Area of Suspicion

by John D. MacDonald

  The fall released the pressure on my throat. I braced my feet against the side of the car and thrust myself over in a backward somersault, swinging my legs high as I came over. My right shoe thudded against something and I heard a gasp of pain. I landed on my hands and knees, facing the car. I swung and dived forward, arms spread wide. A knee glanced off my cheek, making my eyes water, but I grabbed one leg and drove ahead hard, like a linesman.

  I could hear the other cars starting up, racing motors as they left hastily, and one set of headlights swept across us just as my man went down. They had heard the screams and this was trouble and the people in the other cars wanted no part of it. Joan screamed again, and this time there was a flat quality to it, and I guessed she had been dragged out of the car on the other side. I clambered over the man as he fell and hammered down with my fist where his face should have been. My fist hit wet earth. He was like an eel. On the next try I hit him squarely and felt something give under my knuckles, felt the frightening eel-like vitality slow into thick movements. I had to get to her and stop whatever it was they were doing to her. I scrambled away from the man on the ground, felt his fingers grasp weakly at my ankle as I stumbled toward the hood of the car. I went around the hood and saw a churning shadow, heard Joan whimpering with effort and fear as I grabbed at the shadows and felt her slimness under my hands. I released her, trying to shove her out of danger, and turned to take a blow above the eye that felt as though it cracked my skull. I yelled thickly to Joan, “Run! Run!” I lunged toward the shadow which had struck me. My arms were dead and, as I grasped him, I took another blow in the dead center of my forehead. I went down onto my knees, trying to hold onto him. He struck down at the nape of my neck and I slid my face into the wet grass. My slack fingers had slid to his ankle. I groaned and yanked the ankle toward me and bit it as hard as I could, the wool of the sock in my teeth. He yelled and kicked free and I rolled toward the bigger shadow of the car and, like a bruised animal hunting a hole, I wormed under the car. I took two deep, gasping breaths and wiggled on out the other side, my shoulder banging something on the underside of the car.

  There was a silence. The rain came again, whispering along the river. I crouched, my knuckles against the wet grass, wetness soaking through one knee. I came silently to my feet, my head clearing. The river made wet, sucking sounds against the bank. A boat hooted, far away. I listened for some sound from Joan. Suddenly I heard a gasp and quick running footsteps in the grass. A flashlight clicked on and the beam swept toward the rear of the car, swept on out and pinned Perry as she ran across the rutted grass. She ran fleetly, like a slim boy.

  There was an odd sound. A sort of whistling chunk. Joan’s scissoring legs made one more stride and she pitched forward onto her face in the grass, falling in a boneless, nightmare way.

  The light went off.

  I went around the car, my shoes skidding and slipping on the grass, half-hearing the noise I was making in my throat as I strained toward a shadow, reaching for it, feeling my finger tips brush fabric. The tears of rage were running out of my eyes. I ran slam into the front end of a black locomotive. It thundered over me and ground me down into darkness, rolled me into something small and black that bounded along the ties between the roaring steel wheels.

  The train rumbled off into an echoing distance. I was in a car. I slumped sideways in the back seat. Something pressed warm and heavy against my thigh. I crawled my hand along and touched it, traced a smooth cheek, brushed hair of silk. The car moved, uneasily. It seemed to waddle like something fat and tired and old. I squinted toward the front seat. It was an old joke. Nobody was driving, mister. We were all sitting in the back seat. The car bumped and moved again. Somebody expelled breath in a sharp whistle of effort. The hood tipped down suddenly, pitching me forward toward the back of the driver’s seat. I could look down the gleam of the hood and I saw it glide down into the black mirror of the river surface, and I saw the black mirror, swirled and broken, slide up and cover the windshield and the world. The car tilted slow, unsupported, and it glided down in slow motion, like a trick movie shot of a car going off a cliff.

  It nudged bottom gently and swayed, and swayed some more, and folded softly over onto its weary side, down in the darkness, down in the river, where death was a hard, thin hissing as the water gushed in through a dozen places, spattering my face, rising up my side. It had been a slow dream, mildly amusing, and I had been a spectator, watching it all in entranced numbness. But the cold hard jet of water from the window nearest me smashed into my face and brought me back to alertness—and panic.

  There was some air trapped in the car, but it was going quickly. My mind started to work. I ripped off the constricting jacket, reached down and pulled my shoes off underwater. I remembered it was a two-door sedan. I got hold of her and shoved her toward the vertical dashboard. I took a deep breath of the precious air and shoved myself forward in the car. I braced my feet against the door, reached up and got the door handle of the door on the driver’s side, the one uppermost. The girl was under water. I couldn’t force the door. I risked one more breath, knowing that when the last of the air was gone the pressure would be equalized and the door would open if it was not sprung. I found the window crank and turned it. The air bubbled up and the black water closed around me, the pressure humming in my ears. I thrust against the door. It opened. I got girl around the waist.

  I bulled up against the door and worked through it, pulling on the girl. She got caught somehow. I tugged hard, and she came free. As we went upward through the door, it tried to close on my feet like something alive, trying to bite. I tore free. I clawed upward through chill layers of water that pressed hard in my ears. I kept kicking, holding her, pulling at the water with my free hand, and it was a nightmare of climbing up a ladder with rubber rungs.

  My lungs were straining against my locked throat and I knew soon there would be no more will to keep my throat locked and the black water would come in.

  My head broke through into the cold moist air of the rainy night. I gasped out the staleness and sucked the good air deep. The light was faint. The current was taking us, and the shore trees moved slowly by against the glow of the distant city. I found I was holding her wrong, holding her with her head under water. I turned her around, with her face in the air. I cupped one hand under her chin and towed her on her back, angling toward shore. The bank was too steep. I couldn’t get any hold on it. She slipped away from me and I reached and caught her just as she was slipping under the surface. I floated with her, straining for the bank. My feet touched. I stood in waist-deep water. I pushed her ahead of me, forcing her upward against the bank. I used roots to claw my way up. I shoved her over the crest and dragged her to a level space and straightened out her body and rolled her over onto her face, adjusting her arms and legs the way the book says. I put my finger in her slack mouth and hooked her tongue forward so she wouldn’t swallow it.

  I knelt with one knee between her legs. I pressed down and forward against the rib cage just above the small of her back, slowly increasing the pressure, then slid my hands back quickly, hooked my fingers on the ridges of hip bone and lifted her pelvis and diaphragm on the reverse count, to suck fresh air back into slack lungs. At first I was trembling so badly from effort, the rhythm was uncertain. Then I began to steady into it. Press—one, two, three. Lift—one, two, three. Press—one, two, three. Lift—one, two, three. I did not let myself think I was working on a body that was dead when it went into the river. I had a vision of the back of her head smashed under the soft copper hair, smashed by the thing that had whistled and thudded and tumbled her like a rag doll. But there was no light and I could not see, and I was doing the only thing I could do, and it was better not to think about it.

  There was no time, no clocks, no night. Existence was divided into two motions: press-lift. I worked over her. My arms were clumsy, bloated things. The small of my back was like a tooth broken down to the nerves. I had no thought of stopping. It became a mania. I
could not remember why I was doing this. I worked with my eyes squeezed against the pain, my jaw sagging.

  She made a choking, coughing sound, and she whispered and stirred under my hands. I rested my hands on her, lightly, and felt the swell and fall of her breathing. I found her pulse. It was slow and steady. I crawled away from her and pitched forward, my cheek against the mud. Nausea curled inside me and faded. I wept with weakness. After a time I crawled back to her. I fingered the back of her head, and felt the stickiness.

  I stood up weakly and saw, far off, golden rectangles of lighted windows. They were home, and fireside. I gathered her up. She seemed very heavy. She was unconscious. I fumbled over two fences, carrying her. I dropped her once and told her aloud that I was sorry about being so clumsy. I picked her up again.

  Chickens made querulous sounds in their sleep. A dog came charging out, yapping in valiant hysteria. See me, the brave dog, defending my land. Hear my bold voice.

  A hard, white yard light went on and there was a big barn shape near me, with a smell of tractors. I tripped and caught myself.

  “Who’s that? Who’s out there?” a man yelled.

  “Accident!” I croaked. “River.”

  I came into the cone of light. A gaunt man peered at me. He took two long strides and caught Perry as she started to slip away from me again.

  I followed him into the kitchen. The house was full of kids. The television was on. The kitchen tilted slowly and the linoleum hammered the side of my head. I tried slowly and laboriously to get up and somebody helped me, saying, “Easy does it! Easy does it!”

  I smiled to show I was just fine. I leaned on him and said carefully, “Please … get a doctor. Phone Arland Police. Get hold of Portugal … Sergeant Portugal. Nobody else, please. Tell him … Dean wants him. Tell him … how to get here.”

  Chapter 16

  I knew the calls had been made. I wanted to sleep. But the man knew I was badly chilled and shocked and he got me into a hot tub. It had the right effect. I felt life and strength coming back into drained muscles. He left me when he was sure I wouldn’t pass out in the tub. He left fresh underwear, a wool shirt, and blue jeans. I soaked for a long time. I could hear heavy voices in the house, and people walking around. I got out and used the big rough towel. I looked in the mirror. There was a knot in the middle of my forehead. My left cheek was puffed and purple, the eye swollen to a slit.

  I dressed in the clothes left there for me and walked out of the steamy bathroom. Kids peered at me and darted into other bedrooms. I went into the living-room. Sergeant Portugal stood there, looking solid and safe and comforting. He was talking to a tired-looking young man with an unkempt mustache.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “By God, you look rough, Dean,” Portugal said. “Meet the doctor.” He was bouncing a small object in his hand. He held it up between thumb and forefinger. “The doc took this out of her head.”

  “She’ll be all right, Mr. Dean,” the doctor said.

  “I figure it was an air gun,” Portugal said.

  “A powerful one. It hit at an angle right at the crown of her head, and traveled between scalp and skull all the way around and came to rest just above her left eyebrow. If it hadn’t hit at an angle, I’d judge it could very easily have perforated the skull.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “No. I removed the pellet, treated her for shock, and gave her a shot that will keep her out for eight hours. She’s okay to be moved. There’s an ambulance on the way out.”

  “She’ll go into Arland General under another name, Mr. Dean,” Portugal said. “And you and I are going into town too, so let’s thank these people and arrange about clothes and see if your wallet is dry, and you can start talking on the way in.”

  I rode with Portugal in his sedan. As we turned onto the highway, the ambulance turned in. I talked. I kept nothing back. I was so weary, I would begin to ramble until Portugal would haul me back onto the subject with a terse question. He stopped near a drugstore and made a phone call. I sat in the darkness. I felt uneasy. The river had done something to my nerves. Every time I thought of Joan I felt gladness.

  Portugal came back. He got in and didn’t start the motor. “I got to make another call in ten minutes. We’ll wait right here.”

  “What call?”

  “I got to know where to take you. I got to know where they want you.”

  “They?”

  He turned. There was enough light on his heavy face so that I could see his weary smile. “It’s out of my league. You’re going to be in good hands. Just relax and ride with it, Mr. Dean.”

  Suddenly he was shaking me awake. I came to, bleared with sleep. “Did you make your call?” I mumbled.

  “Made it and drove three miles. You’re to go with them.”

  I saw two men standing by the sedan. We were parked in an alley. I sensed that we were in downtown Arland. I got out and turned to thank Portugal, but the sedan was already in motion.

  “Please follow me, Mr. Dean,” one of the men said. We went through a door and down steps and through a boiler room to a waiting basement elevator. The elevator took us up to a high floor, to an empty, echoing corridor, to lighted offices.

  There was a man waiting, sitting at a table. There were three empty chairs. There was a small microphone on the table, a large tape recorder with oversized reels on a stand. The two men who brought me up looked young and competent. The seated man was older. I was conscious of the poor fit of the wool shirt and the jeans, of my bruised face and soggy shoes.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Dean. My name is Tancey. I’m with the FBI.” He did not introduce the other two. We all sat down. Tancey was one of those curiously professorial-looking men who, on closer examination, suffer a subtle alteration. You see the hard-knuckled hands then, and the steady eyes, and the breadth of chest, and the clean, compact physical movements, and you wonder what gave you the original impression of the subdued scholar.

  Tancey turned on the tape recorder, checked the gain, gave the date and hour and my name, and began asking questions. They took me through it, right from the beginning. Facts and conjectures. And when I did not give enough detail to satisfy them, they made me back up and go over the incident again. They asked questions that seemed to me to be immaterial, and when I asked a question, it was ignored. They were not rude. They were businesslike. It was a strain. I kept yawning. At last Tancey was satisfied. He turned off the recorder, rewound the tape, checked it for sound, using the monitor speaker. I heard my own voice, scratchy with fatigue.

  During the last half-hour of it, I had begun to get annoyed. They were undoubtedly fine, capable men, but their attitude was as though they were dealing with a rather stupid, naughty child.

  Tancey lit a cigarette and gave me a weary smile. “We may have to go over some of it again tomorrow, Mr. Dean.”

  “Can I go back to the hotel now?”

  “I’m afraid not. You and Miss Perrit were murdered tonight. We’ll keep it that way.”

  “How about her people? You can’t keep them in the dark.”

  “They’ve been contacted. They’ll co-operate. They know she’s all right. We had them report her missing.”

  “There’s something about this cloak-and-dagger atmosphere that doesn’t set too well with me, Mr. Tancey. Why don’t you sweat it out of Colonel Dolson and wrap it up?”

  “You’ll be taken to a place where you can sleep and we’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Mr. Tancey, I got myself and Miss Perrit off the bottom of the river. I’ve opened up for you. I’m tired. But I’m not going to accept being brushed off. I want to know the score, and I think I’ve earned the right to know the score.”

  Tancey looked at me. It was the first time he had looked at me as a human being rather than a source of information. I sensed the extent of his dedication.

  “I’m tired too, Mr. Dean. I haven’t meant to brush you off. Colonel Dolson died tonight. It was arranged to look like a suicide, w
ith note and all. The note was in the form of a confession, so it could have been written by him in exchange for a promise to get him out of the country.”

  Weariness had so dulled my reaction time that it took long minutes to understand what had happened, and the implications of it. With Dolson dead, Stanley Mottling might be in the clear. Not beyond suspicion, but beyond proof.

  “There is something else you should understand, Mr. Dean,” he continued in his grave voice. “Your will names your brother without any alternate heir. If you had died tonight, his estate would inherit, and that means his widow would inherit your holdings, giving her a solid sixteen thousand voting shares.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Tancey said, “There is more we can talk about. Believe me, Mr. Dean, I’m willing to talk to you, but right now I think you’d better go to bed.”

  I could not resist. The brisk young men took me down in the elevator and out through the basement to a car waiting in the alley. I managed to stay awake while they drove me to an old Georgian brick house in an old and no longer fashionable residential section of the city. I was taken to a bedroom. The bed opened like a cave and gobbled me up …

  They were efficient. When I woke up I could tell by the sun that it was at least mid-morning. My wrist watch had stopped. The river had gotten into it. Someone had visited my hotel suite. My toilet kit was there, and the rest of my clothing. There was a morning paper just inside the door. I felt astonishingly good. I wondered about Joan. I wondered if the doctor had been lying to me. That thought shadowed the sunshine. My face was not swollen, but I had a black eye that looked like a comedy effect. Deep blue and purple, and I knew it would fade to bilious saffron before bleaching out. I showered and shaved and sat on the side of the bed and looked through the paper.