The Drowner

by John D. MacDonald

  “In case you should wonder, I’m taking his car.”

  “Okay, Angie.”

  She went down in the public elevator and walked around to the parking lot in the rear. She took Sam’s keys from her purse and moved his big beige Imperial over close to her car. She opened her trunk and took her canvas bag of gear and moved it into the Chrysler. It contained swim suit, swim fins, two masks, harness, diving belt and spare regulator.

  On the way out of town she stopped at Scotty’s Marine to pick up her twin tanks.

  “Got you a day off and the boss’ car too, huh?” Scotty said.

  “Maybe not the whole day off. How about that regulator?”

  “I cleaned it and adjusted it and it checks out fine. No charge, Angie. And I put filling the two tanks on your bill. Let me help you with those. I swear, Angie, you carry those the way most women would carry a pocketbook. Who you diving with?”

  “Alone again, Scotty.”

  “Now you know better than that! It’s dangerous.”

  “But I’m very careful, Scotty, honest.”

  “Look. It’s a slow day. I’ll close up and come along. Take me one minute to get ready.”

  “No thanks,” she said, and pulled out, the tires skidding on the gravel, waving back at him after she had straightened out on the highway.

  She drove the big car as fast as she dared. At the shack she got out and swung the gate open and left it open. She drove through a half mile of white pine and when she reached the house, she swung around it and drove on and parked beside Sam’s ten-acre pond. The water was so high in the pond there was less than a foot of clearance under the narrow weathered dock. She laid her gear out in an orderly manner, stripped down and pulled her faded blue swim suit on. The black mosquitoes whined around her. She stowed her clothing in the gear bag along with the excess equipment and flipped it into the car. She hooked the tanks to the harness and shouldered it on and buckled it. She buckled the weighted belt around her waist, over the harness straps, snapped the fin straps snugly against her ankles, picked up her mask and went flapping out to the end of the narrow dock and lowered herself heavily. The tanks thumped against the dock. She spat into her mask, dipped it into the water and swirled it clean. She put the mask on, adjusted the regulator, bit down on the mouthpiece and turned and fell backwards into the pond. She twisted underwater and straightened out and explored. The water was not as murky as she had expected it would be. In the middle where it seemed to average twelve feet of depth, she could still see reasonably well in the saffron world. At the end of the dock it was six feet deep.

  When exploration was done, she went under the dock. It was shadowy under there, and she found a level where she could stand with the fins against the soft muck of the bottom and the water barely covering her shoulders. She pushed the mask up onto her forehead and took the mouthpiece out. She held onto a cross brace to support herself.

  As she waited with a mild almost bovine patience, she sorted out the possibilities of what could be done about Lucille’s sister, once Stanial was out of the way. In the dead of night she could get Mister Sam down and out the private door and into his car, with that suitcase he kept packed. And the sister would come if she thought Sam wanted her. She could go into the trunk with Sam, alive or dead, it made little difference, and there were three real deep places at Lake Larra where you could get a car close enough. Mister Sam wanted to go on a trip with a woman.

  Five minutes after Paul Stanial had driven away from the motel, Barbara decided to ignore his instructions. It seemed so ineffectual to sit in a motel room while the whole thing was being solved and settled. Sit and wait and wonder, with the night lock on and stern orders not to open the door to anyone.

  She phoned Sheriff Walmo. “This is Barbara Larrimore,” she said. “I’m so glad I caught you before you left, Sheriff.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I employed a man named Mr. Paul Stanial to …”

  “Yes, I know all about that, Miss Larrimore. And I guess if that’s the way you want to spend your money …”

  “Sheriff, I wonder if I could ride out there with you.”

  “Ride out where, Miss?”

  “Why, out to that place in the woods Mr. Kimber owns.”

  “Out to Sam’s shack? Now why would I be going out there?”

  “Didn’t Mr. Kimber even get in touch with you yet? He called Mr. Stanial over a half hour ago. And then he was going to call you to meet him out there. Angela Powell apparently confessed to murdering my sister. And Mr. Gable. And she hid something in a pond out there, and she is going out with Mr. Kimber to show him where it is, and Mr. Stanial was going to meet them out there. Sheriff? Sheriff Walmo!”

  “I’m here, Miss. I’m here and I’m wondering if you’re drunk.”

  “I am not drunk. And now I’m worried about why Mr. Kimber didn’t call you. Mr. Stanial believes Miss Powell is … some kind of a fanatic and very very dangerous.”

  “Angie Powell?”

  “I wish you would stop making those gasping sounds and do something. I know Mr. Stanial has gone out there.”

  “And Sam Kimber told Stanial all this … this information?”

  “He certainly did!”

  “What’s your number there? I’ll talk to Sam and call you back.”

  She paced the floor. It was a long wait before the phone rang. “Miss Larrimore? There should be a deputy pulling in there any minute to pick you up. Then he’ll pick me up here and we’ll go on out and see what’s going on.”

  “Didn’t Mr. Kimber confirm what I told you?”

  “Tell you in the car,” Walmo said and hung up. She went outside and saw a county car parked by the office with a man in uniform just getting out of it. She hurried to him and identified herself and got in.

  When they stopped at the court house, Sheriff Walmo came out and got into the front seat beside her.

  “Right on out nine-twenty, Pete,” he said, slamming the car door. “This is kind of a wild story, Miss Larrimore.”

  “Didn’t you get hold of Mr. Kimber?”

  “I got hold of Miz Nimmits in Sam’s office. She said Sam don’t feel so good and he’s taking a nap. And she said Angie went off a while back in Sam’s car. Miss Larrimore, sometimes a man like this Stanial, they get just a little bit carried away trying to make it look like there’s leads worth working on.”

  “Paul isn’t like that!”

  “Until they get themselves worked into a corner and have to take off.”

  “Doctor Nile told Paul Stanial it was quite possible that girl is dangerous.”

  “Stanial told you that Doc Nile said that. It doesn’t have to mean Nile said it, Miss.”

  She turned to look angrily at him. “And did Mr. Stanial just imagine that the autopsy on Mr. Gable is very odd?”

  Walmo’s large face darkened. “Somebody is doing too much talking, by God.”

  “Is anybody making any attempt to disturb Sam Kimber and ask him to verify what I told you?”

  Walmo lifted the dashboard mike off its hook. “Car three, car three, calling in. You picking me up okay, Henry? Over.”

  “Loud and clear, Shurf.”

  “Henry, you figure Billy has had time to get to Sam Kimber’s office yet? Over.”

  “He should be there right about now, Shurf.”

  “Then you phone there and get Billy and tell him I want Sam shook awake no matter how much hell he has to raise, and put Sam through on a phone link to me right in this here car fast as he can. Over.”

  “I’ll have Billy do just that, Shurf.”

  “Over and out,” Walmo said and hung up.

  “Shouldn’t we … be going faster?” Barbara asked tentatively.

  “We go faster, Miss, and we’re too soon out of the reach of this danged old-timey radio. Three years I been after better, but the County Commissioners they chop my budget down every year.”

  They rode sedately into the country on the black, narrow, lumpy surface of
state road nine-twenty.

  “Calling car three, calling car three,” a tinny little insect voice said. “You still hear me, Shurf?”

  “I hear you, Henry. Over.”

  “Shurf, Billy he busted in, but nobody’s going to shake Mister Sam awake. Son of a bitch. Mister Sam, he’s face down drowned in his own bathtub with his clothes on. Son of a bitch. You better come right on back, Shurf.”

  Sheriff Walmo hung the mike up without a word. “Unwind this here thing, Pete,” he ordered. And the sudden acceleration tilted Barbara’s head back.

  Paul Stanial saw Sam Kimber’s car beyond the house beside a sizeable pond, and he drove down in its tracks and parked behind it. He got out into the back country silence. He could hear a liquid sound of meadow larks, and a distant swamp-sound of frogs. He slapped a mosquito and rubbed it off the side of his throat.

  “Sam!” he called. “Hey, Sam!”

  There was no response. He walked back to the house. It seemed to be closed up. He pounded the back door with his fist and listened again to silence. He walked back down to the pond and leaned into his car and gave a long blast on the horn. He stood and looked at the pond, wondering what to do next. A skiff half full of water was tied to the narrow dock. Weeds grew tall around the shore, but the water looked clean.

  There seemed to him to be an ominous quality in the silence. It gave him the feeling that something had happened to Sam Kimber, that he might even be nestled in the mud and grass at the bottom of the pond.

  He walked out onto the narrow dock. He stood at the end of it and looked at the surface of the pond. A small fish made a feeding circle.

  As he turned around, there was a great startling swashing sound close beside the dock, and before he could turn to see what it was, his ankles were grabbed and yanked from under him. He fell heavily, striking his shoulder and the side of his head against the dock boards. He made a dazed grab and missed the dock. The smash of cool water cleared his head and he tried to kick his legs free and swim to the dock. But even as he stroked he could see he was being pulled out toward the center of the pond. He twisted and saw half the face mask above the water, saw the soaked cap of dark gold, the lavender eyes behind glass, narrowed and intent. He used the leverage of her grasp on his ankles to double himself and try to reach her with his hands, but she released him. The moment he tried to swim away from her, the powerful hands closed once more on his ankles and began drawing him back.

  Three times he reached for her, three times she released him, and each time the dock was farther away. But the next time she grabbed his ankles, she pulled him down, pulled him under. He doubled down to try to grab her wrists, but she let go of him. He bobbed up, caught his breath and was immediately yanked under again. And suddenly he knew how Lucille Hanson had been drowned without a mark on her. There could be but one ending to this one-sided struggle. Exhaustion, panic and death.

  And so, the next time she released him, he bobbed up, filled his lungs, doubled, spun and drove down at her as powerfully as he could. He reached and grasped something, some edge of fabric, but as he reached for her with his other hand, she tore loose. With his eyes open in the yellow murk he strained to reach her, only to see her, sleek and golden brown, turn beyond his grasp to cruise in a half circle, graceful, watchful and immune as a shark, the flippers thrusting her faster than he could have swum even unencumbered by clothing. And as he fought up toward the light and the air, he knew, with a sick despair, that there was no more chance to reason with her than there would have been with a shark.

  She drew him down before he could reach the surface, and with a great effort he wrenched one foot free and kicked blindly down at her, but missed her, felt fingertips brush his ankle and fasten there again. His lungs were beginning to spasm in the involuntary attempt to draw the air in, and he kept his throat locked only through a final effort of will. He knew he was being pulled deeper, and he doubled once more, feeling for her wrists. Before he could touch them he was freed, and grasped once again as he tried to straighten. It was too far and too long, and his throat opened, the air expelled in a noisy metallic eruption and the lungs sucked full of the yellow water. At once he was in a languid and drifting dream wherein, if he cared to make the effort to climb it with his watery limbs, there was a ladder going straight up, its rungs made of wide yellow bands of satin, cleverly graded to increasingly pale hues as it reached up toward the surface.

  As he felt himself fading, like a light going off, he had a faraway awareness that she had climbed his body, was now close to him, holding him. He felt hard fingers digging into his back. She had twined sleek strong legs about his dying, drifting ones. And, seeing her vaguely in the yellow light, he felt a mild fascination in seeing that she was leaning back, her face strangely savage, holding him, churning her hips against him in a monstrous and murderous parody of the sexual act. And he knew she would leave him here in the yellow world and go after Barbara next. His hands were free. He brought his right hand up in front of his face. He turned the edge of it toward her throat so it would slice readily through the water. He chopped that straining throat as hard as he could. She drifted away in his dream, sinking, turning, erupting a bloat of bubbles. She brushed his leg. He put a languid foot against her and pushed. Suddenly he broke into a blackening world and spewed a great gout of water, choking, gasping, flailing with an increasing pain and panic that made him wish he had not been thrust up out of the yellow dream below him. He coughed and gagged and choked, but the sky brightened and he saw the dock at the far end of the world and began to paddle his way toward it, coughing, vomiting, half-blinded, moving with an earnest, dogged instinct.

  She came thrashing to the surface a scant yard in front of him, foaming and spinning like some great wounded fish. She steadied and turned toward him. She had lost her mask. It was an animal face, emptied of reason and mercy, but he saw the hand tuck the mouthpiece in place. She lunged and caught his wrist and took him down. He struck at her with his fist, caught a strap, pulled her close, saw her in the brighter yellow near the surface, her strong breasts bared where the suit had been torn away, saw the breathing tube and yanked it out of her mouth. They burst up into the air again, entwined and thrashing, and then she took him down into darkness …

  He coughed and gagged and gushed water against the rough boards and tried to tell them to stop. But the iron pressure kept coming down on the small of his back and then going away. He coughed again and reached and caught an edge of gray board and tried to pull himself away from the thing that was injuring him. And it stopped then. He groaned and rolled onto his side. He opened his eyes and looked into a blurred distortion of Barbara’s face. It was vivid with concern and alarm. She touched his cheek. She said something with darling in it. He tried to sit up and they tried to stop him, but he pushed them away. He looked at Barbara. “How’d you get soaking wet this time?” he asked in a husky rasp.

  Sheriff Walmo was suddenly beside her, shaking his head in mournful wonder. “Saw the two of you thrashing out there as we stopped. Barely got the car door open and this gal come busting by me like a rocket. Just as you go under, she goes off the end of that dock. Never see any human person go so fast in the water in my life. I swear to God, she made a wake you could hear crash up against the shore.”

  “Are you all right? Are you all right, Paul?” Barbara asked earnestly.

  He tried to shake like a wet dog. It was partially a shudder. “She tried to drown me.”

  “Making a habit of it,” Walmo said. “Drowned Sam, too.”

  “Here?” Paul asked blankly.

  “No. Right in that big special bathtub he was so proud of.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Right over there,” Walmo said.

  Paul tried to stand. Walmo and Barbara helped him up. As he straightened another spasm of coughing shook him. They supported him. The tears ran down his face. When he’d blinked his vision clear he saw Angie Powell huddled on the ground, her wrists handcuffed around a sapling. Her e
quipment was scattered nearby. She wore one fin, the bottom portion of her torn blue suit and her tank harness. Her wet hair was pasted to her skull and across half her face. One eye was visible. It looked through them and beyond them, like the indifferent eye of a caged animal.

  Paul saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a deputy approaching with a blanket in his hand.

  Walmo said, “Now, Pete, I’m getting right tired of you just standing and staring at her.”

  Pete spat and said, “Well, you got to admit she …”

  “Shut up. I tell you, Stanial, it was a day’s work getting her this far.”

  “How did you get her in?”

  “Poled this here old skiff out to where the excitement was. Had to chunk her on the head twice with the pole before we could haul her into the skiff. By then Miss Larrimore had you towed to shore. Pete went to respirate you and I was getting this stuff off Angie when she came to and bit me twice and started to take off, and Pete came running and tackled her. And she bit him once and liked to kick his face off before we cuffed her up there.”

  Pete bent cautiously and tried to tuck the blanket around her, but she snapped at him like an animal. There was an audible click of teeth when she missed him. Pete jumped back.

  “We got to get back in, Pete,” Walmo said. “You got that persuader out of the car, so you just chunk her on the head again.”

  Pete waved the braided leather sap and looked at the girl helplessly. Walmo grunted and went over. Barbara turned her back. Walmo took the sap and bent and struck Angie quite delicately behind the ear. Her eye rolled up and she sagged against the ground. The two men removed the cuffs, wrapped her in the blanket, carried her and put her in the cage rear of the county car and recuffed her to the big ring bolt.

  In a few minutes the three-car caravan headed back toward the city. Walmo drove Sam Kimber’s car. Pete drove the county car. Barbara drove Paul’s car.

  Stanial sat beside her with his eyes shut. “I thought I’d had it.”

  “So did I … think you’d had it,” Barbara said in a very small voice.

  “She was hiding under the dock. She yanked me off.”