Hard Case Crime: The Vengeful Virgin (11 page)

I saw the knife sticking out of her back. It was a carving knife, and the blade was in to the hilt. She kept struggling to reach it with her hands. The back of her white sweater was a sheet of dark blood. She stopped, swayed, and fell to the floor.

She said, “No,” sharply.

I went over to her. I was conscious of Victor Spondell standing in the doorway.

“Jack,” Shirley said. “Is she all right?”

Somehow, from the way Shirley spoke, I knew Mayda hadn’t told her about what we’d done. Mayda Lamphier was dying. For only a moment, she was dying. Her eyes looked up at me with awe and confusion from the cramped position of neck and head. Then she was dead.

I would never know why she hadn’t told.

That didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she was dead and the ball was rolling.

“I was just trying to stop her,” Shirley said. “I couldn’t let her go.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You couldn’t.”

I looked up at Victor Spondell.

I was shriveled up like a weed inside, now.

Spondell turned dazedly and stumbled toward the living room, his white pajamas ballooning.

“Stop him,” Shirley said.

I stood up, and looked at her. I heard myself speak.

“It’s all right,” I said. “You couldn’t do anything else. There was nothing else to do.”

She nodded numbly. I heard the telephone dial.

“Victor,” I said.

I turned fast and went in there. He was in the living room, dialing on the phone. He saw me and went all to pieces. I yanked the phone out of his hand and slapped it on the cradle. He fell back against the wall, trying to get his breath.

I guess maybe it was right about here that the whole thing began to turn into a nightmare.

I stood there looking at Victor Spondell. He had to die. It was either him, or Shirley and me.

You go into a confused state. You do things you know have to be done. It’s all very crazy. You know you’re doing hellishly wrong things. You know you can’t stop doing them, because the minute you stop you’ll wash away with the sands. You’re a swimmer in a riptide, fighting toward a receding shore.

So details were like that. Swarming in my brain. Victor Spondell had to die. Something had to be done about Mayda Lamphier’s body. Miraglia had to be called. The intercom unit had to be checked. I had to post Shirley on what to say. I had to figure what to do with Mayda’s body. The money had to be collected.... I would have to get my story straight for Miraglia, and maybe even the Law. Grace was out there someplace, God only knew where, maybe looking in a window now. I had to get rid of the truck before somebody saw it out front. A hundred things were suddenly riding me.

Her whisper came from behind me.

“What will we do, Jack?”

Victor Spondell was sliding down the wall, slowly. He watched me, trying to speak, unable to. He slid down the wall and sprawled on the floor, eyebrows bristling.

“He heard you,” I said. “Over the intercom. He heard everything. Why in Christ didn’t we think of the telephone? A party line. An obvious, tired old business like that?”

I looked at her. She raised one hand. It smeared on her chin. Then she saw the hand and reacted violently. It was a sight I would never forget.

“Wash your hand—hurry up!”

“What’ll we do, Jack?”

“Wash the hand.”

I turned and looked at Victor Spondell. She gave a little gasp and started for the kitchen. She stopped in the dinette, then turned and went into her room. I heard the water running in her bathroom.

Victor was crawling along the rug, toward the front of the house. He was saying things. I couldn’t make out what the words were. I went over and stood in front of him. His hands clawed at my shoes. He stopped and lay there, panting. He looked up at me, craning his neck. His mouth was a black panting hole, the eyes all gone to hell with fear. He collapsed on the floor. You could see the back of his pajamas, up between his shoulder blades, moving in and out like a bellows, with the way he tried to breathe.

“Mask,” he gasped. “Get—air. Oxygen—mask.”

I didn’t move. I looked down at him, hearing him, but I couldn’t move.

Shirley came back. She stood off across the room staring at Victor with a curious expression on her face. It was as if she couldn’t bear what she saw—but you could tell she was going to bear it, anyway.

“We’ve got to get him in the bedroom,” I said.

She didn’t speak. I looked at her again. She had both hands clenched in front of her, holding her thumbs like a little girl. She looked like a little girl, standing there.

Anxious and confused.

I leaned down, grabbed Victor under the shoulders, and started dragging him toward the bedroom. “Shirley,” I said. “Find something that won’t be missed around the house. An extra blanket would be best. Go in the kitchen and mop up every last speck of blood, and get Mayda wrapped in the blanket.”

I kept on dragging Victor. Shirley didn’t move.

“Get going!” I said.

“I can’t go in there.”

“You’ve got to. We’ll have to move fast.”

She clutched at her face with one hand. “I can’t.”

“All right. Help me with him.”

She moved slowly after me as I hauled Victor into the bedroom. He was moaning and gasping. I caught him by the arms, and slung him half up on the bed, then flung his legs up. He lay there writhing and twisting, his hands like claws, the tendons sticking out. His eyes glared toward the rack where the oxygen tanks stood. I went over to Shirley. “Stay with him,” I told her. “Don’t leave him for a second.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Get rid of her.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

She kind of leaped in against me, her arms around me. I could feel how tense she was. “Say you love me.”

I kissed her.

“Say you love me, Jack!”

“I love you. You know I love you. Would I be doing any of this if I didn’t love you?”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were very wide.

“Shirley,” I said. “We’ve got to move fast. I think I’ll get her car—take her someplace, and fake a wreck. I don’t know yet.”

“If they find her—they’ll see the knife wound.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to fix that.”

“Jack, I didn’t want anything like this to happen.”

I pushed her away. “Get in there with him.”

“What should I do?”

“Keep him there till I get back. If the phone rings, answer it. You’ll know what to say to whoever calls.”

She stood there staring at Victor’s bedroom doorway. You could hear him in there. Dying.

Somehow, I did what I had to do.

I carried a casting rod and a couple of plugs in the truck. Sometimes, driving around town on calls, I stopped by different lakes, and had a few tries for bass. It would have to be my alibi now. I drove the truck six blocks from the Spondell house. There was a lake I knew of. I parked the truck, shielding it as best I could in a copse of cedar. It was one of the chances I’d have to take. My explanation, if it ever came to that, would be that Miss Angela had called for TV service. After I left her place, I drove to the lake and made a few casts for fish along the shore. Because the truck might be spotted. It could easily have been seen at Shirley’s. Grace had seen it. It was weak business, but maybe it was weak enough to be believable.

I dogged it back to Shirley’s. She was in the bedroom with Victor. She got me a blanket. I cleaned the kitchen floor, and the carving knife. I scrubbed the knife with a brush and kitchen cleanser, and did the same with the floor after I had wrapped the body in the blanket.

I was so worried I couldn’t see straight, and I knew I had to keep calm.

Mayda Lamphier was still warm. I knew pretty well what I would do.

“She’ll be found,” Shirley said. “They’ll suspect something.”

“Nobody’s going to suspect anything. They may never find her.”

“Victor’s dying.”

I didn’t say anything. I hardly knew what I was doing. “Go back in there with him. Do whatever you feel you should do.” I looked at her. “Only don’t give him any air. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She avoided looking at the blanket-wrapped body.

“I’m scared, Jack.”

“I know.”

I waited till she went in there with him. I could hear him again. I hoisted what was left of Mayda Lamphier on my shoulder and went out back. The yard was dark. I took her across the lawn, and through the hedge into her driveway where her convertible was parked, and laid her across the seat. Lights were on in her living room.

I got under the wheel, backed the convertible out of the drive, and left that place.

Somebody had to see her car; somebody who knew the car. I drove around the blocks nearby, trying to think.

I recalled a gas station on the corner of the main highway leading south, not far from this residential section. In all probability, Mayda Lamphier had used it at some time or other. Possibly regularly. It was close enough to her home.

I went that way. Neons glowed brightly over the station. An attendant was out front under the marquee, taking care of a customer.

With the gas pedal to the floor, I swerved the car wildly in toward the station, then back onto the highway, and wailed the horn. The attendant couldn’t possibly make out who was driving the car. He turned sharply, then waved and shouted something. I figured he did know the car, and it was what I wanted. Even if he didn’t know the car, he would remember it. I went on, driving like that, swerving from one side of the road to the other. A truck approached from the opposite direction. I cut directly in front of it. The driver slammed the brakes, and rode the horn. I brought the convertible back at the last minute, knowing he would remember, and that it had been seen by the gas station attendant, and the customer, too. It was good enough.

I opened the convertible up and held it, till I was about eight miles down the road, then took a bisecting country road, and came back toward town again, until I found what I was looking for. I figured it to be about a mile or slightly more from Shirley’s place.

There was a stretch of old canal beside the road. The road itself was a dark stretch of potholed, highhumped macadam; a back route to town. Trees grew profusely along the canal banks. I had fished the water, and knew it was plenty deep.

It would have to be a fast job. The road was seldom traveled, but that didn’t mean no one would come along. If I were spotted, if the convertible were seen out here, stopped on the road, we were done.

I parked the car on the road, and got out for a quick inspection. Finally I found what I wanted.

What happened now had to be perfect.

There was no sound of a car. The night was inert. Not even a cricket. No wind. I found a long, loose limb, took off shoes, socks and trousers, and waded in the water close to the old canal bank. So far as I could make out by testing with the limb, the water was very deep—well over the top of any car. It was turgid water, scummed with weeds and surface moss.

Dressing, I returned to the car. Still no sounds.

What I did then was bred of desperation and the knowledge of what could happen if and when Mayda Lamphier’s body ever might be recovered. It was something I could never have done again.

The convertible top was up. First I unwrapped the blanket, and put it safely in some bushes on the canal bank. Then I stood on the rear deck of the car, and jumped on the convertible top. The canvas top ripped. Steel stays bent. But not enough. I unhooked the top, and using all my might, managed to bend the steel forms under the canvas out of shape, and I finally snapped loose a single steel rod from the driver’s side.

I slung the body under the wheel. The body had to stay with the car. I couldn’t bind it in there with rope. I jammed an arm between the steering post and the dashboard, and did my best to fasten one of the feet under the gas pedal. The other leg I twisted up around the steering post and propped under the dash, as a lever to hold the body. Then I shoved the head between the twin spokes of the steering wheel. It didn’t look as if it would ever come loose.

Then the bad part. The knife wound. I took the steel support from the convertible top, got it set, closed my eyes, and drove it into her back through the spot where the knife blade had stuck.

I heard the sound of a car’s engine. It was distant, but it was tearing up road space, whining in the night.

I had wanted to take my time. I couldn’t.

Starting the engine, I reached for the gas pedal. Her foot was underneath, so I couldn’t press it down. It was a serious flaw.

Back on the road, I saw the car’s headlights shining above tree tops. The oncoming car was rounding a series of S curves about a half mile away.

There was nothing to do. I yanked at the foot. It wouldn’t come free. I heard myself cursing. It had me out of my head. There wasn’t time now. I reached for the hand throttle, yanked it out, and set it. The gas pedal went down enough so the engine was wound up. But if they found the throttle pulled out, it would be obvious what had been done—or at least suspicious.

The car wasn’t in gear.

I let loose the throttle. I was completely out of my mind now. I pulled the shift lever into drive, and yanked the throttle out, and stuck with the car as it bucked and began slowly to move off the road toward the canal. It was all fouled up. I saw the other car coming along the road, then.

I yanked the throttle all the way out, twisted it into lock position. The car shot toward the canal. I jumped and slammed the door and let it go, and knew I’d made a worse slip still as the convertible leaped off the bank and struck the water. The headlights were off. They had to be on.

It didn’t make much of a splash. It hit and slid down into the water, with the engine going. Waves splashed against the shore, and the engine had quit.

I hugged the ground by some brush. The oncoming car swept past, going like hell, headlights glaring across the night. The canal was frothing white where the convertible had gone under.

The sound of the car on the road gradually diminished.

I looked at the darkness, and knew I had to go in that water. I had to go down there and make sure. I would never know, unless I did.