Ross Macdonald - Find a Victim

FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, AUGUST 2001

Copyright 1954, copyright renewed 1982 by John Ross Macdonald

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1954.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Macdonald, John Ross.
Find a victim [by] John Ross Macdonald [pseud.]
New York, Knopf, 1954.
p. cm.
PZ3.M59942 Fi
1381659
CIP

eISBN: 978-0-307-77333-3

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

To Ivan von Auw, Jr.

A man feared that he might find an assassin;

Another that he might find a victim

One was more wise than the other.

STEPHEN CRANE

CHAPTER:He was the ghastliest hitchhiker who ever thumbed me. He rose on his knees in the ditch. His eyes were black holes in his yellow face, his mouth a bright smear of red like a clowns painted grin. The arm he raised overbalanced him. He fell forward on his face again.

I stamped the brake-pedal and backed a hundred yards to where he lay, a dark-headed man in jeans and a gray workshirt, prone among the jimson. He was as still as death now. But when I squatted down beside him I could hear the sigh and gurgle of his breathing.

Supporting his hip on my knee and his loose head with my arm, I turned him onto his back. The blood at his mouth was breaking in tiny bubbles. The breast of his gray shirt was dark and wet. Unbuttoning it, I saw the round hole among the sodden hairs on his chest, still pumping little bright spurts.

I removed my jacket and tore off my own shirt. Wadding it over the bullet hole, I fixed it in place with my tie. The wounded man stirred and sighed. The eyelids quivered over the dusty-black eyes. He was a young man, and he was dying.

I looked back to the south and then to the north. No cars, no houses, no anything. I had passed one clot of traffic somewhere north of Bakersfield and failed to catch another. It was one of those lulls in time when you can hear your heart ticking your life away, and nothing else. The sun had fallen behind the coastal range, and the valley was filling with twilight. A flight of blackbirds crossed the sky like visible wind, blowing and whiplashing.

I lifted him, his head lolling on my chest, and carried him to the car. He was hard to handle, neither big nor heavy but terribly lax. I got him onto the back seat with his head propped up on my overnight bag so that he wouldnt smother, and covered him with the car blanket.

He rode six or seven miles in that position. I turned down my rear-view mirror to keep an eye on him. As the twilight faded, his face in the mirror faded almost out.

I passed a sign: CAMP FREMONT, U.S. MARINE CORPS BASE . Cyclone fence sprang up along the highway. Beyond it streets of weathered barracks marched across the valley to the humpbacked horizon. There wasnt a trace of life. The Quonset hangars of the attached airbase could have been barrows built by a lost race of giants.

Then there were lights at the roadside, a city of lights beyond them. Neons stained the thickening air green and yellow: KERRIGANS COURTDELUXE MOTOR HOTEL . Its lobby and pueblos were brilliantly floodlit. I stopped in front of the lobby and went inside.

It was all blond plywood and green imitation leather furniture. The woman behind the registration desk was also blonde. Her long blue eyes surveyed me, making me conscious of my naked chest. I buttoned my jacket as I crossed the room.

Can I help you? she said in a distant way.

A man in my car needs help, badly. Ill bring him in while you call a doctor.

Her eyebrows moved downward, a worried cleft between them. Is he sick?

With lead poisoning. Hes been shot.

She rose in nervous haste and opened a door behind her. Don, come here a minute.

He needs a doctor now, I said. Theres no time to talk it over.

Talk what over? A big man filled the doorway. He was heavy-shouldered in a light gabardine suit, and he moved like an ex-athlete gone to seed. What in hell is it now? Cant you handle anything by yourself?

Her slim hands wrenched at each other. I wont permit you to speak to me that way.

He smiled at her without showing his teeth. Under clipped sandy hair, his face was fiery with alcohol or anger. I talk the way I want to in my own place.

Youre tight, Don.

Youve never seen me tight.

They were standing close to each other in the space behind the desk, face to face in furious intimacy.

I said: Theres a man bleeding to death outside. If you wont let him come in here, at least you can call an ambulance.

He turned to me, his eyes gray triangles under folded lids. Bleeding to death? Who is he?

I dont know. Are you going to get some help for him or not?

Yes, of course, the woman said.

She lifted a telephone book out of the desk, found a number, and dialed. The man went out, slamming the door behind him.

Kerrigans Motor Court, she said, Mrs. Kerrigan speaking. We have an injured man here.No. They say hes been shot.Yes, it seems to be serious, an emergency.

She replaced the receiver. The county hospital is sending an ambulance. She added in a low voice, hardly more than a whisper: Im sorry for what happened. In our family we dont rise to an emergency. We sink beneath it.

It doesnt matter.

It does to me. Im really sorry.

Her face slanted forward across the desk. Her pale smooth hair was drawn back severely from it, as if to emphasize its stark beauty.

Isnt there anything else I can do? she said on a rising note. Call the police?

The hospital will. Theyre required to by law. Thanks for your trouble, Mrs. Kerrigan.

She followed me to the door, a troubled woman who had missed her chance to react like a human being and couldnt let it go. This must be a terrible thing for you. Is he a friend of yours?

Hes nothing to me. I found him on the highway.

She touched my arm, as if to establish contact with reality, and quickly withdrew her hand, as if the contact frightened her. Her eyes were focused on my chest. I looked down at the drying smear where the bloody face had rested.

Are you hurt, too? Can I do anything for you?

Not a thing, I said, and went outside.

Kerrigan was leaning in at the open back door of my car. He straightened sharply when he heard my feet in the gravel.

Is he still breathing?

Yeah, hes breathing. The alcoholic blood had drained out of his face, leaving it blotched. I dont think we ought to move him, but well take him inside if you say so.

He might dirty your carpet.

Theres no need to get unpleasant, fellow. You heard me offer to take him in.

Forget it.

He moved up closer to me, his eyes opaque and stony gray in the floodlights. Where did you find him?

A couple of miles south of the Marine Base, in the ditch.

How did you happen to bring him here, to my doorstep? If I may ask.