Flight to Darkness (24 page)

“
Sure.” We had to get to the cabin.
She was certainly determined about that.

“
It’ll be dry there. We can build a
fire,” she said.

The rain didn’t seem to be coming down so
heavily now. Up on the bridge there was no sound, but the dimming
headlights of the old truck still gleamed in shallow
saffron.

“
Do we follow the road?” she
asked.

“
I shook my head. “We’d never get
there that way. Take all night. Got to cut cross country. Think you
can do it?” I didn’t believe I could myself. Yet I knew I had to.
Because ever-blossoming in the back of my mind was the reminder of
murder. I pointed down the narrow stream away from the bridge.
“That way.”

“
All right, darling,” she said.
“I’m game.”

She was game for anything.

We hadn’t gone a half mile when I knew what we
were up against for real. The rain had settled down to a fine
dripping drizzle. The rain didn’t matter. We were soaked through,
mud-caked, and my leg was plenty stiff.

We kept to the mud-choked bank of the steam.
It would bring us out on the Oklatoochee River and Frank’s cabin
should be about a mile upstream. I knew we’d have to cross this
small tributary, but I didn’t want to chance it now. The water
would be black, deep, and treacherous. Clots of sodden moss brushed
us as we pushed on.

“
Look out!” Leda cried, falling
back on me. A bird—probably a white heron—thundered up from
directly before us. Leda breathed harshly, clung to me. Her dress
was torn in the front and she clutched her coat across her breasts,
looking as wild and untame as a jungle cat.

“
Best thing is to move fast,” I
said.

“
Oh, sure.”

“
If we stop, it’ll only be that
much longer.”

“
Can’t we just rest a while?” She
paused, her eyes flicking around the night. “No. No, we can’t.
You’re right. We’d better get going.”

At a small bend in the steam an uprooted slash
pine bridged the moldering banks. Its trunk thrust itself away into
darkness on the other side, but I knew we had to cross here. An
obscene grunting and thrashing on our side of the stream in the
underbrush decided the move quickly.

Leda went first and I guided her with my hands
on her hips. We made the other side and I took a look at the sky. A
couple of stars winked fitfully between ragged wisps of dirty storm
clouds. The rain was decreasing more and more, the storm was
breaking. High overhead among the drenched clutter of oak and
cypress a monotonous wind moaned.

Still we clung to the bank of the
stream.

During the past few months plenty had happened
to me. Right now my work seemed empty and foolish; the elements
could do that to a man. Mother dead because of Frank’s blind,
selfish witlessness. Frank murdered by somebody who had it in for
me, or who used me as an easy mark to frame. I’d been with two fine
women, one lost with me now, chancing death because I’d been a
fool. The other kind and good in every respect, hurt deeply because
I couldn’t see as she saw, couldn’t return her love. For love it
was. I knew that now. Norma had never disguised it, but I’d never
been able to believe it.

And behind me somewhere Clyde Burkette clicked
his teeth with his thumbnail and snapped his black button
eyes.

With me always the haunting shadow of the
dream. . . .

Frank, dead on the floor, with a wooden mallet
beside him. The very implement I’d always used to kill him in the
dream. But I couldn’t make myself believe such a thing was true.
Dream, yes—actuality, no. And I knew I wasn’t nuts, then; death had
proved it to me.

The cabin was our only home, now, escape was
really cut off. No transportation. The only thing I could think of
was finding a boat someplace around the cabin. With a boat of some
kind, we could go down the Oklatoochee to the Gulf of
Mexico.

The rain ceased. But where the trees had
seemed to shelter us some before, now they rained from their
water-laden branches.

Bleak gray dawn paled the eastern sky as we
broke through the undergrowth and found the broader, deeper,
blacker Oklatoochee.

Leda was excited for all her tiredness. “I
remember this,” she said. “Frank and I hiked down this far once. I
remember it!”

“
Good,” I said. Then I hadn’t been
wrong. The cabin wouldn’t be far off, because Frank was no man for
the woods. He wouldn’t go far from the cabin.

“
It’s up this way,” Leda
said.

I looked at her. She was a mess, but even so,
with the cut over her eye, her water-slimed clothes, her matted
hair, she was somehow wildly beautiful. Her face was pale, but
there was bright excitement in her eyes. She seemed to have more
energy than I.

“
Don’t know what keeps you going,”
I said.

“
You do, Eric. You do.”

“
Thanks. But it can’t be just
me.”

“
Is, though. What you do to me,
too.”

We stood there looking at each other, trying
to smile, weaving with fatigue.

“
You’re a rich woman now, Leda.
Damned rich.”

“
Does that matter?” She came
against me and touched her lips to mine. “C’mon, Eric. Let’s get to
the cabin. I’m about knocked out.”

We reached the cabin after locating the dirt
road. The road was muddy, a mess, but we slogged along it and found
the cabin up against the river bank beneath the mammoth spread of
banyan.

The excitement of reaching the place stirred
Leda. I noticed the change. Whatever tiredness had been in her
seemed to disperse. She walked faster, striding. The soft water of
the rain had dried out in her hair now, and the auburn hues sparked
even without sunlight. The sky was overcast again and the air was
chill.

It was a four-room cypress-plank affair, built
solid and weather-tight.

“
Well,” she said. “We’re here.” She
stood at the door and looked back into the roadway, across at the
tight growth of jungle that pushed against the horizon. Out back
the Oklatoochee wound like a black snake, its mirrored surface
tingling with mystery.

The door was open. We went in. It was
furnished comfortably, in heavy leather, deep-napped rugs, and with
a large fireplace in the front room.

Then I noticed how really tired I was. Leda
went through the house hurriedly, her heels thudding on the rugs.
She returned to where I was throwing newspapers and small chunks of
dry wood on the hearth. I lit the papers and in a few moments
warmth began creeping out.

“
Any signs of life?” I
said.

“
What do you mean?”

“
Anybody been around?”

“
Oh. Certainly not.” She draped her
coat over the mantel and looked down at herself. Her dress was torn
across the breasts and there was a slit in her skirt clear to the
waist. The thin material clung to her form like adhesive. Then she
eyed me quietly.

I bent down, poked the fire, laid some heavier
wood on the irons. Resinous pine caught instantly and the cold
morning warmed.

“
We made it all right,” Leda
said.

“
Yeah. Now we’re here,” I
said.

She smiled, turned and walked into the other
room.

I sat on the floor feeling the heat from the
fire and feeling suddenly drowsy as the room warmed. We were here,
and now what? We couldn’t stay long, because they’d find us
eventually. We’d have to move on, someplace. I saw us forever on
the move, then, forever looking back, forever chased. It was no
good. I had to find an answer because there was an answer.
Someplace.

The only way I could find that was to return
to Cypress Landing and start snooping. But how could I do that?
Inside I was empty and sick and the more I thought about it, the
worse I felt.

It didn’t seem to strike Leda so badly. She
took things more in her stride than I was able to. I could see the
papers hitting the street this morning. I could see the body of
Frank with its head smashed lying on my studio floor. The clay
image of Leda. The blood-covered mallet.

I’d been poking through life like the average
guy, dreaming of murder more than the average, but still never
realizing it could get so close. And when it is close, when it
happens like this, you don’t understand it at first. Shock, sure,
but only because it’s so close to you. Because you’ve seen dead men
before. But your brother, even if he was a louse, was still your
brother. Even half brother.

Then you see you’re the guy who’s nailed to
the cross. You’re the guy they’re after. But even that doesn’t hit
you until you comprehend the fact that you didn’t do it. And that
somebody you probably know did it. And they framed you for
it.

“
Darling.”

I turned around, blinked my eyes. Leda stood
beside me with a blanket wrapped around her. She knelt down and the
blanket fell open. She’d brushed her hair to a coppery sheen and
her lips were damp. There was only a slight bump over her eye now
and the cut hardly showed. I was drowsy, tired, and she looked
good.

“
Why don’t you undress?” she said.
“You’ll catch cold.”

“
Sure.” I slipped off my swimming
shorts and she rolled up next to me, opening the
blanket.

“
We’ll stay here,” she breathed.
She kissed my throat, her teeth nibbling as she moved against me.
“We’ll just stay here together.”

“
We can’t for too long.”

Her pressure tightened. “Yes. Yes, we can! Oh,
Eric! Excitement gets me this way and when I’m tired—”

We were lying in front of the fire. We were
warm and comfortable with the fire and I felt worse every
minute.

“
We’ll see if we can’t dig up
something to eat,” I said. “Then we’ll pull out of
here.”

“
Pull out?” She sat up, squeezed
her hair away from her face with both hands. “We’ll stay right
here,” she said. “Listen, Eric. Where would we go?”

She had me there. But I wasn’t going to sit
here and wait for nothing to happen. I had to make things happen.
What good was life if you couldn’t live it all the way? What was
the real murderer thinking? How did he feel? He was free, roaming
someplace, laughing up his sleeve. But who in hell was he? And why
had I been framed?

She snuggled close. “Why don’t we go to sleep
for a while?”

I ignored that. “Has Frank got a
boat?”

She hesitated. “No,” she told me. “Not that I
know of. No, he hasn’t got a boat up here. Why?”

“
We could run down to the
Gulf.”

“
Oh, Eric. Forget it, will
you?”

“
Forget murder?”

“
We’re safe enough.”

“
For how long?”

She shook her head. “Don’t you see? We’re
together, Eric. Why—Why, look. You could forget all about it,
darling. I could go back, say I’d escaped from you. I’d have the
money. I could meet you again. We’ll stay here a few days, then I
can do that. You could change your name. We could go South
America.”

“
But I didn’t murder
Frank!”

She shrugged. “What difference does it
make?”

“
For God’s sake, Leda! What
difference . . .”

“
Take a drink,” she said. “Don’t
you like it here with me?”

“
That’s not the point.”

She laughed. Her eyes were bright now. She
stretched lazily, lay flat on the floor beside me on the blanket.
“I’m staying right here,” she said. “It’s safe here. Where would
you go? What could you do? Nothing. You know that,
Eric.”

“
I can’t stay here, knowing all the
time I didn’t do it. That whoever did is free.”

She raised herself on one elbow. “Bosh.
They’ll never find you here.”

“
They would eventually. It’d get
out somehow, it always does. You’ve got to keep on the move.” I
felt tortured inside because nothing was clear to me. “I love you,”
I told her. “I’ve brought you into hell. I’ve got to clear
myself.”

She shook her head. “If you go, darling, you
go alone. I’m staying. I’m tired. I don’t think I feel so well.
Last night was pretty bad.”

“
You look damn fine to
me.”

She patted my face lightly. “Because you’re
blinded by love, silly.”

I grabbed her wrist. “Damn it,” I said.
“Anybody’d think you don’t want me to find out who killed my
brother!”

Leda’s mouth went slack and she tried to draw
her wrist away from my grasp.

The man’s voice from behind me in the kitchen
doorway snaked into my guts. It was a familiar voice and I whirled
sharply.

“’
At’s exactly right, Eric,” he
said. “Just exactly. Leda don’t want you to know a durn thing. Only
now it don’t matter. Ain’t that right, kid?”

It was Lenny Conn. He lounged soaking wet and
muddy against the doorjamb. In his fist was a blued-steel revolver
and the muzzle was pointed at my bare middle. He let his mouth
hang, and he looked very tired in his ruined tan suit and pink
shirt.