The Cry of the Owl (31 page)

“What road?”

“The River Road. I didn’t see my car. I don’t remember if I was even looking for it. I just wandered along. And then—and then I got angry. I thought, Forester tried to kill me, so I’ll make it look as if he did. Get him blamed, because he deserved it.” Anger came to his rescue, buoyed him up like the drink. “But it wasn’t that much planned out. For a long time, I was like somebody with a temporary amnesia.” The phrase was comforting and solid. Greg had thought of it often during the past three weeks, thought he might one day have to say it.

But the plainclothesman was looking with a smile at the shirt-sleeved man who was not writing any more, whose arms were folded.

“I didn’t really come to for days,” Greg said.

“And then where were you?”

“New York.”

“Where’d you get the money to last you all this time?”

“I had it on me.”

“How much?”

“Oh—two hundred, say.”

“Two hundred? You in the habit of carrying two hundred? I don’t believe you had enough money on you to last you two weeks, stopping in hotels and so forth.”

Greg hated being called a liar, hated being treated like dirt. “Why don’t you go after Forester? He seduced a girl and then—and then drove her to kill herself! Why’re you picking on me?” Greg tossed off the rest of his drink.

The plainclothesman still looked calm and vaguely amused. “Who gave you money? Somebody in New York? Some friend in Langley? Humbert Corners? Rittersville?”

Greg was silent.

“How about New York? You got friends there?”

“I’ve got friends everywhere.”

“Who in New York, for instance? Why’d you go there first?”

“A lady. In particular,” Greg said. “I wouldn’t care to mention her name.”

“Ah, come on now. I won’t believe you unless you mention her name.”

“All right, I will mention it. Mrs. Veronica Jurgen, the ex-Mrs. Forester,” Greg said, sitting up in his chair. “She knows Forester, all right. She should. Sure, she gave me money and advice, too.”

“What kind of advice?”

“To keep it up,” Greg said. “To keep it up till Forester gets put away where he belongs—in a nut house or a jail.”

“Hm-m. Did she hide you in her apartment in New York? At all? Hurry up with your answers, Wyncoop.”

“No, but she invited me there.”

“What do you mean ‘invited’?” asked the plainclothesman with annoyance. “For dinner?”

The listening officers chuckled.

“Yes, for instance. I never went.”

“Um-m. What’s her phone number?”

Greg hesitated. But they’d get the number even if he didn’t tell them. He told them. The plainclothesman strolled to the counter and had the call put in.

Nickie’s number didn’t answer.

“Who else?” asked the plainclothesman, coming back. “Who else helped you in New York?”

Greg frowned. “What does it matter who helped me?”

“Oh, just curious, Wyncoop. We have to fill in the story.” The plainclothesman smiled in a nasty way.

Nobody was even writing anything down now, Greg saw. They were just baiting him. Then Greg saw three men come in the door, two policemen and one man in ordinary clothes, but with the swaggering walk of a cop. He was a short man in a gray suit with a gray hat on the back of his head. They greeted him as Lippy. So this was Lippenholtz. Now Greg remembered reading his name in the newspapers. He was a detective. The plainclothesman who had questioned Greg was talking in low tones to Lippenholtz, and Lippenholtz was looking at Greg, nodding, as he listened.

“Yeah, I just left Forester,” Lippenholtz said, and he chuckled. “Forester’s neighbors …”

The rest trailed off to Greg. Then Lippenholtz said, “Oh? That’s interesting. The ex-Mrs. Forester.”

“We just tried to get her on the phone. She doesn’t answer.”

At a signal from Lippenholtz, one of the policemen who had come in with him came over to Greg and pulled some handcuffs out of his pocket.

“You won’t need those for me,” Greg said, standing up, willing to leave.

“Let’s have your wrist,” answered the cop.

The handcuff was clicked onto Greg’s right wrist, and the other on the cop’s left wrist.

Then there was a long, dark ride to Rittersville. Only twelve miles, Greg knew, but it seemed twice that. The policemen and Lippenholtz were chatting about a ball game somewhere, ignoring him completely.
In the Rittersville station, a gloomier, older building than the one in Langley, Greg had the same routine questions put to him. He had expected to see Forester in the station, and was rather relieved that he wasn’t there. Greg was asked again if he had fired the shots into Forester’s house, and Lippenholtz had the dates. Greg said yes to all his questions.

“What am I guilty
of
?” Greg said. “Why’re you treating me like this?” He was still handcuffed, seated, with the cop standing beside him.

Smoke burst out of Lippenholtz’s mouth as he laughed. “Assault and battery, aggravated assault and battery, and murder, if that doctor dies.”

“Murder? Manslaughter, maybe,” Greg said.

“Murder. You were trying to hit Forester and you hit someone else who might die. That’s murder, Wyncoop.”

Greg’s stomach fluttered. “He’s not dead yet.”

“No, not yet.”

“He’s not dying from my bullet,” Greg said. “I read the papers. He’s dying from a concussion.”

“Yeah, he slipped and fell,” said Lippenholtz with disgust. “So when you went to New York, what did you do?”

“I took a hotel room.”

“Where?”

“The Sussex Arms.”

“Check,” said Lippenholtz, referring to a tablet. “From the seventeenth to the twentieth of May. I understand you received money and—moral support from the ex-Mrs. Forester.”

“That’s right,” Greg said.

“Let’s have her phone number.”

“I don’t know why you have to bother her. She didn’t do anything.”

Lippenholtz only gave him a bored smile. One of the policemen laughed. There were five or six policemen standing around, listening. “Let’s have the number,” Lippenholtz said.

Greg gave it.

This time there was an answer. Lippenholtz took the telephone. “Oh, Mr. Jurgen? Could I speak to your wife, please? This is First Precinct in Rittersville calling. … But it’s quite important. … Yes. Thanks.” He looked at Greg with a confident smile now.

Greg pulled the policeman’s wrist forward as he reached for another cigarette. He was out of cigarettes, but one of the cops had put a nearly empty pack of Luckies by him on the table.

“Hello, Mrs. Jurgen. Detective Lippenholtz speaking. We’ve just found Gregory Wyncoop. … Yes. … Well, he was getting on a bus in Langley just a few minutes ago, so he’s far from dead, Mrs. Jurgen,” Lippenholtz said with a smile and a wink at one of the listening officers. “Why? Because he says he’s a friend of yours or you’re a friend of his.” Then, as he listened, Lippenholtz moved the earpiece a little away from his ear.

Greg could hear her voice from where he sat, but not what she was saying. Lippenholtz shook his head and smiled at his pals as he listened.

“I see. But is it true that you gave him some money while he was in New York? … Hm-m. Gave it or lent it? … I see. … Well—” He was interrupted. “I don’t know about that, Mrs. Jurgen. I hope you won’t,” pleasantly. “Mrs. Jurgen, you’ll have a chance to—” Lippenholtz looked over at a cop, shook his head, and sighed. He put his
hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Boy, this woman can talk.” Then he said into the telephone, “
Mrs. Jurgen
, that’s all very interesting, but we have specific legal problems here to deal with. It might be better if you came down to Rittersville and—All right, we’ll just have to come to you. … No, I can’t, but it’ll be soon. … It won’t be forgotten, I can assure you. Goodbye, Mrs. Jurgen.” Lippenholtz put the telephone down and looked at Greg. “Some friend you’ve got there, Wyncoop.”

“What do you mean?”

“She says she gave you money because you were broke, but on condition that you’d go right back to Pennsylvania and tell the police you were still alive.”

Greg sat forward. “The hell she did! She wanted me to stay on in New York. She’s—she’s scared or something, or she never would’ve said anything like that.”

“Yeah, you’re damned right she’s scared. She’s aided and abetted—Ah, the hell with it. Well, Wyncoop, I think this time I’m really going to believe you. But she says she’s no friend of yours and she wanted you to go back home.”

“Hah!” Greg swung his left arm up and his cigarette flew from between his fingers. “She wanted me to stay on indefinitely in New York. But Forester came up to see her and said he thought Nickie knew where I was, so she told me to get out of New York and she gave me some more money.”

“Hm-m. Not quite the way she told it. She said you were a bum, a beatnik—”

“Oh, yeah? She slept with me,” Greg said. “Twice.”

“Oh, she did? That’s interesting. Maybe. But irrelevant.” Lippenholtz strolled toward him, his hands in his back pockets under his
jacket. “What’s your relationship with Mr. Jurgen? Another friend of yours?”

“Yes,” Greg said firmly.

“Likes you sleeping with his wife, eh?”

Greg took a second or two, trying to think of an answer, and Lippenholtz turned away from him and started talking to another plainclothesman. Greg was pulled to his feet. They were talking about locking him up for the night. He was allowed to make one telephone call, and Greg thought of calling Nickie, then decided he’d call his parents. He’d ask them to get some bail together.

Twenty minutes later, Greg was lying face down on a narrow, firm bed in a cell. He was alone. It was dark, except for a slanting triangle of light that came from down the hall, outside the barred door. From a nearby cell, maybe the cell next to his, there was a loud snoring, like the snoring of a drunk. Greg pressed his face into the rough blanket, and the conversation he had just had with his parents repeated itself in his ears.
How could you? … Why, Greg?
His mother’s shrill voice, after her near scream of relief at hearing his voice, after her questions, “You’re all right, dear? You’re not hurt?”
How could you? … Why, Greg?
As if he could explain why over the telephone with half a dozen cops standing around listening. They hadn’t even let him use the booth in the station. He’d had to use the telephone on the main desk, which Lippenholtz had talked to Nickie on.
I’ve got friends, Ma, will you stop worrying?
Greg had shouted back, and the cops had all laughed.
I had amnesia!
Then his father, in that stunned, formal tone Greg knew so well, that his father always used when he was mad as hell about something, before the leather strop had come out when Greg was a kid and his father’s teeth had bared in fury at him,
I’ll see you as soon as possible, Greg
. His
father was in that kind of mood, but he was going to get the money together. His father was going to find out how much bail he needed and get it together right away, even tonight, if he could, and he would, Greg thought, because his father thought it was the utmost disgrace to be locked up in jail. Greg writhed, his teeth against the blanket. His boss, Alex, was going to act like a sell-righteous holier than thou, too, Greg supposed. Let them rail at him, let them lecture, what did he care? He hadn’t done anything wrong enough to be clapped in jail for. It was ridiculous. If he was so God-damned much to blame, then so was Nickie. He wasn’t exactly alone in it. Nickie would help him. Nickie liked him, liked him a lot. Greg was sure of that.

There were footsteps coming along the hall. Some damned guard, Greg supposed. Or maybe his father had done something already about getting him out. How much time had passed? He stuck his left hand into the slant of light. It was only ten of one by his watch.

“Just talked to Mrs. Jurgen again,” said Lippenholtz. “Your friend. I told her you said you’d had an affair with her. Boy, she wasn’t very pleased about that.”

“No? I suppose she denied it?”

“Um-hm, and she’s plenty mad at you for saying it. I just came by to tell you she’s coming down to see you.”

Greg looked at him. “When? Tonight?”

“Yep. That’s how mad she is. I told her you couldn’t have any visitors tonight, but that didn’t stop her. I called her to tell her we’d be sending somebody to talk to her early in the morning, but she said, ‘I doubt if I’ll be here, so save your energy,’ or something like that, so I told her, ‘Thanks, it’ll save us going up there.’ Sleep well, Wyncoop.” Lippenholtz walked away.

Greg set his teeth, imagining Nickie’s voice in the front room of the station, demanding to see him—and they wouldn’t let her, of course. She’d have to wait until six or seven or eight in the morning, or whenever his father got the bail money, to talk to him. Then, at least, they could talk in private. He definitely didn’t want to talk to her here in the police station, where a dozen cops were all ears every minute. He pulled off his tie, let it drop on the floor, and tried to relax. Then the thought of Forester hit him like a bomb. He had thought of Forester almost at once, as soon as they picked him up at the bus station, but now, in the darkness of the cell, the thought was worse and made him turn and twist on the hard bed. Forester must know this minute that he was in jail in Rittersville. Forester must be gloating.

But he’d slept with Nickie twice—yes, twice—and nobody could deny that. Even Ralph knew it, or at least suspected it. Twice, and Nickie would have come to see him a lot more times if he’d been able to stay on in New York. He had a triumphant instant, thinking of that. But the feeling left him at once. He had to prepare himself, prepare his case. He’d say he’d been out of his mind for a day or so. Then when he realized what he’d done, made Forester look like a murderer, he’d been a little afraid to come back. He’d decided to play it for all it was worth. Nickie would certainly have to back him up in that, say she tried to help him and had. Forester not only deserved to be called a murderer, he had actually murdered a man, Nickie said, on one of their hunting trips. A man had come up to their camp and threatened to haul them in for shooting too many deer, and Forester had bashed his head in with the butt of his rifle, and then had buried him in the woods. Nickie had been weeping
with emotion when she told him that story, and she said she had never had the courage to tell it to anyone before, because Forester had threatened to kill her if she did. Greg wondered if he should bring that murder up to the police? The trouble was, Greg wasn’t
quite
sure Nickie was telling the truth, and an untrue story against Forester might do Greg more harm than good.