John D MacDonald - The Executioners (aka Cape Fear)

by The Executioners (Aka Cape Fear)(Lit)

  "Rack it up to my intense devotion to law and order."

  "He won't do anything, and he'll stop us from doing what we want to do."

  "Don't start to cry."

  "But it puts us back where we were. Just waiting and waiting and being scared every minute."

  Captain Mark Dutton was out, and they had to wait over forty minutes before he came back to headquarters. The waiting room was barren and depressing.

  The people who went through glanced at them, quick, brief glances that contained no interest, no curiosity.

  Carol sat woodenly, her face stamped with hopelessness.

  At last a clerk came for them and took them to Dutton's office.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  DUTTON GREETED them with bored courtesy. They sat in two chairs near his desk.

  Sam said, "Did you hear about... the trouble we had down at " "A report and a request for information came in from Sheriff Kantz. There's a pick-up order out on Cady. Unless he leaves the area, he won't stay loose very long. How is your boy?"

  "He's all right. We were lucky."

  "How long can we keep on being lucky?" Carol said flatly.

  Button gave her a quick measuring glance.

  "Are your children in a safe place?"

  "We think so. We hope so," Sam said.

  "But in a business like this, there are no guarantees. The man is insane."

  Dutton nodded.

  "From what's happened, assuming he was the sniper, I'd say that was a fair estimate, Mr. Bowden."

  Dutton listened with no change of expression while Sam told him of the loosened wheel lugs.

  "All I can say to you is I hope we can pick him up soon. I don't know what other assurances I can give you. I've given the job the best priority I can give it. If you people can... be careful until we " "You want us to hide," Carol said sharply.

  "That's one way to put it, Mrs. Bowden."

  "You want us to hide and wait and then, when he's wanted for murder, you'll give it some extra priority."

  "Now just a moment, Mrs. Bowden. I explained to your husband " Carol stood up.

  "There's a lot of explaining going on.

  I didn't want to come here. I'm sorry I came here. I knew you'd be nice and rational, Captain Dutton. I knew you'd pat us on the head and send us away full of some kind of forlorn confidence that you people will be able to handle this."

  "Now, just " "I'm talking, Captain Dutton. And I'm talking to you and I want you to listen. We were going to try to trap that... animal. We were going to use me as bait. And we were going to depend on the gun you let my husband carry. I'm astonished you went so far as to let him have a gun. And when everything was arranged, he felt he had to come down here and see you again. And I knew it would be just the same as before."

  "Carol..."

  "Be still, Sam. The world is full of too many little men full of self-important, petty authority and not one ounce of imagination or kindness. So fill out all your neat little priority forms, Captain, and we'll go home and try to do it our way. Unless, of course, you can quote some law that will restrain us from even trying.

  My children are threatened, Captain, and if I can kill Mr. Cady, I will gladly do so, with a gun or a knife or a club. Let's go, Sam."

  "Sit down, Mrs. Bowden."

  "I don't see how " "Sit down!" For the first time there was the full ring of dominance and authority in the man's voice. Carol sat.

  Button turned toward Sam.

  "Just how did you plan to trap Cady into coming to you?"

  "There's a lot of ifs. If I can be smuggled back in the station wagon and sneak into the kids' room in the barn. If he is watching the house. If our signal system works. If he thinks Carol is alone and decides to come after her. If I can fire at him and hit him."

  Dutton looked at Carol.

  "Do you people think he's watching your house?"

  "I think so. Yes," Carol said.

  "Maybe it's nerves.

  But I think he is. We're pretty isolated there."

  "Please wait right here," Dutton said and left the office quickly.

  "I'm sorry, darling," Carol said. Her mouth was trembling.

  "You were slightly magnificent."

  "I made a fool of myself. But he made me so angry."

  "A lioness."

  "No. Ninety per cent rabbit."

  Dutton was gone for a full fifteen minutes. When he came back he had a young man with him, a brown young man in his twenties, short and stocky, with mild blue eyes and a lip that struggled to cover buck teeth, and brown hair that needed cutting. He wore a white shirt, dark-blue trousers, and a yellow pencil behind his ear.

  He stood at semi attention as Dutton went around his desk and sat down.

  "This is Corporal Kersek. He's restless, unmarried, a first-class pistol shot, and bored with his current assignment in Communications.

  Andy, this is Mr. and Mrs. Bowden. I've cleared his assignment with the County and with the State Police.

  Andy was an infantryman in Korea. I can assign him to you for three days, Mr. Bowden. He understands the situation in general. Go over your plan with him in detail, and accept his recommendations for any changes. Good luck to you. And, Mr. Bowden..."

  "Yes?"

  Button smiled thinly.

  "You have an alarmingly effective wife. And a very handsome one."

  Carol flushed and smiled and said, "Thank you, Captain Dutton."

  They talked with Kersek in a small room just large enough to hold six chairs, a table and a radiator. Sam explained the original plan and made a rough sketch of the house, barn and grounds on a yellow pad. Andy Kersek was shy and awkward at first but as he began to take more of an active interest in the problem, he became more articulate.

  "About how far from the house to the barn, Mr. Bowden?"

  "A hundred feet."

  "I think it'll be better if I'm in the cellar. I can make it there after dark. You could open a cellar window for me, Mrs. Bowden."

  "It's a damp cellar."

  "I can make out all right."

  It pleased Sam that Kersek did not in any way question that Cady would make an attempt. It made the whole project seem more businesslike and official.

  After he drew the equipment he thought he would need, they drove him to his rooming house, where he changed to dark shabby slacks, a dark shirt and tennis shoes.

  Before they reached the village, Sam and Kersek stretched out in the back of the wagon and pulled a dusty car blanket over them. Sam knew all the familiar turns. He felt the pitch of the hill, and knew just when she would have to slow down for the driveway. When she drove into the barn, less light came through the blanket, and the motor sound became louder before she turned it off. She opened the left rear door and picked up the bag of groceries for the house.

  "Be careful," Sam said in a low voice. She nodded, her lips compressed. He and Kersek got out of the car and he stood well back from the dusty window and watched her scurry across the lawn toward the house, through the late-afternoon sunlight, moving with all the clean grace so familiar and so dear to him. He saw her unlock the door, go inside and close it. He turned and saw that Kersek was tensed and waiting.

  "What's the matter?"

  "He could be inside waiting. She'd get a chance to yell once."

  Sam cursed himself for not having thought of that.

  They stood in the intense silence of the barn, listening.

  The cooling motor of the station wagon ticked. Suddenly, startling both of them, the buzzer sounded in the upstairs room three short, quick sounds.

  "All clear," Sam said gratefully. He climbed the ladder quickly and returned her signal. It was just four o'clock. Kersek helped him carry his stuff up and get organized. Kersek left his supplies near the foot of the ladder. They sat upstairs on the old Army cot, surrounded by broken toys, half-completed projects, a hundred pictures cut out of magazines and tacked and pasted to the rough walls. They talked in low voices.

  Sam
told Andy Kersek the complete story of Max Cady.

  The single cobwebbed window looked toward the house, and from where he sat, Sam could look along the thin wires that sagged and lifted again to enter the house through the hole drilled in Nancy's window frame. He could see a portion of the hill behind the house, but he did not try to see more of it because he did not want to get his face too close to the window.

  Carol sent her brisk signal each hour on the hour.

  After they had exhausted the subject of Cady, Kersek talked about Korea and how it had been, and how he had been hurt and how it had felt. They both read for a time Kersek reading at random in the great pile of dusty comic books in the corner. And at last it grew too dark to read and too dark to smoke.

  Carol buzzed at nine and at ten, and Kersek muffled the buzzer, suspecting the sound might carry too far in the stillness of the night.

  "Time to move," Kersek said. He seemed shy again.

  He held his hand out and Sam took it.

  "I don't want anything to happen to her," Sam said.

  "Nothing will." There was reassurance and confidence in his voice. Sam followed him down the dark ladder, feeling his way. Kersek drifted out into the night. He made no sound. Sam strained his eyes to see him, but he could not. Kersek had smudged his face, and his clothes were dark, and he moved with the ease and vigilance of a trained man.

  The faint light that showed around Nancy's window went out at ten-thirty. He tried to sleep, but he could not. He listened to the sounds of the long summer night, the insect chorus and the distant dogs, and the few cars on the road, and the far-off trucks, and a long, brazen Diesel hoot far down the valleys.

  The first light of dawn awakened him, and he moved the cot back away from the window. There was no signal at six, and he resisted the temptation to initiate a signal. The slow minutes passed. The hour from six to seven seemed but little longer than eternity. There was no signal from her at seven. The house looked silent and dead. They were in there, slain while he slept. At five after seven he could wait no longer. He initiated the signal. Twenty seconds later, as he was reaching again for the key, his mouth dry and his heart pounding, the signal was returned. He took a long deep breath and was immediately sorry he had awakened her. She needed sleep so very badly.

  He ate. The long morning passed. A salesman parked in front of the house and walked to the front door and waited there several minutes before giving up and driving away. A brown-and-white cat stalked a bird across the lawn, tail twitching, ears forward, body crouched. It sprang and missed and looked up into the elm for a few moments, then sat and washed neatly, and strolled away, the birds scolding it.

  By noon his worry over the children had become intense. If Cady had found out, somehow... But Carol had promised to call them twice a day, and if anything was wrong, she would have come running to the barn.

  He could not remember ever having spent a longer day. He watched the shadows change and lengthen. At six the sun went behind a bank of dull clouds in the west behind the house, and night came earlier than usual. She made her last signal at ten o'clock and her light was out shortly afterward.. fogged dream in a deep sleep, dream interrupted by the morning alarm clock. And he groped for the clock that was not there, and suddenly sat up in absolute darkness, his reactions so blurred by heavy sleep that for long and precious seconds he did not know where he was, nor why his heart should be hammering so heavily.

  When shrill realization came, he rolled off the cot and tried to scoop up the gun and flashlight His body was clumsy with sleep and he pawed the flashlight away from him and then found it in the darkness. He lowered hmself hastily through the trap door, found the rungs of the ladder with his toes. He had not anticipated how awkward it would be to try to climb down in complete darkness carrying a gun and flashlight.

  His foot slipped and when he tried to catch himself, his hand slipped. He fell and landed with his right foot on something uneven. It was an eight-foot drop and he landed with his entire weight on the right ankle. It felt as though a white flare had exploded inside his ankle.

  He fell heavily, faint with pain, a sprawling fall that brought him up against a wheel of the car, rolling in darkness, empty-handed, his sense of direction completely confused. He got up onto his hands and knees, grunting with pain, and he realized the long alarm cry of the buzzer had stopped. He began to paw around in the darkness, sweeping his hands across the floor, feeling for gun and flashlight.

  He touched the roundness of the flashlight, snatched it up and pushed the switch, but it did not light. He heard a scream of complete and shocking terror, a scream that seemed to tear a long and ragged strip off his heart, and he heard the muffled and yet brittle sound of the Woodsman as two shots were fired.

  He was sobbing with fright and frustration and pain. He touched the butt of the revolver and snatched it up and tried to stand. When he put weight on the ankle he fell again, and crawled to the wall and pulled himself up. Just then he heard the second scream quaver across the night air, a piece of silver wire stretched out to an endurable point, then snap into a silence worse than the scream.

  From somewhere he found the strength to walk, and then the strength to break into a blundering run.

  The night was utterly black. There was misty rain on his face. He felt as though he were trying to run in chest-deep water. His right foot flopped uselessly, and each time he came down on it he felt as though it landed in white-hot coals, ankle-deep.

  He fell on the front steps, struggled up and found the door and knew in despair that it was locked and that he had no key and it would take him an eternity to find his way around the house and find where Cady had broken in. That was another thing they had not considered. Another tragic oversight. But where was Kersek?

  Just at that moment he heard a sound that must have come from a man's throat, but it was utterly unlike any human sound he had ever heard. It was a snarling, roaring sound, full of anger and madness and a bestial frenzy. And there was the deep, resonant bang of a weapon heavier than the Woodsman, a sound that rattled the windows.

  There was an enormous crashing and clanging and thudding of something running or falling down the front stairs, bringing Carol's alarm system of pots and pans and string with it. And a jar that shook the house.

  Before he could move, the locked front door burst open and a half-seen figure, wide and hard and stocky and incredibly quick, came plunging out and smashed into him and drove him back. There was a sick sense of floating as he sailed backward over the steps, and then he landed flat on his back on the wet grass with a great jar that knocked the wind out of him. He had managed to hold on to the revolver. He rolled up onto his knees, gagging for breath, and heard the pound of running feet on the turf, saw something running toward the corner of the house. He fired three times at it, snap shooting taking no aim. He got up and wobbled to the corner of the house. He was still sobbing for breath, but he managed to hold his breath and listen. He heard something that moved with frantic haste, crashing up through the brush on the hillside behind the house. He fired twice at the sound and listened again, heard it recede, become fainter, and disappear.

  When he turned back, his ankle folded again and he fell against the side of the house, hitting his head. He crawled on his hands and knees. He crawled up the steps and through the open front door, found the light switch in the lower hall and turned it on.

  He could hear a faint mewling sound, a hopeless sound of fright and pain and heartbreak so like the unforgettable sound he had heard so long ago in a Melbourne alley that it seemed to him his heart would stop.

  The sound continued as he climbed the stairs on his hands and knees. Halfway up he threw the empty gun aside. When he reached the upper hallway, he turned on the light. Kersek lay in the hallway outside the door of Nancy's room. The door was open. The room was in darkness. The endless whining sound came from inside the room.

  Kersek blocked the hall. His gun lay five feet from him. Sam had to clamber over him. He tried to be
gentle. Kersek groaned as he climbed over him. He turned on Nancy's room light. The bedside table was tipped over, the lamp shattered. Carol lay half under the bed, curled in fetal position. She wore her pajama trousers. The top was ripped off her, hanging by one sleeve. There were two deep, bleeding scratches on her back. She made the endless and broken sound with each breath as he crawled toward her. When he tried to pull her out from under the bed, she fought him, and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

  "Carol!" he said sharply.

  "Carol, darling!"

  The sound continued and then stopped. She opened her eyes cautiously, and when she turned he could see the purpling bruise that covered most of the left side of her face.