The Man in the Net (9 page)

The nightmare quality wasn’t fading; it was growing.

Somewhere he had to make a beginning. He said, “She didn’t sound that crazy about me the other evening, did she?”

“But you’d fought.” Vickie was watching him, frank, bewildered. “Anybody would have had a fight over something as drastic as the decision you two had to make. A fight like that doesn’t count. Besides, she’d had a drink. She admitted it. She wasn’t herself and, right away after she’d said those things, she was desperately sorry. Anyone could have seen that.” She glanced quickly at her husband. “John, please don’t think we’re not believing you. We know it’s happened if you say it’s happened. But it can’t be like that.”

Now that the time had come, he felt, absurdly, a sense of betrayal. This would do it. When he’d finished telling them, this would be the end of Linda with the Carey set, the end of any chance they might have had to find a workable life for themselves in Stoneville. Some vestigial part of him, some ingrown loyalty, prompted: Don’t do it to her. Don’t take away what little she has got—even if she’s got it on false pretenses. But he knew there was no sense in thinking that way. They were all washed-up in Stoneville anyway, and it was all washed-up between Linda and him too. He’d not actually realized it until that moment. But he saw it clearly then. Now, after she’d done that to the pictures, whatever happened, however it explained itself away, the irrevocable break had come. He was through with her forever.

He took a pull at the drink, not looking at either of them. Then he brought it out.

“You don’t know Linda. Nobody knows her except me. At least I don’t think they do. I’ve done my best to see that they didn’t. You got a glimpse of her the other night. But only a glimpse. You see, the other reason I went to New York was to consult a doctor. She’s sick. She’s been sick for years.”

He started to tell them, not everything, not the most intimate, the most sordid details, but enough. He knew, as he talked, that he was saying far less than the truth, but surely it would be coherent to them—the tale of insecurity, the compelling urge to compete, the failures, the constantly heavier drinking, the dream-world which more and more took the place of any reality. His only worry, at first, was the fear that they would think he was demanding their pity, that he was picturing himself too emphatically as the suffering one, the good-intended, loyal husband who had sacrificed so much of himself for a cause that was virtually lost from the beginning. And yet, as he talked, as they sat watching him, their faces carefully arranged, polite, with no expression, he began to realize that he wasn’t making contact.

Was it as difficult as this then for people to grasp the infinite complexities of an alcoholic’s make-up? If they didn’t have any personal experience of one, or only knew one as the Careys knew Linda, was the elaborate front of normalcy so convincing that it seemed more real than the truth? Gradually, as he went on, he felt less and less confidence; his words stumbled over each other, and then, at the last, as he felt the gulf between them growing wider and wider, he stopped.

Their faces were still as polite as they had been before. They were still carefully avoiding each other’s eyes, watching him with a kind, alert determination to be just. And yet, although they were trying at all costs to conceal it, he could feel their embarrassment, particularly Brad’s, and he knew they hadn’t believed him or, at best, they thought he was ignobly exaggerating, trying to get his point of view in first, because his relations with Linda had been unsatisfactory and he was scared now of what might have happened.

It was Brad who spoke. The quality of his voice was very slightly changed. “So the other night, when she was here, you hadn’t hit her at all?”

Wearily thinking: I did hit her later, John said, “I hadn’t hit her. She’d fallen down because she was drunk and it’s the drinking she wants to hide more than anything.”

“But she admitted she’d had a drink.”

“One drink, yes. Just because she knew you’d realize something was wrong. That was her complicated way of covering up.”

“So to keep us from knowing she was on a drinking jag, she was ready to lie and accuse you of having hit her?”

“Sure. That wouldn’t phase her for a minute.” Be careful. Don’t put it that way. It sounds bitter. It’ll only antagonize them more. “But maybe it went deeper than that. You see, when she’s drunk, when she so desperately needs to make a heroine of herself, she usually wants to make a villain out of me, too. Probably that was it. She wanted you all to hate me.”

There was a long flat pause. Then Vickie said, “So all we know about her, all she’s ever said or done here is an act?”

“More or less, I’d say. Almost everything she does or says is an act.”

“Then—is this an act too? Is she just pretending to have run away, to – to scare you or punish you or something?” There was no trace of sarcasm in Vickie’s voice, but that question, coming from her, made everything he’d tried to explain seem completely preposterous.

“If she’d been here or at your father’s or at the Morelands’, it could have been an act. But now … She’s never been this violent before. Maybe once she’d committed herself to my consulting a psychiatrist she got panicked. She couldn’t face … (
But she knew Bill MacAllister wasn’t going to be there
) Maybe …”

The exhaustion was in full control again. What was the use? What did it matter anyway? It wasn’t his business to convince the Careys. His business was to find Linda.

“But if she’s gone”—it was Vickie who spoke—“where would she have gone to?”

“There isn’t any way I know of.”

He hadn’t gone so far as to admit his dread of insanity and suicide. He was glad now. If they’d had to swallow that on top of everything else!

Brad said gruffly, “We’d better call the state troopers.” “But if it is just an act.” Vickie was watching John now. “If she—she got mad and slashed the pictures and then got scared, maybe, and ran off in the woods. Think of it, Brad. The scandal and everything for her, if it’s only something like that. Couldn’t we try to find her ourselves?”

“At night?” asked Brad. “In the woods? Do you know how many thousands of acres of woods there are around here? You’d need search parties even in the daytime.” He got up, lit a cigarette and started pacing the room. Suddenly he turned back to John. The friendly, easy quality which he’d shown in New York and on the train was gone. His eyes were registering not antagonism exactly but an obvious desire to disassociate himself from a situation in which he could no longer be comfortable.

“Why don’t you call your house? Maybe she’s back.”

“Yes,” said Vickie.

“If she isn’t and if she isn’t back by morning, then call the troopers.”

“Yes,” said Vickie. “That’s it. Yes.”

The phone rang. Brad almost ran to answer it.

“Yes … Yes … No, she isn’t here, but John’s here. Do you want to talk to him? … Okay, wait a moment.”

He turned, cupping the receiver. “It’s Gordon. He tried your house, got no answer and called here.”

“Is Linda… ?”

“He didn’t say.”

John crossed the room and took the phone from Brad, who, taut and uneasy, remained at his side. Gordon Moreland’s voice, high, fancy and glacial with dislike, said, “John? Is that John?”

“Yes.”

“Is Linda with you?”

“No, she isn’t.”

“Where is she?”

John felt the anxiety like a clenched fist in his stomach. “She isn’t here right now.”

“But you know where she is? That’s what we want to know.”

“No,” he said. He had to. “No, I don’t.”

“Then you’d better come here right away and join us. Us—and Steve Ritter.”

The police call! “Where are you?”

“I’m calling from the first house I got to. Steve and Roz are at the village dump. That’s where Steve wants you.”

“The dump?”

“You know where it is?”

“Yes. But what is it? What’s happened?”

“You’ll know when you get here. Right away, Steve says, as quickly as possible.”

John heard the receiver click at the other end.

When he told the Careys, Vickie wanted to come with him, but the thought of them on top of Steve Ritter and the Morelands was too much. They were nice about it and sympathetic. They had never stopped being nice and sympathetic. It was worse, almost, than if they’d come out with what was in their minds. Brad didn’t go out with him to the car, but Vickie did.

“Let us know, John, if you need us….”

If he needed them! If Linda was lying out there on the dump….

He swung the car recklessly out of the drive. The dump was about a mile away from the lake up a little track off the highway. The world for him was now completely a world of nightmare. Linda was lying on the dump.
What have you been up to? Murdering your wife or something?
 No, it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. How could Linda be lying … ?

As he approached the turn-off to the dump, he saw cars ahead of him at the side of the road with their parking lights on. He stopped his car beside them and jumped out. 

“John … John . .

He heard children’s voices, strangely muffled, calling his name and two grotesque shapes ran toward him into the dimly illuminated semi-circle made by the cars’ parking lights. They were round and cumbersome, topped with weird, onion like domes of plastic that sprouted antennas—Buck and Timmie in their new space-suits.

“We found it, John,” panted Buck excitedly. “We were exploring the Earth.”

“With our space-suits,” said Timmie.

“We explored the dump. We were scientists from Mars exploring the dump and …”

“John?” Steve Ritter’s voice—deep, faintly threatening—sounded from somewhere down the dark track. “John? Is that you, John?”

He started up the track with the bizarre children scampering around him. The darkness seemed to engulf him. Fireflies, winking and bobbing under the great shadowing branches of the trees, added to the illusion of fantasy.

“Here, John. This way.”

A flashlight beam sprang out of the darkness, high up at an odd angle. He turned left toward it and stumbled over cans and bottles which slithered away under his feet.

“Up here, John.”

He started scrambling up the treacherous pile of heaped refuse. Dimly now he could make out figures above him and the glowing tip of a cigarette. Just as he reached them, the flashlight went out.

“The kids found it, John.” Steve Ritter’s voice sounded deliberately, menacingly casual. “Timmie told the Morelands. Buck told me. Then Mr. Moreland called me. He thought we ought to investigate. Didn’t seem right, he said, the way the kids described it.”

“We found it.” It was Buck’s voice again, muted through the plastic dome. “It was treasure trove. We found it—me and Timmie.”

“We’re pretty sure what it is,” said Steve. “Leastways, Mrs. Moreland’s sure. But you’re the one got to identify it and maybe explain to us what it’s doing here.”

Suddenly, dramatically, the flashlight pointed downward.

There, sprawled across the top of the mountainous trash pile, was Linda’s new suitcase. It was open.

John saw the green dress first, Linda’s new green dress. Its skirts, full and neatly pleated, drifted over the side of the suitcase and trailed across the edge of a rusty oil can.

JOHN STOOD looking down, feeling a sensation of doom. Roz Moreland’s voice, cultured, emphatic, sounded from behind the burning cigarette end.

“It’s Linda’s new dress. There’s no point in arguing about it. She only just got it last week and she came over right away to show it to me. She was thrilled about it. She’d never throw it away. Never in a million years. And her grey suit, too—all her best things. That’s why I knew, immediately, when Timmie described it.”

“Roz.” Gordon Moreland’s voice broke in, prissily correct. “This isn’t our business at the moment. It’s Steve’s. He’s the proper authority. It’s up to Steve.”

“Well?” asked Steve Ritter. “We’re waiting, John. Do you identify these things and this suitcase as your wife’s property?”

John’s eyes were accustoming themselves to the darkness. He could see the vague outline of Steve Ritter’s jaw and even the faint gleam of his eyes, just as he could sense the near-hysterical hostility in the Morelands, hemming him in, accusing him. Danger was here. He felt its presence as strongly as if it were standing at his elbow—another weird, domed figure like the children.

He had to be careful. It was changing now—changing for the worse.

“Yes,” he said. “They’re all Linda’s things.”

“Kind of funny, isn’t it?” said Steve. “Throwing out all those good things? Her best dress and everything? Throwing them out on the dump?”

“It’s absurd,” said Roz. “Never in a million years …”

“Roz, please,” said Gordon Moreland.

The sour smell of abandoned refuse trailed up around them.
If the suitcase is here, then Linda’s here.
The thought sounded in John’s mind like a roar. There was no way now of avoiding what had to be faced—all of it.

He said, “I don’t know where my wife is.”

“You don’t know?” echoed Gordon.

“You …” Roz’s voice cracked.

Steve Ritter said slowly, without any expression, “Just what do you mean by that, John?”

“I went to New York yesterday. I just came home this evening. She wasn’t there. She’d left a note to say—she’d gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?” said Gordon.

“My God,” said Roz, “I’m not surprised.”

“Roz…”

“Well, are you surprised? After that spectacle the other night? When he’d hit her, when he’d …”

“Hey, wait a minute, Mrs. Moreland.” Steve’s voice, crisp now with authority, cut in. “You and Linda had an argument, John? You went off to New York and while you was away she walked out on you? Is that it?”

“Yes, I guess so. I guess that’s about it.”

“Did she take the car?”

“No. I had it at the station. I drove myself in.”

“She went off without the car? How? Walking? Thumbing a ride?”

“I don’t know. How would I know?”

For a moment none of them spoke. The fireflies sputtered in the darkness. Roz Moreland’s cigarette end gleamed—a round, stationary firefly. The odor of decay impregnated the air.