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Key To The Crime




The dead man lay on his back in the damp leaves, shot through the temple. His cheap tan business suit was ripped and torn in a dozen places, front and back, as if by thorns. A nickel-plated revolver lay beside him on the leaves.

Looking down on him was a man of roughly his own build, but dressed in new leather high-laced boots, rough brown trousers, checked jacket and hunter’s bright-red outer vest and cap, with an expensive shotgun under his arm and a look of bewilderment on his face.

At the dead man’s head, a man in his late twenties, a silver sheriff’s star on his own leather jacket, knelt to study the body. A little back from the others stood a fourth man, tall, dark-haired, dressed in a business suit and a gray all-weather coat, who looked with alert gray eyes at the body, at the bewildered-looking hunter, the thick low-growing green pine in the surrounding forest of bare maples and beeches, and the nearby moss-covered ruin of an old cabin, where four cars were parked on the edge of the graveled road.

The sheriff glanced up at the man in the business suit and gray coat.

“The description matches, Mr. Verner. Black hair, gray at the temples. Brown eyes. About five feet eight. Spare build. Brown business suit and shoes. There’s no wallet on the body, but this must be the man.”

Verner looked at the body noncommittally and said nothing.

The hunter cleared his throat nervously.

“I thought he was lost, officer. I wasn’t going to shoot him. He stumbled out of the woods, and he looked as if he were going to fall. I hurried over toward him. I completely forgot that I was carrying this shotgun. I shouted to him, he glanced around, saw me, and said, ‘You won’t take me alive.’ I think then that I must have raised my own gun. It went through my head that the man must be crazy. I didn’t know what he might do. Then he shot himself.”

***

It had been only some four hours earlier that the phone had rung in Richard Verner’s office, and a man’s worried voice had said, “Mr. Verner, this is Brian Darrell. I’m the sheriff of Rockland County. Is it true, Mr. Verner, that you make your living by solving problems?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“Because I’ve just had one hell of a problem dumped in my lap, and I need help to solve it.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Late last night, a car went through here, rounded a curve, hit a patch of ice, and went off the road. It smashed through the guard rail and down into the ravine. This morning, a farmer noticed the smashed guard rail, and called me up. I got out there, and found that the car had gone all the way to the bottom of the ravine. The driver had apparently switched off the engine as soon as the car slid off the road, but that hadn’t helped him any. He was dead. Shot through the back of the head.”

Verner frowned. “Shot?”

“That’s right, Mr. Verner. There were three men in the car. Two in the front seat and one in the back. Both men in front had been shot through the back of the head. The man in back had been shot twice through the chest. They were all dead.”

Verner said nothing for a moment, and the phone hummed quietly in his ear. Then he said, “Were these men armed?”

“The two in front were. The man in back wore a shoulder holster but had no gun.”

“Gangsters?”

“Far from it. They were F.B.I.”

Verner gave a low exclamation. “You’re sure of that?”

“As sure as their identification would let me be.”

“No sign of any fourth man?”

“Yes, there was. A pair of handcuffs on the floor of the car, and an open right rear window. This car was a four-door sedan. It ended up jammed between the bank and a fallen tree. You couldn’t open any of the doors enough to get through.”

“So that this fourth man would have had to open the window to get out?”

“Yes. And the window was wide open. There’d have been no other reason to open the window. It’s cold today, and it was colder yet last night.”

“How do you know it went over at night?”

“The headlight switch was turned on, for one thing. For another, we had a light snow last night. It covered the car tracks, and there’s no snow under the car. You see what must have happened?”

“You think the F.B.I. was transporting a prisoner, the car slowed, the prisoner threw himself against the man beside him, grabbed his gun, shot him while he was off-balance and momentarily distracted, and did the same to the two men in the front seat. The car slid down into the ravine and smashed to a stop. The prisoner crawled out a window and escaped.”

“That’s it. Now, here’s my problem, Mr. Verner. I don’t know if Rockland County is the poorest county in the U.S., but I’d hate to see one that was poorer. I’m the sheriff, and for practical purposes, I’m the whole sheriff’s department, too. The coal mines here are shut down; what lumbering there is, is done by a few men with chain saws, bulldozers, and so on; if you’ve already got a farm, you can maybe make enough money to eat, but that’s all. But we’ve got good hunting here, and we’re trying to attract sportsmen and campers. For the first time, this year it looks as if we may be able to manage it.”

Verner was scowling. “What’s that got to do with this escaped prisoner?”

“That prisoner escaped on a pretty good road that has next to no traffic on it at night. I’ve deputized enough men to man roadblocks to stop him getting out on that highway, and I’ve notified the state police and the F.B.I. I don’t think he got away from here last night. I think he’s still here. Now, he’s already killed three men. He’s armed, and he’s loose in some of the ruggedest country there is around here.

“We’ve got deer hunters camped out here and there in the middle of nowhere, completely out of touch with everyone else. If this killer walks in on them unexpectedly, he can kill as often as he wants to squeeze the trigger. We’ve got no way to warn them. We can’t possibly protect everyone. We’ve got to get this murderer, and put him out fast. But how? We don’t know where he is.”

“Yes, I see the problem.”

“He’s out in that forest somewhere, but the ground is cut up, uneven. There are patches of thick brush, stretches of pine woods, ravines, and places where you can’t see fifty feet in any direction but straight up. Listen, could you possibly get out here?”

In a little over three hours, Verner found himself stepping down from a light plane, whose pilot looked around at the stretch of grassy field where they’d landed, and shook his head.

At the near end of the field, a white car bearing a gold sheriff’s star was parked. The door opened, and a powerfully-built man with a sheriff’s star on his jacket and a forty-five revolver on his hip, walked over to shake Verner’s hand.

“We’ve had word from the F.B.I. about our man. They say he’s a psychopathic killer, and as clever as they come.”

“Any more sign of him?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Are the roads blocked?”

“Yes. Every motorist who goes through is checked. The state police are out in force. The F.B.I. has a team of men headed here. We’ve warned everyone we could reach, and we’ve gotten a posse together to go through the woods from one end to the other to warn the hunters. But that’s easier said than done.” He looked at Verner, and said, “I’ve heard you solve problems that are too tricky for other experts. I hope you can solve this one.”

The sheriff slid into his car, and pushed open the door on the other side. Verner got in, and said, “Could we retrace the route the F.B.I. car traveled—and go in the same direction as that car was going?”

“Sure. What do you have in mind?”

“To overcome three highly-trained men so quickly, the killer had to be fully alert before the car skidded. Why was he any more alert than the men with him, unless he had just seen something that suggested a plan? If we follow the same route the car followed, we may see whatever it was that suggested the plan.”

The sheriff looked doubtful, frowned, started to speak, then slammed on the brakes. The car, coming down a steep muddy hill road toward the blacktopped highway, slowed abruptly as a rabbit bounded across in front of it. The sheriff let up on the brakes, and stopped the car at the highway.

A state police car dashed by. Then the sheriff, glancing carefully in both directions, pulled out.

“How far did you want to go?”

“At least ten miles from the spot where the accident happened.”

They drove in silence for a while, then the sheriff said, “I heard about you at a convention of sheriffs, Mr. Verner. As I heard it, you captured a gang of spies single-handed after tracking them for several miles through fresh snow three feet deep.”

Verner looked startled, then grinned. “If I’d known that, I’d have stayed home.”

“Why?” The sheriff cast a quick doubtful glance at him. “Isn’t it true?”

“No, it isn’t.” Verner looked around. “I think this is far enough.”

The sheriff glanced at his mileage meter. “Eight point two miles from where we pulled out. And the car went off the road about two miles further back. Good enough.” He slowed, glanced up and down the road, and swung the car around in a tight U-turn.

For a little while, they rode in silence, and the dreary hills flowed past, with occasional brown bare fields to the left, and a forest of bare trees to the right, brightened here and there by the green of a pine or occasional hemlock.

With a forced effort at cheerfulness, the sheriff asked, “See anything?”

“Not yet,” said Verner, his voice noncommittal.

There was another silence, and the sheriff asked, “Seen anything yet?”

“Not yet,” said Verner coolly.

Obviously uneasy, the sheriff cast a quick glance at his watch.

“The posse should have made about two-and-a-half miles by now. Of course, I could join them when they cross the Peters road. Look, do you think—”

Verner didn’t answer. He was watching a series of small cabins set back from the road, with a huge neon sign out front, reading: 

HUNTER’S HAVEN.

“Slow down,” said Verner.

The sheriff slowed the car, frowning.

“Look,” he said, “that was one of the first places we checked.”

Verner looked at the sheriff as a man looks at a fly swimming in his coffee.

“Are you under the impression that I came all this distance, at your request, because I thought you were too stupid to do your job?”

“No, but—”

“Good. I never try to beat the expert at his own job. It never entered my head that you hadn’t checked that motel. Keep going slowly. Where does this road go to?”

On the right, a wide rutted dirt road led up into the hills. At the base of the hill, on the corner by the road, was a small store, its clapboards painted yellow. Two weathered gas pumps stood outside.

“There’s an abandoned coal mine back there. They used to bring the coal out down that road. When the mine closed, most of the people who lived up there moved out. About all that road leads to now is a fine stretch of deer country.”

“Was there much moonlight last night?”

“There was a full moon, but it wasn’t clear. Yes, it was fairly bright out last night.”

“Where do these hunters you speak of stay at night?”

“Some stay at the motel, The Hunters’ Haven, down the road. Some camp out in tents. A few sleep in the backs of their station wagons, or in campers on the backs of pickup trucks.”

“What do they use for light?”

“Lanterns, mostly. Usually gasoline mantle-lanterns. They give a good white light.”

“From this road, would it be possible to see any of these lights at night?”

“That depends on the hunters. Sometimes they’re tired and go to bed early. At other times, it may have been raining off and on all day, with them getting ready to go out, and then getting driven back in, and they may be pretty fed up, wide-awake, and stay up late playing cards. Yesterday was a good day. When I went down this road around ten o’clock, I only saw three lights back in there, fairly close together.”

“When do you think the F.B.I. men came through?”

“As nearly as we can judge, it was sometime around eleven. They probably expected to go through a lot sooner, but there was a rock slide that blocked the road about forty miles from here. If they came to that before it was cleared away, they may have decided to detour through the hills. A man who’s not familiar with those dirt roads could lose half a day in there.”

“Why so?”

“Well, the back roads aren’t predictable. They wind all over through those hills. And they aren’t well kept up. I know one spot where there’s always a foot of mud and water on the road in wet weather. You can’t go around it, because the ground is soft and marshy to either side. You either get stuck in it, back out of it and try another road, or else you fight your way through it and then you’re on the other side. Now, no matter where the road goes, you don’t dare to go back that way for fear you’ll end up axle-deep in the mess. You have to drive those roads for a while to appreciate them, and to know what to do.”

The sheriff slowed the car.

“Now, you see where that guard rail is bent back? That’s where the car went off the road.”

Verner nodded.

The sheriff pulled to the side of the road.

“If you want to examine the car—”

“No.”

“But—”

“That’s your job, Sheriff, and the job of the state police. I trust you to do it better than I could do it. No, unless you want to stop here for some reason, let’s go back up the road.”

“Back up the same road we just came down on?”

“Exactly.”

The sheriff glanced around, and with no sign of enthusiasm swung the car back up the highway.

Verner said, “How do we know this killer didn’t leave the car, go through the woods to the nearest light, shoot some hunter, steal his car and leave? He could have been gone long before the wrecked car was found.”

The sheriff nodded. “We’ve thought of that. But I don’t think he did. I think he was dazed by the time he got out of that car. When we looked at it, we could see the marks in the mud where someone slipped and scrambled up the steep bank at the bottom of the ravine. That was the wrong bank, to get back to the road. Of course, he may not have wanted to go back to the road, anyway. But at the top of this ravine, you eventually get into a tangle of trees, low pines, and a gas pipe-line right-of-way that’s been cleared of timber and is overgrown with blackberries.

“No one would care to tackle that mess at night. You could break your neck among those fallen trees. Some of those blackberry bushes are six and eight feet high, branched, and thick with thorns from one end to the other. If he got into that, he didn’t go anywhere till daylight.”

Verner nodded. “In that case, we’ve got a chance. Turn up this road, past this little store.”

The sheriff, frowning, swung past the yellow-clapboarded store with its two gas pumps. He waved to a parked state-police car, then glanced at Verner.

“How do we know,” said the sheriff, “that he came back this way?”

“I don’t claim to know,” said Verner. “But this man is supposed to be smart. What is there to attract him if he goes further down the road?”

“Nothing. It’s just empty woods, like this.”

“The difference is that he’s seen something of these woods.”

“You mean, when they drove past?”

“Yes, of course. You said you saw three bright gasoline lanterns lit up here. He may have, too. Earlier, he passed the Hunters’ Haven motel. Wouldn’t this suggest to him that if he could get free, he’d find men and cars, split up out in the woods, protected by nothing more than a tent or the wall of a truck camper, and not expected home for several days or a week?”

The sheriff nodded. “That’s true.”

“If this man wasn’t familiar with the woods, he would have had no idea what he was getting into. After smashing to the bottom of that ravine, he may very well have been stunned, dazed. But what would he do today? He would still head for the most likely place he knew of to find a hunter and catch him unawares and then take his car.”

The sheriff said exasperatedly, “If we only could warn them! We told them at the Hunters’ Haven, and we warned the few we could find, but a lot of them are out deep in the woods, and there just hasn’t been time—Let’s see now—” He slowed the car where a graveled road, thickly but not deeply rutted, led off to the right. “That’s a favorite spot for hunters. There’s an old ruined cabin in there, and a flat level spot to park. Anyone who hit this road early this morning could see these fresh ruts, realize that that road is used a lot, and go back there.”

The sheriff swung the car in the side road, jounced a little in the ruts, then pulled into a little clearing with a fallen-down cabin, and three cars parked side-by-side near the road. Beside the cabin grew a thickly-branched pine, its low boughs brushing the wall of the cabin.

In front of the cabin, a man in hunter’s bright red cap and scarlet vest waved excitedly.

“Sheriff! Come here!”

It was then that they found the body on the leaves, the revolver close beside it.

The sheriff straightened from examining the dead man. The hunter shifted his gun, keeping the muzzle carefully pointed down, and reached in his hip pocket, to pull out a wallet.

“My name’s Foster, Harold Foster. I don’t know this man. I can’t understand what happened here. Did he think I was attacking him?”

The sheriff shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Foster. This man was an escaped murderer. He killed three men last night to get away, then got lost in the woods. He was probably out of his head by morning. He must have known he’d be hunted down by a posse, and when he saw you, he thought you were one of them.”

“Good Lord! If he’d shot at me, instead of—”

“We were doing our best to get word to everyone. This is the only time anything like this has ever happened here.”

“Well, here’s my wallet if you need my license. Here’s one of my business cards. It has my address and phone number. If you need me to testify to anything, I’ll certainly be happy to cooperate in every way.”

The sheriff nodded and smiled. “I don’t think we’ll need to bother you, Mr. Foster. We’re grateful no one was hurt. I can repeat what you’ve said to the F.B.I. men when they get here. The men he killed last night are F.B.I. men, you see.”

“Then I can see why he committed suicide.” The hunter shook his head, and took the wallet as the sheriff handed it back. “My car’s just over here, so if it’s agreeable with you, I think my hunting is over for today.” He smiled, nodded to the sheriff and Verner, and walked toward a long, dark-blue Cadillac parked at the edge of the clearing.

The sheriff glanced at Verner and smiled in relief. “You were right. Sorry if I—”

“Wait a minute.”

The hunter had reached the car, shifted the gun to his other hand, pulled out a keycase, tried the car door, murmured an annoyed comment, tried again, bent momentarily at the lock and then opened the car door, leaned over, apparently to move something on the seat, then turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared.

“Quick,” said Verner. “Go over there and warn him about the roadblocks.”

The sheriff, frowning, strode toward the car, which was just starting to back.

Verner bent briefly over the body, his coat shielding his action, and pulled open the shirt. He straightened, to see the sheriff stop by the car window. The driver looked up, smiling. There was a flicker of window motion on opposite side of the car. Then the driver’s window rolled down.

The sheriff leaned down and spoke courteously.

The driver replied, then nodded and waved.

The long car backed out and swung around, then pulled forward.

The sheriff, coming back smiling from the car, said, “Well, we were lucky. And so was he.”

Verner nodded.

“Unfortunately, it just ran out.”

His hand, inside his gray coat, came out holding a .45 Colt service automatic. He sighted carefully at the rear tire of the moving car.

The gun roared.

The tire blew out.

The big car swerved to the side of the road as the driver spun the wheel and whirled in his seat.

The front door was open in a flash. The hunter was out, shotgun raised.

Verner and the sheriff fired at the same time.

The shotgun flew up, and discharged with a roar.

The hunter staggered back, banged into a tree trunk, lost his balance and toppled over sidewise.

Verner and the sheriff were already running.

The hunter looked up at them in shock.

“Shoulder wound,” said the sheriff. “He’ll recover.”

Verner bent, ripped open the clean hunting shirt, took off the red hunting cap to show black hair, gray at the temples.

“Look here,” he said. “Brown eyes. Height about five feet eight. Spare build. They told you the truth when they said he was clever.”

“My God!” said the sheriff. “He prowled around till he spotted a man with roughly his own build and looks?”

Verner nodded soberly. “Then his own appearance would match the description on the victim’s driver’s license. For some purposes it gave him a complete new identity. He could have driven that car to the Mexican border if we hadn’t come in here and found him.”

“But someone else in the party would have reported a hunter missing.”

“Whoever else he may have been hunting with?” said Verner uneasily. “Yes, only a few hunters hunt alone. Where are the rest of his party?”

The sheriff looked around, glanced at Verner, and then across the clearing.

He looked at the ruined cabin, then back at Verner.

“Keep him covered.”

Slowly, the sheriff crossed the clearing.

Verner stepped carefully to the side, and kept his complete attention on the killer till the sheriff came back.

“The cabin hasn’t been touched. You couldn’t move anything without those old boards coming apart anyway. But there’s a spring about forty feet away, with a rock shoved over the top and one body head-down inside.”

Verner nodded, and looked down at the killer.

“So,” said the sheriff tonelessly, “it follows that he hid back of that ruin, got behind those two hunters, shot one, disarmed the other, shot him so it would appear to be suicide, shoved the first one into the spring, carried the second to the back of the cabin, changed clothes, and was carrying that one out when we showed up. Then he was out in the open, away from the cabin, couldn’t get rid of the body, so he did the next best thing and called us over.” The sheriff frowned. “Wait a minute. Why did he bother to kill the second one so it would look like suicide?”

The prisoner tired without success to sit up. He whispered, “I was going to take him in the car. If nobody had found the wreck, then I could put him in it and burn it.”

Verner kept his gun ready, and his attention carefully centered on the killer.

“Then,” said the sheriff wonderingly, “we’d find the four burned bodies, think their prisoner had killed the F.B.I. men, been trapped with them in the blazing car, and committed suicide?”

The prisoner shut his eyes. “Sure.”

Back toward the road, there was the throb of an engine, and the squeal of brakes, then the sound of footsteps on the wet dirt and gravel.

The sheriff turned away, and Verner, watching the prisoner closely, could hear voices, and the words, “F.B.I.,” and then the snap of the card section of a wallet or pocket case. Then he heard the sheriff say, “Right over here. And you’re welcome to him.”

Two trim, neatly-dressed men stepped into view through the trees, followed by two more. They looked down at the killer, and one of them nodded, and said, “This is the man.”

The sheriff said, “I’m turning him over to you.”

“Yes. We’ll take it from here.”

The sheriff led Verner off to the side.

There was the sound of footsteps, the throb of an engine, the crunching of gravel, and the sticky squishing of mud, then silence.

The sheriff drew in a deep breath. “I’ll have to notify the families of these two men. But at least I’m not standing here with those F.B.I. men telling me this body is the victim, and the man I made friends with was the killer.”

The sheriff shook his head ruefully. “Well, we got him, thanks to you. But how on earth did you know?”

“Thanks to the car,” said Verner.

“The car?”

“In some makes of car, you insert the key in the lock with the flat spine of the key down and the indentations up. Cadillac is one of the makes that has the spine up and the indentations down. When he jammed the key in the lock upside down, it seemed peculiar. Next, he had to try two or three different switches to find the right one to lower the driver’s window. It followed that he wasn’t familiar with the car. Of course, he could have bought it recently. But look here.”

Verner knelt briefly by the body of the man shot through the head, who had seemed at first to be the killer, but was actually the killer’s victim. Verner opened the dirty, sweat-stained shirt. Underneath was a clean undershirt.

The sheriff nodded slowly. “I was too busy being friends with a rich hunter to think of that. The killer naturally would switch clothes as fast as he could.” He glanced at the body, then looked around. “While I take care of the rest of this, would you put the spare on that car?”

Verner glanced at the big car, where it sat across the road, with the door on the driver’s side still open and the window down.

For some reason, the car had a grim contented look, as if it knew who had really trapped the escaped killer.











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