Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

During the days immediately following the murder, Mr. Willis Pryor, brother of the accused woman, spent countless hours by her side, even watching over her during the night, and was tireless in proclaiming her innocence. He wrote a letter to the paper criticizing the inertia of the police. After Nadine Olan’s collapse and the medical verdict that the prognosis was unfavorable, Willis Pryor ceased his efforts in her behalf, withdrew from many community activities and resigned from the boards of several local corporations.

I sifted over what I had. It wasn’t much. It was certainly less than Dodd Raymond had. He had known enough to kill him. This was his town; he’d know little things that hadn’t been in the paper. He had perhaps used the paper to confirm his memories. And he had known Mary Olan well. She would have talked to him about such things, though not to me.

All I had was a hunch. A hunch about the evil of righteousness.

I took Toni out to dinner that Saturday evening. I guess I was poor company. I would join our group of two for a while and be fine. And then I would drift away again. Toni was aware of it, and she was half amused, half hurt. I did as well as I could, returned her to my apartment and holed up at the hotel. I phoned her after I was in bed with the light out. I could picture her sitting by my phone. She said she was wearing another pair of those delightfully diaphanous pajamas, and that she too was in darkness.

We said the things you would expect to be said under such circumstances and it was all very very fine indeed.

Two hours later, nightmare yanked me out of dreams. I felt as exposed and afraid and naked as if I had been flayed. The object of fear was gone; I couldn’t remember it. I could only remember running in slow motion with something coming after me that moved faster and faster.

The Pryor farm was, in its own way, as much a show-place as the house. Fat black cattle grazed on juicy grasses behind bone white fences. The aluminum roofs of the cattle barns blazed in the Sunday morning sun. I slowed down to watch a pack of horses running like hell. No reason. They felt good. It was that kind of a morning. Two big fieldstone posts marked off the entrance. The gravel road led straight from the entrance to the tenant house. Beyond the house, on the gentle slope of a hill, were the two cottages where the Pryors stayed when they stayed over at the farm. The cluster of barns and silos was behind the tenant house.

I ignored the severe private signs and drove on in and parked by the tenant house. A new red tractor stood in rigid angular dignity, like a strange Martian insect.

John Fidd came around from behind the tenant house and looked at me with disgust. “Yar?” he said.

“Came back down from the lake, eh?”

“No horses and no boats up there this summer. On account of Miss Mary. And that no good Yeagger. Good thing. I got too much to do here without going up there and being a stable boy. I got to watch the hands here.”

“I’d like to see the place where they found Mr. Raymond yesterday morning.”

John Fidd spat with emphasis. “Wouldn’t be anybody driving around the place at night if I was here. I can’t show you now. Too busy.”

“How do I find it?”

“You don’t,” he said.

That seemed to be that. He looked beyond me. A yellow jeep swung into the gravel road, rear wheels skidding dangerously. It was piloted by one of the Pryor girls.

“Which one is that?” I asked.

“That there is Miss Skeeter, the oldest. Best of the lot, too, if anybody should want to ask me.”

She stopped beside my car and jumped out of the jeep. She wore beat-up khaki riding pants, a yellow sports shirt. Her brown hair had paler sun streaks. She looked as round, brown, healthy and uncomplicated as a young koala bear. “Hi, John. Hello, Mr. Sewell. John, I thought I’d give Simpy a run.”

“You’re out early, Miss Skeeter.”

“I went to church early. The rest were about ready to go by the time I got back to change. Dad will probably bring the rest of them out later on.”

“Mr. Sewell here was wanting to see where that fella hanged himself. I don’t have the time right now to take him over there.”

She looked at me dubiously. “If you really want to see it, I’ll show you where it is. Wait until I saddle up and then you can follow me in the jeep. Or maybe you’d like to ride too?”

“No thanks. The jeep will be fine.”

She trotted off toward the barns. I leaned against the jeep. Fidd went off. In about five minutes she came out on a big roan that was all stallion and half as high as a house. He felt like going sideways. She yanked some sense into him, touched him with a little crop and cantered up to the jeep.

“Once we get beyond that fence line there we’ll cut across country. Better put it in four wheel drive. Do you know how?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t follow Simpy too close. He gets nervous.”

She spun him and lifted him into a full run. There wasn’t any danger of my getting too close. I had enough trouble keeping him in sight. Far ahead of me she cut over toward a dirt road and swung to the ground. The far side of the road was lined with trees. I drove up and stopped and got out.

“This is the tree and that’s the limb there. See, he had the car right about here, so that the limb was about ten feet above the roof of the car and about five feet behind it. It was easy to throw the rope over the limb.”

“I wonder why he came out here?”

“They say he used to come out here a lot years ago. They used to ride out here. He didn’t really date Mary then. She was too young I guess.”

Simpy cropped grass steadily. Skeeter seemed anxious to get on him and be off. I wanted to get her talking, and I didn’t know exactly how to go about it.

“I guess they had to get a ladder to cut him down.”

“I guess so.”

“How do you feel about it, Skeeter?”

“What do you mean?”

“About Mary and Dodd Raymond.”

“I didn’t know him very well. Just to say hello to. I’m certainly not sorry he’s dead, Mr. Sewell. Everything seems so dull without Mary. She was wonderful. We loved her, my sisters and I. It was a terrible thing to do.”

“I guess it was, all right.”

“Simpy wants his run. You can leave the jeep back by the house.”

“How old are you, Skeeter?”

“Seventeen.”

“The last time I saw you was a week ago today.”

Her eyes seemed to change to a paler color. “I know. When you came up to the lake after throwing Mary’s body out in the bushes, acting up there like nothing had happened. I remember it very well, Mr. Sewell.”

“That was a mistake. It was bad judgment. I lost my head.”

“You looked calm enough up at the lake.”

“Skeeter, I was scared to death. Honestly.”

She weighed that carefully. “I guess maybe you had every right to be. But you did a bad thing.”

“I know that. I had that impressed on me... forcibly.”

“She was so alive.”

“I know.” I braced myself carefully, smiled and said, “A little too lively for her Uncle Willy, I guess.”

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said with young dignity, slamming the family gates.

“From things she told me, I gathered that your father didn’t care much for the way she led her life.”

“Mary told you that?”

“We talked a lot. Remember, I knew her pretty well, Skeeter.”

“Have you got a cigarette? I’m not allowed to smoke, so I can’t carry them.”

I gave her a cigarette, lighted hers and my own. She hitched her tight pants onto the flat surface of the front fender of the jeep. “She just about drove Daddy crazy. He’s awfully strict with us. He tried to be the same way with Mary, but it didn’t work because she was of age and had her own money. There wasn’t any way he could punish her or restrict her the way he does us.