They stayed on the porch and they stayed quiet. It wasn’t real—that was all he could think, that it was not real, that it was a play or a movie and not something happening before them.
They heard Carroll’s voice, crystal clear in the still night air. “I’ll make it good,” he said. “I swear to God I’ll make it good. You tell Lublin I’ll make it good, Jesus, just tell him.”
The man behind him, the one jabbing him in the back with the gun, began to laugh quietly. It was unpleasant laughter.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Carroll said. His face was awful. “Listen, please, just a chance, just give me a chance—”
“Crawl,” the man in front said.
“What do you want me to—”
“Get down on your knees and beg, you bastard.”
Carroll sank to his knees. There were fallen leaves on the ground, and pine needles. He was saying something over and over again in a weak voice but they couldn’t quite make it out.
The man in front stepped forward and put the muzzle of his gun against Carroll’s head. Carroll started to whine. The man shot him in the center of the forehead and he shook from the blow and pitched forward on his face. The other man moved in and shot Carroll four times through the back of his head.
Jill screamed.
It wasn’t much of a scream. It broke off in no time at all, and it was neither very loud nor very high-pitched. But the two men in the dark suits heard it. They heard it and they looked up at the porch of the Wade cabin.
And came forward.
They stood, the four of them, in Carroll’s cabin. The small room was as neat as if no one had ever lived in it. There was a hot plate on an oak table, with a large jar of Yuban instant coffee beside it and a half-finished cup of coffee off to one side. The bed was neatly made.
The taller of the two men was called Lee. They knew this, but they did not know whether it was his first name or his last name. He was the one who had made Carroll crawl, the one who had killed him with the first shot in the forehead. Lee had large brown eyes and thick black eyebrows. There were three or four thin scars across the bridge of his nose. His mouth was a thin line, the lips pale. He was holding a gun on them now while the other man, whose name they had not heard yet, was systematically going through Carroll’s dresser drawers, taking everything out piece by piece, throwing everything on the floor.
“Nothing,” he said finally. “Just what was in the wallet.”
Lee didn’t say anything. The shorter man turned around and nodded toward Dave and Jill. He was heavier than Lee, with a thick neck and a nose that had been broken and imperfectly reset. He looked as though he might have played guard or tackle on some college’s junior varsity.
Now he said, “What about them?”
“They didn’t see a thing. They aren’t going to talk.”
“What if they do?”
“So? They don’t know a thing.”
“We won’t make any trouble,” Dave said. His voice sounded odd to him, as though someone else were pulling strings that moved his lips, as though someone else were talking for him.
They didn’t seem to have heard him. Lee said, “If they talk, it doesn’t matter. They talk to some hick cop and he writes it all down and everybody forgets it. They put it in some drawer.”
“We could make sure.”
“Just let us alone,” Dave said. Jill was next to him, breathing heavily. He looked at the gun in Lee’s hand and wondered whether they were going to die, now, in this cabin. “Just let us live,” he said.
“We kill ’em,” Lee said, “it makes too much stink. Him out there, that’s one thing, but you kill a couple of kids—”
“Leave ’em alone then?”
“Yeah.”
“Just like that?”
“I don’t like killing nobody without I get paid for it,” Lee said. “I don’t like throwing any in for free.”
The man with the broken nose nodded. He said, “The broad.”
“What about her?”
“She’s nice. Stacked.”
Dave said, “Now listen—”
They ignored him. “You want her?” “Why not?”
The man called Lee smiled brutally. He stepped up to Jill and stuck the gun into her chest just below and between her breasts. “How about that,” he said. “You don’t mind a little screwing just to keep you alive, now, do you?”
Dave stepped out and swung at him. He threw a left, hard, not thinking, just reacting. The man called Lee stepped back and let the punch go over his shoulder. He reversed the gun in his hand and laid the side of the gun butt across Dave’s forehead. Dave took one more little step, a half-step, really, and fell to the floor.
His head was spinning. He got to one knee. The shorter man was pushing Jill toward Carroll’s bed. She was crying hysterically but was not fighting very hard. There was the sound of cloth ripping, Jill’s shrill scream above the tearing of the dress. He pushed himself up and rushed toward the bed, and Lee stuck out a foot and tripped him. He went sprawling. Lee stepped in close and kicked him in the side of the rib cage. He moaned and fell flat on his face.
“You better take it easy,” Lee said.
He got up again. He stood, wavering, and Lee set the gun down on the table. He moved as if he had all the time in the world. Dave stood there, staring dead ahead, and Lee moved in front of him and hit him in the pit of the stomach. He doubled over but he didn’t go down. Lee waited, and he straightened up, and Lee hit him twice in the chest and once in the stomach. This time he went down again. He tried to get up but he couldn’t. It was as though someone had cut all his tendons. He was awake, he knew what was happening, he just couldn’t move.
Jill had stopped crying. The shorter man finished with her and came over to them. He asked Lee whether Dave had tried to be a hero. Lee didn’t say anything. Then the shorter man said, “She was cherry. You believe that?” And he said it as though he had not known virgins still existed.
Lee said, “She ain’t now.” And took off his jacket and went to take the shorter man’s place with Jill.
She didn’t scream. She lay there, motionless, and Dave thought that they must have killed her. This time his legs worked, this time he got up. The shorter man hit him with the gun and pain split his skull in half. He went down. The world turned gray, and the gray darkened quickly to black.
CHAPTER 2
HE NEVER REMEMBERED going back to the cabin. He had vague memories of walking and falling down, walking and falling down, but they were as dim as vanished dreams. When he did come out of it, he was in their own cabin. He was lying on the bed and Jill was sitting in a chair looking down at him. She was wearing a beige skirt and a dark-brown sweater. Her face was freshly scrubbed, her lipstick unmarred, her hair neatly combed. There was a moment, then, when nothing made sense—the whole thing, Carroll and the two men and the beating and the violation of his wife, none of this could have happened.
But then he felt the pain in his own body and the dull ache of his head and he saw the discoloration over her right eye, masked incompletely by makeup. It had all happened.
“Don’t try to talk yet,” she said. “Take it easy.”
“I’m all right.”
“Dave—”
“I’m all right,” he said. He sat up. His head was perfectly clear now. The pain was still there, and strong, but his head was perfectly clear. He remembered everything up to the blow that knocked him out. The return from Carroll’s cabin to their own, that was lost, but he remembered all the rest in awful reality.
“We’ve got to get you to a doctor,” he said.
“I’m all right.”
“Did they—”
“Yes.”
“Both of them?”
“Both of them.”
“You’ve got to see a doctor, Jill.”
“Tomorrow, then.” She took a breath. “I think the police are over in ... in the other cabin. I heard a car, someone must have called them. It took them long enough.”
>
“What time is it?”
“After ten. They’ll be coming over here, won’t they?”
“The police? Yes, I think so.”
“You’d better clean up. I tried to wash your face. Your head is cut a little. In two places, on top and behind your ear there.” She touched him, her hand light, cool. “How do you feel?”
“All right.”
“Liar,” she said. “Wash up and change your clothes, Dave.”
He went into the tiny bathroom and stripped down. There was no tub, just a shower. It was one of those showers in which you had to hold a chain down in order to keep the water running. He showered very quickly and thought about the two men and Carroll and about what they had done to Jill. At first his mind clouded with fury, but he stayed in the shower and the water rained down upon him, and he thought about it, forced himself to think about it. The fury did not go away. It stayed, but it cooled and changed its shape.
While he was drying himself off the bathroom door opened and Jill brought him clean clothes. After she had left he realized, oddly, that she had just seen him naked for the first time. He shrugged the thought away and dressed.
When he came out of the bathroom, the police were there. There were two tall thin men, state troopers, and there was one older man from the Sheriff’s Office in Pomquit. One of the troopers took their names. Then he removed his hat and said, “A man was murdered here tonight, Mr. Wade. We wondered if you knew anything about it.”
“Murdered?”
“Your neighbor. A Mr. Carroll.”
Jill drew in her breath sharply. Dave looked at her, then at the trooper. “We met Mr. Carroll just this afternoon,” he said. “What ... happened?”
“He was shot four times in the head.”
Five times, he thought. He said, “Who did it?”
“We don’t know. Did you hear anything? See anything?”
“No.”
“Whoever killed him must have come in a car, Mr. Wade. We found tire tracks. There was a car parked right next to yours outside. That is your car, isn’t it? The Ford?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear a car drive up, Mr. Wade?”
“Not that I remember.”
The man from the Sheriff’s Office said, “You would have heard it—it was right outside your window. And the shots, you would have heard them. Were you here all night?”
Jill said, “We went out for dinner.”
“What time?”
“We left about seven,” she said. “Seven or seven-thirty.”
“And got back when?”
“About ... oh, half an hour ago, I guess. Why?”
The man from the Sheriff’s Office looked over at the troopers. “That would do it, then,” he said. “Carroll’s been dead at least an hour, the way my man figures it. Closer to two hours, probably. They must have gotten back just before we got the call, must have come right in without seeing the body. You wouldn’t see it from where the car’s parked, anyway. Just been back half an hour, Mr. Wade?”
“It may have been longer than that,” he said.
“As much as an hour?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe forty-five minutes at the outside.”
“That would do it, then. I guess you didn’t see anything, then, Mr. Wade. Mrs. Wade.”
He turned to go. The troopers hesitated, as though they wanted to say something but hadn’t figured out the phrasing yet. Dave said, “Why was he killed?”
“We don’t know yet, Mr. Wade.”
“He was a very pleasant man. Quiet, friendly. We sat outside this afternoon and had a beer with him.”
The troopers didn’t say anything.
“Well,” Dave said, “I don’t want to keep you.”
The troopers nodded shortly. They turned, then, and followed the man from the Sheriff’s Office out of the cabin.
It was midnight when the last earful of police was gone. They sat quietly for five or ten minutes. He stood up then and said, “We’re getting out of here tonight. You’d better start packing.”
“We’re leaving tonight?”
“You don’t want to stay here, do you?”
“God, no.” She reached out a hand. He gave her a cigarette, lit it for her. She blew out smoke and said, “They won’t be suspicious?”
“Of what?”
“Of us, if we leave so quickly. Without staying the night.”
He shook his head. “We’re newlyweds,” he said. “Newlyweds wouldn’t want to spend their wedding night next door to a murder.”
“Newlyweds.”
“Yes.”
“Wedding night. God, Dave, how I planned this night. All of it.”
He took her hand.
“How I would be sexy for you and everything. How I wouldn’t mind if it hurt because I love you so much.
Oh, and little tricks I read in one of those marriage manuals, I was going to try those tricks. And surprise you with my ingenuity.”
“Stop it.”
He got the suitcases and spread them open on the bed. They packed their clothes in silence. He put the clothes she had worn earlier and his own dirty clothes in the trunk and loaded the two suitcases in the back seat. She got in the car, and he went to the cabin and closed the door and locked it.
As they drove past the lodge, she said, “We didn’t pay. The old woman would want to be paid, for the one night.”
“That’s too fucking bad,” he said.
He turned left at the main road and drove to Pomquit. He passed through the town and took a road heading north. “It’s late and I don’t know the roads,” he said. “We’ll stop at the first motel that looks decent.”
“All right.”
“We’ll get an early start in the morning,” he went on. He was looking straight ahead at the road and he did not glance over at her. “An early start in the morning, figure out which route to take, all of that. They’re from New York, aren’t they?”
“I think so. Carroll said he was from New York. And they all had New York accents.”
He slowed the car. There was a motel off to the left, but the “No Vacancy” sign was lit He speeded up again.
“We’ll go to New York,” he said. “Well be there by tomorrow afternoon, Monday. We’ll get a room in a hotel, and we’ll find out who they are, the two of them. One of them is named Lee. I didn’t catch the other one’s name.”
“Neither did I.”
“We’ll find out who they are, and then we’ll find them and we’ll kill them, both of them. Then we’ll go back to Binghamton. We have three weeks. I think we can find them and kill them in three weeks.”
Up ahead, on the right, there was a motel. He slowed the car. As he pulled off the road he glanced at her face, quickly. Her jaw was set and her eyes were dry and clear.
“Three weeks is plenty of time,” she said.
CHAPTER 3
IN THE DINER the waitress said, “Mondays, how I hate ’em. Give me any other day, but Monday, just never mind. Coffee?”
“One black, one regular,” he told her.
There were two men at the counter who looked like truckers and one who looked like a farmer. The waitress brought the coffee and he carried the two cups over to a table on the side. Some of the coffee in her cup spilled out onto the saucer. He took a napkin from the dispenser and wiped up the coffee. She added sugar, one level spoonful. He drank his straight black.
When the waitress came over he ordered toast and a side order of link sausages. Jill wanted a toasted English muffin, but the diner didn’t have any. The waitress said there would be some coming in around nine-thirty. Jill had a cheese Danish instead and managed to eat half of it.
He spread a road map on the table and studied it, marking a route with a pencil. She sipped her coffee and looked across the room while he traced the route they would take. By the time he was finished, she had drunk her coffee. He looked up and said, “This is how we’ll do it. We’re on 590 now. We take it to Ford—that’s just acr
oss the state line—and pick up 97. We go about five miles on 97 to Route 55. That’s at Barryville. Then 55 runs just about due north to something called White Lake, where we get 17B. Then we hook up with 17 at Monticello. That carries us all the way to the throughway at Exit 16, and then we just drive down into New York.”
“I never heard of those towns,” she said.
“Well, Monticello you’ve heard of.”
“I mean the others.”
He sipped his coffee, checked his watch with the electric clock over the counter. “Twenty to eight,” he said.
“Should we get going?”
“Pretty soon.” He got to his feet. “I’m having another cup of coffee,” he said. “How about you?”
“All right.”
He carried the two cups back to the counter. The waitress was busy telling one of the truckers what a terrible day Monday was. She was a heavyish woman with stringy hair. When she finished talking to the truck driver Dave got two fresh cups of coffee and carried them back to the table.
They passed through the town, a small one, and a sign told them to resume their normal speed. He bore down on the accelerator. The sun was bright on the road ahead. The sky had been overcast when they got up, but the clouds were mostly gone now.
“That was Forestine,” she said. “White Lake in three miles.”
“And then what?”
“Then right on 17B.”
He nodded. So far, in close to an hour of driving, they had talked only about the route and the road conditions. She had the road map open on her lap, the map with their route penciled in, and she told him when to slow down and where to turn. But most of the time passed in long silences. It was not for lack of things to say to each other, or because any distance had sprung up between them. Small talk did not fit and larger talk came hard.
The night before they had stayed at a motel called Hillcrest Manor. They slept in a double bed. After he checked in, they left their suitcases in the locked car and went inside. They undressed with the lights on, then he turned off the lights, and they got into the large bed. She took the side near the windows, and he had the side nearer to the door. He waited, and she came to him and kissed him once, on the side of the face. Then she went back to her side of the bed. He asked her if she thought she would be able to sleep and she said yes, she thought so. After about fifteen minutes he heard her easy rhythmic breathing and knew that she was sleeping.