Give Up the Body (8 page)

He put his hands on my shoulders. His fingers were frighteningly strong. His face was not three inches from mine. It was all rather horrible, the hard, set line of his mouth and the distortion of his eyes through the thick lenses of his glasses. I fought to hold myself. I could not let him know I was frightened. He had given me the upper hand; it was up to me to keep it.

“Forget that,” he said harshly. His hands tightened on my shoulders as if he could force his will into my bones.

He released me suddenly and turned away. He walked to the center of the room and swung around. I could feel the bruises his fingers had left on my shoulders. I wanted to rub at them, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“I’m upset,” he said in a gentler tone. “We say odd things when we are upset, Miss O’Hara.” He was not looking directly at me but off to one side. Again I felt that pity for him. I couldn’t explain it. He had been frightening and ruthless, a coldly passionate man, a moment ago. Yet there it was, pity.

“I won’t say anything unless I’m asked,” I said.

“You will hardly be asked.” He looked at me now, a small smile on his thin mouth. “I may as well tell you, Miss O’Hara, I rather expected this to happen.”

The front door slammed. There were footsteps in the hallway. Hilton nodded and left the room abruptly. I stood there alone, gaping after him. I was still standing in the same spot when the door opened again.

It was Jocko Bedford, the sheriff of Teneskium County. He came in alone. He shut the door carefully, closing out a hum of noise above which I could hear Godfrey Tiffin’s sonorous and insistent voice.

“You’re one I been wanting to see, Addy,” Jocko said.

Jocko was an old time lawman. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a cowhide vest and chewed a neat quid of tobacco. He was a lean, wrinkled man but the wrinkles were from sun and wind as much as age. Jocko was bowlegged too, and after all he had seen as much of the country from a horse as he had from the seat of a car.

He was a quick old man, and his presence was a break for me. I had known him all my life. He and my father had come across the mountains from the eastern Oregon cattle country together.

“That’s some rig, Addy,” Jocko said. He shifted his quid from one cheek to the other and looked about for a place to spit. He chose the fireplace and hit it squarely in the center. “If I was you I’d disguise myself better’n that.” He squinted his shrewd blue eyes at me. “Tiffin is out there and he’s after your hide.”

Godfrey Tiffin had been a prestige-filled senior when I was a sophomore at college. I had made a monkey out of him in debate one time, and previous to that had had the pleasure of chalking him up as my first rejected suitor. As a result he despised me. It was mutual.

“Can’t he forget?” I demanded angrily. “It all happened years ago.”

“He’ll crimp your stories, Addy,” Jocko said. “He’s sore because you phoned that murder story before we got the news.”

“I called him first,” I said. “And besides I didn’t phone a murder story. I …” I had to stop and think a minute. I had mentioned my suspicions but not in my story. “All I did was report the accident and disappearance,” I said lamely. “They must have jumped to conclusions. Anyway, the Press isn’t on the street yet.”

“On their news broadcast,” Jocko said mildly. “But you must have given ‘em the idea, Addy.”

“Maybe I did,” I said miserably. And I wasn’t so smart for having the same hunch about murder as Jocko. He had simply borrowed it from me by way of the Press newscast.

“How’d you know?” Jocko asked in his deceptively mild voice.

I was about to start the difficult job of explaining when someone hammered on the door. “The search party is starting, sheriff,” a voice called. I recognized Godfrey Tiffin.

“Join you outside,” Jocko called back. He said to me, “We’ll go into this later, Addy.”

He opened the door. I waited a moment and followed. The hallway was clear. But the front door was open and a squad of men were standing on the porch. The bright light revealed Godfrey Tiffin in all his glory. He was a tall, horsy young man with very prominent teeth and a balding head. His complexion was pasty and his eyes tended to bug. In fact the only things I had ever found attractive about him were his slim, expressive hands and his voice. He had a William Jennings Bryan voice and he knew it.

Tiffin was so busy being important that he failed to recognize me in my dilapidated costume. I was just as glad of it. I joined Matt Mulcahey, one of Jocko’s deputies. He was a big, round-faced Irishman, another lifelong friend. I grinned at him. He grinned back, and I felt better.

Jocko took the job of organizing the search party away from Tiffin. He sent all the deputies but Mulcahey back to the house, herded Tiffin and Hilton in front of him, and started off. Mulcahey and I brought up the rear.

We skirted the fishponds, following the gravelled pathway down the far side of them so that we reached the end of the path at the river and downstream from the dam. I felt less shaky now. It was partly due to Mulcahey’s assuring bulk alongside me and partly the feeling that the episode had resolved itself into a hunt for something definite. That the object of the search was a freshly killed man, a man I had spoken to only short hours before, I kept from thinking about. I clung close to Mulcahey and pretended we were seeking something inanimate, rather than the grisly result of a possible murder.

It worked fine, for a time.

“Heard about you, Addy,” Mulcahey said as we trotted along. “Still tomboying.”

“It will make a good story, Matt,” I defended myself.

“Tiffin says you’d do anything for a story, Addy.”

“Sure,” I said. “I killed him; I was hard up for news.”

Mulcahey sent a broad Irish chuckle into the night. “Seeing your name is O’Hara I won’t believe it. But Tiffin might.”

Tiffin would love to make me miserable.

We were going single file now. The gravel path had narrowed until tree branches could reach out and slap at us. The path stopped suddenly and a narrow deer trail dropped over the edge of the river bank. We all skidded down it, being snatched at and torn at by the ever-present brush. A spiky branch of Oregon holly took a firm grip on my trouser seat and for a moment the old panic gripped me. I gasped and grabbed Mulcahey just ahead of me. The light from his flash whipped around as my fingers caught his arm and jerked him sideways. He gave me a little tug and I parted company with the holly bush. I was glad for the supporting grip of his arm around my shoulders.

We plowed to a stop finally on a small beach at the edge of the tumbling white water river. I sagged against Mulcahey and waited for Jocko’s next move.

“It’s downstream,” Hilton said in his precise voice.

“All right,” Tiffin said testily. He swung his electric lantern and revealed himself clearly for a second. He wore riding pants and leather puttees, and instead of looking efficient and natty he only showed how spindly his legs were. An impulse to laugh replaced my shaky feeling. I was grateful to him for that.

Jocko said, “Let’s go then,” and they started downstream. Mulcahey and I brought up the rear as usual.

That was a nightmarish hike. The bushes slapped us and scratched us and twice we had to swing wide of the river and fight our way through nasty tangles of small, second-growth firs. Once we were ankle deep in icy water. Finally I heard blessed words from Hilton:

“About here, sheriff.”

“Gawd,” Mulcahey panted, “And we got to go back.”

I was past feeling squeamish at the thought of what lay ahead. I could even joke about it. I said, “Lugging a body,” cheerfully.

But no one paid attention to me. Jocko was flashing his light across the water. “Where?” he demanded.

“There’s a snag,” Hilton said. His voice came clearly over the dirge-like song of the river. Jocko was flashing his light and it caught white water, a slick, razor-edged black rock, drew in and held on an ugly looking dead tree. Black, leafless branches straggled into the air like the stiff, dead hair of some water witch. They rolled a little with the current, back and forth, in a horrible, steady rhythm. I hung onto Mulcahey more tightly.

“That’s it,” Hilton said.

We all stepped forward until the water lapped at our shoes. I felt a morbid curiosity as I strained for a view of Delhart’s body. The light rolled back from those gnarled, awful branches, back over the dead, rotting trunk to the shore. There was nothing. Those clawing branches rocked back and forth, empty talons holding nothing but the thick, black night.

“Wrong tree.” Tiffin said impatiently.

“No,” Hilton said. His voice was definite. There was a superior, snappish quality that Tiffin could not meet. After all, Hilton represented a millionaire’s estate, if not the man himself. That alone would command respect from Godfrey Tiffin.

“By God,” Jocko said. He went splashing into the water, holding onto the trunk of the tree with one hand. He bent down, water tugging viciously at his waist. He straightened and splashed back to us. There was something in his hand. “That river’s cold.”

“This,” he said, “looks like a piece of shirt.”

“Brown khaki,” Tiffin decided.

Carson Delhart had worn brown khaki that afternoon. I stepped forward a little more to see and hear better.

Tiffin said, “The current is strong. He could have been swept away …?” He made a question of it, deferentially since he was addressing Hilton.

Hilton’s voice came distinctly. “We made a lashing of his belt and tied him—his body—to the trunk. He couldn’t have been washed away.”

• • •

I lost all track of time. After the sickening realization of what must have happened, we split into smaller parties and began that dogged search downriver. I stayed by Matt Mulcahey because with the disappearance of the body the terror and panic of the unknown struck me again. Someone or something must be loose in this dark forest. I could not see it any other way. A dead man did not release himself. Nor had Delhart killed himself.

I remember endless trudging through that beastly brush, fighting the lashing branches of the holly and buckbrush and everything else that grew there. My eyes were aching and strained from constantly looking into the water, trying to see by the feeble spot of my flashlight. Mud built up my boots, caking them with heavier and heavier layers until it was all I could do to drag my legs, let alone lift them over treacherous windfalls and the ropey vines of the ground cover. More than once Mulcahey picked me up and shook a little breath into me. He kept urging me to go back. I could laugh at that. As long as the darkness clung to us it would take more than discomfort to pry me loose from him.

It grew lighter at last. Dull grayness came up from the east, spreading across the sky and oozing down between the trees so that everything became shadowy and our lights were dull, useless blobs.

Occasionally someone would halloo from ahead of us or to one side. Each time we raced toward the sound, stumbling in our anxiety. And each time it was a false alarm. Finally it grew light enough for me to make out distinct patterns ten and fifteen feet away. I stopped by the river bank and told Mulcahey I was going to sit this one out.

“Don’t get lost, Addy.” His broad face was plastered with sweat and mud and streaked with daubs of blood from scratches. I shuddered to think I could look like that. I probably did.

I managed to grin at his solicitousness. “Matt, I was teethed on a fir tree. As long as I can see fairly well I’m all right. And I can see the road across the river.” I pointed through the trees. “Or I think I can.”

Matt Mulcahey patted my shoulder, gave me a grin, and plodded on into the trees. I sat on a rotting stump by the water and smoked a cigaret. All the strength was drained from me. Exhaustion made my arm shake so I had a hard time getting the cigaret to my mouth. I thought of my army training and was glad for it. Otherwise my endurance would hardly have been enough for even this much. I sagged back on the stump, completely relaxed, not letting myself think of anything until I was somewhat rested. By the time I was ready to go on I really could make out the road across the river.

I could hear no one ahead of me now. They would be too far in front of me for that. Except for Tiffin. He had taken the line that Delhart could have freed himself and struck off through the forest. Hilton’s insistence that Delhart was dead made no impression on Tiffin. I had heard him last bumbling about in the trees, a good distance from the river. With that in mind I stayed close to the water. I had no yen to run into him the way I looked and felt.

In the dull grey light I thought I saw something. I squinted toward the middle of the river. There the Teneskium was only about thirty feet wide but it had a deep and swift central channel. Here and there, though, it ran over rocks only a few inches under water. This was one such place. White water boiled up and shot spray into the air, making it difficult to see clearly. But the more I strained my eyes the more certain I was that a thick form was wedged out there, pushed this way and that by the current.

I reasoned that the others had gone by this spot when it was too dark to make anything out. I felt a little thrill. If this really was Delhart’s body then I would have another story. The thought made me feel a bit ghoulish. But daylight had taken away the last of my shudders.

I stepped ankle deep into the water, then knee deep, then the rocks shelved upward and I was ankle deep again. I could feel the edges of the current tugging at my legs. The water was icy, raw cold. But I had my eyes fixed on that formless shape ahead. I paid no attention to anything else. I was breathing hard and fighting the water that had reached my knees again. When I was only three feet away, I knew. It was Carson Delhart. He was caught between two barely submerged rocks on the edge of the deep central channel. I took a step forward, my hands outstretched.

One minute there was solid if slippery rock beneath my feet. The next there was nothing. Suddenly I was in complete emptiness. I had the sensation of leaving my stomach behind and rushing frantically away from it. I grasped for breath and flailed my arms, reaching for something, for any kind of support. It was the same awful feeling I had had during my one experimental parachute jump. I fought the emptiness, the awful helplessness.