Death Trap

by John D. MacDonald

  “We sort of took it for granted. We talked about it like it was going to happen. I don’t know when we decided we would exactly. It was going to happen after he graduated. The University of Illinois was going to give him a research fellowship thing. I could take my last year of high school there, and then go into the university. He wanted me to do that, and I said I would but I didn’t see why I should.”

  “Did your family know about the plan?”

  “Oh, no!”

  “What do you think they would have thought of it?”

  “My father would have said no. And all that time I was wondering if I had the courage to do it anyway. I think I would have.”

  “Did you think at all about the physical side of marriage?”

  “I don’t want you to talk like that.”

  “Nancy, please. I’m not trying to play games. This all may be important. I don’t know just how, but it may be a factor in this whole thing. I’m a stranger. You probably won’t see me again. I’m not making any kind of a pass. I’m in love with Vicky Landy, and I’ve done enough living to know that any other girl from here on in is of no use to me in any physical sense. I asked you this question. What did you think about the physical side of marriage?”

  “I—I thought about it. A lot, I guess. I didn’t know how it would be. I mean I know what happens, but I couldn’t imagine it being done to me. It scared me. It seems so—so nasty. A terrible thing. Jane Ann kept wanting to do it. I couldn’t understand how she could want that. She said it was fun; but I don’t think it was really for her, because so many times she would be so sour and moody. I—guess I just hoped that Alister would be gentle and not scare me and not want to do it very often, so maybe then I could pretend to him it was all right.”

  “Nancy, I’m not criticizing you, really. But that isn’t a healthy or normal way to think. There are a lot of girls and women who think the way you do. And a few men. Something must have caused that attitude.”

  “You’re not right. The other kind of people are dirty.”

  “They’re normal, honey. How do your parents feel about all this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”

  “You weren’t found under a cabbage leaf, you know.”

  “Stop it! I don’t let myself think about that.”

  “Because it’s nasty, I suppose. Has your mother lectured you about this nastiness?”

  “No. Never.”

  I studied her closely and decided that she was not lying. This girl would make someone a wonderfully frigid wife. The emotional block was so pronounced that only superhuman patience could ever create a natural relationship. An initial queasiness had perhaps been intensified by the waywardness of the sister, by the severity of the beatings her sister was given, by the aura of innuendo in her social contacts with her contemporaries. Yet this did not seem enough. Had Jane Ann been the elder sister, it would seem more reasonable. Many nuns are the younger sisters of dissolute women. And the children of drunkards are often highly moral. I could not decide what had twisted this girl. And, also, I could not help but think, in the romantic tradition—or perhaps hope is the better word—that the kink in her emotions was something that could be unknotted by the right word, the right gesture. As in the sexual symbolism of Sleeping Beauty.

  She took advantage of my silence to say, “I don’t see how this has anything to do with whether Alister did it.”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t. Let’s try another approach. It came out at the trial that you and Alister had quarreled on Thursday night. Did you have a date with him for Friday?”

  “Yes, but we broke it after the fight.”

  “Was it a bad fight?”

  “Not very bad. It was mostly silly. He started talking about this town in that funny way of his, saying how it was such an awful, narrow, little place, full of prejudice and jealousies and tribal rites. I said it was my home and I liked it. He said if I couldn’t see it for what it was, I was blind or stupid or both. We—went on from there.”

  “Did your parents approve of your dating him two nights in a row?”

  “I don’t think my father liked it. I heard him and my mother arguing. She said I was eighteen and he couldn’t keep me locked up. I don’t think they had anything against him. He was always polite to them. But I knew him better and I could see that it was—like a pose. Like he was playing a game. Like he was trying to be the kind of boy they wanted me to go with.”

  “How about other boys? Were there any others?”

  “Oh, no! Just Robby and Alister.”

  “But other boys must have tried to date you.”

  “They try all the time. But they’re a different kind. I know what they’re thinking about all the time. Now we’re talking about that again. I don’t like to. It makes me feel all crawly.”

  “Then we’ll change quick. Would Jane Ann have gotten into a car with a stranger?”

  “I don’t know. Even though she was the way she was, I don’t think so. But maybe if he was young and it was a nice car—you know.”

  “Was there anybody around town who was after her? Maybe somebody older and pretty unattractive. Maybe a village idiot type.”

  “No. There wasn’t anybody like that. I don’t know of anybody like that.”

  “What happened to her things afterward? Maybe she had a diary or letters or something.”

  “The police looked for things like that when she was missing, before they found her. They thought she had run away. I think my father thought so too. But I didn’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn’t take the things from her locker at school. I guess I better explain that. After she started doing bad things, my father wouldn’t give her any allowance. I get an allowance and I have to buy my clothes and personal things out of it. He wouldn’t let my mother buy her anything pretty. But I guess she made boys buy her presents. She had wonderful sweaters and skirts and things in her locker. She’d always get to school early enough so she could pick an outfit out of her locker and go change in the girls’ room. Then after school she would change back into her other clothes. She couldn’t wear any of those things home. Once she brought a dress home and when she put it on my father asked her where it came from and she wouldn’t tell him, so he ripped it and called her a whore.”

  “Did she tell you who bought her the things?”

  “No. I guess they were from the Sheridan boys. They have more money. She kept jewelry and perfume and lipstick in her locker. Afterward the school opened the locker and sent all those things home. I knew she probably hadn’t run away, because I knew that when she closed her locker on Friday all those things were in there. I was with her. I had to ask her something. I forget what it was. If she was going to run away, she would have packed up those pretty things and maybe left them off with a girl friend. After school closes on Friday you can’t get back into the lockers until Monday.”

  “What happened to the clothing?”

  “My father gave it all away. My mother thought I could use some of the sweaters, but I couldn’t have worn them.”

  “Who got the stuff?”

  “My mother thought we could save it for the church rummage sale; but my father took it all, the pretty things and the things she wore at home, and drove over to Warrentown and gave it to the Salvation Army.”

  “How did she manage when she had a date and wanted to dress up?”

  “She kept other clothes over at a girl friend’s house. Ginny Garson. She’s—just like Jane Ann was. Ginny was her best friend. I’ve seen Ginny wearing some of her things, so I guess she just kept them. They were about the same size, but Ginny is dark.”

  “She didn’t go over there and change that night she was killed?”

  “No. She thought she had a date and then she didn’t and I guess she was mad about it. There wasn’t any need to dress up. She was going up the hill to see another friend of hers. Not a very good friend. Ann Sibley. She’s the daughter of one of the prof
essors at the college. Ginny had a date that night.”

  “You didn’t tell the police that you were pretty certain she hadn’t run away.”

  “No. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. They were hunting all over anyway. I guess if they’d found the money first instead of later they—” She gasped and put her hand over her mouth.

  “What money?”

  “I can’t tell you. I promised I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

  I had to argue, plead and browbeat her, and tell her how important it could be to Alister before she consented to tell me about it. “My father found it. It was a long time later. It was while the trial was on. You see if the police had found it when they searched her room they would have known she hadn’t run away. My father was like a crazy man when he found it. It was by accident. The house is small. He was going to change her room into an office where he could work on the books and charge accounts from the market. The trial was terrible for all of us. When it was recessed over a week end we came back and we all tried to keep busy. There were so many reporters calling we had to have the phone disconnected. And the Chief sent Barney Quillan over to keep people away from the house. That week end my father decided he would carry her bureau up to the attic to make way for the desk he was going to put in her room. He thought it would be easier to carry if he took the drawers out first. That was the way he found it. It was in one of those heavy reddish envelopes that was thumbtacked to the back of the drawer, so you had to take the drawer out to get to it.”

  “Was there much?”

  “He talked so loud to my mother I couldn’t help hearing. He made me go to my room but I didn’t shut the door all the way. It was eight hundred and something. Eight hundred and twenty, I think. He called it whore-money, and the wages of sin. He carried on for a long time. It hurt him very badly. I don’t know what ever happened to it. I guess he used it in the business. Or maybe he used it on the funeral bill. He made me promise that I would never tell anyone. He said it was a disgrace.”

  “Don’t you think he should have told the police? Maybe they would have started looking for someone else.”

  “Oh, no! Everybody knew Alister did it.”

  And again I had run into the blank wall. I sighed and said, “Where do you think the money came from?”

  “I guess the boys gave it to her. I guess she asked them for it and they would give it to her before she’d let them—do anything. Like they gave her the sweaters and things.”

  We had talked a long time. She had to leave. She was becoming very nervous about the time and she kept glancing across the square toward the Paulson Market. It was obscured by trees but she kept looking in that direction. I asked her how I could contact her again if I had more questions. She was reluctant at first, then told me that if I really had to talk to her, I could park near the school. She would see my car and meet me here at this same bench a half hour later, or another bench close by if somebody was using this one. I wasn’t to talk to her or even look at her when I parked near the school. She said that if her father ever found out she was talking like this, and particularly if he should find out she had talked about the money, he would whip her. He would be angry. She was frightened of being whipped. One time he had whipped Jane Ann too hard. It had done something to her back. She had to wear a sort of corset thing for six weeks. The doctor had been very angry at her father. Dr. Farbon. He had been their family doctor for years, but he said the wrong things, and so her father had changed over to Dr. Higel, the new man.

  She hurried away into the threat of dusk, and when she was far away, she looked back hastily and furtively. Her constricted walk was a sad thing to watch. Poor scared lamb in a wolf-infested world. Panicky virgin, running headlong from herself.

  I walked across the green to the Inn and, using the phone booth in the rear of the entrance hall, I called John Tennant in Warrentown. I caught him just as he was leaving for a cocktail party. I told him about the money, about how I had found out about it, and I asked him if it was sufficient new evidence on which he could base a request for an appeal.

  First he made some comments about Richard Paulson. He used not a single profane word, but he traced the probable ancestry and probable demise of Mr. Paulson with both fervor and emphasis. Then he said, “Hugh, it’s interesting. It’s provocative. It’s a new fact. But it isn’t enough. Paulson will deny it. He’ll make the daughter say she was lying. I may try to use it as a last forlorn hope if I have to. But there should be more. I suddenly have a lot more respect for your amateur talents. My boy didn’t dig that morsel up. How about I send you somebody down to help out?”

  “Let me find out first if I need somebody. I’ve got a starting point now. And a new contact to make. One of Jane Ann’s girl friends. Her best friend.”

  “Good hunting, Hugh.”

  I drove to the motel. Vicky was still depressed. But as I told her what I had learned, I saw the rebirth of hope in her eyes. I wondered if I should have told her. Perhaps it would have been more kind to keep it to myself. It lifted her up a little bit, only to give her further to fall. She was almost gay at dinner. Then I told her I had work to do, and I went back to Dalton.

  Chapter Six

  The Garson home was the nearest thing to being on the wrong side of the tracks that the town of Dalton could provide. It was on the Warrentown-Dalton road, about ten blocks from the Paulson home. Successive widenings of the highway had placed it too close to the road. There was a small woodworking mill on one side of it, a bar and grill on the other. Directly across the road was a new-looking farm implement dealership, with show-room night lights gleaming on flanked tractors, and intricate accessories.

  I had been told the Garson home was directly across from the implement place. I parked on the wide apron in front of the implement place, and waited for a hole in the traffic so that I could walk across.

  There was a narrow porch across the front of the house. The yard was bare. Oncoming headlights illuminated a tire swing hanging from a tree close to the corner of the porch. As I had walked across the road I had heard low male voices on the dark porch, and the clink of bottle neck on glass.

  I walked up the first two steps and paused when a man asked, with the faked belligerence of someone who has had too many bill collectors come, “Something you want?”

  I could make them out dimly. Two sitting on a couch, one slouched against the porch railing, facing them. The three faces were turned toward me.

  “I’m trying to locate Ginny Garson. Is this where she lives?”

  “She lives here, but she’s out some place. She’s my kid. What do you want to see her about? School trouble?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s about the Landy case.”

  “You the law?”

  “No, I—I want to get a story.”

  “You come too late, buster. They got her story. Took pictures, too. Made her get her swimming suit on and for one of them they took her across the road and the fellow had her making out like she was driving one of them tractors over there. It’s going to come out right after they burn that Landy son of a bitch. Cora!”

  He called so loudly it startled me. A woman came to the door. She stood inside the screen. The light was behind her. It shone through her thin dress. She had massive hips and thighs, a long neck, scrawny shoulders. She spoke in a tired whining tone. “I can God damn well hear you, Jerry, without you yell like a crazy man.”

  “Shut up,” he said amiably, “and tell me what is the name of that story that magazine is putting out about Ginny next month.”

  “That story it’s called ‘He Killed My Best Girl Friend’ and it comes out in a magazine called True Emotion that’s one of my favorites.”

  “The thing I remember about it, they wanted to give Ginny twenty-five bucks for a release thing, but I dickered ’em up to fifty bucks.”

  “And you give her ten and me ten and you lost the whole thirty down to Bristol’s in the pitch game on Saturday night.”

  “Shut up, Co
ra. This fellow here, he’s another one of those magazine fellows. How much you giving out for a release? Ginny, I bet you she could tell you some stuff she didn’t tell those others.”

  I had gotten into a trap without meaning to, and it seemed easier to let it slide. “This is just speculation, Mr. Garson. I don’t work for a magazine. I’d do it and then try to sell it and give her part of the money if I do.”

  “How much?”

  “Maybe there isn’t any story left. I’d have to talk to her.”

  “Where is she, Cora?”

  “I don’t know how the hell you think I can keep track. I got five littler than her and this all the time washing and cleaning up and cooking and you never lift a hand to—”

  “Knock it off before I come in there and kick your teeth in, woman.”

  She turned away from the door abruptly, indignantly. One of the other men spoke for the first time. He had a low, slow voice with a Deep South tinge. “I see the Quarto kid pick her up about seven in that chopped Ford of his. They was a mess of them in the car. They hang around that Big Time Burger Drive-In about five mile east on this here road. It’s on the left. You can’t miss it. The Ford, it’s yellow and it’s chopped and it’s got a fish tail and chrome blower pipes. But just ask any of the kids out there. They all go out there. My boy, he’s out there I betcha, if he hasn’t got hisself killed off driving out there at a hundred and ten miles an hour. His driving like to drive the old lady nuts. You just ask out there. You can’t miss it.”

  “And before you do any story,” Mr. Garson said blusteringly, “you’re going to put down in writing all notarized just what she gets paid if you sell it.”

  I thanked them and turned to leave.

  “Hey!” the third man said. “Hold it!” I turned back. “I was wondering why you sounded familiar and then you turned and the light hit your face. Your name ain’t MacReedy is it? By God, I’m sure it is. You was an engineer on that road job three years ago. And I was working for the paymaster. I’d know you any place. And hey now! Jerry, this joker is MacReedy and I remember now he was running around with the Landy bitch.”