Never Say No to a Killer Read Online Free PDF Page B

rested against the kitchen sink and had another glass of water and after a while I felt pretty good, pretty proud of myself.
    Yes sir, I thought, things are looking up. They certainly are! I had possessed her as completely as if I had laid her; I was boss now!

CHAPTER FIVE
    I CAME INTO THE sitting room and she was on the sofa, crumpled on the sofa like a discarded plaster manikin. “How about a glass of water?” I said.
    She made no sound. The best thing to do, I decided, was let her alone until she pulled herself together. You think your nerves and glands took a beating, Surratt, I thought. Think what it must have done to hers! So I took a chair in the corner of the room and waited. I was in no hurry.
    It gave me time to think, and I needed some time to think. Things were happening fast. It was about time to look a-round and see just where I was.
    I had an angle now. I had a woman who was scared to death of her own abnormalities, who tried to cover them up, hide them, call them by strange names. A woman like that added up to an angle that a man could really get his fingers into. That was quite a beginning, considering that this was only my second day out of prison.
    But it was only the beginning. An idea had been nibbling at the edge of my brain. Dorris had mentioned that her husband had set out to dispose of his enemies…. Now there was an angle to my liking, because John Venci had been much too polished to try anything as crude as murder. There was not much satisfaction in murder, it was too sudden-no, it would have been something else, it would have been something long-drawn-out and filled with anguish, the most exquisite anguish, I was sure, that it was possible to devise.
    And that, of course, would be mental anguish.
    Long-drawn-out and filled with anguish, that much fit perfectly, but how would the end eventually be achieved?
    Then I had it. Venci had been nothing if not logical-self-destruction would have been his aim! Suicide!
    I was on the right track now, I could feel it. Great mental anguish culminated by suicide-that would have appealed to John Venci. So the only thing left was the method with which he would achieve this end. One word came to my mind automatically-Blackmail.
    That was it! Venci had set out to blackmail his enemies, and that meant that he must have gone to fantastic lengths to gather evidence against them.
    I grinned, feeling like a million dollars. All I had to do was get my hands on that evidence, and I had just the key to turn the lock! I had Dorris Venci! When I get through with this town, I thought, they'll think they've been hit by a hurricane!
    I went over to the sofa and shook Dorris. “Okay,” I said, “you ready to talk?”
    She shuddered.
    “Look,” I said, “I'm not sure how we got off on this tangent, but I know one thing, it's time to get back on schedule. Go in the bathroom and wash your face or something.”
    When I was a kid I used to go out on the golf course and find golf balls. Just for the hell of it I would cut the golf balls open, cut deep into them, and the tightly-wound little bands of rubber would snap and writhe like something going crazy. The golf ball would go all to pieces right there in your hand. That's what Dorris reminded me of: she looked like she would go all to pieces any minute.
    But she got up and went to the bathroom. After a while she came back and I was surprised to see that she was almost normal.
    I said, “You were saying something about my killing somebody…”
    She glanced at me, her old icy self again. “I-I'm afraid I have changed my mind. I don't believe I need you, after all, Mr. Surratt.”
    “Like hell you don't need me,” I said. “What do I have to do to convince you? You don't want to go through that act again, do you?”
    That did it. She closed her eyes for a moment, her hands clenched hard, then she sank to the sofa.
    “That's better,” I said. “We understand each other, Dorris; I think we understand each other