Deathwatch (16 page)

The doctor flexed Ben’s arm, moving and twisting it as he felt the bones and tendons with his fingers. At last he laid it down on the table and said, “Lucky.” Then he said, “Nurse, gunshot wound, left arm, three inches below the elbow, clean entrance and exit wounds, minor damage, no bones involved.”

As the doctor swabbed out the purplish holes and then put adhesive bandages over them, Emma finished what she was writing and said, “You have to put in the report what to do with him.”

“Except for injuries noted, the patient is in apparently good health and can be released to the custody of the sheriff,” the doctor said.

Ben looked up at him, wondering why he had to be so unfriendly about everything.

The doctor said, without any sympathy, “This is going to hurt.”

It hurt a lot and as Ben watched him sewing up the cuts on his feet, he wondered if the doctor had to be so rough about it. He rammed that curved needle through Ben’s flesh as though he were sewing up a ripped tarpaulin.

He finished putting the bandages on and went out, saying to Emma, “I’ll be in the lab if anybody
wants me. You’d better see to Mr. Madec.”

As Emma started across the room Ben said, “Is that all?”

“All of what?” she said and left.

Ben was half-dressed, standing on his bandaged feet, when Strick came in. He looked sore about something as he leaned against the wall waiting for Ben to finish.

Ben couldn’t get his boots on over the bandages so picked them up. He felt sick and weak and very tired.

“You know what I’m going to do, Strick?” he said. “I’m going home and go to bed and sleep for a week. One week.”

“Let’s go down to the office first. I’ve got to get some sort of statement from you about all this.”

“Tomorrow,” Ben said. “I’m really bushed, Strick.”

“Tonight would be better,” Strick said. “While it’s fresh in your mind.”

Ben smiled, and his lips felt as though they hadn’t smiled for years. They were stiff and they hurt. “That’s going to be fresh in my mind for the next fifty years.”

But Strick beckoned him to come and in the corridor headed him toward the front door. “What about my Jeep?” Ben asked.

“It’s been impounded as evidence.”

In the station wagon Ben said, “How’s Madec?”

“What do you care?” Strick asked unpleasantly.

“What are you so sore about, Strick?” Ben asked.

Strick glanced at him as he turned in at the sheriff’s office. “I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes the things people do to each other make me mad,” he said.

In the office Strick went around behind his desk and sat down, motioning to Ben to sit in the chair in front of him. Picking up a piece of cardboard, Strick began to read from it rapidly and tonelessly. It was something about Ben’s rights, that he could have an attorney, that he did not have to confess to anything if he didn’t want to.

Strick put the cardboard down and said, “Do you understand what I just read to you?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Ben said. “There was an accident, and I’m reporting it. I don’t need a lot of stuff about my rights, and I don’t need any lawyers.”

“Hold it! Hold it!” Strick cautioned him. “If you want to talk to me here’s a waiver for you to sign. Just sign it right there.” He pushed a blank form across the desk.

“What for?”

“It just says you heard me read to you about your rights, and you understand what I read and are waiving ’em.”

Ben signed it, and Strick took it back and put it in his drawer. Then he sat back in the chair, his arms over his head and said, quietly, “Why did you shoot him so many times, Ben?”

Ben could see Madec again, coming toward him, the big gun swinging in his hand. Then he saw Madec down on the sand, still reaching for that gun. “To keep him from shooting me,” Ben said.

“Then how can that be an accident?”

For a moment Ben was confused. “Wait a minute, Strick. Who are you talking about?”

“The old man,” Strick said.

“I’m talking about Madec.”

Without any change in his voice or position, Strick said, “All I’m trying to do is find out what happened, Ben. What was the beef between you and that old man?”

Half of Ben’s face was numb from the novocaine. It felt as though spit were running out of the left side of his mouth, but he couldn’t stop it. Suddenly it was hard for him to think about all this; it seemed so long ago. “Beef?” he asked. “I didn’t even know that old man.”

“
All right, then let’s go back to Mr. Madec. How many times did you have to shoot him, Ben?”

Ben tried to remember. “I don’t know, Strick. Once to make him drop the gun, and a couple more times when he kept going for it. Three? Four?”

“You shot him more than once, though, is that right?”

“Yeah. Look, Strick, I’m really wiped out. Let’s wait until tomorrow and then go through the whole thing.”

“Be a lot easier to get it over with now.”

“I can’t even think straight now,” Ben said. “Tomorrow.” He pushed himself up out of the chair. “Give me a call when you’re ready, and we’ll go through the whole thing.”

As Ben started toward the door Strick said quietly, “Where’re you going, Ben?”

“Home.”

“I can’t let you do that, fella,” Strick said.

Ben turned to look at him.

Strick was writing something and said, without looking up at him, “I’m charging you with felony-aggravated assault, Ben.”

“Okay,” Ben said and started toward the door again, wondering what walking around in the bandages was doing to them. Then he stopped and looked back at Strick. “With
what?
What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not going home,” Strick said, his voice different now; tough. “It means you’re going to jail.”

T
HE JAIL WAS
a one-room cell with concrete walls, a barred steel door, two bunks, a washbasin and a toilet.

Ben was so tired that all he could do was stagger over to the empty bunk, sit down on it and begin to laugh. The only thing he could think about was that his old classmate, Strick, had put him in jail. Somehow it seemed funny.

What was it Strick had said he’d done? Felony? And assaulting something. And aggravation.

It was aggravation, all right, he thought.

He knew that he should be outraged by the injustice of all this. He should be angry and doing something about it, but, as he let sleep come rolling in, he felt as he had in the desert; that it was not real, was not happening.

Tomorrow everything will get straightened out, he thought. Tomorrow.

When he woke up it was broad daylight. The door of the cell was open, and a deputy Ben didn’t know was standing out in the corridor.

A kid in Ben’s Boy Scout troop named Don Smith came in with a tray of food and when he saw Ben almost dropped it. Not saying a word, he just stared at Ben as he put the tray down on the bunks and backed out of the cell.

“Has anybody called my uncle?” Ben asked the deputy.

“I’ll check the log.” the deputy said and shut the door.

The food was good. When he finished Ben went to the door and tried to see out but could see nothing except the wall across a narrow corridor.

It was a long time before Ben heard someone coming down the corridor.

His uncle, looking worried and sad, peered in through the bars. “Ben,” he said in a sort of wailing voice, “what have you done?”

“Nothing,” Ben told him. “See if you can get hold of Ham. Not Strick. Ham.”

“He’s here,” his uncle said. “He’ll be ready for you in a minute. But listen, Ben, don’t say anything, hear? I’m going to get you a lawyer; I called Joe McCloskey as soon as I heard, but he can’t get here until tomorrow. So just don’t say anything until he gets here.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Ben said.

“Just don’t say anything. How bad are you hurt, Ben?”

“I’m okay. I just want out of here, Unc. Go tell Ham I want out.”

“All right. But remember, Ben, don’t say anything.”

Ben watched his uncle’s face disappear. He was a good man, Ben thought, a good, honest, sad man who still seemed to hope that his wife who had hated the desert and had walked out on him twenty years before, was going to come back-about any minute now.

Ben got madder and madder as time passed, and no one else came to the door. Around ten o’clock the Boy Scout and the deputy came back to take the tray. As soon as the door opened Ben said, “Listen, Deputy, does Ham know I’m in here?”

The deputy just looked at him and said, “Get the tray, Don.”

“I asked you! Does Ham know I’m in here?”

“He knows,” the deputy said, letting Don out and closing the door.

It was an hour later before Sergeant Hamilton came and unlocked the door. “I’m sorry to see you in all this trouble, Ben. Come on in the office.”

“There wouldn’t be any trouble if you’d been here last night, Ham,” Ben said. “Things are just all fouled up.”

“Yeah,” Ham said, closing the cell door. “How you feeling, Ben?”

“Fine.”

“Can you walk okay?”

“Sure. Look, Ham, what’s Madec saying? What kind of story is he telling?”

“We’ll go into it,” Ham said as they walked slowly across the hot pavement.

“Whatever it is, it’s a lie, Ham.”

There was a crowd in the office. His uncle, Les Stanton, the game warden, Mr. Hondurak, the justice of the peace, Strick, Denny O’Neil, the chopper pilot, and two men in suits Ben had never seen before. He looked around for Madec, but he wasn’t there.

“Sit down, Ben,” Ham said.

There was silence in the room for a moment as everybody stared at him and then the justice of the peace, Mr. Hondurak, said, “All right, Ben. First, these are Mr. Madec’s attorneys. Mister …”

The older of the two men in suits pointed with his thumb at the younger one and said, “Alberts, and I’m Mr. Barowitz.”

Ben nodded to them but neither of them even glanced at him. He studied them a moment as they sat, looking pale and bloated among all these leather-skinned, desert-dry men.

“Now, Ben,” Hondurak said, “Officer Strick tells me you’ve been informed of your rights, and here’s the waiver you signed.”

Ben nodded.

“If you want to, I’d like to hear your version of this thing,” Hondurak said.

As Ben started to speak he noticed Sonja O’Neil for the first time. She was sitting at Strick’s desk, her hands poised over a stenotype machine.

Sonja and that machine made him nervous, but he told his story slowly, trying to remember
each detail, trying to keep everything in sequence. No one said anything, but just sat looking at him, as Sonja kept making soft clicking noises with the machine, the paper folding itself up neatly as it came out.

When he got to the point where they had found the old man on the ridge the sheriff spoke for the first time. “Was he dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Shot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

“In the chest.”

Ben went on with it, telling them only what had happened after that, leaving out what he had thought and felt; leaving out both his fear of Madec and his anger.

The sheriff was the only one who asked any questions. “What did you shoot Mr. Madec with?”

“The slingshot, sir.”

“The one you found in the old man’s camp?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is that slingshot, Ben?”

“In the Jeep.”

Ben saw Ham glance over at Strick, who shook his head.

“Isn’t it in the Jeep?” Ben asked.

“There’s no slingshot in the Jeep.”

“Then it must have fallen out when we took the old man out,” Ben said.

“It didn’t,” Strick said.

“It’s either out on the ground in the parking lot or back behind the Diagnostic Center,” Ben said. “Because it was in the Jeep when I got here. I saw it.”

“There’s no slingshot,” Strick said. “Anywhere.”

“Go ahead, Ben,” Hamilton said.

“It’s around somewhere. A hunting slingshot with a brace that comes down on your arm.”

“I mean, what happened then?” the sheriff said.

“That’s about all,” Ben said. “I got the gun away from him and tied him up. Then I went back and got the old man and brought him in.”

The sheriff looked over at the justice of the peace, who said, “Les, how about you and Strick going out there in the chopper, and check some of these details, will you? See if you can find where the old man was shot. Pick up any slugs you find. Check on his camp. You might look that butte over a little, too, just in case. And if you can find where Ben shot Madec, pick up any slugs there, too.”

“Let me go along,” Ben said. “I can show you.”

“That’s all right, Ben,” Ham said. “You just stay here.”

Ben looked around at them, and suddenly he felt as though the hot, stale room was ice cold.
None of them would look at him. It was frightening.

He turned to Hondurak. “What did Madec tell you? What’s his story?”

“Well, that isn’t exactly relevant, Ben,” Hondurak said.

“It is to me,” Ben told him. “If you believe what he says, I can be in trouble.”

“It isn’t a question of whether I believe what he says, or what you say. This is just a preliminary investigation into the death of one man and an assault on another. I’m just trying to get all the details so I can decide whether there’s a basis for a felony-aggravated assault charge and perhaps a suspicion of murder charge.”

“Nobody got murdered,” Ben told him. “It was an accident.”

For the first time one of the lawyers, Barowitz, spoke. “Shooting a man three times is an accident?” he asked in a dry, low voice.

“Shooting a man after he’s dead isn’t a murder,” Ben said.

The lawyer just shrugged and smiled at Hondurak.

“Ben, listen,” his uncle said, “don’t say any more. I’ll get you a lawyer.”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” Ben said. “I told you how this thing happened, and you can go out in the desert and see where it happened. If Madec told you something else, he’s a liar.”

“All right, all right, calm down,” Hondurak
said. “Okay, lock him up, Strick, and then you guys get going.”

“Why do I have to stay in jail?” Ben asked, trying to keep his voice down. “Where’s Madec? He’s not in jail!”