Death Trap (22 page)

“Eight hundred dollars!” he cried. “What do you think I am? I’d slip her a five, sometimes a ten. If she was getting that kind of money, she was getting it from somebody else. I guess you know about the time she stayed in that fraternity house. There’s some pretty well-to-do kids up on the hill. Maybe she was peddling. Maybe she stole it. I didn’t give her that kind of money.”

I was forced to respect the quickness of his mind and the plausibility of his manner. He had covered himself by making a minor admission. It began to seem incredible to me that this man could be what we thought him to be.

Score said warmly, “Bill, these people seem to—”

“I am conducting this,” Tennant said sharply.

Score shrugged. “Go ahead. Have fun.”

I looked at Mackin. Score’s interruption seemed to give him strength.

Tennant turned more pages. “You claim that you were working at your store on the night of the crime. The lights were on in your back office, as well as the night light in the store proper. You were seen leaving the rear of the store early in the evening.”

Mackin banged the flat of his hand on the table top. “Now just a moment! I can see where you’re heading. This is utterly ridiculous. I do not have to sit here and be accused of anything.”

Tennant looked at him mildly. “Then leave.”

Mackin eyed the notebook. He seemed as though ready to leave, then settled down again. “I’ll help all I can. But I go on record as saying this is absurd.”

“You’re on record,” Arma said quietly.

“It’s hard to remember that far back. Maybe I did leave the store and return. I keep some of my records at home. Sometimes I find I need some records from the house. So I leave and get them and come back. It happens often. I may have left that night to do that or to go get some coffee. I really couldn’t remember. Does it matter?”

“Some of your records are kept on three by five file cards, are they not?”

Mackin looked at Tennant with perfect blankness. “Eh? Yes. The charge account file. Some of the inventory records.”

“Unruled cards?”

“I don’t get it. Yes.”

“You stock several brands of glue and paste, don’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“Would you be willing to turn over blank samples of your card file stock and samples of the glue and paste you stock for laboratory analysis?”

Mackin shook his head in a bewildered way. “This I don’t get. Sure. I’d do that, but I don’t see what it could mean.”

Score shifted restlessly. Tennant let the silence grow. He nodded. He put the notebook down, and said, “In all fairness to you, Mackin, I want you to be
very
careful of your answer to this next question. Before you came to Dalton, were you ever in trouble with the law?”

The phrasing of the question was clever. If Tennant had no information it would be safe to say “no” quickly; or if he had been in no trouble, the “no” would be automatic. But if he had, he could assume from Tennant’s warning that Tennant knew about it. And after three taut seconds had passed, Mackin realized he had waited too long. I saw a first gleam of sweat on his upper lip.

“It was one of those things,” he said. “I got caught in a box. A town in Indiana. I looked too crummy to get a hitch. I was hitting the farms, trying to work for a handout and get a chance to clean up. This woman got pretty friendly. I guess you know what I mean. Then she must have looked out the window and seen her old man coming in from the field. She started screaming and carrying on and she tore her own clothes. I ran for it. They picked me up in the next town. I was booked for rape, but they didn’t want to fuss and after ten days they gave me a release to sign, they drove me over the state line and beat hell out of me. Any kid could have gotten caught in the same box.”

Tennant was making the most effective use of silences. Mackin lighted another cigarette. His hands shook slightly.

“Nothing else?” Tennant asked.

“No,” Mackin said too quickly.

“You’re positive of that?”

Mackin shrugged. “You bum around, you get booked for vagrancy. California is tough. I’m not counting those times.”

“Wasn’t there something more than vagrancy? Certainly you can remember.”

Mackin’s face darkened. “Nothing else. Nothing.” But I think that even Score sensed he was lying. Score’s expression had changed. He was looking at Mackin warily and he seemed puzzled.

Tennant nodded at Vicky. She got up and went to the other door. I did not turn to watch Nancy come in. I watched Mackin. For just a moment his eyes narrowed and his mouth tautened, and then his expression was normal again. Nancy sat at Score’s right, between him and Tennant.

Tennant said, “My dear, I know this is going to be very unpleasant for you. But, believe me, if I can help it, nothing you say will go further than this room. Tell us what happened to you on that Labor Day week end when you were eleven.”

Nancy moistened her lips. Her face was chalky. She did not look toward Mackin. She kept her face turned away. She told the story in a small emotionless voice, in short sentences, with little descriptive detail. But it was a powerful and frightening story.

“Can you remember how Mr. Mackin was dressed?”

“Yes. He had been working on the roof. He had on tan pants. He didn’t have a shirt on. He was sweaty. His eyes were funny.”

“What do you remember afterwards?”

“I was just walking. I didn’t know where I was going. My throat hurt. I carried my dress for a long time and I remember I stopped and put it on.”

“You are certain now that it was Billy Mackin?” She turned her head very slowly and she looked at him with dead eyes, eyes too old for her face. “It was Uncle Billy.”

At a nod from Tennant, Vicky went around the table and got her and took her back to her mother. She resumed her seat. We all looked at Mackin. He seemed on the verge of speaking several times. He slumped lower in the chair. His face had become masklike.

“She’s mistaken,” he said.

“Do you really think so?” Tennant asked gently.

“I—I get a little out of control. I mean I used to. I’ve outgrown it. I fought it. I’m all right now. Have been for years. I didn’t do anything to her.”

“Except nearly scaring her out of her mind.”

“I heard somebody coming. I didn’t do anything.” He mumbled the words. I could barely hear him.

I knew we had enough to drive him out of the town, to collapse the personality he had built up. But not enough to save Alister. I knew that there had to be some hard blow that would shatter the whole structure.

“You didn’t do anything,” Tennant said. “You still wanted her. You waited a long time. Nobody else was going to have her. Now it’s all ruined for you, isn’t it?”

Mackin seemed to realize how much damage had been done him. He looked alarmed. He straightened up and the plausible smile was back. “You can’t condemn a man for a mistake a long time ago. I’m respected in this town. I’ve got good friends here.”

Score spoke up. “You
were
respected. You
had
friends.”

“You won’t be able to stay here, Mackin,” Tennant said. “You’ll be back on the road again. It’s all gone now.”

“You people can’t do that to me!”

“We won’t. The town will,” Higel said.

I imagine that Tennant had been waiting for Mackin to become highly agitated. In a sharp voice he said, “And why were you stupid enough to pick Jane Ann up under a street light?”

“It was dark where—” And in a gesture like that of a child, he clamped his right hand over his mouth. His eyes stared at us over the tense hand. His eyes closed and his hand dropped into his lap. His head sagged. I could see his chest lift and fall with his breathing. There was silence in the room. Tears ran down Vicky’s cheeks. Score looked as though somebody had hit him in the belly. Arma was cool, professional, remote. Tennant merely looked weary. He closed the notebook and put it back in his pocket.

“All right,” Mackin said without opening his eyes. “All right.” His voice was subdued, resigned.

“From the beginning,” Tennant said.

“All right. I heard them talking. Nancy and the Howard kid. Robby Howard. I heard them talking about running away. Jane Ann was being punished. Dick had locked her in the top of the boathouse. I didn’t know that. There was a little window in front. She could see the dock. I sat on the edge of the dock. He came swimming.”

Tennant and I exchanged puzzled glances.

“I pushed him under with my feet. He was a strong kid. He should have swum away. He kept coming back. I kept pushing him under. He tried to grab my ankles. Then he didn’t try any more. I saw him for a while under the water and then I couldn’t see him any more. I didn’t know she saw it. She kept hanging around me. I didn’t know what she had on her mind. It wasn’t until Christmas that year that it started. She told me; and I gave her money to keep her quiet. She kept asking for more. She didn’t have any proof. But it would have made trouble. I shouldn’t have given her money. That made it look bad if she told later. I took it out of the register each time.”

He shielded his eyes with his hand. It was several moments before he resumed. He explained how carefully he had planned it, how many false starts he had made, and how the timing had finally worked out.

When he started to tell of the actual killing, Vicky got up and left the room. I followed her out, closing the door behind me, shutting out the drone of the tired, defeated voice. I caught her and held her in my arms. She was trembling.

There isn’t much more. When Alister was released, he had to be institutionalized. We were told that the prognosis was favorable, and that a complete recovery could be expected in a few months. They said it would be better to permit no visitors. And the man in charge of the case, a Dr. Dougherty, was severe with Vicky for having over-protected Alister. He told her to live her own life.

We found a place for a honeymoon. Down in Pine Island Sound below Boca Grande, a place called Cabbage Key, run by nice people. There she relearned the knack of gaiety, but there is still a cloud over my bride. It dwindles month by month; but there will be, for all her life, that streak of darkness, that stain left upon her by disaster.

After my marriage my employers began to look more kindly upon me. Vicky made a good impression on the staff. They gave me my own job to run, a piece of a turnpike in North Carolina.

Now it is April, and that black week is six months ago, and Mackin still awaits execution. His wife died five months ago. Alister visited with us a week before going up to Philadelphia where he will do graduate work. There is no arrogance left in him. He is, perhaps, too silent. He told us about Nancy. They plan to be married in the summer. It can be either a very good marriage or a very bad one. It is up to the two of them.

It is April and spring comes early to the Carolinas. We have rented this dim little house full of borax furniture. Vicky does not seem to mind that we will live like nomads for many years. It is Saturday afternoon and I have come home from the dusty job and showered. From the bedroom window I can see her out in the small back yard. She is sitting on her heels, earnestly grubbing in what may turn out to be a flower bed. The trowel is red and her sunsuit is yellow and her back is tanned by spring sun. She looks very intent and very delectable. Her little bottom is trim and handsome in yellow linen. I feel a pleasant sense of possession, of responsibility. I feel extraordinarily lucky.

“Hey!” I say through the screen.

She tilts her head and squints up at me. “Hey to you.”

“Come on up here a minute.”

“What for?”

I growl. I consider it quite a respectable effort. She gives a large and knowing sigh, burlesques great reluctance, discards garden trowel and trudges toward the back door. Seven seconds later she is in my arms.