The Chill la-11

by Ross Macdonald

  On a Monday, not many of them were at sea, but I noticed a few white sails on the horizon. They were headed shoreward, like homing dreams.

  A man in the harbormaster's glass-enclosed lookout pointed out Stevens's yacht to me. Though she rode at the far end of the outer slip, she was easy to spot because of her towering mast. I walked out along the floating dock to her.

  _Revenant_ was long and sleek, with a low streamlined cabin and a racing cockpit. Her varnish was smooth and clear, her brass was bright. She rocked ever so slightly on the enclosed water, like an animal trembling to run.

  I stepped aboard and knocked on the hatch. No answer, but it opened when I pushed. I climbed down the short ladder and made my way past some short-wave radio equipment, and a tiny galley smelling of burned coffee, into the sleeping quarters. An oval of sunlight from one of the ports, moving reciprocally with the motion of the yacht, fluttered against the bulkhead like a bright and living soul. I said to it:

  "McGee?"

  Something stirred in an upper bunk. A face appeared at eye level. It was a suitable face for the crew of a boat named _Revenant_. McGee had shaved off his beard, and the lower part of his face had a beard-shaped pallor. He looked older and thinner and much less sure of himself.

  "Did you come here by yourself?" he whispered.

  "Naturally I did."

  "That means you don't think I'm guilty, either." He was reduced to such small momentary hopefulnesses.

  "Who else doesn't think you're guilty?"

  "Mr. Stevens."

  "Was this his idea?" I said, with a gesture that included McGee and myself.

  "He didn't say I _shouldn't_ talk to you."

  "Okay, McGee, what's on your mind?"

  He lay still watching me. His mouth was twitching, and his eyes held a kind of beseeching brightness. "I don't know where to start. I've been living in my thoughts for ten years--so long it hardly seems real. I know what happened to me but I don't know why. Ten years in the pen, with no chance of parole because I wouldn't admit that I was guilty. How could I? I was bum-rapped. And now they're getting ready to do it again."

  He gripped the polished mahogany edge of the bunk. "I can't go back to 'Q', brother. I did ten years and it was _hard_ time. There's no time as hard as the time you do for somebody else's mistake. God, but the days crawled. There weren't enough jobs to go round and half the time I had nothing to do but sit and think.

  "I'll kill myself," he said, "before I let them send me back again."

  He meant it, and I meant what I said in reply: "It won't happen, McGee. That's a promise."

  "I only wish I could believe you. You get out of the habit of believing people. They don't believe you, you don't believe them."

  "Who killed your wife?"

  "I don't know."

  "Who do you think killed her?"

  "I'm not saying."

  "You've gone to a lot of trouble, and taken quite a risk, to get me out here and tell me you're not saying. Let's go back to where it started, McGee. Why did your wife leave you?"

  "I left her. We had been separated for months when she was killed. I wasn't even in Indian Springs that night, I was here in the Point."

  "Why did you leave her?"

  "Because she asked me to. We weren't getting along. We never did get along after I came back from the service. Constance and the kid spent the war years living with her sister, and she couldn't adjust to me after that. I admit I was a wild man for a while then. But her sister Alice promoted the trouble between us."

  "Why?"

  "She thought the marriage was a mistake. I guess she wanted Constance all to herself. I just got in the way."

  "Did anybody else get in the way?"

  "Not if Alice could help it."

  I phrased my question more explicitly: "Was there another man in Constance's life?"

  "Yeah. There was." He seemed ashamed, as if the infidelity had been his. "I've given it a lot of thought over the years, and I don't see much point in opening it up now. The guy had nothing to do with her death, I'm sure of that. He was crazy about her. He wouldn't hurt her."

  "How do you know?"

  "I talked to him about her, not long before she was killed. The kid told me what was going on between him and her."

  "You mean your daughter Dolly?"

  "That's right. Constance used to meet the guy every Saturday, when she brought Dolly in to see the doctor. On one of my visiting days with the kid--the last one we ever had together, in fact--she told me about those meetings. She was only eleven or twelve and she didn't grasp the full significance, but she knew something fishy was going on.

  "Every Saturday afternoon Constance and the guy used to park her in a double-feature movie and go off by themselves someplace, probably some motel. Constance asked the kid to cover for her, and she did. The guy even gave her money to tell Alice that Constance went to those movies with her. I thought that was a lousy trick." McGee tried to warm over his old anger but he had suffered too much, and thought too much, to be able to. His face hung like a cold moon over the edge of the bunk.

  "We might as well use his name," I said. "Was it Godwin?"

  "Hell no. It was Roy Bradshaw. He used to be a professor at the college." He added with a kind of mournful pride: "Now he's the Dean out there."

  He wouldn't be for long, I thought; his sky was black with chickens coming home to roost.

  "Bradshaw was one of Dr. Godwin's patients," McGee was saying. "That's where he and Connie met, in Godwin's waiting room. I think the doctor kind of encouraged the thing between them."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Bradshaw told me himself the doctor said it was good for them, for their emotional health. It's a funny thing, I went to Bradshaw's house to get him to lay off Connie, even if I had to beat him up. But by the time he was finished talking he had me half-convinced that he and Connie were right, and I was wrong. I still don't know who was right and who was wrong. I know I never gave her any real happiness, after the first year. Maybe Bradshaw did."

  "Is that why you didn't inject him into your trial?"

  "That was one reason. Anyway, what was the use of fouling it up? It would only make me look worse." He paused. A deeper tone rose from a deeper level of his nature: "Besides, I loved her. I loved Connie. It was the one way I had to prove I loved her."

  "Did you know that Bradshaw was married to another woman?"

  "When?"

  "For the last twenty years. He divorced her a few weeks ago."

  McGee looked shocked. He'd been living on illusions for a long time, and I was threatening his sustenance. He pulled himself back into the bunk, almost out of sight.

  "Her name was Letitia Macready--Letitia Macready Bradshaw. Have you ever heard of her?"

  "No. How could he be married? He was living at home with his mother."

  "There are all kinds of marriages," I said. "He may not have seen his wife in years, and then again he may have. He may have had her living here in town, unknown to his mother or any of his friends. I suspect that was the case, judging from the lengths he went to to cover up his divorce."

  McGee said in a confused and shaken voice: "I don't see what it has to do with me."

  "It may have a very great deal. If the Macready woman was in town ten years ago, she had a motive for killing your wife--a motive as strong as your own."

  He didn't want to think about the woman. He was too used to thinking about himself. "I had no motive. I wouldn't hurt a hair of her head."

  "You did, though, once or twice."

  He was silent. All I could see of him was his wavy gray hair, like a dusty wig, and his large dishonest eyes trying to be honest:

  "I hit her a couple of times, I admit it. I suffered the tortures of the damned afterward. You've got to understand, I used to get mean when I got plastered. That's why Connie sent me away, I don't blame her. I don't blame her for anything. I blame myself." He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.

  I offered
him a cigarette, which he refused. I lit one for myself. The bright trembling patch of sunlight was climbing the bulkhead. It would soon be evening.

  "So Bradshaw had a wife," McGee said. He had had time to absorb the information. "And he told me he intended to marry Connie."

  "Maybe he did intend to. It would strengthen the woman's motive."

  "You honestly think she did it?"

  "She's a prime suspect. Bradshaw is another. He must have been a suspect to your daughter, too. She enrolled in his college and took a job in his household to check on him. Was that your idea, McGee?"

  He shook his head.

  "I don't understand her part in all this. She hasn't been much help in explaining it, either."

  "I know," he said. "Dolly's done a lot of lying, starting away back when. But when a little kid lies you don't put the same construction on it as you would an adult."

  "You're a forgiving man."

  "Oh no I'm not. I went to her with anger in my heart that Sunday I saw her picture in the paper, with her husband. What right did she have to a happy marriage after what she did to me? That's what was on my mind."

  "Did you tell her what was on your mind?"

  "Yessir, I did. But my anger didn't last. She reminded me so of her mother in appearance. It was like going back twenty years to happier times, when we were first married. We had a real good year when I was in the Navy and Connie was pregnant, with her."

  His mind kept veering away from his current troubles. I could hardly blame him, but I urged him back to them:

  "You gave your daughter a hard time the other Sunday, didn't you?"

  "I did at first. I admit that. I asked her why she lied about me in court. That was a legitimate question, wasn't it?"

  "I should say so. What was her reaction?"

  "She went into hysterics and said she wasn't lying, that she saw me with the gun and everything and heard me arguing with her mother. Which was false, and I told her so. I wasn't even in Indian Springs that night. That stopped her cold."

  "Then what?"

  "I asked her why she lied about me." He licked his lips and said in a hushed voice: "I asked her if she shot her mother herself, maybe by accident, the way Alice kept that revolver lying around loose. It was a terrible question, but it had to come out. It'd been on my mind for a long time."

  "As long ago as your trial?"

  "Yeah. Before that."

  "And that's why you wouldn't let Stevens cross-examine her?"

  "Yeah. I should have let him go ahead. I ended up crossquestioning her myself ten years later."

  "What was the result?"

  "More hysterics. She was laughing and crying at the same time. I never felt so sorry for anybody. She was as white as a sheet and the tears popped out of her eyes and ran down her face. Her tears looked so _pure_."

  "What did she say?"

  "She said she didn't do it, naturally."

  "Could she have? Did she know how to handle a gun?"

  "A little. I gave her a little training, and so did Alice. It doesn't take much gun-handling to pull a trigger, especially by accident."

  "You still think it could have happened that way?"

  "I don't know. It's mainly what I wanted to talk to you about."

  These words seemed to release him from an obscure bondage. He climbed down out of the upper bunk and stood facing me in the narrow aisle. He had on a seaman's black turtleneck, levis, and rubber-soled deck shoes.

  "You're in a position to go and talk to her," he said. "I'm not. Mr. Stevens won't. But you can go and ask her what really happened."

  "She may not know."

  "I realize that. She got pretty mixed up the other Sunday. God knows I wasn't trying to mix her up. I only asked her some questions. But she didn't seem to know the difference between what happened and what she said in court."

  "That story she told in court--did she definitely admit she made it up?"

  "She made it up with a lot of help from Alice. I can imagine how it went. 'This is the way it happened, isn't it?' Alice would say. 'You saw your old man with the gun, didn't you?' And after a while the kid had her story laid out for her."

  "Would Alice deliberately try to frame you?"

  "She wouldn't put it that way to herself. She'd know for a fact I was guilty. All she was doing was making sure I got punished for my crime. She probably fed the kid her lines without knowing she was faking evidence. My dear sister-inlaw was always out to get me, anyway."

  "Was she out to get Connie, too?"

  "Connie? She doted on Connie. Alice was more like her mother than her sister. There was fourteen-fifteen years' difference in their ages."

  "You said she wanted Connie to herself. Her feelings for Connie could have changed if she found out about Bradshaw."

  "Not _that_ much. Anyway, who would tell her?"

  "Your daughter might have. If she told you, she'd tell Alice."

  McGee shook his head. "You're really reaching."

  "I have to. This is a deep case, and I can't see the bottom of it yet. Did Alice ever live in Boston, do you know?"

  "I think she always lived here. She's a Native Daughter. I'm a native son, but nobody ever gave me a medal for it."

  "Even Native Daughters have been known to go to Boston. Did Alice ever go on the stage, or marry a man named Macready, or dye her hair red?"

  "None of those things sound like Alice."

  I thought of her pink fantastic bedroom, and wondered.

  "They sound more," McGee was saying, and then he stopped. He was silent for a watching moment. "I'll take that cigarette you offered me."

  I gave him a cigarette and lighted it. "What were you going to say?"

  "Nothing. I must have been thinking aloud."

  "Who were you thinking about?"

  "Nobody you know. Forget it, eh?"

  "Come on, McGee. You're supposed to be leveling with me."

  "I still have a right to my private thoughts. It kept me alive in prison."

  "You're out of prison now. Don't you want to stay out?"

  "Not if somebody else has to go in."

  "Sucker," I said. "Who are you covering for now?"

  "Nobody."

  "Madge Cerhardi?"

  "You must be off your rocker."

  I couldn't get anything more out of him. The long slow weight of prison forces men into unusual shapes. McGee had become a sort of twisted saint.

  chapter 28

  He was about to be given another turn of the screw. When I climbed out into the cockpit I saw three men approaching along the floating dock. Their bodies, their hatted heads, were dark as iron against the exploding sunset.

  One of them showed me a deputy's badge and a gun, which he held on me while the others went below. I heard McGee cry out once. He scrambled up through the hatch with blue handcuffs on his wrists and a blue gun at his back. The single look he gave me was full of fear and loathing.

  They didn't handcuff me, but they made me ride to the courthouse with McGee in the screened rear compartment of the Sheriff's car. I tried to talk to him. He wouldn't speak to me or look in my direction. He believed I had turned him in, and perhaps I had without intending to.

  I sat under guard outside the interrogation room while they questioned him in tones that rose and fell and growled and palavered and yelled and threatened and promised and refused and wheedled. Sheriff Crane arrived, looking tired but important. He stood over me smiling, with his belly thrust out.

  "Your friend's in real trouble now."

  "He's been in real trouble for the last ten years. You ought to know, you helped to cook it for him."

  The veins in his cheeks lit up like intricate little networks of infra-red tubing. He leaned toward me spewing martiniscented words:

  "I could put you in jail for loose talk like that. You know where your friend is going? He's going all the way to the green room this time."

  "He wouldn't be the first innocent man who was gassed."

  "Innocent?
McGee's a mass murderer, and we've got the evidence to prove it. It took my experts all day to nail it down: The bullet in the Haggerty corpse came from the same gun as the bullet we found in McGee's wife--the same gun he stole from Alice Jenks in Indian Springs."

  I'd succeeded in provoking the Sheriff into an indiscretion. I tried for another. "You have no proof he stole it. You have no proof he fired it either time. Where's he been keeping the gun for the last ten years?"

  "He cached it someplace, maybe on Stevens's boat. Or maybe an accomplice kept it for him."

  "Then he hid it in his daughter's bed to frame her?"

  "That's the kind of man he is."

  "Nuts!"

  "Don't talk to me like that!" He menaced me with the cannon ball of his belly.

  "Don't talk like that to the Sheriff," the guard said.

  "I don't know of any law against the use of the word 'nuts.' And incidentally I wasn't violating anything in the California Code when I went out to the yacht to talk to McGee. I'm cooperating with a local attorney in this investigation and I have a right to get my information where I can and keep it confidential."

  "How did you know he was there?"

  "I got a tip."

  "From Stevens?"

  "Not from Stevens. You and I could trade information, Sheriff. How did _you_ know he was there?"

  "I don't make deals with suspects."

  "What do you suspect me of? Illegal use of the word 'nuts'?"

  "It isn't so funny. You were taken with McGee. I have a right to hold you."

  "I have a right to call an attorney. Try kicking my rights around and see where it gets you. I have friends in Sacramento."

  They didn't include the Attorney General or anybody close to him, but I liked the sound of the phrase. Sheriff Crane did not. He was half a politician, and like most of his kind he was an insecure man. He said after a moment's thought:

  "You can make your call."

  The Sheriff went into the interrogation room--I caught a glimpse of McGee hunched gray-faced under a light--and added his voice to the difficult harmony there. My guard took me into a small adjoining room and left me by myself with a telephone. I used it to call Jerry Marks. He was about to leave for his appointment with Dr. Godwin and Dolly, but he said he'd come right over to the courthouse and bring Gil Stevens with him if Stevens was available.