Read Have Gat—Will Travel for Free Online

you I was holding out on you, and that was it. I couldn't spill, because even you might have given something away when you saw her, and I couldn't take a chance with her in the spot she was in. She knew you were coming down to the club, that's why I let you go. She carries a gun, is a better shot than you are, and could cover you. Shell, is there any chance Dorr knows she's a cop?"
    In the moment before I answered, I remembered the puzzled look in her hazel eyes when I'd jerked my head; she'd known who I was, maybe she'd thought I had some word from Samson. Now I understood how Sam had known Chuck wasn't alibied for last night; she'd told Sam, and even knowing Chuck might be Pam's killer, she'd taken the big chance and had come outside, worried, forgetting her bag. And then Dorr had come out with the bag that held her gun and must have held her shield or identification. Right after that I'd been beaten, probably was to have been killed — and they'd all left the club and brought her to this desolate spot.
    "Sam," I said, "he knows."
    He was cursing when I hung up. I sprinted to the car. The speedometer needle crept to ninety. After five or six miles I passed an intersection, a narrow road that extended both to my right and left. I swore, kept on going straight ahead. But no car showed up in my headlights, and finally I turned around and went back to the intersection. There wasn't time to wonder which branch they might have taken; I swung left onto the bumpy road and stopped, switched off the lights and got out of the car, opened the trunk. I found the infra-red scope and got behind the wheel again. If they saw me coming on this dark and little-traveled road I wouldn't have a chance — nor would she. I drove forward slowly, lights out, looking into the blackness ahead through the small scope.
    It's now called the snooperscope, though it was the sniperscope in World War II when it was used by snipers, and by Army drivers driving without lights on dark nights. With the scope to my eyes I could see the outline of any otherwise invisible objects as much as two-hundred to three-hundred feet from me. As I drove I remembered Chuck's face when he'd hit me, Pam's face in the morgue — and Lucille's face. I remembered thinking Lucille might be pretty without the mass of paint and that brassy air.
    I was almost ready to give up, turn around and try the other direction, when I saw the clear outline of a car in the scope. It was parked off the road on my right, and I stopped a hundred feet away, and went forward on foot, carrying the hammer. It was Chuck's car, empty.

    T he night was black, still, sky overcast and moon hidden behind the scudding clouds, but looking through the small tube I could see outlines of scattered trees and shrubs. I didn't see the four of them. They had parked on the road's right, so I walked to the right of the car.
    And then I saw them: four sharp outlines visible through the tube, fifty yards away. I couldn't make out what they were doing. I ran toward them, trying not to make noise that would startle the men. Then I stopped running and walked slowly, carefully, until I could hear Chuck's voice. I still couldn't see them without the scope, but through it I saw Chuck's long arm reach to the front of Lucille's blouse and rip it savagely. The two others were behind her, holding her. I moved closer, gripping the hammer in my fist.
    And now I could see them with my naked eyes. I heard Chuck's tense voice as he spoke viciously, savagely, filthily to Lucille, giving her an intimate description of what he and the other two with him now had done to Pam the night before. Then he told Lucille what they were going to do to her.
    I was almost near enough to jump them, and I had been so intent on Chuck's words that I hadn't noticed the clouds overhead slipping away from the moon. But moonlight grew without my noticing it, and bathed us all in soft but bright silver — and at the same moment I recognized the