Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956

Here Lies... by C. L. Moore

I wish to make it clear at once that I agree completely that the amusement park is a place to have fun. With this bit of illuminating brilliance recorded, I hasten to add that none of the three people you are about to meet at this amusement park is destined to have much fun. As a matter of fact, one of them is slated for personal acquaintanceship with rigor mortis.

He saw a pink-striped arm with a pointing hand shoot past his face. A woman’s breathless voice said, “Oh, look at that girl! What’s she going to do?”

There wasn’t any doubt what the girl was going to do. The amusement pier had a fence all around it, to stand between the deep blue sea and the people with devils after them, people who wanted to do what this girl was trying. She had hung her big straw hat, with the straw horse and rider on the side of it, over a fence post. Over that she’d hung her big, dirty embroidered handbag. Now she had one toe stuck through the wire mesh and she was trying to get her other knee over the top of the fence. She wore no stockings and her legs were pale and very thin.

Cliff heard himself say foolishly, “That girl’s going to get hurt.” He made it to the fence in three jumps. He stuck his own toe in the mesh and got up high enough to take her by the elbow.

“Lady,” he said, “you want to fall off the pier? Come on down.”

She looked at him over her shoulder, the darkness blurring her face so that he could only guess she was young. Not much older than me, he thought, and pulled downward on the bony elbow. “Lady—”

“I’m not a lady,” she told him in a fierce whisper. “Let go, will you? Let go!”

“You don’t want to do this,” he said, trying to throw persuasion into his voice. “There’s a lot of cold water down there. Look.” A wave crashed over and hissed up the beach below them in the dark. “People are watching. Come on down.”

“Who wants to live?” she demanded, tugging.

Cliff looked down at the beach and suddenly found himself laughing a little. “You do,” he said. She swiveled her head around again and stared, her eyes and mouth dark splotches in the shadowy face.

Cliff laughed again. He let go the elbow. “Okay, go ahead. Jump.”

She hung there, looking down at him and breathing noisily through her open mouth.

Cliff said, “Go on, what’s keeping you? I just looked down. Did you? It’s only about five feet to the sand, and the tide’s out. You couldn’t even sprain an ankle.”

She teetered a moment on the swaying wire and then crooked up one arm and hid her face against it. Cliff said pityingly, “Come on down.”

“Help me,” she said.

She was like a bundle of dry twigs under the summer dress she wore. He had never seen a girl so thin. The little knot of loiterers who had slowed to watch moved on again, losing interest. Even the pink-striped woman had disappeared. The show was over and nobody had been much interested, anyhow.

Cliff said, “That’s better. You didn’t really want to drown yourself. Come along and I’ll buy you some popcorn.”

“I hate popcorn,” the girl said. “I need a drink.”

Cliff pushed a hand in his pocket and turned the coins over with his fingertips. “I could buy you a beer.”

They sat with their elbows on the moist bar and their heels hooked over the stool rungs, feeling through bar and stool the deep drag and suck and crash of the dark Pacific under the floor. Outside all the noises of the midway on Saturday night went round and round.

“Now what was all this about?” Cliff folded his arms on the bar as he had often seen his father do. He felt quite adult. “You weren’t really serious. I could tell that. What were you up to?”

“I was serious.” She drank thirstily and then looked at him out of the tops of her eyes. They were large and dark, and even in this dimness he could see how blood-shot they were. She had a scratch along her jaw, and her face was both puffed and thin. She wasn’t as young as he’d thought. Not nearly as young. Her name was Anne.

“I just thought I’d rather die than live, that’s all,” she said. “I feel like somebody who died of old age a long time ago. Everything that was important to me died. I ought to carry a little tombstone around with me that says HERE LIES—” She paused and gave him that look from the tops of her eyes again. “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

“You’re too nice a girl to talk that way.” Cliff felt flattered at the confidences, but not at all sure just what was expected of him. He played it safe.

She gazed in silence at him. Then she dug into the big dirty handbag and brought out a pint bottle. She turned her head so the hatbrim hid her, and he heard the bottle gurgle. “I’m not so nice,” she said, wiping her mouth. “The only thing is, it takes courage to kill yourself. I’ll have to work up to it. But I will. It’s the only way I can get back at him.”

“Back at who?” Cliff asked. He felt awkward, but he wanted her to go on talking. Partly because it was exciting to hear about, partly because he had in a way, he supposed, saved her life, and that gave him a responsible feeling toward her. Get her talking, he thought, and maybe the whole thing will pass over. He said, “There’s as good fish in the sea, you know. Why worry? You’re young and pretty—” He heard his voice falter a little on that, but he went on heartily. “—young and pretty, and you ought to take better care of yourself.”

“Am I?” She touched the scratch on her cheek. “Really?”

He was glad the mirror was dim. “Sure you are.”

She thought it over briefly and then tipped the pint bottle to her mouth again. Coughing, she said, “I’d offer you some, but there’s hardly any left, and anyway, you’re a little young for boilermakers.”

“I’m not that young,” Cliff said. “I don’t mix my drinks, anyhow. You know what they say, ‘Whiskey, beer — never fear. Beer, whiskey — mighty risky.’ You’ll be sick as a dog tomorrow if you don’t stop.”

“Who cares?” She dropped the bottle in the bag and took another long, thirsty pull at the beer. Under a white moustache of foam, she said with enormous self-pity, “I’m sick enough now. I feel terrible. If you hadn’t butted in, I’d be dead and out of it. Don’t you understand? I’ve got to get even somehow. When I heard he’d got into town yesterday, I figured my chance had really come. I’ve tried to get even before, but it never quite works, somehow. It never quite works.” She wiped off the foam with an unsteady finger.

“What’d you try?” Cliff asked. She didn’t seem to need much encouragement to talk, he realized. Still, it ought to make her feel better.

“The reason I came down here is there’s a joint marked Off Limits,” she said rapidly. “Cops were hanging around, and a lot of service men. I thought if I made enough trouble, there’d be a raid. Well, I made trouble.” She touched the scratch again. “There was a raid, all right, and I gave my right name and everything, good and loud. But—” She sighed and her thin shoulders collapsed a little. “They won’t pick me up any more. They told me to go home and sleep it off. They’re sorry for me. I get just so far and then it doesn’t work. It’s like having a guardian angel who hates me.” She folded her matchstick arms. “You’re sorry for me too, damn you. If you’re so sorry why don’t you help me get what I want?”

Cliff said uneasily, “What’s that?”

She said, “Do you know who I am?” It wasn’t so much that she hadn’t heard him, he thought, as that she didn’t want to answer.

“Look,” he said, “why don’t we drink up and take a walk on the pier. I want to see the sights. Come on.”

“I’m a sight,” she said bitterly. “Look at me. Take a good long look. I’m a mess, right? I’ve been a mess for two years. And you know who I am? I’m Mrs. William Howard Brewster, that’s who. How do you like that?”

Cliff said, “Brewster?” uncertainly. He thought he had heard the name before, but it didn’t mean anything to him now. He wondered if it should.

“That’s what I said. The rally’s tomorrow night. That’s why he’s in town. Here, I’ll show you.” She set her glass down with a bang. “I’ll have another,” she said loudly. “Bartender, one more beer for Mrs. William Howard Brewster. Me.” Heads turned briefly to look at her.

“Take it easy,” Cliff said. “My money’s about gone.”

She didn’t hear him. She was fumbling in the big handbag.

“I want to ask you a question,” she said, her voice insistent. “Look. Just look at this.” With unsteady fingers, she spread a newspaper clipping on the bar. A drop of water seeped through it from below and grayed the face of a large square-jawed young man who was looking up at them out of the clipping. In big capitals William Howard Brewster promised the State how much good he could accomplish for it if elected to the State Senate next week. So that’s where I noticed the name, Cliff thought.

Anne looked earnestly at him, tapping the paper. “You think he looks like God? He thinks he does. He thinks he is God.”

“Does he know where you are now?” Cliff asked with some relief. He was beginning to feel he didn’t know how to handle this situation exactly, but it might be all right to call the man up and tell him where his wife was. Somebody ought to be looking after her, he thought.

“He doesn’t know I’m alive,” she said wearily. “I wish I weren’t.”

“You don’t want to talk like that,” Cliff said. He stood up, pushing back the stool. “Look, Anne, I think we ought to get moving. Now why don’t you—”

She turned quickly, full of sudden animation, blinking her eyes fast. “But you didn’t answer my question. Just let me tell you what happened and see what you think. It won’t take but a minute. I really want your opinion. Would you ever know to look at this man he’s just a cheap crook? Well, that’s what he is. He certainly cheated me. I worked like a dog for three years for William Howard Brewster. Like a dog. I put him through law school. I paid the bills while he studied. That was my investment in the future. We were partners. Oh, sure.” She picked up her fresh glass and blew gently into the foam, making a little slanting tunnel in it down to the beer. “He even made Phi Beta Kappa,” she said in a marveling voice. “Oh, he’s smart. He used to say I ought to wear the key. I was the one who paid for it.”

“Well, now he’s in the money, isn’t he?” Cliff said. “What’s wrong with that?”

She laughed. “Not a thing,” she said, looking at him from the corners of her eyes this time, a sly look. She had such an odd way, he thought, of using the edges of her eyes for looking at him. “Only I never saw a penny of it. And I went along with everything he wanted, too. What else could I do? How could I stop him?” She put out a cold hand and seized his wrist with fingers hard and thin like bone. “Tell me,” she said, “what else I could have done?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t keep thinking about these things,” he said uncomfortably, wondering if it would hurt her feelings for him to pull his wrist away.

“Tell me!” she insisted. “I tried everything I knew. I even quit kicking when he brought other women home from bars. Can you imagine that? And I wasn’t even drinking a lot. Not then. Not nearly as much as he said I was. I am not,” and she fixed him with the large, bloodshot stare, “—not an alcoholic, no matter what anyone says. I know perfectly well what I’m doing. It’s just that I feel so—” She let her voice die, not finishing. After a moment she said, “Listen to the ocean down there. I wonder if the water’s cold this time of year.”

Cliff said hastily, “You don’t want to think about that.” He was trying to figure how to end this and get away. “You’re just mad at your husband,” he continued lightly. “You never really meant to jump off the pier. If you’d been serious, you’d have gone down to the other end where the deep water is.”

She slapped the bar so loudly the bartender jumped and then looked at her. “I haven’t got a husband,” she said. “We aren’t married any more. He knew how to ditch me when he was ready for the next step up.” She made a harsh sound that resembled laughter. “That’s funny, isn’t it? Me putting him through law school so he’d learn how to frame me and get a divorce? Very funny. I’m laughing. I could die laughing.”

Cliff thought, She’s had too much to drink. She shouldn’t have any more. At least, this is the last beer I’ll pay for. He drained his own glass, telling himself profoundly that life can certainly be pretty tough for some people. Some people seem to get all the wrong breaks. He said, “That... that’s too bad, Anne. You sure had tough luck all down the line. Look, Anne, I think I’d better be shoving off now.”

She turned swiftly, her thin fingers pinching his sleeve, her eyes meeting his for the first time fully and in focus. “But you haven’t told me,” she said. Her gaze was anxious and searching. “What do you think I ought to do?”

He considered this, wondering what was the right thing to say. “I think you ought to pull yourself together, for one thing. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re still young and — I mean, you made money when he needed it, didn’t you? What’s wrong with making it for yourself? You aren’t the first girl who ever got a divorce. You could—”

Her eyes left his. She turned toward her glass again, shaking her head. “Not for myself. I’m too tired. I can’t do anything by myself. I couldn’t even jump off the pier.” She tilted the empty glass. “You know something?” She cast him one swift, sly glance from the far corners of her eyes. “I’ve often thought it would be nice if he killed me and got hanged for it. He has a fine motive. I’ve done everything I could to make a scandal and ruin him. It’s not my fault I couldn’t. I really tried, too.”

“Cut it out,” Cliff said.

She sighed and shrugged. “Oh well. I’ll think of something.” She shut her eyes briefly and sagged over the bar, sighing again with a deep, breathy sound from the bottom of her narrow lungs. Then she looked up and flashed a bright, determined smile. “Maybe we ought to talk about you now. Let’s drink up.” She thumped her glass on the bar. “Another beer for Mrs. William Howard Brewster.”

Cliff got quickly to his feet. “Not for me. I’m on my way. Well, good-bye, Anne, I sure hope you—”

“Wait a minute. Hold on. What’s your hurry? I’m ready, too, I guess. Maybe I’ve had enough.” She settled the big straw hat on her head, snatched up her handbag. She was only a little unsteady, he thought, and as tall as he on her thin high heels, but no wider than a twig.

She smiled and blinked her eyes brightly at him, suddenly quite jaunty. “I feel better now,” she assured him. “I feel fine. Why don’t you walk me part way home? It’s a beautiful night. I was noticing the moon over the water when I — just before I—” She paused, looking down at her handbag. “Well, anyhow, I’ll be all right. Don’t you worry about me. I’ve got the wherewithal.” She laughed, patting the bag. “He had a professor who used to talk all the time about the wherewithal. It was one of our jokes, back in the good days. We did have good days, once.” Her laughter went a little forced and then died.

“I have a bus to catch,” Cliff said.

“Walk as far as my car and I’ll give you a lift. I owe you that much. You did me a good turn. Oh, come along.” She tucked her chin down and looked at him from the tops of her eyes with a sort of bloodshot coquettishness. “I might jump in the ocean if you don’t.”

Cliff thought, Well, maybe she might, at that. Maybe I ought to go with her. I guess she hates being alone. It can’t do any harm to walk always with her. And he was yet young enough to find it hard to say no. He looked at the straw horse and rider cantering gaily along the brim of the straw hat. The bright summer dress looked quite cheerful. She smiled and her lipstick was not on very straight, but it was bright and red.

“All right,” he said.

Of all the sounds, the music of the merry-go-round went with them farthest along the dark highway. At first there were filling stations and used car lots to break up the night, but before long, stretches of vacant lots began and it was like walking through open country between the street lights. Wild mustard grew high here, pale in the moonlight. Where the highway bordered the ocean, they could see the big luminous breakers come threshing in to collapse exhausted on the sand.

“How far is your car?” Cliff asked, beginning to feel uneasy.

In a remote voice she said, “Only a little way more.” She pushed her hand through his arm and he could feel the handbag and the pint bottle flop heavily against his side with every step. Presently, still in the faraway voice, she began to speak.

“I thought about killing him, you know. Do you think that’s terrible? I often thought about it. After all, I invested my life in him. And now it’s paying off, but not to me. Louise is getting the payoff. I told you about Louise, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t. Look, Anne, don’t you think—”

“He married Louise.” She spoke quickly, not letting him finish. “He thought Louise was what he wanted — then. Terribly, terribly efficient, for one thing. He used to be mad because I wasn’t efficient. Well, I guess I’m sorry for Louise, at that. I know what’s ahead. He’ll throw her over when he’s ready for the next stepping stone. Don’t think he won’t. He has to be God. He has to have the last word. Louise will find out the same way I did.”

“Now hold on,” Cliff broke in. “Why not just forget about all this?” He looked down at her, but she was not paying much attention to him. She seemed to be looking all around the grassy verge they walked on, as if she had some particular spot in mind and meant to find it. Cars hissed by, each with its flash of light and sough of sound.

“Maybe you made mistakes too,” Cliff said. Their isolation in the dark — with the cars going by and the ocean on the other side closing them in — created a sort of closeness that made him feel at once responsible and wise enough to help.

“It isn’t too late to start over,” he assured her. “You’re young and pretty. You know you didn’t really mean anything about getting even and jumping in the ocean and all that stuff. Why don’t you just face up to—”

“Oh, shut up!” she cried out suddenly. “Shut your mouth!” She jerked her hand from his arm and swung to face him, the heavy handbag flailing from her wrist. “You know so much! You had to butt in. You had to stop me when I might have made it. You—”

“Not from that end of the pier,” he said, shocked but stubborn. “If you’d really wanted to drown yourself you’d have—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she screamed at him. “You had to stop me! Now you’ve got to help me get it done, do you hear?” She scrabbled in the handbag. “I told you I had the wherewithal. I’ve got it, all right. But I can’t use it. I can’t, I can’t! I’ve tried. You do it for me!”

And she thrust the wherewithal into his hand. It wasn’t very big — a thirty-eight, maybe, he thought, with a short barrel. Warm from the depth of the bag and the company of the bottle.

The disbelieving part of his mind stood back and knew that nothing like this could possibly be happening to him. The rest of him was jolted to incoherence. He could only open his hand flat and shove the gun back into hers, stammering, “No, no, no!”

“I’m young and pretty!” she was saying, her hard fingers clenched around his, trying to fold his hand shut on the gun. “Here, take it! I know what I am. I know how I look. Take it, you little damned fool, and do what you stopped me from doing! I can’t do it alone. I need help. Help me! Please!”

A wave of the most intense feeling washed over him, pity, terror, disbelief all hopelessly canceling each other out. Things like this can’t happen, he thought, not in real life, not to me. And he remembered with horrified revulsion that he had sat beside her, talked to her, walked with her, actually felt the gun bump against his side, and had not even begun to guess what he was getting into. The cars went by a million miles away, each snatching with it a small, temporary haven of light and safety and leaving him here in the dark, struggling with the woman and the gun.

He said, “No, no, let me go, Anne! Don’t! Anne!” But her fingers were hard as bone and in the desperate, incoherent struggle neither of them quite knew which held the gun.

He thought, Surely somebody will see this. Surely somebody will stop and help me. This can’t be happening — not like this. Not to me!

But he felt the gun hard in his palm, and her finger somehow pressed between the trigger-guard and his, very cold, very strong. No matter how hard he fought to let it go, when the pressure tightened on his finger, somehow, somehow the end of the struggle came and she got what she wanted.

There had been a terrible jolt and flash between them, and he was not sure at first which of them it had struck. Though the noise was loud he felt an immense silence and wondered if it were he who was hit. Because guns kill, he told himself wonderingly. Real guns kill.

Then he felt her fold softly up against him and slide down. It was strange how soft she was, when she had been nothing but hard, twig-like bone before. Her hat fell off and rolled in half a circle, the pale straw horse and rider cantering in the moonlight.

He stood there shaking convulsively, the gun in his hand shaking too. Everything wavered. He had the strange feeling that until a moment ago there had been three of them: Anne, himself, and a transparent, square-jawed William Howard Brewster walking between them. It was that transparent man she was really struggling to kill. And maybe she had, he thought dazedly. Anyway, now he was alone. He looked up at the stars and knew how terribly alone he was, feeling it for the first time. How alone every man is.

The car slid to a stop beside him while he still stood there looking up. He felt the gun in his hand and thought. It could have hit me, not her. I could be dead. It was inconceivable, but it was true. He could begin to believe it, as he could not have done ten minutes ago.

A car door slammed. He turned. A woman in a pink-striped dress was walking toward him through the wild mustard. He had a moment’s startled feeling that she was Anne. Tall, thin, with big dark eyes, but these eyes met his squarely. They glanced once at the gun.

Cliff opened his hand wide and flat and heard the gun thump to the ground beside the bright summer dress at his feet. Without knowing that he was going to speak at all without even thinking what he would say, he heard his own voice with hysteria in it.

“She did it herself! You’ve got to believe me! She did it herself. She pushed the gun in my hand and made me pull the trigger.”

The woman’s dark eyes searched his face. She looked down once into the grass and then away again. “Be still,” she said. “Let me think.” She put her hands over her face and again he thought of Anne. But when she looked up again, she was resolute and not like Anne at all.

“All right,” she said. “It’s done. Nothing can help that now. But nobody will believe you. You know that.”

“But it’s true! She—”

“I saw you on the pier together,” the woman broke in. “The bartender must have seen you leave together. Do you think the police will listen to you after that?”

He gulped and held his breath, desperately afraid he was going to cry. “I didn’t,” he said, hearing in his own voice a hint of the helplessness he had seen in Anne. “I didn’t do it!”

She stood there for a long moment in silence, looking down again at the thin, motionless girl lying among the wild mustard, the highway dust blowing over her in the headlights. Then she seemed to pull herself together with a little shudder, and she stepped quickly to the car and reached in to switch off the lights. In the sudden dark she said, “All right. I knew her. I believe you. I believe it happened just as you say. Now listen. I’ll help you, but you’ll have to do exactly as I tell you. First of all, we’ll put her in the back of my car. Wait, I’ll spread out the tarp.”

She turned swiftly, saying over her shoulder, “Go on, hurry before another car comes.”

But Cliff felt a fragment of caution stirring in the midst of his relief and his terror. “Maybe we ought to call a doctor,” he stammered. “Maybe—”

“Have you looked?” the woman said harshly, opening the back of the car. “She’s dead.”

“But the police—”

“Call the police and you’re done for.” She paused and looked at him in the dim starlight. “Now do you want out of this or don’t you? Make up your mind fast.”

“I... I’ll do what you say.”

“All right, then. Here, I’ll help. You take her shoulders.”

Her arms were like dry twigs again and she weighed nothing at all. Tall as she had been, she doubled up easily — with her feet against the spare tire, in the dark cavern of the car. The woman hesitated a moment before she closed the big curved lid. She stooped and put a strand of the straggling black hair aside quite gently from the good side of the shattered face. Half of it still looked very much like her own.

“Get in front,” she said in a controlled voice. “We have a long drive ahead.”

He didn’t say a word for a long while. He was nothing inside, he thought. Nothing but a quivering and shaking mass. With a part of his mind, he was walking along the dark highway with Anne beside him and all this a nightmare that hadn’t ever happened. If he could only go back, he thought with passion. If he could only go back, say half an hour, and leave her as his instinct had warned him, when they came out of the bar. He remembered how the gun had thumped against his side, never imagining then that it was a gun, and he thought he would never, never be fool enough again to let another human being get that close to him. He sat as far from the woman at the wheel as the seat allowed him. If it weren’t for the shaking inside, he would have jumped from the car at the first stoplight and run until he dropped. But all he could do now was shut himself off, shut out the world.

It was late and they made good time. When they hit the freeway, the woman let the car really go, and the rest of the traffic became explosive, shining blurs that shot backward past the windows.

As they drove through silent Pasadena, he said, “Are you—” He licked dry lips and tried again, needing to know. “Were you her sister?”

She laughed like a little cough, quick and startled. “Under the skin, maybe.”

“I thought— You look alike, and I thought—”

“We weren’t related,” she told him in a flat, unemotional voice.

He was silent awhile, and the car left the outskirts of the city and began to climb. A sign flashed past. “Angeles Crest Highway.”

“I saw you on the pier,” he said. “It was you, wasn’t it? You pointed her out when she was about to jump. Why?”

“I’ve been watching her. Ever since I got to town.”

“Why? Why were you watching her?”

“Call it morbid curiosity if you like. I knew the state she was in. I knew what she might try to do. But I never really expected — this.” She drew her shoulders together and was silent.

They went up steeply a long way. They passed the crest and began to drop. The hot breath of the desert blew in their faces. “We’ll be there soon,” she said.

They left the highway at last, and drove awhile with the lights switched off and only the pale starlight and the glow of paler sand to guide them. Somewhere far off the road they drew up at last, among Joshua trees that sighed noisily when the sound of the motor stopped. The stars were a blaze that filled the whole sky, infinitely many, powderings beyond powderings of pale silver that crowded the spaces behind the bright, familiar stars.

“Get out,” the woman said. “Now we dig.”

He thought of balking.

“Come on, get it over,” she said impatiently. “We’re on the same side. I’m covering up for, you. But you’ve got to help. We’re very lucky there’s a shovel in the car. We’ll take turns.”

“But why?” he demanded. “I don’t understand. Why?”

She paused to look at him in the starlight. “Because if she had to die, at least some good can come of it. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t want it. But now it’s happened — well, she and I had a lot in common.” A sardonic note sounded in the woman’s voice. “I couldn’t help her when she was alive. But now she’s dead, she can help me.” Briskly she turned away, glancing around the sandy clearing. “Nobody will find her here. I know this desert pretty well. I grew up here. I can cover our tracks. But we’ll have to dig deep. Let’s get started.”

They dug very deep. Tough roots tried to stop them; rocks rang under the shovel. Sand kept running back again into the grave until they had gone quite a way down. When the woman thought it was deep enough, she helped him bring Anne. Together they lowered her gently, in her bright summer dress, and laid her with the bad side of her face down upon the dark, curved cradle of her grave. The woman put Anne’s handbag beside her and then stood up and dropped something small upon the folds of the print dress, something that flashed once in the starlight as it fell.

“What was that?” Cliff asked, hushed.

“Never mind. Bring me the tarp, please.”

They folded it over her before they shoveled the dirt back. She looked quite relaxed and at peace, lying there among the deep roots with the tarp to keep the sand off her face.

When it was finished, the extra earth scattered, the Joshua tree branches dragged back and forth over the spot, the woman said, “Go on back to the car. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

He went and sat quiet, watching her. She stood there motionless, looking down, for perhaps five minutes. The wind in the Joshuas made a strange rattling and whistling sound that was as lonely a noise as he thought he would ever hear again.

They drove back to the city together in silence.

“Where shall I drop you?” she asked as they came off the freeway.

“The Greyhound Bus Station is where I’m headed.”

She pulled over to the curb on a cross street a little way from the station and sat there looking at him in the reflection of the street light. Her face was more like Anne’s than ever, looking thin and drawn now as it had not when he had seen her earlier that evening.

“She told you about herself,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but he nodded. “All right. Now listen to me and pay very close attention. You and I committed a crime tonight. It wasn’t our doing that she died. It was somebody else’s doing. I’ve had to make the best of it. In a way it’s lucky for you. The publicity would have been bad, and besides—” She looked down at the wheel and her hand clenched on it, and she smiled a thin smile. “And besides, I saw the answer to an old problem. But it was a crime we did. You and I are in it together. No matter what happens, no matter what you ever read or hear about this, no matter if they find her body or not — you’ll be safe only as long as you never say a word to anyone. Do you understand that?”

Cliff nodded, his eyes not moving from hers.

“Don’t ever think you can blackmail me,” she went on. “The gun has your prints on it, and I’ve got the gun. We must both keep still as long as we live.”

He thought about it, his hand on the door, ready to get out. He said, “Yes, I understand — most of it. But I wish you’d tell me what it was you dropped into the — in with her.”

She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back, but he was surprised to find how close he had drawn to her in the sharing of this terrible, this shattering thing. Since that moment when he stood above Anne’s body and looked up at the stars, he had known how alone he was. The knowledge had sunk in and it would be with him always, because it was the truth. But this was the kind of closeness two people can share even in their solitude. She was not a stranger any more. He almost knew before she spoke what she would say.

“Something that belongs to him,” she said, not needing to speak the name. “His Phi Beta Kappa key, with his initials and school and date. If anybody ever finds it, he’s finished. He had more of a motive than anybody alive. He pulled the trigger, really, in a way.” Her smile grew tight and thin. “So now,” she said, “he moves into second place. From tonight on I have the last word. What happened to Anne will never happen to me. I think she’d have liked that.”

Cliff thought of Anne, lying there among the clasping roots. He nodded. “I think so too.” He felt much better now, much solider, somehow, inside. Much surer of himself. In quite a firm voice, without any awkwardness in it, he said, “Well, goodnight. Goodnight, Mrs. Brewster.”

“Goodnight,” she said, and watched him walk away, his heels ringing solidly on the pavement of the early morning street.