As he jumped and grasped the fence, the thirty-eight caliber slug pierced the left buttock, ripped through the groin and shredded the left femoral artery. He lay on his back on the dry grass and looked at fading stars and felt as if the world was falling away from him. The trooper put the flashlight on his face just in time to see the last fragment of comprehension in the eyes as the fugitive bled to death.
When old Sam Gates opened the door to Doctor Marriner, he said in a nervous whisper, “Doc, for gosh sakes, can you get him out of there? It ain’t right. There’s things I should get started on, Doc. I tried to get him out of there and he didn’t even …”
“Shut up, Sam,” Marriner said wearily. “Just please shut up.”
The shadows were harsh in the small back room. There was a bright bare bulb in a wall fixture. The body was on the grooved slab, covered with coarse sheeting. Under the molding of the sheet it was the body of woman, eternal. Shanley sat on a low stool, close to the slab, the light behind him. He was doubled over. When Marriner walked around the slab he saw that Shanley had the dead arm out from under the sheeting. The forearm rested on his knee. His forehead rested on the forearm. He held her hand in both of his. He was utterly still, and Marriner sensed that the first raw violence of loss had slowly leached out of him here in the acid-smelling silence.
Marriner put his hand on the man’s shoulder, squeezed it, shook it gently. “Come on now. I’ll take you back.”
In a few moments Shanley lifted his head and frowned blankly up at Marriner. “What?”
“I’ll take you back to the house now.”
Shanley gave a slow nod. He stood up. He lifted the edge of the sheeting and, holding the leaden arm by the wrist, neatly and carefully laid it in at her side and put the sheeting back and gave it a small pat to make it neater.
Marriner walked him out through the dim rooms and out the front door of Gates’ place. Six feet beyond the door Shanley stopped abruptly and looked back over his shoulder.
“Why?” he said, his voice loud and hoarsened and despairing.
“Come on along. Mankind has been asking that same damn fool question for two million years, and we’ll keep asking it until there’s just one last one of us left. And that’ll be the last word he says. I’ll take you back and give you a little something.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You’re getting it anyway.”
“… All right.”
On the day she was buried, Shanley drove Jane Weese and old Davie to the church service and then to the cemetery and back to the house. Jane Weese made snorting sobs all the way back. Shanley wished he had been able to weep. There had been the incredulity and the rage, and then the numbness, as if some drug had been injected into his brain. All sights and scents and sounds were vivid but they did not mean very much. It was like living in a very detailed and plausible dream, among people he had imagined.
As he turned into the driveway he saw the stranger on the front steps and hit the brake too hard, startling Jane and Davie.
“Who is that?”
“Why, that’s Mr. Fergasson!” Jane said.
He drove to the back of the house, parked there and they got out. He went through the house. Fergasson was in the front hall and made as though to speak, but Shanley went by him and into the study off the living room. The nurse sat knitting.
“No change at all,” she said in a voice that seemed too loud for that room. It was a skull covered with wet grey cloth and through some distasteful trick it kept breathing. He despised it for living when all the world’s warm flesh was casketed and deep.
When he walked back into the hall Fergasson was there.
“Mr. Shanley, I …”
“We’ll talk outside.”
Fergasson followed him out the front door and around to the wall where, a lifetime ago, Paula had sat in the sun.
“So you’re the one who found me.”
“I had that good fortune,” Fergasson said. He was a tidy little man. He had that servile arrogance of a waiter who feels superior to his customers. “I am sorry about Miss Lettinger. And the old man. And your brother, Mr. Shanley.”
“What do you want?”
“Forgive me. This was a strange and tragic mixup. They identified the man. Did you hear? His name was Bertold.”
“I heard. What do you want?”
“He was after you, of course. He must have been skilled. But this one went badly for him.”
“What do you want?”
“I was curious about you, Mr. Shanley. You have stayed alive a long time. I think you are bright, and lucky.”
“Lucky! Oh, yes, I have more luck than I can use.”
“You were fond of her.”
Shanley frowned at him. And turned and started toward the house. Fergasson called to him. He stopped and turned.
“Mr. Shanley, I just wondered if you were going to keep running.”
Shanley stood there a long time. He had the strange feeling that he had remembered something terribly important, something he had been trying to recall for a long time. “Run,” he said softly and wonderingly. He moved back toward Fergasson. “No. I don’t think I’ll run any more.”
Fergasson’s smile was obsequious. “You’ll wait here for them to try again?”
“No.”
Still smiling, Fergasson said, “Then what do you think you will do, Mr. Shanley?”
Shanley felt a pain in the corners of his jaw, in the palms of his hands and in the muscles of his back. He felt as if he had come awake. He spoke with an effort. “Wain, Boardman. And other names from them. And other names.”
“As soon as the old man dies, Mr. Shanley, you will have ample money. You will have the money, the intelligence, the luck and the hate. It’s a rare combination. I have been looking for many years for that combination, Mr. Shanley. It would be a shame to see it all smashed because of—let us say—a combination of rashness and faulty information.”
“What do you want of me?”
“I am not a likeable man, Mr. Shanley. But I am a very very clever man, and I am a very thorough man, and I am a very inconspicuous man. I can take a long leave of absence. The firm would not approve of … such a hobby. I can add, also, that I am a very indignant man. My indignation has been growing for quite a few years. I can find the names for you, Mr. Shanley. And I can draw maps, make up schedules of daily habits and find appropriate tools of execution. You do not have to like me, Mr. Shanley, in order to use me. And, believe me, without help, you will not live out the month. Unless you run.”
Shanley looked at him for a long time. “The running is over.”
Just as he took Fergasson’s outstretched hand, Shanley saw the practical nurse coming toward them across the lawn, billowing along through the summer sunlight, wearing such a tight stiff expression of satisfaction that he knew the old man had just died.
About the Author
John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.
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On the Run Page 16
