TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME

by John Dunning

  He coughed. She started to speak but he gestured her down. “Don’t try to make it tonight, it’s too late now, these woods’ll be like pitch once the sun goes down. Go in the morning, you hear what I’m saying? Just bed down right here and sleep as best you can, then at the first sign of light drink the rest of the water and follow the trail. You’ll reach the town in a two-hour hike.”

  He poked at the fire. “I’ll build this up for you, it’ll give you some light for a while. I’ll leave you some wood, not enough to last the night but you’ll have the fire for a while.”

  “I don’t care what you do.”

  “Come on, miss, don’t go all spiteful on me here at the last. We may not see each other again.”

  “That’s fine with me. I hate you.”

  “You seem to’ve gone to a great deal of trouble for a man you hate.”

  “It seems I’m not just crazy, I’m also stupid. I wish I’d never come.”

  “Well, nobody asked you to. Didn’t I do everything I could to throw a damper on you? You can’t say I didn’t.”

  “If that makes you feel better, do what you want. I can’t stop you now. You can go straight to hell if that’s what you want.”

  He stepped away. “That seems to be your last word on it.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  “Nothing.” He gave a little cough. “Nothing.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he sighed. “You really are one hard goddamn woman.”

  “Oh, stop, would you please just stop! What do you want me to do, beg you to stay? Would it make any difference if I did that?”

  “Nothing much makes a difference these days. There’s so damn little left in the cup.”

  She clutched at this. “At least there’s something left. That’s what you should hang on to. I’ll help you if I can.”

  “What can you do?”

  “I don’t know, maybe nothing. All I can do is try.”

  He stared at her.

  “I can listen. I can care. I can walk with you on the beach when Pauline’s not around.”

  “I’d be a pain in the ass. You don’t want to talk to me, all you want to hear about is what happened to March. Isn’t that what you came for?”

  “It’s not what I found.”

  He came closer. “Maybe it is.”

  Suddenly her heart beat faster. “What does that mean?”

  He leaned toward her and smiled. “I killed March.”

  He coughed. “Me alone. I killed him that night on the beach. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Well, you got it. I killed him.”

  He leaned forward and gave her a crooked smile. “You still want to walk on the beach, darlin’?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t think so.”

  He stood up straight. Said, “I’ll be going now,” then stiffened and froze where he stood. A few feet away Dulaney had come out of the forest.

  ( ( ( · ) ) )

  HOLLY

  ( ( ( 1 ) ) )

  THEY reached the town in the morning. The general store was open at eight and Jack went in to use the telephone, leaving her on the porch with the old man, where he could watch them through the glass.

  “Tom . . . why don’t you tell me what happened now?”

  “I told you. I killed March. He was my friend and I killed him.”

  “Then you must’ve killed my father as well.”

  He smiled cagily as if he sensed a trick. “Sure I did. Damn right.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Whose name?”

  “My father’s, you fool. Look at you, you don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about. If you killed him, tell me his name.”

  “What difference does it make? I can’t remember them all.”

  “Have there been that many?”

  “Oh, I’ve killed lots of people.”

  “Then where’d you hide them? Show me one and I’ll believe you about the others. What’d you do, snap your fingers and they all disappear?”

  “I buried ’em deep.”

  She shivered at that and a moment later Jack came out and covered her with a blanket. She looked at the old man. “Now he’s saying he killed Daddy.”

  Jack said nothing. She touched his hand. “What are we going to do?”

  “Someone will come pick us up.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. But someone will come pick us up anyway.”

  An hour later Becky Hart arrived.

  ( ( ( 2 ) ) )

  SHE was blissfully warm under the blanket. The hum of the car was almost hypnotic and she fell into a deep hot sleep. When she opened her eyes she saw the dunes and the tower looming above them. The root of all evil, she thought. On the seat behind her the old man coughed, bringing her back to the big question. What are we going to do with him? Turn him loose and he’ll be gone again, off in the woods to die alone. Lock him up and there’ll be endless new questions to answer. She and Jack would become part of the official record, linked to the old man until his confession could be verified.

  Becky seemed to hear her thought. “What’s with Mr. Griffin?”

  “He’s trying to kill himself,” Jack said. “I guess for his own good we’ve got to take him to jail.”

  “Take me to jail, I don’t care. I killed March.”

  Becky rolled her eyes back in the mirror. Holly shifted and looked back. “I don’t know about jail. I think he’s putting us on.”

  “I told you what I did. Take me to jail.”

  “Let’s take him to see Mrs. Flack. Let him look in her eyes and tell her what he just told us.”

  “No!” the old man shouted. “God damn you, I thought you were a good person! I should’ve let you die!”

  “Pull over,” Holly said, and Becky stopped at the edge of the road. Her face was ashen.

  “Listen to me, Tom. If you don’t want to go see Pauline, tell us what happened.”

  “I already told you. I killed March.”

  “Then show us where he is.”

  “If I do, you’ve got to promise me. You’ve got to leave Pauline alone.”

  “Okay.” Holly looked at Becky. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Tom will tell you.”

  They came into town. “Here,” the old man said, almost at once.

  “There’s nothing here,” Becky said.

  They had stopped at the edge of the lot facing Harford’s office building. Holly reached back and touched the old man’s hand. “Tom?”

  “He’s there. Under the north wall, where I threw him the night before they poured the foundation. He’s down there under a ton of concrete.”

  “All right,” she said softly. “Now tell us why.”

  “That’s between him and me.”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “Too bad for you. Why wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Tom, please. I need to make some sense out of it.”

  “It doesn’t need to make sense. It makes sense to me. You’ve got to keep your word now. I need to lie down.”

  She sighed deeply. “I guess that’s our answer, Jack. Maybe the only one we’ll ever get. I don’t know what else to do but take him to jail.”

  ( ( ( 3 ) ) )

  THE sheriff was out of town on personal business until Monday and a deputy booked the old man in. They all gave brief statements. Griffin confessed for the record and told where March Flack was buried; then he signed his statement and was put in a cell.

  They walked home along the beach. “What now?” she asked.

  “The old man will go before a judge, probably Monday. The confession should be strong enough to hold him until they dig out that foundation and see what’s down there.”

  “And on Monday, then what? We’ll have to give a much fuller account. They’ll ask how we know what we know and why, and once those questions begin it’ll all come out. Who you are. What you did.”

  “Maybe. But
maybe not yet.”

  “Or maybe already. Harford knows, you told me that yourself. He’s probably told Kidd and maybe Maitland, and who knows who they’ll tell?”

  She was shocked at what he told her next. She had called him Jack, not Jordan, back in the car with Becky. He told her not to worry about it, but she closed her eyes and suffered. God help him, I’ll be the death of him yet.

  They had reached the house and now he was telling her about an old war and why he believed everything had begun long ago in some South African prison camp. March Flack, Kendall, her father, the Germans—all of it went back to that single motive. One killer driven by vengeance. Rage at an entire nation. The old man’s confession had cleared up nothing because the old man hadn’t done it. You couldn’t separate March Flack from the others, that had always been the problem. The old man hadn’t killed anyone unless he had killed everyone, and it was unlikely that he could have killed the Germans and probably impossible that he could have killed Kendall. She let him ask the obvious questions himself. “Why would the old man lie, and who besides Pauline Flack would he lie for?” Her choice was still Harford. But why would Harford allow March Flack to glorify Kitchener on his own radio station and then kill him for doing it?

  “He wouldn’t,” Dulaney said.

  They were quiet for a moment. Then Dulaney said, “I’m going up to New York on Saturday. If I can learn who wrote that script I can put it to rest. I’ve got a name and an address. The house where they sent the check, six years ago, and the name of the guy who cashed it. A fellow named John Riordan.”

  “Six years. Anybody could be living there now. And you could be in jail by Saturday. It wouldn’t take much, you know, for even that deputy to start asking questions about you. Harford found you out easy enough.”

  “We settled all this two months ago. There’s no use beating it to death.”

  “I don’t care what I said then. It’s different now.” She leaned close. “It’s different, Jack.”

  “How is it different? Are we going to go away together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then nothing’s different. If you leave here because of me, you’ll never have any peace.”

  She took a deep breath and finally said what she had never let herself think. “Maybe we’ve taken it as far as we can go.”

  “Not yet we haven’t.”

  “It’s not as if I’ll have to wonder about my dad forever. I know where he is now, I know what probably happened to him. Maybe that’s got to be enough.” She touched his face. “I don’t want you in jail, Jack. I don’t want you in jail!”

  She trembled suddenly. “I should’ve said that two months ago. What does that say about us? Maybe it’s another sign. What I meant when I said we always seem to slip past each other.”

  “I don’t believe that. I’ve got a killer in my sights, that’s what I know. For the first time I’ve got a real sense of him. I can feel him out there, I can smell him. That’s how close he is.”

  He began gathering his papers and notes.

  “What now?” she said. “Back to work as if nothing’s happened?”

  “That’s how it’s got to look, hasn’t it? The work’s there to be done and there’s nobody but me to do it.”

  He looked at her. “Don’t think it’s easy for me to leave you here.”

  He told her a little of the terror he’d felt, hunting her in the woods. “Right now I just don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

  “I know that. I know what it feels like.”

  But she also knew that her premonitions had a way of coming true. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I want you to promise me something. We’ll give it till Saturday. Then we cut our losses and get the hell out of here.”

  She tugged at his sleeve. “Jack?”

  “I hear you.”

  It wasn’t much of a promise. Not nearly enough. While he was in the shower she looked through the South African script. Then she read Becky’s report and made her own notes about the man named John Riordan and the house on West Fifty-sixth Street.

  ( ( ( 4 ) ) )

  WHEN he had gone she soaked in her bathtub. Then, still queasy, she lay at the open window, just under the light ruffling curtains, and slept. She was wakened by the telephone ringing, and she sat up on the bed and let it ring a moment. It was probably Jud wanting to know where the hell she was, and now, this moment, she didn’t know what to say.

  But it wasn’t Jud. A stranger’s voice, deep and male, said, “Is this Holly O’Hara?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “This is Knox Butterfield of the Regina Beachcomber. I understand Mr. Tom Griffin has confessed to killing March Flack, and that you and a Mr. Ten Eyck had something to do with bringing him in.”

  She sat up straight and blinked away the sleep. “News does travel fast in this town.”

  “I keep a close watch on the doings of the sheriff ’s department,” Butterfield said. “This is a big story here and Mr. Griffin’s arrest is a matter of public record.”

  “Well, that may be, but I don’t see what I can tell you.”

  “You could start by telling me how you happened to—”

  “I don’t think I should talk about this now.”

  “Please, Miss O’Hara . . . in the interest of accuracy—”

  “That’s your problem, sir. I don’t think I should be talking in a newspaper before . . .”

  “Before what, miss?”

  She could hear his pencil scribbling, taking down everything she said. And didn’t say. Her mind raced ahead, looking for answers.

  “Miss O’Hara?”

  “Yes. I was going to say, before the sheriff ’s even had a chance to interview either Mr. Griffin or myself.”

  “What difference does it make? I don’t go to press till Wednesday.”

  “Then I could ask you the same question. What difference does it make if I talk to you now or Monday?”

  “I would just rather—”

  “I’m sure you would, sir. But I would rather not.”

  There was a pause. She was getting her wits about her now. Don’t make him mad, she thought. Play to his sympathy. Buy some time, especially for Jack. “Look, Mr. Butterfield,” she said in a soft, gentle voice. “Give me some room here, would you do that, please? Wait till Monday and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “Is that a promise?” His voice hinted of teasing now.

  But hers was deadpan, as sincere as she could make it. “Of course.”

  “What you say indicates that there’s a bigger story here than what meets the eye.”

  “Oh there is, sir. I promise you that.”

  Suddenly she had another thought. “I will tell you this. Mr. Ten Eyck had nothing to do with it. He was looking for me, that’s all. What else there is has only to do with Mr. Griffin and myself.”

  “Miss O’Hara, can I just—”

  “Monday . . . please. I’ve got to go now. Someone’s at the door.”

  She hung up the phone and parted the curtains slightly, looking out over the beach at the pier. “Good,” she said aloud. “Good.”

  She closed her eyes and had her sharpest memory yet of her sister’s funeral. The slate gray sky. The sticky summer heat. The leaves fluttering gently on the graveyard trees. The faces of the people standing around an impossibly small coffin. The Reverend Clyde Morrison read from the good book, lines that were supposed to give comfort with the untimely passing of a child. Most clearly she remembered her parents: her mother glassy and impenetrable, fragile in her black dress and veil; her father shaken, the only time she had ever seen him quake. He loved us both more than life. Not like Mamma, who was always partial to Iris. After her sister drowned it became almost unbearable that she could never fill any of the emptiness in her mother’s heart.

  The day after the accident her father had taken her for a long walk, out along a dirt road into the woods. She remembered the almost paralyzing fear of his judgment, how badl
y she wanted to stop but couldn’t because he seemed to want to go on and on. At last she fell and lay sobbing in the dirt. He swept her up and she cringed as he buried his face, weeping, against her shoulder. “I can’t talk,” he cried. Suddenly she remembered that so clearly, his husky voice and the words he said. There were things he had to tell her but he couldn’t then, he was still too crushed.

  He told her later. This was one of those senseless tragedies that was nobody’s fault. She must never blame herself. She must be strong.

  She had been raised to be a strong daughter. She had taken many batterings since then, but maybe she could be strong again. She thought of Jack and felt the disaster premonition. Maybe she could be strong enough to save him.

  ( ( ( 5 ) ) )

  AT quarter to four she walked to the club and quit her job. Jud was unhappy, but Holly O’Hara had sung her last song.

  An hour later she walked across the dunes to the station. She asked for Kidd at the reception desk and a moment later Becky Hart came out to receive her.

  “Mr. Kidd isn’t here just now, but he shouldn’t be long. Would you like to wait for him?”

  They went back to Kidd’s office. Becky fidgeted, uneasy in her presence. “Can I get you something? The coffee’s pretty bad this time of day, but I brought in some lemonade from home. At least that’s cold.”

  “A small cup would be lovely, thank you.”

  Becky disappeared and returned a few minutes later. “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “I’m fine now, thank you. Where’s Jordan?”

  “He’s upstairs doing some revisions on tomorrow’s show. It’s been pretty frantic here yesterday and today. Do you need him now?”

  “No. I was just wondering.”

  Moments passed and the unease grew. At last Becky said, “Why do I get the feeling this is going to be bad news?”

  “I’ve quit the band,” Holly said. “I wanted Mr. Kidd to know there won’t be any show Saturday night. Unless they find another singer.”