The Nothing Man (12 page)

"I wouldn't want to advise you," I said. "I don't have much use for Judge, and-well, you know, my own wife and all. I might give you the wrong dope."

"Uh-huh. Sure. Well"-he sighed-"you'll buzz me in the morning, then?"

"As soon as I talk to Lovelace."

We said good night and hung up. I was reasonably confident that he would give Tom little trouble tonight. And by morning…

By morning?

She knelt down in front of me, resting her elbows on my knees. "Brownie. Is it-is there something wrong?"

"They think they've got the man who killed Ellen," I said. "One of the boys from the paper. I-it's hard to believe that he's guilty."

"Poor Brownie. It's just one thing after another, isn't it? Want another drink, darling? Something to eat?"

"No," I said. "I don't think I do."

"Why don't you get out for a while, darling? Ride around and get a little fresh air. You must be getting awfully restless."

"Well, I-"

"You do that, Brownie." She cocked her head to one side, smiling at me. "Pretty please? I'll lie down while you're gone."

I grabbed her in my arms. I hugged her, burying my face in her hair. "God," I said. "Jesus, God, Deborah. If you only knew-"

"I do know," she said. "You love me. I love you. I know that, and-that's enough."

"I wish it was as simple as that," I said. "I wish-"

"It is, Brownie. It
is
that simple."

I kissed her.

I left the house and drove away.

I drove up on the hill first, up into the Italian section of town, where I had a few drinks at a bar. Then I bought a bottle in a liquor store, pulled the car onto a side street, and sat there drinking alone in the dark.

I drank for a while. I wondered… about her, about Ellen. About myself.

Why? I asked. Why had I done what I had to Ellen? That was a mere by-phrase with her-the "you burn me up." An imbecile would have known that, and I was not, by the most exaggerated estimate, an imbecile. I had had to kill her-_perhaps_-and perhaps I would have to kill Deborah. But the other…

Was it because… well, hadn't she always been hysterically afraid of fires? And Deborah-wasn't she morbidly afraid of dogs?

I tried to look at myself squarely, to think the thing through. I couldn't do it. Something kept getting in the way, bending my vision around into a circle; and while I was in that circle I was not of it. It did not touch me. Between the man who wanted to look and the man to be looked at, was a heavy curtain. Drawn, of course, by the inner man.

It was now after nine o'clock. I gave up the searching and started home. I wasn't going to kill her; I knew that much, at least. There was no need to-no real reason- and I wasn't. And…

And suddenly there was a reason, many of them, and I was going to do it. The two-way pull had me to itself. All resistance had ended abruptly, and I was swung far out into that other world. There was nothing to hold me back. It was as though she had suddenly ceased to exist.

I let the car coast into the yard quietly, the motor stilled. I eased the door of the house open. Silently, I went in.

The kitchen had been cleaned up and the dishes put away. The living-room had been swept and put in order. I hesitated, looking around, and it was ridiculous to feel that way, in view of what I intended doing, but I was troubled, worried about her.

To have left her alone, in this isolated railroad-side shack… She'd have been helpless, although she'd have doubtless tried to fight. And if there'd been a scuffle, the house might be like this. Put to rights, and…

I went into the bedroom.

I heaved a sigh of relief.

She was all ri-she was there. Stretched out on the bed on her stomach. She was lying with her face in the pillow, her arms akimbo on it, the horsetail of corn-colored hair hanging down to one side.

So quiet. So peaceful and calm and trusting. So… quiet.

Actually, she must have been one of those nervous sleepers. You could see how she had been balled up tight; you could see it by the way the sheets were wrinkled and the mattress depressed. Now, finally, she had straightened out, her body stretched out full length. But she was still tense, her fingers sticking out rigidly, her whole body stiff, unbending, motionless.

That's how she lay there, and I heaved a sigh of relief, and I killed her.

I stood over her, staring down, studying her position: the way her neck formed an unsupported bridge between the pillow and her shoulders.

I stooped down at her side, balling my hand into a fist. I raised it, brought it down hard.

There was a dull pop, and her neck sagged and her head bent backward.

I picked up her purse, put the poem in it, lifted her in my arms and carried her out to the car.

It was all right. It was a game again. I had been forced to play and with an inordinately heavy handicap. And I had won, and she perforce had lost. But…

But already I was feeling the emptiness, the lifelessness.

And off in the not-too-distant distance, it began to move toward me… _The withered and dying world, the vast and empty desert where a dead man walked through eternity_.

I reached the dog pound.

I threw her over the wall.

I must do so…

The story broke about five minutes before deadline, and I handled it. It was short, thank God. The paper was already made up, and there was only one brief yarn that the news editor could yank. So this one had to be short also. There wasn't a whole lot to say, for that matter, since the body had only been discovered a few minutes before.

Those half-starved dogs were always fighting and raising hell, and the Peablossoms-the old couple-hadn't investigated the racket until morning. By that time, of course, there wasn't much left of… Well, they'd identified her by the contents of her purse: by, among other things, a nearly empty box of sleeping pills with her name on it.

I say
they'd
done it, meaning the cops, not the Peablossoms. They'd also found the poem in her purse.

There was no way of knowing how long she'd been dead, whether she'd been killed there and tossed into the stockade or whether she'd been brought there after being killed. The only clue to the murderer was the poem.

The Peablossoms hadn't heard a car during the night, but then, they wouldn't have heard one with the dogs carrying on. There were a great many footprints and tire tracks around the place. Far too many to be of value as clues.

Well, I wrote the story. Then Dave and I were called into Lovelace's office for a conference.

He was in a very bad humor, and he took it out on Dave. This "Judge fellow." He'd always known he was no good, should've been fired long before. Dave should've fired him. Now he was a murder suspect-a
Courier
man under arrest for murder! Shocking. Inexcusable.

And Deborah Chasen-that woman! She, it appeared, was also Dave's fault. An editor was supposed to know what was going on, wasn't he? He was supposed to have news sources, people who kept him informed? Well, why, then, hadn't Dave kept track of her a woman "posing" as a friend of the Lovelaces? Should've known she was back in town. Should've known she'd get into trouble. Now, she'd been killed, a woman identified with the proud name of Lovelace, and…

"Shocking. Inexcusable. Very bad management, Randall."

Dave took it, squirming and sweating and trying to protest. Finally he escaped-rather he was called out to the desk-and I had a chance to work.

"Obviously" (and let us put that
obviously
in quotes) the two murders-Ellen's and Deborah's-had been committed by the same person. The poems "established" that fact. Certainly two such poems in the possession of two mysteriously murdered women could not be mere coincidence. The man hated them-the hard murderous hate shone through the lines-so…

I bore down on the poems so heavily that I almost believed what I said.

"But I don't need to explain all this to you, sir," I said. "You felt that the colonel needed a good jacking up and you took this opportunity of delivering it-of making him sweat a little, if you'll excuse the expression. But you can see that Judge couldn't be guilty. He was in jail at the time of the second murder; therefore he couldn't possibly be guilty of either one… That's your opinion, isn't it, sir? I've stated your own thoughts correctly? You feel that Judge-the
Courier-is
in no way involved in this scandal?"

It was, it appeared, exactly the way he felt. I had stated his own thoughts perfectly, and he complimented me on my astuteness.

"Very-uh-shrewd of you, Brown. Couldn't have put the matter more clearly myself. But this-this Chasen woman-"

"I was coming to that, sir. When you call Detective Stukey about Judge-You were going to do that right away, I suppose? After all, a
Courier
man shouldn't-"

"Certainly!" he snapped. "Demand his immediate release! Can't think what the police department is coming to to make such a ghastly error."

"Well," I went on, "I was thinking you might clarify Mrs. Chasen's position while you were talking to Stukey. We have our duty to the public, sir. We can't allow baseless rumors to get into circulation. As I see it-regardless of her claims-Mrs. Chasen was
not
a friend. She was not even an acquaintance, in the accepted sense of the term. It seems to me, sir, that she was merely another visitor to the building, one of the many sight-seers who come here yearly to-"

"Exactly! That's exactly the case, Mr. Brown. Don't know why I-uh-I'll call Stukey immediately."

He called, and Stukey was far from pleased, from what I could gather. But he didn't have any evidence against Tom, and he hadn't been able to make him talk. And there was no small amount of logic in "Lovelace's" opinion about the connection between the two murders. Moreover-most important, of course, was the fact that Lovelace was Lovelace. You didn't say no to him if you could avoid it.

Stukey had no grounds for avoiding it.

So Tom was promptly released… and fired almost as promptly. Just as soon as he could be reached by phone. He'd not been a very good worker to begin with, and now he'd had the bad judgment to get himself arrested. And- But we don't need to go this fast. We can slow down a little now.

I talked a while longer, "restating" Mr. Lovelace's thoughts for him. He frowned a trifle, but he was forced to admit that I had voiced them perfectly.

"Uh-yes. Must be done, I suppose. Public duty and all. Of course, the murderer may have left the city-"

"I'm positive he hasn't," I said. "As sure as I'm sitting here, sir, he's still in town."

"Yes-uh-probably. Doubtless. Have to get him, eh? See that this Stukey fellow-uh-keeps out the-uh- dragnet. Continues the clean-up. Right?"

I told him his mind worked like a steel trap. "I don't know how you do it, sir. I mean, see right through to the point of things."

"You think-ahem-you really think I do, Mr. Brown?"

"Like a steel trap," I repeated firmly…

Dave was just heading for Lovelace's office as I came out, and I thought he appeared somewhat chagrined when he learned that everything had been settled without him. Along with the chagrin, however, was considerable relief at getting the old man off his neck. And he seemed pleased at the latter's instructions to fire Tom Judge.

"I should have done it long ago." He nodded. "Just didn't have the heart. Now it's out of my hands."

I started toward my desk. He touched me on the arm. "By the way, Brownie. You spent the better part of a day with Mrs. Chasen…"

"You're right," I said. "It all comes back to me now that you mention it."

"I'm not trying to pry, but-you thought quite a bit of her, didn't you? I got the impression that you were pretty annoyed with Lovelace's references to her."

"I loved her, Colonel," I said. "Her image is permanently graven on my heart. I could have gone for her in a large way-if, unfortunately, I had not lacked certain essential equipment."

He winced, managed a sympathetic smile. "Well, we'll put someone else on this one. You keep out of the office today-go out to the Fort. They're having maneuvers with a lot of VIP's present. You phone in the story-maybe an interview or two if it's convenient-and don't show back here until tomorrow."

I was startled almost to the point of speechlessness. My absence would leave the office seriously undermanned, and Stukey would certainly want to talk to me. To send me off for the day on a relatively unimportant story was virtually idiocy. Or something.

"You go on," Dave repeated firmly, in answer to my puzzled mumblings. "I've got a guy coming in-used to work on the labor rag here before it folded-and Stukey can wait. He won't know what the hell to do, anyway, and I can probably give him about as much dope on Mrs. Chasen as you can."

"But, Colonel-" I stared at him frowning, still too stunned for proper speech. "I-I don't believe-"

"I don't want Stukey bothering you. That's one reason I'm getting you out of here. Now, go on and take it easy and-and, look. How about that dinner tonight? Come on out to the house about six, huh?"

I said I would. I wanted to talk to the colonel, outside of the office with its many interruptions. There was a terrible price attached to the privilege, but I believed it would be worth it. Broadly speaking, of course. In actuality, there was no proper compensation for the torture of an evening with Kay Randall.

I drove out to the Fort, leisurely, wondering how, if I ever found the opportunity, I should polish Kay off. The most appropriate way, I felt, would be to hit her with a father. She always called Dave "father" and I think that any wife under sixty who does that should be hit with one.

Again-and this would be especially fitting-she might be drowned in mayonnaise. Kay cooked with mayonnaise; it was her rod and her staff, kitchen-wise. Mayonnaise was to Kay as can opener is to Newlywed. I felt reasonably sure that she had whole hogsheads of the stuff concealed in the cellar. If one could surprise her at just the right moment-catch her while she was dipping out a couple of ten-gallon pails for the evening meal-well…

But probably she had become immune to it; probably she could breathe in it as a fish breathes in water. In any event there were other ways, and all very pleasant to contemplate.

One might ash tray her to death, for example. You could place her at the end of a vast room while you sat at the other end. And you would be equipped with unlimited cigarettes and a thimble-size ash tray, and she with a pair of binoculars. Then… well, perhaps your own experience will allow you to imagine the rest. Driven by an insane urge, Kay would have to empty the tray each time you dropped a speck of ash in it. And each time, before returning to her post, she would have to give you a bright little smile and say, "My! You
do
smoke a lot, don't you?" As soon as she returned to her post, of course, you would drop ashes again and Kay would…

No. No, it was nice to think about, but it would never work. Kay had been in training too long. There might be ways of running her to death, but you could never do it with the ash-tray routine.

Probably no one method would be adequate to dispose of her, for that matter. You would have to use a combination of all available means. You might, say, join the several hundred doilies and antimacassars in the living-room into a sack, fill it with mayonnaise, and tie it over Kay's head. Then you could remove her shoes and start dropping ashes on her feet, and Kay- Hell.

To hell with Kay. How could I think of Kay when Deborah- But I couldn't think about Deborah either. I was afraid to think about her…

I arrived at the Fort and repaired to the public-relations office. Except for brief intervals, I stayed there until quitting time, sprawled out on a lounge within reaching distance of the bar.

The story wasn't worth my time. The p.r. men could cover it better than I could, and I felt that they should. P.r. men don't work enough. They are always pushing you to take a story, and when you agree they let it slide and come at you with something else. They will give you pictures, yes, possibly some you can use if you are real hard up. They will set up interviews, yes, possibly with someone quite well known in his own neighborhood. But stories, no. They can talk story, but they can never give you one. Some strange psychological quirk keeps them from carrying through.

However, I got them to work, and they produced a fairly good story on the maneuvers as well as two interviews with the VIP's.

"You can do it, men," I said as I swung open the doors of the bar. "You have lingered in the nest too long, and now you must fly. Begone, and do not return without youknow-what. Otherwise, no word anent this occasion shall creep into the
Courier
and your asses shall be ashes."

It was what they needed-firm words and a steely eye. They tottered away, nervous but determined, and they returned triumphant. I called their stuff in to the desk.

At three o'clock I sent in some pictures for overnight and knocked off. I went home and cleaned up, taking no more time about it than I had to. Then I went to a bar and stayed until a quarter of six, when I started for Dave's house.

Until the last six months or so, they had been living in a comfortable apartment at a surprisingly reasonable rental. But Kay had wanted "a little place of their very own," so they had got this thing. It was little, all right, all bright new paint and shiny doorknobs-and rooms approximately the size of packing crates. But it was a very long way from being theirs. By the time Dave paid off the mortgage, his two "kiddies"-four and six-would be well past the voting age.

Kay
knew
that I wanted to see the "little ones," so I was taken in for a look immediately. And that I could have done without.

The little boy, the oldest, had said a naughty word, it seemed, and the little girl had repeated it after him. Kay beamed down at them primly, commanding them to confess their evil to me.

The confessed, sniffling and rubbing their eyes.

"And Mother had to punish you, didn't she? She had to wash your mouths out with soap."

They admitted it. Also that poor mother had been hurt by the punishment much worse than they.

Well, the poor little devils had got one break anyway. They'd been put to bed without any dinner.