Dead Low Tide (22 page)

“Wargler took me right to his house and his wife found a robe that almost fit me after I took a shower to get the salt off. Then I had a great big strong drink and we talked, and I told them everything that had happened. The Chief decided that I’d seen the man who murdered John Long, and if it was announced that I was dead, it would give him a false sense of security, so he’d stay around. Because if it came out that he didn’t … get me, then he might take off, knowing I could identify him. He put a man to watch Joy’s place and he said they’d better not barge in and question her, because she might alert the man, whoever he was. I asked if they could tell you I was all right, and Wargler said he better not, and he said he’d even give it out as a sex murder to make the man feel even safer. He said you better not know, because he wanted you to have the right reaction, and he didn’t have much faith in how well you could act. But he did promise he’d let you out. I insisted on that, or I wouldn’t stay hidden, I said. They put me in the spare room, and I told the Chief what clothes to bring out of my closet. And I asked him how they’d arrange it, and he said the Hoover brothers were his wife’s first cousins and they’d cooperate to make it look good, getting my body in a net.”

“That Wargler,” I said wonderingly. “Had you like an ace in the hole, and as soon as Roy Kenney saw you, he knew all his time had run out, all at once. I can see what happened to Joy now. From talking to her landlady, I knew he went back. And I think he told her he’d killed you, and maybe told her
he’d kill anybody else she tried to talk to. And she could tell right then and there he’d gone over the edge, at last. Like when he killed the kitten in the barn, a long time ago. Then, there was her conflict. She
had
to turn him in. But emotionally she couldn’t. She’d protected him for too long. So there was only one thing she could do. Retreat to some place where the decision wouldn’t exist. She’s basically, I guess, a good person. But there’s some stain in that blood. He got more of it than she did. And she got just enough to live in her own type of hell. Anyway, if they can get back into that dark place where she’s gone and get the information to her that the police know now, and that her brother is a fugitive … that ought to help bring her out of it because the conflict will no longer exist.”

We got out of the car and walked, hand in hand, into my place.

I opened two cans of cold beer. She sat on my kitchen table and I leaned on the sink, and she made me go over everything that had happened. I’d been ramming around for nearly twenty-four hours, but looking at her was enough to make me feel like a good match for Marciano. The chill beer was nectar. Tickler Terrace was heaven.

It wasn’t pleasant to tell about Mary Eleanor. It wasn’t a happy thing to tell. Poor damn little wench, all fouled up inside, but not enough to get killed for it, not in that way, not with two keen little steel fangs twisting their way into the hollow at the base of the unconscious throat.

I covered all of it, for my Christy, and at the end my voice turned thick and rusty and my eyelids were packed with beach sand, and my leg bones were made from soft putty. The sun was up and I was looking at her. My eyes were focusing
wrong. Her head would swell up to the size of a bushel basket and then fade away into something the size of a dime.

I looked at her and said, “A guy can be wrong, you know. He can underestimate something just because it comes with a few laughs. And never know it was exactly right for him until all of a sudden they take it away.”

She looked shy. It looked right on her. Bridal and right.

“You would have found out,” she said.

“At sixty-three. But you knew it, didn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“When?” I asked her.

“When does a thing like that creep up on you? Click, like a box top? Boing? Thud? Uh uh. Not like that. You realize it all of a sudden, but when you realize it you know you’ve had it coming on … like a virus.”

“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.

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.