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The Killer Touch
By Ellery Queen MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
Copyright © 1965 Ellery Queen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1848-7
CHAPTER 1
Burt March sat on a coil of rope and watched the green-yellow islands of the Grenadines sail past. The schooner wallowed through a heavy sea, but there was no wind and the sails were furled. From below came the intermittent growl of the diesel engine; an occasional vile whiff of exhaust fumes reminded Burt of the city he'd left the day before.
He gazed around the open deck, crowded with islanders returning from St. Vincent after selling their vegetables, pigs and chickens. A rum bottled passed from one black hand to another; a Negro girl flashed him an over-the-shoulder look, then reached into her basket and tossed him a ripe mango. He caught it and smiled at her; she turned quickly to whisper to a girl who sat beside her. Their burst of tinkling laughter pleased him; he was glad to leave the grit and sticky July heat of Florida, to forget the pinch of a shoulder holster, and to be among people who didn't know him as Dective Sergeant Burton March of the Crystal City Police Department. He hated the puffed, indignant faces of solid citizens, the uneasy look from those who had nothing to fear from him, and the pinched, scared faces of those who did. He hated the scared faces most, maybe because he knew others in the department who liked them scared.
A boy picked his way across the deck, collecting fares. Burt drew out his wallet and removed a British West Indian dollar. "I get off at Isle de Trois."
"I think we don't stop there, sir."
Burt looked up. The boy was shirtless and barefoot, with trousers cut off at the knees. "Why not?"
"Too much sea. The water very swift there, no good bottom to hold anchor."
"Well, can you get me in close? Joss could send out a boat to pick me up."
The boy nodded. "I ask the captain."
As the boy started away, Burt called, "How old are you?"
"Fourteen year." The boy squinted at Burt for a moment, then shrugged and started up the gangway.
Burt sighed and pulled a paperback book from the pocket of his white canvas trousers. The same age. Funny. And the kid that got sick on the plane looked around fourteen, too. Burt remembered the smell of fear in the darkened store, the roar of the other's gun and the ripping pain in his thigh, then his own reflexive shot at the muzzle flash. He saw again the beardless face, curiously feminine in death, and the ugly redness where Burt's slug had torn through his throat. ...
Burt closed the book and returned it to his pocket. There would be time to read on the island, time to dive in the air-clear water, fish, and walk on the salt-white sand and put strength in his leg, or just to sit at the top of the island's lone hill and think. What about? Well, think about reaching the age of twenty-eight and deciding you've picked the wrong career. That would keep him busy for his entire month of sick leave. He wondered if he should've sent Joss a wire ... but then she'd told him once that nobody came during the summer. He'd probably have the whole square mile of the island to himself.
The boy returned and said the captain wanted to see him. Burt planted his bamboo cane and rose. He was slightly less than six feet tall, heavy-set in a hard-muscled way which made him look average. He used the cane no more than necessary to steady himself on the rolling deck.
The wheelhouse swarmed with girls in bright-colored dresses. It was a mark of status for a girl to ride with the skipper, and Captain O'Ryan was notoriously free with his favor. He was a blue-black Negro who walked softly, talked slowly, and had a barrel-chested build.
He grinned as Burt entered. "Mister March. I din' recognize you when you board. Man, you pale, lose weight." He gripped his jaw to indicate hollow cheeks.
Burt held up his cane. "Had a little accident, so they handed me an extra vacation."
"So you rest with Miss Joss, eh? If she leave you be. Maybe I stop off one day when the sea calm down, bring some rum." O'Ryan looked at the deck, dipping and swaying below, then raised his eyes to the southeastern horizon. "I think a hurricane trying to work up." He looked sideways at Burt. "You never been in one of our hurricanes?"
"No."
"Ah, man, they come rare and small, but hard, hard." He grinned as though looking forward to it. "Well, we get you close and see if Miss Joss will pick you up. You give her something for me?"
"Sure," said Burt, then frowned as O'Ryan drew a smart, olive-green leather purse from beneath the binnacle. "That doesn't belong to Joss."
"No, a lady left it on my ship three days ago. She staying now with Joss."
A twinkle in O'Ryan's eye gave new significance to the expensive look of the purse and the seductive scent which rose from it. Burt suspected that if O'Ryan fulfilled his promise to stop on the island, it wouldn't be to visit Burt.
"Pretty lady, huh?"
"Pretty, yes, but —" O'Ryan frowned. "Her eyes move about like butterflies, never still." He shrugged and turned back to the wheel as the schooner approached a cluster of islands. "But you all that way, man, you live too fast up there."
Back on deck, Burt sat on his coil of rope and dangled the purse thoughtfully between his knees. He felt an irritating urge to peer inside and learn something more about the girl. If he dropped it, perhaps it would spring open ...
Put it away, March. You're off-duty. Forget it.
He set it on the deck between his feet, then braced himself as the schooner heeled over abruptly. They were negotiating the swift frothy channel between two islands. Ten yards away a black jagged rock thrust up from the sea, bird droppings melting down its side like cake frosting. The schooner dipped, then soared sickeningly. It poised for a second, tilted, slid into the trough. There was a shuddering thump against the hull. A wall of white water plumed up and arched overhead. Burt put his head between his knees and felt the water drum against his back. Another swoop, a dip, and another shower, smaller than the first, the schooner righted itself and entered smooth water. Burt settled back and looked at the people sprawled on the streaming deck. A few of the girls were rising to their knees, throwing their dripping hair off their foreheads and, with a total lack of self-consciousness, raising their dresses and wringing out the water. Burt felt his feet squishing inside his white crepe-soled sneakers and decided that getting soaked was a part of inter-island travel, not at all unpleasant.
"Oh-oh, the purse. He looked down, felt a twinge of alarm, then saw it caught in a loop of rope, half-submerged in the runoff water. He picked it up and shook off the water. Better see if any got inside ...
He paused with his hand on the catch, then shrugged.
The smell struck him again as he opened the purse; an exciting smell of perfume. Ladies' soft leather wallet. ... Once started, he fell into an unconscious search pattern. The wallet's plastic windows contained a social security card issued to Miss Tracy Dunn, and a Florida driver's license for Mrs. Tracy Keener. Must have quit work after she got married, otherwise she'd have had her card changed. Age, twenty-eight. Well, well, she's a Gemini too, and the same age. Address in North Miami. Evidence was stacking up. Her married status didn't seem very important, since she'd come to the island alone. Where was Mr. Keener? Dead, divorced, separated, working ... having a ball elsewhere. Weight one-oh-five, height five-four. A good build, provided the weight was arranged properly. Hair black, eyes brown. Folder of traveler's checks, all fresh and new. Whee! Hundreds, tens of 'em. Poor little working girl struck it rich. Probably married the boss's son, or the boss ... Funny no pictures, probably meant she had no kids. Lipstick, bright red, a little garish for Burt's taste. Well, nobody's perfect, Can of talcum power, funny thing to carry in a purse. Or was it? He took it out and shook it, felt a soft rattle against his hand. Maybe the powder had gotten wet and lumpy ...
The lid came off with a hard twist of his fingers. He shook out some powder and a capsule dropped into his palm. He felt a coldness at the back of his neck. He looked up quickly. The passengers were busy drying themselves. He cleaned off the capsule and saw the white powder inside. He didn't bother taking it apart. What else comes in capsules which you have to hide inside a talcum powder can? There were fourteen in all. The girl had a heavy, heavy habit. ...
He put everything back in the can, replaced the lid, returned the can to the purse and closed it. She'd been nervous as a cat, and why not? Carrying a couple hundred bucks worth of heroin. But then, to walk off the boat and leave it ...
Isle de Trois jutted abruptly from the sea to the south, humped up to a five-hundred foot prominence, then sloped gently to the north. As the schooner neared, Burt could make out the three black crags which gave the island its name. The upper slope was clothed in cedar, frangipani and shoulder-high citronella grass. At the water's edge a line of palm trees overhung the thatched roof of the beach club. In front of the club curved a silver-white beach strewn with conch shells and bleached coral. A gentle swell disturbed the lagoon and caressed the beach.
Burt had first seen the island from the deck of a cruise ship five years ago. He had recognized a scene he'd dreamed of years before, while his breath froze on the fringe of a parka, his finger stuck to an icy trigger and his eyes squinted across a frozen Korean landscape. He'd spent his last five vacations on the island, and while Caribbean prices had ballooned, Burt still paid the same as he had on his first visit: thirty dollars a week.
The schooner stopped fifty yards outside the semicircle of black rocks which enclosed the lagoon like the jaws of a giant beartrap. Burt stood at the rail listening to the grinding complaint of the engines as they fought the current which hissed and gurgled around the ship. A black figure clad in shorts moved languidly across the beach, dragged a tiny blue rowboat into the water, and started rowing across the lagoon. Burt recognized Joss's boatman, Coco. He was a skilled fisherman who knew every submerged rock within five miles of the island. Muscles corded in his powerful arms as he left the lagoon and entered the current. Five minutes later the boat thumped against the hull.
"Mist' March," he said, holding the boat steady as Burt clambered down. "I din' expect you this time."
There was no time for conversation; Burt took his bulky canvas suitcase from the cabin boy, settled into the forward thwart, and helped push off. When they reached the peace of the lagoon, Burt saw that Coco wore a blue straw hat. The boatman had two other hats, one painted red, the other white. He changed them according to his mood: white when he felt good, blue when he was sad, and red when he was angry.
"Why the blue hat?" asked Burt.
The boy spoke abruptly between strokes. "No guest. No fish. No tip."
"The woman who's staying here doesn't fish?"
"Woman?" Coco's expression of disgust encompassed the entire sex. "I never take woman to fish. Too much play, too much talk."
"She talks a lot, eh?"
"She? Man, I never see her. She remain in her cabin all day, walk the beach at night."
Frowning, Burt opened the side pocket of his bag and took out two rolls of film. "Here's some new high-speed film. I guess you've still got that Brownie I gave you."
"Yes." Coco grinned. "Now I maybe change my hat, take you to catch big fish."
Coco tied up at a rickety jetty of poles and wood planks. It was attached to an unfinished concrete jetty begun by Joss's fourth or fifth husband — who had also inaugurated a yacht basin, a hotel, and a new clubhouse, only to abandon the island and depart with a female guest from Barbados. He'd never come back, and Joss had never continued any of his projects.
Burt stepped off the jetty and looked around. Nothing ever changed here; it could have been five years ago. He saw a figure floating at the south end of the lagoon, where the palms arched down and dipped their fronds in the surf. It could have been a corpse, it floated so still, so bonelessly complaisant to each ripple of water. But Burt recognized the mistress of the island, Jocelyn Leeds.
"Joss!"
No response. After fourteen years on the island, Joss was capable of falling asleep in the water. Her boys had to watch that she didn't drift out to sea.
Burt started down the beach. He saw smoke trailing up from a cigarette between her lips. A glass rested on the gentle mound of her stomach:
"Hey!" he called. "Hey, Joss!"
"I'm full up," she called without removing the cigarette. "You should've had O'Ryan wait."
"Don't hand me that. Come and see what I brought you."
"Now who in the world — !" She twisted to look, but a wave broke over her face. She spat out her soggy cigarette, rolled over, and started stroking toward shore. Burt opened his suitcase, took out the green beach coat he'd brought her, and walked down to the edge of the surf. Joss rose in thigh-deep water and waded ashore. Her homemade bathing costume (it was too individualistic to be called anything else, a loose-fitting playsuit made of a cotton print) wetly outlined a figure which had once been, obviously, arrestingly full. Now, though resigning itself here and there to the pull of gravity, her shape was still good enough to draw whistles at a distance. Once she'd shown Burt an old picture of herself in a net bra and panties, both of which concealed no more than the absolute legal minimum. She'd refused to say whether she'd been a runway queen, a nightclub stripper, or a freelance exhibitionist; she drew a curtain of phony coyness over her entire past and was even vague about the number of her husbands. Burt wasn't sure whether the Englishman from whom she'd inherited the island had been her third or fourth. Her hair was the color of bleached straw except at the back of her neck and behind her ears, where traces of gray were visible among the auburn. Burt placed her age at forty-five, but wouldn't have been surprised if she turned out to be five years on either side.
She walked out of the water, squinting in his direction. She was hopelessly nearsighted but scorned glasses, saying she'd seen too much already. Burt sidestepped and slid the beach coat around her shoulders. "Now you can greet your guests decently."
"Burt March!" She gave him an impulsive hug which dampened his clothes for the second time. Then she backed off a step. "Burt, you look like hell!"
"Thanks," said Burt dryly. "You haven't changed either."
"But really. You're thin and pale, and carrying a cane ..." Her mouth flew open. "You stopped a bullet!"
"Shhh. I'm supposed to be an insurance salesman."
"Tell me, really. Did you shoot it out with a gang?"
"Crystal City's too small to support a gang. It was just a little jewelry store robbery —"
"And you went in after them?"
"Look —" He sighed. There'd be no business transacted until Joss had the entire story. "Joss, there was only one. A kid tried to heist a ring for his sweetheart. He stole his old man's gun and broke a window. He must've panicked when I came in, I don't know. He didn't live to talk about it. He was fourteen."
"Oh —" Her eyes clouded with sympathy. "Poor Burt. Let's go up to the club and get you a drink."
She slid her arm around his waist, half-helping him through the loose sand. Burt drew no personal conclusion from this intimacy; Joss had a way of making guests feel that she'd been wistfully scanning the sea for their arrival. He suspected it was only half a pose.
When they reached his luggage, she swooped down and held up the purse. "Burt March! You've changed sides!"
"If you weren't like a grandmother to me, I'd whop you. That belongs to your guest, Mrs. Keener. She left it on the schooner."
"Oh?" Her expression froze into neutrality. "I'll have Boris take it to her."
"I'd rather take it myself."
Joss frowned, then gave a shrug of indifference which somehow failed to come off. As they stepped beneath the thatched roof of the club, she gave him a sidelong look. "Whatever happened to Caroline, the girl you brought down here last year? She told me she was trying to get you to propose."
"I almost did." Burt sat down at a rough, hand-hewn table. He kept his eyes carefully on a grackle which was strutting along the railing. "We broke it off a couple of weeks ago. She wouldn't have wanted to marry a cop."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Killer Touch by Ellery Queen. Copyright © 1965 Ellery Queen. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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