Джон Макдональд - The End of the Night

“We were just inside that loading window there,” Howard Craft said and pointed. They all turned and looked at the barn glowing in reflected light. The high window was a rectangular hole, about five feet long and three feet high. A fringe of hay lapped over the bottom edge.

“Ruthie and me, we were there maybe only fifteen minutes when that Oldsmobile came along, moving real slow, and parked over there right across from us, and turned off the lights and the engine.”

“What time was that?”

“I’d guess maybe ten to nine, Sheriff. They sat there and talked. A man and a woman.”

“Could you hear what was being said?”

“Not really. It was an argument. It seemed like he was trying to talk her into something she didn’t want to do. We could only catch a word here and there.”

“Like ‘surprise,’ ” the girl said. “He talked about a surprise and money. I heard him say a thousand dollars. We weren’t listening good because we were just hoping they’d go away.”

“He said about getting married a couple times,” the boy said.

“Then all of a sudden the lights came on and they started up real fast,” the girl said.

“We were looking out,” the boy said. “I guess she jumped out when he started up. But not quick enough. She fell, I guess. And he racked the Olds right into the ditch. Then he came scrambling out and ran back to where she was, there on the edge of the road. He was yelling, ‘Helen! Helen! Helen!’ It was hard to see them. Then this other car came from the west. It was wound up real good. When the headlights hit them, we could see them good. A big guy in a white jacket kneeling beside a blond woman.”

“She had a white skirt and a green blouse,” the girl said.

“The car coming braked real good,” the boy said. “It was handled good. It stopped maybe thirty feet from them, where the guy was trying to pick the girl up and got her off the edge of the road. It was a dark Buick, a big one, pretty new, maybe last year’s. Dark-green or dark-blue or maybe even black.”

“Dark-blue, I think,” the girl said.

“Four people got out,” the boy said. “One of them was a girl. They left the doors open and the motor running. They acted... funny.”

“How do you mean, funny?” the sheriff asked.

“Excuse me, Gus,” Barney Tauss said.

Kurby turned irritably. “Yes, Barney?”

“I was just wondering if it wouldn’t be a smart thing to establish road blocks so...”

“That’s been done. After the first informal interrogation, I requested the State Police so to do. All right, son. In what way did they act funny?”

“Well, it wasn’t like they wanted to help. They were laughing and joking around. It seemed to me they were drunk, the four of them.”

“You saw them clearly?”

“When they got out in front of their own headlights, yes. We saw them pretty good.”

“Take them one at a time and give me a description.”

“One was a big, dark, tough-looking guy. The three guys all wore sports shirts and slacks. The big one had his shirt outside his slacks, and the other two had theirs tucked in. Then there was a skinny guy wearing glasses, maybe getting a little bald. He was hopping around all the time, making cracks and laughing in a funny way. The third guy was pretty well built, a big, blond guy with a good tan.”

“He maybe looked a little like Tab Hunter, only bigger and rougher,” the girl said.

“The girl wore brown slacks and a yellow blouse and high heels,” the boy said. “She had long, brown hair. She was pretty, I’d say.”

“She was kinda hippy to be wearing slacks,” the girl said.

“What did they do?”

“They gathered around the blonde and the guy who had put the Olds in the ditch. We couldn’t hear much of what the others were saying, but we could hear the crazy guy with the glasses pretty good. He was saying crazy things, like it was lucky there was a witch doctor in the audience. And he said if people were throwing beautiful blondes away, the country was in worse shape than he thought. Then he got down on his knees and took the blonde’s hand and yelled, ‘Speak to me, darling! Speak to your old buddy!’ That made the guy in the white jacket sore. He pushed the guy in glasses away so hard that he rolled over onto his back, his legs in the air, and he yelled, ‘Let her alone!’ The next second the big, tough one smacked the guy in the white coat and knocked him down. But he scrambled right up again. The big one went after him. He fought — the one in the white coat — like a crazy man. But then they were circling around behind him.”

“Who was?”

“The other three. The girl too. The one with glasses had picked up a rock in each hand. The girl had a knife. There was hardly any sound. Just shoes scraping on the road, and the way they grunted, and the smacking sound when they’d hit him. And the one with glasses laughed some. The fight moved away from the blonde girl. All of a sudden it was a terrible thing. All of a sudden you knew they were killing him. Ruthie started to cry. I whispered to her not to make a sound. I knew they’d kill us too. I knew they’d kill anybody. They weren’t like people you see. I didn’t know people could be like that. I saw something like that a long time ago. I was twelve, maybe. A pack of dogs got after a bull calf. It was a long way from the farmhouse. I didn’t have a gun or anything. The calf kept bellowing and circling, but it didn’t do him any good. The dogs weren’t even barking. They kept circling and snapping and they pulled him down and tore his throat open. It was like that.”

“Can you give us any kind of a sequence, son?”

“Just how it happened? It got pretty confusing. The blond guy knocked him down a couple of times. They’d let him get up. The skinny guy knocked him down with a rock, and he got up slow. By then he wasn’t fighting. He kept yelling, ‘Wait! Wait! Don’t!’ It was a terrible thing. When he could hardly move, the big one got him by the throat and bent him over the back of the Olds. The girl moved in close and I couldn’t see the knife, but I could see her elbow going back and forth, real fast. The guy screamed once. The big guy let go. The skinny guy popped him again with a rock. The blond guy kicked him into the ditch as he slid off the back of the car. Just then the blonde woman sat up. Her face was in the lights. I guess she didn’t know where she was. They went to her. They talked low. We couldn’t hear what they said. But they helped the blonde up onto her feet. She seemed to sort of let them lead her. The girl and the blond guy helped her. They walked her to the Buick and got her into it. They slammed all the doors. The skinny one with glasses got behind the wheel. They scratched off and they were doing I’d say seventy by the time they got to that next ridge.”

“And what did you do then?”

“We got down to my car fast as we could. I drove out and stopped by the ditch. I held my lighter close and looked at his face and I knew he was dead. I didn’t want Ruthie to see him. Sometimes a car won’t come along for a half hour. I drove home fast and phoned. It was about twenty-five after nine when I phoned. Then we came back here to... meet you people and tell you about it.”

“You did not see the plate on the Buick?”

“No, I told you, Sheriff. It was out of state, but I don’t know from where.”

“I want to thank you, Howard, and you, Ruth, for your good citizenship.” The little red light went off.

“Can we go now, Sheriff?” the boy asked.

“Yes.”

“Will I be in the papers?” the girl asked, smiling.

“You sure will, honey,” one of the reporters said. “How about a few more questions before you take off, kids?”