Death's Sweet Song (19 page)

I was almost ready to explode. “All this talk doesn't prove a damn thing and you know it!”

Otis grinned tightly. “It proves plenty, and I can see your guts crawling. Do you know how long the factory burglar alarm had been installed, Hooper? Just two days! That means that whoever took the money and killed the watchman gave that place a thorough going-over not more than two days before the job. And you're the man, Hooper. I can put my hands on at least twenty people who will testify to it. How does it look to you now, Hooper? The jury will throw the book at you. When the story gets out, you'll be lucky if they don't lynch you on the courthouse lawn.”

My voice deserted me. I couldn't make a sound.

“I'm not making any promises, Hooper, but if you'll sign a statement I'll at least see that you get a fair trial.”

My brain was numb. I just stood there too sick to move.

Then a light stabbed the darkness outside the cabin, and I heard the sound of my father's old Dodge pulling up in front of my door.

Ray King said, “It's your father, I think, Joe.”

“Look,” I said. “Don't say anything to him about this. Not now, anyway. He has a patient next door. That's the only reason he's out here.”

Otis Miller said nothing. The two of them looked at each other and finally Ray nodded. I went to the door and said, “Dad, is that you?”

“Yes, Joe. It's pretty late for you to be up, isn't it?”

“Some friends of mine dropped in. Anyway, I wanted to stay up till you got here. I don't know how important it is, but his wife seems to think he's getting worse.”

I could see him standing there, a stooped, bone-tired old man. After a moment he turned and walked heavily toward Number 2.

“How about it, Hooper?” Otis said. “You ready to sign that statement?”

The brief escape from the Sheriffs hammering had given me a chance to get things straight in my mind. At first I felt empty and helpless. I knew they had me. There was absolutely no doubt about it, and I might as well do what they said. So this is the way it ends, Hooper.

After a moment I turned to the Sheriff and looked dully into those eyes of his.

That was the thing that saved me.

I had expected to see the iron-hard glint of victory in those eyes. But it wasn't there. There was anticipation, anxiety, expectation, but not that glint of complete victory. At last I recognized what I saw there. Otis Miller's eyes were the eyes of a gambler who had just run an outrageous bluff and was waiting for his opponent to call.

The implication struck me like an icy shower. It jarred me awake, it released the numbness in my brain. Otis Miller didn't have a damn thing on me! Maybe he had tried to run the most fantastic bluff in history, but he still didn't have a leg to stand on and he knew it.

Oh, he knew I was guilty, all right. He was mixed up about Manley, but he had me pegged every inch of the way. But he couldn't prove a bit of it. All that loud talk of his had been so much hogwash in the hope that he could panic me into a confession.

I felt like a teen-ager on his first drunk. I wanted to laugh right in Otis Miller's face and then kick him and Ray King out of my cabin. What I did was look at Otis and grin.

“Now,” I said, “are you through, Otis?” The glee of the top dog was bubbling inside me. “Are you finally through shooting off that fat mouth of yours? Because if you are, I've got a few things to say that might interest you.”

He reacted just the way I had known he would, as though I had whipped him across the face with a pistol butt.

I had to laugh then; I couldn't hold it back. “Who the hell do you think you are, Otis? None of your talk means a thing. That flywheel story, for instance. There's no way in the world you can prove the flywheel was in my station on the night of the robbery. It was hauled away to the dumping grounds almost a month before, where anybody could have picked it up. As for the bogus bill, I always thought it was a sheriff's duty to take care of things like that. You can suspect anything you please, Otis, but you'd better be damn sure you have proof to back you up before you accuse people of robbery and murder.”

He opened his mouth but I didn't give him a chance to say a word.

“That visit to the factory,” I said. “No jury is going to convict a man for going out of his way to pay an honest debt. That burglar alarm doesn't prove a thing, either, because any top law officer will tell you that any burglar worth his salt takes care of burglar alarms as a matter of course. That just about blows your conviction sky-high, doesn't it, Otis?”

I wasn't through yet. When you got Otis down, it was a good idea to kick him, just to be safe.

“What else is there?” I said. “Oh, yes, the watch. Well, listen carefully, Otis, because this is what happened to my watch. I missed it tonight just before Bunt Manley drove up for gas. I figured at the time the strap had broken and I'd dropped it somewhere, and I intended to look for it when I wasn't busy. While Manley was here I saw him pick something up, but I didn't think anything about it at the time. Manley wouldn't be above picking up a watch, of course, but I didn't think about that until it was too late. So that's what happened to my watch. Also, while Manley was here I noticed that he had been drinking and mentioned that he shouldn't be driving in his condition, but he wouldn't listen to me. Half drunk, he stalled his car on the railroad tracks and got himself killed by a train. Later, you found my watch near the scene of the accident, which isn't surprising. I'll bet you found a lot of other things, too, didn't you, Otis, scattered clear to hell and gone, probably?”

I had shown the cape to the bull but he hadn't charged. He got red in the face, his throat swelled, veins stood out on his forehead, but he didn't charge because he knew that he couldn't win. Ray King stood stiffly, looking grim, but Otis was almost crazy with rage and frustration. Maybe a full minute went by before he made a sound, before he trusted himself to open his mouth.

Suddenly he wheeled and went to the door, then he turned and came back. “You think you're smart, don't you, Hooper? Well, listen to me.”

“You listen to
 
me!”
 
I said. “If you think you've got something, you're welcome to use it. Take me down to the courthouse, lock me up, bring me to trial. You try that, Otis, and you'll be the laughingstock of the country. The jury wouldn't be out thirty seconds before they come in with a verdict of not guilty.”

That was the reason I was so sure that nothing was going to happen. Otis wasn't going to bring me in until he had the evidence he needed, and he didn't have it. The law of double jeopardy worked in Creston as well as it did in other places, and once they found me not guilty it would be over, no matter what Otis might turn up later.

Ray King touched his boss's arm. “Well, Otis?”

I could see the angry blood pumping in the Sheriffs throat, but he took a tight rein on his voice. “You're guilty, Hooper,” he said softly. “You're guilty as hell and I won't let up on you until I see you cooked. You can bank on it!”

Then he tramped out, stiffly, like a mechanical man operating on overwound springs. Even the back of his neck looked angry as he went out.

I stood at the door as the two men got in the car, circled the cabin, and headed toward the highway.

Well, I had won that round, but he was a bulldog, that Otis Miller. He had his teeth in my throat and he wasn't going to turn loose until I was dead. There was only one answer—I had to get out of Creston, far away from Creston, before he scraped together a real case against me.

I heard the door slam at the Sheldon cabin, and when I looked out the window I saw my dad heading for his car. I went to the door and started to speak, but he didn't even look in my direction. He leaned against the car for a moment. Then he looked up at the white clouds sliding under the pale belly of the moon and I thought I heard him say something, but I couldn't catch what it was. Finally he got into his car and drove away.

I kicked the door open and headed for Number 2.

I ran into Paula at the door of the Sheldon cabin; she was just coming out. “Joe,” she said quickly, “I'm afraid we're in trouble.”

“You can say that again. Do you know who I've been fighting with for the past half hour? The Sheriff!”

“At this time of night!”

“The time of day or night doesn't mean a thing to Otis Miller. Didn't you hear the car?”

“I heard it, but I thought it was your father. I thought he had stopped to talk to you before looking at Karl.”

“It was the Sheriff, all right, and he threw the book at me. He hit me with everything he could get his hands on. Luckily, it wasn't enough to panic me into a confession, the way he had hoped.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you mean he actually suspects you of that robbery?”

“He doesn't suspect, he
 
knows.
 
There's absolutely no doubt about it in his mind. But he doesn't have the evidence to convince a jury, and that's the only thing that saved me. Paula, we've got to get out of here, and we've got to do it in a hurry!” I went inside, dropped on a chair, and looked at Sheldon, who seemed to be asleep. “What did Dad say about him?” I asked.

“He has a high fever, but he should be all right tomorrow. We'll leave tomorrow night.”

I was too tired to argue. Anyway, I needed some rest. All of us did, before starting the trip to Arkansas. Then I remembered something. “You said something about trouble,” I said, looking up at her. “What is it?”

“Your father. He knows everything.”

I felt the nervous tingling of my scalp. “The factory, the killing? How could he know?”

“He saw those sketches you made for Karl. I had meant to burn them, but so much has happened.... Anyway, he saw them, and the minute he looked at them he knew everything.”

A cold void opened in my bowels. This was the beginning of a sickness that I knew would never be cured. Paula sat on the arm of the chair, then put her hands on my shoulders and gently massaged the back of my neck. “He can just guess,” I said. “He doesn't really know.” “He knows,” she said, “because I told him. I thought if I laid it on the line for him, it would scare him so that he wouldn't dare go to the police. Now I don't know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father has a conscience,” she said. “A strong one. It will eat at him until he'll finally have to do something about it.”

I got out of the chair so suddenly that I almost knocked her off the arm. I went to the door and looked out at the darkness, remembering how he had looked standing there beside his car, his face turned up to the black sky. Paula came over and stood beside me.

“What are we going to do, Joe?”

“What
 
can
 
we do?”

Her voice was suddenly brittle, and it was one of those rare times when I felt that she actually understood what it was to be afraid. “Don't you understand?” she said. “He knows everything! Sooner or later—maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but pretty soon—he won't be able to hold it inside him. He'll start talking and he'll tell everything he knows.”

“By that time we'll be far away from Creston.”

“That won't help us. For murder, they'll come after you, no matter where you are.”

“All right,” I said tightly, “you think of something. It was your idea to tell him everything.”

She said nothing. She just stood there beside me looking out at the night. But somehow I knew what she was thinking. I knew her well enough to guess the solution that would come instinctively to her mind. I took one of her arms and jerked her around to face me.

“You can forget it!” I said. “You can damn well forget it right now!”

There was a flicker of pain in her eyes. “Joe, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You know, all right!” I let her go and she almost fell.

There was nothing—absolutely nothing—that she wouldn't do. She would have killed my father in a minute, because he had become dangerous to her. Several long seconds passed as we stood there staring at each other, as we sized each other up like two savages. Then she closed her eyes, swayed, and leaned against me. Those arms of hers went around my neck and her face tilted up to mine.

“I'm sorry, Joe. You can see right through me, can't you? You can read me like a book.”

I said nothing.

“I'm over it now,” she said huskily. “Things will work out fine. You'll see.”

The first thing I did the next morning was write a letter.

Dad:

I guess you knew this would happen sooner or later. The station and tourist-court business just didn't work out. Everything seems to have gone to pieces this past year—first the business, then breaking up with Beth. There's no reason why I should stay on in Creston, so I'm pulling out. The bank can take over the station, if they want it. They would have done it anyway in another month or so....

I wrote the letter for the jury's benefit, in case I ever had to face a jury. At least they couldn't say I was running away without a legitimate reason. When I finished the letter I went to the station and opened up as usual.