“You are gone go over and tell James Redfield that his oldest son went and laid three people at the bottom of the Styx? And one of ’em was a fourteen-year-old pregnant girl? And—” She paused significantly: “And I bet it was Nathan that got Margaret pregnant in the first place...” “I imagine it was,” said her husband: “And I thought you might want to go over and talk to James about it all.” “No,” said Ginny flatly. “There’s probably nothing about those two boys that James doesn’t already suspect, except that, I don’t want to be the one to tell him.”
“I don’t much care whether you tell him or not,” said Charles slowly: “But I do think you ought to get him out of there.”
“What?”
“Get him out of there. Nathan told me that he was after the Larkin farm for the money it would bring. He’d get a lot more money if James was to die sudden. Last night Nathan pushed a girl near about through a glass-paned door, and the other day he nearly ripped Annie-Leigh Hooker’s shoulders off her back, and I think it would be a good idea if you got James Redfield out of that house. It wouldn’t do any good to talk to Ben, those two are so close. I don’t think Ben would leave if Nathan was pointing a double-barrel at his appendix scar.”
“You really think something might happen to James?” “I do, I sure do.”
Ginny said nothing for a moment, but at last remarked: “I guess this really is serious, isn’t it? Now, I think you’re right and we’re gone have to get James out of that house, but I don’t know if I’m gone be able to do it by myself. If I can get to Nina though, maybe the two of us together can convince him to come away with us. But Charles, even if we do get him out of there, you think there’s any proof? I mean, can Ted Hale arrest Nathan and hold him? I sure would like to see Warren out of jail, poor thing is wasting away like a little black puppy-dog with ringworm, but I don’t want to go dragging James Redfield out of his own house in a fireman’s carry, and then have to let him go back when Ted Hale laughs in your face about Nathan.”
“Ted’s bound to have heard about Annie-Leigh Hooker and I imagine he knows what happened last night at the White Horse too. And when I start painting a picture of Belinda sitting on a couch with the man who might have killed Margaret Larkin, Ted’s not gone start talking to me about evidence.”
“All right then, Charles. I’ll go by Nina’s place and pick her up. If Nathan’s at the house I may have trouble getting in. He was friendly enough last night, but after what happened, he may not throw open his arms when he catches sight of me on his front step. I may have to hide in the car, and send Nina in on foot.”
“But you’re gone try?”
“I’m gone try. I hate to do it on a Friday. I hate to start any project on a Friday ’cause it always comes out wrong, and starting a project on a Friday, you might as well be walking around inside the house with an open umbrella over your head, it’s that kind of luck. But if what you say is true, and it was Nathan that killed Evelyn and Jerry and Margaret, then I’ll do everything I can to see him strung up.”
Chapter 45
At the other end of the darkened patio from James Redfield’s room, the iron gate was pushed slowly and quietly open, and a dark figure moved stealthily across the flagstones. The old man’s weak eyes could just discern the awkward outline of a large woman, It paused at the screen.
“Who’s that!” cried the old man.
The screen slid open, and the figure moved into the room. James Redfield reached for the light.
“No!” hissed the intruder,
“Oh,” sighed James Redfield: “Nina—thank goodness —what you doing here? Why you coming in like that, fit to scare me into a silk-lined casket? Somebody else—”
“Shhhh! Mr. Red,” whispered Nina earnestly: “I come to take you away...”
“What? Where you gone take me? What you talking about, Nina?”
“Mr. Red, ' said Nina: “I got to get you away from this house. Just for the time being now, I—”
“Why?!”
“Mr. Red,” the old woman cried: “You think I’d ask you to come away with me in the dark if I didn’t just have to do it?”
James Redfield paused, and without another word of argument, began to raise himself in the bed, Nina hurried forward with the wheelchair.
How are we gone get out of here?” demanded the old man, as he was shifted into the chair. “Do you plan to wheel me all the way to the center of Babylon?”
Miss Ginny has got her car outside, We’re gone go to her house for a while.”
Nina pushed open the screen, and maneuvered the wheelchair over the metal tracks. James Redfield peered ahead into the darkness. Another dark figure hovered at the iron gate of the patio.
“Ginny,” he whispered hoarsely: “Is that you?”
“James,” she cried excitedly back: “We got to get you away from here! You don’t have to worry—we’re gone bring you back just as soon as we can.”
She pulled open the iron gate.
“Ginny, what did Nathan do?”
“Shhhh! We want to get you out of here without anybody seeing that you’re gone, or who it was that took you,”
“Then let’s go. Don’t hang around. Somebody was just in the room checking on me, and they’ll be back. I don’t know who it was, but they’ll be back.”
The full moon shone bright above the pines that grew dense in the yard, and its white-gold rays shattered into nervous spots of light on the needle-carpeted ground. Nina pushed the wheelchair urgently across the uneven ground. Frequently the wheels caught and turned in small ruts and holes so that Ginny had to bend to lift the front of the chair. They proceeded silently. From the other side of the house, they heard the muted voices of Belinda and Ben and the occasional splash of water in the pool. “Miss Pie,” the old man whispered twice, and said nothing more. Two of the lights had been turned on around the pool, and their harsh glow broke fitfully across the gravel roof.
Nina ran over a large pinecone, and the chair tilted, threatening to toss James Redfield out. The two women struggled to right it, holding their breath in suspense against the accident. In that brief moment, they heard, not far from them, a strange unsettling noise. Something was being dragged across the carpet of brown needles. They stared around them, and found that the noise had its equal echo on the other side of them as well. Without a word Nina pushed the chair quickly forward, and Ginny ran to the car and pulled open the back door. She opened the trunk too, and cried “Hurry, hurry!” in a frantic whisper.
Nina hastened the chair forward,
Though Nina and James Redfield were not thirty feet from Ginny, they appeared but dark shadowed figures among the black trees. The moonlight dappled their movement, now illuminating one of the old man’s flurrying hands, now brightening on the black woman’s contorted mouth.
But further back, through the trees and nearer the house, Ginny Darrish could see something else—the prone body of a white-robed woman snaking, in motion that was elegant, and unhurried, across the ground. As she stared, Ginny caught sight of another figure, a man, in dark clothes but with a pale featureless head, moving at the same pace, in a glide that was just as sinuous and inhumanly graceful. They slipped quickly and without apparent effort among the thin trunks of the pines.
Nina had laid James Redfield across the back seat and folded the chair in the open trunk. “Miss Ginny!” she hissed twice: “Let's go! Let’s go!” She slammed the trunk closed.
Ginny shook herself, and ran around the car, got in, and started the engine. She backed recklessly in the cul-de-sac, scraping the finish of Belinda Hale’s blue Volkswagen.
When she pulled on the headlights, Ginny and Nina beside her shrieked. Caught in the white light, against the white brick of James Redfield’s patio, were a man and a woman. They rose from the earth in a soft spiral, and stood erect. They turned their dead expressionless faces a moment into the harsh light, then slipped through the open iron gate.
Chapter 46
Ted Hale had spent
all morning, and the greater part of the afternoon in the county sheriff’s office in the Escambia County Courthouse in Pensacola. Over a long lunch at a seafood restaurant on the municipal pier, he had discussed with the county sheriff, the county coroner, and the county district attorney, the case of the murdered family in Babylon. The deaths of the grandmother and her two grandchildren had attracted attention all over Florida and in neighboring states, and it had been decided that the trial of Warren Perry ought to go forward as soon as possible, in order to assuage the public’s longing for a culprit.
Hale felt duty-bound to say he thought the schoolteacher not guilty of the crimes. He found it difficult to push this opinion, however, since he had no one to blame in Warren’s stead, and because he was known to have “harbored” the suspect for many months previous to the murders.
The points in favor of Warren’s innocence were two: His fingerprints had not been found on the sword, and his mother, however reluctantly, backed up Warren’s claim that he was in Atmore by eight o’clock, at which time Warren’s uncle, Mr. Henry Harp, was certain that Evelyn and Jerry were alive in his garden on Palafox Street. Overwhelmingly against Perry was the fact that no other suspect had presented himself, coupled with the necessity of bringing someone to trial soon.
Just as Hale was taking leave of his friends in the sheriff’s office, a call came through to him from Babylon. Briefly, Charles Darrish told him what he suspected of Nathan Redfield, He had murdered Jerry and Evelyn Larkin, and, just as Evelyn had said and as none of them had believed, he had tied Margaret Larkin to her bicycle and drowned her in the Styx.
Hale accused Darrish of scandalmongering and demanded his proof. Darrish said he didn’t have any, but told, without implicating himself, of Nathan’s scheme to get the Larkin blueberry farm for the possible oil beds that lay beneath it. And, as clincher, he related with some embellishment Nathan’s attack on the cash register girl at the White Horse.
“Now,” said Darrish: “You know what happened the other day in the bank, when Nathan laid his hands on Annie-Leigh Hooker, when she wasn’t doing a thing but waiting in line to make a deposit.”
“Yes,” said Hale grudgingly: “I heard. I heard from several people, but I didn’t give it much credit. I know Nathan, and I know he doesn’t attack customers. I also know Annie-Leigh Hooker, and I know what she and Ed Geiger can do to a story. I thought it was something about like Nathan tripping on somebody’s foot and falling against the girl, that’s all I thought it was.”
“Other people saw it,” said Darrish: “And you ought to have listened careful. Nathan jumped the rail, and just about pushed his thumbs through her windpipe. And Margaret Larkin was Annie-Leigh Hooker’s best friend. He might have been out to get ’em both. Ted, I wouldn’t be saying all this if I didn’t feel that I had to, because Nathan is Ginny’s cousin, and it’s not gone be doing this practice one bit of good in the world to have my wife’s cousin languishing on death row through the next five sessions of the Supreme Court.”
Hale replied grimly: “Yes.”
‘Now,” said Darrish, no longer in the voice of persuasion: “Ginny right this very minute is on her way over to the Redfield place with Nina to get James Redfield out of the house and safe. Now Nathan may be just fine, and this may be something pressing on his brain and he cain’t help it, but until it’s cleared up, we just thought it was best to get James out of there. I don’t think we could do anything with Ben, Ben’s not gone leave Nathan no matter what.” Charles, listen. Belinda’s probably over there too.” Hale sounded frightened, and his fear proved that he had in some measure accepted Charles’s accusations. “Does Ginny know enough to get her out of there?”
Yes, if Belinda's there with James, she’ll get her away too. But Ginny’s gone try to do it without Nathan finding out. I’m proud of her. I'd be scared out of my britches to go over there right now, thinking what I think about Nathan Redfield, and trying to spirit his daddy out of the house in a wheelchair.”
“Listen,” said Hale: “I’m on my way up there right now. You stop Ginny, and I’m gone to make sure everything’s all right. Nathan won’t do anything in the next forty-five minutes, that’s all it’s gone take me to get there. He won’t be scared to see me, but if it’s Ginny, he’ll know something is up. I don’t want him to do anything. If it’s like you say, and it’s something that’s pressing on his brain, Ginny might start it all over again. You ought to keep her away.”
“I cain’t,’ said Charles simply. “She’s on her way there now. She’s probably already strapping James Redfield in his chair. You just better get up here quick as you can.”
Chapter 47
Nathan's plan now was simple. He would put on his bathing suit and join Belinda and Ben in the pool. When Charles Darrish arrived, Nathan would feign surprise but offer to take him in to James Redfield. Then he would go to his own bedroom for the pistol and the suicide note, and return. He would shoot Charles Darrish through the heart, then quickly place the pistol against his father's temple and pull the trigger.
The shots would no doubt bring Ben and Belinda running. Nathan would pretend to have arrived there only seconds before, and would allow one of them to find the suicide note on the bedside table.
Three times he went over these actions in his mind, and then satisfied, changed into his bathing suit. He carefully unlocked the door of his room and peered out into the hall. This short carpeted corridor opened only onto his and Ben's bedrooms and the bath that they shared. At the other end was the wider hallway that led from the den to James Redfield’s separate wing. Nathan could just make out the angled glow of the outside lights, ricocheting off the den walls and through the archway. Nathan wondered whether Belinda had gone down to his father’s room again, but that thought snapped off when he stepped into a small puddle of water in the middle of the carpet. It was thick and impure, and stained his foot black. He glanced, terrified, down to the end of the hallway. Just as he did so, the door opposite his father’s slowly closed and clicked shut; this was the door to the guest bedroom. It was Belinda who had just entered that room, where she changed her clothes, and it was Belinda who had tracked muddy water into the house—he dared believe nothing else.
Nathan stepped into the den, and approached the glass windows that opened onto the pool. When he saw that Ben swam alone, he turned back with confidence, and stepped quietly to the end of the hallway. He paused at the door of his father’s darkened room, and carefully eased the door shut. Then he squeezed open the door of the guest room, with the intention of persuading Belinda to return to the pool.
The room was unlighted, but the curtains across the glass wall had been drawn open. Nathan glanced uneasily at the moon rising above the trees outside. As before in the cemetery, it seemed a featureless sharp disk, but now it was full. Belinda stood silhouetted against the black glass.
‘‘Well, Miss Pie,” said Nathan with soft derision: “Do you think—”
It wasn’t Miss Pie, but Evelyn Larkin that turned slowly to face Nathan. Black water spilled iridescently out of her mouth into a shining puddle at her feet.
She came forward in a slow turning glide; her feet moved not at all, and she skimmed across the thick carpet, her arms raised in graceful menace.
Unthinking, Nathan stepped forward to meet her; he grabbed Evelyn by both upraised wrists and slung her onto the bed. Her putrescent flesh coated the palms of his hands, and he wiped it frantically away on his pants, while twisting his head about in the darkness, trying to remember if there was anything near with which he might pound the old woman’s corpse into immobility. Evelyn’s body had flopped onto the bed like a hooked fish in the bottom of a boat, and now in a sidewise rocking motion was trying to right itself.
Nathan picked up a small pottery vase that stood on the dresser, and turned toward the bed.
“Nathan!” cried Belinda: “What the hell are you doing?”
He looked down. Belinda lay on the bed, encircling her bruised wrist with her o
ther hand, and whimpering. “You hurt me, goddamn it, Nathan, what did you think—”
“Belinda,” he cried: “I thought—”
“Nathan, get out of here. You cain’t push me around like that. You hurt me—”
He moved forward, but she twisted farther up on the covers.
He rushed to the door, and flicked up the light switch. He turned to her, and began apologetically: “It was the dark, Belinda, I thought you were—”
“A burglar! How many burglars you know are fat as I am? How many burglars you know wear a two-piece bikini?” The top of her new suit had been dislodged in the brief scuffle, and now she pulled it up again to cover her breasts. “I was just standing at the window trying to think of a going-away gift for you, or trying to think of some way to keep you from going. Nathan, I was just telling myself how much I was going to miss you, and that I wasn't gone have the heart to do a handstand when you were gone.”
He stood by the door, with his hand still on the switch. “Come on back to the pool, and we’ll sit with Ben a while, and then I’ll be all right. I just—well, you see why I need a little vacation.” He laughed shortly, but Belinda only looked askance.
“No rough stuff,” she warned him.
“No,” he replied meekly. “I won’t touch you—”
“Unless I tell you to,” she added archly.
He smiled, and stepped back for her to pass before him into the hallway. He turned out the light, and pulled the door shut without looking back into the darkened room.
“You think I ought to see if Mr. Red is all right?” whispered Belinda, nodding toward James Redfield’s closed door. Evidently she had forgiven Nathan, for her tone was confidential.