Crawlspace (31 page)

I knew it all before I got there. I didn’t need the little bit of light still flickering in the trampled torch to tell me what had happened.

When I scrambled down the steps and stood there, the unfired rifle still dangling at my side, what I saw was like a little vignette you come upon in stained glass in some old church: some grisly Old Testament tale of pride or lust or murder—Cain and Abel. I suppose, or Absalom and David—telling an ancient parable of violence.

That’s the way Richard Atlee looked at that moment, panting there like a winded animal and crouching over the limp carcass of the boy. In his fist, the heavy boulder with which he’d bludgeoned him was still swinging from the momentum in his arm.

Richard stared up at me. I could see his face clearly in the orange shadows of other burning rags. They were still all around us, ringing us, but now they’d moved closer and their pinwheels were strangely still. At a certain point they all halted, not twenty feet off, and silently watched the little scene being played before the kitchen door. There was no sound other than the hissing of the burning rags and the sound of crackling sparks flying upwards.

I stooped over the boy, trying to see what had been done to him. At first he seemed to be sleeping, strangely childlike, his hands folded across his chest in an attitude of beatific repose. Then when I knelt down I could see that the front of his skull was caved in. A large flap of flesh had been gouged out by Richard’s rock and hung loosely from the front of the boy’s head. From beneath that, small bubbles of grayish matter were seeping out at the edges. The eyes were still open, but the pupils had rolled upwards, only their bottoms still showing from beneath the upper lid, like thin, black crescents.

I looked back up at Richard crouched above me, panting. For the first time since I’d known him he appeared to be frightened. It had finally gotten through to him what he’d done, and now he was looking at me beseechingly, as if for guidance.

In the brief time that we stood there it was clearly evident to everyone that something quite awful had happened, and now in that strange glow of burning rags, many of them shuffled silently forward to see. They stopped in a ring about twenty feet from us and stared at the scene.

I imagine I stood up then and looked around at them. Richard dropped behind me, falling back into the shadows. They were all boys, just like the one lying crumpled there on the ground, most of them no more than seventeen or eighteen years old. They’d been drinking. You could see it in the wild flush of their faces. But now they were all suddenly sober and frightened.

“Get but,” I shouted at them at the top of my lungs. “Get the hell out of here.”

I started toward those faces swinging the rifle at them from the barrel end in wide whooshing arcs, looking, I suppose, like a madman. They fell back before me. The ring of them broke open and they started streaming for the cars. Doors slammed. Lights went on. Motors turned over. They were all suddenly scurrying out of the driveway like so many frightened roaches, leaving the burning rags to die in small smouldering heaps all around the grounds.

After they’d gone, there was nothing left but Richard and me confronting each other over that poor smashed form sprawled on the ground, the little gray bubbles oozing from beneath the torn flap in its skull. I reached for the boy’s wrist. It was still warm and it dangled limply while I felt for a pulse. But there was no pulse.

I’ll never forget the expression on Richard’s face. It was an appeal. “Help me!” it said, but he never spoke those words. He kept looking over his shoulder, as if some instinct were telling him to run and he was trying desperately to fight that instinct. His eyes flashed wide, however, and he already had the look of a fugitive.

If he was looking to me for advice, he was wasting his time. Though my mind was numb, it seemed to be going a mile a minute. But I couldn’t put a plausible thought together in his behalf. Birge would be out there momentarily. As soon as those boys hit town or a nearby phone, Birge would know. I knew that’d be what they’d do first, and then Birge would be out to see me, in an official capacity. Not to help me, mind you. And certainly not to help patch together what was left of my house—and certainly not to apprehend the people who’d torn it apart; not even to give solace or comfort in that hour of loss. (The patrol car he’d promised to send had never come, of course.) No. He’d be out there seeking justice for the applecheeked boy whose wrecked body lay crumpled on the ground in the dying light of a few smouldering rags.

But most of all, Birge would be out there seeking Richard Atlee. And the full implication of that had only just now, for the first time, registered on Richard. Gone was the impassivity, the almost god-like absence of human emotion that was so characteristic of his features. Now, for the first time, he seemed aware that he was in danger. He was genuinely frightened, and I must confess it pleased me.

He stood there breathing heavily and waiting for me to tell him what to do. Still, I couldn’t get myself to speak, nor did I even want to. For if he wanted me to help him to escape, I wasn’t about to. My instincts at that moment were all for self-preservation. I had a dread of seeing Richard fall into Birge’s hands, but I wasn’t about to compromise myself any further by helping him get away. I could see the possibility of Birge’s linking me to him as an accomplice. At first it sounded absurd. But I wouldn’t put it past Birge. For him, it would’ve been two birds with one stone. He would’ve liked nothing better than to charge me with harboring a dangerous criminal. Richard kept staring at me, waiting for me to speak. I half believe he’d read my thoughts, that he could see me plotting my own salvation at the expense of his. Suddenly there was a look of betrayal on his face. He gazed down at the crumpled figure at his feet and appeared to be saying, “I did this for you. And now see how you repay me.” That’s what he appeared to be saying to me.

Suddenly he whirled, spun around, till his back was facing me. Then he whirled again, a small yipping sound like that of a frightened puppy squeezed from his lips. Then he was running, but not moving—just standing in one place—a flurry of agitation at his feet and small puffs of dirt and gravel rising all around him. Then he was streaking full speed up the drive. I thought for a moment he was heading toward the bog, and I was already congratulating him for having enough brains to save his skin, as well as sparing me a great deal of difficulty.

But just as he was passing the back porch, he veered sharply and ducked into the kitchen door, still hanging open on one hinge. I started to call out his name, but nothing came except a half-strangled cry. I stood there goggle-eyed and unbelieving. He’d gone back into the house.

I found an old tarpaulin in the barn and with it covered the body of the boy, then went quickly in after Richard.

The first thing I did was to release Alice. I took the pistol from her and led her back into the bedroom and sat her down on the edge of the bed. She appeared to be in a state of shock.

“Wait here, I’ve got to make a call.”

She nodded as much as to show me she understood. I left her there and went back down and called Birge’s office. A man answered. I didn’t even ask to speak with Birge. I told the man who I was and that a dead body was lying out in my drive. Then I told him to tell Birge to come and fetch it.

This time there was no smirk in the voice I was speaking to. The person on the other end sounded startled and a little frightened. Clearly at a loss for words, he kept calling me “Sir.”

“Send Birge to collect the body,” I said again. “It’s on his head. Not mine.”

When I hung up the phone, there was Alice standing there, ankle deep in wreckage, her face gone a sickly white.

“Is the poor child out there?” she whispered.

“Yes. Spattered all over the driveway.”

“Oh God, no—Richard.”

I tried to lead her off, but she held back, clutching my hand.

“Where is he?” she asked, her eyes staring terribly. “Richard? In the crawlspace.”

“What’s that you said about the driveway?”

“The driveway?”

“You said Richard was spattered on the driveway.”

I suddenly realized she didn’t know anything about the dead boy on our driveway. She thought I’d been talking about Richard.

“No,” I said, “I was wrong. I misunderstood you. Richard is fine.” I moved to her. When I reached her I put my arm around her. She seemed so pathetically small. “Come,” I said, “I’ll take you upstairs.”

She seemed to accept that, and only then did she permit me to lead her back upstairs. “Poor child,” she kept mumbling all the way. And even when I put her to bed, half in shock and half in a daze from two powerful sedative tablets, she was still mumbling those words: “Poor child. My poor, poor child.”

“Get him out,” I thought to myself clattering back down the steps. “Get him out?” But not for one moment did I believe that he had any way of getting out, even, that is, assuming he were willing to go—an assumption that struck me as highly improbably.

Undoubtedly Birge, by this time, was well aware of what had happened. He was most certainly already on his way out. I’d called his office about fifteen or twenty minutes back, and there was no answer. The trip was about forty minutes. It was only a matter of moments before he’d be here pounding on the door, or what was left of it, demanding blood for blood.

“Richard.” I stood outside the crawl entrance calling softly into it. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear breathing somewhere back deep in the hole—a hoarse, rasping ugly sound.

“Richard.” I called again into the darkness and heard him scurry and dig further back into the shadows.

“Richard. The sheriff is going to be out here any minute. You’ve got to get away from here.”

I waited, staring into darkness. “I can’t guarantee your safety if you should fall into his hands.”

Still no answer.

“I have two hundred dollars in cash in the house,” I went on. “I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you the car. Take it and run. As far as you can.”

Silence roared back at me from out of the hole.

“Richard, I can’t help you any more.” My voice was a mixture of pleading and exasperation. “I can’t save you this time. You’re in great peril, and you’ve got to try and save yourself.”

The only sound I could hear was the sound of my pulse throbbing at my temples. “For God’s sake, what do you want?” There was another scurrying movement, this time toward me. And then he spoke:

“I ain’t goin’.”

“Birge’ll be here any minute.”

“I ain’t leavin’.”

“Birge’ll be here any minute.”

“I ain’t leavin’.”

“The boy out there is dead. You killed him. Do you understand that?”

“I ain’t leavin’ here.”

“These people here—if they get their hands on you—”

“Never leavin’—”

“Richard. Believe me. I’m not trying to get rid of you. But it will be very bad if you stay.”

“Never, never leavin’.”

He went on like that. Not sentences. Mindless, detached little mutterings. Things I couldn’t hear and didn’t want to. Past all reason.

But of course I’d known it all along—just how he’d react. I knew he couldn’t get himself to go. He’d wandered and searched for nineteen years just to find us; now that he had, he wasn’t going to let a little matter such as the safety of his own neck endanger anything he’d won over the past few months.

I’ stood there a while longer wringing my hands and gaping at the hole. Then I turned and walked slowly up the stairs.

When I got back up, it was close to 2 A.M. Birge was already out in the driveway with several other men. He’d got there only moments before. There were two cars parked out in front of the kitchen—one a patrol car and the other, Birge’s station wagon with a tower light swiveling round and round on the roof, thrusting a blood red shaft of light far out into the night.

From where I stood on the back porch I could see Birge crouching over the body on the ground. He had pulled back the tarpaulin and was groping for a pulse. Several times he prodded the body with his finger. It was the same sort of motion you see women use to select meat in a supermarket. After a while he pressed his thumbs on the lids of those ghastly upturned eyes. Then dragged the tarpaulin back over the body.

He looked up and saw me walking toward him. “Bobbie Winton,” he said when I reached him. “Nice boy.”

“Delightful,” I replied. “He tried to burn my house down tonight.” Young Winton’s arsonist tendencies didn’t appear to faze Birge. Still crouched over the tarpaulin, he looked up at me. “You got yourself some trouble here.” It angered me, the way he said it. Smug and satisfied it was, as if he were saying, “Now I gotcha.”

“You got yourself a pack of trouble now,” he went on. “You’ve got some trouble, too,” I shot right back. “If you’d sent someone out here when I called—”

“I did send someone out. They looked around. Found nothin’. And come right back.”

He said all that with a straight face and a voice full of touching sincerity.

“Ain’t that so, Brody?” He turned and spoke to one of the men hovering just behind him. “Mister Graves here looks a little dubious, Brody. Tell him what you seen.”

A great hulking creature with a beer belly and the smell of stable leather all about him shuffled out of the shadows. He wore one of those wide-brimmed trooper hats, and when he spoke the red beam from Birge’s tower light kept swinging across his bloated purplish features.

“That’s right,” he said in a voice almost comically high for a man his size. “Jes’ like the sheriff says—I come out here ’bout eleven-thirty or so and looked around. I seen nothin!”

“That’s a lie!” I fumed. “That’s a damn lie! If you were anywhere near here at eleven-thirty, you would’ve seen this driveway choked with cars and those boys swarming all over the place.”

“I come right in here,” he went right on as if I hadn’t said a word. It was as if he’d memorized it all by rote and was afraid to stop for a second for fear he’d forget his lines. “I walked round the barn and the back of the house and all round the grounds. I seen nothin’.”