Red-Headed Sinners Read online

  Red-Headed Sinners

  Jonathan Craig

  This page formatted 2011 Munsey's.

  http://www.munseys.com

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Epilogue

  * * *

  RED-HEADED SINNERS

  A BIG NOVEL OF

  TORMENTED

  PEOPLß By

  JONATHAN CRAIG

  He had Killed Ann Lynch...

  He could remember exactly how he had done it.

  The blonde knocked his hand away and struggled off his lap.

  “What's the matter with you, anyway? You crazy or something?” She backed cautiously away from him, her eyes wide with fright.

  The scene in Ann's hotel suite was vivid now, racing through his brain like an accelerated movie. He was walking toward her. He was bending over her. He had her throat in his hands. She was fighting him. But he was choking her, and he would show no mercy, She had to be punished. He ground his thumbs deep into her windpipe....

  And suddenly the memory blurred and became another night and another girl....

  BY Jonathan Craig

  Prologue

  the sharp crack of his open hand against the girl's face was loud in the small room. He leaned over her, breathing heavily, feeling the sting of sweat in the furrow her teeth had cut in his palm.

  The girl had red hair and tilted green eyes. Insolent, defiant eyes. And the blood that bubbled on her lips accentuated the ripe fullness of a mouth that was somehow hard. Her body on the chair was straight and small and rigid. Only her eyes and lips moved.

  She said, “Hit me again, copper.”

  He hit her, harder this time, watching her head snap back, staring down at the red hair that seemed like a crimson mist swirling up around him. A blood red fog that blinded him and twisted his belly and seeped into his brain.

  He watched the big white claws going out for the girl's throat. Those claws were his own hands, he knew, but it was as if they were detached from his body... white blobs moving slowly down into the red mist. His fingers tightened around the soft, damp warmth of her neck.

  He watched the green eyes go round with sudden terror, then her hard mouth open in a silent scream.

  A door opened behind him. He heard people yelling at him. A man and a woman. Heavy feet pounded across the floor toward him. Powerful hands caught at his shoulders and jerked him back from the girl. He felt his right arm twisted behind him and shoved upward in a hammerlock.

  The woman moved in front of him, immense in her gray matron's uniform. In the lumpy suet of her face her eyes were flat and hard.

  “Jeff!” she rasped. “You crazy?”

  The hammerlock made Jeff Stoner's shoulder feel as if his arm were laced to it with white-hot wire. He moved slightly, and the man behind him shoved his arm up another two inches.

  “Ease up,” Jeff said. “I'm all right now. Ease up.”

  “Ease up, hell!” the man said. “You were trying to kill that girl!”

  Jeff shook his head, but the red fog was still there. “No,” he mumbled. “No, I...”

  “You bastard!” the man said. “You crazy, sadistic bastard!”

  The room was beginning to fill with people now, cops and detectives, the other night matron, the porter, the new reporter from the King City Sentinel. Eyes shuttled between Jeff's towering bulk and the small form of the girl on the chair, the girl with the bloody froth on her mouth. The eyes grew cold and remote.

  For a long moment no one spoke.

  Then the girl on the chair put out the tip of a small pink tongue and licked the blood from her lips. She smiled up at Jeff Stoner. “Hit me again, copper,” she said softly.

  Chapter One

  THE THUNDERSTORM that had threatened the city all afternoon broke just as the police trial board got around to telling Jeff Stoner that he was through as a cop. Through, disgraced, and dismissed. The board had taken less than five minutes to reach that conclusion, after calling up Jeff's hearing in the record time of only two days.

  Jeff listened to the roll of thunder across the city, vaguely aware of the Chief's voice as he told Jeff what he and the rest of the Department thought of a detective who would manhandle a female prisoner. The Chief's blast was mainly for the benefit of the press, Jeff knew, but there could be no mistaking the sardonic tone of the Old Man's voice, nor the open contempt in his faded eyes.

  Jeff listened because he had to listen, and when the Chief had finished he walked back to the supply room and got a receipt for his .38 and holster, his handcuffs and badge. He signed a form stating that he was in possession of no other police property and that he had no claim, financial or otherwise, against the Department.

  And that, he thought bitterly, was all there was to it. Just like that. Twelve years of being a good cop... down the sewer because of some nightmarish impulse he couldn't understand, and hadn't been able to control.

  It had all been in the day's work—just another hood's girl to be asked a few trick questions. Routine. But something had happened. They'd pulled the girl in because they thought she knew where Piggy Ferris was holing up. Nothing more than that. Nothing to get rough about. Certainly nothing to make a man beat her up, try to kill her.

  He walked slowly down the long corridor to the street door, acutely conscious of the accusative stares that followed him. He was bone-weary from two days and nights of no sleep. Why? he asked himself for the thousandth time. Why had he done such a thing? How could he have come that close to murder—-for no reason? The matron had left the room for a moment, he remembered, and the girl's gypsy blouse had slipped down over one shoulder. He'd been questioning the girl and wishing he hadn't had that extra Martini before dinner—and it had happened. Without warning. Some foul abscess had burst in his brain, some crazy compulsion had driven him.

  But what? What had happened to him? In the course of twelve years he had questioned hundreds of suspects—men and women— and never before had he so much as lain a finger on any one of them.

  He reached the foyer. For a moment he stood staring out at the gray curtain of rain, and then he turned up the collar of his jacket and pushed through the revolving door.

  He walked slowly, not caring about the rain. Marcia would be waiting by her telephone, he knew. He could picture her, auburn-haired and beautiful, sitting there in her tiny apartment glancing at the phone every few minutes, waiting for his call. Waiting to hear the worst.

  And that was the most painful thing about this whole damn mess: the effect it would have on Marcia. At first she hadn't even been able to believe it.

  He came abreast of Bailey's Bar. A drink might help. A big drink. He could have a fast double shot and then use the phone booth in the rear to call Marcia. He opened the screen door and stepped inside.

  Except for Ed Bailey behind the bar and a zoot-suited punk trying to stand quarters on edge in a back booth, Jeff had the place to himself. He climbed onto a stool and fumbled for a cigarette. But his fingers were wet and the cigarette came apart. He dried his hands with his handkerchief and tried it again.

  Ed Bailey moved up the
bar toward him. “Same thing, Jeff?”

  Jeff nodded. “Same thing—only make it a double.”

  Ed poured the drink. “Sort of wet out.”

  “Sort of,” Jeff said. “Have one with me, Ed?”

  “Not this time,” Ed said. He mopped at the mahogany with his bar rag. “And Jeff—do me a favor, will you? Make that one the last.”

  Jeff stopped the glass half way to his lips. “What's chewing you? Why should this be the last one?”

  Ed shifted his weight uneasily, not looking at Jeff. From the direction of the back booth came the tiny sound of coins falling. The zoot-suiter swore bitterly.

  “Why should this be the last one?” Jeff said again.

  Ed wet his lips. “You know how many of the boys hang out here when they're off duty.”

  “What about it?”

  “Some of them might come in here any minute.”

  “So?”

  “So you're trouble, Jeff,” Ed said in a tired voice. “And trouble's the number one thing I don't want.”

  Jeff set his glass down, very carefully. “Spell it out for me, Ed,” he said.

  “No offense,” Ed said. “That drink's on the house. For old times' sake. I...”

  “Let's have it,” Jeff said tightly.

  Ed shrugged. “All right, son. It's just that a lot of the boys are plenty sore at you. They figure you gave the Department a hell of a black eye. What with all the stink the Sentinel is raising over police corruption and brutality to prisoners, and all, they think you picked a mighty bad time to rough up that gal.”

  Jeff twisted the glass around in his fingers. A little of the whiskey sloshed out onto the bartop.

  “Who's doing most of the talking?” he asked. “Gil Phelps?”

  But he didn't have to ask. He knew it would be Gil, the only man he had ever really managed to hate. They'd been rivals—and enemies—ever since he could remember. As kids, and schoolmates, as National Guardsmen and fellow cops. And, more recently, even more bitterly, as rivals for Marcia Webster.

  Gil had shown his resentment and jealousy in a thousand petty ways. Planting lies about Jeff. Undermining him with the police brass. Nothing that Jeff ever could prove. He knew his back bristled with Gil Phelps' knives, and there was nothing he could do but endure it.

  Ed Bailey spread his hands. “Not just him, Jeff. Hell, it's all of them. Nobody likes to see a pretty girl take a bust in the mouth.” He mopped at the spilled whiskey. “And from what I hear, it was even worse than that.”

  Jeff lifted his glass again. He drained the whiskey, chased it with a deep drag on his cigarette, and waited for the liquor to take hold. There was nothing to say to Ed. Not a thing.

  Ed glanced anxiously toward the street door.

  “Give me a break, Jeff,” he said.

  Jeff stood up. “Just as soon as I make a phone call.”

  “There's a booth next door in the drug store.”

  “To hell with you,” Jeff told him. “I'll use yours.

  He strode back to the booth and dialed Marcia's number. She answered it on the second ring.

  He made it fast; it was just a matter of confirming something they had both known to be inevitable. “.... and I'll be over in a few minutes,” he finished, and hung up. The sound of the tears in Marcia's voice had brought the pain throbbing through him again. The pain, and the deep shame—and the same gnawing, torturing, answerless question: why?

  He walked toward the street door with a tall man's long stride, and he wouldn't have seen the two men in the front booth at all if he hadn't noticed the strange, worried look in Ed Bailey's eyes and followed his gaze toward them.

  Lieutenant Gil Phelps and, across the booth from him, Harry Sybert of the King City Sentinel. It had been Phelps who had applied the hammerlock to Jeff's arm when Jeff had gone berserk in the red fog, and it had been Sybert's gift of invective that had branded Jeff in the eyes of the city as a monster.

  “Keep going,” Jeff heard Ed Bailey mutter from behind the bar. “Keep going, and don't come back.”

  Gil Phelps was lounging back against the booth cushions, his huge, wedge-shaped body dwarfing the thin little man across from him. He had close cropped blond hair and heavy, even features. The tight-lipped smile on his handsome face was the same one he had worn when he congratulated Jeff on Jeff's promotion to Lieutenant—eighteen months before Gil himself had been promoted. It was the same smile Jeff had seen there the night that Gil had stood and listened to Marcia tell him she was going to marry Jeff. The little reporter's eyes were bright and cold and eager. “I've just called in my story on what happened, Stoner,” he said. His nose was thin and had been broken, and his receding chin was just a small bulge half way between his wide mouth and his throat. “But there's still one thing that intrigues me.” He glanced at Gil Phelps and smiled. Phelps drummed the tips of thick, spatulate fingers on the table, his face expressionless, not smiling at all. Sybert looked up at Jeff again, wetting his lips, enjoying this. “I'd hate to keep you in the dark about anything, Harry,” Jeff said. “What's worrying you this time?”

  “The same thing that's worrying a lot of people, Stoner. Why'd you slug that girl? I mean, she wasn't a murder suspect, or anything like that. All you had on her was that she was Piggy Ferris' girl, and you wanted Piggy because you had him tagged for heisting forty thousand bucks' worth of ice.” He laughed scornfully. “Hell, you didn't have anything on her. They let her go twenty minutes after you tried to kill her.”

  Jeff let his breath out slowly. “I didn't try to kill her. I—”

  “The hell you didn't! I got there a couple seconds after Gil here pulled you off her. Don't tell me you didn't try to kill her.” He wet his lips again. “The big question is why.”

  Jeff bent down and spread his hands out flat on the table, his face inches from Sybert's. The cumulative effect of the last two days was getting to him. “Keep talking, Harry,” he said softly. “Just keep making with the mouth.”

  The thin reporter swallowed hard. For an instant, fear crawled in his eyes; and then, suddenly, the fear was gone and his eyes were narrow. “I'm going to pull your cork, Stoner! A guy just don't go crazy like that for nothing. There was some good reason for what you did. Some damn good reason. And I'm going to look under every rock in your backyard until I find out what it is!” His face was studded with sweat; the collar of his pale blue shirt was black with it. “There's something between you and that girl and Piggy, something the Department doesn't know about.” He half rose from the booth. “But they're going to know about it. Everybody is going to know. And I'm the guy who's going to tell them!”

  Gil Phelps cleared his throat. “Take it easy, Harry,” he said pleasantly. “Mr. Stoner has had a hard day.”

  Jeff looked at the glistening, vicious face of the reporter, and, abruptly, what little strength had remained in him washed out of his body completely. He felt as if someone had worked him over with a cue butt and then jammed it down his throat.

  “You're wrong, Sybert,” he said. “I don't know why I... It just happened, that's all.”

  The reporter shook his head slowly. “Like hell. Those things don't 'just happen,' Stoner.”

  “It did this time,” Jeff said. He turned toward Gil Phelps. “You got anything to add to this, Gil?”

  Phelps smiled his strange, enigmatic smile. “I can't think of anything at the moment, Jeff. Maybe later, but not just yet.” He raised his voice. “Ed! Bring us a couple beers.”

  Jeff looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Another ten seconds of this and a bad situation would become even worse. He fought back the helpless anger that surged inside of him. It cost him every ounce of will power he possessed, but he managed somehow to turn away from the booth and walk to the door.

  And as the screen slammed shut behind him, he heard the high-pitched, almost effeminate laughter of the chinless little reporter. A laugh to prickle a man's skin—like the scrape of chalk on a blackboard. An unnatural, demonic laugh that
hit a man like a fist in the belly.

  Chapter Two

  WHEN MARCIA WEBSTER had put the phone back in its cradle after Jeff's call from Bailey's Bar, she sat for several moments without moving, listening to the drone of the shower in her bathroom blending with the quieter, whispering drone of the rain against the windows.

  She had been on her way to the shower when Jeff called. She wore nothing but ballet slippers and the green ribbon with which she had tied up her dark, shoulder-length hair, and the rough nap of the Morris chair in which she sat chafed mildly, though not unpleasantly against the creamy softness of her skin.

  She was an incredibly beautiful girl, high-breasted and long-legged. Now she crossed one tapering leg over the other, folded her arms and leaned forward on her bare thighs. Her smoke-gray eyes grew cloudy with thought.

  There were, she reflected, always two sides to every coin. She remembered the relief and elation she had felt when Jeff had first told her he was suspended. She'd hated his work, because of the danger and death that followed him every moment of his life, but she had understood his deep love for his job, and she had kept her hatred of it and her fear for him a secret. Still, she had never ceased to hope that, somehow, he would turn to something else. Anything else. Sales work, maybe. Jeff would make a good salesman. But it wouldn't really matter what he did, so long as there wasn't that continual anxiety over his safety.

  Well, he was no longer a cop. That part of her dream had come true. But there was the other side of the coin, the ugly, tarnished side. She now had to live with the sickening knowledge that Jeff had beaten a young girl, had even tried to kill her. She remembered how, at first, she had been wholly unable to believe that Jeff was capable of the viciousness that the editorial in the Sentinel attributed to him.

  But that had been before she had gone back in her memory to two occasions on which Jeff had been so unlike himself that he had frightened her.

  That time at the beach, for one. They'd had a few bottles of beer at the pavilion, and then decided, suddenly, to go swimming.