HANDBOOK FOR HOMICIDE
Chapter 1
The Road to Einar
It was raining like the very devil, and I couldn't see more than twenty feet ahead. The road was a winding mountain road, full of unexpected turns and dips apparently laid out by someone with more experience constructing roller coasters than highways.
Worse, it was soft gooey mud. I had to drive fast to keep from sinking in, and I had to drive slow to keep from going off the outer edge into whatever depth lay beyond.
They'd told me, forty miles back in Scardale, that I'd better not try to reach the Einar Observatory until the storm was over. And I was discovering now that they'd known what they were talking about.
Then, abruptly and with a remark I won't record, I slammed on the brakes. The car slithered to a stop and started to sink.
Dead ahead in the middle of the narrow road, right at the twenty-foot limit of my range of vision, was a twin apparition that resolved itself, as I slid to a stop five feet from it, into a man leading a donkey toward me.
There was a big wooden box on each side of the donkey, and there definitely wasn't going to be room for one of us to pass the other.
About twenty yards back behind me, I remembered, was a wider place in the road. But backward was uphill. I put the car into reverse and gunned the engine. The wheels spun around in the slippery mud, and sank deeper.
I cranked down the glass of the window and over the beat of the storm I yelled, “I can't back. How far behind you is a wider place in the road?”
The man shook his head without answering. I saw that he was an Indian, young and rather handsome. And he was magnificently wet.
Apparently he hadn't understood me, for a shake of the head wasn't any answer to my question. I repeated it.
“Two mile,” he yelled back.
I groaned. If I had to wait while he led that donkey two miles back the way he had come, there went my chances of reaching Einar before dark. But he wasn't making any move to turn the beast around. Instead, he was untying the rope that held the wooden boxes in place.
“Hey, what's---” And then I realized that he was being smart, not dumb. The donkey, unencumbered by the load, could easily pass my car and could be reloaded on the other side.
He got one of the boxes off and came toward me with it. Alongside my car, he reached up and put it on the roof over my head.
I opened my mouth to object, and thought better. The box seemed light and probably wouldn't scratch the top enough to bother about.
Instead, I asked him what was in the boxes.
“Rattlesnakes.”
“Good Lord,” I said. “What for?”
“Sell 'em tourists---rattles, skins. Sell 'em venom drugstore.”
“Oh,” I said. And hoped the boxes wouldn't break or leak while they were on my car. A few loose rattlers in the back seat would be all I needed.
“Want buy big rattler? Diamondback? Cheap.”
“No thanks,” I told him.
He nodded, and led the donkey along the edge of nowhere past the car. Then he came back and got the boxes to reload on the donkey.
I yelled back, “Thanks!” and threw the shift into low. Downhill, it ought to start all right. But it didn't.
I opened the door and leaned out to look down at the wheels. They had sunk in up to the hubs.
The donkey, the rattlesnakes, and the Vanishing American were just starting off. I yelled.
The Indian came back. “Change 'em mind? Buy rattler?”
“Sorry, no. But could that creature of yours give this car a pull?”
He stared down at the wheels. “Plenty deep.”
“It's headed downhill, though. And if I started the engine while he pulled, it ought to do it.”
“Got 'em tow rope?”
“No, but you got the rope those boxes are tied with.”
“Weak. No pull 'em.”
“Five bucks,” I said.
He nodded, went back to the donkey and untied the boxes. He put them down in the mud this time and tied the rope to my front bumper, looping it several thicknesses. Then he led the donkey back front and hitched it.
We tried for ten minutes---but the car was still stuck. I leaned out and yelled a suggestion: “Let the donkey pull while you rock the car.”
We tried that. The wheels spun again, madly, and then caught hold. The car lurched forward suddenly---too suddenly---and what I should have foreseen happened. I slammed the brakes on, too late.
The donkey had stopped dead the minute the pull relaxed. The radiator of the car struck the creature's rump a glancing blow, and the donkey went over the edge. The car jerked sidewise toward the edge of the road, and there was a crackling sound as the rope broke.
Regardless of the knee-deep mud, I got out and ran to the edge.
The Indian was already there, looking down. He said, “It isn't deep here. But damn' it, I haven't got my gun along. Lend me your crank or a heavy wrench.”
I hardly noticed the change in his English diction. I said, “I've got a revolver. Can you get down and up again?”
“Sure,” he said. I got the revolver and handed it to him, and he went down. I could see him for the first few yards and then he was lost in the driving rain. There wasn't any shot, and in about ten minutes he reappeared.
“Didn't need it,” he said, handing me back the pistol. “He was dead, poor fellow.”
“What are you going to do now?” I asked him.
“I don't know. I suppose I'll have to stash those boxes and hike out.”
“Look,” I said, “I'm bound for the Einar Observatory. Come on with me, and you can get a lift from there back to town the first time a car makes the trip. How much was that donkey worth?”
“I'll take the lift,” he said, “and thanks. But losing Archimedes was my own damn fault. I should have seen that was going to happen. Say, better get that car moving before it gets stuck again.”
It was good advice and just in time. The car barely started. I kept it inching along while he tied the boxes on back and then got in beside me.
“Those boxes,” I said. “Are they really rattlers, or was that off the same loaf as the Big Chief Wahoo accent?”
He smiled. “They're rattlesnakes. Sixty of them. Chap in Scardale starting a snake farm to supply venom to pharmaceutical labs hired me to round him up a batch.”
“I hope the boxes are good and tight.”
“Sure. They're nailed shut. Say, my name's Charlie Lightfoot.”
“Glad to know you,” I told him. “I'm Bill Wunderly. Going to take a job up at Einar.”
“The hell,” he said. “You an astronomer, or going on as an assistant?”
“Neither. Sort of an accountant-clerk. Wish I did know astronomy.”
Yes, I'd been wishing that for several years now, ever since I'd fallen for Annabel Burke. That had been while Annabel was taking her master's degree in math, and writing her thesis on probability factors in quantum mechanics.
Heaven only knows how a girl with a face like Annabel's and a figure like Annabel's can possibly be a mathematics shark, but Annabel is.
Worse, she had the astronomy bug. She loved both telescopes and me, but I came out on the losing end when she chose between us. She'd taken a job as an assistant at Einar, probably the most isolated and inaccessible observatory in the country.
Then a month ago Annabel had written me that there was to be an opening at the observatory which would be within the scope of my talents.
I wrote a fervid letter of application, and now I was on my way to take the job. Nor storm nor mud nor dark of night nor boxes of rattlesnakes could stop me from getting there.
“Got a drink?” Charlie asked.
“In the glove compartment,” I told him. “Sorry I didn't think to offer it. You're soaked to the skin.”
He laughed. “I've been wet before and it hasn't hurt me. But I've been sober, and it has.”
“You go to Haskell, Charlie?”
“No. Oxford. Hit hisn't the 'unting that 'urts the 'orse; hit's the 'ammer, 'ammer---”
“You're kidding me.”
“No such luck.” I heard the gurgle of liquid as he tilted the bottle. Then he added, “Oil. Pop's land.”
I risked an unbelieving look out of the corner of my eye. Charlie's face was serious.
He said, “You wonder why I hunt rattlesnakes. For one reason, I like it, and for another--- Well, if this was a quart instead of a pint, I could show you.”
“But what happened to the oil money?”
“Pop's still got it. But the third time I went to jail, I stopped getting any of it. Not that I blame him. Say, take it easy down this hill. The bridge at the bottom was washed out four years ago, last time there was a big storm like this one.”
But the bridge was still there, with the turbid waters of a swollen stream swirling almost level with the plank flooring. I held my breath as we went across it.
“It'll be gone in an hour,” Charlie said, “if it keeps raining this hard. You haven't another bottle of that rye, have you?”
“No, I haven't. How do you catch rattlers, Charlie?”
“Pole with a loop of thin rope running through a hole in the end. Throw the loop over a snake and pull the loop tight. Then you can ease the pole in and grab him by the back of the neck.”
“How about the ones you don't see?”
“They strike. But I wear thick shoes and I've got heavy leather leggings under my trousers. They never strike high, so I'm safe as long as I stay upright on level ground.” He chuckled. “You ought to hear the sound of them striking those puttees. When you step in a nest of them, it sounds like rain on a tin roof.”
I shivered a little, and wished I hadn't asked him.
Then, ahead of us, there were lights.
Charlie said, “Take the left turn here. You might as well drive right up to the garage.”
I turned left, around the big dome on the north end of the building. Apparently, someone had heard us coming or seen our headlights, for the garage doors were opening.
I said, “You know the place, Charlie?”
“Know it?” His voice sounded surprised. “Hell, Bill, I designed it.”