Border Town Girl

by John D. MacDonald

  “What makes you so happy?” I asked him.

  “All your prints they found on the gun. Plus some of Jeffries’ and some of your wife’s. But mostly yours. And Jeffries showed Vern where he and your wife caught the fish. Vern picked up four of her cigarette butts there, on the bank, with her lipstick on them. They fished in a hole near an old broken-down dock behind a mangrove point, so they weren’t seen by any of the boat traffic on the bay. It comes down to this, Paul. It’s your word against theirs. And a jury will believe them. Change your mind since yesterday?”

  “No.”

  He roamed around the cell, hands crammed in his pockets, head lowered, scuffing his feet, whistling tonelessly. He stopped and sighed. “Okay. I’ll do every damn thing I can. Shepp has decided to make a try for first degree. He’ll handle it himself. Voice like an organ. Makes them cry. Well, hell. We’ll do what we can.”

  He said he would come back the next day and go over a lot of stuff in detail, and left.

  David Hill arrived at eight o’clock. He wore a big briar pipe. He looked through the bars at me and said, “I’m the opposition, so you don’t have to talk to me, Cowley.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  He sat in the straight chair, thumbed his pipe, got it going again. “I’m a stranger here myself,” he said. “I came down three years ago. Used to practice in Michigan. Passed the Florida bar, set up here and got appointed as Shepp’s assistant. The doctors said my little girl would do better in this climate. Asthma. Ever play chess, Cowley?”

  “No.”

  “When your opponent launches an attack, you must watch the moves he makes and try to figure out what he has in mind. The most nonsensical-looking moves can sometimes conceal a very strong attack.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “We paid per diem to two men who confirmed what I’d already guessed. You’re intelligent, stable. I spent some more county funds today and talked to a man named Rufus Stick. I have a fair idea of what you’re like, Cowley. You are my opponent, let’s say, and I see you making a nonsensical move. In other words, your story of what happened on the beach. You stand up to stiff questioning, and they don’t trip you once. So I have two assumptions. One, you made up that story and went over it in your mind until you were letter perfect on it. Two, it was the truth. Now why would an opponent I know to be able, devise a story which practically means suicide? Answer: he wouldn’t. Conclusion: he told the truth. Next step, a closer look at the two other principals. How did you meet your wife, Cowley?”

  I told him everything I could remember about her, and everything I knew about Brandon Jeffries. From time to time he wrote things down in a small notebook. It took a long time.

  When at last he stood up to go I said, “It is the truth, you know.”

  He looked into his dead pipe. “I think it is, Cowley. I’ll wire Jeffries to be back for the inquest. He was told his statement would be enough. I’ll get him back here.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He looked at me and his face changed. “If your story is true, it’s the coldest, most brutal, most callous murder I’ve ever heard of.”

  Journeyman was in the next day and we worked for three hours. Linda came the next day with more cigarettes and reading matter. I refused to see her and the jailer sullenly brought me the things she had purchased. This was Saturday, the day we were to have left, the day they were lowering the body of Stella Jeffries into the ancient soil of Connecticut. No one came to see me on Sunday. I had read everything at hand. It was a long day.

  David Hill, complete with pipe, came at noon on Monday. He seemed ill at ease, as though he had to bring up something unpleasant. When he finally brought it up, it was not as unpleasant as it would have seemed a week before. It was about Linda.

  “It’s a good firm,” he said. “We used to use them when I was in Michigan. They have an office in Los Angeles and they have a big staff, so things move fast. I had to use my own money for this.”

  “I’ll pay you back, of course.”

  “Her name was still Willestone when she went out there. She went out there with a married man. He left her. She was calling herself Mrs. Brady when you met her again. Mrs. Julius Brady, you said. There is no marriage record. She lived in San Bernardino with a petty gambler named Julius Brady for a while. He cheated some soldiers at Camp Anza and was sent up. There’s a blank, and then she turned up in Bakersfield, calling herself Linda Brady. She was sentenced twice there, thirty-day terms, for soliciting. She moved up to Los Angeles and was picked up in the company of a man wanted on suspicion of armed robbery. They found she was sick and committed her to the county hospital until she was well. Then she was warned to leave the city. That was about three months before you met her on the street. It—it isn’t pretty, Cowley.”

  I thought of how she had been, years ago. I looked beyond Hill. “In school,” I said softly, “she was the prettiest, and the best. Life was going to give her all the wonderful things. You could see that, just looking at her.”

  “Maybe she thought so too,” Hill said. “Life didn’t give them to her and she tried to take them, and her methods were wrong, and she got licked, beaten down. Then you picked her up and brushed her off. This time she waited for the long chance. The big chance.”

  “This time maybe she’s made it.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.”

  “How about Jeffries?”

  “Nothing on him. Orphaned. Brought up by an aunt. Never much money. Good athlete. He was working on a cruise ship—something to do with games and recreation—when he met his wife. She steered him into sales, and he did well. Her people objected at first, but finally came around. He’ll be back tonight. He’s flying in. I’ve wangled a delay on the inquest.”

  “Why? What can you do?”

  “I don’t know. They both know they’ll hang together if anybody slips. They’ll be careful. I’ve gone over it a hundred times. They did a good job. There aren’t any loose ends. You said you don’t play chess, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sometimes you see an attack shaping up. It’s flawless. If you make all the expected moves, you’re going to be slowly and inevitably defeated. So you don’t make the expected moves. You make a wild move. It’s meaningless. But they don’t know positively that it’s meaningless. So they have to guard against the unknown. Sometimes it can put a strong attack off balance, just enough.”

  After he left I thought about what he had said. Though I didn’t understand how it worked on a chess board, I thought I knew how it worked in life. I could even relate it, in a small way, to my own experiences.

  They had the plot and the plan and the program. They were the ones—Linda and Jeff—who had moved. I was the one who was being whirled down the careful channel they had dug to the inevitable destination they had planned for me. I paced for a time and then I sat down and made a careful evaluation of my actions. What did they expect me to do? Obviously, I was expected to sit in this cell and insist that my story was the true one, and so instruct my lawyer, and wait calmly for a trial that would end me.

  Just so long as I kept to the pattern, they would feel calm. Should there be any deviation from the pattern, they would begin to feel uneasy.

  I wondered how I could deviate from the pattern. The most obvious idea was to escape. I discarded that at once. It was idiotic. Meaningless.

  Yet David Hill had spoken of the meaningless move. And how the opponent must guard against the unknown. Purely as an intellectual game, it would hurt nothing to think of escape. It startled me a little to find that I could contemplate it even as a game. Linda had indeed changed me.

  I knew that my cell was on the top floor. There were two cells to the left of the guardroom, of which this was one. The other was empty. Beyond the guardroom, on the other end of the corridor, were a drunk tank and a row of smaller cells. There were three stories and a basement. No elevators. To reac
h the stairs it would be necessary to go through the guardroom. I had no idea of who might be in there, or even if there was always somebody there. My radio was plugged in. I turned it up higher and examined the windows. They were casement windows worked by interior cranks. The mesh screen inside was heavy. They would open only so far, not far enough to squeeze through, even if I could cut the heavy screening. And the panes were small.

  It had to be through the door, if at all. My mind moves somewhat ponderously, but with logic. I could not see myself going out armed, cowing the guards. They would not let me walk out, at least not as Paul Cowley, slayer. I would either have to be someone else, or invisible. Disguising myself presented almost insurmountable difficulties. I put that line of thought aside and addressed myself to the problem of the cell door.

  In spite of the massive look of the door, the lock did not seem impressive. The jailer used two keys to open the door. One unlocked a flap arrangement which covered the second keyhole, thus preventing the prisoner from reaching through the bars and trying to pick the main lock. When he closed the cell door, the main lock snapped into place, and then he used his key just for the outer flap arrangement. The door fitted closely, but in the small crack I could see the brass gleam of the metal that engaged the slot in the steel frame. Each time he pulled the door shut, he would give it a shake to test it.

  It was not until an hour after darkness that I had the vague stirring of an idea of how to cheat the lock. As it was a spring lock, I suspected that the force which held the brass portion in the slot was not great. It would resist great lateral force, of course, but if it could be pushed from behind…

  At breakfast on Tuesday I was able to get a better look at the mechanism. During the morning, by sliding a piece of paper down the crack, I was able to get an accurate idea of the dimensions of the orifice in the steel frame. Later in the afternoon, after another discouraging visit from Journeyman, I took the back off the portable radio. I had to use one prong of the plug as a screwdriver. It would not fit the screw heads until I had rubbed it to a smaller dimension on the rough wall. I disabled the radio, taking out what I decided I needed—one short length of tough wire, a longer length of flexible wire. To break the tough wire to the length I wanted, I had to hold it in my teeth and wind it around and around until it snapped. I bent the short length into a U with square corners, the approximate size of the lock orifice. I knew the bolt was loose in the orifice by the way it chattered when the jailer tested the door each time. It took a long time to fasten the longer, more flexible wire to the small piece. I had removed a small thin plate from the interior of the radio. I put the back back on.

  During the afternoon I opened the back of the toilet, removed the rubber valve stop and gouged a small piece off it. I heated it with my matches, and when it bubbled and was sticky, I smeared it liberally on the small U-shaped piece of wire. An hour later it was still satisfactorily sticky to the touch. I managed with great difficulty to separate a six-inch piece of the rubber plug-in cord of the radio and peel back the insulation on both ends.

  I was ready then, though not yet committed. It had seemed merely an interesting problem in mechanics. My uncommunicative jailer would visit me for the last time when he came to take away the dinner plate and spoon. Usually I passed them between the bars after, at his orders, scraping what I didn’t eat into the toilet

  I left the moment of decision until the very last moment I even reached for the plate and spoon and then slumped back on the bed. He yelled at me in irritation and then came in. I moved slowly toward the cell door. My right hand was in front of me. I slipped the U-shaped bit of wire into the orifice and pressed it in tightly just as he yelled at me. I turned back and he told me to stay away from the door. I was certain he would see the length of flexible wire that hung down from the U-shaped piece. But he was too angry to be observant

  He clashed the door shut, mumbling. He went away and I let out a deep breath. After the guardroom door closed, I fished the hanging piece of wire out with a scrap of paper. When I held it in my hand, I had in effect a line fastened to a hook, with the hook firmly around the bolt. I held the thin plate in my left hand, the wire in my right. I exerted a steady pressure. The bolt slid easily back. I slipped the plate in quickly. The wire pulled free. The bolt spring held the plate in place. The door was unlocked. I stretched out. If any visitor had come, I would have had to snatch the plate out. The bolt would have clicked into place, and I would have had it to do over again. But no one came. The darkness came slowly. I waited until midnight. By pressing my cheek against the bars I could see the strip of light under the guardroom door. I had heard no rumble of conversation in a long time. The odds were that only one man was in the room.

  I took the six-inch piece of insulated wire and shorted out the wall plug. Had the guardroom been on a different circuit, I would have had to start over again with another plan. I ran to the door and looked again. The strip of light was gone. I opened the cell door, catching the plate before it could fall. I closed the cell door and the lock clicked into place. The wire I had used was in my pocket

  I hurried silently up the dark hall. The guardroom door opened inward onto the corridor, I remembered. I flattened myself against the wall beside the door. I heard somebody kick a chair in the darkness and curse. I saw a flickering light under the door. I had expected to feel shaken, jittery. I felt absolutely cold, and absolutely certain of myself.

  The door opened suddenly, swinging back and snubbing against the toe of my moccasin. The night jailer walked grumbling along the corridor, shielding a match flame. Ten feet beyond me the match went out. I went through the dark doorway and turned to the right, crossed the small room cautiously, found the knob and opened the door to the main corridor. There was a light at the far end. The staircase was shadowy. I went down as quietly as I could. On the main floor I could hear someone typing. I went in the opposite direction. I found an unlocked door and went in. Streetlights outside illuminated the orderly rows of desks and filing cabinets. I slid one of the big windows open. It made a great deal of noise. It was a six-foot drop into shrubbery. I landed and hit my chin on my knee, biting my lip until it bled. I ran across the midnight expanse of the courthouse lawn, keeping to the shadow. I thought I could hear hoarse yelling behind me. I stopped, oriented myself, and turned north.

  Every time a car passed, I moved back onto dark lawns, crouching behind bushes. I heard a siren, back where I had come from. I felt slightly hysterical suddenly and made a grotesque giggling sound. This could not be Paul Cowley, that bold slayer of crab grass, that desperate man who always says pardon me when you step on his foot, that desperado of the cellar workshop, that pirate of the purchasing section. The siren faded and then I heard it again, further away.

  Hill had indirectly recommended a senseless move. I had really made one.

  At the north edge of town I came upon a rustic bar set back from the road. Local cars were thick around it. I moved in on the cars in shadow and felt through open windows for ignition keys. A girl spoke, quite near at hand, and a man answered her. I crouched down. I realized, after a moment, that they were in a parked car, and only luck had kept them from seeing me. I wanted to be out of sight. I found a pickup truck. I crawled cautiously into the back, found a tarp and pulled it over me. The tarp smelled of ancient fish.

  It was at least a half-hour before people got into the truck. Two young boys, I judged. They backed out briskly. I held my breath. They turned north. The road was smooth and they drove fast. The wind whistled, tugged at the corners of the tarp. I tried to make an estimate of the miles. Suddenly the truck began to slow down. I risked looking. The truck was slowing down to turn into a driveway out in the country. A single light was on in a house set back under the pines. I thrust the tarp aside and, as the truck made the turn, I vaulted out into the wide shallow ditch and fell headlong. I rolled onto my back and looked at the stars. Mosquitoes whined around my ears. A truck rumbled by. When I looked again the house light was out. I got up
and began to walk north. I walked spiritlessly, forcing myself. I was one of those children’s toys powered by a coil spring. The spring had been wound up tightly, and now all the force was gone.

  I had never done anything remotely like this. Perhaps I had assumed that I would be like men I had read about, tireless because of their anger and desperation. But I wanted to lie down in the ditch, or flag a car headed south. My feet hurt and I felt cross and tired. My bites itched. I plodded along through the night, feeling dulled and purposeless. Far back of me I heard the thin lost whine of a siren, coming closer. I walked as before, telling myself I didn’t give a damn.

  Then unexpected fear made me come alive. I plunged across the ditch and tripped and fell flat. I rolled into deeper shelter. The siren, on a high sustained note, screamed by and faded into the north. This could not possibly be me, this man who hid like an animal and heard, in the stillness, the quick hard beating of his own heart. That other Paul Cowley could never do this. Yet maybe he had ceased to exist when the finger had pulled the trigger. Perhaps the ridiculously small lead pellet had killed him as expertly as it had killed all that was Stella Jeffries.

  I had no watch. I guessed it could be nearly four when I reached the turnoff to Verano Key. My eyes had adjusted to the night. I walked a half-mile down the sand road to the old wooden bridge. I stopped and listened. I could hear no far-off sound of a car. I did not want to be caught on the bridge. I ran across and turned into coarse grass and crouched on one knee, listening again. Far down the bay I could see the Coleman lights of the commercial fishermen spreading gill nets for mullet. Linda would be a mile down the key. I wondered if she slept calmly, quietly, without regret or conscience.

  I trudged down the key road. From time to time I could see the night Gulf, inky under the sky, with a starlit paleness where small waves broke on the even paler sand. A shell worked its way into my left moccasin and I took it off, dumped the sand out of it. I realized that I was walking more slowly. I had no idea what to do once I arrived at the cottage.