Ben looked at the clock and moved nearer to the phone. His heart began to knock against his ribs and his body went hot and cold by turns.
Lorene Guthrie watched him. She was sitting beside Kratich. Her eyes were very big and surrounded by dark circles. She kept worrying her lips, biting them. All the lipstick was chewed off, leaving her face pale as paper.
Policewoman Dalby sat quietly in a corner of the room, looking as much like Lorene Guthrie as a wig and make-up could accomplish. She was dressed in Lorene’s clothes and she carried one of Lorene’s handbags with everything taken out of it to make room for a Police Positive. She did not really look enough like Lorene, Ben thought, to fool anybody very long, unless it was damned dark indeed. Ernie had made a good try, but it was not going to work. Ben held to that thought. All day he had had to fight against resurgent glimmers of hope. It was better not to have any.
Quarter to nine.
Packer looked at his watch. “I think you’d better stand by the phone, Mr. Forbes.”
Ben went into the hall and sat down beside the stand.
Lorene straightened up in her chair as though she had come to some desperate decision. “Please—”
Everybody looked at her and she stopped.
Kratich said quite gently, “What is it?”
“I wondered—could I have a drink?” She looked pleadingly at Harbacher. “Just a little one. I’m so nervous—”
Her voice became shrill and unsteady. She shut her jaw tight, and Kratich put out his hand and laid it on her arm.
“There’s nothing to be nervous about. He can’t hurt you over the telephone.”
“I know. But I’d like a drink so much.”
Harbacher said, “All right. It might be what she needs.”
“In the kitchen cupboard,” Ben said. Harbacher came back in a minute and shoved a small glass into Lorene’s hand. He sat down again. Ernie looked over at Ben through the hall arch and gave the particular kind of a nod with which a man wishes a friend good luck.
Lorene drank from the glass, sucking big mouthfuls like a child taking medicine. Suddenly her eyes widened. She put the glass aside and sat forward in her chair, her mouth slightly open, her face getting whiter and whiter.
Kratich said sharply, “What is it?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she got up and ran out of the room.
Policewoman Dalby, looking alarmed, sprang up and went after her. They disappeared together into the bathroom like some grotesque sister act. The door slammed.
Kratich stood up, his face dark and stern.
Harbacher looked at Packer, who shook his head. He went and opened the bathroom door. “God damn it,” he said. Lorene was sprawled out on the floor inside. Virginia Dalby said tensely, “She’s passed out. Wait, I’ll get some ice.”
“Never mind,” Kratich said. He pushed in past Packer. “Let me get at her.”
He bent over and hauled her up to a sitting position. Her arms flopped and her head hung down.
“I’m sick,” she murmured. “I’m so sick.”
“I don’t care if you’re dying,” Kratich said. “Get on your feet.”
He braced his knees and heaved Lorene up and held her against the wall.
The phone rang.
Packer spun around in the doorway. “Hold it,” he said to Ben.
Ben stood with his hand on the phone. It rang a second time. He said almost inaudibly, “I can’t wait long.”
Kratich smacked Lorene’s face, two calculated stinging blows, one on each white cheek. The color sprang back into them along the lines of his fingers. She caught her breath in a sobbing gasp and tried to pull away from him.
The phone rang a third time.
Ben said, “For God’s sake.”
Packer shook his head. Ernie and Bill were on their feet and so was Harbacher. Kratich said fiercely to Lorene:
“Just think of one thing. Yourself. Think what Al will do to you if these men don’t catch him.”
He yanked her away from the wall and pushed her out the door.
Lorene put her hands to her cheeks and tottered down the hall toward Ben.
Packer nodded.
Ben picked up the phone.
“Yes,” he said. And then, “She’s right here.”
He held the phone out to Lorene.
She took it. She put it to her ear and said, “Yes, Al. Yes, it’s me.”
Ben stood rigid in the utter silence, watching Lorene’s face. He thought he could hear the distant sound of Al Guthrie’s voice. Several times Lorene said, “Yes, Al.” Her color was coming back and she seemed steadier. She looked around at Ben and Kratich and the policemen, and gradually Ben saw a new expression creep into her eyes. It was as though for the first time she understood the immense importance of her position.
Everything depended on her. The kidnaping had been done because of her, because Al was crazy about her and wanted her back. The whole situation was about her. And now she was actually talking to Al on the phone and he couldn’t hurt her, but she had the power to destroy him. Ben Forbes and the whole police force were waiting for her to do it.
“Sure, Al,” she said, as though she had never been afraid in her life. “I’ve been thinking it over. I’ll give you another chance. But you’ve got to promise not to be mean to me like you were.”
Ben’s mouth was dry. Don’t overdo it, he thought. Please for Christ’s sake don’t get smart.
Kratich watched her from beside the bathroom door with an unwinking stare.
“You really mean it this time?” Lorene said. “All right, I’ll believe you. I’ll believe this time it’s true.”
For just one furtive moment she smiled the proud smug smile of a triumphant child.
“Yes, Al,” she said. “I’ll see you. Yes, sure. Right away.”
She handed the phone back to Ben.
Guthrie spoke in his ear, hoarse and wild. “All right, Forbes, I’ll tell you what to do. But I’m warning you. If you try—”
“You heard Lorene. What could I try?”
“I don’t trust you, see? That’s all. Now you listen and be goddamned sure you get it right.”
He talked and Ben wrote on a pad by the telephone. He had trouble forming the letters. He kept saying, “Yes, I’ve got it.”
“Okay,” said Guthrie finally. “If you start now you can be there in half, three quarters of an hour. I’ll be waiting, only you won’t know where, and I’ll have your wife. You know what I mean, Forbes? She won’t live through another one like you pulled in South Flat.”
He hung up.
Ben put the phone down and stood trembling.
Packer picked up the pad and continued on with it to the bedroom, where Harbacher had been listening in on the line. Ernie and Bill and Virginia Dalby went after him, moving fast.
They listened to the playback. Ben joined them, listening again to Guthrie’s voice. A week, ten days ago, this had seemed like a walking nightmare. Now it was the accepted norm. Carolyn, Guthrie, Lorene, himself. It was difficult for him to realize that within an hour it would all be over.
Lorene walked back down the hall to where Kratich was standing. She smiled and shook back her hair the way a bird will spread its feathers out and preen.
“Well,” she said, “I did it. Aren’t you proud of me?”
“Yes,” said Kratich. “Real proud.”
“Well, what’s the matter? I did what you wanted me to do, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” said Kratich. “Sure.”
Lorene burst into tears of rage and honest bewilderment. “I don’t understand you at all, Vern. I did just what you told me and now you’re mad anyway.”
Kratich said, “I didn’t tell you to enjoy it.” He took her arm and steered her back to the living room. “Oh well, never mind it now. Just quiet down.”
In the bedroom the playback was finished. Harbacher shook his head. “Christ,” he said. “The way he’s got it planned, Forbes and Dalby will be like targets in a shooting gallery.”
“I don’t care,” Ben said. “I’m going.”
He pulled on his coat and started for the door. He did not care who came with him.
twenty-four
Al Guthrie stood in the dark beside the telephone.
Lorene. Lorene.
He could still hear her voice inside his head. “I’ve been thinking it over, I’ll give you another chance.” Still snotty as hell. Another chance. Promise me this, promise me that. Just like he’d run out on her instead of the other way around.
Okay, Lorene, he thought. Okay!
He could almost see her in the dark. All that white skin and red hair, all that soft body big in the right places. A hot flush went over him. Give me another chance, he thought. You do that. And I’ll show you who’s the man of the family.
His face was dripping with sweat. He wiped it with his sleeve.
She’s coming back. She said so. In an hour I’ll have her. Promise this, promise that. Hell. Sure. There’s lots of time.
The store smelled of food and oily polishes and dust. He hadn’t wanted to go far to phone. He had some things to do before Forbes and Lorene could get to the place he’d told them, and he needed the time. He needed privacy too, more than you could get from a wall phone in a village tavern or gas station. These country dumps didn’t have such a thing as a booth. So there was a place where five dirt roads came together, and there were four houses and a one-lung store with a gas pump in front of it. The store was closed for the night but there was a phone line into it. So he left the car in a clump of trees up the road and locked it and came around to the back of the store and opened a window and got in. These country places were like cracker boxes if you wanted to break into them. He’d done it many a time when he was a kid around Butler. The old fool that ran the place could figure he was lucky he didn’t lose more than the price of a long-distance call and a couple of packs of cigarettes.
And now it was all set.
He climbed back out the window and closed it behind him. Then he went back to the car, walking fast, sometimes running, cursing the brambles and the rough stony road. There was a white mist hanging low in the bottoms. The night air was cold on his face.
Lorene. Lorene.
Her voice was still going through his head. It made him want her so he could hardly stand it. He dreamed as he went. Her big white breasts, her soft white belly. The place between the ribs and the hipbones that made her scream when he took a handful of the flesh and dug his fingers in. Little Lorene, so full of herself. Walk out on him, curse him, kick him around, act like she was God, and then, real generous, give him another chance.
The car was dark and still where he had left it. He fought the keys and the lock, cursing. He got the door opened finally and groped on the front seat for the half bottle of whiskey he’d been saving for this time.
Little Lorene.
Lying in her teeth.
She wasn’t coming back to him.
Forbes had put her up to it. You can say anything over a phone. Forbes was a real smart man. “Guthrie’s dumb,” he would tell her. “Talk to him, tell him you’ll do whatever he wants. He’ll swallow it, he’s so dumb. Then he’ll tell me where to bring you to him and I’ll know where I can get at him. See? A real smart trap, and Guthrie’s so dumb he’ll fall right into it.”
Yeah? Well, you know now, Mr. Forbes, it ain’t that easy. I’m calling the tune this time. Let’s see how smart you are. You show up without Lorene and you won’t have time to tell me why.
He leaned over into the back and shook Carolyn.
“Did you think I’d trust ’em?” he shouted at her. “That pair? My wife that ran out on me and that bastard Forbes that already double-crossed me once?”
She moaned.
He was sick of her moaning. One way or the other he’d be rid of her tonight and he was glad.
He took another drink from the bottle and got under the wheel and drove away up the dark back road, raising the dust behind him.
twenty-five
Ben Forbes started his car and roared out of the driveway, spinning his wheels on the short turn into the road.
Virginia Dalby sat next to him on the front seat, holding her handbag on her lap. She wore flat shoes with snow boots pulled over them. Her head was bare.
In the back seat Ernie and Bill Drumm were riding part of the way in comfort, but they were not idle. They had the lens off the dome light and they were busy hacking pieces out of Ernie’s handkerchief and fitting them inside the frosted glass of the lens cup.
Packer and two other detectives were in a second car, trailing Ben. Harbacher was on his way back downtown. The police radio network was busy.
Ben’s car raced down Lister Road.
“Jesus, Ben,” said Ernie, “take it easy. Let’s at least get there in one piece.”
Ben slowed down. But he remained leaning tensely forward over the wheel, staring ahead down the dark road.
Bill Drumm replaced the lens and they tried the light. Ernie said, “I think we can stick in another layer.”
Bill said doubtfully, “That stuff’s liable to catch fire.”
“It won’t have time to get that hot,” Ernie said.
“Oh hell,” said Ben. “Let it burn.”
Release. No more nights, no more days like these last ones. In one hour, less than an hour, I’ll either have her back or I’ll know that she’s dead. And if she’s dead—
Then I’ll do what has to be done.
Due process of law be damned.
The wheel was cold and slippery under his hands. The windshield started to mist up and he turned on the defroster. The night was clear and cool, with rolls of white mist in the low places, along the creek bottoms. Probably by midnight there would be a general fog. Ben did not worry about it. By midnight he could not care what the weather was like.
He turned onto the highway and drove eastward toward the Pennsylvania line.
The dome-light lens was tried for the second time. Now when it was turned on the light it gave was so muffled and fuzzy that a man standing in the dark ten feet away would not be able to see Virginia Dalby’s face well enough to tell that she was not Lorene but only a fairly good imitation.
“That’s the best we can do,” said Ernie. “I hope it’s good enough. Keep your head down as much as you can, Virginia.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will.”
“If you hear anything that sounds like a shot don’t wait to make sure. Hit the floor. Hear that, Ben?”
“Yes.”
Ernie lighted another cigarette and sat quiet, puffing nervously.
Bill Drumm said, “If we get through the first part of it we might be all right. But he’s sure not taking any chances.”
“No,” said Ernie.
From time to time he talked briefly with Packer on the radio they had installed, with the mike run into the back seat.
Virginia Dalby sat still, her hands flat on her heavy pocket-book.
Seven or eight miles short of the state line Ben turned off the highway onto a secondary road going north. Packer’s car was still behind him. He continued on for several miles, and then Packer said, “It’s just ahead here. Slow down.”
Ben took his foot off the gas. There was a car pulled off the road in a wide place maintained by the Highway Department for its slagging crews. A deputy stood at the side of the road with a flashlight. Ben pulled off beside the car and Packer came behind him. It was dark there, with thick woods and no houses in sight.
Ernie and Bill got out. Packer and one of the men with him got out of their car. A big bull-shouldered man in a tan uniform got out of the car that had the insigne of the Sheriffs Office on it.
“This is Sheriff Magnusson,” said Packer. “Mr. Forbes.”
He went on talking to Magnusson. Ben sat at the wheel and waited because there was nothing else he could do. Cars of the Sheriff’s Office had been deployed around the Shepherd’s Creek area and would move in when they got the signal. M
agnusson himself would join Packer in trailing Ben’s car. They would not be able to follow him closely and it would be several minutes before they could reach him even after they were called. Ernie would keep in constant touch with them.
“You’ll have to play it by ear,” Packer said, “as you go along. I just want one thing firmly fixed in everybody’s mind. The first objective is to get Mrs. Forbes away from Guthrie unharmed. Every other consideration must be subordinate to that. Guthrie himself we can deal with. Mr. Forbes?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t lose your head. You’ll only endanger your wife. Just do what you have to and let us take care of the rest.”
Ben said, “I know.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Ernie got into the back seat and crouched down out of sight. Even with the dome light on he could not be seen except by someone standing right beside the car. Bill Drumm climbed into the back deck and pulled it shut, opening it once to make sure the new catch arrangement worked. Then he tapped the inside of the trunk and Ernie said, “Okay.”
Ben started the car and drove on.
Virginia Dalby opened her borrowed handbag and let the tips of her fingers rest on the edge of the flap.
Ben looked in the rearview mirror. The Sheriff’s car and Packer’s car remained in the pull-off. They would give him plenty of room. Al Guthrie had been smart enough to see to that. They were on their own. By the time they called for Packer and Magnusson and the Sheriff’s deputies the vital question of Carolyn would have been settled, one way or the other.
The road was narrow and high-crowned, rough along the edges of the berm. There were woods and fields, farmhouses and barns, a village where the road went over a bridge by an old mill dam. The mill was still standing, a great tall building all dark and sagging. The village had a supermarket and an icecream store, a service station, and a tavern. There were lights in all of them, and Ben caught the sound of a juke box.
He drove on, and the splash of light dropped behind him.
“Take it easy,” said Ernie from the bottom of the back seat. “You’ll overshoot your turn.”
“I think it’s still about half a mile ahead.” He turned to Virginia Dalby. “Give me a cigarette, will you?”
An Eye for an Eye Page 16