River Girl

by Charles Williams

  The story went on with a lot more of Buford. He reconstructed the whole thing as indicated by the evidence, giving his opinion that I had arrested Shevlin and started out with him. Somewhere along the line I had grown momentarily careless, Shevlin had seized the opportunity to slug me with the oar, unlock the cuffs—they had found the key where I had dropped it—and had dropped me over the side with the anchor tied to my body. Then he had gone back for his wife—for by this time it was known that he was married, though no one could remember having seen her in almost a year—and on the way out of the swamp in his boat he had hidden the rental boat and then escaped. It was as nearly what I had planned as if I’d left him a script to read.

  Full of elation, I paused to light a cigarette, and then read on, looking for some hint about the grand jury.

  Young Marshall, a veteran of World War II and well known and liked throughout the county, was the only son of the late Judge Halstead Marshall and the last of a family quite prominent in this part of the state for over a hundred years.

  I put the paper down. That last paragraph might be the answer. It carried a hint of something I had hoped for but had not dared count on too heavily. Now that I was presumably dead and nothing could be gained by investigation except to raise a smell, there was a good chance they had let it die out of respect for the Judge’s memory. Probably they had started, got far enough into it to see where it was going to lead, and now that I was dead they’d let it drop. I hoped so, anyway.

  I paid for the coffee and went back to the hotel, walking as if a hundred-pound weight had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders and knowing that at last there was no danger. I almost ran the last few steps down the corridor to get into the room to tell her.

  She was just coming out of the bathroom in her robe. I caught her excitedly and kissed her while she looked at me in wonder, and then I handed her the papers.

  “Read it,” I said. “We’re in the clear. They went for every bit of it. No, wait.” I interrupted myself. “Before you start, call room service and order your breakfast. I’ve already had some coffee and I’m too excited to eat any thing.”

  “All right, Jack.” She made an effort to smile, but it was a strained and pitiful attempt, and I knew that the terror of last night was still alive there somewhere below the surface. After she had made the call she started reading the news stories and I watched her face as the hope and relief grew in her eyes. When the waiter knocked on the door I went into the bathroom and hid while the set up the breakfast things. When he had gone I came out and drank a little of her coffee and watched her while she finished the papers and tried to eat. She didn’t get much of it down.

  “Look,” I ran on, too full of plans now to be quiet, “the other things you bought will be delivered to the hotel by noon today and I’ll have the suit and a change of clothes. We have luggage and can travel looking just like anybody else. So we’ll check out, separately, sometime this afternoon, and catch the first bus. No, by God, we’ll take the plane. We can afford it now. Why didn’t I think of it sooner? We’ll take the plane to San Francisco, stay there a few days, and then go on up to Seattle by bus to see the country.”

  She had begun to catch my excitement now. “I think that’s wonderful, Jack,” she said. She called the airline and found there would be a plane at six-fifteen p.m., and made her reservation.

  “You’ll have to go down and pick up the ticket sometime this morning,” I said. “I’ll follow you and get a ticket for myself. Maybe we’d better make it pretty soon, so they won’t be sold out.”

  She called room service and I went back into the bathroom while the waiter took away the dishes. I prowled the room restlessly while she was in the bath changing into street clothes, and when she came out I spoiled her lipstick kissing her.

  “You’re just like a big bear,” she said, smiling. She started to pin her hair up into that roll on the back of her neck and I took her by the arms and turned her around.

  “Couldn’t you leave it down now?” I asked. “After all, there hasn’t been any description of you broadcast, as far as we know. As a matter of fact, nobody’s seen you for-a year and they don’t even know what you look like. But, no, I guess not. It would attract attention, chopped up like that. I don’t like it, though. Put up that way, I mean. Because it’s so damned lovely when it’s down across the side of your face.”

  “But after all, Jack,” she smiled, “when we’re alone together I always have it down. And you don’t care what it looks like to other people, do you?”

  “Yes that’s right. But remember that when we’re out in public, the other people aren’t the only ones looking at you. I am too.”

  “You say awfully nice things for this early in the morning.

  “There is no early morning in the way I feel about you,” I said, grinning. “It’s always just at dusk with the moon rising.”

  “Sweet! Maybe, though, I could get a beauty-shop appointment this morning and have it cut to even it up. It would be all right then.”

  “Try it,” I said eagerly. “That’d be fine.”

  She looked up some in the telephone book and started calling. On about the third one she hit a cancellation and they said they could take her at eleven-thirty.

  We went down the street to the airline office, going in separately, and she picked up her ticket while I bought one. There isn’t much need for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff any more, I thought, and as soon as we’re on the plane we’ll call it off. It’s all right now.

  We went back to the hotel to wait until she had to go to the beauty shop. The rest of her packages had been delivered. I went up to my room and found that the suit and the other clothes I had bought had come, as well as the new bag. I packed, and just as I was starting out the door to meet her down in front of the hotel I remembered I hadn’t shaved this morning. I’d forgotten all about it. Well, there isn’t time now, I thought; I’ll come back and do it while she’s in the shop.

  The beauty shop was only two blocks away, and we walked, going slowly along through the dense crowds and the heat. The boys were beginning to call the afternoon papers and I was just going to buy one when a sharp cry from Doris interrupted me.

  “Jack! I left my watch!” She had stopped. “I took it off to bathe this morning and put it on the dresser. And when I got ready to meet you I went right over there and looked at it to see what time it was and didn’t put it on. Oh, how stupid!”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s safe in the room. “But I’m worried about it. It’s such a beautiful thing, and you gave it to me. And, besides, the maid will be in to clean the room.”

  “I know what,” I said. “Give me your key and I’ll run back and pick it up while I’m waiting for you.”

  I watched her go across the street and into the shop, and when she was inside I walked back to the hotel. The watch was still on the dresser and I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I’ll run upstairs and shave, I thought, and go back to meet her. She said it’d take only about half an hour. Then I remembered the paper I hadn’t bought, and was suddenly curious as to whether anything new had turned up. I went back out and bought one from the boy on the corner. He handed it to me folded and I stuck it under my arm, going up the street toward the bar I had been in yesterday. It was air-conditioned and would be more comfortable than the hotel.

  The place was almost deserted, very cool and dim after the crowds and hot sunlight in the street. The barman in his white jacket was bent over a newspaper spread out on the bar, and as I went past I noted absently that it was the same one I carried under my arm, the afternoon paper with the salmon-colored outer sheet. I sat down at the end of the bar and he came over.

  “Bottle of beer,” I said.

  He opened it and got a glass. “Quite a deal about that sheriff, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  I’m a celebrity now, I thought. But, anyway, a dead one. “Yeah,” I said casually. “Probably never find his body, either.”

  He shook his head
. “Not a chance, in that place. I been up there fishing a couple of times. But, say, that babe was a looker, wasn’t she?”

  What was he talking about? “Babe?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that guy’s wife. A real pipperoo.”

  “Wife?” I asked stupidly. What the hell, was Louise mixed up in it now?

  “The sheriff?”

  “No,” he said. “The other one. The man that killed…his wife’s picture is there on the front page.”

  I could feel my skin congeal inside the sweaty clothes. Somehow I got the paper out from under my arm and unfolded it, trying to keep my face still while the bar swam around me in a slow and horrible eddying of black mirrors and mahogany and white-jacketed barmen.

  I knew what it was even before I looked. For some crazy reason, the thing she had said about the watch came back to me. “I went right over there and looked at it to see what time it was and didn’t put it on.” I had stood right there in the cabin day before yesterday, taking a last look around, and had looked right at the picture sitting there on the mantel beside the clock—the clock I had even noticed was stopped—and I had never even seen it.

  “A honey, huh?” It was the barman.

  Somehow I managed it. “Yeah,” I said. “A honey.” I had to get out of there. But I couldn’t run like that. I might get him suspicious. Somehow I managed to dig a dollar out of my pocket and put it on the bar, to give him something to do besides just standing there looking at me. They had given it a full two columns. “sought,” the caption said. “Mrs. Roger Shevlin, beautiful young wife of man sought in swamp killing.” Good God Almight, I raged, they didn’t have a picture of him—only twenty thousand of them scattered in every law-enforcement office in the South—so they had to run hers!

  I gulped at the beer, almost drowning myself to get it down so I could get out of there. Fortunately I had swallowed it before my eyes had started wildly down the front-page story alongside the picture, for then I got the second jolt—

  as law enforcement officers of the adjacent county swung into the search for the body and the escaped killers. According to Sheriff Carl C. Raines of Blakeman County, Marshall may have been overpowered and killed in the cabin itself or nearby, and Shevlin and his wife may quite possibly have disposed of the body in the other direction, above the cabin, before they fled.

  I tried to put the glass down without rattling it against the wood. So now Raines was mixed up in it, and thought she had helped to kill me, and he was looking for them both! Buford had called the warning, and I hadn’t paid any attention. He had told me that the upper end of the lake was in Blakeman County. I had even known it myself, but hadn’t thought it was important. But now—

  Buford covering my tracks behind me was one thing, but having Raines sniffing at the trail was something entirely different. He wasn’t just going through the motions.

  Somehow I got out of the bar. Heat rolled up and hit me as I went through the door, and I had to remember where I was to get my directions straight. The beauty shop was up the street toward the left. But what was I going to do? I thought of her sitting there, with that ragged hair already causing the girls to notice her, and with everybody looking at the picture on the front page. I’ve got to do something, I thought agonizingly. But what? I had to wait for her to come out; if I went in there to get her, that would attract attention. And if I got her back to the hotel, then what? Dye her hair? How did you disguise a woman?

  The heat was beginning to make me weak, and I felt sick. This was the last intersection now, and I leaned against the lamp pole waiting for the light to change. The beauty shop was the fourth door from the corner and I stopped in front of it, not knowing what to do next. People going past in the hot sunlight bumped into me and I moved out toward the curb.

  A sedan pulled up into the no-parking zone and stopped. Two men got out, and as I watched in growing horror they walked into the shop. But they’re not in uniform I thought desperately. They’re not police. They couldn’t be! But there was no use trying to kid myself that they looked like the kind of men who frequented beauty shops.

  The door opened. She was coming out. I wanted to jump forward and cry out and take her by the arm, but I stopped, rooted where I was. One of the men was right behind her and he had her by the arm, I had to move to get out of their way, for I was standing right in front of their car.

  She saw me and I thought she would cry out. The terror was awful in her eyes, but she went past me with no word and no sign of recognition. I could swing and hit him, I thought through the black despair, but she couldn’t run in those high heels, and there’s always the other one. And by now I had seen the shoulder holsters and the guns. One of the men got in the front seat behind the wheel and the other helped her in and then sat down beside her in the back.

  Nobody had said a word. The people going by on the sidewalk never knew it. As the car pulled away from the curb her face turned toward me just for an instant through the window and I wanted to die.

  Twenty-three

  Then I was back at the hotel. I had no idea how I had got there, but I was standing in her room looking around at her clothes and the two alligator bags and her robe and nightgown across the bed and feeling all the emptiness and silence of this place where she had been come crawling up over me like ants across a lidless eye. There was no escaping them, and I wanted to turn and run back out, but there was nowhere else to go and I had enough sense left to know that the emptiness was inside me and that I would take it with me when I ran.

  The thing I had to do was sit down and try to think, try to see exactly what had happened. This torturing condemnation running endlessly through my mind like a singing commercial through a radio you couldn’t turn off wasn’t going to do anything except eventually drive me crazy, and then they’d have us both. I had done this to her. I had left the picture there where they had found it, I had been responsible for her going to the beauty shop, and I had stood there like a baby and let the police take her away to jail, but it wasn’t going to help any to go on torturing myself with the knowledge.

  I sat down on the bed. The maid had already been here and cleaned the room, so I was safe enough from discovery. And they’re not even looking for me anyway, I thought, struggling to reorient myself. They’re only looking for the people who are supposed to have killed me. Then the terrible irony of it went to work on me again and my head was in a spin. I had done such a good job of erasing myself that they had already arrested her as an accomplice in my murder.

  But does she know that? I thought. Does she know that it’s my disappearance she’s been arrested for, or does she, in her terror, think they’ve found out about Shevlin? What would she do? What would she be likely to say, to cry out without knowing where she might trap herself? That was the terrible part of it. I had no way of knowing what she was going to say, and no way to get word to her to tell her what to say. I thought of those “Information, Please” experts at work on her and of all their tricks, and had to tear my mind away from it.

  If she saw from the first that they had picked her up only because they were trying to find Shevlin, she would be all right. There were a thousand things she could tell them that would leave her in the clear. And all the time she would be secure in the knowledge that the crime for which she had been arrested didn’t actually exist, that they couldn’t actually do anything to her for being accessory to my death, because I wasn’t dead, and that as a last resort I could always reappear to kill the charge. But, I wondered then, suddenly, would her mind, having gone that far, go on to the next fact, the one staring me in the face right now? And that was that if I reappeared, what was I going to tell them when they asked me what it was all about and where Shevlin was? I could tell them that he had escaped from me. Sure. But what was I doing down here? Running from that grand-jury investigation at home? No. Because I didn’t even know that such a thing existed. Again, I had covered my tracks too well. And, also, if I reappeared out of limbo right here in this city where she was a
nd to save her from the charge, it would tie the two of us together. Shevlin missing, and his lovely wife down here with me? It was a tabloid editor’s dream come true, and they’d have a confession out of one of us inside a day.

  I was calmer now and my mind was beginning to function, as it always seemed to do eventually when I was in a jam. It was a lot like the way I had felt that day up at the cabin on the lake. After the first shock wore off and I could see that the chips were down and I had to do something, I could think. I was conscious now of this growing clarity, this ability to see all paths at once and the dangers inherent in each one. And the first thing I could see was that I was going to have to get out of this room, and get out of it fast. I wasn’t safe here; this was probably the most dangerous place in town for me right now. I sprang up from the bed. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Someday, I thought, I’m going to realize something like that just a minute too late.

  Taking the key out of my pocket, I left it on the dresser. Since she didn’t have it with her and they’d know it when they searched her, it had to be here unless I wanted them to know somebody else had been here with her. As for the other things, the clothes and the bags she had bought, there was nothing to do but leave them. But no, I thought suddenly. I can’t. I can’t leave those two bags. I was with her when she bought them and helped her pick them out. The man who sold them to her could probably describe me to the police as easily as he could describe his brother. And since they were after Shevlin, they’d be backtrailing her all over town to see if anybody had seen him with her. I grabbed them up and looked out into the corridor. It was clear, and I slipped out hurriedly, closed the door, and went up the stairs to my room.

  That had been close, and I’d probably caught it just in time. They would have her at the station by now. And, since they were after him and since it would be logical to assume that if she were here in town he might be too, there’d be dozens of them shaking down the hotels right this minute. The thing to do was get out of here, and the sooner the better. They’d be here any minute with her picture. Thank God, I thought, we weren’t registered together and the hotel people had no reason to connect me with her. Of course, they weren’t looking for me, but my description, if they had it, would be one that would stick in the mind, and I couldn’t take any chances of having them begin to wonder just how dead I was.