The Far Cry

by Fredric Brown

  “My breath is irrelevant, madam. I—“ How the hell can you tell a woman who antagonizes you at sight and is antagonized by you, bad news and sound sympathetic about it? "I'm sorry, Mrs. Albright, I'm afraid I must tell you that your daughter is dead.”

  "When? Where?” She might have been asking a laundryman when the laundry would be delivered—if she didn't like the laundryman.

  "A few days after she left home. In New Mexico."

  “And your purpose in telling me this?”

  “I thought you might be interested. I see that I was wrong." He bowed slightly, not quite losing his balance. He turned and started for the porch steps.

  “Mr. Weaver—” Her voice sounded almost human. He turned back. "Mr. Weaver, perhaps I owe you an explanation. I am sorry to learn that Jenny is dead."

  “Very big of you, madam.”

  "But no more sorry than to learn of the death of anyone. She was not our daughter as of the time she left us. You did not know that, of course, so your reason for coming here was generous if misguided. Thank you.”

  "Thank you,” Weaver said, “for being so kind as to be interested.”

  The door was closing. Damn the bitch. He wanted to hurt her. If he could. "I thought," he said, "it might even interest you to know the manner of her death.” The door stopped closing, a few inches open. He said, "A madman killed her with a knife."

  As good an exit line as any. He went back to his car and got in. He glanced back and the door had closed. But he felt sorry and ashamed of himself. He almost opened the door of his car to go back—but what could he possibly say that wouldn’t make things worse than they already were? And she had asked for it. What the hell kind of mother had she been, not to be interested in what happened to her own daughter? If Jenny’s father had been anything like her mother, how had she ever lived at home for twenty-two years—and why hadn't she taken the whole damn bank with her—some sum that her father couldn’t possibly have paid back? Oh, yes, they'd paid it back, but out of pride, to save their own name and reputation, not to spare Jenny pursuit and prosecution.

  He drove out of Barton fast, turning corners viciously. On the open road he upped the speed to eighty to get away from the place.

  Could he make Tucson tonight? He pulled off the road and studied a map he’d picked up at a filling station the day before. Tucson was six hundred miles away and it was after three o'clock in the afternoon now; no, he couldn’t possibly make it tonight. But he’d push on as far as he could before he holed in, get an early start in the morning, and try to make Tucson by noon.

  San Bernardino, Indio, Blythe. And it was nine o’clock. Up at seven and off at eight. Phoenix at eleven o’clock, Tucson at half-past one.

  What now? The police? No, not the police. Too much to explain, and everything given away, the whole thing in the newspapers. He’d have to see what he could find out by himself, and then decide what to do about it. Chance in a million, probably, that Nelson would still be here after seven years. Best he'd be likely to get would be a lead to the next place Nelson had gone.

  Two lines to work on. Picture galleries—thank God he’d brought his photographs of Nelson's pictures with him on the off-chance that they’d come in handy. Sanatoriums that took t. b. patients, in case Nelson’s t. b. had developed to the point of hospitalization during his stay here.

  Try the sanatoriums first, he decided.

  He put his car in a parking lot in the middle of town to get it off his hands; since he didn’t know the town, he'd save time using a taxi.

  He went to the Chamber of Commerce first; a woman there gave him a list of sanatoriums that specialized in t. b. cases and, with her help, he crossed off several that had started within the last few years. There weren't as many as he feared; he should be able to cover them in one afternoon.

  Telephoning would be useless, of course. Nelson certainly wouldn't have registered under the name he'd used in Taos; in each case he’d have to find someone who’d worked there at least seven years and try to identify Nelson by description. It was going to be tough going, he thought.

  It turned out to be easy going, ridiculously easy going. He hit it on the second try. A small gray-haired man with thick glasses and bright eyes looking through them sat behind a desk and said, “Yes, we had a patient of that description. can look up the records if it's important to be exact, but offhand I'd say he came to us between six and seven years ago. He was here two years.”

  Weaver leaned forward, his fingers digging into his knees. "And do you know where he went when he left here? Have you been in touch with him since?”

  "He died here. His tuberculosis seemed to be only pulmonary when he first came to us, but it developed into tuberculosis of the bone—of the spine. We tried surgery, spinal fusion, but it did not help. You say he was a murderer? Then his case, I fear, has long since been settled before a higher court."

  "I see,” Weaver said. He felt strange, somehow. "If you don't mind, doctor, I'd like to make sure, absolutely sure, that we’re talking about the same man. You say he was an artist. Did he do any painting while he was here?"

  "During the first few months we allowed him to paint a few hours a day. After that, he was unable to continue. But he completed several paintings during that time; one of them is on the wall behind you ."

  Weaver turned and looked.

  Mountains, in colors and shapes such as mountains have never been. Mountains that writhed in dark agony against spectral skies, mountains of another dimension, in another world, under an alien sun. Nelson's work, beyond the remote possibility of a doubt, as individual as his fingerprints would have been. Possibly more individual; in infinity fingerprints might repeat, style never.

  Weaver looked at the picture for a long time. The voice of Dr. Grabow came over his shoulder. “Interesting technique. Not many people like it, but I do. Dealers have told me it is worthless—not that I tried to sell it; it happens that several have been here in my office on other business and I asked them out of curiosity. But I like it. There's something—“

  Weaver asked, "Was he mad?”

  He turned back and looked at the doctor, who was smiling. "What is madness, Mr. Weaver? I am not a psychiatrist, so I do not know. If I were a psychiatrist, I would know even less. Nothing is more confusing than trying to define madness. I don't even know whether I am sane myself. Do you?"

  Weaver said, “I want to know. I really want to know. Was he insane?"

  "He was a sadist, I believe. Sadism is mental abnormality—whether or not it is insanity, I do not know. The sadism was latent while he was here, but it might easily have become active, given opportunity. He was homosexual, of course—you mentioned that yourself in describing him, and you were quite right. Homosexuality again is an aberration but is not insanity, definitely not. The point at which he nearest approached true insanity—whatever that is— would be his fear psychosis. He feared death. Everyone does, of course, but in his case the degree of fear was probably psychopathic. He killed for money?”

  "Yes," Weaver said. "He killed for money."

  "Understandable. Desperation, the fear psychosis. If he needed money in order to give himself the treatment that might have saved his life, I do not doubt that he would have gone to any length to get the money he needed.”

  “How much money did he have?”

  “Somewhere around ten thousand dollars, I would say. Enough to pay his way almost—not quite—to the end. Including the surgery he underwent. He wrote checks regularly until the last month or two. By then all surgery had failed and he was a dying man; we knew that he had only weeks to live and he had already paid us so much that— well, we’re not a charity institution but we didn’t have him transferred to one. We carried him through ."

  A better break, Jenny, than he gave you. Or was his death worse than yours? He must have seen it coming—longer, much longer.

  Weaver stood up. "Thank you very much, Dr. Grabow." His voice sounded strangely flat to him. He looked again, on his way ou
t, at the twisted mountains in the painting on the wall.

  The hot sunlight. Fourteen minutes after three o’clock, and it was all over. He knew the whole story now. And there was nothing to do about it.

  There's never anything to do about something that happened years ago—or yesterday or a minute ago.

  He went back to his car in the parking lot and sat in it to study his road maps. Over five hundred miles back to Santa Fe. And what was in Santa Fe? Vi. No, he couldn’t possibly make another five hundred miles today and night, not possibly. He felt let down, worn-out, dull, passive. And anyway he was still ahead of schedule; Vi wasn't expecting him before tomorrow evening or the evening after that.

  Some problems multiply themselves. He had a drink and he got drunk. It got dark and he got drunker. It wasn't a happy drunk; it was a dull brooding one.

  There must have been hallucinations in it because—sometime, somewhere—there was a man, a big man, who said, "Mr. Weaver?" He said, “Yeah? My name’s Weaver.” Not belligerently, not worriedly, not anything at all. And the big man peeled back a lapel and said, “Police. Like you to drop around to the station. They want to talk to you.” And under the lapel was a badge. It was interesting. Weaver said, "Sure, pal. How’d you know my name?" And the big man said, "I asked you and you told me." And that didn’t make sense, but he went with the big man and they took him to a room with bars and there was a cot in the room; he lay down on the cot and slept and then somebody shook him and said, “All right, you can go now." "Go where?” "Anywhere. Listen, mister, it’s all right; we made a mistake. We’re sorry. Now beat it or we'll change the charge to D and D." "D and D? What the hell is D and D?" "Drunk and disorderly. Now listen, you’re drunk and you know it and I know it and if you want to sleep it off here, it’s okay by us. But—we're telling you to scram if you want to scram and if you don't you’re being disorderly—and that adds up to D and D and if you're smart you’ll scram because there’ll be a fine tomorrow if we have to book you D and D." A fine tomorrow. It was all mixed up, however the hell he tried to interpret it, but what the hell, he wasn’t belligerent and he didn’t want trouble with anybody so he scrammed, and afterwards he knew it hadn’t really happened because it couldn't have—not with a cop picking him up by name when nobody knew his name and he was just on the way through. Yes, here he was back in a bar—the same or another—and it was a screwy dream he'd had because it couldn't have happened. It was just something that he remembered that didn’t happen, and some other things must have happened that he didn't remember, because he woke up in a hotel room and had no recollection of having got there; the last thing he remembered was the man from Chicago who was explaining—what was it?—in such great detail. Anyway, he awoke in a hotel room, asleep in his clothes although he'd taken his shoes and coat and tie off, thank God. And his money—except about twelve dollars, and he must have spent that—was still in his wallet so that was all right. His watch had run down and he phoned down to the desk and learned that it was ten o'clock.

  His suitcase wasn't with him; he must have left it in the car. No use taking a bath until he had clean clothes to put on afterwards, so he went downstairs, oriented himself and found the parking lot—only two blocks away, luckily—and carried his suitcase back to the hotel.

  As he bathed and dressed, something puzzled him. What was that crazy memory he seemed to have about having been in jail the night before? Arrested without charge and released without explanation—and the big man who'd turned back his lapel to show a badge—had all of that been a dream? It must have been; it didn't make any sense otherwise.

  He drove out of Tucson before noon. About five hundred miles to Santa Fe. Well, he could make it in ten hours if he kept going. He kept going. Not thinking—any more than he could help—just driving. Sometimes through mountains—but on wide, easy roads—sometimes across the open desert where he could make eighty without even feeling that he was going fast.

  In spite of a stop to eat in Lordsburg—he didn't know whether it was breakfast or lunch or what—he made Socorro by seven o'clock—and he was tired then but it was only seventy-five miles to Albuquerque and another sixty to Santa Fe; he could make that in not much over two more hours, so he kept going, stopping only for a sandwich and coffee.

  Santa Fe, nine-thirty. He stopped at the outskirts of town so he could phone the Colbys, with whom Vi was staying. He hoped she'd be there. If he could talk Vi into it, he’d push on the last seventy miles to Taos—and the ten miles beyond—tonight, to get it over with, to get back home. But there was no answer at the Colbys'.

  He drank coffee to keep himself awake, realizing now that the driving was over, how utterly tired he was, and how miserable mentally and physically. He didn't even want a drink—after a binge like last night’s he seldom felt able to drink again the next day. And he'd been drinking too damned much anyway.

  He phoned again at ten and again at ten-thirty. They were still out. And by then he realized that he was too tired to face that last eighty miles of driving even if he did contact Vi—and that he'd rather check into a hotel and get a long night's sleep than reach her now and be talked into coming around and joining the party, whatever they were doing.

  He took a room at the Montezuma and fell sound asleep the instant he got into bed. He slept eleven hours; it was ten o’clock in the morning when he awoke. He had breakfast and phoned the Colbys at eleven.

  "George, old boy!" Wayne Colby's voice said. "Been hoping to hear from you. Come on around for lunch with us.”

  "Just had breakfast, thanks. But I'll drop around to pick up Vi. Like to get started back to Taos right away."

  "Don't be silly; you're going to give us an afternoon at least. Look, today's Saturday, that's why I’m not working. And what's wrong with going back to Taos tomorrow, Sunday?”

  "I—well, I'll drop around and we'll talk about it, Wayne." He didn't have an excuse ready to explain why he couldn't stay over, but the stall would give him time to think one up.

  He had one ready by the time he reached the Colbys' apartment, and he didn’t push it too far; he said they had to leave Santa Fe in time to get back home by six o’clock, and that gave him several hours to spend with them. Rather boring hours and he was constantly having to say "Pardon?" when somebody asked him a question and he hadn’t heard it, but the hours passed.

  He pried Vi away at four o'clock. Taos at five-thirty. He’d pleaded a six o’clock appointment to the Colbys as his reason for having to leave at four, but on the way back he explained to Vi that he didn't really have one; he was just tired of traveling and of being away, that he was now in a hurry to get back home.

  He wondered if he really was. And, if so, why.

  “George, it’s Saturday, remember. We’d better lay in some liquor, hadn’t we, before we find we can't get any on Sunday?”

  "Sure, Vi.” He remembered the two fifths he'd borrowed from Callahan and got five bottles so he could return Callahan’s two. But Callahan’s place was dark when they drove past it, so he didn’t stop. He’d take it over to Callahan tomorrow.

  Six o'clock when they got home. Weaver parked the car while Vi unlocked the door and went in. She'd turned the kitchen light on and was standing in the middle of the room, looking around, when Weaver joined her.

  “George, I think somebody’s been in here.”

  "Why, Vi? Anything gone?”

  “Well—not that I can see—but things have been moved."

  "I’ll—just a minute.” Weaver went quickly through the rest of the house. No one was there, then, but someone had been there all right. Things on top of the dresser had been moved and the drawer in which he kept his shirts was closed all the way—he always left it an inch or so open because it stuck when closed tightly. After a struggle or two with it, he’d stopped closing it completely; he was sure he hadn’t done so when he’d packed for the trip.

  He joined Vi in the kitchen. "Nothing gone that I can see, Vi." He didn't want to worry her, so he didn't mention the draw
er. "Are you sure things have been moved?"

  “Well—almost sure, George. But there's nothing gone that I can find.”

  He grinned. "If anything was gone you of course couldn't find it." He went to the kitchen door. “Well, I'll look around the rest of the place.”

  Not to be too obvious in heading quickly for the shed he walked once around the house itself and even opened the door of the outside toilet and looked in before he went to the shed.

  Were there scratches on the padlock? Yes, but he couldn’t be sure that they hadn't been there before without his having noticed. He went inside and turned on the light.

  His portable typewriter was still there, probably the only thing in the shed that could have been stolen for resale. His eyes took that in and then went to the three stacked pictures behind which the canvas bundle was hidden. He could see canvas at the end of the pictures—and he’d hidden it carefully; it hadn't showed before.

  He took out the bundle and opened it on the floor, kneeling. The shreds of clothing, the toilet articles and their case, the fragments of the suitcase and the remnants of the box of stationery. All there. All there but one thing. The letter Nelson had written to Jenny was gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Weaver locked the shed behind him, wondering why he bothered, and walked back to the house thoughtfully. Who in hell would have searched the house and the shed and have stolen only that letter? It didn’t make sense. Jenny dead eight years. Nelson dead four or five. Case closed.

  Vi was frying eggs. He said, "Nothing missing, Vi, that I can discover. Nobody around. You must be imagining things."

  "Guess so, George. Want to make us a drink before we eat?”

  He made drinks. He made them strong—his own because he thought it might get the cobwebs out of his brain and let him think more clearly, Vi’s because she was watching and would complain if he made hers weaker than his own.

  "Forgot to ask you, George. How’s Luke?”