Vixen 03

"You'll pay hell proving anything," Lee said, calmly relighting his cigar stub, "without a body."

"Not in a court of law," Pitt said casually. "I

"The practical course would have been to call the sheriff. Unluckily for Charlie, he was the curious sort. He had to prove to himself there was a plane down there, so he scrounged a rope and grappling iron and began dragging the lake bottom. On one pass he must have caught and yanked up the shattered nose gear, which must have broken out of its housing. Suspicions confirmed, Charlie then became greedy and sniffed the sweet smell of treasure. So instead of playing Honest John Citizen and reporting his discovery, he headed straight for Lee Raferty."

"Why would Charlie come to me?"

"A retired Navy man, a deep-water diver; you were made to order. I venture to guess the diving equipment and air compressor you and Charlie scrounged are sitting in your garage right now. A hundred-and-forty-foot dive must have been child's play for a man of your experience, wearing hardhat gear. The strange cargo in the aircraft stirred the juices of your imagination. What did you expect to find inside the canisters? Old atomic bombs, perhaps? I can only envision the backbreaking work it took for two men nearing seventy to dive in frigid waters and wrench weights of two thousand pounds from the lake depths to shore. I give you both credit for guts. I can only hope I'm in half the physical shape when I reach your age."

"Not so tough." Lee smiled; he seemed to have no fear of Pitt at all. "Once Charlie devised a small explosive charge to enlarge the already cracked opening on the fuselage, it was a simple matter for me to attach a cable to a canister while he towed it to shore with the four-wheel-drive."

"Where there's a will," Pitt said. "What then, Lee? Once the canister was removed, it was obvious to an ex-Navy man and a former demolitions expert that you were looking at a prize that could have only warmed the cockles of an old battleship admiral's heart. But what was the value at today's prices? What was the demand for an outdated naval shell, except for scrap?"

Lee Raferty casually resumed filing the rough edges of the pipe. "Pretty slick guesswork, Mr. Pitt. I admit it. Not one hundred percent. mind you, but a passing grade. You underestimated a pair of foxy veterans, though. Hell, we knew them things in the canisters weren't armor-piercing projectiles the minute we laid eyes on one. Took Charlie all of ten minutes to peg it as a poison-gas carrier."

Pitt was stu

"Outwardly it looked like standard naval ordnance, but we saw it was rigged the same as a star shell. You know the kind: after reaching a preset altitude, a parachute is released while a small explosive charge splits the head, igniting a wad of phosphorus. Except this devil was set to unleash a bundle of tiny bomblets filled with lethal gas instead."

"Charlie figured they contained gas merely by looking at it?"

"He discovered the parachute-es capehatch cover. That gave him his first clue. Then he came around front, dismantled the head, disco

"Dear God!" Pitt murmured in near despair. "Charlie opened the warhead?"

"So what's the big deal? Charlie was a master at demolitions."

Pitt took a deep breath and pitched the obvious question. "What did you do with the warheads?"

"The way I saw it, it was finders, keepers."

"Where are they?" Pitt demanded.

"We sold them."

"You what?" he gasped. "To whom?"

"The Phalanx Arms Corporation, in Newark, New jersey. They buy and sell weapons on an international front. I contacted the vice-president, a screwy sort of duck, looks more like a hardware peddler than a death merchant. Name's Orville Mapes. Anyway, he flew out to Colorado, checked over the projectile, and offered us five thousand bucks for every one we could ship to his warehouse. No questions asked."

"I can guess the rest," Pitt said. "It occurred to Charlie that if those shells were detonated, he would be responsible for thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of deaths. You were more callous, Lee. The money meant more to you than conscience. You two argued, then fought, and Charlie lost. You hid his body in the sunken aircraft. Then you set off a few sticks of dynamite, tossed a boot and his thumb in the debris, and cried all the way to his funeral."

Raferty displayed no reaction to Pitt's accusation. His mellow eyes never left his pipe. His hands slowly, placidly filed away at the threaded ends. He was far too nonchalant, Pitt thought. Raferty wasn't acting like a man about to be turned in for murder. The look of a cornered rat was nowhere apparent.

"A shame Charlie didn't see things my way." Raferty shrugged almost sadly. "Contrary to what you may think, Mr. Pitt, I am not a greedy man. I did not attempt to sell off the projectiles in one swoop. You might say I looked upon them as a sort of savings account. When Max and I needed a few dollars, I'd make a one-at-a-time withdrawal, you might say, and call Mapes. He'd send a truck to pick up the merchandise and pay me in cash. A clean-cut, nontaxable transaction."

"I'd like to hear how you murdered Charlie Smith."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Pitt, but I don't have it in me to take a human life." Raferty leaned forward and his wrinkled face seemed to leer. "Max is the stronger one. She handles the killing. Shot old Charlie in the heart as neat as can be."

"Maxine?" The shock that swelled within Pitt did not come so much from the sudden disclosure as it did from the realization that he had committed a sad mistake.

"Throw a dime in the air at twenty paces and Max will make change," Raferty continued, nodding over Pitt's shoulder. "Let Mr. Pitt know you're there, honey."

Two metallic clinking sounds answered Raferty, followed by a gentle thud.

"The cartridge striking the floor should tell you Max's old lever-action Winchester is loaded and cocked," said Raferty. "Any doubts?"

Pitt braced both feet squarely on the floor and flexed his hand under the Windbreaker jacket. "Nice try, Lee."

"Then see for yourself. But I warn you no sudden moves."

Pitt gradually turned to face Maxine Raferty, whose kindly blue eyes were staring over the sights of a repeating rifle. The barrel was pointed, rock steady, at Pitt's head.

"Sorry, Mr. Pitt," she said sadly. "But Lee and I ain't of a mind to spend our few remaining years in jail."

"Another murder on your hands won't save you," said Pitt. He tightened his leg muscles as he gauged the distance between himself and Maxine. It was five feet. "I brought my own witnesses."