Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories (25 page)

I want to pray but I don't know how. I never went to church much, I never got to know God. The doctors asked if I wanted to see a minister. I said no. What could a minister do for me? Would a minister understand about the light and the dark? I don't think so. Not the way I understand.

The lights in this room are bright, real bright. I asked the doctors to turn the lights up as high as they would go and one of them said he would and he did. But outside, it's night—it's dark. I can see it, the dark, pressing against the window, if I look over that way. I don't look. Dying scares me even more when I look at the night—

I just looked. I couldn't stop myself. The dark, always the dark, trying to swallow the light. But not the black dark that comes with no moon, no stars. Gray dark, softened by fog. High fog tonight, high and heavy, blowing cold. It'll drop by morning, though. There won't be much visibility. But that won't stop the boats from going out. Never has, never will. Wouldn't have stopped us from going out—me and Kjel and Pete and Nicky. It's the season and the big Kings are running. Christ, it's been a good salmon run this year. One of the best in the last ten. If it keeps up like this, Kjel said this morning, we'll have the mortgage on The Kingfisher paid off by the end of the year.

But he said that early this morning, while we were still fishing.

He said that before the dark came and swallowed the light. It seems like so long ago, what happened this morning. And yet it also seems like it must have been just a minute or two . . .

We were six miles out, finished for the day and on our way in—made limit early, hit a big school of Kings.
Whoo-ee!
They were practically jumping into the boat. I was in the wheelhouse, working on the automatic depth finder because it'd been acting up a little, wishing we could afford a better one. Wishing, too, that we could afford a Loran navigation system like some of the other skippers had on their boats. Kjel and Pete and Nicky were working the outriggers, hauling in the lines by hand. We didn't have one of those hydraulic winches, either, the kind with an automatic trigger that pulls in a fish as soon as it hits the line. The kind that does all the work for you. We had to do it ourselves.

The big Jimmy diesel was rumbling and throbbing, loud, at three-quarters throttle. I shouldn't have been able to hear them talking out on deck. But I heard. Maybe it was the wind, a trick of the wind. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I heard.

I heard Nicky laugh, and Pete say something that had Lila's name in it, and Kjel said, "Shut up, you damn fool, he'll hear you!"

And Nicky said, "He can't hear inside. Besides, what if he does? He knows already, don't he?"

And Kjel said, "He doesn't know. I hope to Christ he never does."

And Pete said, "Hell, he's got to have an idea. The whole village knows what a slut he's married to . . ."

I had a box wrench in my hand. I put it down and walked out there and I said, "What're you talking about? What're you saying about Lila?"

None of them said anything. They all just looked at me. It was a gray morning, no sun. A dark morning, not much light. Getting darker, too. I could see clouds on the horizon, dark hazy things, swallowing the light—swallowing it fast.

I said, "Pete, you called my wife a slut. I heard you." Kjel said, "Danny, take it easy, he didn't mean nothing—" I said, "He meant something. He meant it." I reached out and caught Pete by the shirt and threw him up against the port outrigger. He tried to tear my hands loose; I wouldn't let go. "How come, Pete? What do you know about Lila?"

Kjel said, "For Christ's sake, Danny—"

"What do you know, goddamn you!"

Pete was mad. He didn't like me roughing him up like that. And he didn't give a damn if I knew—I guess that was it. He'd only been working for us a few months. He was a stranger in Camaroon Bay. He didn't know me and I didn't know him and he didn't give a damn.

"I know because I was with her," he said. "You poor sap, she's been screwing everybody in the village behind your back. Everybody! Me, Nicky, even Kjel here—"

Kjel hit him. He reached in past me and hit Pete and knocked him loose of my hands, almost knocked him over board. Pete went down. Nicky backed away. Kjel backed away too, looking at me. His face was all twisted up. And dark—dark like the things on the horizon.

"It's true, then," I said. "It's true."

"Danny, listen to me—"

"No," I said.

"It only happened once with her and me. Only once. I tried not to, Danny, Jesus I tried not to but she . . . Danny, listen to me . . ."

"No," I said.

I turned around, I put my back to him and the other two and the dark things on the horizon and I went into the wheelhouse and shut the door and locked it. I didn't feel anything. I didn't think anything either. There was some gasoline in one of the cupboards, for the auxiliary engine. I got the can out and poured the gas on the deck boards and splashed it on the bulkheads.

Outside Kjel was pounding on the door, calling my name. I lit a match and threw it down.

Nothing happened right away. So I unlocked the door and opened it, and Kjel started in, and I heard him say, "Oh my God!" and he caught hold of me and yanked me through the door.

That was when she blew.

There was a flash of blinding light, I remember that. And I remember being in the water, I remember seeing flames, I remember the pain. I don't remember anything else until I woke up here in the hospital.

The county cops asked me if I was sorry I did it. I said I was. And I am, but not for the reason they thought. I couldn't tell them the real reason. They wouldn't have understood, because first they'd have had to understand about the light and the dark.

I close my eyes now and I can see my old man's face on the night he died. He was a drunk and the liquor killed him, but nobody ever knew why. Except me. He called me into his room that night, I was eleven years old, and he told me why.

"It's the dark, Danny," he said. "I let it swallow all the light." I thought he was babbling. But he wasn't. "Everything is light or dark," he said. "That's what you got to understand. People, places, everything, the whole world—light or dark. You got to reach for the light, Danny. Sunshine and smiles, everything that's light. If you don't you'll let the dark take over, like I did, and the dark will destroy you. Promise me you won't let that happen to you, boy. Promise me you won't."

I promised. And I tried—Christ, Pa, I tried. Thirty years I reached for the light. But I couldn't hold onto enough of it, just like you couldn't. The dark kept creeping in, creeping in.

Once I told Lila about the dark and the light. She just laughed. "Is that why you always want to make love with the light on, sleep with the light on?" she said. "You're crazy sometimes, Danny, you know that?" she said.

I should have known then. But I didn't. I thought she was light. I reached for her six years ago, and I held her and for a while she lit up my life . . . I thought she was light. But she wasn't, she isn't. Underneath she's the dark. She's always been the dark, swallowing the light piece by piece—with Nicky, with Pete, with all the others. Kjel, too, my best friend. Turning him dark too.

I did it all wrong, Pa. All of it, right to the end. And that's the real reason I'm sorry about what I did this morning.

I shouldn't have blown them up, blown me up. I should have blown her up, lit up the dark with fire and light.

Too late now. I did it all wrong.

And she's still out there, waiting.

The dark out there, waiting.

Deathwatch.

The pain isn't so bad now, the fire on me doesn't burn so hot. The morphine working? No, it isn't the morphine.

Something cool touches my face. I'm not alone in the room any more.

The bastard with the scythe is here.

But I won't look at him. I won't look at the dark of his clothes and the dark under his hood. I'll look at the light instead . . . up there on the ceiling, the big fluorescent tubes shining down, light shining down, look at the light, reach for the light, the light . . .

And the door opens, I hear it open, and from a long way off I hear Lila's voice say, "I couldn't stay away, Danny, I had to see you, I had to come—"

The dark!

D
unsett had two things Burke had coveted and one habit Burke hated, so Burke decided to murder him.

He walked over to Dunsett's neighboring dairy ranch, which was one of the things he coveted, and stole a glance through the kitchen window at Dunsett's wife, which was the other thing he coveted, and then he went into the milking barn. Dunsett was there, using a hose on the floor near an overturned bucket. The barn and all the dairy equipment gleamed spotlessly; Dunsett was a fastidious man, and a fanatical one when it came to his cattle. He claimed he had a kind of mystical communion with them—that he would do anything for them and in return they would do anything for him. Which was a lot of nonsense, of course, although Burke had to admit that Dunsett's dairy ranch was the most productive in the state.

He went up to where Dunsett stood working with the hose. "Hello, Dunsett," he said. "What are you doing?"

"Well, I'll tell you," Dunsett said. "I was using a lye soap solution to wash the floor and I knocked over the bucket accidentally. So I'm cleaning it up now." He grinned. "After all, there's no use milking over spilt lye."

That was the habit Burke hated—outrageous punning. It cemented his decision. He walked over and picked up a metal bar that was part of the vacuum milking machine and hit Dunsett over the head with it.

Dunsett make a cow-like bleating sound and toppled over on the floor. Outside, somewhere in the north pasture, several cattle began to make noise—a new low for them, as if they had heard Dunsett and were responding to his cry. But then, after a few seconds, they stopped and it was quiet again, inside and out.

Burke determined to make the murder look like an accident. First, he dragged the body over near one of the cattle stalls and arranged it so that it seemed as though Dunsett had slipped and fallen against a stanchion. Then he wiped off the bar with his handkerchief and returned it to the vacuum machine. When he stepped back to examine it he was satisfied that it appeared clean and homogenous, like every milk bar he had ever seen.

He turned and started across to the doors. Just before he got there, he heard voices outside. He looked around frantically, but there was no other immediate exit from the barn. Which meant that he had to find a place to hide, and the only place he saw nearby was a stack of large stainless-steel milk pails painted in Dunsett's favorite color of crimson.

Burke ran there and dropped down on all fours behind the stack, just as the barn doors opened. There was a narrow crawlspace between some of the containers; he eased his way along it to the front, where he could see a narrow aperture between two of them. He knelt there and peered past the red pails at Dunsett.

The voices belonged to Mrs. Dunsett and one of the ranch hands. They found the body right away, and there was a lot of excitement and confusion for the next couple of minutes. Burke held his breath and sat perfectly still as he watched them. He knew he was lost if he was found.

Mrs. Dunsett left finally to notify the authorities, but the ranch hand stayed there to watch over the body. After a time he began to pace back and forth in heavy-footed strides. Burke remained motionless and watched and waited, listening to the sound of the one hand clopping.

Before long the sheriff arrived from the nearby village, along with the local mortician, who was also the county coroner; the mortician drove his hearse right inside the barn. They examined the body while Dunsett's wife and the ranch hand looked on. Then the sheriff glanced around the barn, and for a moment Burke was afraid he would want to search it.

But the mortician said, "Looks like an accident to me. Fell and hit his head on that stanchion. Probably slipped on the wet floor."

The sheriff agreed. And he stopped looking around.

Burke breathed an inaudible sigh of relief as they loaded Dunsett's remains into the hearse and prepared to depart. He was home free. All he had to do was leave his hiding place, slip outside, and close the barn door after the hearse was gone.

Which he did, five minutes later. There was no sign of anyone in the vicinity; apparently they had all gone into the village. Smiling, Burke moved away from the barn and headed for the north pasture, a shortcut to his own property. He thought he had committed the perfect crime.

But he was wrong.

When he got out in the middle of the pasture, Dunsett's outraged cattle converged on him, knocked him flat on his face, piled on top of him, and crushed him to death.

First moral: Murderers often get it in the end.

Second moral: Never underestimate the herd mentality. Third moral: Milk and beef can put a lot of weight on you. Fourth moral: When walking in a pasture, always be on the alert for cow flops.

I
was walking along one of the cinder paths in the southern end of the park when the blond guy in the Navy pea jacket tried to mug me.