The Cry of the Owl (27 page)

“I guess they’re not looking very hard,” Robert said. “And you’re no stupider than anybody else, so don’t reproach yourself. You’ve hit it anyway—they’re not looking. Why should they?”

“Well, who do they think’s doing the shooting?”

“It simply doesn’t interest them,” Robert said.

Butter sizzled in a skillet in the kitchen. The doctor stood in the kitchen doorway with a spatula in his hand. “Mr. Forester seems to be right. It doesn’t interest them. I’d suggest you put your head back and relax, Mr. Forester.” He pulled some pillows against the wall behind Robert, and Robert lay back against them. “How do you feel?”

“All right, but a little funny.”

“You lost enough blood last night to feel funny. I had to sew up an artery,” the doctor said cheerfully.

Jack looked at his watch again. “Anything you’d like me to say to Jaffe, Bob—”

“No, thank you, Jack. Well, yes—you can tell him I won’t be in today. That I’m sick. As soon as I can, I’m going to write a letter resigning. Quitting. I’m licked. It’s true.”

Jack looked at the doctor, then back at Robert. “What about tonight? Aren’t the police—”

“Mr. Forester is very welcome to stay at my house,” said Dr. Knott. “In Rittersville. Nothing ever happens there, except”—he rubbed his bald head—“except a phone call in the middle of the night because somebody’s got indigestion. That’s the old joke and it’s still true. Would you join us in some eggs, Mr. Nielson?”

Jack stood up. “No, thanks, I’ve got to be going. Bob, why don’t you wait about the resignation? The dentist tomorrow can—”

“After Jaffe’s speech?” Robert said.

“Did he make you a speech?”

“Not exactly, but I’m sure he thinks I’m generally guilty. An oddball, not the kind of character for L.A. That’s enough.”

“You won’t be working for Jaffe in Philly.”

“Oh, it’s all connected,” Robert said. “If the dentist tomorrow says the corpse isn’t Wyncoop, that doesn’t produce Wyncoop, does it? That doesn’t prove I didn’t kill him.” Robert glanced at the doctor, glad that he was listening from the kitchen doorway. “It’s good to talk. It’s very good to talk,” Robert said, and leaned back on his pillows again.

“But I don’t want you to have the attitude of giving up,” said Jack, shifting in his space shoes.

Robert didn’t answer. Was he giving up? He felt fragile as a small box of glass. What can I do, he thought, and the answer seemed to be nothing. “In most situations, there’s something one can
do
,” he said, “but in this one, I don’t see it.” His voice cracked in a hysterical way, and suddenly he thought of Jenny. It was his fault that she had taken her life. She had loved him, and he had made such a mess of things that she had taken her life.

Jack patted his shoulder. Robert had his head down, his right hand clamped across his eyes. Jack and the doctor were talking, the doctor saying in a very matter-of-fact voice that of course Robert would stay at his house, for a day or so, if necessary. And Jack was taking the doctor’s name and telephone number. Then Jack was gone, and the doctor set on the coffee table before Robert a plate of scrambled eggs with toast, buttered and covered with marmalade.

When he had eaten, his thoughts were less nebulous. Greg had an immunity, a sort of carte blanche until the dentist’s pronouncement tomorrow afternoon, which presumably would be that the corpse was not Greg’s, which presumably might inspire the police to look a little harder for him. Greg had tonight, in other words. But wouldn’t it be ironic, Robert thought, if the dentist said the corpse was Wyncoop’s, that the remaining molars in the upper jaw belonged to Greg? And wouldn’t it be a joke on himself, if the corpse really
was
Greg’s?

“You’re feeling better,” said Dr. Knott. “I can see it.”

“Much better, thanks. Dr. Knott, I shouldn’t stay at your house tonight, but thanks very much for your offer.”

“Why not? You shouldn’t stay here in this isolated spot, surrounded by a lot of crabby neighbors. Had you rather go to your friend Mr. Nielson’s? He said you’d be welcome at his place.”

Robert shook his head. “Not to anybody’s house. I’ve a feeling I’ll draw another bullet tonight, and why should somebody else get hit? The logical place for me is either a hospital or a jail. A jail has thicker walls.”

“Oh!” The doctor chuckled, but his smile went soon away. “You really think Wyncoop—or whoever it is—would dare? Again?” The doctor’s round, cocked head looked suddenly ludicrously civilized,
sensible, logical, pacific. He plainly wasn’t used to bullets, or to people like Greg.

Robert smiled. “What’s to stop him? I’m not going to bother asking for a guard tonight. I doubt if it would do any good at all.”

Dr. Knott glanced around the floor, at their cleaned plates, then looked at Robert. “Well, the last place you want to be is here, isn’t that so, where Wyncoop knows you live. Now, Rittersville’s seventeen miles or so away. Bring your car there. I’ve got a garage big enough for two cars. We can both be on the second floor. There’s nothing on the downstairs floor but—but the living room and the kitchen.” He smiled, confident again. “Needless to say, I’ve a good lock on the front and back doors. Mine’s one of those old-time houses that used to be called manses. Built in 1887. I inherited it from my father.”

“It’s very kind of you,” Robert said, “but there’s no need of it. I won’t necessarily stay here—I don’t know whether I will or not—but I don’t want to go where any other people—”

“You don’t seem to realize,” the doctor interrupted, “I’m in a residential section, the oldest section of Rittersville. Lots of houses around. Not jammed, I don’t mean that, they’ve all got lawns, but it’s not like—like here,” he gestured, “where you’re as exposed as a sitting duck and anybody can just disappear in the woods or a field.”

Robert was silent, trying to muster another argument, something besides a flat “No.”

“Why don’t you call your mother? It’s getting on to ten.”

Robert called his mother.

She had been waiting for his call. She still wanted him to come out to New Mexico, and she wanted to know when he was leaving. Robert explained that he had to remain through Saturday because
of the dentist, who was coming to look at the body that the police thought was Wyncoop’s.

“No, Mother, I don’t think it is, but they’ve got to make sure. This is a police case, Mother, this is a crime.” It was oddly reassuring to say “crime” to his mother—she believed so utterly that he was innocent of any crime, believed it more than Jack, more than the doctor, more than himself. He was holding the telephone against his left ear with his right hand. “Sure, Mother, I can call you tomorrow, or Sunday’s better, I’d imagine, because I’ll know more. … All right, Sunday before twelve noon. … Give my love to Phil. … Goodbye, Mother.”

“How were you planning to go to New Mexico?” asked the doctor.

“I was thinking of driving,” Robert said automatically, at that moment thinking of the newspapers his mother would see today, if she hadn’t seen some already. There were bound to be the hostile comments of Langley citizens, his neighbors, the stories of the suicide, the sniping, the prowling, all put together and focused now on the corpse in the Rittersville morgue. Robert felt a bit faint again. “I’m pretty sure by Sunday I’ll feel up to driving. It’s either that or store my car here.”

“Hmm. Well, if you take it easy till Sunday,” said the doctor, watching him. “Sit down, Mr. Forester.”

Robert sat down.

“Your mother lives in New Mexico?” The doctor was getting Robert’s toothbrush and razor from the bathroom.

“No, she lives in Chicago, but she and her husband have a summer place near Albuquerque. It’s like a small ranch. They have a couple living there, taking care of it when they’re not there.” Robert wanted to lie down again.

“That sounds very pleasant. Probably do you a lot of good to go there for a while. Take this.” The doctor held out his palm.

“What is it?”

“A Dexamyl. Just to pick you up till we get to Rittersville. You can rest up this afternoon.”

A few minutes later, Robert went out with the doctor, and followed him in his car to Rittersville.

The house at whose driveway the doctor turned in was indeed a manse in the old style. It looked made of snowy-white meringue, and it bulged with bay windows on the first and second stories. All the windows shone in the sunlight as if they had just been washed. On the freshly mown front lawn stood a huge weeping willow, its branches gently swaying. The willow and the hydrangea bushes gave the place a softer and more Southern appearance than the other houses on the street had. Robert drove his car into the remaining half of the garage at the end of the driveway.

The doctor closed the garage doors.

“I didn’t stop to get anything for us to eat, because I told Anna Louise to do it, and now we’ll see if she has,” said the doctor, opening the back door with a key on his key ring.

Robert carried one smallish suitcase, which the doctor had helped him pack. They went into a large square kitchen with black-and-white checked linoleum and a well-worn wooden drainboard by the sink. The doctor opened the refrigerator, gave an “Ah” of satisfaction, looked into the freezing compartment, then announced that Anna Louise had done her duty.

“I’ll get you settled upstairs first,” said the doctor, beckoning Robert to follow him.

The doctor led him through a living room, down a carpeted hall, and up a stairway with a heavy, polished banister. The house looked spotless, dustless, and yet lived in, and every piece of furniture, every picture and ornament, Robert supposed, had some special story or meaning for the doctor and his wife. Robert only hoped that he was not going to be installed in his late wife’s room or her sickroom, then the doctor said, throwing open a tall door, “This is our guest room.” He looked around. “Yes—I suppose it’s all right. Needs some flowers to make it cozy, but—” He paused, obviously wanting Robert to like it, to pay his house a compliment.

“It doesn’t need a thing,” Robert said. “It’s a beautiful room. And that bed—”

The doctor laughed. “Feathers, believe it or not. A feather bed. My wife’s mother made the quilt. That’s a design based on the state flower of Oregon, the Oregon grape. It’s an evergreen,
Mahonia aquifolia.”

“Oh?”

“Nice little blue grapes, aren’t they? My wife always loved that quilt—that’s why she put it in the guest room. She was like that. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable, and I’ll let you alone for a few hours. The bath’s next door to your right.” He started to go out. “By the way, you might just as well sleep this afternoon, and that Dexamyl’ll keep you awake. I’ll bring you a mild sedative and you can take it or not, as you like, but I’d advise you to put on pajamas and loaf.”

Robert smiled. “Thank you. I’d like to see the papers first. I’ll go down and get them.”

“No, no, I’ll bring them up. Stay there.” The doctor went out.

Robert looked around the room once more, a little incredulously, then opened his suitcase to get his pajamas. The doctor knocked on the door, came in with the papers that he had bought on the way, laid them on a gros-point chair seat, and with a wave of his hand disappeared out the door again. Robert carried the papers to the bed and sat down, but he sank so deeply into the bed. … At last, he sat down on the floor with the papers. There was also the New York
Times
, and he looked into this first to see how much coverage they gave the story. He had turned to page 17 before he found it, a five-inch-long column reporting quite sedately that the Rittersville police were awaiting the arrival of Wyncoop’s dentist, Dr. Thomas McQueen, and that Robert Forester, who had fought with Wyncoop on May 21st, had been “fired on Wednesday evening in his house near Langley.” That was, of course, the salad-bowl bullet. The Rittersville
Courier
and the Langley
Gazette
were different matters. They reported the five bullets of last night, “which brought a score of alarmed neighbors to the Forester house. Forester was wounded in the left arm and was treated by Dr. Albert Knott of Rittersville. This was the second time Forester had been fired on by an assailant or assailants who are believed to be friends of Gregory Wyncoop. …” Neither paper suggested that the assailant might be Wyncoop himself.

Dr. Knott returned with a glass of water in his hand. “What’re you doing on the floor?”

Robert stood up. “It seemed the easiest place to look at the papers.”

“Tch-tch.” The doctor shook his head. “That’s an old house for you. Nothing really comfortable, if you come right down to it.”

Robert smiled and accepted the water and the pill, a white one, from the doctor. “I think I will take this.”

“Good. I’m going out just before three. If you’re hungry, there’s cheese and some other things in the refrigerator. We’ll have something more substantial tonight.” He turned to the door.

“Wouldn’t you like to see the papers?”

“Yes, I would. You’re finished with them?”

Robert gathered them up. “Yes.” He handed them to the doctor. The doctor’s eyes met his for an instant, pleasant and smiling, but the doctor’s small mouth seemed to belie the eyes. His mouth was tense. Was that doubt, Robert wondered, suspicion? Or a remnant of the doctor’s own grief? Or was he imagining suspicion?

Robert put on pajamas and slept.

When he awakened, the sun seemed to be coming straight into the room. The sun was setting. It was a quarter to seven by his watch. Robert went into the bathroom and washed, brushed his teeth, and dressed. From the hall, he could faintly hear someone in the kitchen downstairs, the tinkle of a spoon against a bowl. Robert couldn’t imagine the doctor cooking, even though he had done quite well with the scrambled eggs this morning. Robert felt his arm again, squeezing it. There was almost no pain. He had a surge of energy and confidence, and ran down the steps, his hand just above the banister, and for an instant remembered running down the stairs in Nickie’s house.

The doctor was cooking, and he had an apron on. “Have a rye,” he said. “Do you care for rye? There’s the bottle.” He nodded toward a counter by the refrigerator.