River Girl

by Charles Williams

  My bag was already packed. Just for a moment, as I saw it sitting there, the agonizing hell of what-might-have-been and the despair and bitterness came rushing back and hit me. In six more hours, I thought, we would have been on the plane with all the rest of our lives before us. Then I got hold of myself. I couldn’t go to pieces that way. I had to keep moving and I had to keep my head. Dragging a hand roughly across my face, I went over to the telephone and called for a boy to come after the bags. There was no use taking the cheap one I’d bought in the drugstore, I thought, and threw it inside the closet and closed the door. I had two more than I’d checked in with as it was.

  We went down in the elevator, and as we came into the lobby I looked guardedly around. There was no one at the desk who looked like a plain-clothes man. I wondered if the clerk would notice the extra bags. The boy took them on out and I settled the bill. There was a cab outside and I got in.

  “Where to, chief?” the driver asked. Where? I thought I had to go somewhere.

  “Bus station.” I had to get rid of those bags, no matter what I did. We crawled through snarled traffic and heat and blaring horns. The bus station was jammed and sultry, full of a loudspeaker’s blasting and the roar of a departing bus. I put the three bags in lockers and stuck the keys in my pocket. All right, I thought, I’ve cut the trail from her to me to give myself time to think, but where do I go from here?

  I pushed through the crowd to the lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee. What had she told them? That was the question that went through my mind over and over. Everything depended on that, and there wasn’t any way I could know. Suppose she had confessed? In spite of the sticky heat I felt the chill between my shoulder blades. And it was possible; I knew it. In her terror and confusion, not even knowing what she had been picked up for, with all of them firing questions at her, who knew what she might blurt out?

  But suppose, I thought, trying to pick up the thread of thought I’d had before I realized I had to get out of the hotel, suppose she kept her head and hasn’t said anything so far? Then we’re safe enough—for the moment. The danger then would lie in the fact that eventually they might wear her down, keep hammering at her until she let something slip, or that eventually, as they kept looking for my body, they might find Shevlin’s. That was a very real danger now that Raines had joined in the search because he wasn’t trying to cover anything up, as Buford was. Therefore, I had to get her out of there. But how? Obviously, the only way I could do it was by turning myself in, or coming back to life. And then they would be asking me the question, the big one: Where was Shevlin?

  But wait, I thought. I was very close to it a while ago when I had to run away from the hotel. Suppose I could come back to light in some way that wouldn’t indicate I had ever been down here at all or even knew her? They were still looking for me in that swamp, with some faint hope that I was still alive and only hurt and lost. Well, suppose it turned out that I was? They would release her. The charge then wouldn’t be worth holding her for. That would take the pressure off her before she broke down and confessed, or let something slip.

  The girl brought my coffee. “What’s the matter, big boy?” Suddenly I realized she was talking to me.

  “Matter?” I asked. “Why?”

  She gave me a pert smile. “Well, I don’t know, but you just looked so worried and kind of moving your lips like somebody talking to himself.”

  I’ve got to stop attracting attention, I thought. “Oh,” I said. “It’s my wife. She’s having a baby.”

  “Oh.” She started to move away. “I hope it’s a boy.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Where was I? Oh, yes. Back in the swamp. But if I came back out of there, they would probably dust off that grand-jury investigation again, even providing they’d really dropped it. All right, I thought, what of it? A year, two at-the most. And even a chance of a suspended sentence. We’re young. We could stand it. And it would be a hell of a lot better than what we had staring us in the face right this minute.

  I was working on it at top speed now. I could do it. I could get back in there, fake the scalp wound where he had slugged me with the oar, fall in the swamp a few times, wander around all night until I was dirty and bloody and haggard enough, and then start finding my way out, get picked up by some of the searchers, and have a good story ready for them. I could make it stick. But wait, I thought. I’ve got to get that bag back out of the locker and change clothes somewhere. I’ve got on the new suit, and I’d have a hell of a time explaining how I bought it while I was lost in a swamp. But that was easy. I could do it in the men’s rest room. I put a dime on the counter for the coffee and started to get up, and then the other thought hit me. I sat down.

  My hands were tied. I couldn’t make a move until I found out what she had said to the police. God, suppose I went back into the swamp, and then, tomorrow morning, when I found my way into one of the searching parties, learned that she had confessed the whole thing! Talk about walking into a trap…I flinched.

  Her story would probably be in the papers. I had to wait for them; there was no other way. I couldn’t do a single damned thing now but sweat through the whole, hot, nerve-racking eternity of this afternoon waiting for the story to hit the streets. I looked at my watch. It was twelve-thirty. It would be at least three hours, if it hit the last edition of the afternoon papers, and it might not be in them at all and I’d have to wait until around eight for the morning ones.

  But in the meantime there was something else to work on. Was there any way to get word to her to tell her what I was going to try to do so she could hold on and not break down and spill everything after I had started in there? I thought about it for just a minute. There was one slight chance.

  I got up hurriedly and got some change from the cashier at the counter and went over to the bank of pay phones along the wall. I dialed, “Long-distance? I want to put in a person-to-person call to a Miss Dianne Weatherford at Bigelow. I don’t know the number.”

  “What is your number, please?”

  I told her and waited. It was a slim chance. Would Dinah even be there? She was probably still here in town. And suppose she was home; would she talk to me? I remembered the way she had driven off. I could hear the terse, efficient chatter of the long-line operators and then somewhere far off a telephone ringing. It went on, while I waited, sweating. “Hello?” It was Dinah. I deposited the coins.

  “Hello, Dinah?”

  “Yes. Oh, is that you, Ja—?” She caught herself in time and cut it off.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look, can you get in touch with Buford? It’s important, and I can’t call him at the office.”

  “I will if he’s there. He may still be down at the lake.”

  “Well, look,” I said urgently. “Try to get hold of him. Ask him to come to your place and I’ll call again exactly an hour from now. Got it?”

  “All right.” She paused, then went on blandly. “Oh, by the way, I see they caught that awful Shevlin woman. It was on the radio.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I heard it.”

  “And isn’t it funny, too, that the creature was right there in Bayou City? Where you are.”

  “Yes, isn’t it? Remember. I’ll call you an hour from now.” I hung up. Wait till she sees the picture, I thought. Then she won’t have any doubt of it. Well, it couldn’t be helped now.

  Somehow I sweated out the hour. When I called back Dinah said, “Yes, he’s here now. Just a minute.”

  “Yes?” It was Buford his voice as impersonal as death.

  “Listen. I want you to do something for me,” I said, beginning to talk fast and stumbling over myself. “They’ve just picked up Mrs. Shevlin. I guess you know it by now. And I suppose you’re going to have to send a man down to get her. I want him to give her a message”.

  “Yes? What is it?” he asked coolly.

  “Tell her not to worry about anything. I’m coming back.”

  “I thought so. That’s about the way I had it figured. Well, I�
��ve got news for you. I can’t do anything about your girl friend. We’re not claiming her; Raines is. That place was in Blakeman County, as I told you, so now they’ve issued a warrant for her on suspicion of murder.”

  “What?” I almost shouted it.

  “And another thing. Don’t try to come back.”

  “What do you mean, don’t try to come back?” The booth seemed to be shrinking, trying to choke me. “Listen, don’t you understand—”

  “The thing I understand is that we had an agreement and I carried out my end of it. I didn’t know then that I was just financing your expedition, but I’m satisfied with it because so far it’s worked. And if you come back, it won’t. The minute you show up, everything’ll hit the fan. I don’t like to be doubled-crossed, so I’m telling you to stay away. Do we understand each other?”

  I understood him, all right. He was warning me. He knew now what had actually happened up there in the swamp, or he was pretty sure of it, but nothing interested him except that two-bit graft investigation. She could go to the chair for all he cared, so long as he was all right. My mind grew quite clear and I no longer shouted.

  “I’m coming back,” I said. “Don’t get in my way.” I hung up the receiver and walked out.

  But I still couldn’t go until I knew what she had told the police. It was going to be dangerous enough going in there without being able to get word to her, and having Buford trying to stop me, but it would be simple suicide if she’d confessed and I didn’t know it.

  I never did know afterward where I was that afternoon. It was a blur of hot streets and a million faceless people going past while time ran down and stopped like a clock no one had thought to wind. And then somewhere, later, with the sun slanting obliquely through the east-west streets and brazen on the shop windows, I heard the newsboys shouting, “Read about Mrs. Shevlin. All about Mrs. Shevlin.”

  I bought one and ducked inside a bar. There was another picture of her, but it was the caption I was looking at. “DENIES CHARGE.” I breathed again. Thank God, I thought. She kept her head. Forgetting the beer I had ordered, I tore into the story, trying to absorb it all at once.

  MARSHALL NOT DEAD—MRS. SHEVLIN

  Mrs. Roger Shevlin, beautiful young wife of the man sought in the disappearance and suspected murder of J. B. Marshall, Devers County officer, denied today in a statement to police, who arrested her in a beauty shop in downtown Bayou City, that her husband had killed Marshall. According to Mrs. Shevlin, who was near collapse in the city jail following her arrest, her husband returned for her after he had overpowered the officer and escaped while the two men were on their way out of the swamp, telling her he had merely tied Marshall up with the boat’s anchor rope, knowing he would eventually work free and get back to town. The boat had been hidden to prevent Marshall’s finding it, to give the Shevlins more time to make good their escape.

  If only they don’t break her down before I can get there, I thought desperately. If she cracks…But I didn’t have time to sit and think about it. Paying for the beer, I got up and took a taxi back to the bus station, got the bag out of the locker, and changed back into the old suit in the rest room. Taking out the plane ticket and the watch so there’d be nothing in it by which they could ever connect me with Bayou City, I shoved the bag back into another locker and left it.

  I can’t take the bus, I thought. Somebody might see me getting off at Colston. Too many people know me there. I’ve got to get back into that swamp the same way I got out—without being seen. And I haven’t got time to horse around with freight trains.

  Thirty minutes later I was weaving through traffic in the outskirts of the city, headed toward Colston in a stolen car. It had been easy. I just walked up the street until I saw a woman park and leave the keys in the car. When she went inside a store I got in and drove off. Nothing was going to stop me any more.

  Twenty-four

  I stopped once and bought a flashlight in a drugstore. I’d need it, trying to get around in that swamp at night, and at dawn I could throw it in the lake. I worked it out in my mind as I drove, staying just under the speed limit in spite of the impatience riding me. I couldn’t leave the car up there where I had come out of the swamp before, on the deserted country road. It would be picked up eventually, and the state troopers might begin to wonder why somebody would steal a car in Bayou City, drive it to a place like that, and leave it, forty miles from anywhere. But if I wrecked it on the main highway, on the opposite side of the bottom, it would look all right.

  It was dusk when I went through Colston, and nearly nine by the time I had passed the store and the boat place on the dam at the south end of the lake. The highway swung and turned north again, along the west side of the bottom. Fifteen miles up, and only three or four miles outside of town, it swung sharply left again, away from the bottom, and here was where I crashed it by the simple method of not making the turn. I had slowed to about twenty-five, and as I went down off the roadbed and through the ditch I took out a section of fence, and then finally came to rest without much damage up against a tree. I picked up the flashlight and started out through the pines. Joy-riding kids, they’d say.

  It was a still, sultry night, with no moon but a faint light from the stars. As soon as I was in the timber, however, it was black, and I could see nothing at all. I snapped on the flashlight and started up over the ridge, leaving no tracks in the dense carpet of pine needles. When I came out on top I stopped and looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty.

  If I went straight out across the bottom now, I’d hit the lake about five miles below Shevlin’s cabin. But I wanted to go in at least five miles above it, right into the swamp country itself. The best thing to do, then, was to go north here along the high ground for about ten miles and then swing down off the ridge.

  It was fairly open up here in the pines and I made good time. At a little before one in the morning I figured I had come far enough, and turned right, going downhill. Before long the sand and pines gave way to big oaks and heavy underbrush. Inside an hour I was drenched with sweat and my clothes were badly torn. I ran into a wide marshy area where the mud and water were up to my knees, and to make matters worse, in the middle of it there was a place a quarter mile wide where a cyclone had gone through years ago. Big trees were piled like spilled matches in a nightmare confusion of tree trunks, limbs, and vines. I scrambled over, crawled under, and fought my way through the muck. Once, clambering along the trunk of a big windfall stacked crisscross above another, I slipped in my muddy shoes and fell into the tangle of big limbs below me, laying open a gash on my head and almost knocking myself out. I scrambled up, cursing and wiping blood out of my face, and then grinned sourly as it occurred to me it wouldn’t be necessary now to fake any signs of violence. I’d look as if Shevlin had worked me over with a ball bat.

  It was nearly four when I hit the first sizeable channel of open water. I flashed the light out across it, saw that I was going to have to swim now, and stopped to light a cigarette. There wasn’t any necessity for swimming it before dawn, which would be in about an hour. I sat down against a tree and went over it in my mind. This was—What day was it, anyway? Time had been alternately stretched and compressed for so long I didn’t even know. Let’s see, I thought, I went into the lake Wednesday morning. That night at midnight I was in Bayou City. The next afternoon, then, when the story first broke, would have been Thursday. Then today was Friday. No, I corrected myself, it’s almost daylight Saturday morning. Then I’ve been lost in here for three night and two days, assuming that I tell them it wasn’t until very late Wednesday that I arrested Shevlin. It had taken me nearly all day to find his house, and I didn’t get started out with him until nearly sunset. That would make his being able to jump me and get away a lot more plausible, anyway; it’d naturally be easier in the dark.

  He’d banged me with the oar, and when I came around I was in the bottom of the boat tied up like a pig with the anchor rope. It was dark and I was down there where I couldn’
t see anything anyway, so I had no idea where he took me except that we went a long way. He put me ashore somewhere hours later, with my hands still tied, but not very tightly, and I’d managed to get them worked loose before daylight. The only thing, though, was that I was lost. I kept looking for the lake, and there wasn’t any; there was nothing but a thousand small sloughs and the marsh and flooded areas. After a while I’d run across some tracks and started following them, thinking somebody else was up here and I might find a cabin, and then I had lost my head completely when I found I was going in circles and that they were my own. They wouldn’t have any reason to doubt it; at least one man I knew of had been lost up here and never had found his way out. I shivered, thinking about it. I was taking a long chance. And not only of getting lost, either. I thought. Suppose they broke her down while I was in here?

  I shook it off with rough impatience. It was just a chance I had to take. I lighted another cigarette, knowing that as soon as I swam the slough they’d be ruined anyway and I might as well use them up. Would I look as if I’d been lost up here for nearly seventy-two hours? Yes, there wasn’t much doubt that I’d look the part. My clothes were in ruin already and sweat-soaked and bloody from the cut on my head. Of course, I had shaved on Thursday morning, but I never had got around to it on Friday and would have a forty-eight hour growth of beard, ugly enough to convince anybody. All I had to do now was fight my way down through the swamp until I ran into some of the searchers. They would probably have a camp set up somewhere down there below and be firing guns, still hoping to guide me in. I listened now but there was no sound except that of the frogs.