The Far Cry

by Fredric Brown

  From somewhere back there in the distant dark his mind seemed to hear the eight-year-old echo of a far cry, the one scream Jenny Ames had screamed. Had it been when she first knew that the killer was going to catch her?

  Had there been a moon that night. Stars? He hadn't thought to ask Pepe, he hadn't thought that it mattered, and it hadn’t then. But it mattered now; it mattered because he was interested, because he wanted to know what that night had been like, just as he wanted to know what Jenny had been like—and even Nelson.

  There was no moon tonight, just a faint glimmer of starlight. But he could see easily now that his eyes had accustomed themselves to the lack of light. He could make out the outline of the outhouse and, beyond it, the shed. And beyond them the ground was level, sandy, sloping slightly upward toward the foothills of the mountains.

  He walked out, leaving the kitchen door open behind him—as it would have been left open that night long ago—and found that he could see the clumps of chamiso, the line of cottonwoods in the distance to the left, pale white like skeletons in the starlight.

  A girl, running.

  He stood there for what seemed like a very long time. Then there was the sound of a car coming along the road toward the house, from Seco. Unless someone was lost—on a road that petered out to nothing less than half a mile beyond this house, the last one—then the car was coming here.

  He walked around the outside of the house in time to see the oncoming headlights slow down and stop directly in front.

  "Hi, Weaver. Up and about? Want to talk awhile?”

  It was Callahan's voice. Weaver called, "Sure, come on in," and the lights of the car went off. Callahan got out and walked across the bridge from the car. "Bit late for a call,” he said, "but I thought I'd see if your lights were on,”

  "It isn’t late,” Weaver said. He glanced at his wrist watch and saw that it was only half-past nine; he'd thought it was considerably later than that. "Glad to have some company for a change."

  He wondered if he was lying about that; he was glad to see Callahan, but maybe it was because he could pump him now that he was here, for more details about Jenny Ames. Several questions had occurred to him that the editor might be able to answer.

  Inside, Callahan said, "Got it fixed up pretty good. Did I tell you that I live on this road too? Third house back, about a quarter of a mile. Out in this country that makes me one your neighbors."

  "Glad you live so near," Weaver told him. "Let’s go in the kitchen—that's my sitting room. And can I offer you some muscatel? Sorry, but it’s all I’ve got on hand."

  "Well—one. My wife’s in Santa Fe, went down there for a duplicate bridge tournament and she's staying overnight with friends. I got a little restless and thought I’d drive down this way and see if your lights were on. If they hadn’t been, I’d have gone back; it’s a little late for a call.”

  "Don't sound so damn formal,” Weaver said. "So drop in at three in the morning if you feel like it and my lights are on." He poured wine into a glass and handed it to Callahan, then refilled his own glass. "What time do people go to bed around here anyway?"

  "The Spanish people—and that’s most of them out this way—about nine o’clock. They think we Anglos are crazy—and maybe they’re right."

  "Maybe they are at that," Weaver said. "Which reminds me. Do they like us?"

  "Well—no. Not particularly.”

  "I thought so. I’m not new to Spanish-Americans, not after living five years in Santa Fe. I even know enough to call them that and not Mexicans. But I’ve noticed a difference in Arroyo Seco. They’re polite as hell, but—"

  “Salud,” Callahan said. "They're polite as hell but— That’s just about it."

  There was a sloppiness to Callahan’s enunciation that made Weaver look at him more closely and he saw now that the editor was already a bit drunk; his face was slightly flushed and his eyes were beginning to be glassy. Obviously he’d been drinking before he came here, possibly alone at home.

  Weaver said, "But why? I mean, why more than in Santa Fe or other towns where Spanish-Americans and Anglos live together? Why especially in Taos?”

  "Oh, not Taos. Just Arroyo Seco—this is one of the last strongholds of the old-line Spanish-Americans that hate Anglo ways and everything about Anglos. Especially ones like us who try to live out here among them—taking over their land, buying it when they have to sell—and then fixing it so they can never get it back."

  "How do you mean, fixing it so they can’t get it back?"

  "Fixing it up too well. Take this place, just for an example. The people who lived here before Nelson did bought it for five hundred dollars—the Spanish-American family who lived here, at least a dozen of them, had a bad year and deaths in the family and doctor bills. It was a two-room place then, falling apart. So five hundred was a fair price. But what do the Robinsons—that was their name—do? They fix it up. They add a room; they fix the floors and the woodwork; they put in two oil burners instead of one wood stove. They have electricity run from the last house a quarter-mile back. They put up a new outhouse and add a shed. So—now the property’s worth a couple of thousand instead of five hundred and none of the natives out here can ever buy it back; it's fancy, it’s only for ricos, rich people. The average cash income for those people is only a couple of hundred dollars a year. A place like this is a palace to most of them."

  "Well, I didn’t fix it up. I see what you mean, though. I felt it in Seco, when I stopped at the tavern one night.”

  "I don’t. Stop there, I mean, I speak enough Spanish to catch phrases I’m not supposed—or am I?—to overhear. But even if you didn’t speak Spanish you could feel the antagonism. Not that I blame them; We're changing this country, their way of life. We're interlopers. They've lived here practically since Coronado. But don’t let it worry you, Weaver."

  "Worry me how?"

  "I mean they're not going to come here some night to assassinate you or anything like that. Just don't tangle with them, outside of business. Let them alone and they’ll let you alone. But do your drinking in Taos and you'll like it better. Just be polite to them as they are to you, but don't think you can make friends. There’s a barrier.”

  Callahan took another sip of his wine. “And it's probably good for us. Gives us the wrong side of race prejudice. We damn Anglos are prejudiced against any minority group we live with; does us good to be a minority group and get the dirty end of the stick for once. Sure, the reasons aren’t completely logical or justified—but are the reasons we’re prejudiced against Jews or Negroes or Chinamen any better? It's good for our immortal souls, if any, to be hated a bit. Do you realize, Weaver, that almost every other country in the world—even those that are on ’our side'—hates us more or less because of what we are? So let’s have a sample of it right here at home; maybe it’ll teach us we’re not completely God’s chosen people.”

  "Ummm," Weaver said. "Maybe you've got something there."

  "Yeah, good for us. You know, I had something I wanted to tell you, but damned if I can remember what it was.”

  "Something about Jenny Ames?"

  "I think it was, but I can’t remember it right now. Well, I'll think of it some other time. How are you and Jenny getting along?"

  Weaver felt himself bristle a little, and then wondered why he had.

  "Got about all I need,” he said. "I've got Pepe Sanchez’s eyewitness account and the newspaper story. That’s really enough, but I’d still like to talk to a few people who remember it, if they're still around. Who is?"

  "Well, Freeman's not still around; he died a couple of years ago. Doc Gomez, who was coroner then, is still alive, but he’s living up in Colorado somewhere. Alamosa, I think. Let’s see—who else was there?"

  "The woman who rode up on the bus with her. Evers?"

  "Sure, Carlotta Evers. She’s still in Taos. Works at the supermarket on the west side of the plaza. But be careful—or are you married?"

  "I'm married,” Weaver said. "
Who else might be around? Let's see—there was the man who found the body. Ramon Camillo, I think his name was."

  "I don’t know. He was from Seco, maybe he still lives there. I didn’t know him, aside from seeing him at the inquest."

  "The people who knew Nelson, who'd talked to him. Who were they?"

  "Don't know, offhand. I guess I knew him as well as anybody else, which means I’d talked to him three or four times. Once his car broke down in front of my place and he couldn’t get it started. I wandered out to see if I could help and he said sure if I had a phone he'd like to use it to have a repairman come out from Taos. So I phoned the A-1 and they sent out a man and got his car going. I forget what was wrong with it, but it wasn't anything serious; the mechanic had it running ten minutes after he got there."

  "Did Nelson wait inside your place?"

  "Sure, when I insisted. I gave him a drink, even, but he wouldn’t take a second one. Which reminds me, I will, if I may.”

  Weaver poured it.

  "Didn't Nelson tell you anything at all about himself?"

  "Sure. A pack of lies. I remembered most of it when they were looking for him but when it got checked back on, none of it was true. Said he'd come here from a little town in California, Gersonville. Turned out there isn’t any town in California by that name. That he'd lived in Woodstock, New York—that’s another artists' colony like Taos is—but they couldn’t find anyone in Woodstock that knew him, either by name or description. But he really was an artist, or tried to be one. I’m no judge, but Will Freeman says the place out here was littered with canvases."

  "What happened to them? Did he take them all along with him?"

  "Guess so, I don’t know. I never heard anything to the contrary."

  Weaver looked at him thoughtfully. "You say you're no judge. That sounds as though you'd seen some of his paintings. Did you?"

  "Some of his water colors, that time his car broke down. He’d been out painting somewhere and was on his way back and while we were talking he showed me what he’d just done. I was polite about it, sure, but it made nuts to me. It was supposed to be mountains, but what mountains I couldn't guess—and I’ve seen all the scenery for lots of miles around here. Oh sure, I know there’s such a thing as abstract art and that some of it is supposed to be good, but if this was—well, as I said, I’m no judge."

  "You never saw any of his oil paintings?"

  "No, and the only person I know of who did see them was Freeman—the two times he was in Nelson's place looking around, the night of the murder and the day after. He wasn’t any judge of painting either, but he said they looked like crap to him. As I told you, I think, Nelson never had any guests out here. The only two people known to have been inside the place while he lived here were Jenny Ames and the sheriff. Those water colors, though, they looked to me like something an insane man might do.”

  "About that day he was inside your place talking to you", Weaver said. "You say what he told you was malarkey, but what—well, what impression did he make on you? What did he seem to be?"

  "Well, I think he was queer. And I don’t mean strange, I mean homosexual. My guess is that Jenny Ames was pretty safe with him those few hours after she got there and before he killed her. And I’m not alone, incidentally, in thinking Nelson was probably queer—that's the impression he gave other people around Taos—and Taos is pretty good at judging. It gets a lot of them. I guess any artists’ colony does. Lezzies, too."

  Callahan sipped his wine. "Freeman had the same idea, that Nelson was as queer as a bedbug. One reason why he doubted Pepe’s story—he didn't see what Nelson would be doing with a girl out there to begin with."

  Weaver was interested. "You’re fairly sure of that? I mean that he was straight homo—not even ambivalent?"

  "Ninety-nine percent sure, and I'm pretty good at guessing. For instance, you're not homo."

  "Thanks," Weaver said. "But let's stick to Nelson. Anything else about him you can remember?"

  "Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a lunger. T. b. He looked big and husky, but that’s the kind that often gets it. And he had one coughing spell in my house that sounded like it to me—and I noticed that he coughed carefully into his handkerchief. Besides, he had slight flushed spots in his cheeks—unless they were make-up, and he wasn’t that queer; he didn’t swish. You know it’s a funny thing about homos—the masculine-looking kind, not the out-and-out pansies—how girls will fall for them. And fall hard. Girls who haven’t been around enough, that is, to spot them as competition instead of prospects. And most of them can be charming as hell when they want to turn on the charm. Nelson didn’t, around here, but he probably could have. And he was handsome enough to make women fall for him."

  "You're doing fine," Weaver said. "Any other impressions about him?"

  “Not that I can remember. Damn, what was it I was going to tell you? With that pumping you've been doing, I've been telling you everything else but. Well, it couldn’t have been too important or I'd have remembered it. If I think of it in time I’ll let you know. Guess I'd better push along.”

  "Why? It’s still early, not much after ten.”

  "Sure, but tomorrow's Wednesday, our big day. The day before we go to press. I’ll have to get down early—and bright. Thanks for the drinks."

  Weaver walked with Callahan to the car and stood on the bridge until the car went out of sight along the curving road. He decided that he rather liked Callahan—and certainly Callahan had been helpful in filling out his picture of Nelson. But—didn't that picture make the motive of the crime even more murky than it had been?

  Or did it? A homosexual perhaps fighting his homosexuality, trying to make himself respond to a woman who loved him, suddenly going berserk with hatred and revulsion when he couldn't?

  It seemed possible. Only, of course, if Nelson had been psychopathic—aside from or in addition to his homosexuality to begin with.

  But the tuberculosis—if Callahan was right about it—where did it fit into the picture? Perhaps it didn’t; perhaps it was incidental.

  Weaver turned around and found himself staring into the window of the still lighted kitchen. And again trying to picture what Pepe Sanchez had seen there.

  He shook himself a little.

  Nuts, he told himself, I'm letting this get me.

  Back in the foothills the Coyotes were yapping again, their nightly chorus of the damned yearning for the unattainable.

  Weaver leaned against the wall and stared up at the stars. A long distance away he could still hear the faint sound of Callahan's car.

  The stars, the silly, far, twinkling stars. Somewhere he’d read that the nearest one was eight light-years away. That meant that the light he was seeing from it now, tonight, had left it eight years ago, perhaps on the very night— He shook himself a little. It was all right to let himself get interested in—this—but he couldn’t let it get him, like that.

  He went back into the house and decided that for once he was going to bed early and reasonably sober. He did.

  Chapter Five

  He woke, the next morning, in time to see the sun come up over the mountains. It was beautiful; the cool morning air was good to breathe. Life was suddenly good, until he remembered the date.

  It was Wednesday, the31st of May. Tomorrow was the first day of June, the day the girls would go to camp, and Vi would be coming. Strange that she hadn’t written already, telling him when to meet her in Santa Fe.

  Well, if she didn't write in time, that was her grief and she could take the bus, much as she hated riding buses. Not that blamed her for that—although there were plenty of things he did blame her for. Indirectly, he knew damned well, the animosity between them (which they kept so carefully submerged for the sake of the girls) had been the cause of the breakdown he’d had. The direct reason, of course, had been that he'd worked too hard, far too hard. But if he analyzed the reasons why he'd worked too hard, there were two of them, simple and obvious. First, in order to spend less tim
e in an intolerable home. Second, in order to try (vainly) to earn enough money so he could provide separate maintenance for them, enable them to live apart without the necessity of a divorce—and all the things that a divorce would do to girls the ages of Ellen and Betty.

  But the money part hadn’t worked out; instead he'd toiled himself into a breakdown that had set him back to scratch again, now with no possibility of a separation in the foreseeable future. Not even the possibility of their living apart this summer while he was recovering.

  Another part of it had been his own fault, the drinking. Drinking too much makes any problem worse.

  And Vi drank too much, too. That really put the lid on it.

  He made coffee for himself and fried two eggs, and then managed to kill a little time washing the few dishes and glasses that were dirty and straightening up and dusting the house.

  If he had his typewriter—

  The hell with a typewriter; he’d better make at least some notes in longhand before he forgot some of the things he’d learned. All he had on paper were names and dates and all the other details—especially things like those Callahan had told him last night—were still in his head.

  He found writing paper and worked for about an hour. When he’d finished, it was still only nine o’clock, far too early to go into Taos for mail. He felt a little better now than he had a few days ago when he’d tried painting last; maybe he should try it again now.

  But that reminded him of something else. All those canvases of Nelson's that the sheriff had seen around the house when he'd called here after the murder. Was it possible that some of them, or even some sketches, had been left behind? Possibly somewhere inside the house where he hadn't looked, possibly in the wooden shed twenty yards behind the house? He’d looked in that shed just once to date; he’d decided that he wouldn't need it for anything so he’d merely glanced in and noticed that it seemed to contain only junk, some odds and ends of broken furniture, some rusty bedsprings, an empty oil drum. He’d scarcely stepped inside and hadn’t bothered to inventory the contents. There might be some pictures there.