The Killer Is Mine by Talmage Powell

Author:Talmage Powell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781440536922
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 2011-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

12

I NEEDED to check the office and the telephone-answering service.

When I got to the office, I found Max the Giant waiting outside the door. He stood with the solid patience of a creature out of a. Greek myth. He might have been there for minutes, or hours.

“Mrs. Wherry wants to see you,” he said, without moving from the office door.

“All right,” I said, getting out my keys.

“Mrs. Wherry wants to see you—now,” he said.

He didn’t intend to let me into my own office. He had a monorail brain, and Mrs. Wherry wanted to see me.

I looked him up and down. When I say up, I mean it. Compared to him, I was an undersized runt. I wasn’t afraid of Max, but I had no yen to tangle with him. If I forced my way in and made a big issue out of a little one, it would be with the cold knowledge that I was going to get hurt. I could stand such a knowledge, if the price was right, but under the circumstances I decided the office could wait.

“Okay,” I said.

“I have a car.”

He waited for me to turn and go out of the building ahead of him. The car was the big, black limousine. It was parked near a fire plug, but it didn’t have a ticket on it. It was an easily recognizable car.

“You ride up front with me,” Max said.

We got in the car.

He started it, and it hissed away from the curb.

“What’s on Mrs. Wherry’s mind?” I asked.

“She’ll tell you.”

“You don’t like me very much, hey, Max?”

“No. You’re troubling Mrs. Wherry.”

“Not intentionally.”

“Your intentions don’t matter to me. You just quit troubling Mrs. Wherry. She’s got enough worries.”

“I’ll agree, but I’ve got a few worries of my own.”

“I ain’t interested,” Max said, “in your worries. You just leave her alone, or I’ll break your back.”

He said it with mildness and simplicity.

We rode awhile in silence.

“I should have killed Tulman,” he said finally. “Before the police came and arrested him. It would have settled a lot of things, including all the courtroom business and people like you. I could have killed him and closed it up once and for all and told the police that he was trying to get away and I killed him in the fight.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“She wouldn’t let me. I think she wanted to. She knew all the mess that lay ahead, but she said we had to call the police instead.”

“That was smart of her,” I said.

“I don’t think so. I believe Mr. Wherry would have done it the other way. Ruthie out there in the patio, and Tulman in our hands—I don’t think Mr. Wherry would have hesitated. He’d have killed Tulman himself. Then called the police and said he’d ridded the world of a sonofabitch.”

“You miss the old man.”

“Yes, I do. He understood. He hated people sometimes for the way they felt about the other people they called freaks. It wasn’t pity he gave to us. Dammit, he understood!”

Max turned the Caddy into a palm-lined driveway.

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