And the Girl Screamed (Prologue Crime)

by Gil Brewer

  “That’s all right. Go on.”

  “How you rent out boats for fishing now. You should have heard him laugh at that. He had fits. He knows how you saved that Andy Leonard’s life when you and Leonard were sent out after that convict that escaped from Raiford. How you got shot in the arm—and because your arm won’t straighten out just right, they won’t let you back on active duty. He said he wished you’d got shot in the stomach.”

  “Maybe I should have.”

  “Don’t say that, Cliff.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  So he couldn’t have told her about this morning, about how he had helped me. And Eve herself would never know how much being a cop meant to me. When people joked about it, I’d always begin to sweat.

  “I tried to tell him we’ve known each other a long time,” she said. “That we can’t help what’s happened. But he’s not human. It’s no use.” She hesitated. “He told me he’d figure a way to stop you for good, if we keep it up. Honestly, Cliff, he hates you. But he’s thinking of himself—not me. He doesn’t want his name sullied. He’s hopping mad, Cliff. Only it’s not like jealousy—it’s something else—like wondering how he could be in such a mess.”

  A large motor launch was coming along shore, close in. Its engine was loud, sputtering and thumping as it crept past us.

  “Cliff,” she said. “What are we going to do?”

  “Do?”

  I rolled over and pressed her back on the blanket and our mouths came together and I held her down that way until she began to respond. Her breath pushed her breasts against me and I could feel the breath all through her body. I wanted to hold her everywhere, hold her body against mine; I would never have enough of her. It was like hell, and all that’s wonderful and right and good and fierce, too. Her mouth opened against mine, and I felt the wild biting pressure of her fingers on my shoulders. She began to twist, and make noises in her throat and I thought they were the noises of love—only they weren’t. I held her like that, held her down, because that’s what I wanted and I thought she wanted it, too. Only she didn’t. She whimpered and tried to move her head away. Then abruptly she heaved and twisted sharply, and tried to pull away.

  “Wait, Cliff.”

  She lay back, trying to hold me away. I pushed her arms aside.

  “Cliff!”

  I waited. “What?”

  “Cliff—don’t.”

  I waited same more. She lay there, looking up at me. Her face was without expression, rigid and pale, the eyes shining and the hair tumbled out on the blanket. The thin cloth coat was spread out beneath her and her breasts rose and fell with quick breathing. She swallowed sharply twice, trying to get her breath. I kept on waiting and she kept looking at me as she lay there.

  “It’s what I wanted to say, Cliff.”

  “What?”

  She sat up, propped on one arm, not quite looking at me now. “We’ve got to stop it, that’s all. We’ve got to stop seeing each other. This is the last time. It’s got to stop.”

  “Do I hear you right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it again.”

  “We’re just torturing each other. You know that. It’s hell for me and it’s hell for you.”

  “Eve, for God’s sake.”

  “That’s why I came out tonight. I wasn’t even going to come out, but I had to. I had to warn you, Cliff—and you would’ve just waited and waited till morning, and I couldn’t stay in there knowing you were out there.”

  “Warn me?”

  “Yes. We’ve got to break it off, Cliff. Quit seeing each other. He won’t give me a divorce. He’s a lawyer—no matter what we do, we can’t beat him, don’t you see? Listen, he’s got me really scared, Cliff.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “You’re going to listen,” she said. “You’ve got to. It’s not only me, it’s you. He said if we continued the way we are, if we defied him, he would get a divorce—only he swore he’d ruin me. And he said he’d fix you for good and all. Not only with the police force—he promised me he would wreck your life.”

  “He wouldn’t say that to me, Eve.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “That’s just it. You don’t know him—he’s secretive, full of pretense, a liar of the worst kind, Cliff. That’s how he’s managed to get to where he is. He wouldn’t leave himself open to anything. He swore very calmly that if we don’t break it off, he’s going to start arranging things. He’s one of the sweetly sly, Cliff. He can lose his temper, bluster around, raise hob—but down inside he’s a rotten schemer. He’s got me treed, Cliff. There’s nothing either of us can do.”

  “All right.”

  “I go home every night after being with you, and—you can’t imagine what it’s like.”

  “Can’t I?”

  She had fallen face down on the blanket. She had her head in her arms and I laid my hand on her shoulders, smoothed it down her back to her waist and just held her waist, feeling the stirrings of her. Finally she turned and sat up.

  “Don’t you think I know what it’s like?” I said.

  “Yes. You know.”

  “Then don’t say those things.”

  “But that’s what we’ve got to do.”

  “We don’t ‘got’ to do anything.”

  “Cliff, you don’t know what he’s like. He’ll do what he says.”

  “I know what he’s like. And I know what you mean to me and what I think I mean to you. You don’t heave something like that in the drink just because of a little disturbance.”

  “Disturbance, Cliff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen. You know what we both want. And it’s something we can’t have. I can’t take it, and neither can you. We’ve got to—well, grow up about it.”

  “Women!”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. They get something into their heads. What books have you been reading?”

  She didn’t speak. I thought for a moment that she was going to cry, then I knew it wasn’t that at all. I took her hands and held them. We just sat there for a time.

  “I’ve thought it all through a hundred times,” she said. “And that’s the way it’s got to be, darling.”

  “You mean give it up? Quit hoping?”

  “There’s nothing to hope for now. We’ve had it, Cliff.”

  “He doesn’t scare me,” I said. “Can’t you see that? But all right—”

  I told her about that morning, all of it straight through. She sat there listening with that intentness that was part of her. “So, I’m resigning from the force,” I told her. “And now all I do is run a fishing camp. Would you like to marry a guy who runs a fishing camp? Live there with him, and smell fish all day?

  “You know that wouldn’t matter a damn,” she said, “and you know you wouldn’t be doing that for long, anyway. But it’s more than that. Edward wouldn’t let it be that way.”

  “Only that’s the way it is.”

  “I’d live with you any damned place, but he wouldn’t allow it. He promised me that, Cliff.”

  I reached for her and this time I got her down and held her there and said, “Now, we’re just going to see if we can give this up—Edward Thayer or not.”

  I felt her body stir, and she wasn’t trying to get away, or fight it. She shook her head a little and her arms came around my shoulders.

  She started to say something about sand spurs, when we both stiffened. Somebody was running across sand, from the highway. Whoever it was was getting close; they were back there by the dunes.

  “Oh, Cliff—could it be him?”

  “Don’t be foolish.”

  “He would—”

  I put my fingers across her lips.

  I heard other footsteps then, pounding, and hoarse breathing, and then somebody grunted.

  A girl screamed. It was the damnedest thing I’d ever heard. It ripped across the soft night, a crazed shriek of pure helplessness and fear.

  Chapter Four

 
FOR A MOMENT we lay there, holding our breath. The scream came again, purling into the wind—then ceased, abruptly. I kneed myself up and took a step toward the shelf of sand above the beach.

  “What is it?” Eve whispered. She came up beside me.

  Somebody moaned.

  We both came up over the shelf into the grass above the beach and started moving toward the highway. We’d taken three steps when a flashlight splayed blindingly straight at our faces, then went out.

  “What’s going on?” I called.

  I heard a hard thud and then more running footsteps, going away now, over toward the pines. I started after the sound of the footsteps.

  “Cliff!” Eve called in a sharp whisper.

  There was a bounding shadow up there, but there were yellow and red dots in my eyes from the flashlight and I couldn’t see right. The shadow vanished around the cabbage palms by our car, and I heard the pounding feet heading toward the highway. I tripped on something, sprawled in the sand on my face, my mouth full of sand, my eyes gritting with it.

  “Cliff!” Eve called again, louder now.

  A car door slammed out there. The car gunned away and I heard the tires shrill as it turned on the highway.

  “Cliff,” Eve said. “Are you all right?”

  Then I heard her kind of hold her breath and I got my eyes clear enough of sand so I could see her again. She was standing up there against the pale night sky, looking down into the grass.

  “Cliff,” she said again, and this time it was a whisper. “God, Cliff.”

  I had tripped over the crumpled body of a young girl.

  Eve said something I didn’t get. She stepped close to the figure in the grass and knelt down. All the good opinions I had of her soared a little more.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Stay away.”

  “I’m all right.”

  The light color of the girl’s hair, her twisted skirt up across her thighs in the moonlight, touched off memories inside me. I had seen them like this before, and worse, much worse. But this was bad enough.

  Eve reached out, took the girl’s shoulder, turned her over. The body moved loosely, curiously slack and awry, the legs sprawling, as if they were oiled at the joints. Then the young face looked vacantly up into the moonlight, eyes half open, shining, staring with that stare they have, the red mouth twisted in death so you could see the bright white tips of teeth.

  Eve made a sound in her throat, drew away, cringing toward me. I saw the slow shaping of horror in her face.

  “Easy, now,” I said. “Ever see her?”

  “No—no.”

  I thrust her aside, knelt down. The kid was dead, all right. Her fine blonde hair was matted darkly where she’d been struck. Full of energy in life, in death this seemed hard to imagine.

  “You’d better go back and sit in the car,” I told Eve.

  She stood there, perfectly straight, her arms flat against her sides, staring down at the dead girl.

  “I saw him, Cliff. I got a good look at him.”

  “Good girl.”

  I waited. I hadn’t seen a thing, and some of the sand still burned in my eyes. I was very conscious of the body on the grass, still very warm, still so very close to life, yet so very far from it.

  “Describe him,” I said. “Quick, now.”

  She started to speak, then stopped.

  “I can’t describe him,” she said. “He sounds too much like a description of any man.”

  There was a high strain in her voice.

  “Try,” I said.

  “Well, he was young.” She pointed toward the body, then looked away, then back at it again. “Young; as young as she was.” She stopped again and I knew she was struggling with herself. It was plenty bad for her. I doubted that she’d ever seen a dead person, and then to see one under these conditions—

  “I could tell the way he moved,” she said. “The way he turned and looked back. He stopped on the road and stared back here. A car’s lights shone on his face.” She paused, looked at me. “Cliff,” she said. “If I ever see him again, I’ll know him. The lights were right on his face.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A—a jacket of some sort. Open. No tie.”

  I stood up and went over to her, looked into her eyes and held both of her hands. “Listen,” I said. “You doing all right?”

  “Yes—fine.”

  “Go back to the beach. Get the blanket and thermos, and take them to the car. I want to have a look around.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m taking you home,” I said. “Then I’m going to report this.”

  “All right, Cliff.”

  She turned away without looking down and walked across the dunes toward the beach. I watched her, waiting until she was down on the beach.

  • • •

  Something shining on the sands had taken my eye. It was a long, five-cell flashlight. The lens and its housing were broken and bent. I didn’t touch it. That’s what she had been struck with, and it could be a nasty weapon swung by a strong man. It was plenty heavy. I stood there for a moment, looking at it, feeling a lot of things.

  I moved on past the body, stepping carefully. Then I saw a purse on the sand.

  It was a white straw bag. I knelt down, looking at it. It was open partially, the contents spilled out on the sand. There was a letter, the writing plain in the moonlight. It was addressed to Jinny Foster, 219 Palm Drive, in town. There was no return address.

  Still holding the letter, I knelt again and checked through the rest of the stuff in the sand. There was an ID card with her name and address, three lipsticks, half a fine-toothed comb, a wallet, Kleenex tissues, bobby pins, a hammered silver bracelet, a crumpled package of cigarettes, and a tiny rag doll tied to a string which in turn was fastened to a pencil stub, and some other odds and ends.

  I stood up with the letter in my hand. I looked at it again in the bright moonlight, smelled it—traces of perfume, the same kind that emanated from the purse—and stood there some time. Little questions formed in the back of my mind and I knew it wasn’t the thing to do, but I could send it to the police if I wanted to, later.

  I put the letter in my pants pocket.

  There was a noise. I turned and watched Eve cross the dunes carrying the blanket and thermos.

  “You coming?” she called.

  “Yeah.”

  I went over to the body again. I knelt down and studied her. She was wearing a white blouse, and a very thin, fuzzy white sweater that fit her tightly. The skirt was light-colored, but it might have been any color in the moonlight. It, too, was very thin, with tiny pleats running from the snug waistline. She was wearing nylon stockings, a garter belt, and spike-heeled shoes. One of the shoes had fallen off and lay in the sand; the other was half off, dangling from her left toes. She wore a ring on the little finger of her right hand and a chain bracelet on the right wrist. Her left hand was held in a tight fist, covering a handkerchief. I opened the hand. There was only the handkerchief, damp and knotted tightly. The fingernails of both hands were well cared for and lacquered darkly.

  The moonlight was terribly bright. This kid was terribly dead. It got me, seeing her there in the grass like that.

  I had no way of finding out anything, except by reading the papers. I had already made too many enemies, trying to get back on the force. All I could do was report it anonymously, because what was I doing out here? How did I happen to find this body? Did I know the kid? No. Prove it, Reddick. She’s a nice-looking kid, isn’t she? Built real solid; lots of stuff. There’s a full moon tonight, too, isn’t there?

  • • •

  Eve was waiting beside the coupe. I was all full of what had happened tonight and there was a sensitive spot in it some where about us. We shouldn’t have been here. As I came along, I could see the strain in Eve, the way she stood there, waiting. It was a little as if she wanted to run, but couldn’t. I opened the door for her.

  Her mouth opened but
she didn’t speak.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “Fine, Cliff. Did—did you see anything?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  I took hold of her waist just at the point where the soft swell of her hips started and my fingers bit into her flesh. I could feel the tense warmth of her, the urgent and impatient need of her under that thin white dress. She moved against me, her thighs pressed against mine, and then all of her body. She moved her legs apart slightly, and I moved my hands down around to her back, dragged her up to me harshly.

  She looked at me, arching her back, holding her lower lip loosely with her teeth, and I remembered vividly that dead girl’s teeth showing. I dropped my hands.

  “Oh, Cliff!”

  “Get in.”

  “Yes.”

  She touched my arm with her hand, then turned and climbed into the car. I slammed the door against the rustle and motion of her skirt….

  Driving home, neither of us said much at first. I could sense the fright in her, the mixed emotions. She wanted to do something—anything—to wipe out that scene back there, even for a moment. I wanted her, and we could have had that. We could have lived for a moment in the surge of what we had together, only we weren’t going to—not tonight. It was there, burning high, but it was impossible because that brutal scene stood between us. There are some moments of shock and horror when male and female come together in a hard, bright need, in a savage flush of desire—strangers suddenly hurled into that panting need of the small, complete death, the one great pleasure. But now there was nothing to do—we couldn’t wipe that out. Death is final.

  And Eve was frightened. As she pressed close against me I felt the taut smoothness of her body beneath the light dress. I had to ask her something.

  “Listen. You think maybe he knows you got a good look at him?”

  A kind of ripple went through her flesh.

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” she said.

  I sensed the worry behind the flat tone of her voice. “He looked right at me,” she said. “And I was looking at him. I wasn’t paying any attention to myself—but the car lights were bright on him and they might have been on me, too. The lights sweep out toward the beach when cars came around that curve in the highway.”