Crawlspace (32 page)

Birge shot me a look of glowing satisfaction.

“He’s lying,” I said. “Can’t you see he’s lying?” I grabbed a flashlight from the trooper who’d just spoken and threw a beam from it up over the house, so that it fell on the windows and the kitchen door, with all of its glass punched out and hanging on a hinge.

“You think that’s a figment of my imagination?” I snapped at Birge.

“Didn’t say it was. Just said my man wasn’t out here when it happened.”

“Well, he damned well should’ve been. I’ve called your office at least a half-dozen times in the past month with prowlers and intruders and God knows what out here, and you deliberately—”

I could see his face turning as I spoke. It was like watching a bowl of milk curdle. But I couldn’t stop myself now. I rolled right on.

“Don’t think this is the end of this thing for me, either, sheriff. I’ve only just started. And there’ll be reports and investigations—right on up to the governor—”

Up until that moment he’d spoken civilly to me. Or at least there was a pretense of speaking civilly. In the next moment something harsh and ugly crept into his voice. “Where’s that animal you keep down your cellar?”

. At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. “If you mean the boy, he’s not here.”

“I got twenty witnesses or so, say they seen him beat the livin’ hell out of the Winston boy tonight.”

“What’re you going to do about those twenty witnesses.” I asked. “You think they were just out here sightseeing tonight?”

“You leave them boys to me.”

“I left them to you once before, and they beat up my boy.”

“Your boy?” Birge shot me an amused glance. Thinking back to it, it was a peculiar thing for me to say at that moment.

“Where is your boy?” He said with all the sniggering malice he could muster. “You better tell me now.”

“He’s not here,” I said.

“Then I don’t s’pose you’ll mind my taking a little look around.”

“You don’t suppose he’d be fool enough to sit around here and wait for you.”

“I frankly don’t know what a freak like that’d do.” He laughed and looked around at the others. They all laughed along with him as if on cue. Birge was clearly pleased with himself. “I’ll just take me a little look around.”

My mind was going at a feverish pace. “Not if you don’t have a search warrant.”

I knew he didn’t. It pulled him up short, and there was a look of surprise on his face. Frankly I was surprised, too, at my own audacity.

“You sayin’ I can’t go through here without a warrant?”

“Exactly.”

“Now I know you don’t mean that, Albert.”

“I assure you I do. And to you, it’s Mr. Graves.” I enunciated my name in a very brisk, clipped manner. He was still incredulous.

“You mean to say I got to have a warrant?”

“I don’t say it, sheriff. The law says it. And you above all ought to know enough to respect that.”

He stood there for a while a little puzzled, his hands on his hips, his high black boots spread wide, and shaking his head. He knew I had him, at least for the moment. “Okay, Mr. Graves. I’ll get you your fucking warrant.”

“Thank you, sheriff.”

He looked at me for a long while just oozing hate. Then he addressed Brody over his shoulder while still staring at me.

“Go on back to town and wake Judge Harrington. Tell him what happened out here tonight, and you tell him Mr. Graves says I got to have a warrant to search his place. You tell him I want that warrant quick. Now.”

“You gonna stay out here?” Brody asked him.

“Gonna sit right out front in my car. Make sure no one leaves here.”

My heart sank then, thinking about Richard below in the crawl.

“Not on this property,” I said. “If you care to wait you can go out on the road. But you can’t wait on this property.”

Birge crossed his arms and stared at me. There was now a look of exasperated amusement on his face. I got the feeling he even admired me a little.

“Okay, Mr. Graves. He flicked the wide brim of his hat so that it made a snapping sound. “I’ll be glad to wait out on the road.”

He and the others started for their cars. When Birge reached his, he took the floodlight on his side window and played it up across the face of the house where he could see all the pits and scars of recent battle.

“Kind of reminds you a bit of Harlow Petrie’s place, don’t it?” he said, and they roared out of the drive laughing and leaving deep tire scars in the gravel.

It was getting on to 3 A.M. when Birge and his men backed out of the driveway. I could still see them out on the road huddled in conference. Then one of the cars made a sharp U turn and sped back in the direction of town. Birge’s station wagon remained there pulled up on the side of the road with the red tower light swiveling slowly round and round, like a dragon’s eye in the dark.

There was very little time left before Birge’s men would be back with the warrant. I calculated an hour and a half at best. If Richard was to get away he’d have to move quickly in order to put some distance between himself and Birge. There was no hope now of his leaving by car, for that would mean having to drive off in front of Birge. No. The way out now was through the back. Out the cellar door and across the bog.

When I got back into the house I found Alice in the darkened kitchen, seated at the table amid the wreckage and debris.

“Albert,” she said very gently.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was.”

“Did they wake you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can you put the light on?”

“I’d prefer not to. He’s sitting out there watching our every step.” I looked at her a little anxiously. “Did you hear?”

“Everything. I was standing right at the door. He’s still here, isn’t he?”

There was nothing accusatory or harsh when she said it. It was just sad.

“I’m going to get him out right now,” I said, bolting for the library door. “Birge’ll be back with a warrant very soon. What a mess. What a Godawful mess!”

“Albert,” she called out from behind me. “Why didn’t you just let them come in and take him?”

“I don’t know why,” I snapped angrily. “How the hell should I know why?” I lunged for the door.

“I’m going down there with you.” She started after me. “You stay right here and watch Birge out there. If he moves out of that car, you call down and let me know.” She started toward me again. “Albert, tell them. Just tell them and let them take him away.”

“Let’s not discuss it any more.”

“Albert—I’m begging you—”

“Never mind!” I snapped and started down the cellar stairs. “What a mess,” I muttered as I went. “What a Godawful mess!”

“Richard!” I shouted into the dark. “They’ve sent a man to town for a search warrant. He’ll be here in less than an hour. Birge is sitting out front in a car. You’ve got to go now.”

Of course no answer came. I didn’t really expect one. But I could hear the breathing—harsh and rapid—that horrible trapped animal sound.

“All right—it’s your funeral. Once these people get their hands on you, just forget about justice or any kind of fair play. It’s no holds barred.”

I started out in a huff as if I were leaving. But it was only an act, and he knew it. I took about ten steps, then turned, barged right back to the hole and started shouting again, “I’m coming in.”

The moment half my torso was through the hole, I felt him spring toward me in the dark and land in such a way that he was right beside me, coiled above the hole. For a moment I was sure he was going to strike me, and I was already flinching, awaiting the blow. It never came, and after I huddled there a bit, my neck retracted turtlelike into my shoulders, I dared to look up. He was still there beside me, poised like a serpent, waiting. Finally, I dragged the rest of my body through the hole.

The transition was too abrupt, moving out of a warm dry cellar into the moldy chill of the crawl. And of course there was the smell. It was like death. Like something had died in there. At first I lay there on the cold earth floored by it—all the sensibilities outraged. Then I just lay back and succumbed to it—the way a man struggling against a tide finally consents to go with it.

I lay there on the ground, slightly winded, my face inches from his boot, ransacking my brain for the right words with which to get through to him. But then suddenly, amazingly, he was speaking. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt him. Never meant to hurt no one. Sorry. I was only thinkin’ of you and Missus, I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

It came out a long, grievous lament which he kept repeating over and over again. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” All the while he said it there was a dull, hard, thudding sound directly above me. At first I couldn’t imagine what it was. Then I realized—it was his head. He was banging it violently against one of the wooden joists.

“I seen him start to whirl that fire,” he said. “And I went crazy. I seen that fire and all them rocks and dirt they was flingin’ and all I could think was that new coat of white paint, and you and Missus inside. That’s all I kept thinkin’. Sorry. Sorry.”

“You don’t kill a man for throwing rocks at your house any more than you wreck his store because he cheated you out of a few dollars.” The venom in my voice appeared to stun him, and that awful chanting of his came suddenly to a halt.

“You’ve got to go now,” I snapped.

“Never leavin’. Can’t. Can’t.” The awful thudding resumed once more overhead.

“We don’t want you here any more!” I shouted at last, at the limit of my patience. “It’s been nothing but trouble since you’ve come. You’ve messed up our lives. Our house is a shambles along with all of our possessions. We’re wiped out. We don’t have a single friend left in town. It’s enough now. Enough. We don’t want any more. We want you to go. Do you understand, Richard? We don’t want you here any more.”

It had all come out of me in wave upon wave. Like steam escaping from a valve under great pressure—with a long, sibilant hiss.

But having said it, after so long, it brought no relief. Only a kind of curious aching from somewhere deep inside me. At the end of that tirade I lay back against the wall, spent and overcome. An immense weariness had overtaken me. I was full of a sense of terrible defeat and trying to muster enough strength to crawl back out of there when the sound started.

At first it was a long, low wailing from somewhere in the crawl. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Once it commenced, it didn’t stop. It didn’t rise; it didn’t fall. It merely persisted on a single tone and filled the place. It was an inhuman sound. The kind of thing one associates with mourners in wild strange lands. Primitive and aboriginal. It wasn’t weeping, either. It was a deep, inconsolable grieving of a most profound and heart-rending sort.

What I did next, I barely recall. Only in a general way I recall squirming through the hole, struggling back toward the light in the cellar, and then running. But I wasn’t running from him. I was running from the sound. When I reached the top of the stairs I could still hear it behind me. Then I slammed the library door shut on it.

I slumped for a moment against the door, looking at Alice across the parlor in the kitchen sweeping up glass and debris. Suddenly she looked up and saw me. She didn’t say a word. She could see it all in my face.

She crossed the parlor, coming toward me, still holding the broom. “Did you hear it?” I said when she’d reached me. “Did you hear it?” I was about to ask her again when we heard the click from downstairs. When I looked at Alice I saw that she heard it, too. We stood there holding each other, listening to the squeal of the garden door, faint but unmistakable, and after that the dull thud of it closing.

It was Richard Atlee. He had left the house. “He’s going,” I said. Hopefully, I told myself, forever. I hoped that he would start running now and not stop until he’d placed a continent between us. There’s a part of me that thinks like that, that has a kind of childish faith in all things turning out well. But there’s another part of me harsher, more fatalistic—and that part told me that Richard had only vacated the crawl temporarily. He was heading out across the bog, probably to the cave, and would lie low there for a while, like a wounded creature. But, sooner or later, he’d be coming back to us.

All this I thought as Alice and I went back to the kitchen and once again resumed the job of cleaning up the awful mess.

Shortly after, we heard Birge’s steps coming up the drive and halting just outside the kitchen door. He stood there peering in at us, his large red face framed in shattered glass, smiling mockingly and dangling a sheet of official-looking paper through the gaping hole.

“I got that warrant for you now, Mr. Graves.”

I continued sweeping, not even bothering to look up. “Fine,” I said. “Go search to your heart’s content.”

The only place he looked was the crawl. He went directly down to the basement followed by several other men. They stayed down there for nearly half an hour. We heard them rummaging around, their muffled voices seeping up through the floor boards.

Then they came back up.

“Where is he?” asked Birge.

“I told you I don’t know,” I said. “I hope he’s a thousand miles from here right now.”

“You know that if you helped him, you’re an accomplice. That’s punishable by law.”

“I didn’t help him,” I said, suppressing a desire to laugh. “I tried to, but he wouldn’t let me.”

He looked at me coldly for a moment, clearly stumped.

“But if he’d asked me to,” I went on, “I would’ve. Without a moment’s hesitation.”

“He ain’t no thousand miles away,” he said. “I got the feelin’ that if I just look under a few rocks in the general vicinity here he’ll come squirming out.”

“I wish you luck,” I said.

He nodded and smiled, then flicked his trooper’s hat to Alice. It was done with an idiotic flourish which I’m sure he thought of as very dashing.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and started out. When he reached the door he turned. By then I’d resumed my sweeping, and just as I looked up he was standing there smirking at me.

“What the hell you s’pose he’s been doin’ in your crawl?” he said. “Smells like a Goddamned zoo down there.”