So Many Doors

by Oakley Hall

  His eyes were held by the blood. With an effort he pulled them away. He saw Gene. She stood motionless, her arm, pointed down, turning into gun, the gun glinting bluely in her hand. The sharp smell of gunpowder cut into his nostrils.

  Gene did not move. Her face was like a lump of white dough, her eyes two dark, wild spots in it. He saw that she was panting, swaying, gasping for breath, but still holding the gun pointed down at the floor. Her face turned toward him and she whispered, “She’s dead.”

  Jack looked down at V. One leg was crumpled under the other; he could see her brown thigh partly covered by pink slip, then the pink slip covered by her blue dress. Her arms were flung out as though she had been going to dive. They pointed toward him and her face was turned away, but he could see the red spring of blood below her breast. He took a step forward, his breath tearing at his lungs. His brain had stopped. He heard the door close behind him.

  “She’s dead,” Gene said.

  He tried to focus his eyes on Gene. He took a step toward her, another. He snatched the gun away. It was hot to his hand and he dropped it into his pocket. Gene’s eyes rolled idiotically. He could see spittle at the corner of her mouth.

  “I’ve killed her,” she said, and she began to laugh. It was a high, hysterical sound that cut painfully into his ears. He slapped her face, too hard, and she slumped forward. He caught her and held her, limp and heavy in his arms. She babbled unintelligible sounds.

  “Make sense,” he cried. “Make sense, Goddamn you!” He was shaking, holding her. His face was wet with sweat, each drop of sweat an active pain to his nerve-ends. Everything inside him was dead with the thing on the floor, upon which the light streamed, bright and cold and mocking.

  Gene hiccoughed, spit trickled onto her chin, her mouth began to work. He tried to listen to the words, forced out with harsh, deep breaths. “She called me up. She asked me to come here…” And then she began laughing again, and hiccoughing. Jack felt his fingers tear at the soft flesh of her arms. He shook her.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I went to the doctor,” she gasped. She stopped and his hands released her arms and reached for her throat. They twitched and shook. He made them drop. Gene said, “I can’t ever have a baby. That Mexican doctor…His instruments weren’t clean. I’ve got something all over inside me.”

  He put his hands over his face and took a step back. Gene said, “Then she called up. It was just then. I’d just come back from the doctor and it was just like the other time she called me, only when I knew…”

  “When you knew what?” he whispered. “What did she say?”

  “She wanted to know where you were. She asked me if you’d told me and I didn’t know what she meant and then she said she had to talk to me…”

  She stopped. “Oh, why, God?” he whispered. His eyes had turned to hot balls of iron in their sockets as through his spread fingers he watched her bend over, hiccoughing, gasping for breath. It was as though he saw her through the wrong end of a telescope. But suddenly his brain came to life. There was no time.

  “Where did you get the gun?” His voice was too loud but it would come no softer. He didn’t look at V, staring fiercely at Gene; he felt the flesh of her arms twist as he pulled her upright. Oh, why, God? he thought. He shook her.

  “She asked me if you’d told me,” Gene said. “So I knew you’d been here again. I knew it then and it was when I’d just got back from the doctor. Jack, when I…Jack, something in me tore all apart. I couldn’t stand…”

  “Where did you get the gun?”

  “It’s yours. Jack, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I took it out of your dresser there.” His hands fell from her arms. “It’s the one you’ve always had,” she said. “It’s always been there.” He felt the weight of the gun in his pocket then, so heavy it seemed to pull him off balance; the gun he had brought home from the war as a souvenir. He sobbed aloud.

  “Get out of here!” he cried. She didn’t move. “Get out!” he cried. He half-pushed her, half-carried her to the door. He opened it and pushed her out. “There’s a stairs down at the end of the hall.” He pushed her roughly toward the stairs and she stumbled and almost fell. She gaped back at him over her shoulder.

  “What’re you going to do?” she whispered. “Jack!” She swayed toward him. Her dark eyes were huge and rimmed with white. “Jack!”

  “Go on!” He raised his fist and she staggered away from him. The hall was empty, silent. “Go on!” he whispered. She stumbled down the hall. At the door to the stairs she turned again. He raised his fist again. She disappeared and he watched the door swing slowly closed behind her.

  Inside the room again, he looked down at V. The gun was an immense weight in his pocket as he moved toward her, moving as though he were walking through water, seeing her in a bright, watery haze.

  He dropped to one knee beside her, then, with a jolt, to the other. Clearly now, he saw the red wound below her breast. It was edged with charred cloth. Blood had soaked the blue of her dress to a sickening purple, had spilled from her waist and soaked darkly into the carpet. He put out a slow, nerveless hand toward the wound. He stopped it, changed its course and touched the other breast. He sobbed as he felt it; it was warm. He couldn’t see her anymore. He tried, but she had dissolved into tears in his eyes.

  He took the gun from his pocket. He thumbed the hammer back, the metal biting into his thumb, the gun too, still warm. Taking a deep breath he staggered to his feet. V lay dead on the floor before him, robbed of all beauty and cleanness, robbed of any dignity. He watched the gun as though it were a deadly snake he held. He turned his hand slowly. The muzzle turned slowly toward him, a thick ring, the barrel extending down into darkness and release. He could see the slugs in the cylinder as he watched the muzzle turn toward him. There were muffled footsteps in the hall.

  There was a knock on the door. He heard it, but his nerves did not signal to his brain. His finger pressed gently, almost delicately, the trigger. He stopped. He forced his finger to press again, gently, his hand straining to be gentle.

  The door flew open and slammed back against the wall. He saw them, in blue uniforms. He turned the gun toward them. “Get back!” he shouted. There was a flash of fire and sound from the doorway. He ducked and the gun escaped from his hand. He tried to catch it, but it dropped and he saw them running at him.

  He turned toward the glass doors. His legs moved with terrible slowness. They were on him; one of them crashed upon his back, something grazed the side of his head. He went to his knees. His arm flailed out and he heard one of them scream. There were shouts and pain and madness as he tried to stagger up with the one still on his back, and his heart tore apart with the effort. He ran toward the bright, sun-streaming squares of the glass doors.

  Something hit him from the side and he fell heavily. He lay pinioned on the floor. Panting, pleadingly, he looked up at them. There were two and each held an arm, panting with him, shouting at him. Blood streamed from the mouth of the one on the right. The hotel was full of shouting, and running feet. He was lying on the floor where V was lying.

  “Why couldn’t you let me?” he panted. He looked at the one on his left, who was young and had a red face and his cap still on. He felt the man’s grip loosen a little, and with a quick, convulsive movement he jerked his arm away. He slammed his fist into the face of the other. He clutched at hair and pulled himself up, turning and running and falling toward the source of the brightness. But there was a flashing pain in his head and he fell against the glass and slid down it to the floor, the brightness turning to blackness and then even the blackness gone.

  15

  Then the hours of riding, of being jerked and shoved, of people staring and people talking, and the bright steel handcuffs that cut into his wrists and the pain in his head and the aching nothingness inside him; the police shouting questions at him and then others asking him questions and listening quietly while he told them how he had killed her and why he had killed her, a
nd then what he had said was brought back to him typed neatly and he read it and signed it; then the darkness of the cell where he wanted to sleep but could not sleep because he had to think, trying to remember what he had said, trying to remember if he had said it correctly. He had said it right and what he had done was right, and all his thinking only came back to the simple, quick judgment and decision he had made when he saw V dead.

  He would see them looking at him; he wondered if they thought he was crazy. He knew they thought him a murderer, and they were right. But they should understand that he realized it too, that he knew it was his doing and only his, that his was the responsibility, that he wanted to pay for it. Responsibility; that was the only word that came near describing the enormity of it; his responsibility—Red, the kid, and finally—V. The feeling of responsibility that had grown from the passion and the rotten, corrupting jealousy, the desire and the shame of the desire, that had changed and grown, and had grown too large…

  Why had it happened this way? He had not been the first man to seduce a girl. But that girl had been V. His had not been the first fight, but Red had been killed. Abortions were common, but this one had gone wrong. And he had never understood. He had never understood what was wrong and what was right, good and bad, what he wanted and did not want; he had never been able to solve the knotted snarl of his life because of the very complexity of that snarl, because of his indecision, because of the double responsibility he felt, and when, finally he had become man enough to solve it, it was too late, and too many forces had been set in motion. V was dead.

  The next day Gene came.

  The turnkey brought her to the door of the cell and went away, the jingle of the keys he carried and his squeaking shoes fading to silence down the long corridor. Sitting on the cot, he looked at Gene through the barred door.

  After a long time he got up, stretched, and went over to her. The black, spaced bars were between them. Gene’s hands were two white knots of flesh, pierced by the bars, and between them her face was like death, her eyes huge and dark with seeing too much. Two bright spots of fever burned on her cheeks.

  He stood with his legs braced apart, looking down into her face. “What do you want?”

  Her white lips parted. She whispered, “Why are you doing this?”

  “You’d never understand,” he said. “Go on home.”

  “Please…”

  “Get out,” he whispered fiercely. “Get out and don’t come here again. Get as far from here as you can, where you’ll never even hear about this. Don’t you ever…”

  “Please. Let me take what’s coming to me.”

  “Get out!” he said. Her hands clenched tighter. He saw her throat work. “This is mine,” he said.

  “No! I did it, Jack.”

  “Shut up! Listen,” he hissed. “Stay out of it! You stay the Goddamn hell out; don’t tell, don’t say a word. If you do I’ll kill myself in the rottenest.…” He clenched his fist in front of her face. “In the filthiest way I can!”

  He was shaking when he turned away, and he heard her crying. The sound angered him. Around them the cell block was completely silent.

  “Jack!”

  He turned back, scowling. Her black-clad body was pressed against the bars. One hand reached through toward him. “Tell me one thing,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Tell me the truth. Please.”

  “What?”

  “Jack, are you doing this for me? Or for V?”

  He stared at her, suddenly breathing hard. He took a step back.

  “Are you doing this for me or for her?”

  “Not for you,” he said.

  She slumped against the door and her hands relaxed. He turned and went back to the cot and lay down with his face to the wall. After a while he heard her go away.

  Epilogue

  When he had finished the cigarette he snuffed it out against the iron side rail of the cot and lay completely motionless for a few moments. Finally he raised his knees and clasped them tight against his chest and then released them.

  He rose with an effort, stepped across to where the shards of glass lay upon the floor, squatted and carefully swept them into the palm of his hand. Sitting on the edge of the cot again he sorted through the pieces until he found a large, wedge-shaped segment that was thick and sharp at the apex, thin at the base. He pricked his finger with it.

  As he watched the drop of blood form he began to sweat. But he stared at it with fascinated, unafraid eyes. It was perfectly round and dark red, and exulting and trembling, he held the hand up in front of him, massaging the finger until the drop of blood grew larger, and suddenly he doubled up his fist, clenching it and tightening his forearm until the blood vessels stood out bluely, knotted and tumescent at his wrist.

  He did what he had to do quickly, with steady fingers, and then he lay back on the cot and dropped his arm over the side so that he would not see the blood. He was not afraid of it, but he did not want to be afraid. He felt no pain; only his pulse seemed to sound loudly in his ears, the palm of his hand tickled and felt hot and sticky, and when he tried to clench his fist once more, his hand was weak.

  Sweat prickled coldly all over his body and he relaxed the fingers of his right hand to drop the bit of glass. He closed his eyes and thought about death. He had not thought about death before, but he did not fear it, he only wondered about it. How did it come, he wondered. Was it only an instantaneous blotting out? But it must be more than that; he hoped it would be more. He needed it to be more.

  How does it come, he wondered. Did it come like the soft sighing of the wind across the desert, coming louder and louder, until like the last long roll of Naval guns along the beach at Betio, so loudly sighing, it filled every void and lack and aching hollowness. Was it a great rush of feathered wings descending and carrying away in a blinding rush of brightness and sound, wings like white strong arms, brightness that was the sun and everything ever seen, sound that was all the universe of sounds, all the words ever spoken by all the world of voices.

  Or did it fit the person to whom it came, a mechanism created in and of himself: for him a great, spectral tractor, with a pale, black-clad operator on the seat, one gloved hand on the blade lever; and the great engine straining and roaring and shaking the world, the cable keening in the cable-channels, the great tracks clacking and biting with sharp cleats, the enormous blade shining and down with its load of black earth and at the corners the cutting edge gleaming silver; a band on the friction clutch as the monster comes closer, and it turns toward him, the engine roaring and filling everything with sound and shaking, and the gloved hand touching gently the blade lever, and the cat nearer and nearer and louder and louder…

  Shamus Award Winner for

  Best Original Paperback Novel of the Year

  SONGS of

  INNOCENCE

  by RICHARD ALEAS

  Three years ago, detective John Blake solved a mystery that changed his life forever—and left a woman he loved dead. Now Blake is back, to investigate the apparent suicide of Dorothy Louise Burke, a beautiful college student with a double life. The secrets Blake uncovers could blow the lid off New York City’s sex trade…if they don’t kill him first.

  Richard Aleas’ first novel, LITTLE GIRL LOST, was among the most celebrated crime novels of the year, nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus Awards. But nothing in John Blake’s first case could prepare you for the shocking conclusion of his second…

  PRAISE FOR SONGS OF INNOCENCE:

  “An instant classic.”

  — Washington Post

  “The best thing Hard Case is publishing right now.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle

  “His powerful conclusion will drop jaws.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “So sharp [it’ll] slice your finger as you flip the pages.”

  — Playboy

  Available now from your favorite bookseller.

  For more information, visit<
br />
  www.HardCaseCrime.com