“What is your name, please?”
“Emmett,” he said. “John Emmett.”
The girl’s voice said, “Mr. Kirkpatrick isn’t here, but he left a message for you, Mr. Emmett, in case you should call this office for confirmation. He said to tell you there would be an army car waiting at Numa, on the south edge of town, to escort you into the Project. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Emmett. Does that agree with what you’ve been told of the arrangements?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It checks. Thanks a lot.”
“You’re very welcome, Mr. Emmett.”
He put the receiver away and found that he was not at all reassured. The fact that the federal man had anticipated his suspicions of Mr. Nicholson only emphasized the fact that both Kirkpatrick and Mr. Nicholson had reasons for not wanting the interview to go through, and that they could very well have come to an agreement. And even if Kirkpatrick were on the level, there was only one road through Numa, and it would be easy enough for Mr. Nicholson to have the Mercury convertible picked up as it approached the rendezvous. It was not likely that the FBI was so anxious to have Dr. Kissel exposed to the danger of an interview as to raise any serious questions if the party never showed up.
Emmett found his hands shaking a little as he filled and lighted his pipe. He was tired and sleepy, and frightened at how wrong he could be, in how many different ways. He walked slowly to the soda fountain. From the last stool, nearest the door, he could just catch a glimpse of the girl waiting for him beside the car; the afternoon sun still too hot to let her sit inside in comfort. He remembered that they had hardly spoken to each other since leaving the filling station from which he had called her father that morning. She had not referred to the call, nor had he mentioned it; remaining silent because he did not know how he wanted to bring it up. There was, after all, no really good way of asking a girl you had kissed if she were a confessed murderess.
He thought of Mrs. Pruitt saying: I’m betting that girl’s all right. He remembered his own response: What the hell do you think I’m doing? It seemed to him that the time had come to decide just how much he was going to put into the center of the table. He was already in the game for more than he could afford to lose.
The boy behind the fountain gave him a Coke and answered his questions, and looked after him with some curiosity as he went out.
Emmett was aware of Ann straightening up as he came out of the drugstore, but he walked quickly away from her; then he was around the corner, pausing to orient himself. There were no awnings on the side street and the sun burned his bare head. He had forgotten his hat in the car. He followed the directions the boy had given him. The building he wanted was white stucco resembling adobe, and the room he wanted was on the second floor. A man in shirtsleeves asked him the questions and recorded the answers, finally shoving the completed license across the desk.
“Any minister or justice of the peace,” the man said.
Emmett took the paper and folded it slowly. “What else do I need?” he asked.
“Just the girl,” the man said, smiling.
“No medical—?”
“You’re all set to go, Mac,” the man said gently.
“How soon can we—?”
“Right now, if your girl’s ready and you can catch Judge Pierce before he leaves. You’d better let me call him if you want him to wait for you.” The man reached for his telephone.
“Yes,” Emmett said, a little breathlessly, “have him wait, please.”
When he came back around the corner, he saw that Ann had retreated into the doorway of a drygoods store, but she went forward to the car when she saw him approach. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder as she started to get into the car. She turned sharply to look at him, her face a little flushed with heat and with the annoyance of being kept waiting; her shoulders bare, a little pink, and showing a faint sheen of perspiration. She looked small and hot and rather sticky, like a child that had been playing in the sun, but her expression was adult and reserved, rather hostile. He realized abruptly the enormity of what he had been about to suggest to her—and the impossibility of explaining to her why it was necessary.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to see some people. You’d better roll your pants down.”
She glanced down to her bare legs, and back to his face. “I like them like that,” she said stiffly. “It’s so hot…”
He heard his own voice crackle with anger. “Roll them down, goddamn it!”
“John!” she breathed, staring at him. “What’s the—?”
There was, for a moment, nobody passing on the sidewalk; no cars on the bright hot street; they were quite alone beside the convertible parked diagonally to the curb. Then he had struck her, and she was back against the car with one hand to her cheek. He could feel the tingling in his own hand. He watched all hurt and shock and bewilderment and life slowly drain from her face, leaving it a mask that he did not recognize.
“And get in the car and put a blouse on,” he whispered.
The voice that answered him was no voice he had ever heard before. It was dull and submissive. “My suitcase is in the trunk…”
When she climbed out of the car again, she was wearing the eggshell satin blouse she had worn with the suit he had first seen her in; the blouse a little crushed from being packed in the suitcase, but giving her an expensive, fragile, casually festive air. She crouched in front of him, rolling down the legs of her slacks, then straightened up for his inspection, her eyes avoiding him. There was a faint red mark on her cheek. He nodded and took her arm. They walked slowly away along the sidewalk.
He said without looking at her, “When you ask one man who doesn’t like you to force another man who doesn’t like you to do something neither of them may want done, you’re asking for trouble. I’m in this up to my neck already, Nicholson. That guy whose shoulder I busted last night could put me in jail for a good long time. I need an official stake, so to speak, in what’s going on. Something to make my position legal, so I can’t be ignored.”
Her face turned up to him briefly, but she did not speak.
He said, “Keep walking. We’re on our way to see a judge, who’s going to marry us… Keep walking!” He made his fingers bite into the soft flesh of her arm. “I’ve got the license in my pocket, Nicholson. The only way you can stop me is to kick up a fuss. If you kick up a fuss, we’ll land in jail with a lot of policemen asking questions. Remember that.”
Again her glance touched him, but she remained silent. He said, “I want you to make up your mind right now what you’re going to do. I don’t want you to go off half-cocked when you get in there. Make your decision now, while we’re walking. You can tell the judge that I’m forcing you to marry me, and he’ll have me put in jail, but you’ll go with me. Once the police have us, you’re on the road to Chicago and a murder trial you can’t win. If it’s worth that much to you to keep from marrying me, go right ahead and yell. But just be sure you know what you’re doing and what the consequences will be.”
She reached up to pry gently at the fingers that gripped her arm. He hesitated, and released her. The satin of her sleeve was quite wet where he had been holding her. She walked along beside him, silent, plucking the thin material free of her skin. It began to dry almost instantly in the hot dry air.
He said, “If you’re wondering about the ring, I picked up the one you bought to fool Mrs. Pruitt. You dropped it in the cabin, remember?”
She did not look at him, or answer him, and they went up the court-house steps in silence. When they came out, the doorway was in shadow, and they paused a moment before plunging out into the bright street. The judge, who had come down with them, shook hands with them both again and wished them all the luck in the world. He asked if he could drive them anywhere. Emmett said their car was right around the corner. They watched him go down the street to his own car. He waved to them as he drove past. They walked slowly down the steps to the sidewalk.
“I’
m sorry,” Emmett said, walking beside her without touching her. “If I’d done it any other way you’d have wanted to argue. Maybe you’d have refused. I couldn’t take the chance. I had to catch you by surprise.” She did not say anything. He went on, “When we’re through with this business, you can probably get it annulled without much trouble. I had to fudge a lot of the answers on the application.”
Her face had a remote, closed look, and he did not think she had heard what he was saying. He did not think she knew where she was. She was safe inside a dark refuge of her own that she had built for herself some time ago. He had caught her by surprise, striking her; he had been a friend, able to hurt her. But now she was safe inside her defenses and nothing he could say or do would reach her. Now he was allied in her mind with the savage world she had known during the war. She knew how to deal with him, now.
He watched her fingers come up absently to rub the tiny scar on her lip, the wedding ring glinting on the appropriate finger; and he shivered.
“Did you get everything I asked you to?”
“Yes,” she said mechanically.
“You don’t mind camping out?”
“No.”
It was like speaking to an obedient doll. “I have a feeling we’ll do better not registering anywhere tonight,” he said, and tried a grin. “Even though it’s legal, now.”
She looked at him and looked away. He stopped trying to grin and opened the car door for her, closed it behind her, and walked around the car to get behind the wheel.
The sun was almost down when the road dipped to show them a barren plain below, broken by a series of garishly striped, eroded buttes that, Emmett thought, were good for nothing but putting on a postcard. You did not believe in them, seeing them in the red evening sunlight, even while you were looking at them. Even the wide graded highway, with its accompanying line of telephone poles, running straight through to the horizon, did not break the illusion of unreality; a distant car, dragging dust behind it, was a busy insect from another planet.
Emmett heard the quickly indrawn breath of the girl beside him, and glanced at her, but did not speak in spite of a sudden desire to share the experience with her, in words. Her face was suddenly alive again, with awe and wonder, but he knew that his voice would break the spell. He led the car down the series of switchbacks a little too fast, having to brake a little too often. He was getting quite tired, he realized suddenly; almost dangerously tired. It seemed a long time since he had had any sleep. It seemed almost as if he had been driving along endless mountain and desert roads as long as he could remember. When he saw a faint track leading off the highway toward the badlands, he swung the car onto it, jouncing across the parched clay of the alkali plain. He stopped the car when the first butte hid them from the road, and switched off the engine. Presently the car began to creak and tinkle metallically as various parts of it contracted, cooling. He was aware that his shirt was still wet across the back from the heat of the day, but now he was a little chilly. Ann was silent beside him, waiting for him to move. He took his camera from the glove compartment, hesitated, looked at the space where it had been; then got stiffly out of the car and took a picture of the steep clay cliff above them, the erosion patterns standing out clearly shadowed by the low sunlight. But it was a picture that really needed color film, he reflected. He was not really thinking about it, anyway. As he turned back toward the convertible, Ann’s voice stopped him.
“Just a minute, please; I’m not decent.”
Then she came out, tucking in the tails of the bright wool shirt she had put on against the chill of evening. As she bent over, fastening up her belt, her light hair parted and fell forward along her cheeks so that, looking down on her bent head, he could see the little curling wisps at the nape of her neck, still faintly damp with perspiration.
“Where’s the gun?” he asked softly.
She was quite still for a moment. At last she lifted her face to him, silently questioning. As he looked down at her, all the uncertainty and weariness of the long day was boiling up in anger inside him, urging him to lash out at her with the suspicions he could not put aside, to repay her for the quiet contempt with which she was treating him. Georges trusted you, he wanted to say, and look what it got him. Maybe you even talked Stevens into believing in you. Stevens is dead, murdered. He felt a sudden bitter sense of kinship with these two dead men he had never known. One of them had been, like himself, her husband. The thought startled him with its reminder of how deeply he had committed himself to helping a girl he barely knew.
He said mildly, “The gun I took off that guy last night. Didn’t you put it in the glove compartment?”
“Oh,” she said quickly. “No, I’m sorry. It’s in back.” She brushed at her slacks and straightened up. “Do you want it?” she asked politely. “I’ll get it for you.”
He studied her for a moment. Her head was well back, a little defiant, and he was aware of the slenderness of her throat against the open collar of the checkered wool shirt.
“Never mind,” he said carefully. “So long as you know where it is.”
As he closed the camera case and went back to the car to get the food out he found that his mind had suddenly begun, like a radar screen, plotting her position as she moved behind him.
chapter TWENTY-ONE
He heard a coyote in the distance and knew that he had not been asleep because he had, vaguely, been listening to the sound for a long time. It was not the sound that had brought his mind back to the present. He moved a little to rouse himself fully, and something gouged him in the thigh: the car keys that he had dropped into his pocket before turning in.
The ground was hard and lumpy beneath him. Even completely dressed except for his shoes, with a wool shirt under his sweater and a blanket wrapped around him, he was a little cold. It was difficult to recall the glaring heat of the day; now the air felt almost frosty. Except for the wailing of the coyote it was very still on the desert. If any cars were passing along the road a quarter of a mile away, he could not hear them. When he opened his eyes he could see the convertible, and the buttes to the eastward, bright and silvery in the cold moonlight. Presently he heard the girl he had married move again in the car when she was supposedly sleeping.
He closed his eyes and heard her open the car door carefully; then he lost her, her stockinged feet making no sound on the sun-baked clay. He waited, thinking, even if she does, she’ll want to tell me why; she’ll want to talk first. He could not remember ever having been so scared in his life.
“John.”
He did not move, and he heard a clump of the dry desert grass rustle as she stepped closer.
“John,” she whispered.
He sat up and looked at the gun in her hand.
The hand that held the gun was trembling a little, with cold, or with some strong emotion, or with both. Her whole body seemed to contract, as if with pain, when the coyote howled again, coming closer. She looked down at the gun.
“You forgot this,” she whispered.
He did not say anything. He watched the gleaming small revolver pointed at him in the moonlight. The weapon was not cocked; that gave him, he decided, a little time unless she was aware of the effort that would be necessary to work the stiff double-action mechanism. He got a grip on the blanket so that he could rip it aside and roll free if he saw the hammer begin to rise.
“Do you want the car keys?” he asked. “They’re in my pocket. You can take them and beat it, if that’s what you want.”
Her face was a small pinched mask in the moonlight. The muzzle of the gun sagged a little.
“Oh, don’t be silly, John,” she breathed.
Then the gun dropped to the ground and she stood looking at it; presently giving it a small push toward him with her stockinged foot.
“There it is!” she whispered. “You can relax now. You can go to sleep now. You can—” She turned her back on him sharply, choking. Her voice was harsh with tears when she spoke again: “I suppos
e you took the cartridges out of it when I wasn’t looking!”
He glanced at her back and, with sudden anger, raked up the cut-off revolver, pointed it out across the desert, and pulled the trigger. There was more flame than he had expected; and for an instant the little gun was alive in his grasp. The report was a short, smashing sound, like the sound of a blow. It jerked Ann around to face him, gasping. After a pause the echo came yammering back at them from the distant buttes.
“Don’t you want to make sure they aren’t blanks?” Emmett demanded, holding up the weapon.
“Why did you leave it? You left it there deliberately, to test me!” She caught her breath. “You’ve been lying here, waiting… You thought I might…! I don’t like booby-traps, John Emmett!”
He said, “All right, and if I’d guessed wrong about you, who’d have been the booby?”
The coyote howled again. Ann shivered convulsively. After a moment she sank down on the blanket beside Emmett, hugging herself against the cold. They did not speak for a while.
“This afternoon… striking me!” She breathed at last. “Tonight… waiting for me to—to attack you—as if I were s-some kind of an animal you had to beat and trick…!”
He said, “Your father said you called him up in hysterics, Saturday night, and confessed to killing Stevens.”
For a moment she was quite still; he thought she had even stopped breathing. When she spoke, her voice was just barely audible.
“No. Oh, no!”
Emmett said, “He warned me not to let you get behind me with a weapon. I thought I’d try it and see what happened.”
He felt her glance at him through the pale darkness. “Does that mean… that you don’t believe I…?”
“Did you?” he asked.
“No.”
“No what?” he asked. “No you didn’t kill him, or no you didn’t call him.”
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