He turned dead white. “So I’m a dirty old liar, am I?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you why. You liked her too much. You were jealous of the boys, jealous of your own daughter–”
“You’re a crazy woman, talking like that in front of a stranger, blackening your old man.”
His voice strangled in his throat. His hand flew up as if of its own accord and struck her once, sharply, across the face.
“Don’t, Father.”
I stepped between them, facing Meyer. Emotion shook him the way a terrier shakes a rag. It let go of him suddenly. He collapsed on the davenport, limp as a corpse, but breathing audibly through his mouth.
I stood over him. “Meyer, who killed your daughter?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a thin old voice. “You’re not even sure she’s dead.”
“I’m sure enough. Did you kill her yourself?”
“You’re way off the beam. You’re as crazy as she is. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of Annie’s head.”
“You did once. And I wouldn’t throw words like ‘crazy’ around. They can boomerang.”
“Who you been talking to?”
“A person who knows your background, and what you did to Anne.”
He sat up unsteadily, his head lolling on his furred and wattled neck “That was ten years ago. I was younger then, I didn’t have good control of myself.” His voice swayed heavily into self-pity. “It wasn’t all my fault. She ran around the house without her clothes. Played up to me the same as she did to the others. It got so I couldn’t keep her out of my room. I couldn’t stop myself. You don’t know how it was, being without a woman all those years.”
“Get a crying towel, old man. Don’t blubber to me. A man who did what you did would do murder.”
He shook his head violently from side to side, as if it was encumbered by invisible chickens coming home to roost. “It’s all over, all passed over. I never laid hands on Annie since that time.”
“What about the gun you said you gave her? Was that a straight story, Meyer?”
“Sure it was. Honest to God.” He crossed his chest with his finger, making the gesture seem obscene. “I gave her this old police positive that I had. She was scared of Aquista, see. If anybody killed her, it was Aquista. That stands to reason, don’t it?”
“Who killed Aquista, then?”
“Not me. If you think I knocked off my own driver, you’re nuts.” His red-veined gaze rose to my face and hardened. “Listen, mister, I don’t like this. I don’t like anything about this. You’re supposed to be working for me.”
“I resign.”
“That suits me down to the ground. Now get to hell out of my house.”
I started for the door.
“Wait a minute, you owe me a hundred dollars. I want it back.”
“Sue me.”
He tried to get to his feet and fell back onto the davenport. His breathing was fast and loud. His limbs jerked convulsively. I looked around for Hilda.
The screen door slammed.
Chapter 20
I went out after her, down the veranda steps, across the uncut lawn. She looked back and saw me coming and started to run. At the edge of the vacant lot her feet got tangled in the rank crabgrass. She fell on her knees and huddled there, her hair veiling her face, her white nape bare to some unknown fatal ax.
I lifted her to her feet and kept one arm around her to steady her. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I can’t stay here with him. I’m afraid of him.” Her breasts moved against me like wild things caught in a net. “He’s an evil man, and he hates me. He’s hated us both from the time we were born. I remember the day Anne was born. My mother was dying, but he was angry with her. He wanted a son. He’d be glad to see me dead too. I was a fool to come back here.”
“Why did you leave your husband Mrs. Church?”
“He threatened me. He threatened to kill me if I set foot outside his house. But anything would be better than staying here.”
She looked up at the blind house-front and across the vacant lot strewn with its rusty car-frames. Beyond it, in the street, a black sedan turned the corner and stopped at the curb, abruptly. I saw the white Stetson emerge from the driver’s seat.
“Brand.” Her body went soft against my side, as if its bones had dissolved in acid terror.
He came across the vacant lot, walking stiffly on long pistonlike legs. I went to meet him. We faced each other on the narrow path.
“What are you doing with my wife?”
“You’d better ask her.”
“I’m asking you.” His large hands were open at his sides, but they were taut and trembling. “I told you to stay away from her. I also ordered you to drop this case.”
“It didn’t take. I’m on it, and I’m staying.”
“We’ll see about that. If you think you can disregard my orders, push my deputies around, and get away with it–” His teeth bit off the sentence. “I’m giving you a choice right now. Be out of my county in one hour, or stay and face felony charges.”
“The county belongs to you, eh?”
“Stick around and find out.”
“This is where I came in, Church. Every time I run into you, you have a bright new plan for getting me off the case. I’m slow in the mind, but when a thing like this goes on and doesn’t stop, I get a little suspicious. Just a little.”
“I’m not interested in your suspicions.”
“The D. A. ought to be, unless he’s as sour as you are. If your whole county government is sour, I’ll go higher.”
He looked up at the white colloidal sky. “What makes you think you can talk to me like this?”
There was something histrionic in the question. I suspected that his will was bending under pressure, that his integrity was already broken.
“The fact that you’re a phony. You know it. I know it. Your wife knows it.”
A pale line framed his mouth, almost as white and definite as a chalk line. “Are you trying to force me to kill you?”
“You haven’t the stuff.”
His lips stretched, uncovered his teeth, which glinted with gold souvenirs of childhood poverty. His eyes sank and darkened. I watched them for a signal. They shifted. His right shoulder dropped.
I ducked inside of his swing. His fist went by like a blundering bee, stinging my ear in flight. He staggered sideways off balance, open to a left to the jaw or a right to the middle. I let him have the right. His stomach was like a plank under his clothes. He blocked my left with his right forearm and countered with a left of his own. It caught the side of my head and whirled me around.
Hilda Church was crouched at the edge of the lot like a frightened animal. Her eyes were wide and empty, and her mouth was open in a silent scream.
I turned on Church with my face covered. His fists drove in under my elbows and doubled me over. I came up from underneath with an uppercut that turned his face to the sky. His hat fell off. He staggered backwards a few steps and went down. Rolled over and got up and came at me again.
His long left found my stomach, then my nose. Rain-bowed in my streaming vision, he pivoted from the waist and brought his hooked right over. It chopped me down. I got up onto my knees and felt his fist exploded in my face again. It must have opened the gash in my brow. Liquid warmth ran into one of my eyes and turned the daylight red.
I got up and went after him with my head down and bulled inside his left and hammered his body. He dropped his guard. I looped a right at his jaw, felt the pain of the impact electric to my elbow. His dazed profile turned sideways, nimbused with red. I measured him with my left and put my weight behind a short right hook. He went down with his back against the side of a wheelless T-model.