A Bullet for Cinderella

by John D. MacDonald

  He stood up, closed the lid on the toilet, bent over me, picked me up with disconcerting ease, and sat me on the closed lid, holding me for a moment until he was certain I wouldn’t topple over. He sat on the rim of the tub again, facing me.

  “We aren’t going to talk over a whisper, Tal. We aren’t going to make any sudden noises. If we make any sudden noises I’m going to snap your neck with my hands. It wouldn’t be hard to do. Nod your head if you’re going to be quiet.”

  I nodded. He took a knife out of his pocket, opened the blade, and leaned toward me. He put the cold steel against my cheek, holding it there, smiling in an odd way, then yanked it toward him, cutting the strip of sheeting that held the dry washcloth in my mouth. I pushed the washcloth out with my tongue and it fell to the floor at my feet.

  “Where’s Ruth?”

  “That was just a little bit too loud. Not much too loud. Just a little bit. So soften it up, Tal. Ruth is all right.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Not God. Me. I had the idea, not God. She was on the ground. On her face. Out like a light. I took hold of that wonderful hair in my left hand and I pulled her head up. I held this little knife against her throat. It’s sharp enough to shave with. I was about to pull it through her throat when I suddenly began to wonder if she might be worth something. So I didn’t do it. She’s all right. Don’t thank God. Thank Earl Fitzmartin. She isn’t comfortable. She isn’t happy. But she’s still alive, Tal.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Not over a half mile from here. But you don’t know what direction. It’s across country. I was trained to fight at night. I move well at night, Tal. I’m good at night. You know how I used to get around the camp. You remember that. She’s well tied, Tal. She can’t even wiggle. She can’t make a sound. You’re really worried about her, aren’t you? She came to the yard. For a little heart-to-heart talk. Did they find the bodies, Tal?”

  “They tore up the garage floor.”

  “Now they can ask George all about it. But George won’t have a word to say. George isn’t talking. George didn’t have much more left. Just a little equity in the lumberyard. A little stock in the store. Not enough left to stay around for. He was good for forty-seven thousand, seven hundred dollars. It should have been more. He didn’t have to give up. He could have gotten on the ball and started making more. He could have tried to fatten up the kitty. But he was selfish. He would have lived longer.”

  “You killed him.”

  “That was a shade too loud, Tal. Just a bit too loud. How are you coming with Cindy, Tal. Find her?”

  “You took an awful chance killing George.”

  He smiled again. “You won’t believe this, but I didn’t kill him. He started to come to while I was stripping him, but I poured more liquor into him. I read that people drown themselves and shoot themselves and cut their wrists naked. Did you know that? Very interesting. I got him propped on the side of the bed. I got the muzzle with the towel around it between his teeth. The gun was about the only thing holding him up. I wanted the angle to be right and I wanted to do it when there was a lot of noise on the floor. But I wanted to do it, Tal. You know, you plan a thing, and work it out just right, you want to do it. But he opened his eyes. He looked right at me. He looked ridiculous, with the gun in his mouth. He looked right at me and put his big toe against the trigger before I could stop him. I don’t know if it was an accident. What do you think?”

  “I think he did it on purpose.”

  “So do I. So do I. It makes me feel a little strange. He maybe did it like a joke. He did that well. He didn’t do much else well. He didn’t do well marrying that woman or burying her, either. I thought I’d hit the sixty thousand when I dug under the pines. But it turned out to be the woman and the salesman. It disappointed me, Tal. But it turned out to be just like finding money, didn’t it?”

  “They’re all after you now.”

  “Do you think that worries me? Now hear this. It doesn’t worry me a bit. Maybe you ought to be worried. Where is Grassman? I didn’t think you could get out of that. You surprised me a little, Tal. I thought it would give you the jumps. What did you do with it?”

  “I hid the body in a barn, an abandoned barn.”

  “And I bet you did some sweating. Grassman was smart. He was in my league, Tal. Not yours. He added things up. He was a pro. He added things up and came after the money. He knew I had to have it around somewhere. He knew I was too smart to spend it. I caught him looking for it. We had a little talk. He got rough. I got mad and hit him too hard. That made it awkward. I put him in the back end of my car. I didn’t know where to dump him. I was thinking of an alley, so they’d think he’d been mugged. But I found your car by accident. It saved me a lot of time. After I killed Grassman, I knew I had to get George out of the way. He was the only one who could tie me to Grassman. It took some planning, and some luck. I won’t have time to work on the Cindy angle. How are you coming?”

  I could see the shape of it. George could tie him to Grassman and George was dead. I could tie him to both of them. It was only through his greed that I could buy time, buy my life. “I found her.”

  He waited ten seconds. He said, “A hundred and seven thousand sounds better than forty-seven. I think I better have that much before I take off, Tal.”

  “They’re going to get you.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t figure it that way. They might have got me if I’d cut her throat. I wanted to. But I didn’t let myself. They would have hunted me too hard. Now you can trade information for her, Tal. If she doesn’t mean anything to you, too bad. I can kill you right here and go and kill her and be on my way and be careful and take my chances. I couldn’t leave you here telling them about George and Grassman and then finding my sixty thousand. I’d rather nobody found it.”

  “Somebody is going to find it, anyway. The girl is going to find it. She knows where it is.”

  “Where is it, Tal?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. I told her too much. I couldn’t find out any other way. She’s—more in your league, Fitz. I’m picking her up tomorrow morning in Redding. At ten o’clock. She’s going to go with me to where the money is hidden.”

  He smiled in that wild, unpleasant way. “You’re kidding the troops, boy. You’re stalling. I scared you and you’re making things up. You’re just smart enough to know that if you are going to get it tomorrow, and yet you don’t know where it is, I’ve got to leave you alive. You’re that smart, and that’s why you made it up.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “I don’t think it’s the truth at all. I think maybe you haven’t gotten any place. I think I’ve stalled around here too long. I think I’d like to hear your neck snap. I can do it so quick you’ll hardly know it happened. Maybe you won’t know it at all.”

  “Wait a minute. Look in the closet in the bedroom. Her luggage is there.”

  For the first time he looked uncertain. He turned out the bathroom light and went into the next room. He came back with the two suitcases. He shut the door, turned the light on again. He opened them and looked at the clothing.

  “This is pretty good stuff. This belongs to her? What’s it doing here?”

  “We were going to get the money and go off together.”

  I could see him appraise that, and half accept it. “But I don’t like the idea of letting you go and get it. I can’t keep an eye on you.”

  “Fitz, listen to me. I don’t give a damn about the money. You can have every cent of it after I get it. I’ll trade all of it for Ruth Stamm. Then see how it will be. You’ll have the hundred and seven thousand. They think George was a suicide. Maybe they’ll never find Grassman. I covered the body with hay. The barn is about to fall down. Nobody ever goes in there. They won’t look as hard for you. You’ll be a lot safer.”

  “You’re lying. This is a stall.”

  “It’s not. I’ll prove we were going to go away together when we got the money. Look for the small black box
in the bottom of the smaller suitcase. Under all the clothes. Yes, that’s it. Look under the partition.”

  He took the money out. He riffled through it. He folded it once and put it in his shirt pocket. He looked at me for long moments, his eyes dubious.

  I do not like to think about the next half hour. He put the gag back in my mouth. He had his strong hands, and he had the small sharp knife, and he had a sadistic knowledge of the nerve ends. From time to time he would stop and wait until I quieted down, then loosen the gag and question me. The pain and humiliation made me weep like a child. Once I fainted. Finally he was satisfied. He had learned how much I thought of Ruth. He had learned that I knew that we had to go where the money was hidden by boat. He knew that I had guessed we would start from the Rasi house north of town. And he knew that I knew no more than that.

  After that he cut my hands loose. He was perfectly safe in so doing. I was too enfeebled by pain to be any threat to him.

  “You’ll get the money. You’ll dig it up. You’ll come back here with it.”

  “No.”

  He took a quick half step toward me. I couldn’t help flinching. Memory of what he could do was too clear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t trust you to do what you promise, Fitz. I’ve got to know Ruth will be all right. I’ve got to know she’ll be safe. Or you don’t get the money.”

  “I broke you this far. You want to be broken the rest of the way?”

  “I don’t think you can do it.”

  After a long time he gave a shrug of disgust. “Maybe not. How do you want it worked?”

  “I want to see her. I want to see that she’s alive before I give you the money. It could be by the river. Then if you try to cross me, I’ll throw the money in the river. I swear I’ll do that.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you? You’re making it rough. I can’t risk being seen.”

  “I’ll see that we start off by boat at one o’clock. I don’t know how far we have to go or how long it will take. You could bring her to the Rasi house at two.”

  “It’s a risk.”

  “It’s isolated. There’s no phone there. At least I don’t think they have a phone. I’ll give you the money and I’ll see that you get a fair start. That’s the most I can do. I won’t try to make it any safer for you.”

  “But you promise a fair start?”

  “I promise that.”

  He snapped out the bathroom light. I heard the door open, and then heard the outer door open and close. I walked unsteadily through the dark room to the front door. I opened it. The moon was gone. A wind sighed across the flats on the far side of the road. There was no sign that Fitzmartin had ever been there. The night was still. He was very good in the night. I remembered that.

  There was a first-aid kit in the trunk compartment of my car. I got it. The small cuts had not bled very much. I cleaned myself up and bandaged the cuts. I ached all over. I felt sick and weak, as though I were recovering from a long illness. I kept seeing his eyes. His powerful hands had punished nerves and muscles. Even my bones felt bruised and tender.

  I went to bed. I was certain that Ruth was still alive. I hoped his greed would be stronger than his wish to kill. I hoped his greed would last through the night. But there was something erratic about his thought patterns. There was an incoherency about the way he had talked, jumping from one subject to the next. He had a vast confidence in his own powers.

  I wondered where he had Ruth. A half mile away. Across country. Maybe she was in his car, and it was parked well off a secondary road. Maybe he had found a deserted shed.

  As I lay awake, trying to find some position in which I could be comfortable, I heard it begin to rain. The rain was light at first, a mere whisper of rain. And then it began to come down. It thundered on the roof. It made a drench of the world, bouncing off the painted metal of the cars, coming down as though all the gates of the skies had been opened.

  • TWELVE •

  I awoke at dawn. It was still raining. It seemed to be raining harder than before. I was surprised that I had been able to go to sleep. I took a hot shower to work the stiffness out of my muscles. The small cuts stung. My face in the mirror looked like the face of a stranger, with sunken eyes and flat, taut cheeks.

  I prayed that Ruth was still alive. I prayed that she had lived through the night. I knew what would have happened the previous night had I not found Cindy. I would be lying dead on the tile floor. They would find me there.

  I shaved and dressed and left the motel. I got uncomfortably wet in the ten feet from the motel door to the car door. I drove slowly into town, the lights on, peering ahead through the heavy rain curtain. I drove through town and found a gas station open on the far side. I had the car gassed up. Farther along I found an all-night bean wagon. A disc jockey in Redding was giving the seven-o’clock news. The plastic radio was behind the counter.

  “… as yet on the disappearance of Ruth Stamm, only daughter of Doctor Buxton Stamm of Hillston. It is believed that the young woman was abducted by a man named Earl Fitzmartin, Marine veteran and ex-prisoner of war. Fitzmartin had been employed for the past year by George Warden, Hillston businessman. Fitzmartin was a newcomer to Hillston. George Warden committed suicide this week. But certain peculiarities about the circumstances of Warden’s suicide have led Hillston police to believe that it may have been murder. Yesterday the Hillston police, assisted by Gordon County police officers, searched a summer cottage once owned by George Warden and found, under a cement garage floor, the bodies of Eloise Warden, wife of George Warden, and Henry Fulton, of Chicago. At the time of the Warden woman’s disappearance two years ago, it was believed she had run off with Fulton. Discovery of the bodies and of the Fulton car, which had been driven into the lake into deep water, has led police to believe that George Warden killed both of them after finding them together at the summer cottage.

  “An intensive search is being made for Fitzmartin and Miss Stamm. Full details of the case have not yet been released, but it is believed that there is some connection between Fitzmartin and the bodies discovered yesterday at the summer cottage. It is expected that federal authorities will be called in on the case today. Miss Ruth Stamm is twenty-six years old, five feet eight inches tall, and weighs about a hundred and twenty-eight pounds. She has dark red hair and gray eyes and was last seen wearing a dark green skirt and a white cardigan sweater. Fitzmartin is about thirty years old, six feet tall, weighs about a hundred and eighty pounds. He has very blond, almost white hair, pale gray eyes. He may be driving a black Ford, license BB67063. Anyone seeing persons of this description should contact the police at once. Listen again at eight o’clock to WRED for complete local news.”

  The disc jockey stopped and whistled softly. “How about that, folks? They give me this stuff to read and sometimes I read it and don’t even listen. But that’s a hot one. That one can grab you. Bodies under concrete. Cars in lakes. Suicides that aren’t suicides. A red-headed gal and an ex-Marine. Man, that’s a crazy mixed-up deal they’ve got down there in Hillston. That’s got all the makings of a national type crime. Well, back to the mines. Got to spin some of this stuff. But before I do, let me tell you a little something you ought to know, you good folks out there, about the Atlas Laundry and Dry Cleaning people right here in Redding, over on Downey Street. If you’ve got clothes you’re really proud of, and I guess we all got one set of those good threads at least, then you—”

  The fat young girl behind the counter turned off the radio. “That character,” she said amiably to me. “Ten minutes of commercials between every number. Drive you nuts. I just turn him on for the news. If you want, I can turn him back on or find something else.”

  “No thanks.”

  “How about that Stamm girl? I met her once. We had this dog, see. Got him when he was a puppy. But this highway, it’s bad to try to have a dog when you live on the highway. He got himself hit and we took him to Stamm’s. The girl was real nice. Pretty sort of
girl. But Blackie was too far gone. Busted his back, so they had to give him a shot. Honest, I cried. And you know what I think? I think it’s a big deal for those two. I think she maybe ran off with that Marine. You can figure she wasn’t getting any younger. She’ll hear about all the mess she’s causing and she’ll get in touch. That’s just what will happen.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Of course it could be. You want more coffee, maybe? Sometimes I think I’d run off with anybody asked me just to get out of this rat race. That’s on my bad days. Isn’t this day a stinker, though? It keeps coming down like this, every creek in the county will be flooded. It gives me the creeps to think about those two buried under a garage floor all that time. I never knew her, but my sister knew her. She was in the high school with her, before my time. My sister says she did a lot of running around. The way I see it, mister, if a husband catches his wife and another man, he’s got a right to kill the two of them. It’s like what they say the unwritten law. When I get married, I’m not going to do any cheating. I guess it isn’t so bad if a man does a little cheating. They’re all alike, beg your pardon. But no woman with a home and husband and everything has any right to jump the fence. Don’t you think so? He made his big mistake burying the two of them like he did. He should have just got on the phone and said to the police, ‘You boys come out here and see what I did and why.’ Then it would have been just what they say formalities. The way I look at it—”

  I was saved by two truck drivers who came in from the big red combo that had just parked in front of the place. After she served them she came back, but I had finished.

  As she gave me my change she said, “You remember what I told you, now. That girl and that Marine ran off some place. Drive carefully.”

  I drove on through the rain. The cars I met were proceeding with great care. It should have been full daylight, but it hadn’t gotten appreciably lighter since first dawn. It was almost nine o’clock before I got to Redding. I parked near a drugstore and phoned her number from a booth in the back of the store.