The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

Lead Cure

Originally published in Manhunt, July 1957.

It was Joe Edgerly’s wedding night. He sat on the side of the bed in the expensive motel room and held his head in his hands.

Lean, slim, muscular in his new pajamas, he stared at the floor and wondered if any of the other guests in the motel had heard his wife scream the moment he had touched her.

Wedding night.

But we’re not husband and wife yet.

I wonder if we ever will be.

She was quiet now, lying very still on the bed behind him.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” she said in a faraway voice.

He turned his head slowly to look at her. His eyes ached.

Her body molded the bed linens beautifully. Her face, for all its waxen cast, was the loveliest thing he had ever seen. Her blonde hair spilled and sparkled across the pillow like gold.

She was looking away from him. At the window. At the night. Or at something far beyond the window or night.

“It’s all right,” he said. It wasn’t all right, but he didn’t see how he could say anything else.

She wasn’t crying now. She didn’t seem to feel anything. “You shouldn’t have let me cry out like that, Joe. You should have made me stop.”

He turned toward her, almost reached out to touch the white marble of her shoulder. He let his hand drop.

“We’ll forget this happened,” he said. “You’re not the first bride to get panic-stricken, Dusty.”

“I should never have let you talk me into running away and getting married,” Dusty said. “I’ll only hurt you. I’m not right for you. I’m — not pure, Joe.” The final words seeped out of her, almost inaudible.

He felt the muscles contort in his face, changing its dimensions and planes.

“Who hurt you, Dusty?”

“Joe...” she pleaded.

“Who?” he demanded.

“A man named Radford.”

“Did you — did you love this Radford?”

“I never saw him before that day, Joe.” Her voice pulled as tight as it could go, broke, and words tumbled out. “It happened three years ago, when I was living in Colterville. There was a swamp... out on the edge of town. My mother used to nag me to stay away from the place. But I liked the swamp, the old trees, the water... There was a shack in the swamp. I was tired. I went in. The place didn’t look lived in, just an old daybed and rickety table for furnishings. Radford — he came in while I was there.”

“An old bum,” Joe said.

“Not old. Young. Dressed up, he would have been handsome. But he was dirty. Living there like an animal. I told him I had wandered into the shack by mistake.”

She had to pause to get saliva into her mouth. Joe sat unmoving, only hurting. Each word like a bullet, he thought.

“He said,” Dusty whispered, “that he lived in the shack during the spring every year, on his way north from bumming around Florida.

“I wasn’t afraid at first. He didn’t talk like a tramp. I even began to wonder what made him tick, how a man who could talk well could be a vagabond, a homeless wanderer.”

“So you talked to him for some time?”

“Yes. And then as I was leaving, he looked at me with a twisted smile on his face and said it was too early to leave.

“I was afraid then. He came up to me and took hold of my arms. I screamed. He laughed. There was nobody to hear me scream...”

There was a singing in Joe’s head. It rose to such a pitch that he felt as if he were losing his balance and would fall off the edge of the bed.

He got up and lighted a cigarette and walked back and forth across the room.

She lay with her arm over her eyes, “You made me tell you, Joe.”

“It was best.”

“Now you’re upset.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You can’t deny it, Joe. It’s been a mistake. You should walk out the door and not come back.”

Joe lay down on the bed and continued smoking. He reached up and turned off the bed lamp. Dusty lay still and tense beside him. After a long time, he realized they were both pretending to be asleep.

The quiet shell he wore in the office brought some ribbing from men who worked with him.

“...Married life getting you down, Joe?”

“...Look at the guy — married a week now and all he can do is go around thinking of his wife. It’s almost five, Joe. Almost quitting time. You’ll be home to her in less than an hour.”

“...When do we meet the bride, Joe? Geez, I got to meet the gal who’s terrific enough to addle Joe Edgerly’s brains.”

By the end of the week, Joe admitted to himself that he had changed inside. The thing had grown in him like a ravening monster. He could think of nothing but Radford.

He went in old man Simpkins’ office and reminded Simpkins that he had several days of sick leave coming.

“I’d like a few days off,” Joe said.

Simpkins, a withered man with a dry sense of humor, leaned back behind his desk. “I guess it can be arranged, Joe. Can’t say that I blame you. I’d hate to come right back to work myself after a short weekend honeymoon. By the way, when am I going to meet the missus?”

“Very soon,” Joe said, “Thanks for the time off, Mr. Simpkins.”

Simpkins waved him out of the office.

Nevertheless, as if a part of him had been iced over, Joe left the office and drove across town.

He chose a cheap pawnshop. Dirty windows. Shelves and showcases piled full of broken dreams and moments of fear. A wizened old man, like a packrat, coming out into the light.

“I want to buy a gun,” Joe said.

“Do you have a permit?”

“No.”

“I can’t sell a gun without a permit.”

Joe put a hundred dollar bill on the showcase.

A claw with five talons and broken nails covered the bill. The money disappeared.

“I have a 38 revolver that’s in good working order,” the old man said.

“That will do.”

When he reached the cottage he had rented for Dusty, she was in the kitchenette fixing dinner.

She came to the living room while he was getting some papers out of the kneehole desk and stuffing them in his briefcase.

“Dinner’s almost ready, Joe.”

“I won’t be able to eat. Simpkins gave me a sudden business assignment. I have to drive up to Atlanta.”

“That’s too bad.”

He didn’t look at her. “I’ll be gone several days. Maybe even a week. Do you have enough money to take care of yourself?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I get through this job.” He snapped his briefcase closed. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“Sure, Joe. I might visit my mother.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said.

When he left the central Georgia town where he lived and worked, he didn’t drive north. He drove south by east, toward Colterville and the big swamp that sprawled just north of the Florida state line.

The night was balmy, the moon full. He drove with the windows of the car open.

The most beautiful season of the year. The season of promise and new life.

Spring.

He didn’t find the shack in the swamp right away. He searched for three days before he found the path that led to it.

He walked along the path as the sun was sinking. Blood-red sun, falling into the western edges of the swamp. The heat over the swamp sang with insect life. Cypress reared from the black water on knobby knees and wept Spanish moss over him.

Then as he rounded a bend in the path, the shack stood before him.

He stopped short, his breath catching. He felt the weight of the gun pressing his stomach hard behind the waistband of his pants.

He took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his sweaty, tropical weight suit and wiped his face. Slowly. Almost carefully.

Then he walked forward again.

The door of the shack was standing open. Joe saw a man inside, hunkered over a rusty two-burner oil stove that was set atop an orange crate.

Joe stepped inside the shack, and the man whirled around. She had described Radford well, Joe thought. Young, handsome, if he had been dressed differently and that light of cruelty extinguished in his lean, angular face.

“Hello,” Joe said. The voice didn’t sound like his. It was quiet, with a faint ring of sadness in it.

“What you want?”

“Your name Radford?”

“So what if it is. You a cop or something?”

“No.”

“What you doing out here?”

“Looking for you, Radford.”

“Yeah?”

“You come here every year, I understand.”

“So what? The shack don’t belong to nobody.”

“That’s right.”

Radford stood with eyes narrowed, but confusion showing in his face. “You ain’t a hunter or fisherman that’s lost his way. You ain’t dressed for the part.”

“No, I haven’t been fishing or hunting — except for this shack.”

“What’s the shack to you?”

“I hoped you’d be here.”

“Me? Why me? I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t. But I’m glad you’ve stuck to your habits and stopped off here for a few weeks on your way north.”

Radford scrutinized Joe from head to foot. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

“Enough. More than enough.”

Radford took a forward step. “I don’t like people messing in my business. I don’t like people, period. Least of all guys who come walking in looking at me like I was something to be mashed under their toe. Who are you anyway?”

“The name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“Yeah? Well, what brings you here?”

“You knew my wife,” Joe said.

There was a quick flare of caution in Radford’s eyes. “That don’t seem likely. I don’t move in your circles, bud. You’re sure you feel all right?”

“I feel fine. You knew her before we were married. Her name is Dusty.”

He watched Radford’s face.

“I don’t know any woman by that name,” Radford said.

“Your face says different. Your face says you’re lying.”

“I think you’d better get out of here,” Radford said.

Joe opened his coat and pulled the gun from his waistband.

“I’m going to kill you, Radford, for what you did to her.”

Sweat broke out on Radford’s face. He began walking back from the gun, moving on his toes. The back of his legs struck the edge of the daybed. His legs broke, dropping him to a sitting position. His face was gray beneath its beard stubble. He looked as if he were going to be sick.

Then as he stared at the gun, something deep buried in Radford began crawling to the surface. In a moment he was sitting almost straight.

“Do me any good to beg?”

“No,” Joe said.

“Then the hell with you. Only she ain’t worth it.”

“Shut up,” Joe said.

“You shut me up, son. You’re buggy with the idea of getting back at me, and I guess that’s an inescapable fact of life. She’ll be disappointed when she comes here this spring.”

“This spring?”

“Every spring, since the first one. Like she’s reenacting the first one. I always have to slap her mouth shut.”

Joe’s flesh felt as if it were freezing and burning at the same time. “You’re a liar, Radford.”

“Okay, so I’m a liar. I don’t have to work to convince you. What difference would it make?” Radford sat quietly on the edge of the daybed. Joe held the gun pointed at him. He looked down at his own hand and saw the gun begin to waver and lower, almost of its own accord. The gun pointed down at the floor, and Radford remained, sitting upright, not moving at all.

Maybe he’s telling the truth, Joe thought. Maybe that’s just what happens, every year, every Spring. Dusty comes to this shack, and Radford is here waiting for her...

That’s impossible, he told himself. He thought of Dusty, knowing she would never come to this shack, knowing that what Radford had said was impossible. He lifted the gun again, and it was pointing at the quiet man when he heard the voice.

“Radford...”

There was no fear in Dusty’s voice. Feeling nothing at all, Joe went to the door of the shack and looked out, down the path. Her figure was outlined, clear and sharp, in the light. She saw the shadow of him, not clearly.

She stopped and called: “Radford?”

The minute I was supposed to be out of town, Joe thought, she came running here...

He lifted the gun. He squeezed the trigger and saw the bullet hit her.

She had time only for a very soft, muffled scream as she crumpled and died.

The swamp knew one moment of absolute silence after the crash of gunfire.