The Executioners

Chapter Nine

Carol had been at the hospital for nearly an hour when Sam arrived at one-thirty. She and Nancy were in the semi-private room with Jamie when Sam walked in. Sam kissed her. She looked completely under control, but he felt the trembling of her mouth as he kissed her. Nancy had a subdued, troubled look. Jamie’s face against the pillow was just pale enough under the tan to give him a greenish look. His left arm was bandaged, and he looked proud and excited.

“Hey, I didn’t make a sound when they sewed it up, and I got six stitches.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Sort of, but not bad. Gosh, I can’t wait to tell the kids at home. A real bullet. It hit my arm and went through the shed next to the mess hall, right in one side and out the other — zowie — and when they find it I can have it after the sheriff is through with it. I’d like it on one of those little wooden things under glass in my room.”

“Who did it?”

“Heck, who knows? That man, I guess. That Cady. A lot of the kids didn’t even hear any shot. I didn’t. I wish I’d heard it. He was a long way away, up on Shadow Hill someplace, the sheriff thinks.”

Sam began to understand the picture. “Tell me about it, Jamie, from the beginning.”

Jamie looked uncomfortable. “Well, I goofed up. I snitched Mr. Menard’s shaving bomb and I was going to let Davey Johnstone have it right in the chops and then I was going to sneak it back. But I got caught. So I got ten days of doing pots, and this was the last day. Everybody hates pots. You got to use steel wool. I got ten whole days because it was sort of like stealing, even though it really wasn’t. So you do the pots out by the shed. There’s a faucet there, and, oh, this was about nine-thirty and I was doing the breakfast pots and I was nearly done almost.

“I was just standing there, sort of looking at the last one, and bam! I thought some joker had gone in the shed and hit it with something to scare me. Then my arm felt all hot and funny. I looked down and there was blood squirting out of it, squirting all over. I yelled as loud as I could and ran for Mr. Menard’s cottage and other kids saw all the blood and they were running and yelling too, and they put a tourniquet on it. And then it all of a sudden started to hurt something terrible. And I cried, but not very much. By then Tommy went and got Nancy and then the sheriff came and we all rode over here in the sheriff’s car about maybe a hundred miles an hour with the siren going. Boy, I wish I could do that again when my darn arm wasn’t hurting.”

Sam turned to Carol. “What happens now?”

“Dr. Beattie said he’d like to have him stay here overnight, and he should be all right to travel tomorrow. He gave him some whole blood.”

“There’s going to be a scar,” Jamie said fervently. “A real bullet scar. Will it hurt when it’s going to rain?”

“I think you have to have the bullet in there, son.”

“Anyway, no other kid I know has a bullet scar.”

A smiling nurse came in and said, “Time for this wounded veteran to have his pink pill and a long nap.”

“Heck, I don’t need any nap.”

“When can we see him again, Nurse?” Carol asked.

“At five, Mrs. Bowden.”

They walked to the stairs and went down to the hospital lobby. Carol, her face ghastly, turned toward Sam and said in a voice so low Nancy couldn’t overhear, barely moving her bloodless lips, “Now what? Now what? When does he kill one of them?”

“Please, honey.”

“Daddy, Sheriff Kantz is coming with Tommy,” Nancy said.

“Take your mother over to that couch and sit there with her, Nancy, please.”

The sheriff was a rangy man who wore boots and tan riding pants and a khaki shirt. He had an outdoor look about him, a gun belt, a wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He shook hands slowly, almost thoughtfully. His voice was nasal, with a tired sound about it.

“Guess we can talk over in that corner, Mr. Bowden. Sure, you sit in, Tommy.”

They pulled three chairs closer together. “I’ll tell you my end, Mr. Bowden, and then I’d like to ask you a couple questions. First off it looks like the range was about seven hundred yards. And down hill. Take a good rifle and a good scope and a knowledgeable man and it isn’t a tough shot at all. I imagine if the wind wasn’t cutting up too much, I could put nearly every shot in a circle about half again as big as a pie plate. If it were deer season, I’d have maybe a different idea about this. Your boy’s arm was close to his side. The wind was a little gusty from the south. The boy was facing east. So it looks like one of those gusts drifted that slug over a few inches. Nobody was trying to scare the boy. They made a pretty good try at killing him. If he’d put his slug say two and a half inches further to his right, that boy would have been dead before he could fall all the way down.”

Sam swallowed hard and said, “You don’t have to—”

“I’m talking facts, Mr. Bowden. I’m not talking to see how much I can get you upset. And I wouldn’t talk to your wife like this. If he’d hit the boy the way he wanted to, we’d have had us a real bad time trying to figure where the bullet came from. But he missed and he put two holes in the shack and that gave us a line of sight. It couldn’t be direct, because the way the slug will drop, especially after going through a three-quarter-inch board. It put us on a line up the side of a knoll the kids call Shady Hill. There’s a lot of back roads up in there and I know for a fact that there are plenty of places you can look down right into that camp. I’ve got a deputy named Ronnie Gideon I left working on it, and he’s a good boy and he knows the woods and he can read track, and he’ll find where the man with the gun was when he took aim. We were too late for any road block because we didn’t know what to look for. I understand you can tell us who to look for, Mr. Bowden.”

“I can’t prove he fired the shot. I can’t prove he poisoned our dog. But I know it was Cady both times. Max Cady. He got out of federal prison last year in September, I think. He drives a gray Chevy sedan, about eight years old. You can phone Captain Mark Dutton in New Essex and he’ll give you all you need to know on him.”

“He must have a pretty strong hate for you folks.”

“I was instrumental in getting him jailed for life. But they let him out after thirteen years. He was in for rape of a fourteen-year-old Australian girl during the war. He comes from bad stock. He’s vicious and I think he’s more than half demented.”

“Is he smart? Shrewd?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s take a look at this situation now. Suppose he’s picked up. He’ll be miles from here. He won’t have a rifle with him. He’ll deny firing at any boy. Must have been a stray shot. He’ll yell persecution. I don’t know any good way to hold him, under the law.”

“That’s just fine.”

“Now, you’ve got to think the way those people think. All right. This was carefully planned. He had to spend some time scouting the situation. So he had to think of what he was going to do after he killed the boy. He knew you’d point suspicion at him. So he’d have to either brazen it out, depending on no evidence showing up, or he’d have it all set so he could hide out. Killing a kid would attract a lot of attention. He couldn’t be certain somebody didn’t see him up on those back roads. So I’d say he’s got a hole to hide in. He’ll have it all stocked and he’ll be in some out-of-the-way place where nobody will look for him.”

“You’re so optimistic.”

“I’m trying to be practical. So you can know what to expect. I’ll bet he’s sore at himself for missing. I think he was planning to move fast and get out of the area. He may try to keep on moving fast. I’d say this is the time to be just as careful as you can possibly be.”

The sheriff stood up and smiled wearily. “I’ll get hold of the people up there in New Essex and then I’ll put out a pick-up order on him. I think the thing to do would be to lock up you people.”

“I don’t find that excruciatingly funny, Sheriff.”

“I can see how you wouldn’t have much sense of humor left this afternoon.”

“What can I do, sir?” Tommy asked Sam.

“Could you go... No, I’ll do that. I’ll go over and pick up Bucky and bring him back here. Stay with the gals, Tommy.”

“All right, Mr. Bowden.”

“And thanks. Thanks a lot.”

It took him just a little over a half hour in the station wagon to reach camp. He found Sheriff Kantz with Mr. Menard in the administration cottage. The dull-looking young man with them was introduced as Deputy Ronnie Gideon.

Menard was obviously troubled. “I don’t know what we could have done to avoid this, Mr. Bowden.”

“I don’t blame you in any way.”

“I am finding it very hard to accept the fact this was intentional. Sheriff Kantz assures me it is.”

The sheriff was tossing a small object into the air and catching it. “This is the slug. Badly deformed. Thirty-caliber, I’d say. Mr. Menard here put a slew of kids to looking for it until they found it.”

“We’re saying it was a stray bullet,” Menard said. “Everybody is excited enough as it is. But I don’t know what the parents are going to say when they get letters saying a stray bullet wounded a camper. I’m sorry, Mr. Bowden. I shouldn’t be griping about my problems when yours are so much greater.”

“Did you find the place where the shot was fired from?” Sam asked.

The deputy nodded. “Rock ledge. Prone position. About thirty feet from the road up there. He matted the moss on the rock. It was still springing back up. No car tracks, no empty cartridge case. Did find a chewed cigar butt. He’d rubbed it out on the rock. Mouth end still soggy.”

“If he’d killed the boy,” the sheriff said, “we’d be sending it along to the lab to see if we could get a type on the saliva. But I don’t see as how it does much good.”

“Cady smokes cigars.”

The sheriff looked blandly at Sam. “Hope you got a permit for that thing you’re carrying?”

“What? Oh, of course. Yes, I have a permit.”

“What do you plan to do now?”

“We were going to take Jamie out of camp today anyway. I think I’ll go over to the girls’ camp and get Nancy’s gear and check her out.”

“And go home?”

“No. I’m going to leave my wife and children in the place where... she has been staying with the younger boy.”

“Any chance of this Cady knowing where that is?”

“I don’t see how he could.”

The sheriff pursed his lips. “Sounds okay to me. Leave them all there until he’s picked up. But suppose he isn’t picked up? How are you going to know when he gives up and goes away?”

“I guess we won’t know.”

“Can’t keep your family hid out forever.”

“I know that. I’ve thought of that. But what else can I do? Do you have any ideas?”

“The only one I got I’m not proud of, Mr. Bowden. Think of him like he’s a tiger. You want to get him in out of the brush. So you stake out a goat and you hide in a tree.”

Sam stared at him. “If you could possibly think I’d use my wife or any of my kids as bait for—”

“I told you I wasn’t proud of it. You can guess what a tiger will do, I’ve heard, but you can’t guess about a crazy man. He tried sniping this time. Next time he might try something else. I guess it’s best to keep them hid. It’s the best you can do.”

Sam looked at his watch. “I’d like to collect Jamie’s gear and pick up Bucky, Mr. Menard.”

“I’ve had his gear packed and brought up to the mess hall. Bucky is with my wife. I’ll go get him. I’m sorry this was such a bad ending to Jamie’s month.”

“I’m glad it wasn’t worse.”

“We’ll look forward to having him with us next year.”

Sam said goodbye to the sheriff and thanked him. The sheriff assured him there was a pretty good chance of Cady being picked up for questioning. But there was a hollow ring to his assurances.

Sam was back at the hospital by quarter to five. Nancy was very surprised when she found he had checked her out of camp, and disappointed she would have no chance to say goodbye, but she soon accepted it as a logical and inevitable decision.

She nodded slowly and said, “I know. There’s so many hills. I couldn’t be outdoors anywhere in daylight without wondering if...” And she shuddered.

Sam phoned Bill Stetch from a booth in the hospital lobby and told him the situation and said he wouldn’t be back in the office until Friday morning.

After they saw Jamie again and said good night to him, they had dinner at the Hotel Aldermont. Sam suggested to Carol that she drive on back to Suffern with Nancy and Bucky and he would stay over and bring Jamie up the next day. But when he sensed how reluctant she was to be parted from him, he went to the hotel desk and took two rooms for the night. Tommy Kent tried to insist that he could get a bus back to camp, but Sam drove him back. Nancy had wanted to come along, but Sam told her to stay with her mother and Bucky. He was worried about Carol. She was entirely too reserved and subdued. During dinner she had joined in the conversation mechanically. She seemed far away from all of them.

As he drove the MG west toward the afterglow of the sunset, he said to his quiet passenger, “Am I doing the right thing, Tommy?”

“Sir?”

“Try to put yourself in my shoes. What would you do?”

“I... I guess I’d do what you’re doing.”

“You sound as if you have reservations.”

“It’s not that, exactly, but it seems so... you know, waiting instead of doing anything.”

“Passive.”

“That’s what I mean. But I can’t think of anything you can do.”

“Society is well organized to protect me and my family from theft and arson and civil riot. The casual criminals are kept under reasonably good control. But it is not set up to deal with a man who is trying specifically and irrationally to kill us. I know I could put enough pressure to bear to get my family officially guarded around the clock. But it would merely give Cady pleasure in finding a way to outwit the guards. And if the police were pulled off, I could hire people as bodyguards. But that would be the same story, I’m afraid. And it would be a very artificial way to live. And it would be constant terror, especially since this has happened.”

“He won’t be able to find out they’re in Suffern?”

“Not unless he can manage to follow us when we leave Aldermont. But I don’t think he’s in this area any more. I think he is always a half step ahead of me. I think he knows damn well I would immediately pull both kids out of camp. I have the feeling he’s back up near Harper. There’s a lot of fairly wild country around there.”

“I sure wouldn’t want anything to happen to Nancy.”

“Suffern doesn’t sound as safe to me as it did before. I think I may move them again tomorrow.”

“I’d feel better about it, I think.”

Sam studied a road map for a long time before the two-car caravan started the hundred-mile trip from Aldermont north to Suffern. Jamie was in good spirits, and his color was back to normal. He had all the faintly patronizing nonchalance of a seasoned combat veteran. Carol was still peculiarly subdued and unresponsive. He led the way in the MG with Nancy, and Carol followed with the boys. He took a roundabout route over secondary roads, and after stopping twice to be certain they weren’t followed, he continued with more confidence. It was a bright morning, with air so clear that every detail of far hills was sharp. The back roads went through beautiful country. It was the sort of day that raises the spirits. They were all together. He could be almost certain that Cady would be apprehended, and when that happened, maybe there would be some legal way he could be given tests to determine his sanity. Maybe some kind of pressure could be brought on Bessie McGowan to make her testify.

He looked frequently in the rearview mirror to see how far behind Carol was. At approximately eleven o’clock, when they were forty miles south of Suffern, he glanced back at the precise moment when the station wagon made a wild swerve, swung back into a deep ditch and turned over. It seemed to happen in slow motion. He braked hard. Nancy looked back and screamed. He put the little car in reverse and shot backward and got out and ran to the car. He climbed up on the side of it and opened the door. Bucky was roaring with fright. He got Bucky out first and then Jamie and finally Carol. Nancy helped them down. There was no traffic. Sam made the three of them sit down in the thick grass at the top of the ditch near the fence.

Bucky had a lump like a half walnut on his forehead. Carol’s mouth was bleeding. Jamie seemed unhurt. But Carol had gone to pieces. Completely. Her hysteria seemed more alarming to the children than the accident. He was unable to calm her. A small farm truck came rattling down the road. Sam ran out to hail it. A small, elderly, bitter-looking man was driving it. He looked directly ahead, jaw clamped shut, mouth working. Sam had to jump out of the way or be run down. He stood in the road, shaking with rage, yelling curses at the receding vehicle.

The next car stopped. It was a dusty sedan. The back was full of tools. Two big men in work clothes got out in a leisurely way and came over. Carol by that time had exhausted herself. She lay on her side, holding Sam’s handkerchief to her mouth.

“Anybody hurt bad?”

“A split lip and some bruises. They weren’t going fast. Where can I get help?”

“We’re on our way to town. We could send Charlie Hall back out with his wrecker for the car. Ed, if you want to wait here and ride back in with Charlie, I could take the lady and the kids in and leave them off at Doc Evans’.”

“I was shot in the arm yesterday,” Jamie announced.

The two men looked at him blankly. A large shiny car with an elderly couple in it slowed down and then speeded up.

Sam helped Carol across the ditch and put her in the sedan. She made no protest. There was just room for Bucky in back with the tools. Jamie sat on Nancy’s lap in front. The driver got in and said, “Doc Evans is on the left-hand side in a white house just when you get inside the town limits.”

As they drove off Sam said to the man named Ed, “I didn’t even remember to thank him.”

“I don’t guess his feelings are hurt. I can’t get this straightened out. Who was driving what?”

“My wife was driving the station wagon and I was leading in the MG with my daughter. I happened to look back when it happened.”

“I get it. Pretty tricky thing to stay out of trouble when you lose a front wheel.”

“Front wheel? I didn’t even notice that. The front left wheel.”

“Ought to be around here someplace. Probably ran off the other side.” They found it after five minutes of search, fifty feet from the road. The chrome rim had glinted in the sun and Ed had spotted it. Three cars stopped and were waved on. Ed got down in the ditch and looked at the wheel bolts. He touched one gently with a thick finger.

“Funny,” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing sheared. The threads got chewed up some. How far you come?”

“From Aldermont.”

“Well, I’d guess you had maybe only three nuts on here and each one of those turned just enough to catch the threads. Kids act crazy these days. Even if the nuts weren’t tightened down tight enough, they couldn’t all work off. Crazy kids, I’d say, playing a pretty nasty trick on you. Let’s see if we can find the hub cap.”

The wrecker arrived a few minutes after Sam found the hub cap in the ditch on the other side. The car was efficiently winched up onto its wheels and pulled out of the ditch. The right side of the station wagon was crumpled and two windows were cracked. Sam listened to directions about how to find the repair garage, thanked Ed, and drove in to the doctor’s. The small town was called Ellendon. The doctor’s name was Biscoe. He explained he was taking over the practice from Dr. Evans. He was small, dark, feline — with a black mustache and trace of unidentifiable accent. He wore a crisp white tunic.

He took Sam off into a small examination room, closed the door and offered Sam a cigarette. “Mr. Bowden, is your wife, would you say, a nervous woman? Tense?”

“No.”

“Then has she been under some great strain lately?”

“Yes. A very great strain indeed.”

He waved his cigarette. “I sense — you know — undercurrents. The boy’s bullet wound. I checked to see if the stitches held. This is none of my business. But were it my wife, I would take steps to see the strain is ended. Soon. It is like combat. She has committed all of her reserves. She is totally in action. She could be broken.”

“What would that mean?”

“Who can say? Retreat from reality when reality becomes more than she wishes to bear, or can afford to bear.”

“But she’s very stable.”

Biscoe smiled. “But not dull stable, stupid stable. No. Intelligent, sensitive, imaginative. She is frightened out of her wits, Mr. Bowden. I have given her a mild sedative. You can get this prescription filled for her, please.”

“How about her mouth?”

“Not enough of a split to try a stitch. I stopped the bleeding. It will be puffed out for a few days. The small one is pleased with his bump. He admires it in the mirror. No other damage.”

“I have to go and see about the car. Would I be imposing too much if I asked to leave them here while I check?”

“Not at all. Miss Walker will have your bill, Mr. Bowden. Your wife is resting and your well-behaved children are out in the back admiring my Belgian hares.”

The station wagon was on the alignment rack being worked on. The service manager said, “Not much damage. We had to use a file on a couple of those chewed threads before we could get the wheel back on. It’s ‘way out of alignment, but I don’t think the frame is sprung. Neither right-hand door will open. We replaced the oil that ran out. Hammering it out would be a long job, of course. But I imagine you want to get back on the road.”

“I’d like to. I don’t think my wife will want to drive. Can you people store my MG for a few days?”

“Sure thing.”

“How soon will the car be ready?”

“Give us another forty minutes.”

“Can I give you a check?”

“Certainly.”

After he had got the prescription filled, he went back to the doctor’s. The nurse showed him where Carol was resting. The shades were drawn and her eyes were shut, but she wasn’t sleeping. She opened her eyes when he approached the bed. There were spatters of dried blood on her blouse. She smiled weakly and he sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand.

“I guess all my sawdust ran out,” she said.

“About time, wasn’t it?”

“I’m ashamed of myself. But it wasn’t tipping over in the car. I guess you know that. It was Jamie. Ever since it happened. A little boy like that. Trying to kill him with a gun. Trying to shoot him to death, like killing a little animal.”

“I know.”

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Does my mouth look terrible?”

“Horrible,” he said, grinning at her.

“You know, when I look down I can see my upper lip. It’s cut on the inside. He packed something in there. He’s very nice.”

“He gave you something.”

“I know. It takes the edges off everything. It makes me feel floaty. Is the car ruined?”

“It’ll be ready to roll in a half hour. It won’t be pretty but it’ll run.”

“That’s wonderful! But... but I don’t want to drive it any more today.”

“I’m storing the MG here and we’ll all go in the wagon.”

“All right, dear.”

“How did it act?”

“Right from the first it wasn’t steering right. You know, it sort of wandered. I thought it was out of line again. I had to steer it every minute. And then, on curves, it would make a funny crunchy noise up in the front somewhere. Then, just before it happened, it got much worse. There was a terrible vibration. I was just starting to put my foot on the brake and blow the horn for you to stop when I saw the wheel go scooting out ahead of me. Just when I realized what it was, we were turning over and something hit me in the mouth. Do they know what happened?”

“Somebody loosened the nuts.”

She looked up at him and then closed her eyes and shut her hand hard on his fingers. “Oh, God!” she whispered.

“He knows the car. He would know the nearest hospital was in Aldermont. He could find that out. Aldermont isn’t large. I don’t imagine they have a night watchman on that lot across from the hotel. If we’d taken the main road with all that fast traffic, it might have been a different story.”

“When does all our luck run out? How long do we wait before that happens?”

“They’ll pick him up.”

“They’ll never pick him up. You know that. I know that. And if they pick him up, they’ll let him go again the way they did last time.”

“Please, Carol.”

She turned her face away from him. Her voice was far away. “I think I was about seven years old. My mother was still alive. We went to a carnival. There was a merry-go-round and my father lifted me up onto a big white horse. It was wonderful for a while. I held the brass pole and the horse went up and down. I didn’t know until later that my father paid the man to make it a long, long ride. After a while the faces of the people began to blur. The music seemed to get louder. When I looked out all I could see was streaks. I wanted it to stop. When I shut my eyes I felt I was going to fall off. Nobody could hear me yell. I had the feeling it was going faster and faster and the music was getting louder and louder, and I was going to be hurled off.”

“Honey, please.”

“I want it to stop, Sam. I want it to stop going around and around. I want to stop being scared.”

She looked at him with naked plea. He had never felt so helpless in his life. Or loved her so much.