Free Cop Out by Ellery Queen Page A

jacket, she had her hair bound in a scarf. She picked up her purse. “Okay, Stinkfoot, let’s go. I’ll stick my nose out the window.”
    â€œI swear to Christ,” Hinch gargled, “if it wasn’t for Fure I’d tear that bitch tongue of yours out by the roots.”
    â€œThen what would he play with?” Goldie said, and sailed past him as if he weren’t there.
    Malone awoke to pain. Something that felt like a needle was scratching his face and his back was one burning ache. For a moment he did not know where he was.
    Then he remembered and he brushed the branch out of his face. He sat up in the darkness.
    Dark.
    He had slept all afternoon and into the evening, well into it. The moon was high. He could not see the hands of his watch but he knew it must be late. He had slept ten hours or more.
    He stared over at the cabin. It was lit up; the shades were only half drawn. A figure passed, another. A third. They were careless. He could not see above their waists, but they were all there.
    What chances have I missed?
    How in God’s name could I have let myself fall asleep with Bibby in there?
    He strained to see her.
    Bibby Bibby.
    There’s no sense to this.
    There’s no sense to me.
    Malone crouched in his bush for ten minutes arguing with the prosecution. While he argued he found himself working his muscles, beginning with his feet and going up. Isometric exercises got the aches and stiffness out. It was something he had learned to do during the cramped hours in the patrol car.
    He worked at it with passion.
    It was like a miracle. When he was altogether limbered up he had a plan readymade. He did not know where it came from. One moment he was blundering about in a mystery, the next it was all clear, solved, perfect.
    He began to crawl about in the dark, feeling for dry twigs, brittle leaves, pine needles. He arranged them just outside the clearing on a line of sight with the cabin’s front windows, making a little pile of tinder in the heart of the brush and laying down thicker pieces of branch like the spokes of a wheel over it, Boy Scout fashion. It should be enough to blaze up and start a smoky fire. The bushes would burn slowly, it had been a wet month, there was not much danger of setting the woods on fire. But I’ll burn the whole damn county down if it means getting Bibby out of there.
    They’re bound to see the fire or at least smell the smoke. They can’t afford to have half of New Bradford roaring into the woods to put it out. They’ll have to leave the shack and put it out themselves. If the woman stays inside I’ll break her neck.
    He blocked the view from the cabin with his body and on hands and knees struck a paper match and very carefully touched the flame to the tinder.
    It flared up.
    Malone ducked into the woods and made his way rapidly around the perimeter of the clearing to a point at right angles to the porch. Here he stopped. He had both the fire and the front door in sight. The fire had grown taller and huskier, it was jumping. Then the bushes began to smoke. The smoke tumbled into the clearing like surf, a shifting wall through which the flames licked and darted. The sharp sweetness of burning leaves and green wood rolled through the clearing and struck the cabin. Malone’s eyes began to water.
    Come on .
    They came. One of them opened the door and Malone heard a startled yell, then something about blankets, and a moment later three figures dashed out of the shack and across the clearing and began slapping the fire and stamping on embers, shouting orders to one another. They ran around like hooched-up Indians in a Western.
    But Malone was not there to applaud. Even before they were at the fire he was on his way around to the back door of the cabin and yanking at the knob. The door was locked. He ran at it and through it without feeling anything. He found Barbara immediately. She was lying on a cot in a tiny bedroom with a door