You Live Once

Chapter 9

I spent all day Thursday in the cell. Tasteless food arrived at intervals. There was nothing to read, nothing to hear. It was a quiet place.

Kruslov came as the small high window was turning grey in the May dusk. He came into the cell, rested and amiable, a folded newspaper in his hand.

“Well, boy, the D.A.’s office has approved the file for prosecution and we don’t hold you for questioning any more. Now we hold you on a first degree charge.”

“What does that mean?”

“They figure they have enough to go on. Now you can have a lawyer. You got enough dough to hire a good one, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“If I was in your shoes, Sewell, I’d want Jerry Hyers. He’s tough and he’s smart. If you want, I’ll give him a ring. He’s got a good batting average. Too damn good sometimes.”

He puzzled me. He seemed relaxed, friendly.

“I don’t know who I want.”

“I’m giving you a good steer. Don’t look so suspicious. You’re not in the killing business. You just got mixed up with the wrong dolly. You’d have had a lot easier time of it last night if you’d talked up.”

“Go to hell, Kruslov.”

“Okay. Get hard. What’s the point? I do my job. It isn’t personal with me.”

I looked at him and said, as steadily as I could, “I didn’t kill that girl.”

He laughed. “Come off it, Sewell. Save that for the trial. That’s when you’ll need it. Shall I phone Jerry?”

“All right. Phone him. I’ll talk to him.”

“Gosh, thanks!” He tossed the paper on the bunk. “Here, read all about yourself.”

I read it after he left. They used a page one picture of me, the picture taken the night I had come home from the police station after getting smacked by Yeagger. I stood looking into the camera with a sickly smile, a perfect picture of guilt.

The write-up was discouraging. The newspaper had tried me and found me guilty. The authorities had certainly not been reticent about leaking their case to the press. They had even figured out how I had worked the car arrangement. According to the paper, we had ridden around until she felt better and then gone back to the club for my car. Driving two cars, we had headed out toward the Pryor farm, getting as far as Highland. Then I had signaled to her to stop. I had overpowered her somehow and brought her back to my apartment in my car. That was the car Mrs. Speers heard driving in at four. I had taken her into the apartment, killed her, taken my car back to the club and walked the two miles back to the apartment. It was fantastic, but it made a frightening kind of sense. Much was made of the belt, the tarp, the juice can, the thread. Nice juicy clues for the reading public.

My first visitor Friday morning was Willy Pryor. He had done some aging since the conference at his home. He looked less like himself in a business suit. He was as brown and hard looking as before, but he did not move the same way. He moved like a much older man. His head trembled a little and his eyes looked sick. It was the damnedest conversation I have ever had with anybody.

“Mr. Pryor, I want you to know that I didn’t kill your niece.”

“Mary was a wild, reckless girl, Mr. Sewell.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“After my sister became ill, Myrna and I tried to do our best for Mary. A good Christian home. We taught her right from wrong. But there was the wildness in her. It couldn’t be helped, I guess. She was promiscuous, Mr. Sewell. She was evil.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“She lived for lust and the gratification of the body. You must know that, Mr. Sewell. You went out with her. You certainly had carnal knowledge of her.”

“No. I didn’t. In the vernacular, I never got beyond first base. I think you’re low-rating her.”

He looked at me. There was an Old Testament sternness about him I had not seen before. “Do you deny possessing her, Mr. Sewell?”

“I certainly do. And I didn’t kill her.”

“She died eternally damned. It was the blood of her father, Mr. Sewell. He was evil. She sinned with many men. I did what I could. I have three young daughters to bring up. She was a bad example in my home, but I was responsible for her. I don’t grieve for her, Mr. Sewell. I feel sorry for her. Whoever killed her was acting as the instrument of God.”

He was beginning to give me the creeps. “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t sleep with her. What are you trying to do? Get me to say I did?”

“No, Mr. Sewell.” He stood up and looked down at me, thick white brows flaring, nostrils wide. “God have mercy on you.”

“Now wait a minute.”

“Be of good faith,” he said. “Do not despair.”

They let him out and he went away.

Jerome B. Hyers came bustling importantly in about ten minutes later. He was a short stocky man in his fifties with a great bulge of forehead and black hair long enough on one side so that he was able to paste it down across his bald pate. He had a mouth as big as a bucket, a ringing baritone voice and small sharp brown eyes. We did not get along at all. Every time I’d explain that I hadn’t killed her, Hyers would talk about the privileged conversations a client could have with his lawyer. Then he tried to tell me that the lack of premeditation would make a first degree charge difficult to sustain.

We yelled at each other for a good fifteen minutes. He paced the small cell, with gestures. Suddenly he dropped all his mannerisms. He sat down and took out a big white handkerchief and wiped his mouth and looked at me calmly.

“Didn’t do it, eh?”

“No! I’ve been...”

“All right. All right. Let me think. Beautiful circumstantial case. Beautiful! Quarrel at the club. Your belt. Disposal of body.”

“I admit getting rid of the body.”

He smiled a little sadly. “Young man, I might say that I do not look with great anticipation on basing my case on the assumption that somebody entered your apartment while you were sleeping and put the body in your closet.”

“That’s what happened!”

“Kindly stop repeating yourself. I accept that. Let me see. May. I’ll have until early December to prepare.”

“December! Can you get me out of here?”

“There is no bail for a first degree charge. You remain here until then.” He looked around the cell and sniffed. He said, “Of course we can see that they make you a good deal more comfortable than this.”

“Kruslov and his people knocked me around a lot. Can you make anything out of that?”

“I doubt it. If you had signed a confession we could start thinking about physical duress. But you signed nothing, so we’ll just have to forget that. My fee, young man, will be five thousand dollars, plus expenses if I should decide to employ an investigator.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“I’m a lot of lawyer, young man.”

I grinned at him. “Okay.”

“I will do some thinking and review the facts we have and come back and bring a tape recorder and we’ll go into this in detail, young man.”

“What happened to... Miss MacRae, my secretary? I’m anxious to keep her out of this.”

“That investigator, France, reported where he had found you. Kruslov had her brought in. She was here when they brought you in. Kruslov was willing to be convinced that she had no part at all in the murder. He knows her father, and I guess his brother knows her. He talked to France about it. So the papers didn’t get it yet. But I think they will when it comes to trial. The prosecution will want to show that you acted like a guilty man. That includes hiding, and whoever hid you.”

“The company will fire her.”

He looked at me sadly. “They’re not likely to give you a medal, Mr. Sewell.”

At about six o’clock they took me to the same room, that shabby defeated room with its smell of violence, where they had roughed me up. Toni was waiting there for me. They closed the door and left us alone. I suspected the influence of Jerry Hyers in that nice arrangement.

We kissed and both talked at once and kissed again. She put gentle fingertips against my swollen face and cried about that, and about us and about the whole miserable mess.

“It can’t be true, Clint. It’s hideous. It can’t really be true.”

“Part of it was true.”

She flushed. “Yes. Oh, yes. You know, they came to the plant and got me. Captain Kruslov said awful things to me. About helping you. Mr. France was there too. He was terribly angry at you. You chipped one of his teeth. I talked to Mr. France afterward. I asked him if his assignment was over and he said he thought it was. I asked him if he’d work for you. I didn’t think he would he was so angry, but he said he would, and I’m going to pay him.”

“I don’t want you trying to pay his fees.”

“I want to. When I run out of money, you can pay him. But I want somebody trying to help you, Clint. Captain Kruslov is so certain it was you that it scares me.”

“You know it wasn’t.”

“Yes. I know, darling.”

“Don’t ever doubt it. Don’t ever wonder about me.”

“I couldn’t. Don’t talk like that.” She looked directly at me. “And don’t you doubt me. Nothing will ever change. I’ll wait for you. I’ll work to get you free.”

They warned us that we could have but two more minutes together. She said she would be at the office the next morning, Saturday morning, to clean up odds and ends and the phone in my office would be on one of the night circuits if I could get a chance to phone her. She said she would come and see me on Saturday afternoon and bring a change of clothing and toilet articles for me. She had something else to tell me, too, she said, but there wasn’t time to explain it. She had to leave then and they took me back to a cell that was colder, barer, more frightening, after the chance I had had to hold my tall warm girl in my arms and hear her voice and look into her eyes. Somebody has to believe in you, all the way. Somebody has to give a damn about you. You have to be important to somebody. Or life is just a routine of going through the motions.

They released me at ten-fifteen on Saturday morning. Hyers stood impatiently while I put the laces back in my shoes, put my belt through the loops, tied my tie around the collar of the dirty shirt. I ripped open the manila envelope, recovered wallet, keys, lighter, change, cigarettes.

“What’s up?” I asked Hyers.

“Let’s have some coffee down the street.”

I was glad it was a small dingy place. With a four day beard and dirty shirt, I looked like a bum. We took a booth near the back of the place.

Jerry Hyers ordered doughnuts and coffee and said to me, “They would have let you stay there all week end. Too damn much trouble to go through the red tape and get you out.”

“Would somebody kindly tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Don’t you know yet? They found Raymond this morning. Early. A couple of kids were cutting across the Pryor farm, going out on an all day hike. His car was on one of the farm roads. He’d taken his tow rope, climbed up on the roof of the car, heaved the rope over a limb, made it fast, tied it around his neck and swung off the car. The kids couldn’t reach the rope even if they’d felt like it. They left him hanging there and ran to the farm. He had the Olan girl’s pocketbook in one pocket and the missing key to your apartment in the other. Kruslov got hold of Mrs. Raymond right away. When she found out what had happened she admitted that she had lied about the night when the Olan girl was killed. Apparently Raymond was out until five in the morning. And she told Kruslov that Raymond, as your boss, had fixed you up with dates with the Olan girl so he could see her oftener. She told Kruslov that she was positive her husband had rented a room or apartment somewhere where he could have been seeing the Olan girl. Here’s a note. Turn it in at the police garage on Fourth Street and they’ll release your car to you. Charges against you have been dropped.”

“I thought of Dodd, but I couldn’t believe that...”

“Nice guy. If his nerve hadn’t broken, you’d be holding the big bag, young man. Your check for three hundred will take care of my activities in your behalf.”

“I’ll mail it Monday.”

“Thank you. I have to be off.” We shook hands and he hurried out, important and busy.

I finished my coffee, paid the check and found the police garage. After a bored look at the note they told me my car was around in back. Just go down the alley, mister. I drove back to the apartment and phoned my office.

Toni answered, “Mr. Sewell’s office.”

“This is Mr. Sewell, Miss MacRae. I phoned to tell you I won’t be in this morning.”

“Clint! Is it true then? There’s a rumor around that Mr. Raymond...”

“Are there enough people there to cook up a rumor?”

“Clint, tell me and stop fooling. Are you out?”

“I’m out, and you shouldn’t be working on Saturday. This is a picnic type day. Where will we go?”

“Clint!”

“Look, darling. I won’t be able to pick you up at the plant. I’ve got to get cleaned up and then I’m going to go see Nancy Raymond. Suppose I pick you up at your place at about two.”

“Where are you phoning from?”

“My apartment.”

“Well... you see, dear, I live there.”

“What?”

“Mrs. Timberland threw me out, with harsh words. I had a long talk with Mrs. Speers. That was what I didn’t have time to tell you. We thought it would be simpler if...”

“Mrs. Speers is knocking on my door right now, it so happens.”

“She’ll tell you then. I’ll see you, dear.”

I let Mrs. Speers in. Staring awed at my whiskers, she said, “I heard it over the radio. About Mr. Raymond. I told those stupid... ah... flatfeet that you hadn’t killed that girl. She came from a fine old family, but she was no good. All that drinking.”

“I certainly appreciate your attitude.”

“It horrifies me to think that anyone would hide a body in my house. Mr. Sewell, I had a long talk with your Miss MacRae. That Timberland biddy threw her out, bag and baggage. We talked about you, Mr. Sewell. She’s a splendid girl. We decided that it would be easiest if she would live here while we... made every attempt to aid you in your predicament.”

“She told me that over the phone.”

“Oh, you’ve talked to her! That makes it easier. I didn’t want you to think I’d been too free in letting her use this apartment. Naturally you can’t both stay here. I won’t have that sort of thing going on. You’ll have to take a hotel room until she can find other accommodations, Mr. Sewell.”

“Yes I...”

“You know, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed they released you so quickly. Isn’t that dreadful of me? I haven’t had so much excitement in... in just years and years. I imagine you want to get cleaned up after that horrid jail, don’t you? Poor Mr. Raymond. She must have driven him insane. Her mother was a lovely person, poor dear. Her father was quite a rounder, though. Remember about that hotel room. Don’t forget now!” She wagged a coy finger at me, smirked and backed through the doorway.

I showered, shaved and dressed. I couldn’t help having a holiday feeling. It went away when I turned into the Raymond drive and parked near the side door. Mrs. Raymond’s heavy old car was there, back from the lake.

The muscular Irish nurse opened the door to me. I said that I wanted to see Mrs. Dodd Raymond. The nurse whispered and took me into a small study to wait. I waited five minutes before Nancy appeared in the doorway. She wore black and she moved like an automaton.

She held a cold hand out to me. “So good of you to stop by, Clint.”

“Nancy, I’m terribly sorry.”

“Do sit down, won’t you? Mother Raymond is taking this very badly. The doctor left just a little while ago.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I’d thought of asking you to be one of the pall bearers, but then I decided that under the circumstances we’d better not have any. The funeral will be on Monday at two P.M. The Upmann Funeral Home.”

I couldn’t get beyond the social glaze. She was saying the formal proper thing.

“Nancy!”

She looked at me and her eyes widened a bit. “I’m all right. I’m really all right. I’m standing it very well, Clint. I made the formal identification of the body this morning at nine. They’ll release the body to Upmann some time today after they’re through with it.”

“You don’t act all right.”

“I’m perfectly all right. I don’t know what you mean. The family burial plot is here in Warren, of course. Mr. Upmann said he would make the necessary arrangements. Mother Raymond wants the Reverend Doctor Lamarr to give the service. I phoned him. He was a little reluctant at first, but he agreed. He said it would be in good taste. Mother Raymond has always been a good friend of the church. I think he thought it would be difficult because the Pryors belong to the same church.”

“Nancy, remember me? Clint. I’m your friend. I didn’t come to pay the normal sympathy call.”

Her face broke and she began to cry. She cried herself to exhaustion. She lay on the leather couch in the small gloomy study and I sat beside the couch and held her hand. It took a long time before she could talk again.

“I hadn’t cried before,” she said tonelessly.

“It’s a good thing to do.”

“I was going to go away. I was going to leave him.

And he was in trouble. He should have told me.”

“He couldn’t tell you that.”

“I failed him somehow, Clint. I didn’t... measure up. He wanted more than I had to give.”

“He wouldn’t find it with Mary Olan.”

“I should have guessed something. He’s been acting so strangely.”

“How?”

“I don’t think he slept more than two or three hours the last three nights. Roaming the house at all hours. I tried to call him twice at the office but he wasn’t in. He didn’t seem interested in the plant any more. He seemed to be thinking something over, making his mind up about something. He wouldn’t talk to me. Then yesterday afternoon he talked... wildly. I couldn’t make any sense out of it. He shouldn’t have been home in the middle of the day. He didn’t seem to care. His hands were all dirty when he came home. He didn’t seem to notice the dirt until I mentioned it. Then he looked at his hands and smiled in a funny way and said, ‘Dust of years gone by, darling. Or call it gold dust. That’s just as good.’ He washed his hands and then came out to the kitchen where I was. He acted as if he’d made up his mind about something. He said, ‘I’ve got it made, baby.’ He wouldn’t explain what he meant. He had a wild-looking smile. ‘C.P.P. can go to hell,’ he said. ‘We’re going to really be in business.’ He kept nodding and smiling to himself. He left after dinner. He didn’t tell me where he was going. He made a phone call before he left, but I didn’t hear who he talked to or what he said. I... I won’t ever see him alive again.”

“Easy, gal.”

She looked into space. She held my hand tightly. “It’s all over, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s over, Nancy.”

She turned her face away from me. “I keep thinking of something awful,” she said in a small voice.

“Like what?”

“Like waiting until this is all over. Six months. Or a year even. And then going back and finding a way to have the good years.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned abruptly toward me, her eyes almost fierce. “We must be almost the same age, Clint. I’d know how to be good for you, in the job and everything. I know the life. We had tests, you know. It wasn’t me, I can have children. It would be right this time. Young people all living together. And transfers to new places. I know it all. You could be proud of me, people like me. I was always active on committees and things. I made every new place look good. It was all good until we came here. That’s the horrid thing I keep thinking.”

I didn’t say anything and I didn’t release her hand. She turned her face away again.

“Stupid, wasn’t it?” she said.

“You’re upset.”

“It isn’t you. I just want that way of living back. I just want to be like that again, only this time with children. I’m sorry, Clint.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“You wouldn’t try it, would you?”

“I’m sorry.”

She took her hand away. I stood up and said goodby to her. She didn’t move or answer or look at me. I let myself out. Just as I reached my car, Kruslov drove in. He and another man started toward the house. I cut over and intercepted them.

“Now what?” Kruslov asked. He looked square and dull and tired.

“Now I want to know how proud you are, Kruslov. I want to know how big a charge you got out of slapping me around.”

He eyed me coldly. “Want an apology?”

“You might try one for size.”

“Never, you damn fool. You found a body and moved it. What the hell right has a civilian like you got meddling in police work? You complicate my job, mess up the evidence, shoot off your mouth and then come prancing around looking for an apology. There’s statutes that cover what you did, and if I get too damn annoyed at you I may see if I can make some of them stick. Now get the hell out of my way.”

I got out of his way before he bounced me out of his way with a heavy shoulder. He went on into the house. I felt like a spanked child. I got into my Merc and drove away.

I had won my argument with Toni and moved some of my stuff into a second class hotel room. I won it by telling her that if I knew C.P.P., I wouldn’t remain in my job for more than another few days. We had taken a bag of cheese and liverwurst sandwiches and a cold six-pack of beer far into the country. Before we left, I had brushed off two reporters with more dispatch than finesse.

From the grassy bank we could toss crumbs into the river. Minnows struck the crumbs ferociously. I lay back and her slack-clad thigh fitted the nape of my neck as though designed for that special purpose.

“Stop frowning,” she said softly.

“Can’t help it.”

“It’s all over now.”

“A cold guy, Toni. A type who figured all the angles. A ruthless guy. Could he kill? Yes, if it would give him a big gain, and if he was logically certain he could get away with it. Would he kill himself? Perhaps, if he was aware that he would be caught. So how does it fit? Not at all. No gain in Mary’s death. And he wasn’t about to be caught.”

“In the immortal words of the bard, leave it lay.”

“Can’t.”

“Maybe it’s all different than it looks, Clint dear. So what? We’re out of it. You don’t owe anybody anything. Now we just think of us.”

“Female reasoning. Ten thousand years ago you’d have your own lady-weight club leaning against the cave wall, just inside the door. And uninvited guests — boom.”

“And ten thousand years ago you’d be seeing how close you could get to a saber-toothed tiger. Hah! Male reasoning.”

“But I can’t let go of it, girl. The package is too neatly wrapped. The string is too carefully tied. Maybe too carefully tied around Dodd’s throat.”

“Don’t!”

“I’m not in love with his memory. I’ve got no yen to vindicate him. Good sense says to do as you suggest. Leave it lay. And spend a lot of the tag ends of the hours of my life wondering.”

She ran a gentle thumb along one of my eyebrows and then the other. She sighed heavily. “Meddler.”

“I know.”

“Big fool.”

“I know that too.”

“If you gotta, you gotta.”

“Mmmm. You are a special deal, MacRae.”

“The large economy size deal.”

“Three dimensional, color, bite-sized, built-in flavor.”

We kissed until the river ran uphill. The minnows goggled at us. All the trees applauded, and a brown and white cow strolled down to the river edge to watch with benign gravity. We gave her a spare sandwich. She ate it with the dignity of a baroness. Then we went back to the car. She took hold of my arm. Her fingers bit in. Her dark eyes spotwelded my soul.

“Be careful,” she said.

Yes, I would be careful. But it was something I had to do. I had to know. They had changed me — Kruslov and his hands, the damp cell, the dead girl. Before I had changed I could have said that it was none of my business. But I had changed and become more involved with life. As with John Donne and his talk of no man being an island.

Death had come very close to me, black gauze wings grazing my face. I could not tell myself it was all over. Not while I had these nagging doubts. I could not let Dodd Raymond be buried with that mark on him.

And I would be careful. Because afterward, there would be Toni.