The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Forrest, Richard;

  “We have to go.” He took her hand and she dutifully stood.

  “I’m not dressed.”

  He half-dragged her to the door and noticed the cut chain swinging uselessly by the frame. He let go of her fingers to turn the door handle, and then pulled her out the door and down the porch stairs.

  He watched her climb into the passenger’s side of the car, fold her hands primly on her knees, and stare quietly through the windshield into the night.

  His arm and shoulder were throbbing and sympathetic pains shot tendrils through each finger. He slid behind the wheel, inserted the keys awkwardly into the ignition, and started the engine.

  “I can’t drive, Sara,” he said softly. “I’ve never driven a car before.”

  She slowly turned to look at him. “Ray’s dead.”

  “Sara, I said I can’t drive.”

  “Yes, you can, Martin. There’s no traffic this time of morning. If you can drive a tractor and a mower, you can drive a car. Turn on the lights.”

  He fumbled with buttons until the headlights blinked on in high beam. “What now?”

  “Put the car in ‘drive’ and go,” she said almost gaily, and he realized that she was on the verge of hysteria.

  Martin put the gear in “drive” and depressed the accelerator. She was right, he thought, it wasn’t much different from a tractor. He drove down the gravel drive to the road and turned.

  Althea awoke. Her eyes, at floor level, could only see what seemed to be spilled red paint stretching toward the still open front door.

  Her fingers fluttered and felt the sticky constitution of the substance on the floor.

  She was lying in her own blood.

  She moaned and pushed into a sitting position. Her right hand slowly reached toward her cheek and then recoiled in horror.

  “No,” she said aloud.

  She pushed erect, stumbled, and grabbed the banister with both hands as her legs seemed to detach from her body. Her mind whirled with disorientation until a deep-seated instinct for survival took hold. With shaking fingers, she tore a swatch of cloth from her blouse, folded it, and pressed it against her face.

  She held the makeshift bandage in place with one hand while the other clenched the banister as she stumbled upstairs.

  In the bathroom she fumbled for the light switch, flipped it, and stared at her harsh reflection in the mirror.

  Carefully, she withdrew the cloth from the side of her face. Her eyes widened as she viewed the devastation.

  Her face began to bleed again, and tiny rivulets of blood ran down her neck and over her shoulder. She continued staring at her reflection in macabre fascination. Tendrils of pain began to seep through numbed nerve endings, and the shock returned her to reality.

  She was a survivor and this was going to be the most difficult challenge of her life. There were things to be done, ends had to be tidied, a story had to be concocted.

  Her legs weakened and she had to grab the edge of the sink with both hands to keep from falling.

  The pills in the ivory case in her pocket would help. She fumbled for the small container and broke a nail in her rush to open the tight lid. There were yellow Percodan tablets and black biphetamine capsules—pain-killers and uppers. The “black beauties” would probably counteract the effect of the Percodan, but she’d have to make do. She popped two of each into her mouth and swallowed with water from her cupped hand.

  Next a tight pressure bandage was fashioned from gauze pads and adhesive tape found in the medicine chest. She gingerly applied it to the mangled flesh of her cheek.

  There was no time to waste. Billie’s body had to be disposed of, the UZI hidden, and a thorough search made of the house in order to destroy anything incriminating they had left behind. It would be light in less than an hour.

  She was hurt and weak, but her hatred for Martin Fowler would give her the strength to do what had to be done.

  Martin was on the precipice of unconsciousness. The road before him wove back and forth like a coiling snake, and rings of black pain seemed to muster on the pavement ahead to spring forward and converge around his unfocused eyes. His jaw was slack, his wounded arm without feeling, and webs of spidery substance seemed to cling to his face.

  The car began to weave from lane to lane.

  The vehicle’s erratic motion penetrated Sara’s daze, and she looked at Martin in alarm. She was still numb from the horror of the shooting at the house, but an inchoate sense of self-preservation forced her into action.

  He winced as she touched his arm. “Let me drive.”

  “I can make it. Where are we going?”

  “I know a place. Pull over and let me drive.”

  The car immediately swerved onto the shoulder and braked to a halt. Martin slumped over the wheel and for a moment she was afraid he had passed out. She left the car and went to the driver’s side.

  “Move over, Martin, please.”

  “Yes … move.” He hunkered over on the passenger’s side of the car and leaned against the window. Sara threw the car in gear and drove off the shoulder.

  When she had first reported to the training school, Ray had taken her on a picnic to a secluded portion of the forest. She knew vaguely that the turnoff road to that spot was not far ahead. She could only hope that she wouldn’t miss it in the dark.

  At the cutoff, she swerved onto an unlighted narrow road. It was paved for the first three miles, and then the pavement abruptly turned into a rutted dirt road, more suitable to a four-wheel-drive vehicle than the car they were driving.

  Martin groaned at every rut and pothole they hit.

  The headlights picked out summer camps that occasionally lined the road. They consisted mostly of small two- or three-room cabins, with an occasional recreational vehicle or house trailer.

  Sara slowed and began to examine the passing camps. She wanted an isolated one, at least several hundred yards from its nearest neighbor, and also one that was obviously vacant.

  An even more primitive dirt road branched off to the right, and she took the turn. After a half-mile of rough driving they approached a deserted campsite. She turned into the area in front of the cabin porch and let the car’s headlights splay across the building.

  The cabin was rustic and seemed to be composed of two rooms. She drove around back so that they were hidden from the road and helped Martin from the car.

  With a small rock she broke a pane of glass in a window at the rear of the cabin. She reached in to unlatch the lock and then levered herself inside.

  She turned. Martin was leaning against the side of the building. “Can you climb in?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Go around front. I’ll see if I can get the door open.”

  The front door was secured with a padlock, but by utilizing a poker from the fireplace, she was able to pry it off its hasp and help Martin into the cabin.

  It was dawn and chalky light gave an unreal dimension to the dim interior of the camp. With Martin’s arm around her shoulder, they stumbled into the second room and toward a bunk covered with a bare mattress. She let him slip from her arms and he fell heavily onto the bed.

  A hand pump at the sink finally trickled cool well water into a basin, which she used to bathe his wound. A sparse first aid kid found in the top drawer of a worn bureau provided a small bottle of Merthiolate, which she poured into the gaping flesh.

  It was all she could do, and she stood over the shivering man and realized that he was on the verge of going into shock.

  “Don’t hit me. Please, Mama.”

  It was a child’s cry for help. Sara lay on the mattress, pressed her body against the shaking man, and held him as tightly as she could.

  Lt. Amston Wellfleet of Troop K, Horton Barracks of the New York State Police, walked down the nearly deserted hospital corridor. He felt the tightening band of a migraine begin to encircle his forehead. He knew its causes—too much poker, too many cigarettes washed down with too much beer, and a problem
with filling a disastrous four-card flush. Catching the call at the barracks before he had a chance to drink black coffee didn’t help matters any.

  He stopped at the ward clerk’s desk and scowled at the gray-haired woman behind the counter. “Give me the wounded woman’s chart.”

  “I can’t do …” She glanced up at his unsmiling face, blinked, and handed a metal-backed chart to the police officer. “She’s in room fourteen, down the hall to the right.”

  “Uh huh.” Amston clunked the chart down on the counter and flipped through its contents. He attempted, with difficulty, to focus his eyes and make sense out of the contents.

  The call had come to the barracks at 8:02 A.M. The woman had sounded hysterical, and only the automatic holding device on the phone had allowed them to trace the call and send a unit to the remote farmhouse.

  The victim had been suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in the face, and an ambulance had been immediately dispatched. That’s when Amston had arrived for work and the duty captain had sent him to the hospital.

  He slammed shut the chart cover and left it on the counter as he strode down the hall toward room fourteen.

  There was a “no visitors” sign on the door, but he entered without hesitation.

  A youthful looking doctor, wearing a scraggly beard, glanced in Amston’s direction. “What the hell do you want? Didn’t you see the sign?”

  “I saw it. Police.”

  Dr. Strickland looked down at the woman on the bed. One half of her head was completely swathed in bandages, while the other half was still that of an attractive woman. He had seen her while aiding the surgeon in extracting the shot. It was doubtful that the wounded half of her face would ever appear completely normal.

  “She’s had an injection,” Strickland said. “You won’t get much from her.”

  “I’m awake,” Althea said. “Are the police here?”

  Don Strickland squeezed her hand. “Yes, they are,” he said softly. “Can you talk?”

  I want to talk to them. I want them to get who did this to me.”

  “Only for a few minutes,” Strickland said with a glare at the police officer.

  With a grunt, Amston pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and placed a small recorder on the nightstand. He flipped it to “record” and tilted the chair back on two legs. “I’m Lieutenant Wellfleet of the State Police. I’m here to help all I can, Miss Wilson.”

  “How is Ray?”

  “The man with you?”

  “Yes. He saved my life, you know. When they broke in, he threw himself over me and … how is he?”

  “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  Her hand reached out and clawed at his. “You must find them. They must be sent to jail.”

  “We’ll do our best, ma’am, but you can help. Tell me all you remember.”

  “I … I live in Washington … the District, not the state. I’ve known Ray Heath for years, and he invited me up to spend my vacation with him. We … we were in bed. It must have been late, near dawn, when they broke in and began shooting.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “Yes. There were two of them. One of them was a woman called Sara. Sara Bucknell. She used to work for Ray, but he told me that he had to fire her for drunkenness.”

  “You said ‘they.’ Do you know who was with her?”

  “A dark-haired man, in his late twenties … he looked funny, like he was one of the students at the school. Just as they shot him, Ray called out, ‘For God’s sake, Martin, please …’ Those were his last words.”

  “There’s a Martin Fowler who’s listed as missing from the halfway house. Could that have been him?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  Don Strickland stepped forward and put a restraining hand on Amston’s wrist. “You have enough for a start. This woman must get some rest.”

  Amston nodded. “We think they have Heath’s car,” he said as he pocketed the recorder. “I can promise you, Miss Wilson, they won’t get far. They won’t get out of the state.”

  “I hope not, officer. I pray to God that you catch them.”

  Althea lay back on the pillow and let the warm glow of the narcotics begin to take hold and carry her into sleep. It was working, she thought. Billie Bamburg was gone. His body, encased in the car’s trunk and driven into the lake, would probably never be found. Also in the car were the tape recordings and letters she had discovered at Heath’s house and Billie’s bloody knife. It was working, she thought again sleepily.

  The last thought she had was the hope that the police wouldn’t find Sara and Martin. She wanted to do that herself.

  Midday sun warmed the cabin and Sara slipped from the bunk. Her body was caked in dried blood, and she crossed into the combination living-dining-kitchen area that was the second room in the small cabin. She pumped a dishpan full of cool spring water and let the pajama top fall into a heap at her feet. She recoiled at the sight of her bloody naked body—the blood of two men, Ray and Martin.

  She began to wash her body with harsh strokes that rubbed away the streaked caked blood. As she washed, she reached over and opened a kitchen cabinet to find half a dozen assorted cans. At least they wouldn’t go hungry.

  “I’ve never seen a naked woman before,” the voice in the doorway said. It was a remark without salacious overtones, filled with a sense of wonderment.

  Sara whirled to see Martin standing in the doorway, supporting himself with his uninjured arm. She felt a deep flush of embarrassment seep up from the base of her neck. “Martin, please …”

  “You’ve got an awfully nice …”

  “I know what I have. Now, please go back in the other room until I scare up something to dress in.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help looking.” It was his turn to blush as he turned away and went back into the bunk room.

  “How do you feel?” she called after him as she finished her pan bath and began to search the small cottage for castoff clothing.

  “My arm hurts a lot.”

  “I can imagine. We just have to hope it doesn’t get infected.”

  Under the sink she discovered a pair of paint-splattered jeans and frayed tennis sneakers. On top of a kitchen cabinet she located a tee shirt far too large for her body. She donned the clothing—it was ratty, but would have to do.

  “Hungry?” she called out.

  “A little, I guess. Can I come in now?”

  “Okay.” She found a can of corned beef hash and opened it. “It’ll be ready in a minute.”

  He sat at the small table. “Fine.” He watched her working at the stove, and she could see a troubled look come over his face. “I killed them, Sara. Three people now. The man at the motel, and the man and woman at Ray’s house. I never meant to hurt people.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Martin. Those two last night—they killed Ray and fully intended to kill us both. You had no choice.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Martin asked.

  “First I’m going to look at your shoulder.” She removed the makeshift bandage and saw him wince deeply in pain. The knife wound was red and jagged. She felt the surrounding flesh and found it warm to her touch. “This needs stitches,” she said.

  “To be sewn up by a doctor?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.…”

  “Shouldn’t we go to the police?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. Things have happened so fast that I haven’t had time to think. We should redo those letters, I suppose. I just need time to think.”

  “We’ll rest here for a few days,” Martin said. “I’ll get better and then …”

  He fell unconscious across the table.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dr. Donald Strickland was bone weary as he drove his Ford wagon toward the small A-frame he called home.

  Four years of undergraduate work, four years at Boston University Medical School,
a year of internship, three years residency, and the sale of his soul for another four years to the National Health Foundation made him tired. He had three more years in the outlands, the price he had to pay for his medical school tuition, and then he would be free to move where he wished.

  He didn’t know where he wanted to go. Perhaps he would stay on in the Adirondacks. It was pretty country. You worked like hell in the summer, but except for the orthopedic work during skiing season, the winter months were mostly idle.

  He pulled to a stop in front of the A-frame and contemplated a warm shower, cold martini, and a small steak. A little Vivaldi on the stereo and maybe he’d get a little squiffed.

  He slammed out of the car and fished for the door key. Once inside he fumbled for the light switch alongside the doorframe and flipped it on.

  It escaped him involuntarily. “Oh, my God.”

  Sara Bucknell sat in a chair by the empty fireplace with her hands folded primly on her lap. The man unconscious on the couch had his knees drawn toward his chin.

  “Martin’s hurt,” she said without expression. She tried to light a cigarette, but her hands trembled too strongly for her to light the match.

  “Which of you am I supposed to treat first?”

  “Martin. Please. He needs stitches.”

  “My bag’s in the wagon.”

  “Hurry.”

  He nodded, went back to the Ford, and snagged his medical bag from the rear. He stood by the open vehicle door for a moment, contemplating diving for the ignition, throwing the car in gear, and making his escape.

  There would be time for that in a few minutes. He hadn’t seen any sign of a weapon, and the two people inside were obviously in bad shape. He went back to the house.

  He bent over Martin. “His shoulder?”

  She nodded.

  He removed the makeshift bandage and peered intently at the wound. “My God! What did this?”

  “A knife.”

  “You’ve waited too long—I can’t suture him. He needs to be in the hospital.”