Charles Williams - Girl Out Back

Going downstairs, I picked up the shoe that was in the dining-room and got a roll of heavy cord from a drawer in the kitchen. I was recovering now, and thinking quite clearly. On the way back I stopped in the living-room and picked up the four cigarette butts from the ash-tray, the ones that were smeared with lipstick. I flushed them down the toilet. Putting both shoes and her panties down beside her on the blanket, I folded it over her both ways and then folded the ends in. I knew that I was probably as guilty of the actual fact of her being dead as Nunn was, and while the sadism and brutality were all his, I still felt better after I didn’t have to look at her any more. I made several ties around her body with the cord, to hold the blanket in place.

Then I turned my attention to the bed. There’d been surprisingly little blood for a bad beating, but then he’d merely been trying to bruise and puff the face rather than cut it. There was one sizeable spot and two smaller ones on the bedspread, and in one place it had gone through both sheets. I took them all off, washed out the spots in the bathroom, and put them in Reba’s laundry bag. Getting new sheets and another spread from the linen closet. I remade the bed, trying to copy the way it had been tucked before.

I took out the two bags I’d packed and put them in the hall closet. The one down in my den didn’t matter. Jessica would be here long before I got back, but she wouldn’t go down there. I took a last look around. Everything was in order up here. Picking her up with considerable difficulty, I carried her down the stairs and out to the kitchen. I placed her near the door, went out, and closed it behind me.

I studied the distance. It was two steps across the kitchen porch, down two steps to the ground, and then three long strides into the side door of the garage. Situated as it was, with only trees to the rear and the house and garage covering the respective sides, it was exposed to view only from the street and Mrs. Macklin’s house directly across it. As I came back from the garage to the kitchen porch I shot a casual glance across at her windows. The drapes were open in the living-room windows and in two of upstairs bedrooms. She was probably home. The garage door was closed. There were no other cars parked in front, so there probably wasn’t any bridge game or catfight in progress. It was hard to tell just what Mrs. 20/20 Snellen would be doing this time of day.

Well, I could give her something to do. As I recalled the layout of her web, her telephone had two extensions, one in the central hallway and the other in the kitchen. Either would do. I went back inside the kitchen, but left the door unlatched.

I was going to have to take a chance on the street, but very few cars went by as a rule. It ended in a cul-de-sac at the end of the next block. I went into the living-room, looked up her number, and dialed it. It rang four or five times. The receiver clicked on the other end and when I heard her say, “Hello,” I put this one down and ran. Hoisting up Jewel Nunn’s body, I kicked open the door and went out and into the garage. No car went by. I was in the clear.

The end of the station wagon was already open. I put her in, doubled into as small a space as possible, and pulled the blankets and life-belts over her. I went back in the house, replaced the telephone handset, and brought out her overnight case. There was a short-handled gardening spade in the garage. I put it and her purse in under the blankets. Everything was set, except that I’d better leave a note. After she’d called me, it would look a little odd if I didn’t. I went back inside once more, scribbled out a few lines to the effect that a man who owed me eighty dollars on an old deal had called from Exeter that I could collect if I’d come after it, and left it on the coffee table. Of course, there would be a fight, anyway. That was news? But she wouldn’t have cause to suspect anything. Except that I was still the same miserable bastard she’d been married to for two years.

I locked the front and back doors, and swung up the door of the garage. Taking one last look into the back of the station wagon, I was satisfied with it. It was always full of some kind of camping gear and those old rumpled blankets and life-belts. I glanced at my watch. It was four twenty-five.

I got in and backed out of the garage. Somewhere off that road going into the northern end of Javier Lake, I thought. It would do as well as any. I tried not to think about her. Twenty-four was a lousy time to die. Oh, drop it. It never did any good. This world was a rough place to live in, unless you lived in it one day at a time and never thought of what was gone or what could have happened. You used up Today, threw it back over your shoulder, put your hand around a blind corner, and a little man put another one in it. Some fine morning you’d shove your hand around the corner and there’d be no little man. Just a seagull with a sense of humor. You couldn’t buck a system like that; you joined it.

I might make this stick, and I might not. The best thing would be to continue denying she was ever with me. Nobody could prove it, and Nunn’s word didn’t carry much weight. If I carried it off successfully I’d hang around another six months or a year before I tried to get away. She’d never tell anybody about Cliffords now.

I swung into Minden. It was only three blocks to the traffic light at Main. I saw I was going to hit it on the green, and speeded up a little, and then the career of Barney Godwin began to come apart like a cheap toy left out in the rain. I smelled the motor just a second before all the bearings began to go, but by that time I was already into the intersection and starting to turn. The clatter of connecting rods and burned-out mains rose to a crescendo, and then the end of a rod came out through the crankcase wall and I was through. The motor locked. tires skidded and made a short screeching sound as I came to a standstill in the middle of the intersection of Main and Minden with traffic piling up around me and horns beginning to blow.

There was a sort of horrible fascination about it, like watching a levee crumble and go out, or seeing an explosion in slow motion in a newsreel. You knew what the end result was going to be, and yet you sat and appraised the individual stages in the sequence of destruction. Pedestrians turned and stared, most of them people I knew. The light changed. More horns took up the outcry. I saw Grady Collins step off the curb and come toward me. He was grinning wryly and shaking his head.

“Barney, he said, “did you ever try putting oil in this heap?”

Then, before I could reply, he called to someone on the sidewalk before the café. “Hey, Gus. Run inside Joey’s there and call Manners. Tell him to bring his wrecker and get this clunk of Barney’s off the street.”

I got out. If there was anything unusual about my manner or expression he apparently didn’t notice it, so perhaps nothing showed. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do, so I merely stood there. He grinned at me again, shook his head ruefully at the car, and began directing traffic around it.

The wrecker came and maneuvered into position. While his helper was hooking on and hoisting the front of the station wagon, Manners glanced briefly under the hood, whistled, and shook his head. Then he got down on hands and knees and peered at the bottom of the motor.

“Crankcase drain-plug is gone, Barney,” he said. “Somebody didn’t tighten it.”

Perhaps, I thought, it was news to him. He hadn’t had the benefit of my experience. I turned and studied the faces along the sidewalk, searching for Nunn. He probably wasn’t expecting it this soon, I thought; there was no way he could have known Jessica was coming home and that I d have to do it in daylight. No. Wait. There he was, near the middle of the block, peering owlishly at the spectacle while he weaved with a slightly exaggerated drunkenness. No doubt, I thought, it exceeded his fondest hopes.