“Well, we’re wasting time here. We know he’s around somewhere, so he’s probably broke into one of the others. And we got to search all them shrimp boats.”
Roy climbed out the window, and I heard them drive away. I felt limp as I walked slowly into the living room and collapsed on the couch. When I crushed out what was left of the cigarette I saw it had burned blisters on my fingers.
Two
In about twenty minutes they came back. There was a little comfort in knowing I had anticipated them on that one. They walked around the house trying the windows they had forgotten the first time. I could hear their footsteps and the murmur of their voices, but I couldn’t make out anything they said. They drove away.
I smoked another cigarette and tried to think. I didn’t have a chance. The whole area would be saturated with police now that they knew they had me pinned down in this small town. But maybe I could stay in here and out-wait them. I had food and a warm place to sleep. If I could remain hidden long enough to convince them I must have got out of the area, they might relax. But then what? Where was I going, and what was I going to do? There was no answer, and thinking about it made my head hurt.
The blanket was a nuisance; it kept flapping open. I found a pair of kitchen shears, cut a hole in the middle of it for my head, and put it on like a poncho. In one of the drawers in the kitchen I found some heavy cotton cord to gather it about me at the waist. It wasn’t so bad that way, but I had to start trying to get my clothes dry. I lighted the gas heater and brought in some more of the cord for a clothes line. When I had it strung up in the corner above the heater, I wrung out the clothes in the bathtub and draped them over it. The shoes I put nearby on the floor. My wallet was a soggy ruin. I took the money out and spread it across the top of the desk to dry. It came to one hundred and seventy dollars.
Remembering the radio then, I went over and turned up the gain just enough to hear the station with my ear against the loudspeaker. It was playing some Dixieland jazz. When the record stopped, the disk jockey spieled a commercial and then gave the time. It was nine forty-five. I wound my watch and set it. The music began again. I tried some of the other stations, but there was no news program. Maybe there’d be one at ten o’clock. I switched it off.
The bookshelves were just to the left of the radio. I stood looking at them, and then noticed with surprise that all the books in the top two rows were by the same writer, someone named Suzy Patton. There were at least a hundred of them. They were novels, apparently, in colorful dust jackets. They seemed to be new and untouched, as if they were on the shelves in a bookstore. I started taking them down at random and glancing at them, and I saw they were the same six novels translated into a great many different languages. I could recognize Spanish, French, and Italian, and what I thought was Swedish or Norwegian, but there were some I’d never seen before. They all had the same type of dust jacket, running largely to luscious girls with a great deal of cleavage, bustle, and hoop skirt, and dashing types of men in Confederate uniforms. Patton? Suzy Patton? The name was familiar, but I didn’t recall having ever read one of the books; I didn’t care much for historical novels. But this must be her cottage. I couldn’t think of any other reason why all these foreign editions would be stored here.
It was almost ten. I switched on the radio again and hunkered down with my ear against the speaker grill. This time I found a news program. The first half of it was all Washington and Cape Canaveral, and another blizzard in the East. The stock market had opened irregularly lower. “And now for the local news,” the announcer continued. Two people were killed in a freeway crash. Some screwball had tried to hold up a branch bank with a water pistol. The Mayor was laid up with Asian flu. Somebody didn’t like the schools. Somebody else thought the schools were in great shape. Then I tensed up. Here it was.
“According to a bulletin just received, the intensive manhunt for Russell Foley, seaman from this area, has been localized this morning in the vicinity of Carlisle, on the Gulf coast some fifty miles west of Sanport. Police report a brown hat similar to the one Foley was wearing when last seen, and bearing the initials R.F., was found near the railroad station in Carlisle just after dawn, together with tracks and long skid marks in the mud beside the right-of-way, indicating he had leaped from a moving freight train. Police believe he is almost certainly hiding out somewhere in the town. All exits from the area have been closed by roadblocks set up by local police, Sheriff’s Department officers, and the Highway Patrol.
“Foley is sought for questioning in connection with the slaying last night of Charles L. Stedman, Sanport detective, during a savage fight in Stedman’s apartment. Police, summoned by occupants of an adjoining apartment, arrived just minutes after Stedman’s assailant had left the building. When they received no answer to their knocks, they forced the door and found Stedman dead of a knife wound. The assailant, allegedly recognized as Foley by two other tenants in the building, made his way to a bar in the next block, but escaped by way of a rear exit a few moments later.
“Foley, third mate of the Southlands Oil Company tanker Jonathan Dancy, was formerly a tenant in the same building. His estranged wife, Denise Foley, is believed to be in Reno, obtaining a divorce. When last seen he was wearing a brown gabardine suit, white shirt, brown striped tie, and the brown hat believed to be that found near the railroad tracks in Carlisle. He is described as being twenty-seven years old, six-foot-one, one hundred and ninety pounds, with coppery red hair, and blue eyes. The police are convinced his face and hands will still bear bruises and cuts suffered in the fight which preceded the stabbing.”
That was all. I turned off the radio, feeling sick. There was no description of the knife or whatever it was he was stabbed with, and no mention of anyone else at all. It had to be somebody who was already in the apartment and knew the back way out, down the service stairs, but I hadn’t seen anybody else or even any sign of anybody. Losing my head and running when I learned he was dead had been stupid—there was no doubt of that—but it hadn’t really made it any worse. It couldn’t be any worse.
I went out into the kitchen and poured another drink of whisky. Then fatigue, exposure, and twelve straight hours of running and being afraid hit me all at once. I grabbed another blanket, and the minute I lay down on the studio couch I melted and ran all over it. When I awoke it was still raining and gusts of wind were shoving at the house. There was about the same amount of light in the room, and for a moment I thought I’d been asleep for only a few minutes. Then I looked at my watch and saw it was after three. I was sweaty and tangled in the blankets as if I’d been thrashing and turning. I was just reaching for a cigarette when I went tense all over, listening. It was the sound of a car door being shut.
Had they come back to prowl around some more? I sprang off the couch and slipped across to the front window. Pulling back the drape a fraction of an inch, I peered out and felt the skin tighten up between my shoulder-blades. It wasn’t the police; it was worse. The car was a blue Oldsmobile, and it was stopped in front of the garage.
There was nowhere I could hide, and I couldn’t run, with nothing on but a blanket. There was nothing I could do but stand there helplessly and watch. No one was in the car, but I could hear the rattle of the hasp as the driver unlocked the garage. Then she came suddenly into view, a tall woman in a dark coat, holding a plastic raincoat over her head and shoulders. She seemed to sway slightly, as if leaning against the wind, as she opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel. One of the doors blew shut, and she had to get out again and prop it open with something. She got back in and drove into the garage.