Panic!

“Sure,” Brackeen said. “Twenty minutes, Forester.”

He gave the mike back to Bradshaw and told him to put the news of the homicide on the air to the county sheriff’s office—and to the Highway Patrol office—in Kehoe City. Then he located his Stetson and went out to where his cruiser was parked in front. He drove very fast, the way he liked to drive, windows down and the hot, thick air blowing against the textured leather of his face; the siren, shrill and undulatory, turned heads and cleared away the few cars which dotted the streets of Cuenca Seco and the county road beyond.

Brackeen felt a faint, half-forgotten stir of excitement as he sent the cruiser hurtling along the heat-spotted road. There had been a time when the commission of a crime such as murder set the juices flowing warm and deep within him, a time when his position as a representative of the law—of Justice—had inspired grim determination, a need to protect the citizenry from the lawless and the desperate. That time was long dead now—let the bright-faces inflate themselves with righteous vigor—but still, he could not help being interested in what Forester had had to report. A murder, any violent death, was an unheard-of occurrence in Cuenca Seco and environs, the last one having taken place in 1962 and that a husband-wife thing resulting from a protracted drought and flaring tempers, and a revolver kept too handy and too well supplied with bullets; in fact, any kind of overt crime was so rare as to be virtually nonexistent. There was no challenge to the job of law enforcement in Cuenca Seco, and that was the way Brackeen wanted it; but the fact remained that he had been a trained city cop once, dedicated in his own way, and a murder was something he couldn’t take with his usual indifference. That was why he was going to the scene personally, instead of letting Forester and Lydell and the State Highway Patrol have it all to themselves ...

Forester was waiting for him under the wooden awning in front when Brackeen arrived at Del’s Oasis. He had a slender, athletic build and ash-blond hair and intense eyes the color of forged steel; in spite of the heat, his khaki uniform was fresh and crisp except for patches of dust on the trousers that he had apparently gotten from climbing through the storeroom window. He stood officiously, unmoving, watching the approach of his immediate superior without expression.

Brackeen parked his cruiser behind Forester’s, stepped out into the wash of heat from the perpendicular desert sun. He pushed his hat back and crossed under the awning. Forester nodded curtly, his sharp eyes now registering disapproval at what they beheld; he said, “The county and state people coming?”

“They’ll be along,” Brackeen answered. He moved past Forester and entered the oppressive warmth of the café. The shades had been pulled up and the lights were on; the air was thick with flies, buzzing angrily, circling. Brackeen went to the lunch counter and around behind it. Forester had apparently found a blanket somewhere and had used it to cover Perrins; the dead man lay sprawled on his back, one leg twisted under him, arms outflung. Wedging his big buttocks against the shelving beneath the counter, Brackeen knelt and drew the blanket back. Pool of blood, hell; there wasn’t much blood at all. Well, that figured. But the guy had been shot six times, all right, you could count each one of the scorched holes in the dark-spotted front of Perrins’ shirt.

Brackeen frowned slightly. Each of the holes was on the upper chest, left side and middle, over and around the heart, with maybe five inches between the two outside wounds. Some nice shooting—or some careful shooting. He replaced the blanket, stood up, and came out from behind the counter.

Forester was watching him from just inside the screen door. Brackeen looked at him and asked, “You go over the premises?”

“Naturally.”

“Find anything?”

Forester hesitated, and then shrugged, and then said, tightlipped, “I think so.”

“What?”

“In the storeroom.”

Brackeen followed him across and into the storeroom. Near the window, a cot was pressed against the wall; on top of the cot, the handle of a broom wedged through two leather carry loops, was a battered overnight bag, zippered open.

Forester said, “Found that bag under the cot. Probably prints on it.”

“Probably,” Brackeen agreed dryly.

“Clothing and some other stuff inside. Clothes are too small to belong to Perrins.”

“All right,” Brackeen said. “Let’s hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“Your theory.”

Forester smiled grimly. “I figure the bag belongs to a transient, a guy Perrins put up for the night, maybe had do some work around here. The sign up on the roof is freshly painted.”

Well, the bright-face was observant, at least. Brackeen said, “And so you think this transient shot Perrins.”

“That’s right.”

“Where did he get the gun?”

“Could have had it with him. Maybe stolen.”

“And the motive?”

“Robbery—what else?”

“Register cleaned out, is it?”

“Well, no, but that doesn’t have to mean much.”