More Good Old Stuff Page 5

But a deep jealousy stirred inside her. As the seconds passed she grew restless. Quickly, and with unconscious animal stealth, she went down the street, avoiding the line of vision of anyone inside Cabin 7. The door was ajar.

  Unconscious of who might be observing her, she flattened herself, shoulders against the outside wall of the cabin, her ear near the crack of the door.

  “Let me go!” Serena Bright said, her voice muffled and irregular, as though she struggled.

  “Don’t! You’ve got to listen to me. Serena, darling, listen to me!”

  “What do you want to say?” Her tone was sullen.

  “I made a mistake Serena. I don’t know what was the matter with me. She’s a horrible woman. I hate her. I love you, Serena. Only you. I should have known that. Please don’t condemn me for a mistake. Please.”

  “Is that all?” Serena said in a flat tone.

  “Don’t do this to me, darling. I’ll be free of her soon. Believe me. I’ll find a way. You’re the only one, Serena. The only one I love. When I’m free, will you marry me? Will you?”

  Betty Kelso walked away from the cabin, walked mechanically back to Cabin 11 and shut the door behind her.

  It was as though in the back of her mind there was a gleaming and accurate machine which had, a few weeks before, ground to a stop. And while it was stopped she had gone through antics that were ridiculous and absurd. She had made a complete fool of herself and, in the bargain, had lost that deep sense of power, that power of death that had made her feel like a goddess.

  Now the machine had started again, slowly at first, then faster, until it was running as before.

  How had she thought that Kelso, the absurd man-child, was charming and attractive? She flushed when she thought of the things she had said, the way she had behaved. That was over. Her mind was clear and firm again. She thought of death. She was not known in this place. They had no address for her. Their description would fit any of ten million women.

  Kelso had taught her to drive. Obviously the best thing to do would be to kill him quickly, take the car, drive a good distance, abandon it, cover her tracks, reestablish herself. Some other state. Idaho. She had never lived in Idaho.

  Yes, this could be done quickly. But in this case it would be worth it.

  Yes, this time she could be brutal, and this time she could let the man know, as he died, just why he died. Suddenly it seemed very good. Very, very good.

  Jay Kelso reached into his pocket, and his fingertips touched the little torn fragment of khaki cloth. It would fit the ragged edge of Lawton’s work shorts as perfectly as a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Serena had been difficult. She had been cold and distant and contemptuous. But he thought that after Betty had died and Lawton had been taken away, it would not be too difficult to bring her back to his side like a well-trained puppy. He thought of how well Serena would look in clothes from the Miami branches of the better New York shops. A girl to be proud of.

  He went into the cabin, and Betty came tripping across to him, her arms reaching up, tightening around his neck. He held her close and she murmured, “Betty missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” he said softly.

  But when a few minutes later he looked into her eyes, he wondered if something was wrong. Her odd lavender eyes didn’t have that depth of warmth they had before. They seemed—brittle.

  He shrugged away the impression. Probably it was his imagination. Probably it was because he had thought of her dead body so many times. When he thought of killing her, his hands began to sweat and the hair on the back of his neck prickled oddly.

  It would have to be tonight. Everything was set. The plan looked perfect. He would kill her, as quietly as possible, then run down the hill yelling for the old man. He would say that he couldn’t sleep, had gone for a walk, had come back just in time to see Lawton sneaking away from the cabin. Inside he had found the body of his wife.

  The police would do the rest.

  It was eight o’clock. Four hours to wait. Betty sat at the dressing table and he stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, looking at her face reflected in the glass. She was filing her nails, using a long heavy file with a plastic handle.

  He felt her eyes on him and glanced into the mirror. Odd. She seemed to be staring in a fixed way at the base of his throat. She was smiling. It was a warm, contented, wifely smile. The nail file made a raw buzzing noise as she used it deftly. He took his right hand from her shoulder, touched his fingertips to the base of his throat.

  “After we eat, we’ll come back here and have a long evening alone, just the two of us,” he said quietly.

  “Big lover man understands his little Betty,” she cooed.

  He concealed his irritation at the liquid baby talk and managed to smile at her. He glanced at her face and throat. Her features were delicate. They would have to be spoiled a little. It would have to look like a killing by a powerful man …

  He moved his arm with great stealth until he could see the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Just midnight. Faint light drifted into the room, and he could make out the shape of the chair where his clothes were. Beside him, Betty was breathing softly and regularly.

  His nerves were bad. The room seemed very cold, and he shivered. But it had to be done. To give himself courage, he thought of Serena walking in the sunlight.

  He looked at Betty, lifting himself up on one elbow. He imagined that there was a gleam of the dim light against her eyeballs. That was silly. She was sleeping. Her breathing was soft and regular.

  He reached gently until his fingers hovered inches from her slim throat. Then, tensing his muscles, he drove his hand down onto her throat, fingers biting into the soft flesh.

  She exploded into motion with such sudden, horrid strength that it frightened him. One hand slipped but he managed to replace it, his lean thumbs on either side of her throat. She writhed, and together they tumbled off the side of the bed. A stinging, burning pain ripped across his shoulder.

  They were in the patch of light that shone in the window. He was underneath, panting with strain, his arms straightened and rigid, holding her high above him. The pain struck again, this time across the muscles of his arm. When her flailing hand paused for a moment in the moonlight, he saw that she clenched the nail file.

  Sudden fear gave him strength. The moonlight struck her darkening face, her eyes that widened and bulged, her lips that seemed to snarl.

  Her struggles slowly weakened and something gave under the pressure of his thumbs. The nail file clattered to the wooden floor. Her arms hung limply, and he lowered her so that she rested beside him.

  He took his right hand from her throat. With bitter, sodden strength born of fear, he drove his fist into her face, again and again and again. He was dimly glad that her face was in the shadows. The sound of his fist was wet and heavy.

  Shivering, he stood up. Her legs sprawled loosely in the patch of moonlight. Sweat ran down his body. And something else. Blood from the two shallow rips.

  That was dangerous. Quickly he closed the blinds, took the flashlight and shone it on the floor. He didn’t shine it on Betty. He went to the bathroom, got a scrap of tissue, moistened it and cleaned up the drops of blood. He hurried into the bathroom, washed the nail file, dried it and put it on her dresser.

  Time was flying by. He dressed hurriedly, and felt sudden nausea when he forced the scrap of khaki into her hand, because already her hand had lost warmth and life.

  He paused for a moment, checking back to see if anything had been forgotten. No, he had taken the hairs from her comb, had planted them in Lawton’s room when he had sneaked in at dusk three days before to rip the khaki patch from the ragged work shorts.

  One more thing. It would be natural for him to turn on the cabin lights. He did so, and leaving the door open, he ran down the hill yelling hoarsely.

  “Help!” he shouted. “Murder!” Even as he ran, he wondered why she had been in bed with that nail file in her hand. Could it be that she wa
s going to …? No, that was absurd.

  The investigation seemed to be going nicely. Jay Kelso sat at one of the round tables near the soda fountain.

  The two police cars were parked out by the gas pumps. The men in charge were up in Cabin 11, investigating.

  “Why haven’t they picked Lawton up?” Kelso demanded angrily of a man in the doorway.

  “If they haven’t, they will,” the man said grimly.

  Finally he heard the crunch of steps on the gravel. The tall man in charge half turned and said loudly, “There’s nothing more to see. All you people go on back to your cabins.”

  “Have you got him yet?” Kelso demanded.

  “We know where he is. I just want to check the identification again with you. You say you came back to the cabin after a short walk and you saw the door open.”

  “That’s right,” Jay said. “It surprised me, so I stopped. I was in the shadows. The moonlight hit the door. Lawton came out, sort of crouched. I saw his face as plain as day. He was wearing those ragged old work shorts of his.

  “He stood for a minute as though he was listening for something. Then he went off into the darkness. It worried me. I knew he’d been acting funny lately. Mumbling to himself. In fact, I mentioned it to Mr. Bright a week or so ago. Lawton was a mental case. There’s no getting around that.”

  The officer yawned cavernously, said, “Well, Mr. Kelso, we can sure wrap this up like a Christmas package if you can stand back of that identification.”

  Jay pretended annoyance. “I tell you I saw him like I’m seeing you. No possible doubt about it.” Secret glee replaced the fear he had felt before.

  The officer turned in his chair, looked back at the old man and said, “Jonas, let me have that thing you showed me a little while back.”

  Without looking at Kelso, Jonas Bright shuffled over and handed the officer a small folded slip of yellow paper.

  The officer opened it, read it, his lips moving with each word. Then he slid it across the table to Jay Kelso. “Yes, sir, I guess that positive identification sews this case right up.”

  Jay felt sudden coldness as he read the telegram.

  DON’T BE ANGRY, DAD. THIS WAS MY IDEA AND NOT BEN’S. THE CABINS CAN TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES FOR A FEW DAYS. I’LL BE MRS. LAWTON WHEN I GET BACK. WE ARRIVED HERE IN DAYTONA AT MIDNIGHT. ALL MY LOVE, SERENA.

  Jay tried to speak and his voice was a pitiful squeak. “Dark. Just moonlight. He must have looked like Lawton. You can’t think that I—that I—”

  The officer opened a big brown hand and put a scrap of khaki on the top of the table.

  Jay Kelso almost reached his car before the slug smashed his knee.

  State Police Report That …

  In the first gray of dawn he came awake with the alertness of an animal. He was on his stomach in a sandy notch between two rocks and the revolver was a hard lump against his body.

  They might have seen him there and they might be watching. His hand closed around the chill metal, and he thumbed back the hammer. Only then did he move, so explosively that nearby birds squawked in alarm and winged off.

  He drank from the creek at the foot of the slope and then went back up to the crest. As he neared the crest he dropped to hands and knees, writhed the last few feet on his belly, reaching forward with caution to part the dried grass.

  He froze in that position, his pale eyes squinting against sunrise, staring down toward the distant ribbon of highway. His face held all the cunning of a man who skirts the narrow border of death and means to survive it.

  It was a narrow face, with a pulled-down petulance about the oddly thickened lips. His body looked flaccid and too thin, but it had a coiled-steel efficiency about it, an animal’s economy of movement. A prison number was stenciled across the back of his torn gray cotton shirt. The stubble of beard along the thin line of his jaw was flecked with gray, though he didn’t look much over thirty.

  At last, when the sun was high enough, it glinted on the white enamel of the trooper cars. The roadblock was established at the place he had expected to find it. With half a break he would have been out of the area before they could have set up the block. The distant cars stopped to be checked, went on again, seeming from that distance to move with incredible slowness.

  But the escape siren had gone off too quickly and he had been cut off, had been forced to make his way through the swamp. The black mud had caked to a sick gray on his pants.

  He watched the roadblock for a time and his eyes suddenly narrowed as he saw movement halfway between his position and the distant highway. The slant of the sun made vision difficult but he finally saw a thin line of men beating their way toward the hill.

  Cursing, he slid slowly back, crawled a dozen feet, ran in a crouch for a time and then began to walk back toward the swamp at a ground-covering pace. Yet there was indecision in his manner. He was a bug in a bottle and they were putting the cork in the bottle.

  Then he stopped, thinking that maybe he could ambush the line when they got to the brush, shoot his way through into the clear. But there were flats in the valley and he had seen the long gleam of rifle barrels. The thought of a rifle slug tearing his flesh made him feel ill. It made him forget the hunger that had gnawed at him for twenty-four hours. No choice. The date set for his execution was but a month and three days away. The state wanted that date kept.

  Though he knew it was dangerous, some hunch he only half understood turned his steps toward the edge of the swamp where the highway cut close to it.

  Soon he heard the roar of cars and, after forty more yards, he could see the flash of sun on chrome as they swept by. With a car he might be able to bluff his way past the roadblock.

  But what chance of stopping one of them, when every driver had probably been told an escaped murderer was hiding somewhere along that stretch of road?

  He wondered if he could make one of the cars stop. If only they didn’t go so fast. A hill might slow them down a bit. He began to move more rapidly, on the alert for any sound of crashing brush that would indicate the nearness of the posse.

  A half mile further the road cut away from the swamp, went up a long steep hill. He crouched in the brush and listened until he could hear no drone of cars approaching from any direction. He ran across the road, dived into the brush on the other side, rolled to a stop and held his breath while he listened. There was no shout of discovery, no sound of pursuit.

  Twice he heard faraway yells and guessed that it was the men of the posse shouting instructions to each other. Working his way up the hill was slow and laborious. The brush was thin and twice he had to run across open spaces. Once, moments after he found cover, the search plane circled lazily overhead. He cursed it quietly until it was gone—heading back over the swamp.

  Fortunately, the steepest part of the hill was a place where the brush grew close to the road. The morning was growing hotter and the sweat made the thin shirt cling to his shoulders and chest. Deerflies began to bother him.

  He flattened out on his belly and watched the road. Looking down, the hill did not seem to be as steep. It did not appear to slow down the cars. A red trailer truck ground up the hill and he tensed, then saw the helper sitting beside the driver. Too much risk. Two girls came up the hill in an ancient convertible and it began to labor. But as he shifted the gun to a more comfortable grip, the girl behind the wheel dropped it into second and began to pick up speed.

  He wondered how long it would be until the thin line of men came up the hill. Not until afternoon, probably.

  The sun was high when he saw the car. He knew the moment it came in sight that it was the car. An ancient touring car. Fifty feet up the hill from where he crouched, a faint unused road cut off at an angle.

  The only thing that could ruin his plan would be a car overtaking this one, or coming from the other direction at the wrong time. He tried to listen through the chugging of the old car, tried to hear other motors. There was nothing but silence.

  Partway up the hill the d
river shifted. As the tense watcher expected, the car continued, but at a very slow rate.

  Lifting himself, he waited on his toes and knuckles like a track star. When the car was opposite him, he bounded forward, ran three steps parallel to it and then jumped onto the running board, leaning in across the woman to hold his revolver on the pasty driver. The driver stared at him.

  The convict said, “Do as I say and you won’t get hurt—much … Turn in right up here.”

  The driver did as he was told. The car swayed and bounced on the uneven track, the grass scraping the underside.

  When they were away from the highway, out of sight of any passing car, the driver looked at him again. “Stop here,” he said.

  The two towheaded children perched on the luggage in the back seat stared at him with round blue eyes. One was a girl of three or four, and the other was a boy of about nine.

  They had their mother’s coloring. She sat, slack and bewildered, in the front seat, a baby in her arms. She had a look of acrid poverty about her.

  “Sit right there and keep the kids still,” he told her, “or you won’t see your man again. Come on, you.”

  He forced the driver ahead of him with the gun, walking him off into the brush. When they were out of sight of the car, he tripped the man so that he fell heavily. The driver was a bigger man than the man with the gun, but he trembled with fear and shock.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  The man’s trembling hands fumbled with his shirt buttons. It was a blue work shirt, sodden at the armpits … The clothes were in a heap and the man lay quivering on the pine needles. He had a second to cry out, but he didn’t.

  Once the heavy barrel of the revolver smashed down against the bridge of his nose, there was no sound except the drone of the insects, the distant roar of traffic and the monotonous thud of the heavy gun on helpless flesh, on splintering bone … The familiar red mist faded away and he looked down at the dead driver of the car.

  The clothes fit reasonably well once he had tightened the belt to the last notch. The worn blackened wallet contained thirty-three dollars and a union card saying that the bearer was Andrew Robelan, a machinist.