Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (40 page)

 
          
It
was so strange to be alone in this entire huge house with all the light glaring
in from outside, distorting the shapes, turning the furniture into
science-fiction versions of itself. Sara walked wonderingly through it all,
sensible shoes clacking, echoing in all the empty rooms.

 
          
Ida,
armed only with ruthlessness and forged documents and a black leather doctor’s
bag, had emptied this house as though with a machine gun, had sent people
backing away from all this light with shocked faces and twitching hands. AIDS?
Johnny Crawfish? Here was horror compounded; no one wanted to be anywhere near
the merciless killer disease. And no one wanted to believe that
Johnny Crawfish
had carried it.

 
          
“Contagious
disease,” Ida had said to the State Police captain, her tone cold and official
and just slighdy contemptuous, as Sara had stood beside her, trying to make her
own face that cold and impenetrable. “Death from contagious disease,” Ida had
said. “State law prohibits public viewing, prohibits
any
services of any kind until after the autopsy. This property is
closed by law until the deceased can be removed. Miss Twitchell and I will
secure the building. You, Captain— Captain—?”

 
          
“Ogilvie,”
the captain had said, wide-eyed.

 
          
“You
will keep the general public back. Come, Miss Twitchell.”

 
          
And
Ida had marched out into all that light, followed by Sara, suffering madly from
stage fright all along the whole route under the lights, all the way to the
black front door and through it. Only inside, away from the light, could she
begin to relax, to shakily laugh and say, “Did I have to be Miss Twitchell?”

 
          
“We
don’t have much time,” Ida said, humorless and determined as ever.

 
          
So
they marched through the house, recognizing the route from the teenager’s
photographs, and there was the right room at last, there were the great peach
and coral pillows of floral bouquets, giving off their own muted glow and
cloying smell. There was the casket on its bier, upper half of the lid standing
open like a cubist’s idea of a grand piano. And there was Johnny.

 
          
They
were far from the lights now, deep within The— Shack, absolutely alone. Ida
opened the doctor’s bag atop a small side table and withdrew a camera from it.
“You take the first batch,” she said.

 
          
“Batch?”

 
          
“He
isn’t going anywhere,” Ida said. “Just keep taking pictures.”

 
          
Sara
took the camera with its self-contained flash and went over to stand at the
foot of the casket and look up its gleaming ebony slope to the open portion,
the white silk puffed over the padding, the body in the box. Oh, God, she
thought, looking at that helpless castoff husk. I’m not sure I can do it. Look
how gray the jaw is. I’m not sure I can do it.

 
          
I
have to do it. Ida’s right here, Jack’s waiting back on
Edger Street
, I’ve come this far, I
have
to do it. Let my hands not shake, she thought, and slowly
raised the camera.

 
          
Conversationally,
Ida said, “I suppose you’ve figured it out that Jack killed Hanrahan.”

 
          
Sara
nearly dropped the camera. She turned her head and stared at Ida, still
standing there by the side table, hand on the doctor’s bag. “What was that?
What did you say?”

 
          
“I
was hoping you’d let it alone,” Ida said. “That’s why I shot the gun into your
bed.”

 
          
“You
did?”

 
          
“I
knew you were in the other room with Jack,” she said. “I hoped he’d convince
you then to lay off.”

 
          
“He
didn’t— He never—”

 
          
“That’s
because I couldn’t ever say anything to him, that was the problem,” Ida said.
She could have been talking about a missed lunch date. “I didn’t want him to
know
I
knew he’d killed Hanrahan,
because then maybe he wouldn’t be sure he could trust
me.
But he can. Absolutely.” “But—” The whole world was melting
around Sara, going in and out of focus like the cousins’ photographs, slipping
and sliding. “But why
would
he?”

 
          
“Hanrahan
was a private detective.”

 
          
“I
know that.”

 
          
“Sybille
Hamler hired him.”

 
          
Sara
shook her head. “I don’t know who ... I don’t know that name.”

 
          
“George
Hamler’s widow,” Ida said, naming a major rock star who’d died last year.

 
          
The
name at last made a connection for Sara, who said, “The fire!”

 
          
“When
we got the body in the box,” Ida agreed. “Jack went in as a fireman. Sybille
Hamler’s mother was in there, she was a cripple in a wheelchair, they didn’t
get her out in time, she died.”

 
          
‘“Oh,
Ida,” Sara said, feeling as though her heart would break. “What are you
saying?”

 
          
“Jack
set the fire.”

 
          
“No!”

 
          
“Jack
set it,” Ida said implacably. “It was the only way to get the picture. Sybille
believed it was arson, and then her mother’s death would be murder. She hired
Hanrahan. Hanrahan thought he had the goods on Jack. He went to
Florida
to be absolutely sure, and Jack didn’t have
any choice. You can see that, can’t you? Why you and I have to stick with him,
no matter what? Because he just didn’t have any choice.”

 
          
Sara
tried to think, tried to absorb all this, tried to make it make sense.
Jack—Hanrahan— Ida firing through the hotel room window to scare her off. The
dead man beside the road . . .

 
          
“No,”
she said.

 
          
Ida
watched her, very carefully. “No? What do you mean, no?”

 
          
“Jack
was already there that morning, when I arrived,” Sara said. “He was there all
day. He couldn’t have gotten rid of the car. He couldn’t have gotten rid of the
guard. Yes, Taggart, him, too!”

 
          
Ida
said, “Sara, this is very important. For Jack’s sake. He did what he had to do,
and we have to stand by him.”

 
          
“No.
It wasn’t him, because he ran into me when I stepped off the elevator, he was
there all along. And the only other person who knows about it, Ida ...” Sara
looked at this cold and ruthless woman “. . .is you.”

 
          
Ida’s
hand came out of the doctor’s bag again. This time, it held a gun.

 
          
They
wouldn’t let him through. He honked and honked, leaning on the horn, sticking
his head out the window to scream, and the slow tidal waves of people barely
noticed him at all, moved only when the bumpers and fender of his car brushed
their bodies, blinked resentfully in his headlights, moved with that underwater
slowness of dreams. “Life and death!” he screamed. “Life and death!” And what
did they care? They were barely alive, and death was merely the excitement of
Johnny Crawfish.

 
          
A
state trooper, looking like a man who’s gone far too long without the
opportunity to exert some authority, pushed his way to the side of the car,
lowering at Jack like an incoming storm front, saying, “What do you think
you're
doing? You can’t drive through
here.”

 
          
“The
Board of Health women!” Jack yelled at him. “I’ve got to get to them!”

 
          
“Why?”
the trooper demanded, noting the total civilianness of the car, the lack of
identifying uniform on its driver. “Who are you supposed to be?”

 
          
“This
is life and death, dammit! I’ll give you my resume
later!
Get me through this fucking
crowd!”

 
          
Jack’s
intensity had its effect, that and his utter disregard for the trooper’s
authority, suggesting that Jack’s own authority was too supreme even to need
mentioning. “Follow me,” the trooper said, pretending
he
was the one giving the order, and stepped out in front of the
car to yell at people to clear this area, keep back there,
move
it. A mounted policeman soon joined him, and they all made
their way through the surging billows of denim and polyester and elaborate bas-reliefs
of hair, followed by vaguely curious eyes. Is this interesting? It doesn’t
look
interesting, but is it interesting
after all?

 
          
At
the main entrance to the compound, Jack clambered from his car and was escorted
to a State Police captain identified as Ogilvie. Beyond Ogilvie, The Shack
stood out starkly against the night, floodlit. Everyone was back here out of
that light, pressed to the perimeter of the estate. Nothing could be seen to
move up there; it was as though life itself ended at that doorway.

 
          
Captain
Ogilvie, a put-upon harried man, stood arms akimbo, fists pressed into hips,
jaw thrust forward, as he glared at this new interruption. “Yes?” he demanded.
“Just who are
you
, and just what do
you
want?”

 
          
Jack
opened his mouth. Over the captain’s shoulder, the house gleamed and glistened,
empty except for Ida and Sara. Am I wrong? Am I crazy? The body in the box!
Right now, right this minute, those two are getting the body in the box. Do I
lose that? If I open my mouth, the
Galaxy
does not get the Crawfish cover. Am I right? Or am I wrong?

 
          
“Well?”
the captain insisted, leaning closer.

 
          
“The,
the-the-the-the-the-the, the Board of Health women!” Jack said.

 
          
“What
about them?”

 
          
“They’re—
They’re phonies! They’re really from the
Weekly
Galaxy
, they’re not Board of Health at all!”

 
          
The
captain stared. “Are you out of your mind? They’ve got ID, court orders, they—”

 
          
“Phony!
Phony!” Jack clawed out his own ID, the
real
ID, and pushed it at the captain. “I’m their editor! I
sent
them there!”

 
          
The
captain didn’t want to believe any of this, and he certainly didn’t want to
believe anything said by a self-confessed editor of the
Weekly Galaxy.
Brushing Jack’s ID aside like a pesky moth, he said,
“We’ll verify all that when they come out.”

 
          
“You
have to go
in
there!” Jack yelled.
“One of them’s a killer!”

 
          
Half
a dozen cops now stood about and gazed at Jack, certain he was crazy. Ogilvie
leaned backward slighdy, no longer thrusting his jaw out. “Killer, is she? And
you’re their editor. And we’re supposed to go in and—”

 
          
The
sound of the shot silenced the entire world.

 
          
It
couldn’t have been anything else. It
cracked
out from that big empty light-struck house, and flattened everything in its
path like a sonic boom. Captain Ogilvie, slack-jawed, turned to stare. Jack, a
great agony pouring through his body, tottered and clutched at the nearest
trooper for support. Leaning on that smoothly uniformed arm, staring through
grit-covered eyeballs at the house, he said, through a throat gone closed, “I
loved her, goddamnit, and I never told her. Goddamnit! Goddamnit!”

 
          
CRACK!

 
          
The
sound of the second shot caused a dozen moving bodies to freeze, just at the
edge of the zone of light. In the motionless silence, Jack lifted his head.
Two
shots. “There’s hope,” he whispered.