Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

“He wouldn’t tell me. But he’d probably tell you. It could have a bearing on this mess.”

“Really? Perhaps I’ll give him a call.”

The deputy and Mrs. Sherrill came out to the patrol car, and Jeffrey’s Rover led them down the hill. Bernice Sebastian stood in the open doorway and watched them go.

“Thank God we’ve got them out of here for tonight. Thank you, too, Mr. Archer, for taking charge.”

The expression of feeling came hard to her. Her eyes had a dull overexposed look.

“Your husband took charge. I gave him some advice. I’ve sat in on quite a few of these family evenings.”

“Do you have children of your own?”

“No. I used to feel deprived.”

She let me in and closed the door and leaned on it, as if she was countering the pressure of the night outside. “Will they let us keep her?”

“It depends on several things. You have trouble in the family, and Sandy isn’t the only source of it. The trouble is between her and you.”

“It’s Keith she’s angry with, mainly.”

“That makes it three-way trouble. You’ve got to resolve it some way.”

“Who says so?”

“Probation will say so, if she’s lucky enough to be taken on as a risk. What’s Sandy got against her father?”

“I don’t know.” But she veiled her eyes and looked down.

“I don’t believe you, Mrs. Sebastian. Do you want to show me Sandy’s diary?”

“I destroyed it, as I told you this morning – yesterday morning.” She closed her eyes and covered them with her fine narrow hand. She had lost a day, for a moment, and it worried her.

“Tell me what was in it that made you destroy it.”

“I can’t. I won’t. I won’t put up with this humiliation.”

She tried to rush blindly past me. I stepped sideways, and she ran into me. We stood in close contact, her body taut and elegant against mine. A spreading heat climbed from my groin to my heart and into my head.

We stepped back away from each other by sudden mutual consent. But there was a difference in our relation now, the difference of a possibility.

“I’m sorry,” she said without explaining what she was sorry for.

“It was my fault. We haven’t finished.” Possibility put a curve on the meanings of the words.

“Haven’t we?”

“No. The most important thing in determining what happens to Sandy is what happens to Stephen Hackett. If we can get him back alive–” I let the sentence finish itself in her mind. “Sandy may be able to tell me something. I have the doctor’s permission to question her.”

“What about?”

“She said last night that Davy Spanner was looking for a place where he used to live. I’m hoping she can pin it down a bit.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s all for now.”

“Very well. You can talk to her.”

We passed the door of the living room, where Sebastian and the lawyer were talking about bail. The door of Sandy’s room was locked and the key was in the door. Her mother turned the key and gently pushed the door open.

“Sandy? Are you still awake?”

“What do you think?”

“That’s not a nice way to answer me.” The mother’s tone was strangely mixed, as if she was talking to an immensely powerful idiot. “Mr. Archer wants to talk to you. You remember Mr. Archer.”

“How could I forget him?”

“Sandy, please talk like yourself.”

“This is the new me. Send in the fuzz.”

The girl’s toughness was clearly an act, generated by guilt and terror and self-disgust, and a rather bullying contempt for her mother. But for the time, at least, the tough act had taken over her personality. I went in hoping to reach the original girl, the one who collected Ivy League pennants and cloth animals.

She was sitting up in bed with one of the cloth animals hugged to her chest: a brown velvet spaniel with drooping ears, button eyes, a red felt tongue. Sandy was flushed and heavy-eyed. I sat on my heels by the bed, so that our eyes were almost on a level.

“Hello, Sandy.”

“Hello. They’re going to put me in jail.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, wooden. “That should make you happy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Her mother spoke from the doorway: “You mustn’t talk like that to Mr. Archer.”

“Go away,” the girl said. “You give me a headache.”

“I’m the one with the headache.”

“I think I’m getting one, too,” I said. “Please let me talk to Sandy alone for a minute.”

The woman withdrew. The girl said: “What are we supposed to talk about?”

“You may be able to help me and help yourself at the same time. Everyone will be a lot better off if we can find Davy before he kills Mr. Hackett. Do you have any idea where they are?”

“No.”

“You said last night, early this morning, that Davy was looking for a certain place, a place where he used to live. Do you know where it is, Sandy?”

“How should I know? He didn’t know himself.”

“Did he remember anything about it?”

“It was in the mountains someplace, up north of Santa Teresa. Some kind of a ranch where he used to live before they put him in the orphanage.”

“Did he describe the place?”

“Yes, but it didn’t sound like much of a place to me. The house burned down a long time ago. Somebody put a roof over part of it.”

“The house burned down?”

“That’s what he said.”

I stood up. The girl recoiled, clutching the velvet dog as if it was her only friend and guardian.

“Why did he want to go back there, Sandy?”

“I don’t know. He used to live there with his father. And his mother. I guess he thought it was heaven or something, you know?”

“Was Laurel Smith his mother?”

“I guess she was. She said she was his mother. But she ran out on him when he was a little boy.” Sandy took a quick audible breath. “I told him he was lucky to have that happen.”

“What have you got against your parents, Sandy?”

“We won’t talk about it.”

“Why did you throw in with Davy on this? You’re not that kind of a girl.”

“You don’t know me. I’m bad clear through.”

The tough act, which she’d forgotten for a minute, was coming on strong again. It was more than an act, of course. Her mind was caught between darkness and light, spinning like a coin she had tossed herself.

Outside in the hallway, where Bernice Sebastian was waiting, I remembered that something was missing from Sandy’s room. The silver-framed picture of Heidi Gensler had been taken down.

WITH BERNICE SEBASTIAN’S permission, I shut myself up in the study and put in a call for Albert Blevins at the Bowman Hotel. The long silence on the line was broken by a succession of voices. Albert would be right down. Albert wasn’t in his room but he was being searched for. Albert had apparently gone out, and nobody knew when he was expected back. He’d gone to a triple feature on Market Street, it was thought.

I left a message for Albert, asking him to call my answering service collect, but I doubted that I’d be hearing from him tonight.

There was another possible source of information. I got out the papers I’d acquired from Albert Blevins and laid them on Sebastian’s desk. I reread the letter which Alma R. Krug, Albert’s mother-in-law, had sent him in 1948 from her house at 209 West Capo Street in Santa Monica.

“Jasper and Laurel and the babe will be staying at our house for a while,” Mrs. Krug had written; “then Jasper wants to have a try at ranching.”

I looked for Alma Krug’s name in the telephone directory, and tried Information, in vain. Mrs. Krug’s letter had been written nearly twenty years ago. The lady must be very old, or dead.