The Man in the Net (12 page)

HE HADN'T eaten since lunch in New York. Although he wasn’t hungry, he remembered the fact and drank a glass of milk. Then, because being idle was worse than doing nothing, he went into the living-room and started to clear up the destruction. He made himself examine everything with care, treating it merely as damaged property, to keep from thinking about Linda and the spite and the madness. All the canvases were beyond saving, but the phonograph amplifier and the recorder seemed only to have their tubes smashed. Some of the records had not been broken. He collected them up and put them back in the cabinet. The spools of tape were his special love. He had only recently bought the tape-recorder and there were no more than seven or eight tapes of music which he had taken off the radio. He sought them out in the mess of broken records and canvas strips and found them all except his most recent tape of the Mendelssohn “Calm Sea And Prosperous Voyage” Overture. Probably it was somewhere under the couch or one of the chairs, but it didn’t matter. They were all useless anyway, hopelessly torn and tangled. He threw them down again. Then he gathered up all the debris, took it, armload by armload, outside and stacked it neatly against the studio wall.

His life had changed so drastically in the last few hours that it was impossible to imagine himself as he had been before he went to New York—just as it was impossible any more to speculate about Linda. She had gone, and by going had done this to him. That was all that had any reality. She had spawned the nightmare which had climaxed with Steve and the three troopers, ominous dream figures, staring at him from four pairs of eyes which, in their itch to destroy, had become one.

What have you done with your wife?

He stood by the studio doors, gazing through the shadowy trunks of the apple trees toward the great hulking darkness of the woods beyond. An owl cried—the strange, half-human wailing owl which he had heard once before. Suddenly he knew he couldn’t go back to the house. The house was Linda, madness, the danger that had come to strike him. In the house he wouldn’t be able to breathe.

He went into the studio, stripped to his underclothes and threw himself down on an old couch. He thought of Linda’s description tapping out, right at that very moment probably, over the teletype. And he thought of Stoneville.

Stoneville was now the Enemy. People were still awake. Old women whispering, “Have you heard … ?” Boys and girls, coming home from a summer’s evening, met by their mothers or their fathers. “Have you heard about Mrs. Hamilton?” And, the center of it all, Steve Ritter with his bland white smile, moving from house to house, collecting volunteers for the search-parties tomorrow.

“How about a little off-season hunting, boy? Sure, big hunt—big hunt for Linda Hamilton … Haven’t you heard? She’s crazy and drunk, wandering off in the woods. Leastways that’s what her husband says…. Now, boy, take it easy? … John Hamilton murder her? A nice quiet artistic type like John Hamilton, murdering his wife? … Shouldn’t say things like that around a police officer, boy … that’s libelous, that is … If John says she’s crazy and drunk, wandering off in the woods … then she’s crazy and drunk…”

Quite soon he was asleep, and in his dreams Steve Ritter was hunting him through the woods, galloping on all fours —like a hound.

He struggled up from sleep dimly aware that a voice was calling his name. He opened his eyes on to sunlight. For a moment he was vague as to his whereabouts. Then he thought: The studio—and remembered.

“Hey, John. John—shape up there, John boy.”

It was Steve Ritter’s voice, loud, heavy with false jocularity. The voice of his dreams?

“Hey, John. Want us to come up and get you?”

He swung off the couch. He had an old pair of blue jeans which he kept in the studio to wear when he painted. He went to the peg where they hung. They weren’t there. He returned to the couch, put on the pants of his city suit and his shoes and stepped out of the studio on to the lawn.

A group of men—seven or eight of them—in jeans and work-shirts were standing with their backs to him, gazing up at the house. In the center was Steve Ritter’s broad, muscular back.

They had a dog with them, a fluffy mutt with a long brown tail. It saw him and started dashing toward him, barking shrilly. Almost as if they were one unit, the group of men turned and stood absolutely still, watching him. His faculties were still blurred by sleep. Panic leaped through him. They’d found Linda. They’d found her dead and they’d come to get him. Then, as control came back, he realized it was one of the search-parties.

The men just continued to stand on the lawn with Steve Ritter in the middle of the group. Some of them were carrying lunch boxes. As he walked toward them none of them moved. When he was right up to them, Steve Ritter grinned at him.

“Hi, John. Slept in the studio, eh? House seemed kind of—lonesome, did it?”

It was there, the quality which had been in the dream, the threat masked behind the bland, smiling facade.

“Well, John, I guess you know all these folks?” Steve Ritter nodded down the line of men, some of whom he recognized. “They’ve all been kind enough to give their time. Them and a lot of other guys too. This here’s just one of the search-parties. We came to get you, John. Figured you’d want to tag along. After all, you must be feeling pretty bad, pretty eager to do all you can to locate Linda.”

One of die men spat on the lawn. The faces, wind-burned, blue-eyed, utterly without expression, were all watching him fixedly.

He said, “So there’s no word yet?”

“No, boy. ’Fraid not. Not a single response that amounts to anything from the teletype.” Steve Ritter hitched up his blue jeans. “Well—come on, guys. Let’s git gitting. But— wait a minute. You eat any breakfast, John?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Not matter? Sure it matters. You all het up and everything? You didn’t ought to start out on an empty stomach.” Steve Ritter turned to the others. “Did he, boys? He should get himself a cup of coffee or something.”

All the men grinned. One of them laughed and then stifled the laugh.

“Sure, Steve. Sure. Let the guy have a cup of coffee.” Steve Ritter went up to John and threw his arm around his shoulder. “Now you get in that kitchen and whip yourself up something. Don’t worry about us. Get yourself in good shape. We’ll be out in them woods quite a piece. You just don’t worry about us. We’ll wait for you.”

The dog started to bark again. Someone threw a twig at it. His arm still on John’s shoulder, Steve led him toward the house. All the men turned to watch. When they got to the kitchen door, Steve left him. Simultaneously, all the men dropped down on to the grass.

He made himself some coffee and fried a couple of eggs. Why not? He had to eat. From outside on the lawn, he could hear the murmuring voices of the search-party. Every now and then the dog barked and a voice was raised, shouting at it to shut up.

When he had finished, he went out of the kitchen door. All the men got up, edging together, forming a phalanx. “Well, John,” said Steve, “ate something? Feel better?”

“I’m all right.”

“That’s the boy. Now what do you say? After all, you’re the authority. Linda’d been drinking, you say, was kind of mixed up. She come out of the house with the suitcase. Now, which way you figure she’d go?”

The sarcasm in his voice was veiled, but the men responded to it. One of them grinned. They eased a little closer together. It wasn’t just Steve Ritter now. They all of them felt the same way. To them the search for Linda alive was a farce, but they were playing it Steve Ritter’s way, going along with it, drawing out the elaborate cat-and-mouse game until the word came from Steve.

“That way, you think?” Steve Ritter’s blue eyes were fixed solemnly on his face as he pointed beyond the apple trees to the woods. “Or that way, maybe?” He indicated the road. “Of course, with the suitcase being on the dump by the lake, looks like that’s where to look for her, but that ain’t our search-party. There’s another party handling that area. Maybe back in the woods, eh?” He turned to consult the others. “That way, you think, boys? Start off by covering the woods back there?”

“Sure, Steve. Start with the woods back there.”

“We got to cover the whole territory before we’re through, don’t we?”

“Anywheres, Steve. You’re the boss.”

One of the men had strolled away and was standing by Linda’s zinnias, peering through the open doors of the studio.

“Boy,” he said. “Look at them paintings. He must have got pretty near four dozen of ’em stacked up against the walls.”

“Okay, boys,” called Steve. “Shape up now. This is it.” And they all started off through the apple trees, down the slope choked with second growth and over the little creek into the woods.

Once the search had begun, Steve was as serious and expert as an officer with a platoon. He had the men fan out at regular distances from each other and maneuvered them slowly forward, covering every inch of ground. The timber hadn’t been cut for years; great maples, hemlocks and beeches towered up over the smaller trees, the bulky outcroppings of rock and the wreckage of dead trunks, and limbs torn off by ice-storms. Sunlight came down in wide shafts. The smell of the woods, damp, secret, which John had loved and always associated in his mind with the children, impregnated the air.

Nobody talked. John, off on the extreme right of the fan, could every now and then catch a glimpse through the high underbrush of the man next to him and every now and then hear the crunch of twigs under shoes. But, by and large, the silence was intact, and slowly, as he moved forward, ducking under saplings, climbing over dead logs, the horror began. It wasn’t the horror of finding Linda lying stretched there, under a rock, near a fallen tree, in a patch of sunlight; it was horror of the men. This was the dream again. It wasn’t Linda alive they were hunting for. It wasn’t even Linda dead. Not only that. It was the body of Linda, murdered, buried perhaps in a shallow grave. And it was him. Although he was part of the hunt, he was its destined victim too.

What have you done with your wife?

They covered the whole area on John’s side of the Archertown road and then crossed the road, swinging into an even larger stretch of woods. The only house they passed was the little neat clapboard box where Emily and Angel lived with their mother. John was familiar with the whole area; he knew the hills, the sheer drops, the brooks, the high cliffs of rock, but he had never before been so conscious of the vastness and desolateness. After a few hours, Steve Ritter called a halt for lunch. The men gathered together and opened the lunch boxes. Hardly anyone spoke while they ate, except for an occasional gruff monosyllable. They all lit cigarettes and lay for a while under the trees, smoking.

Then Steve said, “Okay, boys.”

And the search began again. It was almost four when the great circle had been completed and they came out again on the Archertown road only a few hundred yards from John’s house. There was an overgrown meadow between the road and the house, which was part of the property. Instead of taking the road, Steve led them through the strip of woodland into the meadow. As they walked across it, closer together now, weary, sweating from the afternoon sun, John caught a glimpse of the house’s roof ahead of them. At least this part of the nightmare was over. But maybe one of the other search-parties or the men dragging the lake … When they got to the house, Steve would call and they’d know whatever there was to know.

The dog was running ahead of them, hidden in the weeds except for the tall, foolish, wagging tail. They moved on, slower now, relaxed, down the slope toward the creek which separated them from the house. Suddenly the dog’s tail ahead of them stiffened. John saw the ragged, fluffy brown beacon quicken into quivering alertness. Then the dog started to yelp. All the men dashed forward. John ran with the others, feeling his stomach turn over. They all reached the dog at once. Steve Ritter pressed ahead. He stood looking down, while the others crowded around him.

John, straining over a shoulder, made himself look too, his mind infected by horror images. There was a small circular area of charred grass. In its center, with the dog sniffing at it, was—what? Some sort of material? A piece of clothing? A … ?

Steve Ritter picked it up and, as it fell into shape, it revealed itself as a pair of blue jeans. Both the legs had been burnt off to the knee. The rest was intact and was spattered with stains of various colors of paint.

John’s second of relief was splintered again as he recognized what they were. His blue jeans. The blue jeans he kept in the studio. The blue jeans which had not been there that morning.

It didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t surely be possible unless someone, with deliberate malice, had done this to him. Suddenly a totally new vista opened up in his mind.

If they had been planted, not by Linda, but by …

As if they’d received some inaudible word of command, the men eased away into a circle, leaving Steve Ritter holding up the jeans and looking directly at John.

“Someone’s been burning blue jeans on your property, John.”

John looked back at him, struggling against the panic of this new idea. Not by Linda, but by … Who?

Steve dropped his eyes to survey the jeans. “Blue jeans with paint on ’em, I guess. Blue paint, green paint, red paint—paint like a painter uses painting a picture. What d’you think, John? Who’d be burning up a pair of blue jeans on your property? Whose would they be, maybe, with paint on ’em like a painter’s blue jeans?”

All the red, round, blue-eyed faces were watching John. The circle seemed to move the fraction of an inch closer, hemming him in.

“What d’you think, John, boy?” Steve held the jeans higher. “About your size, would you say?”

When he stopped speaking, there was a sudden ominous silence.

Then one of the men called, “Have him try ’em on for size, Steve.”

The others all laughed and took it up.

“Yeah, Steve, have him try ’em on for size. Have him model ’em.”

John said, “They’re mine. I looked for them this morning in the studio. They weren’t there. Somebody brought them out here.”