by Devon, Gary;
Every blade of grass was slick with dew: here and there the precise symmetry of the moisture was broken and ruffled like fur brushed the wrong way. Something had passed through here. The trampled patches formed a disjointed trail, leading from the side of the porch to the garden. She thought, That’s what I heard through the kitchen window.
But what came through here? A small animal—a cat or a groundhog—would have left a more discernible trail with smaller prints. She was trying to sort it out, following along beside the rumpled places when she reached the edge of the brick path.
There was a quality of quiet about these past few minutes that she did not like. In every detail, the garden appeared to be as lifeless as a photograph. She found herself straining to hear even the smallest sound, but if God had struck her deaf, the silence couldn’t have been deeper. How can this be? she thought. Always there was something: dry leaves rustling, old bark falling, insects moving, tiny wings whirring. Where were the starlings that came every morning?
The depressions of the grass joined and crossed the brick walkway and mingled with the slick smudges her own shoes had left behind. It was impossible to separate them. An animal of some kind did this, she thought, maybe a big dog. Walking along, still trying to reason it out, she nearly tripped over her basket. It was lying in her path beside the clematis trellis.
It seemed very strange. Rachel couldn’t remember leaving her basket there—when she remembered her burning percolater, she had been tying up her roses. Her thoughts swept back, trying to recreate exactly what she had done. She had stripped off her gloves—she remembered that. “I’m getting so forgetful,” she grumbled to herself. “I must be losing my mind.”
Had she started forward carrying the basket and then carelessly set it down as she rushed toward the house? “I wouldn’t put it past me,” she said.
Stooping to one knee, she gripped the basket’s wooden handle and in the clear gap of air beneath the fog, very close, the thatch splintered and burst—a streaking shape shot before her eyes—a blur right in front of her that scared her silly.
The blood rushed to her head; she was shaking all over. Down the brick path, she glimpsed its white tail as it leapt into her rows of spring peas: and she knew what it was, a rabbit. A rabbit!
So that’s what it had been all along, making that noise, leaving those tracks. A stupid rabbit! Ten feet away, sitting among her rows of peas, nibbling at a leaf, its large glassy eyes seemed to mock her. Keeping him firmly in her line of sight, Rachel lowered her hand, reaching for a rock to throw, but her fingers brushed over something round and grooved and rubbery instead. She looked down.
The toe of an athletic shoe protruded through the weeds. Her first thought was, Who’d throw an old shoe into my garden? Then among the green stalks, she noticed the faded bottom seam of blue jeans, the pant leg rising through the foliage. Inches from her face, half-hidden in the vines and fog, a man was standing over her.
Rachel could not stop staring; she wanted to but she couldn’t. She had a terrifying impression of how big he was. Suddenly she stood straight up, her arms locked at her sides, all of her locked.
At once, the entire fabric of vines and fragile blossoms exploded in front of her and Rachel was gazing at a face among the clematis—at his emerging eyes, driven and dark, burning like coals.
“You,” she gasped.
She meant to say, What’re you doing here?, but only the you came out. It was all happening too quickly, moving far too fast for her. He said nothing; he was smiling, oddly. The thought ran through her mind that he was trying to show her something—he was wearing her glove and in her glove, he clutched her pruning knife.
“What d’y—”
The words were never finished. The blade edge, gleaming and sharp, flashed through the air; there was a sudden hiss of movement and a burning slash opened across her throat. She couldn’t scream. Her plangent cry was air. She was stumbling backward, away from him.
I can’t breathe, Rachel thought. Her hands plucked at the wound as if to snatch it away and then her hands were slick with her own dark blood. All at once she tasted it, like salt; blood, hot and coppery, spilled from her mouth.
Her throat was on fire; she almost fainted from the pain. The garden went black then flooded back into focus. Again, she tried to scream—heard the cry she couldn’t make burst through her mind. For an instant she saw his face, rigid with hatred and fear, lunging at her.
Twice the pruning knife came at her and twice it missed her altogether, but the hand she threw out, trying to defend herself, could not fend it off. The third time it severed her windpipe. And then everywhere Rachel turned, everywhere she looked, her blood speckled the bright green leaves.
My God! God, help me!
The green morning revolved around her. She could see her hands grasping for a post, something to hold on to—the edge of the trellis broke under her weight like matchsticks—but she couldn’t feel anything. It was as if she were floating.
Then something struck her hard in the face. A bone cracked. The stench of rotting leaves filled her senses, and yet precious seconds passed before she realized she had fallen facedown beside the brick walkway. A gush of red warmth soaked the front of her dress. She felt her blood spilling out on the ground and she knew that she was dying.
Lifting herself on her hands and knees, she tried to crawl, but she couldn’t see where she was going. Her mouth sprang apart as if to cry out but no cry was there. Suddenly her spine tensed and her body jerked in uncontrollable spasms. Then her movements slowed. She was lying on her side, her head tilted skyward. Somewhere hovering near, she heard the sound of his hoarse, hollow breathing, but along with everything else, even that was receding. With her last flicker of recognition in this world, Rachel saw them—the starlings that came every morning, thousands of small black wings rising in a wave, then a spiral ascending through the fine, wet mist.
Her last thoughts were of the starlings and these splendid spring mornings, of her roses and of Sheila, all the things she loved, as if suddenly her memory had run backward through the fading circuits of her mind. Silence again prevailed. Rachel Buchanan was dead.
8
Slater stood over the body, still clutching the pruning knife, shock running through him. He was shuddering, breathing rapidly through his mouth. He felt that if he moved, some delicate, finely tuned part of him would shatter.
In a moment of wild clarity, the urge struck him to gather the old woman up in his arms, wipe the blood away and tell her it was all a crazy mistake. Just as quickly the feelings left him. He felt paralyzed. The blade clattered against the bricks and the sound echoed on and on. He thought it would never end.
The remaining ceiling of fog stood at a level over his head, leaving a muzziness in the air. He looked frantically about, searching for anything that might later betray him. Fingerprints, he thought. Jesus! He grabbed the handle of Rachel’s garden basket and wiped it on his sleeve. Then his eyes darted in a frenzied reconnaissance of the neighboring windows. Hadn’t anyone heard them struggling, the crash as the trellis broke? In the house across the driveway, he noticed for the first time that the lights were on, and all at once, he expected the entire neighborhood to come running.
A voice in his brain kept shouting, Get away! Get away! Run! Run! But as Slater backed away, he forced himself to look at the inert body one last time.
She was dead, no mistake. With a quick last glance at the surrounding windows, he turned to make his escape. He ran across the graveled driveway and down past the side of the old garage, his tall shadow rippling over the vines and the peeling paint. He crossed the rear of the shed to the corner. With his sleeve, he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
All right, it’s all right, Slater thought, still feeling sick with panic. Surely someone’d heard the commotion, but no … it’s too early. Nobody saw me. It’s over. It’s over. No noise came from the garden, the air seemed empty and timeless.
He broke from the corner, legs t
earing through the high grass, his head twisting to look back, eyes afraid. He tried to listen for some cry of recognition and heard nothing but the crashing of his own footsteps. He reached the gully and plunged into it, small stones tumbling in after him.
Gasping for breath, Slater raised his head above ground and peered across the field the way he had come, into the weedy gap beside the shed. Again he expected to find the garden crowded with neighbors, but nothing had changed. Through the fuzzy remnants of the fog, the morning appeared undisturbed.
Then the noises came to him, distant noises that seemed to waft through the damp air and fade away: the prattling of birds, the keen whir of the wind, voices. He heard a woman cry out: “Rachel! Call an ambulance!” Someone in a bathrobe was yelling, then still another, “Over here! Give me a hand here!” Their shouts sent his heart pounding up into his throat. He dropped from sight below the rim of the gully. I knew they heard us, he thought.
Slater climbed quickly upward along the old floor of the gully, through the underbrush and saplings and the outcroppings of rock when, suddenly it hit him: all the fear and horror at what he had done surged in his gut. He stood gripping his knees, heaving with nausea. His stomach was empty, but when he tried to go on, he felt drained, without strength.
Pushing harder and harder, he reached the flinty summit where he fell headlong onto the mat of dry needles, out of breath, his lungs wheezing with the exertion of his flight. As soon as he was able, he stood up among the wind-bent trees, desperate to see the Buchanan house through the drifting tent of haze. But he could see nothing. Only one thing was certain: no one was chasing up the ravine after him.
Relieved, he dragged the gray hood off his head. Already his terror was beginning to dissipate, as if a long, bad dream had suddenly burst inside him, stunning him momentarily. Drinking in the high clear air, Slater felt giddy with triumph, almost light-headed. But it was short-lived. From deep in the distance came the whine of a siren. Immediately he turned and moved through the patch of cedars. Taking a zigzag course between boulders, he went down the backside of the ridge to the Old Sawmill Road.
He had harbored the perverse fear that the Jeep would be overrun with police. It wasn’t. The Jeep was sitting exactly as he had left it—off the road, among the grove of trees. It was when he slid into the seat that he remembered to take off the bloodstained work glove that still covered his right hand. Panicked, he groped inside the pouch of his sweatshirt for the other glove. It was still there. With shaking fingers he turned the key; the engine started and he pulled out through the overgrown gateposts onto the pavement, heading farther inland where he would take secondary country roads back to the farmhouse.
Christ, it had been awful: how could he have lost his head so completely? The stroke of his arm had been like a mindless thing, the knife like something with nerves of its own. Now, when he tried to reconstruct exactly what had happened, he discovered that he couldn’t. How many times had he struck her? How long did it take?
He couldn’t remember.
His grave, white face stared back at him in the windshield glass.
And the blood. Christ, the blood!
When had the lights come on in that window? Had someone actually watched him do it? Again Slater felt his stomach contract with nausea. He swallowed air. The window had been a good distance away—he remembered that—so far away that he couldn’t see anything except the blank surface of its glass panels. He had to believe that it would have been impossible for a witness to have seen him clearly, if at all. If there was a witness.
“Well, it’s over now,” he muttered to himself. “So what does it matter?” He couldn’t go back and change things. Nothing could be undone or done over. But it mattered. It mattered.
Off to his left, the windows of a farmhouse slipped by, catching for an instant the reflection of the speeding Jeep. Farther on, a pickup truck clattered past, headed toward town. The sun was striking the Jeep’s windshield—it would be impossible for the other driver to see him clearly through the glare.
The fog had all but dispersed. Slater drove four and a half miles and turned onto a dirt road known as McCovey’s Lane, cutting across the narrow width of fifty acres of pastureland. He followed the old cow trail through a stream, then a long grove of cypress and came to a junction with the road he wanted. Within five minutes he pulled into his converted stable and turned the motor off. The Eldorado sat in the next stall.
Leaning against the steering wheel, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, inhaling slowly until the nausea began to pass away. He looked at his watch. 6:55. So far he was close to keeping the schedule he had set for himself. He would have twenty minutes to take care of things here and get dressed, then another fifteen minutes for the drive back to Rio Del Palmos. At seven-thirty, he wanted to be sitting in the Beachcomber Cafe having his breakfast, as he did every weekday morning.
He got out of the Jeep and walked to the wide doorway, to the edge of the intruding sunlight. Slater listened intently for any unusual sound and heard the creaking of the plankings overhead, the thousand small scattered sounds of the wind in the trees and bushes. At the same time, his gaze swept over the silent yard, along the repaired porch, across the shut windows and doors to the gate that was closed as he had left it. Now, at last, he breathed a little easier. No one had been here. No trap had been set. Again, irrationally, he couldn’t dislodge the feeling that he had made some obvious and disastrous error.
He stripped off his clothes. Dark flecks of Rachel Buchanan’s blood had splattered his sleeves, the lower legs of his jeans and his running shoes. All his clothing would have to be destroyed. Moving quickly, he dropped the clothes piece by piece into a wire basket, then carried it outside, doused the clothes with kerosene and set them ablaze.
He remembered the gloves, went to the Jeep, retrieved them and tossed them into the burning basket. The rubber soles of his shoes would take the longest to burn. In the end, all that would remain would be the rivets from his blue jeans and the chrome-plated eyeholes of his running shoes, both easily disposed of. Inside the stable, in the small bathroom, Slater picked up a clean towel and a bar of soap and went out to the yard. He shed his shorts, dropped them into the fire and holding the soap in his hand, dove naked into the clear, deep water of the rock pool.
At 7:27, Slater pulled the Eldorado into the municipal parking garage. From beginning to end, the killing had taken him an hour and a half to complete.
With his hand sliding on the smooth metal rail, he walked down the concrete stairs: second landing, ground level, the concrete cubicle deserted as usual. The thick walls muffled the noise from outside. He realized he was just standing there, lost, exhausted, terrified of going out. As he gripped the handle and pulled the door open, the latch clapped, sending a cascade of echoes up the stairwell. He looked back in sudden fright. Only particles of dust rising through the gloom met his gaze. Shaking off the fear, he stepped outside.
The throb of the awakening city was like an assault. From everywhere, the sunlight struck—from chrome, glass, even flecks of mica in the sidewalk sparkled, burning barbs of light into his eyes. He had sunglasses in his pocket but he left them there. Nothing could look suspicious.
Today of all days, he would behave exactly as he did on any other morning. He went to the corner of two streets and stood waiting for the light to change, looking around him. Across the wider boulevard, a few people strolled by, singly or in pairs. Always before they had been just another part of the background but now, suddenly, he was acutely aware of them and of his place among them. He was the mayor, dressed for business, on his way to get a cup of coffee before going to the office and everyone was his friend.
“Hello, Henry,” they said as they passed on the sidewalk. “Hi, Henry … Hello, Mayor … Beautiful day, isn’t it, Mr. Slater?”
Charlie Ulrich leaned out of his open car window and said, “How’s it going, Mayor?”
“Fine,” Slater answered him, “never better.” And, fi
nally, he meant it.
On his face, the air felt bright and fresh, tinged with salt. A sweet, new sensation welled up in him, the promise of unimaginable pleasure. There was nothing to stop him now, no one to hold him back. Sheila, he thought. Now there would be time, endless time, for everything … everything he wanted. The realization made him feel giddy.
This must be, Slater thought, what a man feels like when he’s let out of prison. I did it. I really did it. It’s over. All across the city, bells in church steeples struck the half hour. 7:30. And he was Mayor Henry Lee Slater, walking along the sidewalk at seven-thirty on a bright May morning, feeling ecstatically happy.
Keeping a steady pace, his necktie flapping gently against his shirt, his hands thrust carelessly into his trouser pockets, he walked the last half block to the Beachcomber Cafe. At the locked newspaper dispenser near the front door, he dropped two quarters into the slot and bought the morning edition of the L.A. Times.
He went inside and took a table beside the large front window. The tablecloth was white and starched. The restaurant seemed oddly uncrowded—only a few men sat at the counter drinking coffee. Somewhere above him, a paddle fan made a tiny, repetitious shriek in its rotation. He unfolded the newspaper before him and let his eyes wander to the mirror behind the counter, then along the wide Mojave mural to the waitress, in her red-checked uniform, who was coming toward him.
She ought to look at me with horror. Setting the glass of ice water on the table and taking the pencil from her hair, she simply said, “You just missed your buddy, Mayor.”
He could feel himself looking up at her blankly. “Who’s that, Gina?”
“Oh, you know who I mean,” she said. “Chief Reeves. One of the patrolmen came in and got him and they left. Something must’ve happened.”
“No telling,” Slater said with a little shrug. “Where’s the crowd this morning?”