Fatal Step by Wade Miller

Author:Wade Miller [Miller, Wade]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4055-4
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1975-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

Wednesday, August 27, 12:30 A.M.

THURSDAY LEFT his car unlocked and hurried across First Avenue to Joyland. The night was cooling off but the little flags over the amusement park hung unfluttering. As he strode past the corner lunch and the bright emptiness of the penny arcade, the detective had the dream feeling of a repeat performance. Tonight was last night all over again. Ahead, just past the Oriental Bazaar, was the crowd whispering on the curb and looking around for things to see. There were a few more people than before. But the front of the crossbow gallery was closed again.

He didn’t sight Merle Osborn’s Buick anywhere. Changing into street clothes had put the reporter a few minutes behind him.

Within the flock of people, Jim Crane’s white head was bent over his notebook as he scribbled and tried to listen to one person at a time. Thursday pushed through the onlookers and thumbed his ribs. The policeman jumped.

“Oh, hello, Thursday. Seen Austin?”

“No. Where is he?”

Crane jerked his black serge shoulder toward the crossbow gallery. “In there again, with Doc Stein. Another murder.”

“Shooting?”

“I don’t know what you’d call it. It’s all free on the inside, like they say.” Crane went back to name-taking. Thursday squatted and crawled through the half-door into Ned Banks’ concession.

When he stood up, he found Austin Clapp leaning on the counter next to him, chewing moodily on the stubby stem of a black pipe. Clapp stopping watching his men working along the length of building and gave Thursday a wry nod. “You got here in a hurry.”

“Where’s the body?”

Clapp’s teeth clamped harder on the pipe. “You tell me.”

Thursday looked down the gallery through the strata of tobacco smoke. Down by the targets, Stein was huddled on his knees examining the sawdust floor. Two fingerprint men were working any smooth surfaces they could find on the wall timbers. A camera man was packing his gear back into a zipper bag. Nowhere could Thursday see the expected figure, the familiar figure that never moved and always looked about the same.

“I don’t get it,” he said slowly. “Crane said another murder — ”

“Maybe he did,” Clapp admitted heavily, “but I’ll bet he didn’t say we had a body.”

Thursday put an elbow on the counter and met the cold gray eyes. “Shoot.”

“We don’t know much — yet. Ned Banks closed down for the night a little before midnight. Maybe about fifteen minutes later some of the bunch who work around Joyland here began noticing a pickup truck backed up to the rear of this place. There’s a door down there behind the targets that leads to the inside of the fun zone.”

“The pickup again, huh? Anybody get a license or make or whatnot?”

“Do they ever? A truck’s a truck and they’re pretty common around these concessions. But then the old gal who takes tickets at the Loop-o-plane saw a guy come out of here. He had his head bandaged up. He dumped a bundle in the back of the truck that was long enough to be a body.

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