by Cave, Hugh
You know what I mean, Sam. You've seen people possessed at voodoo services and know what they can do. Anyway, two or three times I thought I wouldn't be able to hold her off any longer. Then all at once she went limp and slid out of my grasp to the floor.
I don't know what happened, I swear. I wasn't trying to kill her, just desperately struggling to keep from being killed. My hands were at her throat but I don't recall feeling anything snap or hearing any sound of that sort. I must have done something, of course. I just don't know what.
I went to my knees beside her and she was not breathing, she had no pulse, that queer glow had left her eyes. No doubt about it, she was dead, but I even held a mirror to her mouth for several minutes to make sure. Then—what was I to do with her?
Leaving her there on the bedroom floor, I went into the kitchen and poured a drink to clear my mind, but didn't drink it. It went down the sink when I realized I'd better stay cold sober at this point.
I asked myself whether Vicky had gone mad. What had she planned to do if she succeeded in murdering me? I went into her bedroom to look for evidence that she had planned to run away—a packed suitcase, an extra large supply of money in her handbag, that sort of thing. There was nothing. Apparently in her madness she hadn't thought beyond the act of walking into my room and stabbing me.
But this train of thought gave me an idea for what I might do then. I had to dispose of her body, of course. Nobody was going to believe she tried to kill me and I accidentally killed her while trying to defend myself. I would put her body in the lake. Then I would tell the police she had left me. I would say she had been acting queerly—which, God knows, was true—and perhaps I could even go so far as to hire a private detective agency to find her. As for Vicky herself, if I disposed of her in the lake (forgive the seemingly callous use of that word, but I can't think of another just now), she literally would disappear, wouldn't she?
So, to keep this short, I went down to the beach, looked up to make sure there were no lights on in any of the apartments, then returned to my apartment and carried Vicky down to one of the condo's boats.
It was about three in the morning then. At this point I really needed a drink and would have finished half a bottle, I'm sure, had I brought any along. I felt like a character in a crime story, certain I was making mistakes that would trip me up, but unable to think of what they might be. That's what I meant at the beginning of this letter when I said there were things Jurzak might come up with as he digs deeper.
He won't, however, come up with the body. Of that I'm convinced. I hate to say this—it makes me even more sorry for what I did—but I believe the alligator must have taken care of Vicky, or the people dragging the lake would have found her by now.
So now you know, you two, and I can only leave the judgment to you. I didn't mean to kill her. It was an accident that happened while she was trying to kill me. What I did with her afterward was stupid but seemed at the moment to be the best way out. As for the thing that keeps coming out of-the lake to attack people, I don't know what it is, but I suspect. Vicky learned something from all those long talks with Sister Merle, no doubt of it. She may have learned things from Margal, in Haiti, too, where her interest in the occult was equally strong.
Did she learn about life after death? How not to die as we know dying? How to return as demon, friend, incubus, spirit, shade, specter, phantom, materialization—whatever one may call it? For revenge on the man who killed her? Because I killed her, no doubt of that, and the other night when she attacked Carl Helpin she thought he was Will Platt. That jacket—she herself sewed my name in it. She knew it well. And when she discovered her mistake, she let him go.
Which leads me to one more speculation before I close this letter. The phantom first killed two dogs. A basic, primitive killing, it seems to me. It then killed a woman, Connie Abbott. Still fairly basic but at least Connie was human. Then it destroyed Tom Broderick, a man. And now, this last time, it attacked a man wearing my jacket but let him go on discovering the man was not Will Platt. Is it becoming more selective? Getting closer?
I hope we can talk about this now that I've briefed you. The alternative, of course, is for you to hand a copy of this letter to Karl Jurzak.
31
Voodoo Woman
"I think we need Ima Williams," Sam Norman said.
They were seated, the three of them, in Will's living room, where Lynne and Sam had just finished reading Will's letter.
"Yes," Sam said, twisting his face into a frown, "I think we'd better try to get Ima up here. We can't do this alone, Will. We just don't know enough about this kind of thing."
Will said, "Why Ima? Because she was able to destroy Sister Merle?"
"And because she's kanzo."
Will nodded.
"I had some long talks with her after you and Vicky left and she was taking care of me," Sam said. "I asked her how she was able to get close enough to Merle to do what she did, and she said the loa helped her. Let's hope they'll help her again."
Will shook his head. "We can't bring her here. Have you any idea how long it would take her to get a visa, even if she already has a passport?"
"She has a Haitian passport," Sam said. "Showed it to me one day when I asked about her family in that country. And you're forgetting the U.N. owes me a large favor for going down there to help their Juan Cerrado." He shrugged. "All they'd have to do is pick up a telephone, and I'd be in and out of our embassy in Kingston in half an hour."
"And if they won't?"
Sam frowned. "If they won't, there are other ways to cut the red tape, if you're willing to pay for it. I know a fellow right here in central Florida who's been flying to Jamaica for pot. For a price he'd fly me down there and bring the two of us back."
"You're kidding."
Sam smiled. "Am I? There's a spray-plane field just outside Christiana. You didn't hear the planes over the banana fields when you were there? Or notice the goo on the Land Rover after they'd been working?"
"But—"
"Wait," Lynne interrupted. "Why do we have to confront this thing in the lake?" Why can't we just get out of here?"
"Run away, you mean?" Will said.
She reached out to touch his hand. "Believe me, darling, I'm not proud. I want to keep you, not lose you to a dead woman."
"We can't run, Lynne."
"Why?"
"In his own sweet way Jurzak warned me not to. Said he didn't want the job of going after me. Besides, what's to keep Vicky from following us? I can't believe she's confined to any one place."
A shudder briefly touched Lynne's slender body. "The way you and Sam speak of her as though she were still alive . . . I feel I'm trapped in a nightmare."
"It's safer for us to think of her that way," Sam pointed out. "She isn't alive the way we are, of course. But she had those long sessions with Sister Merle—learned from her, we have to assume—and both obeah and voodoo provide for a life after death. Especially when there's unfinished business to be attended to."
He paused, then added quietly, "Yes, we'd better think of her as being alive, Lynne, if we want to go on living. And Will is right. If you two left here, she'd probably follow."
"And if she didn't," Will said in a tone of finality, "she'd continue looking for us here, is my guess. As she's been doing right along. We could be responsible for more terror, maybe more deaths. That is, I could be. But you needn't stay, love. In fact, I wish—"
"Uh-uh." Emphatically Lynne shook her head. "If you stay, so do I." And when he would have protested, she held up a hand to silence him.
"All right," Sam said, rising. "The only problem I can see is Ima. Does she like you enough to do this for you, Will? I think she does—and she owes you for not reporting Merle's death to the police. But, of course, we don't know." He looked at his watch again. "Shall I give my U.N. buddy a ring?"
Will nodded. Sam went to the telephone and dialed a number. They watched him in silence while he toiled through the layers of expla
ining and at last had his man.
Lynne Kimball suddenly said then, "Will, if he can get a visa for Ima, I'm going with him."
"You what?"
"I'm going with him." Her voice was low but firm. "I'm a woman, I've lived in Jamaica—"
"She's Haitian, Lynne. Not Jamaican."
"There can't be that much difference in what I'm talking about. If I go along and tell her I'm there because I love you and don't want to lose you—" Suddenly silent, she looked the length of the room at Sam Norman.
Still talking on the phone, Sam had raised a hand to signal them, with two fingers upthrust in a V for victory.
The following morning, before daybreak, Sam Norman and Lynne Kimball left for Miami in Lynne's car, and Will was alone.
32
A Visitor from the Marsh
What, Will wondered, would he do with himself until they returned—with or without Ima Williams?
He tried working, but an hour at the typewriter produced nothing worthwhile, and he gave up. He tried to read and found he could not concentrate because his thoughts were with Lynne and Sam on their mission.
Would they be able to persuade Ima to leave Jamaica? Would they even be able to locate her? She had said she would be going to another housekeeping job as soon as Sam departed. That other job might be anywhere in the island, and they could be days trying to track her down.
About eleven he could stand the tension no longer and went out to work some of it off by waxing his car. He was doing that when a car with the county sheriff's seal on its doors rolled in and Karl Jurzak stepped out of it. The homicide investigator flapped a hand in salute but did not approach. Leaning against his car, he appeared to be waiting for something.
He did not have long to wait. Almost at once a pickup truck arrived, towing a trailer with a boat on it. Jurzak walked along with the men as they rolled the boat to the lake and launched it. Then one of the newcomers returned to the truck for what looked like a high-powered rifle.
After a few minutes the quiet of the morning was disturbed by the purr of the boat's powerful outboard as the craft moved out toward the marsh.
Jurzak had not gone with it. Returning to the parking lot, he veered toward Will and now leaned against Will's car, as though the effort of helping to launch the boat had wearied him.
"Has anything happened since I talked to you, Mr. Platt?"
"No, Karl."
"That's something to be thankful for, at least."
"Why the rifle?" Will said. "I thought when a 'gator invaded a place like this, you tried to capture it and take it to the Glades."
"This one killed a man, Mr. Platt. If we find him, we'll shoot him. Only safe thing to do. Besides, the restrictions on hunting them have been eased. For quite a while we've had a surplus." He smiled. "From what I hear, you can even order 'gator steak in some restaurants."
Will made a face. "You, maybe. Not me. Not after what happened to Helpin."
"I should tell you there will be other boats here before the day is over. Maybe for several days."
"Professional hunters?" The state, Will knew, sometimes hired such men to remove 'gators from places they were not supposed to inhabit.
The fat man nodded. "And we're going to drag the lake again. More thoroughly this time."
"A good idea."
"You think so? Suppose they find your wife."
Will hoped his shrug was convincing. "They won't. Ever since you suggested she might have drowned herself, I've been thinking. I don't buy it, Karl. It won't stand up."
"You told me she was acting strangely even before the two of you returned from Jamaica."
"Not that strangely. In any case, if she had wanted to kill herself, she wouldn't have done it that way."
"Why not?"
"She never swam in the lake. Some of our people do at times, but she couldn't persuade herself to try it, not even once. The thought of being caught up in weeds and lily pads like a fly in a spider web gave her the shivers. She used the pool."
The watery eyes seemed to appraise Will's face intently for a few seconds, then Jurzak shrugged. "You may be right. I think if I were you, though, I might be somewhat relieved if we did find her in the lake. The uncertainty must be getting to you."
Limply flapping a hand in farewell, he walked away.
There were four of Jurzak's boats on the lake before the day ended. Each was manned by two or three men, and no two of them were alike. At times Will could not resist walking out onto his sixth-floor veranda to watch them.
In a marshy body of water three miles long, it might take weeks to home in on an alligator, even one as large as this. Still, experts familiar with the reptiles' habits would not have to search the entire lake, would they?
What else would they find? Will wondered. They had already found pieces of Helpin's body and might drag up more. But after all this time would there be anything left of Vicky to be found?
He doubted it. She had been wearing nothing but a nightgown when he committed her body to the lake's dark water. Not even slippers. If the 'gator had taken her—and it must have—there would not be enough left of the nightgown for it to be identifiable. Even the jacket worn by Helpin, recovered almost immediately after his death, had been in shreds.
Relax, he told himself. They won't find anything. When darkness came and the boats returned to the condo's beach for the night, he found himself pacing the apartment. He realized suddenly that he had to get out of the apartment for a while. Waiting for the phone to ring was not the answer; he was too tense—something would snap. Besides, what assurance did he have that the phones in Christiana were working or that Sam or Lynne would call so soon.
He slammed the door behind him and went down to his car. Got into it and slammed the car door too. On Highway 27 he headed north with no destination, just to breathe a different air and see something other than the apartment walls and the lake. After he'd been out for a couple of hours—he'd stopped at a diner for a sandwich —he felt relaxed enough to head for home.
It was after eleven when he got out of his car in the condo parking lot and walked into the building. Riding up to the sixth floor, he fished his key from his pocket and opened his door.
An odor assailed his nostrils. A smell of the marsh, of stagnant water, of swamp muck. It gagged him, it was so strong. He reached out blindly for the light switch on the wall and fumbled it on. Took in a deep breath and felt himself become cold and brittle.
The carpet was wet with footprints again. Footprints all over the living room. Footprints leading to the bedrooms and the study. Their maker must have prowled the whole apartment, looking for him.
He quickly put the light out and stepped back into the hall, but stood there with the door still open, peering into the now dark apartment. The thing could be seen clearly in the dark now, couldn't it? He had distinctly seen it attack Helpin in the marsh. A human shape, Vicky's shape, made of mist—or ectoplasm—internally glowing. If it were still here, he should see it now. Or the glow from it.
Nothing. It must have departed.
Snapping the light back on, he hurried through the living room to the veranda and saw where the thing had come through the screen, wetting the plastic. Shaken, he peered into the bedrooms and his study, even into the bathrooms and the kitchen.
Footprints everywhere. And that sickening smell of the swamp. But nothing else.
It knew where he lived now, for certain. It was homing in on him, becoming smarter all the time. There would probably be no more Connie Abbotts or Tom Brodericks or Carl Helpins. But it hadn't killed Helpin, had it? Only rendered him helpless long enough for the 'gator to get him. My jacket, Will thought. Platt, for God's sake get out of here before it returns!
He hurried back to the hall door, putting lights out as he went. Turned there for one last look into the dark apartment, one last shudder of apprehension that racked him from head to foot.
Pulling the door shut after him, he went along the hall to the stairwell, where the thum
p of his shoes on the uncarpeted concrete stairs was not much louder than the thudding of his heart as he descended to the floor below. His hand shook as he fumbled Lynne's key from his pocket and opened her door.
This time he sniffed the air before lifting his hand to the light switch. There was no swamp smell here. The thing was after him, then, not Lynne, and wasn't aware yet that he spent much of his time in this apartment. He might be safe for a while.
He switched the light on. There were no footprints. He shut the door behind him, walked to the living room sofa, and sank onto it with a noisy exhalation of relief.
Almost at once, though, he got up to put the light out and draw the drapes at the windows and across the veranda door facing the lake. Then with only one lamp on, he sat to wait, ready at the first sign of danger to leap to his feet and race to the hall door.
An hour passed. Two. Nothing happened.
He fell asleep at last on the sofa, sitting up, and dreamed of Lynne and Sam in Jamaica. Inthe dream they were with bearded, loyal Ken Daniels in Ken's battered old taxi, driving through the night in search of Ima Williams. When he awoke they were still searching, and it was daylight in both Jamaica and Florida, and the telephone was ringing.
He answered it with sleep and bewilderment in his voice. Who would be calling Lynne at this hour?
"Morning, Will." It was Sam Norman. "We thought we might find you there when you didn't answer your phone. Any reason, other than the obvious one?"
Will hesitated. Should he tell them? They would worry if he did. On the other hand, they might not realize the special urgency of their mission if he didn't. "My own place is full of footprints again, Sam."
"No."
"I went up the road last night for a bite to eat. Found them there when I got back. What luck with Ima?"