by Bill Crider
Ray had started back toward me. I lay still and pointed the Mauser at him, trying to breathe slowly and steadily, bracing my arm on the ground and gripping my wrist with the opposite hand. I would be pretty hard for him to see since I was wearing dark clothing. Maybe I could wait until he got close enough.
He saw me too soon. He stopped and fired, but the bullet was well to my left. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and squeezed the trigger.
Ray yelled and spun around. I'd hit him somewhere, maybe in the arm. He was running again.
I tried to get to my feet and finally made it. There was no question of my running, though. What I did was hobble, my right leg dragging almost uselessly along.
Ray got down to the edge of the water. He stopped, pressing his left arm tightly to his side, fumbling in his pocket with his right hand. The pistol must have been in his left, but I didn't see it. He was reloading the cylinder.
It didn't take him long, and then he was moving along parallel to the water. He was going slower now, but he was still getting farther and farther ahead of me. He kept looking to his right for something. I thought again about a boat.
There wasn't any boat. The next thing I knew, Ray was out into the water, headed deeper.
I remembered what a boating friend of mine had told me once. "Sailing in the Bay is OK," he said. "But you've got to watch out. It's really shallow. Why, you could walk across it if you tried." He laughed. "Not really, but if you knew where to go and when to swim a little, you could make it without too much trouble."
Ray must have figured it was worth a try. By the way he had been looking, I thought that he must have had a marker, some light on the opposite shore, to tell him when to hit the water.
He was sloshing through it now, up to his waist. The good thing was that it slowed him down.
I got to the edge and looked out at Ray. He didn't look back. I stepped into the water.
It was cold. I was in only up over my ankles, and the chill went right through to the bone. I went on out. If Ray could do it, I could.
The water worked to my advantage as it got deeper. It took some of the weight off my leg, and I was able to move as fast as Ray. Of course, I was so cold that my teeth were chattering. I was shaking too much to hit an elephant with a pistol shot, much less a man. I kept on, trying as best I could to follow Ray's path.
I was getting nearer, almost within range. Then Ray disappeared, just sank right under.
I stopped. It was dark, and maybe he lost his way. I stood, waiting for him to surface, the wind tugging at me and almost freezing my sweatshirt to my body.
Suddenly Ray popped out of the water, showering drops all around.
He scared the hell out of me. He was so close that I could see him clearly. He'd been swimming toward me under the water. He was smarter than I was, that was for sure.
He was firing the pistol wildly, however. Blue flames spurted from the barrel.
I sank under the water. Never let it be said that I'm a slow learner. The scrapes on my hands and face sizzled when the salt water hit them.
I have no idea how long I was under. I wasn't used to holding my breath, so it probably wasn't long. I stayed down until my lungs were burning. I thought about Ray, wondering if he thought he'd hit me. I knew he was reloading, waiting for me to come up.
I eased a little way to my left, gripped the pistol, and popped up. I held the pistol down to make sure the water drained out of the barrel. The wind hit me like a bucket of shaved ice.
Ray was nowhere in sight.
I looked all around, hoping to be able to see bubbles on the surface of the water if he was releasing his breath.
I didn't see anything except the slight chop on the water caused by the wind.
There was a huge splash behind me. I started turning. It was as if things were happening in slow motion. I got half turned before the shooting started.
Over the sound of the pistol, I could hear Ray's screaming. He wasn't screaming out words. It was just noise. Rage, I suppose, or maybe the salt water was just hurting his wound. Or it could be that he'd gone completely around the bend.
I went under again.
In a way, Ray had the advantage on me. He knew about how long I could stay under, so he could wait to go down himself. My only chance was to out-maneuver him. I tried to decide whether to try getting so far away that he couldn't possibly hit me or simply to head for the shore. Either way, he might outguess me. I opted for the shore.
The water was cold, but at least it seemed warmer underneath it than in the wind above. I held my breath as long as I could. I was just about to surface when I collided with something.
It was Ray.
I tried to move away to get to the air, but he was on me too quickly, flailing at me, trying to get a grip on me so he could hold me under.
Somehow he got his left hand tangled in my hair. He started trying to hit me with the pistol, but he couldn't do much damage under the water. Then he tried raking my face with the barrel. I felt the tip of the sight rip the skin of my jaw.
I was more worried about getting a breath than about what he could do to me with the pistol. I struggled for the surface, but he clubbed me on the temple. There wasn't much force in the blow, but there was enough to keep me down.
I fought back by jabbing him in the stomach with the Mauser. I shoved as hard as I could, concentrating all my force on the small spot of the attack. It was so dark under the water that I couldn't see a thing, so I had no real idea of exactly where I was hitting him. I wasn't going to last much longer. I would have pulled the trigger, but I was afraid to. I didn't know what might happen. The barrel was full of water. There was water outside, too, and maybe the forces would balance out, but I didn't want to take the chance of having the pistol blow up in my hand.
Ray loosened his grip on my hair as I jabbed him for the third time. I flipped over and kicked backward as hard as I could, then shot out of the water like an undersea missile. I was gasping burning lungfuls of air and trying to get my footing, hold onto the pistol, and spot Ray.
It took me a second or two to realize that I wasn't going to be able to get my footing because there wasn't any footing. We'd drifted over a hole. I tried to tread water and calm down.
Ray was easing to the side about twenty feet in front of me. I could barely see his head atop the dark water. I moved in the same direction.
He got his footing first, and his shoulders rose out of the chop. He fired twice. Both bullets thunked into the water to my left, sounding almost as if they were hitting sheetrock.
I was exhausted. My knee was throbbing and I could almost feel it swelling. My scraped skin was frying on both my face and hands. The cut on my jaw felt as if it had electricity running through it. But I still didn't want to have to shoot Ray.
He'd tried to kill Dino once and tried to set him up a second time when the first attempt failed. He'd certainly had both Shelton and Ferguson killed, though he hadn't done it himself. He'd abused Sharon Matthews, even if he was telling the truth about the kidnapping being her idea. He may have killed either her or Evelyn. He'd tried to kill me, too, and he'd had me beaten up.
But I didn't think any of that mattered much.
To me he was still Ray, my friend, the black kid I'd grown up with. Looking at it from his point of view, I could see that he'd never really been my equal, not in the eyes of a lot of other people. Dino and I had gotten most of the ink for our athletic prowess, and maybe that was because we were white. And Ray had fetched and carried for Dino for a long time, while Dino seemed to expect no less. There was a depth of bitterness in Ray from past years that I knew I would never understand.
So I didn't want to kill him.
I'd already killed two men that night, and I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to accept having done so. I never wanted another dead man on my conscience, especially not a dead friend.
But when I got my footing, I fired the pistol anyway.
I wasn't really aiming. I was shakin
g too hard for that, and I was too exhausted for accuracy. It was all chance, and it was clearly self-defense. Despite all my feelings for Ray, he clearly had no qualms about disposing of me. Right at that moment, I don't think anything would have pleased him more.
"I hate your goddammed soul, Tru!" he screamed as he fired for the third time.
The bullet went wild. I didn't even hear it hit the water. He was taking aim again when I pulled the trigger of the Mauser.
Ray seemed to rise out of the water. "Shit," he said, sounding more surprised than anything.
Then he sank under the surface.
"Ray!" I said. I pushed forward, trying to get to him.
It took me a minute, but I reached the place where he'd gone under. Stuffing the pistol in my pants, I dived after him.
He was right there. I pulled him to the surface and started for the shore. It wasn't far. I towed him with my hand under his chin, and he floated in my wake, relaxed now, all the hate gone out of him.
I got him out on the shore and tried to make him comfortable. I knew that he must be freezing in the wind. "I'll get help, Ray," I said. "It won't take long."
"Never mind . . . . that," Ray said. I was surprised he could speak. There was a hole in his shirt, right in the center of his chest. "I could never be a pro . . . could I? Screwed up . . . again. I . . . I'm sorry, Tru, about . . . everything."
I stood up from where I'd been kneeling in the sand beside him. "Don't be sorry," I said. "We're all still alive. I think."
"Not . . . all," he said. "I'm sorry about . . . Jan."
19
There was no one on the seawall except me.
I didn't know where the rat was. I'd gone there to look for him, but he was nowhere around. Not that I blamed him.
It was cold and gray, with a stinging rain in the air being blown along by what was probably the season's last really strong norther. The boulevard was wet and shiny in the lights from the few cars that drove by.
I was carrying a blue cardboard box of Kraft American cheese. I'd brought it for the rat. I don't know why I thought I could find him. He was probably warm and dry in some hole among the granite boulders, chewing on the remains of a hermit crab.
I, on the other hand, was cold and wet and getting wetter all the time.
Ray had died on the shore that night. The last word he said was my sister's name. I don't suppose I'll ever know for sure what he meant by it. I hope he meant that he was sorry I'd never found her, but that might not be what he meant at all. It may be that he was out to punish both me and Dino for whatever imagined slights he'd conjured up and that he knew very well what had happened to Jan. It may be that he'd made it happen.
But I'll go on hoping that he didn't and that someday I'll find her or that eventually I'll know the truth about what happened, even if it's a hard truth.
One thing was for sure: Ray was never going to tell. I tried CPR, slapping, screaming, and beating him on the face. He just lay there in the dark and wind.
I finally left him there and hobbled back to the house. Dino had things pretty well under control there, thanks mostly to Evelyn.
Dino managed to get Hobbes to drop the gun, but that was about all he was up to. Hobbes got on top of Dino, digging his thumbs into the re-opened wound, when Evelyn realized what was going on, left Sharon, found the pistol, and clobbered Hobbes in the back of the head with it.
She didn't mess around. Hobbes was in the hospital for three days with a severely cracked skull before he finally came around enough to tell the cops his version of what had happened.
For the rest of us, those three days were spent in varying degrees of comfort. Dino, being who he was, got to stay in the hospital in a much nicer room than the one Hobbes was in. Evelyn and Sharon, who had been only creased by Ray's shot at her, got to go home, thanks to Dino's influence.
I got to go to jail.
After all, I was the one who admitted that I'd killed a man, and it didn't take the police long to match the bullets from my pistol with the ones they'd dug out of one of guys in the warehouse, the one I'd shot in the chest.
Gerald Barnes didn't like me much. It didn't take him long to work up a really good case of moral fervor and outraged indignation. I let him work on it, and I told him as much of the truth as I could. It was up to somebody else to tell him the rest.
Sharon told most of her story straight, except for the part about the kidnapping being her idea. Ray had told her about her past and lured her to Dino's isolated house. Terry had helped Ray with that part. Ray had gotten to him, promised him a big part of the ransom money, which of course he never collected.
Because Sharon was distraught, and young, her story was pretty convincing. Dino and Evelyn backed her up, and so did I, when I found out what I needed to say.
Hobbes, when he came out of his swoon, didn't contradict her. He really didn't know what was happening at any point. Ray pointed him in a particular direction, told him what to do, and he did it. His story was, of course, that Ray had personally killed Shelton and Ferguson, Ferguson because he got greedy, and Shelton because Ray had no intention of paying him any of the proceeds from the kidnapping and because a dead Shelton told no tales.
Barnes gave me hell, not that I blamed him much.
"You sorry son of a bitch," he said. "You lied to me that day when you found Shelton's body. Collection agency, my ass!" He wasn't very big, but he could get mad with the best of them. His face was very red. "I'd like to tie you to a nylon rope and go trolling for sharks."
I was sitting on a cot in a jail cell at the time, which gave him a superior position. Still, I felt as if I had to say something. "You think if I'd told you the real reason I was looking for Shelton you could have done any better?"
He put his hands on his hips and looked at me. "Maybe," he said.
"Just maybe?"
"Just maybe. But maybe your friend Ray would be alive now. Maybe your friend Dino wouldn't be in the hospital with bullet holes in him. Maybe you wouldn't have killed three men."
I didn't like to think about that last part any more than I had to. And maybe he was right. But he could have been wrong. If I hadn't mixed in, Sharon could have been dead, and Dino, too. I could have been dead, for that matter.
I got the feeling, in fact, that Barnes would have been happier if Ray had killed me instead of vice-versa, but that was all right. He'd get over it. What was really bothering him was that I'd solved his murder case, on which he'd made absolutely no progress, and he liked to think that he could have done just as well as I had if I'd given him all the information. He might even have been right, but it didn't make much difference now.
Evelyn came by to tell me that Sharon was holding up pretty well, considering all that had happened to her. They let us meet in the visitors' room.
"She knows how wrong she was," Evelyn said. "And she blames herself for everything."
"She shouldn't," I said. "Ray was just waiting for something. He would have made a move sooner or later, no matter what. And he would have made it on Sharon. Believe me."
"How can you be so sure of that?"
I hadn't told anyone about Ray's dying words, and I didn't intend to. That was my business. Mine and Ray's. "I'm just sure," I said. "That's all. You can tell Sharon that. If she thinks she had a rotten break, tell her a little about Ray. She's still got a chance. Ray hasn't."
"I'll tell her," she said.
She asked what else she could do, and I asked her to call Vicky. Vicky came by the jail not too long after that.
"Nice place," she said. "You trying to impress me?"
"Sure," I said. "All the best people stay here. You selling any soap?"
"A little," she said. She was wearing the pink workout suit again. "I didn't realize what a dangerous man you were."
Her tone was light, but there was something in her eyes that showed me she meant it.
"I don't mean to be," I said. "Things just worked out that way."
"Ms Matthews made it soun
d as if you were hurt."
"It's just an old football injury," I said. I told her about the knee and how it got that way.
"You mean you were almost an All-American?"
"Yeah," I said. "Almost."
We talked for a bit longer, and she agreed to go by the house and look after Nameless. It turned out that she was a cat lover.
"You won't love this one," I said. "He's not very affectionate."
"Sort of like his owner?"
"I can be very affectionate. In the right circumstances. These aren't the right circumstances."
"I see what you mean. Can we discuss this after you get out of here?"
"Absolutely," I said. Then I told her were my spare key was hidden and asked her to go up to the bedroom and bring me the copy of Absalom, Absalom, the Faulkner book that I'd been reading. I figured I'd have plenty of time to finish it now.
She brought it back later that day. "I read this one time, in an English class," she said. "It was all right, but I didn't like the way it ended."
"I'll let you know what I think. What about the cat?"
"He was very sweet. Sitting right by the porch as if he was waiting for me. Rubbed all around my legs while I was unlocking the door."
"He didn't try to scratch you?"
"Of course not. I gave him a good rub after I fed him. You ought to pet him more."
"I'll give it a try."
"I'll be back tomorrow," she said.
~ * ~
It took three days for Dino's lawyer to get through all the roadblocks Barnes threw in his way, including one of Barnes' pet judges, but he finally got me out. He assured me that with Hobbes' testimony and the statements from Sharon, Dino, and Evelyn, I wouldn't have to go back to the jail, at least not for anything that had happened recently.
"It's clearly all self-defense," he said. "I'm sure that all charges will be dropped and that you won't even have to appear before the grand jury." He was a young man in a sharp suit that he hadn't bought at the mall. I figured that he must know what he was talking about.