“Ronnie,” Lisa cried, “be careful! They’re all high!”
Ronnie barely heard her. His foot was hard on the accelerator again. This time he cut sharply around the Caddy, giving the driver no time to slide over. For a few seconds they raced hood to hood. The shower of jeers grew to a howling shriek that faded and died as the Jag left the Caddy behind. A mile down the highway Ronnie began to ease off the accelerator. He glanced at Lisa. She was wiping her face with a handkerchief.
“They hurt you!” he cried.
She shook her head. “It’s only beer—” She paused and sniffed of the handkerchief she’d been using to sponge her face. “—No, it’s whisky. Can you imagine — kids like that? I’ll bet the driver wasn’t over fifteen.”
“I should have run him off the road,” Ronnie said.
“Oh, Ronnie, what if the police—?”
Ronnie pulled his foot off the pedal and watched the needle dip to a legal speed. Lisa was right. They were eloping to Vegas, and they were minors. A scrape with the police would mean a call back to Desert Bend and two irate families messing up everything. Nothing was worth that risk. When the Caddy roared down on them again, Ronnie slowed and let it pass. A second invitation to race was ignored until the kids gave up in disgust and roared on. Only then did Ronnie resume speed.
It was several miles farther along that Lisa cried out. Ronnie had glimpsed a sign “Gila Fork” off to his right. Small towns could be speed traps. He began to slow, and then, suddenly, something was happening up ahead. He wasn’t sure what it was — a dog on the pavement, perhaps. He yanked the wheel of the Jag to the left.
“Ronnie—”
Lisa didn’t scream. Her cry was strange — almost frightened. Ronnie looked at her. Her face had gone white. He glanced at the rear-view mirror, and then two things occurred simultaneously. The first was the way time stopped for an instant — the instant required to see the woman lying on the highway; the second was the way his foot turned to lead on the accelerator.
That was the way it had happened — not the way Lisa said. But she was screaming now. The sound of her voice pulled Ronnie back to the present.
“Ronnie, don’t let them take us out of here! Don’t let that mob take us anywhere!”
And the man named Matt was leering in his face like something out of a nightmare.
“I say take them over to the mortuary to see what they’ve done!”
A murmur of assent rose up behind him until Ronnie understood why Lisa was so afraid. Maddened people did mad things. The sheriff’s office had become a sanctuary he had to protect.
“I didn’t do anything!” he yelled. “All you have to go on is this old man’s word, and I say he’s a liar. He can’t prove anything!”
For an instant his shout pulled back the anger. He looked at Lisa. He was beginning to feel like a man again. And then Matt finished everything.
“Is that so?” he said, against the quiet “What about that broken glass on the highway?”
Ronnie’s head swung back to Matt.
“And what about the broken lens in your right headlamp?”
“What?”
“Yes, what? What about it, murderer? Tommy, I say we take these kids over to the mortuary and see if we can shock some truth out of them.”
“No!” Lisa cried.
“Right now!” Matt shouted.
“No! Ronnie, don’t just sit there! Tell them. Tell them the truth! Tell them that you killed that woman!”
Ronnie heard her. She was a total stranger now, but he heard hen She was a girl with a face twisted with fear, thinking of only one thing — her safety. Her own precious safety. Behind her was Matt’s ugly face, and beside him was the deputy with his greedy hand itching for the gun that hung inches from his fingers. There it was, all laid out for him with Lisa’s voice, no longer sweet and promising, still screaming in his ears.
“Tell them, Ronnie! Tell them!”
Suddenly Ronnie was on his feet.
“All right!” he yelled. “I killed her. I ran over that woman on the highway and killed her! Now leave us alone... leave us alone!”
After he signed the confession, Ronnie was left alone for about two hours. He was exhausted, and so he slept. When the deputy awakened him, the sky had turned black outside the windows. He was taken to the front office where Sheriff Thompson was talking earnestly to two state troopers and an officious-looking man who was scanning the confession. Seated beside the sheriff’s desk was Lisa. She looked pale and sick.
“Ronnie,” Sheriff Thompson said, “this is Mr. Winters from the District Attorney’s office.”
Winters peered at Ronnie through thick-lensed glasses.
“Were you coerced into signing this confession?” he asked.
Ronnie hesitated. He looked at the sheriff, then at the deputy.
“Were you abused — maltreated? Were you subjected to physical violence?”
“No, sir,” Ronnie said.
“You were panicked, is that it?”
Ronnie glanced at Lisa. She stared at her hands in her lap.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“All right, Thompson. Let him go.”
Ronnie turned toward the sheriff, bewildered.
“What happened?” he asked.
Sheriff Thompson unlocked his desk and took out Ronnie’s personal belongings.
“A car full of half-drunken kids were picked up about an hour ago,” he said. “They were driving an old Caddy. The right front fender was dented with particles of blood and hair ground into the dent. The right front lens was broken, and the glass fragments matched those found on the highway near Mrs. Cooley’s body. The fragments from your headlamp don’t.”
Ronnie’s mind was suddenly racing. The wild kids in the Caddy — they must have smashed his headlamp with one of those bottles. But that still left one thing unexplained.
“Matt Cooley—” he said.
The sheriff handed him his car keys.
“Yes,” he said bitterly, “Matt Cooley. A man suffering from grief and shock can make an awful fool of himself. He wanted to hurt you because he had been hurt. He wanted the comfort of thinking he was somehow avenging his wife’s death. Try to think of it that way, son. It’s always easy to make ourselves believe what it’s comfortable to believe.”
Driving home, Ronnie had plenty of time to think about that. He didn’t mention going on to Vegas. Lisa didn’t mention it either — or anything else, until he was depositing her at her father’s driveway.
“Ronnie,” she said, “I only begged you to confess because I was afraid for you. I didn’t want you hurt.”
That was what she wanted to believe. If he hadn’t loathed her so much, Ronnie might have felt sorry for her.
“You might have stood by me,” he said.
“But, Ronnie—”
“You might have said, ‘No, we didn’t hit that woman!’ and if I started to break down and say that we did, you could have said, ‘No, no, no!’ until I couldn’t break!”
And then it hit Ronnie, suddenly, that a woman who really loved a man would fight for him — even if fighting for him meant fighting the weakness in him, instead of just saying meekly: “Yes, sir.”
He couldn’t explain that to Lisa. He gunned the Jaguar and headed for home.
Hard Sell
Craig Rice
“Malone,” the voice said, “you’ve got to help me.”
The little lawyer waggled a finger at Joe the Angel and sat impassive while the bartender poured another double shot of rye. Then he swallowed the rye, reflecting thoughtfully that clients were always turning up when you needed them the least. “I don’t have to help you,” he said without bothering to turn around. “My office rent is paid a month in advance. My secretary is paid a week in advance. My bar tab is paid several drinks in advance. So go away.”