The Watcher

by Dolores Hitchens

  Curt looked nervously at the window above the sink. It let out on the sheer, three-story wall. But the one in his bedroom was bigger, had an apron of roof below it, and overlooked a small porch. There would be quite a drop, and the porch roof was small and sloping.

  He went on thinking about it as he hastily scrubbed up the pots.

  Larry Lebracht clawed his way up out of the culvert to the weedy bank. He sat there, running his hands over his head and body, feeling for broken bones. The highway was less than twenty feet away, and the lights of cars spinning by up there left glittering and aching reflections in his eyes.

  There was a lot of crusted stuff, dirt, and a drying stickiness he knew was blood; his hair was matted and the whole side of his face puffed and throbbing. One eye opened to no more than a slit. The bastard had really given him the business.

  A truck roared by, headlights glaring, and Larry saw the tire lying on the bank nearby. He crawled over to it, touched it, remembering the service station, the new tube, and the owner who had mysteriously disappeared out back somewhere. What in hell had gone on after that? He could recall opening the car door, boosting the tire inside, thanking the driver for offering to take him back to Molly even as he wondered a little over all the trouble the bastard was taking for his sake. After that moment—blooey!

  He squinted at what he could make out of the surrounding country, trying to identify this place. It looked like the country near the service station, a flat headland with hills in the distance. Bean fields all around, in the dark, most likely. Larry struggled to get to his feet and toppled over instead, rolling back to the opening of the culvert.

  He lay there while his senses steadied.

  Molly had been right. Damned if she hadn’t been exactly right. He’d walked right into it, after her telling him. Somebody had been following and waiting, and had hit when the time was right. Funny how he hadn’t wanted to believe Molly. It had sounded crazy as hell, her crying and whispering how scared she was, there on the beach while he had held her.

  He suddenly took in the meaning of the black sky above, all speckled with stars. Hell, it was night! It must be hours since he’d left Molly at the Ford. She’d be wondering what had happened to him.

  God, no! She’d be sure now that he was dead!

  He got up again, propping his weight on the culvert’s cement buttress. He waited until the roiling dizziness faded a little, then crawled back up to the tire. He got it and himself up close to the edge of the highway and stood there to thumb a ride. He had to figure first which was the right direction. A far-off wink of light from a ship at sea gave him his bearings.

  Nobody wanted to stop. I must look like hell, Larry thought. When the next pair of headlights streaked towards him, he glanced down at his clothes. The T-shirt was a rag, the pants covered with dried mud from the bottom of the culvert. God knows, he thought, what my face looks like from the beating. He tried to shelter his eyes from the dazzle.

  He waited, a dogged determination keeping him there; and at last a car slowed as it approached. He heard the screech of worn brakes, then the rattledy-clunk of an old car before he made out what it was behind the headlights, an ancient pickup with a load of hay. The cab door swung open. The driver looked at Larry’s burden. “Got a tire? Sling it in back with the feed.”

  Larry threw the tire behind the cab and got in. There was a man and a dog. The man was about fifty, needed a shave, wore overalls and a blue cap, and smelled of muscatel wine. The dog was a collie. He looked nervous. He looked to Larry as if he had been watching his master drive, and was expecting a wreck at any minute. Larry rubbed his ears.

  The driver put in the clutch and peered over at Larry. “Been in a fight?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Thought you’d tell me I ought to see the other feller.”

  “I’d like to see him myself.”

  “Like that, huh? He jump you?”

  “He sure as hell did.”

  “Over a gal?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Uh-huh. I knowed it.”

  They sailed off down the highway, not exactly staying in one lane. The light from the dash shone in the collie’s nervous eyes. The air got pretty thick, and Larry rolled the window down a bit.

  “You want a drink to pick you up, reach up back of the seat there.”

  “Thanks.” Larry got the bottle and looked it over. It was muscatel, and the sweet heavy flavor escaped as he unscrewed the cap. For a moment he was almost sick. Then he put the bottle to his lips and took a long drag.

  There was an instant of nausea, and then it decided to stay down. He capped the bottle, started to return it to the shelf behind the seat The driver put a hand over. “Need a snort myself.”

  The headlights wobbled back and forth across the white line and Larry watched the road nervously, until he realized that he and the collie were poised there alike, tense as a pair of cats, and that the driver was unconcerned. He grinned over it, and the grin caused a great flashing spasm in his face, from jawline to the injured eye.

  The driver insisted on turning off at the dirt track, when they reached it, taking Larry all the way to the Ford, and then parking the pickup so that the lights illuminated the jacked-up wheel. The collie got out and walked to the brink of the bluff and looked off worriedly at the sea, the wind ruffling his fur.

  Larry found the nuts, and he and his new-found friend put on the wheel, then let down the jack. Larry couldn’t remember putting air in the tire after the bastard had bought the new tube for him, couldn’t remember the service station man doing it either, but the tire was fully pumped up and firm.

  In his muscatel voice, the man said, “You’d better head for a doctor, get that face patched up. You got a cut there along your hairline’s a beaut. What’d he use on you? Bike chains?”

  “I don’t even remember.”

  “He try to kill you?”

  “I guess he thought he did,” Larry decided. “That’s why he left me.”

  The other man nodded, whistled to the dog, went to his truck. He waved cheerfully from the cab window as he swung the truck around, and beyond him the collie sat erect, ears pricked up.

  Larry got into the Ford. The key was in the switch, thank God. He reached for it, and then a staggering wave of darkness swam up and over him, and his wounded head thudded down against the wheel. He clung there, fighting for consciousness. In the distance, the red taillight of the truck winked and vanished.

  When things settled down a little, he got the motor started and switched on the lights. Against the glow ahead he saw a trembling something fixed under the wiper, a tiny scrap that wavered against the light. He crawled from the car to get it, knowing beforehand what it was: Molly had left him a note and it had blown away, except for this bit.

  He stood there dizzily looking off into the dark, wondering what Molly’s note had said.

  It couldn’t happen that way, of course . . . but there was a white scrap of some kind snagged in a tumbleweed out at the edge of the light. He went out there and brought it back, a small damp scrap of paper. He took it to the headlights. Molly’s writing winked up at him. He didn’t try to figure out what it said through the buzzing of his senses; the paper, the thread of ink were physical things linking him to her. Then he noted the scraggly and broken writing, still without reading it; and he was shot through with fear. If she figured something had happened to him, she might do something kind of drastic. She might go to the police, get herself involved in a bad situation.

  He put the note in his pants pocket and got behind the wheel, turned the Ford in the dirt road, and headed for the highway.

  First stop: first phone. Get to Molly at home. Or get hold of the uncle she was so fond of.

  He didn’t want to go inside where people would see him. He passed up some roadside cafés and liquor stores and found a gas station with a phone booth out at the edge of its parking area. He went in there, left the door open so that the dome light wouldn’t shine on
him, got the operator, and asked for Molly’s number in Newport Beach.

  The phone rang for a while and then a man’s heavy voice said, “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Larry said cautiously. “Is Molly there?”

  There was a moment as if he had surprised the other man, and then sharply: “Who’s speaking, please?”

  Larry hesitated. “If I can’t speak to Molly, I’d like to have her uncle. Uncle Florian.”

  “Who is this speaking?”

  “I’m a friend of Molly’s.”

  “Do you happen to have a name?” The tone was mean, hard; the naked anger reached Larry over the wire.

  “Larry.”

  “Larry. That’s all?”

  “Larry Lebracht.”

  “Larry Lebracht,” the man repeated in his hard voice. He was thinking it over.

  “Is Molly at home, please?”

  There was a short laugh. “I’m afraid she’s not quite . . . presentable. Not right now.” The harsh authority gave Larry an inkling; this must be Molly’s father. “Are you by any chance the young hoodlum responsible for the fiasco here tonight?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. Is Uncle Florian there?”

  “My brother-in-law is in jail,” the man said. “My daughter is on her way to a hospital. If I were you I would stay away from here.”

  Larry was frantic. “Please, Mr. Pettit! I don’t want an argument. I’ve got to know——”

  “If you come within arm’s reach of me I’m going to kill you. Or I might even look you up to do it.” The phone slammed and went dead.

  Larry drove to the shack in the boatyard and washed and repaired himself as well as he could. He put tape on the worst of the cuts on his face. He couldn’t do much with the mess in his hair; his head seemed one big wound, stuck together with blood and dirt, and the lightest touch was agony. He changed clothes, putting on a real shirt and his one good pair of slacks, and some shoes. He wondered just then what had become of the sandals he’d borrowed from Molly. Gone. Or back in the culvert. Or in the bastard’s car.

  He drove to the jail and found out about the charge against Uncle Florian.

  During the evening there had been a call about a riot at a party. The police had responded dubiously since the address was quite respectable. When they got there the trouble seemed to be that a man was beating his wife; and then it turned into a man beating his sister about a girl cutting her wrists.

  It was now past visiting hours so Larry didn’t get to see Uncle Florian. The cops got quite interested in Larry’s beaten appearance, so he left.

  He had other things to do.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LOTTIE TOMLINSON sat on a bench facing the dark sea.

  The seaside promenade stretched emptily in either direction spotted at regular intervals with ornamental lights, bordered by occasional clumps of palms. There was a light a short distance behind the bench; it threw Lottie’s shadow on the pavement, and she looked at it dully. She was glad of the sea wind, cooling her tired body. She had walked for a long way, through darkening streets, roundabout from the bay over to the ocean side of the peninsula, all the way out to the end of the pier and back.

  Her legs had begun to tremble with tiredness. The grief and dread in her mind were muffled with exhaustion.

  She had thought and thought about Edie, as she walked. Nothing remained now but the craving for peace, the desire to know the truth at any price and be done. Well, there still was one other thing . . . something she thought of as a ragged and dirty bundle lying in a dusty corner of her mind, waiting for final disposal. Her memory of Edie. She knew that it shouldn’t be like this, that no subsequent discovery should change the memory of love, the trust that had existed between them.

  It won’t always be this way, she thought dimly, tiredly. I’ll find Edie again, as I always knew her; and this grinding and dirty day will be gone into limbo. It’s just right now that I have to know, that I have to get rid of this torment Archer planted in my head. When I know, I can rest. I can look at life again and face tomorrow and the day after; and then accept Edie for whatever she was. Loving her, anyway.

  She realized that she had accepted the worst interpretation of those scratches across Edie’s bottom. This too was part of the damage, the sickness, that had overwhelmed her after that visit to Archer’s office. Since those minutes she’d walked out and the scene had tilted, all the little boats had seemed to slide down the tilting bay, nothing had been as it should be. Most of all herself.

  The memory of the subsequent hours and the ideas that had filled them, all the telephoning, the vague and chattering replies she had received from Edie’s friends, had grayed as if with immense distance. Even her anger at the tenant next door, her suspicions, writing the note and then retrieving it from under his door, had the fogged unreality of nightmare. She no longer considered him at all in relation to Edie, Edie’s death possibly being murder, or any affairs of hers. Her viewpoint had narrowed. There was just one focusing point, now. Find out. Find out if Edie, so young and so sweet, sleeping and eating and living her young life right under her eyes, had concealed an ugly transgression.

  No. Trespass. Forgive us our trespasses, as we . . .

  Forgive.

  How can I forgive, Lottie asked herself in her whimpering mind, if I don’t even know?

  The shadow on the walk squared its shoulder before she realized that she had.

  There was one more place to go. After all.

  Curt’s house.

  Lottie thought: his mother will be there now and I’ll have to ask my questions in front of her. She’s known far and wide as a crazy religious fanatic. What will she do?

  Perhaps she will beat me for insinuating that Curt might have lapsed into what she thinks of as sin.

  As she rose from the bench, Lottie’s exhausted mind brought up sharply: She thinks. Don’t I?

  Haven’t I been thinking in terms of sin? And couldn’t Edie have been an innocent victim, sinned against, really, and still not told? Couldn’t Edie have held silent because of shock, or shame, wanting to spare me, or simple incomprehension of what had really happened?

  Did it have to be a . . . a romp?

  Until the shocking word occurred to her, she had had no precise idea of just how she had pictured Edie getting those gouges. And now she knew.

  I need my mind washed out with soap.

  She paused at a corner, looking at the lighted street ahead, a couple strolling arm in arm, the girl’s skirts blown by the sea breeze.

  I started out with the idea of play, of proving that those scratches had happened innocently in some beach tussle. And when I couldn’t prove anything innocent, when the kids on the phone wouldn’t or couldn’t answer my crying hope, I still somehow took for granted that this grab across the buttocks had to represent something playful.

  Her shadow followed her along the side of the building, a marching woman of shadow who looked straight ahead and moved stiffly, whose loose hair wove in the air before her face. Though the shadow woman had no brain and no heart, was made simply of a dark patch laid against the bricks of the wall, she walked with the stunned gait of someone going somewhere to die.

  I won’t ever know now, Lottie told herself. I’ll go to Curt’s house and ask him, and his mother will be angry. Perhaps she will beat Curt as well as me. Perhaps she’ll throw me out, down those three flights to the ground. And I still won’t know about Edie.

  But this much I have pinned down, thank God. If Edie did . . . did that . . . it wasn’t a casual promiscuous frolic.

  Not for Edie.

  For Edie, it would have been what Edie took for love.

  Larry Lebracht turned in at the courtyard entry and went purposefully to the door and lifted his hand to rap. Actually, he would have preferred to kick down the door and barge in but there was still some remnant of disbelief, incredulity, in his mind. He still couldn’t quite digest the knowledge that had been thrust upon him. For a moment, w
aiting, seeing the windows dark, he was aware of the utter quiet in the courtyard; and then he heard the whisper of steps behind him. He turned.

  The next minute his arms were pinned behind him. Then a flashlight lit his face.

  “Who are you?”

  He tried to struggle. Then some whiff of authority reached him, the gleam of a badge from one of those on either side, their unmoving sureness. “What in hell is it to you?”

  “We’re police officers.” A leather folder flipped open under his face. “Answer my questions, please. Who are you and what are you doing here?” (And what in God’s name, he sensed, happened to your head?)

  “I’m Larry Lebracht. I work at Mr. Warren’s boatyard. I came here to see the guy inside. Natch.”

  “Take him out to the cruiser,” Archer said abruptly.

  In the police car, Larry tried some nimble double talk. He didn’t get anywhere with Archer. Archer pried out of him the tale of the day’s misadventures, finally. The picnic, the flat tire, the helpful Samaritan who turned out to be something else. The mystery of what had happened to the operator of the service station.

  He got from Larry everything but the name of the girl who had been along on the picnic. He skirted this question, and at first Larry thought it was damned considerate of him. Then Larry had the growing impression that Archer didn’t need the girl’s name because he already knew it.

  Listening carefully, Larry decided that Archer had already known about his being missing, too; and he wondered with a flash of dismay if Molly or Uncle Florian had reported his disappearance to the cops.

  Or then, that still-unexplained battle between Uncle Florian and his sister. Could it have tipped them off?

  Archer was cagey and Larry suddenly didn’t trust him.

  Archer switched the line of questioning abruptly. “And you knew this man at once, recognized him, called him by name?”

  “Hell, yes, I’d worked on his boat, he used to hang around as soon as school let out.” Larry made a rueful grimace. “I just remembered something. Right after I’d got into his car, in the traffic—another car passed and one of the guys in it knew me. Freitag must have seen him wave to me. I’ll bet that’s why he wanted to dump me at the first service station. I had to beg him to take me further on. Then . . . I don’t know what happened to the guy . . . there was just this one operator at the pumps, and a real small place, nobody stopped but us——”