Odds Against Tomorrow

Chapter Twenty-One

The day cleared slowly and by the middle of the afternoon a patch of thin sunlight brightened the faded carpet in the living room of Doctor Taylor’s home in Avondale.

Kelly stood at the window with his hands in his pockets, and the sheriff sat heavily on a straight-backed chair holding his wide-brimmed hat on his knee. They were alone but they had nothing to talk about, no speculations to exchange; the silence between them was a mark of their failure.

They had been working here on and off since dawn, questioning the doctor and his daughter, then returning to Crossroads to feed the information to the teams of agents and police working on the case. But so far they hadn’t got on a definite lead.

They had learned a number of significant things, however. They knew the condition of the white man, they knew the Negro was feverish and ill. And they knew they were holed up in an old house somewhere in the country. And that they had disposed of the station wagon and were using a sedan now.

From the other sources they knew that the sedan belonged to a woman named Lorraine Wilson, a friend of Earl Slater’s. Frank Novak had been picked up by police in Baltimore, and he had talked; he had given them Slater’s name and address, and that had led them to the drugstore where the girl worked in Philadelphia. The counterman remembered that a Negro had come to the store the night before and talked with her. She had left the store after him. Now her car was gone, and her apartment was empty. The inference was obvious; the Negro had brought her back to the hideout. Then he had driven to Avondale for the doctor. Quite a boy, Kelly thought with reluctant respect.

The doctor was co-operating with them, Kelly thought. Trying his best, anyway. He had used his pulse beat to time the trip, and in his judgment it had taken the Negro almost an hour to drive them to the old house. But he couldn’t recall the turns and backtrackings on the way. And his estimate of how long they had driven over concrete and dirt roads was no more than a thoughtful guess.

But with these facts and impressions a dozen police cars were probing the countryside southwest of Crossroads, in close co-operation with FBI agents in jeeps and commandeered delivery trucks. They had pinpointed the plane the doctor had heard; a commercial flight flying a southeasterly course toward New York. If the doctor’s memory was accurate he had been west of the federal highway when it passed over his head.

But they still couldn’t reach out and put their hands on the men. It was an exasperating and dangerous failure, Kelly knew. Slater and Ingram could probably make their move when it got darker, and that would mean trouble for anyone who got in their way.

Kelly glanced at his watch: two o’clock. If his assumption was right they didn’t have much time left. The doctor had gone upstairs a moment or so ago to wake his daughter. He had put her to bed with a sedative, after they had questioned her. Kelly wanted to talk to her again because he had suspected something that hadn’t occurred to the sheriff; the doctor and his daughter were unconsciously protecting the Negro. Without knowing it, they were in collusion to save him.

He strolled restlessly across the room to the fireplace. “It’s clearing up,” he said, looking at the sunlight on the carpet. “Be a nice day to go gunning.”

“There’s more rain coming,” the sheriff said. Then: “You like hunting?”

“I don’t have much opportunity anymore.” They had talked about the case so long it was a relief to talk about something else. “But I went after turkeys last year in Georgia. That’s pretty special. They run as fast as a horse, and can hear a twig break a thousand feet away. They settle into an oak or a pine twenty feet above your head looking as big as cargo planes. Then they disappear. Vanish. Their markings are green and gold and black, and they just fade out of sight before you can raise your gun.”

“Sounds interesting,” the sheriff said, taking out his pipe. There was both hope and skepticism in his tone, the reaction of a true hunter. “Our pheasants aren’t anything special, but some pretty good shots go season after season without getting their limit.”

“Your daughter told me about them. She’s quite a booster for the area.”

Kelly had stopped at the sheriff’s house early that morning, and Nancy had made a quick breakfast for him...

“I used to take her gunning when she was little,” the sheriff said slowly. “I didn’t know she was still interested. She was a nice shot.” He rubbed the bowl of his pipe slowly between his big hands. “I thought she’d put all that away with her jeans and boots. Girls get into ribbons and skirts and they’re not so keen about tramping through the fields with a gun anyhow.”

“That’s true, I guess.” Kelly was tactfully noncommittal; he had sensed the stiffness between the sheriff and his daughter, and he wasn’t planning to blunder into that personal area. This morning she had been at ease with him, attractive and confident in a white sweater and dark slacks, with her blond hair tied back in a pony tail. This was Saturday and she wasn’t going to the office. They had talked about hunting and fishing, and places they knew in New York, and several other matters, the kitchen warm against the cold morning, their cigarette smoke mingling pleasantly with the aroma of bacon and coffee. He had listened to her with a stranger’s capacity for direct, relevant compassion. She had wanted to talk, he realized. So he had listened...

The sheriff was still rubbing the bowl of the pipe between his hands. “Nancy and I are pretty close in some ways,” he said defensively. “But sometimes—” He looked steadily at Kelly, trusting him in this, but refusing to ask help of any man with averted eyes. “Sometimes I can’t understand her. Maybe I’m too standoffish.” The sheriff hesitated; in his code you didn’t go whining to strangers with your personal problems. He liked and trusted Kelly, but he was nonetheless a stranger. “I don’t know,” he said, lowering this standard with a sense of defeat. “I’d like to talk to her, to help her any way I can. But I just don’t know how.”

“She’s got to help herself,” Kelly said. “You can hold her hand maybe, but that’s about all. She’s got to forget him — you can’t do that for her.”

It took the sheriff an instant or two to understand what Kelly meant. Then he said “Yes,” and rubbed a hand roughly over his mouth, speaking against a painful constriction in his throat. So that was it... Why hadn’t she told him?

“She’s doing fine,” Kelly said, misunderstanding the bitterness in the sheriff’s eyes. “If he wasn’t smart enough to hold onto her, he’s no bargain.” He hesitated then, his cheeks suddenly hot. If the old boy didn’t know... “A stranger makes a good wall to bounce things off,” he said, inwardly cursing his tactlessness.

“Why didn’t she tell me about him?” the sheriff said so softly that Kelly had to lean forward to catch the words. “That’s what I’m wondering.”

Kelly felt like biting off his tongue. “I’m terribly sorry. Naturally, I thought—”

“Naturally. Naturally a girl tells her father. Who was he, by the way? Or are you supposed to keep her secrets?”

“There’s no sense huffing and puffing,” Kelly said quietly. “At her or at me.”

The sheriff was slightly startled by Kelly’s tone; not many men would use that voice with him when his temper was up. Then he smiled wearily, and said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“He was a man she met in New York. They saw each other for a year or so. Then things changed. With him.” Kelly raised his hand and let it fall. “Your daughter took it like a big girl. No scenes, no recriminations, no rebound nonsense. She just packed up and came home.”

“I don’t understand her,” the sheriff said helplessly. “But that’s not her fault, is it? It’s mine. I just don’t understand.”

“You won’t be the last man to say that about a woman.” Kelly retreated gratefully into the protective cliché. He distrusted too-tidy explanations of emotional conflicts. And he distrusted people with quick solutions for them. Loose talk about Oedipus complexes and sibling jealousies made him uneasy. The amateur analyst might be right; that was the hell of it. Buckshot usually hit something. You could even hit a hornet with buckshot but that was no way to stop a swarm of them.

Things would work out. He believed in that philosophy because he was a hopeful man; he had learned to wait cheerfully.

So they didn’t get along. Well, that would work out. The sheriff was a demanding man without knowing it. He had grown taller and taller with the years and now he was too damned far from the ground. He needed to be brought to earth — to change a few diapers, get a flailing little foot in the eye occasionally, stock up his wallet with some new baby pictures. Solving her needs would solve his, Kelly figured. Making her happy would make him happy. It would be a nice job for some guy. Two birds with one stone. A rewarding kind of job. But it couldn’t be rushed; it needed patience and humor.

They heard footsteps on the stairs, and the sheriff stood up quickly, forcing the conversation from his mind. Kelly said, “Let me do the talking, will you? I know what their trouble is, I think.”

The sheriff nodded; his respect for Kelly had gone up considerably in the last few minutes. “You go ahead,” he said.

The doctor opened the door and ushered his daughter into the room. “Sit down and get nice and comfortable, honey,” he said. “This won’t take long, will it, Sheriff? We’ve told you everything we can remember.”

“We’ll be quick as we can,” the sheriff said. He smiled at the girl. “Feel better after your nap?”

“Yes, thank you.” She sat on the sofa with her slippered feet tucked under her, looking sweet and young and rested; but Kelly saw the nervousness in her tightly gripped hands.

He took a sheaf of notes from his pocket, and sat down in front of her. “You know what the subconscious is, I suppose, Carol.”

“Well, more or less.”

Kelly smiled. “That’s a good answer.” He realized that behind this teen-aged poise and dignity was a very frightened little child; he could see the pulse beating rapidly in her throat, and the quick rise and fall of her soft bosom.

“I was once in love with a very beautiful girl,” he said, with nothing in his voice to mark the comment as irrelevant.

“What?” the sheriff said, staring at him.

“This was quite a while ago. But she was a knockout, Carol.”

“Oh?” She looked interested. “What was she like? I mean, was she a blonde or a brunette or what?”

“I don’t remember,” Kelly said. “I struck out with her pretty completely. There was another guy with looks and money — so she foolishly brushed me off like a speck of lint.”

“How old was she?” Carol said doubtfully.

“She was ten,” Kelly said, “and very flighty and immature for her age.”

“You aren’t serious.”

“Yes I am, Carol,” Kelly said quietly. “I’m being very serious. I don’t remember what the girl looked like because I don’t want to. Part of my mind simply hides her from me, so I won’t worry about her. We forget things, Carol, without knowing we’ve forgotten about them — that’s our safety valve, a protective device we all use without realizing it.”

“But I’m not hiding anything from you. Really, I’m not.”

The doctor patted her shoulder. “Of course, honey.” He looked at Kelly. “But I know what you’re getting at — and believe me, I’ve tried to be honest.”

“You owe your lives to that Negro,” Kelly said. “He made a bargain to bring you back and he stuck to it. Even at the risk of getting a bullet through his head.”

“I know, I know,” the doctor said. “He saved Carol’s life and I can’t forget it. But I’ve tried my level best not to let that influence me.”

“I’m sure of it,” Kelly said. “But think about this possibility: you may be unconsciously trying to repay him for saving your lives. You don’t want to dredge up anything that might put his neck in a noose.”

“I’ll tell you this much,” the doctor said sharply. “When he’s caught, I’ll see that he gets the best lawyer in the state to defend him. That man behaved with courage and honesty — in spite of everything else he’s done.”

“Fine,” Kelly said. “Do everything you can for him. But think of this in the meantime: those men will move when it gets dark. They’re armed and desperate. Someone will get in their way. Think about that person for a second. A police officer with kids waiting for him at home, a salesman or a housewife, a young girl, maybe. Whoever it is may wind up dead. And you can’t help the Negro then. You can only help him now — before he’s hounded into more trouble.”

“I haven’t held back a thing,” the doctor said with a stubborn edge to his voice.

“Let’s go over a couple of points anyway,” Kelly said. “Forget about the car, the roads, the weather. Just concentrate on the living room of that house.”

“There is nothing more I can tell you. Floor boards of uneven width. Hand-hewn beams. We’ve gone through all this. There are hundreds of homes like that in the country. Old, pre-Revolutionary houses with two-foot stone walls, and fireplaces you can walk into. That’s what brought a lot of wealthy people into the area — the fun of renovating those old relics. I didn’t see anything distinctive. I was treating a wounded man and wondering if my daughter was going to be killed before my eyes. Maybe I missed something that would help you find the place. But can’t you understand that I wasn’t in the best possible mood to be taking an inventory.”

“And I was blindfolded,” Carol said. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Yes, of course,” Kelly said, looking at his notes. “But you both mentioned that there was an odor of food in the house. Something that reminded you of sauerkraut. You used the word ‘reminded’ each time we’ve come to this point. You mean it wasn’t sauerkraut — but something similar? Could you pin it down exactly, do you think?”

The doctor was frowning. “It seemed like sauerkraut. Didn’t it, Carol?”

“I don’t know. I said sauerkraut because you did, I guess. But it wasn’t like food at all—” She was frowning faintly, not looking at any of them, and Kelly sensed that her thoughts were searching for a memory buried deep in her mind.

“What was it, Carol?” he said gently. “It wasn’t food, was it?”

“No, it was more like — well, the chemistry lab at school. It was something sharp and unpleasant.”

“I think you’re right,” the doctor said slowly.

“Was it some kind of acid?” the sheriff said.

“No — I’m trying to remember.”

They were silent for a moment, and Kelly held his breath. “Daddy, wasn’t it like a mustard plaster? That’s all I can think of.”

“A mustard plaster?”

“Maybe there was someone sick in the house,” Kelly said.

The doctor began to pace the floor, snapping his fingers rapidly. “Not mustard, not acid — wait a second.” He stared at the sheriff. “Balsam Peru — Do you remember that stuff?”

“Sure.”

“That’s what it was — Balsam Peru. How that helps I don’t know, but I’m certain of it. Balsam Peru!”

“What is it?” Kelly said.

“An old patent medicine, a cure-all like Doctor Pratt’s Salve or Mother Mercer’s Remedy.” Excitement had brought color into the doctor’s pale tired face. “You remember it, Sheriff. Years back there wasn’t a home in the county that didn’t have a jar on hand. They used it for burns, aches and pains, damned near anything. Carol mentioned a mustard plaster, and that jogged my mind toward medicine.”

“We may be able to trace that,” the sheriff said. “There’s not much call for it any more.”

“We’ll check the doctors and the drugstores,” Kelly said, standing and looking at his watch. “Doc, can I use your phone?”

“Yes, of course. It’s in the hall.”

Kelly hesitated, looking down at the little girl’s unhappy eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said, and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “Believe me, you’ve done him a favor. You’ll understand that someday.”

“I wish I did now,” she said, slowly.

The doctor pressed her shoulder as Kelly went into the hall and scooped up the phone.