woman. Lack of power in the marriage had led him to seek it wherever he could. I could have almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Until I thought of Jackie and Cindy.

I turned over Joyce McCormick’s information in my head. It made sense, Wheeler knowing the surrounding countryside so well. I figure’d that he spent a great deal of time roaming around in it, looking for scenes to sketch. That would mean he knew all the back roads, maybe even better than Cartwright and his men. He could be holed up back in the hills where it would take an army to find him.

Something Cartwright had told me earlier popped into my head. According to Jackie’s story, something had happened to Wheeler’s car and he had stopped it to check under the hood. That was when the kids slipped away. That couldn’t have happened too far from where I found them, or they would have been a lot more tired than they were.

It was possible that Wheeler hadn’t been able to get the car going again. If he had had to abandon it and strike out on foot, it was possible that he was hiding not far from the road, waiting for night to fall again. It was too hot to do much walking in the daylight hours.

I drove on through Dunes and headed for the spot where I had found the kids. Once I passed it, it was only another mile or so to the old deserted gas station that I had barely noticed the night before. I slowed down as I approached it.

There was a road there, turning off to the north, toward the foothills. It hadn’t registered on my consciousness the night before, and I hadn’t been able to pull it out of my subconscious until now. I didn’t know whether Sheriff Cartwright had already checked it out or not, but I thought. It was worth a try.

It was more of a trail than a road, two dim tire tracks that led off through the mesquite and cactus. I had to watch out for rocks, but other than that, it wasn’t too hard to negotiate.

Once, not long after I had turned off the highway, I caught a glimpse of movement in the rearview mirror, a flash of blue, but when I looked again, I couldn’t see anything for the dust that was billowing up behind me. Ah uneasy feeling wormed its way up my backbone.

The road twisted up the edge of the hills, out of sight of the highway now. The dust was coming into the car and getting into my eyes and nose, and I was rubbing at my eyes with one hand and steering with the other when the trail turned sharply around a hillock.

I hit the brakes and stared.

There was a car sitting there with its hood up, an old Chevrolet that was covered with dust, just like my Ford was now. I brought my car to a stop behind it.

I got out slowly, looking around to see if anybody was in sight. The whole area seemed to be deserted for miles around.

Then I heard the growling of an engine somewhere behind me.

Someone had followed me out here. I didn’t know why, but I knew the reason probably wasn’t anything good. I hurried over to the other car. I wanted to check it out quickly and get moving again.

I glanced in arid saw the papers and documents scattered on the front seat. Reaching in through the open window, I picked some of them up and saw that they were the stocks and bonds that Ralph Barrett had mentioned. This was Wheeler’s car, all right, there was no doubt about that.

I took another step toward the front of the car. That’s when I saw the foot.

I moved forward slowly. The foot didn’t move. As I stepped around to the front of the car, flies rose in a cloud.

The man was sprawled on the sand in front of the car. His blue eyes were glazed and staring. His hands still clutched at his chest where the dark stain had spread on his sports shirt.

I walked around the body and then saw the gun lying in the sand on the other side of the car. I wasn’t going to touch it. Cartwright could do that.

I was sure that this was John Wheeler. I could see the resemblance, especially to Jackie. He was lying on his side, and I suddenly noticed a few inches of a leatherbound book sticking out of his pocket.

Something made me reach out and pull it gently from his pocket. Blood had stained one corner of it. I opened it and flipped through the pages hurriedly. It seemed to be a record of shipments of some kind. I wondered if the handwriting was Ralph Barrett’s.

There seemed to be something wrong with the shipments listed. They all originated at the border and went to various cities, but there was no explanation of what was being shipped. I checked the dates. They ranged all through the year, so it couldn’t be produce. That wasn’t an agricultural area, anyway. Nor was it an industrial one.