Cape Fear

by John D. MacDonald

  Twelve

  DR. ALLISSON, after emergency treatment of Kersek and after Kersek had been taken away in the ambulance, treated the deep scratches on Carol’s back. As soon as she was in her own bed, he gave her a shot of Demerol that put her into a deep sleep in thirty seconds.

  After he had decided that Sam’s ankle was badly sprained and not broken, he injected it with a local anesthetic and bound it tightly.

  “Try to stand on it.”

  “It doesn’t hurt at all!” Sam said wonderingly.

  “Don’t use it too much. Try to keep off it. But use it some. Big night you people are having out here.”

  “How about that policeman—Kersek?”

  Allisson shrugged. “Take a guess. He’s young and he’s in good shape. He was in shock. A lot depends on how long that blade is. Better to take it out on the table. I’ve got to get along. Those state cops are anxious to get at you.”

  When he went downstairs, favoring the dead ankle, he found that Captain Dutton had arrived. He was talking in low tones to a big man who managed to wear baggy pants and a leather jacket with a look of competence and importance.

  Dutton nodded coldly at Sam. “This is Captain Ricardo of E. Barracks, Mr. Bowden,” he said. “I’ve been briefing him.”

  “I talked to the captain when he got here,” Sam said.

  “How is Mrs. Bowden?”

  “She was on the ragged edge. Dr. Allisson gave her a shot. He says she’ll be dopey tomorrow, but rested.” Sam moved over to a chair. “I’m supposed to stay off this ankle as much as I can.”

  “Apparently you and Kersek didn’t handle this too well,” Dutton said.

  Sam stared at him. “If it wasn’t for my wife and her little lecture, I would have been handling it myself, and it would have been one hell of a lot worse than it was, Captain Dutton.”

  Dutton flushed and said, “How were you staked out?”

  “I was in the top of the barn with a buzzer alarm system rigged so she could call me. Kersek was in the cellar. The front stairs and the back stairs were booby-trapped. I’d like to know how he got in.”

  “We found out,” the big state-police officer said. “He climbed up onto the shed roof over the kitchen porch and cut the screen out of the window at the end of the upstairs hallway and forced the latch.”

  Sam nodded tiredly. “And Kersek didn’t hear him and that’s what cut down the warning time. And he wouldn’t hear the sound of the buzzer. The first thing he heard was her scream and the two shots that she fired.”

  “Two?” Ricardo asked. “You’re certain?”

  “Almost certain.”

  Ricardo turned to Dutton. “We found two twenty-two slugs, one on the door frame at chest level, and one in the plaster on the other side of the hallway, about six feet high. And one thirty-eight slug in the baseboard in the hallway. It struck at an angle and knocked a long splinter out.”

  “I was certain Kersek could handle himself,” Dutton said.

  Ricardo tugged at his ear lobe. “Handling a rough customer is one thing. Handling a nut is another. It was dark in the hall. Your man didn’t know the layout, and he probably couldn’t locate a light switch. And he was trying to move fast. This Cady probably came out of that room like a bomb.”

  “I fired at him too,” Sam said.

  “With the revolver we found on the stairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where, and how many times?”

  “Three times in the front yard. He knocked me off the porch. He was running to the corner of the house. Then I heard him going up the hill in back, and I tried two more at long range. But he kept going. I could hear him.”

  When the phone rang, one of Ricardo’s people answered it, announced that it was for Captain Dutton. Dutton went over to the phone. He listened for a time, spoke in monosyllables, hung up. When he turned, his face looked older, his eyes pouched and bitter.

  “We won’t know how he got suckered, Ricardo. He didn’t make it. They lost him on the table.”

  “I’m damn sorry,” Ricardo said.

  “What are your plans?”

  “This isn’t an easy area to seal off. Too many back roads. And maybe we didn’t get on to it soon enough. I don’t know. But I’ve established the blocks. We can’t use dogs, because we can’t give them the scent. I’ve got a half dozen more troopers reporting in a half hour. At first light we’ll spread out and go up the hill and see if we can follow the track. I’ve got one boy who’s pretty good at it. We can hope Mr. Bowden nicked him, and if he didn’t we can hope we sealed off the area in time.”

  “Just in case we didn’t, how about putting out an alarm?”

  Ricardo nodded. “Six states. Give it the works. All right. Now, how about the press? My people have been keeping them off our necks so far.”

  Dutton pursed his lips. “It’s a cop killing. Let’s get a big spread. We can release mug shots.” He looked sharply at Sam. “They’ll want a statement from you, if they can get it. I can handle it, if you wish.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I’ll do it now,” Dutton said. “The quicker we cooperate, the friendlier they’ll be.” He went out the front door, heading for the cluster of lights and sounds of conversation by the barn.

  Ricardo eased his tall, big-boned weight into a chair. He said thoughtfully, “The relation between the mind and the body is strange. Something in the mind of the sane person seems to keep him from using the full strength of the body. Last year two of my boys tried to pick up a woman that weighed a hundred and twelve pounds. She was trying to break up a roadhouse on the Sherman Road. Doing a good job of it, too. Turned out it took five of them, five big husky boys, and after they had her under control two of them had to be hospitalized. From what Dutton says, this Max Cady is off his rocker.”

  “And he’s big and fast and in good shape,” Sam said.

  Ricardo lighted a cigar carefully, examined the glowing end of it. “Some people named Turner from just up the road were here and my people sent them back. Good friends?”

  “The best.”

  “Maybe somebody ought to be with your wife. Mrs. Turner okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He got up. “Which house?”

  “The next one up on the same side. Thanks very much.”

  “I’ll send one of my people up to get her.” He went out.

  Sam sat alone in the living room. He felt dulled by all the expenditure of emotion and energy. He thought of all the things he had done wrong. A clown act. Fall off the ladder. Can’t get into the house. A great man of action. Decisive. All it needed was for him to have run into a clothesline in the dark. The pratfall division. It was hard to believe Kersek was dead. Tough, competent, efficient Kersek. But, in dying, he had prevented the unthinkable from happening. There was that much.

  Liz Turner came hurrying in. She was a tall blonde who concealed incredible stores of energy behind a facade of a look of languid anemia.

  “Good Lord, Sam, we’ve been frantic. It was like a war going on over here. By the time we got dressed and got over here, we got shooed off by the troopers. The trooper that picked me up told me a policeman was killed over here and you are both all right. How is Carol? Where is she?”

  “Allisson gave her a shot of Demerol. She’s knocked out, but I don’t know for how long. I thought if you wouldn’t mind …”

  “Of course I wouldn’t mind. I’ll sit with her. In your bedroom? I’ll go right up. Is it the man your Jamie told little Mike about? The one that poisoned Marilyn?”

  He nodded. She looked at him for a moment and hurried to the stairs and went up, two stairs at a time. He heard more cars arrive. He got up and went to the window and looked out. State troopers in uniform moved back and forth in front of the car lights. It was beginning to get light in the east. The rain had stopped. The trees dripped.

  Ricardo came in and got Sam and had him come outside to show them where he had stood and fired at the hillside and point out where the nois
e had seemed to come from.

  “I’ve got it organized now, Mr. Bowden. As soon as it’s light enough to pick up a trail, we’ll get going. I’ll take ten men and we’ll spread out. Dutton has gone back to New Essex. There isn’t much chance he’ll double back here, but I’m leaving one man here anyway. And here’s your gun back. It’s reloaded.”

  Just as Sam took the gun a flashbulb went off, and Ricardo turned in irritation. “What did I tell you press people?”

  “Just a little break, Cap,” the man with the photographer said. He had a putty face, wide, blue innocent eyes. “This is one time us Gutenberg boys get a jump on the television sharpies on a story. Every press service will grab this one. When do we kick off, Cap? How about an exclusive interview, Mr. Bowden? I’m Jerry Jacks.”

  “Not now,” Sam said, and walked slowly back to the house. Behind him he heard Ricardo shooing Jacks back toward the barn.

  He watched the start from the kitchen window, watched the line of men start up the hill, guns ready. He watched them until they were gone. The dawn sun was up. He went up to the bedroom. Liz smiled at him and held her finger to her lips. Carol breathed deeply and slowly, her bruised face relaxed, lips parted. Liz put her magazine aside and came out into the hall with him.

  “She hasn’t moved,” she whispered.

  “Pretty dull for you.”

  “I’m not minding it a bit. Her poor face!”

  After he went back downstairs he was too restless to sit and wait. He went out the kitchen door and sat on the back steps. The sun was high enough to warm his face and the backs of his hands.

  In the silence of the morning he heard their voices before he saw them. They had chosen an easier path down the hill, the one that came down from the improvised range, past Marilyn’s grave, and came out behind the barn.

  He went over. Four troopers struggled with the improvised litter. Two saplings had been cut and trimmed and threaded through the arms of two uniform tunics. Sam waited at the foot of the path. When they reached the flats they put the litter down in order to rest. They put it down clumsily. Cady lay on his back on the litter. The blunt face had a strangely shrunken look and it was the color of soiled dough. Half-open eyes were slits of opaque blue glass. In his lifetime Sam had seen several bodies. Not one of the others had looked as dead. When they set the litter down, Cady was tumbled over the side and turned slowly and ponderously to lie facedown in the damp grass. A flashbulb went off.

  “He made it halfway to the car,” Ricardo said. “It was easier to carry him downhill than uphill. The car was hidden off that dirt road up there, covered with brush. A scope rifle in it, and food and liquor. One of the boys is taking it in.”

  “Did you have to shoot him?”

  Ricardo looked at him. “All we had to do was bring him down. We started finding blood halfway up the hill. A lot of it. Look at his clothes. One of your shots must have hit him, one of those last two you fired. Tore his right arm on the inside, just below the armpit. Tore an artery open. He climbed another three hundred feet before he ran out of blood.”

  Sam looked at the body as they rolled it back onto the stretcher. A blade of grass was pasted to the lips. He had killed this man. He had turned this elemental and merciless force into clay, into dissolution. He searched through himself, looking for guilt, for a sense of shame.

  And found only a sense of savage satisfaction, a feeling of strong and primitive fulfillment. All the neat and careful layers of civilized instincts and behavior were peeled back to reveal an intense exultation over the death of an enemy.

  “I’ll get him off the place as soon as I can,” Ricardo said. “Stop by the barracks tomorrow if you can. I’ll have the red tape ready for signature.”

  Sam nodded and turned and walked back to the house. He walked ten feet, stopped and turned and looked at them. He looked at the body as they picked it up, and said tunelessly, “Thanks.”

  He had intended to go upstairs, but a sudden weakness turned him toward a chair and he sat down listlessly. He could hear Jerry Jacks talking over the phone. He knew he should be annoyed at Jacks for sneaking into the house, but it didn’t seem important. “… that’s right. Dead. And it was Bowden did it.”

  It was Bowden did it.

  Sam Bowden, who had wanted to throw his head back and yell at the sky, who had wanted to dance around the body and chant of the defeat of the enemy.

  When he felt strong enough he plodded up the stairs to wait there until Carol awoke, and then he would tell her, and then he would sleep, and then he would drive down and get the kids.

  Thirteen

  ON LABOR DAY THE BOWDEN FAMILY, with Tommy Kent as the special guest, took the traditional last trip of the year on the Sweet Sioux to the island.

  It was a warm day with a fresh wind across the lake. They ate at noon. At two o’clock the kids were swimming. Sam sat on a blanket in his swimming trunks, arms resting on his upraised knees, can of beer and cigarette in hand. Carol was on her back beside him, her arm across her eyes.

  She grunted in a sleepy way and rolled over and craned her arms back and unhooked the bra part of the two-piece suit and said, “Baste me, ole friend.”

  He put the beer can down, rested his cigarette on top of it, uncorked the lotion bottle, poured it warm into the palm of his hand, and stroked it into the long, clean brown lines of her back. One of the rarest of women, he thought. Woman of grace and spirit, pride and delicacy. And once again he thought of the nightmare thing that had so nearly happened to her. A duller spirit might have survived the crime without too much emotional damage, but Carol never. It would have broken her utterly and forever. When he thought of the narrowness of the escape, it made his eyes sting, and it blurred the shape and pattern of her.

  “Um,” she said contentedly as he recapped the bottle.

  “You are far too lazy to go in the water, I suppose.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I was cheated,” he said somberly. “When I bought you at the slave market in Nairobi, the auctioneer said you would work like a dog, from dawn to exhaustion. You seemed firm of flesh, clear of eye. You had all your teeth.”

  “The price was right,” she said dreamily.

  “But they cheated me.”

  “You remember the sign. No merchandise can be returned.”

  “I’m thinking of selling you.”

  “Too late. Years of slaving for you have turned me into a hag, mister.”

  He sighed theatrically. “I suppose I can get a few more years of use out of you.”

  “Ha!”

  “Don’t go ‘Ha.’ It’s impertinent.”

  “Yes, master.”

  It was the sort of gentle game they had played all of their married life. They could pick up clues from each other and go on and on, enjoying the play of invention, and making of it a game of love.

  He threw the empty beer can into the lake and watched it move away, glinting on the ripples, pushed by the wind. He watched Nancy eel up onto the stern of the Sweet Sioux and go off in a clean dive as lovely as music.

  Carol fastened the bra and sat up. “Maybe I will swim. You’ve made me feel guilty, you swine. What do you do? Swill beer and make insulting comments.”

  “You swim. I’ll wait awhile.”

  He watched her walk down to the water, tucking her hair into the white rubber cap. She waded in and swam out, her crawl competent and leisurely. He toasted himself with a fresh beer from the ice chest and said to himself, Moment of significance. On this day and this hour and this minute, I have come all the way out from under a dark cloud labeled Cady. I am, unexpectedly, quite whole again.

  Carol came back dripping wet and slightly winded, and demanded a beer of her own. She sat beside him to drink it.

  She looked at him, her head slightly tilted. “You’ve got that thoughtful look again.”

  “Instead of the usual idiot vacancy?”

  “What is it?”

  “Cady.”

  Her face changed. “I wish
you wouldn’t do that. I lock it in a neat little closet in the back of my mind, and you keep blundering in and yanking him out and waving him at me.”

  “You asked. I was trying to detect change. You kill a man, you should change. I don’t know how. Coarser, maybe. Certainly less sentimental. Less of an amiable ass loose on the world.”

  “There is a change,” she said.

  “Can you see it?”

  “In me, I mean. I’m not such an idiot about myself and my tight little world, Sam. I thought it was my absolute right, my unalterable heritage, to be happy and raise my kids and eventually shoo them out of the nest and spend a dignified old age with you. I knew I was going to die some day, and would be a little old lady, white-haired and smelling of lavender, dying in my bed with my grandchildren around me. And you would linger on a few years, to give you a good chance to miss me, and then you would join me. That’s what was in my mind. An enormous and infantile trust that this world was made for me to be happy in.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Only with luck, my darling. Only with the greatest of good fortune. There are black things loose in the world. Cady was one of them. A patch of ice on a curve can be one of them. A germ can be one of them.”

  “I know, darling.”

  She took his hand and held it hard and frowned at him. “So just this little thing is what I learned. That all over the world, right now, this minute, people are dying, or their hearts are breaking, or their bodies are being broken, and while it is happening they have a feeling of complete incredulity. This can’t be happening to me. This isn’t the way it was meant to be.”

  “I know.”

  “I think maybe I’m stronger and braver. I hope I am. Because I know that everything we have is balanced on such a delicate web of incidence and coincidence.” She flushed. “Your turn now.”

  He sipped his beer and looked out across the lake. “My turn. Okay. All that you’ve said, plus something else. It’s like recovering from a serious illness. All the world looks fresh and new. Everything looks special. I feel enormously alive. And I don’t want that to fade. I want to hang on to that. I think I was getting stuffy. I was idealizing my profession, and leaning on it too heavily. Now I know it’s just a tool. You use it like any other tool. Use it wisely and it can help you. And when it’s of no use to you, you take a course of action that will be of use.”