Burnt Offering Read online

  It was all very obvious. There was, Heimrich thought, a fair chance that it was too obvious. There was, however, nothing immediately to be done about it—nothing important enough to stop his doing what he had come to do. Heimrich began a slow and careful search for evidence that Orville Phipps had been killed in his own house. There would be blood if he had been. Perhaps there would be, lodged somewhere, a bullet. It was always helpful to have a bullet.

  It was a little after eleven when Asa Purvis ground a final cigarette underfoot and went into the garage and walked its shadowy length to the room he slept in. The air smelled of gasoline and oil, in spite of the open window, but Asa did not particularly notice this. He was used to it; also, he was engaged in thought. He looked around the small room narrowly; he went to the window and through it searchingly regarded the night. His eyes were narrowed; once he moved his right hand, as if to snatch from a shoulder holster his police positive.

  He did not, this night, take a brief, but manly, swallow from the pint bottle of blended whiskey. He had put that behind him. Alcohol slowed the reflexes, as everyone knew. After you had got your man, when you were explaining to admirers how you had got him, then it might be proper to relax—but still warily—over a drink or two. But with your man un-got, you kept your wits about you, since you were Asa Purvis of the FBI. (It was really too bad about that “Asa.” Almost anything else would be better. Asa absently tried a few—Wade Purvis? Michael Purvis? Kurt Purvis?)

  In the past—the lax past—it had been well enough to drink now and then. Obligations had been few; if you were to be Asa Purvis the wastrel, the lounger in night clubs, the loved (but pitied) of Marilyn Monroe, it was, after all, your life. If you chose to throw it away, chose to be a playboy, it was yours to throw. You became one of the beautiful and the damned, a phrase which Asa had come across in an article in the Sunday Mirror. It was quoted there; presumably someone had said it before. Membership in that group had, for several days after Asa had heard of it, become, if not precisely an aspiration, a rather romantic possibility.

  Now, of course, all that was changed. Softness was rejected, and blended whiskey with it. Asa took a deep breath of the fumes of gasoline and oil, with their moderate admixture of air. He kept his back to the wall of the room as he undressed, and his movements were quick and decided. Before he got into bed he took a last survey from the window, leaning through it to look to right and to left. He held his breath momentarily, so that if anyone else were breathing in the vicinity he would detect the sound. There were a good many sounds—country nights are by no means silent—but none which appeared to be inimical.

  Assured that duty—the duty he had assumed when Captain Heimrich had entrusted him with the protection of Mr. Phipps’s jeep—did not require present action, Asa went to bed. A flashlight was handy on the floor beside him. He did not immediately go to sleep; his thoughts reverted to the jeep. There was still something funny about its being there—about his having expected it to be there, although the more he thought about it the more certain he became that it had not been there when he went to bed the night before. Well, he would simply have to deduce what had happened about the—Asa, being nineteen and healthy, went to sleep abruptly, in mid-thought.

  He was awakened by a great flash and a great roar, and, almost at once, by great pain. At the same time, he was, by some force which was incomprehensible, hurled back against the wall by which the bed stood. He cried out, loudly, in that instant between sleep and painful waking. His own cry drowned to his ears the sound, outside the window, of running feet.

  He was, and knew he was, badly hurt. In a moment he knew he had been shot. He put his hand where the pain was—just below the left shoulder—and there was warm wetness on his hand. He reached down for the flashlight and found it, and fastened his fingers around it, although the fingers seemed to move slowly, uncertainly. The flashlight slipped in his hand and it was difficult—it was slow and painful—to find the switch, to slide it forward so that light leaped from the end of a black tube.

  There was a great deal of blood from the wound below his left shoulder; blood ran from the wound with frightening speed. He wadded a sheet and pressed it against the hurt place, and the white fabric began to redden. He stood, then—half stood—and began to walk. He reached the telephone, which was across the room. He could not lift his left hand. It was necessary to let go the sheet which he had dragged with him in his slow crossing of the room so that he could work the dial with his right hand. He started to dial the number of his home, but his finger slipped after he had dialed the letters of the number—slipped when he was halfway around the dial with the first of the digits. Painfully, he pressed down on the buttons which break the circuit. He laid the receiver on the table which held the telephone.

  He was in a circle of light, of consciousness, in a greater, contracting, circumference of darkness. The circle he lived in grew smaller and smaller. It was the circle at the bottom, at the right—he had to get his finger in it—had to turn toward his left—toward the wound—toward the blood—had to wait—and wait and—there was a spaced buzzing somewhere—somewhere—

  He leaned down toward the receiver lying on the table.

  “Please,” he said. “Please—please hurry—please—this is Asa—Asa Purvis—at the garage. Please hurry. I’ve been—something’s happened—I’ve been shot—I’ve—”

  He could not hear an answer, if there was an answer. He reached down for the sheet and, as he reached, almost fell. He lifted the end of the sheet slowly, with infinite effort. He pressed the sheet against the bloody place.

  He would get back to the bed. That was what he would do. He would get back to the bed and lie down and they would come and—

  The flashlight lay still on the floor. Its beam knifed the darkness, was a circle on the wall. The bed was there, beyond the light. He would lie on the bed and they would come and—

  Asa Purvis did not quite make it to the bed. When the circle of consciousness was shuttered out by darkness, and he slipped slowly to the floor, the bed was still several feet away. He fell with the sheet under him, bunched under the wound. He happened to fall so that much of the sheet was wadded there, and the weight of his body pressed the fabric against the wound.

  Heimrich had not found anything helpful in the living room, and the large room had taken time. A flashlight would have helped, especially for close examination of the carpet. No longer having a flashlight, Heimrich worked with table lamps, held close to the floor. If Orville Phipps had been shot in his living room, he had not bled there. It was highly probable, however, that he had bled a good deal before he died.

  Satisfied, if not contented, Heimrich went out and down the hall, and into the second door on the right. This was the dining room; it was through this room—yes, there was the open window—that the burglar had fled. Heimrich went to the door between living room and dining room and unlocked it. He turned on more lights. He went over the dining room inch by inch; it was a smaller room, and held less furniture, but it, also, was carpeted. There was no evidence that Phipps had been killed in the dining room.

  Nor was there any evidence that violence had occurred in the kitchen—the very large kitchen which crossed the rear of the house. Heimrich worked his way back through the two rooms on the side of the hall opposite to the living room. Both were sparsely furnished and, it appeared, little used. And neither gave evidence it had been used for murder. Heimrich went upstairs to examine, and find nothing relative in, five bedrooms—two of them furnished for immediate occupancy—and two bathrooms. The big bed in what, evidently, had been Phipps’s own room had not been slept in since last it was made up. There was nothing to indicate recent use of either bathroom.

  Heimrich sighed and went up to the attic, although it was highly improbable that anyone had taken Phipps to the attic to shoot him. There were several rooms there, and a good deal of retired furniture and many newspaper parcels. There was no sign that anybody had died there, except a bird—a swift,
Heimrich thought, from what was left—which had apparently found some way in and no way out. Heimrich went down the necessary flights of stairs to the basement, which was cement floored and somewhat cavernous. He was behind the oil burner when, distantly, he heard a bell ringing. He emerged. A telephone bell was ringing. He went, solidly, up the wooden stairs. The telephone—a telephone at any rate—was in the central hall. Heimrich picked it up. He said, “Hello?” in a voice which, if not disguised, was not noticeably his own.

  “Captain,” Forniss said. “We’ve had a shooting. The kid at the garage. Young Purvis.”

  Heimrich swore, heavily. He did not ask questions; Forniss needed no guidance.

  Asa Purvis was still alive and, at the moment, on his way to the Cold Harbor Hospital. He was wounded in the left shoulder, just below the left shoulder. The collar bone was broken; the extent of further damage was as yet undetermined. The boy had lost much blood. Asa was unconscious. He had lain unconscious for at least half an hour after he was shot, and before help arrived. The bullet appeared still to be in Asa’s body. It might be somewhere near, it was to be hoped not too near, the spine. From the entrance wound, it had been of small caliber.

  He had been shot, it appeared, while asleep in the room at the rear of the garage. At a guess, he had been shot from the window of the room, by someone standing outside. At a guess, the attack had occurred about midnight.

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “It isn’t midnight yet. It can’t be more—” He paused to look at his watch. The watch told him it was twelve forty-five. Heimrich shook it; he watched the sweep hand revolve. He said, “All right, Charlie. I’ve been here longer than I thought.”

  The ground under the garage window was hard, baked hard. The attacker had left no trace there. With two troopers who had responded to Asa’s broken, stuttered plea, Forniss had searched the area, hoping for a cartridge casing. He had found none. For what it was worth, then, the weapon probably had been a revolver. It was regrettable that the bullet which had entered Asa’s body had remained in it. It was probable, however, that, since the slug had hit bone, it would be useless for their purposes, when and if obtained. They did not, on the whole, seem to be having much luck.

  “Neither does the kid,” Heimrich said. “He’s a nice kid, Charlie. We’d better get over to the hospital. I’ll meet you there.”

  This time, Heimrich drove fast on the deserted country road. It was a few minutes after one when he went into the lobby of the Cold Harbor Hospital and crossed it to the reception desk, where a student nurse sat, keeping her eyes open with an effort. She said, “Oh! The Purvis boy. I’m afraid—” But she called someone. She got a nurse, first. “I’m afraid I can’t—” the nurse said. But she called the resident. Sergeant Forniss was there, by then. They waited on a wicker seat in an alcove.

  The resident was young, and tired, and quick. He said it was a bad business.

  “How bad?” Heimrich asked him, and the physician said it was bad enough, that the boy had lost a lot of blood. He was being given a lot of blood.

  “He’s young,” the doctor said. “A pretty husky kid. He ought to make it, if things go all right. You can’t talk to him, if that’s what you want. He’s doped up, anyway.”

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “I realize that. The bullet?”

  “In the back muscles,” the doctor said. “And we’re not going to get it for you. Not tonight. A couple of days, if everything goes all right.”

  “I like the boy, doctor,” Heimrich said, and was mild. “I don’t want anything that would be bad for him. Has he said anything?”

  “Nothing coherent,” the doctor said. “He mutters. They do, mostly.”

  “I want someone with him,” Heimrich said, and was told a nurse was with him. “The sergeant here,” Heimrich said. The doctor looked at the largeness of Sergeant Forniss. “He’ll be quiet,” Heimrich said. “He’ll be out of the way. He’ll listen, doctor. I want someone to listen.”

  The resident lacked enthusiasm, and lacked it openly. “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “We’ll do no harm to the boy.”

  The physician’s face expressed doubt, and displeasure. Asa was still in the operating room. He might be there for some time.

  “When he’s in a room,” Heimrich said. “We’ll wait, naturally.”

  The doctor did not see what they expected to get. He didn’t like it. He agreed to it. He would have the sergeant told when the boy was in a room, in bed. He said, “Come along, then,” and Forniss went behind him down a corridor, towering over him, and walking very quietly.

  Heimrich went back into the reception lobby. James Purvis was at the desk; he bulged in his blue suit, and his face was red. A small woman stood beside him, and patted her eyes with a wet handkerchief. “We want to see our kid,” Purvis told the student nurse, and the woman beside him nodded her head mutely. Heimrich waited; heard Asa’s father and mother asked to wait, promised that someone would be sent. As they came toward Heimrich, Mrs. Purvis’s pale face worked; her husband’s red face was angry.

  “He’s going to be all right,” Heimrich told them, when they were close enough. “The doctor says he’s a husky boy.”

  Mrs. Purvis nodded, and went on. Her husband stopped.

  “What’re you doing here?” he asked, and his voice, although low, was angry.

  “What you are,” Heimrich said. “Finding out about the boy.”

  “You got him into it,” Purvis said, with violence. Heimrich merely shook his head. “Leave him alone,” Purvis said. “I’ll see that you do.” To this Heimrich said nothing, and indicated nothing. He watched the Purvises go into the alcove, and went himself to the desk.

  “People may ask about the boy,” he told the nurse. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get the names of those who do.”

  “Well,” she said. “I don’t know. The rules—”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Heimrich said. He smiled. “It’ll be all right.” Doubt remained in the girl’s face. “Has someone already asked?” She looked toward the corridor which led to the alcove. “Besides his parents,” Heimrich said. He was patient. She hesitated. Then she nodded.

  “While you and—and the other gentleman—were waiting for the doctor,” she said. “Somebody telephoned and wanted to know about Asa. I didn’t get any name. He just said something about understanding Asa Purvis had been hurt and taken to the hospital, and how was he?”

  “A man?” Heimrich said.

  “Oh yes,” she said, but then hesitated. “I thought it was a man,” she said. “But it was a—a very faint voice. As if the connection was bad. I suppose it could have been a woman. Or a girl.”

  Heimrich sighed, involuntarily. He resumed his smile with an effort, and nodded.

  “What did you say?” he asked her. She brightened somewhat at that, conscious of rectitude.

  “Oh,” she said, “I told whoever it was that Asa was doing as well as could be expected.”

  Heimrich agreed, by implication, that there she had done well or, at any rate, as well as could be expected. He told her he would be at the Old Stone Inn in Van Brunt, that he was to be called there and told of those who, in the future, expressed interest in Asa Purvis’s progress. He drove back, not so fast this time, along almost deserted roads.

  It was, of course, not certain that the person who had shot Asa Purvis had called the hospital to find out how well he had done at it. It was merely probable. He—and if “he” was the correct pronoun—had not got much for his pains, for what amounted to his daring. He could be expected to try again, since he would surely want to know.

  You would not have known that Sergeant Forniss was in the dimly lighted room. The young nurse who sat in a low chair was conscious of his presence (and that he was a great deal of man) but not because of any movement he made, or any sound he made. She came to suppose, indeed, that he had fallen asleep, knowing that people who are awake inevitably fidget in some fashion. But Forniss was entirely awake. It was merely that he c
hose not to fidget.

  The boy on the bed did not know that Forniss was in the room, or that he was himself in the room. He did not know pain, or that his young face was bloodless, for all the blood which had been trickled into his veins. For the most part he was so quiet that one might have thought him dead. But sometimes he talked, and then Forniss listened and, with just light enough, made the quick squiggles of shorthand. He did not take down everything, since much the boy said repeated what he had said before.

  Several times, for example, he said, during the slow hours, “Please—please somebody—shot—shot,” and then, “Don’t you hear me? Please—oh, please somebody.” And several times he said, “Not Asa—not Asa” which puzzled Forniss, and which he put down. He would not have supposed the boy of the type which refers to itself in the third person, but one never knew. Once the boy said, “Wade?” and said it questioningly, and that, also, Forniss noted, spelling it out. He had not heard of a Wade involved, but there was, evidently, much they had not heard of.

  It was not always easy—indeed, it was not often easy—to understand what the boy said, since he mumbled, for the most part without inflection, in his world of dreams. He said, “Want a drink,” and the nurse looked up at that, and watched him for a moment, and shook her head. But it was not certain he had said that he wanted a drink. Later, it seemed much more likely that he said, “Had a drink,” and that Forniss noted. After that he said, “Not any more,” but whether it referred to what he had said previously could only be guessed. There was no sequence.

  “Must have come back,” the boy said, just as light began to show at the windows. “Saw it twice—must have got up and—must have got up.” He mumbled then, and it was impossible to hear words in his mumbling. But then he said, very clearly, “In my sleep?” and said it as a question. He was quiet for a time. He said, “Can’t remember can’t remember can’t remember” and repeated those words for so long a time that the nurse got up and went to the bed and bent over him.