Rainbow’s End

4

It seemed the sheriff was in Europe on some kind of business. The officer who was in charge was a sergeant named Edgren. He introduced himself and then the deputy with him, a middle-aged man named Mantle. He also introduced, or pointed at, the intern on the ambulance, who had pulled up in back of the sheriff’s car, a doctor named Cline, and the undertaker, Santos, who was getting out of the “dead wagon,” a black, enclosed truck with no markings of any kind, that had pulled up behind the ambulance.

Sergeant Edgren asked me: “You killed a man, that right?”

“The hijacker, Shaw, yes.”

“You identified him already?”

“The girl identified him. The one who came down with him on his parachute.”

“She here?”

“Right inside.”

“She’s the one that’s to go? In the ambulance?”

“She’d better go, sergeant. I’d say she’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Dr. Cline?”

Dr. Cline came up with two men who got a stretcher out of the ambulance, and I led the way inside. When I’d introduced the whole bunch to Jill, she motioned to the blanket and started talking like she was used to taking charge. “Pardon my informal clothes,” she said, very cool, “but my others got wet in the river, where I came down on the parachute. Mr. Howell fixed me up with this blanket.”

Dr. Cline touched her forehead, felt her pulse, and made a face. His men put the stretcher down, lifted her on it, and carried her out. As they were sliding her into the ambulance I bent down and kissed her. “You get well,” I whispered.

“For you I will.”

Edgren was at the door keeping an eye on me. As soon as the ambulance drove off, I went back with him. “OK,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”

“Not much to tell. However—”

So I told it, beginning with Mom’s waking me up, the walk to the water’s edge, the argument there with Shaw, my trip up to the landing, my paddling down in the boat, my order to drop the gun, the shot he took at me, and the one I took at him. “That killed him, at least, I think it did. I didn’t look, but I imagine my mother did. You can talk to her about it.”

“When was this?”

“Little after five. Twenty after, I’d say.”

He opened a notebook and glanced at it. “You called us at six after six.”

“Something like that, yes.”

“What took you so long? What were you waiting for?”

“I had that girl on my hands. She was in awful shape from the cold after coming down in the water, fright from his holding that gun to her head, and shock at seeing him killed. First things first. She was important. He could wait.”

“Your mother was there, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“Why couldn’t she have called?”

“She was looking for the money.”

“What money?”

“The money the airline put up. That was put in a zipper bag with straps to go over his shoulder, so it said on TV. That he had on him — that he must have had on him — when he jumped with that parachute.”

“What she have to do with it?”

“She wanted to claim the reward.”

“For what?”

“Sergeant Edgren, from what the girl had told her, the water took everything when they came down in the river — his hat, coat, shoes, the girl’s shoes — everything they had, including, of course, the money. But my mother thought it just might have floated after he threw off the strap, after he swam to the island, and that if she got going real quick, if she rowed out there and looked, she might be able to grab it before it sank, before it got waterlogged, or got knocked to pieces below, going over the dam. So you can’t call from a johnboat. So that’s why she left it to me.”

“She find it?”

“I’m sorry to say, she didn’t.”

“Where’s he at now?”

“Where he fell — on the island.”

I led them around the house and down the path to the boat. “That’s him,” I said, pointing. “Over there in the bushes.”

I offered to row him out, but he motioned to Mantle who pushed the boat in. Then the two of them — Edgren in the stern, Mantle at the oars — rowed out to have a look. “OK,” he told Mantle. “Load your camera. You got work to do.” Mantle snapped film into his camera, then got busy, shooting pictures of the corpse, measuring with a steel tape Mantle had on a spool, taking note of the trampled underbrush, and so on. Then Mantle called to me, wanting to know where I had been, “when you fired the shot that killed him.”

“I’ll show you.”

They rowed to shore again, and I stepped in the bow of the boat. Mantle headed downstream, then to the island’s far side. I had him pull for the tree and caught it, just as I had before, and pulled the boat in to jam it, exactly the same way. All three of us got out and headed for the stump where I’d picked up Jill, which was four or five feet from the corpse. Mantle spotted a twig, a fresh one on top of a bush, and looked at it with a glass. Then he wrapped it in a Kleenex and put it in his pocket. “I think,” I said, “it was cut off the tree by his shot.”

“That’s right,” he agreed. “It’s important. More or less proves you shot in self-defense.”

The three of us got in the boat again and rowed back to the bank. Edgren said: “I broke Shaw’s gun, found one empty shell in the chamber. The rest of it, one twig cut off the tree, apparently by his bullet, corresponds with what Howell said.”

“You mean, write it up that way?”

“It all checks out.”

“OK.”

So we were done except for moving the body, recovering the parachute, and impounding my gun for evidence at the inquest that would have to be held. Mr. Santos refused to put the body on my boat. “We’d just be asking for trouble. If that thing should capsize, I’ve got two men in the river, we don’t mention that body, and God knows where I come out. You’ll have to call DiVola.” DiVola was a fire company down the river that had a bigger boat, an aluminum thing with an outboard. To call them, we all went back to the car, the sheriff’s car with a dashboard phone, and Edgren did his talking standing beside the door. But as we walked around the house I could see Mom inside, talking on the phone. I knew right away who to. It was Sid, her brother over in Flint, who got in it deep before long. Of course, she had to tell him about it, but right away I began to worry.

I’ve already mentioned her left-handed way of talking. If she should get in it now and began telling it in a way that didn’t match up with what I’d said, and especially what Jill would say, if they ever got around to her, it could all get loused but bad. So I was nervous while Edgren talked, and hopeful when he hung up, that we’d be going down to wait for DiVola, but I was too optimistic. He had hardly turned around with the news “they’re on their way,” when the door opened and Mom was there. I hardly knew her. Her hair was all combed up with a blue ribbon on one lock, and her face was powdered to hide the freckles. She had on light tan pantyhose and her best blue dress, which was short, to show her goodlooking legs. Everyone turned, but she didn’t speak at first, just stood there staring at Mantle. Then: “Well, Mr. Mantle, howdy,” she sang out very friendly. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

But Mantle gave a blank stare. Then: “Madam, do I know you?” he asked in a puzzled way.

“You certainly do,” she told him. “I’m Myra Howell, Myra Giles that was — Little Myra, they called me, to tell me apart from my cousin, Big Myra Giles, who’s two years older than I am. Mr. Mantle, I’m the girl that bit that bandit! Remember?”

“Oh! I place you now! And later, you were the girl Mr. Hanks called us about.”

“I’d like to forget that if you don’t mind. Why, the idea, him calling the police about an argument two girls had. I never thanked him for it.”

“You were smaller then.”

“I was only sixteen. I grew. You moved to Marietta?”

“I’m from Marietta originally.”

“But you’re working for the county?”

“Sergeant Edgren has some questions.”

I could feel the drawstring pull on my stomach, but she talked so simple and honest and natural that even I believed her. She told how Shaw had “made passes at that girl, poking the gun at her head and her stomach and ribs, and all the time saying he’d kill her. And then my son spoke to him from the other side of the island, and I couldn’t hear what he said, but at the sound of his voice the man spun, spun around on one foot, and let go with his gun. Then I heard my son’s gun, and he dropped to the ground. And soon as my son brought the girl, took her ashore from the boat, I knew I had to get moving, to bring in that poke full of money, the one they were talking about on TV.

So when Dave had gone up with the girl, I got in the boat again and rowed out to the island, first to have a look if he was really dead, and if he was, to pick up the money and bring it in. He was, all right, with his brains scattered around, but no money was there. Then I remembered the parachute he’d come down with, and thought if it was still in the river, the poke with the money might be tangled in it. If I got out there quick I could grab it before it sank from water soaking in. So I rowed around to the other side of the island and found the parachute. It’s caught on the bottom somehow, between the island and the bank on the other side. But I couldn’t see a poke. It could be there, though, if someone got out there quick and fished up the parachute. It could be tangled up in it.”

It all matched up, not only with what had happened but with the way I’d told it myself — so much so that even I believed it in spite of what Jill had said. Yet Mantle kept looking at her, and the drawstring didn’t loosen. When she started all over again, about how scared she’d been for “that girl,” I wanted to beg her to stop, to leave well enough alone, but of course, I didn’t dare open my mouth. Just then a horn sounded from below. That shut her up, and we all went down to the river.