Ben took the needle and looked questioningly into Jimmy's eyes. He nodded. Ben injected the needle.
Jimmy's body tensed like spring steel. For a moment he was a sculpture in agony, every tendon pulled out into sharp relief. Little by little he began to relax. His body shuddered in reaction, and Ben saw that tears had mixed with the sweat on his face.
'Put the cross on me,' he said. 'If I'm still dirty from her, it'll . . . it'll do something to me.'
'Will it?'
'I'm sure it will. When you were going after her, I looked up and I wanted to go after you. God help me, I did. And I looked at that cross and I . . . my belly wanted to heave up.'
Ben put the cross on his neck. Nothing happened. Its glow - if there had been a glow at all - was entirely gone. Ben took the cross away.
'Okay,' Jimmy said. 'I think that's all we can do.' He rummaged in his bag again, found an envelope containing two pills, and crushed them into his mouth. 'Dope,' he said. 'Great invention. Thank God I used the john before that . . . before it happened. I think I pissed myself, but it only came to about six drops. Can you bandage my neck?'
'I think so,' Ben said.
Jimmy handed him gauze, adhesive tape, and a pair of surgical scissors. Bending to put the bandage on, he saw that the skin around the wounds had gone an ugly, con?gealed red. Jimmy flinched when he pressed the bandage gently into place.
He said: 'For a couple of minutes there, I thought I was going to go nuts. Really, clinically nuts. Her lips on me . . . biting me . . .' His throat rippled as he swallowed. 'And when she was doing it, I liked it, Ben. That's the hellish part. I actually had an erection. Can you believe it? If you hadn't been here to pull her off, I would have . . . would have let her . . . '
'Never mind,' Ben said.
'There's one more thing I have to do that I don't like.'
'What's that?'
'Here. Look at me a minute.'
Ben finished the bandage and drew back a little to look at Jimmy. 'What - '
And suddenly Jimmy slugged him. Stars rocketed up in his brain and he took three wandering steps backward and sat down heavily. He shook his head and saw Jimmy getting carefully I down from the table and coming toward him. He groped madly for the cross, thinking: This is what's known as an O. Henry ending, you stupid shit, you stupid, stupid -
'You all right?' Jimmy was asking him. 'I'm sorry, but it's a little easier when you don't know it's coming.'
'What the Christ - ?'
Jimmy sat down beside him on the floor. 'I'm going to tell you our story,' he said. 'It's a damned poor one, but I'm pretty sure Maury Green will back it up. It will keep my practice, and keep us both out of jail or some asylum . . . and at this point, I'm not so concerned about those things as I am about staying free to fight these . . . things, whatever you want to call them, another day. Do you understand that?'
'The thrust of it,' Ben said. He touched his jaw and winced. There was a knot to the left of his chin.
'Somebody barged in on us while I was examining Mrs Glick,' Jimmy said. 'The somebody cold-cocked you and then used me for a punching bag. During the-struggle, the somebody bit me to make me let him go. That's all either of us remembers. All. Understand?'
Ben nodded.
'The guy was wearing a dark CPO coat, maybe blue, maybe black, and a green or gray knitted cap. That's all you saw. Okay?'
'Have you ever thought about giving up doctoring in favor of a career in creative writing?'
Jimmy smiled. 'I'm only creative in moments of extreme self-interest. Can you remember the story?'
'Sure. And I don't think it's as poor as you might believe. After all, hers isn't the first body that's disappeared lately.'
'I'm hoping they'll add that up. But the county sheriff is a lot more on the ball than Parkins Gillespie ever thought of being. We have to watch our step. Don't embellish the story.'
'Do you suppose anyone in officialdom will begin to see the pattern in all this?'
Jimmy shook his head. 'Not a chance in the world. We're going to have to humble through this on our own. And remember that from this point on, we're criminals.'
Shortly after, he went to the phone and called Maury Green, then County Sheriff Homer McCaslin.
Ben got back to Eva's at about fifteen minutes past mid?night and made himself a cup of coffee in the deserted downstairs kitchen. He drank it slowly, reviewing the night's events with all e intense recall of a man who has just escaped falling from a high ledge.
The county sheriff was a tall, balding man. He chewed tobacco. He moved slowly, but his eyes were bright with observation. He had pulled an enormous battered note?book on a chain from his hip pocket, and an old thick?-barreled fountain pen from under his green wool vest. He had questioned Ben and Jimmy while two deputies dusted for fingerprints and took pictures. Maury Green stood quietly in the background, throwing a puzzled look at Jimmy from time to time.
What had brought them to Green's Mortuary?
Jimmy took that one, reciting the encephalitis story.
Did old Doc Reardon know about it?
Well, no. Jimmy thought it would be best to make a quiet check before mentioning it to anyone. Doc Reardon had been known to be, well, overly chatty on occasion.
What about this encephawhatzis? Did the woman have it?
No, almost certainly not. He had finished his examin?ation before the man in the CPO coat burst in. He (Jimmy) would not be willing - or able - to state just how the woman had died, but it certainly wasn't of encephalitis.
Could they describe this fella?
They answered in terms of the story they had worked out. Ben added a pair of brown work boots just so they wouldn't sound too much like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
McCaslin asked a few more questions, and Ben was just beginning to feel that they were going to get out of it unscathed when McCaslin turned to him and asked:
'What are you doing in this, Mears? You ain't no doctor.'
His watchful eyes twinkled benignly. Jimmy opened his mouth to answer, but the sheriff quieted him with a single hand gesture.
If the purpose of McCaslin's sudden shot had been to startle Ben into a guilty expression or gesture, it failed. He was too emotionally wrung out to react much. Being caught in a misstatement did not seem too shattering after what had gone before. 'I'm a writer, not a doctor. I write novels. I'm writing one currently where one of the important secondary characters is a mortician's son. I just wanted a look into the back room. I hitched a ride with Jimmy here. He told me he would rather not reveal his business, and I didn't ask.' He rubbed his chin, where a small, knotted bump had risen. 'I got more than I bar?gained for.'
McCaslin looked neither pleased nor disappointed in Ben's answer. 'I should say you did. You're the fella that wrote Conway's Daughter, ain't you?'
'Yes.'
'My wife read part of that in some woman's magazine. Cosmopolitan, I think. Laughed like hell. I took a look and couldn't see nothing funny in a little girl strung out on drugs.'
'No,' Ben said, looking McCaslin in the eye. 'I didn't see anything funny about it, either.'
'This new book the one they say you been workin' on up to the Lot?'
'Yes.'
'P'raps you'd like Moe Green here to read it over,' McCaslin remarked. 'See if you got the undertaken' parts right.'
'That section isn't written yet,' Ben said. 'I always re?search before I write. It's easier.'
McCaslin shook his head wonderingly. 'You know, your story sounds just like one of those Fu Manchu books. Some guy breaks in here an' overpowers two strong men an' makes off with the body of some poor woman who died of unknown causes.'
'Listen, Homer - ' Jimmy began.
'Don't you Homer me,' McCaslin said. 'I don't like it. I don't like any part of it. This encephalitis is catchin', ain't it?'
'Yes, it's infectious,' Jimmy said warily.
'An' you still brought this writer along? Knowin' she might be infected with somethin' like that?'
Jimmy shrugged and looked angry. 'I don't question your professional judgments, Sheriff. You'll just have to bear with mine. Encephalitis is a fairly low-grade infection which gains slowly in the human blood stream. I felt there would be no danger to either of us. Now, wouldn't you be better off trying to find out who carted away Mrs Glick's body - Fu Manchu or otherwise - or are you just having fun questioning us?'
McCaslin fetched a deep sigh from his not inconsiderable belly, flipped his notebook closed, and stored it in the depths of his hip pocket again. 'Well, we'll put the word out, Jimmy. Doubt if we'll get much on this unless the kook comes out of the woodwork again - if there ever was a kook, which I doubt.'
Jimmy raised his eyebrows.
'You're lyin' to me,' McCaslin said patiently. 'I know it, these deputies know it, prob'ly even ole Moe knows it. I don't know how much you're lyin' - a little or a lot - but I know I can't prove you're lyin' as long as you both stick to the same story. I could take you both down to the cooler, but the rules say I gotta give you one phone call, an' even the greenest kid fresh out of law school could spring you on what I got, which could best be described as Suspicion of Unknown Hanky-panky. An' I bet your lawyer ain't fresh out of law school, is he?'
'No,' Jimmy said. 'He's not.'
'I'd take you down just the same and put you to the inconvenience except I get a feelin' you ain't lyin' because you did somethin' against the law.' He hit the pedal at the foot of the stainless-steel waste can by the mortician's table. The top banged up and McCaslin shot a brown stream of tobacco juice into it. Maury Green jumped. 'Would either of you like to sort of revise your story?' he asked quietly, and the back-country twang was gone from his voice. 'This is serious business. We've had four deaths in the Lot, and all four bodies are gone. I want to know what's happening.'
'We've told you everything we know,' Jimmy said with quiet firmness. He looked directly at McCaslin. 'If we could tell you more, we would.'
McCaslin looked back at him, just as keenly. 'You're scared shitless,' he said. 'You and this writer, both of you. You look the way some of the guys in Korea looked when they brought 'em back from the front lines.'
The deputies were looking at them. Ben and Jimmy said nothing.
McCaslin sighed again. 'Go on.' get out of here. I want you both down to my office tomorrow by ten to make statements. If you ain't there by ten, I'll send a patrol car out to get you.'
'You won't have to do that,' Ben said.
McCaslin looked at him mournfully and shook his head. 'You ought to write books with better sense. Like the guy who writes those Travis McGee stories. A man can sink his teeth into one of those.'
13
Ben got up from the tab and rinsed his coffee cup at the sink, pausing to look out the window into the night's blackness. What was out there tonight? Marjorie Glick, reunited with her son at last? Mike Ryerson? Floyd Tibbits? Carl Foreman?
He turned away and went upstairs.
He slept the rest of the night with the desk lamp on and left the tongue-depressor cross that had vanquished Mrs Glick on the table by his right hand. His last thought before sleep took him was to wonder if Susan was all Tight, and safe.
Chapter Twelve MARK
1
When he first heard the distant snapping of twigs, he crept behind the trunk of a large spruce and stood there, waiting to see who would show up. They couldn't come out in the daytime, but that didn't mean they couldn't get people who could; giving them money was one way, but it wasn't that guy Straker in town, the only way. Mark had seen of a toad sunning itself on and his eyes were like the eyes a rock. He looked like he could break a baby's arm and smile while he did it.
He touched the heavy shape of his father's target pistol in his jacket pocket. Bullets were no good against them ?except maybe silver ones - but a shot between the eyes would punch that Straker's ticket, all right.
His eyes shifted downward momentarily to the roughly cylindrical shape propped against the tree, wrapped in an old piece of toweling. There was a woodpile behind his house, half a cord of yellow ash stove lengths which he and his father had cut with the McCulloch chain saw in July and August. Henry Petrie was methodical, and each length, Mark knew, would be within an inch of three feet, one way or the other. His father knew the proper length just as he knew that winter followed fall and that yellow ash would burn longer and cleaner in the living room fireplace.
His son, who knew other things, knew that ash was for men - things - like him. This morning, while his mother and father were out on their Sunday bird walk, he had taken one of the lengths and whacked one end into a rough point with his Boy Scout hatchet. It was rough, but it would serve.
He saw a flash of color and shrank back against the tree, peering around the rough bark with one eye. A moment later he got his first clear glimpse of the person climbing the hill. It was a girl. He felt a sense of relief mingled with disappointment. No henchman of the devil there; that was Mr Norton's daughter.
His gaze sharpened again. She was carrying a stake of her own! As she drew closer, he felt an urge to laugh bitterly - a piece of snow fence, that's what she had. Two swings with an ordinary tool box hammer would split it right in two.
She was going to pass his tree on the right. As she drew closer, he began to slide carefully around his tree to the left, avoiding any small twigs that might pop and give him away. At last the synchronized little movement was done; her back was to him as she went on up the hill toward the break in the trees. She was going very carefully, he noted with approval. That was good. In spite of the silly snow fence stake, she apparently had some idea of what she was getting into. Still, if she went much further, she was going to be in trouble. Straker was at home. Mark had been here since twelve-thirty, and he had seen Straker go out to the driveway and look down the road and then go back into the house. Mark had been trying to make up his mind on what to do himself when this girl had entered things, upsetting the equation.
Perhaps she was going to be all right. She had stopped behind a screen of bushes and was crouching there, just looking at the house. Mark turned it over in his mind. Obviously she knew. How didn't matter, but she would not have had even that pitiful stake with her if she didn't know. He supposed he would have to go up and warn her that Straker was still around, and on guard. She probably didn't have a gun, not even a little one like his.
He was pondering how to make his presence known to her without having her scream her head off when the motor of Straker's car roared into life. She jumped visibly, and at first he was afraid she was going to break and run, crashing through the woods and advertising her presence for a hundred miles. But then she hunkered down again, holding on to the ground like she was afraid it would fly away from her. She's got guts even if she is stupid, he thought, approvingly.
Straker's car backed down the driveway - she would have a much better view from where she was; he could only see the Packard's black roof - hesitated for a moment, and then went off down the road toward town.
He decided they had to team up. Anything would be better than going up to that house alone. He had already sampled the poison atmosphere that enveloped it. He had felt it from a half a mile away, and it thickened as you got closer.
Now he ran lightly up the carpeted incline and put his hand on her shoulder. He felt her body tense, knew she was going to scream, and said, 'Don't yell. It's all right. It's me.'
She didn't scream. What escaped was a terrified exha?lation of air. She turned around and looked at him, her face white. 'W-Who's me?'
He sat down beside her. 'My name is Mark Petrie. I know you; you're Sue Norton. My dad knows your dad.'
'Petrie . . . ? Henry Petrie?'
'Yes, that's my father.'
'What are you doing here?' Her eyes were moving continually over him, as if she hadn't been able to take in his actuality yet.
'The same thing you are. Only that stake won't work. It's too . . . He groped for a word that had checked into his vocabulary through sight and definition but not by use. 'It's too flimsy.'
She looked down at her piece of snow fence and actu?ally blushed. 'Oh, that. Well, I found that in the woods and . . . and thought someone might fall over it, so I just - '
He cut her adult temporizing short impatiently: 'You came to kill the vampire, didn't you?'
'Wherever did you get that idea? Vampires and things like that?'
He said somberly, 'A vampire tried to get me last night. It almost did, too.'
'That's absurd. A big boy like you should know better than to make up - '
'It was Danny Glick.'
She recoiled, her eyes wincing as if he had thrown a mock punch instead of words. She groped out, found his arm, and held it. Their eyes locked. 'Are you making this up, Mark?'
'No,' he said, and told his story in a few simple sentences.
'And you came here alone?' she asked when he had finished. 'You believed it and came up here alone?'
'Believed it?' He looked at her, honestly puzzled. 'Sure I believed it. I saw it, didn't I?'
There was no response to that, and suddenly she was ashamed of her instant doubt (no, doubt was too kind a word) of Matt's story and of Ben's tentative acceptance.
'How come you're here?'
She hesitated a moment and then said, 'There are some men in town who suspect that there is a man in that house whom no one has seen. That he might be a . . . a . . .' Still she could not say the word, but he nodded his understand?ing. Even on short acquaintance, he seemed quite an extraordinary little boy.
Abridging all that she might have added, she said simply, 'So I came to look and find out.'
He nodded at the stake. 'And brought that to pound through him?'
'I don't know if I could do that.'
'I could,' he said calmly. 'After what I saw last night. Danny was outside my window, holding on like a great big fly. And his teeth . . .' He shook his head, dismissing the nightmare as a businessman might dismiss a bankrupt client.
'Do your parents know you're here?' she asked, knowing they must not.
'No,' he said matter-of-factly. 'Sunday is their nature day. They go on bird walks in the mornings and do other things in the afternoon. Sometimes I go and sometimes I don't. Today they went for a ride up the coast.'
'You're quite a boy,' she said.
'No, I'm not,' he said, his composure unruffled by the praise. 'But I'm going to get rid of him.' He looked up at the house.
'Are you sure - '