We were past it before I spotted it, however. I had to drive on another mile before I could turn around.
Crestwood Beach proved as promising as it had looked. The beach itself was but a narrow strip of sand, and clustered along its edge were some two dozen modest summer cottages. I noted with satisfaction lights showed in not more than a half dozen.
Parking next to one of the dark cottages, I examined it carefully before getting out of the car. Apparently its owner’s summer vacation had not started yet, for the windows were still boarded up. The cottages either side of it, each a good fifty yards away, were dark also.
I climbed out of the car and told Helena to get out also.
Together we walked the scant fifty feet down to the water. As I had hoped, each of the cottages had its own small boat dock. Nothing much, merely a series of planks laid across embedded steel rods, but adequate for an outboard boat.
“Think you can find this same place alone tomorrow night?” I asked Helena.
“If I have to.”
I pointed out over the calm, moonlit water. “I’ll be out there somewhere in an outboard. I won’t be able to tell one beach from another in the dark, so you’re going to have to signal me with the car lights. We’ll set a time for the first signal, and you blink them twice. Just on and off fast, because we don’t want any of the other cottagers out here to come investigating. Then regularly every five minutes blink them again. Got it?”
“Yes.”
We went back to the car and I drove back under the wooden arch to the main road again. A mile and a half northwest of Crestwood Beach I stopped once more, this time at a sign which read: “Boats for rent.” This sign too was at the entrance to an unpaved road. I followed the road only about fifty yards before coming to the boat livery.
The proprietor was a grizzled old man in his seventies who chewed tobacco. He sat on the screened porch of a small cottage reading a Bible by the light of a Coleman gasoline lantern.
“They’re all taken tonight, mister,” he said as soon as I put my feet on the steps. He shot a stream of tobacco juice at a cuspidor halfway across the porch. “Everybody heard the large-mouths is biting.”
Then he let out a cackle. “Don’t know who starts them rumors. Look at that lake. Calm as glass. They’ll come in with a mess of six-inch perch.” He spat again.
“You booked up for tomorrow night?” I asked through the screen-door.
“Nope.” He got up and opened the door for me.
Walking onto the porch, I said, “Then I’d like to reserve a boat. When’s best to go out?”
“Ain’t much point till it gets dark. If you mean to use live bait, that is. Eight-thirty, nine o’clock.”
I told him I’d be there at nine and paid in advance. The price of a boat and a fifteen-horsepower motor was six dollars, a Coleman lantern fifty cents extra, and I gave him a dollar for a can of night crawlers.
When I got back to the car, Helena asked, “May we eat now?”
I stopped at a roadside eatery and let her have some dinner while I drank two cups of coffee. I hadn’t eaten since noon, but I still couldn’t develop any appetite.
13
By ten the next morning we were downtown at the largest branch of Sears Roebuck. Why criminals ever buy their necessary equipment anywhere else, I can’t imagine. Police records are full of cases where kidnappers were trapped because the paper of the ransom note was traced to some exclusive stationery shop, or murderers were caught because a hammer was traced to some neighborhood hardware store where every customer is remembered. At a place like Sears you are only one of thousands of faces seen by the clerk waiting on you, and even if by some unlikely chance the item you buy is traced back to that particular clerk, the chance of his remembering anything at all about the person who bought it is remote. The chance of it’s being traced that far is even more remote, since identical items are sold across Sears counters all over the country every day.
In the men’s clothing department I bought the cheapest fishing jacket I could find.
In the sporting department I bought a cheap glass casting rod, a three-dollar-and-ninety-five-cent metal and plastic reel, fifty yards of nylon line, a cheap bait box and an assortment of leaders, sinkers, hooks and lures to fill up the bait box. I didn’t intend to use any of it, but it might have excited comment at the boat livery if I had showed up to go fishing without any gear.
I also bought two eight-pound rowboat anchors. I intended to use them.
In the hardware department I bought fifty feet of sash cord. Also to use.
I stowed all of my purchases in the trunk of the convertible.
The rest of the day we simply waited.
At seven thirty in the evening we started the job of disposing of Lawrence Powers’s body. First I transferred my fishing gear, the anchors and the sash cord from the car trunk to the rear seat of the car. The fishing jacket I put on. Then I carefully covered the floor of the trunk with the three burlap bags.
We hadn’t added any ice to the tub since Helena showed me the body, and it had melted away to no more than about twenty-five pounds. I managed to lift the dead man out without spilling ice all over the floor.
The body was stiffened in its prenatal position, the ice apparently having caused it to retain rigor mortis longer than it normally would have. I made no attempt to straighten it out because I would only have had to fold the knees up to the chest again in order to get it into the trunk.
There was little danger of anyone seeing me carry it the one or two steps from the car port door to the trunk, inasmuch as the car itself blocked the view from outside, but I had Helena stand in front of the stall anyway as a lookout.
The body was cold and slippery against my arms and chest as I staggered through the door with it and shoved it into the trunk. When I locked the trunk, I found I was drenched with sweat.
I let Helena drive. It was just nine o’clock when we pulled up across the road from the boat livery. I had Helena co-ordinate her watch with mine.
“I’ll give you a half hour,” I said. “Blink your lights exactly at nine thirty, and then again every five minutes after that until I dock. O.K.?”
“I understand,” she said.
Collecting my fishing gear from the back seat, but leaving the anchors and sash cord, I got out of the car. Helena drove off without a word.
The boat the old man gave me was a flat-bottomed scow about ten feet long. In addition to the motor it contained a pair of oars and a gas can with an extra gallon of gas. The Coleman lantern he furnished had a bolt welded to its bottom which fitted into one of the oarlocks.
I had to wait while he picked two dozen night crawlers from a large box of moss. I didn’t have a use in the world for them, but it would have looked peculiar to go fishing without bait.
When I was settled in the boat, the old man said, “Looks like a good night for bass.”
I looked out over the water, which was as smooth and moonlit as it had been the previous night.
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Just a little choppy.”
He let out a cackle. “Them little six-inch perch is good eating anyway, even if they ain’t much sport. You ought to catch a bushel.”
I started the motor and pulled away while he was still cackling at his own humor.
14
For about a quarter mile I set a course straight out from shore, then swung right and followed the shoreline for what I judged to be about a mile. The water was dotted with lights of other night fishermen, some farther out and some between me and the shore.