The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Forrest, Richard;

  “I think I should go.”

  She saw concern on his face. “Do you know where I’m going?”

  “You’re going to see that blond lady.”

  “You were listening at the door.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “We’ll stop by the motel after I place the pizza order. You’ll stay in the car.”

  Sara pulled the car to a halt several units away from the manager’s office and around the corner from unit twelve. She took a silk scarf from her bag and tied it over her head and down under her chin. Dark glasses completed the rudiments of her disguise. “Stay here and keep quiet,” she whispered to Martin.

  She left the car and walked briskly to the motel office. The vacancy sign was still lit, so someone should be available. She slipped through the screen door, walked over to the horseshoe-shaped desk in the corner, and slapped her hand down on the bell twice in rapid succession.

  A sleepy-eyed nondescript clerk with tousled hair ambled through a rear door behind the desk.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “I’m Virginia Cunningham in unit twelve and I seem to have locked myself out.”

  The clerk reached over to a pegboard and slapped a duplicate key on the desk. “Return them both in the morning or I’ll have to charge you for them.”

  “I understand. Thanks a load.” She left the office and walked quietly to the door of unit twelve.

  She glanced up and down the motel walk and saw that it was deserted. The Venetian blinds were drawn on the room’s windows, but through the small crack at the edge she could determine that the interior lights were out. She pressed her ear against the door. No sound.

  She slipped the key into the lock and slowly turned it, hoping that the inside night latch wasn’t hooked. The door opened and she slipped inside and softly closed it. She pressed her back against the door while her rapid breathing returned to normal and her eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  She could hear low, regular breathing from someone on the near twin bed.

  It was too dim for her to make out anything except the gross outlines of the furniture. She slipped her hand over the Venetian blind cord and slowly opened the louvers. Light from a nearby street lamp filtered through.

  The mannequin head was on the bureau top slightly to the right of the mirror, a blond wig snugly drawn over it.

  Sara carefully turned to look at the woman asleep on the bed. The sheet had partly fallen from her body, and through the nearly transparent nightgown she could make out the full figure of the sleeping woman. Abundant red hair was splayed across the pillow.

  She had seen enough.

  She slipped out of the room and turned the key on the outside of the door. She dropped the key in her pocket and was about to turn when strong arms gripped and pushed her against the door.

  “Where you been, little lady?” Fingers pressed against the rear of her neck with a power that sapped her strength.

  Her head was pushed roughly against the doorframe. “Please,” she gasped. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then let’s go inside and look again.” He reached roughly into her pocket and pulled out the key, inserted it in the lock, and turned it.

  The pressure on her neck was increasing and her legs were buckling.

  There was a heavy thud from behind her. The man gripping her neck gave a low prolonged groan and fell forward to crumple against the door.

  Sara whirled to see Martin with a tire iron gripped in both hands. “I had to hit him,” he said.

  She bent to examine the fallen man and saw that the massive blow from the tire iron had crushed the back of his head. He was obviously dead. She turned to look up at Martin in horror. “You’ve killed him.”

  “He was going to kill you.”

  The lights inside the unit switched on and the door was flung open. Althea stood in the doorway, the room lights shining through the transparency of her nightgown illuminating her figure. Holding a long-barreled pistol with silencer supported in both hands, she looked down at the body crumpled in the doorway and then at Sara.

  “You!” she said as the revolver barrel swung forward.

  Martin flung himself against Sara and knocked her sprawling across the pavement as the pistol “thunked” and the projectile ricocheted off the cement walk. He threw the tire iron toward the figure in the doorway.

  Althea staggered back as the heavy steel tool glanced off the side of her head. She stumbled back inside the room as blood gushed from the side of her face. She caught the side of a small desk, brushed blood from her eyes, and turned to fire again.

  Martin pulled Sara to her feet and dragged her along the walk as they ran for the car. The woman by his side emitted choking gasps that signified her perch on the brink of hysteria. He shoved her behind the wheel of the car.

  “Drive!” he commanded.

  Chapter Nine

  Sara and Martin arrived back at the house to find Ray exuberantly pacing the living room floor. He stopped when they entered and pointed an accusing finger at Martin.

  “I’m on to you, Fowler. You’re a goddamn cheat.”

  Martin took a backward step, poised as if to flee. “What?”

  “You’ve been faking it all these years. The tests they gave you, you phonied them on purpose.” He picked up a sheaf of papers from the couch and waved them in the air. “I’ve double-checked the answers. And damn it, even if the test isn’t properly standardized and my results can’t pinpoint intelligence down to the last decimal, it sure in hell proves one fact.”

  “He’s normal,” Sara said.

  “Normal hell! Above normal. By how much I can’t accurately predict, but it’s significant.” He good-naturedly pummeled Martin on the shoulder. “You sly fox. You’re a victim of institutionalization. It’s not the first time this has happened, you know. There are other recorded cases of test error, or as in Martin’s case, deliberate error. He obviously realized when he was fairly young that if he tested well, they would make him leave the school. And the staff, like me, was so filled with preconceptions that we didn’t see the obvious evidence. We’re all victims of …”

  “Ray,” Sara interrupted. “I think we’ve just killed a man.”

  “I did it,” Martin added.

  “What are you two talking about?” He seemed confused, unable to make the mental shift required for the assimilation of their statements. “Killed who? Not another car accident?”

  “I hit him—with a tire changer,” Martin said.

  “Oh, my God.” Ray sank onto the couch. “What happened?” he asked in a low voice.

  “We went to the motel where the woman who came to see you earlier today was staying,” Sara began.

  Ray shoved himself numbly from the couch and walked toward the kitchen. “I think I need a drink. I know I need a drink.”

  Sara caught his arm. “And I have not been drinking. Not today and not yesterday, I am not suffering from any so-called alcoholic psychosis.”

  “I guess not.”

  “It was the red-haired woman that came to see you. The same woman who questioned me. The same who rode a motorcycle and tried to kill Martin.”

  Ray uneasily brushed his hand over his hair. “We’ll have to go to the police, of course. I would think the sooner the better.”

  “And they won’t find anything,” Sara replied.

  “What do you mean? You told me Martin probably killed the man. There will be a body, a doctor will be there, the police will have been called.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “In God’s name, why?”

  “Because these people, whoever they are, can’t afford to reveal themselves. I think the dead man will either be left at the motel or hidden in the woods.”

  “You’re paranoid, do you know that?”

  “They’ve tried to kill us, what more do you want?”

  “Reasons, damn it! Women looking
like that reporter who came to see me don’t go around trying to do in men like Martin.”

  “He’s not retarded. You proved that tonight.”

  “But everyone thought he was. That’s what matters,” Ray snapped.

  “Martin knows something he’s not supposed to.”

  “We went over the records tonight, Sara. Martin’s been in the school for twenty years, and except for an occasional day field trip, he’s never left.”

  “He was at Meegan House with me.”

  “For a few days.”

  “And before that he spent three weeks working at Camp Mohawk.”

  “That’s a private club for some of the most powerful men in the country. Men of impeccable …” Ray stopped in mid-sentence. “It had to come from there.”

  “What?” Sara turned. “Martin. Where is he?” The living room was empty behind her. “Martin!” She ran to the front door and threw it open to yell out into the dark night. “Martin, come back!”

  “He can’t have gone far,” Ray said. “I’ll get a flashlight and we’ll go.…”

  A toilet flushed and Martin stepped out of the bathroom. “You called me, Miss Bucknell?”

  They both turned to watch Martin come across the living room. His appearance had changed radically from what they had observed earlier in the evening. The shamble of the institutionalized retarded had returned. His face had once again assumed the mask of unemotionality. He had reverted to a former state, and only now did they realize how different he had been.

  Sara ran to put her arms around him. She felt his body go completely rigid and she stepped back. “We’re going to find out what happened, Martin. It’s going to be all right. You don’t have to act like this.”

  “I want to go back to school. Can you drive me, Mr. Heath? I want to go back now.” He spoke with words and tones that verged on the edge of a small child’s tantrum.

  “You don’t have to go back,” Sara said.

  “I want to go back. Whenever I leave they hurt me.”

  “You can’t do this!” She shook his shoulders and he slumped forward without resistance. “You can’t sentence yourself to die.”

  Ray pulled her away. “For God’s sake, leave him alone. He’s been through enough.”

  “What about the test results? He tried tonight. For the first time in his life he really tried and proved that he could be.”

  “What test?” Martin asked.

  “The one right …” Sara saw that the couch that had been strewn with Ray’s test results was now bare. “You took it, didn’t you?”

  “That test didn’t count,” Martin said. “Like you said, it wasn’t a regular test.”

  “You destroyed it,” she said in a low voice. “That’s where you were?”

  Martin didn’t answer and turned away from her. “I want to go back.”

  “You can’t!” she said in a hoarse voice.

  “Sara, stop it!” Ray interjected.

  “No.” It was nearly a cry of anguish.

  Martin put his arms over his head and slumped forward in a crouch.

  Althea looked with disgust at her surviving accomplice. He was perched on the end of the bed with a warm beer can cupped in both hands. He wore pajama bottoms and no top, and a beer belly overflowed the drawstring around his waist. God, she hated men who were out of shape.

  “Did you wipe the blood off the pavement and door?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “No.” He jerked the can to his mouth and drank.

  She wanted to call Rutledge. She needed his help on this; but it was an extremely inconvenient time to make the call, and she would have to go outside to a safe phone. She would handle the cleanup details of the mess herself, and call Rutledge at the usual time in the morning.

  She walked over to the second twin bed and looked down at the corpse. They had moved him from the doorway of her unit into the men’s room. She shook her head and turned away.

  The man on the other bed crumpled the empty beer can, threw it toward a trash can, missed, belched, and picked up another can. God, she thought. Hire scum and this is what you get. He flipped the tab on the new can of beer.

  “If you didn’t drink all that junk, you might have been in shape and taken that guy.”

  “I wasn’t out there. One of us had to sleep sometime.”

  “You had your chance with the chain.”

  “You told me he was a retard and couldn’t coordinate.”

  “I didn’t ask you to blow it.” She stood in the center of the room staring blankly at the mirror as she thought. Radical changes would have to be made, a new approach with fresh blood must be begun. Alternatives flicked across her consciousness. Her eyes focused and in the mirror she saw him looking at her. He could see through the flimsy nightgown and his eyes were devouring her. It made goosebumps rise on her flesh. He mopped his brow with the back of his hand.

  “You better get dressed so’s we can do something with the stiff,” the man on the bed said.

  She turned with a smile. “Do you really want me to?”

  “I said you better,” he snapped.

  Her decision was instantly made. She slanted her hips and wet her lips. “Don’t you like what you see?”

  “I think it’s pretty goddamn terrific.”

  “Want to try it?” She walked slowly toward him.

  He gulped. “Sure.” As she approached he put the beer can on the floor and followed her with his eyes. “Maybe we could have some fun.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “You don’t mind him in here?” She jerked her head toward the corpse on the other bed.

  “Don’t bother me if it don’t you.”

  She stood docilely between his legs and felt his hands knead her breasts. She let him continue for a few moments before reaching over to the night table and picking up the .38 with its attached silencer.

  One step forward, she thought—they’d found Martin Fowler. Two back—with the loss of her accomplices. She would need more money and more men.

  She placed the pistol against his forehead and fired.

  The surrounding hills made reception on the small transistor radio on the windowsill poor. The three people sitting at the kitchen table had to strain to make out the announcer’s voice.

  “Local police have called in the State Police for aid in the murder-suicide investigation. The two men found early this morning at the Sleepy Hollow Motel by a chambermaid had evidently died late last night. One victim, as yet unidentified, had been bludgeoned to death with a tire iron found on the premises. The other victim, also unidentified, was found near the first with a bullet wound in his head. A large amount of cash was found in the room which leads authorities to speculate that underworld activities were involved in the deaths. Further details will be brought to you as they become available. Now, back to the Jon Wharton show.…”

  Ray flipped off the radio and turned to face Sara and Martin. He rubbed his head in consternation. “You two didn’t by any chance also shoot someone, did you?”

  “Obviously—she did it.”

  “The redheaded woman?”

  “Do you believe us now?”

  “I think I’m going to have to. There’s no other logical explanation.”

  Martin picked up his coffee cup in both hands. He drank and then carefully replaced the cup on the table. “Can I go back to school now?”

  “Will you stop acting like that,” Sara said impatiently.

  “Leave him alone,” Ray said evenly. “He’s got a lot to work through and it’s going to be a long process.”

  Martin stood up so abruptly that his chair fell backward to the floor with a crash. He moved to the door. “I’m going to walk back.”

  Sara grabbed his arm. “No. Don’t go.”

  He turned to face her and she saw that he was trembling. “The school is safe.”

  “No,” she said softly. “It won’t be safe for you there anymore. She will look until s
he finds you, and then she will see that you are hurt again. The only way to end this is to find out why and stop them. You must understand that, Martin. Please. For me.”

  He stepped back until he was against the door and her grip on his arm was broken. “I … I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Will you try?” Her voice was a pleading supplication.

  He looked at her for a long moment before replying. “Yes.”

  Ray slapped his thigh. “Well, that settles it. The first order of business is for me to call the school.”

  “You’re not going to tell them?” Sara asked.

  “Under the circumstances that wouldn’t be wise. I’m going to call the super and tell him that I’m taking some vacation days I’m owed to work out a family emergency. He’ll be a little pissed since I haven’t given prior notification, but he’ll go along.”

  “What then?” she asked.

  “Then Martin and I are going to have a long talk.”

  Ray moved the large and comfortable leather chair from the living room into his study and cleaned off the desk. He had to search the house for a window shade that worked, but when he found one he installed it on the study window. The light machine was placed on the center of the desk facing the leather chair. A metronomelike affair located in the front of the machine’s base had an arm with a round shiny disc that would pass to and fro in front of the bright light. To the side of the machine he set up a small cassette recorder with a microphone that also pointed in the direction of the chair.

  Sara led Martin into the room and watched as he was seated in the leather chair. Ray signaled her to leave. She looked at him questioningly, but he gestured to the recorder and then closed the door after her.

  Ray sat in a straight chair placed behind and to the left of Martin’s seat.

  Both men sat quietly until the silence surrounded them like a warm cocoon.

  Ray spoke in a soothing monotone. “Are you comfortable?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to lean back and look at that object on my desk. That’s right. Now, let your neck muscles relax. Your arms are tense, try and let them lie loosely on the chair arm. I want you to think about your feet, then your legs … they are relaxing, each muscle in your body is slowly relaxing as if you are nearing sleep.”