The Scarred Man (3 page)

    "I really don't think you ought to bother him now, Sergeant."

    "You said I could have five minutes, Doc."

    "I'm not sure you appreciate the extent of this man's injuries."

    "Yes, I do, but it's just because of those injuries that we've got to talk to him."

    "Why won't it wait?"

    "Because there's some evidence that he wasn't alone at the time of the accident. We checked out the bike rental place, and they said there was a woman with him at the time he rented the machine. Also we found additional tire marks around the scene of the accident, tires with a different tread from the ones that belonged to the machine he was riding."

    "Well, now you're talking about police work, and I have no interest in that. My concern is entirely for the welfare of this patient."

    "Well, now that's what I wanted to ask you, Doc. Do you think his injuries can be accounted for solely by a fall off a bike?"

    "That would be impossible to say. I would have to know the speed at which he was traveling and the full circumstances of the accident. Even then I don't suppose I could answer you with any certainty."

    "But you can see why it's important that I talk to him. We checked out the address he gave the rental place and found it's a boatyard up the Miami River. Seems like he's been living there on a boat with his wife. Nobody's seen the wife since yesterday when they took off together on the bike. Now if she was with him at the time of the accident, we want to know where she is now and what became of her."

    "Well I don't think you'll get anything very coherent out of him. He's been pumped right up to the gills with pain killers."

    "We've got to try anyway, Doc."

    "I'll leave you to it, Sergeant, but remember, not more than five minutes. This man is still in critical condition."

    "Anything you say, Doc."

    I had drifted off into a world of my own, a world of sweet breezes and serene seas. It seemed to me that I was sailing again on
Compass Rose
, the little bug-eye ketch I had owned many years before. We were hard on the wind, and she was sailing herself, beautifully balanced, a ladylike little vessel. Stacey was on the foredeck. She had taken off her shirt and her bare breasts were the color of honey. My heart gave a great lurch, and I said in a strangled voice, "Stacey."

    Someone bent over me and said, "Is that your wife?"

    I opened my eyes and saw a man in uniform. He had a round red face and faded blue eyes.

    He said again, "Stacey. Is that your wife?"

    "Yes."

    "She was with you when you had the accident?"

    "Accident?"

    "Yeah, when you fell off the bike out in the Glades."

    It was beginning to come back to me, the nightmare scene, the wind, the rain, the lights, the three men.

    "Stacey!"

    "What happened to her?" asked the cop.

    "They…"

    "Who?"

    "They… grabbed her."

    "Who grabbed her, Mr. Shaw? Was there someone out there with you?"

    I was trying to push myself up, but my arms were without strength. A woman's voice said sternly, "There now, see what you've done. You've upset the saline solution. We'll have to reinsert the tube. I think your five minutes are up, Sergeant."

    "Just one minute more, nurse."

    "Must I call the doctor?"

    I was muttering wildly.

    "Can't you see that you're upsetting the patient? We'll have to give him another injection now. Please leave at once."

    "Okay, okay."

    Something pricked my arm. The lights went out.

    Morning sunlight dappled the hospital room. Lights flashed, bells tinkled their muted messages. I struggled against the heaviness of the drugs that had been pumped into my veins. A man's voice said, "We've found your wife, Mr. Shaw."

    "You've found Stacey?"

    "That's right, sir."

    "Where?"

    "Not far from where it happened. We were out there all night with lights looking for her."

    My heart thumped, "Is she all right?"

    "Considering everything, she's not in too bad a shape."

    "What do you mean?"

    The sergeant hesitated. "Well… I guess you know what happened to her."

    I didn't say anything.

    "Do you, Mr. Shaw?"

    "Yes."

    "Well, there's that of course, and the fact that she was wandering around out there in the swamp for more than thirty-six hours. Exposure, mosquito bites, shock. You might say she's kind of delirious right now."

    "Did they… hurt her?"

    "Well, now they sure didn't do her any good. If you mean did they cut her up or break any bones or anything, the answer is no. She's all right that way."

    "When can I see her?"

    "That will be up to the doc, I guess. From what he tells me they've got her under pretty heavy sedation. I don't guess she'd hardly know you anyway. Better just try and relax until they give you the okay. What we need right now is some kind of a description of those three men. So far we haven't been able to get anything out of your wife. We sent out a BOLO for three guys on bikes in that general area, but of course we've got to have something a lot more specific than that if we want to do any good. What I need is a description of each one."

    The nightmare scene flashed before my eyes again. The lights, the helmeted figures, Stacey's screams, the impact of the chain.

    "There's nothing," I said.

    "Nothing?"

    "They wore helmets and face masks."

    "How were they dressed?"

    "I could hardly tell. I was half blind from the lights and the dust."

    "Jeans?"

    "Yes, I guess so."

    "Leather jackets?"

    "I think two of them wore jackets. One had on some kind of vest."

    "Any distinguishing marks? Tattoos?"

    "I don't know. It all happened too fast."

    "What about motorcycle club insignia? Did they have anything on the backs of their jackets? Like Hell's Angels or something?"

    "I couldn't tell. They kept the lights in my eyes all the time."

    He shrugged. "All right, Mr. Shaw. You haven't given us much to go on, but we'll do the best we can. In case you remember anything more, you can always reach me at this number."

    "You'll keep me advised?"

    "As soon as we turn up anything, we'll let you know."

    

    

    A week passed before they let me out of bed long enough to go to see her. She could of course have come to visit me during that time, but when they had asked her if she wanted to she refused. The attending psychiatrist talked it over with me, but I didn't require his explanation in order to understand the situation. The damage in my case was to the flesh, but Stacey had suffered wounds that were far deeper. The doctor's Freudian bandaids hadn't stopped the bleeding.

    She looked old, a little old lady in a hospital bed. Her cheeks were hollow. Her body hardly seemed to disturb the smooth rigidity of the bed, as if there were only the disembodied head on the pillow.

    I made no move to touch her. I knew instinctively that she was not yet ready to be touched.

    She said, in a very small voice, "Your face…"

    "It's nothing. They leave the bandages on just to create an effect."

    She shook her head. "Tell me the truth."

    "Smashed cheek bone."

    "Will there be a scar?"

    "Of sorts. The Heidelberg look. Very distinguished. If it's too bad they can do wonders now with plastic surgery. Make me look like a new man. Who do you fancy, Gregory Peck? Woody Allen? You name it."

    My effort to achieve a lighthearted tone was going over like a lead balloon. Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her face to the wall.

    "Stacey," I said.

    "What?"

    "Look at me."

    She shook her head.

    "Please."

    "Go away."

    When I saw it was no use I left, closing the door softly behind me.

    

    

    "The trouble is, Mr. Shaw, we haven't really got a damn thing to go on," Sergeant Bertram complained.

    Despite the air conditioning there was a light film of perspiration on the sergeant's forehead. He mopped it with a clean handkerchief. Everything about him looked artificial, from his teeth to his knife-edged dacron suit. I wondered if his hair was his own. An entire man made of permanent press. He didn't look much like a detective. Where was the rumpled look you saw in films and on television? This one was altogether too cool. He would have ulcers before he was forty.

    "No physical descriptions," he went on. "No names. No description of the machines. No tag numbers. You've got to try harder to remember something, Mr. Shaw."

    "I've told you all there is."

    "What about the first time you saw them, when they went by you on the road?"

    "It was dark; there was dust and wind in my eyes; they went by like hell."

    "You sure you didn't see a tag number then?"

    "Absolutely."

    He shrugged. "Then until we get some kind of a break there isn't much we can do."

    "Why not start with the local gangs? Round up every one of them for questioning. I keep reading about all these Hell's Angels."

    "You're a lawyer, Mr. Shaw. You know it isn't that easy to get evidence. Suppose we round up every motorcycle gang in the state and grill them all. So they deny everything. Let's assume that half of them are guilty of rape or worse. Without identification what have we got to go on?

    And how do we know the people we're after are from around here anyway? They might have come from Georgia or Alabama or Louisiana or God knows where. They drift down here in the winter along with the other snow birds, but they're just as apt to drift out again."

    "Then you're telling me it's hopeless."

    "Not exactly. We've issued the necessary bulletins. We might get an unexpected break somewhere. Somebody might get drunk or stoned and begin to talk. They like to boast about a thing like that."

    "It isn't much of a chance."

    "I know. About all we have to go on is that one of them is pretty badly gashed."

    "Gashed?"

    "By your wife. She took a good chunk of skin and hair out of one of them. Didn't she tell you?"

    "No." How could I tell him that Stacey wouldn't even look at me?

    "When we found her the next day she still had his hair in her fist." He must have seen something in my face that made him say, "You sure you want to hear about this, Mr. Shaw?"

    "Yes."

    "Nobody knows exactly what happened to her that night. She says she doesn't remember. That may be."

    "What do you mean, may be?"

    He gave me that look again. "It may be that she just doesn't want to talk about it."

    "All right."

    "It's a pretty painful subject. Someday when she gets over it she may be able to remember, and when that time comes we may get something more useful out of her."

    "Did she just wander around after they were gone?" I said.

    "As far as we can make out, yes. She was either out of her head, or she was trying to get help for you and got lost. Anyway she left the road and got down into the mangroves and water. She was damned lucky a snake or gator didn't get her." I said nothing. My face was itching like hell under the bandage.

    "You all right, Mr. Shaw?"

    "Yes."

    "You look a little pale."

    "So she wandered around in the swamp."

    "Well, yes. She was pretty badly scratched by the mangroves. She was mostly naked. When they were… working her over…"

    For a cop Bertram had a nice sense of delicacy. He could hardly bring himself to use the word "rape" in front of me. "… they tore off most of her clothes…"

    White legs tossing in the glare of the lights. Screaming.

    "She was found by a Negro family about five miles from where it happened. Being a Sunday morning, they had come out to go fishing. Actually, it was one of the kids who spotted her first and called his old man. They put a blanket around her and bundled her into their pickup and took her out to the Shell station near Forty Mile Bend. Maybe you remember the place."

    I shook my head.

    "Anyway her fist was still clenched. When we opened it up, we found blond hair in it and bits of skin and blood."

    "So one of them was blond?"

    "It seems that way. And she took a good chunk out of him. The first thing we did was notify every filling station and bar for a hundred miles along the Trail both ways to look out for three punks on choppers, one of them blond and badly scratched."

    "And?"

    "So far nothing."

    "All it proves is they didn't stop for gas or a drink."

    He nodded.

    "What about before it happened?"

    "We thought of that too. We've had State Police cars as far west as Naples and south to the Keys asking about three guys on bikes. If anybody saw them, they won't admit to it."

    "Why wouldn't they?"

    "The kind of places guys like that would be apt to go into don't like to talk to the police. They don't particularly like to help us on a thing like this."

    I didn't say anything.

    He stood up. "There's no use worrying yourself about it, Mr. Shaw. I mean it's our job. We'll get them eventually."