“Laurel told me after she killed him. He did things to her that no woman has to put up with. That was why she killed him, and I don’t blame her.”
chapter 30
I THANKED MAMIE HAGEDORN and went out to my car. I’d let some daylight into the case, all right. But the main effect had been to change the color of the daylight.
I headed over the pass toward the Krug ranch. It was the place where all the trouble had started, where Albert Blevins had thrown a lamp at his wife (or vice versa) and ruined his house and his marriage and his son Jasper, where Jasper’s marriage had ended in murder, where Davy Spanner was born and Jack Fleischer died. I wanted to see the place in the different-colored daylight.
It wasn’t raining in the valley. The cloud cover was breaking up, letting the sky show through in places.
I went through Centerville and made my turn without pausing. I didn’t stop till I got to Buzzard Creek.
Henry Langston’s station wagon was parked on the side of the road. The creek had shrunk to a shallow stream meandering across the road through several channels cut in the mud it had deposited.
I waded through the mud, following footprints which were probably Langston’s, and climbed the rocky lane to the old ranch. The fields around it looked fresh and new. Each blade of grass, each oak leaf, was brilliantly distinct. The sky was luminous, and even the scattering clouds were like floes of light.
Only the human structures were dilapidated. They were dwarfed by the sky, which seemed to arch like a great span of time across the valley.
Henry Langston’s footsteps led past the barn to the ruined house. Before I reached the house, he came out carrying his .32 target pistol in his left hand and a sawed-off shotgun on his right arm. For a moment I entertained the wild idea that he intended to shoot me.
Instead, he waved the shotgun at me in a friendly way and spoke my name with pleasure. “I found the murder weapon.”
“In the house?”
“No. He threw it in the river. I saw it sticking out of the mud when I came across.”
I took the shotgun out of his hands and broke it. There were two expended cartridges in the breech. The short ugly double muzzle was choked with mud.
“Any other sign of him?”
Hank shook his head. “I had a hunch that he might come back to the ranch here. It seemed to be the place he was looking for. But I was wrong.”
“Where’s the posse?”
Hank pointed toward the mountains in the northeast. Over them I could see black clouds whose trailing edges were ragged with rain.
“They may be bogged down,” he said with some satisfaction.
“You don’t want him caught, do you, Hank?”
“I’m of two minds about Davy. Of course I want him caught. He’s dangerous. But I don’t want him shot and killed without a trial. There are mitigating circumstances, remember.”
I knew that. It was one of my reasons for going on with the case. There wasn’t much chance of saving Davy from a first-degree conviction, but I hoped the girl was still reclaimable.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I stopped in Santa Teresa, by the way, talked to your wife on the phone.”
Hank gave me a quick guilty look. “Is Kate all right?”
“No, she isn’t. She’s worried about you and worried about herself.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“It may be only nerves. She said she wouldn’t tell me because I wasn’t a doctor.”
“She’s concerned about losing the baby,” he said gravely. “She was bleeding a little before I left last night.”
He started walking with long strides past the barn toward the road. The barn owl flew out, his eyes wide in his flabbergasted face. Hank took a shot at the owl with his target pistol. He missed the bird, but I didn’t like the action. It reminded me of Lupe’s shot at the mud hen.
We drove to Centerville in separate cars. Hank parked his wagon in front of Al Simmons’s beer and sandwich place. When I followed him in, he was already talking into the bar telephone: “Make it collect, please. My name is Henry Langston.”
There was a long silence, stitched by the telephone ringing at the far end of the line, and the mutter of a turned-down radio at this end. Al Simmons leaned across the bar:
“More trouble?”
“I hope not.”
The operator’s voice came over the line like a second answer to Al’s question: “Your party does not answer, sir. Do you wish me to try again?”
“I’ll try again myself, thanks.” Hank hung up and turned to me: “She must be at the nursery school picking up Henry, Jr. It’s early for that, though.”
Moving abruptly, as if he was pulled or driven, he started for the door. Al Simmons detained me.
“What’s on your friend’s mind?”
“He’s worried about his wife.”
“On account of the shotgun killer?”
“Yes.”
“I guess a lot of people will be worried. He made it out over the north pass, did you know that? The radio said he hitched a ride on a truck.”
“Headed which way?”
“South. The truck driver says he dropped him in Santa Teresa.”
I went outside to tell Hank. He was already roaring up the county blacktop. By the time I reached the summit of the pass, his car was far down the twisting road, crawling like a flea on the mountain’s scarred flank.
Perhaps I should have stopped in Rodeo City. The trouble was that I didn’t trust Pennell’s judgment. Assuming that Davy had holed up in Langston’s house, the last thing needed was the kind of shoot-out in which innocent people could get hurt.
Once on the highway and past the roadblock which Pennell had ordered too late, I pushed the speedometer up to ninety and held it till I reached the outskirts of Santa Teresa. I took the first off-ramp and drove to the Längstens’ neighborhood.
Hank’s wagon was standing in the road with steam blowing out from under the hood. Hank was halfway between the wagon and his front door, running with his pistol in his hand.
He shouted: “Kate! Are you all right?”
Kate Langston came out screaming. She lunged toward her husband, fell on the flagstone walk before she reached him, got up bloody-kneed and crying piteously: “I’m going to lose the baby. He’s making me lose the baby.”
Hank gathered her against him with his left arm. Davy appeared in the doorway. He was muddy and unshaven, and awkward, like an actor dying of stage fright.
Hank raised his right arm, pointing the pistol like a dark elongated finger. Davy looked at him shyly, and opened his mouth to speak. Hank shot him several times. The third shot broke his left eye. He sat down on the threshold and died there very quickly.
An hour or so later, I was inside the house with Hank. The local police had come and, after getting a statement from Hank and congratulating him, had taken the body away. Kate was in the emergency ward of the hospital under sedation for shock.
With the same general idea in mind, I was pouring whisky for Hank but not drinking much myself. On top of everything else, the whisky hit him hard. He wandered around the living room, looking for something that probably wasn’t there. He paused at the grand piano, with closed fists began to hammer the keys.
I yelled at him: “Is that necessary?”
He turned with his fists raised. His eyes were dark and wild, as wild as Davy’s had been.
“I shouldn’t have killed him, should I?”
“I’m not your conscience. There is a kind of economy in life. You don’t spend more than you have, or say more than you know, or throw your weight around more than necessary.”
“He was wrecking my marriage, driving my wife crazy. I had to made a decision, do something decisive.”
“You certainly did that.”
“The police didn’t blame me.”
“They’re not your conscience either.”
He sat swaying on the piano bench. I was disappointed in Hank, a
nd worried about him. The second self that most of us have inside of us had stepped into the open and acted out its violence. Now he had to live with it, like an insane Siamese twin, for the rest of his life.
The telephone rang. I answered it: “Langston residence.”
“Is that you, Mr. Langston?” a woman said.
“I’m a friend of the family. There’s illness in the family.”
“I was wondering why Mrs. Langston didn’t pick up Junior.”
“Is that the nursery school?”
The woman said it was, and that she was Mrs. Hawkins.
“Just keep the boy for now. Keep him overnight.”
“We can’t do that. We don’t have the facilities.”
“Give it a try, will you? Mrs. Langston’s in the hospital.”
“What about Mr. Langston?”
“He’s not well, either.”
I hung up and went back to him. His eyes had a dark used look, like burned ends. He was beginning to feel the change in himself and in his life.
I said good-bye and left the house, stepping wide over the threshold where some of Davy’s blood was turning brown in the sun that had rejected him now forever.
chapter 31
BEFORE HEADING BACK to Los Angeles, I paid a final visit to Mrs. Fleischer. She came to the door wearing a black hat and coat. Her face was freshly made up but under the makeup it looked pasty and inert.
She seemed almost completely sober, but very nervous. “What do you want?”
“The tapes.”
She spread her gloved hands. “No havey, no savvy.”
“Don’t give me that, Mrs. Fleischer. You said they’re where you could put your hands on them.”
“Well, they’re not any more.”
“Did you turn them over to the police?”
“Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. You’ve got to let me go now. I’m expecting a taxi.”
She started to close the door on me. I leaned against it casually but firmly. Her eyes moved sluggishly up to my face.
“What is this, anyway?”
“I’ve decided to raise my offer. I’ll give you two thousand.”
She laughed joylessly. “That’s peanuts. Chicken feed. If I wasn’t a lady I’d tell you what you can do with your lousy two thousand.”
“Who have you been talking to?”
“A very nice young man. He treated me like a gentleman, which is more than some people do.” She gave the door a fretful shove, which my shoulder blocked. “And he told me how much those cans of tape were really worth.”
“How much?”
“Ten grand,” she said with the pride of a daily-double winner putting down a loser.
“Did he buy them from you?”
“Maybe he did.”
“I know. And maybe he didn’t. Can you describe him to me?”
“He’s very good-looking, with nice brown curly hair. Much better looking than you are. And quite a few years younger,” she added, as if she could score off her husband through his old buddy Jack Archer.
Her description failed to evoke anyone, unless it was Keith Sebastian, which seemed unlikely. “What name did he use?”
“He didn’t mention his name.”
That probably meant she had been paid in cash, if she had been paid. “Ten grand is a lot of cash,” I said. “I hope you’re not planning to carry it around loose.”
“No, I’m gonna—” She bit her lower lip and got lipstick on her front teeth. “It’s none of your business what I’m gonna do. And if you don’t lay off me, I’ll call the police.”
That was the last thing she was likely to do. But I was weary of her, and of myself talking to her. I drove around the block and parked at the corner. After a while a yellow cab came from the other direction. It stopped in front of her house and honked gently.
Mrs. Fleischer came out carrying a light-blue traveling bag. She got into the taxi. I followed it across town to the freeway and north along the freeway to the local airport.
I didn’t try to find out where Mrs. Fleischer was flying to. I didn’t care. She wouldn’t be leaving town if she hadn’t sold the tapes.
I drove south to Woodland Hills, feeling empty and light and futile. I think I’d been harboring a secret wish that I could somehow pull it out for Davy, save his life at least, give him a long-term chance for rehabilitation.
Such wishes for other people were always going sour. Langston’s wish for Davy had turned into a secret triangle which meant the opposite of what it seemed to mean. I was beginning to worry about my wish for the girl.
Bernice Sebastian let me into her house. She was sallow and desolate, with black glittering eyes. Her grooming was coming apart for the first time that I’d seen. She had cigarette ashes down the front of her dress, and her hair needed combing.
She took me into the living room and seated me in a golden drench of late afternoon sunlight which came in through the high glass.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“No thanks. A glass of water would taste good.”
She brought it to me formally, on a tray. She gave the impression of trying to hold together, by such formalities, all the centrifugal pieces of her life. I drank the water and thanked her.
“Where’s your husband?”
“Off on one of his missions,” she said dryly.
“He didn’t go to Santa Teresa, by any chance?”
“I don’t know where he went. We had a quarrel.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. It isn’t the sort of talk I’d care to repeat, to anyone. Essentially we were blaming each other, for this disaster.”
She sat down on a hassock facing me, folding her knees and holding them with locked fingers. Nothing she did was graceless, as she knew. She turned her pretty, disheveled head self-consciously under my eyes.
“I’ll tell you what our quarrel was about, if you promise not to do anything.”
“What do you want me not to do?”
“I don’t want you to do anything to stop Keith. That would be treachery.”
“Stop him doing what?”
“Promise first.”
“I can’t, Mrs. Sebastian. I will promise this: I won’t do anything that would harm your daughter.”
“But not Keith?”
“If their interests turn out to be separate, I’ll do my best for Sandy.”
“Then I’ll tell you. He’s planning to take her out of the country.”
“Jump bail?”
“I’m afraid so. He’s talking in terms of South America.”
“It isn’t a good idea. She’d have a hard time ever coming back, and so would he.”
“I know that. I told him that.”
“How is he planning to finance the trip?”
“I’m afraid he’s thinking about embezzling money. Keith seems to be breaking up. He simply can’t bear the idea of Sandy standing trial and possibly going to jail.”
“She’s still in the Psychiatric Center, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call them and find out.”
Bernice went into the study and closed the door behind her. I heard her talking, too dimly to know what she said. She came out with a frightened grimace pulling at her mouth.
“He took her out of the Center.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Did he say where he was taking her?”
“No.”
“Or give you any clue?”
“This morning he talked about flying to Mexico City, and then perhaps on to Brazil. But he wouldn’t go without telling me first. He expects me to go along.”
“Do you want to?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think any of us should go. We should stay here and fight it out.”
“You’re a good girl.”
Her eyes filled up with feeling but what she said was: “No. If I were a good person, my family wouldn’t have got into thi
s mess. I made all the mistakes in the book.”
“Do you feel like naming them?”
“If you can bear to listen.” She sat quiet for a minute,ordering her thoughts. “I don’t really want to talk it out at any length. This isn’t the time, and I doubt that you’re the person.”
“Who is?”
“Keith should be. He’s still my husband. The trouble is we stopped talking years ago. We started a game of let’s pretend, without ever admitting it to each other. Keith was to be the rising young executive and I was to be his model homemaker, making him feel like a man, which is hard for Keith. And Sandy was to make us both feel good by doing well in school and never doing or saying anything wrong. What that boils down to is exploitation. Keith and I were exploiting each other and Sandy, and that’s the opposite of loving each other.”
“I still say you’re a good girl.”
“Don’t try to make me feel better. I have no right to.”
But she closed her eyes and leaned her face toward me. I held it between my hands. I could feel her mouth and her breathing warm on my fingers.
After a while she straightened up. Her face was more composed. It had recovered some of the pride that made it beautiful.
She said: “Are you hungry? Let me fix you something to eat.”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“You said it yourself just now. People shouldn’t play let’s pretend.”
“Is that what I’d be doing?”
“That’s what I’d be doing, Bernice. There’s something else we should be doing.”
She misunderstood me, and gave me a quick-frozen quizzical look. “Really?”
“That wasn’t a pass. But I have to ask you a question that may embarrass you. It has to do with Sandy’s sex experience.”
She was startled. She stood up and walked away from me, to the far side of the room.
“How much did your daughter know about sex?”
Slowly, she turned to face me. “I haven’t the faintest idea. We never discussed the matter.”
“Why not?”
“I assumed she learned all about it in school. She took a course on the subject. Anyway, I didn’t feel qualified.”
“Why.”
She looked at me angrily. “I don’t know why you’re insisting on this catechism. It has nothing to do with anything.”
The Instant Enemy Page 19