Tears Are for Angels (20 page)

    She had quieted a little now and I went over and put my hand on her shoulder.

    "That night," I said, "that night after we were married-and all the others-I knew then I didn't want to kill him any more. I would have told you a long time ago. But I thought you'd go on and do it by yourself if I backed out of it. I thought nothing would stop you."

    "So now you tell me."

    "I had to. I had to make a try at stopping it."

    "Why didn't you do it sooner? Why didn't you tell me?"

    "Damnit, can't you see why? I love you, Jean. If you're going to go through with it, I'll help you. I've got to help you. But I don't want to any more, and I don't want you to, either."

    "You fool," she said. "Oh, you stinking, blind fool! You thought
I
wanted to do it! You were doing it for
me
! Oh, Harry, you fool… you fool…"

    She began to laugh again and I watched her. And then I knew. I knew how right she was and what a fool I'd been.

    What fools we'd both been.

    I laughed, too. It began to come plunging out of me, out of my belly, and I couldn't stop it. I sat down on the bunk beside her and put my arm around her and she clung to me. We rocked back and forth together and our wild helpless laughter rang through the cabin and out into the night. We couldn't quit and we began to ache from it and still we laughed, and only his voice stopped us:

    "Somebody tell me the joke. Maybe I can laugh too."

    

    

    Even then, we couldn't stop it, not altogether, not all at once, not even looking down the barrel of his pistol.

    He stood there, not moving, the pistol quite steady, and slowly it all went out of us and we sat there, clutched together, watching him, not laughing any more.

    "Maybe you were laughing at me," he said. "Maybe you were thinking what a gag it is to blackmail a…"

    I felt her grip tighten suddenly on me and she slowly stood up and I felt her reluctant hands on me.

    "It's all off," I said. "You can put that down and go home. You can forget about it."

    "Forget about it, eh?"

    "Yes," I said. "You wouldn't believe why, if I told you. But we aren't going to bother you any more."

    "You aren't going to bother anybody any more. Not ever."

    It began to dawn on me then what he meant to do. And I knew, suddenly, the thing we had forgotten.

    "You had it all figured, didn't you?" he said. "You'd bleed me white and I couldn't do anything about it. Only you got careless."

    "Not careless. I tell you, we just called the whole thing off."

    He laughed.

    "You just called off twenty-five thousand dollars? Like that? Don't make me laugh."

    It would happen this way, I thought, just when we both quit being fools, just when we both found out we didn't want any part of it, when we had a chance to get out from under it, it would have to happen, the one thing we didn't think of: that he might decide to fight back, that he too might plan murder.

    Jean stood up beside me and I saw in her face that she had figured it out, too.

    "Give him the letters," I said. "The real ones. Let him have them. There's nothing in them, anyway."

    I can't let him find out, I thought. If he tumbles to what we really had in mind, he'll never believe we backed out of that one too. He'll think he has to do it, just to stay alive. We've got to keep him from finding out.

    "They're in my pocketbook," she said.

    He frowned a little, worriedly, and hope leaped in me. He moved cautiously to the shelf where the pocketbook lay and took out the packet of letters. The gun still pointed steadily at me. He glanced at them in quick takes, never letting his eyes drop from us long enough for me to jump him.

    It took him a long time to finish them. Finally, he dropped them carelessly to the floor.

    "I can't figure it. What the hell's going on? What about the one you showed me?"

    "It was a fake. We were bluffing. We thought we could pull it off and collect a little cash. Then just tonight we got cold feet and decided to call it off. I swear it."

    He's got to swallow it. It can't all end this way, just when everything should be beginning. It can't!

    His face was creased in a frown now, his head cocked to one side, the gun still covering us. I could feel sweat beginning to prickle all over me.

    I took a good look at his flushed face and I saw him shift his feet and it came to me in a Hash that he had been drinking. He's had to nerve himself up, I thought.

    He was thinking hard now, and suddenly he snapped his fingers, the pop loud in the hot silence, and my stomach began to curl up.

    "So that's why you kept throwing yourself at me," he said, his eyes darting at Jean.

    "I don't know what you're talking about."

    "You got half the county talking about us, haven't you, and I never laid a finger on you."

    Neither of us said anything, and he grinned, slowly and evilly.

    "You're smarter than I thought," he said. "You were going to shoot me and plead the unwritten law. The blackmail talk was just to get me out here alone with you."

    It was all over. I knew it now. He had figured it right, the one thing he could have done to make himself absolutely sure he had to kill us.

    "All right, Stewart. That was it. But we gave that up, too. We got cold feet, like I told you. We were going to call it off."

    His laugh was a dry, harsh rattle.

    "Go on," he said. "Beg me. You had me begging once, Harry. Now it's your turn."

    "What's the use? Your mind's made up."

    He laughed again.

    "That's right. My mind's made up."

    He began to back away, still covering us. until he was standing almost in the door. Then he bent his knees slowly and picked up a coil of rope.

    I hadn't seen it before. He shook it out and there was already a loop in one end of it, tied with a slipknot. He carefully dropped the loop to the floor and spread it out with his toe. He let the rope run through his fingers until his free hand held the other end of it.

    "All right," he said. "Stretch out on the floor, Harry, and put your arm in that loop."

    I shook my head.

    "You'll have to do it without that," I said. "If you shoot us, I'll be damned if I'll let you work whatever scheme you've got. You'll have to shoot us here, where we stand."

    He laughed.

    "Listen, you don't think I came out here without an alibi, do you? You don't think anybody's ever going to connect me with you two disappearing, do you? Because I don't think you'll ever be even found, whether I shoot you here or anywhere else. Not the way I'm going to fix it. It'll be safer for me if you co-operate. But you're going to get it, either way."

    I thought fast. You could see in the flushed face and the burning eyes that he meant it. And of course, he would have to have a plan. He would have foreseen some such argument as I had put up, and besides that, every minute I could just stay alive would give me another moment when I might have a chance to jump him.

    I lay down on the floor and stretched my arm into the loop.

    "That's a good boy," he said. "Now you." The pistol moved toward Jean. "Both of your arms."

    She lay down beside me and put her arms out into the loop. I took one of her hands and felt her squeeze back.

    He jerked the rope and the loop slipped tight around all three arms.

    "Now get up."

    Slowly, unable to use our arms, we clambered to our feet. He pulled the loop tighter around our forearms. That pulled us around face to face and I looked down at her and tried to smile.

    "Maybe this is what we get," I said. "Maybe this is what we should have expected all along." I kissed her forehead.

    "Isn't that sweet?" Stewart said. "Wait a minute, Harry, and I'll get her up close."

    I glared at him and he laughed. He snapped the rope over our heads a couple of times, pulling us tighter together. Then he walked around and around us until the rope bound us securely together, from our shoulders down to our waists. We could move only our hands and our feet.

    Still pulling the rope tight, he slipped the pistol in his waistband and came up behind her and fastened the loose end securely through one of the loops around her.

    "Now," he said. "Move toward the door."

    We had to take short side steps to walk at all, but we finally got there. When we stood right at the door sill he reached out both arms and pushed us sprawling through the door and down the steps.

    We lay in the sand, almost stunned from the shock of the fall, me flat on my back with Jean on top of me. He stood above us in the lighted door and laughed.

    "Be with you in a minute," he said. "Then we'll get this show on the road." He disappeared back into the shack.

    I could feel her struggling against the ropes. Her warm breath was in my face.

    "Listen, Jean, there's not much time. Maybe we can make some kind of break, I don't know, but maybe not too, and I want you to know. Ever since I knew I loved you I didn't want to kill him, I only kept on because I thought you did, because I thought you needed me."

    I felt her stop moving and then her voice whispered softly. "Was it our wedding night, Harry? That was when it started for me."

    "Yes," I said. "But I thought you were just stringing me along. I didn't dream you loved me too."

    "I tried not to. I kept thinking about Lucy, and about what we were going to do. But you were so hurt… so lonely… I couldn't help it."

    "If we had only known… if we had only told each other…"

    "I know. But I thought you had to kill him to get Lucy and all that out of your mind, to get over what he'd done to you. To be a man again."

    "And you were going to help me do that. Make me go through with it."

    "Yes. And you were going to help me."

    "And neither of us wanted to do it at all."

    "No. Not since that night."

    "My God," I said. "How can two people get so fouled up?"

    We lay there, still and quiet, and even with the sounds of him moving inside, even with the ropes cutting into our flesh, I think we were more at peace than we had ever been. I think we both thought that this was better, to die together and unashamed rather than to kill together and live in fear and shame and regret.

    Then something blocked out the light and his shadow fell over us again. He came cautiously down the steps and moved to one side of us. I rolled to the side where I could watch him.

    "That sand in the suitcases," he said. "Pretty cute. So I'd think you really were leaving. But I fixed it up in there, all right. It looks like maybe the two of you just stepped out for a walk, the way I fixed it."

    He stood there grinning at us and Jean turned her head.

    "What are you going to do to us?" she said.

    "I'm going to take you for a swim, a nice long swim."

    Agonizingly, like lightning in the night, I realized what he was going to do. I had not been the only one to think that Rutherford Millpond would be a good place for murder. I had even thought how easy it would be to hide a body there. That was what he had meant, when he had said he didn't think anybody would ever find us.

    And he's probably right, I thought. I doubt if anybody ever will.

    "I don't get it," Jean said.

    "You will, baby. You will."

    He pulled a flashlight from his hip pocket and checked the knot at her back, then snapped it off. He patted her hip and chuckled.

    "All right," he said. "On your feet, now. I haven't got all night."

    It took us several minutes to make it, but finally we did. He stood there grinning at us all the time. The gun was in his hand again.

    "My car's over there in the woods," he said. "Let's go."

    That was the hardest journey I ever made, the slow, inching side steps over the deep, clinging sand. I don't know how many times we fell down, but I began to feel bruised all over, the ropes cutting hard into my flesh now, and my arm aching as the circulation went out of it. Worse still was knowing how it must be on her soft arms and body. But she never whimpered.

    And always, he was just behind us, grinning, laughing out loud whenever we fell, making filthy remarks if I landed on top. If I get out of this, I thought, just for a minute, just for one minute, I'll stuff that grin down your throat.

    Finally we were there and we leaned against the car.

    He reached through the front window and got a bottle from the seat. He took a long pull at it and wiped his mouth.

    "I was pretty smart, eh?" he said. "You thought I'd come driving right up and hand myself over to you." He chuckled. "What a couple of suckers you two turned out to be!"

    If you only knew, I thought, what suckers we really are. And you're the biggest of all. Because you could go on and let us go and never hear another word from us the rest of your stinking life. But you're going to kill us and it's going to be for you the way it would have been for us. You're the biggest sucker of all.

    He opened the rear door of the car and herded us in. We sprawled all over the back seat, Jean on her side, half on the seat, and I on the floor, my legs twisted up to allow the door to close. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him run his hand along her leg and J kicked savagely at him. He laughed and slammed the door.

    He got in and started the engine and drove out into the open and turned the car around. We began to move back along the little road.