by Gil Brewer
“What’re you going to tell him?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
We stood outside, waiting. The sky was overcast and the wind had come up some, fingering the palms against the dark-drenched sky.
I tried to keep my mind away from the body lying in there on the studio floor, away from all the crazy things that had happened, and could happen.
I thought of the big neon sign downtown in Cypress Landing and of how it blinked and flashed the name of a dead man who, in some people’s minds, had got what he deserved. I wished I had gone and talked to the Hewitts.
“You still love me, Eric.” Leda moved against me. She seemed tiny against the background of murder, but as her fingers touched my face I knew I would always feel the same about her. No matter what happened.
“Yes,” I told her. “Nothing’ll change that.”
She sighed. We didn’t kiss, we just stood there, waiting, like two pawns in the hands of the gods.
The sheriff’s gray sedan rolled down the sand road about twenty minutes from the time we called. Two men climbed from the car. One was Clyde Burkette, his pale Stetson gleaming in the car’s lights as he walked toward us. The other was a deputy, quite young, and very grim.
“Hello, Clyde. Come inside a moment.”
He nodded, glanced at Leda, shrugged his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. The grim-faced deputy, who somehow reminded me of Hartly up in Alabama, looking neither right nor left, opened the door himself, preceded us inside. I lit the lights.
“Thought you were coming alone,” I said.
Burkette shoved his hate on the back of his head and picked at a front tooth with his thumb nail. “Gallagher came along for the ride.”
Leda went over and sat by the kitchen table. She still wore her coat and she looked very tired around the eyes. Her lips were tense and she kept her hands clasped on the table. Suddenly she leaped to her feet, ran out the kitchen door. I heard her gagging outside.
“What the hell is this?” Burkette said.
“Yeah,” Gallagher said. “What is this?” He was very grim, very professional. His gray shirt and trousers were creased immaculately, his sparse hair was combed flat without a single strand astray, and his eyes were very steady.
Leda stepped back into the kitchen. She was even paler than before. Her eyes were watering and she clutched a handkerchief to her lips and swallowed with regularity. It seemed odd, seeing a nurse sick to her stomach. But I guess it can happen.
“In here,” I said. I opened the door to the studio, lit the lights, and motioned Burkette ahead of me. Gallagher crowded right behind him. As they entered the room I couldn’t tear my eyes off the butts of their revolvers, holstered high on their left sides.
Deputy Gallagher saw the body right away. He went over and knelt beside it. Burkette clicked loudly at his front teeth with his thumbnail, then turned to me. His eyes were squinted.
“Your brother.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Leda, who stood partially in the doorway, then turned to me again. “You got around to it, finally, eh?”
I’d expected something like this.
“I didn’t do this. Why in the hell would I kill my own brother?” The wooden mallet and the dream, you fool, my mind said.
“We’ll let that pass.”
Gallagher stood. “Been dead quite a while,” he said. “Geez, look at his head.”
There was no excitement in them while I kept burning out inside; burning out like a candle. Burkette kept watching me all the time.
“So this is Garth,” Gallagher said. “This is the guy you told me about?”
Burkette nodded. “Reckon so. Listen, Eric. I been expecting this. What’s your side?”
I told him exactly what had happened. That I was modeling Leda. I told him that, too.
He kept looking at Leda and then me with those infernal black-button eyes of his. I felt everything shredding out, tightening up, weakening. Everything I said had a hollow ring to it.
“What about the Hewitts?” I said.
“What about ’em?” Burkette said. He went over by the body and frowned at it for a while. “A fine job. Wasn’t your mother buried today?”
“Yes.”
“What were you arguing with Frank about out at the cemetery? Heard about that. He was making quite a ruckus about something out there.”
Word got around fast. Burkette had told me that.
“Nothing,” I said. “It was just—nothing.”
Leda hadn’t said a word. She leaned against the doorjamb, not looking anywhere, just standing there with her eyes blank and unseeing.
“What you got to say, Mrs. Garth?” Burkette said. “Looks like you led Frank a merry chase.”
“Leave her out of it,” I said. “She just happened by. I found him, like I said. She came along just before I called you.”
Gallagher edged over until he was by the kitchen door. He stood with his hands on his hips. We all stared at each other. The room was very still and outside I could hear the wind moaning against the barn.
Burkette clicked his teeth. “How about that, Mrs. Garth? I asked you a question. You don’t have to answer. Neither of you have to answer, I reckon, you don’t want to. You’ll answer later, anyways.”
“I don’t like it,” Gallagher said.
Leda shifted in the doorway. “I—I don’t know,” she said softly. She was still very pale, with the handkerchief in her hand. She avoided looking at the body, she avoided looking at anybody, even me. “I—it’s just as Eric, Mr. Garth—Eric said.”
“Eric’ll do, I reckon,” Burkette said.
“For God’s sake, Clyde!” I stepped over to him. “Act decent, will you? We’ve known each other a long while. You’ve got to help me.”
“You’ll need help, all right. Where’s your other dame, Eric?”
Gallagher looked very grim.
“Sure,” Burkette said. “Sure.”
Death was so commonplace to them. Burkette eyed the body some more and said, “Reckon we’ll run to town. Me an’ you, an’ the girl. Gallagher, you stay here.”
Now it really began to get me. “Listen, Clyde. We’re wasting time. Whoever did this is laughing someplace. Can’t you see it’s a frame? I’m it?” I had to believe that, or I’d take a mallet to my own head.
He nodded. “You’re it, all right. But I don’t see any frame, Eric. None whatever. It’s right pat, I’d say.” He cleared his throat. “We’ll have to hold you.”
“I’m not going anyplace.”
Gallagher grinned.
Leda said, “You’d better do like they say, Eric.”
God, now her! Like back in Alabama. A cold deadly repetition. I looked at her and realized right away she was all I had in the world. She smiled at me. It was something to have somebody, let me tell you. Because the world all went apart around me. I couldn’t understand it. Why in hell should I be framed for murder, and by whom? It had to be that. It had to.
“Shall we go?” Burkette said. He glanced at the deputy. “Just sit tight here, till I get back. Don’t touch anything.”
He guided me toward the doorway. Leda moved ahead of us into the kitchen and right then I knew I wasn’t going anyplace with Burkette, for sure. Everything was working too smoothly and I was it without any trouble at all.
There’s a moment that comes in every man’s life when he’s got to act. If the moment slips by, he’s a goner for sure, and it’s unlikely he’ll get the chance to act again. Anyway, he either acts or he doesn’t and sometimes his life can hang on that instant of decision. It isn’t even decision. It’s instinct.
I knew if I walked out that door with Burkette, life might not be very sweet, or very long. Somehow things were mapped out for me, had been ever since I’d left California. I had to find out who did this myself, and I had to do it quickly. But before that, I had to get by myself and start.
So instinct led me by the cupboard door just as Burkette paused to look i
n the other room beyond the kitchen. Leda was at the outside door and the deputy was in the studio. His footsteps came toward the kitchen, and my hand moved toward the forty-five on the cupboard shelf by the coffee can.
Leda saw what I was doing and her eyes opened wide. I grabbed the gun, snaked it down, and Burkette turned as I rode the slide. He didn’t move. But somehow I wasn’t as worried about him as I was about Gallagher who had just entered the kitchen.
He pulled his gun. I didn’t want to fire, but I did. And the forty-five bucked and thundered. The slug tore into the wall next to the young deputy and his gun clattered to the floor.
“Get over next to him!” I told Burkette.
Burkette grimaced at Gallagher. “You fool!” he snapped. “You goddamned fool! Why didn’t you fire?” Gallagher didn’t say anything. He stared at his gun on the floor.
“Kick it over here,” I said. “Hurry up!”
“Eric,” Leda said. “Don’t do this— Can’t you see it’s wrong, Eric?”
“Quiet,” I said. “Start Frank’s car. Frank’s. Mine’s no good and your heap’s too light. Pull up by the door.”
I looked at Gallagher. “Take the gun out of Burkette’s holster and drop it. Drop it right away quick.”
Burkette was very plain. “Now, damn you,” he said over his shoulder to Gallagher. “Here’s your chance. Take it, you fool! You’ve got as much chance as he has. You’ll have a gun in your hand.”
Gallagher hesitated. Burkette was right and I’d never given him credit for that kind of courage. He goaded Gallagher on.
“Go on,” he said. “You yellow-bellied son-of-a-bitch! You’ll have a gun right in your hand. All you got to do is shoot!” He lowered his voice, pointed with meaning. “If you don’t shoot, by God I’ll break you clean back into diapers. Get me?” He paused. Still Gallagher waited, sweat glistened on his face and all the grimness was gone now. He looked like a lost kid, worried to death, scared stiff.
I knew this was the only way, now. If I tried to get that gun from Burkette, he’d pull something. I knew he would. He was mad clear through, and busting out all over. His face was dark red, his eyes snapping.
Gallagher looked at me and his hand moved toward Burkette’s left hip.
“If you do,” I said. “I’ll kill you.”
The words seemed to hang there in the room.
Gallagher drew the gun from the holster very slowly.
“Now!” Burkette yelled. “Get ’im!” He dropped to his knees.
Gallagher stood there a moment with the gun dangling in his hand. It was his moment, just as it had been mine.
He started to shake all over. The gun clattered to the floor. He looked as if somebody had hit him with a hammer right behind the ear. I thought he was going to bawl.
“Now, get back in that other room, both of you!”
Burkette stood. He didn’t say a world. He didn’t look at Gallagher or me. Turning, he walked into the studio, brushing by the deputy as if he were so much lumber stacked against the wall.
I wondered if the deputy would ever get another chance. He would certainly have reason to look grim now.
“Clyde,” Gallagher said. “Clyde, you saw him with the gun, there. Damn it, you know I couldn’t—he’d have killed me—maybe killed us both. Clyde, can’t you—”
Burkette ignored him as completely as if he weren’t even in the room.
“Oh, Geez,” Gallagher said.
Leda came through the kitchen. “Car’s ready,” she said.
“Don’t do it,” Burkette said to her. “Don’t go with him. I’m just telling you. Don’t.”
“Oh, God,” Gallagher moaned.
Kneeling carefully, I kept the forty-five squarely on Burkette and picked up the other two guns. I stuck them in the waistband of my shorts.
Gallagher sat on the couch, slouched over, and stared at his feet. His smooth hair was tousled now. His moment to act was gone and he knew it.
Over my shoulder, I said, “Go get in the car, Leda.”
“Don’t do it,” Burkette said.
I heard her move behind me. “Eric, I—”
“Get in the car and start the engine. I’ll drive.”
“All right.” Her voice was a pale whisper.
Burkette didn’t speak. I heard her go out and right away the smooth roar of the big car’s engine sloughed through the night, parrying with the moan of the wind.
“I didn’t do this,” I said, nodding toward the body on the floor. “Sorry you won’t believe me. It’d make things much easier.”
“Well—Maybe I do, now,” Burkette said.
“Never mind that,” I said. He knew there was no use attempting wiliness now. Anything went. “I’m going to see what I can find out. Somehow I’m going to lock this door and the other door. If you come out of here before we’ve gone, well—” I shrugged.
Burkette turned his back. I went on out. There was no way to lock the inside door. From the kitchen, Burkette called to me.
“We’ll get you, Eric. Just remember that. You won’t get away.”
“We’ll get you,” Gallagher called. He was trying to come back into the good graces of his superior.
“Shut up, you fool!” Burkette said.
I went on out, locked the door, and leaped for the car. Leda was huddled in the front seat.
I turned the sedan around the barn, through a field and over onto the sand road. We were doing fifty by the time we approached the main highway.
“Somebody’s coming,” Leda said. “Look out.”
It was a girl in red shorts, walking on the side of the road. Then I saw it was Norma. She was on my side, and as the car flashed by, we looked straight at each other. She recognized me.
“Eric!” she yelled. “Eric . . .” But the rest of her words were lost as the tires screamed on the smooth, broad blacktop road.
Chapter 17
Clouds of driving rain like gusts of steam broke across the front of the car. The tires whined on the water-flushed highway as we droned ahead at a steady eighty-five. It was a sweet car to drive and we could very easily need all that power before long.
“Where we going?” Leda said with a tense note of fear. “You’ve got to run, Eric. Run fast and far.”
“Got to find the Hewitts,” I said.
“But why? What good will that do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then forget them, for God’s sake, Eric.”
“Do you know where they live?”
“Darling, this is not time to think about the Hewitts. You’ve got to think about us. They’ll be looking for you.”
I glanced at her. She strained her white face toward me and I cursed silently. I didn’t want her to go to pieces; it wouldn’t be like her to do that. I hoped to hell she would hold up. She had to hold up.
I had turned away from Cypress Landing but I knew I’d have to find a back road in order to cut around the town and inland. It was a good thing it was this country—once I’d been familiar with every trail, cow path, and woods road in the section. But it would be bad on a night like this. The swamps and the jungle threatened the shoulders of those roads wherever you went and this rain wouldn’t help matters.
“Maybe the Hewitts had nothing to do with this,” I said. “But maybe they’ll know something. They’re my only lead.”
“You’re going to play detective.”
“You can call it that.” I looked over at her. She was a beautiful, white-faced, frightened woman; so beautiful that for a flashing instant I wondered if I wasn’t glad all this had happened. We were together again, all the way clean. But I swore at myself for that, too. She was curled up with her back to the door, her coat thrown wide, her skirt in her lap. Long legs with the sheen of gold sloped into the shadows below the dashboard, gleaming palm’s widths of soft thigh winked above the tops of sheer hose. With glistening red lips, full and warm, and with eyes that could burn with passion, I loved her. I loved the wildness inside her, the strands
of fury that cut through her soul, the urgent need that powered her being.
“Watch the road, Eric.”
“I am.”
“Okay.” She was thinking. “Listen, Eric. They’ll be after you, we’ve got to hide someplace. For a while, at least. Someplace where we can think.” She moved closer to me and her breast brushed my arm.
“Yeah, you’re right. But where? Anyway, I’ve got to see the Hewitts.”
“All right, all right.” She hauled the two guns from the waistband of my swimming shorts and put them in the glove compartment. They’d been gouging my middle. “But then we can go to Frank’s cabin.”
I didn’t know about that, didn’t know he had one, or where it was.
“Nobody’ll ever find us there,” she said. “He had it built quite a while ago. It’s way in the jungle. On a river. Nobody else lives anywhere around, and it’s reached only by an old trail of a dirt road.” She described where it was. I remembered the section and it was hellish. It’d be a good place to hide out, all right. The country would be flooded out there tonight.
“You sure nobody knows about where that place is?”
She gripped my leg with her hand. “No. Nobody. I—I went out there with Frank a couple of times.”
“Don’t tell me.” I swerved the car sharply to avoid a sinkhole, then spotted the road I wanted back toward the town, cutting off to our left. The rear end ripped around on the rain-sluiced pavement as we took the turn. The road was dirt but well-packed and not too bad as yet. I opened the engine as far as she’d go.
“We’ll see,” I said. “I want to talk with that family first. They’ve got to know something. People who are skinned by a man stick together. Anyway, they’re apt to hold council.”
“You sound like a senator.” She placed her hands beneath the waistband of my swimming trunks.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I’m just warming my hands.” She wriggled her fingers. “Don’t you like it?” She squirmed closer. “You’ve got to get some pants, Eric. I’d lend you mine, but . . .”
I heaved an inward sight of relief. So long as she stayed like that, it was all right. It could be plenty bad with a hysterical woman on my hands. “Didn’t know you wore any,” I said, and swung the car off on another road that would take us past Cypress Landing. We were in pine country now.