Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 1, January, 1955

“I guess the good Lord was riding with me,” she said, in a husky voice. “I knew from the moment the man climbed into my car that he meant to kill me... or worse.” She paused to draw the mink scarf tighter across her de-bosomed gown. The lieutenant dropped his eyes, and the hand on her shoulder tightened. “All I could do was drive slowly and try to keep him talking—”

“You’re a brave woman, Miss Coe,” the lieutenant said. “Most women wouldn’t have had the presence of mind.”

“But there was no choice, officer. I had to take a chance on a prowl car being near that station... I had to swing off on that dead end street so he wouldn’t make me lose it when it came. That’s when he fell against the instrument panel and dropped the gun. That’s when I— Oh, it was so terrible!”

Crystal Coe buried her face in a handful of damp linen and smothered one last sob. “My wife’s been through enough for one night,” the paunchy man said. “I’m takin’ her home right now!” It was the voice of a man who didn’t expect an argument when he spoke, and he didn’t get one now. There was a gun on the lieutenant’s desk that was covered with a dead man’s fingerprints, — there was a coupon from a gasoline credit book covered with a frightened woman’s message. There was no argument at all.

Behind the damp linen, Crystal Coe smiled. She was safe now. Nobody would have any curiosity about a crazed ex-convict. She could pose for the photographers outside and wait for the afternoon editions to finish up the story... “Crystal Coe Slays Attacker”... “Singer Escapes Rapist.” She could go into seclusion for a week or two to rest her nerves, and then go shopping for a new convertible. The old one had bullet holes in the upholstery.

“The man must have been crazy,” the lieutenant muttered, “just plain crazy. That station attendant said he was laughing like a maniac.”

He couldn’t know, of course, what brought the flash of anger to Crystal Coe’s eyes. Not knowing, he mistook it for something else.

“Now, don’t you trouble yourself because you had to kill a man like that,” he said quickly. “He’d have done the same to you — and worse. But his death is going to cause a big headache for somebody. I’m just glad it isn’t in my department.”

Crystal came to her feet slowly. She didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to do anything but get out of this awful place fast, but she had to know.

“A headache—?” she echoed.

“A big headache,” the lieutenant said. “You see, Miss Coe, we had a report on this man a few days ago. He was an ex-convict, a parolee from another state, but he had special permission to leave that state and come out here to close a business deal. Seems he’d invented something while he was in prison — some kind of equipment for showing motion pictures. Signed a contract yesterday that’s supposed to guarantee a quarter of a million dollars, cash, for his patent.”

“A quarter of a million!”

“Just plain crazy,” he repeated, “but can you imagine the kind of investigation it’s going to entail to dig up this man’s past and find his beneficiary?”

He took the gun and used it, because the little man with yellow pointed shoes told him to.

I saw Manila today, and it all came back with the sight of him, all the details I’ve tried to remember and couldn’t — all the little, important details that meant so much, all about the night and what happened in the night and all things before and afterward...

The night was hot and humid. I lay in my room on a sheet sodden with the seepage from my pores, and suspended above me in the dark like a design in ectoplasm was the face of the man named Marilla, and the hate within me stirred and flowed and seeped with the sweat from my pores, and the color of my hate was yellow.

I got off the bed and walked on bare feet across the warm floor to the window, but there was no air moving at the window or outside the window, and the adherent heat had saturated my flesh and soaked through my eyes into the cavity of my skull to lie like a thick, smothering fog over the contours of my brain. I could hear, across the narrow interval that separated houses, the whirr of blades beating the air, and because my eyes were like cat’s eyes, I could see behind the blades into the black, gasping room, and it was the bedroom of Mrs. Willkins, and she was lying nude on her bed under the contrived breeze, and her body was gross and ugly with flesh loose on its bones, and I hated her, just as I hated the ectoplasmic face of the man named Marilla, with all the force of my yellow hate.

Turning away from the window, I found in the darkness a pint of gin on a chest and poured two fingers into a tumbler. I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the gin and then lay down again, and the face of Marilla was still suspended above me, and in a moment the face of Freda was there too, and I began to think deliberately about Marilla and Freda, and the reason I hated Marilla.

I stood with Freda in front of the shining glass window, and she pointed out the coat to me on the arrogant blonde dummy. I could see Freda’s reflected face in the glass from my angle of vision, and her lips were slightly open in excitement and desire, and I felt happy and a little sad at the same time to see her that way, because it wasn’t, after all, much of a coat, not mink or ermine or any kind of fur at all, but just a plain cloth coat that was a kind of pink color and looked like it would be as soft as down to the touch.

“It’s beautiful,” Freda said. “It’s, oh, so beautiful,” and I said, “You like it? You like to have it?” and she said, “Oh, yes,” in a kind of expiring, incredulous whisper that was like the expression of a child who just can’t believe the wonderful thing that’s about to happen.

We went into the store and up to the floor where the coats were sold, and Freda tried on the coat, turning around and around in front of the mirror and stroking the cloth as if it were a kitten and making a soft little purring sound as if she were the kitten she was stroking. I teased her a little, saying that, well, it was rather expensive and would raise hell with the budget, but I knew all the time that I was going to buy it for her, because she wanted it so much and because it made her look even more beautiful than before, and after a while I went up to the credit department and made arrangements for monthly payments, because I didn’t have the price. When I came back down, she was still standing in front of the mirror in the coat, and I said, “You going to wear it?” and she said, “Oh, yes, I’m going to wear it and sleep in it and never take it off,” and I kept remembering afterward that it wasn’t after aft, so much of a coat, not fur or anything, but just pink cloth.

We went down in the elevator, and she clung to my arm and kissed me over and over with her eyes, and I thought it was the best buy I’d ever made and cheap at the price, even if I had had to arrange monthly payments. We went out onto the street through the revolving door, walking close together in the same section of the door because Freda wouldn’t let loose of my arm, and the street was bright and soft and cool with the cool, bright softness of April, and it was just the kind of day and street for a new pink coat. We walked down the street toward the drug store on the corner, and I was thinking that I’d take Freda into the store for some of the peppermint ice cream with chunks of stick peppermint in it that she liked so much, and it occurred to me that the ice cream was just about the color of the pink coat, and then there were a couple of explosions inside the drug store, and after a second or two a woman began to scream in a high, ragged voice that went on and on, and the door of the store flew open, and a man ran out with a gun in his hand, and the man was Marilla, the man they were later to call a psychopathic killer.