He got out and walked slowly across the bridge; the moon, now riding the zenith, laid oily cusps and crescents on the water. He climbed down the bank, brought up a thirty-pound chunk of riprap.
Now came the worst part of the job. The terrible part.
Mervyn drove to the middle of the bridge, got out, unlocked the trunk. Below, the dark water waited in puddles of moonlight. He braced himself, pulled the body out. In spite of his efforts, it dropped to the planking with a thud. Wincing, he made a bundle of the purse and the rock, wrapping them in the mat from the floor of the trunk and tying the whole thing securely with the plastic clothesline. Then he ran a short length of the line from the bundle to the neck of the dead girl...
Now.
But he hesitated. How undignified, how graceless an end for one so sweet and vital! Mervyn’s eyes filled with tears. He looked up at the moon, down at the water. It can’t be helped, he whispered. Forgive me, Mary.
He rolled the whole thing off the bridge. It made a huge, helpless splash. Ripples circled swiftly out, exciting sparks of moonlight. They quieted. They disappeared.
And the river ran darkly again.
He walked slowly back to the car. The thing was done. The car seemed empty. He felt empty, too. Mechanically, with a flashlight, he explored the trunk compartment. He found nothing.
The thing was done. He climbed into the car. The water flowed black as ink, and Mervyn said aloud, “Goodbye, Mary.”
He started the car, pulled off the bridge, swung around and drove back the way he had come, west, toward the black mountains, toward the glow of the cities circling the bay. Who or what was waiting for him, malignantly, over the hill?
It would be harder now, he thought. The evidence linking him to Mary was gone... But something gnawed at the back of his mind. He could not identify it. What had he overlooked? The car trunk? He’d give that a good cleaning in the morning. Something else? He jerked his head in irritated failure.
Mervyn got home at two in the morning. He parked the convertible in the garage, went quietly by the back way into the court. All the apartments were dark. Mervyn looked up at Apartment 12 for a moment. Susie must be feeling so lonely...
He had the wild impulse to wake her up, soothe her, let her soothe him. Impossible, of course. Harriet Brill, that human sonar, would hear him as he passed; and then, Susie was likely to be tart and sarcastic rather than soothed or soothing. He wondered how it would be to have Susie for a wife, and wondered at himself for wondering.
When he stole into his apartment and flicked on the light, he searched the rooms. He was only half convinced that nothing was wrong.
He stood uncertainly in his living room, swaying with fatigue. But he knew he could not sleep. So he went into the kitchen and opened the liquor cabinet. John Boce had lifted the fifth of bourbon, but there was still some Scotch, and he made himself a Scotch and soda, took it back into the living room and slumped down on the couch.
He sipped, brooding.
Something was missing. Something he had neglected.
He reviewed the entire affair, from Friday night to the present moment. Mary Hazelwood in a rumpled blue suit, stiff, contorted, life gone. He saw again the area of the blow, the odd semicircular contusion. And suddenly, heart pounding, he jumped up and ran into his bedroom and yanked his wardrobe open and snatched from its top shelf his ski boots. He took one of the boots by the toe and dashed over to his bed and swung the boot viciously. The heel struck the white spread with great force, leaving a crescent-shaped indentation in the spread... He thought he would faint. But he nerved himself and examined the heel of the boot closely. He could find nothing, and he tossed it aside and peered at the heel of the other boot, the left one. Was that a dark stain on the cogs? Yes! And a wisp of blond hair caught in a roughened cut mark. A blond hair... like Mary’s.
Mervyn ran back through the living room to his kitchen, carrying both ski boots. His head was a jumble of thoughts: That stain... blood... must be blood... hair... Mary’s... maybe others they’ll find under a microscope... they can test for blood... establish blood type... test for hair... identify...
At the kitchen sink, he washed and washed and washed the heel of the left boot. He used scouring powder, he scrubbed, he polished, he rinsed. Then he rubbed with vinegar. Then he rubbed with salt. Then he rubbed with more scouring powder. Then he dipped the heel in ammonia, rinsed again. But those police-laboratory tests were fantastically sensitive, he told himself. He turned on one of the burners of his range; he held the heel over the clean blue flame and scorched it over and over. And then, once more, he scoured the heel and rinsed it; and finally he dried it.
And then, for good measure, went through the entire process again with the right ski boot. Just in case, he told himself.
He was gasping when he returned to the living room, as if he had run five miles. His eyes felt as if they were full of hot sand.
Sleep was out of the question.
He dropped like a sack of feed on the couch.
So he had caught and balked another trap laid by his enemy. Were there others? There must be others...
And suddenly his neck prickled, at the nape.
He was being watched! He knew it... There! Wasn’t that a slight sound?
Mervyn slewed about on the couch, glaring at his front door, biting his lower lip, flexing his fingers, scarcely breathing. You damn patsy, he said to himself, get up and go over to that door and open it and find out once for all... Suddenly he was in a rage. He jumped off the couch, dashed to the door, jerked it open...
No one.
He peered out, right, left.
No one.
He actually stepped out into the court and took a deliberate look around. Nothing stirred. The fountain tumbled in the slanting moonlight.
Mervyn stood stock still, listening. All he heard was the fountain and his own râling breath.
So he went back into his apartment and locked his door and snapped off the living-room light and went into his bedroom and undressed quickly in the dark and crept into his bed and pulled the sheet over his head, like a child.
And presently he fell asleep.
Chapter 5
Mervyn drove the convertible around to the front. He brought a hose out from the court, thoroughly soused the interior of the trunk, scrubbed it with a bristle brush and hosed it down again. Then he went over it inch by inch. He was satisfied at last that not even the most assiduous technician could find specks of sky-blue wool or blond hairs. Or blood.
John Boce came sauntering out of the court. Mervyn looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were a working man.”
The accountant teetered jauntily on his heels. “A man like me is paid for what he knows.” He strolled around the car critically. “Looks pretty nice, Mervyn. Considering what the old bucket’s been through, the paint job has held up. Too bad the chrome’s so pitted.”
“A shame.”
“Hey! Is that the radiator leaking?”
“We can tell better after I finish washing the hood.”
Boce looked into the driver’s seat. “Not a bad old boat. You’ve had a lot of fun in this car, Mervyn.”
“Yes. It’s like parting with an old mistress.”
“You even talk dirty in a literary way,” the fat man said. “You’re going to sell her, eh?”
“Absolutely.”
“Suppose your mother wants the VW back?”
“She won’t. She’s afraid of cars.”