Border Town Girl

by John D. MacDonald

  And she said, “Now don’t start that. From the point of view of the law, my friend, it was our finger on the trigger, not just mine. Ours. Please, Jeff. Try to take it easy. Nothing can happen to us. We planned it too carefully. And don’t fret about Paul. He hasn’t got the guts of a rabbit.”

  He marked that portion on a paper tape that stretched across the front of the black cylinder. He thanked the people who had helped. The girl made a face and said, “All that practice, Dave, and then you make us sound as if we didn’t have any voices at all.”

  “That’s the way I want it,” he said, smiling. “And if it works, kids, you’ll get as much credit as I can give you.”

  IT WAS TEN IN THE MORNING WHEN THEY TOOK me down to a big office I had not seen before. Hill sat behind a big desk. His smile was quick and nervous. Sheriff Vernon stood by the windows, pouchy and ill-humored. The pimply girl sat off to the side with her steno pad. Mr. Shepp sat alone in critical dignity. They put me in a chair in the corner.

  “What do you want him here for while this damn fool stunt goes on?” Vernon demanded.

  “The psychological effect, I guess. Tell your guard to wait in the corridor. I want Cowley to look as if he had been freed.”

  Vernon reluctantly gave the order. Shepp said, “It behooves me to state at this point, officially and for the record, that I would not be a party to this were it not for the pleadings of my assistant. Is that quite clear? In addition I have grave doubts about the legality of this proceeding.”

  Hill said, “It won’t take long. It’s an experiment.”

  Vernon sniffed, turned his broad back to the room and looked out the window, disassociating himself from such nonsense. I sat uncomfortably. My moccasins had dried stiff and hard, pinching my insteps. The slacks were stiff with dried salt. I heard the distinctive click-tap, click-tap of her high heels, heard her voice on a rising, questioning inflection as she spoke to someone. A tall sallow man in uniform opened the door for her and she came in. She came three steps into the room and I watched her, saw her quick eyes flick around, pass across me. She wore a white blouse, fluffy and intricate, setting off her dark tan. She wore a brick red coarse weave skirt, a belt with a big silver Mexican buckle. She wore lizard shoes with four-inch heels, and I remembered that those shoes had cost twenty-nine dollars. She carried an oblong straw purse that looked like a doll coffin.

  “Did you want to talk to me?” she asked the room at large.

  “Please sit down right there, Mrs. Cowley,” Hill said. She sat down in her neat way, crossed her good legs, lizard toe pointing toward the floor, dark eyebrows delicately raised in question. Hill rubbed the bowl of his pipe against the side of his nose, inspected the fresh gloss.

  “Mrs. Cowley,” he said, “purely as an experiment, and I might say contrary to the wishes of my superiors, I took the liberty of having recording equipment installed on the Dooley property.”

  Her face did not change. I watched her hands. She held the wide straw strap of the purse. She began to scuff at the strap with her pointed thumbnail. It made a faint mouse-sound in the still room. “Yes?” Eyebrows still delicately raised.

  “Mr. Cowley advised that you were shrewd enough to be on guard while in either of the cottages. While you were driving to pick up Mr. Jeffries on his return, I looked over the property and decided to have the installation made in that overturned boat near the bay dock.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand all this,” Linda said politely. But her thumb was digging harder at the straw. She had parted some of the small strands.

  “I’d like to play back some of the results,” he said. He turned and fiddled with the equipment beside him, below the desk level, out of sight. The room was very quiet. I heard a girl walk down the hall, humming softly. I heard a far-off police whistle.

  The equipment hissed and hummed and then the ghost voice of Jeff, crackling, disembodied, said sarcastically, “Yes, you really have to think about it, don’t you?”

  “Now don’t start that. From the point of view of the law, my friend, it was our finger on the trigger, not just mine. Ours. Please, Jeff. Try to take it easy. Nothing can happen to us. We planned it too carefully. And don’t fret about Paul. He hasn’t got the guts of a rabbit.”

  Hill turned off the machine. Linda sat very still, her head tilted to one side, her thumbnail deep in the soft strap, the cords of her throat harsh. She looked as if she was still listening to the voice. The ovoid pad of muscle between her thumb and forefinger bulged. I saw the tension go out of her hand and saw her throat soften. I do not know what went on in her mind. I suspect she detected some flaw in diction or phrasing or emphasis. She was good. She was a shrewd animal fighting for its life. She leaned back in the chair and she laughed.

  It was a good laugh and it took the life out of Dave Hill’s deep-set eyes. “Really, Mr. Hill, I don’t understand what this is all about. Was that supposed to be me talking to Mr. Jeffries? Isn’t this a little quaint?” She looked over at Vernon. “Is this your idea of police work?”

  “Not my idea, ma’am,” Vernon said.

  “All right, Jenneau,” Hill said to the guard. “Take her to Room 12 and leave her with Mrs. Carty, and bring Jeffries in here.”

  She had gotten up as Hill started to speak to the man in uniform. Her color was good. When Hill said to bring Jeffries in, I saw her eyes change and I knew that in that moment she knew exactly what would happen. The area around her mouth turned gray and bloodless under her tan. Her smile as she turned toward Shepp was grotesque.

  “I think we’ve had quite enough of this nonsense,” she said. “I don’t see why Mr. Jeffries should be subjected to this sort of farce.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Shepp said in his bassoon voice. “We’ve had enough of this embarrassing farce, Hill. I’m calling it off right now. I’ve never had the slightest doubt in my mind but what—”

  “Hold it!” Vernon said. He stood there, looking at Linda. The eyes in his fat, sweaty, sick-looking face were shrewd. He looked at Linda for a few more seconds. He nodded, as though deciding something within himself. “Do just like Hill told you, Jenneau.”

  Shepp stood up. “But I insist that—”

  “Sit down and shut your face!” Vernon said, never taking his eyes from Linda’s face. He smiled at her. It was not a smile I want anyone to give me. She turned violently away and they left the room.

  Hill said softly, “Thanks.”

  It was a long two minutes before Jeff came in. Big, rugged, hearty Jeff. Gray sports shirt with green fish on it. Material taut over the shoulders. Spiky bushcut, and engaging grin.

  “Sure,” he said cheerfully and sat where Hill told him to sit. “Glad to help in any way I can.”

  Hill gave him exactly the same build-up he had given Linda. I had the curious impression that, as Hill spoke, Jeff was dwindling before my eyes, shrinking down into himself. The recording was, of course, exactly the same as before. The rasping ghost voices.

  Jeff did not break the long silence that followed the recording.

  Hill said, in a kindly tone, “We have all of it. The entire conversation. Would you like to hear all of it?”

  Jeff did not answer. I could not see his expression. I saw the big chest lift and fall with the slow cadence of his breathing. I realized that he was frozen there with terror and regret, and some animal caution told him that the only thing he could do would be to say nothing.

  “Mrs. Cowley has informed us that it was your plan from the very beginning.”

  I expected several things. A heated denial. A wild attempt at escape. I did not expect what he did. He put his big hands up and held them, palms flat against his face. He bent forward from the waist. The sobs were vocalized. “Ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh—” the phrasing and emphasis of a small child that cries, but projected grotesquely in a stifled baritone. Small, grown-up child, lost and alone. It made me acutely uncomfortable. I shifted uneasily. Hill was frowning. Vernon looked at Jeffries with heavy contempt. Shep
p looked astounded.

  No one spoke. Jeff slowly regained control. He snuffled, wiped his nose on the back of his hand. He sat with his elbows on spread knees, forehead resting on his fists as though he could not bear to look at anyone.

  “It wasn’t… my plan,” he said, his breath catching from time to time. Hill nodded at the girl. She began to take notes. “Some of it was mine. The live fish. And the kind of gun. It started as a joke. After we started… seeing each other. I’d tell her how tight Stella was with her money. She’d tell me how dull Paul was. I think she was the one who said it would be nice if—if they dropped dead. I said Paul… ought to murder Stella and hang for it. Joking. Just joking like that. But… it grew. We talked about ways it could happen. Where it should happen. We had a lot of bad ideas. Then we had this one. It’s funny. Right up until… right up until the last second, I was… thinking about it like it was… a plan that wasn’t really real. Wouldn’t really happen. Then… she did it. She shot Stella in the head and that made it real and we… had to go through with it.”

  He looked at Hill then. He said carefully, explaining it, “Once the shot was fired, you couldn’t take it back. You couldn’t change anything.”

  “No,” Hill said gently, “you couldn’t change anything.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” Jeff said.

  THERE ISN’T MUCH MORE. I DID ONE THING I’M sorry about. I had them let me in to see her. I looked through the bars at her. I had expected that she would be just the same, cold and fierce and haughty, even though they’d had her for three weeks. I wanted to call on her the way she’d called on me. I thought her eyes would flash at me and she’d make cruel hooks of her nails. But she just sat on the bunk. Her tan had faded a lot and she had put on a lot of weight. Her black hair was a mess and she didn’t have any make-up on. She had turned middle-aged in three weeks, and the new weight she had put on looked doughy. She looked at me with dull eyes and the lower part of her face was slack, the way it had been when I took the gun away from her.

  She looked away from me. I stood by the bars and I said, “Linda.” She didn’t look at me. My eyes stung. I wasn’t crying for her, I guess. I was crying for the unknown girl named Linda I had once lived with.

  At the trial they seemed like strangers. They didn’t look at me when I testified. I went back north after the trial. I worked in my shop in the cellar all through the night before the early morning when they were executed. I washed my hands in the cellar sink and hung up the sawdusty coveralls and went up into the kitchen. I looked at the electric clock she had bought. It was pottery, shaped like a plate. It was twenty past the hour and I knew it was over. I filled a glass with water and drank it slowly, looking out at the yard. The house was empty, and the world too seemed peculiarly empty. I felt as though I should do something dramatic, decisive, final. There seemed to be some great gesture I could perform, if I could only think of what it was.

  In the end, all I did was shower, shave and drive to the office. I was early. When Rufus came in he told me I could take a day or week off if I felt like it.

  I told him I felt all right.