While I Disappear

by Edward Wright

  He pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Horn heard Mad Crow’s voice. He let the gun slip from his hand and pushed himself up from Coby’s body, then unsteadily got to his feet. His head ached; he staggered and almost fell. The smell of gunpowder stung his nostrils.

  “You okay?” Mad Crow asked again. De Loach lay on the floor, curled up into a rigid ball, occasionally shuddering as he made faint liquid sounds. A small pool darkened the carpet under him. But Mad Crow’s attention was already elsewhere. “Look,” he said.

  Dolores Winter sat in the chair, both hands grasping her stomach, where the dark blue of her dress glistened redly from her rib cage to her lap. Horn went over to her.

  “He shot me,” she said through clenched teeth. “Luther. Can you believe that? He didn’t mean to, but….”

  As he watched, a patch of brighter red invaded the darkening stain. He had seen wounds like this during the war. The aorta was nicked or severed. The blood would not stop.

  “This really hurts,” she sighed. “Can you get a doctor here?” She raised her knees slightly, as if to relieve the pain somewhat, then dropped them. “Please.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that,” Horn said.

  She looked at him searchingly, seeking something in his face and not finding it. “Are you going to be that way?” she asked almost teasingly, attempting a smile. Her face was growing pale under the rouge, and her eyes seemed to be losing some of their color and clarity.

  He didn’t answer.

  She removed her left hand from her stomach and extended it toward him. He took it. Both their hands were already bloody, so it didn’t matter.

  “Cowboy,” she said, sounding as if she were tired and ready for bed. “Big cowboy hero.” She squeezed his hand hard.

  “Tell the doctor to hurry.” Her voice was down to a whisper. “Be sure and tell him I’m getting ready to make a movie. With Robert Taylor.” Her eyes closed. “Mister…Gorgeous….”

  Her hand went limp.

  “Come on,” Mad Crow said. He stood nearby, supporting Alden Richwine. “We’ve got work to do.”

  They helped Alden over to the sofa where Horn had once slept, and they made him reasonably comfortable with a pillow under his head.

  “Alden, I’d like you to meet my friend Joseph Mad Crow.”

  “Are they dead?” Richwine asked.

  Horn turned around. All three were still. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “Don’t look at them, all right? Just lie here for a while.”

  “We should call the police.” His eyes darted to Coby’s large form. “Or…someone.”

  “Later. Just rest.”

  Out in the kitchen, the two men washed carefully in the sink. “You were a little early,” Horn said.

  “Yeah. Turns out that Lancaster movie doesn’t open ’til this weekend. They had something with Esther Williams, but I wasn’t that hard up. So I thought I’d just come over here, and we’d make a pot of coffee and sing campfire songs.”

  “Thanks, Indian.”

  “You’re making a mess.”

  “Oh. Right.” Horn noticed that his injured left hand, showing a small, jagged tear at the base of the thumb, was dripping blood on the rim of the sink. He held it under the faucet again.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Mad Crow said. “We call the cops and we’re asking for it.”

  Horn nodded. “Me especially, since I just killed one. And he happens to be the same one who went around telling people he suspected me of murder.”

  He paused. “I thought he was reaching for another gun. Turned out he wasn’t.”

  “Does it matter one way or the other?” Mad Crow asked. “To me, it’s simple: If he’d lived, you would’ve died. Eventually.”

  “I suppose.” Horn studied his hands. Except for the wound, they appeared clean, but he rubbed them together under the running water for several more seconds.

  “So what do we do?”

  Horn winced as he touched a wet dish towel to his ear. “I think we’re going to have to make up a story that doesn’t have us in it,” he said. “And just hope Alden can tell it right.”

  Grabbing a clean towel, he dried his hands and, with Mad Crow’s help, wrapped a handkerchief around the wound on his left hand.

  For the next five minutes they talked. Then, carrying towels, they returned to the living room, where Alden seemed to be napping. Stepping carefully to avoid tracking blood around, they retrieved Mad Crow’s gun from De Loach’s belt and cleaned it, then wiped off Coby’s gun and placed it in De Loach’s hand. Mad Crow wiped off the hunting knife. He went out to the kitchen, found a large knife with roughly the same size blade, then returned, stained it with De Loach’s blood, and wrapped the fingers of Coby’s right hand around it.

  They surveyed the living room with its three bodies. “It’s a godawful mess,” Horn said. “But it could make sense. Two weapons, two killers, three dead.”

  “All right,” Mad Crow said. They roused Alden and helped him out to the kitchen, where Horn found a bottle of Paul Jones and three glasses. The three sat at the kitchen table. Horn and Mad Crow told their story. Then they told it again.

  “What do you think, Alden?” Horn asked. “Can you tell it that way?”

  Richwine downed a healthy slug and nodded his head. “Yes, I can,” he said. His cheeks were gaining some color. “You gentlemen saved my life.” He shook his head. “I’m deeply ashamed not to have been more perceptive about those three individuals. I thought two of them were my friends. And the policeman….”

  “They fooled a lot of people,” Horn said. “Can you go over the story, the way you’ll tell it?”

  “All right.” He sipped from his glass and began, haltingly at first. He had planned to go out for a drive and then dinner with Dolores Winter and Lewis De Loach. But Coby joined them, and things turned ominous. They beat him until he produced the photos. And they made it clear that they planned to kill him.

  At this point, Richwine’s story became more creative, and his delivery more confident. “Naturally, I questioned them,” he said. “Miss Winter admitted having caused the death years ago of Tess Shockley in this very house. To keep her role secret, she admitted having dispatched Mister De Loach, her former husband, to murder Rose Galen and—” He paused to clear his throat. “—and Cassie Montag, who was a wonderful young woman. And admitted bribing Detective Coby to help her cover up both deeds.”

  By now his voice had regained much of its old strength, and he began embroidering his story with gestures.

  “A dispute, however, developed. It seems Miss Winter had promised the detective a sum of money for his services, and he demanded much more. He mentioned the high price of a home he was buying in Del Mar. They argued. A fight ensued. I was, I confess, somewhat dazed from my beating and unable to follow every detail. But it appeared to me that Mister De Loach had somehow got his hands on the policeman’s gun and threatened him with it. The latter obtained a knife from the kitchen. They grappled. De Loach was stabbed, and the policeman was shot. Other shots went astray, one of them striking Miss Winter.”

  Richwine stopped, slightly out of breath. “Somewhat baroque, I admit. But on the whole, a rather convincing performance, don’t you think? You know, when I portrayed Horatio in the Old Vic’s Hamlet, a total of four bodies littered the stage at the final curtain, one of them a woman, and no one suggested that it was unbelievable. Three dead in my living room….” He looked pensive. “I think I can make our story sound credible.”

  “Oh, Lordy,” Mad Crow said. “I wonder if anybody’s going to buy it.”

  “I think they will,” Horn said. “Three bodies, two weapons, and a story that explains it. A story told by a distinguished actor.” Horn got up and washed the three glasses. Then he rolled up the two stained towels. “We’ll take these with us. I think you can call the police now, Alden.”

  “This was quite an adventure,” Richwine said at the kitchen door. “Qu
ite possibly the last of a full life. And a secret for the three of us to keep down through the days. Do you mind if I call you John and Joseph? Good Anglo-Saxon biblical names, both of them.”

  “My friends call me John Ray.”

  “Oh, yes. That curious southern American custom of giving one’s children a whole string of given names. As if one were not good enough.”

  “You’re being snooty, Alden.”

  “One of the privileges of age.”

  * * *

  They leaned against the fender of the Cadillac, looking out over the gentle green hills and spreading oaks. It had been another blustery morning, but a stray sunbeam had found one of the farthest hills and, depending on the movement of the high clouds, looked as if it might pay them a visit if they stayed long enough. Because it was Sunday, families were dotted around the grass, some of them carrying bouquets of flowers.

  “Funny old gal,” Mad Crow said, indicating Madge, who stood next to Rose’s marker down the slope about fifty feet away from them.

  “Yep,” Horn agreed. “She can do a trick with a dollar bill. Maybe we’ll show you later.” Bandages covered part of his left hand and his right ear. His fedora hid the other two wounds, which were now mostly healed.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “This?” Horn held a piece of note paper covered with writing, some of the words crossed out. “It’s just a letter I’ve been working on. To Tess’ father. I’m looking for a way to tell him it’s over—”

  “Without telling him everything.”

  “Right.” Horn put the letter in his pocket.

  Mad Crow flicked his cigarette butt out over the close-cut grass in a long arc. “I, uh…” he began, then tried again. “I never killed a man before. Did you know that?”

  “I never thought about it one way or the other.”

  “I figured you must have done something during the war, because of where you were, even though you never wanted to talk about it. That night up behind your house, when they came after Clea…I guess you could say I was ready to do it then. As it turned out, I didn’t have to, and I was glad. This time I had to. And I wanted to.”

  “If anybody deserved it, he did.”

  “One thing, though,” Mad Crow said, looking at someplace far off. “I think I enjoyed it a little. Because of Cassie. That sound funny?”

  Horn didn’t answer.

  “Oh, hell,” Mad Crow said. “Never mind.” He looked over at the spot where Madge stood. “Nice place for Rose to be.”

  “Doll paid for it.”

  “Really?”

  “Before she died, she said something about how she was no worse than Rose.”

  “You believe that?”

  “No. But I have learned some things about Rose I wish I didn’t know.”

  “Well….”

  “She did something a long time ago, something that put a mark on her. It was like she took on a huge debt, to herself and other people, and she spent the rest of her life trying to pay it off.”

  “Do you think she—?”

  “If youcan pay off something like that, I think she did. By the end.”

  Madge came up the slope and joined them. She wore the same tattered coat, but it was topped this time by a brown velvet hat with a jaunty feather. Even though Horn had never seen the hat before, he knew it. “This is just awfully pretty here,” she said. “I’m happy for Rosie.”

  “I thought you’d like it,” Horn said. “Now, are you hungry? There’s this place in Glendale that serves up great steaks.”

  Madge beamed at both of them. “Well, ain’t you nice?”

  THE END