Rainbow’s End

7

I introduced Mom who took charge. She pointed at the armchair for Jill, the sofa for me and herself, and various chairs for the nurse, York, and Bledsoe. But I set Jill down on the sofa, camped beside her myself, and let everyone else, including Mom, find places where they could. Bledsoe got to the point at once: “Let’s get going. What’s Mantle suspicious about?”

“What ain’t he suspicious about?” asked Mom. “He’s a rat. He suspicions everyone — for no reason.”

Bledsoe eyed her, comprehending at last what his friend had heard on the phone but hadn’t rightly got the point of. But when he looked at me, I sidestepped. “Well, I wouldn’t know,” I faltered.

“Dave! You do know. Spit it out!”

“The little he said,” I told him, “he seemed to think it funny I killed Shaw around 5:30 and didn’t call in until 6:00. I explained to him the shape Miss Kreeger was in, how I was actually afraid she would die—”

“I would have,” she cut in.

“Well, she could have,” said the nurse. “She was in dreadful shape when we got her. She’s in pretty bad shape now.”

“Why didn’t you call, Mrs. Howell?” Bledsoe asked. “Did Mantle go into that?”

“I explained it to him over and over,” Mom answered. “That I was out looking for the money, to find it and claim the reward. I started looking right off, and that’s why I didn’t call. It wasn’t my fault it wasn’t there. I found them the parachute, though — a lot of thanks I got.”

Bledsoe thought this over and asked: “Is that what you told Mantle?”

“Edgren did the talking.”

“Edgren, then?”

“What else was there to tell him?”

He thought some more, then asked me: “So what’s Mantle suspicious of? Or Edgren? Or whichever it is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Dave, let’s have it.”

“Perhaps I might know,” Jill said. “They think she stole the money while pretending to be looking for it.”

“Were you here, Miss Kreeger?”

“No. They hauled me off in an ambulance before the questioning started. I just think that’s what it was. If I can think of it, they can think of it.”

“Well, thanks, Miss Whatever-Your-Name-Is, thanks a lot. Here I save your life and you up and call me a thief.”

“You are a thief.”

“Don’t you call me that! Don’t you do it!” And with that, Mom jumped up and ran at Jill. Jill rose from the sofa, waited till Mom was close to her, then let go with a slap that banged Mom down on the floor. I was blocked off by the table, but Bledsoe helped her up and led her back to her chair. “You rotten bitch,” snarled Jill. “You tried to get me killed, you—”

“Will you cool it!” bellowed Bledsoe. “We have just a few minutes. Are you going to use that time to save your necks or to send all three to prison? Don’t you realize that that’s all it takes? That the three of you start working against each other, to land you all in the soup?”

“Not me, I don’t think,” Jill told him, kind of waspish.

“Especially you, beautiful you.”

“For what?”

“Conspiring with Howell and Mrs. Howell to murder that guy for money. If it’s ever found, God help you — and especially God help Dave Howell.”

“Why especially Dave Howell?”

“He pulled the trigger on Shaw.”

There was a long, dark silence. Then York strolled over behind the sofa. He leaned over Jill, gave her a pat on the cheek, and said: “Honey, he could be right. Perhaps — it’s up to you — but I was sent here to help however I could, and I feel I should say what I think. Perhaps you should take it easy.”

Her face twisted up and she said nothing. Nobody said anything and a minute or two went by to the sound of Mom’s sniffling. Then two more cars pulled up outside, one behind the other.

Edgren and Mantle got out of the first car, and a guy I didn’t know, but who looked like a college professor, got out of the second. When I stepped outside and Edgren introduced me, I knew who he was: Mr. Knight, of the state’s attorney’s office, the one who handled big homicide cases. He was pleasant enough, but it was Edgren who took charge when I brought the three of them in and introduced Knight to Jill, Mom, and the nurse, whose name I don’t remember. He knew Bledsoe and spoke to him pleasantly. I got some dining room chairs from Mom’s room, then we were ready to begin. Edgren led off with Jill, “Advising you of your rights: You don’t have to talk unless you so desire. You’re entitled to counsel, who may sit in with us now.”

“Mr. Bledsoe is my counsel.”

“You want to talk or not?”

She turned, before answering that, to Mr. York, who squinched his eyes and said: “Just you don’t get excited.”

She looked at him, at Bledsoe, and at Edgren, then said, “OK.”

“So,” Edgren said, “shall we begin at the beginning?”

“Where’s that?”

“The plane, I would say.”

“OK, but I don’t like to remember those hours with that idiot waving his gun around and making them take us from Pittsburgh to Chicago and back, all the time explaining he liked me personally but would kill me just the same unless they did what he said, ‘exactly, exactly, exactly.’ He kept saying it over and over, like some kind of football yell. Then, once he strapped on his parachute, after making me stand with my back to him, over the money that they brought in a bag and that he strung over his shoulder by its canvas strap, he yelled into the first-class cabin: ‘Everyone down! Lean your head on the seat in front!’ When everyone did, he made me walk ahead to the passenger exit and made Lefty Johns, who was our copilot that night, open it.

“But then he lost his nerve. He looked out and couldn’t jump. That’s when we hit the air pocket and dropped I don’t know how far — couple hundred feet at least. Two or three women screamed. I’m used to air pockets, and it wouldn’t have bothered me, except that the whole plane creaked and I knew all of a sudden, that with the door open like that, another drop could tear us apart. Lefty knew it too because he yelled at Shaw real loud: ‘If you’re going to jump, jump! Will you for Christ’s sake jump!’ or something like that. But still nothing happened. Shaw just stood there looking out, a scared look on his face. When the plane creaked one more time I spun him around and pushed. But he grabbed me to keep from going out. Then the two of us were spinning down through the night, him hanging onto me and me hanging to him. Then I remembered the ripcord and found it and pulled. I was almost shaken off when the parachute opened. Then, like in some horror movie, I was over my head in water, but water so cold it stabbed inside me like ice. I screamed, but when the water went down my throat I cut it off quick. Then I came up and could see what looked like shore, with bushes and stumps and trees against the sky. I swam to it, but when I crawled out and stood up, it hurt my feet horribly. The water had taken my shoes off, and I was in my stocking feet. Nothing on but my pantyhose and my skirt, bolero, and bra — but they were soaking wet.”

“Wait a minute,” said Edgren. “You’re now on that island out there?”

“I was and he was, soon as he climbed out beside me — but we didn’t know it was an island then. He was the one who found it out after circling around. He still had his shoes on and could walk. Then he turned on me, blaming it all on me, saying that we were ‘trapped in this God-awful place’ and saying that he would kill me. For that, he began drying the gun, blowing into the barrel and rubbing it on his trousers to get the water off. Then he saw what looked like a house, with a light showing upstairs.”

“That was this house?” asked Edgren.

“I don’t think so.”

She turned to me and I started to speak, but Edgren cut in with his speech about my rights. Bledsoe then motioned to me, and I explained about the other house. She went on: “He yelled at it and so did I. I’m here to tell you I did. Then two flashlights came over the hill, and Mr. Howell was there with this lady.”

“Just a second,” said Edgren. “While this was going on, while he was drying the gun and while you were yelling at the house, did he still have the money?”

“Sergeant Edgren, it was dark. I couldn’t see. It was cold, so cold. All I could see was that gun — but I couldn’t rightly see that. When he jammed it against me, sometimes against my head, I could feel it.”

“Did he mention the money at all?”

“Not as I recall.”

“Didn’t blame you, or something like that, for its being lost in the river?” That was Mantle, getting into the discussion.

“He said nothing about it at all.”

On that, Edgren, Mantle, and Knight put their heads together, and Bledsoe looked at me. I knew what he was thinking: that Knight and both officers thought it peculiar that if Shaw had lost his money, slipped it off when he unsnapped the parachute, he wouldn’t have mentioned it to her, to blame her for it, as one more reason for killing her or at least to start to search for it. But when Edgren resumed, he told her: “OK, take it from there. Mr. Howell came with his mother. What then?”

“Shaw asked, did he have a boat, and Mr. Howell said yes. Shaw said, go get it or he would kill me. So he left and Mrs. Howell started hollering at Shaw and he hollered back.”

“About the money? Or what?”

“Why the money?” asked Bledsoe. “How did that get in this?”

“It’s what Mrs. Howell said she was thinking about at the time.”

“Repeat the question.”

“What was she hollering about?”

Jill looked at Bledsoe, at York, and at me, at me the longest, then said: “Sergeant, with a gun jammed to your head and your teeth chattering from cold, you don’t pay too much attention to what’s being said by a woman you can’t even see a hundred feet off in the dark. She was arguing with Shaw, that’s all I remember now, but what about, I have no idea.”

She made the rest of it short, how the voice said “drop that gun,” how Shaw had whirled and fired, how a rifle spoke, how Shaw had dropped at her feet, “his brains running out of his head.” She told then how she’d started for me, “and fell on account of my feet,” and how I’d come “piling through the bushes, put his coat on me, and carried me to his boat. I’d been praying to God, and I don’t mind saying right here that he looked to me like God. How do you like that, he still does.”

She put her hand in mine and there was a kind of pause. Then Edgren asked: “What then?”

“How do I know, what then?”

There was another pause, and she said: “He carried me to the house, and this lady mentioned the money, said she meant to start looking for it. I think that’s what she said. I had my mind on that coat, Mr. Howell’s heavenly coat — though it left him bare to the waist.”

She mentioned the bed, the bath, and my call to the sheriff’s office, then remembered her call to Chicago, but didn’t say anything about the brawl we had had when Mom came in with the rifle. Edgren pressed her about how much time had gone by between Shaw being killed and my phone call, and she guessed a half hour. “Long as it took to roll me into that bed, then put a blanket on me and carry me up to the bathroom, then dunk me in the tub.”

“One other thing,” said Edgren. “How did this man, this Shaw, get his gun past the metal detector? Did he mention that while you were with him on the plane?”

“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“I think everyone would.”

“Well, you work on it, mister. You won’t get it from me. If I tell you that and you tell everyone because they want to know then we start all over on this hijacking thing. How he did it was so simple anyone who has 10 dollars could do it. Yes, he mentioned it, he bragged about it. But he’s dead now, and I’m not telling you or anyone.”