You Live Once

Chapter 10

There are few places where a man can dirty his hands with the dust of the past. After I left Toni off — a rather disconsolate but understanding girl — I went to the Warren Public Library. It was the same vintage as the police station. The young lady who came to my assistance wore a white angora sweater that struggled to contain two of the most enormously unreal breasts I have ever seen. She marched trimly behind them, using them as weapons of offense. I wondered how anybody ever remembered what question they had come to ask. They had a life of their own — mammalian, incredible — objects far beyond the realm of desire, creating only awe and consternation.

I managed to stammer my question about old records and newspapers. She pointed toward a side stairway with those breasts and said that they had booths up there and micro-film projectors and a girl who would help me. I went up the stairway.

The upstairs girl was of different construction. Between the two of them they had two sets of normal equipment. She explained the setup to me and told me that if I knew what I wanted, she would get the rolls and I could sign for them. I told her I didn’t know what I wanted. I told her I wanted to see any rolls a Mr. Dodd Raymond had looked at yesterday afternoon. She became skeptical and uncooperative. She had heard about Mr. Raymond and had recognized the name at once. I confessed that I was not with the police. Finally she allowed as how she could look at the records and tell me. She came back from her desk in a few minutes and, with a relieved icy smile, told me that Mr. Raymond had not signed for anything. It was what I expected. Miss Ice kept her domain spotless.

I thanked her and went back down the stairs and out — not without trying for a last look at Miss Angora. She had disappeared.

The Ledger Building was a three story oblong, quite new, of tan stone and aluminum. A quote about freedom of the press was lettered in bronze beside the main door. I got there a few minutes after five. The business end of the paper, the people with regular hours, were leaving. Trucks were swinging out of the side alley with the afternoon final.

A girl behind the classified counter on the main floor stopped applying raspberry lipstick long enough to tell me, with calculated insolence, that it was late and maybe I could find what I wanted on the second floor.

The file of bound editions was in a small room next to the morgue. A bouncy, swarthy little girl with rhinestones set into her glasses frames looked at me carefully and told me I could help myself.

“Do you keep any record of who uses these?”

“Oh no. Nobody uses them very much any more except the news staff sometimes. The public library has them on micro-film going all the way back to 1822 when the Ledger first started to come out as a weekly. Why don’t you use theirs? They’re handier and cleaner.”

“Well, as long as I’m here.”

“That’s okay. Handle the old ones carefully, won’t you? They’re pretty brittle.”

“I’ll be careful.”

She left me in the small room. One set of bound copies covered one wall of the room, with boards locked across the fronts of the volumes so they could not be taken out; another set was unconfined. I had to find out which volume Dodd Raymond had been interested in — if my guess was right. I found the switch that controlled the overhead light and moved close to the books. The recent years’ copies were quite free of dust. I ranged back over the years. One volume stood out, most of the dust gone from the spine. I slid it out and carried it over to the table.

Just as I set it down two men came in, so involved in a heated argument about the Giants that they barely glanced at me. They picked one of the recent volumes, spread it out, turned the pages with silent intensity. Then one pointed with his thumb and said, “Hah!”

“So okay. So I was wrong.”

“So you buy.”

They put the book back and left. I began to go through my volume. The paper was yellowed, the corners brittle, the type face more quaint than in the current editions.

A half hour later and two-thirds of the way through the volume, I found it. I read it carefully. It had warranted quite a splash in the paper.

I read it and read the follow-up stories in subsequent editions. The last little flicker was a page eight squib telling about the transfer of Mrs. Rolph Olan from a local hospital to a private mental institution in accordance with a court order.

I sat back and pulled the peanut-can ash tray closer and lighted a cigarette. It was not a pretty story. Mary Olan, on an October Wednesday, had been picked up at two-thirty at the private elementary school she attended by the Olan chauffeur driving Mrs. Olan’s car. The little girl had run into the house. She had seen her father’s car in the drive and was anxious to see him. Her baby brother was having his nap. The cook and maid had Wednesday afternoons off. She went in the front door. Her mother, Nadine Pryor Olan, was standing on the bottom stair of the main staircase. She held a bloody kitchen knife in her hand. Her husband was on his back on the floor in front of her, stabbed through the heart and quite dead. Nadine Olan was in a state of severe shock, unable to respond to questions.

It was established — though the paper was most coy about this — that Rolph Olan had led an active extramarital life and that this had been a cause of discord between them. Except for the sleeping child, they had been alone in the house. They were unable to establish why Mr. Rolph Olan had come home in the middle of the day. He had received a phone call at his office shortly before he left and it was believed that it was his wife who had called him home, though this could not be proved. He had a habit of answering his own phone, perhaps due to his concurrent intrigues.

At first Nadine Olan, whose health had always been delicate, had responded to treatment. She claimed that she had heard a fall shortly after she had heard her husband’s car drive in. She said she had been resting in her bedroom next to the nursery. She had thought little of it, had called to her husband, and then begun to worry when he didn’t answer. She had gone down and found him and she guessed she had instinctively pulled the knife from his chest. The next thing she knew, her daughter had come running in and had started to scream.

She had been quite calm for a few days and then, perhaps as she began to realize that everyone was quite certain she had killed him, her mind failed quickly. I guessed that it could have been due to her own uncertainty as to whether or not she had killed him. Faced with such an insoluble problem, a retreat into unreality would not be inexplicable, particularly in the case of an emotional, sensitive, unhappy woman.

During Mrs. Olan’s period of relative calmness, the paper speculated about two facts which seemed to spoil the picture of guilt. One man, who knew Rolph Olan by sight, was almost willing to swear that he had seen another man riding homeward with Mr. Olan that afternoon. And a neighbor woman reported that on that same afternoon a man had cut across her grounds and could have been coming from the Olan residence.

But when Mrs. Olan’s mind went, before she moved back into the silent darkness where she could not be reached, she made a confession of sorts. Portions of it were reprinted in the paper. It was wildly incoherent. It spoke of angels of death and the vengeance of the Lord. It spoke of sin and retribution. Her obvious insanity put a halt to further speculations about her innocence.

During the days immediately following the murder, Mr. Willis Pryor, brother of the accused woman, spent countless hours by her side, even watching over her during the night, and was tireless in proclaiming her innocence. He wrote a letter to the paper criticizing the inertia of the police. After Nadine Olan’s collapse and the medical verdict that the prognosis was unfavorable, Willis Pryor ceased his efforts in her behalf, withdrew from many community activities and resigned from the boards of several local corporations.

I sifted over what I had. It wasn’t much. It was certainly less than Dodd Raymond had. He had known enough to kill him. This was his town; he’d know little things that hadn’t been in the paper. He had perhaps used the paper to confirm his memories. And he had known Mary Olan well. She would have talked to him about such things, though not to me.

All I had was a hunch. A hunch about the evil of righteousness.

I took Toni out to dinner that Saturday evening. I guess I was poor company. I would join our group of two for a while and be fine. And then I would drift away again. Toni was aware of it, and she was half amused, half hurt. I did as well as I could, returned her to my apartment and holed up at the hotel. I phoned her after I was in bed with the light out. I could picture her sitting by my phone. She said she was wearing another pair of those delightfully diaphanous pajamas, and that she too was in darkness.

We said the things you would expect to be said under such circumstances and it was all very very fine indeed.

Two hours later, nightmare yanked me out of dreams. I felt as exposed and afraid and naked as if I had been flayed. The object of fear was gone; I couldn’t remember it. I could only remember running in slow motion with something coming after me that moved faster and faster.

The Pryor farm was, in its own way, as much a show-place as the house. Fat black cattle grazed on juicy grasses behind bone white fences. The aluminum roofs of the cattle barns blazed in the Sunday morning sun. I slowed down to watch a pack of horses running like hell. No reason. They felt good. It was that kind of a morning. Two big fieldstone posts marked off the entrance. The gravel road led straight from the entrance to the tenant house. Beyond the house, on the gentle slope of a hill, were the two cottages where the Pryors stayed when they stayed over at the farm. The cluster of barns and silos was behind the tenant house.

I ignored the severe private signs and drove on in and parked by the tenant house. A new red tractor stood in rigid angular dignity, like a strange Martian insect.

John Fidd came around from behind the tenant house and looked at me with disgust. “Yar?” he said.

“Came back down from the lake, eh?”

“No horses and no boats up there this summer. On account of Miss Mary. And that no good Yeagger. Good thing. I got too much to do here without going up there and being a stable boy. I got to watch the hands here.”

“I’d like to see the place where they found Mr. Raymond yesterday morning.”

John Fidd spat with emphasis. “Wouldn’t be anybody driving around the place at night if I was here. I can’t show you now. Too busy.”

“How do I find it?”

“You don’t,” he said.

That seemed to be that. He looked beyond me. A yellow jeep swung into the gravel road, rear wheels skidding dangerously. It was piloted by one of the Pryor girls.

“Which one is that?” I asked.

“That there is Miss Skeeter, the oldest. Best of the lot, too, if anybody should want to ask me.”

She stopped beside my car and jumped out of the jeep. She wore beat-up khaki riding pants, a yellow sports shirt. Her brown hair had paler sun streaks. She looked as round, brown, healthy and uncomplicated as a young koala bear. “Hi, John. Hello, Mr. Sewell. John, I thought I’d give Simpy a run.”

“You’re out early, Miss Skeeter.”

“I went to church early. The rest were about ready to go by the time I got back to change. Dad will probably bring the rest of them out later on.”

“Mr. Sewell here was wanting to see where that fella hanged himself. I don’t have the time right now to take him over there.”

She looked at me dubiously. “If you really want to see it, I’ll show you where it is. Wait until I saddle up and then you can follow me in the jeep. Or maybe you’d like to ride too?”

“No thanks. The jeep will be fine.”

She trotted off toward the barns. I leaned against the jeep. Fidd went off. In about five minutes she came out on a big roan that was all stallion and half as high as a house. He felt like going sideways. She yanked some sense into him, touched him with a little crop and cantered up to the jeep.

“Once we get beyond that fence line there we’ll cut across country. Better put it in four wheel drive. Do you know how?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t follow Simpy too close. He gets nervous.”

She spun him and lifted him into a full run. There wasn’t any danger of my getting too close. I had enough trouble keeping him in sight. Far ahead of me she cut over toward a dirt road and swung to the ground. The far side of the road was lined with trees. I drove up and stopped and got out.

“This is the tree and that’s the limb there. See, he had the car right about here, so that the limb was about ten feet above the roof of the car and about five feet behind it. It was easy to throw the rope over the limb.”

“I wonder why he came out here?”

“They say he used to come out here a lot years ago. They used to ride out here. He didn’t really date Mary then. She was too young I guess.”

Simpy cropped grass steadily. Skeeter seemed anxious to get on him and be off. I wanted to get her talking, and I didn’t know exactly how to go about it.

“I guess they had to get a ladder to cut him down.”

“I guess so.”

“How do you feel about it, Skeeter?”

“What do you mean?”

“About Mary and Dodd Raymond.”

“I didn’t know him very well. Just to say hello to. I’m certainly not sorry he’s dead, Mr. Sewell. Everything seems so dull without Mary. She was wonderful. We loved her, my sisters and I. It was a terrible thing to do.”

“I guess it was, all right.”

“Simpy wants his run. You can leave the jeep back by the house.”

“How old are you, Skeeter?”

“Seventeen.”

“The last time I saw you was a week ago today.”

Her eyes seemed to change to a paler color. “I know. When you came up to the lake after throwing Mary’s body out in the bushes, acting up there like nothing had happened. I remember it very well, Mr. Sewell.”

“That was a mistake. It was bad judgment. I lost my head.”

“You looked calm enough up at the lake.”

“Skeeter, I was scared to death. Honestly.”

She weighed that carefully. “I guess maybe you had every right to be. But you did a bad thing.”

“I know that. I had that impressed on me... forcibly.”

“She was so alive.”

“I know.” I braced myself carefully, smiled and said, “A little too lively for her Uncle Willy, I guess.”

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said with young dignity, slamming the family gates.

“From things she told me, I gathered that your father didn’t care much for the way she led her life.”

“Mary told you that?”

“We talked a lot. Remember, I knew her pretty well, Skeeter.”

“Have you got a cigarette? I’m not allowed to smoke, so I can’t carry them.”

I gave her a cigarette, lighted hers and my own. She hitched her tight pants onto the flat surface of the front fender of the jeep. “She just about drove Daddy crazy. He’s awfully strict with us. He tried to be the same way with Mary, but it didn’t work because she was of age and had her own money. There wasn’t any way he could punish her or restrict her the way he does us.

“At Christmastime Daddy caught Jigger kissing a boy. Just kissing a boy! You’d think she was living in sin or something. Jigger didn’t get any allowance and she couldn’t have a date or even go to the movies for six whole weeks. After dinner she had to go right to her room and study until bedtime. And he restricted Dusty and me for two weeks because he’d caught Jigger. Honestly!”

“They must have fought then?”

“If you can call it fighting. Daddy was either yelling at her or not speaking to her. She never seemed to get mad. She acted as if it was some kind of a joke. I couldn’t ever figure out why she didn’t go and live alone where she could do as she pleased and Daddy wouldn’t know anything about it. That’s what I would have done. That’s what I will do, the minute I’m old enough. It sometimes seemed to me that she stayed with us just to needle Daddy. I think there was some legal reason why he had to provide a home for her for as long as she wanted it.”

“She needled him?”

“I don’t know exactly how she’d do it, but she could sure raise hell with him. When he’d be having one of his bad spells over something she had done, or something he thought she’d done, she would find a chance to say something to him. She’d never let any of the rest of us hear what she said. It must have really been something, though. Sometimes Daddy would go and walk for hours after that happened. Or lock himself in his study and we could hear him in there reading the Bible out loud. You know I’ve always thought she... she told him about... men.”

She was blushing under her tan. “What?” I said.

“About men. Because Daddy has told me, gosh, dozens of times, not to let Mary talk dirty to me, and come and tell him right away if she did. She never did, of course. But that’s the way I think she must have talked to him. Daddy is strong and he has a terrible temper sometimes. Like the time he broke Dusty’s arm when...” She stopped abruptly. “That’s none of your business. I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You’ve said most of it. Maybe it would sound better if you explained it.”

“Actually she fell.”

“Pushed?”

“Well, yes. But he didn’t mean to break her arm. I guess I better tell you. I still don’t understand it. It was two years ago. Mary had come home from a trip. It was a warm day in early October and we went up to the lake, the six of us. I guess Dusty thought Daddy and Mother were up at the big house. Jigger and I were still in the water. Mary had gone to the girl’s shower room over the boat house. Dusty decided to sneak up into the men’s bunk room and look at some cartoons on the wall up there. We’re not supposed to look at them or even know they’re there. They aren’t really dirty, just kind of silly.”

“I’ve seen them.”

“Dusty sneaked up and Daddy was up there at the window with a pair of binoculars looking over toward the girls’ bunk room. He got angry and chased Dusty down the stairs and pushed her. She fell and broke her arm. She didn’t tell us about the binoculars until later. He could have been trying to see Mary get dressed, but that doesn’t make much sense. He’d hate anything like that. I’ve just never been able to figure out what he was doing. I even asked Mary about it one time. She looked startled and then she laughed and laughed. Tears ran down her cheeks she laughed so hard. She wouldn’t tell me what was so funny. At dinner that night she looked at Daddy and started laughing all over again. He got so mad he couldn’t eat. He left the table.”

I had almost all of it. Nearly everything I needed. The pattern was all too clear. I looked at the snub-nosed healthy girl and pitied her. But maybe she and her sisters would have the strength they would need. Maybe the blood of Myrna was strong enough, clear enough, sane enough. Yet probably nothing would ever keep this girl from hating me.

“It must be pretty tough on your father, with what happened to his sister, and now what’s happened to his niece. I understand your father and his sister were very close.”

“They were only a year apart. They were inseparable when they were young. I think he nearly died when they had to send her away. I was just a baby, of course. Mother still talks about how sick he was.”

“He looks pretty husky now.”

“Oh yes. He’s very healthy for a man his age. Do you know what he did last fall? All by himself, with an axe, a handsaw, a sledge and wedges, he cut down trees and sawed them up and split over fourteen cords of hardwood. There was so much more than we needed that John Fidd sold six cords in town for twelve dollars a cord.”

“He works out here a lot, I guess.”

“Oh, yes.”

I braced myself again and made it casual. “I suppose he was working here the last time I saw you up at the lake. Was your mother along?”

“Let me think. Yes, she was up there with us but went back early when Daddy phoned about Mary. Daddy doesn’t like us to go up alone, even though Mrs. Johannssen and Ruth are there. Mother isn’t as strict with us. Daddy stayed in town. I don’t know whether he stayed home or out here. Maybe here.”

“And nobody went up this weekend.”

“No, we all stayed in town.”

“Did your father stay out here Friday night?”

“No. He was out here on Friday, but he came home... why are you asking me that?”

“Just making conversation, I guess.”

She was looking dubious again. I made my smile as bland as possible. “You certainly stick to that horse nicely. He’d scare me.”

She slid off the fender. “He’s an old lamb. He’s a honey pie, old Simpy is.”

She caught him, mounted, waved and rode off. His hooves drummed the May earth. I looked at the tree. Dodd Raymond had hung there, night dew on his shoulders, on the wavy hair, two hundred pounds at the end of a tow rope, while dawn came and the birds awakened.

I drove the jeep back the way I had come, following my tire tracks in the pasture grass.

As Toni would say, it was none of my business. But you can’t leave a thing like that alone. Not when you’re nearly positive.

I waited a full hour before they arrived — Uncle Willy, Aunt Myrna and the other two girls. Skeeter came cantering back to the barn just as their car drove in. The girls got out, gave me a quick unconcerned glance and raced toward the barn. Willy halted them with one short bark. They came back meekly, took the two baskets of food and carried them toward one of the cottages. Myrna Pryor stared at me and followed the girls.

Willy came over toward me. His polished boots gleamed black in the sun. His riding pants were crisp and fresh. His white shirt was unbuttoned, the tails knotted at the waist à la Mexican beach. His hair was almost impossibly white against the tan of him. He was a Hemingway, fifty, taut as drums, resilient, proud of his body.

“Hello, Sewell. Something I can do for you?”

The look of defeat he had worn in the jail cell was entirely gone. His eyes were clear, keen.

“Your eldest has been showing me the tree where Dodd was found.”

He frowned a little. “Did you arrange to meet her here, sir?”

“No. No. I just happened to get here at about the same time. Lovely girl.”

His face was unfriendly. “Yes, she is.”

“You have three fine daughters, Mr. Pryor.”

“Did you come out here to tell me that, Sewell? I might say that I have no particular urge to entertain the... companions of my late niece. It’s over and I want my daughters to forget about it as soon as possible. The whole thing was sordid and unfortunate.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Now if you wouldn’t mind leaving, we’re having a family picnic here today.”

“Under the same tree?”

He stared at me. “If that’s humor, Sewell, I find it a little strange. If it isn’t humor, you should know that I’m physically capable of throwing you into your automobile.”

“I guess you are, at that.”

“Please go, will you?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“There’s nothing I can conceive of that we can talk about.”

“I just wondered if another man could take over that business opportunity Dodd mentioned to you, Mr. Pryor.”

He stood there, the sun on his face, looking at me, fists on his hips, brown arms flexed. I cannot say there was any physical change. I saw no change. But I sensed a change that went on inside. I sensed a shifting, a re-evaluation, a new poise of forces. A man might sit at a poker table with that same immobility, certain from the restrained betting that his was the winning hand, and then see a large bet made.

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“Dodd was going to speak to you. He told me he was. I understand you were going to finance him.”

“I’m not interested in new business ventures.”

“He said you were interested in his.”

“Then he lied to you, because I never heard any proposition from him. I thought he was satisfied with his job.”

“Maybe I should rephrase it. He said you couldn’t help but be interested in his proposition.”

“That’s a strange statement.”

“Isn’t it.”

“Are you trying to be cryptic? You’re talking way over my head, young man.”

“I don’t imagine it was the money that stopped you. I guess it was just having someone know. Or maybe you have that strange form of distorted honesty that saw it as one way to get me out of a jail where I didn’t belong. There was a good chance I might get electrocuted for killing her. You wouldn’t have liked that. Conscience is a funny thing, Mr. Pryor. Even your twisted one.”

“This is the damnedest nonsense I ever heard.”

I measured the distance between us and then said softly, “How did she look through the binoculars, Willy? Lush and desirable? You know when I mean. When you broke Dusty’s arm.”

“You must be quite mad.” He said it with discouraging calm.

“It’s the hot sun, Willy. I wonder how you fit your conscience around another thing, though — that elastic conscience of yours. How...”

“Why don’t you leave before I throw you off my land?”

“How do you adjust to what happened to your sister? You did that, you know. You killed the father and then watched the father’s blood come out in the daughter. You framed the beloved sister Nadine.”

Again it was the poker table. He had matched the large bet. Now the stranger’s cards were turned over. He looked beyond me. His mouth moved and was still. His eyes saw nothing.

“There’ll be more,” I said. “Somebody else will figure it out next. Maybe one of your own girls. Maybe your wife. Or maybe she half suspects already. There aren’t any secrets, Mr. Pryor. Not about a thing like this.”

There was something reminiscent of a bull in the set of his shoulders, in the hump of muscle at the nape of his neck. He came at me with the wild sudden fury of a bull. I had driven him a little bit too far. There was no room in his brain for cold plans and projects. There was room for nothing but fury, a very desperate fury.

I had destroyed his world and I must in turn be destroyed. A fist like a sledge numbed my left arm. I struck back once and a second blow thumped my ribs and he was on me. His arms locked around me, head driving against my chin, knuckles in the small of my back. I tripped and fell heavily and he was on top of me, smashing the wind out of me as he fell. I was young and reasonably husky, but you can’t fight that sort of fury. You can’t even survive that kind of fury. He got a blocky knee on my stomach and husky brown hands locked around my throat. I tensed my throat muscles and tried to get hold of a finger to pry it back and loosen his grip. My hands were sweaty and I could not get a grip. The last bit of air rasped in my throat and then his hands closed the air passage. My chest convulsed. The sun swam and darkened and I slapped weakly at his face with hands made of balsa and paper, like the frail drifting wings of toy gliders.

He was taken off me. I sat up, retching and coughing, and color came back into the world. I saw Pryor stagger and then make what must have been a second or third charge at Paul France, trying to get his hands on him. He hit Pryor three times as Pryor came at him, moved almost casually to the side and hit him twice more as Pryor went by. The last blow was decisive. Pryor’s legs worked for three more strides before he went down on his face. The four Pryor females came running down from the cottage, one of them emitting short sharp screams with each stride. John Fidd appeared with a shotgun.

I got to my feet. A lot of little white dots whirred around like so many bees and slowly faded away. France said, “Your girl said to find you and keep an eye on you, bub.”

“Thanks.”

He touched a red mark on his chin and said, speculatively, “Think nothing of it. Nothing at all.”

“Get back,” Fidd snarled. “Get back against that car, both of you.”

France walked directly toward him, took the shotgun, wrenched it away from him, murmuring softly, “Easy, Dad. Easy now.”

The girls had rolled their father over onto his back. Mrs. Pryor was demanding to know what had happened.

I said to France, “I’ve heard a citizen can arrest another citizen. Is that the truth?”

“It’s legal. What have you got on him?”

“He murdered Rolph Olan, Mary Olan and Dodd Raymond.”

Skeeter flew at me like a fat brown robin — a robin with claws. “That’s a damn lie!” she screamed. “You’re a big liar!”

Willy Pryor hadn’t opened his eyes or moved. He opened his mouth and said, “It isn’t a lie. It’s the truth.” He got up slowly and steadily, brushed his women aside and walked toward us. “Which car do you want me in?”

France opened the door of his grey sedan. “Right in here, please.”

I followed the grey car. The Pryor car, with the four females and John Fidd, followed me. It was a bright Sunday and seventeen miles to Warren, with the first part of it through lovely farmland. We went by with our load of heartbreak. The cows didn’t care. The bees didn’t care. The birds didn’t give a damn. It was May with summer coming up.

Kruslov let me sit in on it. He acted like a man who had been hit sharply over the head. He kept staring at Pryor and shaking his head, almost imperceptibly. It was Sunday and it took a little time to gather the official cast.

Willis Pryor sat stolidly, dominating the small room with a sort of sad force and dignity, waiting, motionless, grave. He seemed like the chairman of the board awaiting tardy members with iron patience.

The pasty-faced stenographer uncapped a huge prehistoric fountain pen of a peculiarly poisonous shade of orange. I sat where I could see dark bruises on the left side of Willis Pryor’s jaw.

“I guess we’re ready, Mr. Pryor,” Kruslov said apologetically.

“Shall I tell this all as it happened?”

“Please, sir.”

“My sister Nadine married Rolph Olan. Shortly after marriage he began to make her life a hell on earth. She confided in me, we were always close. I spoke to Rolph several times during the years. He ignored me. He seemed amused by me. His infidelities were becoming notorious. It was no life for my sister. On the day of his death I phoned him at his office. I said I had to speak to him. I insisted. I had prayed for guidance. I wanted to give him one last chance. He picked me up on the corner I mentioned. I said we could talk at his house. I hoped to bring Nadine into the conversation. Nadine was resting. We talked quietly in the study. He told me that Nadine was as tasteless to him as weak tea. He said he would not spend his life chained to the living dead. He said he had decided to divorce her. That was his answer. I excused myself saying I wanted to get a drink of water. I brought the knife back from the kitchen. He had gone into the front hall, to go up the stairs and wake her and tell her his decision. I struck him with the knife. He looked down at it and raised his hand and touched the handle and tried to say something and fell. I went out through the back of the house.

“It never occurred to me that Nadine would be suspected. I hoped the police would suspect some prowler, or some business enemy. After her mind started to go, I told her that I had done it. I told her why. I couldn’t reach her, she didn’t understand what I was saying. I had done that to her. Once I knew she was incurable there seemed little point in confessing. I had my own wife to think about, an infant daughter, another child on the way. I contemplated suicide. I was mentally sick and physically sick for a long time. Eventually I recovered. Had it not been for Rolph’s evil actions, Nadine would not have lost her mind. Once I had decided that, I was able to regain my physical and mental health.”

He was silent for a long time. Kruslov stirred in his chair but did not speak. Pryor’s face was still, and he was far away in old memories.

Pryor looked up with a little start. “Rolph’s death and Nadine’s collapse left me with the responsibility for the school child, Mary, and the infant, John. I had never had any trouble with John. He is brilliant, devious, and of a metaphysical turn of mind. But his mind is stronger than his body. He has never evidenced the weaknesses of the flesh. Mary was a different problem. I have thought about her a great deal. She was born old. She was born with a knowledge of evil. Often as I beat her, I could never subdue the evil in her. Once she became of age and began to receive her own income, I no longer had any hold over her. She hated me. She hated me because of the punishments I had inflicted for her own good. With the devilish wisdom of her black heart, she began to punish me in turn. She decided to debauch me and my daughters.

“She told me of her physical affairs. She flaunted her body at me. She laughed at me and tried to create in me a desire for her flesh. She spoke of my sister, her mother, and inferred that the relationship between us had been diseased, unnatural. I knelt on sharp stones for hours at a time, praying for guidance. I had begun to desire her and I could not cut that evil longing out of my heart.”

In the beginning he had spoken tersely, factually. Now his voice had deepened and there was almost a biblical cadence in his words.

“When she would go away I would begin to heal myself, but on her return I would turn again to paths of error. At last she taunted me with the affair she was having with a married man, Dodd Raymond, son of old friends. She taunted me with that as she had taunted me with vile details of her affair with young Yeagger. She wished to punish me for the fancied cruelties I had practiced on her when she was younger. She spoke of a rented place where she would meet Raymond. I saw that she would spend her life spreading her own kind of evil. I told her her father had been evil and he had died. She looked at me then with a special kind of recognition. Maybe my face had shown her too much. I knew that she had begun to suspect me. I knew then that she would have to die also. Once I had decided it, I felt cleansed.

“When my family went to the lake a week ago last Saturday, a week ago yesterday, I parked near the Locust Ridge Club and followed her in her car when she left. I thought she was with Raymond. I thought they would go to the rented place she spoke of. I followed them until they turned into a driveway in the old part of the city. To make certain, I turned around and went back and turned into the driveway. My headlights were on them and I saw them clearly in carnal embrace. I returned to my home to wait for her. I expected her to be very late. She came sooner than I expected. As with her father, I mercifully decided to give her a last chance. I told her I wished to talk to her.

“She listened for a long time, quite patiently. I told her how she had to combat the evil she had inherited. I spoke calmly to her. When I was through she laughed at me. She jeered at me and said unforgivable things to me. I walked away from the car, trembling. I went in the house and took a sock from my bedroom and went out and filled the toe with coarse dirt. When she came walking toward the house, humming to herself, I struck her as hard as I could, caught her as she fell and put her back in the car.

“I thought for a long time. Raymond had broken vows. I found a strange key in her purse. I drove back to the apartment, left her in the car. The key opened the door. I went in and found him in bed, breathing heavily, smelling of drink. I struck him twice, as hard as I could, to prevent his awakening. In the darkness his head was clearly visible on the pillow. His breathing changed and that was all. I carried her into the dark apartment. She seemed to have no weight at all. I placed her in the closet. I lighted a match and saw a belt hanging there. I placed it around her neck and drew it tight. I knelt in the closet doorway in the darkness. I could hear a faint whistle of breathing. I tightened the belt a bit more and I could hear nothing.

“I waited a long time and began to tremble. I thrust her further back into the closet, closed the door, closed the outside door and drove away. I did not sleep that night. Early in the morning I called my wife at the lake and said that Mary had not come home and I was worried. Myrna drove down from the lake. It was minutes before she arrived that I happened to see Mary’s purse near the edge of the drive where I had struck her...”

“The car, her car,” Kruslov said softly.

“I drove her car from Sewell’s driveway and abandoned it near Highland. I walked two miles to the farm and drove back to my home in one of the jeeps. I rubbed my hands on the parts of her car I had touched, to smear my fingerprints. I hid her purse and the key in my bureau. After my wife returned from the lake and we phoned Stine, I waited for Raymond to be found with the body in that apartment. We told Stine that Mary had been at the club with the Raymonds. But it turned out I had struck Sewell. When the body was not found, I guessed that Sewell had taken it away somehow. I did not want Sewell punished. I suspected that he and Mary had been intimate, but I had no proof.

“I wanted to talk to Sewell, to find out if he too should be punished. I waited one night near his apartment, the night Mary’s body had been found. He drove in with Yeagger. I was behind a tree. They came close to me and fought. I got a tire iron from my car. Yeagger was choking Sewell. I struck him from behind. I thought I had killed him. Sewell still breathed. I left.

“Sewell’s arrest troubled me. I visited him in his cell. He seemed honest. He disclaimed carnal knowledge of my niece. I was afraid that once again, as with Nadine, the innocent would be punished. I began to think of confession and suicide. I was the instrument of the vengeance of the Lord, but He did not want me to punish the innocent.

“When Raymond phoned me to set a place to speak to me in private, I had no idea what he wanted. I had him meet me at the farm on Friday night. He spoke cautiously. Suddenly I realized what he wanted. Mary had hinted of her suspicions that perhaps I had killed her father. She had told him of the relationship between herself and me. Raymond had a business venture in mind. I would furnish funds. He said he could insure a good return. Otherwise he would go to the police with his suspicions, and he felt there would be enough to warrant reopening the investigation. I told him I would have to think it over. I told him to wait there. He showed me the gun he was carrying.

“I went back to my home and recovered Mary’s purse from its hiding place and took it back out there with me. The sock heavy with dirt had worked so well that I used it another time. It did not take long to catch him off guard. I spoke of large sums of money and his greed diluted his caution. He was a heavy man, but as when I carried Mary, he seemed astonishingly light. I removed my shoes so as not to leave telltale marks on the roof of his car. The most difficult part was holding him upright while I knotted the tow line around his neck. He began to recover consciousness as I held him upright. I put the purse in one side pocket and the key in the other.

“I pushed him off the car. He caught at the rope over his head with his hands and when he swung back he scrabbled at the car roof with his feet but he could not get a purchase. On the second swing he did not come close enough. He held his weight with his hands, swinging and turning slowly. I had used a flashlight to locate the proper limb and judge the throw. I turned the light on him. He swung, turning slowly, looking at me with a terrible face. I turned off the light. I put my shoes on and stood by the car in the darkness. Soon I heard the sounds of his dying. I walked back to the farm and drove home. I knew it was all over. Sewell would be freed. The guilty had been punished. I felt clean again, as in the moment when I decided to kill my niece.

“When Sewell spoke to me today my anger turned me blind. I knew that it was all over in a different sense. I was angered because I had saved him and this was the way he would repay me.”

Pryor stood up slowly. The faces of the listeners changed. The orange fountain pen made a tiny scratching sound as the last few words were taken down.

Pryor turned toward Kruslov. “Now that you know all the reasons, Captain, now that I have explained everything in detail, may I go home? I’ll appreciate it if this is given no publicity.”

I swear that Kruslov was so shocked he almost said yes. He licked his lips and said, “Oh no, Mr. Pryor! You can’t go home.”

“Do you plan to detain me? Here?”

“I’m afraid I’ve got to.”

“Well, get your formalities over as soon as possible then. Will I be able to go home this evening?”

I saw the Kruslov brain begin to tick. He stood up and smiled and said, “Mr. Pryor, rest assured that we’ll take care of all this just as efficiently as we know how. If you’ll come along with me, sir?”

They half bowed to each other. As they went out the door together, Willis Pryor said, “Remember now. No publicity. And I’d like to talk to Jud Sutton as soon as possible. Get him for me, please.”

“Right this way, Mr. Pryor,” Kruslov said gently.

We were all left in the room. Somebody sighed. Then we all filed out of there, not looking at each other. We all shared some nameless guilt. We’d all seen the shining structures fall, the streets decay, the walls crumble. We didn’t want anything to do with each other. Maybe we had all resigned from the human race a little bit.

Young John Olan was standing in the main corridor when I left. Nobody seemed to want me, so I left. A reporter had edged up to me and I had snarled at him. John Olan was studying a pocket chessboard.

“More prepared variations?”

I startled him. He recognized me and smiled at me. “That’s right.”

He jerked his head toward the other end of the corridor, the official end. “He did it? My father and my sister?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

His eyes were dark mirrors, reflecting nothing. His mouth moved in a quick grimace of pain, wiped out immediately.

He looked back at the board in his hand. I no longer existed. He was back in a special clean geometric world, where the god was reason, where the goddess was logic, where hearts were prisms, cold and true and neatly cut. Perhaps it was a good world to hide in.

I left him and walked slowly to my car in the late afternoon sunshine. A thunder front was rolling up the sky, and the sun was beginning to be misted, and the city was full of an orange light, lambent and ominous.