Chase (22 page)

Chase slapped him hard with the back of his hand. When Judge's mouth fell, he jammed the silenced barrel between the man's teeth and pulled the trigger. Once.

He dropped the gun and turned away from the dead man, walked into the hall and opened the bathroom door. He put up the lid of the toilet bowl, and after a few moments, vomited into the water. He remained on his knees for a long time, coughing up bile before he could control spasms that racked him. He flushed the toilet three times, put the lid down and sat on it, wiping at the cold sweat on his face.

It was done.

No more lies.

Having won the Congressional Medal of Honor, the most sacred and jealously guarded award the country had, he had only wanted to return to the attic room in Mrs Fiedling's house and take up his penitence again. They had not allowed him that much.

Then he met Glenda, and things changed. There was no question about returning to the hermetic way of life, sealed off from experience. All that he wanted now was a quietude, a chance for their love to develop, a normal life. Cauvel, the police and Richard Linski had not allowed him that. The press, if it were found that he had solved the case himself, would not allow him that either.

He had known, without admitting it to himself, from the moment he had decided to come out here on his own, that he intended to kill Linski in just such a fashion. While he cleaned up all signs of the fight in the living room, he knew it. But he had not faced up to it until he pulled the trigger.

Examining his conscience, he felt no guilt. This was different from the women in the tunnel. They had done nothing to him, had offered no genuine threat to his peace. Judge, however, brought an end to hopes of peace.

Chase rose and went to the sink. He rinsed his mouth out until the bad taste was gone, then returned to the commode, sat down and tried to think the rest of it through.

He felt no guilt, because other people had driven him into a corner - and permitted him to escape by using the deadly skills the army had taught him. He had won by their rules. He was sorry for what he'd done, but the guilt was reserved for those Vietnamese women who would live as a part of him until he died. He had subconsciously ignored the gun on the television set, he now saw, taking the wound in his shoulder as further punishment and reason to act. Besides, Richard Linski had been as much a victim of national hypocrisy as he had himself. Play it rough in war and in business at home. That was the way of the nation, and he had become an acolyte to the religion.

He no longer had to be a hero.

He got up and left the bathroom.

In the front room, he untied Richard Linski's body and let it sprawl on the floor. He wiped the chair with wet paper towels until there was no blood on it, replaced it at the dining-room table, then put the towels in the plastic garbage bag.

When he considered the pistol, he realized there would be three slugs missing from the clip, but he could do nothing about that. It was no proof that Judge had shot at anyone or that he had not killed himself. He wiped the gun with a towel he had got from the linen closet and pressed Judge's hand around it to leave unmistakable prints.

With the pistol out of the way, he searched for the two slugs which Judge had expended earlier. He found one embedded in the baseboard, and he dug it out without leaving a very noticeable mark. The other was behind the portable bar under the spot where the mirror had rested. He dug it out along with a large piece of glass that he had overlooked the first time.

Using the same towel, he decided to begin wiping everything he had touched, but brought himself up short at that. There might be a good many fingerprints on things as it was, enough to mask his own a bit. If the police found the doorknob wiped clean, however, they'd not believe the suicide angle for a minute. He put the towel in the plastic sack.

It was a quarter to twelve when he reached the Mustang and put the garbage bag in the trunk. He got in, started the engine and drove down the street past Linski's bungalow. The lights were burning. They would burn all night.

On the way back to the motel, he began to think about Glenda and about taking her to bed again, soon, within the hour. This time, he felt almost certain, there would be no inability on his part. That thought, combined with the knowledge that Judge was out of their lives for good, served to liberate his spirit, loosen one bond after another until he felt as if he were soaring. Giddy, he considered how soon he should ask her to marry him; he wanted her as a wife, more than he had wanted anything.

He had not forgotten Operation Jules Verne. It was just that he had come to see that he was as much a victim of his society as the Vietnamese women had been victims of theirs. Guilt should be tempered with hope and happiness, even for him.

He thought about Glenda again, pictured her as his wife, liked the picture. In a few years they might even have a baby. Just one child. He didn't want her to become a baby machine. And if it were a boy, none of Them would touch him, none of Them would take him away when he turned eighteen and teach him to kill. Society had taught Chase how to play tough, and he would use every trick he had learned to protect his own.

She was waiting in the room, sitting on the bed with the television whispering at her. When he knocked, she unlatched and unchained the door, looked out warily, then grinned.

‘What happened?’ she asked as she welcomed him inside.

He began to unbutton her blouse, and the sense of capability did not leave him. He was shaking a little, but he did not think she would notice. He said, ‘He killed himself.’

‘
What?’

‘When I got there, I took my time sneaking into the place, wormed my way to the living room - and found him dead. He'd left a suicide note.’

‘But what took you so long?’

‘I didn't build up the nerve to go into the house until after ten. When I found him, I had to sit down and think it out. I wiped my prints off the doorknob and everything I touched, then took my time getting out of there in case someone might be watching from another house.’

‘You're sure he's dead?’

‘Yes.’

She came against him, her hand on his arm, directly over the lump of his makeshift bandage. ‘What's this?’

‘I fell and cut myself.’

She helped him take his shirt off, and she undid the bandage. ‘Cut yourself on what?’

‘A broken mirror,’ he said, feeling sick. ‘I broke a mirror in Linski's place and cut my arm.’

‘Come into the bathroom,’ she said.

It had stopped bleeding and was crusted black and ugly. She bathed it tenderly and used one of the pillowcases to make clean strip bandages. ‘We should see a doctor about this.’

‘It'll be all right,’ he said. He took her head in his hands when she had finished tending him, and said, ‘Glenda, will you marry me?’

‘You're in shock,’ she said. ‘Don't propose marriage when you're not clear-headed.’

‘If you don't answer me now,’ he said, ‘I'm afraid I'm going to start screaming and be unable to stop.’

She smiled, but quickly saw that he was serious. She said, ‘You haven't said you love me.’

‘Haven't I? My own stupidity. I do, and you know that I do. And I also should tell you that from now on I think I can also love you in the physical sense as well.’ He smiled at her. ‘Marry me?’

She stood and unhooked her bra, stepped out of her skirt and panties.

‘Please answer me,’ he said.

‘I am answering you,’ she said. ‘I'm answering you in the most positive way I can think of. Let's go to bed, darling.’

Later, very much later, as they lay side by side on the motel bed, she said, ‘I want to pick up your things tomorrow and move you in with me.’

‘What will your mother think?’

‘She'll have to accept the fact that I'm a grown girl. Besides, you've said you'll marry me rather than live in sin.’

‘It's a deal,’ Chase said. ‘First thing in the morning; I don't have much to be moved.’ He thought that now he even had enough determination to tell Mrs Fiedling to button the neck of her damn housedress.