The sensation of being trapped was very bad now. Of what we had done. Of what I was doing. There was a moment of realization of how life had been before I’d met Shirley Angela, and I lay there on the muddy bank, and began to laugh. The laughter was bad, and it stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
I got sick.
Finally I lay there on the bank, panting. My head ached. The whole thing was an impossible business. But it had happened. And it had only begun happening. All I’d accomplished was to take care of one little point that wasn’t even supposed to have happened. A tiny flaw. A diseased speck in what lay ahead.
I got down into the water again and scrubbed the mud and scum away, then came up the bank and dressed.
After that I went over the ground carefully, wishing I had a flashlight, but making what moonlight there was do. I smoothed out my footprints, and obliterated the tire tracks enough so they wouldn’t be noticed, but would still be there.
Then I started down the road.
I’d taken maybe a hundred paces, when I remembered the blanket.
I ran back. I couldn’t find the place where I’d hidden it. I couldn’t even find the place where the convertible had gone over into the canal.
Another car passed. I hid again, then went on looking. Finally I found the blanket. I rolled it up tightly, and stood there. I couldn’t figure what to do with it.
Then I got to laughing again. For a minute or two, I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t really laughing. It was a kind of loud shouting. Then it stopped.
I started down the road with the blanket rolled up under my arm. Mayda Lamphier’s death blood was soaked into the cloth. I didn’t know what to do with it.
It was nutty. Everything was in order. Everything had to be in order all the way down the line. Except for this damned blanket.
I couldn’t burn it. I couldn’t tear it to shreds, and float the stuff away on the wind. If I threw it into the canal, somebody would find it. A fisherman would find it, maybe. So for a moment I was blocked solid.
There was only one thing to do. Bury it.
I cut off the road, on the opposite side from the canal. The land was wooded with pine. I walked and stumbled through the woods, until I thought I was far enough in. It would look different in daylight. Maybe I was in somebody’s back yard.
The hell with it. I dug with both hands. I scraped out a hole about four feet deep in the sandy, mucky soil, jammed the blanket down there, and covered it. I littered the spot with dried pine needles and leaves and ruck from surrounding ground, then hiked it back to the road.
Once on the road again, I ran.
Ten
“He’s dead, Jack.”
She was like a hunk of marble. The only thing that gave away what was going on inside her was her eyes. I didn’t say anything. I went into the bedroom and looked at him, there on the bed.
His knees were buckled, with those big feet sticking out, and he was on his side. His hands were shaped into large claws, the tendons in shadowed relief. The hands were stretched out at arm’s length, toward the oxygen tanks. But his face really got me.
From the neck up, he was choked with a kind of rich purple, blotched with blues and grays. The eyes were bugged right out of his head. It looked as if you would have to punch them back in order to close the lids. The mouth was stretched open as if he were screaming like an animal, with the purple lips drawn back away from the teeth as if they’d been stapled into his jaws.
All that eagle-like arrogance was gone now.
“He died a few minutes before you came, Jack.”
Her voice was flat and there was fear.
Well, I thought. This is what you wanted.
The bright white light glared down on the room. The oxygen mask was on the bed. The TV set was still turned on with the sound off. A guy on the screen was sneaking down an alley. It was raining in the alley.
I knew then that I hadn’t really wanted Victor to die. Only it was too late.
Maybe it was all wrong. Maybe we’d gone too far. But I knew this, too—it couldn’t be undone. So now was the time to make it pay.
I heard Shirley say something. She grabbed me with both arms. “Oh, Jack....”
All I thought of was the money. I didn’t want it that way. Here she was, scared stiff, like a little kid, wanting me to comfort her, needing me, wanting me to say something to her so she wouldn’t feel so bad. And all I could think of was the money.
It was strange. There were bright little moments of realization, knowing what was really happening. And with those brief interims came a hopeless trapped feeling I’d never had before.
I thrust her away, holding her shoulders. Her face didn’t look too good.
“We’ve got to have everything absolutely straight,” I said. “Are the volume controls turned up on the outside speakers?”
“Jack. He kept crying for air. He lasted and lasted. I stood there and watched him. I taunted him, Jack. I was crazy—I must have been crazy. I just stood there. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move—just to see him die.”
For a moment I thought she was going to crack.
“Easy, now, Shirley.”
I remembered something: I went back into Victor’s bedroom and checked the intercom unit. Sure enough, it was turned off. He must have turned it off after it stopped working. I turned it back on and up to full-volume. His was a master control. I flipped open all the remotes.
I went back to the living room. She hadn’t moved.
“Your story, Shirley—can you make it all right?”
She stood there with one hand clamped over her mouth, the round eyes staring at me.
“Shirley,” I said. My voice cracked a little. “I’ve got to get out of here. Remember. You were out back, sitting by the Gulf. You didn’t hear anything.” I pulled her hand away from her face and said slowly and harshly, “Will you get everything straight?”
“Yes. Jack. Mayda—?”
“Never mind Mayda. Don’t even think about her. Forget she was ever around here. The less you know, the...”
“I’ve got to know.”
“Okay.” I told her about Mayda, thinking again how if she’d ever found out about Mayda and me, things wouldn’t even be this good. “Now, forget her.” I wanted to forget her.
She said, “It’s all wrong, Jack.”
“Don’t think it for a second, Shirley. Now’s when we need strength. We’re in it. There’s no backing out now.” I glanced at the bedroom. “Listen,” I said. “Already we’re wasting time. You’ve got to call Miraglia now.”
“I called him, Jack.”
“You what?”
“I called him maybe five minutes ago, before you came.”
I didn’t speak.
She said, “I knew I had to. It wouldn’t look right unless I called. I had to do what was right. I didn’t know when you’d get back. I knew if you came back when he was here, you’d see his car out front. It’s all right, Jack—don’t look like that!”
I still said nothing.
She said, “It’s all right, Jack. It’s all over. Say you love me.”
I stared at her. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“I told the doctor what had happened, how I didn’t hear him. And when I came in, he was having a bad attack. I told him the oxygen didn’t seem to do any good. I gave him a nitroglycerin pill, for his heart—but it didn’t seem to do any good, either. I said Victor fought the oxygen when I tried to help him. He said he’d known something like this would happen—that he’d be right over.”
“Listen,” I said. “Don’t call me. On your life. Don’t try to contact me. I’ll contact you.” I took her in my arms, then, because I needed somebody to hang onto, too. Only I let go of her right away, because it didn’t do any good. It was as if I were in a dream, and none of this had happened. Only it had happened. I knew I hadn’t meant it to happen. Isn’t that what they always say afterward? The whole business tumbled down over me like a big black wet tent.