Soft touch (11 page)

I heard footsteps on the front porch and slapped the book shut, slid it into its space on the shelf. My heart was beating heavily.

I went to the door. I did not turn the porch light or hall light on. I was relieved to see that it was a woman silhouetted against the street light.

"Jerry?"

"Hi, Mandy."

"Lorraine around?"

"No, she isn't."

"Our damn phone is out of order again. That's the third time this month. Know where I can find her?"

"She didn't say where she was going. She didn't take her car, so she's probably somewhere in the neighborhood."

"Well, I don't feel like tramping all over looking for her. If she gets back before ten have her try to call me and if it's still out of order maybe she could drive over for a couple of minutes."

"I'll tell her."

"Thanks, Jerry."

I watched her go down the steps. I went back and got the book and took it upstairs and got a razor blade and cut the flyleaf out neatly. I took the book back down and replaced it. Back in the bedroom I propped the note up against her dressing table mirror. It looked plausible, and it was entirely accurate. She wouldn't be back.

I went down to the storeroom in the cellar. The lawn chairs were stacked there. They hadn't been put out yet. They were covered by a tarp. I pulled it off and held it up. It was big enough, a khaki tarp with a few tears and grease stains.

I took the tarp and some heavy twine up to the bath-

room. I turned on the light. I had expected her to look different somehow, but she looked the same. I spread the tarp out on the tile floor beside her. I sat on my heels and wiped my palms on the thighs of my slacks. It was several moments before I could make up my mind to touch her. Then I reached over and grasped her by the left shoulder and the hip and rolled her onto the tarp. Her body had changed. She was not cold, but neither did she have the warmth of life. It was a middle temperature, queasy and unlikely. I rolled her over one more half turn so that she was once again on her back. I put her arms at her sides and her ankles together. I folded the tarp up over her legs and down over her face. Then I tucked the tarp around her. I passed the twine under her and tied the bundle firmly at ankles, knees, thighs, waist, bust and throat. When I stood up my knees were trembling. Only then did I realize that I had somehow managed it all without once looking directly at her face.

I picked the long bundle up awkwardly. I had heard that the dead are unexpectedly heavy. But she was no heavier than on the many other occasions when I had had to carry her after she had passed out. I half stood her against the wall as I had done so many times before, then bent over, put my right shoulder against her belly and grasped her around the knees, straightening up as the upper part of her body fell forward against my back.

As I stood up she made a ghastly croak of complaint.

I felt an instantaneous cold sweat on every part of my body. I stood with the weight of her on my shoulder and told myself that it was merely the captured air being forced out of dead lungs. I took her down the dark stairs and out to the kitchen and lowered her to the floor, easing her down gently. I locked all three outside doors and ran back upstairs. I mopped the bathroom floor, and then did all I could to make the gouges on my right cheek less conspicuous, finding and using the pancake makeup Lorraine used to cover blemishes.

Just as I had finished the phone rang. I hurried into 84

the bedroom, sat on the bed, let it ring twice more while I brought my breathing under control.

"Hello?"

"Jerry, Mandy again. Sorry to be a nuisance. Lorraine in yet?"

"Not yet."

"Well, tell her our phone is working again."

"I ... I have to go out in a few minutes, Mandy. I may be late getting back. But I'll leave her a note."

"How about me coming over and staying with your sick friend if you're both out?"

"No need of that. Anyway, Vince is asleep. Thanks, Mandy."

"Is he receptive to blondes?"

"Very. And brunettes and redheads."

"You wouldn't be just a teeny weeny little bit receptive to redheads yourself, would you, Jerry dear?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I heard that you and ... a mutual friend were observed having a very torrid little time in a deck chair recently. And then you both slunk off into the bulrushes."

"A case of mistaken identity."

"I'm sure it must have been. Well, you leave that note, dear."

"I will."

I hung up. I went down to the living room, sat at the small desk and wrote, "Lorrie—When you come in Mandy wants you to phone her. The patient is sound asleep. I'm going out. I don't know when I'll be back. That nasty little threat of yours has made me restless. I keep hoping you didn't mean it."

I signed it. I took it into the dark kitchen, put it on the edge of the breakfast booth table, weighted it down with a salt shaker. I looked at the shadowy bundle on the floor near the door and said, "Mandy wants you to phone, darling." And then I laughed, and stopped abruptly. It was a creaky laugh, twisted and nervous and horrible.

I went to the garage, put a shovel in the back of the wagon, backed it out, turned around, backed it into the

driveway and lowered the tailgate. I waited for several moments in the darkness. The neighborhood was quiet. I looked at the luminous dial of my watch. Twenty minutes to ten. I could hear no car coming, no pedestrian sounds. I went and got her. I picked her up as before and ran heavily with her to the station wagon. I sat her on the tailgate, pushed her over backward. Her head thumped hard. I picked up her legs and slid her in beside the shovel, and covered the tell-tale shape pf the twine-wrapped bundle with the old army blanket I keep in the back of the wagon. The shape was still too evident. I pulled the blanket off, laid the shovel across her and covered her again. It made an awkward and meaningless bundle.

I locked the house and drove carefully into the city. I parked the wagon on a quiet side street behind the Hotel Vernon and locked it. I went into the bar. It was a quiet evening. Four or five couples and three men at the bar. I sat on a stool. Timmy came to my end of the bar and said, "Good evening, Mr. Jamison."

"Is it?" I said, scowling at him and slurring my words. "Gimme a bourbon mist, Timmy." I put a five on the bar.

When he brought it I said, "Hellova world, Timmy. Can't live with 'em and can't live without 'em."

"That's the way it goes sometimes, Mr. Jamison."

Lorraine had made a spectacle of herself just often enough in the Hotel Vernon bar so that Timmy had a look of genuine compassion.

"I'll be damned if I'll go home. Maybe I'll get a room here."

"These things blow over," he said.

I drank my drink and left him a dollar tip. I wanted him to remember me. I lurched into the door frame with my shoulder as I left. I walked quickly to the car and drove to our new development, Park Terrace. And for once I had cause to be thankful for E. J.'s marble-headed stubbornness. Time after time I had pleaded with him to employ a night watchman. I had pointed out that petty pilferage off the job and malicious damage by kids

was costing us more than a watchman would cost. But he would say that the men could lock up their tools in the shacks, and you couldn't keep kids from stealing scrap lumber.

I knew that on the following morning the transitmix trucks would be out to pour footings, foundation walls and the carport slabs for the next ten houses. The forms were in. I parked beside a high stack of cinderblock. I walked around until my eyes were used to the night light. I had to make certain our development hadn't been chosen on this night of a half moon by anybody with romance in mind. The nearest occupied houses were a quarter of a mile away. I watched a commercial airliner settling toward the airport, running lights blinking. Two distant cats were enchanting each other with horrid sounds.

I got the shovel and stepped over the taut string and the edge of the form for a slab and picked a place about three feet from the edge. The drain would go in the middle. I had selected a house where the slope of the lot had caused us to use fill on the carport side of the house, so the digging was relatively easy. I worked hard and fast. My wind went rapidly and my back and shoulders began to ache. Though I had intended to go deeper, when I was down about four feet, I quit.

With the lights out, I backed the wagon as close as I could. I lowered the tailgate, pulled on her ankles, then pulled her up into a sitting position and took her on my shoulders again. In the length and width the hole was a tight fit. I consciously tried to dull my awareness of what I was doing as I shoveled the dirt back in. Once the mound was high over her, I had to force myself to the point where I could endure stamping it down. I thought of her in the sun by a poolside, thought of her in a formal dress, her shoulders bare. I saw her walking and running and laughing.

There was less excess dirt than I had expected. I guess she did not displace very much. What there was I threw down the slope with wide swings of the shovel. I used the

khaki blanket to brush away the evidence of my stamping.

Eleven o'clock. Time was going too fast. I drove home, put the shovel away, went to the big hall closet upstairs and got out her two large suitcases. I packed her things. I tried to select what she would select. The best. The newest. Suits, skirts, blouses, shoes, underwear, jewelry, perfume, cosmetics. And I did it in a hasty sloppy way as she might have done it, leaving drawers open and clothing on her closet floor.

When I was nearly finished the phone rang. I let it ring. It rang eleven times before the caller gave up. I took the suitcases down and put them in the luggage space behind the bucket seats of the little copper-colored Porsche. I wedged her mink cape in between the suitcases. I put the convertible top up on the little car. As usual, she had left the key in the ignition. I went back into the house. When I came out again, I had changed to old hunting pants, tennis shoes and a dark wool shirt. I carried her purse, and I carried the .22 calibre target pistol I had not touched in at least three years. The nine-shot clip was fully loaded.

As with Vince, I circled the city until I could strike the Morning Lake road, Route 167, and turn north. The little car, the unfortunately conspicuous little car, droned north up into the hills. It clung beautifully on the corners. I was worried about being spotted when I went through the village of Brindell, two miles from Morning Lake. I need not have worried. A dozen dim street lights, a few dark stores, a cluster of dark houses. In the middle of the village I turned off Route 167 on the unnumbered county road. The night was so still I thought Vince might be alerted if I tried to stop too close to the driveway, so I turned the key off a quarter of a mile or more away and let it drift as far as it would before turning it off onto the steep grassy shoulder under the tree shadows.

It did not seem possible that I had been at the camp

just that afternoon. I could more easily believe that I

had driven Vince up days ago. I worked the slide on the

automatic, jacking a bullet into the chamber. I left it on

full cock, but kept my forefinger in front of the trigger guard in case I should slip on a loose stone in the driveway.

Where the moon came down between the trees to shine on the drive I could walk confidently, avoiding twigs and loose stones. Where the leaves were thick overhead I had to take shorter steps, testing each step carefully before bringing my full weight onto it. Once a loose stone rattled against another. I stood and held my breath and listened. I was being consumed by black flies. I could hear the lap of the lake against the rocks along the shore and against the piling of the dock. A dog barked, far far away. And somewhere behind me an owl asked who.

Tins was work I had done long ago, work I had learned to do quietly, efficiently and well. When at last I came to the end of the drive I went down on one knee and studied the black bulk of the camp against the moon silver of the lake and an angle of starry sky. I went over the floor plan in my memory, and guessed that he would select the bedroom in the southeast corner of the building. It was the handiest, and held a large double bed. I picked up half a dozen walnut-sized stones in my left hand. I could smell the sharp-sweet odor of gun lubricant.

I crossed the open moonlit space of the turnaround quickly and silently and flattened myself against the rough siding of the building. The expectation of being stopped by a bullet as I crossed that space had taken my breath away. After several moments I moved again, moved along the side of the building until I stood close beside the window of the southeast bedroom. And I could hear his breath, slow-and heavy in sleep. I stepped a little away from the building and threw one of the stones off into the woods. It pattered through the leaves and struck a branch with a sharp sound and fell to the ground. After the second stone I listened and could no longer hear the breathing. I threw a third and then waited. I heard a soft creak of the bed. I heard a squeak of a floorboard under his weight. I put my finger lightly on the trigger.

When I judged that he had time to reach the window

I stepped out in front of it, raising the pistol as I did so. His face was a paleness against the blackness of the room, and about three feet above me.

I fired three shots into the center of that pale oval blur, then fell flat and rolled tightly against the side of the building. And I heard him come down onto the wooden floor, heard the long rumbling fall, thuds of bone on wood, and a sharper sound of metal on wood, and a heavy grunt, and a dwindling sigh. I waited ten minutes by my watch. I used the pistol barrel to poke a hole in the copper screen in the middle near the bottom member of the frame. I put my ringer through, pushed the hook out of the eye, pried the frame outward and lifted it off the top hooks, set it against the side of the house, without once getting my head in front of the screen. I reached gun and lighter into the room and snapped the lighter on. I looked at him quickly. I put the lighter back in my pocket, pulled myself up and climbed into the room. I pulled the shades and turned on the light. He was in his underwear. He lay half on his side with his face against the floor, one leg doubled under him. I put my heel against his shoulder and rolled him over. He rolled loosely. He had taken one in the upper lip, one close beside his nose on the left side, and one in the corner of his eye. The hydraulic action of hollowpoints on brain fluid had grotesquely altered the shape of his head, bulging it badly at the temples. He had bled very little. Had I been using long rifle shells it would have blown his head apart.