From a distant cell I heard an unseen player strumming softly and expertly on a guitar, accompanying a quavering falsetto voice, a voice plaintively beseeching his sweetheart to meet him on that opposite shore. I stopped and held my breath, suddenly caught and wrenched, helplessly plucked at the heartstrings, unaccountably moved by this wry mingling of sadness and comedy. I resisted an impulse to go seek out this anonymous artist, to take his hand, to behold at last a person who didn’t treat this haunting evocative instrument as a species of drum. But there was murder to be unraveled and I must not get sidetracked. I shrugged and moved on, reflecting that I must have been a guitar-playing gardener at some Spanish hacienda during a previous incarnation. Pablo O’Biegler, no doubt.
“Oh, tell me you’ll leave me no more,” the quavering voice pursued me. “When we meet on that opposite shore … .”
“Hello, Polly!” someone called from one of the nearer cells, and I recognized the wreckage of one of Chippewa’s more persistently dedicated drunkards. This gaunt alcoholic specter was gaily waving at me, as though it was I who was caught in jail and he instead a mere passing visitor. I waved back, not very gaily, and as I toiled my way up the last flight of stairs I heard him explaining in an extravagantly loud voice to his cell neighbor just who I was and what a hell of a hard-boiled prosecutor I had been. “But good, though. Boy! Why, that Polly there even once sent me to prison on t’ird-offense drunk and disorderly … .” It was nice, I thought, to have such a grateful and satisfied customer.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” I said.
My client was sitting on his unmade cot reading a newspaper, clad in old fatigue trousers and a white T-shirt, his dark hair rumpled and uncombed and his face unshaven. Except for the smudge of mustache he reminded me of a photograph I’d once seen of Lawrence of Arabia.
“Oh, good morning, good morning,” he said, quickly rising and pointing to the lone stool next to the gaping seatless toilet. “Please sit down. I—I didn’t expect you quite so early or I’d have been ready.” He gestured at his cell. “Forgive the appearance of this—this—”
“Sty,” I said helpfully, sitting down. I had forgotten how oppressively squalid the cells really were. Nor had I realized that the man had carefully groomed and dressed himself for his daily sessions with me. “Here,” I said, handing him a thick book, “this may help take your mind off your surroundings.” It was Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. “I hope you haven’t already read it.”
“Oh, thanks. Thank you very much.” He examined the thick book gingerly. “No—no I haven’t read it,” he said. He leaned over his cot and carefully shoved the book under his pillow, patting the pillow to hide it. “Haven’t ever heard of it, in fact.” He laughed briefly. “I’m just a typical army type, I guess, interested only in three things: in wine, women, and war, or as I once heard a soldier say in Pusan, in beer, broads, and battle. Is it any good?”
“Good?” I said. “Good?” I repeated. “It was written by a ravaged whale of a man—written with his own threshing flukes dipped in his own raging Mood … . But I didn’t climb ‘way up here to talk of Wolfe.” I lowered my voice. “I came to tell you that your wife passed her lie-detector test. She was telling the truth.”
The Lieutenant sat staring at me in tense coiled silence. He stared searchingly, almost uncomprehendingly. The dark eyes fluttered. Then: “How do you know this?” he said, his voice suddenly gone husky with emotion. His eyes, too, had grown narrow and slitted with craft. My hunch, I felt, had not been wrong: he had suspected her all along.
“I can’t tell you, Lieutenant,” I replied steadily. “But I know it is true.” I paused. “There is now not the slightest doubt in my mind that your wife’s story is true in every important particular—including the rape.” The lieutenant had closed his eyes and sat, tight-lipped, shaking his head quickly from side to side. “The poor bastard,” I thought. “The poor tormented bastard.” The canker of doubt had still been gnawing at him whether it had really been rape, whether she mightn’t have encouraged or even solicited Barney Quill.
“There’s one more thing,” I said, rising to leave. “We must not let anyone know that we know what we know. That makes a nice cryptic sentence, doesn’t it? I mean the result of this test.” I turned to go.
“I understand,” the Lieutenant said. “You’re leaving so soon? Oh, I suppose you prefer to wait for me below.” He smiled and glanced about his cell. “I wouldn’t much blame you. I won’t be long.” He arose and walked to the cell door.
“I won’t be seeing you until some time this afternoon, Lieutenant,” I said. “Oh, by the way, I wrote the Army last night about furnishing us a psychiatrist. I held out the tin cup and piled it on. Right now I’m going to talk with your wife. I expect we’ll have a rather heavy session this morning.” I paused. “I would prefer that you weren’t there.”
The Lieutenant stood frozen in his tracks. “But you talked with her yesterday,” he suddenly blurted. “You talked for—for over two hours. Why—I—” He had paused, fallen silent, and stood nervously chewing his lower lip.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” I said, turning and facing him. “Have you said all you wanted to say? Are you done?”
The man’s face was a brick-like crimson. “I—I was just think. ing,” he said.
I stood watching the man, wavering between scorn and pity. “Lieutenant,” I said softly, “I don’t think I’d like to know what you’re thinking. I don’t think I’d really like it. You’ve already revealed quite enough.” I paused. “And if I may say so, it seems to me that you are in enough trouble already without dreaming up any more. Now come off of it, Lieutenant. Please. We’ve got to fight a real danger—this damned murder case.”
I held out my hand. He still stood there frozen, still flushed and frowning, his eyes unblinking, his lower lip caught in his teeth. There was a perceptible pause and then he took my hand. “Yes, sir!” he said, and the phrase escaped him like a pent jet of steam. I turned and quickly left.
As I clattered down the ringing jail stairs I whipped out my handkerchief and patted my forehead. The guitar had fallen silent. It seemed that I still had a client. I discovered that I was running and I slowed to a walk. Reaching the bottom I rattled the big main door like a man fleeing from nightmare. “For Christ’s sake let me out of here, Sulo!” I shouted. “I need air. I—I’m suffocating.”
“Don’t get your bowels in a uproar,” Sulo said, hurrying to release me from—from precisely what I did not know … .
I stood outside the jail door, breathing deeply. God, it was good to be alive and—and free from witnessing an open cancer of jealousy. When I reached the car Laura Manion and her little dog were awaiting me.
“Did you tell Manny?” she asked eagerly before I fairly got seated. “How did he take it?”
“Did I tell him what?” I said sharply, knowing what she meant and feeling an unaccountable prick of irritation. What kind of a pair of emotional juveniles was I getting mixed up with?
“Why, the results of the lie-detector test, of course. I could scarcely wait to ask you.”
“Oh, that,” I said almost gaily, fighting back the dark mood I seemed to be in. “Yes, I told him,” I said airily. “Everything was fine, fine. I also told him to keep mum.” I paused, feeling not unlike a sort of badgered and teetering diplomatic referee, like someone trying to promote sweetness and light, say, between the Soviets and the U.S.A. “Everything’s under control,” I went on. “He’s getting himself and his bachelor quarters tidied up and I plan to see him after lunch. In the meantime I’d like to hear your story. I want it from A to Z. Would you care to light up?”
“Do you want me to tell it just as I told it to the state police?”
“I want it just as you told it to the state police, plus,” I said.
“Plus what?”
I smiled. “Plus, my dear, what you didn’t tell the state police. Come now, Laura, you’re a smart woman and you’re doubtless several light years ahead
of me. I want all the story—plus all of the angles, good or bad. Don’t you see, if you don’t tell your lawyer what he may have to face and fight—”
“Where shall I begin?” she said, smiling.
“Suppose,” I said, “suppose you begin at A.”
chapter 13
“I had ironed most of the afternoon,” Laura Manion said, beginning on a nice domestic note. “Manny had got home from the firing point a little later than usual, about six o’clock—I mean the night of the shooting.” She was wearing slacks and a tight sweater—I saw I’d have to speak to her about that—and had drawn her legs up under her, sitting cross-legged, Indian fashion. “I think he’d stopped off at Barney’s bar with some other officers and had a round or two of drinks—he was sleepy and hungry.”
“Was he drunk?” I said.
“Oh, no, just so-so—just relaxed, merely a pleasant glow.”
“I see,” I said. “Did you tell the police about that?—I mean about his sleepiness, about the pleasant glow?”
“I didn’t tell them and they didn’t ask me.”
“Very well,” I said. “Go on. I’ll try not to interrupt unless I have to.”
Laura Manion went on with her story. Manny had taken a brief nap before dinner; then he had eaten; then he had taken another nap. Later he had awakened and asked for a highball, but there was no whisky in the trailer; then he had wanted some beer, but there was no beer. Laura Manion had suggested that they go visit Barney’s bar but Manny had grunted and turned his face to the wall.
“And what were you doing all this time?” I said.
“Being frightfully bored,” she replied. “I hadn’t been out of that damned trailer in over a week, except to shop. It was beginning to feel like a cell.”
“Cleopatra,” I thought. “Imprisoned Cleopatra chained to the ironing board of a mortgaged trailer.” There was something faintly incongruous in the picture. “Go on,” I said.
Manny had again fallen asleep. A full moon had swum up out of Lake Superior, sifting through the pines surrounding the trailer. It was a gorgeous summer night and for a time she had sat watching the shimmering lake. Laura had finally awakened Manny and told him she planned going to the bar at the hotel to get some beer. Would he like to go along? Manny had yawned and thought no, but said he might join her later. Then he had fallen asleep again. This time he had begun to snore. He had sounded, she thought, “like a missing outboard motor.”
Laura had listened to his snoring as long as she could and then she had called her little dog Rover and taken her flashlight and walked up to Barney’s hotel bar, taking the path through the woods. That was her regular route to town, much shorter than going by the road. She thought it had been shortly before nine o’clock, she couldn’t exactly remember, anyway it was getting dusk. She must have got there in about ten minutes.
Barney’s hotel bar was almost deserted, there were only a few customers, and those mostly locals. No, there were no Army people. There might have been a tourist or two. Oh, yes, the tourist park where the Manions stayed was quite full; it was that time of the year. “Tourists to the right of us; tourists to the left of us … .” The only others in the bar were the bartender, whose name was Paquette, she thought, and a blonde waitress called Fem something or other, she wasn’t quite sure of her last name, perhaps Malmquist or Youngquist, something like that. We certainly had some rather odd names up in this neck of the woods, didn’t we?
“Yes,” I admitted. “Up here Smith is an odder name, however. And where was Barney Quill? Wasn’t he there when you arrived?”
“No, he didn’t appear until later. I ordered a highball—my regular drink, a bourbon and tall water—and then I went over and played the pinball machine.”
“Pinballl” I said, recoiling in horror. Somehow or other I couldn’t quite visualize this beautiful creature and pinball. “You played pinball?” I asked her incredulously.
She smiled, defiant in her waywardness. “I love to play pinball,” she said. “I guess I’m funny that way.”
“You share your neurosis with millions,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “Why there are even some people who love to square-dance—square-dance to hill-billy music sung through the left nostril. I have beheld it with these tired old eyes.”
“An Army wife has to find some way to pass her time—and still stay an Army wife,” she said. “Anyway, I love it.”
“Go on,” I said wearily.
She had gone on playing pinball; there was no escape from it; more lights had lit, more bells had rung, still more colors and numbers had flashed and cascaded, the machine was wracked with more tremors and seizures—and she had gone on playing pinball. Then Barney Quill had appeared quietly at her side and challenged her to a game for a drink. She had accepted his challenge and they had played and she had won the first game. Yes, Fern had served them their drinks over at the machine.
“This Barney—what shape was he in?” I said. “How did he act? Did he seem to be drunk? Did he—did he make any kind of a play for you?”
“He appeared sober to me. And I must say he acted like a gentleman. In the place, that is. There was no suggestion of any play”—she paused and smiled—“and from long experience I think I’ve grown fairly sensitive to all the signs.”
“Yes, I suppose. Did the police ask you about this, too?”
“Yes. And I gave them the same answer, because it was true. He was friendly and courteous, no less and no more.”
“Go on,” I said. “When did you finally wrench yourself away from the hypnosis of pinball?”
She and Barney had played several more games. They had had some of their drinks at the bar. During the evening she had had three or four highballs; she was quite sure it was not more than four. No, she was not intoxicated, just feeling relaxed and enjoying herself, perhaps about like Manny had felt when he had come home for supper. Then she had noticed it was nearing eleven so she ordered her six-pack of beer and made ready to leave. It was then that Barney suggested that he drive her back to the trailer. Yes, he was still courteous but she had thanked him and declined, saying that with her flashlight and dog Rover she would make it all right walking.
Barney had then warned her that there were a lot of strange characters floating about the town at that time of the year and that he felt it was his duty to see the Lieutenant’s wife safely home. And then he had mentioned the bears.
“Bears!” I said. First there was pinball, now there were bears. Little Laura and the three bears. “What bears?” I said.
“It seems that nearly every evening the black bears move in to scavenge the village and trailer-park garbage dumps. I remembered that Manny had mentioned seeing a bear one night while driving along the main road. Then I recalled that one of our soldiers had wounded one only the week before.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, by that time I was of half a mind to ride with him but I knew that Manny didn’t like Barney—or any man that was nice to me, for that matter—so I again declined and thanked him for the pleasant evening. I then went back to the rest room, back beyond the pinball machine, to tidy up so that when I was ready to leave I could slip out the side door of the bar without further notice.”
“I understand,” I said.
Laura Manion had lighted her flashlight when she emerged from the rest room and given it to Rover—he carried it in his mouth like a bone, it was his little trick—and she and Rover had slipped out of the side door as she had planned.
“What happened then?” I said.
Someone standing in the shadows had said “Psst!” and come forward. It was Barney. He had the motor of his car running and he again asked her to let him drive her home; once more he expressed his concern over the anonymous characters and the bears.
“What did you do?” I said.
“Well, it seemed frightfully dark outside after the brightly lit barroom. And, foolishly as it turned out, I was growing more afraid of possible strange bears than of any stran
ge men. It also struck me as ungracious and rather insulting for me to continue to refuse him. It seemed much easier to let him drive me home—it was so close. So I consented and Rover and I got in his car, Rover sitting between us with his flashlight.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Well, Barney drove down the main road to the regular car entrance to the trailer park. It’s only a short way beyond the footpath I had taken earlier while coming to the hotel. When he turned in toward the tourist park I remember feeling a little silly for having refused a ride so long—for there he was, driving me straight home, just as he had promised.”
“Proceed,” I said.
“There is a little stretch of heavily wooded road just before you get to the boundary of the tourist park, the main entrance. When we got there I saw a gate closed squarely across the road. I had never seen it before.”
“What happened then?”
“As I started to open the car door and thank him for driving me home he laid his hand on my hand or arm—not forcibly, just lightly —and told me that he had forgotten that the caretaker locked the gate at night; that he knew of another little road into the park that had no gate and would not be closed; and there was no use in my getting all dusty going through the fence and walking the sandy road, he’d gladly take me the other way. With that he backed the car swiftly out to the main road and shot it into forward gear and drove away down the road—in a direction still farther away from the hotel bar.”
“Up to that time had you felt any particular sense of alarm?”
“No, none whatever.”
“All right. Then what happened?”
“He drove rapidly down the road and then turned abruptly off the main road onto a strange narrow two-rut road to the right and away from the tourist park. That was the first time I had any feeling that things were not right. I said, ‘Barney, where are you going?’ Instead of answering me he grabbed my arm, tightly this time, and kept driving furiously. I don’t know how far we drove. Suddenly he stopped the bouncing car and turned out the lights. By that time I was thoroughly alarmed and I opened the door and tried to get out, but he dragged me back in. He was terribly strong. Then Rover the dog started to whine and Barney opened his door and threw him out. All the while he hadn’t spoken a word. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could hear Rover whimpering outside.”
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