William McGivern - The Seven File

“We’re ready to go,” Duke said quietly. “Anything you want us to bring you?”

Grant hesitated, reluctant to force the issue. “Did you check the radio this morning?” he said. “The news show, I mean?”

“Sure. There’s nothing on us. Nothing at all.”

“Okay, get back here as fast as you can,” Grant said shortly. He tried to sound as if he were granting Duke permission to leave, but it didn’t come off that way; they all realized he was avoiding a challenge.

Belle came downstairs as Duke was starting the car. The noise of the motor was a series of shattering sounds against the silence. She smiled a good morning at Hank and then glanced at Grant who was still staring at the front door.

“Duke going somewhere?” she asked him.

“We need groceries. And the baby needs some things.”

“Oh.” Belle glanced at Hank, sensing that Grant’s mood was ugly. “Where’s the girl? The nurse, I mean.”

“She went with Duke,” Hank said.

“Was that smart?”

Hank shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Judas Priest. Eddie, what did you let them go for?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Grant said, without looking at her. “It’s all right.”

Hank knew that Grant’s temper was dangerously short; he had lost to Duke by default and that was eating at him.

“Eddie, it wasn’t smart,” Belle said. “Duke’s after that girl. You don’t know what kind of a dumb thing he might do while he’s alone with her.”

“Don’t worry about it, I told you,” Grant said.

“How do you know Duke didn’t wake the girl up the night he took the baby?”

“What do you mean?” Grant said, turning and staring at her.

“Maybe he woke her up deliberately, that’s what I mean. He says she caught him in the nursery, but how can you be sure? It’s his story, that’s all. I wouldn’t be surprised if he woke her up just so he could bring her with us.”

“Shut up!” Grant said, making an abrupt, silencing gesture with his hand. “Stop talking up trouble.”

“I may be saving us trouble, Eddie.”

“And I told you to shut up. Duke isn’t crazy. He’s thinking of his hide just like the rest of us.”

“That’s right,” Hank said.

They both looked at him and Grant said dryly, “Thanks a lot, Junior.”

“He’s his brother after all,” Belle said. “He should know.”

“All right, he knows. And he knows his brother is no crackpot. That’s why I’m telling you.”

Hank put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match with his good hand. “It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “Duke makes sense to himself. But sometimes other people can’t see that so they’re liable to think he’s a little cracked.”

Belle smiled at him as she sat down and crossed her legs. “That’s an interesting way to look at it,” she said, moving her foot about in a small circle. “I’m not sure I understand it, but it’s interesting anyway.”

“It’s pretty deep,” Grant said dryly. “It means Duke is smart. It means he gets what he wants.”

“That’s it exactly,” Hank said. “Regardless.”

Grant turned away from them and strolled to the windows. He stood there for a few seconds and the silence in the room stretched into a curious tension; the conversation wasn’t over yet, and everyone realized that. Duke was a subject of desperate importance to Grant and Belle; they didn’t trust him but their lives were in his hands. They wanted clues to his character, indices to his patterns of behavior. They had to know what made him tick. Hank had guessed this earlier, but now he was sure of it; he could feel their uneasiness in the silence.

Grant turned slowly and looked at him. “What do you mean ‘regardless?’ ” he said.

“Regardless?”

“You said that he got what he wanted ‘regardless.’ ” Grant gestured irritably with one hand. “What do you mean?”

“Oh. Well, I simply meant that he’d scare you with the chances he’d take. If he wanted something, that is.” Hank smiled and shook his head as if he were savoring an old, bitter-sweet memory. “One summer, for instance, Duke looked like a cinch to win the first prize for the biggest muskie caught in Lake Sandstone. The prize was twenty-five dollars, quite a bit of money in those days, and it was put up by one of the big lodges on the lake. Duke caught a beauty in July, a forty-six-pounder, and the contest ended on Labor Day. By the first of September he looked like a shoo-in. No one else had caught anything close to his big one.” Hank took a drag on his cigarette, all of his movements casual and deliberate. Then he smiled at Grant who was watching him with a hard little frown.

“You wouldn’t think twenty-five dollars would mean such a lot to a man,” he said. “I mean, a fish is a fish. But Duke wanted that prize.”

“Okay, okay, so what happened?” Grant said.

“He won the contest, all right,” Hank said, “but it was no shoo-in. A day before the contest ended the word came into the lodge that one of Duke’s Friends had caught a whopper. He was still out on the lake with it, but he’d showed it to a man coming in. And this fellow said the fish might go sixty pounds. This was around dusk, and there was only a little bit of light still showing on the horizon.”

“Never mind the nature touches,” Grant said. “Let’s have the results. You said Duke won. How come — when somebody else caught a bigger fish?”

“Well, that’s what I meant by ‘regardless,’ ” Hank said. “Duke took out a motorboat and cut his friend’s boat in half. Ran him down. He said he didn’t see him in the dark.”

Belle drew a sharp breath. “I’ve never heard of anything so terrible.”

“But Duke got what he wanted. His friend lost all of his tackle, plus his record fish. And he almost lost his life. But Duke got the twenty-five bucks. So it made sense to Duke. Other people might not see it that way, of course.”

“Kids are always pulling damn-fool stunts like that.” Grant said. “How old was he then?”

“About twenty-three,” Hank said quietly.

Grant let out his breath slowly and turned back to the windows. He stared at the gravel road that wound past the house. The sun was stronger now, sparkling on the dew in the fields.

“Eddie?”

He turned and looked at her. She was very pale and her fingers moved nervously along the sides of her dress. “Well, what?”

“Oh, nothing.”

He swore softly and turned back to the window. Belle smiled tentatively at Hank, as if entreating him to ignore Grant’s bad manners. “This is going to be a nice day. isn’t it?” she said.

Hank glanced at the sun-bright windowpanes. “They picked a good morning for their shopping,” he said. “Half the country probably has the same idea.”

“That’s right,” Belle said slowly. She glanced at Grant’s tense shoulders, a worried little frown on her face. “The stores will be crowded, I suppose.”

Hank nodded. “Mobbed.”

Crowley tapped lightly on Mrs. Bradley’s door and when she said, “Yes?” he hesitated for a second, wishing to God there was some way of avoiding this session. It would be difficult for him, and painful for her — but it had to be faced. “This is Crowley,” he said. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”

“Please come in,” she said.

Crowley opened the door and stepped into her darkened room. He didn’t see her at first; the shades were drawn, and only a night lamp gleamed above the tufted crimson bedspread; its reflection shone on the face of an illuminated clock and struck splinters of brilliance from a bracelet on the dressing table. Then she said, “I’m over here,” and he turned and saw that she was sitting in a lounge chair near the windows, her arms folded tightly over her breasts. A bar of light from the blinds touched her sleek blonde head, but her face and eyes were in darkness.