“Oh, him,” I say, distracted. “I meant Oscar.” I look at O’Connor, trying not to see poor Oscar. “But Buddy really is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” O’Connor says. “And after you killed him...”
Flashback 27
Manic, wired, Jack emerged quietly from the main front door of the house and walked around toward the garage. When he was almost there, a security man approached him out of the darkness, saying, “Everything all right, Mr. Pine?”
Jack screamed in surprise and shock, then recovered, gabbled a second, and at last said, “What? All right? Of course, everything’s all right. Naturally everything’s all right. Why wouldn’t everything be all right?”
“No reason, sir,” the security man said.
“I’m just going for a little drive, that’s all,” Jack said, straining to act, to perform, naturalness and calm. “Be off with you now,” he said, as though casually. “Go on to bed.”
“I’m supposed to patrol down here, Mr. Pine,” the security man said.
“I don’t want you to patrol!” Jack snapped at him. “I’m the boss around here, and if I don’t want you to patrol you don’t patrol!”
“Yes, sir,” the security man said.
“I don’t need patrols!” Jack yelled. “Not tonight! Look how nice everything is! It’s the full moon!”
“Yes, sir,” the security man said.
“Go to bed, or you’re fired!”
“Good night, sir,” the security man said.
The security man went away. Jack went on to the garage, opened the first door, went inside, and a minute later backed out the Mercedes. Giggling at the wheel, he backed the Mercedes in a great loop, off the drive and over the lawn and through the roses and right up to the wall of the house, stopping directly in front of an east parlor window, the rear bumper of the car just touching the wall of the house.
Jack climbed out from behind the wheel, went to the rear of the car, opened the trunk. Then he went around the car, slipping at one point, falling to his knees, recovering, using the front of the car to brace himself so he could stand again, then hurrying on.
He went back through the front door, down the long hall, and into the east parlor, where the thing lay on the floor, drying blood in random blobs and lines disrupting the intricate pattern of the carpet. Jack stepped over the thing and opened the window and looked out at the rear of the Mercedes, the open trunk just below him. “Good,” he muttered, grinning. “Still there. Good.”
He went back to the thing on the floor, grabbed it by the wrists, dragged it across the floor. The mess in the room he could take care of tomorrow. Every other problem could be taken care of tomorrow. There was only one thing that absolutely and positively had to be dealt with tonight.
And Jack knew how to deal with it.
“I was doing it again last night,” I say, remembering now at last, in awe of that previous self, that mad, busy, energetic, straining, scheming previous self. “All over again.”
“That’s right, Mr. Pine,” O’Connor says. “You followed the same method for disposing of the body as you did so many years ago with Wendy. You stuffed the body in the trunk of the car.”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Wendy’s final resting place was deep water.”
“The lake.”
“You dropped her there, in her father’s car, from high on a cliff.”
“Yes.”
“That was the pattern you repeated last night.”
I rub my face with both hands. I’m so tired. No matter what you do, you can never do enough. I say, “I still only get bits and pieces of it. I was so stoned last night, I couldn’t... I don’t even know how I got home.”
“Oh, you had no trouble,” O’Connor says, mysteriously.
But there’s another mystery, I suddenly realize. Sitting up straighter, frowning at O’Connor, I say, “Wait a minute. I was wasted. I don’t remember a thing. And nobody else was there. If I dumped Buddy and the car in the ocean, how come you know all about it?”
“Because it wasn’t the ocean, Mr. Pine,” he tells me. “You’re right, you were very heavily influenced by drugs last night.”
“Not the ocean? But—” I try to remember. I get bits of it, all so similar to Wendy: the car heaving in neutral with the weight on the accelerator, the gleaming Mercedes trunk in the bright moonlight, the moonlight sparkling off the water far below... “It’s all there,” I say, trying to piece it together. “Car — water — edge of the cliff—”
“Edge, all right,” O’Connor says, “but not of any cliff. And in the state you were in, you couldn’t tell one body of water from another. Besides, you do hate to leave the property.”
Hate to leave the property? No trouble getting home? For the first time today, I turn full about and look over at the swimming pool.
Frogmen and scuba divers are standing there, beside the pool. Something lies on the lawn under a sheet. A police-department wrecker, its back to the pool, is slowly winching my beautiful Mercedes back up onto dry land.
The Mercedes. In the swimming pool.
I look at O’Connor. “Did I really do that?” I say.
“Yes, sir.”
What could I say? “Silly me,” I said.
O’Connor gets to his feet, putting his pen and notepad away, smoothing out the gray knees of his trousers. “Shall we go, Mr. Pine?” he asks.
Hoskins bows toward me. “Shall I pack your bag, sir?”
I look again at the Mercedes, then at O’Connor. “Good idea, Hoskins,” I say.
“For how long a stay, sir?”
“Oh, about twelve years, Hoskins, I would guess.”
“Very good, sir. May I help you to your feet?”
“Excellent, Hoskins.”
He helps me to my feet. I modestly close the robe about myself. Glancing over at the pool, I remember something else; too late. “I forgot to get my lighter back,” I say.
“Ready, Mr. Pine?” asks O’Connor.