Death of a Tall Man (14 page)

“Do we help?” Jerry said. “Help look?”

They did, Bill told them. Then he hesitated.

“You girls stay together,” he directed. “Jerry and I, the trooper, Mullins—we split up. You don't.” He looked at them. “Gordon is very—jumpy,” he told them. “I should hate to have either of you—”

“We'll be careful,” Dorian said. “Very careful.”

Bill Weigand looked at the two of them as if he didn't believe what Dorian promised. But he went off with Jerry toward the center hall, talking as he went. Pam and Dorian were alone in the big living room.

“This is the kind of room I've been telling Jerry about,” Pam said, waving at it generally. “Long, with french doors and everything. And a terrace outside.”

She looked down the room toward the rear of the house.

“Only,” she said, “I'd like it a little longer, if anything, and that end down there used as a dining room. Maybe with some way of shutting it off.”

She walked down the room and stopped near the end.

“About here,” she said. “Some sort of a partition. Movable. Or screens. Or one of those what-you-may-call-'ems that fold up. Here there must be—” They had reached the end of the room. There was a doorway arch at the left. “Here there is a dining room,” Pam said. “Rather nice, too. Do you and Bill want a house?”

“Very much,” Dorian said. “Doesn't everybody? But a policeman—”

Pam said she knew.

“Do you still mind his being one?” she said.

“Not any more,” Dorian said. “I see it his way.” She stopped and looked at a picture on the wall. “Nice,” she said. “I wish I could paint.”

“But—” Pam said.

Dorian said she meant paint. She didn't mean do fashion drawings. She meant paint.

There was no one in the dining room. They went through it to a swinging door beyond.

“Pantry,” Pam said. “Then kitchen.”

They looked at the kitchen.

“Actually,” Pam said, “I suppose it's very sanitary, and everything. But it looks clinical.”

They had turned on lights. The kitchen was very bright. And very empty.

“A
really
big refrigerator,” Pam said, and went over to look at it. “Big enough to keep anything.” She heard herself and stopped suddenly. She looked at it again. “Anything,” she repeated, in a changed voice. She touched the handle, drew her hand back, pressed on it with resolution. The door of the refrigerator came open. Dorian from across the room and Pam, from closer, looked in.

“Food,” Pam said. “Just food.” She sounded relieved. “Look,” she said. “It's got a special freeze compartment and—”

She explored. Dorian watched her. Then, because there was a door, half glassed, in the wall at her right, she turned to it and opened it and looked out. It opened on a sheltered terrace. The kitchen was a wing; it and the quarters of the Gustafs were a wing. The door was in a corner made by the wing and the french doors which formed a wall of the dining room. The terrace was paved and white in the moonlight. And Dorian, her hand still on the door, was suddenly motionless and she drew her breath in quickly. Pam heard that before she heard Dorian Weigand, her voice oddly hurried, call “Pam!”

They opened the door a little wider and looked out. Grace Spencer lay there, on the flagging, as if she were asleep, face down. But her head was not pillowed on an arm, as it would have been if she had been asleep. The moonlight was white on her. It made the blood around her head look black. It was a spreading blackness.

They went out together—close together. It was Pam who knelt beside the nurse. She knelt briefly and then stood up.

“Her whole head—” she said, in a voice which shook a little. “Her whole head, Dorian.”

Dorian put an arm around Pam North, and Dorian did not look down at what lay by their feet. She drew Pam back into the bright kitchen, and Pam was shaking under her arm.

“I'm—” Pam North began, and then closed her mouth and did not finish. Her face was very white; lipstick was sharp against the pallor. She waited a moment, quiet; using all her strength, and not moving. “All right,” she said. “I'm not going to be. You—didn't look?”

“Not—closely,” Dorian said. She was white, too. “Not after—after I saw from the door.”

“Somebody struck her with an iron something,” Pam said. “A rod. More—more than once. The rod is there, in the—by her head.”

“You're making a picture of it,” Dorian said. “Don't.”

“I know,” Pam said. “I know now. It's a spit from a broiler. One of those charcoal broilers. It—Dorian, it
bent
a little!”

She put her hands up and covered her face. Dorian waited. Pam took her hands down.

“All right,” she said. “But I had to get the picture over with. We've got to find Jerry.”

They went, almost running and still close together, back through the pantry and the dining room. In the dining room Pam began to call. “Jerry!” she called. “Jerry!”

They were in the living room. Halfway up its length five people were standing—all facing them; one expression on their very different faces. Jerry and Bill, Mullins—Dan Gordon and Debbie. Then Jerry broke from the little group and came to meet Pam and Dorian. Pam ran into his arms and clung to him for a moment.

“Out there,” she said, gesturing behind her. “Oh—Jerry!”

Dorian Weigand was beside her husband; she clung to his left arm with both her hands. She was very white, too. Bill looked down at her.

“The nurse,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Miss Spencer. She's out there. She's—somebody beat her skull in. Pam—Pam looked.”

Bill and Mullins moved fast, out through the french doors of the dining room. They did not stay long. Their faces were hard when they came back. They looked like policemen. They walked back, looking at Gordon and the girl. Then Weigand stood in front of them, and looked at them without saying anything for what seemed like a very long time.

“You say you were together?” he said. “All the time? In the—in whatever you call that room?”

His voice was without expression.

“Yes,” the girl said. “Oh—yes.”

But almost at the same time, Dan Gordon spoke.

“Not all the time,” he said. “No.”

He looked back at Weigand, and his eyes were steady. But perspiration stood out on his forehead.

“Sit down,” Weigand told them. “Both of you.”

There was a deep chair near and Debbie Brooks sat in it. She did not sit back in it; she sat on the edge and she held Dan Gordon's left hand tight. With his free hand, Dan drew a lighter chair near enough and sat beside her. His free hand gripped the wooden arm of the chair.

Bill Weigand turned back toward a table behind the sofa which stood before the fireplace. He seemed to hesitate a moment. He picked up a book lying on the table and looked at it idly. Then, with no warning, quickly, he slapped the book down hard, flat, on the polished wood. It made a sharp crack, almost like an explosion. Everybody started, and then looked at Bill.

But you could not call Dan Gordon's movement a mere start of surprise. It was convulsive. But it was a convulsion which shook his whole body. His head went back against the back of the chair, the neck twisted. His left hand broke from Deborah's grasp, his right came away from the chair arm. Both hands went to his face and covered it. Both hands, his whole body, trembled.

They looked at him, then, in the instant before Deborah's young arms went around him, holding him; before she turned toward Weigand defiantly, her eyes hot with anger. They all looked at Dan Gordon, tall and, in a lean fashion, powerful—and cowering like a frightened child.

After a moment, Dan Gordon recovered himself. Gently, he pushed the girl away. He looked at Weigand and his eyes told nothing.

“I'm sorry, Gordon,” Bill said, and for the first time he spoke to Gordon in a tone which was not his official tone. “I'm sorry. I wanted to know.”

“Well,” Gordon said, and his voice was controlled. “Now you know.”

“Yes,” Bill said. “Now I know.”

Debbie Brooks put her face down in her hands, and her hair flowed down, covering face and hands. Dan Gordon reached out toward her bent shoulders and then, hesitantly, withdrew his hand. His face flushed, and then he turned back toward Bill Weigand. Anger grew on his face, twisting his mouth. Then, with a kind of confused violence, he was on his feet and he began to talk. He talked too loudly. His anger was ugly in ugly words. Weigand listened only a moment.

“Stop it!” he said. His voice was harsh, breaking through the other's words. “Stop it, Gordon!”

Gordon moved toward Weigand, hurling the ugly words. His face was contorted. He was taller than Weigand and his fists clenched. Bill stood, not moving, not seeming to tense his muscles, his arms hanging loosely at his sides and his hands open. Only his eyes seemed alert. Mullins moved in from a position near the fireplace, and he moved easily and without hurry.

“Stop it, Gordon,” Bill said. His voice was not so loud. It was almost matter of fact. Gordon did not seem to hear him. “Watch yourself, Gordon,” Weigand said. “Watch yourself.” His tone was almost quiet, now.

Debbie Brooks was looking up. She pushed back her hair with both hands.

“Dan!” she said. “Danny!”

Gordon was within arm's length of Weigand and still coming toward him. And then he stopped. It was hard to say what had stopped him; hard to guess whether he had heard the girl's low, pleading voice. For a moment after he had stopped, and fallen silent, he stood unmoving, looking at Weigand. Hatred began to fade out of his eyes, and purpose left them. He seemed puzzled, suddenly—bewildered. You would have thought he was surprised to find himself standing there, so close to Weigand and so threatening. Then he looked embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he said. “Don't know what—” He broke off. “Sorry,” he said again. He went back to his chair and looked down at Debbie a moment and shook his head. Then he sat down beside her and took the hand she gave him. He held it tight.

“You mustn't,” Debbie said, and looked at Weigand anxiously. “Please! Can't you understand?”

Weigand nodded.

“I understand, Miss Brooks,” he said, and he spoke slowly. “Do you?”

She looked at him and shook her head. Her eyes were wide and, Bill thought, frightened.

“How long has it been, Gordon?” Weigand asked. His voice, again, was matter of fact. He looked at Dan Gordon, and saw perspiration standing out on his forehead. Gordon freed his hand from Debbie's and took a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wiped both his hands, carefully. Then he took the girl's hand again.

“Several months,” he said. “It started after things were over. Delayed reaction, they say.”

He might have been talking about someone else.

“Better than it was?” Weigand said.

Gordon said he guessed so.

“Oh, yes,” Debbie said. “Much better, Danny.”

“All right,” Dan said, and smiled down at her. “Much better, Debbie.”

But he looked at Weigand almost immediately and his eyes held no confidence.

It was all there, Weigand thought. Extreme irritability, restlessness, excessive perspiration, convulsive reaction to sharp sounds—all of it you could see from outside was there. You didn't need to be a psychiatrist to put a name to it—the name they were using this time. Combat fatigue. But you needed to be more of a psychiatrist than Weigand was to know what it did inside, where you couldn't see. Maybe it needed more of a psychiatrist than anybody was.

“Why did you leave the office?” Weigand asked. “You knew we wanted to talk to you.”

“What the hell,” Gordon said. “You made me wait. I've done enough waiting in the last few years. I was tired of being there.”

“Why did you think you could get away with it?” Weigand asked.

Gordon looked at Weigand, shook his head, and repeated “get away with it?”

There was, in theory, a patrolman who would have stopped him, Weigand said. Only in theory, but Gordon couldn't have known.

“I don't know,” Gordon said. “I didn't think of it particularly. I just went.”

“And got your car and drove out here?” Weigand asked him.

“Yes,” Gordon said. “Sure.” He hesitated a moment. “I wasn't hiding, or anything,” he said. “I wouldn't have come here if I had been.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Not if you thought of it. But—was there something you had to do here, Gordon? Something that wanted doing before we came?”

“Such as?” Gordon said.

Bill declined to be drawn. He said he had no suggestions. “At the moment,” he said.

“And in the library,” he went on. “When the lights went out. Why did you run again?” He watched Gordon's face. “Hold onto yourself,” he said. “It won't get you anything to blow up.” He waited, interested to see what would happen. Gordon got hold of himself.

“I didn't run,” Gordon said. “When the lights went out I—I went to find Debbie.”

“You were afraid something would happen to her?” Weigand asked.

“I guess so,” Gordon said.

Weigand turned to the girl.

“Miss Brooks, did you throw the light switches?” he asked, his words coming quick.

She looked at him. Then she looked at Gordon.

“Why would I?” she said. “Dan hasn't anything to hide.”

She looked back at the tall young man beside her when she said that. Her eyes questioned him. Again, Weigand thought, there was fear in them.

“I think you did,” Weigand said, and his voice was almost gentle. “I think you don't know whether he has anything to hide or not, Miss Brooks. I think you're afraid he has.”

The girl looked quickly at Weigand and then back at Dan Gordon. She was looking at Dan as she spoke; she was speaking to him.