Джон Макдональд - Area of Suspicion [= My Brother’s Widow]

I whispered to her, “You said the big crush ended. You said you got over it.”

“Of course it ended, dear. I just didn’t tell you what it turned into. Just hold me tight, like this, for a long, long time.”

I looked beyond her, through the car window. I saw the silhouette of a faceless man. As I lunged to trip the lock on the door on her side, the door behind me was ripped open and a hard arm clamped around my throat, dragging me out from behind the wheel as Joan screamed.

I tried to grab the wheel but my hand slipped. I went back and down, the concealed running board scraping against the small of my back, my shoulders thudding against wet grass. In the endless moment of the fall, I thought of my stupidity in making no effort to find out if we were followed, no attempt to see the car that had probably hung back, lights off, following the rented sedan. And I also thought of the truck that had come barreling down on the hill when I left Niki’s house. Mottling had told her I was coming. The penalty for stupidity was high. Too high, because Joan was in it too, and the Brady girl had talked before they killed her.

The fall released the pressure on my throat. I braced my feet against the side of the car and thrust myself over in a backward somersault, swinging my legs high as I came over. My right shoe thudded against something and I heard a gasp of pain. I landed on my hands and knees, facing the car. I swung and dived forward, arms spread wide. A knee glanced off my cheek, making my eyes water, but I grabbed one leg and drove ahead hard, like a linesman.

I could hear the other cars starting up, racing motors as they left hastily, and one set of headlights swept across us just as my man went down. They had heard the screams and this was trouble and the people in the other cars wanted no part of it. Joan screamed again, and this time there was a flat quality to it, and I guessed she had been dragged out of the car on the other side. I clambered over the man as he fell and hammered down with my fist where his face should have been. My fist hit wet earth. He was like an eel. On the next try I hit him squarely and felt something give under my knuckles, felt the frightening eel-like vitality slow into thick movements. I had to get to her and stop whatever it was they were doing to her. I scrambled away from the man on the ground, felt his fingers grasp weakly at my ankle as I stumbled toward the hood of the car. I went around the hood and saw a churning shadow, heard Joan whimpering with effort and fear as I grabbed at the shadows and felt her slimness under my hands. I released her, trying to shove her out of danger, and turned to take a blow above the eye that felt as though it cracked my skull. I yelled thickly to Joan, “Run! Run!” I lunged toward the shadow which had struck me. My arms were dead and, as I grasped him, I took another blow in the dead center of my forehead. I went down onto my knees, trying to hold onto him. He struck down at the nape of my neck and I slid my face into the wet grass. My slack fingers had slid to his ankle. I groaned and yanked the ankle toward me and bit it as hard as I could, the wool of the sock in my teeth. He yelled and kicked free and I rolled toward the bigger shadow of the car and, like a bruised animal hunting a hole, I wormed under the car. I took two deep, gasping breaths and wiggled on out the other side, my shoulder banging something on the underside of the car.

There was a silence. The rain came again, whispering along the river. I crouched, my knuckles against the wet grass, wetness soaking through one knee. I came silently to my feet, my head clearing. The river made wet, sucking sounds against the bank. A boat hooted, far away. I listened for some sound from Joan. Suddenly I heard a gasp and quick running footsteps in the grass. A flashlight clicked on and the beam swept toward the rear of the car, swept on out and pinned Perry as she ran across the rutted grass. She ran fleetly, like a slim boy.

There was an odd sound. A sort of whistling chunk. Joan’s scissoring legs made one more stride and she pitched forward onto her face in the grass, falling in a boneless, nightmare way.

The light went off.

I went around the car, my shoes skidding and slipping on the grass, half-hearing the noise I was making in my throat as I strained toward a shadow, reaching for it, feeling my finger tips brush fabric. The tears of rage were running out of my eyes. I ran slam into the front end of a black locomotive. It thundered over me and ground me down into darkness, rolled me into something small and black that bounded along the ties between the roaring steel wheels.

The train rumbled off into an echoing distance. I was in a car. I slumped sideways in the back seat. Something pressed warm and heavy against my thigh. I crawled my hand along and touched it, traced a smooth cheek, brushed hair of silk. The car moved, uneasily. It seemed to waddle like something fat and tired and old. I squinted toward the front seat. It was an old joke. Nobody was driving, mister. We were all sitting in the back seat. The car bumped and moved again. Somebody expelled breath in a sharp whistle of effort. The hood tipped down suddenly, pitching me forward toward the back of the driver’s seat. I could look down the gleam of the hood and I saw it glide down into the black mirror of the river surface, and I saw the black mirror, swirled and broken, slide up and cover the windshield and the world. The car tilted slow, unsupported, and it glided down in slow motion, like a trick movie shot of a car going off a cliff.

It nudged bottom gently and swayed, and swayed some more, and folded softly over onto its weary side, down in the darkness, down in the river, where death was a hard, thin hissing as the water gushed in through a dozen places, spattering my face, rising up my side. It had been a slow dream, mildly amusing, and I had been a spectator, watching it all in entranced numbness. But the cold hard jet of water from the window nearest me smashed into my face and brought me back to alertness — and panic.

There was some air trapped in the car, but it was going quickly. My mind started to work. I ripped off the constricting jacket, reached down and pulled my shoes off underwater. I remembered it was a two-door sedan. I got hold of her and shoved her toward the vertical dashboard. I took a deep breath of the precious air and shoved myself forward in the car. I braced my feet against the door, reached up and got the door handle of the door on the driver’s side, the one uppermost. The girl was under water. I couldn’t force the door. I risked one more breath, knowing that when the last of the air was gone the pressure would be equalized and the door would open if it was not sprung. I found the window crank and turned it. The air bubbled up and the black water closed around me, the pressure humming in my ears. I thrust against the door. It opened. I got girl around the waist.

I bulled up against the door and worked through it, pulling on the girl. She got caught somehow. I tugged hard, and she came free. As we went upward through the door, it tried to close on my feet like something alive, trying to bite. I tore free. I clawed upward through chill layers of water that pressed hard in my ears. I kept kicking, holding her, pulling at the water with my free hand, and it was a nightmare of climbing up a ladder with rubber rungs.

My lungs were straining against my locked throat and I knew soon there would be no more will to keep my throat locked and the black water would come in.

My head broke through into the cold moist air of the rainy night. I gasped out the staleness and sucked the good air deep. The light was faint. The current was taking us, and the shore trees moved slowly by against the glow of the distant city. I found I was holding her wrong, holding her with her head under water. I turned her around, with her face in the air. I cupped one hand under her chin and towed her on her back, angling toward shore. The bank was too steep. I couldn’t get any hold on it. She slipped away from me and I reached and caught her just as she was slipping under the surface. I floated with her, straining for the bank. My feet touched. I stood in waist-deep water. I pushed her ahead of me, forcing her upward against the bank. I used roots to claw my way up. I shoved her over the crest and dragged her to a level space and straightened out her body and rolled her over onto her face, adjusting her arms and legs the way the book says. I put my finger in her slack mouth and hooked her tongue forward so she wouldn’t swallow it.