Chapter 27 Chapter 27 Warehouse
We walked down the street, our eyes searching for buildings that looked like old abandoned warehouses.The sky was now bright enough to see things clearly.
Before long I saw a large, square, rust-red building standing in the middle of an overgrown lot.Clearly, the lot and building have long been abandoned and look a lot like what we're looking for.
"Park on the next corner," I said. "Looks like that's what we're looking for. You stay in the car and I'll go out and have a look."
I made a double detour to get in from the back of the building.I walked across the clearing cautiously, not stealthily, just making sure not to make unnecessary noise.
I cautiously tried the back door.Locked, as it should be.I moved to a window and tried to look in, but couldn't see well because of the lack of light and the dust.I pushed the window again, but couldn't move.
I went to another window, still no luck.I rounded the corner of the building and started walking along the north side.The first window ignored me, and the second one was pushed up slowly by me, without making any sound.
But the windows were boarded up and boarded up from top to bottom, and looked very solid from where I stood.
I cursed at them, and remembered hopefully that I hadn't raised the window too loudly.So I climbed onto the window sill, put one hand against the board, and pushed gently.
The board shook.
I added a little more strength, and the left side of the board separated from the window frame, revealing a row of iron nails shining coldly.
I continued to push back the boards and looked in through the gap, but saw nothing and heard nothing but darkness.
I stepped over the ledge with the gun in my right hand, stepped into the building, and took another step to the left, away from the gray light reflected by the window.
I switched the gun to my left hand and pushed the board back with my right.
I listened breathlessly for a full minute, but heard nothing.Clinging to my body with my gun-raised right arm, I began to feel the place.Inch by inch I advanced, but found nothing but the floor beneath my feet.The left hand, groping around, found nothing until it touched a rough wall.I seem to walk through an empty room.
I move along the wall, looking for the door.After six short steps I came to a door and put one ear to it, but heard nothing.
I found the doorknob, twisted it slightly, and slowly pushed the door open.
Something whizzes.
I did four things at the same time: let go of the doorknob, jumped up, pulled the trigger, and slammed my left hand against something as hard and heavy as a tombstone.
The sparks from the pistol don't illuminate anything, though you can easily imagine you do.Not knowing what to do next, I fired another shot, and another shot.
An old man's voice begged, "Brother, don't do that. You don't have to."
I said, "Brighten it up!"
There was a crackling sound from the direction of the floor, a match was lit, and the flickering light illuminated a horrible face.It was a useless, expressionless old face that you often see on park benches.He sat on the floor with his bony legs spread apart, seemingly unhurt.Beside him was a piece of table leg.
"Stand up and get some light," I ordered. "Let the match burn first."
He struck another match, shielded the flame with his hands as he rose, and crossed the room to light a candle that stood on a three-legged table.
I followed closely behind him.If it weren't for the numbness in my left hand, I would definitely be holding him for safety.
"What are you doing here?" I asked him after the candles were lit.
Actually, I don't need his answer.The other side of the room was full of wooden boxes, stacked six feet high, labeled "Perfect Maple Syrup."
The old man began to explain.He swears to God that he is only in charge of guarding and knows nothing else.All he knew was that a man named Yates had hired him here as a night watchman two days ago, and that if anything happened, he would have nothing to do with it.I pulled off the lid of a box.
The bottle inside is labeled "Canadian Club" and looks like it's been rubber-stamped.
I dropped the crate, let the old man lead the way with a candle, and began to search the building.As I expected, there was no indication that this was the warehouse where the Whisperers had been hiding.
By the time we got back to the wine room, my left arm had recovered enough to carry a bottle of wine.I put the drink in my pocket and then gave the old man some advice: "Better get out of here. Finn Pete's men--they're SWAT now--hired you to guard the place, but Pete's dead now, His men are finished too."
When I climbed out of the window, I saw the old man standing in front of the wooden box, looking greedily in his eyes, and counting with his fingers.
"How's it going?" Mickey asked when I got back in the car and sat next to him. Without saying anything, I pulled out the bottle of Canadian Club, uncorked it, and handed it to him.Then I took another gulp down my throat. He asked again: "How is it?" I said, "Let's try to find the old Redman warehouse." "One day you're going to ruin yourself by talking too much," he said, before starting the car. Three blocks further down, we came upon a faded sign that said "REDMAN CORPORATION."The building below the sign was low and narrow, but long, with a crooked steel roof and few windows. "Let's park in the corner," I said, "you come with me this time. It wasn't much fun when I was alone." We got out of the car and found an alley leading to the back of the warehouse.We walked over. There are a few people walking in the street.But for this part of the city, it's still too early for factories to wake up. We found something interesting behind the building.The back door of the warehouse was closed.Scratches on the edge of the door frame and near the lock.Some people have worked hard with iron sledges. Mickey tried to open the door, but it wasn't locked.He pushed open six inches at a time, then paused, pushing the door open enough for us to squeeze in. As soon as we squeezed in, we heard a voice, but couldn't make out what it was.I only know that it was made by a man, the voice was weak and vague, some distance away from us, and it felt like a quarrel. Mickey felt the pry mark on the door with his thumb and whispered, "It wasn't the police." I took two steps into the room, resting my full weight on the rubber heels.Mickey followed, exhaling on my neck. Ted Wright once told me that the Whisperer hides upstairs, in the innermost room.That distant and indistinct sound was most likely coming from there. I turned to Mickey and said, "A flashlight?" He jammed the flashlight into my left hand.I held the gun in my right hand, and the two of them crept forward together. The door was only a foot open, letting in just enough light to illuminate the way from this room to a doorless corridor ahead, which was completely dark. I turned on the flashlight, shone into the darkness, and found a door.So I turned off the flashlight and walked forward.Then the light of the flashlight illuminated the stairs for us to go upstairs. We went upstairs as if the stairs would crumble underfoot. The grunting stopped.There's something different in the air, but I don't know what.Perhaps a voice too small to be heard, if that meant anything. I went up another nine steps, when a very clear voice came from overhead: "Yes, I killed that bitch." Then a gun opened fire, and there were four yells, which sounded like a sixteen-inch rifle roaring under a tin roof. "Okay," said the first voice. By this time Mickey and I had gone up the rest of the stairs.We pushed open the door in our way and tried to wrest Reno Starkey's hand off the Whisperer's neck. It's hard work, and it's useless.The Whisperer is dead. Renault recognized me and let his hands hang down.His eyes were still dull, and his horse face was still blank. Mickey carried the dead Gambler to a cot across the room and made him lie down. Apparently, this room had once been an office and shared two windows.By the light that came in, I saw a body hidden under the bed—Dan Rolfe.A Colt automatic lay in the middle of the floor. Renault slumped his shoulders, his body wobbling unsteadily. "Injured?" I asked. "He shot me four times," he said quietly, bending over and pressing his arms together on his stomach. "Go to the doctor," I ordered Mickey. "It's useless," Raynor said. "I don't have any more left than Pete." I pulled a folding chair for him to sit down, so that he could hunched over and stabilized his mind.Mickey ran out of the room and down the stairs. "Did you know he wasn't dead before?" Raynor asked. "I don't know. I got it from Ted Wright when I told you." "Ted left too early," he said. "I was worried that something was wrong, so I came to make sure. He fooled me beautifully, and played dead until he pointed a gun at me." He stared blankly. The corpse of the Whisperer, "pretending to be like this, damn it. Dead, still refusing to lie down, bandaging his own wound, lying there alone and waiting." He smiled slightly.It was the first time I saw him smile. "But now he's just a piece of meat, useless." His voice became deeper and deeper, and the blood that flowed out had pooled under the chair.I dare not touch him.It seemed that he could only rely on the pressure of his arms and the arched position to keep himself from completely breaking down. He stared at the blood on the ground and asked, "How the hell do you know you didn't kill her?" "I can only hope I didn't kill her until just now," I said. "I suspected you, but I couldn't be sure. I was so drunk that night, I had a lot of dreams, I heard bells and shouts, a lot Something like that. Then it occurred to me that maybe they weren't just dreams, but nightmares created by things happening around me. "I woke up with the lights off. I don't think I'd kill her to turn off the lights and then lie back and hold the ice pick. But that's probably not the case. You know I was there that night and didn't Giving me an alibi without hesitation made me think a little more. Dawn tried to blackmail me after hearing Helen Aubrey's story. And the police, after hearing her story, put you, whisper The author, Rolf and I were all involved. I had seen O'Mara on the street before I found Dawn's body, which means that treacherous fellow also wanted to blackmail you. This, combined with the fact that the police put We got it together and I came to the conclusion that the police were as suspicious of you as I was. They suspected me because Helen Aubrey saw me go to that room that night, or come out of it, or go in and out. Saw them all. So it's not hard to speculate that they suspect you for the same reasons. It's easy to take Whisperer and Rolf off the list of suspects, and you and I are left. But I've been having trouble Understand why you want to kill her?" "Let me tell you," he said, watching the blood on the ground grow larger, "she asked for it. She called me and told me that the Whisperer was coming to see her, and that I could sneak up on him if I got there first. I liked the idea. So I went over and waited around, but he never showed up." He stopped talking, pretending to be interested in the shape of the blood.I knew it was the pain that stopped him, and I knew that as soon as he could bear it, he would go on talking.He wants to die as he lived, and he is as strong inside as he is outside.Talking was torture to him, but he wouldn't stop there, not while someone was watching.He was Reynold Stuckey, a guy who didn't change his face no matter what happened, and he was going to fight to the death. "I'm tired of waiting," he continued after a while. "I knocked on her door and asked her what was the matter. She let me in and told me there was no one in. I was skeptical, but she swore She was alone. So we went to the kitchen. You know her, and that's when I began to suspect that it was I, not the Whisperer, who was framed." That's when Mickey came in and told us he had called an ambulance. Raynor took this break to take a break before continuing with his story. "Later, I found out that the Whisperer did call her to come over, but he arrived before me. You passed out by then. She didn't dare let him in, so he left. But she didn't tell I'm afraid I'll leave her and go away. You passed out, and she needs someone to protect her when the whisperer returns. But I didn't know any of these things at the time. Knowing her, I suspect I'm going step by step What a trap. I thought I should grab her first and slap her and make her tell the truth. I did. Then she grabbed the ice pick and started screaming. Just as she was yelling, I heard the man's footsteps Sound. I guess this is a trap showing its feet." He spoke more slowly, because it was getting harder, more time-consuming, and more painful to utter each word calmly and clearly.His voice started to muffle, but even if he realized it, he pretended not to. "I didn't want to be the only one. So I grabbed the ice pick from her hand and stabbed her. Then you rushed forward, staggering, eyes closed. She fell on you, and you fell too oh, rolled over and finally got your hand on the handle of the ice pick. You fell asleep clutching it, as quiet as she was. That's when I realized what I'd done. Damn! She's dead, there's nothing to do .So I turned off the light and went home. And you—" A weary group of paramedics—drug towns kept them busy all day long—brought in with a battered mat, ending Raynor's story.I feel very grateful.I've got all the news I want to know, and it's not going to be fun to sit here and watch him talk till he dies. I pulled Mickey to the corner of the room and whispered in his ear: "From now on, this matter is up to you. I have to hide. I should not be implicated, but I am too knowledgeable about poison town to want to Take any risk. I'll take your car to some station and catch a train to Ogden. I'll stay at the Roosevelt Hotel and register under the name PF King. You stay and deal with this and let me know when the dust settles You can use your real name, or you'd better take a vacation in Honduras." I was in Ogden for almost a week, writing my report so that it would read as if I hadn't broken too many society rules, state laws, and heads. On the sixth night, Mickey came. He told me Raynor was dead; that I was no longer a wanted criminal; that much of the loot from the First National Bank had been recovered; that McSwain had admitted to killing Tim Noonan.And Bosheng City, under the martial law, has slowly developed into a bed of fragrant and thornless roses. Mickey returned to San Francisco with me. I should have saved my energy and hadn't bothered to make up that nice-looking report.Because the old guy can't be fooled anyway, he made me suffer a lot.
"How's it going?" Mickey asked when I got back in the car and sat next to him. Without saying anything, I pulled out the bottle of Canadian Club, uncorked it, and handed it to him.Then I took another gulp down my throat. He asked again: "How is it?" I said, "Let's try to find the old Redman warehouse." "One day you're going to ruin yourself by talking too much," he said, before starting the car. Three blocks further down, we came upon a faded sign that said "REDMAN CORPORATION."The building below the sign was low and narrow, but long, with a crooked steel roof and few windows. "Let's park in the corner," I said, "you come with me this time. It wasn't much fun when I was alone." We got out of the car and found an alley leading to the back of the warehouse.We walked over. There are a few people walking in the street.But for this part of the city, it's still too early for factories to wake up. We found something interesting behind the building.The back door of the warehouse was closed.Scratches on the edge of the door frame and near the lock.Some people have worked hard with iron sledges. Mickey tried to open the door, but it wasn't locked.He pushed open six inches at a time, then paused, pushing the door open enough for us to squeeze in. As soon as we squeezed in, we heard a voice, but couldn't make out what it was.I only know that it was made by a man, the voice was weak and vague, some distance away from us, and it felt like a quarrel. Mickey felt the pry mark on the door with his thumb and whispered, "It wasn't the police." I took two steps into the room, resting my full weight on the rubber heels.Mickey followed, exhaling on my neck. Ted Wright once told me that the Whisperer hides upstairs, in the innermost room.That distant and indistinct sound was most likely coming from there. I turned to Mickey and said, "A flashlight?" He jammed the flashlight into my left hand.I held the gun in my right hand, and the two of them crept forward together. The door was only a foot open, letting in just enough light to illuminate the way from this room to a doorless corridor ahead, which was completely dark. I turned on the flashlight, shone into the darkness, and found a door.So I turned off the flashlight and walked forward.Then the light of the flashlight illuminated the stairs for us to go upstairs. We went upstairs as if the stairs would crumble underfoot. The grunting stopped.There's something different in the air, but I don't know what.Perhaps a voice too small to be heard, if that meant anything. I went up another nine steps, when a very clear voice came from overhead: "Yes, I killed that bitch." Then a gun opened fire, and there were four yells, which sounded like a sixteen-inch rifle roaring under a tin roof. "Okay," said the first voice. By this time Mickey and I had gone up the rest of the stairs.We pushed open the door in our way and tried to wrest Reno Starkey's hand off the Whisperer's neck. It's hard work, and it's useless.The Whisperer is dead. Renault recognized me and let his hands hang down.His eyes were still dull, and his horse face was still blank. Mickey carried the dead Gambler to a cot across the room and made him lie down. Apparently, this room had once been an office and shared two windows.By the light that came in, I saw a body hidden under the bed—Dan Rolfe.A Colt automatic lay in the middle of the floor. Renault slumped his shoulders, his body wobbling unsteadily. "Injured?" I asked. "He shot me four times," he said quietly, bending over and pressing his arms together on his stomach. "Go to the doctor," I ordered Mickey. "It's useless," Raynor said. "I don't have any more left than Pete." I pulled a folding chair for him to sit down, so that he could hunched over and stabilized his mind.Mickey ran out of the room and down the stairs. "Did you know he wasn't dead before?" Raynor asked. "I don't know. I got it from Ted Wright when I told you." "Ted left too early," he said. "I was worried that something was wrong, so I came to make sure. He fooled me beautifully, and played dead until he pointed a gun at me." He stared blankly. The corpse of the Whisperer, "pretending to be like this, damn it. Dead, still refusing to lie down, bandaging his own wound, lying there alone and waiting." He smiled slightly.It was the first time I saw him smile. "But now he's just a piece of meat, useless." His voice became deeper and deeper, and the blood that flowed out had pooled under the chair.I dare not touch him.It seemed that he could only rely on the pressure of his arms and the arched position to keep himself from completely breaking down. He stared at the blood on the ground and asked, "How the hell do you know you didn't kill her?" "I can only hope I didn't kill her until just now," I said. "I suspected you, but I couldn't be sure. I was so drunk that night, I had a lot of dreams, I heard bells and shouts, a lot Something like that. Then it occurred to me that maybe they weren't just dreams, but nightmares created by things happening around me. "I woke up with the lights off. I don't think I'd kill her to turn off the lights and then lie back and hold the ice pick. But that's probably not the case. You know I was there that night and didn't Giving me an alibi without hesitation made me think a little more. Dawn tried to blackmail me after hearing Helen Aubrey's story. And the police, after hearing her story, put you, whisper The author, Rolf and I were all involved. I had seen O'Mara on the street before I found Dawn's body, which means that treacherous fellow also wanted to blackmail you. This, combined with the fact that the police put We got it together and I came to the conclusion that the police were as suspicious of you as I was. They suspected me because Helen Aubrey saw me go to that room that night, or come out of it, or go in and out. Saw them all. So it's not hard to speculate that they suspect you for the same reasons. It's easy to take Whisperer and Rolf off the list of suspects, and you and I are left. But I've been having trouble Understand why you want to kill her?" "Let me tell you," he said, watching the blood on the ground grow larger, "she asked for it. She called me and told me that the Whisperer was coming to see her, and that I could sneak up on him if I got there first. I liked the idea. So I went over and waited around, but he never showed up." He stopped talking, pretending to be interested in the shape of the blood.I knew it was the pain that stopped him, and I knew that as soon as he could bear it, he would go on talking.He wants to die as he lived, and he is as strong inside as he is outside.Talking was torture to him, but he wouldn't stop there, not while someone was watching.He was Reynold Stuckey, a guy who didn't change his face no matter what happened, and he was going to fight to the death. "I'm tired of waiting," he continued after a while. "I knocked on her door and asked her what was the matter. She let me in and told me there was no one in. I was skeptical, but she swore She was alone. So we went to the kitchen. You know her, and that's when I began to suspect that it was I, not the Whisperer, who was framed." That's when Mickey came in and told us he had called an ambulance. Raynor took this break to take a break before continuing with his story. "Later, I found out that the Whisperer did call her to come over, but he arrived before me. You passed out by then. She didn't dare let him in, so he left. But she didn't tell I'm afraid I'll leave her and go away. You passed out, and she needs someone to protect her when the whisperer returns. But I didn't know any of these things at the time. Knowing her, I suspect I'm going step by step What a trap. I thought I should grab her first and slap her and make her tell the truth. I did. Then she grabbed the ice pick and started screaming. Just as she was yelling, I heard the man's footsteps Sound. I guess this is a trap showing its feet." He spoke more slowly, because it was getting harder, more time-consuming, and more painful to utter each word calmly and clearly.His voice started to muffle, but even if he realized it, he pretended not to. "I didn't want to be the only one. So I grabbed the ice pick from her hand and stabbed her. Then you rushed forward, staggering, eyes closed. She fell on you, and you fell too oh, rolled over and finally got your hand on the handle of the ice pick. You fell asleep clutching it, as quiet as she was. That's when I realized what I'd done. Damn! She's dead, there's nothing to do .So I turned off the light and went home. And you—" A weary group of paramedics—drug towns kept them busy all day long—brought in with a battered mat, ending Raynor's story.I feel very grateful.I've got all the news I want to know, and it's not going to be fun to sit here and watch him talk till he dies. I pulled Mickey to the corner of the room and whispered in his ear: "From now on, this matter is up to you. I have to hide. I should not be implicated, but I am too knowledgeable about poison town to want to Take any risk. I'll take your car to some station and catch a train to Ogden. I'll stay at the Roosevelt Hotel and register under the name PF King. You stay and deal with this and let me know when the dust settles You can use your real name, or you'd better take a vacation in Honduras." I was in Ogden for almost a week, writing my report so that it would read as if I hadn't broken too many society rules, state laws, and heads. On the sixth night, Mickey came. He told me Raynor was dead; that I was no longer a wanted criminal; that much of the loot from the First National Bank had been recovered; that McSwain had admitted to killing Tim Noonan.And Bosheng City, under the martial law, has slowly developed into a bed of fragrant and thornless roses. Mickey returned to San Francisco with me. I should have saved my energy and hadn't bothered to make up that nice-looking report.Because the old guy can't be fooled anyway, he made me suffer a lot.