Flight to Darkness (26 page)

Lenny fought with the revolver. He was dying
and he knew it. It was all over for him. Only one thing was left
and he wanted very much to do that one thing. She could have ended
it there, but she didn’t. I watched her face and it was taut. She
began breathing faster and faster, her lips parted, her breasts
thrusting almost convulsively.

Lenny fought with the gun. Then he squeezed
the trigger, just once. The lead slug tore through his foot and
into the floor. He fell back dead.

Leda shuddered and relaxed. She breathed
deeply. “Geez,” she said. “That did something to me.”

I couldn’t look at her sagging lips. Leda was
no longer sane, something had gone bang inside her, now. Her eyes
were glassy.

“
You see, Eric,” she said. “I could
never split the money. And—and I couldn’t let him—”

“
It’s funny,” I said. “But they
never seem able to split the money.”

She swallowed, glanced at Lenny, then turned
her gray eyes toward me again. I kept trying to tell myself that
here all pride and defiance were gone. That only emptiness
remained, emptiness behind a shell of beauty. A clay shell. I tried
to tell myself that was all she was—nothing but clay and clay could
be smashed. Lenny had smashed clay. I tried to tell myself that.
But I had loved this woman and even now—after thinking the things I
had, after seeing the things I’d seen her do and heard her say,
after I had watched the vicious turbulence within her—I couldn’t
help wanting her still.

I was as bad as she. Worse, perhaps. She was
all wickedness combined; all the dirt of many gutters—a murderess
and one who could not love. But had she loved? I still wanted her—I
knew I could not have her. . . .

Her voice was soft now. “There’s one more
thing I’ve got to do.” She was pulling herself together after
discovering that killing Lenny hadn’t been the easiest thing in the
world to do after all. But Leda was Leda, my Leda, and she did pull
herself together. “I’ve got to kill you,” she said. She drew the
forty-five from the pocket of her bathrobe and it looked terribly
large in her white hand. The pocket was burned.

And I knew the weaknesses of man. I didn’t
want to die. That was one weakness. I still wanted this woman. And
that was the other weakness.

Death was big but it was also
final.

I leaped for her. The automatic bucked in her
hand once again and the cabin rocked with explosion. But she had
missed and the gun was empty. I was on my hands and
knees.

“
Leda!”

She whirled, ran for the kitchen. The rear
door slammed. I went after her, stubbed my foot on Lenny’s body and
sprawled across the floor.

Lenny’s revolver was caught under my chest. I
scrambled up with the gun in my hand and headed out the back door
after her.

In the shallow gray light of morning I
glimpsed her flashing legs, the auburn hair, and that maroon
bathrobe flapping along the river bank.

“
Leda!” I shouted. From in front of
the cabin I heard the abrupt sound of a car’s engine, the quick
slew and rumble of tires gripping the muddy road. I paid no
attention, ran on toward the spot where Leda had
vanished.

Chapter 21

Wet grass along the steep crumbling bank of
the river showed me her path. I followed, running, knowing I had to
reach her. Then I saw her.

“
Leda!”

She turned, looked at me. She was standing on
the river bank, grasping a low long waving branch of a live oak.
Moss tumbled over her shoulders as she half crouched, watching
first me, then the rushing waters below. She stood half naked, the
maroon bathrobe fell from her body.

“
Eric,” she said, and I rushed
her.

For a long moment we tangled on the bank’s
crumbling lip. She fought wildly, passionately. The gun fell from
my fingers as I grasped her arms. Her smooth white body was lush,
savage, but not with love—never with love.

With fear, now.

“
I loved you,” I said. “Did you
ever love me?”

Her right hand raked red-tipped nails across
the side of my face and her teeth gleamed white between her lips. I
held her to me, felt all the lithe tortured length of her body and
again her nails raked me. Across my neck, my shoulders. She
writhed, cursed.

“
I don’t love you now. Hear me,
Leda? Hear?”

She cringed back, bending, her lips parted,
her eyes black-pupiled and afraid.

“
But I want you! Hear
me?”

I heard my own voice, shouting,
harsh.

I had to hurt her. Nothing mattered but that.
I had to hurt her for real just as she had so perfectly wrecked
me.

Her lips were parted as I grabbed for her. All
the hell-hate in her snapped across her eyes. For a second, as I
moved, she crouched, wild-eyed. Then she leaped.

She struck at me, then turned and ran
stumbling along the bank away toward denser woods.

I sprawled on the ground, half over the bank,
knowing the sure fate that lay in the swollen mad river beneath me.
Scrabbling back, I found the gun and went after her.

The bank rose on a gentle incline, walled with
twisted roots.

“
Leda!” Her naked body flashed
against the morning. I fired the gun twice into the soggy earth.
She whirled, her mouth wide and soundless. Then she
screamed.

Her long nakedness thrashed for a brief
instant as the bank crumbled beneath her feet. She vanished into
the black waters of the river.

It was much swifter than it looked. As I came
up to where she’d fallen something swirled in a rush against the
surface, already far downstream. Her face, maybe, then an arm, a
leg, very white and small and moving away.

I stood on the bank, watching, while mudclots
broke off beneath my feet and splashed in the wild water. I
couldn’t move.

And that was all. Quickly gone. I saw no more
of her and the river was the same. Leda Thayer was gone. She had
found escape through death. No one could live where she was
now.

I walked back to where we had fought. Trampled
into the wet grass at my feet was the maroon bathrobe. I dropped
the gun into the folds of blood-colored cloth.

“
Eric.”

I glanced around. Coming through the grass
toward me was Norma. She still wore the red shorts and the white
sweater and her hair was very golden. Clyde Burkette stalked behind
her with two other men. One of them was Gallagher.

“
Hello,” I said to Norma. All
right. They were here and it was over and I was it. Leda’s scream
still echoed in my mind. But Leda was gone.

Norma stood facing me as Burkette, Gallagher,
and the other man came up.

Norma and I stared at each other. Yes, I was
it.

“
We saw it,” Norma said. “Most of
it. We found Lenny, Eric.”

I could never explain Lenny’s
death.

Burkette shoved past Norma and strode up to
me. His face was haggard, his gray Stetson grimed with
mud.

“
We been trying to catch you,” he
said. “We trailed you from your car, last night. Old man with the
load of chickens on his truck reported the accident, Eric.” He
glanced down at his mud-caked shoes. If it hadn’t been for
Burkette’s knowledge of the trail, his being a born backwoodsman,
he might never have found me. He did not pick his teeth. Somehow
his attitude had changed. “Soon as I realized where you were
headed, I sent Gallagher back to town. He brought another man and
the car up the back road. Met us down yonder a piece.” He waved his
arm vaguely.

Gallagher and the other man stood in the
grass. Gallagher didn’t look very grim any more.

I didn’t feel anything. Just tired, now—tired
and empty. I didn’t want anything any more, not
anything.

Burkette cleared his throat. “You been through
a heap, I reckon. Reckon mebbe I had you wrong, Eric.”

I didn’t say anything.

“
Eric, the girl—Norma, there. She
saw it—saw him back there—” he gestured toward the cabin beyond the
tangled undergrowth, “when he killed Frank. She come to the barn
and saw it through the window. Didn’t know what to do, I reckon.
Excited. Finally made up her mind to tell you, but she missed you.
Listen,” he said. “We been chasing you ever since. Trying to tell
you. You was jamming yourself up, Eric.” He coughed, swallowed.
“Owe you an apology, Eric.” His gaze dropped. “You’ll be a big man
in these parts from now on.”

I’d heard it all. It didn’t make sense, yet it
had to be true. I looked over at Norma. For a second her face was
rigid, then slowly she smiled and there was something in her eyes
that was very different from something in another pair of eyes I
remembered so well. She nodded, stepped toward me.

“
That’s right, Eric. I was with the
sheriff at the Hewitts when you drove in.”

“
But you fired at me. . .
.”

Burkette shook his head. “In the air, figured
it’d maybe stop you.”

“
Then you know I didn’t kill my
brother?”

“
Knowed it for hours.” He shoved
his hat back. “The one in the cabin,” he said. His hand flicked
toward the river. “She did that?”

I nodded.

He started to turn, paused. “Body’ll snag at
the bend. Best we get on down there.” He glanced at Gallagher and
the other man. “Least the body’ll make the bend if the river says
so. I wouldn’t want to swim in there.” The three of them waded
through the grass.

Norma was tired. But she smiled again. The
river moved sluggish and certain toward the bend. I couldn’t smile
right then.

Norma kept watching me. I wanted her to go
away, to leave me alone. I was sick right now, but someday it would
be all right.

“
It’s all right, Eric,” Norma said.
“I know what it is to be lonely.”

We stood that way for some time. Both of us
knew what the other thought. And it was my turn to
understand.

THE END

of a novel by

Gil Brewer