“It was that same sergeant, wasn’t it?” Carol said in a small voice.
“The same. I’d forgotten his name. Max Cady. His sentence was reviewed. He was released last September. He served thirteen years at hard labor. I wouldn’t have recognized him. He’s about five nine, wide and thick-set. He’s more than half bald and deeply tanned, and he looks as though you couldn’t hurt him with an ax. The eyes are the same and the jaw and mouth are the same, but that’s all.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not in any explicit way. He had control of the situation. And he was enjoying himself. He kept telling me I never had the word, I never saw the picture. And he kept grinning at me. I can’t remember ever seeing a more disconcerting grin. Or whiter, more artificial-looking teeth. He knew damn well he was making me uncomfortable. He followed me into the lot and I got in the wagon and started it up. Then he moved like a cat and snatched the key out and leaned on the sill, looking in at me. The car was like an oven. I sat in my own sweat. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I couldn’t try to take the key away from him. That’s nonsense.”
“Could you have gotten out and gone after a policeman?”
“I guess so. But that didn’t seem very … dignified. Like running to Teacher. So I listened. He was proud of the way he found me. When his defense officer was questioning me, it came out that I got my law degree from Penn. So Cady went to Philadelphia and got somebody to check the alumni records for him and got my home address and business address that way. He wanted to give me the word on what thirteen years of hard labor was like. He called me lieutenant. He used it in every sentence. He made it sound like a dirty word. He said that because it was June it made it sort of an anniversary for us. And he said he’d been thinking about me for fourteen years. And he said he was glad I was doing so well. He said he wouldn’t have wanted to find out I had a lot of problems.”
“What … does he want to do?”
“All he said was he wanted to make sure I had the word, the big picture. I sat there sweating, and finally when I demanded my car key, he handed it to me. And he tried to give me a cigar. He had a shirt pocket full of them. He said they were good cigars. Two bits each. As I backed out he said, still grinning, ‘Give my best to the wife and kids, Lieutenant.’ ”
“It’s creepy.”
Sam wondered whether he should tell her the rest of it. And then he knew he had to. She should know the rest of it so that she would not be careless—if it came to that.
He patted her hand. “Now brace yourself, Carol-bug. This may be only in my mind. I hope so. But this is what has been chewing on me. You remember that I was late on Thursday. Cady used up a half hour. I had a lot of chance to observe him. And the more I listened, the more a little warning bell rang, louder and louder. You don’t have to be a trained psychoanalyst. Somehow, when a person is different, you know it. I suppose we all run in a pack, in a sense. And there are always little clues to the rogue beast. I don’t think Cady is sane.”
“My God!”
“I think you should know that about him. I may be wrong. I don’t know what words the doctors would have for it. Paranoid. I wouldn’t know. But he can’t blame himself. I tried to tell him it was his own fault. He said if they’re big enough they’re old enough, and she was just another Aussie bitch. I didn’t have the word. I couldn’t see the picture. I think he was the type of Regular Army enlisted man who despises officers anyway. And he’s come around to believing that the incident in the alley was perfectly normal. So I took thirteen years out of his life, and I should pay for it.”
“But he didn’t say that?”
“No. He didn’t say that. He was having a dandy time. He knew that I was squirming. What’s the matter?”
Her eyes were very wide and focused. She looked beyond him. “How long has he been in New Essex?”
“I don’t know. I got the impression he’d been around a few weeks.”
“Did he have a car?”
“I don’t know.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Khaki pants, not very clean. A white sports shirt with short sleeves. No hat.”
“Something happened over a week ago. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. A week ago Wednesday, I think it was. In the morning. The kids were in school. I heard Marilyn barking her fool head off and I figured she had some horribly dangerous game treed—a chipmunk or something. So I didn’t pay any attention until she gave a shrill yelp. Then I went out in the yard. She was circling back through the field, tail tucked under, staring back toward the road. There was a gray car, sort of beat up, parked on the shoulder, and there was a man sitting on our stone wall, facing the house. He was well over a hundred yards away. I got the impression he was a heavy man, and he was bald, and he was smoking a cigar. I stared at him but he didn’t make a move. I didn’t quite know what to do. I guess Marilyn had been barking at him, but I couldn’t be sure he’d thrown a stone or anything at her. If he’d just pretended to throw a stone, our courageous dog, friend of man, would have reacted the same way. And I didn’t know if sitting on the wall is trespassing. The wall marks our line. So Marilyn and I went back into the house and she went under the living-room couch. The man made me sort of uneasy. You know, kind of alone out there. I told myself he was a salesman or something and he liked the view, so he stopped to sit and look at it awhile. When I looked the second time, he was still there. But the next time I looked he was gone. I don’t like to think it could have been … him.”
“Neither do I. But I guess we better assume it was. Damn it, we ought to get a better dog.”
“They don’t make better dogs. Marilyn isn’t exactly brave, but she’s sweet. Look at her.”
Marilyn, awakened from her sleep by the whooping and splashing of the kids, had gone into the water. She was a spayed red setter with a beautiful coat and good lines. She churned around after the swimming children, yipping with her spasms of joy and excitement.
“Now that I’ve depressed you,” he said with a heartiness he did not feel, “I can get over onto the bright side. Even though good old Dorrity, Stetch and Bowden do corporation and estate work and handle tax matters, I do have friends in the police force. In our tidy little city of one hundred and twenty-five thousand, Sam Bowden is reasonably well known, and possibly respected. Enough so that there seems to be an idea that some day I should run for something.”
“Please don’t.”
“I’m trying to say that I’m one of the boys. And the boys take care of their own. Yesterday I had lunch with Charlie Hooper, our bright young city attorney. I told him the story.”
“And I’ll bet you made it sound like some kind of a joke.”
“My hands weren’t trembling and I didn’t look haunted, but I think I made him see that I was concerned. Charlie didn’t seem to think it would be a special problem. He took down the name and description. I believe the dainty phrase he used was to have the boys ‘put the roust on him.’ That seems to mean that the officers of the law find so many ways on the books to lean heavily on an undesirable citizen that he departs for more comfortable areas.”
“But how could we be sure he leaves, and how would we know he wouldn’t sneak back?”
“I wish you hadn’t asked that question, honey. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”
“Why don’t they put him in jail?”
“What for? My God, it would be nice if you could do that, wouldn’t it? An entirely new legal system. Jail people for what they might do. New Essex goes totalitarian. Honey, listen to me. I always use the light touch, I guess, when I talk about the law business. All we moderns shy away from any hint of dedication. But I believe in the law. It’s a creaking, shambling, infuriating structure. There are inequities in it. Sometimes I wonder how our system of law manages to survive. But at its base, it’s an ethical structure. It is based on the inviolability of the freedom of every citizen. And it works a hell of a lot more often than it doesn’t. A lot of very little people have bee
n trying to whittle it into a new shape during these mid-years of our century, but the stubborn old monster refuses to be altered. Behind all the crowded calendars and the overworked judges and the unworkable legislation is a solid framework of equity under the law. And I like it. I live it. I like it the way a man might like an old house. It’s drafty and it creaks and it’s hell to heat, but the timbers are as honest as the day they were put up. So maybe it is the essence of my philosophy that this Cady thing has to be handled within the law. If the law can’t protect us, then I’m dedicated to a myth, and I better wake up.”
“I guess I have to love you the way you are. Or maybe because you’re the way you are, old barrister. We females are more opportunistic. I would be capable of taking that dear rifle of yours and shooting him right off our stone wall if he ever comes back.”
“You think you could. Shouldn’t these two old parties try the water with the young ’uns?”
“All right. But don’t start kidding Pike again. You curl him into painful knots.”
“I’m just being the jolly father of the girl friend.”
They walked toward the water. Carol looked up at him and said, “Don’t get out of touch again, Sam. Please. Let me know what goes on.”
“I’ll let you know. And don’t worry. I’m just superstitiously afraid because we have it so good.”
“We have it very good.”
As they stepped into the water, Nancy was clambering up over the stern of the Sweet Sioux. Water droplets sparkled on her bare shoulders. Her hips, so recently lanky, had begun to swell into woman-lines. She balanced herself and dived off cleanly.
Carol touched Sam’s arm. “That girl. How old was she?”
“Fourteen.” He looked into Carol’s eyes. He took her wrist and held it tightly. “Look now. Stop any of that kind of thinking. Stop it now.”
“But you’ve thought it too.”
“Just a moment, when you drew your little conclusion. And we’ll both discard that sickening little thought right now.”
“Yes, sir.” She smiled. But the smile was not attached in the proper and usual way. They held the look a moment longer, and then waded in. He swam out with furious energy, but he could not swim away from the sticky little tentacle of fear that had just fastened itself around his heart.
Two
SAM BOWDEN WAS IN HIS OFFICE the following Tuesday morning, going over—with a young lawyer named Johnny Karick, who had been with Dorrity, Stetch and Bowden less than a year—a trustee report from the New Essex Bank and Trust Company when Charlie Hopper phoned and said he was in the neighborhood and would it be convenient if he dropped in for a couple of minutes.
Sam finished up with Johnny quickly and sent him back to his cubicle to write a summary of the report. He called Alice on the switchboard and reception desk to send Mr. Hopper back as soon as he arrived.
Charlie came in a few minutes later and closed the office door behind him. He was a man in his early thirties, with a good-humored and ugly face, considerable energy and ambition, and a calculatedly indolent manner.
He sat down, reached for his cigarettes and said, “Dark paneling, hushed voices, files that go all the way back to the Code of Hammurabi. And the rich smell and soft rustling of money. A working clown like me should come in on tiptoe. In between times I forget how you suave jokers make this business look almost respectable.”
“You’d die of boredom, Charlie. I spend half my time putting nice sharp points on my pencils.”
Charlie sighed. “I’m out there in the hurly-burly of life, attending all meetings of the Common Council, and the Zoning Board and the Planning Board. Honest sweat, Samuel. Say, why don’t you ever stop by Gil Brady’s Courthouse Tavern any more?”
“Haven’t had any courthouse business lately. And that’s a sign of efficiency.”
“I know. I know. Well, I started the wheels rolling on your old buddy. He’s living in a rooming house at 211 Jaekel Street, near the corner of Market. He checked in on May fifteenth. He’s paid ahead until the end of June. This being only the eleventh, he had it in his mind to stay awhile. Our boys in blue check the registrations down there frequently. He drives a gray Chevy sedan about eight years old. West Virginia plates. They plucked him out of a Market Street bar yesterday afternoon. Captain Mark Dutton says he made no fuss. Very mild and patient about the whole thing.”
“Did they let him go?”
“They either have, or they’re about to. They checked Kansas and found out he was released last September. They made him explain where he got money and where he got the car. Then they checked back on that. He comes from a little hill town near Charleston, West Virginia. When he was released he went back there. His brother had been working in Charleston and holding on to the home place. When Max came back, they sold it and split. He’s got about three thousand bucks left and he carries it in a money belt. Charleston cleared him and Washington cleared him. His car registration and license are in order. They searched the car and his room. No gun. Nothing out of line. So they had to let him go.”
“Did he give any reason for coming here?”
“Dutton handled it the way we decided he should. Your name wasn’t brought into it. Cady said he liked the looks of the town. Dutton told me he was very cool, very plausible.”
“Did you make Dutton understand the situation?”
“I don’t know. I think so. Dutton doesn’t want that type drifting in any more than you do. So they’ll keep an eye on him. If he spits on the sidewalk it will cost him fifty dollars. If he drives one mile an hour over the limit, it will cost him. They’ll pick him up on a D-and-D when they see him coming out of a bar. He’ll catch on. He’ll move along. They always do.”
“Charlie, I appreciate what you’ve done. I really do. But I have the feeling he isn’t going to scare.”
Hopper stubbed out his cigarette. “Your nerves bad?”
“Maybe. And maybe I didn’t act worried enough when we had lunch Friday. I think he’s psycho.”
“If so, Dutton didn’t catch it. What do you think he wants to do?”
“I don’t know. I have the feeling he wants to do something to hurt me the worst way he can. When you’ve got a wife and three kids and you live in the country, it can make you a little shaky.” He told Charlie the incident of the parked car and the man on the stone wall. The fact that Carol remembered it being a gray car made it seem more likely that it had been Cady.
“Maybe he just wants to give you a bad case of the jumps.”
Sam forced a smile. “He’s doing fine, then.”
“Maybe you can try something else, Sam. Do you know the Apex people?”
“Yes, of course. We’ve used them.”
“It’s a national organization and in some places they’re weak, but they’ve got some good people here, I’m thinking of one boy in particular. Sievers, his name is. He’s well trained. C.I.C. background, I think. And police work too. He’s rough as a cob and cold as a snake. It’ll cost you, but it might be a good place to spend money. Do you know the manager over there?”
“Anderson. Yes.”
“Call him up and see if he can give you Sievers.”
“I think I’ll do that.”
“Have you got Cady’s address?”
“I wrote it down. Two-eleven Jaekel Street near the corner of Market.”
“Right.”
Sievers came to the office at four-thirty. He sat quietly and listened to Sam’s account. He was a square-headed, gray-faced man who could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty. There was a bulge of softness over his belt. His hands were very large and very white. His hair was no color, and his eyes were bored slate. He made no unnecessary movements. He sat as still as a tomb and listened and made Sam feel as though he were being an alarmist.
“Mr. Anderson gave you the rates?” Sievers asked in a faraway voice.
“Yes, he did. And I promised to mail him a check right away.”
“How long do you want Cady cover
ed?”
“I don’t know. I want … an outside opinion as to whether he’s planning to harm me or my family.”
“We don’t read minds.”
Sam felt his face get hot. “I realize that. And I’m not a hysterical woman, Sievers. It had occurred to me that by watching him you might get some clues as to what he has in mind. I want to know if he comes out to my home.”
“And if he does?”
“Give him as much leeway as you think safe. It would help if we could get enough evidence of his intention to convict him.”
“How do you want the reports?”
“Verbal reports will be adequate, Sievers. Can you start right away?”
Sievers shrugged. It was his first gesture of any kind. “I’ve started already.”
The rain stopped just before Sam left the office that Tuesday night. The evening sun came out as he edged his way through traffic and turned onto Route 18. The route followed the lake shore for five miles through a summer resort area that was becoming more built up each year. Then it turned southwest toward the village of Harper, eight miles away, traveling through rolling farm land and past large new housing developments.
He drove into the village and around two sides of the central village square and, at the light, turned right up Milton Road Hill to his home just beyond the village limits. They had looked for a long time before they found the farmhouse in 1950, and hesitated a long time over the price. And had several estimates made on what it would cost to modernize it. But both he and Carol knew they were trapped. They had fallen in love with the old house. It sat on ten acres of farm land, all that was left of the original acreage. There were elms and oaks and a line of poplars. All the front windows overlooked a far vista of gentle hills.
Cape Fear Page 2
