Dead Low Tide, page 18
“My goodness,” I said, and I had to strain to focus my eyes to keep her from wavering.
She gave me a very fierce look. “Well?”
“What for you saying ‘well’?”
“You’re weaseling, McClintock. You’re a-hemming and a-hawing all around barns and things. Do I live on inferences, yet? Or don’t you think it would be manly? A girl has a right to hear the words. A girl likes the words. Get in the habit, McClintock, because I’m going to like to hear the words—forty times a day, eighty times a night. I’ve been waiting long enough. Come on.”
I swallowed once and tried it for size. “I … uh … I love you.”
“There, was that so hard?”
“Not as bad as I thought it would be. Here’s one with a little more confidence. I love you. And how about this one—I love you. My God, it gets easier, I love you.”
She came over to me. “Hush, darlin’. This isn’t a political rally. And I love you also, and have for some time, and will for some time into the future. Generations. Now come on, before you drop.”
I suffered myself to be led into the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed, and she took off my shoes, and said, “This is once-in-a-lifetime service, I’ll have you know.”
“Uh,” I said.
I went over backward like a collapsing tent. She swung my legs onto the bed. I felt the light touch of her lips on mine, and then on my forehead. Sleep grabbed me like a big black thing with teeth.
Eighteen
THEY LET ME SLEEP exactly one hour. Christy shook me awake. I felt as though my head were stuffed with wet cotton. I could make stupid gargling sounds and that was about all.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my head hanging on my spaghetti neck and became dimly aware that Elly and Ardy and some others of our Tickler Terrace group were crowded into my room. I raised my head. Ardy couldn’t take his eyes off Christy.
“Please, Andy?” Christy said. “He’s on the phone.”
“Wha? Who?”
“Wargler. Right now.”
The little group steered me down the road to Elly’s house. I was a zombie. I grunted into the phone.
“McClintock? Damn you, it took you long enough.”
“What is it? What do you want?”
“Are you drunk?”
“I’m just about to wake up.”
“He didn’t go far in that car of yours. He drove it about a mile south of where you are right now, and then ran it off the road down into the brush. George overshot it first, drove all the way to the road block and spotted it on the way back, so he’s had over an hour to find a place to hide out. I’m getting dogs down there by the car, and I sent some people to get some of his clothes out of that shack for the dogs to start with. We tried to start your car. It’s bound up tight. Won’t turn over.”
“I just had a new ring job on it,” I said dismally.
“Then that did it. Look. Some of the boys will be out there to kind of keep an eye on you and the Hallowell girl. I think that maniac knows he’s cooked and you can’t trust ’em an inch. He’ll want to finish what he started on that Hallowell girl, if he can get close enough. You understand what I’m saying?”
I turned and looked for Christy. She was talking to Ardy.
I could see her standing out there in the sun. Out in the open.
“I understand.”
“We’re blocking the area good as we can. With every man and with volunteers. You stay close to that girl.”
“O.K.”
“He had an hour. I don’t think he got another car. He’s probably squatting in the mangrove someplace, waiting for dark.”
He hung up. I went out into the sunlight. My watch said quarter of nine. Ardy looked like a man who had just broken the bank.
They all crowded around again, and I gave out the information. Everybody started eyeing the brush. Christy moved a little closer to me and bit her lip. As we were talking a police sedan swung in, let off a stranger and went back out again. This one had a face like one of the blue herons, with the same yellow fierce wild eyes.
He picked out Christy and me and herded us off, shooed the others away. Those who were late for work already took off for town. Elly resented being left out.
It was funny how the idea that he might be within fifty feet of us changed even the look of the sunshine. The water in the creek looked blacker. The whole world had a slightly alien tinge. Christy’s fingers were like ice when I took her hand.
The new one was named Luffberry. He herded us into my place and then departed for a tour of the area. He came back and said, “I was supposed to look around and take you into town if I figured that would be better. The Chief’s got it in his head Kenney might come here. He told me if I figured it was safe enough, we’d leave you here as a kind of a decoy, maybe. They’s a man at that island, and one at the hospital, and one out to that restaurant, and one about every place he might head for. The roads are blocked and they’s a couple little airplanes out looking for him in case he hits inland across country, or steals a boat and tries to go out in the Gulf. I guess we’ll get him all right. Now you two stay in here and keep this place locked up and I’ll be waiting over in your place, lady, in case he shows. Now if he comes here, you give a hoot and a holler and I’ll be listening and come running. I’ll tell all the other folks to stay inside their places, the ones what don’t go to work.”
He left us. I locked the doors. I found a place where she could sit and not be seen from the windows.
“Andy, you go to bed. I’ll be all right.”
“No thanks. Not while there’s a chance of him showing up. I sat and watched him and listened to him talk. I respect him the way I respect the Red Army.”
“I … saw him too. I’m all right.”
“I’ll wait with you.”
“Andy, if he was going to come here, he would have, before they spotted his car. You need sleep, darling.”
I prowled around. I unlocked the side door off the kitchen and looked cautiously into the garage, and then hustled out and grabbed a gig and came back in and relocked the door. It was a big one, like Neptune’s trident, with a long sturdy handle. A wicked weapon, if you ever used it on anybody. I sat down on my couch with the gig close at hand. I was grimly determined to wait out the vigil, no matter how long it took.
I woke up on the couch at noon. Christy was blithely rattling pans in the kitchen. I felt slightly better, but shamefaced about sleeping. I went out there and herded her away from the window.
“What’s the idea?”
“I got hungry. I’m a big girl. I need regular meals.”
I noticed how she was dressed. She had on an old faded pair of my khaki shorts with the legs rolled high and tight, and a blue bath towel pinned into a halter.
“It was hot and I got comfortable,” she said.
“Mmmm,” I said.
“Please, sir.”
She was slightly breathtaking. The smell of food was good. I said, “Look. We can’t stay cooped up forever.”
“And why not?”
“That’s a good question I won’t answer. I’m going to go check with that Luffberry. Come on and let me out and lock the door after me.”
“Won’t he be mad?”
“I don’t care much at this point.”
I tested the door behind me to make certain it was locked. I yelled through to her to stay away from windows. I went down to her place, looking warily from side to side at the brush, feeling as though the shells underfoot were actually eggshells.
Luffberry was annoyed. And bored. As he was chewing me out, Elly came warily up to report a phone call for him. I waited for him. He came back in five minutes to report, sourly, that we could relax. After a lot of false starts the dogs had led the pursuit to a bay shore dock, that the owner of said dock thereupon reported a boat missing, and that the boat itself had been spotted pulled ashore on Horseshoe Key. The dogs had been transported there and had lost the trail when the fugutive had, apparently, taken to walking on the water. But he was, evidently, on Horseshoe Key which, Luffberry observed, was a plenty damn fool thing for a man in his spot to do, seeing as how there were only two bridges and thus two ways off it, both bridges now being blocked. He further observed that all this information had been available at eleven, and they had only now gotten around to informing him, and they desired his presence on Horseshoe Key and were sending a car for him at once.
“It proves to me, anyhow,” Luffberry said, “that the guy is nuts.”
I went back to my place. Christy let me in and said, “Lunch is on the table, master.”
We sat and started to eat and I told her the news. She listened carefully and looked worried.
“Andy, love, wouldn’t you say he was … intelligent?”
“In a twisted way.”
“I keep thinking of what my father told me a long time ago when he took me to see Thurston, the magician. He told me never to watch the hand that waved around. Watch the other one.”
“So?”
“That boat, Andy. It’s too pat, isn’t it? He’s bright enough to know that Horseshoe Key is a trap. It would be … well, perfect for him if he had some way to get off Horseshoe Key. They’ll all be watching the Key like a bunch of cats watching the wrong mousehole. I’m wondering if maybe you ought to lock the door again.”
I looked at her for a good ten seconds. I got up and went and locked the door. Assumption: Kenney was no longer on the Key. How did he get off? Swim? A swimmer in the bay by daylight would be much too conspicuous. People just do not swim in the bay. But if a man were determined, and knew the tides, and knew the area well, he could go out the sand spit to Horseshoe Pass and swim across when the tide was dead low. I got up and looked at my tide chart. Dead low tide had come, this Tuesday morning, at nine forty-three. He could swim the neck of the pass, given a break in the way of no fishing boats around. And that would bring him out on Vera Key, the next one south from Horseshoe Key. He’d have five minutes to swim across before the tide began to swirl in from the Gulf, turbulent enough to drown him. An airplane would not be likely to spot a head in the water. The police would think in terms of a boat or a car, and, finding none missing, would start thrashing through the shrubbery, of which Horseshoe Key has plenty.
Once on Vera Key he would be two miles from the mainland. One mile and seven-eighths down a sand road down the center of the small key, and then a short narrow causeway with a wooden hump-backed bridge, and an old couple who lived in the bridge house and opened the bridge manually when it had to be turned to let a boat through.
Swim the pass at nine forty-three. Ten minutes to get to the bridge. Call it ten o’clock at the bridge.
I went over it for Christy. She was thoughtful. I told her what I had in mind. She became more thoughtful.
“Well,” she said at last, “I guess they’d remember seeing him go over the bridge. It wouldn’t hurt anything.”
“It’s an animal instinct to double back on your tracks, throw off pursuit. That guy has lived most of his life as something being hunted. And he knows the area. It would be as good a way as any. A hell of a lot more devious than taking the stolen boat south a way, but actually a hell of a lot more effective.”
“It would be better than just sitting around here.”
“O.K., then?”
“I guess … O.K., Andy.”
“I’d rather have you with me than locked up here. I don’t ever want you out of my sight again, Christy.”
I went out cautiously, checked the area, moved the Cad closer to the door and opened the far door of the car. I honked and she came scuttling out, piled in and banged the door shut as I backed it around. I drove out our road, turned south on the trail and drove a fast five miles before turning right into the obscure little road that led to the Vera Key bridge. One day it won’t be obscure. It will have become another fat rich Key, loaded with heavy money, homes out of the architectural magazines. Right now Vera Key is just a half step ahead of the bulldozers, but it is already too late to expect to come down and grab yourself good land and wait for the rise. The rise has happened, and the land is sewed up and the boys are waiting.
It was a mile in to the bridge. The bridge was open. Two big cars with northern plates were waiting. A fat, elderly, red-faced man stood indignantly in the sun with his hands on his hips, glaring at the bridge.
I looked up and down the channel and there wasn’t a boat in sight. I got out and the indignant man turned on me as though I were personally responsible.
“I’m trying to get onto Vera Key to look at some land there, and by God, what kind of a way is this to run a goddamn bridge!”
“Shush!” his wife hissed at him from the car. “Shush!”
“You can bet your life I’m going to have something to say about a bunch of lazy crackers going away and leaving the bridge open. What the hell kind of a way is this to run a …”
“Shush!”
“Stop shushing me, dammit! I …” He looked beyond me and I saw the usual Hallowell reaction cut him off in mid stride and leave him with a wondering, enfeebled smile.
Christy came up beside me. “What is it, Andy?” The bridge tender’s house was on the Vera Key side. It had an ominously silent look.
“There isn’t anybody there,” the man said. “I blew my horn until I was afraid my battery would run down.”
I knew I wanted a look. The bridge was of the kind that turns on a central pier. It is turned by standing on the bridge itself and walking around and around with a big crank gadget, like an ox turning a millstone. When it is turned at right angles to its usual position, a boat can go through on either side of it. The crank affair was sticking up out of the socket in the bridge floor.
I walked over and looked at the gap. About twelve feet. I had no great urge to try to jump twelve feet and clear the bridge rail on the far side. The tide current was running in swift below me.
Down the bank to my left I saw an old skiff pulled up on shore without oars. But it did have a claw anchor tossed up into the brush at the end of about twenty feet of sturdy-looking rope. I went down and removed the anchor line from the bow, brought it back up.
“What are you going to do?” Christy asked.
“Just watch and cheer in the right places.” I tossed the anchor over the bridge rail. It pulled free the first time. The second time it caught. I yanked on it hard, then fastened it to the front bumper of the car of the indignant citizen and got him to back up slowly until the line was taut.
I then went across it, hand over hand. It pulled my shoulders practically free of the sockets, and by the time I got both hands on the bridge rail, all I could do was hang there for a minute. Then I got my knee up, pulled myself up the rest of the way and climbed feebly over the rail.
I bowed and Christy clapped. I unhooked the anchor and tossed it back and over to one side, and Christy busied herself returning it to the skiff. I began to walk around and around pushing on the big crank and the bridge slowly returned to its normal position, coming to a jarring stop when it had turned as far as it should. I took the crank out and tossed it out of the way by the rail and trotted off the other end of the bridge.
Christy was right behind me when I found the bridge keeper and his wife. The old couple were on the floor, facedown, side by side. Their wrists were fastened behind them with leader wire, twisted cruelly tight. Their ankles were fastened in the same way. The pliers with which it had been done were close at hand. They had a cutting edge. I snipped the wire from her wrists and ankles first. She sat up at once and began to untie the rag tied around her mouth. Christy helped her up as I unsnipped the old man. He got the rag off his mouth and started cursing. Most of it, it seemed, was directed at some damn fool who sat over there the other side of the bridge and blew his damn fool horn until you couldn’t hear yourself think. He went spryly out, rubbing his wrists, to inspect his precious bridge.
The old lady was willing to talk. Almost too willing.
“He come here around ten o’clock and he asked if we had bait, and he waited while George opened the bridge for a boat and closed it again, and while George was closing it, he came right in here and tied me up before I could hardly squeak. And then he got George when he came in. I swear he was like a crazy man. I heard him out in my kitchen, eating and talking to himself, like. And then a boat blew for the bridge to open, and he went on out and opened it himself. Then I heard some yelling and I heard the boat going off down the channel.”
I told her he was a crazy man, a murderer, and she looked as if she might faint.
“Which way was the boat headed?”
“South.”
I saw the telephone and told her I wanted to use it. I couldn’t get Wargler or George. I got the young one they called Jimmy and told him and he said he’d get word to them out on the Key right away.
The old man was still cursing. I went outside with Christy.
“It’s pretty obvious, now, Christy. He opened the bridge for a boat and then dropped onto the boat from the bridge and took over. The boat was headed south.”
I called to the old man, “About what time did that boat go through?”
“Quarter to eleven. He hung around a while after he tied us up like he did.”
By my watch it was nearly one-thirty. Two and three-quarter hours. Roy Kenney was still widening the gap. Assume fifteen knots. He could be nearly forty miles away in a straight line. Or he could have made the commandeered craft put him ashore at any number of places. He had moved so quickly and boldly and well, that it gave me the hopeless feeling he was going to get away.
From the air they could search for a cabin cruiser drifting someplace, or aground. Maybe the people aboard would be lucky, the way the old couple had been lucky. Spared by a whim.
There wasn’t anything else we could do. With Christy beside me I drove slowly back toward Tickler Terrace. Out on the trail two police cars went by us headed in the opposite direction, sirens lusty. I caught a glimpse of Chief Wargler’s florid face in the second car.
