Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 (21 page)

 
          
He
watched her fingers come up absently to rub the tiny scar on her lip, the
wedding ring glinting on the appropriate finger; and he shivered.

 
          
“Did
you get everything I asked you to?”

 
          
“Yes,”
she said mechanically.

 
          
“You
don’t mind camping out?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
It
was like speaking to an obedient doll. “I have a feeling we’ll do better not
registering anywhere tonight,” he said, and tried a grin. “Even though it’s
legal, now.”

 
          
She
looked at him and looked away. He stopped trying to grin and opened the car
door for her, closed it behind her, and walked around the car to get behind the
wheel.

 
          
The
sun was almost down when the road dipped to show them a barren plain below,
broken by a series of garishly striped, eroded buttes that, Emmett thought,
were good for nothing but putting on a postcard. You did not believe in them,
seeing them in the red evening sunlight, even while you were looking at them.
Even the wide graded highway, with its accompanying line of telephone poles,
running straight through to the horizon, did not break the illusion of
unreality; a distant car, dragging dust behind it, was a busy insect from
another planet.

 
          
Emmett
heard the quickly indrawn breath of the girl beside him, and glanced at her,
but did not speak in spite of a sudden desire to share the experience with her,
in words. Her face was suddenly alive again, with awe and wonder, but he knew
that his voice would break the spell. He led the car down the series of
switchbacks a little too fast, having to brake a little too often. He was
getting quite tired, he realized suddenly; almost dangerously tired. It seemed
a long time since he had had any sleep. It seemed almost as if he had been
driving along endless mountain and desert roads as long as he could remember.
When he saw a faint track leading off the highway toward the badlands, he swung
the car onto it, jouncing across the parched clay of the alkali plain. He
stopped the car when the first butte hid them from the road, and switched off
the engine. Presently the car began to creak and tinkle metallically as various
parts of it contracted, cooling. He was aware that his shirt was still wet
across the back from the heat of the day, but now he was a little chilly. Ann
was silent beside him, waiting for him to move. He took his camera from the
glove compartment, hesitated, looked at the space where it had been; then got
stiffly out of the car and took a picture of the steep clay cliff above them,
the erosion patterns standing out clearly shadowed by the low sunlight. But it
was a picture that really needed color film, he reflected. He was not really
thinking about it, anyway. As he turned back toward the convertible, Ann’s
voice stopped him.

 
          
“Just
a minute, please; I’m not decent.”

 
          
Then
she came out, tucking in the tails of the bright wool shirt she had put on
against the chill of evening. As she bent over, fastening up her belt, her
light hair parted and fell forward along her cheeks so that, looking down on
her bent head, he could see the little curling wisps at the nape of her neck,
still faintly damp with perspiration.

 
          
“Where’s
the gun?” he asked softly.

 
          
She
was quite still for a moment. At last she lifted her face to him, silently
questioning. As he looked down at her, all the uncertainty and weariness of the
long day was boiling up in anger inside him, urging him to lash out at her with
the suspicions he could not put aside, to repay her for the quiet contempt with
which she was treating him.
Georges
trusted you,
he wanted to say,
and
look what it got him. Maybe you even talked Stevens into believing in you.
Stevens is dead, murdered.
He felt a sudden bitter sense of kinship with
these two dead men he had never known. One of them had been, like himself, her
husband. The thought startled him with its reminder of how deeply he had
committed himself to helping a girl he barely knew.

 
          
He
said mildly, “The gun I took off that guy last night. Didn’t you put it in the
glove compartment?”

 
          
“Oh,”
she said quickly. “No, I’m sorry. It’s in back.” She brushed at her slacks and
straightened up. “Do you want it?” she asked politely. “I’ll get it for you.”

 
          
He
studied her for a moment. Her head was well back, a little defiant, and he was
aware of the slenderness of her throat against the open collar of the checkered
wool shirt.

 
          
“Never
mind,” he said carefully. “So long as you know where it is.”

 
          
As
he closed the camera case and went back to the car to get the food out he found
that his mind had suddenly begun, like a radar screen, plotting her position as
she moved behind him.

 
          
He
heard a coyote in the distance and knew that he had not been asleep because he
had, vaguely, been listening to the sound for a long time. It was not the sound
that had brought his mind back to the present. He moved a little to rouse
himself fully, and something gouged him in the thigh: the car keys that he had
dropped into his pocket before turning in.

 
          
The
ground was hard and lumpy beneath him. Even completely dressed except for his
shoes, with a wool shirt under his sweater and a blanket wrapped around him, he
was a little cold. It was difficult to recall the glaring heat of the day; now
the air felt almost frosty. Except for the wailing of the coyote it was very
still on the desert. If any cars were passing along the road a quarter of a
mile away, he could not hear them. When he opened his eyes he could see the
convertible, and the buttes to the eastward, bright and silvery in the cold
moonlight. Presently he heard the girl he had married move again in the car
when she was supposedly sleeping.

 
          
He
closed his eyes and heard her open the car door carefully; then he lost her,
her stockinged feet making no sound on the sun-baked clay. He waited, thinking,
even if she does, she’ll want to tell me
why; she’ll want to talk first.
He could not remember ever having been so
scared in his life.

 
          
“John.”

 
          
He
did not move, and he heard a clump of the dry desert grass rustle as she
stepped closer.

 
          
“John,”
she whispered.

 
          
He
sat up and looked at the gun in her hand.

 
          
The
hand that held the gun was trembling a little, with cold, or with some strong
emotion, or with both. Her whole body seemed to contract, as if with pain, when
the coyote howled again, coming closer. She looked down at the gun.

 
          
“You
forgot this,” she whispered.

 
          
He
did not say anything. He watched the gleaming small revolver pointed at him in
the moonlight. The weapon was not cocked; that gave him, he decided, a little
time unless she was aware of the effort that would be necessary to work the stiff
double-action mechanism. He got a grip on the blanket so that he could rip it
aside and roll free if he saw the hammer begin to rise.

 
          
“Do
you want the car keys?” he asked. “They’re in my pocket. You can take them and
beat it, if that’s what you want.”

 
          
Her
face was a small pinched mask in the moonlight. The muzzle of the gun sagged a
little.

 
          
“Oh,
don’t be silly, John,” she breathed.

 
          
Then
the gun dropped to the ground and she stood looking at it; presently giving it
a small push toward him with her stockinged foot.

 
          
“There
it is!” she whispered. “You can relax now. You can go to sleep now. You can—”
She turned her back on him sharply, choking. Her voice was harsh with tears
when she spoke again: “I suppose you took the cartridges out of it when I wasn’t
looking!”

 
          
He
glanced at her back and, with sudden anger, raked up the cut-off revolver,
pointed it out across the desert, and pulled the trigger. There was more flame
than he had expected; and for an instant the little gun was alive in his grasp.
The report was a short, smashing sound, like the sound of a blow. It jerked Ann
around to face him, gasping. After a pause the echo came yammering back at them
from the distant buttes.

 
          
“Don’t
you want to make sure they aren’t blanks?” Emmett demanded, holding up the
weapon.

 
          
“Why
did you leave it? You left it there deliberately, to test me!” She caught her
breath. “You’ve been lying here, waiting… You thought I might…! I don’t like
booby-traps, John Emmett!”

 
          
He
said, “All right, and if I’d guessed wrong about you, who’d have been the
booby?”

 
          
The
coyote howled again. Ann shivered convulsively. After a moment she sank down on
the blanket beside Emmett, hugging herself against the cold. They did not speak
for a while.

 
          
“This
afternoon… striking me!” She breathed at last. “Tonight… waiting for me to—to
attack you—as if I were s-some kind of an animal you had to beat and trick…!”

 
          
He
said, “Your father said you called him up in hysterics, Saturday night, and
confessed to killing Stevens.”

 
          
For
a moment she was quite still; he thought she had even stopped breathing. When
she spoke, her voice was just barely audible.

 
          
“No.
Oh, no!”

 
          
Emmett
said, “He warned me not to let you get behind me with a weapon. I thought I’d
try it and see what happened.”

 
          
He
felt her glance at him through the pale darkness. “Does that mean… that
you
don’t believe I…?”

 
          
“Did
you?” he asked.

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“No
what?” he asked. “No you didn’t kill him, or no you didn’t call him.”

 
          
“Both.”

 
          
“Are
you sure?”

 
          
Her
eyes found him again. She did not speak.

 
          
He
said, “Your memory’s kind of tricky in spots, Nicholson.”

 
          
“Please,”
she whispered.
“Please
don’t call me
Nicholson. It sounds as if…” She choked down a laugh that had come dangerously
close to hysteria. “Besides, it isn’t even
right!
I’m Mrs. Emmett. Mrs. John Emmett. Remember?”

 
          
He
was silent, waiting.

 
          
She
shook her head impatiently. “We’ve been through all that before. I know I didn’t
kill anybody, or telephone anybody.”

 
          
“Tell
me what happened.”

 
          
She
said, “I thought Miss Bethke gave me a… an alibi.”

 
          
“She
was lying to cover the fact that she’d let you get away from her. The
Chicago
police know it. They think your dad bribed
her, and consider it another point against you. Then your dad had your suit
cleaned in
Boyne
; they think that was to get rid of
bloodstains. Between you and your old man, Ann, you might as well take an
electric cord between your teeth and turn on the juice.”

 
          
“But
you married me.” He saw her eyes studying him in the moonlight. “Why, if it’s
that bad?”

 
          
“I
told you,” he said. “I was stuck with you anyway. I want to make sure you’re
stuck with me, and your dad with both of us.” He waited for her to make a
comment, or ask a question. When she did not speak, he went on, “What about
that Saturday afternoon, the afternoon Stevens was killed? You beat it from the
cocktail party after talking to him. Some time later you cashed a check in a
department store.”

 
          
She
stirred beside him. “How did you find out all this?”

 
          
He
said impatiently, “I don’t have to find out. I just stand around and people
come and tell me things. The amount of information, probably phony, that people
have given me, I need a secretary to keep track of it all. Now, you cashed a
check at this store. The manager says you were almost incoherent; he thought
you were either stinking drunk or had been in an accident.”

 
          
“Oh,
I
wasn’t.”

 
          
“Tell
me what happened in between.”

 
          
“Nothing,”
she said. “I… just left the party and drove down to the lake front. I had to—to
think.”

 
          
“Think?”

 
          
“Well,”
she said, a little defiantly. “I cried. Then it took me about twenty minutes to
get my hair up and my hat back on and my makeup presentable again. It had been
quite a deluge. Then… I knew I had to see Dr. Kissel, and I knew they’d stop me
if I went home… at least I’d have had to explain why I wanted to go to
Denver
, so I just cashed the check and drove off.”

 
          
“You
had that clipping that said Kissel was at
Fairmount
U.
?”

 
          
“Yes,”
she said.

 
          
“How
long had you had it?”

 
          
She
hesitated. “Months,” she whispered at last, avoiding his eyes.

 
          
“And
still, it wasn’t until last Saturday that you felt impelled to head for
Fairmount to discover what Kissel had to say about you?”

 
          
“Oh,
please!”
she gasped. “Don’t be
sarcastic about it, John. Can’t you understand? I didn’t dare. I didn’t
want
to know. Until Stevens—”

 
          
“Yes,”
he said.

 
          
“—made
it impossible for me to go on deceiving myself that I could just forget…”

 
          
“Yes,”
he said. “Tell me, what about that clipping? How did you get it?”

 
          
She
looked up abruptly. “That was a funny thing,” she said, quite slowly. “We get
Time,
but that copy just vanished from
the house. I wondered if maybe they hadn’t hidden it from me for some—some
medical reason.”

 
          
“I
see.”

 
          
“I
just happened to notice the cover on a newsstand and picked it up because I
hadn’t seen it around home. And suddenly the name jumped out at me… Why?” she
asked. “Why did you ask that?”

 
          
He
said, “Miss Bethke claims to have made a point of leaving the magazine where
you could find it.”

 
          
She
stared at him; even in the dark he could see the sudden hunted look in her
eyes. “But that isn’t true. It simply isn’t true!” she gasped. “Damn it, John
Emmett, I’m not crazy! I don’t care if it does sound as if I were trying to
claim that everybody is lying except me. And you don’t think so or you wouldn’t
have married me, so don’t look at me like that.”

 
          
“Take
it easy,” he said.

 
          
“What
are you trying to prove?” she demanded. “Why do you keep pointing out how—how
everything seems to…?”

 
          
He
waited while she fought back the tears. At last he said. “Let’s go back to
Saturday again. You left Stevens and had yourself a cry and decided to see Dr.
Kissel, is that right?”

 
          
“Yes,”
she breathed.

 
          
“What
made you think Stevens might be lying?”

 
          
She
said, shocked, “Oh, not lying! Mistaken. I’m sure he believed what he was
saying.”

 
          
“But
you think he might have been wrong? What makes you think Dr. Kissel is going to
say anything different?”