Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1953

The murder itself was a cinch, no trouble at all. The things that were hard to do came later...

1

I rolled over in the hot sand and sat up. Down the artificial beach about fifty yards, the old man was coming toward us with a bright towel trailing from one hand. He was wearing swimming trunks, and with every step he took, his big belly bounced like a balloon tied up short on the end of a stick. Dropping the towel on the sand, he turned and waded into the water.

“The old man’s taking a swim,” I said.

Beside me on the beach, Cousin Cindy grunted. She was stretched out flat on her belly with her head cradled on her arms and her long golden legs spread in a narrow V. Her white lastex trunks curved up high over the swell of her body, and the ends of her brassiere lay unattached on the sand. When she shifted position, raising herself a little on her elbows, my reaction was not cousinly. Not cousinly at all.

“Hook me in back,” she said.

I reached over and brought the loose ends of her brassiere together below her shoulder blades, letting my fingers wander off lightly down the buttons of her spine. She sat up, folding the golden legs Indian style and shaking sand from the ends of her golden hair. She was gold all over in the various shades that gold can take. Even her brown eyes, behind dark glass in white harlequin frames, were flecked with gold.

Out in the lake, Grandfather was swimming toward the raft that was a small brown square on the blue surface of the water. He was swimming breast stroke, as many old men swim, and the water bulged out ahead of him in smooth, sweeping undulations.

“The old man’s strong as a bull,” I said.

Cindy didn’t answer. She just handed me a bottle with a white label and a white cap and some brown lotion inside. I unscrewed the cap and poured some of the lotion on her shoulders and back, rubbing it in gently with my fingers until it had disappeared and her skin was like golden satin to my touch.

Looking over her shoulder, past the soft sheen of her hair and out across the glittering blue lake, I saw that Grandfather had reached the raft. He was sitting on the far side, his back to us, legs dangling in the water. He’d made it out there in good time. For an old man, damn good time. He was strong, in spite of his fat belly. It didn’t look like he was ever going to die.

“It’s hot,” Cindy said, her voice slow and sleepy like the purring of a kitten, “but it’s not as hot as it gets in Acapulco. You ever been in Acapulco, Tony? It’s beautiful there. The harbor is almost land-locked, with mountains all around, and the ships come right up against the shore.”

I didn’t say anything. My hands moved across her shoulders and down along the soft swells of flat muscle that padded the blades. The perfumes of her hair and the lotion were a strange, exotic blend in my nostrils. Out on the raft, Grandfather still sat with his legs in the water.

“I was there for two weeks once,” Cindy said. “In Acapulco, I mean. I went with a man from Los Angeles who wanted me to wear red flowers in my hair. He was very romantic, but he was also very fat, and the palms of his hands were always damp. It would be better in Acapulco with you, Tony. Much better.”

My hands reversed direction, moving up again into her hair, cupping it between palms as water is cupped. The raft, out on the lake, rose and dipped on a slight swell. Grandfather rode it easily, still resting.

“He just sits,” I said bitterly. “He’ll be sitting forever.”

Her head fell back slowly until it was resting on my shoulder, and her golden hair was hanging down my back, and I could look down along the slim arch of her throat into the small valley of shadow under the white band she wore. Behind dark glass, her lids lowered, and she looked dreamily through slits into the brash blue of the sky.

“Acapulco, Tony. You and me and Acapulco. It’s hot and beautiful there by the harbor in a ring of mountains, but it wouldn’t be good unless you and I were hot and beautiful, too. It wouldn’t be good if we were too old, Tony.”

“He’s strong as a bull,” I said. “He’ll live forever.”

A shiver rippled her flesh, and the tip of her pink tongue slipped out and around her oiled lips.

“It’s a nice day, Tony. A hot, dreamy day with a blue sky and white clouds drifting. If I were old and ugly, I’d like to die on a day like this.”

She remained quiet a minute longer, lying against me with her hair splashing down my back, and then she slipped away, rising in the hot sand.

“I want a drink,” she said. “A long, long drink with lots of ice and a sprig of mint. You coming, Tony?”

I stood up too, and we stood looking at each other across the sand of the artificial beach that had cost Grandfather a small fortune.

“I’ll be up in a little,” I said. “I think I’ll swim out to the raft and back.”

Her breasts rose high against the restraint of the white band and descended slowly on a long whisper of air. She wet her lips again.

“I’ll have your drink waiting,” she said.

I watched her walk away up the beach, her legs moving from the hips with fluid ease, even in the soft sand, and after she was gone, I went down to the water and waded out into it to my waist. The water was cool on my hot skin and seemed to make everything clear and simple in my mind. Swimming with a powerful crawl, I was nearing the raft in almost no time. A few feet from it, treading water, I stopped and looked at Grandfather’s motionless back. I wasn’t worried about his hearing me. He’d been partially deaf for years and usually wore a little button attached to a battery. After a few seconds, I sank in the water and swam under the raft.

The first time I reached for his ankle, my fingers barely brushed it, and it jerked away. Reaching again, I got my fingers locked around the ankle and lunged down with all the force I could manage in the buoyant water. He came in with a splash, and even under the water I could see his veined eyes bulging with terror as my hands closed around the sagging flesh of his throat.

He was strong. Stronger, even, than I’d thought. His hands clawed at mine, tearing at my grip, and I scissored my legs, kicking up to a higher level so that I could press my weight down upon him from above. My fingers kept digging into his throat, but he put up a hellish threshing, and when I broke water for air, it was all I could do to hold him below the surface. It was a long time before he was quiet and I could let him slip away into the green depths.

There was a fire under my ribs. My arms and legs were throbbing, heavy with the poisonous sediment of fatigue. I wanted to crawl onto the raft and collapse, but I didn’t. I lay floating on my back for a minute, breathing deeply and evenly until the fire went out in my lungs, and then I rolled in the water and crawled slowly to shore.

On the white sand where he had dropped it, Grandfather’s towel was a bright splash of color. Leaving it lying there, I crossed the beach and went up through a sparse stand of timber to the eight room house we called the lodge.

Cindy was waiting for me on the sun porch. She had removed the dark glasses but was still wearing the two scraps of white lastex. In one hand was a tall glass with ice cubes floating in amber liquid and a green sprig of mint plastered to the glass above the amber. Her eyes were lighted hotly by their golden flecks. Between us, along a vibrant intangible thread of dark understanding, passed the unspoken question and the unspoken answer.

“Tell me more about Acapulco,” I said.

She set the glass with great deliberateness on a glass-topped table and moved over to me. Still with that careful deliberateness, she passed her arms under mine and locked her hands behind my back. There was surprising strength in her. I could feel the hard, hot pressure of her body clear through to my spine. Her lips moved softly against my naked shoulder.

“Was it bad, Tony? Was it very bad?”

“No. Not bad.”

“Will anyone guess?”

“I had to choke him pretty hard. There may be bruises. But it won’t matter, even if they do get suspicious. It’s proof that hurts. All we have to remember is that we were here together all afternoon.”

“What do we do now?”

“We have a drink. We wait until dusk. Then we call the sheriff and tell him we’re worried about Grandfather. We tell him the old man went swimming and hasn’t returned.”

“Why the sheriff?”

“I don’t know. It seems like the sheriff should be the one to call.”

“The will, Tony. Are you sure about the will?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s all ours, honey. Every stick, stone, stock and penny, share and share alike.”

It was only then that she began to tremble. I could feel her silken flesh shivering against mine all the way up and down. Her lips made a little wet spot on my shoulder. Under my fingers, the fastening of her white brassiere was a recalcitrant obstacle, thwarting the relief of my primitive drive. Finally it parted, the white scrap hanging for a moment between us and then slipping away. My hands traced the beautiful concave lines of her sides and moved with restrained, savage urgency.

Her voice was a thin, fierce whisper.

“Tony,” she said. “Tony, Tony, Tony...”

2

Out on the lake, they were blasting for Grandfather. All day, at intervals, we’d heard the distant, muffled detonations, and every time the hollow sound rolled up through the sparse timber to reverberate through the rooms of the lodge, I could see the bloated body of the old man wavering in terrible suspension in the dark water.

On the sun porch, Cindy stood with her back to me, staring out across the cleared area of the yard to the standing timber. She was wearing a slim black sheath of a dress without shoulders. Beautiful in anything or nothing, in black she was most beautiful of all. She was smoking a cigarette, and when she lifted it to her lips, the smoke rose in a thin, transparent cloud to mingle with the golden haze the light made in her hair.

“It’s been a long time,” she said. “Almost an hour.”

“What’s been almost an hour?”

“Since the last explosion. They’ve been coming at half-hour intervals.”

“Maybe they’ve raised him.”

“Maybe.”

She moved a little, lifting the cigarette to her lips again, and the sunlight slipped up her arm and over her shoulder. I went up behind her and trailed my hands down the black sheath to where it flared tautly over firm hips and then back up to her shoulders. I pulled her back against me hard, breathing her hair.

“Nervous, Cindy?”

“No. You?”

“A little. It’s the waiting, I guess.”

She turned to face me, her arms coming up fiercely around my neck.

“Sorry, Tony? Will you ever be sorry?”

I looked down into the hot, gold-flecked eyes, and I said, “No, I’ll never be sorry,” and her cigarette dropped with a small sound to the asphalt tile behind me. Out on the front veranda, there was a loud knocking at the door.

I went in through the living room and on out through the hall to the front door, and there on the veranda stood Aaron Owens, the sheriff of the county. He was a short, fat little man with round cheeks and a bowed mouth, and it crossed my mind that maybe he’d been elected sheriff because the voters thought he was cute. Looking in at me through the screen, he mopped his face with a bright bandana and blew out a wet sigh.

“Hello, Mr. Wren. It’s a hot walk up from the lake.”

I opened the screen door and told him to come in. “My cousin’s on the sun porch. She’ll mix you a drink.”

We went back to the sun porch, and Cindy put bourbon and soda and ice in a glass and handed it to him. He took the drink eagerly.

“We’ve been listening to the blasting,” Cindy said. “We haven’t heard any now for an hour.”

He looked at her over the rim of his glass, his face and voice taking on a studied solemnity.

“We’ve brought him up. Poor old guy. I came to tell you.”

Cindy turned quickly away, looking again out across the yard to the timber, and the little sheriff’s eyes made a lingering, appreciative tour of the black sheath.

“He’ll be taken right into town,” he said. “Twenty-four hours in the water, you know. Didn’t do him any good. We thought you’d prefer it that way.”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

He lifted his glass again, draining the bourbon and soda off the cubes. He let one of the cubes slip down the glass into his mouth, then spit it back into the glass.

“The coroner’ll look him over. Just routine. An old man like that shouldn’t swim alone in deep water. Maybe a cramp. Maybe a heart attack. Never can tell with an old man.”

“Grandfather was always active,” I said.

He looked wistfully at his empty glass for a minute and then set it down on the glass-topped table.

“Sure. Some old men never want to give up. Ought to know better. Well, time to be running along. Lucky to get him up so soon. Can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

I took him back to the front door and watched him cross the veranda and go down across the cleared area into the timber. Turning away, I went back to Cindy.

She was facing me when I came in, black and gold against the bright glass. Her lips were parted, and her breasts rose and fell with a slow, measured cadence.

“Everything’s all right, Tony. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Sure. They can’t touch us, honey.”

“He was an old man. We didn’t take much of his life away.”

“Don’t think about that. Don’t think about it at all.”

“I won’t, Tony. I’ll just think about the time when we can go away. I’ll think of you and me and more money than we can spend in a dozen lifetimes. You and me and the long, hot days under a sky that’s bluer than any blue you’ve ever seen. Oh, Tony...”

I went over and held her tightly until she whimpered with pain and her eyes were blind with the pleasure of suffering.

“It won’t be long, honey. Not long. After the will’s probated. After everything’s settled.”

She snarled her fingers in my hair and pulled my face down to her hungry lips, and it must have been a century later when I became aware of the shrill intrusion of the telephone in the hall behind me.

I went out to answer it, and when I spoke into the transmitter my mind was still swimming in a kind of steaming mist. The voice that answered mine was clear and incisive but very soft. I had to strain to understand.

“Mr. Wren? My name is Evan Lane. I have a lodge across the lake. I see the sheriff’s men have quit blasting. Does that mean they’ve found the old man?”

“Yes,” I said. “They found him.”

“Permit me to extend my sympathy.” The country line hummed for a long moment in my ear, and it seemed to me that I could hear, far off at the other end, the soft ghost of a laugh. “Also my congratulations,” the voice said.

A cold wind seemed to come through the wire with the voice. The warm mist inside my skull condensed and fell, leaving my mind chill and gray and very still. Inside my ribs, there was a terrible pain, as if someone had thrust a knife between them.

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

The laugh was unmistakable this time, rising on a light, high note. “I offered my congratulations, Mr. Wren. For getting away with it, I mean.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do. You see, Mr. Wren, you made one small mistake. You made the mistake of acting too soon after your lovely friend had been sun bathing on the beach. A girl like that is an open invitation to a man like me to use his telescope. I have a clear shot from my veranda. Now do you understand, Mr. Wren?”

“What do you want?”

“I think you’ll find me a reasonable man. Perhaps we’d better meet and discuss terms.”

“Where?”

“Say the barroom of the Lakeshore Inn.”

“When?”

“Tonight? At nine?”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I cradled the phone and went back through the living room to the sun porch. Cindy was standing at a liquor cabinet in the corner, moving a swizzle stick in the second of two drinks she’d mixed. She stopped stirring and looked across at me, becoming suddenly very quiet.

“Who was it, Tony?”

“He said his name’s Evan Lane. He has a lodge across the lake.”

“What did he want?”

“He wants to meet me at the Lakeshore Inn. Tonight.”

“Why?”

“He has a habit of watching you on the beach through a telescope. He was watching yesterday. He saw me and the old man in the lake.”

She took two stiff steps toward me, her slim body rigid in its black sheath. Bright spots were burning in her cheeks.

“Blackmail?”

“It looks like it.”

“What shall we do, Tony? What shall we do?”

“Find out what he’s after, first of all. After that, we’ll see.”

“He’ll bleed us, Tony. He’ll bleed us white.”

“No,” I said. “It won’t be like that. It won’t be like that at all.”

Then she came the rest of the way to me, but her body was cold and rigid in my arms, and it was a long time before it got back the way it was before the telephone rang.

3

The Lakeshore Inn was on an arm of the lake that was almost at a right angle to the main body. In the barroom, they’d tried to make an effect with rafters. After they’d finished, the effect was just rafters, but you felt friendly because they’d tried.

I crawled onto a stool. A clock on the wall behind the bar said five to nine. I looked at my reflection in the mirror below the clock and was a little astonished to see that I didn’t look any different from the way I’d looked yesterday or the day before. Same brown hair. Same eyes a little browner. Same face in general.

The bartender said, “Good evening, Mr. Wren,” and cocked an eyebrow to show that he was tuned in.

“The usual,” I said.

He put a couple of cubes in a glass and covered them with White Horse. Down the bar, around the curve to the wall, a heavy man with a bald head was drinking beer. The bartender went down to him and resumed a conversation I’d interrupted. At nine precisely, someone came up behind me and got onto the stool on my left. I looked up into the mirror.

The face I saw went on from where mine stopped. Thin and dark, with a clean, chiseled look, burned mahogany by wind and sun. Above it, black hair was feathered with white around the ears and almost mathematically divided by a single white streak. It was a head to make the ladies itch. The head of a man who might have been a heavy actor but thought he was too good for it. I sat and watched it until the bartender had done his job and gone back to his beer drinker.

“You don’t look like a blackmailer,” I said.

An incisive white smile flashed in the shadows of the mirror. “Thanks. You don’t look like a murderer, either.”

“It’s a funny world,” I said.

We drank in silence, two congenial guys, and after a while I said, “You’re a little previous. Right now I’m a poor relation. So’s Cindy. You know Cindy, don’t you? She’s the girl you peep at through a telescope. We’re just a pair of lovable young parasites, Cindy and I. We won’t have any money for blackmailers until the estate’s settled.”

The smile reappeared in the mirror, growing to a laugh, the soft, substantial embodiment of the ghost on the wire.

“You think I want money? My friend, I have more of the stuff than I can ever use. More, I imagine, than you’ll get from Grandfather.”

“In that case, what the hell are you after?”

Our eyes came together, locking in the glass, and his, I saw, were darkly swimming with the amused and cynical tolerance that doesn’t come from compassion or conviction, but from a kind of amoral indifference to all standards.

“Nothing that need worry you, if you’re reasonable. Believe me, I feel no compulsion to see you punished merely for killing a man old enough to die.” He lit a cigarette, doing it neatly with a silver lighter. In the mirror, the light flared up across planes and projections, giving his face for a moment the quality of fancy photography. “I’m a tenacious man, Mr. Wren. I know what I want, and I’ll use any available means to get what I want. In the light of yesterday’s events, you should be able to understand that.”

“You’re talking all around it,” I said. “The point, I mean.”

The coal of his cigarette glowed brighter and faded. “I’m thinking about the girl. Cindy, I believe you called her.”

I guess I’d known all along what was coming. I guess I’d known from the instant I looked into the mirror and saw that thin, patrician face with its ancient eyes. Strangely, there was no anger in me. There was only a cold, clear precision of thought: This time it’ll be easy. This time it’ll be fun. Not just a job, like it was with the old man.

“You can go to hell,” I said.

His white teeth showed pleasantly. “My friend, you are the one in peril of going to hell. I can send you with a few words.”

Killing the White Horse and turning to face him directly for the first time, I said, “You’re lousy with dough. You said it yourself. Buy yourself a girl.”

I got off the stool to go, and his hand came out to lie lightly on my sleeve.

“Since she’s involved in this, it might be smart to let Cindy make the decision. She may not be as ready as you for that trip to hell. In case she isn’t, I’ll be here until eleven.”

“You can stay forever,” I said. “You can stay forever and to hell with you.”

I went away without looking at him again, because I was afraid if I looked at him that I couldn’t resist ruining his pretty face. Outside, standing by my convertible in front of the Inn, I felt the cool wind come up off the lake and hit me, and all the strength went out of me. My hands began to tremble, and I clutched the edge of the door. After a long time, I got into the convertible and drove back down the lake road to the lodge.

In the drive, I killed the motor and sat quietly under the wheel. Beyond the timber, a cold slice of moon was rising. In the lodge, all lights were out except the one in the room where Cindy slept. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. Golden, sultry Cindy. The thought of her and Evan Lane brought the hot trembling back into my body, and I gripped the wheel until I was quiet.

I’d kill him, of course. I’d kill him, and it would be a pleasure. It would be the greatest pleasure I’d ever have on earth, except the pleasure that Cindy brought. Thinking of it clearly that way made me feel better, almost uplifted, and I got out of the convertible and went into the lodge and up to the room with the light burning.

Cindy was in bed with a book open, but I could tell she hadn’t been reading. I stood leaning against the door, looking across at her, and pretty soon, she said, “I heard you drive up several minutes ago.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been sitting down there thinking. I’ve been thinking about how to kill a man.”

“No, Tony. Not again.”

“It’s the only way. I’ve always heard that one murder begets another, and I guess that’s the way it is.”

“We’ll have money, Tony. Lots of money. We can pay.”

“Like you said, he’d bleed us. He’d bleed us as long as we lived. Besides, he’s got money. He isn’t interested in getting any more.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants you.”

Her eyes dilated, and the breath rattled in her throat. I watched her lips come open and bright color creep under gold, and I thought again of the pleasure of killing Evan Lane.

“What do you mean, Tony?”

“Just what I said, honey. He wants you. The same way I want you. The same way any man who looks at you this side of eighty must want you. He’s the guy with the telescope. Remember?”

She came out of the bed in a mist of white nightgown that barely existed, and I went to meet her. Against my shoulder, she said, “What now, Tony? What’ll we do?”

“I told you, honey. I’ll kill him before the night’s over.”

“No. We’ll find another way, Tony. There is another way.”

“There is, honey. The way he wants. Is it the way you want?”

“It’d be better than prison, Tony. Better than the death house.”

I dug my fingers into her arms until she gasped with pain.

“Don’t say that, Cindy. Don’t.”

“I’m thinking of us, Tony. You and me and the big dream. Are we going to throw it all away because some louse wants a cheap experience? We can’t do that now.”

“We won’t throw anything away. If he wants an experience, he can die. Dying’s the biggest experience of all.”

“It’ll point. Oh, Tony, can’t you see? Two deaths like that, the location of his lodge, all the things together. Together, they’ll point right back at us. They’ll dig it all out. Besides, maybe he’s already on his way to the sheriff.”

I shook my head. “No. He’s at the Inn waiting for you. He said he’d wait until eleven.”

“I’d better go, Tony. I’d better go see him. Maybe we can work it out short of what he really wants.”

“No. Not a prayer. If you saw him, you’d know.”

“Give me a chance, Tony.”

“There isn’t any chance.”

“I don’t want to die, Tony. I don’t want you to die. If we have to kill him, let it be later. Let it be when the time’s exactly right. Oh, Tony, give me a chance to save us.”

Her golden flesh burned through the white mist, but I was suddenly spent and impotent, and I turned and went away to my own room and lay down in the darkness.

After a while, I heard the convertible come to life below my window and move off down the drive.

I kept on lying there in the darkness.

There was no warmth in the sun, and the wind blowing in across the lake was very cold. The timber stood naked against the sky above its fallen leaves.

In her room, Cindy was packing. I went in and closed the door and stood leaning against it.

“Going somewhere, Cindy?”

“Yes. Back to town. Summer’s over, and it’s getting cold, and it’s time to go back.”

“Going alone, Cindy?”

“Please, Tony. We’ve been over it all so often. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” I said. “Like you said a long time ago, you’re saving us. Two months ago, Cindy. A long time.”

She kept going back and forth between the closet and her bag, not looking at me. She was wearing brown velvet pajamas with six inches of golden skin between the pants and the top, and the effect of the brown velvet and the golden skin was a matter of shading that made my heart ache.

“You’re going with Evan. Evan, the pretty blackmailer.”

“It’s for us, Tony. For you and me.”

“I know. That’s what I keep telling myself. She’s making a big sacrifice, I keep telling myself. But now maybe it’s time to let Evan Lane start sacrificing. Maybe it’s time now to let him make the big sacrifice for us, the same way Grandfather made it.”

She stopped halfway to the bag and turned toward me, holding in her hands a scarlet cashmere sweater that was like a great soft splash of blood against the brown velvet.

“He’s got us, Tony. However much we hate him, he’s got us, and you know it.”

“I should’ve killed him the first night.”

“He’ll get tired of it pretty soon, Tony. I know he will. Then it’ll be you and me again.”

“Sure. You and me and Acapulco. You and me and the hot nights.”

“It will, Tony. It will.”

I went over to her fast and took a handful of her golden hair. I pulled her head back hard until her slender throat was a tight arch and her lips were pulled apart.

“Is that the truth, Cindy?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Say it. Say it’s the truth and the whole truth, so help you God.”

“It is, Tony. It’s the truth and the whole truth, so help me God.”

I let go of her hair, and her head came forward and down until her mouth was warm and alive on the base of my neck, and her arms came up around me.

“I love you, Cindy. I’ve murdered for you, and I’d die for you, and there’s no place to go without you but hell.”

“It won’t be long now, Tony,” she whispered. “Not long now.”

Then I went out of her room and downstairs. From a desk in the den behind the living room, I got a .38 calibre revolver and put it in the pocket of my tweed jacket. Outside, I angled down through the naked timber to the artificial beach and turned right along the shore.

The grass around the lake was dying, but it was still long and tough and hard to walk in, and in spite of the chill, the shirt under my jacket was soon wet with sweat. It was a small lake, but it took me well over an hour to walk around it to Evan Lane’s lodge.

The lodge sat among the trees. I went up the slope and across the front veranda to the door and knocked, but there was no response. I thought at first that I’d come too late, but when I went around back, I saw his car still in its shed, so I returned to the veranda and sat down on the top step,

From where I sat, I could look at an easterly angle and see the timber growing west of our lodge across the lake. Swinging my eyes a little farther east, I saw more trees, but they were thicker and closer and growing on a kind of little peninsula that jutted out into the water from the end of the lake. I got up and went down to the west end of the veranda, where the angle of vision was sharper, but I still couldn’t see anything but the heavy growth of scrub trees on the little peninsula. I went back to the top step and sat down again.

Except for the soft sighing of the trees, there was no sound. Under the pale sun, the lake was quiet. My mind was quiet with the quiet that comes when things are accepted.

Down by the lake, beyond the trees, there was suddenly the faint sound of whistling. The whistling grew louder as it came nearer through the trees, and pretty soon Evan Lane appeared on the slope, dressed in a bright plaid shirt, open at the throat, and corduroy trousers. When he saw me sitting on the step, the whistling broke for a moment and then resumed.

A few steps from the veranda, Lane pulled up, saying, “Well. Mr. Wren. Your neighborliness is appreciated, but it comes a little late. I’m returning to town tonight.”

“I know,” I said. “Cindy’s home packing.”

“Yes? I still have mine to do. I know you’ll understand.”

“Sure. I’ll only stay a minute. I was just sitting here admiring your view. You could improve it, you know, by having the trees cut off that little peninsula. If you had the trees cut down, you could see our place across the lake. You could even see the beach and the raft.”

He turned slowly to follow the direction of my gaze, and when he turned back, his eyes were alive with that swimming, cynical amusement I had seen in the Inn’s barroom.

“Oh, yes. I did say I spotted you from the veranda, didn’t I? But, of course, it no longer matters.”

“Sure,” I said. “It no longer matters. As far as you’re concerned, nothing will ever matter again.”

I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him, and then I saw what I’d been living to see. I saw the smooth assurance go sick in his eyes and fear come flooding in. When I’d seen that, I’d had everything from him I’d ever want, so I shot him. I shot him where I hated him most. Right in his pretty face. The bullet struck him just under the nose, and he went down like an empty sack.

I sat there a little longer, looking with a kind of cold detachment at the crumpled body, and then I got up and went back down the slope and around the end of the lake. By the time I got back to our side and the beach, the afternoon was almost gone. Crossing the beach toward the timber in front of the lodge, I thought for a moment that I saw Grandfather’s bright towel lying on the sand where he’d dropped it over two months ago, but of course the towel wasn’t really there at all.

I went up through the timber and into the lodge, and Cindy was in the living room with a glass in her hand. She was still wearing the brown velvet pajamas, and when I looked at her, there was still in my heart, in spite of everything, the pain of my love and the sadness of a great loss.

“It’s late, Tony. You’ve been gone a long time.”

“I went around to the other side of the lake,” I said. “I called on Evan Lane.”

The glass moved sharply in her hand. “Why, Tony? Why?”

“He wasn’t home when I got there,” I said, “and I sat on the veranda until he came. I learned something while I was sitting there, honey. I learned that you can’t see our beach or the raft at all from his place. He never used a telescope, as he said he did. He never saw me drown the old man. I kept trying to think how he could have known, and the only thing I could think was that you told him.”

I waited a few seconds, and she tried to speak, but no sound could pass through her constricted throat. After a while, I went on talking in a quiet kind of way with no anger in my voice, because there was really no anger in me,

“Yes, honey. You told him. You told him because you were hot for each other, and he could move in with a new kind of blackmail, and there would be nothing I could do about it because he knew I was a murderer. You talked about the big dream. The dream was there, all right, but I was never in it. When the time came, you’d have gone away, all right, but never with me. He was the one, honey. He was the one from the beginning, but first you had to have Grandfather dead. You had to have him dead for his money, because you wanted his money in addition to Evan’s. He didn’t have the guts to do his own killing. He didn’t have the guts, and you didn’t have the strength. So you drafted me. Well, the old man’s dead now, as you wanted him, and Evan Lane is dead, too. He’s lying on the slope in front of his lodge, and he’s dead forever.”

She tried again to speak, but nothing came from her throat except a dry sob.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll never know how sorry.”

I took out the gun, and the glass fell from her hand, and her voice came at last with a hot rush.

“I don’t care if he’s dead, Tony. Honest to God, I don’t. We can still go away together. We can still have the dream.”

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll go away together, honey. I’ve got our tickets right here in the gun. One way and a long way.”

“No, Tony. For God’s sake, no.”

I pulled the trigger then, and there was only a little bang that wasn’t very loud at all, and a black spot appeared as if by magic in the golden area of skin just below the place where her heart lay hidden. Her legs folded slowly, lowering her to her knees, and she pressed one hand, with the fingers spread, over the black spot. A thin trickle of blood seeped out brightly between two of the fingers. The gold-flecked eyes were wide with shock and terrible supplication.

“Please, Tony. Please, please...”

Then she lay quietly on the floor, and I turned and walked out onto the veranda. I leaned against the railing, looking off into the timber where night had come, and from one of the trees came the crying of a crazy-voiced loon. I put the barrel of the gun into my mouth until the sharp sight was digging into the roof, and even then, when there was no reasonable alternative, I was a little surprised to realize I was actually going to do it.