Death Trap (3 page)

“I want to try to help.”

Her voice became hard. “I do not want that kind of help. I don’t care to be helped because, strange as it may seem to me, your conscience might hurt a little. It must hurt, or you wouldn’t have come here. The whole thing seems odd to me.”

“All right. Get out all the little whips. So it wasn’t like that when I walked in here. It wasn’t like that at all. Your face was different. Your voice was soft. It was all right to have me hold you.”

She flushed and lifted her chin. “Don’t get stupid ideas from that kind of weakness, Hugh. I’m vulnerable right now.”

I hit my fist on the packing case. “Skip all that. Forget all that. Maybe it’s conscience. It probably is. Is that such a bad thing? I want to help you. What are you going to do? Where are you going?”

“I—I thought I’d go up and be near him until—” She twisted her face away, then covered her face with her hands. Then came the small, lost, stifled sound of tears. I sat there awkwardly until I could stand it no longer and then I went over and sat beside her and tried to touch her on the shoulder, turn her into my arms. She moved violently away from me. Then she got up quickly, hiding her face, and left the room, going into the other part of the apartment. I stood up, knowing I could not leave. I looked around. They had apparently used the conservatory as a living-room. Out the back windows I could see two cars parked in the rear of the house, a high old Dodge, and a Chevy coupé about five years old. I heard water running. I waited for a time and then began to pack the rest of the books.

It must have been ten minutes later that she spoke, standing behind me. “Please don’t do that. Please go, Hugh. I mean it.”

I had been trying to think of some way to tell her. I stood up and turned and said, “I’ll go. But please let me do one thing.”

“No.”

“It’s a very simple thing. It won’t cost you anything. I want you to sit over there beside me and I want to be able to hold your hand and I want to talk to you for maybe ten minutes. You don’t have to say anything.”

“No.”

“Please, Vicky. I’m begging you. I’m asking you very humbly. Please.”

“All right.”

She sat primly. She extended her hand to me with as much warmth as though she were reaching it out to touch nastiness. I took it in both of mine. It was cool, dry and utterly flaccid. And I did not know how to start.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ve been in Spain. I’ve worked with those people. I like them. They’ve got pride. They’ve got self-respect. And a kind of passionate honesty. There was this boy, Felipe. A village boy. We taught him to drive a truck. After we started paving we put him on one of the big mixers. He was bright and quick. He took a lot of pride in how fast he could work the controls, drop the scoop and so on. When he came to work with us, he came with his best friend, Raoul. Raoul wasn’t too bright. He wasn’t good around equipment. He was tough and strong and willing, but he didn’t fit into the machine age.

“Listen to what happened. There are guards, metal guards, where the big scoop comes down. So nobody can walk under the scoop from the side, by accident. But somebody could walk in from the front. So we have a mirror rigged. The operator is supposed to glance in the mirror before dropping the scoop. It comes down fast and hard. It weighs maybe a ton and a half. But on the job , the mirror gets coated with dust, and the operator ignores it.

“Felipe was running the mixer, full of pride. Raoul walked under from the front. Felipe dropped the scoop on him. He lived for two days and then died. Felipe was with him every minute of the two days and with him when he died. The next day I caught Felipe just in time. He’d wound wire around his arm as a crude tourniquet. He had an ax from stores. He was about to take his right hand off at the wrist. The right hand was the one on the control that drops the scoop. It was an infantile reaction. It was a stupid thing to try to do. It was remorse. And grief. I stopped him.”

Her hand stirred in mine. I could not look at her face. “I don’t understand.”

“I couldn’t cut my heart out, Vicky. I couldn’t go backward in time and mend things. I know there are things you can never mend. I’ll just tell you this. I’ve been ashamed. For three years. I’m not the person I was then. I’ve thought of you for three years. Sometimes I’ve been able to forget you for as long as two weeks. But you always came back, and everything is just as vivid.”

“I hope—I hope your three years have been hell.”

Startled, I looked into her face. Tears stood on dark lashes and the blue eyes were hot and angry. “But, Vicky, I—”

She snatched her hand away and jumped up, the look of weariness gone. “My three years have been hell. How many times do you think I told myself you were cruel, sly and unimaginative? That you just played a part to help you get what you wanted? That you were not worth pain, or a second thought? That you were a part of growing up, my growing up? Now you come back. I want the courage to spit on you. I—I—don’t want to love you any more. I’m so dirty awful tired of loving you, Hugh.”

She sagged and half fell forward into my arms, her face contorted with pain. It was a curious experience to hold her like that. She was like a transformer taking too heavy a load. She was taut, trembling so intensely it seemed more like a hum than a physical reaction. I sensed that she was on the edge of breakdown, that the world had been too much for her. I held her for a long time. Her breathing slowed and deepened. I turned her until I could see her face. It was slack, lips parted. Emotional exhaustion had pushed her over the edge and she had fallen into a deep sleep. She was limp and boneless as a doll. I left her there and walked back into the other rooms. I found her bedroom. I turned the bed down, then went back to her. I took off her sandals, then carried her in, put her in the bed, covered her lightly, and closed the door gently as I left the bedroom.

I went back out and picked up one of the sandals and studied it, and tapped it against the palm of my hand. Love makes a curious transformation in physical objects. Another woman’s sandals, scuffed as these were, with worn straps, with buckle marks on the straps, would have been meaningless. But these were hers and these were dear. There could be nothing about her that was not endearing. A smudge on her cheek, a blemish on her skin, a broken bra strap, lipstick on the edge of a cup—all the things that, had they referred to someone else, would have been nothing. Love creates its own symbolism, and touches the meanest things with magic.

I do not think I had ever felt so good in my life.

I continued the packing, being very quiet. I did all I could see to do. By mid afternoon I was ravenous. I heard her call my name, faintly, tentatively. I went quickly to her. She sat on the bed.

“This is—so silly. It’s like I dreamed things. But I feel all soft and weak. As if I couldn’t stand up.”

“You’ve been going on nerve too long. Don’t try to get up.”

She smiled and I went to her. “Is it true?” she asked.

I nodded solemnly. “All true. I love you. That’s all I had to say three years ago.”

“That’s all you had to say, Hugh.”

“And I was too stupid to say it. It was against the rules.”

“What rules?”

“You wouldn’t understand. It’s a game I gave up. I got too old for the game.”

I kissed her, and the second time I kissed her, her lips were salt. I made her stay there. I went out and made some purchases and drove the car back and fixed food for her.

After we had eaten, I said, “Now you’ll let me help you.”

She studied me for a long time. “There’s only one way you can help me. I don’t want to say this to you, but I have to. Maybe I am too emotionally involved with Al. Maybe we were too close, closer than a brother and sister should be. I want—everything for us, Hugh. But I’m not going to be any good. I can feel that. When they—kill him, part of me is going to die and never be any good to you. If he lived, I think I could in time transfer that part to you. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think I do, Vicky.”

“I’m very earnest about this. Maybe the part that will die will be—how to be gay. How to laugh. You see—” She touched my hand. “—if this is a true thing now between us, Hugh, and you help me, it will be helping us.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“No matter what I feel or what you feel, I won’t inflict on you the woman I will be after they—do that to him. And I mean that, with all my heart. Nothing can change my mind.”

And I knew nothing could.

“So how do I help, Vicky? What do I do?”

Her thin fingers tightened on my wrist and her eyes were direct and fierce and blue. “He didn’t do it, Hugh. He didn’t do it.”

“But—”

“I know. I know the way it all sounds. I know the terrible sound of it. He didn’t do it. And there’s nothing I can do to prove he didn’t. Maybe you can. I don’t know. But you see—It’s our only chance, the only chance we’ll ever have. I won’t go away, Hugh. I’ll stay here, so I can help you. And—we won’t have much time.”

“How much?”

She whispered and she looked like a ghost. “Ten days, Hugh. They’ve set the date again. Ten days. They’ll do it on Monday, on the twenty-fourth. In the morning.”

I TOOK A ROOM THAT NIGHT at the MacClelland Inn. The last thing she said to me as I left her was that she felt as though she had begun to live again. No matter how I tried to caution her, she could not stem the rising tide of her own optimism. It was a bigger responsibility than I cared to have. I knew that if I could do nothing, and I expected to be able to do nothing, the blow of his execution would be greater than if I had never come to see her. I could not endorse her faith in his innocence. I knew that whenever such a crime occurs, those close to the criminal find it impossible to believe that such a thing could be done by someone they have known and loved.

And I knew my own limitations. I was no experienced investigator. I did not know this town well, or these people. And Alister had certainly inspired no trust or affection in me. Also I anticipated that there would be a lot of feeling against anyone who tried to help him. On the other side of the ledger, I had hired and fired and managed a lot of human beings. You learn how to improve your snap judgment. You learn how you have to lean on this one and tease that one. I knew that I wasn’t in any sense what could be called a timid man. And I had some money—at least enough to finance my own investigation.

I had stayed at the MacClelland Inn before for a day or two while locating a room when I had first come to the Dalton area. It was a big place and it had once been a private home. It was right on the square, a white frame place with good plantings and a comfortable colonial look about it. The furniture in the lounge was authentic antique. The rooms were large, comfortable and furnished in taste. I had eaten there many times, particularly when the brass had been in town. At that time I had gotten friendly with the owner, Charles Staubs, and his wife, Mary. I didn’t know if they would remember me. He was a graduate of a good school of hotel management, a hard-working guy with sense enough to conceal the wry and somewhat cynical side of his nature from the cash customers who wouldn’t appreciate it.

Mary came out to the small desk in the hallway when I rang the bell on the desk. She was a dark-haired comfortable woman. She had done the decorating, and I had suspected, three years ago, that it was Mary who kept a firm dark eye on the finances.

She glanced at me curiously. I asked for a room and she said they could give me one. I signed the register card. She looked at it and said, “Of course! How stupid! In this business I’m supposed to remember faces, aren’t I? Are you building us another superhighway, Hugh?”

“Just passing through.”

“I hope you’ve eaten. The dining-room just closed ten minutes ago.”

“I’ve eaten. Charlie around?”

“He’s in the office making out some kind of a report. State unemployment or something.”

“If he isn’t too tied up, I’ll buy him a drink down in the Brig in about ten minutes.”

“I think he’ll be glad to break away.”

I went up to the room and unpacked my stuff with the efficiency of a great deal of practice. My possessions are down to a severe minimum. Apart from clothing—and not too much of that—I have a thin black folder of photographs of jobs I have worked on, crews I have worked with, and a few photographs from way back. Then there are some personal papers: birth certificate, Navy discharge, diploma. And there is the revolver, a Smith and Wesson .38 in a spring clip belt holster worn shiny from wearing it on the jobs where you had to wear it, on those jobs where the junglies would come out and snatch a can of gas on the dead run.

I went on down to the basement, to the Brig. When I had been in town before it had been a favorite hangout of the kids from Sheridan College. The Staubs had acquired somewhere the crude iron door from an early American cell and incorporated it into the decor. The walls were hung with antique manacles, whips, goads and other implements of lusty pioneer punishment. There were two sets of authentic stocks. The decor was macabre, but it seemed to appeal to the college trade. Six college kids sat at one of the big trestle tables drinking beer and talking in low tones. There were two others at one of the smaller tables. I had expected to see a lot more business on a Friday night. I had a drink at the bar and in a few minutes Charlie came up beside me. We shook hands. He acted genuinely glad to see me. We took our drinks over to a far corner.

“Where’s all your business, Charlie?”

He shrugged. “It’ll come back, I hope. I guess you can say the village is being sort of boycotted by the kids up on the hill. Can’t blame them too much. You know, in the old days there used to be a lot of trouble between the town and the college. It had all died out. Then we had the murder. Before they caught up with the Landy kid, things were rough around here. Town toughs beat up some of the hill kids, and vice versa. The college fathers declared the village off limits. Before that happened some of my more stupid fellow merchants were giving the college kids the business. Now when they get a night out, they go over to Warrentown. But they’re beginning to drift back. It’s hard to preserve a united front through the summer vacation. But don’t think this town is going to forget quick.” He shook his head sadly. Charlie is a balding man, thickening around the middle, with the bland wise eyes of the professional host.

“Everybody is pretty certain the Landy kid did it?”

He gave me a shocked look. “My God! Certain? There isn’t a single shred of doubt.”

“His sister doesn’t think he did it.”

He tilted his head to one side and looked at me quizzically. “Now I remember. I should have remembered that, Hugh. You and Vicky. And stars in her eyes. You know, I guessed wrong on that one. I never thought it would blow up. You both used to look so sold on each other.”

“Maybe it’s starting up again.”

“It would be good for her. You ought to get her out of this town. People go out of their way to give her a bad time. There’s no sense to it, but they do it. The way they act, you’d think she handed him the knife and made the suggestion. There’s even dirty talk about them sharing the apartment. A boy and his sister. Imagine! Get her out of town if you can. Where have you been working?”

“Spain, ever since I left here. To get back to Vicky, I understand the college fired her.”

“Fast. They never stick their neck out up there on the hill. An aristocracy of fear. That’s what they’ve got up there. A lot of tired little feuds and jealousies and cliques. They were delighted when Frank Leader put together the airtight case against Landy. It took the heat off the school. So they helped jump on the kid. You know, big thoughtful opinions about how the kid was emotionally unstable, brilliant but erratic.”

“Charlie, I think this must be about the fifth time I’ve ever had a chance to sit around and talk to you, but I have the feeling we know each other pretty well.”

“An ominous approach, friend.”

“I can ask you this. I’ve promised Vicky that I would dig around a little and see if I can find something that will take Alister off the hook.”

“Why didn’t you make some other promises too? Like gnawing down all the elms in the square with your own little teeth.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

Charlie turned his glass slowly between thumb and forefinger. “I’ll make a classic understatement, Hugh. I’ll say that it was an unpopular crime around these parts. Jane Ann was a pretty kid. This is a town that goes for kids. We’ve got good schools, good recreation programs. There isn’t much juvenile delinquency. But there are some bad apples. The kids at Sheridan are, for the most part, good kids. I’ll tell you how we all feel. We feel as if we had a monster among us. We didn’t know it. Now we know it can happen, and did happen, and, following the logical pattern, can happen again. There can be other monsters. Dalton isn’t immune any more. We don’t look at each other the same way we used to. But get this. We do feel a little comfortable that at least we got the monster isolated and out of the way. Anybody who goes around with any idea of trying to prove he didn’t do it is going to be very unpopular. Because that implies that we’ve still got a monster running around loose. Until Frank Leader proved Landy did it, you never saw a town locked up like this one was.”

“Suppose I have to try?”

“Then be just as discreet as you can be.”

“Can you think of any starting place?”

“If I could think of one, the defense could have thought of one. That defense lawyer was good. John Tennant. I hear it hasn’t done him much good to have taken the case. Maybe you could talk to him. It might give you some kind of a lead.”

I picked Vicky up at eight o’clock on Saturday morning. The old woman glowered at us from a front window of the house. Vicky looked better. She said she had slept deeply for the first time in months. We had breakfast at a roadside place ten miles out of Dalton on the Warrentown road. It was one of a chain operation, comfortable, clean, efficient and characterless. I had not yet made a complete adjustment to having been away for two and a half years. It seemed to me that standardization had been accelerated, perhaps by television. There was less difference between the new cars, between the women, between all conversations. All seemed predigested and tasteless. I knew that in this place we could get ham and eggs that would not differ one milligram in weight or one half degree in serving heat from the same dish in the same chain a thousand miles away. It was all predictable, all designed to eliminate risk. I looked across the small table at her. She was not a part of this standardization. Her mind did not work in the flat, trite, acceptable ways. In our own way we were both aliens, nonconforming, bored with all the reassurances of a cooky-cut world.

And, with an animal egocentricity, I knew that we were looked at, speculated about. The dark and lovely girl who looked as though she were recovering from some illness. And that deeply tanned man, gray eyes pale in his face. See them talk so intently. See her bend forward, with earnest mouth and look of pleading.

“The first lawyer was from Dalton. His name is Cowan. When he found out what evidence there was, he backed out. He said it was too small a town. He named some people in Warrentown who might take it. I asked him the name of the best man. He said the best was John Tennant but he didn’t think Tennant would touch it. I drove over and talked to Mr. Tennant. I called him that then. I call him John now. He became a friend. He said he would have to talk to Alister first. They had put Alister in the County Jail in Warrentown. He went down and talked to him for a long time. And then he said he would take it. I won’t tell you any more. I want you to talk to him,”

“Should we make an appointment?”

“Perhaps we should. I’ll call from here.”

She didn’t have change so I gave her some. I waited at the table over a fresh cup of coffee, watched her walk away from me toward the booth. She wore a gray sweater with an intricate stitch, a gray flannel skirt, very short. Her dark hair was not lustrous as I remembered it, gleaming with health. It was dulled and lifeless. But in her walk, despite the ten pounds she had lost, there was the same unconscious, unplanned provocation.

As I settled back to wait, I overheard a snatch of conversation from two booths away, a heavy voice. “—her all right. It never got in the papers. And they didn’t have to bring it up at the trial. But you figure it out. They were living there in the apartment together. I got the cold dope. It wasn’t normal, Ed, It wasn’t normal at all.” The voice was oily, insinuating.

“Who’s the guy with her?”

“They locked up the other one. She’s got to have somebody. She’s that type. She’s the one got the kid so heated up he went out and—”

I turned all the way around. The conversation stopped. The man was in his fifties, with a loose gray face, small avid eyes. His companion, with his back to me, was thin and redheaded and going bald. The man licked his lips and looked away. The thin one turned around and stared at me.

I was about to turn back. I had myself under control. Everything was fine. But the redhead had to say, “Something on your mind?”

“Not a thing. Want a suggestion?”

Grayface was emboldened by his friend’s antagonism. “Not from you, friend.”

“I thought you boys might go get a good dry-cleaning job. On the inside. A nice mental detergent maybe.”

The waitress hovered, obviously nervous. Redhead was the one with the guts. Or maybe he thought all scenes of violence were limited to Saturday night taverns. He got up and came to my table. He leaned a freckled hand on the table. He had a wide loose mouth, a rasping voice, a florid necktie without tie clip.

“You need a lesson in manners,” he said. “And maybe you need better taste in girl friends. That floozy you’re with—”

His tone was loud. All the clink and rustle of the sounds of eating had ceased. I do not know how he planned to finish the sentence. I pushed his left hand off the table with my left hand. Simultaneously I grabbed the dangling gaudy necktie with my right hand and yanked down as hard as I could. He came down hard. His teeth clicked as his chin hit the formica table top. His eyes rolled vaguely and he sat gently on the restaurant floor. I put money on top of the check, got up and stepped across his legs. I turned and looked at Grayface. He stayed put, reaching nervously and absently for his coffee, looking everywhere but at me or his friend. The manager had appeared from somewhere. I went to the phone booth. Vicky smiled at me and hung up and came out of the booth. She saw the manager helping redhead to his feet.

“What happened?”

“Let’s get out of here.”

A mile down the road she said, “It was about me, wasn’t it? I mean that’s what started it.”

“Yes. Things they said.”

“Don’t let it bother you, Hugh. They say things loud so I can hear. I don’t let myself listen. It’s filth. I know why it started. Silly reasons. Al and I were close. You know that. I guess I was the only person in the world he could be halfway normal with, affectionate with. Sometimes, when we walked, we would hold hands. It was brother-sister, and a sort of reassurance to him. Nothing else. I kissed him once in public. He had won a prize. It embarrassed him terribly. None of that would have mattered. But afterward they remembered it, and twisted it. Maybe you wonder why we moved to the apartment. He said that one year in the dormitory was all he could stand. He was never young the way the other students were young. The noise kept him from working as hard as he wanted to work. And also it was expensive, maintaining two places. And I guess—after you left—I didn’t want to be alone.”