Hot Spot (21 page)

I straightened up, looking around. Where would he keep it? There was a locker nailed on the front wall near the gun racks. That looked like a good place. I opened it, using the shirt on the glass knob, and found what I was looking for, a can of gun oil, the rod he used for cleaning the shotgun, some oily rags and cut patches, and a can of solvent. I carried it all over and put it on the table.

I rubbed the automatic very carefully with the shirt to get my prints off. Then I wiped both his hands with one of the oily rags—because he’d already cleaned the shotgun—and pressed his fingers to the barrel and the imitation mother-of-pearl butt-plates in several places, flipped the safety off again, and put it down pointing off at an angle away from him on the other side of the table. If he’d been holding it by the barrell with oily fingers, when it went off its recoil would have kicked it over there. I had a hunch that Sheriff was a hard man to fool about guns, and I had to make it look right. I stood back and examined it.

There was one more thing, and then I was through. How many times had he shot? I stood still, trying to remember. He’d shot twice at me after the lightning flash, and then the gun had gone off when it hit the floor. So altogether there should be four cartridge cases around here on the floor. I got down on my knees and started looking. When I’d found all four, I put three of them in my pocket and stood beside the table where he was and tossed the other one in the general direction it would have gone and let it roll where it would. That left only the question of where the bullets had gone. I walked over by the bed and looked towards where I’d been when he shot. There was an open window beyond. I walked over to it. Rain was coming in. It didn’t matter. If he’d shot himself in the afternoon while he was cleaning a gun he would hardly be getting up to close the windows when it started to rain in the middle of the night. I looked around the window frame and couldn’t find any bullet hole, so probably they’d both gone out. The other one, when he’d dropped the gun, wasn’t going to be so easy. But I was lucky. I found it in less than five minutes. It was in the baseplank next to the bed, right down by the floor. There were two thicknesses of plank here, and it hadn’t gone through, so it was all right. They’d never see it.

I stood up, got the pants off the bed, put them in the purse and closed it, picked up the shoes, and stood looking at it. It was all right. It was as good as I had planned it. There was a dead man, who’d never blackmail anybody again. There was the gun he’d killed himself with because he’d forgotten a simple thing lots of others have before him but which very few people have ever forgotten twice—to check the chamber of a gun before you try to clean it.

I looked at my watch. It was two-thirty. I had plenty of time to get back to town. I hadn’t forgotten anything, and I wasn’t scared any more. I leaned over a little and blew out the lamp.

And then the calmness left me. I jerked my head around, listening, feeling my skin tighten up in goose-flesh. I could hear it quite plainly now, and there wasn’t any doubt as to what it was.

It was an automobile horn. It went on blowing, on and on, above the monotonous sound of the rain.

I
LOST MY HEAD FOR
a minute. I ran out the front door and leaped off the porch, feeling the rain come pouring on to me, and then I was swallowed up in a world in which there was nothing anywhere except darkness, and water, and that unstoppable sound. It was laughing at me. It was accusing. It was pointing. Everybody on earth would hear it, and people would come from miles around to find out what was causing it and to stare at me—. It wasn’t loud, be cause it was coming from away up on the hill, but it was like all the automobile horns in the biggest traffic jam in the world all rolled into one. I ran on blindly, unable to listen or pay any attention to the warning inside my head which was screaming for me to stop. It was insane. I had to find the road. I was running away from the house, and once I lost contact with that I’d have no place to start from. And then I tripped and fell, and that was the only thing that saved me.

It knocked a little sense into me. I lay there in the mud with the rain pouring over me, fighting to shut out that sound so I could think. Let it blow. Nobody could hear it. There wasn’t another human being within miles. There wasn’t anything to be afraid of in the noise itself; that was just senseless terror. The danger was in something else entirely, and if I didn’t hang on to my senses and find the road I was done for.

I got up to my feet and looked behind me. I could see nothing at all. The shack could have been fifty feet back there, or it could have been a hundred miles. I tried to think, to see the whole clearing in my mind. I had run straight out the front door, so the road had to be somewhere to my left. I turned that way and started walking, feeling my way through the stumps and bushes of the clearing and fighting down that terrible yearning to run. Unless I got back on the road I didn’t have a chance.

Then I felt the ruts under my feet. I had found the road. I turned right, and started running again, trying to keep between them. My breath burned in my throat, and I was cursing in a monotonous kind of frenzy. Of all the cars on the lot, I’d had to pick that one. Why in the name of God hadn’t I at least asked Gulick which one it was when it cut loose on the lot Saturday afternoon? Why hadn’t I had sense enough to see the warning in the way the motor had turned over when I’d started it?

I was soaked now. Water ran out of my hair and down my neck. With every step it sloshed in my shoes. Suddenly, I felt the road swerve left, and then I was out of the clearing and starting uphill through the timber. The horn didn’t seem any louder as I got nearer to it. Was it getting weaker? I listened, holding my breath, but I couldn’t tell. That insane urgency pulled at me, starting me running again. I missed a turn in the road and stumbled into the trees, and tripped over something and fell. The purse slipped out of my hands. I squatted on my knees and groped blindly in the mud with my free hand, afraid to let go of the shoes with the other. The sound of the horn was growing weaker. There wasn’t any doubt of it. I could hear it dying. And then I could hear myself, cursing endlessly in a sort of lost and hopeless madness as I swung my hand around in the mud and water and drowned leaves, feeling for the purse. It never occurred to me I could leave it; nobody would ever find it, and there was nothing in it to identify her anyway. I had the money clasp in my pocket. I had to find it. And then my hand brushed it and it slid. I reached over and grabbed it and floundered back into the road. The pitch of the horn was changing.

I don’t know how I made the last hundred yards. I was gasping, and wind was burning in my throat. I kept falling. And all the time I could hear the horn growing weaker and weaker, like an alarm clock running down. Then I was up to it. It was off to my left. I plunged off the road, feeling ahead of me with my hands to get around the tree trunks. I bumped into the car, felt my way along it to the door and opened it, and tossed the shoes and purse inside. The horn was still groaning faintly. I yanked the hood up and groped around under it, jerking at wires I came in contact with and pounding on the firewall. It stopped. I collapsed weakly on the fender. In the sudden silence the rain sounded louder, falling through the trees and drumming on top of the car.

Getting off the fender with an effort, I closed the hood, and went back to the door and got in. Water ran off me on to the seat. I switched on the ignition with shaky fingers and reached for the starter button, weak with the unbearable suspense of it and wishing I knew how to pray. I pushed it and the starter groaned once, coming around until it engaged the motor, and then it stopped. I tried once more, and there was nothing at all. The battery was dead.

I sat there for a minute slumped over the wheel listening to the mournful sound of the rain and feeling the sick emptiness of fear inside me. It was the thing which had been goading me down there in the clearing and while I was beating my brains out trying to get up the hill in the darkness. There was no way to get the car started, and I was at least twenty miles from town. Daybreak would catch me long before I could walk it. And if I left the car down here I might as well leave my card, with a note to the Sheriff.

I could see him getting his teeth into it—a man down there who’d accidentally shot himself through the head while I was parked here in the timber in my car because I thought it was a drive-in movie. Now wasn’t that a strange coincidence. I cursed, and tried to shut it off. There must be some way out.

How long would it take me to walk it? But I knew the answer to that. It’d take at least five hours. It’d be after eight o’clock before I got to town. A dozen people, or twenty, or even more, would see me, and they’d remember it. I knew how I must look, drowned and water-soaked, covered with mud, and my clothes torn where I’d fallen. Maybe I could push the car back on the road, and get it started downhill to crank it. I got out and felt around in the blackness to locate the trees behind it, cramped the wheels around, and went around in front. I put my shoulder against the grill, and heaved. My feet slid out from under me and I fell against the front of the car. I braced them and tried again, putting all my weight and the desperation and fear into it, and the car rolled back three or four inches, poised there, and then came back towards me. It was impossible. Four men couldn’t do it. It was slightly upgrade to the road, and I couldn’t do it if I tried for a week.

I’d been so near to winning. Right up to the time I’d leaned over to blow out that light I’d had the game in my hand, and now it was gone. I was done.

No, I wasn’t. The idea hit me with the suddenness of light, and I straightened up, feeling the hope surge through me. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? There was Sutton’s car. I could drive to town in it—. No. That wouldn’t do. That would still leave this one here. And how could they swallow an accidental death if his car had disappeared and turned up in town? But I was on the trail of it, and then I had it. Sutton’s car was the same make. I could change batteries with him.

But how about tools? Was there anything in the car I could use to disconnect the terminals? I grabbed the keys and ran around and opened the trunk enough to get my head and shoulders under it, and began pawing wildly around inside it with my hands. There was no use even reaching for a match. They were drowned long ago. I wondered if there was any light left in the world. Maybe I had gone blind and didn’t even know it. My hands bumped into something and I felt it over. It was a jack handle. And then I found the jack itself. Oh, God, I thought, there must be a pair of pliers, at least. There has to be.

Then I bumped into something and heard it rattle against the side. I groped for it and got it under my hand. My heart leaped. It was a pair of pliers. I let the door of the trunk down and went around to the battery. That terrible urgency had hold of me again, now that I could see a way out. How much longer did I have before daylight? There was no way to tell what time it was—. Sure there was. There’d be enough power in the battery to operate the lights for a few minutes. I pulled out the switch and the headlights came on very yellow and dim, and growing fainter as I looked at them. I ran around in front and looked at the watch. It was three-ten. I had to get this battery loose, walk back to the shack, get that one disconnected, and carry it back up the hill. Was there enough time?

I located the terminals. They were so covered with corrosion I couldn’t even tell where the bolt nuts were. I banged savagely on them with the pliers to break it loose and twisted at them with my hands. Oh, hell, I thought in agony, if I could only see! I opened the pliers and ground them harshly around the side of the connector. And then I could feel the nut. I put the pliers on it, tightened up, and turned. Nothing gave except the pliers slipped a little, chewing up the nut. I bore down again. It came that time. The bolt broke.

It’s all right, I thought crazily. It’s all right. They’re a press fit, and it’ll work without the bolt. All I have to do is drive it on. I started gouging frenziedly at the other one. The nut turned on it, and in a few minutes I had it off. I started to lift the battery out. No, I thought. Why carry it down there? When I get the other battery I can drive down with it.

I was ready to go. I put the pliers in my pocket and groped my way through the trees to the road. I hit it and started to run when the same thought occurred to me again. I wouldn’t be able to find the car when I came back. I wouldn’t have the horn to guide me, and I couldn’t see the handkerchief. It had probably washed away. I had to mark the place somehow. But how? Geez, I thought, I can’t stand here all night. I’ve got to do something. I leaped to the side of the road and started sweeping my arms around. I found a small pine and broke off a limb six or seven feet long, and threw it across the ruts. I’d run into it with my feet when I came back.

I turned then and started running downhill through the downpour, feeling the water slosh in my shoes. I lost track of the number of times I fell and how many times I blundered off the road. When I got down in the clearing and groped and stumbled my way into the yard in front of the shack, breathing was an agony, I wanted to lie down and rest. I felt my way to the car and when I got the door open I turned on the lights and held my watch under the dash. It said twelve minutes until four. I wanted to scream at it. It was lying. It hadn’t taken that long.

I ground savagely at the bolts through the battery connectors, trying to work too fast and fumbling. I dropped the pliers and had to grope around for them in the darkness. Suddenly I was conscious that I was whispering to myself. I was saying, “Hurry, hurry, hurry—,” in a kind of chant that had been going on forever like the rain. I got both connectors loose at last and lifted the battery out. I had to be careful about falling now. If I dropped the battery on anything solid it would break open like an over-ripe squash.

It was nothing now but sheer nightmare. I wasn’t going forward any more. I was just moving my feet up and down in the same place with the same weight on my shoulders and the same rain coming down while time ran past me like a river around a snag. I couldn’t remember the turns in the road. I didn’t know how far I’d come, or how far I had to go. I must have passed the car. It couldn’t have been this far. Maybe I’d brushed past that limb and hadn’t noticed it. I’d never make it now.