The Doomsters

28

I WAITED FOR the green light and walked back across the highway. Chestnut Street was empty again, except for my car at the curb, and another car diagonally across from it near the corner of Elmwood. It hadn’t been there before, or I would have noticed it.

It was a new red station wagon very like the one I had seen in the drive of the Hallman ranch-house. I went up the street and looked in at the open window on the driver’s side. The key was in the ignition. The registration slip on the steering-post had Jerry Hallman’s name on it.

Evidently Zinnie had come back to tuck her baby in. I glanced across the roof of the wagon toward Mrs. Hutchinson’s cottage. Her light shone steadily through the lace-veiled windows. Everything seemed peaceful and as it should be. Yet a sense of disaster came down on me like a ponderous booby trap.

Perhaps I’d glimpsed and guessed the meaning of the blanket-covered shape on the floor at the rear of the wagon. I opened the back door and pulled the blanket away. So white that it seemed luminous, a woman’s body lay huddled in the shadow.

I turned on the ceiling light and Zinnie jumped to my vision. Her head was twisted toward me, glaring at me open-eyed. Her grin of fear and pain had been fixed in the rictus of death. There were bloody slits in one of her breasts and in her abdomen. I touched the unwounded breast, expecting a marble coldness. The body was still warm, but unmistakably dead. I drew the blanket over it again, as if that would do any good.

Darkness flooded my mind for an instant, whirling like black water in which three bodies turned unburied. Four. I lost my Monarchburger in the gutter. Sweating cold, I looked up and down the street. Across the corner of the vacant lot, a concrete bridge carried Elmwood Street over the creekbed. Further up the creek, around a bend, I could see the moving lights of the sergeant and his men.

I could tell them what I had found, or I could keep silent. Slovekin’s talk of lynching was fresh in my thought. Under it I had an urge to join the hunt, run Hallman down and kill him. Because I distrusted that urge, I made a decision which probably cost a life. Perhaps it saved another.

I closed the door, left the wagon as it stood, and went back to Mrs. Hutchinson’s house. The sight of me seemed to depress her, but she invited me in. Before I stepped inside, I pointed out the red wagon: “Isn’t that Mrs. Hallman’s car?”

“I believe so. I couldn’t swear to it. She drives one like it.”

“Was she driving it tonight?”

The old woman hesitated. “She was in it.”

“You mean someone else was driving?”

She hesitated again, but she seemed to sense my urgency.

When her words finally came, they sounded as if an inner dam had burst, releasing waves of righteous indignation: “I’ve worked in big houses, with all sorts of people, and I learned long ago to hold my tongue. I’ve done it for the Hallmans, and I’d go on doing it, but there’s a limit, and I’ve reached mine. When a brand-new widow goes out on the town the same night her husband was killed–”

“Was Dr. Grantland driving the car? This is important, Mrs. Hutchinson.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. It’s a crying shame. Away they go, as gay as you please, and the devil take the hindmost. I never did think much of her, but I used to consider him a fine young doctor.”

“What time were they here?”

“It was Martha’s suppertime, round about six-fifteen or six-thirty. I know she spoiled the child’s evening meal, running in and out like that.”

“Did Grantland come in with her?”

“Yes, he came in.”

“Did he say anything? Do anything?”

Her face closed up on me. She said: “It’s chilly out here. Come in if you want to talk.”

There was nobody else in the living-room. Rose Parish’s coat lay on the couch. I could hear her behind the wall, singing a lullaby to the child.

“I’m glad for a little help with that one. I get tired,” the old woman said. “Your friend seems to be a good hand with children. Does she have any of her own?”

“Miss Parish isn’t married, that I know of.”

“That’s too bad. I was married myself for nearly forty years, but I never had one of my own either. I never had the good fortune. It was a waste of me.” The wave of her indignation rose again: “You’d think that those that had would look after their own flesh and bone.”

I seated myself in a chair by the window where I could watch the station wagon. Mrs. Hutchinson sat opposite me: “Is she out there?”

“I want to keep an eye on her car.”

“What did you mean, did Dr. Grantland say anything?”

“How did he act toward Zinnie?”

“Same as usual. Putting on the same old act, as if he wasn’t interested in her, just doing his doctor’s duty. As if I didn’t know all about them long ago. I guess he thinks I’m old and senile, but I’ve got my eyes and my good ears. I’ve watched that woman playing him like a big stupid fish, ever since the Senator died. She’s landing him, too, and he acts like he’s grateful to her for slipping the gaff to him. I thought he had more sense than to go for a woman like that, just because she’s come into a wad of money.”

With my eye on the painted red wagon in which her body lay, I felt an obscure need to defend Zinnie: “She didn’t seem like a bad sort of woman to me.”

“You talk about her like she was dead,” Mrs. Hutchinson said. “Naturally you wouldn’t see through her, you’re a man. But I used to watch her like the flies on the wall. She came from nothing, did you know that? Mr. Jerry picked her up in a nightclub in Los Angeles, he said so in one of the arguments they had. They had a lot of arguments. She was a driving hungry woman, always hungry for something she didn’t have. And when she got it, she wasn’t satisfied. An unsatisfied wife is a terrible thing in this life.

“She turned against her husband after the child was born, and then she went to work to turn the child against him. She even had the brass to ask me to be a divorce-court witness for her, so’s she could keep Martha. She wanted me to say that her husband treated her cruel. It would have been a lie, and I told her so. It’s true they didn’t get along, but he never raised a hand to her. He suffered in silence. He went to his death in silence.”

“When did she ask you to testify?”

“Three-four months ago, when she thought that a divorce was what she wanted.”

“So she could marry Grantland?”

“She didn’t admit it outright, but that was the idea. I was surprised, surprised and ashamed for him, that he would fall for her and her shabby goods. I could have saved my feelings. They make a pair. He’s no better than she is. He may be a lot worse.”

“What makes you say so?”

“I hate to say it. I remember him when he first moved to town, an up-and-coming young doctor. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his patients. He told me once it was the great dream of his life to be a doctor. His family lost their money in the depression, and he put himself through medical school by working in a garage. He went through the college of hard knocks as well as medical college, and it taught him something. In those early days, six-eight years ago, when his patients couldn’t pay him he went right on caring for them. That was before he got his big ideas.”

“What happened, did he get a whiff of money?”

“More than that happened to him. Looking back, I can see that the big change in him started about three years ago. He seemed to lose interest in his medical practice. I’ve seen the same thing with a few other doctors, something runs down in them and something else starts up, and they go all out for the money. All of a sudden they’re nothing more than pill-pushers, some of them living on their own pills.”

“What happened to Dr. Grantland three years ago?”

“I don’t know for sure. I can tell you it happened to more people than him, though. Something happened to me, if you want the truth.”

“I do want the truth. I think you’ve been lying to me.”

Her head jerked up as if I’d tightened a rope. She narrowed her eyes. They watched me with a faded kind of guile. I said: “If you know something important about Alicia Hallman’s death, it’s your duty to bring it out.”

“I’ve got a duty to myself, too. This thing I’ve kept locked up in my breast – it don’t make me look good.”

“You could look worse, if you let an innocent man take the blame for murder. Those men that went by in the street are after him. If you hold back until they find him and shoot him down, it’s going to be too late. Too late for Carl Hallman and too late for you.”

Her glance followed mine out to the street. Except for my car and Zinnie’s, it was still empty. Like the street’s reflection, her eyes grew dark with distant lights in them. Her mouth opened, and shut in a grim line.

“You can’t sit and hold back the truth while a whole family dies off, or is killed off. You call yourself a good woman–”

“Not any more, I don’t.”

Mrs. Hutchinson lowered her head and looked down at her hands in her lap. On their backs the branched blue veins showed through the skin. They swelled as her fingers retracted into two clenched fists. Her voice came out half-choked, as though the moral noose had tightened on her: “I’m a wicked woman. I did lie about that gun. Dr. Grantland brought it up on the way into town today. He brought it up again tonight when she was with the child.”

“What did he say to you?”

“He said if anybody asked me about that gun, that I was to stick to my original story. Otherwise I’d be in a peck of trouble. Which I am.”

“You’re in less trouble than you were a minute ago. What was your original story?”

“The one he told me to tell. That she didn’t have the gun the night she died. That I hadn’t seen it for at least a week, or the box of shells, either.”

“What happened to the shells?”

“He took them. I was to say that he took the gun and the shells away from her for her own protection.”

“When did he feed you this story?”

“That very same night when he came out to the ranch.”

“It was his story. Why did you buy it from him?”

“I was afraid,” she said. “That night when she didn’t come home and didn’t come home, I was afraid she’d done herself a harm, and I’d be blamed.”

“Who would blame you?”

“Everybody would. They’d say I was too old to go on nursing.”

The blue-veined hands opened and shut on her thighs. “I blamed myself. It was my fault. I should have stayed with her every minute, I shouldn’t have let her go out. She’d had a phone call from Berkeley the evening before, something about her son, and she was upset all day. Talking about killing herself because her family deserted her and nobody loved her. She blamed it all on the Doomsters.”

“The what?”

“The Doomsters. She was always talking about those Doomsters of hers. She believed her life was ruled by evil fates like, and they had killed all the love in the world the day that she was born. It was true, in a way, I guess. Nobody did love her. I was getting pretty sick of her myself. I thought if she did die it would be a relief to her and a good riddance. I took it upon myself to make that judgment which no human being has a right to do.”

Her eyes seemed to focus inward, on an image in her memory. She blinked, as though the image lay under brilliant light: “I remember the very minute I made that judgment and washed my hands of her. I walked into her room with her dinner tray, and there she was in her mink coat in front of the full-length mirror. She was loading the gun and talking to herself, about how her father abandoned her – he didn’t, he just died, but she took it personally – and how her children were running out on her. She pointed the gun at herself in the mirror, and I remember thinking she ought to turn it around and put an end to herself instead of just talking about it. I didn’t blame her son for running away. She was a burden on him, and on the whole family.

“I know that’s no excuse for me,” she added stonily. “A wicked thought is a wicked act, and it leads to wicked acts. I heard her sneak out a few minutes later, when I was making her coffee in the kitchen. I heard the car drive up and I heard it drive away. I didn’t lift a finger to stop her. I just let her go, and sat there drinking coffee with the evil wish in my heart.”

“Who was driving the car?”

“Sam Yogan. I didn’t see him go but he was back in less than an hour. He said he dropped her off at the wharf, which was where she wanted to go. Even then, I didn’t phone the police.”

“Did Yogan often drive her into town?”

“She didn’t go very often, but Sam did a lot of her driving for her. He’s a good driver, and she liked him. He was about the only man she ever liked. Anyway, he was the only one available that night.”

“Where were the rest of the family?”

“Away. The Senator and Jerry had gone to Berkeley, to try and find out where Carl was. Zinnie was staying with some friends in town here. Martha was only a few months old at the time.”

“Where was Carl?”

“Nobody knew. He kind of disappeared for a while. It turned out afterwards he was in the desert all the time, over in Death Valley. At least that was his story.”

“He could have been here in town?”

“He could have been, for all I know. He didn’t report in to me, or anybody else for that matter. Carl didn’t show up until after they found his mother in the sea.”

“When did they find her?”

“Next day.”

“Did Grantland come to see you before they found her?”

“Long before. He got to the ranch around midnight. I was still awake, I couldn’t sleep.”

“And Mrs. Hallman had left the house around dinner time?”

“Yes, around seven o’clock. She always ate at seven. That night she didn’t eat, though.”

“Had Grantland seen her between dinner time and midnight?”

“Not that I know of. I took it for granted he was looking for her. I never thought to ask him. I was so full of myself, and the guilt I felt. I just spilled out everything about her and the gun and me letting her go without a by-your-leave, and my wicked thoughts. Dr. Grantland said I was over exhausted, and blaming myself too much. She’d probably turn up all right. But if she didn’t I was to say that I didn’t know anything about any gun. That she just slipped out on me, and I took it for granted she went to town for something, maybe to see her grandchild, I didn’t know what. I wasn’t to mention him coming out here either. That way, they’d be more likely to believe me. Anyway, I did what Dr. Grantland said. He was a doctor. I’m only a special nurse. I don’t pretend to be smart.”

She let her face fall into slack and stupid folds, as if to relieve herself of responsibility. I couldn’t blame her too much. She was an old woman, worn out by her ordeal of conscience, and it was getting late.