Find a Victim

Chapter 18

I drove back through the green silence along the lake-shore road. Passing the Kerrigan cabin, I saw the red convertible parked in the entrance to the lane. Mrs. Kerrigan waved at me frantically through the windshield. I left my car at the roadside and went to hers.

She was beautifully dressed and groomed, in black silk and a black hat and black gloves. Except for her eyes and mouth, her face was colorless.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” I said.

“Sally Devore told me where you were. I knew you had to come back this way. I’ve been waiting.”

“For these?”

I brought her keyring out of my pocket and handed it in through the window. It jangled nervously in her gloved hand.

“It isn’t why I came,” she said. “Now that I’m here, through, I’d like to see the cabin. Will you come up with me?”

“I wouldn’t go in if I were you.”

“Is she there? I knocked on the door and no one answered. Is she hiding inside?”

“No. She’s nowhere around. Anne Meyer’s dropped out of sight, as your husband said.”

“But he was lying to me about Monday. Mrs. Devore saw them together on Monday.”

“Apparently she did. So did old MacGowan at the Inn. He caught them in the woods, doing a rather peculiar thing.”

A faint flush appeared on her cheekbones. “Were they making love?”

“Hardly. She was digging a hole in the ground. Your husband was watching her dig.”

“A hole? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. Do you mind if I get in?”

“Of course. Please do.”

She slid over in the seat, making room for me behind the wheel. I showed her the brown leather heel.

“Do you recognize this?”

She took it from me and held it up to the light. “I believe I do. Who is it supposed to belong to?”

“You tell me.”

“Anne Meyer?”

“Are you guessing, or do you know?”

“I can’t be absolutely certain. I think she was wearing shoes like this when I saw her last Friday. Where did you get this?”

“In the woods. She seems to have lost it when MacGowan frightened them off.”

“I see.” She dropped the heel in my hand as if it was tainted. “Why in the world were they digging a hole in the woods?”

“Not they. She was digging. He was standing there watching her. It raises a lot of questions, and one possible answer. I’ve heard of sadistic murderers taking their victims to a lonely place and forcing them to dig their own graves. If he was planning to kill her–”

“But it’s incredible.” The words exploded softly from her mouth. “Don couldn’t have done a thing like that.”

“You told me he was a sadist.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I was speaking loosely.” She was gripping the door-handle as if we were going around a curve at high speed.

“So am I. It’s merely a possibility that occurred to me.” I offered her a cigarette, which she refused, and lit one for myself. “Did you see him Monday night when he came home?”

“Yes. It was very late, but I was still awake.”

“Did he say anything to you at all?”

“I don’t remember. No. I was in bed. He didn’t come to bed. He sat up drinking. I heard him prowling around the house for a long time. Eventually I took a sleeping-pill.” Her hand shifted from the door-handle to my arm. “How can you say he killed her? You don’t even know that she’s dead.”

“No, but the signs are bad. If she isn’t dead, where is she?”

“Are you asking me?” The pressure of her hand was almost painful. Her eyes were a tragic blue black. “You can’t believe that I killed her?”

“That’s true. I can’t.”

She didn’t seem to notice my denial. “I was at home all day Monday. I can prove it. I had a friend with me all afternoon. She came for lunch and stayed until nearly dinnertime. Do you know who she was?”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to prove an alibi for me.”

“I can, though, and I want to. It was Marion Westmore who was with me – the District Attorney’s wife. We were planning the Junior League rummage sale. It seems such an awfully long time ago, more like four years than four days. And what a silly way to spend an afternoon.”

“You think so?”

“I do now. Everything seems silly to me now. Did yon ever have the feeling that time had stopped for you? That you were living in a vacuum, without a future or even a past?”

“I had it once,” I said. “The week after my wife left me. But it didn’t last. It won’t last for you, either. You’ll get over it.”

“I didn’t know you had a wife.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Why did she leave you?”

“She said she couldn’t stand the life I led. That I gave too much to other people and not enough to her. And I guess she was right in a way. But it really boiled down to the fact that we weren’t in love any more. At least, one of us wasn’t.”

“Which one?”

“I’d rather not go into it. Exhuming corpses is an ugly business.”

The rebuff held her silent for a time. She looked out toward the lake, which glimmered like fragments of fallen sky between the trees.

“I suppose I asked for that,” she said. “You have been kind to me, though, last night, and again today. I can’t help wondering if it’s simply a technique. Is this your crimeside manner, Mr. Archer? Your psychological third-degree?”

There was enough truth in the question to make me wince. “I’m playing it as straight as I can with you. I don’t deny I’ve been tempted to use people, play on their feelings, push them around. Those are the occupational diseases of my job.”

“And you don’t have them?”

“I have them.” Jo Summer’s changing smile wavered smokily behind my eyes. “This is a dirty business I’m in. All I can do is watch myself and keep it as clean as I can.” I felt as if she’d put me on the spot, and I changed the direction of the conversation: “What brought you up here, anyway?”

“I don’t know for certain. Perhaps I simply wanted to see you again.” She wouldn’t look at me. “Is that a dreadful confession for a woman to make to a man?”

“Dreadful. You shock me, Katie.”

“No, don’t make fun of me. There’s nothing funny about it. Brandon Church frightened me when I talked to him last night – this morning.”

“Did he make things unpleasant for you?”

“Not exactly. He didn’t accuse me of anything. But he seemed so different – not the man I knew at all. He hardly seemed to know me, he treated me like a stranger. I wondered if he was drugged, or losing his mind. And then the other one, the Spanish American deputy–”

“Braga?”

“Yes. Sal Braga. I heard him threaten your life. He said he would shoot you on sight, and Brandon didn’t even try to quiet him. Brandon didn’t say a word.”

“He probably likes the project.”

“But why? What’s happening to all of us?”

“That’s my problem. There are a few more questions I’d like to ask you.”

“About Brandon? He was one person I thought I knew. I don’t seem to know anyone, really.”

“About your husband and Anne Meyer, if you can stand talking about them.”

She answered after a pause, in a neutral tone: “I don’t mind.”

“All right. Were they still attached to each other?”

“I don’t believe so. He told me that he broke with her months ago. For once I think he was telling the truth. When I saw them together at the motor court, they didn’t act as if–” Her voice faded.

“As if they were still lovers?”

She nodded.

“Have you any idea why they broke off, assuming that they did?”

“I suppose he got tired of her – he tired of women very easily. Or she got bored with him.” There was a glint of malice in her eyes. “She was just as promiscuous as he was.”

“But they were still friendly after the break?”

“Apparently they were. She went on working for him, until last week.”

“You say she was promiscuous. How much do yon know about her?”

“I know a good deal about Anne. So much that I can even feel sorry for her, when I’m not feeling sorry for myself. You see, I’ve known her ever since we were in high school together. I’m only two or three years older than she is. Anne had a bad reputation even then.”

“In high school?”

“Yes, she started young. She was one of the boy-crazy ones, very pretty and very wild. It wasn’t entirely her own fault. She grew up terrible fast. She was a full-grown woman before she was fifteen. And she had no decent home life. Her mother was dead, and her father was a bestial man. Really bestial.”

“You sound as if you made a study of them.”

“Father did,” she said surprisingly. “He was deeply concerned about Anne and her family, and he discussed it with me. He was judge of the Juvenile Court as well as Superior Court, and he had the disposition of the case. He had to decide what was to be done with Anne after it happened.”

“What did happen?”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Her father assaulted her.”

“Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Why isn’t Meyer in San Quentin?”

“She wouldn’t testify against him in court. Of course she was the only witness, so they had no case. But they did have enough to take her away from him, out of his house. Father intended to put her in a foster home, but it turned out not to be necessary. Brandon married her sister – he was Juvenile Officer in those days – and the two of them took her in. She lived with them for several years, and it seems to have worked out. There was no more trouble with Anne, no more legal trouble anyway.”

“Until now.”

She twisted suddenly in the seat and looked up the lane toward the hidden cabin. Her half-turned body made a breathtaking line against the light.

“Won’t you come up to the cabin with me?”

“What for?”

“I want to see what sort of condition it’s in. I intend to sell it.”

“You better stay out of there.”

“Why? Is her body–?”

“Nothing like that. You simply wouldn’t like it in there. In fact you’d better give me back the keys.”

“I don’t understand why.” But she took the keyring out of her black suede bag and handed it to me. “What do you want them for?”

“I’ll turn them over to the authorities if I can find an honest cop in Las Cruces. You should know some honest cops, if your father was a judge.”

“I thought Brandon was one. I still believe he is, when he’s himself.” She bit her lip. “Why don’t you go to Sam Westmore?”

“The District Attorney?”

“Yes. Sam and Marion are my oldest friends. You can rely on Sam Westmore.” But she was holding onto the door handle again, as if she needed it to anchor her to reality. “Is it safe, though, for you to go back to the city?”

“I don’t know if it’s safe. It should be interesting.”

She said in a small, clear voice: “You’re a brave man, aren’t you?”

“Not brave. Merely stubborn. I don’t like to see the jerks and hustlers get away with too much. Or they might take over entirely.”

“You won’t let them, will you?”

Her voice was dreamy, almost childish. Her gentian eyes were wide and dewy. They closed. I took her head between my hands and kissed her mouth.

Her hat fell off, but she didn’t try to retrieve it. Her head rested on my shoulder like a ruffled golden bird. Her breast leaned on me, and I could feel the quickened movement of her breathing.

“You’ll stop them,” she said.

“If they don’t stop me first, Katie.”

“How did you know my name was Katie? Nobody’s called me Katie for a long time.”

I didn’t answer. An explanation would only spoil the moment.

It ended anyway. She stiffened and drew back. When I tried to reach her mouth again, she turned her head away.

“God,” she said harshly. “I need a keeper, don’t I? I warned you not to be sympathetic to me. I’m ready to weep on any shoulder that offers itself.”

The red convertible followed me down the mountain. I kept remembering the taste of her mouth.