The Watcher

by Dolores Hitchens

  “Bayer aspirin says ‘Bayer.’ This is one of the mixtures. Pink tablets, oblong shape. Marked with a pharmaceutical emblem, it wouldn’t mean a thing to her.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Someone palmed off the aspirin as a prescription. Perhaps even told her it was from Doc Tatum. She’d be in bed, feverish, not too observant. I think the explanation fits. I think it covers everything. And it’s murder.” Archer took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

  Matthews got to his feet so fast the chair bounced off the wall behind him. “By God, you find me that bottle! I’ll fix his wagon!”

  But Archer was shaking his head. “He’s too smart for that. The bottle wouldn’t lead us back to him. Wouldn’t have, even then. The girl wouldn’t have been allowed to take it.” He waited and watched Matthews bull his way around the room as if searching blindly for somebody to fight. “It’s too long a time, now . . . we won’t find the cab that took her dying to Doc’s office. Nor anyone who might have noticed where she caught it. If she took one. No investigation was made as to how she arrived, to stagger in on Miss Povell.”

  Matthews lifted helpless fists, shook them at nobody.

  Archer went on: “We haven’t a Chinaman’s chance of finding which store sold those pills. Or who bought them. God knows an empty prescription bottle, a blank label, wouldn’t be hard to come by. Give me the average busy drugstore, I could lift them myself.”

  “Labels are typed, aren’t they?” Matthews seized on it. “The dose is typed, the patient’s name, the doctor’s name, instructions how to take the medicine?”

  “He has a typewriter. We knew that.”

  They looked at each other for a long stretched moment of silence.

  Matthews came to the desk, leaned on it. “And still . . . it could be something else entirely. An ignorant kid, scared, alone. She might have been dumb enough to try aspirin and expect it to kill the fever. She might not know enough to realize the bugs were eating her up.”

  “True,” Archer said expressionlessly.

  “Only . . . with that letter here——”

  “He either knows the truth. Or he’s a hell of a good guesser.”

  “He just took a chance. He took a chance and stumbled on a case where there was a question, a possible discrepancy——” He was watching Archer to see if Archer believed it.

  “You think so? Both times, he guessed that good? Charles Carrol and now Barbara Martin? By God, his percentage is something to look at!”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Matthews blinked slowly, something aged and turtle-like in the motion of his gray lids. “I talked to Mr. Carrol a while ago. Called him up, he’s in the Santa Ana office, the real estate outfit he runs. He didn’t hear any whistle when the pup ran across the drive.”

  Archer said, “He was driving the car, backing it, probably goosing the choke.”

  “That’s right. He told me he wouldn’t have heard anything, anyway, he had the windows up on that side.”

  “Any talk about the whistle from his wife and girl?”

  “Yeah, he’d heard something.”

  “Any reason someone might think his kid was better off dead?”

  “I asked him,” Matthews said.

  “What does he think?”

  “He thinks we stink.” Matthews’ tone was heavy.

  Archer got off the corner of the desk and in his turn began to walk around the room. “We’ll have to inquire who might have noticed someone beside the shrubbery, might have heard the whistle and looked over there. It’s been months, of course. Like Barbara Martin—time went by, because we didn’t suspect. With Barbara, I’ve thought of something. Something with possibilities, even yet. This question. Who would she have turned to in a time like that? Who would have hidden her, that she trusted? Her minister, priest? Another doctor? A girl friend?” He paused on the rim of reflected light from the window. “A relative? Some favorite teacher?”

  “By God, you’ve named just about everybody!”

  “Named the ones we’ve got to see.” Archer went over to the door. “Lottie Tomlinson’s waiting to talk to me. There’s hope there—the Tomlinson case isn’t as stale as the others.”

  Matthews nodded. “Well, I’ll start the ball rolling. Shoot some questions to Quentin for Doc Tatum to answer. Try to locate some of Barbara Martin’s old school friends. I’m going even farther than that. I’m going to Beverly Hills and have a session with the bastard that got her pregnant.”

  With his hand on the door Archer said, “I’d like to have a talk with him myself.”

  “Hell, you’d lose your temper,” Matthews growled.

  Curt left Arnold still jumping around in the water with the pair of skags and went back the way he had come. He turned in at the courtyard and walked to Lottie’s door, punched the doorbell. He could hear a ringing inside, but no one came to answer.

  He sat down on the step and dropped the towel beside him, pretended to inspect some imaginary irritation on the bottom of his foot. Meanwhile he listened intently for any sound from the other apartment. He noted the paper lying where he had seen it earlier, the blinds still drawn. But it was far too late for anyone normally to be asleep.

  He got up, flicking sand from the towel, started to leave, then suddenly swung and walked boldly to the other door, pressed the buzzer. Again he heard the bell inside. But no step, no answering rattle of the door. He lifted a fistful of knuckles and pounded sharply.

  Nothing disturbed the pocket of quiet in the courtyard. He could hear traffic a couple of blocks away. Somewhere nearby a radio played softly, nothing he recognized, something long-hair. He pounded again, and again the quiet settled around him afterward, an empty sense of being alone.

  If anyone answered the knocking he was prepared; he’d ask if they knew where Lottie had gone. But no one came.

  He waited, then looked behind him, then put a hand on the knob and turned it. An inner lock resisted.

  Curiosity thudded in him now, stronger than fear. The creep was out somewhere, must have been gone for hours. Must have left before the paper came, and that meant early.

  Gone for the day.

  Curt left the courtyard and circled the house. He came to the window overlooking the bay—draperies were drawn inside, there wasn’t even a chink left to look through. An alleyway led to the rear doors. Curt figured out which was Lottie’s. On the back step of the other flat was a fresh quart bottle of milk. Curt studied it, a slight smile touching his lips. Then he went to the rear door and rapped, then tried the knob. There was a lock here too, but it was loose. The sea wind and the sun had warped the door. It no longer fitted closely in its frame. Curt took a look all around; there was garages in view and above some of them were living quarters, but all windows within sight were empty of watching faces.

  He gave the door a good stiff shove and it popped in and Curt found himself staring at a kitchen.

  He saw a refrigerator, a white kitchen range, a table with two chairs, maple, gingham cushions tied into the chair seats. There were curtains at the windows, bordered with the same gingham. It was neat, clean, and cozy.

  Curt had the feeling of looking at a picture, or at a movie set. It didn’t seem real. It belonged to the creep, a dark and twisted mind, and so something should be odd about it. Without really knowing what he had expected, he knew that it wasn’t this.

  With a final glance at the opening of the alleyway, making sure no one had appeared to watch him, he went in quietly and let the door swing shut behind him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MOLLY WOKE sluggishly to find Larry kneeling on the sand beside her. He was saying something in a hurried, urgent tone but she only caught a foggy snatch, something about the car. She lifted her head and looked around, seeing the scuffed sand, the remains of lunch, the small burned-out fire where they’d toasted wieners, the row of beer bottles lined at the foot of the cliff. Larry’s humor. It was very hot, closed in; she felt as if she had been asleep in an oven.

 
She sat up and pushed the hair out of her eyes. “What did you say?”

  “The car’s got a flat. I thought you might be burning, I went up to get the suntan lotion. The left front tire’s as flat as a busted balloon. I opened up the trunk and took out the spare. It’s shot, threadbare. Doesn’t your uncle buy tires when he needs them?”

  “He doesn’t have much money.” What he did have, Uncle Florian hoarded for the bad days when he had to have whisky. “He told me to get air in it. I forgot.” She looked helplessly at Larry, trying to comprehend their predicament.

  “We’re a hell of a long way from anywhere, any service station or garage. Or even a phone.” Larry was frowning into the distance while he talked. “I’m going to have to take the flat off and walk to the highway with it, catch a ride.”

  “Couldn’t we drive on the flat?”

  “We wouldn’t get anywhere on that dirt road. We’d bust an axle before we hit the highway.”

  Molly looked at the sun. There was no slightest hint as yet of a sunset chill, but she shivered. “It’s late.”

  “It’s late for what I’ve got to do,” Larry agreed. “I was trying to remember which direction I’d find a service station quickest.”

  “South.” She scrambled to her feet. “Let’s get the tire and get going.”

  “Hey, you’re going to wait here!”

  “No!” She held her hair against the ruffling of the wind and looked around again, struck with a sudden strangeness. The little cove seemed no more than a toehold against the vastness of the sea. It had a fragile impermanence, as if the sea might rise and in a single surge wash it away. Even the daylight, the cliffs behind her, seemed something she could blink into darkness at a moment. “I’d be scared!”

  He laughed and caught her and pulled her close to him. His skin was warm, the flesh hard beneath; she sensed the ripple of strength as he kept her from drawing away. “You got over that. After you thought somebody was watching—and they weren’t. Remember?”

  She let her head lie against him, let memory wash over her.

  Larry shook her a little. “You wait here, take another nap. And I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  “You might be hours!”

  “No, I won’t. You’ll be comfortable here. I have to lug that tire in the sun, and that dirt road will be full of stickers. I’m going to see if I can squeeze my toes into those straw sandals of yours.” He gave her a final hug and picked the straw kicks out of the sand. He stood on one leg and rammed his toes into the opening between straps. A strap popped but he forced his foot in, all the way. His heel hung out over the back edge of the shoe. Molly suppressed a half-hysterical giggle.

  “What’s wrong?” he egged her. “You think they’re not my size?”

  She scrambled up the cliff after him. The Ford sat hiked up crookedly on its jack, the left front wheel off and propped against the fender. “Wait! Larry!” She ran to him, caught him in her arms. “Please take me along!”

  “Baby, I’m wearing the only pair of shoes.” He wooled her head, kissed her, pushed her off.

  “I don’t care. My feet are tough.”

  “You stay!”

  He rolled the tire ahead of him, back up the dusty track that led to the highway far in the distance. Molly stood there watching him. He must be hot in the sun. The shoes gave him a half-crippled hobble that looked ridiculous. The tire kept getting away and flopping over in the weeds beside the road. Molly put her hand over her mouth. Suddenly she began to cry.

  She went to the rim of the cliff and looked down, and it was like looking into the memory of their day here, the hours in the sun and the sea, vanished as if they’d never been. The edge of surf had crept to the spot where they had built the fire, the ripples were carrying away the burnt chunks of driftwood, the lunch scraps. Washing out Larry’s footprints, and hers. Pretty soon even the beer bottles, the dead soldiers Larry had lined up along the cliff, would swirl away into the ocean limbo. Molly felt utterly alone She wiped the tears away but more came. She knew that her eyes must be swelling and reddening, Larry would see when he came back and think she must be crazy; and then she remembered her mother’s party. Was it tonight? Was it just a few hours until she was expected to show up in that white eyelet monstrosity? With hair ragged from wind, sunburned skin, tear-swollen eyes and nose?

  She ran to the car, got in, turned the rear-view mirror so that she could see herself. She pulled back her hair, thrust her face towards the glass. But there was just a blur. She couldn’t stop crying.

  She gripped the wheel, head bent, fighting to control the tears. When she had them choked back somewhat she crawled from the car. She sheltered her stinging eyes from the sun and tried to find Larry in the distance. When she saw him she was shocked at the amount of space he had already put between them. He was almost at the highway.

  Some sort of insect was buzzing in the weeds, a high shrill sawing. The surf pounded at the foot of the cliff. “Larry!” Her cry was lost in these other sounds; she had a terrible sense of being mute, of never making herself heard . . . the fear, the aloneness would have to stay bottled up. “Larry, wait for me! Don’t leave me!” She started to run up the road. She crossed a patch of fine, wind-blown, stickery thorns and dropped to her knees with a scream.

  She pulled the stickers from her flesh, leaving bloody wounds. Then she hobbled along, bent over, trying to watch for thorny patches through the tears, now flowing again.

  When it seemed she must surely be nearing the highway she paused in the headlong rush to look for him again. What she saw held her rigid in surprise. Larry was at the highway, still quite a distance from where she stood. He had the tire propped against his leg and he was waiting for a lift. But at this particular moment the highway was almost empty. There was a single car, a black sedan, dropping down towards him from a slight rise. What held Molly stock-still, uncomprehending, was an impression that the car had started to move just as she had looked at it. That it had, in fact, been parked at the top of the rise, almost out of sight.

  For a moment the unfocused fears of the day remained buried in astonishment; then they seemed to burst over her in a flood. She stumbled into a run, keeping her eyes on Larry, oblivious of the torture in her feet. As the black sedan approached him she saw that it was slowing. She saw Larry step forward upon the pavement; he lifted an arm in greeting or request. She tried to put on a burst of speed. She screamed, “Larry, Larry, wait!”

  Too far. He hadn’t heard her. The sea wind had whipped her cry away. There was no use trying to run faster. Her legs felt like two broken sticks. The air she sucked into her lungs burned like fire.

  “Don’t! Don’t get in that car!”

  She had tried to shout, but what came out seemed no more than a hoarse whisper, lost in the crackling sawing of insects and the mutter of the sea. Larry didn’t turn. He didn’t even see her.

  The black sedan came to a stop just beyond him. She could make out the figure of the driver, small black head and shoulders against the brightness beyond. A man in a hat. He had turned and seemed to motion to Larry to come, get in. Larry grabbed the tire. He swung open the rear door of the sedan and tossed it in, then hopped in after it. She saw him lean forward, very close to the driver, as if they were saying something. Did Larry know this man?

  Under the blaze of heat, wrapped in a dizzy fatigue, Molly cried, “Don’t go with him! Don’t go! Larry, Larry!”

  But the driver had turned to the wheel, Larry had settled back. The car was in motion. It picked up speed, crested the next small rise in the highway, and was gone. In the next moment, it seemed, a burst of traffic descended, cars whizzed in both directions.

  With a stunned, wilted air Molly caved in. She fell to her knees in the dusty track, then slipped sidewise, sat there with the heat of the sun pouring down on her, the sea wind tossing her hair.

  The tears had all dried up. It was much too late for them.

  Archer said formally, “I hope you’re feeling better.”

/>   “I am,” Lottie Tomlinson said. “Just all at once, I . . . sort of snapped out of a mood I was in. I don’t even know how or why it happened. I seemed to wake up and look at myself.”

  Archer leaned back in his chair behind the desk, nodded. “There comes a time. Fortunately for us, it came now. We need your help in this. We need your memory and your judgment. Your sister’s death was the most recent of the three mentioned in the letter. There are ambiguities in the other two affairs. We can’t pin them down completely as murders. Or as accidents . . . providing you can think of what happened to the Martin girl as an accident.”

  “I remember,” Lottie said. “That poor girl.”

  “I have hopes, in the case of your sister’s death. We will go over it in detail, just as if it had happened yesterday——” He straightened, glancing at her sharply. “This won’t hurt too much?”

  “No.” She answered his look levelly. “I loved Edie. More than I knew. And I guess when she died I went into a kind of panic. Fifteen. And I’d forbidden her things, because she had all the years . . . the years . . .” For a moment she looked down into her lap, and the new-found composure seemed on the verge of cracking. “But I know now . . . we can’t foretell what’s to come. And the way I treated her, the caution I showed about her, was the way you should treat a fifteen-year-old as young for her years as Edie was.”

  “I was going to say”—Archer was looking through the stuff on his desk for the copy of the letter—“a lot of fifteen-year-olds are pretty grown up.”

  “Edie wasn’t. Thinking back, not judging myself for what I kept her from doing—she was still a kid in so many ways. Younger than most. She still collected sea shells and stray dogs and sick birds.” The memory of the neighbor in the other flat, Edie’s care of the injured bird under his supervision, returned to mind briefly.

  “Sick birds, hmmm?” Archer found the letter but didn’t pass it to her for the moment. He sat still as if thinking. “Do you suppose your sister might have complained to someone else about her discontent?”