“You can’t be very ignorant or you wouldn’t have called it a revolver.”
“I... I thought guns and revolvers were the same.”
“Did you?” The light hadn’t moved off the gun; it was mercilessly steady. “Well, it is a revolver and a very interesting one. Note the ramp built up along the barrel. That’s for more accurate sighting. Know anyone who goes in for target shooting?”
“No.”
He made a sound of disbelief. “The gun’s a common make, a Colt .38. What makes it uncommon is the fancy hand-made grip, and the fact that it’s one of a pair. And the other one of the pair is in Ballard’s study. I saw it there this afternoon.”
She turned away. The ceiling light of the garage was on, and she could see, in sharp contrast to the convertible and its contents, the ordinary items of her everyday existence: her gardening tools, the canvas gloves she wore to protect her hands, the trunkful of woolen clothes she had stored away for the summer, the old bicycle she used sometimes for exercise. They all seemed remote, like the day at the beach with Lewis. It was as if she would never again be able to take up her life where she had left off. The stitch had been dropped, and even if she could return to pick it up, the pattern had already, and inexorably, been changed.
She spoke wearily, “I have a legal right to say nothing.”
“That’s true.”
“I think I’ll — go in now.”
He followed her back into the house. His face was unnaturally red, the face of a man trying to control himself and restrain his anger. He walked the length of the room and back again, slowly, heavily, his full weight on every step.
“Charlotte...”
“You’d better make you report.”
“Not yet. I can hold off for a few more hours. You’ve been away, understand? You’ve been away and you haven’t come back yet.”
“I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d never gone. I wish I’d never met any of you, Violet or Eddie or you or...”
“Take it easy.” He went out into the kitchen and found a bottle of Bourbon and poured her some in a water glass. “Drink it.”
“I don’t want any.”
“Afraid you’ll talk too much? Look, Charlotte, this is no longer a matter of loyalty. It’s a matter of trying to protect yourself from being ruined.”
“I can’t protect myself. They’re there, Voss and Eddie. I can’t get rid of them.”
“I know you can’t.” He put the glass of Bourbon on the coffee table. “But you can minimize the importance of their being found in your garage. As the case stands now, that’s the point the newspapers are going to concentrate on. Double Slaying in Garage of Prominent Physician — they’ll give it the business, and whether you’re guilty or innocent, you’re going to be smeared. You’ll be accused and tried, not by a jury of your peers, but by a couple of newspaper reporters who want a juicy story, a deputy D.A. who likes to have his picture in the paper, several hundred housewives who resent your position as a doctor, a few disgruntled patients, some or your friends who ‘knew it all the time,’ a couple of W.C.T.U. members who saw you drink a beer once in 1943, and the usual assortment of religious cranks, neurotics, sadists... There’s your jury. Like it?”
“No.” Her throat felt raw, as if she’d been chewing glass.
“What we’ve got to do now is to change the emphasis,” Easter said. “Where Voss and O’Gorman are found won’t seem so important if the man who killed them is found first. If he is found and confesses.” He looked at his watch again. “You haven’t much time to decide. Where’s Ballard?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know who his friends are?”
“Some of them.”
“Where would he be likely to hide out?”
“I don’t think he’d be hiding anywhere near here.”
“Use your head,” Easter rasped. “He’s got to be near here. He didn’t drive that car into your garage and intend to leave it there. He intended to come back, to get rid of it But I don’t know when, and time is running out.”
“What am I expected to do?”
“Find him. I’ll give you three hours.”
“What if I can’t?” Her legs and arms felt cold, brittle as twigs.
“Try. You know his habits, his friends, the places he likes to go.”
She hesitated. “If I find him, what will I do?”
“Tell him to stop running, the race is over.”
“Where... where will you be?”
“Me?” His mouth moved in a smile, but his eyes didn’t change. They looked flat and hard as coins. “I’ll be waiting here. If Ballard turns up I wouldn’t want him to get lonesome.”
She knew from his face that that was what he wanted — for Lewis to come for the car, and for him, Easter, to be waiting, like a lion waiting at a watering hole in the certainty that the antelope would turn up. He didn’t expect her to find Lewis; he was only trying to get rid of her so the two of them could meet alone. A trickle of fear ran down her spine. I must get to Lewis first, she thought. No matter what he’s guilty of, I must warn him against Easter.
She looked across the room at Easter. She felt a surge of hatred for him — for his arrogance, his power, his obsession against Lewis. When she passed him on her way to the door, her fists clenched, ready to strike.
He saw them. His smile vanished. With a swift, violent movement he reached out and grabbed her wrists and held them together against his chest with one hand. With his other hand gripping the back of her neck, he leaned down and pressed his mouth against hers.
He let go suddenly, and she fell back a step, holding the back of her hand over her bruised mouth.
“That’s for nothing,” he said. “That’s for no encouragement, no co-operation. That’s for no pretty smiles, no soft looks, nothing.”
“You’re a cheap, rotten...”
“Beat it,” he said quietly. “Find Lover-boy. My patience is wearing thin.”
21
At some time in the past hour a Santa Ana had begun to blow from the desert on the other side of the mountain — a hot, dry, choking wind that harried the trees, hurled the dust down the city streets, swept the people into their houses or into the shelter of doorways where they huddled coughing, shielding their eyes with their hands. Bits of refuse fluttered up and down the road like bold birds, clung convulsively to the windshields of cars for a moment and swooped off again.
The wind was tearing up the city, emptying the streets, stripping the trees, a crazy, confused wind that blew in all directions at once. Charlotte felt that she was a part of it, sharing its wild confusion. She didn’t know where Lewis was or how to find him. She didn’t even know if he was alive.
The moon leered through the leaves of the giant, oaks, veiled, provocative, like a half-told secret: Is he alive? Perhaps, maybe. Where? Somewhere, here or there.
She had no hopes, no plans, but she had to start somewhere. She drove to the building where Lewis had his office. There was a light on the second floor behind the partly closed Venetian blinds. Lewis often worked at night and she had often waited for him, sitting in her car or standing in the entrance hall downstairs pretending to read the directory beside the elevator. H. M. Morris, Electrolysis. Salinda Rental Association. C. Charles Tomlinson, Broker. Ballard and Johnson, Attorneys...
The elevator was locked for the night. An elderly Negro with a white woolly cap of hair was mopping the tiled floor, mopping the same place over and over again, as if his thoughts were far away, dwelling on softer things than tile.
“Hello, Tom.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She knew he didn’t remember her. People walked in and walked out, traded names, traded faces, wore each other’s clothes — so many people they lost their identities in Tom’s mind, and he erased their footprint with his mop.