Hot Spot

  I went back about seven and she was home. She’d gone for a ride to try to cool off, she said. We went over to the county seat to an air-conditioned movie, trying to escape our thoughts and the heat. On the way home she was depressed and silent and nothing I could do would bring her out of it. There was a feeling she was more than usually upset by Sutton and that she wanted to tell me something, but she never did. When we got back to town she said she had a headache and wanted to go to bed early. I left her at the gate.

  I parked the car in front of the rooming house and went on through to my room. I was going to stay there all night, just in case Tate had orders to check on me from time to time. Looking at my watch, I saw it was almost eleven. I changed clothes, putting on dark slacks, a blue sports shirt, and black shoes. I left the light burning for a while, as if I were reading, and after about a half hour I turned it out and lay down on the bed. The landlady’s room was directly above mine, and I could see the light from her window shining out into the back yard. In another twenty minutes it went out.

  I waited. The whole house was deathly still now. I tried to quiet my nerves by thinking how it would be afterwards, of Galveston and a honeymoon in November, and all the years ahead. It would work for a few minutes and then I’d be tightened up again, thinking of what had to be done first, of Sutton lying there in the cabin, waiting for me maybe, or at least alert and knowing the risk he was running, and of the gun which wouldn’t be very far from his hand. And then I’d think of the Sheriff and the fact that this time the game we were playing wasn’t only for keeps, but forever. It made me cold thinking about it, but there wasn’t any other way. Sutton had asked for it. He’d get it.

  I struck a match and looked at my watch. It was an hour since the landlady’s light had gone out. I got softly off the bed and stood up. It was time to go.

  18

  THERE WAS A SCREEN DOOR leading from my room into the backyard. I eased it open, an inch at a time, and slipped out, and closed it very gently. The night was heavily overcast and so dark I couldn’t see the gate. I knew where it was, though, and moved towards it, keeping on the grass to muffle any sound. Then my hands were on the gate, feeling for the latch. I opened it and eased out into the alley.

  I went over to the car lot, walking fast and avoiding street lights, and slipped up to it from the rear. I eased around the corner of the shack, put the key in the lock, and stepped inside, closing the door after me. I didn’t need any light to find the cigar box which held the ignition keys; it was in the top drawer of my desk and I located it by feel. Carrying it over to a corner away from the windows, I squatted down so my body would shield the flame, and struck a match. All the keys had round cardboard tags with numbers on them, and it took me only a second or two to find the one I wanted. It was the key to the Ford which was parked down at the end of the line where the shadows were heaviest and I could pull right out into the cross street without going on to Main at all. I put the others back in the desk and slipped out and closed the door.

  I stood between two cars and peered out, looking up Main. A block and a half up the lights of the restaurant poured out into the night, but there was no one on the street. The constable would be inside, probably, drinking coffee. I ducked back and climbed into the Ford, reaching for the starter. The motor turned over slowly, as if the battery was weak. I jabbed it again, and it caught this time.

  It’s all right, I thought. Driving out there will charge it up. I got it in gear and rolled out into the cross street, not turning on the lights until I was off the lot. Going over two blocks, I turned left and ran parallel to Main until I was in the edge of town, and then cut back and got on the highway. There was very little traffic. I met only two or three cars. I made the turnoff, feeling my stomach tighten up, and started uphill through the pines. As I passed the old farm I turned my head and looked towards the barn and wished I’d never heard of the money that was buried there.

  After I crossed the bridge over the river and climbed up out of the bottom I slowed down, trying to remember all the details of the road. I had to be careful not to get too near. He’d hear the car. I stared intently ahead into the beam of light, watching the wall of timber going past on each side and disappearing into the blackness behind me. Then just after I was over the crest of the ridge and starting down I found what I wanted, a place where I could get the car off the road on firm ground and pine needles which wouldn’t show the tracks. I pulled off and cut the motor, leaving the key in the switch, and then turned off the lights.

  Velvety, impenetrable blackness closed in around me. I got out and closed the door and held my hand up in front of my eyes. I couldn’t see it. It was like being blind. I groped my way back out to the road, and when I was out from under the trees it was a little better.

  A sudden thought occurred to me. How would I ever find the car when I came back? In this ocean of blackness there was nothing to mark the place I’d driven off the road. I took out my handkerchief and dropped it beside the ruts. Out of the corners of my eyes I could see it very faintly, a tiny blur of grey.

  It should be less than a quarter mile to the clearing. I turned and faced downhill, feeling the tightness in my chest and the rapid beating of my heart. For the first time I noticed the charged and sullen vacuum of the night itself. There were no stars, and the air had the hot, dead feel of a closed and sealed-off room. Not a leaf moved. There were no night sounds at all. Everything seemed to be waiting, holding its breath for an explosion that might come any minute. Then in a moment there was a growl of thunder somewhere off in the west. It wouldn’t be long.

  I started downhill in the darkness, feeling my way and stumbling now and then in the ruts. Once I missed a turn and blundered off into the trees. Panic caught up with me for a minute. Suppose I lost the road? I’d never find my way out until daylight. And then the really horrible thought came sweeping over me. What if I lost it afterwards? If anyone saw me down here, or coming out of here, it could mean the electric chair. I cursed and tried to shake off the chill as I turned and stumbled back into the road.

  How long had it been now? The road seemed to go on forever, winding down off the hill. Was I sure I was on the right one? I had to be. There wasn’t any other. But I should have come to the clearing before this. The thunder was growing nearer. I wanted to run, and cursed myself, knowing how stupid it was. It’s just the waiting, I thought. Once I get there I’ll be all right. And then I was out in the clearing.

  The shack would be around to the right, less than fifty yards away. I felt my way cautiously along the faint traces of the road. A long roll of thunder growled and reverberated across the sky, sounding very near. In a moment there was a jagged flash of lightning and I saw the cabin in the greenish-yellow, unnatural light, and then in the quick fraction of a second before it was gone I caught a glimpse of the car standing near the porch. Breath swelled up in my chest, making it painfully tight. He was home. Then blackness rolled back over everything like a breaking sea, and thunder crashed over the clearing.

  Temporarily blinded by the lightning flash, I couldn’t see anything now. It was like the bottom of a coal-mine. I groped my way ahead, moving in the direction I had seen the shack. Then it began to take shape, a dense pile of shadow a little nearer than the inky wall of trees behind it. I was very near the front porch. I could hardly breathe. The tension was almost unbearable. I located the door and stepped carefully up on to the porch, the rubber-soled shoes making no sound at all.

  The bed, I thought—it’s just inside the door, on the right. All I have to do is step inside and turn and reach down, and before he gets his hand on that gun I’ll have mine on his throat and turn the blackmailing bastard off like a leaky faucet. I moved the other foot, easing it down like a cat. I was in the doorway, and then inside, and turning.

  Everything fell apart at once and the night erupted into wildness. There was a sudden, brilliant flash of lightning which lit up the inside of the shack like a flash-bulb going off, and then it was gone and th
e thunder crashed at the same time. It shook the house, and through the roar and rattle of it I heard the sharp report of the gun as he fired. I was turning, and diving towards the floor, and as the blackness rolled back over us I saw the orange spurt of flame as he shot again, and then I was conscious that woven into all this madness of sound there was one more and that it was a woman screaming without beginning or end or drawing breath or changing pitch, going on and on through the dying roll of thunder and the crashing echo of the gun and the meaty impact as we slammed into each other and fell to the floor together and then the sound of the gun again. He was under me and I was trying to locate the flailing hand which had the gun and get hold of it before he could put it against me somewhere and shoot, and then the scream did change at last as she put her feet out of the bed and on top of us and fell beyond us on the floor. He shifted under me and whirled me over until we were both lying on our sides, and I felt something under my ribs and knew he didn’t have the gun any more. He had let it slip out of his hand when I’d crashed into him, and now we were fighting on top of a loaded automatic with the safety off.

  The scream was gone now, and I could hear the desperate sucking sound as she fought to get her breath, and the scrambling as she got up off the floor and ran out the back door into the timber just as the first drumming roar of the rain began, and then the two of us were alone, fighting silently on the floor near the edge of the bed. I located his face with my left hand and swung the right and felt the shock go up my arm as I landed on his jaw. He was clawing wildly for me and I hit him again, and this time he jerked a little and lay still. I shifted my hands down to his throat and began to tighten them to shut off the blackmail forever, right at its source, and then there was a voice somewhere inside me screaming over and over that something was wrong and I had to stop before it was too late. I didn’t get it for a moment, and then when I did the strength went out of me and I turned him loose, cursing with a futile sort of rage. I couldn’t do it now. Of course I couldn’t. How could I, with a witness to it before it even happened?

  I got to my knees, and felt around on the floor until I found the gun. Moving my hand across it until I located the safety, I clicked it off, and put it in my pocket, and then got up with the breath roaring in my throat, still raging, knowing I couldn’t do it now and that I’d never get another chance, and that we were ruined, all on account of that crazy bitch of a woman, whoever she was, running around out there through the timber in the rain. She had seen me in the lightning flash, the same as he had, and if I killed him she could send me to the chair for it.

  Because it made no difference at all now, I struck a match and looked around for the lamp. Then I remembered I’d broken it the last time I was out here, and was about to give up the idea when I suddenly saw it over on the kitchen table. He had bought a new one. I went over and lifted off the chimney and lighted it.

  He hadn’t moved. He was lying on his back with nothing on but a pair of zebra-striped shorts, and he could have been merely asleep because he was snoring. He’d whipped me. He’d ruined me. And he was lying on the floor sleeping like a baby. All because his girl friend was running around out there somewhere in the rain and I couldn’t touch him.

  Who was she? But what difference did it make? I jerked my head around and saw the wisp of pink tangled up with the kicked-back sheets on the bed and the shoes on the floor near the foot of it, and the purse lying open on the table. Well, I thought, she still has a dress to go home in, but it’s going to get a little wet— And then I stopped. The shoes. I swung back, staring.

  They weren’t shoes; they were wedgies. They were wedgies with grass straps. I stood there raking my hand across my face. So I had thought I was free of her! The dirty, lousy, rotten, sneaking, useless, trouble-making little tramp! So now I could wear Sutton round my neck for the rest of my life knowing she was the one who’d saved him.

  I was suddenly tired, and wanted to sit down. I pulled a chair up alongside the table and collapsed into it, groping wearily for a cigarette. We were finished. There was no hope now. And all because of that I cursed futilely, hopelessly, listening to the wild drumming of the rain. I lighted the cigarette after a while and leaned over from force of habit to put the match in an ash-tray. I didn’t see it there on the table, and idly caught hold of the purse to look behind it. It was open, and as it swung around I was looking into it. There was the usual hodge-podge of junk all mixed up in it, lipstick, comb, bobby pins and so on, but it was something shiny lying just behind it which caught my eye. Only a corner of it was sticking out in view. Hardly even knowing why I did it, I reached out and picked it up. I stared at it, blankly at first, and then unbelievingly, and at last with a cold and terrible deadliness that made the hair stand up along my neck. It was a money clasp, a silver money clasp in the shape of a dollar sign.

  No! It was crazy. There must be more than one of them in the world. It was a coincidence. But even as I was telling myself it was, I knew it wasn’t. I was beginning to see it. I was remembering the day Spunky was lost and I’d carried her shoes back to leave them on the sand-bank for him, thinking at the time they were the same as Dolores Harshaw’s. Through the red mist in front of my eyes I could see it all now: the strange, unhappy way she’d acted tonight, the headache, wanting to go to bed early— I cursed and jumped to my feet. His blue serge trousers were hanging on the wall. I grabbed them down, and rammed my hands into the pockets. There was nothing. I tried the overalls hanging beside them, without success. I looked wildly around. Maybe … I lunged for the bed, stepping over him, and snatched up the pillow. The wallet was under it. I spread it open, and there it was, a thick sheaf of bills. My hands were shaking as I counted them. It came to a little over five hundred dollars.

  So that was it. She had brought him the money he had asked for, but with that cynical brutality of his he wasn’t shaking her down for money alone— But why had she done it? I knew her better than that. She would have let him kill her first. And then, slowly and quite terribly, it began to dawn on me. He had told her about me, and about the bank, when he went to see her yesterday morning. She had begged me to let her give him the money, and I wouldn’t. And even then, before I knew it myself, she was afraid I was going to kill him. She’d come out here and brought it, begging him to take it and go away. She hadn’t been trying to save herself. It was me she was thinking of.

  I was as cold as ice all over, and I could hardly get my breath. I thought of her out there trying to find her way back to her car through the rain and darkness, half petrified with terror and running into trees, and barefoot. I got up slowly and took the little automatic out of my pocket and stood there looking at him. When his head turned a little and he tried to move I squatted down beside him.

  “Wake up,” I said, my voice thick and unrecognizable. “Wake up and see what I’ve got for you.”

  He stirred and tried to raise up. When he saw me his eyes went wide and he tried to slide backwards, away from me. I got him by the throat with my left hand and put my knee in his belly and grinned at him. His mouth opened, wider and wider as he tried to scream, but no sound came out of it. His eyes were terrible to look at, and I laughed at him.

  “Don’t go away,” I said, and raised the gun a little and shot him just over the left eye.

  When the sound of the shot had died away there was nothing but the rain. I stood there looking down at all that was left of Sutton, still holding the gun in my hand, and some of the crazy wildness began to drain away. She would know it now, I thought. That seemed to be the only thing my mind would take hold of in that first minute or two. I hadn’t wanted her to, but now she would.

  I shook my head impatiently, trying to think. Why was I wasting time with some stupid thing like that? Sure, she’d know, but she was the only one. There wasn’t any witness. This wasn’t the way I’d planned to do it, but it was still all right. It was all right if I got hold of myself and did something besides standing here the rest of the night muttering to myself.


  I had to get started, and I had to work fast. There was a lot to be done, and time was running out on me. I looked swiftly around the room as my head began to clear, thinking of my original plan. I’d intended to use the shotgun on him to cover it up, setting it up to look like an accident while he was cleaning the gun. The shotgun was out now, but the idea was still good.

  I grabbed his overalls off the wall and hauled at him until I got them on him. Then I put on his shoes and laced them up. I looked at him. A little blood had come out of the place where the bullet had gone in, but none of it had run on to the floor. It was on his face. I pulled a chair up by the table, hoisted him up, and shoved him into it, and then let him slump forward with his face on the table.

  I was all right now. My head was clear and I was working very efficiently. He didn’t bother me. I didn’t have any feeling about him at all. I had other things to think about—such as fingerprints.

  I grabbed one of his shirts off the wall and had just started to clean off the lamp where I’d carried it, when I heard the car. It was somewhere across the clearing. I heard it start up, the motor racing, and then it started up the hill. She had made it. She was all right. That worry was off my mind now. I finished cleaning the lamp, then rubbed the shirt along the table and chair and the other things I’d touched. I went over to the gun racks and lifted down the shotgun, using the shirt so I wouldn’t leave any prints on it. I worked the slide action until the magazine was emptied, picked the shells off the floor and placed them on the table, still being careful about touching anything with my bare fingers. Leaving the action open, I held it around to the light and looked down the barrel. It was clean. That was fine. I placed the gun across the table on his right, as if he’d just finished cleaning it and had started work on the little automatic when the accident happened. A man who has several guns never cleans and oils just one when he has the cleaning gear out. It would be like eating one peanut.