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CHAPTER ONE 

That man tried to kill me! 

Dan Kinnick took his shaking hands from the wheel of his Oldsmobile hardtop and stared after the big Cadillac that had come hurtling out of the darkness with no lights showing. A man had leaned from the right-side window with a pistol in his hand and fired it. 

At me! He fired at me! 

Kinnick felt nausea churn inside him, watching the red taillights come on as the car roared off into the night. With a sickly terror, he turned his head to stare at the bullet-hole in the closed window at his right. Cracks stippled the glass in a crazy quilt pattern. 

He only missed by an inch! I even felt the bullet. I felt it go past my chin! Just a little this side, and I wouldn't have a face. I wouldn't need a face. I'd be dead! 

Kinnick bit his lip and balled his hands into fists and beat them against the steering wheel. He wanted to scream, to yell insanely. Things like this didn't happen to a guy, not in real life. In the movies, sure. You sat back and watched some poor slob running from a gang that was out to get him all the time you knew he was going to get away, no matter how bad the odds. No body kills a hero. Dan Kinnick was no hero, though. No body was dollying in on him with a movie camera. 

He was sitting in a 1962 hardtop, half in and half out of a ditch along Colonial Road in a residential section of north Yonkers. There was a bullet-hole in the suicide seat window, and he was scared witless. 

"A mistake,” he mumbled. "It was a mistake. God, it's got to be a mistake. Somebody thought I was another joe. Sure, that must be it." 

Only it was no mistake. 

Too many queer things had been happening to Dan Kinnick lately for it to be a mistake. Somebody was out to get him, to put him in a coffin six feet under. But why? 

He tried to think, but thinking was impossible. All he could do was summon up a chance memory, here and there. His name was Daniel Philip Kinnick. He owned a gas station on Yonkers Avenue. He was almost thirty years old. To his knowledge, he hadn't an enemy in the world. 

"I don't know anything that would get anybody in trouble. I don't fool around with somebody's wife. I keep my nose clean. What other reason would there be to kill a guy? I don't know any mobsters. I was never in a racket" 

After awhile he realized he was sitting hunched over the wheel, mumbling senselessly to himself. He straightened up and leaned back, shaking his head, taking deep gulps of air in an effort to lessen the sickness in his belly. 

He opened the door, got out and walked around the car three times. The crisp December night settled the churning restlessness of his guts. He leaned his hip against a fender and closed his eyes. 

Ben Vardon. He was the man to see. 

Detective-Sergeant Vardon of the Yonkers Police Department was his friend. If anyone would know why one man killed another, he would. 

The hardtop had stalled. It took him a little while to compose himself enough to start the motor and back up onto the roadway. The sickness was still in him and he had to take a solid grip on himself. Then, he thought, suppose they're waiting for me up ahead to make another try? The sickness came back so bad he opened the car door and stepped out again, nausea in his guts, until his nerves quieted down. 

He drove a mile without lights, almost wishing a patrol car would flag him down and give him a ticket. At least they wouldn't shoot him and he'd have somebody to tell his story to. Nobody stopped him, so when he swung onto the Cross County Parkway he switched on his lights and made good time for home. 

The Vardon house was dark when he braked to a halt. Ben and his wife Kathy would be asleep. His wristwatch showed twenty minutes past midnight. On shaking legs he walked up the flagstones to the front porch and pressed the bell. 

On the third ring a window went up and a sleepy voice called, "Who's there?” 

"Ben, it's me—Dan Kinnick. Somebody just tried to kill me!" 

There was a little silence. Kinnick could hear Kathy saying, “At this hour?" 

Then Ben called, “Be right down, Dan.” 

Ben Vardon was a big man, rawboned and heavyset. He had a wide face and high cheekbones. Kinnick thought there might be Indian blood in him from away back. He usually wore rumpled suits that were always unpressed and he carried anywhere from two to five pipes in his pockets. As he opened his front door, blinking sleepily in the glare from the street-light, he looked neater in dark blue dressing gown and pajamas than he ever did dressed. 

"You drunk, Dan?” His voice implied that he would not blame Kinnick if he were. 

"There's a bullet hole in my car window," Kinnick said shakily. He was too nervous to be angry. "Come on, take a look at it.” When the detective hesitated, he flared, “Goddamn it! It's the only proof I got that something did happen to me!" 

"Sure, Dan." 

Vardon followed him along the walk to the car. He pursed his lips, looking at the hole, and muttered, “It's pretty big. Took a heavy bullet to make that hole. Maybe a .45 revolver or Colt automatic.” He bent over and put his eye to the glass, sighting along it. "Just missed by a hair's whisker, didn't it? Shook you up some, I'll bet." 

“I'm still shook," Kinnick agreed tightly. "Sure. I can understand that. Come on in for coffee."

"No coffee. I just want to tell you what happened. 

Maybe you know why somebody would want to kill me. 

I don't.” 

"Teenagers?" Vardon asked with a quick glance. 

Kinnick shook his head. “No, they were grown men. Big men, beefy, in neat hats and topcoats. I saw that much when that joe leaned out the window and fired." 

"Recognize him if you saw him?"

"I don't think so. It was dark. It happened so fast—" 

“Coffee," Ben said again, and this time he took Kinnick by the arm. 

Kathy was waiting in the kitchen beside the stove, smiling cheerfully as if to hide the sympathy written on her face. She was small and pretty, with brown hair decorated with upwards of fifty bobby pins. When she saw his glance, she flushed and touched her hair, then shrugged. 

“You've seen Midge like this a hundred times," she said. 

Ben growled at her, and Kinnick knew they were trying to hide the sympathy they felt for him because of Midge. Right now he didn't want sympathy. He wanted explanations. 

Vardon showed him into the breakfast nook bench and glowered down at him. "What can I tell you, Dan? Personally I think it was a case of mistaken identity. You drive a damn nice car, that new Holiday. A rich man's car. Somebody thought you were playing around with a wife, maybe.” 

Kinnick said flatly, “You know better'n that, Ben. There were two men in that car. Two men don't go around revenging one guy's horns.” 

"I was hoping you wouldn't notice that," Vardon grumbled. He sat across the table and leaned elbows on the Formica tabletop. "I honestly don't know what the hell to tell you. I feel I know enough about you and your way of living to say nobody's got an excuse in God's wide world to blow your head off.” 

"Ben!” cried Kathy. His face was stony. "It's true, isn't it? Somebody did try to blow his head off. Dan wants to know why. So do I." 

Vardon looked at Kinnick. "Tell me about it, just the way it happened." 

Kinnick frowned. Where did you begin telling a man how you almost died? At the very moment when the bullet went by your jaw, or before that, when you brought Mrs. Conover the new battery for her car? Maybe the beginning should be somewhere else, in some forgotten moment out of time. 

"I had a service call to make in the Bayswater Knoll section. At a Hamilton Avenue address. A Mrs. Conover. She had a run-down battery and I'd promised to bring her a new one, even as late as it was. I particularly remember she asked for an Auto-Lite. She saw an ad on television ” 

Vardon looked impatient as Kinnick spread his hands. "I installed it and drove away. About a half-mile from her place—along Colonial Road—this Cadillac comes tear-assing past. A guy with a gun in his hand leaned out the window. I saw him from the corner of my eye. I jammed the anchors and felt the bullet skin my chin." 

There was a little silence in the kitchen. Kinnick could hear the percolator bubbling. He said lamely, “That's about all, I guess." 

Ben Vardon smiled wryly. "It's only the end, Dan. Now give me the beginning. Go back to where it all began. Go on. You can do it. Something inside you will tell you when to begin... 

His voice trailed off and Kinnick sat hunched over, unaware that Kathy was at his elbow with the coffee pot. A beginning is a start of something, the very first link in the chain. Search back along these links of memory, Daniel Philip Kinnick, to the glistening first link, which was— 

The robbery attempt that was no robbery at all? 

Or the automobile plunging over the Ardsley Hill Road curve? 

Midge? Did it commence with his wife? 

No, it began after Midge, but before the accident. Maybe it was the last time he'd gone hunting up at Indian Head Lodge, the time he'd seen Donna Morrison. Kinnick scowled, remembering that afternoon and the man with the high-powered hunting rifle, the man with buck fever... 

The man was terrified. He whirled and threw the heavy Winchester from him as Kinnick came walking up the little slope, high grass swishing against his leather flight boots. There was a momentary flash of sunlight on glass and then the long iron-weeds and gay-feathers hid the big hunting rifle. 

The solitary hunter had eyes like black holes in his head and his forehead under the scarlet hunting cap was wet with sweat. Kinnick saw the shaking hands and smiled a little. 

"Buck fever?” he asked gently. 

The man took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded. "I guess so. I never had anything like it happen to me before. I—I saw the deer real good, right on my sights. It turned and—and looked at me and—" 

Kinnick fumbled for cigarettes, bringing out the flat, silver case with his initials on it. He was a young man with very lean hips and wide, brawny shoulders under a blazing red jacket. There was a trace of blondish beard stubble at his jaw, and his lips were wide and curiously sensitive. He carried his Remington Magnum easily across his right forearm and offered the cigarette case with his left hand. The man took one with a grateful look. 

"First time out?" asked Kinnick, 

The man smiled tightly. "No, and I'm ashamed of myself. But I've never shot a deer, never even had one in my sights like that. I froze and started shaking. I think maybe I shook so much it made my gun go off. I don't remember squeezing the trigger." 

"Buck fever can get anybody, beginner or old-timer. Never had it myself, but I was raised around these parts. My pop was a forest ranger. Hell, I grew up with deer running past our front door every morning." 

Kinnick let smoke out of his nostrils and glanced idly across the dip of meadowland that lay between this ridge and the far slope of Mount Arrowhead, where fir and balsam grew so thickly that from this distance it looked like a shaggy green blanket. The early October day was crisp and clear with a hint of coming winter in the chill wind that roamed the highlands. His eye touched the gleaming brown stock of the fallen rifle. Only the stock showed. The rest of the gun was hidden by the tall grass. 

"Better clean it off," he smiled, nodding at the Winchester. He shifted his own Magnum in the crook of his arm and said, “Guess I'll be running. Got to stop at the Lodge and settle up with Pops Morrison. Stayed overnight and had myself a few highballs." 

The man nodded absentmindedly, staring out across the distant meadows. “Owe him some money myself. I'll be along shortly. Think I'll sit awhile and get my breath." 

Kinnick moved on up the hill, past a sprawling clump of white chickweed. He walked with steady strides, head down to watch his footing. Thinking about the man and his buck fever, he chuckled with sympathetic understanding. He might never have noticed him if the man hadn't fired. The sound of the shot roused him from his reveries, turning him from the beaten footpath and up into the tall shinleaf. He took a proprietary interest in what went on at the Morrison Lodge, probably because he'd been coming here since he was twelve and Donna Morrison only nine.

He was a married man now and should forget Donna, but how did one go about forgetting long black hair and the touch of soft lips in the night, the perfumed warmth of a first love? Or the long summer days and swimming in Vardis Lake, with hot dogs and cold soda pop waiting the stir of appetite? His mind could pick sounds and fragmentary sights out of the potpourri of memory the touch of her hand in his as they tramped the autumn woods, the remembrance of laughter warmed by love, the togetherness of seeing the first spring robin or a ten point buck—and revel in them. 

Kinnick admitted honestly that he had been looking forward to meeting Donna this weekend, not out of any desire to be unfaithful to Midge, but from the bite of those inner hungers that assail a man when he feels he's growing older and that the carefree days of youth are only a bitter-sweetness in the mind. 

"I'll be thirty next birthday," he muttered under his breath and wondered why he and Midge had never had children. Children might have made a difference in the way he and his wife got along. 

He was moving past a hazel thicket and heading toward a fallen tree trunk when he realized that he had not felt this alive in months. The weight of the rifle on his arm, the biting October wind laden with the smell of wood-smoke, the sight of big yellow pumpkins in a distant field made a congestion of sense impressions that overwhelmed him. He came to a stop and breathed deep. 

A man is a dull clod most of the time, but there are rare moments when his soul grows tumescently pleased with the world around him. Kinnick savored this instant of delight, wanting to hold on to it. A rail fence criss-crossed a strip of pasture three miles away; he could pick out the red leaves and berries of a cotoneaster clump as if they were within reaching distance. A bird doated lazily on a wind current beyond the rim of green needled conifers. He could make out the red slate of the Lodge roof-tiles, the other side of the next hill. 

The sharpness of his senses fled unexpectedly and Kinnick experienced a sudden uneasiness. Turning, he searched his back-trail until he saw the man with buck fever, bulking big and solid in his hunting jacket, staring down at him. Kinnick lifted an arm and waved. The man turned and disappeared behind a patch of dogwood. 

Kinnick shrugged and went on. "Dan! Dan Kinnick!" 

Donna Morrison was standing on the Lodge porch, sweatered arm lifted to him as he came across the macadam parking lot. She ran down the steps, laughing brightly, her long black hair gathered in a pony tail and bouncing wildly. His aliveness of a few minutes before came back with a rush. 

She was as lovely as ever. Maybe more so, for her girlish body had filled out into rounded hips that pressed against carefully tailored black slacks, and he found himself pleasantly surprised at the fullness of her breasts. The years rolled away behind him. Dan Kinnick held out his arms, the Remington Magnum an unnoticed weight in his right hand. 

"Donna! Ah, it's good to see you!" 

He caught and hugged her, looking down into her sparkling eyes, and he knew, just before he bent his head, that he had to kiss her just as he had to breathe. Her lips were softly cradling, and the press of her middle against him was strangely disturbing. After a moment they realized they were in full view right smack in the middle of the Lodge parking lot, and drew away from each other. 

"I was wild when Pops told me you'd come up yesterday and I wasn't here," she said, searching his face with hungry eyes. "I think I've been on and off that porch all day, waiting for you to come back. Oh, Dan, it's so good to talk to you again! Why've you stayed away so long?” 

"Midge doesn't fancy my hunting trips." 

"Oh." Her face was inscrutable. After a moment she asked, “How is Midge? How do you like married life? It's three years next April, isn't it?" 

"Three years, yes." 

"Happy years, Dan? No, I shouldn't ask that. It isn't any of my business. Come inside and have a whiskey sour with me. You used to like the way I made them." 

"Still do. Nobody can make one your way. It's something special." He hesitated then plunged on, "Just the way you're special, Donna." 

She walked beside him with a free stride, smiling a little, turning her head to glance at him sideways out of the corners of her slanted eyes as she used to do. "Not special enough, though. I think that was the trouble with us, Dan. We were much too good friends to be in love. I was a pal, a gal to take to a dance or on a hay ride. I wasn't exciting—" 

"Shut up, Donna," he growled and knew instant contrition. "I'm sorry. That slipped out.” 

"I'm glad it did," she said frankly. "It shows you've thought about me the way I've thought about you, wondering what went wrong between us." 

"Nothing went wrong. I was a stupid fool.” 

Three years ago he had been mustered out of service, and was lonely. Midge had been a hostess at a fashionable restaurant in Mamaroneck just off U.S. 1. Twice a week and every weekend he ate there, always alone. They struck up a conversation and one night made a date to go dancing when she was through with work. He was lonely and she was tired of going home to an empty room, so after their drinks they went to a motel and registered as man and wife. 

Looking back, Kinnick realized he was not the man to take a girl to a motel room and share a few hours of lovemaking without an insistent feeling of obligation. He was making good money as a mechanic in a Scarsdale garage-in service, he'd been an Air Force tech sergeant—so the morning after their fifth visit to the motel he proposed to her. 

Somewhat to his surprise, she accepted him. 

"Ever since, she's been trying to make me over to fit some kind of mental blueprint she has of what a husband ought to be," he said glumly, watching Donna pouring whiskey into a cocktail shaker behind the Lodge bar. "I'd saved up my severance pay. She made me take it out and buy myself a service station in Yonkers. Told me I'd never get anywhere working for somebody else. Nothing satisfied her but that I own my own business. Since cars and machinery are the only thing I know—outside of guns and hunting—I did what she wanted." 

Kinnick watched the gentle tremor of Donna's breasts as she shook the frosted glass shaker up and down. "Funny part of it is, I've done pretty well. I've more than doubled my old salary. I bought a new car. We threw our old furniture out and bought new for our apartment we live in a two-family house on Pond Hill Road and Midge buys as many new dresses as she wants. And she wants plenty.” 

He scowled into the whiskey sour glass as Donna filled it. “This is my first vacation away from work since I bought the station. Maybe I wouldn't have taken even this weekend except that an old codger who used to work at the station hit me for a job the other day. He wants to do part-time work. So I took him on. Midge wasn't so keen on the idea, but—Lord, how I go on! Aren't you tired of listening?" 

Donna leaned her elbows on the bar-top, smiling with a peculiar twist of her full red mouth. "Use me, Dan. For a whipping boy. Get it out of your system." There was a warm tenderness in her eyes. "You men. Every one of you is a martyr. In you I like it." 

"Hey, now," he protested. "I'm not exactly griping. 

Don't get me wrong. Midge is a good kid. She has her faults—but hell who doesn't? And how can you write off something that's worked out as well as the station has? Midge is making me a success in spite of myself.” 

He tasted the drink. It was smooth and as tartly sweet as any whiskey sour she'd ever made. He told her so, then asked, “What about you? Last I remember, you were studying art.” 

"Four years at Skidmore. Now I'm a professional artist and teach at Midland High." 

He straightened with a grin. "Honest Injun? Donna, that's great. An artist. How about that?” 

"Care to see my etchings?”

"I do, soon's we do away with this shaker." 

Her studio was the old Lodge stable, converted into an atelier by the ripping down of a shingled roof and the insertion of a slanted picture window. The wide-planked floor was painted gray and the thick upright beams were stained and waxed. A row of Afro-American wood carvings made grotesque curves and angles on a window ledge. Here and there Donna had hung wooden masks and plaques, carved from balsa or elm and painted with a delicate sensitivity to color. 

"I'd never have believed Pops if he'd described this place to me,” Kinnick enthused. "From the parking lot it looks like an abandoned stable.” 

"I have my own kitchen, my sitting room and a place to sleep. What more—outside a husband could a girl ask?” 

She brought him to a narrow staircase and up that to the open loft that long ago had stored hay and sacks of grain. An iron grille fence ran around the stable over-hang. An easel and a modeling dais stood below the slanted window, directly in the bright yellow sunlight. An old paint-stained table and a high-backed chair with a fringed shawl flung across an arm added color to the setting. A row of unframed canvases leaned against the wall. 

Donna lifted two of the oils and held them up for inspection as he lighted a cigarette. "A landscape and a still life. Someday you'll have to pose for me." 

"You can call it "Man Letting Down his Hair to Old Girl Friend'," he nodded, blowing smoke. "I'll be glad to pose. Any time." 

She came close and looked up at him. "Dan, was it my fault? I have to know. It means a lot to me." 

Kinnick gestured aimlessly, in embarrassment. "It happened, Donna. If it was anybody's fault, it was mine. I forgot how wonderful you are." 

Her mouth curved into a wistful smile. "I'd prefer to think you never knew how wonderful I could be, for you." She took the cigarette out of his mouth, the silver case from his fingers, putting them on the table. Then she moved forward until she was touching him at thighs and belly. Devil fires smoldered in her eyes as she lifted her arms and locked them about his neck. Now he felt the firm solidity of her breasts on his chest. "Call me what you want, Dan—but I have to know about us in the only way a poor, helpless female can tell." 

Poor, helpless female? This woman he held in his arms was perfumed dynamite, ready to blow in half a hundred directions. Never before had he felt this crazy wildfire in his veins, not with Donna herself, and certainly never with Midge. He was a little giddy, he knew, as he bent to kiss her parting lips. 

Her mouth was wide and hungry. Her moving tongue was a tender whip telling him he was a dumb damn fool to have let this girl get away from him. His hands went down her soft back and to her curving hips. Clinging, he pressed her even closer. 

After awhile, Kinnick grew aware that her fingernails were embedded in his shoulder, sharply biting through the tight weave of his red hunting shirt. 

"You bastard," she whispered tenderly, making the word a caress. She kissed him lightly, just a brushing of her lips. "You should have married me. And it's too bad I'm a lady, or I'd take you away from your wife.” 

"Donna," he said, and then he stopped. What in hell could he say to this girl? Tell her that he knew she was right? That he'd been lonely when he got out of service and that he'd always considered her as a youngster, somebody outside his age group and not fair game for loving? He felt helpless. 

Her eyes slanted at him, smoky and rebellious. "Or maybe I'm just not enough of a bitch to make the play. Every woman is a bitch, darling. Didn't you know? Only some of us make believe we don't know it." 

"Maybe I'd better be running." 

She laughed softly. "Maybe you'd better, Dan. I'm a big girl now, though. Always remember it." 

"You think I could forget?” 

He let that hang between them as he went down the narrow stairs. He hefted his hunting jacket from a beam peg and shrugged into it. His blood was pounding so heavily it made his ears pulse. When he went into the sunlight he was surprised to find it so bright. It seemed he'd been in the stable-studio a long time. Actually, it could have been only a few minutes. 

Kinnick went into the Lodge and settled his bill. He turned over his rifle to Johnny Anson who clerked for Pops. Johnny was a crusty old bachelor who cleaned and polished the guns left in his care from one weekend to the next with the loving tenderness of a young mother with her firstborn. The next time he came through the Lodge door, Kinnick knew the Magnum would look as if it had just come out of a display window. 

Standing in the doorway, he buttoned his jacket slowly, trying not to think about Donna Morrison. Moving across the porch he saw the man with buck fever come from between two parked cars and walk toward him, carrying a Winchester M 71. 

The man waved a hand and veered toward Kinnick. His face was flushed. Kinnick wondered if he'd been carrying a hip flask and had stopped along the trail to fortify his nerves. There was an almost jaunty air about him. 

"Wanted to introduce myself and apologize for being so stupid back there on the ridge. Name's Fred Jackson. I'm in the trucking business up around White Plains." His hand clasp was firm and vigorous, but his smile seemed a little too fixed. 

Kinnick said, "I run a gas station myself. In Yonkers. Not a big place—six pumps, a two-car repair garage. It's a living." 

They had been walking beside the cars. When Kinnick turned in at his blue-gray Buick convertible, Jackson chuckled heavily. "Can't be too bad a living if you can afford a car like that." 

"I can't afford it. My wife wanted it." 

The red-faced man looked a little uncomfortable. He said, "Well, I just wanted to thank you for being so understanding. A lot of men would have laughed at me." 

"Not a man who's ever hunted.” 

Kinnick could not explain it, but there was a need in him to get away from this smiling man. The more Jackson talked, the more uneasy Kinnick felt, as if he were hiding something with his speech. 

As his foot pressed the starter, he grumbled, "I'm getting to be an old woman, for Chrissakes!” He wheeled the Century out of the strip and nursed it across the macadam to the big log gate. 

He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The red-faced man was still standing there, looking after him. Even while Kinnick stared, Jackson drew out a leather-bound notebook and pencil from an inner pocket and began to write on it.