The Anatomy of Violence (19 page)

“Laurie?” The voice was clearer. He must have turned toward me.

“Yes!” My throat was raw from smoke but I yelled louder. “Here!”

“Keep your head up and splash a little so I can get a fix on you! This damn smoke—” He broke into a cough.

A chill went down my spine; the hoarse voice was impossibly familiar. “Who is it?”

“Richard! Keep yelling!”

My knees went weak. “You aren’t dead!”

“Damn near.” His voice was near now. “Been rowing around this little corner of hell for three hours. Now I see you; you’re covered with soot just like the water.”

I saw the little boat nosing through the smoke. Richard’s face glistened redly as he caught my hands and lifted me into the boat. I hugged his neck until my shoulders popped and pressed my forehead against his cheek. “I thought I saw you burn inside the car.”

“Goldie. I was thrown out in the wheat field.” He caught my shoulders and studied my face. “How about you? Are you hurt?”

“No.” I looked down and saw the nightgown clinging like a coat of scum. My legs were streaked with dark channels of soot. “But I’m filthy.”

“You?
Look at me, end man in a minstrel.” He grinned, and his teeth looked like piano keys against the black of his face.

I felt strangely exhilerated and started to laugh, then a wall of the lodge collapsed with a shower of sparks. “Let’s get out of here, Rich,” I said soberly. “I want to call daddy.”

He set the oars and started rowing. “I tried to call him after I got out of Curtright City but he’d gone out with the state police, looking for you.”

“How’d you get away?”

“Crawled on my belly to the pumper’s shack. Then I saw your note, and beat my head against the wall trying to figure out where the lodge was. Sometime the next day I remembered a feature I’d done on Jules and thought of the lake near the ancestral home. Had to wait until dark to swipe a car from that restaurant, then wasted another hour after I got here trying to rent a boat legitimately. Redheaded character wouldn’t rent to anyone headed for the island. When I saw the fire I knew something had hit the fan out here so I punched him on his pointed chin and took this boat. It had about a shot glass of fuel so I had to row.”

We were out of the smoke now; the island was a black pyramid mottled with flickers of red. Rich shipped his oars and washed his hands and face in the water. “If I had a cloth we’d get some of that soot off you.”

The damp nightgown had begun to chill me anyway; I pulled it off over my head. “Will this do?”

He nodded, wet it, and wrung it out. “Wonder what the rap is for boat theft?” He sat beside me and ran the cool cloth over my face. “Or car theft, rape, murder, resisting arrest, running a road block—man, I sound like someone I’d hate to meet in a dark alley.” He rinsed out the nightgown and handed it to me. “Koch’ll have a ball when he gets me.”

“Koch is dead, Rich.” I ran the cloth over my legs. “Jules killed him on the island.

“And Jules?”

“I killed him … with your knife.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.

I felt grateful to him for not asking before, even while he must have wondered. “He killed I don’t know how many people, Rich. He put everything in a notebook. I can recite almost every word into a tape recorder when we get ashore. There’s other evidence; bodies to dig up, a grain elevator where he must have left Ann’s clothes and—”

“Don’t talk about it now.” He stripped off his shirt and put it around my shoulders. “I’ve worn it a couple of days, so it might be a little ripe.” He squeezed my shoulder and returned to the oars.

I held the shirt tight at my neck. It was saturated with the smell of Richard but I didn’t care. I watched the rhythm of his rowing, noticing how muscles formed taut bands that met in the center of his chest. I felt warm and relaxed, like the time mother had found me at the state fair after I’d been lost for an hour. “Rich, we’ll go to New York, Saturday.”

He nodded. “And you’ll be the only gray-haired ingenue in the city.”

My hand flew to my head. “Really?”

“Just a little, at the temples.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s striking as hell.”

This edition published by
Prologue Books
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
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Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
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Text Copyright © 1958 by Ace Books, Inc.

Cover Art, Design, and Layout Copyright © 2012 by F+W Media, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4026-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4026-4