Dockerty appeared in the doorway, his stone face bleaker than ever. Goddard held a finger to his lips. Dockerty nodded, moved a bit closer. Ellen had stopped trembling. Jay liked the way she felt in his arms. Tall and firm and warm now. And her dark hair, close to his nostrils, had a clean, spiced fragrance.
Rice started talking again, in the stillness of the room. “I had to get those books. Proof of fraud there. And maybe a two-million judgment and a jail term. I... got the idea when I saw... the Shelby girl. About... the same size and shape as Sheila. And she... could talk that same funny way. Worth a chance. But... she said no. Finally said yes when the offer got up to... five thousand and after I explained... Sheila was blackmailing me. I didn’t say... how. Rikerd drove... her to Reno. Anybody seeing her leave would think... it was Sheila. Rikerd took her to Reno. Phoned me it worked but... Shelby woman took box to one of those rooms... studied books... figured it out... The pain is terrible! I’m getting weaker.”
“What did Rikerd do?”
“Crossed me, too. Should... have gone myself. He took books and rented a box of his own... another bank. Shelby woman knew that. He brought her back to... the Inn. She wouldn’t take... money. Said she was... going to cops. Went in and... rubbed tint out. Rikerd waited. Called her out and... argued some more... too quick with his hands... knocked her into the pool. Where’s that doctor?”
“On the way,” Dockerty said. “I phoned him.”
Rice opened his eyes and looked at Dockerty. “Dock, I didn’t want killing. Too much... at stake here. But it was... too late. And Sheila knew what the Shelby woman had done. Kept her locked up here. Argued with Rikerd. He said we... had to do it. There wasn’t any... other way. So I... I let him do it, Dock. Then that old man found... the body. I knew then it was... going to blow up. Couldn’t run. Everything I own is... right here. Then this woman... friend of the Shelby woman, came around. Questions, questions. And... Rikerd hit her before I... could stop him. Crazy, I think. Said that once... you’ve killed one, it might as well be two or three or fifty. If Shelby woman hadn't gotten nosy... it would have worked fine... she did fine... practiced signature using Sheila’s signature to see how she made the letters. Vault guard didn’t... suspect a thing. I’m getting weaker, boys.”
“You agreed the Star woman had to be killed?” Dockerty asked gently.
“Tom Rikerd said... nothing else we could do.”
Dockerty turned a hard smile toward Goddard. “That makes him mine.”
“I think there’s enough of him to go around, Dock. We’ll take the money and you take what’s left.” Goddard stood up and looked down at the man who thought he was dying. He said, “Funny, isn’t it, how little there is left — once you take the money away.”
Dockerty shifted his belt, snapped the holster flap down over his revolver. “The other one had an easier way out, Goddard. I tried for a shoulder. Forgot this thing throws a bit high and to the right.”
The afternoon was still and hot. A clerk brought the statements, and both Ellen and Jay read them carefully and signed the required number of copies. The clerk had giggled unpleasantly as he told them of Rice’s consternation on finding his wound was slight. And he had giggled again as he gave a too lurid description of the damage Dockerty’s 357 Magnum slug had done to the skull of Thomas Rikerd, graduate of Joliet, graduate of Oasis Springs, graduate of life. They were glad to see him go.
They sat outside Ellen’s room. He smiled at her and said, “That is a black eye of truly magnificent scope. A veritable sunset.”
“Flatterer.”
They sat in the shade and silence, easy with each other. He took her hand. “I’m packed. I’ll be leaving.”
“Free of that... guilt, Jay?”
“Free of one kind. Not completely free of another. The kind that says you didn’t try hard enough.”
“You’re not alone.”
He released her hand. “I know. It’s hard to think of anything that ends without sadness. I was going to take a trip. I guess this was it. Now I want work. Tons of it. I’m going to see the art directors and my agent and load myself.”
“And then?” she asked softly. “Leading-question department, I guess.”
“I’ve got the address.”
“And if I’m not quite ready yet?”
“I’ll wait around until you are. We want no rebounds, Ellen.”
“No rebounds,” she repeated. She stood up. “No, don’t get up, Jay. This is the way I want it. No more words.” She leaned over his chair, and with her hands light on his shoulders, she kissed him with a sudden warm intensity. Then she was gone, and he could not be sure he heard her whisper, “I’ll be ready.”
Her door closed gently. He sat there for a time, and then he looked at his watch and got up and walked across the open court, passing the green-blue mirror of the pool where a woman lay on the low board like something newly dead. He phoned the desk from his room, and while he waited for the bellhop, he thought ahead to the work he would do. He had a lust for the work he would do. He wanted to be out of this place. A mountain of work, and she would be on the other side of it. And by then it would be time. And this time it would work, because there was a sense of inevitability about their rightness for each other.
