The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (10 page)

I got in bed and felt a hundred little nerves quivering in my body. I thought of taking a Seconal, but no, that would make me groggy tomorrow and I needed all my alertness.

Lou still lay with his nose pointed at the ceiling, the blanket pushed down past his hips. Black hair stood up in tufts between the buttons of his silk pyjamas. There was a wall in my mind blocking me off from what I’d just done; I didn’t want to think about it.

I was starting my second cigaret when Lou’s voice said: “Velda.”

There was no inflection, nothing. I was sure he’d seen me. I thought, How will I explain it, what excuse can I possibly give him?

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you come over here?”

I felt relief. So … that was it. He’d gone to sleep, rested a bit and perhaps had a dream … there was no explaining his urges, perhaps there was no explaining those of any male.

“It’s … late,” I said.

“You weren’t asleep anyway, were you?” No need to answer that; he’d known I wasn’t. “Don’t come if you don’t want to.”

Thank you, Lou.
But then I knew I’d feel guilty; here was a man who worked hard to provide a nice house and luxury and all the money I could spend….

I slid out from beneath the covers and stood on the mat between our beds. I seized the hem of the nightdress and pulled it off over my head. The air felt cool on my body.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t move. There is a mental-physical shorthand, a combination of movements and attitudes which comprise the unspoken sexual language of long-married people. I knew what he wanted. I put my palm on his stomach, felt the thick matted hair press against my pain.

“Put the light out, please,” I said.

The light went out. In the dark, I can sometimes pretend I am on the black gelding, riding through the night with the wind in my face. This time it didn’t work. I felt guilty because I was glad when it was over.

Next morning at ten Curt came into the store and asked for a can of Velvet. I rang it up and gave him his change. With it was the key to the Struble place. He raked it smoothly off the counter and slid it into his pocket.

I said: “Are you—?”

He stopped me with a quick shake of the head. He pointed to his ears and then at the walls, the stacks of canned goods. I understood then; he was afraid of hidden microphones. I took out a piece of paper and I wrote:
Are you going out now?

He shook his head, wrote under it:
For Gaby, to stand watch.

I will,
I wrote.

Again he shook his head and put down one word:
Risk.

I wrote:
Pick me up back door one-half hour.
Then to choke off further argument, I crumpled the paper and shoved it in my apron pocket. He lifted his shoulders, then nodded and walked out.

He was waiting in the alley a half hour later. I locked the back door—Ethel had her own key to the front—and stepped into his car. I hunched down between the front seat and the dash, regretting that I hadn’t thought to wear slacks. I had to hike my skirt up to my hips to stay hidden, but it didn’t matter; Curt looked silently ahead as be drove out of town. His old car sent exhaust fumes up my nose; I was perspiring, probably from excitement. I felt like a juvenile sneaking out on her first date. After a long time Curt tapped me on the shoulder and I sat up, gulped fresh air, and took the cigaret he handed me. We were on a rarely-used dirt road which crossed the river via a rattle-trap steel bridge and met the gravel road which passed the Struble place.

While he drove, I asked him about Gil Sisk and Johnny Drew.

“I haven’t cleared Gil yet,” he said. “And Johnny Drew seems too stupid. If he were in a city he’d be a small-time hood running errands and trying to look like a big-shot torpedo. Here he’s nothing. Anyway, he’s dropped out of sight. Maybe the sheriff scared him out of the county. I’ve spent the last two nights scouring his old hangouts, but nobody’s seen him.”

He slowed as we passed the Struble house. In the back yard I glimpsed the mound of naked earth which covered Bernice’s next-to-last resting place. He turned off the highway and onto a dirt track leading toward the river. Our tires crackled on the sticky gumbo. Patches of ice lay beneath the trees—all that remained of snowbanks. He stopped beneath the cottonwoods and switched off the engine. A curve in the lane hid us from the road. “Now,” he said, “we follow the river until we come to a hedgerow. Then we follow that up to the Struble house.”

I stared at him. “How do you know so much about it?”

“Aerial photos,” he said. “I bought copies from the outfit which surveyed the county last year. Next time you come out to the house I want you to take a look at them.”

I stepped out of the car and saw immediately that my heels wouldn’t make it. I took off my shoes, then peeled off my hose too. Curt stood waiting, and I flushed with guilt because I was slowing him down. Gaby would probably have had the foresight to wear flats and jeans. As we walked on, the icy mud crawled between my bare toes and reminded me of the high school walkouts we used to take on the first warm day of spring.

Silently we made our way up the hedgerow to the house. Curt left me crouched beneath a spirea bush while he opened the front door with his key. I was to whistle like a bobwhite—the only bird I could imitate—if I saw anybody coming. I couldn’t seem to get comfortable; spirea bushes spread out impossibly close to the ground, and a slick mound of ice remained beneath them. I squatted with my bare feet sliding on the ice—feet which had once been calloused but now were soft and tender—and I felt the cold ascend like water percolating upward, reaching my ankles, my calves….

It had reached my thighs when Curt reappeared and said, “Let’s go.” I followed him on legs which were stiff as stilts, down to the hedgerow, where I again slowed him down because I had to beware of thorns. When we reached the river he started on, then he looked back at me. I was red-faced, sweating, and puffing, so he found a clump of willows and said: “Here, let’s rest a minute.”

We sat down and lit cigarets, and I asked: “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing, which is significant in itself.”

“Why?”

“All her things were there, receipts, appointment slips, matchbook covers, hairpins, perfume, photographs and letters and everything else relatives take when they go through the effects of a deceased person.”

“So?”

“So her relatives hadn’t gone through it. But someone had. Her things were jumbled, disarranged; the lining of her purse was ripped loose. The sheriff didn’t search, I’m sure; he didn’t even suspect murder.”

“It must have been the killer.”

He nodded. “Another scrap to add to the evidence that she was killed. I was nearly certain of that already.” He looked at me. “Ready to go?”

“I … guess.”

Maybe because there was disappointment in my face, I don’t know, but he bent down and touched his lips to mine, very lightly. At least I suppose it was a light touch, even though I felt an electric current passing through my body. I must have been in a sensual state from the mud squishing through my toes, or the excitement of our stealth, but I had to remind myself that I shouldn’t, mustn’t slide my arms around his back and press him against me. I kept telling myself
no no no
until he drew back his head. I looked at him and I regretted that his eyes … that he had trained them so well that they showed nothing of what he felt. When he spoke I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about….

“It’s a way station, you know. A point in a journey to a destination. If we’re not going to make the whole trip, we shouldn’t even get on the train.”

I realized then he meant the kiss. I was aware of the leaves arching overhead and the river flowing by at our feet, brown and muddy now with the flow-off from melted snow, and I thought, Well, who’s getting off? Then I realized he’d said this in order to give me time to think, so that I’d know exactly what lay ahead. So I thought of Sharon and Lou … and Gaby too, and all the people who would be involved, and I said, “Then I guess you’d better not kiss me again.”

He stood up and held down his hand for me. In his eyes I saw that I’d dissembled too late. I read the knowledge that I was available, willing, that he had only to provide a time and a place and the proper conditions. I knew that later, in an hour or a day I would be grateful to him, but now I was only disappointed and angry at myself for being so vulnerable….

I rejected his hand and got up by myself. We walked toward the car in silence.

Ten feet from the car he stopped and motioned me back with a violent gesture of his hand. I watched him tiptoe forward, peering at the ground. He took a piece of paper off the windshield where it had been held beneath the wiper like a traffic ticket. Then, stepping in his same tracks, he came back to me and unfolded the paper. It was a penciled note which said: GET OUT OF TOWN OR GET KILD. TAKE YOUR CHOISE.

“Stay here a minute,” he said.

I stood holding the note while he searched around the car in ever-widening circles. He walked out to the road and then back. “Gone,” he said. He squatted clown and looked beneath the car, then got a long stick and released the catch on the hood. Without touching the car he examined the engine. Then he poked the stick through the open window and pressed the starter. The car grumbled and lurched, then stopped. I let out my breath, slowly, and only then realized that I’d half-expected an explosion.

“Okay,” he said. “Get in. But don’t step there.”

He was pointing to a sharply defined track in the soft mud. I looked at it and then looked at Curt. “He left a footprint?”

“A beautiful footprint. Too beautiful.” I frowned. “Why?”

“It’s probably a red herring. Look here.” He placed his foot beside the print. The other mark extended an inch beyond his shoe. “I wear tens. This must be a twelve. And the ribbed sole is like they put on engineer’s boots. It’s all too distinctive, too traceable to be real.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Take you back to town, then go home and get my plaster and make a cast of the print. It’s something to look for, even though the shoes are probably buried someplace by this time.”

We were driving along the gravel when I said: “Well at least the note narrows it down. You know the man’s illiterate.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Sure, it narrows it down. It tells me the man is a damn sight from being illiterate. Look at the note. He can’t conceal the fact that he’s used to printing. So be uses his left hand to write the note. Make an ‘E’ with your fingernail there.” I did. “See? You made the vertical bar and the bottom horizontal bar in one motion, then attached the other two horizontal bars. That’s the way this guy did. A semi-illiterate who draws his letters would make the vertical bar and then the three horizontal bars all separately. Now notice how his right-handed habits carry over. Make an ‘A’ with your nail.” I did. “Okay, on the left diagonal line, you started from top to bottom, then retraced the line back to the top and came down again to make the right diagonal. So did this guy. You can see the double line. The slant shows he wrote it left-handed, but as a matter of fact he was right-handed, otherwise he’d have done the right diagonal first. Same with the ‘V’ and there’s the ‘E’ again. See what he’s told us about himself?” I looked at Curt. “What?”

“Not a damn thing … except—” He paused and frowned. “Except that he understands the game. This note accomplishes no purpose at all except to make the game more interesting for him. Now he’s expecting me to carry this note around the county, searching for matching paper, trying to get samples of handwriting …” He laughed abruptly, took the note and shoved it in his shirt pocket. “Yes, he understands the game.”

I stared at Curt. “Is that all it is to you? Just a game?”

He turned to me, and there was a strange glitter in his eyes. “Life is a game, Velda. It ends in death. So does this. Now we could get bitter and morbid about it, or we can relax and swing—”

“Or we can check out.”

“You
can. You want to?”

“No.” I said it quickly, without thinking, but I realized I meant it. “It just seems to me you’ve got the odds against you now. He knows you, and you don’t know him.”

“I will someday.”

“When? How?”

“When he tries to kill me.”

“Suppose he succeeds.”

“That’s my game,” he said. “To see that he doesn’t.”

I expected Curt next morning but he didn’t show up. I was disappointed because I wanted to know if he’d learned anything from the footprints. Gaby came in around eleven; before we knew it we were talking on a level of honesty which I’m sure neither of us intended. That was during our conversation at the cash register; there was a cold drizzle outside and Gaby wore a hooded black raincoat which made her took drawn and tired. I remarked that she was no doubt working hard getting moved in—the kind of social babble you carry on while you’re ringing up purchases—and Gaby said she was. I asked if Curt was getting the place fixed like he wanted and only then did I realize that I’d forcibly turned the conversation to her husband.

“He … hasn’t been home much lately,” said Gaby.

I looked at her and saw a flicker of terror in her eyes, a look which told me she was younger than I thought and had never encountered this kind of problem before. She covered up quickly by throwing back her hood and fluffing out her hair with a quick shake of her head. Then she said:

“At least it’s better than having him get bored. When he gets bored he kicks everything to pieces just to see it fly apart.”

I didn’t want to go that deeply; I pulled back. I asked with a smile: “What does he break up, furniture?”

“No. That was his brother Frankie’s specialty, breaking up bars and things. Curt’s more subtle.” She looked down and fiddled with her billfold, snapping and unsnapping the catch. “He got bored with his research firm, and that’s no longer operating. He got bored living with a certain couple while he was going to college and when he left they got divorced. Toward the end they weren’t speaking to each other, only to Curt. You’d never get him to admit he had anything to do with that, but I think he did. He’s that way about human relationships. He sees a social setup the way a mechanic might see a motor, and he sort of …” she made a fluttery motion with her hands, “… jiggles the wires around to see what will happen.”

Suddenly I realized she didn’t understand Curt, even though she’d been trying for oh, how many years? She’d built up a vast store of knowledge about his reactions to given situations, but he was still a stranger to her; like an unknown animal in a cage. You know that if you stand around cracking your knuckles, it will turn ferocious. Though you don’t know why it turns ferocious, therefore you can’t say you understand it, at least you can deal with it. He likes long hair, he hates polished toenails, that’s the sort of thing she knew about him.

I had her groceries boxed now and her change made, but she wasn’t through. She lit a cigaret and gave me a level look.

“He’s had affairs before, you know.”

The words sent an electric shock through my body. I felt the heat rise to my face, and at that moment I was sure she knew about our visit to the Struble house and our kiss by the river.
Before
was the key word, that’s what made her words apply directly to me—and at the same time made me feel like an insignificant figure at the end of a long line of women. The girl was clever, in spite of her youth.

“Has he?” I asked. “What did you do?”

“Waited. They didn’t really compete with me. No more than a … supermarket competes with a gas station. He goes to them for something different than he gets from me.”

“What?”

“Excitement, the game, the chance to work out his mind on somebody new—”

“And sex, naturally.”

She shrugged. “It isn’t the important thing. He never chases a woman for sex. If he does, it’s not because he desires them.”

I was interested, now that we’d left the specific and gone on to the general. Also I was puzzled. “What reason could he have?”

“To … uh, experiment. To see how sex will affect the woman, or his attitude toward her.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, really. I just know he’s been with women he could have had and he hasn’t touched them. Others … vice versa—until he learns what he wants.”

“And then what does he do?”

“The same as he does with other people he has no more use for.” She held up her palm and blew across it. “He banishes them.”

“Banishes them?”

“Doesn’t see them. They talk, their words don’t reach his mind. He treats them politely, remotely and totally impersonal. I guess there’s nothing more frustrating. You can’t fight it. Women get drunk and swear at him. He acts surprised. I think he really is because he doesn’t realize what he’s done to them. When he can’t use a person any more, they cease to exist.”

I knew what she was doing; she was giving me fair warning:
He wants you only to use you, and here’s what’ll happen when he gets through with you.
Yet I felt no hostility from her. We were like two housewives talking over a mutual problem; Gaby having the more experience with the problem, she’d led the discussion:
Be sure to whip your egg whites and fold them in separately….

Sharon came in then and bloomed like a flower when she saw Gaby. I received a perfunctory Hi Mother, then the two went next door to the drugstore. I envied Gaby at that moment—not for her intimacy with my daughter, for a mother gets used to being regarded as dowdy and middle-aged—but for her ability to switch personalities. It wasn’t faked; one moment Gaby was an adult woman talking to me about adult matters, the next moment she was a teenager skipping off to discuss records and boys and dating. Gaby was a chameleon, changing her attitudes and personality to suit her environment. I saw that Curt need never tire of her; all he had to do was put her in a new environment and he’d have a new woman….

Gil clomped in for Missus Friedland’s groceries. I caught a sour smell of beer on his breath and knew he’d come from the tavern. (I’d begun noticing unpleasant things about him which I’d missed before.) Sarcastically I asked if he and Gabrielle weren’t on a first-name basis by now.

“Well now Velda, that’s only when we’re alone. A smart man never lets on he’s high winner in a crap game.”

That annoyed me too; not to mention his fake country accent. Immediately I connected it with the note which had been left on Curt’s windshield. As Gil walked out, I stared at his shoes. They were big, at least number twelve. I wished Curt would come in so that I could talk to him about Gil. I still couldn’t imagine him leaving Gaby alone with a man he really suspected.

The belt tinkled, but it was only Ethel. She took off her raincoat, put away her purse, cleaned her spectacles, and each move was accompanied by a soulful sigh. I didn’t ask her anything, I just waited. Finally, after another gut-wrenching sigh, she said: “I didn’t sleep hardly a wink last night.”

I was supposed to ask why, so I did.

“Thinking about poor Barney. He was always so careful at crossings. And his eyesight was so good—”

“Then how do you explain the accident?”

“He must have been, you know, despondent. He liked Mart a lot, and he never got over finding him dead underneath the tractor.”

I felt a chill climb my body; I’d forgotten about Barney finding Mart’s body. I must have gone pale, because Ethel asked me what was wrong.

“I was wondering,” I said. “Did Barney mention to you that he’d found anything there, or seen anything?”

Ethel looked puzzled. “I’d have to think …”

“Well, think then.”

“Why do you want me to think about that?”

“You mentioned that Bernice might have been murdered. Did you ever think your husband might have been?”

Ethel’s eyes went wide and round behind the glasses. “Velda! What a terrible thing to say! I won’t hear another word.” And she wouldn’t. She got busy cleaning out the meat cooler and didn’t raise her head until I left. I didn’t particularly want to go home, but Curt knew my schedule and that’s where he’d expect to find me.

I found nothing to do in the house. I would have gone riding but I didn’t dare in case Curt called or came by. I was going through all the hardships of a clandestine affair and having none of the fun.

Four o’clock came, and a phone call. Curt’s voice said: “Jamboree tomorrow at one p.m.”

“What—?”

But he hung up even before I finished the first word. I replaced the receiver with annoyance. Jamboree. What kind of crypticism was that? I puzzled for five minutes, then remembered that Boy Scout conventions were called jamborees. Of course, Curt wanted me to meet him in the Boy Scout cabin….

At noon next day Ethel came in tight-lipped and hollow-eyed. “I’m quitting, Mrs. Bayrd.”

“Ethel, what’s the matter?”

Sincerity was evident from the tears in her eyes. “There’s no need to talk me out of it, I won’t stay in this town another minute. I’m going over to Franklin and live with my sister. She’s alone in the house and she’s been wanting me to come for a long time.”

“Well, of course, if that’s what you want. But why?”

“There’s something bad going on in this town. Don’t ask me, because I won’t tell you.”

But it was not Ethel’s nature to be silent. In the process of getting her things together—I did persuade her to work just one more afternoon—she said that around midnight she’d gotten a phone call. No words were spoken; just a man’s voice imitating a train whistle, then laughing. Next morning she’d found a toy train on her doorstep. It had come from a child’s playpen next door, and had frightened Ethel to death. “… Just think of the man out there, putting that train on my doorstep … lurking around all night watching and waiting. I couldn’t stay another night….”

I mentioned that this proved there was something strange about her husband’s death. Why didn’t she go to the sheriff? She gave me a hard, narrow look and said: “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Barney’s dead and that’s it. Being alone you learn you can depend on nobody but yourself. My mind tells me to forget it and that’s what I’ll do. Whatever you’re doing, don’t bring me into it. If you do—” her voice became plaintive, lost and weepy. “I’m not a young woman, Velda. I just want him to let me live in peace, that’s all …”

I left before she started crying on my shoulder. I went out to the lake, parked the car in the same hiding place but approached the cabin from above.

A hundred yards away I sat down behind a clump of buckbrush and waited for Curt to appear below I’d been there ten minutes when a pair of hands seized my shoulders and jerked me backwards. I arched my back and started to kick when I saw Curt’s face grinning down at me.

“Just thought I’d give you a little lesson in camouflage. Don’t try to hide in vegetation while you’re wearing a blue dress.”

Speaking of dresses made me aware that mine had balled up around my thighs. I sat up and pulled it down over my legs. Curt brushed off my back and I could smell pipe tobacco on his breath.

“I thought the killer had me,” I said.

“Then you should have screamed,” he said. “Best weapon a woman’s got is her voice. If you’re grabbed, let out the loudest, most blood-curdling screech you can. That usually startles a man enough to make him lose his hold, then you can run.”

“Where I grew up a scream didn’t do any good. We lived a mile from any neighbors. What’s that?”

He’d sat down beside me and pulled out a newspaper clipping. “Front page of the latest county paper. This item here interests me.”

A good part of the front page was devoted to Sandy’s death, but almost half a column concerned a burglary of the sheriff’s office, written in the tongue-in-cheek manner which journalists always use when the police are victims of crime.

IS HIS FACE RED?

A burglary of the courthouse last Sunday night left an embarrassed sheriff seeking an acrobatic burglar who entered the sheriff’s office through a third-story window. The sheriff believed it was a prank by a group of boys. Items stolen were:

1. Kit of burglar tools taken from traveler from Minneapolis.

2. Bogus check signed U. Ben Hadde, made out to proprietor of Eat-Rite Cafe.

3. Twenty-two caliber bullet taken from sheriff’s arm, received during arrest of auto thief thirteen years ago.

4. Photographic file accrued during the sheriff’s 28-year term of office.

5. Fragment of safe blown open at Farmer’s Credit Company.

6. Six shares of stock in Reliable Oil Company, a nonexistent firm, which were purchased by various county residents.

7. Assorted pornography impounded from prisoners.

8. Wanted poster for John Dillinger which had hung in office since 1933.

9. Assorted knives, blackjacks, knuckle-dusters and instruments of mayhem lifted from combatants during various peace disturbances.

I looked at Curt. “What does it mean?”

“Item four is the important one, you can forget the rest. I wanted those photos. The one of your sister’s body would have been there, so would Mart’s and Bernice’s and … hell, everybody else I’m interested in. I was trying to figure out a way to get them but the killer beat me to it. Taking that other stuff was a blind, to make it look like a prank.” He sighed and folded the clipping. “Well, at least I’ve got him busy covering up his tracks. One of these days I’ll catch him at it.” He looked at me. “Anything new?”

“My free afternoons are shot to hell for awhile,” I said. “Ethel quit this morning.”

When I told him why, Curt looked thoughtful. “I think I see his game. It fits what Gil told me.”

“What?”

“He got a call last night, man said it wasn’t healthy to work for Curt Friedland, then hung up. Gil called the central switchboard but they had no record of the call.”

I frowned. “How could that be?”

“With our old-fashioned party line you can hook onto the line somewhere out in the country and call a person without going through the switchboard. You know how you call others on your line without going through central.”

“Yes, but … do you believe Gil?”

He looked at me. “Why not?”

“Well … there’s his reputation with women, and the fact that he knew where Mart was working, where Barney was fishing, and so on…. Besides, he wears about size twelve shoes.”

Curt lit his pipe in a preoccupied manner. “I made those casts, by the way. The indentation could have been made by a 220-pound man—or by a 160-pound man carrying a 60-pound load.”