Five O'Clock Lightning

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Somehow I became convinced that if I saw some of the places the killer was supposed to have been, I could be sure if it was David.”

  “So you came here.” Garrett swatted at a fly that had buzzed lazily into the car.

  “But not right away,” Jenny said. “I agonized over it for hours. The only other place I could have gone was Yankee Stadium, but the Yankees weren’t playing, so I didn’t have any way to get inside to where the man was seen.”

  Garrett grinned. “It’s easy enough if you know how. You’d have to hop a fence or two, that’s all.”

  Jenny smiled in return, and a touch of color came into her face for the first time that afternoon. “I was wearing a skirt that day.”

  “This was your best choice, then,” Garrett deadpanned.

  “I’m glad my brain was working for something,” Jenny said. “I was beginning to wonder. Because all along, totally apart from all the things I was thinking about David, I’ve also had the feeling I was being watched.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, that’s the maddening part. Things like seeing the identical car both on Long Island and in Manhattan, when I’d go in to drop off an article or talk to an editor. But that wasn’t something positive—I never saw any cars that continued from day to day, and I looked. Mostly, it was all feelings.”

  Garrett didn’t tell her that it would only make sense for someone on a long-term shadowing job to change cars daily. “Go on,” he told her.

  “Between my indecision and having to find a baby-sitter for the kids, it was evening by the time I got here. I sat where I could see into the kitchen when a waitress brought something out, and I ordered a meal. I didn’t eat much of it.”

  “The food’s not too good in these places, anyway. All that frozen stuff.”

  “I probably wouldn’t have tasted anything even if I did eat it. I just sat there looking around, and suddenly I was aware of David.”

  “Aware how?” Garrett had had trouble understanding this part the first time.

  Jenny held out her hands, helpless. “I was surrounded by him. I’d hear a voice—no, that’s not right. I’d suddenly find myself thinking that was David’s voice, but I’d look around me and no one would be there. No one who could be David, I mean. Or I’d jump and be sure I’d just seen him walk by. I must have seemed like a crazy person. By the time I left I was trembling so badly I could hardly walk.”

  Jenny took Garrett by the wrist. He was surprised at the strength in her small hand.

  “Then the next day I saw him. On Madison Avenue, in the Fifties. I had to take a bus to my next appointment, and I was looking across the street to see how many people were waiting at the bus stop. To try to guess how long I’d have to wait. Do you do that?”

  “Sure,” Garrett told her. “It’d be good news if you saw a big crowd; that would mean there had been a long time since the last bus and the next one would be along any minute.”

  “Exactly,” Jenny said. “And in this case there was a big crowd. I looked down the street, and the bus was already coming, so I started to hurry across.”

  “And that’s where you saw him.”

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes before she answered. “Yes,” she said. “Yes! And nothing anyone says could ever make me believe it wasn’t!”

  “Relax,” Garrett told her. “It’s just that this is important; we have to get the facts straight. He was standing there, waiting for a bus.”

  Jenny sounded miserable. “Like I told you before, Russ, he was standing there. I don’t think he was waiting for a bus. It would be ludicrous. I can’t have seen my dead husband waiting on the curb of Madison Avenue, waiting for a bus I was running to catch.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t really think he was waiting for a bus, either.”

  Jenny looked at him. She was still miserable with doubt, confusion, and fear, but there was a tiny spark of happiness in her eyes at the thought he might believe her.

  “What do you think he was doing, Russ?”

  “Waiting for you. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If it really was him, and he’s the one who’s been following you, it only stands to reason he’d wait somewhere he could see the entrance of the building you’d gone into and pick you up again when you left.”

  Jenny put both her hands on top of her head in a little-girl gesture that said, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Of course,” she breathed. “It has to be that.”

  Garrett scratched his chin. “You didn’t get a really close look at him, though, dammit. It was across most of the avenue, and at an angle.”

  “It wasn’t a close look, but it was a good look. Besides, he saw me, too. I know he did. Our eyes met. I—I couldn’t be mistaken about that, Russ. I couldn’t. The first time I was sure I loved him was when our eyes met that way across the grass ...” Jenny’s voice trailed off, replaced by soft sobbing.

  Garrett figured the best thing to do was ignore it. He told Jenny he wished he knew why her husband would do something like this.

  Jenny’s voice was almost a whisper. “I’m afraid of him, Russ. He looks the same, but he must have changed inside. He shouldn’t be toying with me this way. I know him, Russ, or I did. Even if he did kill the congressman, he would have gotten a message to me some way.”

  Jenny closed her eyes and leaned back against Garrett’s green leather upholstery. “Maybe he hates me now.”

  Garrett frowned. It was a possibility he’d thought of; he hadn’t wanted to share it with Jenny.

  “Maybe he thinks I’ve betrayed him in some way. If you’re right, then he killed Simmons, he killed Ed Bristow, and who knows who’s next? I’ve sent the children away. I leave the lights on and the radio going all night. You know, Russ, I didn’t tell you this before, but right after I saw David, when he looked at me, then ran away into the crowd, I forgot all about my next appointment. I got a taxi to the baseball offices in Rockefeller Center, to tell you about it. They told me you were out of town. It was hell until you got back—I was afraid to talk to anyone. If I don’t find out what’s behind this, I’m going to go insane.”

  Garrett patted her shoulder. “We won’t let that happen.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” Garrett told her. “Let’s go inside and see what we can find out.”

  5

  They’d deliberately waited until after six so that conditions would be as close as possible to what they had been when Jenny had become “aware” of her husband’s supposed presence. Garrett had spent the time telling Jenny what had gone on in Kansas City and making, with increasing irritation, his calls to Captain Murphy’s office before driving to New Jersey.

  Garrett had tried to devote some of the afternoon to thinking of some brilliant way to flush Laird (or whoever was behind all this) from hiding, but the only plan he’d been able to come up with was to ask people questions.

  Niffin, the manager with hair of one sort or another where his forehead was supposed to be, remembered Garrett from his previous visit, and what was even better, remembered him as some kind of cop. Garrett let him go on remembering that way. Niffin gave him the run of the place. He didn’t even ask what Jenny was doing there. Garrett figured he took her for a policewoman.

  Garrett still had the photograph Jenny had given him. He showed it to the staff one by one, starting with Niffin, and asked them if they remembered seeing anyone like that recently. The reactions of the waitresses were summed up by a blue-haired veteran of a million orders: “I notice tips. Who’s got time to look at faces?”

  Garrett renewed his acquaintance with the kitchen staff. The kitchen didn’t seem as bad to him this time; his experience in Kansas City had hardened him to hellish scenes. Harry Lillian, the old cook, was working next to a heavyset woman at the stoves. Garrett learned it was Levi Barlett’s night off. Not having the colored cook around seemed to bother the old man. He was grumpy and uncooperative; said he
was tired of answering questions. Garrett finally got him to look at the picture; Lillian took a look, squinted, and declared he didn’t recognize nobody. They tried the woman cook, just to be polite. She declared it looked like her son-in-law’s cousin, except her son-in-law’s cousin had a harelip, and wasn’t it a shame, a nice-looking boy like that.

  Joey Hart, the dishwasher, kept his head in the steam—he might have been embarrassed to show his deformed face in the presence of a lady, or it might have been he was shy in front of women, face or no face. Finally Garrett practically pulled him out by the neck and made him look at the picture. He took one look and shook his head while rasping out a sound that was probably no. Garrett saw Jenny flinch when she saw the puckered wound that passed for Joey’s mouth. He should have warned her. Garrett decided the cook’s distant relative was lucky to have gotten off with only a harelip.

  “No luck at all,” Jenny said as they left the building.

  Garrett shrugged. “So we keep trying,” he said.

  Jenny wanted to know where they were going now.

  “I’m taking you home. Nothing else we can do today.” They walked to the car. Garrett started the engine, put the Hydra-Matic in drive, and took off. “Did you notice anything in there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you aware of any more strange sensations?”

  Jenny looked straight ahead at the pool of brightness Garrett’s lights made on the road. “Don’t make fun of me, Russ.”

  “I’m not,” he protested. “I wouldn’t. Look, all I meant was, that other time you were noticing things without realizing what they were. Your unconscious—subconscious—intuition—whatever you want to call it—put them together into a certainty that your husband was around. I was just wondering if anything like that had happened this time.”

  Jenny shook her head. “I’m so mixed up, I’m not even sure what I felt. My mind was filled with David, but it was before we got there. It’s been filled with him since the first time I came here. So I just don’t know.”

  Most of the rest of the ride passed in silence. At one point, when they’d just gone through the tunnel from Manhattan to Queens, Jenny said, “Russ, that poor dishwasher. What was wrong with him?”

  Garrett told her his guess about frostbite.

  “Can’t they do anything for him?”

  “I suppose somebody somewhere can fix that up, at least so it looks okay, but how’s he supposed to afford it on a dishwasher’s salary?”

  “That’s the sort of thing that would have outraged my husband, that a man should have to go through life like that because he was poor. David worked to get some sort of health insurance in this country, and they called him a traitor.” Jenny Laird paused as if sorting through an especially rich selection of things she could say next. Finally she said, “I read in a book once where someone said, ‘There’s no justice and little mercy in this world.’ I remember being angry, thinking that was the worst kind of lie. Now I don’t know.”

  Garrett didn’t know, either, so he kept his mouth shut until he pulled up at Jenny’s cottage. When Jenny started to open the door, Garrett was struck with a flash of intuition of his own.

  “Stay put,” he told her. He took the car keys out of the ignition and handed them to her. “Let’s swap; my car keys for your house keys. Stay in the car; keep the door locked. Have you got a watch?”

  “No. What’s this all about?”

  “Nothing,” Garrett said, “I’m being silly. Humor me, okay? All right. The dashboard clock keeps terrible time, but you can count ten minutes on it. If I’m not back by then, slide over to the driver’s seat and go get the nearest cops. Will you do that?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I’m just getting nervous in my old age. I’m going to check out the house, make sure it’s okay, before you go inside. I’ll be back way before ten minutes are up. Okay?”

  Jenny nodded. He left the car, then signaled through the window for her to lock the door. She pushed the button and sat back to wait for him while she tried to decide just what sort of nightmare she had stumbled into.

  It didn’t take long for Jenny to begin to doubt Garrett’s words about the accuracy of the clock. Hours passed in the time it took the luminous dial to show three minutes gone by.

  The night was crowded with noise. Funny she’d never noticed before how loud the frogs were, how strange and insistent the crickets seemed. She didn’t like it out here in the car alone. She couldn’t see past the windows of the car because of the utter darkness of the night. The moon and stars were covered with clouds. The only sounds she could hear were strange cries, all of which had some meaning for the creatures who made them but absolutely none for her.

  Jenny shuddered. It was all too perfect a symbol of what her whole life had become.

  Seven minutes. That clock had to be wrong. Where was he? Jenny began to tap her nails against the steering wheel. She could stand that for about thirty seconds. She cursed and folded her arms across her chest. Something had happened to him. Jenny had to find out.

  She unlocked the car door and began to push it open. It went about six inches and stopped. Jenny looked up, saw a man’s hand pressed against the window, and screamed. She slammed the door and started fumbling with the keys.

  The man was pounding on the window. Jenny held her breath, trying vainly to control her trembling. She just couldn’t get the key into the ignition. The pounding continued.

  Then the man said, “Hey!” Russ Garrett’s voice. Jenny looked up and saw the concern on his face even in the darkness. Jenny was overcome with embarrassment and residual fear. She looked helplessly through the window at the young man. Then she unlocked the door, jumped from the car, and fell sobbing into his arms.

  Garrett made soothing noises and led her to the house. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were so upset. I never should have left you alone.”

  “I just couldn’t—”

  “Shh, it’s okay.” Garrett took her inside and sat her in a comfortable chair. “Is there anything I can get you? A glass of water or something?”

  Jenny looked at him and nodded. Garrett said okay and went to the kitchen.

  This is a good man, Jenny thought. I’m a fool, and I’m a coward, and he still doesn’t get angry. She couldn’t have taken it if he’d gotten angry, and he’d seen that. Not many men would have.

  Garrett came back with the water. Jenny took it, sipped some. “Better now?” Garrett asked. Jenny nodded.

  “Good,” he said. He looked at his watch and made a face. “Time to call the warden. Can I use the phone again?”

  “Sure.” Jenny smiled in spite of herself. “We’re practically partners in this by now.” Garrett laughed and picked up the receiver.

  Jenny said, “Russ, wait.”

  Garrett turned and looked at her. He put the receiver down.

  Jenny was starting to panic again. She was afraid of saying what she wanted to say but even more afraid not to.

  She compromised on a whisper. “Russ, don’t leave me tonight. I need you here.”

  Garrett picked the phone back up, dialed 0 and made his call. When the connection was made, she heard him say, “Yeah, Garrett. Tell Murphy or whoever I’m in for the night. No more calls until morning.” He put the phone down. “Okay, Jenny?” he asked.

  Jenny could feel her fears starting to slip from her. “Okay,” she said.

  6

  Russ Garrett returned to his office Friday morning for the first time in over a week. He was depressed to see how little work had piled up in his absence.

  He was depressed about a lot of things. The weather, for one thing. Rain fell in alternating periods of heavy and very heavy. He was depressed about the Yankees. They had lost 5 to 3 to the lowly St. Louis Browns. He was depressed about the way his own baseball career had fallen into limbo. He was depressed about the news. There was more hell to pay in the Middle East and rumors of a possible Communist takeover in Wes
t Germany. He was depressed to realize that he was just this moment thinking about Ann Devore for the first time since before he went to Kansas City. And he was depressed at how good he felt about last night.

  He should feel guilty, or something. He’d wanted it to happen. Jenny had gone to the bedroom, and Garrett had sacked out on the couch. He didn’t go to sleep. He lay there, his legs cramped up and uncomfortable, thinking how nice it had felt to have his arms around her. And wishing she would come to him.

  When she did come to him, looking childlike and vulnerable in her flowered flannel nightgown, he should have just—

  Oh, to hell with what I should have just, Garrett told himself. She came to him, sat down beside him, and started to cry; hot, cleansing tears that seemed to be purging years of fear, and Garrett could think of nothing to do but hold on tight and pretend to understand. Then she’d stopped crying and told him to kiss her, and he did, and kept doing it, and soon the nightgown was gone, and Jenny still looked vulnerable, but nothing like a child.

  There on the sofa, and later in the bedroom, they had made love. She was alone and afraid, and he (perhaps) had taken advantage of her. She was (possibly) still a married woman. And she was older than he was. Which, Garrett supposed, was getting to be a habit of his.

  He had not until this moment thought to compare Jenny Laird with Cheryl Tilton. He decided it was because there was no real basis for comparison. With Cheryl it had been so exciting he didn’t think he would survive the night. With Jenny it had been so warm that he was sure he would.

  Before he left her this morning, Garrett renewed his promise to take her son to a ball game. “As soon as this business is over,” he’d said.

  Now Garrett frowned. Mantle could be retired and in the Hall of Fame before Mark got a chance to meet him. Who knew when this would be over? Or if it ever would be.

  Garrett was tormenting his brain trying to think of a way to speed the process up a little when the phone on his desk rang. He cursed at it and picked it up.