Shock Treatment (12 page)

Neither of us said anything.

After a few moments, I looked back at the line of headlights behind us.

“No one is following us,” Gilda said. “I made sure.”

“They’re experts . . .”

“No one is following us!”

There was a curt snap to her voice I hadn’t heard before, and I looked quickly at her.

In the lights of the passing street lamps, she looked pale and her expression set. She stared ahead, driving well, moving the big car through the gaps in the traffic, her foot touching the gas pedal every now and then to shoot us forward, ahead of the car in front of us.

We drove like that for twenty minutes or so, then we were clear of Los Angeles and we were heading into the open country, along the fast highway.

Still we said nothing.

Another twenty minutes driving brought us to a side road. She pulled off the highway onto the road, accelerated, driving fast, climbing the steep hill, and then, in a few minutes, she pulled onto one of those laybys, constructed specially for courting couples or for tourists who wish to see Los Angeles from the heights.

As she set the parking brake, I looked back down the long, twisting road, but there was no sign of any car coming up, only the gleam of many headlights far below as the traffic pounded out of Los Angeles.

Gilda turned in the driving seat and looked directly at me.

“Why are you so frightened, Terry?”

“I’m not frightened,” I said carefully. “I’m anxious. This insurance claim was a mistake. The agent of the company has examined the set. He seems to think there is something suspicious about the claim.”

“Why should he think that?”

“Some business about it being difficult for your husband to have taken the back off the set. It doesn’t seem he could have reached the bottom fixing screws from his chair.”

“I told you: I am quite sure he didn’t take the tack off the set. It was something he would never do. It was you who said he did it.”

“Of course he took it off! When I got there, the back was off . . .”

“I think the best thing I can do,” she said, not looking at me, “is to tell Mr Macklin to withdraw the claim. I can manage without the money. I’ll sell everything. There should be just enough to settle his bills.”

I stiffened.

“You mustn’t withdraw the claim now!”

“Why not?”

“Once a claim is lodged, it has to go through, otherwise the insurance company will suspect fraud. They’ll think you have withdrawn the claim because you have lost your nerve. If you withdraw the claim now, they are certain to tell the Los Angeles police.”

“Why should I care if they tell the police? I’ve got nothing to hide!”

“But you have! They could find out about us!”

“And what if they do?”

I drew in a long, slow breath. I thrust my fists between my knees, squeezing them hard.

“We’ve been over all that before, Gilda. We have got to be careful.”

“Is that why you asked me to call you from a pay booth?”

“Yes. I don’t trust these insurance agents. They may have tapped your line.”

She swung around and stared at me, her eyes glittering.

“Tell me the truth!”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t an accident, was it? You’ve been trying to cover up something. You’ve got to tell me!”

I started to say it was an accident, then I stopped. All of a sudden, I felt I couldn’t lie to her. I loved her. You can’t lie to a woman who means as much as Gilda meant to me. I knew it was a fatal thing to do, but I just couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.

“No, Gilda: it wasn’t an accident.” I began to shake. “I killed him.”

She caught her breath in a quick gasp and moved away from me.

“You killed him?”

T must have been out of my mind,” I said. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you being tied to him for the rest of his days. I couldn’t bear the thought of you never being mine so long as he was alive — so I killed him.”

She sat motionless. I could hear her quick, uneven breathing.

T did it because I love you, Gilda,” I said. “With any luck, they won’t find out I’m hoping in a few months we can go away and start a new life together.”

She hunched her shoulders as if she were feeling cold.

“How did you do it?”

I told her.

I didn’t hold anything back. I told her the whole sordid tale.

She sat in the corner of the car, her hands in her lap, motionless, staring out into the moonlit night, her big forget-me-not blue eyes wide and expressionless.

“If only that insurance claim hadn’t been put in,” I said, “I would have had nothing to worry about. But now . . .   I don’t know. I think Harmas suspects something. That’s why we mustn’t see each other until the claim is settled.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Her voice was flat and cold.

“I want you to stick to the story you told Jefferson,” I said. “That’s all I want you to do. Harmas may question you. If he gets the slightest suspicion that we have been lovers, we shall be in trouble. We must keep away from each other until they have settled the claim.”

“You mean you will be in trouble, don’t you? If I tell them the truth, there is no trouble for me.”

She was right, of course, but I just looked at her, not saying anything.

“All right: I’ll lie for you. I’ll stick to the story.” She sat for several seconds staring through the windshield. Then she said quietly, “Would you mind walking back? You’ll be able to get a lift on the highway. I would rather go back alone.”

My heart gave a little lurch.

“This is not going to make any difference to your feelings for me, Gilda? I love you. I need you now more than ever before.”

“This has been a shock. Will you leave me now please?”

I tried to take her hand, but she moved it quickly out of my reach.

I could see how white she was and how tense. I realized she had to be given time to get over what I had told her. Already I was bitterly regretting having told her.

I got out of the car.

“I wouldn’t have done it, Gilda, only I love you so much.”

“Yes, I understand.”

The car began to move away from me. She was staring through the windshield. She didn’t look at me’.

I watched the red rear lights of the car go down the steep hill. I had a sudden horrible feeling she was moving away out of my life: moving out of it for good and all.

CHAPTER VII

I

Two days crawled by, and they were bad days for me.

I kept thinking of Gilda, seeing again the wooden stunned expression on her face as she had driven away and wondering why she hadn’t wanted me with her.

I tried to assure myself it was a natural reaction. I had confessed that I had murdered her husband. The shock must have been a horrible one. What really bothered me now was that this stupid confession might have killed her love for me. That was something I couldn’t bear to think of, for her love was more precious to me than my own life.

On the second night I could stand my thoughts no longer. I got into the truck and drove down to Los Angeles. I called her number from a pay booth.

I was startled when a man answered.

“Is Mrs Delaney there?” I asked, wondering, with a feeling of dread, if this man was a police officer.

“Mrs Delaney left a couple of days ago,” the man said. “I’m sorry but she didn’t give us a forwarding address.”

I thanked him and hung up.

I didn’t need a blueprint to tell me what had happened. My stupid confession had killed her love for me as I had feared it might. She had gone away because she didn’t want to see me again — ever.

I scarcely slept that night, and for the first time, I regretted killing Delaney. I was paying for what I had done, and from the look of my future, I would go on paying for it.

The following morning, as I was shaving, the telephone bell rang.

It was Harmas calling.

“Can you meet me at Blue Jay cabin at eleven?” he asked.

“We’re having a meeting, and I want you in on the technical end.”

I said I would be there.

“Swell, and thanks,” and he hung up.

The next three hours were bad ones. My nerves got so shaky I had a drink around half-past nine, and that led to three more drinks before I drove over to Blue Jay cabin.

Harmas’s Packard was parked near the verandah steps, and as I walked up them, I could hear him whistling in the lounge.

He looked around as I paused in the doorway.

“Come on in. The others will be along any time now.”

I walked stiff-legged into the lounge.

“What’s it all about?” I asked.

“You’re going to see how we insurance dicks earn our money,” Harmas said. He had dropped his indolent pose. He looked alert, and his wide, satisfied smile scared me. “I want you to give me a hand.” He took two ten-dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to me. “You’d better freeze onto these in advance in case I forget. My boss — this guy Maddox I was telling you about — is coming, and when he’s around I’m likely to forget my own name.”

“Maddox?” That really jolted me. “What’s he coming for?”

“Here he is now,” Harmas said.

I heard a car coming and I stepped to the french doors and looked out.

The sight of the police car with its siren and red light on the roof gave me a shock.

From the car came Lieutenant John Boos of the LA Homicide Squad: a big, powerfully-built man, around forty-two or three, with a red, fleshy face and small steel-grey eyes.

He was followed by a short, thickset man who I guessed was Maddox. He wasn’t more than five-foot six. He had the shoulders and chest of a prize fighter and the legs of a midget. His face was rubbery and red. His eyes were restless and as bleak as a Russian winter. He wore his well-cut clothes carelessly, and he had a habit of running thick, stubby fingers through his thinning grey hair to add to his untidy appearance.

He came up the verandah steps, frowning, his small restless eyes missed nothing.

Harmas introduced me.

Maddox shook my hand. His grip was hard and warm, and he nodded to me.

“Glad to have your help, Mr Regan,” he said. “I understand you’re working for the company now.”

I muttered something as Boos loomed up.

“Hello, Regan,” he said. “So you’ve got tangled up in this thing too, huh?”

“That’s right,” I said, and my voice sounded small and husky.

“Let’s get at it,” Maddox said and walked into the lounge. He stood in front of the TV set. “This it?”

“That’s the baby,” Harmas said cheerfully. He turned the set around. “Those four screws held the back in place.”

Maddox stared for a long moment, then walked over to the empty fireplace.

“Sit down, Lieutenant. You, Mr Regan, sit over there. We won’t need you for a while so just take it easy.”

I sat away from the other three and I lit a cigarette. My heart was thumping and my hands were unsteady and I was pretty badly scared.

Boos picked the most comfortable chair and lowered his bulk into it. He took out a pipe and began to fill it.

Harmas sank into another lounging chair and stretched out his long legs.

“Well now, Lieutenant,” Maddox said, “I’ve asked you up here because I’m not satisfied with this claim. Briefly, one of our salesmen called on Delaney and sold him insurance coverage for this TV set. There’s a clause in the policy that gives coverage of five thousand dollars in the event of death through a fault in the set. It’s one of those dumb clauses our sales people put in to catch a sale. We have sold twenty-three thousand, four hundred and ten of these policies, and this is the first claim covering death by a fault we have had. That is: it is a twenty-three thousand to one chance, and when that happens I get suspicious. The claim arrived five days after the policy was signed. Delaney was buried before the policy was even delivered.”

Boos lit his pipe and frowned at Maddox.

“It could be one of those things, M: Maddox. I’ve read the coroner’s report. I’ve talked to Sheriff Jefferson. Nothing I’ve seen in the report and nothing Jefferson has said has convinced me there’s anything wrong with the setup. It looks straightforward enough to me.”

“It looks straightforward to you, Lieutenant, because you don’t handle fifteen hundred claims a week as I do,” Maddox said. “If you had sat at my desk for the number of years that I have, you would get to know a bad claim by instinct. I know this claim is a bad one. I feel it here!” And he paused to thump his chest. “But I don’t expect you to act on my hunches. Let’s take a look at the setup. Delaney was paralysed from the waist down. I’ve got a report from the doctor who attended him when the accident happened. The doctor says he was not able to bend at the waist. That means he was sitting upright all the time in his chair, and he could not bend forward. Now I’ll give you a little demonstration that’ll interest you.”

He turned to me.

“Mr Regan, I want your help. Will you sit in Delaney’s chair?”

I knew what was coming. Keeping my face expressionless, I walked over to the chair and sat in it.

Harmas picked up a length of cord that was lying on the table. He went around behind me and looped the cord around my chest and behind the chair and tied it tightly, preventing me from moving forward.

“That was the way Delaney was fixed: bolt upright and unable to bend forward,” Maddox said.

“Okay, okay,” Boos said, frowning. “So what?”

“Go ahead, Regan,” Maddox said, “and take the back off the set.”

“It can’t be done,” I said.

“Well, try anyway, and try hard.”

I wheeled the chair up to the set and took out the two top fixing screws: that was easy, but I couldn’t get within two feet of the bottom screws, fixed as I was in the chair.

“You’ve read the coroner’s report,” Maddox said to Boos. “When Regan found Delaney’s body, the back of the set was off. And another thing there was a screwdriver by Delaney’s side. He apparently got it from the storeroom. He hooked the toolbox down from the shelf with a walking stick. The tools fell on the floor. Ask yourself: how did he manage to pick the screwdriver up?”

Harmas put the screwdriver on the floor beside me.