The Angry Dream

by Gil Brewer

  Cole looked at Luckham.

  “Who was that?” I said.

  Luckham went over to the desk.

  “That was Miss Gunther,” Cole said.

  “Lois Gunther?”

  “That’s right.”

  I wanted to go lie down somewhere and cover my head. And then I remembered Noraine and I felt like hell. For two years I’d been playing the game with Noraine, running away from it, only accepting it, too, when it showed up—and now I felt sick.

  Luckham said, “Cole—take our friend here and show him our little jail.”

  “You mean—?”

  “Just show it to him. I want he should know what it looks like before we begin talking.”

  Cole was wearing his black jacket. He took it off and tossed it on the pile of books he’d been sitting on. Then he jerked his head at me.

  “Go on along with him,” Luckham said, without looking up.

  Cole opened one of the doors at the back of the room. It opened almost directly on bars. There were three cells in there, divided by brick walls. Cole switched on a light. The light was very bright and it showed the cells plainly; gray and immaculate, with dirty-looking blankets on the chained-up bunks. There was an odor of disinfectant.

  I turned back into the room and heard Cole switch the lights off and close the door. I was still thinking of that crazy car flashing by with Lois behind the wheel.

  Luckham said, “Why did you kill Herb Spash?”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  Luckham inspected his hands, palms and backs. Cole went over and sat on the pile of books.

  “Why were you talking with him?”

  “He had something he wanted to tell me. He’s been tagging me around ever since I came to town. I finally pinned him down.”

  “That’s a fact,” Cole said.

  “Shut up,” Luckham said. “Tell me about it.”

  I didn’t know how much to tell him. I didn’t know where he stood. I wanted to think he was just a bull-headed sheriff, not a bought sheriff.

  “He told me something about my father. Anything wrong in that?”

  “Not exactly, no. Not if you don’t kill him afterwards. Way I figure it, Herb Spash told you something you didn’t want to hear. Maybe he knows—or knew—something you didn’t want him to know. Maybe old Herb said he was going to tell somebody else. Maybe that’s why you came back here—maybe that’s how Herb had been drinking and not working for so long.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “How?”

  “All right,” I said. “I can account for my time, if that’s what you want.”

  Luckham twisted in his chair and eyed Cole. Cole was studying his feet.

  “He can account for his time,” Cole said. “Ain’t that something?”

  “Yes-sir!” Luckham said.

  “What side are you on?” I said.

  “How you mean, ‘side’? I didn’t know there was any sides. What you talking about?”

  “Why didn’t you leave town?” Cole said. “We told you it was the smart thing to do.”

  “We did tell him, didn’t we?” Luckham said.

  “Are you holding me for anything?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Damn you!” I said.

  Luckham sighed. “Listen,” he said, and there was something new in his voice, something very earnest and quiet. “I know what you think, Harper. But you’re wrong. You think I’m a crooked sheriff, don’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  “You don’t have to answer. I can see what you’ve been thinking. Well, let me tell you something. I’m the law in this town, and we don’t have any police force patrolling around, no cruisers cruising up and down with two-way radios. And this isn’t the only section I got to take care of. I got an office in Westfield, too. But I’m sticking around here for a good reason.”

  “Here we go again.”

  “Just take it easy. Pine Springs is a peaceful little farming community. Hell, a sprinkle of houses and a couple stores. It ain’t anything, Harper.”

  Cole cleared his throat.

  “That’s right,” Luckham went on. “It looks like it ain’t anything. For a long time now everything’s been like a picnic in Pine Springs. Cheerful—everybody happy, contented—everybody pulling themselves out of a mess they been in. I didn’t know much about that mess. But I found out. Your father caused it—and that’s none of yours, but he was still your father and these people are peculiar. You shouldn’t have come back here. But you did come back. You’re pigheaded and you’re a fool.”

  I kept on watching him.

  “He sure is pigheaded,” Cole said.

  “I would’ve come back, too,” Luckham said. “I’d of had to come back. But that’s no excuse and I’d be just as much of a fool. See?”

  “You tell him, Tom,” Cole said.

  Luckham turned in the chair and looked at the deputy. Cole kept his gaze down. Luckham turned back to me.

  “So because I don’t go ramming out there, tossing folks in jail, and generally raising Cain, you think I’m a crooked sheriff. Just because I don’t seem to give a damn that somebody wrecked your house and killed a hound-dog.”

  “Then, why—?”

  “Why, why, why! Why what?” He smashed his hands across his face and blinked at me. “Listen here—somebody in this town had an investigator on your tail, Harper. Word come in, too, that you was a criminal—that you went around robbing banks—that you were hiding out here, hiding from the big law. That you were going to start a house, with that Miss Temple as the starting point. And the news come from the same place where Miss Temple spends most of her time right now. Hold on, now—it wasn’t the truth. You weren’t anything, out there. You were a bum, mostly—you got mixed up in something in New York and it made the papers, but I’m inclined to think it was a mistake. Right?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I mean. Every year you been away from Pine Springs was just one more year on the road to getting here again.”

  I went over and sat on the window ledge by the big plate-glass window fronting the office. The office was so hot I had a headache and it was getting hard to breathe.

  “Because you had to,” Luckham said. “And I think—I know—you’d better get away again before something big happens. Because something’s sure as hell going to happen.”

  “You’re not holding me for the killing of Herb Spash?”

  “Cole was following you tonight,” Luckham said wearily. “You went and saw Spash. Then you went down and stood on the gal’s porch, there, and came running out and got in your car and drove down to Jake’s and drank a cup of coffee, left most of it on the counter. You were mad at something and it’s not for me to say what, Harper—but I know! Then you went out to Hickman’s joint on the corners and bought some whisky and had a couple drinks, and you came back and Gunther met you. From the time you left Herb Spash until the time you saw him laying there in the road dead, two hours and nine minutes elapsed.”

  I stared at him.

  “Cole ain’t such a bum, either,” Luckham said.

  “Thank you, Tom,” Cole said, staring at his feet.

  “I told you when we met he was my number one deputy. You think I’d have a number one deputy who was a dumb-head?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Be careful. You still don’t know but maybe I’m being paid off by the citizens of Pine Springs to wring your neck, or something. Maybe I am. Maybe.”

  I didn’t speak.

  “Don’t think I couldn’t.”

  “Who found Herb?”

  “Kirk Hartmann found him.”

  “I see.”

  “Sure, you see—like so much mud, you see.”

  The high keening sound of that car’s engine started up again down the valley, coming from the other direction. We all sat there stiffly, listening. Listening for the sudden break in that sound and the tight grinding
clash of steel.

  “The road’s a mess, too,” Cole said.

  “Slushy,” Luckham said. “We’re due for a freeze.”

  The noise was like a jet, coming with the wind. She had the wind with her this time.

  “She’s probably drunk, too,” Cole said.

  “She’d handle that car soaked to her ankles,” Luckham said.

  You could hear it hit the vicinity. Abruptly brakes went on and tires shrieked. Neither Luckman nor Cole moved a muscle. I looked out the window. White headlights swam into view, the low car slowing fast, shrieking on hot rubber.

  “Going to show off—like last month,” Cole said.

  I saw the headlights swoop, then spin. The car came off onto the shoulder of the road, whipped onto soaking grass across the street, spun completely around and came to an abrupt stop.

  “Stalled,” Cole said.

  Nobody moved.

  The engine started up, the car dug out of there and I saw the shower of wet mud fanning up and out as it struck the highway again. In a moment, the sound vanished down the road.

  “That was for your benefit,” Luckham said to me. “She knows you’re in here.”

  “Why don’t you pull her in?”

  “There’s no use.”

  “She’s endangering people.”

  “Nope. They know about it. They get out of the way. It’s a weekly occurrence. I’ve talked to her about it—she denies it altogether. Says I’m crazy. The mysterious marauder or something—I don’t know.”

  “Well.” I stood up.

  “You going to leave town now?”

  “She’s nuts,” Cole said calmly. “That one is out of her head—no kidding.”

  “Something’s going to happen, Harper. If you don’t get out of town—”

  “Sheriff—all I’m trying to do is settle something in my mind.”

  “You think somebody other than your father took the money from the bank vault. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said. “If it’s true, your life ain’t worth a cent. Don’t you know that?” He ran both hands over his face again, roughly. “There was an investigation,” he went on. “They decided your father took that money—took it and got rid of it. There was talk he sent it to you.” He leaned forward in his chair, his sick eyes squinting a little, the pouches beneath them drawing up. “You think somebody murdered your father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What have you got to go on, Harper?”

  He knew I had something and he wanted to know, and because of that very fact, I couldn’t tell him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. And suddenly I realized I was beginning to like Tom Luckham, and also that I was standing here without being held, and talking.

  “Harper,” Luckham said, “what did Herb Spash tell you?

  “I can’t say.”

  “You’d better say. I want to know.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re withholding evidence,” Cole said.

  “I’m not withholding anything. What Spash told me is my business. You can’t make me tell you.”

  Luckham was mad. I was glad I hadn’t mentioned Gunther’s name. Luckham could pull any number of tricks from the sleeve of the law, if he liked—but I didn’t think he could hold me for not telling.

  “Who you think killed Spash?” I said.

  “The hell with you, Harper.”

  They looked at me, both of them, and the room was very hot and still. Herb Spash would never tell me what he had to tell—if there happened to be anything else, and I was sure there had been.

  Somebody had gotten to Herb Spash. Somebody who did not want him to talk to me.

  I moved to the door and went on outside.

  I headed on up the street toward the coupé over on the sawmill road. I hoped it was still there.

  It was.

  I walked over to where Spash had died. Dark stains still coated the road. The sawmill was very quiet and the shadowed sheds and buildings would no longer echo to the night cry of a hopeless drunk.

  The wind had shifted again and the thaw of early evening had changed to a light freeze. The wind was northwest, sluicing into the valley, bringing air that was just right for big snow.

  I drove past Kirk Hartmann’s. I couldn’t stop. He’d surely acted damned queer tonight.

  I parked in the drive and took my whisky into the kitchen. I opened a bottle, poured a good drink and stood in the dark sipping it. It tasted good. I went over and turned a flap of the cardboard on the window, looked up on the hill.

  I used to do this same thing, years ago. She would signal me up there, pulling a curtain across a certain window to shield the light. Sometimes we had the whole house to ourselves and that was always very good.

  And now it was all changed.

  For a moment I stood there, swept up in the old painful nostalgia. The way she always looked. The things she wore. The way she smiled and laughed. The things she said, and the soft wonderful thrill of her lips and the smooth touch of her hands.

  I slammed my knuckles against the wall.

  There was no use putting it off.

  The snow began to fall more heavily, driving lazily in the rising wind. The sky was thick and low and heavy. With every step, I felt more and more anger eating into me.

  I kept walking toward the big house on the hill. My feet crunched along the gravel drive. The snow was melting as it struck and each flake vanished. Soon none would disappear and it would begin to pile.

  I stepped onto the porch and a gun went off with a crash of broken glass. A woman yelled, crying in a series of long throat-tearing sobs. The gun exploded again—a shotgun—and more glass shattered. I came fast across the porch, tried the door and it opened.

  NINE

  I came down the fieldstone steps into the sunken living room and stopped. It was like walking into a nightmare. For an instant I just sort of grew there like a tree.

  “Al—Al—help me!”

  Noraine, sprawled on the couch across the room, was struggling with Sam Gunther—struggling with a dead man—a nearly headless body that poured blood on her, on the couch. Her eyes were wild, and suddenly she got untangled and the body slid loosely off her and folded onto the floor.

  She got off the couch and ran at me. Her face was pale with shock and there was horror in her eyes. Blood glistened redly on her white sweater. She stared down at the sweater and in one swift movement tore it off and hurled it from her. Underneath, she wore a black blouse.

  Her voice was strained, nearly a whisper.

  “Al—he tried to—”

  Her body was electric against me, faintly trembling. The large window directly above the head of the couch was smashed, and on the floor beside the body was a shotgun, an over-and-under.

  “Take it easy,” I heard myself say.

  She shuddered, her face buried against my chest.

  “He’s dead,” she said. She looked up at me, her face gray-white. I didn’t know what to do with her. My gaze traveled from the body to the window to the couch to the shotgun and then to the blood-touched white sweater there on the floor.

  “He was fighting me, kneeling on the couch, Al. Then the window smashed right over my head and Sam looked up. And then—his head just went away. He fell on me—I couldn’t get loose—” She made strange sounds in her throat. “Then the gun fired again and whoever it was threw it inside on the floor.”

  “Easy, now,” I said.

  She was rigid. I let go of her and walked over there. It was Sam, all right, and he was very much dead. I knelt down, hearing her across the room, her heels scraping on the floor, the subdued noises of intense fright.

  She spoke again.

  “Somebody killed him.” She stood with her back to me, then started to run from the room, up the stone steps, and down the hall. I let her go.

  Sam was dead.

  One side of his face was pretty well gone, bone-broken, torn, blackened, shot-filled flesh. Blood gl
istened in puddles, gleaming in the dim lamplight.

  He was dead—the one man who knew.

  I stood up and looked at the window. Kneeling on the couch, fighting her, head and shoulders up, his face would not have been perhaps more than two and a half feet from the windowpane. Whoever had killed him had first broken the glass. Sam looked up and probably stared straight into his murderer’s face and at the same instant he took the shot full on.

  The next shot fired must have happened outside, because there was no sign of the shot pattern in the room that I could see. Then the killer had thrown the gun through the window and gone away.

  “Al!”

  I turned.

  “Al, somebody’s coming in the drive. It’s the sheriff’s sedan!”

  For a moment my mind stood still, refusing everything but blank futility. Then I was speaking without thinking.

  “They’re trying to pin this on me,” I said. “They slipped up with Spash. And I’m here—red-handed, Noraine. I’m right here and that shotgun’s probably clean of fingerprints if there could be fingerprints.”

  “Yes-?”

  “I’ve got to get rid of that body, Noraine.”

  She moved her head slowly from side to side.

  “This is it, Noraine. You’ve got to do as I say.”

  She was nodding now and I heard the car’s wheels on the gravel drive.

  “Exactly as I say,” I told her. “I’m going to take him away—someplace.” I gestured toward the body. “I’ll wrap him in that shawl on the couch—now don’t get excited, calm down.” She was treading a very tight wire. I took her hand, looked straight into her eyes. “You can tell me about it later. Where’s Weyman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Lois?”

  “I don’t know, Al!”

  “You’ve got to stall them—whoever. Tell them anything. Tell them Sam was here, but he had to go out—you’re waiting for him. Get rid of that sweater. Pull the drapes on the window. Keep them out of this room. Kick the glass under the couch—put cushions over the blood, and after they go, clean it up—somehow. Clean it up!”

  “Al-all right.”

  I went over and began hurriedly bundling the body in the shawl that I’d used to cover Lois a long time ago.