The Revengers by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

motives and they come looking. . . .” I hesitated. “Why didn’t you get rid of it?”
    Still facing the wall, he shrugged his shoulders. “I do a bit of hunting; everybody knows I have a shotgun. If it turned up missing it would be as good as a confession, wouldn’t it? At least she’d have known. . . But she found out anyway from the way I was acting; I couldn’t help it.”
    I said, “I’m not up on local mores, but I didn’t think who slept with whom was a killing matter these days.”
    “You don’t understand,” he said. “We were doing all right at last. We had it made at last. Goddamn it, my wife is not a tramp, she just gets . . . a little bored and restless sometimes. And drinks a little too much sometimes, or used to. But we had it licked, she had it licked, and everything was fine; and then he came along and that damned magazine story: the big dangerous fascinating man with the intriguing disability, tragic really, a great handsome virile guy like that with a time bomb ticking away in his chest. And what with all the tension and guilt and . . . and excitement of carrying on an affair like that, she started doing it to herself again, poisoning herself again. Destroying herself again. I had to. . . .” He stopped and moved his shoulders once more. “All right. I don’t mean to sound too altruistic. I was jealous, sure; and I hated the good-looking bastard for what he was doing to us after we’d worked so hard to build something together; but goddamn it, it wasn’t even as if he loved her and wanted what was best for her. . . .”
    He stopped. A car went along Navajo Drive but the headlights did not reach us where we stood. I said, “You hesitated, there behind the restaurant. He had time to start one way, and change his mind, and come back the other. You had a clear shot—”
    “Hell, I didn’t want to hurt his wife, I had nothing against her,” he said. “That’s a tight-shooting gun, but I had to wait until they were separated enough so I could be sure she wouldn’t get sprinkled; even one buckshot can do a lot of damage. Is that how you knew?”
    “It had to be a full-choke gun or Mrs. Devine would have been hit, regardless,” I said. “But a pro wouldn’t have lugged around a long piece of field artillery like that. He’d have used a short, wide-open, sawed-off weapon that he could hide under his coat; and it would have sprayed lead all over that parking lot. No matter how hard and fast her husband pushed her, she’d have picked up a few stray pellets, regardless. And the shot concentration in the body wouldn’t have been nearly as great if a sawed-off had been used.” I drew a long breath. “And then, a pro wouldn’t have given a damn about the wife. He wouldn’t have taken any chances with a trained man like Bob Devine who might have been carrying a gun. He’d have shot instantly and to hell with who else got hit. If that made it a double killing, too bad.” After a moment I said, “Okay. I had to know for sure, but okay. This is as far as I go, friend. I’ll report it as a private matter, of no concern to us. The fact that you took time to see that Mrs. Devine wasn’t hurt earns you a break from me. For whatever it’s worth now.”
    “Yeah,” he said, softly and bitterly. “For what it’s worth now. I—”
    Abruptly, the garage lights went on and a woman’s voice called out, “Hey, where the hell are you? What are you doing out there? What’s taking you so long? Whatsh . . . what’s going on out there, anyway?”
    I’d worked the shells out of the shotgun as we talked; now I set the empty weapon against the wall and stepped over into the shrubbery as she appeared in the lighted doorway, an unsteady silhouette with a glass in its hand.
    “Whawash . . .” Her voice was slurred. She realized that she wasn’t transmitting clearly and tried again, “What was that awful noish . . . noise, anyway?”
    “A kid with a rock, I guess,” the man said. “He got