Death Trap (17 page)

“Did you ever hear any talk about him? The kind of talk that John Tennant is trying to uncover.”

“No, but you know I never did get very close to the townspeople. My friends were all up on the hill. I’m sorry, Hugh. This just doesn’t seem real to me. I can’t make it seem real. He’s close to the Paulsons. Jane Ann could have gotten money from him. He could have seen Jane Ann start out, and he could have known Al would be alone in the car. He could easily have known about my date in Warrentown. Then killed Jane Ann, rubbed bloody clothing on the seat of the Ford, buried the knife and purse in the flower bed. But it’s all so devious, so darn complicated. That keeps it from being real. He had a motive for killing Jane Ann, you say. All right. But why go to such dangerous lengths to make it look as if Al did it? He had nothing against Al. I don’t see how he could have.”

“I know what you mean.”

“All this ought to cheer me up. It doesn’t.”

“I’ll have to take you back, Vicky. I want to go back to Dalton and poke around a little and see if I can pick up any kind of gossip about him.”

“I remember hearing one thing about him that was said sort of in a mean way. I forget who said it. The money for the store, they said, was from her. After her people died, she got the money from the sale of the farm.”

“Every kind of information we can get will help.”

I left her at the door and drove to Dalton. I drove as fast as I dared and managed to get to the high school at two-thirty, just as the kids were getting out. I parked where I had before, and when Nancy Paulson went by I saw her mouth tighten. It was a look of displeasure and it made me doubt that I would see her in the park. Nevertheless, I drove down and parked and found the same bench empty. The afternoon was getting colder. There was a thin smell of winter in the air. The wind had taken so many leaves in the last two days that the square was beginning to have a bare look.

Forty minutes later, as I was beginning to give up hope, I saw her coming. She wore slacks and a short coat. She sat tentatively on the far end of the bench and gave me a cold glare. “I shouldn’t have come. Somebody told my father they saw me talking to you. He wanted to know about you. I had to lie to him. It makes me feel sick when I have to lie to him.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you were one of the new teachers this semester and I just stopped and talked. He thought that was all right.”

“But you came back anyway.”

“I won’t talk to you again. This is the last time. I came to tell you that. So there’s no use of you parking again like you did, I won’t come here.”

“Will you talk now?”

“Not for long.”

“You must have known Ginny Garson.”

“I don’t go around with that crowd.”

“Didn’t you say she was your sister’s best friend?”

“No. Ann Sibley was Jane Ann’s best friend. Ann is nice. Ginny was a bad influence on Jane Ann.” I could see by the primness of her expression, the tilt of her averted face, that it was pointless to try to remind her of the things she had told me before. She had slipped away from me. Her voice was lighter, more childish.

“Do you feel sorry about what happened to Ginny?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It was a terrible thing, I guess. But like I said, I didn’t know her hardly.”

I could well understand Alister’s frequent impatience with her. This was the immature mind in action. I wondered if he had sensed the true depth of her sexual fears. I despaired of getting very far with her. I had somehow lost her co-operation. Yet I had to find out if she had any pertinent information about Billy Mackin.

“Your family and the Mackins are very close, aren’t they?”

She turned her head and stared at me, apparently confused by the change of pace. “Oh, yes,” she said. “He lived in our house when we were little. We own a camp together. He is my father’s very best friend in all the world.” The last sentence had a curious sing-song intonation as though it had been memorized. She stared right at me, which was unusual for her. Usually she would meet my gaze with quick, flickering little glances. Her eyes were wide and solemn and without guile. For a moment I could not recall what that look reminded me of, and then I remembered. In Panama I had a house boy who was a paragon of cleanliness and honesty with but one exception. He dipped into every opened bottle of liquor and every opened carton of cigarettes. When accused he would look at me in exactly that same way. It was the overly bland look of guilt, of the uncomfortable lie. But this could not be a lie. Richard Paulson and Bill Mackin
were
close friends.

She looked away. I was troubled. I did not know how to pursue the subject further.

“Why did you look at me like that, Nancy?”

“Like what? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Billy Mackin is your father’s best friend. Did Jane Ann like him?”

She turned again toward me, far too bland and honest and convincing. “Jane Ann liked Billy very much. I like him too. He is a wonderful man. He is my father’s best friend.”

“You’re looking at me that way again.”

She flushed with both confusion and anger. “I just don’t know what you’re talking about. Or why you’re talking about Uncle Billy.”

“Is that what you call him?”

“We used to call him that. Now we—I—call him Billy on account of he said he liked it better.”

I could think of only one possibility that might account for her curious reaction. Suppose that family tradition required her to feel fond of Billy Mackin. Yet she despised him. She was cowed by her father. She could force herself to believe, on the surface of her mind, that she liked Billy. Then the subconscious pressure of her hatred for him would give her that too bland look of the unpracticed liar. And it would bring that sing-song quality into her voice, that flavor of childish chant.

“And you like him too?”

“Of course I like him. He has always been good to us. I don’t know why you keep asking me about him. He is my father’s very best friend and he lived with us when we were little.”

I could see no way to penetrate the wall. And I knew it was a wall. I sensed it had been built up over a long period of time. I wished I could remove one stone and look on the other side of that wall.

“Has Billy Mackin ever given you money?”

“Yes, and other things too. Presents on my birthday and Christmas. We give him presents too. And Angela.”

“Angela is very sick, isn’t she?”

“Yes. And Billy is very upset. She’s been sick a long time. They say she is going to die.” Her manner was more that of eleven than eighteen,

“Did Jane Ann ever go in Billy’s store?”

“Yes. We both went to Billy’s store. Lots of times.”

I leaned slightly toward the look of wide-eyed innocence. “Do you go there at all now?”

“No,” she whispered, and she had a look as though a shadow had moved behind her eyes, drifted quickly across her conscious mind.

“Why not?” I asked sharply.

“I do go there. To buy things. Yes, I go there.” There was a shrillness in her voice.

“Then why did you say you didn’t?”

“I didn’t say that. You—you’re getting me all mixed up. I don’t know what you—”

“You’re mixed up, Nancy. But I didn’t mix you up. You’re mixed up all the way.”

“I’m not. I’m not!”

“Then why should you be starting to cry? I’m only asking you about your father’s best friend. You ought to be able to talk about Billy Mackin without getting all mixed up.”

“But you—”

I leaned closer, and made my voice harsh. I punished her with my voice. “I’m not mixing you up. You can answer simple questions. Why do you hate Billy Mackin? What happened to make you hate him?”

“He is my father’s—”

“—very best friend. And you hate his guts. Why?”

I don’t know what I expected. I wasn’t prepared for what happened. Her face and body went rigid. Her eyes focused beyond me for a moment and then rolled up until I could see but thin slices of the bottom of the irises. Her jaw locked and the muscles at the corners of her jaw bulged against the skin. Her hands had been resting on her thighs. The fingers curled back, almost impossibly far back. Cords in her neck stood out. Her breathing was fast and shallow and very noisy.

“Nancy!” I said. There was no change. I put my hand on her shoulder to shake her. Her shoulder should have been soft. It was like stone. I was frightened. It looked like some sort of fit. Her color was very bad.

I heard footsteps approaching rapidly. I turned and saw Mr. Paulson hurrying toward us. He had put a coat on. He hadn’t buttoned it. The white butcher apron showed where the coat was parted. His face was ghastly white, mouth so bloodlessly tight it was like a half-healed scar. The wind had disarranged the careful camouflage of hair over the bald head. Billy Mackin was twenty feet behind him, hurrying along in a gray topcoat, gray felt hat with small green feather in the band.

“Nancy!” Paulson roared. She started to come out of it even before he grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. She looked dazed, as though coming out of deep sleep, looked around as though to orient herself. He pushed her with a vicious explosion of strength. She stumbled and very nearly fell. “Get on home. I’ll tend to you later, young lady.”

She walked slowly away, not looking back. Her walk was somnambulistic.

I had stood up. The bench was behind me. Paulson and Mackin faced me, side by side.

“Why are you bothering my daughter?” Paulson yelled into my face.

PAULSON WAS A BIG MAN, and so angry that he shook, and his voice shook. Mackin looked scornfully amused. There wasn’t a soul within sixty feet of us.

“I told you, Dick,” Billy Mackin said. “A meddler. I thought there was something funny about him. I described him to Perry Score. He’s a pal of the Landys.”

“What did you want with my daughter? She lied to me. She said you were a teacher.”

“I was asking her some questions about Jane Ann.”

“What is your name?”

“His name is MacReedy, Dick. He’s staying at the Inn. He’s the one who was hanging around the Garson girl before the Smith kid killed her. He’s the one who beat up on Garson and the Smith kid.”

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Let me answer him one time, Mackin,” I said. “I’m here to prove Alister Landy innocent.”

He stared at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Innocent?”

“Why not? Other innocent people have been convicted. Not often, but it happens.”

“It didn’t this time.”

“Why argue with him, Dick?” Billy said. “It isn’t hard to figure. He’s trying to stir up trouble enough so maybe that shyster Tennant can get another stay of execution. That will put MacReedy here in big with Vicky Landy. What the hell did you come around and bother me with a bunch of lies for, MacReedy? You make a lousy real estate agent.”

I looked at him as steadily as I could. “I wanted to find out what kind of a man you are.”

He grinned at me. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was certainly disarming. The hint of the feline behind the grin was very remote. “Trying to elect a suspect, maybe? You must be hard up. Now ask me where I was at the time the crime was committed.”

“All right, Mackin. Where were you?”

“In the store. Back in the office. Working on the books. A dozen people saw the light on. Now try somebody else. Maybe the Chief of Police did it.”

“Be quiet, Billy,” Paulson said. “MacReedy, I’ve got a lot of friends in this town. I don’t care what you may think your legal rights are. You may have a hell of a lot less rights than you think. You’ve molested my daughter.”

“She was willing to talk to me.”

“I lost one girl. I’m not fixing to—”

“She was lost as far as you are concerned a long time before somebody killed her, Mr. Paulson. She was a lonely, mixed-up kid.”

The butcher hands flexed. His voice was nearly a whisper, almost lost in the wind and the sound of the dry leaves. “She was evil. She was a foulness.”

“Easy, Dick. Easy,” Billy Mackin said, putting his hand on the older man’s arm.

“And Nancy’s spirit is broken,” I said. “She hasn’t got enough guts left to admit to herself she hates you. The Landy boy was her last chance to get clear of you.”

Paulson raised a fist as though to strike me. He did not raise it in the way a man usually raises a fist. He lifted it high, as though he held a mace, or a crusader’s sword. He looked as though he wanted to strike me down into the earth. I stepped back. His expression changed. The white look changed to a gray pallor. He slumped and his mouth opened. He pressed a hand against his chest, under his heart. He took three tottering steps to the bench, Mackin supporting him, and sat down slowly, arms braced on his knees, chin on his chest.

Mackin looked at him, moved over to one side, motioned me toward him. I approached boldly.

“Lay off him. He hasn’t been well. I don’t care what games you want to play, but leave him out of them, and stay away from Nancy.”

“That’s an order?”

“I think you’d better get out of town.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“You’re not making any friends.”

“It doesn’t worry me.”

He tilted his head and looked up at me. “That was quite an act, last night. An amateur act. I don’t know what the hell you had in mind.” The grin wrinkles were very evident around his eyes. There was a little nick in his chin where he had evidently cut himself shaving. He looked compact, handsome, plausible, likable. “Actually, MacReedy, and level with me now—did you have any crazy notion I’d killed that girl?”

I waited long seconds before I answered. I had the curious feeling of a man who, showing off for his girl, puts his hand inside the bars where a tiger is sleeping.

“I know you killed her, Mackin. And I know why.”

There was no change of posture or expression. I thought I saw something shift behind his eyes. It was half seen. It made me remember a job we had in the southwest, in rattlesnake country. I was climbing a hill. The sun was so bright hot that it made the rocks blaze white and made the shadows deep and black. I saw the heavy shadow in a pocket of the rocks and I thought of snakes and as I had the thought I saw the hint of movement, a slight change in the shades of blackness. I fired into the pocket. The rattler came writhing, spasming out, slithering down the rocks, thick belly punctured. I put the third slug through his head.