Day of Wrath (28 page)

"You killed him, didn't you, Robbie?" I said. "You killed
Bobby Caldwell?"

She laughed and laughed her long blondehair shaking on
her shoulders. She wiggled her bloody fingers and laughed.
 

OF COURSE, THERE WAS NO WAY TO REALLY KNOW. I thought
later, in the hospital, that she might have gone with Bobby on impulse
that Wednesday. Impulse seemed to be her only motivation. I thought that
seeing him killed by the men and the woman she'd been sleeping with might
have destroyed all that was left of her self-control. Grace had said that
Robbie had been hysterical when she was brought back to the farm on Wednesday
night. Grace had said that she'd tried to kill herself and that Theo had
stopped her. But, of course, that didn't prove that she wasn't guilty of
Bobby's murder or of taking a part in it. It was just as likely that she'd
gone off with the Caldwell kid on Wednesday afternoon because Irene had
told her to go—to lead him to his death, as he'd thought he was leading
her to safety. Maybe Irene hadn't told her what she and Reese and Logan
had planned for the boy. Maybe they'd left that for a surprise. They hadn't
told her what they'd had planned for her either—at the tail end of that
bloody Saturday night. After the fun, after the devastation, it was my
guess that they would have killed her, too, as Grace had heard them planning
to do. And then, for all I knew, they I might have turned on each other.

Maybe she'd loved him, I thought. Maybe she'd realized
it on that fatal afternoon, when he'd stood up against all of them and
braved death for her. But by Saturday night that love had been swallowed
up in horror and in the madness that Irene Croft had spread like contagion,
once she'd become the reigning queen of Clinger's blasted paradise.

The boy shouldn't have gone
back for Robbie on Wednesday is what I finally thought. He should have
listened to Grace and left her at the farm. But then he'd been the victim
of his own sweet obsession and, in the end, he couldn't let her go. In
the end, I couldn't either, although the girl I'd brought out of that charnel
house might have been better off dead.

The case worked out strangely for all of us. Instead of
being charged with murder, as I'd expected to be, I was visited one May
afternoon, in the hospital where I was recuperating, by Jerry Lavelle and
snowy-haired Arthur Bannock. Lavelle did most of the talking.

"Harry," he said, pulling a chair up to my bed. "How's
the arm?"

The arm would never be the same—nor would the leg or
the left lung—but I told him it was all right.

"That's fine. Just tine," he said cheerfully. "The cops
talked to you, yet?"

"
Every day," I said.

"Well, that'll probably stop," he said.

I stared at him uncertainly.

"A murder trial, Harry . . . He shook his head and cracked
his gum. "It's a terrible thing. One question leads to another and before
you know it, you got a—"

"Scandal?" I supplied the word.

"Exactly," he said. "We don't want that, do we, Harry?
So we worked out a little deal for you. You cop a plea—self-defense.
And we'll see that it washes."

"And how will you do that?"

"Well, the four of them were loaded with drugs. The coroner's
report shows that. And they'd murdered the Clinger man earlier in the evening.
Their clothes were covered with his blood. And the women had sperm in them.
S0 right away we got the sex angle, too. And the rest is easy. You show
up looking for Robbie. And high on drugs and sex and bloodlust, they tried
to murder you."

"
And what's the
quid pro quo
?" I asked him.

He smiled as if he loved the sound of the words. "The
Croft family never comes up. You don't know me or Bannock or anything about
our little deal."

"I can't prove anything about it, anyway," I said. "Why
the hell do you bother to cover it up?"

"You maybe can't prove anything," he said. "But a friend
of yours maybe can."

I thought about it for a moment and smiled. I glanced
over at Bannock, who was staring at me spitefully. "You were born under
a lucky star, boy-o," he said. "Make no mistake about that."

I said, "It's Al Foster, isn't it? He looked into the
case, after all."

"
He did more than look," Lavelle said woefully. "If we
can't work something out, he's going to blow this thing sky high."

"
I'll think about it," I told them, although there wasn't
much to think about. I wanted to expose the Crofts' vicious conspiracy.
But I also wanted to stay out of jail. And when it came down to it, self-interest
won out.

Another week went by and I was released from the hospital.

I couldn't move around very well yet. It had practically
been a miracle that the surgeons had managed to save my arm. It was still
attached—with wire and plastic and metal rods. But it didn't move when
I told it to. Nothing seemed to move right any longer. Not even my
thoughts.

Something about the case—something beyond the savage
bloodshed—had sapped my strength. I'd done my job. I'd gotten the girl
back. But she'd been sent to an asylum, probably for the rest of her life.
And I'd been left with nothing, except for bad dreams. I found myself thinking
about leaving the city—putting some space between me and those dreams.
I began to plan for it; it made the hours pass.

Spring spun on toward summer. The elm trees blossomed
in the back yard. The dogwoods dropped their waxy pink petals on the sidewalks.
And the nights began to smell of honeysuckle.

One Thursday toward the end of May, I drove out to see
Mildred. We'd seen each other at the coroner's inquest. And again at Robbie's
sanity hearing. But we hadn't spoken after that. So I decided to pay her
a last visit—to say goodbye.

There was a blue Mayflower moving van parked in the driveway
when I drove up Eastlawn to her tidy little house. I pulled up to the curb
and watched the men in their green overalls carting out the furniture—the
sofa with the floral print cover, the blue wing-back chairs, paper boxes
full of plates and glasses, the white rocker from Robbie's room. They stacked
it all on the sunny lawn, then hoisted it onto the truck. It embarrassed
me a little to see Mildred's life spread out in pieces for everyone to
see.

I walked up the tar driveway to the front door. It was
open. I stepped inside and stared at the empty room. It looked small and
naked without the furnishings. Mildred was standing in the dining room.
She saw me and her long, horsey face went blank, as if I were just another
stranger. I'd seen that look on her face during the hearing, as if she'd
ceased to understand what the proceedings were about, as if they didn't
connect with anything in her life. She'd blocked something off inside—some
passageway to the heart—and had become a spectator at her daughter's
trial. She hadn't even flinched when the court had sent Robbie to an institution.
It was as if it were all happening to someone else, as if she'd disowned
the experience. But then she was an economical woman and the cost of facing
the truth—of feeling it fully—was simply too dear.

I didn't blame her for that. In my own way, I'd been doing
the same thing. First, when I'd accepted Lavelle's offer. And second, when
I'd begun to think of leaving. I, too, had stopped caring about what couldn't
be helped. But then we were kin, she and I.

She said hello to me. And I asked her why she was moving.

"
The neighbors," she said with vague embarrassment.

"Their looks. Their questions. It's simply too much for
me."

"
And what about Robbie?" I asked gently.

Her face bunched up for a second and her lips trembled.
"I just can't . . " She put a hand to her mouth.

"They'll take care of her," she said after a time. "And
perhaps someday she'll come back to me."

She held out her hand, and I shook it.

Mildred smiled and said, "Goodbye, Harry."

I walked back out into the sunlight, through that maze
of furniture, and down to the street. I stood by the car and stared at
the massive stone church on the comer. I thought of the priest and his
broomstick. And all that dust.

Then I got in the Pinto and drove away.