by Ed Gorman
So I told her what Emily Cunningham had told me. I told her about all the false leads with Renard, though I didn't mention Dr. Williams. I told her that somehow all this connected up with a baby picture. Sandy used to clean up Claire's attic room and saw the photo and also saw it somewhere else. Told her about Tandy and her drawings.
"Why didn't you work with me?"
"I should have. I wanted to help Tandy, I guess. Keep her in the center of the spotlight."
"You're a good friend."
"She's a nice woman."
"Very neurotic."
"We're all very neurotic," I said.
She smiled. "Is that the lawman speaking or just the man?"
"Both."
She sat back in her chair. "I'll talk to Fuller and see what I can do. Explain things. Maybe he'll back off a little. But if he wants to go ahead with charges, there's nothing I can do."
If she blocked his charges, the Kiwanis and the Rotary would be most unhappy. I didn't blame her. I wouldn't have blocked the charges, either. Whatever my motive, I really had been trespassing at the very least. True, and thankfully, I hadn't gotten inside, where several other charges could have been brought against me.
She picked up the form Fuller had been working on and said, "Let me go talk to him. See if he'll agree to sort this out in the morning." She looked at me with an expression I couldn't read. "Despite the fact that you were carrying burglary tools."
"And let me go back to my room tonight?"
She nodded. "But we're talking fifty-fifty at best."
"That's what I figured."
Form in hand, she left the office. I went back to the photos on top of the bookcase. I felt a compulsion I couldn't explain. "All right if I get in here now?"
The mayor's kid with his cleaning cart. He looked like a decent kid in a shaggy, slow-witted kind of way.
"Sure."
He grinned. "Fuller'll probably kick my ass out of here, he comes back."
"I'll talk to him."
He looked stunned. "Mister, you been booked. Why would he listen to you?"
"Let's just see what happens."
He saw the small framed photo I held in my hand. Cheerleader.
"She was a babe."
"She sure was."
"Don't know how she ever got to be a cop."
"The times're changing, I hear."
"Yeah, I s'pose. But still and all, you sure don't expect your chief to look like that. I mean, boobs like that and everything." He lifted his dusty dry mop, as if presenting it to me. "Guess I'd better get to work."
He started in on the office. I stayed in my corner next to the bookcase. He worked around me. He missed all kinds of spots but I didn't want to be the one who pointed it out.
I looked through the photos and silently weighed my chances with Fuller. Zero to none, it seemed to me.
"That's the one Sandy always looked at."
"Sandy?" I said.
"Yeah, the girl that got killed by Rick Hennessy."
"Really?" I said, setting the baby photo down. "How do you know that?"
"This was where she was working when she died. She had my job. Saving for college. She broke me in. You know, showed me around my first week. Right after that, she got killed."
I hadn't known about her job here.
And then I thought of her other job. The one with Claire Giles.
"She ever say anything about the baby picture of the chief?"
"Don't think so. She'd just pick it up and look at it a lot. It's kind of a cute picture, for a little kid, I mean. She'd just keep staring at it."
"What the hell you doing?" Fuller said, bursting back into the office.
"Where's Chief Charles?" I said.
"For somebody who's gonna spend the night with us, you sure ask a hell of a lot of questions, you know that?" Wide face sweaty, angry, frustrated. Then, "Get the hell out of here, Ronnie. Payne and I need to talk."
"Where's Susan?" I said.
I was pushing him to the edge. I didn't have any choice.
"Some personal business came up, if that's all right with you. She told me to take over and do as I saw fit. Is that good enough for you?"
"She told me she'd ask you to let me go back to my motel tonight."
"She didn't say anything to me."
The way he said it, I knew he wasn't lying.
But why wouldn't Susan have kept her word and asked him to let me go, at least for tonight?
But I already had a good idea.
And now I had no choice but to run.
I was quick enough to surprise him. He cursed, jumped in my direction, slamming his knee hard against the edge of the desk.
Then he got entangled with Ronnie and his dry mop. Ronnie moved in sync with Fuller, and Fuller couldn't get past. Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny executing a routine.
I was several feet down the hall by the time Fuller burst out with "Stop him! Stop him!"
And then he was running down the hall after me.
And then the whole jail was waking up from its rainy slumber.
More shouts. Slapping footsteps.
My chances of escaping weren't much better than those of Fuller letting me go back to my motel room.
SIX
Back door. Opening just now. Patrolman coming through in rain poncho. Smelling of cigarettes and cold air. Didn't see me at first.
I shoved him out of the way. He bounced off the doorframe back at me. I had to shove him again. Ran into the night.
Rain was so hard it was like soft bullets exploding on my head, shoulders, and back.
Running out of the circle of light in the rear of the police station. Darkness. Had to reach the darkness.
Asphalt alley. Splashing through pooling water in the sloping center of the asphalt.
Garages. Tiny loading dock. Dumpsters. Two, three back doors of businesses. None offered much hope of a hiding place. They'd comb the alley for sure.
I needed a car. But hot wiring didn't happen to be a specialty of mine. I could do it, but it would take a long time. Too long.
The street. Small dark businesses on either side. Wind whipping signs and trees and overhead traffic signal viciously.
Had to have a car. And that meant Tandy. The car she'd rented would be at the motel. I couldn't take mine. Too easily spotted. The motel was seven, eight blocks from here.
I jogged three blocks over. If I stuck on a straight course, they'd find me for sure.
I wanted to stop and get out of the rain. Just for a second. There's an old Ray Bradbury story, one of my favorites in high school, about a couple of astronauts marooned on a planet where there's no escape from the rain. Eventually, they go mad. I knew the feeling. I hadn't been out in this stuff ten minutes yet and I was already starting to feel disembodied. Soon, I'd be nothing more than another puddle.
Night. Cold. Rain.
Alleys. Backyards. Streets.
Backed-up sewers. Wind tearing off tree branches. Lightning surgically severing the black sky with a shining silver blade.
Running. A hitch in my side. Slowing down. Gasping. Until this moment, I would have said that I was in reasonably decent shape for a man my age. That's what I told the ladies in the bars when they remarked on my slim body. Now I knew better. Slim wasn't the equivalent of healthy. It just meant you did a better job of hiding your unhealthiness.
And then it was there.
I was just coming out of another alley when it appeared, apparition-like. Big, hot, heavy, throbbing in the rain.
A squad car. Fuller driving. Aiming a spotlight back and forth across the front of the alley. He must have glimpsed me. Or thought he had.
I dove behind three garbage cans set into a wooden frame. I had developed a nose bleed and the blood was flooding hot into my mouth. I was shaking all over.
I peeked up just enough to see the spotlight whip back and forth, forth and back a few more times.
Was he going to pull into the alley and search it?
The
nose was becoming a problem.
I ripped a piece of my shirt off, wrung it out as well as I could, and then pressed it to my nose. Teach me not to carry handkerchiefs.
Fuller still sat at the head of the alley.
Why?
Then I was able to hear the squawk of the radio. He was talking to the dispatcher. I couldn't catch most of the words. But I did get a sense of the exchange.
I lay against the ground. I was already so wet, so cold, it didn't matter. I was so close to the garbage cans that the sweet, fetid stench of last week's dinner leavings were starting to gag me.
I had to get a car. I was sure I knew what was going on. But I needed proof. Fuller wouldn't be easy to convince.
And then he left.
Just as wraithlike as his sudden appearance had been, so was his leaving.
No siren. No quick acceleration. He just left. All that heat and power of the souped-up Ford just vanished.
I got up and started running again.
For a block or so, I got disoriented and had no idea where I was in relation to the motel.
But then I saw a small radio tower that was a block west of the motel and that set me right again.
Sirens in the distance. Probably for me—what could be more exciting than an honest-to-God manhunt for an escaped prisoner?—but then again maybe not. This was perfect fire weather, cops and firefighters alike often converging on the same scene.
I ran.
I was a block from the motel, in an alley, when the dog found me.
Wind, rain, and a ripped branch had worked together to knock down the fencing that was the only protection the civilized world had from him.
His barking was terrifying. All sorts of images of me as his dinner flooded my mind. I was paralyzed.
My fear, of course, was that he'd attack me. But just as the mutant Rottweiler—or whatever the heck he was—started to think about moving on me, I saw a flashlight beam cutting faintly through the mist and rain.
And then a male voice calling, "Gretchen! Gretchen!"
He hadn't taken time to dress properly, a beanpole of a bald guy in a robe and pajamas, slipping and sliding over the muddy grass of his backyard to get to his precious dog.
"Gretchen! Gretchen!"
Gretchen was out to impress him. Demonstrate just how bloodcurdling her bark could be. If he had any sense, he would have been afraid of it, too.
I was pinned against a garage on the other side of the alley. The flashlight beam found my face.
The rain hissed and hummed and hammered away. Soft bullets. "Who're you?"
"My name's Payne. Robert Payne."
"What the hell you doing in my backyard this time of night?"
"I wasn't in your backyard. I was walking down the alley to my motel."
"On foot on a night like this?"
"My car got caught in a little flash flood. Sewer backed up. Couldn't get it started again. So I was walking back to my motel."
"Oh."
"Your fence got knocked down just enough to let Gretchen out."
"Oh, hell, I'm sorry about this, mister."
He was so trusting, I felt ashamed of myself for lying about my stalled car.
Gretchen growled.
He leaned down and said something to her in dog. She quit growling.
"She really wouldn't hurt you."
"Yeah, that's the impression I had."
He caught my sarcasm and smiled. "That's actually the truth. She wouldn't hurt you unless you made some threatening move or something."
"I'll try to remember that."
"I'm going to dry off and make some cocoa. You want to come in and have some?"
"No, thanks. I'd better get back to the motel."
"Well, sorry if she scared you."
Headlights. Far end of the alley. Very good chance it was the police.
I started to edge away.
"Appreciate you coming out like that. Thanks."
Edging away.
"Busy night," he said, staring down the alley at the headlights. "I heard sirens earlier. Something must be going on."
"Well, see you?" I said.
The headlights were starting up the alley now, malevolent in the rain-slashed night.
I didn't run. But I came damned close.
In the cutting rain, the motel looked shabby and beaten, age and relentless rain more than it could handle.
No sign of cops.
I went around the back way. I didn't want the old gent in the office to see me.
I spent a lingering moment under the overhang. No more rain except the beads that bounced off the cars pulled up to their respective rooms.
I leaned against the wall. Catching my breath. Enjoying the respite.
And then I saw the cop car at the far end of the motel. Starting toward me.
I jumped around the corner and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor.
At the rate the squad car had been moving, it would be just about below me right now.
I found Tandy's room. No sound but that of spraying wind and rain as I pressed my ear to the door.
Where was she this late at night? I needed to get in there.
The door wasn't closed. Disbelief, at first, as if somebody was tricking me. But it was true. The door was slightly ajar.
I went inside. Darkness. Perfume. Wine. I stood by the window. Intermixed with the rain was the raspy sound of a police radio. He was almost directly below.
The spotlight again. Angling across the door and window of Tandy's room.
Then he worked his way down the line of doors.
Behind me, a moan.
I couldn't risk a light. I moved through the shadows to the moan, which had been repeated now two or three times. Soughing wind; rattling rain.
I knelt next to the bed. Groped for her face. Touched it. Blood. "What happened, Tandy?"
"She tried to kill me. What time is it?"
"About five."
"I've been out for a long time. She beat me with her gun. I think she thinks she killed me."
"I'm sorry. I should've figured this out a lot sooner."
"It's not your fault," she said. Then, "Giles is Renard."
"I know."
"She was afraid it was going to get out and ruin her career. She has big plans. But being associated with Renard would end them."
The moan.
"And Susan Charles is his daughter. His daughter with Claire."
The moan again.
"The face was hers, Robert. She came in here and saw the drawing—the scar—and knew what was going on."
I stood up. "I'm going to call an ambulance for you."
"Please. I'm scared, Robert. She beat me pretty bad."
In the darkness, I found the phone. Dialed emergency. "Where're your car keys?"
"You're going after her?"
"Yeah."
"They're on the dresser. She's crazy, Robert. Maybe as crazy as Renard."
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, she is."
SEVEN
Many of the streets had become wading pools. Shrubs and children's toys and even a lone garden rake carried away in the torrents. Huge branches lay at angles in the water. Fire sirens; police sirens. Rising water covering entire lawns, swirling water obscuring entire intersections. Yellow overhead traffic lights flashing bold and useless above it all.
Took me a long time to reach the Gileses'. Every other street had to be detoured. All I needed was a stalled car. I'd snuck away from the motel with no problem. I didn't want to get stopped now.
The Giles house was dark.
I parked as close to the curb as I could get.
A steep hill was conducting heavy washes of water down onto the flat corner where the Gileses lived. Most of their front lawn was already submerged.
Some rain smells clean. This rain smelled dirty. I walked around the house. At first, I didn't see any sign of her.
Then I checked the garage.
Smart.
She'd run
her car into one of the two stalls. Nobody would find her.
So she was inside and the house was dark.
Maybe she'd finally snapped, the years of keeping her terrible secret finally too much for her.
Claire was her mother. Claire had known Paul Renard and fallen in love with him. According to most of the locals, that hadn't been too difficult to do. A real charmer, they all said.
And she'd borne him a child. Susan.
And then had suffered her breakdown. And let her own mother, Mrs. Giles, care for the baby.
And then fifteen years ago, Paul Renard had returned. He hadn't worn well, and he'd changed his style entirely. Looked like a used-up workingman. The perfect disguise for a dashing former ass-bandit.
And now all of them were in the house standing before me in the cold, hard rain. Crazy Claire and her mother and stepfather and crazy Claire's daughter, Susan.
Tandy would have a story, all right.
The garage smelled of summer tools that hadn't been cleaned completely. Lawnmower and rakes and wheelbarrow all smelled of sweet summer grass. Dry summer grass. It was time for me to leave my roost again.
I walked outside.
The front door was locked.
I went over to the window and peeked inside.
He sat in his armchair looking straight at me. His T-shirt was bloody. So was his face. A butcher knife had been plunged deep into his right eye. There was a .45 a few inches from his hand. He'd likely dropped it defending himself and his wife.
His wife lay sprawled on her back in front of him. The breast of her faded housedress was soaked with blood. She'd apparently been shot several times.
I tried the door again. Without my burglary tools, there was no way I could get in this way.
I went around back. Took my shirt off. Wrapped it around my fist. Punched out a pane of glass in the rear door. Reached in and opened the lock and pushed my way inside.
No sound but the rain.
Smell of tonight's dinner.
A cat creeping across the kitchen floor, not wanting to look at me. I probably scared him.
I started through the small house.
The living room stank. The bodies were in the process of purging. I picked up the .45 from near Giles's lifeless hand.
