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DH Reddall's work has appeared in a number of publications, most recently in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and in The Thrilling Detective.

Whoever Fights Monsters by D. H. Reddall

Mildred Barriss was thin and angular. Her optician had chosen to accentuate her narrow birdlike features with a pair of wildly oversized glasses, producing the infelicitous impression that she was peering out of a fishbowl.

"My brother left LaGrange several years ago, Mr. Stubblefield. I'm afraid it wasn't an amicable parting. Martin had a terrible row with Dad."

"About what?"

"Oh, about the business, about money, about the direction Martin's life was taking." She removed the goggles, wiped them with a tissue, replaced them.

"Dad passed away recently and the estate cannot be settled without Martin being present. It was a family business and there are all kinds of details. I really don't understand the technicalities."

"LaGrange where?"

"Illinois."

"Why do you think he's on Cape Cod?"

"I'm not certain that he is. But shortly after he left he wrote and asked that I send him some things he neglected to take along. The address was General Delivery here in Hyannis. That was the last any of us heard from him."

Outside the traffic was picking up. By noon the tourists would be careening down Main Street in their Topsiders and Tilley hats, hoping to buy taffy or T-shirts or a rubber lobster.

"Okay, I'll take a look. If I locate your brother I'll have him contact you, if that's what he wants to do. If he's not interested, then that's as far as I go in the matter."

Mildred Barriss said that would be fine. She told me where she could be reached, signed a contract, and gave me five crisp new hundred-dollar bills.

***

When she'd gone I arranged the bills neatly on my desk. Ben Franklin's stern visage stared up at me…somewhat reproachfully, I thought.

Money long ago became the totem of our tribe. As the Eskimo has many words for snow, so we have scores of words for money. We deify it, kill for it, sacrifice our lives in pursuit of it, and are well on our way to destroying the planet to satisfy our money-lust. In relation to any other object such behavior would be considered obsessive. To feel otherwise about money is to be considered anything from simple to insane. I'm not sure where I fall on that continuum. Time doesn't mean money to me. Just the opposite.

After a while I scooped up the bills and locked them away in the old Victor safe that came with the office. Then I considered Martin Barriss. His sister had told me that she had been unable to find a telephone listing for him, and had contacted the Registry of Motor Vehicles without success. Apparently her brother didn't own a car.

I have so far resisted the computer. When it seems necessary, I pay an information broker of my acquaintance to dig out what I need. My primary databases are the phonebook, various public records, and the street. I decided to access the phone book. The new edition had arrived recently with everyone's surname printed in bold type. Easy to see that there was no Martin Barriss.

Undaunted I dialed 411. No new listing for Barriss.

I leaned back and watched the clouds slide by like errant thoughts. A warm breeze stirred the curtains. It was a good day to be lying on the beach with a full cooler and an empty mind.

Ben Franklin's reedy voice, muffled by the walls of the safe, disturbed my reverie: "Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best use of both."

I keep the old phone books. In the 2004 edition there was a listing for Barriss, M. with an address on Sea Street.

***

The address turned out to be a rooming house. The yard was more sand than grass and featured a rusted swingset and a picnic table. The house itself was a lopsided number with asbestos siding that had recently received a coat of pale green paint, a stratagem about as effective as gilding a turd.

The landlady was an elderly woman, a Miss Hoare. My day for names. First M. Barriss, now an obviously estimable spinster with a particularly inappropriate last name. She was pleasant and businesslike as she informed me that Martin Barriss had moved out almost two years earlier.

"Did he leave a forwarding address?"

"No, no he didn't."

"Say where he was going?"

Her blue-veined hands worried an antimacassar. She shook her head, wouldn't meet my eye. A decent woman, obviously unused to lying. I tried again.

"I take it that Mr. Barriss hasn't dropped you a line since he left. Perhaps a postcard."

"Really, Mr. Stubblefield!" she said, exasperated at last. "I've told you I don't know where Mr. Barriss is. He was quiet, paid his rent on time, and left his room neat as a pin. Now if you will excuse me."

"Ah well, I suppose his former employer might be able to tell me more."

She eyed me defiantly. "I suppose he might."

"Alright, Miss Hoare, you've got me. I don't know who his employer was. But Barriss's sister needs to talk to him about a family matter of some importance. And," I added with a knowing look, "it might mean quite a bit of money for him."

Maybe it was because I'd adopted the tone of a supplicant. Or perhaps she understood an appeal based on money

"Very well. Mr. Barriss asked me not to discuss his affairs with anyone, and I really don't know exactly where he went, but I can tell you that he worked for Blake Associates, the accounting firm. When I asked him about his plans he said he'd been offered a position in Florida."

***

"Florida? No, she's mistaken there."

Tony Blake was talking.

"I had to let Barriss go. Not enough work. Last hired, first fired: that's the name of that tune. Anyway, he was reliable and he knew his job, so I made a few calls and found him a spot as a bookkeeper out near Hadley, in a hotel I stay at during hunting season. The owner and I are friends. It's out in the sticks but it's a job, and Barriss seemed glad to get it."

***

Blake gave me the address of the hotel and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach and to hell with Poor Richard. I didn't like the fact that Barriss had apparently lied to his landlady. It was a small point, but sometimes it's the small points that make the difference.

I believe it was Franklin who said, "A full Belly makes a dull Brain." In my case, a large plate of spaghetti and a bottle of Sangre de Toro made for troubled sleep as well. I woke several times to the sound of hysterical laughter and once, much later, I sat bolt upright, awakened by several muffled reports nearby. I couldn't figure out what they were and as I drifted back to sleep I had an awful vision of people being shot through a pillow.

***

The Pioneer Hotel stood next to a bar called The Last Outpost. The desk clerk said that was where I'd find Earl Lubell, the hotelier.

The Last Outpost was appropriately named. It was a stale, flyblown dump done up in deer heads and knotty pine. I knew without looking that the jukebox would run to country: Johnny, Dolly, Tammy, and all the rest of the ranch hands. Over the mirror hung a sign reading "If you ain't country, you ain't shit," in case I hadn't gotten the message. I figured The Last Outpost was a good place to get the snot beaten out of you by a guy named Rod, or Lance, whose parents are siblings and who drives a Bronco and wishes to hell it was 1870 and he was a real cowboy.

The bartender brought me a beer, pointed out Earl Lubell, and drifted back to his soap opera. Lubell was short, trim, and neatly attired from Stetsom and string tie to half-Wellingtons. He was also pretty well gassed. He threw down his newspaper and shook his head.

"Says here that in St. Croix it's cheaper to use gin to wash your windows than it is to use water. Reckon I know where I'm taking my next vacation. What did you say your name was?"

"Stubblefield. I'm trying to locate a fellow, Martin Barriss. Tony Blake says you took him on as bookkeeper."

"You a cop?"

"Private."

Lubell nodded sagely. Probably seen it all out here in West Hadley.

"Man in trouble is he?"

"No, nothing like that. His family is trying to locate him is all."

Lubell took a sip of whiskey. "I did hire him. I needed a bookkeeper, so when Tony called I told him to send this fellow Barriss out here if he thought he could stand the winters. But then a few days later my sister's on the phone and don't you know her boy's fresh out of college and looking for work." He shrugged. "So what the hell am I going to do? I hire the kid and when Barriss shows up I have to tell him I'm sorry."

"Any idea where he might have gone?"

"Sure. Out to Yaman's garage. Barriss looked so downhearted that I sent him out there. Bill Yaman's been saying for some time now how he'd like to hire a part-time bookkeeper and outfront man, you know, someone to jack gas and keep an eye on things so Bill can get a little time off. Last I knew, Barriss was still there."

***

I gagged down the special at the local diner, and as the sun dropped behind the hills I headed out to Yaman's garage.

The station stood a few miles out of town on a secondary road. It was an old wooden structure with two bays and an office. The bays, lit by fluorescents, were open and empty. A couple of rusting pickup trucks languished in the weeds along with a pile of used tires and a smaller pile of rims. A faded Esso sign hung on the wall next to a soda machine whose light flickered off and on intermittently in the blue evening air like summer lightning.

A man was seated at the desk reading a tabloid. The headline blared "Confederate Flag Spotted On Belly of UFO!" The screen door banged shut behind me and he looked up.

"Help you?"

He was fleshy, fortyish, and going bald, but his face was smooth, almost childlike. He looked like a Sunday school teacher.

"Martin Barriss?"

The weak smile faded. He nodded slowly.

"My name is Stubblefield. I'm a private investigator. Your sister hired me to find you."

Barriss dropped the paper onto the desk. For a minute he didn't move or say a word. The only sounds were the crickets, a few June bugs slapping against the screens, the rustling of the trees. Finally he spoke.

"I don't have a sister." The sickly smile returned but the blood had left his face. "And you've just placed me in grave danger."

We faced each other over the battered, oil-stained desk and I got that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. Barriss got up, still smiling, but sweating now and wearing the look of a cornered animal.

"I have enemies. You've probably led them right to me."

"Relax. I wasn't followed. Who's after you?"

"It doesn't matter who. Or why." He fumbled at the pegboard on the wall behind him and came up with keys. "As to your not being followed, I suggest you may be wrong. Please get out of my way."

He lurched through the screen door, got into a pickup with "Yaman's Garage" stenciled on the side, and punched the engine to life. I went after him.

"Barriss, wait."

But he was gone with a roar and a chirp of rubber.

He didn't get far. The truck barely gained the roadway when someone with a rifle on full-auto started firing. In the glow of the station lights I saw holes appear along the side of the truck. The left front tire shredded and glass blew into the cockpit.

The truck, like a mortally wounded animal, faltered, drifted off the road, over the dirt shoulder, and came to rest against a tree where the engine died. After the burst of gunfire the silence was extraordinary.

I hadn't thought it necessary to carry a weapon on this trip. But then I hadn't done anything right in this case yet. I'd failed to do a background check on my client, and I hadn't anticipated, or seen, a tail. As a result Barriss was dead, and I was standing unarmed in a remote gas station on a country lane in Hayshaker County while someone with a lot of firepower slapped a fresh magazine into place.

Moths beat at the lights. The fluorescents buzzed sleepily overhead. Outside, the chanting of the crickets was building to an insane crescendo.

She came around the corner of the building and stopped in the mouth of the bay, standing half in the light. When she saw me she raised the gun and pointed it at my belt buckle. My stomach muscles clenched reflexively. She looked dazed. Also dangerous.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm going to have to shoot you, too." She said it offhandedly, like a waitress apologizing for the delay.

"Who was Barriss?" I asked, just to keep the conversation from flagging. Her hands were shaking. The bore of the gun was bigger each time I looked.

"He was filth."

"What did he do to you?"

"To me?" She shook her head. "No, to my sister. He offered her a ride home one night and she foolishly accepted.. He drove her out to Arnett Park instead. When Beverly protested, he hit her. Many times. Then he raped her. When he was done, he stabbed her and threw her from the car as if she were no more than a sack of garbage." There was no emotion in her voice, just an eerie calmness.

"But she didn't die. She managed to crawl to the highway where someone stopped and took her to the hospital. She was able to identify him––he'd done other things before––and the police arrested him."

She walked into the bay, stopping ten feet from me. The Armalite looked as big as a cannon now.

"Of course, he hired the best lawyers. I don't need to tell you the vile things they said about Beverly. He claimed she was a prostitute, that the knife was hers, that she had tried to rob him and he stabbed her in self-defense."

She wasn't looking at me now, but past me, at nothing in particular. She wasn't talking to me, either. Not really.

"And then he got out, not seven years later. Seven years. My sister underwent several operations to reconstruct her face. But she was never the same again. She lived in fear. Wouldn't leave the house alone. Imagined all kinds of terrible things every time someone came to the door or the telephone rang. She was sure it was him, or someone like him, coming to hurt her again."

She paused and her eyes snapped back into focus.

"When she learned that he was to be released, she literally lost her mind. We had to place her in an institution. Seven years and that swine went free. Beverly will never be free again. They even spirited him out of the state. They were concerned for his safety because of the outcry over the case. Can you imagine that? Concerned for his safety."

"How did you know he was on Cape Cod?"

"I tried to hire a private detective in Chicago, but he was familiar with the case and refused to help. I'm sure he suspected my motives. So I went to Milwaukee and hired an investigator there. It took a while. Barriss had moved many times. I used the time to learn things, like how to use this." She waggled the barrel of the gun. "And other things, too. He found him, but I got there too late. And I was afraid to speak to anyone who knew him, so I hired you. And now it's over."

There wasn't much to say. If her story was true, Barriss deserved what he got. I was a loose thread, someone who could send her to jail for a long time.

Her grip on the gun tightened. I got ready to charge. I'd probably only get a step or two but I was damned if I was just going to stand there and take it.

The screech of rending metal cut through the darkness. I looked toward the sound. The door of the pickup hung open. Martin Barriss stood in the road, a portrait in blood. He started for the station, weaving and stumbling like a poorly operated marionette.

She saw him, too. She gave a strangled cry and Barriss, as if in answer, began to scream, terrible high-pitched inarticulate cries, whether of pain or rage I couldn't tell. He got as far as the pumps and then she opened up on him. The slugs smacked him back and flattened him on the asphalt apron. This time he wouldn't be getting up.

When my ears stopped ringing I heard her sobbing and pulling the trigger of the empty gun again and again.. I took it away from her and led her to the office. Then I called the cops.

***

She didn't look like much squeezed between two beefy state troopers, a frail bit of humanity who for too long had been carrying a heavy load of rage and revenge.

Not that frail, though. I thought of Barriss stretched out under the gas pumps in a pool of blood. Ben Franklin knew: "There is no little Enemy."

***

I had a lot of explaining to do. Barriss had been a piece of human garbage, but I'd led his killer to him. When they found the transponder attached to my gas tank and the tracking unit in her car, they let me go. They did so reluctantly and with plenty of warnings, but Thursday night I was home, watching the lights of the fishing boats out on Nantucket Sound.

I thought about her for awhile, and about her sister. And then I decided to go a few rounds with Jack Daniels. I lost, as usual, and after a bit I fell asleep in the chair and dreamed all night about small boats, far from shore, tossed about on an indifferent sea.

THE END