I went back upstairs and lighted a cigar, and stretched out on the bed. I—a man that’d been through what I had belonged in bed.
About a quarter of eleven, I heard the front door open and close, but I stayed right where I was. I still stayed there, stretched out on the bed, smoking, when Howard Hendricks and Jeff Plummer came in.
Howard gave me a curt nod, and drew up a straight chair near the bed. Jeff sat down, sort of out of the way, in an easy chair. Howard could hardly hold himself in, but he was sure trying. He tried. He did the best he could to be stern and sorrowful, and to hold his voice steady.
“Lou,” he said, “we—I’m not at all satisfied. Last night’s events—these recent events—I don’t like them a bit, Lou.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s natural enough. Don’t hardly see how you could like ’em. I know I sure don’t.”
“You know what I mean!”
“Why, sure, I do. I know just how—”
“Now, this alleged robber-rapist—this poor devil you’d have us believe was a robber and rapist. We happen to know he was nothing of the kind! He was a pipeline worker. He had a pocket full of wages. And—and yes, we know he wasn’t drunk because he’d just had a big steak dinner! He wouldn’t have had the slightest reason to be in this house, so Miss Stanton couldn’t have—”
“Are you saying he wasn’t here, Howard?” I said. “That should be mighty easy to prove.”
“Well—he wasn’t prowling, that’s a certainty! If—”
“Why is it?” I said. “If he wasn’t prowling, what was he doing?”
His eyes began to glitter. “Never mind! Let that go for a minute! But I’ll tell you this much. If you think you can get away with planting that money on him and making it look like—”
“What money?” I said. “I thought you said it was his wages?”
You see? The guy didn’t have any sense. Otherwise, he’d have waited for me to mention that marked money.
“The money you stole from Elmer Conway! The money you took the night you killed him and that woman!”
“Now, wait a minute, wait a minute,” I frowned. “Let’s take one thing at a time. Let’s take the woman. Why would I kill her?”
“Because—well—because you’d killed Elmer and you had to shut her up.”
“But why would I kill Elmer? I’d known him all my life. If I’d wanted to do him any harm, I’d sure had plenty of chances.”
“You know—” He stopped abruptly.
“Yeah?” I said, puzzled. “Why would I kill Elmer, Howard?”
And he couldn’t say, of course. Chester Conway had given him his orders about that.
“You killed him all right,” he said, his face reddening. “You killed her. You hanged Johnnie Pappas.”
“You’re sure not making much sense, Howard.” I shook my head. “You plumb insisted on me talking to Johnnie because you knew how much I liked him and how much he liked me. Now you’re saying I killed him.”
“You had to kill him to protect yourself! You’d given him that marked twenty-dollar bill!”
“Now you really ain’t making sense,” I said. “Let’s see; there was five hundred dollars missing, wasn’t there? You claiming that I killed Elmer and that woman for five hundred dollars? Is that what you’re saying, Howard?”
“I’m saying that—that—goddammit, Johnnie wasn’t anywhere near the scene of the murders! He was stealing tires at the time they were committed!”
“Is that a fact?” I drawled. “Someone see him, Howard?”
“Yes! I mean, well—uh—”
See what I mean. Shrapnel.
“Let’s say that Johnnie didn’t do those killings,” I said. “And you know it was mighty hard for me to believe that he had, Howard. I said so right along. I always did think he was just scared and kind of out of his mind when he hanged himself. I’d been his only friend, and now it sort of seemed like I didn’t believe in him anymore an’—”
“His friend! Jesus!”
“So I reckon he didn’t do it, after all. Poor little Amy was killed in pretty much the same way that other woman was. And this man—you say he had a big part of the missing money on him. Five hundred dollars would seem like a lot of money to a man like that, an’ seeing that the two killings were so much alike…”
I let my voice trail off, smiling at him; and his mouth opened and went shut again.
Shrapnel. That’s all he had.
“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?” he said, softly. “Four—five murders; six counting poor Bob Maples who staked everything he had on you, and you sit there explaining and smiling. You aren’t bothered a bit. How can you do it, Ford? How can—”
I shrugged. “Somebody has to keep their heads, and it sure looks like you can’t. You got some more questions, Howard?”
“Yes,” he nodded slowly. “I’ve got one. How did Miss Stanton get those bruises on her body? Old bruises, not made last night. The same kind of bruises we found on the body of the Lakeland woman. How did she get them, Ford?”
Shrap—
“Bruises?” I said. “Gosh, you got me there, Howard. How would I know?”
“H-how”—he sputtered—“how would you know?”
“Yeah?” I said, puzzled. “How?”
“Why, goddam you! You’d been screwing that gal for years! You—”
“Don’t say that,” I said.
“No,” said Jeff Plummer, “don’t say that.”
“But—” Howard turned on him, then turned back to me. “All right, I won’t say it! I don’t need to say it. That girl had never gone with anyone but you, and only you could have done that to her! You’d been beating on her just like you’d beaten on that whore!”
I laughed, sort of sadly. “And Amy just took it huh, Howard? I bruised her up, and she went right ahead seeing me? She got all ready to marry me? That wouldn’t make sense with any woman, and it makes no sense minus about Amy. You sure wouldn’t say a thing like that if you’d known Amy Stanton.”
He shook his head, staring, like I was some kind of curiosity. That old shrapnel wasn’t doing a thing for him.
“Now, maybe Amy did pick up a bruise here and there,” I went on. “She had all sorts of work to do, keepin’ house and teaching school, and everything there was to be done. It’d been mighty strange if she didn’t bang herself up a little, now and—”
“That’s not what I mean. You know that’s not what I mean.”
“—but if you’re thinking I did it, and that she put up with it, you’re way off base. You sure didn’t know Amy Stanton.”
“Maybe,” he said, “you didn’t know her.”
“Me? But you just got through sayin’ we’d gone together for years—”
“I—” He hesitated, frowning. “I don’t know. It isn’t all clear to me, and I won’t pretend that it is. But I don’t think you knew her. Not as well as…”
“Yeah?” I said.
He reached into his inside coat pocket, and brought out a square blue envelope. He opened it and removed one of those double sheets of stationery. I could see it was written on both sides, four pages in all. And I recognized that small neat handwriting.
Howard looked up from the paper, and caught my eye.
“This was in her purse.” Her purse. “She’d written it at home and was planning, apparently, to give it to you after you were out of Central City. As a matter of fact”—he glanced down at the letter—“she intended to have you stop at a restaurant up the road, and have you read it while she was in the restroom. Now, it begins, ‘ Lou, Darling…’ ”
“Let me have it,” I said.
“I’ll read—”
“It’s his letter,” said Jeff. “Let him have it.”
“Very well.” Howard shrugged; and he tossed me the letter. And I knew he’d planned on having me read it all along. He wanted me to read it while he sat back and watched.
I looked down at the thick double page, holding my eyes on it:
r />
Lou, Darling:
Now you know why I had you stop here, and why I’ve excused myself from the table. It was to allow you to read this, the things I couldn’t somehow otherwise say to you. Please, please read carefully, darling. I’ll give you plenty of time. And if I sound confused and rambling, please don’t be angry with me. It’s only because I love you so much, and I’m a little frightened and worried.
Darling, I wish I could tell you how happy you’ve made me these last few weeks. I wish I could be sure that you’d been even a tiny fraction as happy. Just a teensy-weensie bit as much. Sometimes I get the crazy, wonderful notion that you have been, that you were even as happy as I was (though I don’t see how you could be!) and at others I tell myself…Oh, I don’t know, Lou!
I suppose the trouble is that it all seemed to come about so suddenly. We’d gone on for years, and you seemed to be growing more and more indifferent; you seemed to keep drawing away from me and taking pleasure in making me follow. (Seemed, Lou; I don’t say you did do it.) I’m not trying to excuse myself, darling. I only want to explain, to make you understand that I’m not going to behave that way anymore. I’m not going to be sharp and demanding and scolding and…I may not be able to change all at once (oh, but I will, darling; I’ll watch myself; I’ll do it just as fast as I can) but if you’ll just love me, Lou, just act like you love me, I’m sure—
Do you understand how I felt? Just a little? Do you see why I was that way, then, and why I won’t be anymore? Everyone knew I was yours. Almost everyone. I wanted it to be that way; to have anyone else was unthinkable. But I couldn’t have had anyone else if I’d wished to. I was yours. I’d always be yours if you dropped me. And it seemed, Lou, that you were slipping further and further away, still owning me yet not letting yourself belong to me. You were (it seemed, darling, seemed) leaving me with nothing—and knowing that you were doing it, knowing I was helpless—and apparently enjoying it. You avoided me. You made me chase you. You made me question you and beg you, and—and then you’d act so innocent and puzzled and…Forgive me, darling. I don’t want to criticize you ever, ever again. I only wanted you to understand, and I suppose only another woman could do that.
Lou, I want to ask you something, a few things, and I want to beg you please, please, please not to take it the wrong way. Are you—oh, don’t be, darling—are you afraid of me? Do you feel that you have to be nice to me? There I won’t say anything more, but you know what I mean, as well as I do at least. And you will know…
I hope and pray I am wrong, darling. I do so hope. But I’m afraid—are you in trouble? Is something weighing on your mind? I don’t want to ask you more than that, but I do want you to believe that whatever it is, even if it’s what I—whatever it is, Lou, I’m on your side. I love you (are you tired of my saying that?), and I know you. I know you’d never knowingly do anything wrong, you just couldn’t, and I love you so much and…Let me help you, darling. Whatever it is, whatever help you need. Even if it should involve being separated for a while, a long while, let’s—let me help you. Because I’ll wait for you, however long—and it mightn’t be long at all, it might be just a question of—well, it will be all right, Lou, because you wouldn’t knowingly do anything. I know that and everyone else knows it, and it will be all right. We’ll make it all right, you and I together. If you’ll only tell me. If you’ll just let me help you.
Now. I asked you not to be afraid of me, but I know how you’ve felt, how you used to feel, and I know that asking you or telling you might not be enough. That’s why I had you stop at this place, here at a bus stop. That’s why I’m giving you so much time. To prove to you that you don’t need to be afraid.
I hope that when I come back to the table, you’ll still be there. But if you aren’t, darling, if you feel that you can’t…then just leave my bags inside the door. I have money with me and I can get a job in some other town, and—do that, Lou. If you feel that you must. I’ll understand, and it’ll be perfectly all right—honestly it will, Lou—and…
Oh, darling, darling, darling, I love you so much. I’ve always loved you and I always will, whatever happens. Always, darling. Always and always. Forever and forever.
Always and forever,
Amy
21
Well. WELL?
What are you going to do? What are you going to say?
What are you going to say when you’re drowning in your own dung and they keep booting you back into it, when all the screams in hell wouldn’t be as loud as you want to scream, when you’re at the bottom of the pit and the whole world’s at the top, when it has but one face, a face without eyes or ears, and yet it watches and listens.…
What are you going to do and say? Why, pardner, that’s simple. It’s easy as nailing your balls to a stump and falling off backwards. Snow again, pardner, and drift me hard, because that’s an easy one.
You’re gonna say, they can’t keep a good man down. You’re gonna say, a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. You’re gonna smile, boy, you’re gonna show ’em the ol’ fightin’ smile. And then you’re gonna get out there an’ hit ’em hard and fast and low, an’—an’ Fight!”
Rah.
I folded the letter, and tossed it back to Howard.
“She was sure a talky little girl,” I said. “Sweet but awful talky. Seems like if she couldn’t say it to you, she’d write it down for you.”
Howard swallowed. “That—that’s all you have to say?”
I lit a cigar, pretending like I hadn’t heard him. Jeff Plummer’s chair creaked. “I sure liked Miss Amy,” he said. “All four of my younguns went to school to her, an’ she was just as nice as if they’d had one of these oilmen for a daddy.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “I reckon she really had her heart in her work.”
I puffed on my cigar, and Jeff’s chair creaked again, louder than the first time, and the hate in Howard’s eyes seemed to lash out against me. He gulped like a man choking down puke.
“You fellows getting restless?” I said. “I sure appreciate you dropping in at a time like this, but I wouldn’t want to keep you from anything important.”
“You—y-you!”
“You starting to stutter, Howard? You ought to practice talking with a pebble in your mouth. Or maybe a piece of shrapnel.”
“You dirty son-of-a-bitch! You—”
“Don’t call me that,” I said.
“No,” said Jeff, “don’t call him that. Don’t never say anything about a man’s mother.”
“To hell with that crap! He—you”—he shook his fist at me—“you killed that little girl. She as good as says so!”
I laughed. “She wrote it down after I killed her, huh? That’s quite a trick.”
“You know what I mean. She knew you were going to kill her…”
“And she was going to marry me, anyway?”
“She knew you’d killed all those other people!”
“Yeah? Funny she didn’t mention it.”
“She did mention it! She—”
“Don’t recall seeing anything like that. Don’t see that she said anything much. Just a lot of woman-worry talk.”
“You killed Joyce Lakeland and Elmer Conway and Johnnie Pappas and—”
“President McKinley?”
He sagged back in his chair, breathing hard. “You killed them, Ford. You killed them.”
“Why don’t you arrest me, then? What are you waiting on?”
“Don’t worry,” he nodded grimly. “Don’t you worry. I’m not waiting much longer.”
“And I’m not either,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you and your courthouse gang are doing spite work. You’re pouring it on me because Conway says to, just why I can’t figure out. You haven’t got a shred of proof but you’ve tried to smear me—”
“Now, wait a minute! We haven’t—”
“You’ve tried to; you had Jeff out here this morning chasing visitors away. Yo
u’d do it, but you can’t because you haven’t got a shred of proof and people know me too well. You know you can’t get a conviction, so you try to ruin my reputation. And with Conway backing you up you may manage it in time. You’ll manage it if you have the time, and I guess I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to sit back and take it. I’m leaving town, Howard.”
“Oh, no you’re not. I’m warning you here and now, Ford, don’t you even attempt to leave.”
“Who’s going to stop me?”
“I am.”
“On what grounds?”
“Mur—suspicion of murder.”
“But who suspects me, Howard, and why? The Stantons? I reckon not. Mike Pappas? Huh-uh. Chester Conway? Well, I’ve got kind of a funny feeling about Conway, Howard. I’ve got a feeling that he’s going to stay in the background, he’s not going to do or say a thing, no matter how bad you need him.”
“I see,” he said. “I see.”
“You see that opening there behind you?” I said. “Well, that’s a door, Howard, in case you were wonderin’, and I can’t think of a thing to keep you and Mister Plummer from walking through it.”
“We’re walking through it,” said Jeff, “and so are you.”
“Huh-uh,” I said, “no I ain’t. I sure ain’t aimin’ to do nothing like that, Mister Plummer. And that’s a fact.”
Howard kept his seat. His face looked like a blob of reddish dough, but he shook his head at Jeff and kept his seat. Howard was really trying hard.
“I—it’s to your own interest as well as ours to get this settled, Ford. I’m asking you to place yourself—to remain available until—”
“You mean you want me to cooperate with you?” I said.
“Yes.”
“That door,” I said. “I wish you’d close it real careful. I’m suffering from shock, and I might have a relapse.”
Howard’s mouth twisted and opened, and snapped shut. He sighed and reached for his hat.
“I sure liked Bob Maples,” said Jeff. “I sure liked that little Miss Amy.”