Cape Fear (17 page)

Sam began to understand the picture. “Tell me about it, Jamie, from the beginning.”

Jamie looked uncomfortable. “Well, I goofed up. I snitched Mr. Menard’s shaving bomb and I was going to let Davey Johnstone have it right in the chops and then I was going to sneak it back. But I got caught. So I got ten days of doing pots, and this was the last day. Everybody hates pots. You got to use steel wool. I got ten whole days because it was sort of like stealing, even though it really wasn’t. So you do the pots out by the shed. There’s a faucet there, and, oh, this was about nine-thirty and I was doing the breakfast pots and I was nearly done almost.

“I was just standing there, sort of looking at the last one, and bam! I thought some joker had gone in the shed and hit it with something to scare me. Then my arm felt all hot and funny. I looked down and there was blood squirting out of it, squirting all over. I yelled as loud as I could and ran for Mr. Menard’s cottage and other kids saw all the blood and they were running and yelling too, and they put a tourniquet on it. And then it all of a sudden started to hurt something terrible. And I cried, but not very much. By then Tommy went and got Nancy and then the sheriff came and
we all rode over here in the sheriff’s car about maybe a hundred miles an hour with the siren going. Boy, I wish I could do that again when my darn arm wasn’t hurting.”

Sam turned to Carol. “What happens now?”

“Dr. Beattie said he’d like to have him stay here overnight, and he should be all right to travel tomorrow. He gave him some whole blood.”

“There’s going to be a scar,” Jamie said fervently. “A real bullet scar. Will it hurt when it’s going to rain?”

“I think you have to have the bullet in there, son.”

“Anyway, no other kid I know has a bullet scar.”

A smiling nurse came in and said, “Time for this wounded veteran to have his pink pill and a long nap.”

“Heck, I don’t need any nap.”

“When can we see him again, Nurse?” Carol asked.

“At five, Mrs. Bowden.”

They walked to the stairs and went down to the hospital lobby. Carol, her face ghastly, turned toward Sam and said in a voice so low Nancy couldn’t overhear, barely moving her bloodless lips, “Now what? Now what? When does he kill one of them?”

“Please, honey.”

“Daddy, Sheriff Kantz is coming with Tommy,” Nancy said.

“Take your mother over to that couch and sit there with her, Nancy, please.”

The sheriff was a rangy man who wore boots and tan riding pants and a khaki shirt. He had an outdoor look about him, a gun belt, a wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He shook hands slowly, almost thoughtfully. His voice was nasal, with a tired sound about it.

“Guess we can talk over in that corner, Mr. Bowden. Sure, you sit in, Tommy.”

They pulled three chairs closer together. “I’ll tell you my end, Mr. Bowden, and then I’d like to ask you a couple questions. First off it looks like the range was about seven hundred yards. And down hill. Take a good rifle and a good scope and a knowledgeable man and it isn’t a tough shot at all. I imagine if the wind wasn’t cutting up too much, I could put nearly every shot in a circle about half again as big as a pie plate. If it were deer season, I’d have maybe a different idea about this. Your boy’s arm was close to his side. The wind was a little gusty from the south. The boy was facing east. So it looks like one of those gusts drifted that slug over a few inches. Nobody was trying to scare the boy. They made a pretty good try at killing him. If he’d put his slug say two and a half inches further to his right, that boy would have been dead before he could fall all the way down.”

Sam swallowed hard and said, “You don’t have to—”

“I’m talking facts, Mr. Bowden. I’m not talking to see how much I can get you upset. And I wouldn’t talk to your wife like this. If he’d hit the boy the way he wanted to, we’d have had us a real bad time trying to figure where the bullet came from. But he missed and he put two holes in the shack and that gave us a line of sight. It couldn’t be direct, because the way the slug will drop, especially after going through a three-quarter-inch board. It put us on a line up the side of a knoll the kids call Shady Hill. There’s a lot of back roads up in there and I know for a fact that there are plenty of places you can look down right into that camp. I’ve got a deputy named Ronnie Gideon I left working on it, and he’s a good boy and he knows the woods and he can read track, and he’ll
find where the man with the gun was when he took aim. We were too late for any road block because we didn’t know what to look for. I understand you can tell us who to look for, Mr. Bowden.”

“I can’t prove he fired the shot. I can’t prove he poisoned our dog. But I know it was Cady both times. Max Cady. He got out of federal prison last year in September, I think. He drives a gray Chevy sedan, about eight years old. You can phone Captain Mark Dutton in New Essex and he’ll give you all you need to know on him.”

“He must have a pretty strong hate for you folks.”

“I was instrumental in getting him jailed for life. But they let him out after thirteen years. He was in for rape of a fourteen-year-old Australian girl during the war. He comes from bad stock. He’s vicious and I think he’s more than half demented.”

“Is he smart? Shrewd?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s take a look at this situation now. Suppose he’s picked up. He’ll be miles from here. He won’t have a rifle with him. He’ll deny firing at any boy. Must have been a stray shot. He’ll yell persecution. I don’t know any good way to hold him, under the law.”

“That’s just fine.”

“Now, you’ve got to think the way those people think. All right. This was carefully planned. He had to spend some time scouting the situation. So he had to think of what he was going to do after he killed the boy. He knew you’d point suspicion at him. So he’d have to either brazen it out, depending on no evidence showing up, or he’d have it all set so he could hide out. Killing a kid would attract a lot of attention.
He couldn’t be certain somebody didn’t see him up on those back roads. So I’d say he’s got a hole to hide in. He’ll have it all stocked and he’ll be in some out-of-the-way place where nobody will look for him.”

“You’re so optimistic.”

“I’m trying to be practical. So you can know what to expect. I’ll bet he’s sore at himself for missing. I think he was planning to move fast and get out of the area. He may try to keep on moving fast. I’d say this is the time to be just as careful as you can possibly be.”

The sheriff stood up and smiled wearily. “I’ll get hold of the people up there in New Essex and then I’ll put out a pick-up order on him. I think the thing to do would be to lock up you people.”

“I don’t find that excruciatingly funny, Sheriff.”

“I can see how you wouldn’t have much sense of humor left this afternoon.”

“What can I do, sir?” Tommy asked Sam.

“Could you go … No, I’ll do that. I’ll go over and pick up Bucky and bring him back here. Stay with the gals, Tommy.”

“All right, Mr. Bowden.”

“And thanks. Thanks a lot.”

It took him just a little over a half hour in the station wagon to reach camp. He found Sheriff Kantz with Mr. Menard in the administration cottage. The dull-looking young man with them was introduced as Deputy Ronnie Gideon.

Menard was obviously troubled. “I don’t know what we could have done to avoid this, Mr. Bowden.”

“I don’t blame you in any way.”

“I am finding it very hard to accept the fact this was intentional. Sheriff Kantz assures me it is.”

The sheriff was tossing a small object into the air and catching it. “This is the slug. Badly deformed. Thirty-caliber, I’d say. Mr. Menard here put a slew of kids to looking for it until they found it.”

“We’re saying it was a stray bullet,” Menard said. “Everybody is excited enough as it is. But I don’t know what the parents are going to say when they get letters saying a stray bullet wounded a camper. I’m sorry, Mr. Bowden. I shouldn’t be griping about my problems when yours are so much greater.”

“Did you find the place where the shot was fired from?” Sam asked.

The deputy nodded. “Rock ledge. Prone position. About thirty feet from the road up there. He matted the moss on the rock. It was still springing back up. No car tracks, no empty cartridge case. Did find a chewed cigar butt. He’d rubbed it out on the rock. Mouth end still soggy.”

“If he’d killed the boy,” the sheriff said, “we’d be sending it along to the lab to see if we could get a type on the saliva. But I don’t see as how it does much good.”

“Cady smokes cigars.”

The sheriff looked blandly at Sam. “Hope you got a permit for that thing you’re carrying?”

“What? Oh, of course. Yes, I have a permit.”

“What do you plan to do now?”

“We were going to take Jamie out of camp today anyway. I think I’ll go over to the girls’ camp and get Nancy’s gear and check her out.”

“And go home?”

“No. I’m going to leave my wife and children in the place where … she has been staying with the younger boy.”

“Any chance of this Cady knowing where that is?”

“I don’t see how he could.”

The sheriff pursed his lips. “Sounds okay to me. Leave them all there until he’s picked up. But suppose he isn’t picked up? How are you going to know when he gives up and goes away?”

“I guess we won’t know.”

“Can’t keep your family hid out forever.”

“I know that. I’ve thought of that. But what else can I do? Do you have any ideas?”

“The only one I got I’m not proud of, Mr. Bowden. Think of him like he’s a tiger. You want to get him in out of the brush. So you stake out a goat and you hide in a tree.”

Sam stared at him. “If you could possibly think I’d use my wife or any of my kids as bait for—”

“I told you I wasn’t proud of it. You can guess what a tiger will do, I’ve heard, but you can’t guess about a crazy man. He tried sniping this time. Next time he might try something else. I guess it’s best to keep them hid. It’s the best you can do.”

Sam looked at his watch. “I’d like to collect Jamie’s gear and pick up Bucky, Mr. Menard.”

“I’ve had his gear packed and brought up to the mess hall. Bucky is with my wife. I’ll go get him. I’m sorry this was such a bad ending to Jamie’s month.”

“I’m glad it wasn’t worse.”

“We’ll look forward to having him with us next year.”

Sam said goodbye to the sheriff and thanked him. The sheriff assured him there was a pretty good chance of Cady
being picked up for questioning. But there was a hollow ring to his assurances.

Sam was back at the hospital by quarter to five. Nancy was very surprised when she found he had checked her out of camp, and disappointed she would have no chance to say goodbye, but she soon accepted it as a logical and inevitable decision.

She nodded slowly and said, “I know. There’s so many hills. I couldn’t be outdoors anywhere in daylight without wondering if …” And she shuddered.

Sam phoned Bill Stetch from a booth in the hospital lobby and told him the situation and said he wouldn’t be back in the office until Friday morning.

After they saw Jamie again and said good night to him, they had dinner at the Hotel Aldermont. Sam suggested to Carol that she drive on back to Suffern with Nancy and Bucky and he would stay over and bring Jamie up the next day. But when he sensed how reluctant she was to be parted from him, he went to the hotel desk and took two rooms for the night. Tommy Kent tried to insist that he could get a bus back to camp, but Sam drove him back. Nancy had wanted to come along, but Sam told her to stay with her mother and Bucky. He was worried about Carol. She was entirely too reserved and subdued. During dinner she had joined in the conversation mechanically. She seemed far away from all of them.

As he drove the MG west toward the afterglow of the sunset, he said to his quiet passenger, “Am I doing the right thing, Tommy?”

“Sir?”

“Try to put yourself in my shoes. What would you do?”

“I … I guess I’d do what you’re doing.”

“You sound as if you have reservations.”

“It’s not that, exactly, but it seems so … you know, waiting instead of doing anything.”

“Passive.”

“That’s what I mean. But I can’t think of anything you can do.”

“Society is well organized to protect me and my family from theft and arson and civil riot. The casual criminals are kept under reasonably good control. But it is not set up to deal with a man who is trying specifically and irrationally to kill us. I know I could put enough pressure to bear to get my family officially guarded around the clock. But it would merely give Cady pleasure in finding a way to outwit the guards. And if the police were pulled off, I could hire people as bodyguards. But that would be the same story, I’m afraid. And it would be a very artificial way to live. And it would be constant terror, especially since this has happened.”

“He won’t be able to find out they’re in Suffern?”

“Not unless he can manage to follow us when we leave Aldermont. But I don’t think he’s in this area any more. I think he is always a half step ahead of me. I think he knows damn well I would immediately pull both kids out of camp. I have the feeling he’s back up near Harper. There’s a lot of fairly wild country around there.”

“I sure wouldn’t want anything to happen to Nancy.”

“Suffern doesn’t sound as safe to me as it did before. I think I may move them again tomorrow.”

“I’d feel better about it, I think.”

• • •

Sam studied a road map for a long time before the two-car caravan started the hundred-mile trip from Aldermont north to Suffern. Jamie was in good spirits, and his color was back to normal. He had all the faintly patronizing nonchalance of a seasoned combat veteran. Carol was still peculiarly subdued and unresponsive. He led the way in the MG with Nancy, and Carol followed with the boys. He took a roundabout route over secondary roads, and after stopping twice to be certain they weren’t followed, he continued with more confidence. It was a bright morning, with air so clear that every detail of far hills was sharp. The back roads went through beautiful country. It was the sort of day that raises the spirits. They were all together. He could be almost certain that Cady would be apprehended, and when that happened, maybe there would be some legal way he could be given tests to determine his sanity. Maybe some kind of pressure could be brought on Bessie McGowan to make her testify.