The Fiend

by Margaret Millar

  “How young a man was he?”

  “Oh, about Jamie’s age, thirty-two, thirty-five, maybe.”

  Sheridan was thirty-four. “Do you remember his name?”

  “I never knew it. It’s in the book but I’m not sure I ought to look it up for you. I wouldn’t want to cause him any trouble.”

  “I’m trying to prevent trouble, Mr. Baker. A client of mine—I’m a lawyer—is convinced that the husband she’s divorcing has been using the green coupé to spy on her. I’ve been a family friend for many years and I’m simply trying to find out the truth one way or the other. Even a description of the man would be a big help.”

  Baker thought about it. “Well, he was nice, clean-cut, athletic-looking. Tall, maybe six feet, with kind of sandy hair and a smile like he was apologizing for something. Would that be the husband?”

  Sheridan was short and dark and wore glasses, but Mac said, “I’m not sure. Perhaps you’d better look up the name.”

  “I guess it’d be all right, being as it’s just a divorce case and nothing criminal. I don’t want to get caught up in anything criminal. It plays hell with business.”

  “To the best of my knowledge, nothing criminal is involved.”

  “O.K., wait here.”

  Baker went into the office and returned in a few minutes with a name and address written on an old envelope: Charles E. Gowen, 495 Miria Street.

  “Is that the man?” Baker asked.

  “I’m glad to say it’s not.” Mac returned the envelope. “This will be good news to my client.”

  “Women get funny ideas sometimes.”

  “Do they not.”

  If it was good news to Kate, she didn’t show it. She met him at the front door, wearing a starched cotton dress and high-heeled shoes. Her face was carefully made up and her hair neat. It seemed to Mac that she was always dressed for company but company never came. He knew of no one besides himself who any longer got past the front door.

  They went into the smaller of the two living rooms and she sat on the window seat while he told her what he’d found out. With her face in shadow and the sun at her back illuminating her long, fair hair, she looked scarcely older than Mary Martha. She’s only thirty, Mac thought. Her life has been broken and she’s too brittle to bend down and pick up the pieces.

  “You can stop worrying about the green car,” he told her. “Sheridan wasn’t in it.”

  She didn’t look as if she intended or wanted to stop worrying. “That hasn’t been proved.”

  “The car was registered to Charles Gowen. He traded it in last night.”

  “Funny coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. But coincidences happen.”

  “A lot of them can be explained. I told you from the begin­ning that Sheridan was too crafty to use his own car. Obviously, he borrowed the green coupé from this man Gowen. The kind of people Sheridan runs around with nowadays exchange cars and wives and mistresses as freely as they exchange booze. Sheri­dan’s moved away down in the world, farther than you think.”

  “I haven’t time to go into that now, Kate. Let’s stick to the point.”

  “Very well. He used Gowen’s car to harass me. Then when I fought back, when I chased him, he got scared and told Gowen to sell it.”

  “Why? Why didn’t he simply return it to Gowen and let the matter drop? Selling the car was what led me to Gowen.”

  “Sheridan’s mind is usually, I might say always, befuddled by alcohol. He probably considered the gambit quite a cunning one.”

  “What about Gowen?”

  “I don’t know about Gowen,” she said impatiently. “I’ve never heard of him before. But if he’s typical of Sheridan’s cur­rent friends, he’ll do anything for a few dollars or a bottle of liquor. Don’t forget, Sheridan has money to fling around. It makes him pretty popular, and I suppose powerful, in certain circles.” She paused, running her hand along her left cheek. The cheek was bright red as though it had been slapped. “You asked, ‘What about Gowen?’ Well, why don’t you find out?”

  “I don’t think there’s enough to warrant an investigation.”

  She looked at him bitterly. “Not enough? I suppose you think I’ve imagined the whole thing?”

  “No, Kate. But—”

  “I didn’t imagine that car parked outside my house, watching me. I didn’t imagine an anonymous letter accusing me of neg­lecting my daughter. I didn’t imagine that chase around town yesterday. Would an innocent man have fled like that?”

  “Perhaps there are no innocent men,” Mac said. “Or women.”

  “Oh, stop talking like a wise old philosopher. You’re not old, and you’re not very wise either.”

  “Granted.”

  “If you had been in that car, would you have run away like that? Answer me truthfully.”

  “You seem concerned only with the fact that he ran away. I’m more concerned with the fact that you chased him.”

  “I was upset. I’d just received that letter.”

  “Perhaps he had had a disturbing experience, too, and was reacting in an emotional rather than a logical manner.”

  She let out a sound of despair. “You won’t listen to me. You won’t take me seriously.”

  “I do. I am.”

  “No. You think I’m a fool. But I feel a terrible danger, Mac, I know it’s all around me. Something awful is waiting to happen, it’s just around the corner, waiting. It can’t be seen or heard or touched, but it’s as real as this house, that chair you’re sitting on, the tree outside the window.”

  “And you think Sheridan is behind this danger?”

  “He must be,” she said simply. “I have no other enemies.”

  Mac thought what a sad epitaph it made for a marriage: I have no other enemies. “I’ll try again to contact Sheridan. As you know, he hasn’t been answering his telephone.”

  “Another sign of guilt.”

  “Or a sign that he’s not there,” Mac said dryly. “As for Charles Gowen, I can’t go charging up to him with a lot of ques­tions. I haven’t the legal or moral right. All I can do is make a few discreet inquiries, find out where he lives and works, and what kind of person he is, whether he’s likely to be one of Sheri­dan’s cronies, and so on. I may as well tell you now, though: I don’t expect anything to come of it. If Gowen had a guilty rea­son for not wanting the green coupé found, it seems to me he’d have taken a little more trouble in disposing of it. There are at least a hundred used-car dealers between here and Los Angeles, yet Gowen sold it right here, practically in the center of town.”

  “He may simply be stupid. Sheridan’s friends nowadays are not exactly intellectual giants.”

  Mac’s smile was more pained than amused. “One of the things a lawyer has to learn early in his career is not to assume that the other guy is stupid.”

  He rose. His whole body felt heavy, and stiff with tension. He always felt the same way when he was in Kate’s house, that he couldn’t move freely in any direction because he was under con­stant and judgmental surveillance. He could picture Sheridan trying, at first anyway, to conform and to please her, and mak­ing mistakes, more and more mistakes every day, until nothing was possible but mistakes.

  He knew he was not being fair to her. To make amends for his thoughts, he crossed the room and leaned down and kissed her lightly on the top of her head. Her hair felt warm to his lips, and smelled faintly of soap.

  She looked up at him, showing neither surprise nor displeas­ure, only a deep sorrow, as if the show of tenderness was too little and too late and she had forgotten how to respond. “Is that a courtesy you extend to all your clients?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “Only the ones I like and have known since they were freckle-faced little brats.”

  “I never had f
reckles.”

  “Yes, you did. You were covered with them every summer. You probably still would be if you spent any time in the sun. Listen, Kate, I have an idea. Why don’t you and Mary Martha come sailing with me one of these days?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wouldn’t be very good company. I’ve forgotten how to en­joy myself.”

  “You could relearn if you wanted to. Perhaps you don’t want to.”

  Her sorrow had crystallized into bitterness, making her eyes shine hard and bright like blue glass. “Oh, stop it, Mac. You’re offering me a day of sailing the way you’d throw an old dog a bone. Well, I’m not that hungry. Besides, I can’t afford to leave the house for a whole day.”

  “You can’t afford not to.”

  “Sheridan might force his way in and steal something. He’s done it before.”

  “Once.”

  “He might do it ag—”

  “He was drunk,” Mac said, “and all he took was a case of wine which belonged to him anyway.”

  “But he broke into the house.”

  “You refused to admit him. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Naturally I refused. He was abusive and profane, he threat­ened me, he—” She stopped and took a long, deep breath. “You’re always making excuses for him. Why? You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “I’m a man. I can’t help seeing things from a man’s point of view occasionally.”

  “Then perhaps,” she said, rising, “I’d better hire a woman lawyer.”

  “That might be a good idea.”

  “You’d like to get rid of me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Let’s put it this way: I’d like for us both to be rid of your problems. My going along with you and agreeing with every­thing you say and do is not a solution. It gets in the way of a solution. Your difficulties can’t just be dumped in a box labeled Sheridan. You had them before Sheridan, and you’re having them now, after Sheridan. I’d be doing you no favor by pretend­ing otherwise.”

  “I was a happy, healthy, normal young woman when I mar­ried him.”

  “Is that how you remember yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “My memory of you is different,” he said calmly. “You were moody, selfish, immature. You flunked out of college, you couldn’t hold on to a job, and your relationship with your mother was strained. You tried to use marriage as a way out of all these difficulties. It put a very heavy burden on Sheridan, he wasn’t strong enough to carry it. Can you see any truth in what I’m saying, Kate? Or are you just standing there thinking how unfair I’m being?”

  They were face to face, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at a piece of the wall beyond his left shoulder, as if to deny his very presence. “I no longer expect fairness, from anyone.”

  “You’re getting it from me, Kate.”

  “You call that fairness—that repulsive picture of me when I was nineteen?”

  “It’s not repulsive, or even particularly unusual. A great many girls in the same state go into marriage for the same reason.”

  “And what about Sheridan’s reasons for getting married?” she said shrilly. “I suppose they were fine, he was mature, he got along great with his mother, he was a big success in the world—”

  He took hold of her shoulders, lightly but firmly. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Why should I? Nobody will hear. Nobody can. The Oakleys were very exclusive, they liked privacy. They had to build the biggest house in town on the biggest lot because they didn’t want to be bothered by neighbors. I could scream for help at the top of my lungs and not a soul would hear me. I’ve got enough privacy to be murdered in. Sheridan knows that. He’s probably dreamed about it a hundred times: wouldn’t it be nice if some­one came along and murdered Kate? He may even have made or be making some plans of his own along that line, though I don’t believe he’d have enough nerve to do it himself. He’d prob­ably hire someone, the way he hired Gowen.”

  Her quick changes of mood and thought were beginning to exhaust Mac. Trying to keep track of them was like following a fast rat through a tortuous maze: Sheridan had borrowed the car from Gowen, who was one of his drunken friends—Sheridan had been at the wheel—Sheridan hadn’t been at the wheel— Gowen wasn’t his friend, he’d been hired—Gowen had driven the car himself. At this point Mac might have dismissed her whole story as fictional if she hadn’t produced the real license number of a real car. The car existed, and so did Gowen. They were about the only facts Mac had to go on.

  “Now you’re suggesting,” he said, “that Gowen was hired by Sheridan to intimidate you.”

  “Yes. He’s probably some penniless bum that Sheridan met in a bar.”

  He didn’t point out that penniless bums didn’t pay cash for late-model sedans. “That should be easy enough to check.”

  “Would you, Mac? Will you?”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  “You’re a dear, you really are.”

  She seemed to have forgotten her ill-feeling toward him. She looked excited and flushed as if she’d just come in from an hour of tennis in the sun and fresh air. But he knew the game wasn’t tennis and the sun wasn’t the same one that was shining in the window. What warmed her, brightened her, made her blood flow faster, was the thought of beating Sheridan.

  (15)

  Charlie had lain awake half the night making plans for the com­ing day, how he would spend his free hour at noon and where he’d go right after work. But before noon Louise phoned and invited him to meet her for lunch, and at five o’clock his boss Mr. Warner asked him to take a special delivery to the Forest Service ten miles up in the mountains. He couldn’t refuse either of these requests without a good reason. His only reason would have seemed sinister to Louise and peculiar to Mr. Warner, but to Charlie himself it made sense: he had to find a little girl named Jessie to warn her not to play any more tricks on him because it was very naughty.

  It was six o’clock before he arrived back at the city limits. He drove to the school grounds as fast as he could without taking any chances on being stopped by the police. The mere sight of a police car might have sent him running home to Ben, but he saw none.

  At the rear of the school the parking lot, usually empty at this time, contained half a dozen cars. Charlie’s first thought was that an accident had happened, Jessie had taken another fall and hurt herself very seriously and would be in the hospital for a long period; she would be safe in a hospital with all the doctors and nurses around; no stranger could reach her, a stranger would be stopped at the door and sent packing. Alternate waves of relief and despair passed over him like cold winds and hot winds coming from places he had never visited.

  He drove around to the side of the school and saw that no accident had happened. A group of older boys were playing baseball and a few spectators were watching the game, including a man and woman who acted like parents. There were no young children in sight.

  Charlie pulled over to the curb and turned off the ignition. He had no reason to stay there, with Jessie gone, but he had no reason to go home either. He had called Ben from work and told him that he was going on an errand for the boss and not to ex­pect him home until seven or later. Though Ben had sounded suspicious at first, the words “special delivery” and “Forest Serv­ice” seemed to convince him not only that Charlie was telling the truth but that Mr. Warner trusted him enough to send him on an important mission.

  Charlie watched the game for a few minutes without interest or attention. Then one of the players he hadn’t noticed before came up to bat. He was a boy about sixteen, tall and thin as a broom handle. Even from a distance his cockiness was evident in every movement he made. He tapped the dirt out of his cleats, took a called strike, swung wildly at the second pitch and con­nected with th
e third for a home run that cleared the fence. With a little bow to his teammates he began jogging nonchalantly around the bases. As he rounded second base Charlie recognized him as the boy he’d seen several times with Jessie. There was no doubt about his identity: he even looked like Jessie, dark, with thin features and bright, intense eyes.

  Charlie sat motionless, hardly even breathing. This was Jes­sie’s brother. The phrase kept running through his head like words on a cracked record: Jessie’s brother, Jessie’s brother, Jessie’s brother. Jessie’s brother would live in the same house as Jessie, so it was now simply a question of following him, cau­tiously so the boy wouldn’t get suspicious, but keeping him in sight at all times until he stopped at a house and went inside. Charlie’s throat felt so thick that he had to touch it with his fingers to make sure he was not swelling up like a balloon. The house he goes into will be Jessie’s house. If I’m lucky there’ll be a name on the mailbox and I won’t have to ask Louise to help me. I’ll be on my own, I’ll do it all by myself.

  The home run had broken up the game. There was a round of cheers and applause, with the man and woman deliberately ab­staining. They walked onto the field and started talking to the pitcher, who turned his back on them. Players and spectators were dispersing, toward the parking lot and the side gate. Within five minutes the playground was empty of victors and van­quished alike, and a flock of blackbirds were walking around in the dust, nodding their heads as if they’d known right from the beginning how it would all end: someone would win, someone would lose. Charlie had done both.

  The boys drifted off in twos and threes, wearing their uni­forms but carrying their cleated shoes and bats and baseball mitts. Some of them passed Charlie’s car, still discussing the game, but Jessie’s brother and two of his teammates went out the gate on the other side of the school.

  Charlie drove around the block, passed them, and parked in front of a white stucco house. As they went by the car Charlie pretended to be searching for something in the glove compart­ment in order to keep his face hidden from them. Their voices were so loud and clear that he had a moment’s panic when he thought they were talking directly to him. They knew all about him, they were baiting him—