Who Killed Mr. Garland's Mistress?

by Forrest, Richard;

  Tavie made her way back to her car, and without turning on the headlights, backed the car out the logging road onto the main road. She drove the two miles to the main intersection where a small closed gas station had an outdoor phone booth. She pulled the car out of sight in back of the station and went into the phone booth.

  Helen answered on the fourth ring. “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Fraser, I’d like to speak to my husband,” she said.

  There was an almost imperceptible pause on the line, “I’m sorry, you must have the wrong Fraser.”

  “This is Octavia Garland, Helen, and I want to speak to Rob. I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t an emergency.”

  “I’m sorry …”

  “Hell’ll never forgive you if you don’t put him on the line. I said this was an emergency.”

  There was another pause while Helen debated with herself and then reluctantly handed the phone to Rob.

  “Tavie, is that you?” Rob asked.

  “I need you home, Rob. I need you home desperately.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “A mutual friend.”

  “That son-of-a-bitch Jack.”

  “It’s not his fault, Rob. I told you, this is an emergency. I called and begged him. It’s little Rob, there’s been an accident.”

  “Oh, my God. Where are you?”

  “Home. Come quickly.”

  She hung up without waiting for his reply. From the car she had an unobstructed view of the road, and yet she herself was well hidden in the shadows of the station. He’d probably try and call the house, but would get a busy signal, then he’d realize that no matter what the consequences he’d have to come.

  Timing was so important and always left room for a possible flaw. The gasoline in his tank would take him past this spot and out onto the interstate highway. The highway was uncrowded at this time of night and his stalled car should be spotted shortly by the state police. If he was picked up too soon … once again she’d have to count on mathematical probability.

  The red Datsun passed her, hesitated briefly at a stop sign, turned onto the main road, and was soon out of sight. Tavie started the car and turned toward Helen’s house.

  Clutching the heavy shotgun she stood with her back against the side of the house. Remembering with a start that the gun was unloaded, she opened the breach and inserted two shells from the supply in her field jacket pocket. A dim light from a hall lamp came through the front window.

  As she went around the front corner of the house, she saw a row of low bushes two feet from the wall. She edged along the small border between the bushes toward the front door. Three low cement steps, with a low-wrought iron railing on each side, led up to the front door. She went around the railing to the door and inserted the duplicate key into the lock. It wouldn’t turn. She tried again and felt the faintly discernible click as the tumblers turned.

  The momentum of the weight hitting her across the shoulders knocked Tavie over the wrought-iron rail into the bushes below. The dog’s low growl frightened her and she pulled her arms across her face. She could feel her face pushed into the soft dirt as the dog’s teeth tore at the cloth of her jacket.

  Momentarily the tearing teeth were gone and a low deep bark reverberated through the night, and then the tearing again as she felt sharp pain in her arm and shoulders. Turning, she held a protective arm across her face and neck as the large head loomed inches above her. The gun was gone. Only her upraised arm saved her from the dog’s neck lunge as fabric ripped.

  It was the unforeseen—there had been no way to anticipate—and then all thought and regrets were gone, only an instinct for survival remained. She rolled over and crawled to her knees only to be knocked forward again by the dog’s thrusting weight. As she fell, her hand felt the stock of the shotgun, and she clawed the weapon to her. Turning, she swung the gun across the dog’s head.

  The dog yelped and fell from her as she struggled to her feet. The dog shook his head, as if to clear his senses, and she saw the teeth bare as his front legs dipped and his powerful haunches tightened for a leap. She fired the shotgun from a hip position pointblank into the dog’s chest. She was knocked backwards against the house wall as the dog tumbled away and lay still.

  A floodlight switched on and illuminated the front lawn of the house. She stood starkly outlined in its glare. In the penumbra of light she saw the dog twitch and lie still.

  Tavie, clutching the shotgun, ran for the road, tripped over the body of the dog, and sprawled across the grass.

  A woman in a long housecoat stepped around the corner of the house into the periphery of light. Helen coolly raised her hand and aimed the small gun at Tavie. Turning on her stomach, Tavie fired, without aiming, at the floodlight attached to the eave of the house.

  Helen fired simultaneously with the floodlight shattering in the shotgun’s blast. The yard was plunged into darkness. Tavie scrambled to her feet and ran toward the protecting woods. She stood, with heaving chest, against a large tree.

  The element of surprise was gone. Helen knew somebody was there and even had a gun. Somebody, a neighbor, might have heard the shots, help would be on the way—it was over. No, it couldn’t be. They’d know, she had called Rob, they’d find out it was her—they’d send her back to the hospital. She had to finish.

  She fumbled with the shotgun until it broke open. Putting the expended shells in her jacket pocket she loaded two more. There might still be time. Helen had come out so quickly from the back door she probably hadn’t brought her keys, that meant she would return by the back door, if she wasn’t still out here. No, she’d heard the shotgun. The wise thing for her to do would be to return to the house.

  Tavie ran to the front door and fumbled with the key still inserted in the lock. Turning the key slowly she pushed the door open, stepped in, and shut it quickly behind her. As she had imagined, the living room was to the left, and she stepped into the darkened room and hunched behind an easy chair.

  The house was silent, except for what she imagined was the crescendo of her gasping breath. She held her breath and heard the faint click and squeak of the rear screen door. She tried to let her breath out in short shallow gasps.

  She heard steps in the hallway and raised the shotgun to a firing position. There were probably two entrances to the room she was in, through the hallway, the way she had come, and a rear hall entrance from the family or dining room. If there were an easily accessible switch the room could be bathed in light any moment; Tavie would be outlined and helpless. She would have to gamble on the probability that Helen, entering the house through the rear door, would come into the room from the far doorway.

  A light clicked on.

  It wasn’t the living room light, but came through the entryway in the rear of the house. Helen would be around the corner of the far end of the room. Was she waiting coolly? Did she know? Tavie heard a slight click and then the further click of a telephone dial.

  Moving quietly and swiftly down the length of the room, Tavie inched her body around the corner and saw Helen’s back to her. Helen held a phone in one hand, the pistol in another, and was talking into the phone.

  “Operator, get me the state …”

  An instinct or faint rustling must have reached Helen—she turned to face Tavie. They faced each other in a split second of frozen tableau, and yet Tavie was able to discern the flicker of fright change to a shuttered coolness as Helen’s hand swept upward with the pistol.

  The first shot of the twelve-gauge shotgun blew a hole in Helen’s chest while the second knocked her across the room and sprawled her against the dining-room wall.

  The havoc wrecked by the blasts at such close range was far more than she had expected. Tavie dropped the shotgun and felt bile rush to her mouth. She clamped a restraining hand over her face and swallowed repeatedly. As she walked the few feet across the room to the body she saw that the upper portion of the torso was barely recognizable. Specks of blood were spattered across the rear
wall of the room.

  She wanted to run screaming into the woods.

  Time. She could hear the slow methodical click of a metronome within her, and knew that seconds were rushing by, each one a precious entity. She pulled the body away from the wall and threw aside the layers of housecoat. Helen wore a brief pair of red panties, and Tavie ripped them from the body and tossed them across the room.

  Reaching frantically into her jacket pocket, with a prayer that it was unharmed, she pulled out the hypodermic syringe. It was intact, only a portion of the plastic cylinder bent slightly inward. She pushed the legs of the body apart and inserted the syringe into the vagina of the corpse. Taking care not to puncture skin or damage tissue she pushed the plunger of the syringe in half-way.

  Extracting the syringe she noticed that half its contents were left. She half-stood and ejected the remaining portion of semen over Helen’s face.

  Helen was dead now and had no inkling of this final degrading act—the final act of what would be taken for sexual perversion.

  Putting the syringe back in her pocket, she picked up the shotgun, and ran out the back door and toward her car.

  Slippery hands fumbled with the ignition key of the car. Finally, the engine turned over, and with a screech of tires the car sprang forward. She put the gears in reverse and tried to back calmly out the logging road. What had she forgotten? She turned the car abruptly and drove up Helen’s driveway.

  Leaping from the car she ran to the front door, locked the door from the outside, and pocketed the key. She opened the trunk of the car and took out an old blanket.

  She had to roll the heavy dog’s body onto the blanket and drag it across the grass toward the car. It took all her strength to push the dog over the lip of the trunk. She knew the dog had bitten and scratched her, possibly bits of fabric and skin could be found around his claws. He would have to be disposed of.

  She backed down the drive and turned onto the road. Accelerating rapidly, she tried to calculate the time that had elapsed from the shooting of the dog until now. The kaleidoscope of events made an accurate estimate difficult, but in retracing the events step-by-step she imagined that not more than five minutes had elasped since the dog first jumped on her, and only two minutes since Helen picked up the phone. Assuming that no one called the police immediately after the first shot, she still had time. The operator would trace Helen’s call and then call the police. She tried, but couldn’t remember how far away the nearest state police barracks were.

  No matter—she had to hope.

  She had a strong impulse to floorboard the accelerator as she pulled onto the interstate highway. She glanced down at the speedometer and slowed the car to an even fifty miles per hour. Far ahead she saw a car pulled off on the emergency lane with its lights blinking. She pulled into the far lane and accelerated as she passed the Datsun. Rob stood with outstretched thumb in the glare of its headlights. At her present speed, and with a dark interior, it would be impossible for Rob to recognize her.

  She slowed back to fifty as a state police cruiser, with flashing lights, passed her in the opposite lane—it was headed in the general direction of Helen’s house.

  She left the highway at Farmington and pulled onto a secondary road that headed for the reservoir. As she passed the broad expanse of lake, she pulled onto another road that sloped down toward the water, and stopped the car in a cove of large trees.

  Turning off the engine and lights, she collapsed over the steering wheel. When her breathing returned to normal, she turned on the map light. Her gloves were smeared with blood, and there was blood on the steering wheel. She turned on the car’s headlights and went around front to examine herself in their glare. The blood wasn’t hers, it must be from the dog or Helen. She quickly stripped off her clothes and used them to wipe the car’s interior. The pain in her arm and shoulder began to bother her.

  Tavie stood nude in the glare of the headlights. Her mind was a blank. She felt rooted in these woods like some ancient nymph. Overhead, she saw the half-moon through the hanging trees and over the water moonlight made an ionic column across the lake. She wanted to walk through the woods, into the water, and cleanse herself.

  She shuddered and pushed those thoughts away. She must survive, and in order to do so she had to continue—there was no turning back.

  She went to the car trunk and dragged the dog’s body out. She pulled the heavy body into the water and let it sink. She washed herself in the lake water as best she could and returned to the car.

  Next—get rid of things. She took the pillowcase and rope from the suitcase. She stuffed the field jacket and pants in the pillowcase along with the empty shells from Will’s shotgun, the key, and gloves. Tying the case shut, after putting rocks inside, she threw it as hard as she could into the water.

  Putting the shotgun into the suitcase, she donned her short nightgown and tucked it into her jeans, and then she put on her shirt and sneakers.

  The ride back to Will’s apartment was uneventful. Once again she was unseen as she went back into the small building and let herself into his apartment. She quickly took off her jeans and shirt, and having reassembled the shotgun, put it back in’ the closet. The thread was undisturbed on the bedroom door, and before opening it she put the phone back on the hook.

  Will, one arm outstretched over the edge of the bed, was still asleep. She put his keys back on the dresser and shook him.

  “Hey, wake up. Wake up!”

  “What?” His voice was groggy and sleepy.

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Will, wake up or I’ll get in trouble. What time is it?”

  He sat up and rubbed his head. “Christ, what in the hell were we drinking?”

  “I’ve really got to go.”

  “O.K., O.K.” He slowly got up and looked at his watch on the dresser. “It’s one o’clock.”

  She went back into the living room and began to dress while carrying on a running commentary. “Really,” she said. “You’ve got to go back to beer. Do you remember making love the second time?”

  “The second time? Good God, no. How was I?”

  “Marvelous.” He was leaning against the door frame and she went over and kissed him lightly. “Call me tomorrow.”

  “O.K.”

  At the doorway she turned. “You sure it’s only one.”

  “Just a little after.”

  Walking to her own car, with the suitcase, she drove rapidly, but within the speed limit, back to her house. Halfway down the block from the house, she turned off the headlights, and as the car turned in the drive, cut the engine and rolled silently up the drive to the garage.

  Once in the house, she quickly replaced the phone on the hook and removed the unbroken threads from the bedroom doors. She flushed them down the toilet.

  In her bedroom, she removed her clothes and put them in the hamper. Turning her naked back to the full-length mirror, she could see the long scratches and marks from the dog crisscrossing her back.

  The unforseen. There would be methods she could utilize to explain. She went into the shower and let the warm water course over her body. She rubbed the remaining blood from her body, toweled off slowly, and put first aid cream and bandages over the cuts and scratches. She wore a flannel night-top of Rob’s to bed and gratefully crawled under the sheets.

  Tavie Garland fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They said that Margaret Fitzgerald was dying. The casket was open for viewing at the local A&P Supermarket, but the passing shoppers seemed oblivious of their mourning roles. She wasn’t dying yet, and her fingers clawed at the velvet lining of the casket.

  “Can’t that thing be moved out of the aisle?” a voice said.

  Wasn’t there any decency, couldn’t they wait for a respectable opportunity?

  “Isn’t she dead yet? Call the manager,” another voice called out.

  Yes, it was time for Maggie to die. She called out to them,
and the oblivious scurrying housewives continued passing each side of the casket in a constant stream. Miriam stopped and peered inside.

  “I thought it was a sale, it’s only Maggie,” she said.

  “It’s time for me to go, Miriam. Do something. Please, do something.”

  “Always willing to oblige, but I’ll be late for my art lesson.” Miriam placed a large, frozen turkey in the casket.

  “More,” she cried.

  “Press her to death and get it over with.”

  The scurrying carts stopped at the frozen foods counter while clutching hands picked up frozen fowl to lay in the casket. She felt the weight grow as her breath froze in deep cold.

  “She’s almost done,” a voice cried. “Get it over with, wake her up.”

  “No,” she screamed at them. “I don’t want to wake. It’s not time yet.”

  “It’s time, it’s time,” the voices retorted. “Wake up. Wake up.”

  “No, leave me alone,” she cried.

  “Wake up. Goddamn it!”

  She was being shaken. Someone was grasping her shoulders and shaking her. Tavie opened her eyes and looked at Rob. It was his hands shaking her, his angry face bent over her. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be here. She was still asleep. No, she was awake. He was here. She slowly sat up.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “What in hell kind of game are you playing?” His angry hands still shook her, and his fingernails cut into her wounded shoulder and arm.

  “You’re hurting me. You really are.”

  He let go and stepped back. “I’ve looked in on the children, they’re sleeping like lambs. If you wanted to check up on me you didn’t have to tell a story like that.”

  Her body ached and her limbs were leaden. She wasn’t awake yet, her thoughts weren’t focusing. She wanted to sleep. “What are you doing home?”

  “The goddamn car ran out of gas. I left the damn thing and was lucky enough to get a ride into Hartford where I grabbed a cab. All right, you’ve found out. What now?”

  An element of fear curled within her. It could be a trick. This could be a massive game to bring things out of her. She had to be careful. Oh, she wanted it to be over with, she didn’t want to continue. She had to … there was no backing away. “What are you talking about, Rob? What are you doing home from Pittsburgh?”