The Fiend (35 page)

“You broke him in little pieces. I suggest you buy yourself a rule book.”

“I have a rule book. I just keep it in my Sunday pants so it doesn't get worn out. Now let's leave it like that, Mac. We're old friends, I don't want to quarrel with you. You take things too seriously.”

“Do I.”

“Good night, Mac. Back to the playpen.”

“Good night.” Mac yawned, widely and deliberately. “And if you come up with any more hot leads, don't bother telling me about them. My phone will be off the hook.”

He pulled out of the parking lot, hoping the yawn had looked authentic and that it wouldn't enter Gallantyne's head that he was going anywhere but home.

The clock in the courthouse began to chime the hour. Ten o'clock. Kate would be asleep inside her big locked house from which everything had already been stolen. He would have to awaken her, to talk to her before Gallantyne had a chance to start thinking about it: how could she have known about the affair between Brant and Virginia Arlington? She didn't ex­change gossip with the neighbors, she didn't go to parties or visit bars, she had no friends. That left one way, only one possible way she could have found out.

He expected the house to be dark when he arrived, but there were lights on in the kitchen, in one of the upstairs bedrooms and in the front hall. He pressed the door chime, muted against Sheridan as the doors were locked against Sheridan and the blinds pulled tight to shut him out.
Yet he's here,
Mac thought.
All the steps she takes to deny his existence merely reinforce it. If just once she would forget to lock a door or pull a blind, it would mean she was starting to forget Sheridan.

Mary Martha's voice came through the crack in the door. “Who's there?”

“Mac.”

“Oh.” She opened the door. She didn't look either sleepy or surprised. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she'd been running around, and she had on a dress Mac had never seen before, a party dress made of some thin, silky fabric the same blue as her eyes. “You're early. But I guess you can come in anyway.”

“Were you expecting me, Mary Martha?”

“Not really. Only my mother said I was to call you at exactly eleven o'clock and invite you to come over.”

“Why?”

“I didn't ask her. You know what? I never stayed up until eleven o'clock before in my whole, entire life.”

“Your mother must have had a reason, Mary Martha. Why didn't you ask her?”

“I couldn't. She was nervous, she might have changed her mind about letting me stay up and play.”

“Where is she now?”

“Sleeping. She had a bad pain so she took a bunch of pills and went to bed.”

“When? When did she take them? What kind of pills?”

The child started backing away from him, her eyes widening in sudden fear. “I didn't do anything, I didn't do a single thing!”

“I'm not accusing you.”

“You are so.”

“No. Listen to me, Mary Martha.” He forced himself to speak softly, to smile. “I know you didn't do anything. You're a very good girl. Tell me, what were you playing when I arrived?”

“Movie star.”

“You were pretending to be a movie star?”

“Oh no. I was her sister.”

“Then who was the movie star?”

“Nobody. Nobody real, I mean,” she added hastily. “I used to have lots of imaginary playmates when I was a child. Some­times I still do. You didn't notice my new dress.”

“Of course I noticed. It's very pretty. Did your mother make it for you?”

“Oh no. She bought it this afternoon. It cost an enormous amount of money.”

“How much?”

She hesitated. “Well, I'm not supposed to broadcast it but I guess it's O.K., being as it's only you. It cost nearly twenty dol­lars. But my mother says it's worth every penny of it. She wanted me to have one real boughten dress in case a special oc­casion comes up and I meet Sheridan at it. Then he'll realize how well she takes care of me and loves me.”

In case I meet Sheridan.
The words started a pulse beating in Mac's temple like a drumming of danger. He knew what the special occasion would have to be, Kate had told him a dozen times:
“He'll see Mary Martha over my dead body and not before.”

“Louise?” Charlie peered at her through the darkness, shield­ing his eyes with one hand as though from a midday sun. “No. You don't look like Louise.”

“It's dark. You can't see me very well.”

“Yes, I can. I know who you are. You get off these tracks immediately or I'll tell your parents, I'll report you to the school principal.”

“Charlie—”

“Please,” he said. “Please go home, little girl.”

“The little girls are all at home, Charlie. I'm here. Louise.”

He sat down suddenly on the edge of one of the railroad ties, rubbing his eyes with his fists like a boy awakened from sleep. “How did you find me?”

“Is that important?”

“Yes.”

“All right then. I could see you were troubled, and sometimes when you're troubled you go down to the warehouse. You feel secure there, you know what's expected of you and you do it. I saw you looking in the window of the office as if you wanted to be inside. I guess the library serves the same purpose for me. We're not very brave or strong people, you and I, but we can't give up now without a fight.”

“I have nothing to fight for.”

“You have life,” she said. “Life itself.”

“Not for long.”

“Charlie, please—”

“Listen to me. I saw the child last night, I spoke to her. I don't—I can't swear what happened after that. I might have frightened her. Maybe she screamed and I tried to shut her up and I did.”

“We'll find out. In time you'll remember everything. Don't worry about it.”

“It seemed so clear to me a couple of hours ago. I was the witness then. It felt so good being the witness, with the law on my side, and the people, the nice people. But of course that couldn't last.”

“Why not?”

“Because they're not on my side and never will be. I can hear them, in my ears I can hear them yelling,
get him, get him good, he killed her, kill him back.”

She was silent. A long way off a train wailed its warning. She thought briefly of stepping into the middle of the tracks and standing there with Charlie until the train came. Then she reached down and took hold of his hand. “Come on, Charlie. We're going home.”

 

Even before Mac opened the door he could hear Kate's trou­bled breathing. She was lying on her back on the bed, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched with the palms of her hands turned up as if she were begging for something. Her hair was carefully combed and she wore a silky blue dress Mac had never seen before. The new dress and the neatness of the room gave the scene an air of unreality as if Kate had intended at first only to play at suicide but had gone too far. On the bedside table were five empty bottles, which had contained pills, and a sealed en­velope. The envelope bore no name and Mac assumed the con­tents were meant for him since he was the one Mary Martha had been told to call at eleven o'clock.

“Kate. Can you hear me, Kate? There's an ambulance on the way. You're going to be all right.” He pressed his face against one of her upturned palms. “Kate, my dearest, please be all right. Please don't die. I love you, Kate.”

She moved her head in protest and he couldn't tell whether she was protesting the idea of being all right or the idea of his loving her.

She let out a moan and some words he couldn't understand.

“Don't try to talk, Kate. Save your strength.”

“Sheridan's—fault.”

“Shush, dearest. Not now.”

“Sheridan—”

“I'll look after everything, Kate. Don't worry.”

The ambulance came and went, its siren loud and alien in the quiet neighborhood. Mary Martha stood on the front porch and watched the flashing red lights dissolve into the fog. Then she followed Mac back into the house. She seemed more curious than frightened.

“Why did my mother act so funny, Mac?”

“She took too many pills.”

“Why?”

“We don't know yet.”

“Will she be gone one or two days?”

“Maybe more than that. I'm not sure.”

“Who will take care of me?”

“I will.”

She gave him the kind of long, appraising look that he'd seen Kate use on Sheridan. “You can't. You're only a man.”

“There are different kinds of men,” Mac said, “just as there are different kinds of women.”

“My mother doesn't think so. She says men are all alike. They do bad things like Sheridan and Mr. Brant.”

“Do you know what Mr. Brant did?”

“Sort of, only I'm not supposed to talk about the Brants, ever. My mother and I made a solemn pact.”

Mac nodded gravely. “As a lawyer, I naturally respect solemn pacts. As a student of history, though, I'm aware that some of them turn out badly and have to be broken.”

“I'm sleepy. I'd better go to bed.”

“All right. Get your pajamas on and I'll bring you up some hot chocolate.”

“I don't like hot chocolate—I mean, I'm allergic to it. Any­way, we don't have any.”

“When someone gives me three reasons instead of one, I'm inclined not to believe any of them.”

“I don't care,” she said, but her eyes moved anxiously around the room. “I mean, it's O.K. to tell a little lie now and then when you're keeping a solemn and secret pact.”

“But it isn't a secret any more. I know about it, and pretty soon Lieutenant Gallantyne will know and he'll come here searching for Jessie. And I think he'll find her.”

“No. No, he won't.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“He's a very good searcher.”

“Jessie's a very good hider.” She stopped, clapping both hands to her mouth as if to force the words back in. Then she began to cry, watching Mac carefully behind her tears to see if he was moved to pity. He wasn't, so she wiped her eyes and said in a resentful voice, “Now you've spoiled everything. We were going to be sisters. We were going to get a college education and good jobs so we wouldn't always be waiting for the support check in the mail. My mother said she would fix it so we would never have to depend on bad men like Sheridan and Mr. Brant.”

“Your mother wasn't making much sense when she said that, Mary Martha.”

“It sounded sensible to me and Jessie.”

“You're nine years old.”
So is Kate,
he thought, picturing the three of them together the previous night: Jessie in a state of shock, Mary Martha hungry for companionship, and Kate carried away by her chance to strike back at the whole race of men. That first moment of decision, when Jessie had appeared at the house with her story about Virginia Arlington and her father, had probably been one of the high spots in Kate's life. It was too high to last. Her misgivings must have grown during the night and day to such proportions that she couldn't face the future.

There was, in fact, no future. She had no money to run away with the two girls and she couldn't have hidden Jessie for more than a few days. Even to her disturbed mind it must have been clear that when she was caught Sheridan would have enough evidence to prove her an unfit mother.

The three conspirators, Kate, Mary Martha, Jessie, all inno­cent, all nine years old; yet Mac was reminded of the initial scene of the three witches in
Macbeth—When shall we three meet again?
—and he thought, with a terrible sorrow,
Perhaps never, perhaps never again.

He said, “You'd better go and tell Jessie I'm ready to take her home.”

“She's sleeping.”

“Wake her up.”

“She won't want to go home.”

“I'm pretty sure she will.”

“You,” she said, “you spoil everything for my mother and me.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way. I would like to be your friend.”

“Well, you can't be, ever. You're just a man.”

When she had gone, he took out the letter he'd picked up from Kate's bedside table before the ambulance attendants had arrived. She had written only one line: “You always wanted me dead, this ought to satisfy you.”

He realized immediately that it was intended for Sheridan, not for him. She hadn't even thought of him. First and last it was Sheridan.

He stood for a long time with the piece of paper in his hand, listening to the old house creaking under the weight of the wind. Over and beyond the creaking he thought he heard the sound of Sheridan's footsteps in the hall.