The Instant Enemy by Ross MacDonald Page A

thought, but it was too late now. Since leaving his house I’d added over fifty miles to the odometer.
    “How much further, Hank?”
    “I can’t say exactly. I’ll know the place when I see it. You have to make a left turn onto a gravel road. It crosses the tracks.” He peered ahead through the windshield.
    “How long is it since you’ve visited the place?”
    “About three years. Deputy Fleischer drove me up.”
    “Why did you go to all the trouble?”
    “I wanted to know exactly what had happened. The people at the Shelter told me Davy was practically autistic when he was admitted—mute and almost unreachable. I wanted to know why. Fleischer hadn’t told them much, if anything.”
    “Did he talk freely to you?”
    “Policemen never do, do they? And I can understand an officer getting quite possessive about a case. At the time he brought me up here, he’d been working on this one for twelve years.”
    “Did he say so?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then he couldn’t have thought it was an accident.”
    “I don’t know what he thought, really.” Langston thrust his head forward. “Slow down. We’re coming to the place.”
    Several hundred yards ahead in the lights of an approaching truck I could make out a gravel road sloping away to the left. A lonely hitchhiker was at the corner. It was a girl, standing with her back to us and frantically signaling to the truck driver. The truck passed her, and then us, without slackening speed.
    I made a left turn onto the side road and got out. The girl was wearing sunglasses, as if the natural darkness wasn’t deep enough for her. Her body made a jerky movement. I thought she was going to run. But her feet seemed to be stuck fast in the gravel.
    “Sandy?”
    She didn’t answer me, except with a little moan of recognition. I had a vision of myself seen from above, a kind of owl’s-eye view of a man moving in on a frightened girl at adeserted crossroads. Somehow my motives didn’t enter the picture.
    “What happened to the others, Sandy?”
    “I don’t know. I ran away and hid in the trees.” She pointed toward a grove of Monterey pines on the far side of the railroad tracks. I could smell their odor on her. “He laid Mr. Hackett across the railroad tracks, and I got really scared. I thought he was pretending, until then. I didn’t think he really meant to kill him.”
    “Is Hackett unconscious?”
    “No, but he’s all taped up—his hands and feet and mouth. He looked so helpless lying across the rail. He knew where he was, too, I could tell by the noises he made. I couldn’t stand it, so I ran away. When I came back they were gone.”
    Langston moved up beside me. His feet crackled in the gravel. The girl shied away.
    “Don’t be afraid,” he said.
    “Who are you? Do I know you?”
    “I’m Henry Langston. Davy wanted me to take care of you. It seems to be working out that way after all.”
    “I don’t want to be taken care of. I’m all right. I can get a ride.” She spoke with a kind of mechanical assurance which seemed to be unconnected with her real feelings.
    “Come on,” he said. “Don’t be so stand-offish.”
    “Have you got a cigarette?”
    “I have a whole pack.”
    “I’ll come with you if you give me a cigarette.”
    He brought out his cigarettes and solemnly handed them over. She got a cigarette out of the pack. Her hands were shaking.
    “Give me a light?”
    Langston handed her a book of matches. She lit one and dragged deep. The end of her cigarette was reflected double like little hot red eyes in the lenses of her dark glasses.
    “All right, I’ll get into your car.”
    She sat in the front seat, with Langston and me on either side of her. She gulped her cigarette until it burned her fingers, then dropped it in the ashtray.
    “You didn’t have very good plans,” I said. “Who made your plans?”
    “Davy did, mostly.”
    “What did he have in mind?”
    “He was going to kill Mr. Hackett, like I said. Leave him across the