Росс Макдональд - Find a Victim

“It’s a pretty story,” I said. “Did you tell it to the sheriff?”

For the first time Danelaw seemed uneasy. “I haven’t seen him. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to put him in the position of arresting his own father-in-law. I went over his head for once and laid it out for Westmore.”

“And Westmore bought it?”

“Sure he did. Don’t you?”

“I’ll take an option on it. But I want to do a little more shopping around. Meyer drives a Lincoln, doesn’t he?”

“That’s right. He has another car, too, an old Chewy he uses for transportation.”

“A green Chewy sedan?”

“Yeah. I’m going to work on those cars next shot out of the box. One of them must have been seen around the time and place of one of the shootings.”

“I can save you some trouble there. Talk to the prisoner inside. Ask him about the car Aquista drove away in on Thursday.”

Danelaw turned to the door. I went the other way.

Hilda Church opened the front door and looked out shyly. In her quilted cotton housedress she might have been any pretty suburban chatelaine interrupted at her morning work. But there was a tight glazed look around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes were translucent and strange, a clear pale green like deep ocean water.

“Is your husband home, Mrs. Church?”

“No. I’m afraid he isn’t.”

“I’ll wait.”

“But I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“It doesn’t matter. I have things to discuss with you.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t feel like talking to anyone. Not this morning.”

She tried to close the door. I held it open.

“You better let me come in.”

“No. Please. Brandon will be angry if he comes home and finds you.” She leaned her weight on the door. One side of her breast bulged around its edge. “Please let me close it. And go away. I’ll tell Brandon you called.”

“I’m coming in, Mrs. Church.”

I set my shoulder, against the door and forced it open. She retreated to the doorway of the living-room and stood in it, her arms stiff at her sides, her fingers working at the ends of them. She looked sideways at me, with a kind of fearful coquetry. The cord in the side of her neck was strung taut like a thin rope.

I moved toward her. She retreated farther, into the living-room. She walked with a queer cumbersomeness, as if her body was lagging far behind her thought. Stopping beside a bleached mahogany coffee table, she leaned over and moved a white clay ashtray a fraction of an inch, into the table’s mathematical center.

The ashtray, the table, the rug, everything in the room was clean. The white and black-iron furniture was bleakly new, and geometrically placed around the room. Through sliding glass doors I could see out into a white-walled patio blazing like an open furnace with flowers. A circular brick planter overflowed with masses of purple lobelia, in the middle of which a dwarf lemon tree held its wax blossoms up to the sun.

“What do you want with me?” she whispered.

The light reflected from the patio wall fell stark across her half-averted face. She looked so much like the dead woman in that instant that I couldn’t believe in her reality. Death had aged Anne Meyer and made them almost twins. Time jarred to a stop and reversed itself. The helpless pity I had felt for Anne went through me like a drug. Now I pitied the unreal woman who was standing with her head bowed over her immaculate coffee table.

She had acted beyond her power to imagine what she had done. I had to drive the truth home to her, give her back reality, and regain it for myself. I’d rather have shot her through the head.

“You killed your sister with your father’s gun. Do you want to talk about it now, Mrs. Church?”

She looked up at me. Through her tide-green eyes I could see the thoughts shifting across her mind like the shadows of unknown creatures. She said: “I loved my sister. I didn’t mean, I didn’t intend–”

“But you did.”

“It was an accident. The gun did. The gun went off in my hand. Anne looked at me. She didn’t say a word. She fell on the floor.”

“Why did you shoot her if you loved her?”

“It was Anne’s fault. She oughtn’t to have gone with him. I know how you men are, you’re like animals, you can’t help yourselves. The woman can help it, though. She shouldn’t have let him. She shouldn’t have led him on.

“I’ve done a great deal of thinking about it,” she said. “I’ve done nothing but think about it since it happened. I haven’t even taken time to sleep. I’ve spent the whole week thinking and cleaning house. I cleaned this house and then I cleaned Father’s house and then I came back here and cleaned this house again. I can’t seem to get it clean, but I did decide one thing, that it was Anne’s fault. You can’t blame Fath– you can’t blame Brandon for it, he’s a man.”

“I don’t understand how it happened, Mrs. Church. Do you remember?”

“Not very well. I’ve been thinking so much. My mind has been working so quickly, I haven’t had time to remember.”

“Did it happen on Sunday?”

“Sunday morning, early, at the lake. I went there to talk to Anne. All I intended to do was talk to her. She was always so thoughtless, she didn’t realize what she’d done to me. She needed someone to bring her to her senses. I couldn’t let it go on the way it had. I had to do something.”

“You knew about it then?”

“I’d known for months. I saw how Brand looked at her, and how she acted. He’d be sitting in his chair and she’d walk close to him so her skirt would brush his knee. And then they started to go on weekend trips. Last Saturday they did it again. Brand said that he had a meeting in Los Angeles. I called the hotel and he wasn’t in Los Angeles. He was with Anne. I knew that, I didn’t know where.

“Then Tony Aquista came here Saturday night. It was very late, past midnight. He got me out of bed. I wasn’t asleep, though. I was thinking already, even before it happened. When he came to the door and told me, I could see everything all at once, my whole life in a single instant – the city and the mountains and the two of them in the cabin with each other, and me by myself, all by myself down here.”

She raised her hands to her breasts and gripped them cruelly.

“Go on,” I said. “What did Aquista tell you?”

“He said that he followed her to Lake Perdida and saw her with Brand. He said that they were on the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace. The fire was burning and they had no clothes on. He said that she was laughing and calling out his name.

“Tony was drunk, and he hated Brand, but he was telling the truth. I knew he was telling the truth. I sat all night after he left, trying to think what to do. The night went by like no time at all. And then the church bells started ringing for early Mass. They came as a sign to me, they sounded like my own wedding bells, and all the way driving up to the lake they kept on ringing. All the time I was talking to Anne, they were ringing in my ears. I had to shout so I could hear myself. They didn’t stop until the gun went off.”

She shuddered, as if she could feel its fiery orgasm penetrating her own flesh.

“Where was your husband when it happened?”

“He wasn’t there. He left before I got there.”

“Where did you get the gun? From your father?”

“It was Father’s revolver. But he didn’t give it to me. Anne did.”

“Your sister gave it to you?”

“Yes.” She nodded her fine small head, birdlike. “She must have. I know she had it. And then it was in my hand.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. Honestly. I can’t remember.” Her face went completely blank. “I try to think back and it’s just a blur with Anne’s face in it, and the sound of the bells. Everything moves so fast, and I’m so slow. The gun went off and I was terrified, there by myself with her body. I thought for a minute that it was me, lying dead on the floor. I ran away.”