Do Evil In Return

20

Easter was waiting for her. There was no need to ask him if he had found Voss and Eddie: The garage was dark.

He looked at her across the room. All the lamps were still burning and every line and angle of his face was distinct, grim.

“You’ve got a bad case of trouble, Charlotte.”

In silence she went to the big window where Lewis’ chair was, and stared down at the lights of the city. It was only five nights ago that she’d stood in this same place and wondered which of the city lights belonged to Violet. She had told Lewis about Violet that night, she’d said, “Lewis, I think I made a mistake.”

Well, the mistake had grown, cancerously; its wild, malignant cells had spread from life to life until it covered them all, Violet and Eddie, Voss and his wife and the old man Tiddles; Easter and Lewis and Gwen and Mrs. Reyerling. Her mistake had infected each of them, but its final victim was herself, Charlotte Keating.

She said, without turning, “Have you reported it?”

“Not yet.”

“You will, though.”

“I have to.”

“I suppose you know it will mean the end of my life here, my work.”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes. The lids felt dry and dusty. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I meant only to help Violet when I drove down to Olive Street that night. My duty seemed so clear, so inescapable. I didn’t want to go to that house. I was afraid of it. I remember thinking so many things had happened there that one more wouldn’t even be noticed. I was wrong. I’ve done quite a few wrong things, I suppose; pushed the wrong buttons, knocked on the wrong doors.”

“You still have a chance,” Easter said, “if you can find Ballard.”

“Do you hate him so much you must try to drag him into this?”

“He’s not big enough to hate. And he’s getting smaller by the minute.”

“You talk so oddly.”

“It will make sense if you’ll listen. Or don’t you want to listen?”

“I’m not sure. I’m — mixed up. All these hints about Lewis...”

“I’ve tried to let you down easy, Charlotte. You wouldn’t come down. You were treading clouds, still are. When a cloud gets too heavy, it rains. Stormy weather.”

“Talk straight, please.”

“Trying to,” Easter said. “Ballard didn’t tell you he knew Violet?”

“He didn’t know her.”

“He did. He sent her to you.”

“No! I won’t believe it!”

“You must. It’s true. The child was his. He sent her to you knowing how you felt about people in a jam, hoping you’d help Violet get rid of the child, help Violet and save his skin at the same time.”

“No.” The feeble denial stuck in her throat. “He told me — the night I met him on the breakwater — he said he didn’t even know Violet. I believed him. He was telling the truth, I’m sure of it.”

“He may have been telling the truth, as far as he knew it. Maybe he didn’t remember the girl; maybe he never even knew her name, until he saw her picture in the paper the next day, her picture and the name of the little town she came from. He knew then.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the dock on the mantel, the passing of the restless minutes.

“I’m not guessing,” Easter said. “I know he sent Violet to you because your name and address on the card found in your purse were written on the typewriter in Ballard’s study.”

“You’re framing him. You’re manufacturing evidence against him.”

“I don’t operate like that,” he said flatly, “even for the love of a lady. Want more proof?”

“No.”

“You could use it.” He took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and opened it for her to see. It was a photostatic copy of a sheet from the register of the Rose Court Motel, Ashley, Oregon, C. Vincent Rawls, Owner and Manager. Date, Feb. 26/49. Name, L. B. Ballard. Address, 48 °Corona del Mar, Salinda, California. Make of car, Cadillac, License, California 17Y205.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the name on the photostat. It had been written very carelessly and quickly, and she wasn’t sure whether the writing was Lewis’ or not. She said, “It doesn’t look exactly like Lewis’ writing.”

“It is.”

“And it proves nothing except that he stopped at Ashley for a night.”

“On February twenty-sixth.”

She didn’t reply, though she knew the significance of the date. It was the beginning of July now, and Violet had been four months gone with child when she died. But how could it have happened? Lewis wasn’t like that at all, Charlotte thought. He would never have looked at Violet — she was young enough to be his daughter, young and ignorant and not even pretty; and Lewis was a respectable man, a little stolid, a man who valued his place in the community and his reputation. Lewis and Violet. The thought made her sick. It stuck in her throat; it couldn’t be swallowed; it couldn’t be coughed up. Lewis and Violet. And the baby boy that had died with Violet was Lewis’ child; it might even have grown to look like him — the son that he’d always wanted, now in a garbage can in the morgue or already burned to dust in an incinerator. Poor Lewis, she thought. But running through her pity was an iron stripe of bitterness.

Easter was watching her, narrow-eyed. “I’m not interested in bringing Ballard to trial on moral grounds. That’s woman’s work. What he does with his spare weekends in Ashley or Cucamonga is no business of mine.”

“You’ve managed to make it your business. Do you also break into locked hotel rooms and peer over transoms and creep under...”

“I’m after a murderer,” Easter said. “Not a four-bit Romeo.”

She leaned her forehead against the window to steady herself. The lights of the city whirled, slowed, stopped. “Lewis is neither,” she said at last.

“He’s both.”

“No you have no proof.”

“I can’t prove that he killed Violet. But he’s made it easier for me by shooting Voss and O’Gorman and leaving the bodies in your garage.”

She turned to face him. “He wouldn’t do such a thing. Even if he were desperate, he wouldn’t involve me in such a mess. He loves me. You can laugh at that, but it’s true. He loves me.”

“He loves himself, too, and that’s the big passion. You’re running a poor second, Charlotte.”

She repeated stubbornly, “He would never do such a thing.”

“I admit it’s a pretty stupid idea to drive a convertible containing two bodies into your girlfriend’s garage. But I figure that he didn’t expect you back for a few days, and he intended to use the time to think himself out of the jam. When you look at it like that, Ballard was playing it smart. Your garage was practically the one safe place in town where he could hide the bodies until he planned a way to dispose of them.”

Lewis and Violet. Lewis and Voss. Lewis and Eddie. Three deaths already, and Easter with death in his eyes.

Easters mouth moved with a question, but she hadn’t heard it.

“I repeat,” Easter said. “Ballard had a key to your garage?”

“I don’t see what difference it...”

“But he had a key?”

“I left the door open.”

“Did he have a key?”

“Yes!”

Both their voices were raised, but Easter’s had lowered in pitch, and Charlotte’s was high and shrill.

“Do I have to squeeze everything out of you?” Easter said. “Don’t you know I’m trying to help you?”

“I don’t want your kind of help.”

“You can’t be choosey at this stage of the game. You’d better take all the help you can get while you can get it. You’ve got a car with two very dead men out in your garage, and I have to report it. I have to report it to the chief, to the D.A., to the sheriff. I should have reported it half an hour ago, but I gave you a chance. Where’s Ballard?”

“I don’t know.”

“And even if you knew...?”

“I wouldn’t tell you.”

“The loyal-little-woman role, eh?” An ugly smile crossed his face. “Well, come on, loyal little woman, I have something to show you.”

“I don’t have to...”

“Come on. I want to see that loyalty explode right in your two blind eyes.”

She felt a surge of violence. She wanted to reach out and hit him. It was the first time since childhood that she had wanted to strike someone, to hurt “You’re — you’re a contemptible...”

“Bully,” he said. “Gad. Yeah, I know all that.”

“My — my loyalty isn’t as absurd as you seem to think it is. There’s no proof that Lewis is guilty of anything.”

“Not enough for a court of law. It might take a month, two months, to line up the witnesses and the ballistics and medical experts and to organize the evidence. But right now I’m convinced, as the judge puts it in his instructions to the jury, I’m convinced beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty, that Ballard killed all three of them, Violet, O’Gorman and Voss.”

Beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. Heavy, somber words, like a funeral sermon.

Easter glanced at his watch before he opened the front door. “You haven’t much time. Coming?”

“Where are you going?”

“Just to the garage.”

“I don’t want to.

“Afraid you’ll be convinced?”

“No.”

“Come on, Charlotte.”

“No.”

Easter made an impatient gesture. “If I have to convince you that Ballard is a murderer before you’ll do anything to help yourself out of this mess, you must come out to the garage and see for yourself.”

“See what?”

“The gun.”

“Gun?”

“You’re in a worse spot than you think you are, Charlotte. The evidence indicates that the shooting was done in the convertible, perhaps right in your garage.” He paused. “Coming?”

“Yes.” She wanted to see the gun. She even had a sudden hope that she would be able to say definitely that it didn’t belong to Lewis. Lewis had a target pistol, a pair of them, in fact. She remembered the day she’d first seen them. She thought back to the time when she and Lewis were having a picnic on a remote stretch of beach near Pismo, and Lewis was trying to explain to her the difference between a revolver and an automatic pistol.

“These are revolvers. Now an automatic works differently. The cartridges are loaded into a clip that fits into the handle and the recoil mechanism discharges the empty shell and throws a new cartridge into the chamber. But a revolver like this has a revolving cylinder which — you haven’t even been listening, Charley.”

“I have so.”

“All right, what is this in my hand?”

“It’s a .38 caliber Colt target pistol. Darling, the sun’s making me sleepy. Anyway, what is a caliber?”

“You actually don’t know what a caliber is?”

“I actually don’t.”

“You are an amazingly ignorant but lovable woman,” Lewis said solemnly. He had leaned over to kiss her, one of the pistols still in his hand.

It had been a happy day. She thought of it now as she followed Easter silently out to the garage. The beach, the sun, the happiness, were as remote as a dream.

Easter beamed his flashlight into the back seat. It pointed like an accusing finger at the gun on the floor beside Voss’s knee. “See it?”

“Yes.”

“Recognize it?”

“No — I don’t know — I’m very ignorant about revolvers.”

“You can’t be very ignorant or you wouldn’t have called it a revolver.”

“I... I thought guns and revolvers were the same.”

“Did you?” The light hadn’t moved off the gun; it was mercilessly steady. “Well, it is a revolver and a very interesting one. Note the ramp built up along the barrel. That’s for more accurate sighting. Know anyone who goes in for target shooting?”

“No.”

He made a sound of disbelief. “The gun’s a common make, a Colt .38. What makes it uncommon is the fancy hand-made grip, and the fact that it’s one of a pair. And the other one of the pair is in Ballard’s study. I saw it there this afternoon.”

She turned away. The ceiling light of the garage was on, and she could see, in sharp contrast to the convertible and its contents, the ordinary items of her everyday existence: her gardening tools, the canvas gloves she wore to protect her hands, the trunkful of woolen clothes she had stored away for the summer, the old bicycle she used sometimes for exercise. They all seemed remote, like the day at the beach with Lewis. It was as if she would never again be able to take up her life where she had left off. The stitch had been dropped, and even if she could return to pick it up, the pattern had already, and inexorably, been changed.

She spoke wearily, “I have a legal right to say nothing.”

“That’s true.”

“I think I’ll — go in now.”

He followed her back into the house. His face was unnaturally red, the face of a man trying to control himself and restrain his anger. He walked the length of the room and back again, slowly, heavily, his full weight on every step.

“Charlotte...”

“You’d better make you report.”

“Not yet. I can hold off for a few more hours. You’ve been away, understand? You’ve been away and you haven’t come back yet.”

“I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d never gone. I wish I’d never met any of you, Violet or Eddie or you or...”

“Take it easy.” He went out into the kitchen and found a bottle of Bourbon and poured her some in a water glass. “Drink it.”

“I don’t want any.”

“Afraid you’ll talk too much? Look, Charlotte, this is no longer a matter of loyalty. It’s a matter of trying to protect yourself from being ruined.”

“I can’t protect myself. They’re there, Voss and Eddie. I can’t get rid of them.”

“I know you can’t.” He put the glass of Bourbon on the coffee table. “But you can minimize the importance of their being found in your garage. As the case stands now, that’s the point the newspapers are going to concentrate on. Double Slaying in Garage of Prominent Physician — they’ll give it the business, and whether you’re guilty or innocent, you’re going to be smeared. You’ll be accused and tried, not by a jury of your peers, but by a couple of newspaper reporters who want a juicy story, a deputy D.A. who likes to have his picture in the paper, several hundred housewives who resent your position as a doctor, a few disgruntled patients, some or your friends who ‘knew it all the time,’ a couple of W.C.T.U. members who saw you drink a beer once in 1943, and the usual assortment of religious cranks, neurotics, sadists... There’s your jury. Like it?”

“No.” Her throat felt raw, as if she’d been chewing glass.

“What we’ve got to do now is to change the emphasis,” Easter said. “Where Voss and O’Gorman are found won’t seem so important if the man who killed them is found first. If he is found and confesses.” He looked at his watch again. “You haven’t much time to decide. Where’s Ballard?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know who his friends are?”

“Some of them.”

“Where would he be likely to hide out?”

“I don’t think he’d be hiding anywhere near here.”

“Use your head,” Easter rasped. “He’s got to be near here. He didn’t drive that car into your garage and intend to leave it there. He intended to come back, to get rid of it But I don’t know when, and time is running out.”

“What am I expected to do?”

“Find him. I’ll give you three hours.”

“What if I can’t?” Her legs and arms felt cold, brittle as twigs.

“Try. You know his habits, his friends, the places he likes to go.”

She hesitated. “If I find him, what will I do?”

“Tell him to stop running, the race is over.”

“Where... where will you be?”

“Me?” His mouth moved in a smile, but his eyes didn’t change. They looked flat and hard as coins. “I’ll be waiting here. If Ballard turns up I wouldn’t want him to get lonesome.”

She knew from his face that that was what he wanted — for Lewis to come for the car, and for him, Easter, to be waiting, like a lion waiting at a watering hole in the certainty that the antelope would turn up. He didn’t expect her to find Lewis; he was only trying to get rid of her so the two of them could meet alone. A trickle of fear ran down her spine. I must get to Lewis first, she thought. No matter what he’s guilty of, I must warn him against Easter.

She looked across the room at Easter. She felt a surge of hatred for him — for his arrogance, his power, his obsession against Lewis. When she passed him on her way to the door, her fists clenched, ready to strike.

He saw them. His smile vanished. With a swift, violent movement he reached out and grabbed her wrists and held them together against his chest with one hand. With his other hand gripping the back of her neck, he leaned down and pressed his mouth against hers.

He let go suddenly, and she fell back a step, holding the back of her hand over her bruised mouth.

“That’s for nothing,” he said. “That’s for no encouragement, no co-operation. That’s for no pretty smiles, no soft looks, nothing.”

“You’re a cheap, rotten...”

“Beat it,” he said quietly. “Find Lover-boy. My patience is wearing thin.”