Border Town Girl (17 page)

As I had worked at the boat, I had heard voices. Now I stretched out, waited until my breath quieted and then tried to listen. I could make out the timbre of Linda’s voice, but no word that she said. There were two men. I knew I could not risk trying to get closer.

Suddenly I heard the brisk slap of a screen door and realized they had been talking on the front porch of the Jeffries cottage. I recognized the voice of the man called Dike Matthews as he said, raising his voice a bit, “Like I said, there’s no need to get the jitters about it. He hasn’t got a gun, and you look like you could handle him, Mr. Jeffries. Besides, I don’t figure he’d head for here. What would be the point? Unless he’s nuts like some folks think, in spite of what those fancy doctors said. I suspect you can go on back to sleep and not give it another thought. We got the state boys co-operating and road blocks out, and by first light they ought to pick him up.”

“You’ll let us know,” Linda said. I realized she had moved out into the yard too. There was tension in her voice.

“Sure. We’ll let you know.”

“We’ll come on in in the morning,” Jeff said.

“Folks down there’d give a lot to know how he got the hell out of a locked cell. The lock works fine. They been testing it and scratching their heads.”

“He was always clever with his hands,” Linda said. It gave me a strange feeling to hear her speak of me in the past tense. As if what they plotted for me had already happened. As if I were dead—a man she had once been married to.

A starter whined and the car motor caught and roared. The headlights swept across the boat as he backed out. I heard the car go on down the sand road. I listened for the sound of the screen door again to indicate they had gone back in. Linda said something I could not catch.

“I just don’t like it, that’s all!” Jeff said. “I don’t like any part of it.” His voice was pitched higher than usual. It was querulous. “As far as I’m concerned, I’d like to get in the car and go find a motel where—”

“Shut up! Shut up!” she said violently. “Good lord, do you think he’s going to pounce out from behind a bush or something?”

“No, but—”

“Will you
please
be quiet?”

“But we didn’t—”

“Come here,” she said. I heard the scuff of their feet on the grass as they came toward the overturned boat. They walked by the boat in silence. I heard the sound of their steps on the wooden boards of the dock. At the same time I heard the distant rumble as Matthews, on his way back, drove over the loose boards of the bridge a mile away.

They stopped so close to me that I could hear him sigh. I worked my way close to the edge of the boat, got my eye to the crack. They sat side by side on the dock, their legs hanging over the water. She wore her bulky white beach robe. The match flame illuminated their faces.

“Tomorrow,” she said in a low tone, “you’re going to move to Bosworth. It wasn’t smart to move back into that cottage. I’ll stay here. We were stupid to give anybody the chance to make any guesses about us.”

“He didn’t suspect anything. Why don’t we go up to the house? It’s too buggy out here.”

“We don’t go up to the house because I want to talk to you. I had to be away from the cottage several times. One of them, the young one named Hill, keeps starting the wrong kind of conversation. I don’t like the way he looks at me. And I’m playing this safe, Jeff. Terribly safe. He could have put something in the cottage, either cottage, so he could record what we said. That’s all right so long as we stick to our agreement always to talk about it as if Paul did it, but not now, not this way.”

“That Matthews didn’t suspect anything,” Jeff said sullenly.

“And if he didn’t, whose fault was that? I’m the one who heard him drive in. I’m the one who had to make the mad dash across the yard while you answered the door. You move into town tomorrow.”

“All right, all right. But I don’t like all this. Why did he break out?”

“Can’t you see it’s the best thing that could have happened? They’ll catch him and they’ll all think he escaped and tried to run because he’s guilty. He won’t have the ghost of a chance after this.”

“But I keep thinking that he thought of something we didn’t think of. Paul’s no dummy. You ought to know that. Suppose he came back here to check on something that we overlooked?”

“You kept telling me you had good nerves. Sure. Nothing could rattle you. Just plan it all out and then sit tight. No loose ends.”

“But—”

“But nothing. What could go wrong? Use your thick head. We even thought of putting cigarette butts down there with my lipstick on them proving that I spent time there with you. There was no one on the beach, no one out in a boat, who could possibly have seen what happened. If you could just see the way they treat me down there. I’m the loyal wife being brave about everything. I’m so demure it sickens me.”

There was a long silence. I heard a butt hiss as it was flipped into the water. He said, “I didn’t know it would be—the way it was. I guess I thought she’d just look as if she were asleep. But her eyes… and the blood…”

“Shut up!”

“Stop telling me to shut up!”

I sensed the effort behind her calm voice. “Jeff, darling, I’m sorry. I just don’t want you to think about that. I—I have to think about it too, you know.”

“Yes, you really have to think about it, don’t you?”

“Now don’t start that. From the point of view of the law, my friend, it was our finger on that trigger, not just mine. Ours. Please, Jeff. Try to take it easy. Nothing can happen to us. We planned it too carefully. And don’t fret about Paul. He hasn’t got the guts of a rabbit. All we have to do is wait and act sad and co-operate with them. When it’s all over, we’ll wait a reasonable period of time and then we can be together.”

“On her money.”

“Wasn’t that the object?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. I just wish we hadn’t done it. I just wish I could turn some magic clock backwards and we’d all be there on the beach and—”

“You can’t.”

“I know.”

“It’s done and we have to do what we said we’d do and then we’ll be safe.”

“And all we have to do is live with it.”

“Honestly, I… You better go to bed. And lock all your doors and windows and put the pillow over your head.”

“That wasn’t necessary.”

“You make me so sick sometimes. Good night, Jeff.”

I heard him get up. “You better come and get your clothes,” he said.

“I’ll get them in the morning,” she said tonelessly.

He walked by the boat. I heard the screen door slam a few moments later. She lighted another cigarette. I wondered what she was thinking about, sitting there, looking out at the black water. Was she seeing Stella’s face too, as I was, as Jeff was? Or did it mean nothing to her? Was she ice all the way through, inhuman, inexplicable? This creature had shared my bed, and I thought I knew her better than any other person had ever known her. And yet I had known nothing about her.

The lights in the Jeffries’ cottage went out. I heard her walk by the boat. I could have reached out, caught her ankle, brought her down to where I could reach her throat. I could think of that, yet I could not do it. She knew about the rabbit in me. She was safe in the black night.

By gray dawn I had decided. The trap was too perfect There was no flaw. They would punish themselves. Murder was the bond on which they were going to try to build a life. They were hostage to each other, and one day—perhaps inevitably—there would be murder again.

I did not know how far I could get. I did not care very much. With luck I could find a new place, work with my hands, try to forget all this. I lifted the boat, wriggled out, walked boldly between the two sleeping cottages out to the sand road. The big car sat heavy in the dawn light, windows misted. I looked down at the beach where Stella had died. Porpoise rolled a hundred yards offshore. I walked north to the bridge and crossed it. There were no cars. I decided to turn toward Hooker. I could cut across country behind the town and head on north.

I was fifty feet beyond the bridge when the harsh voice behind me said, “Cowley!”

I stopped. They told me to clasp my hands on top of my head. I did so. The one with the rifle was Dike Matthews. I did not know the other one. I found out later that they had been waiting below the bridge, out of sight. They had not stopped me on the bridge for fear I would leap the rail into the channel. The car was up on the shoulder of the main road. They manacled my hands and walked behind me. My shoes were still wet, and made squelching sounds. They would let me walk about four steps before they would shove me hard, so I would stumble forward. They shoved me into the car. Matthews called in to say he had picked me up. Then he drove at breakneck speed back to the cottages to see what harm I might have done Linda and Jeff. They came out, blinking with sleep and surprise. I saw the confidence flow back into Jeff’s face as he looked at me. I looked away.

Linda said, “No, he didn’t come here at all. Thanks for letting us know. I guess this proves how sick he is.”

They took me back. A photographer snapped pictures of me as fast as he could change bulbs and plates as they took me into the county building. They didn’t unmanacle me until they had shoved me into the cell opposite the one I had escaped from. Vernon came and asked questions. Journeyman came and talked to me. I answered neither of them. I had begun to understand that peculiar psychology of the criminal which enables him to close an unseen door, closing out the world. I had nothing to say to them, and no interest in what they were saying to me. Their words came from far away, and meant nothing.

I was sleeping heavily when David Hill arrived. When I awakened he was in the cell, smoking quietly, watching me. He took the pipe out of his mouth and grinned, said, “I was the one who was going to make an unexpected move, not you.”

“It didn’t do any good,” I said. It was the first time I had spoken since my capture.

“What did you do?”

I told him. I told him how I had gimmicked the lock, how I had gotten out, about the ride in the truck, the long walk, hiding under the boat. I told him, as nearly as I could remember, what had been said. I told him how they had grabbed me near the bridge.

He filled his pipe again, lit it carefully. “I might have had a few small doubts before,” he said. “But now I know you’re innocent, Cowley.”

“How do you know that?”

“You’re a steady and logical man, but you’re not very imaginative. You scored low on that. You had a hell of a job at those ink blots and seeing anything other than an ink blot. It would take a pretty active creative imagination to make up the conversation you’ve just told me. That’s good enough proof, to me, but not to anybody else. Not to Vernon or Shepp or any of them. They’d laugh in my face. Those jokers would have to have an actual playback of that conversation before they’d buy it. Then they’d be reluctant”

“She was afraid somebody had wired the cottages, somehow. I wish I’d had some kind of tape recorder or something with me. Then that nonsensical escape would have worked.”

He looked at me for a long time, the pipe motionless in his hand, two deep wrinkles between his eyebrows. “Told anybody else about this?” he asked.

“No.”

He got up and paced back and forth. From time to time he would stop and look at nothing, and then pace again.

“It’s worth a try, anyway,” he said.

“What’s worth a try?”

“You did have a tape recorder with you. But first I have to do one hell of a sales job on Vernon and Shepp.”

It took him over an hour. He came back with paper, a clip board, pencils. He pretended to snap sweat off his brow. “A sales job indeed,” he said. “According to them I am, at best, a dreamer, a sucker, a soft-head. I pulled out all the stops. Indignant, servile, haughty, scornful. In effect, I’ve bet my job on you, Paul.”

“I don’t think you should—”

“Here. Start writing. I want the script of that talk. Every damn word you can remember.”

I took the pencil and looked at the empty paper. “I can’t remember,” I said.

“Look. You’re under a boat. It’s dark. You’re soaking wet. They walk by you, close enough to talk. They sit on the dock. Who spoke first?”

I looked at the paper. I put down on “L” to indicate Linda, put a dash after it and wrote, “Tomorrow you’re going to move to Bosworth. It wasn’t smart to move back here.” I looked at Hill. I said, “I don’t know if that was the exact wording or not.”

“Is it the way she
could
have said it? Is it in character?”

“Yes, but—”

“What makes you think their memories will be better than yours? Write what they said. Keep is as close as you can.”

I wrote, “I’ll stay here. We were stupid to give anybody a chance to guess anything about us.”

J—“He didn’t suspect anything. It’s buggy here. Why don’t we go up to the cottage?”

HE LEFT ME ALONE TO WORK ON IT. IT WAS amazingly difficult. I could remember a lot of things, but I couldn’t seem to get them in the right order. It was easiest to remember what Linda said, like, “You said you had good nerves. Sure. Nothing could rattle you. Just plan and wait. No loose ends.” And the part about the cigarette butts. And about being so demure it sickened her.

I kept thinking of things I had forgotten, and then making marginal notes about where they should be inserted.

It was dusk when Hill and a guard came and got me and took me down to the small room where they had first interviewed me. He read over what I had written. He had me wait there with the guard. He was gone over an hour. When he came back he had four typed copies of what I had written. He had four people with him, two young girls and two men. He didn’t introduce them. He merely said, “Paul, these people are professionals. I got them down here from Sarasota. I’ve briefed them a little. I want you to check the voices, pick the two closest to Linda and Jeff.”

One of the girls was pretty good. Neither of the men seemed close. I told Hill that and he said I didn’t have to worry too much about that, just to pick the one which sounded nearest. Hill thanked the two who weren’t right, and they asked if they could stay and listen. He said they could, but when all of them left, they should remember that this was a very confidential matter.