The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (15 page)

I stared at him. “You mean … her story was true?”

“Yes.”

My mind buzzed in total confusion. “You mean you covered it up to keep it out of the paper? You think your standing in the damn community is more important than our daughter, for
God’s sake?”

Lou sighed. “Velda, I know exactly what I’m doing. You remember the Covin girl? It damn near ruined her life when they took that boy to court for raping her.”

“But the sheriff could have helped quietly—”

“Don’t argue, Velda. Take Sharon home and put her to bed.”

He slammed the door and walked down the road. I drove Sharon home and drew a hot bath for her. As I bathed her, I saw that the struggle had been far more violent than she’d led me to believe. There were bruises on her breasts and neck. My throat ached when I saw the finger marks on the lower curve of her stomach. He’d reached down, grabbing for the soft tender womanhood. I felt prickly and nervous handling her body; the child seemed suddenly to have become a woman, full-breasted and fledged and desired by men—so desired that they used force to take what they wanted. I thought to myself:
It may be a game for Curt, but it’s no longer a game for me.

As I tucked Sharon in bed, I asked: “You know what he was trying to do?”

“Mother, of course. I’m fifteen.”

I wondered how she knew—then I recalled that I had known when I was fifteen, but couldn’t say how I knew.

“He didn’t do it though? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. It was the Levis. He couldn’t tear them, and I kept my legs crossed.”

I heard the door slam. I said goodnight to Sharon and left her. Lou said he’d found signs of a scuffle on the gravel and a button off her shirt. But there’d been no tracks on the gravel and none on the shoulder. He said goodnight to Sharon, then fixed a drink and sat down.

“Velda,” be said heavily, “it’s time we had a talk about this investigation of Curt’s.”

“He told you about it?”

Lou shook his bead. “I’ve watched it in operation, Velda. You can’t dissemble as well as you imagine. Go ahead, call him up. I think he’ll be ready to talk.”

Curt asked a hundred questions about Sharon—exact time, location … so on … but I couldn’t say much on the phone. Lou’s eyes were on me constantly. At last Curt said he’d be over as soon as be could. When I hung up Lou said:

“He doesn’t trust anybody, does he?”

“He’s coming,” I said.

I dreaded the next few hours: all the days Curt and Lou had been together I’d felt they were building up to some kind of ultimate encounter. I was afraid it might come tonight and I had a feeling they were too evenly matched to do anything but destroy each other. I watched Lou setting out glasses and putting ice cubes in a bowl as though it would be a social gathering; he seemed strangely exhilarated in view of what had happened to Sharon. I discovered that my underclothes were damp with perspiration; I took a shower and put on clean clothes. When I came out of the bedroom, Curt and Gaby were there. Lou was reading from Curt’s list of accidents, sipping his drink from time to time.

Curt sprawled in an armchair with his heels on the floor in front of him, holding his glass with both hands and peering at the light through the liquor. Gaby was smoking, rolling the white cylinder between her long fingers. She gave me an expression of sympathy and asked if Sharon was asleep. I said yes, then I sat down on the hassock between Curt and Lou. After a minute Lou tapped one of the papers. “Teddy Groner,” he said. “You’ll have to take him off your list of murder victims.”

“I’d be interested to hear your reasons,” said Curt.

“I was there, as you’ve noted. The day we went out in the boat Teddy said he wasn’t feeling good and he sat on the bank. We didn’t notice he’d started to swim out until he was half-way there. Ten feet from the boat he stopped swimming. He looked at me and I saw terror in his eyes. Then he slipped under the water. The others thought he’d just dived under the boat to come up on the other side, but I wasn’t sure. A second later, when he didn’t come up, I realized he’d had a cramp. I dived in. The water was murky and I could see only a dark shape drifting down. I tried to reach it, but my lungs gave out. I came up for air and yelled at the others and they started diving too. None of us saw him. It wasn’t until they were dragging the cove for his body that I noticed the blood dripping off my fingers. I realized I’d been bleeding like hell all this time; I’d torn my arm on a nail getting on and off the boat while we were diving for him.”

He held out his arm and showed Curt the scar on his forearm. I’d seen it before, a jagged crescent of shiny scar tissue. Curt leaned forward and examined the scar minutely, so long that Lou withdrew his arm, looking uncomfortable.

“Okay,” said Curt. “Scratch Teddy. I don’t need him anyway.”

Lou read on, and after awhile said: “Here’s another one—Jerry Blake.”

Curt raised his brows. “You’re sure it was an accident?”

Lou shook his head. “I’m almost sure it was suicide.”

I was shocked.
“Jerry?
Why would he kill himself?”

“He was sick,” said Lou. “Bad heart. He had … five, ten years if he took it easy. On the other hand he might go any minute. Only his wife and I knew. Jerry brooded a lot; he might have lived a moderate life if everything had been normal, but somehow the idea that he couldn’t drink and couldn’t hell around … well, Jerry just had to do it, that’s all. Bought a cabin on the lake and took girls there. Got a helluva scare once when he had an attack there and the girl ran off and left him. Jerry told me about it; said he was afraid of kicking off while he was in the sack with some strange woman … embarrass his wife, raise hell with her future. Not long after that he went down to the store to do some late work; I was there, but I left early. You remember that night, Velda? I came home and said Jerry was acting strange. I was about to go back when I got the call that the store was on fire.”

I nodded; remembering the night. I remembered early the next morning, when Lou had come in begrimed with smoke and said that Jerry was dead, and I should forget what he’d said about Jerry’s strangeness.

“We were heavily insured,” Lou went on, “and the insurance company tried like hell to prove it hadn’t been an accident. They finally gave up. I found out later that the books were short by five thousand dollars … that’s how Jerry had financed his high living. But if you mention it outside these walls I’ll deny it. I don’t think you’d he able to prove anything where the insurance company couldn’t.”

Curt looked tired. He stood up. “Don’t bother to read any more.”

Lou shrugged and handed the papers back to Curt. “Don’t you have anything else?”

“Nothing,” said Curt. “Let’s go, Gaby.”

Curt left with a strange, frozen expression on his face. I would have liked to talk to him, but there was no way I could see him alone; I felt tired and totally incapable of sleep. Somehow my irritation turned against Lou.

“You … smug citizen. Why didn’t you give him the benefit of the doubt?”

Lou spread his hands. “What was I supposed to do? Say I was convinced when I wasn’t?”

“You had your mind made up before.”

“That isn’t true.” He squinted at me. “Did he hook you into helping him with that flimsy evidence?”

“He showed it to me—”

“But he has
nothing,
Velda. Couldn’t you see that?”

I felt confused and angry. I started pacing the room, my fists clenched. “Why don’t you just say I’m stupid. Tell me I haven’t got the brains to deal with him?”

“Okay, you’re stupid. You don’t have the brains to deal with him.”

“Ohhhhh.” I threw up my hands and went into the bedroom. I lay down on the edge of the bed and lit a cigaret. After a minute Lou came in, calm and judicious, shaking his glass so the ice rattled.

“Velda, I understand this thing. Curt can’t accept the guilt of his brother, so he’s built up this fantastic theory in an attempt to deny it. He’s smart in other ways, smart as hell, so naturally you assume he’s right about this. But tell me, has he turned up one shred of concrete evidence? One single uncontradictory particle of proof?”

“Yes,” I said, sitting up. “There was the note on his windshield—” I stopped abruptly I didn’t want Lou to know about our burglary of the Struble place. But Lou was nodding.

“He showed it to me. Curt said the handwriting was faked. Why couldn’t
he
have faked it?”

“Oh Lou! And those phone calls in the middle of the night—”

“Couldn’t he have made them?”

“But why?”

“Simple. Curt hates the county for what it did to his brother. He’s trying to stir us up, get us to fighting each other.” Lou chuckled, looking into his glass “Did I ever tell you about his experiment with the rats?”

I recalled that a couple of weeks ago Curt had wanted to trap some wild rats for an experiment. Lou had gotten the materials to build the cage and had helped him trap them in an old granary. But I didn’t know what the experiment was about. “No,” I said.

“He painted the tails of one group red and left the other group just as it was. Then he watched them exterminate each other—just like people.”

I remembered Gaby’s words:
“When he gets bored he ki
cks everything to pieces just to watch it fly apart.”
I got out of bed and paced the room a couple of times. “Lou, your theory that he’s doing this for revenge … it’s just as fantastic as his—”

“You agree that his idea is fantastic?”

“It’s fantastic that a killer has run loose for so many years.”

“Too fantastic to be true.”

“What about Sharon? Curt didn’t attack her!”

“No,” said Lou soberly. “That’s something else again. I’ll learn who did, and I’ll take care of him myself. There’s no need for official action.”

I stopped and drummed my fingers on the bureau. My mind was fogged by the suddenness of events; I couldn’t sort out my thoughts. Maybe a day or so on the lake, doing nothing but thinking …

Lou came up and put his hand on the nape of my neck. It was clammy cold from his glass. “Velda, you’ve let yourself get too deeply involved. Take Sharon and visit your mother for a few days. She can recover from her scare, and you from your … infatuation..

I walked away and went into the living room, away from the voice of sweet reason. After awhile I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes; I’d decide tomorrow, I told myself, after I talked to Curt … Next morning he came into the store with Gaby. It was rare for the two of them to appear together. Gaby’s eyes were red and swollen and I thought she’d been crying.

“Hay fever,” she said in a congested tone. “I cad hardly breed.”

I looked at Curt. “I may visit my mother for a few days, get Sharon away.”

He nodded absently. “It might be a good idea.”

I felt as though I’d been told:
Thank you, your services are no longer required.
But I couldn’t be sure until I talked to him alone. That evening I left Lou working in his shop and drove out to their place. We sat on the front porch—all three of us, and I told him about Lou’s reaction. Curt was noncommittal and vague; I felt like a third wheel. It was a hot night; mosquitoes whined in my ears and the leaves hung still as a painted backdrop. It was the kind of evening when the earth makes you feel like a stranger who doesn’t belong. I felt a vague sadness, as on the last day of vacation, or at the end of a love affair. Around nine Gaby went inside to grill some cheese sandwiches. I had just turned to Curt when I felt it; a faint shimmering, a tightening of the air. A shock wave ruffled my hair, then a thunderous blast blew the doors open and shattered the windows. By the time I recovered my senses Curt was gone. Then I heard him inside the house shouting Gaby’s name.

I ran into the kitchen. Curt was on the floor beside Gaby; her blouse hung in bloody shreds, and blood oozed from her face and neck. My nose filled with the stench of gas and the salty reek of blood. Curt looked up; I read the fear and guilt in his eyes and I thought. Gaby is dead, and Curt will never forgive himself. Then I saw his lips moving and I realized I’d been deafened by the explosion. I bent closer and shouted: “Is she alive?”

“Yes!” he shouted. “But losing blood. First aid kit in the bathroom. Then get your car up to the door.”

I did as I was told. He tore up her skirt to make tourniquets for her arms and held his thumbs to the pressure points of her neck. As he carried her to the car, I saw the trail of blood she left on the wooden porch and I thought, She’ll never make it.

I took the short cut to Connersville past Lake Pillybay. The third time I slid around a curve, Curt said in a calm voice from the back seat: “Don’t rush. I’ve got the bleeding under control.”

I slowed down and asked: “What happened?”

“Oven blew up. There was a fruit jar inside; slivers gashed her head and arms. She must have been bending over when it happened; the cuts all point downward.”

“Curt, do you think—?”

“I think, yes. But I’ll look into it later.”

At the hospital they rushed her into the emergency room. A couple of minutes later an intern came out. “She needs whole blood. You know her type?”

“AB,” said Curt. “Rh-negative.”

The doctor winced. “That’s rare. We may have to put out a radio call—” I jumped up. “That’s Lou’s type. Rh-positive.”

“Call him,” said Curt.

I called Lou; he answered on the extension in his shop. He said he’d bring Sharon and come right over. He must have broken all speed records; I had no idea his pickup would go that fast. Within twenty minutes he was lying on a table next to Gaby. They had her bandaged so that not even her eyes showed. I could see an inch of her forehead above the gauze; it was a pale deadly yellow beneath her tan, but the doctor said her greatest danger was shock and loss of blood. He thought she’d live.

When we were back out in the waiting room, Lou said: “I think I know how it happened.”

Curt turned from his pacing. “How?”

“I sell the same kind of stoves, you know. The oven has two walls, and the area between them is packed with insulation. If something should happen to the insulation—say mice ate it—gas would collect in the dead air space until it exploded.”