“What did you do to my sister?” The belligerent tone made Courtney realize that the boy hadn’t drunk all the milk with the sedative he’d given him just before the meddling fools came along.
“She’s asleep.”
“Let us go home. We want to go home. I don’t like you. I told my daddy I didn’t like you, and Aunt Dorothy was here and you hid us.”
Courtney lifted his right hand, curved it into the mittlike shape and slapped Michael across the cheek. Michael jerked back in pain and then rolled out from under the man’s grasp. Courtney reached for him, lost his balance and fell clumsily across the bed. His mouth touched Missy’s tangled yellow hair, and for an instant he was distracted. Pulling himself up, he turned and was on his feet, crouching to spring at Michael. But Michael was backing away toward the bedroom door. With a swift movement he opened it and raced through the adjoining sitting room.
Courtney lunged after him, realizing that he hadn’t locked the apartment door. He hadn’t wanted Dorothy to hear the distinct ping of the lock turning as she went downstairs.
Michael threw open the door and raced for the staircase. His shoes clattered on the uncarpeted stairs. He moved swiftly, a slim shadow that darted down into the protecting gloom of the third floor. Courtney hurried after him, but in his frantic rush lost his balance and fell. He hurtled down six steps before he managed to stop the fall by grasping the heavy wooden banister. Shaking his head to clear it, he picked himself up, aware of a sharp pain in his right ankle. He had to make sure the kitchen door was locked.
There was no further sound of footsteps. The boy was probably hiding in one of the third-floor bedrooms, but he had plenty of time to look for him. First the kitchen door. The windows were no problem. They were all double-locked, and too heavy anyhow. The double lock on the front door was too high for the child. He’d just secure the kitchen door, then search for the boy—room by room. He’d call to him and warn him. The boy was so frightened. His eyes had been so terrified and wary. He looked more than ever like Nancy this way. Oh, this was so unexpectedly wonderful. But he had to hurry. He had to make sure the boy couldn’t get out of the house.
“I’ll be right back, Michael,” he called. “I’ll find you. I’ll find you, Michael. You’re a very bad boy. You must be punished, Michael. Do you hear me, Michael?”
He thought he heard a noise in the bedroom on his right and rushed in, favoring his ankle. But the room was empty. Suppose the boy had run through this hallway and used the front stairs? Suddenly panicking, he lumbered down the remaining two flights. From outside he could hear the waves from the bay crashing against the rocks. He raced into the kitchen and over to the door. This was the door he always used going into and out of the house. This one had not only a double lock but a high bolt. His breath came in quick furious gasps. With thick, trembling fingers, he shoved the bolt into place. Then he pulled over a heavy wooden kitchen chair and wedged it under the knob. The boy would never be able to move this. There was no other way out of the house.
The heavy storm had almost obliterated the remaining daylight. Courtney switched on the overhead light, but an instant later it flickered and went off. He realized that the storm had probably pulled down some wires. It would make it harder to find the boy. All the upstairs bedrooms were fully furnished. They all had closets, too—deep ones—and cupboards that he might hide in. Courtney bit his lip in fury as he reached for the hurricane lamp on the table, struck the match and lighted the wick. The glass was red, and the light cast an eerie reddish glow against the fireplace wall and faded planked floor and thick-beamed ceiling. The wind wailed against the shutters as Courtney called, “Michael . . . it’s all right, Michael. I’m not angry anymore. Come out, Michael. I’ll take you home to your mother.”
18
THE CHANCE TO BLACKMAIL Nancy Harmon was the break Rob Legler had been needing for over six years—from the day he’d gotten on a plane to Canada after carefully shredding his embarkation orders for Vietnam. During those years, he’d worked as a farmhand near Halifax. It was the only job he’d been able to get, and he loathed it. Not for a minute did he regret his decision to bolt the Army. Who in the hell wanted to go to a filthy, hot hole to be shot at by a bunch of pint-sized bastards? He didn’t.
He’d worked on the farm in Canada because he didn’t have any alternative. He’d left San Francisco with sixty bucks in his pocket. If he went back home, he’d be tossed in jail. A conviction for desertion wasn’t his idea of the way to spend the rest of his life. He needed a good stake to cut out for someplace like Argentina. He wasn’t just one of the thousands of deserters who eventually might be able to slip back into the States with faked identification. Thanks to that blasted Harmon case, he was a hunted man.
If only that conviction hadn’t been upset . . . that case would be finished. But that bastard of a D.A. had said if he spent twenty years he’d retry Nancy Harmon for the murder of those kids. And Rob was the witness, the witness who supplied the motive.
Rob couldn’t let that scene happen again. As it was, the D.A. last time had told the jury that there was probably more to the killing than Nancy Harmon wanting to get out of a home situation. “She was probably in love,” he’d said. “We have here a very attractive young woman who since the age of eighteen has been married to an older man. Her life might well be the envy of many a young woman. Professor Harmon’s devotion to his young wife and family was an example for the community. But is Nancy Harmon satisfied? No. When a student-repairman comes in, sent by her husband so that she will not have to endure even a few hours’ discomfort, what does she do? She follows him around, insists he have coffee, says it’s nice to talk to someone young . . . says she has to get away . . . responds passionately to his overtures . . . and then when he tells her that ‘raising kids isn’t his bag’ she calmly promises him that her children are going to be smothered.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I despise Rob Legler. I believe that he toyed with this foolish young woman. I don’t for a minute believe that their unholy passion ended with a few kisses . . . but I do believe him when he quotes the damning phrases that fell from Nancy Harmon’s lips.”
Frig him. Rob felt sick fear in the pit of his stomach whenever he remembered that speech. That bastard would have given anything to have made him an accessory to murder. All because he’d been in old Harmon’s office the day his wife phoned to tell him the heater had gone off. Rob wasn’t usually given to volunteering his services. But he’d never seen a machine or engine or piece of equipment he couldn’t fix, and he’d heard some guys talk about what a doll that creepy old drag had for a wife.
That piece of intriguing information had made him volunteer his services. At first Harmon had turned him down, but then when he couldn’t get his regular maintenance man he’d said okay. He said he didn’t want his wife taking the kids to a motel. That was what she’d suggested.
So Rob had gone over. Everything the guys had said about Nancy Harmon was true. She was a real looker. But she sure didn’t seem to know it. She was kind of hesitant . . . unsure of herself. He’d gotten over about noon. She was just feeding the two little kids . . . a boy and a girl. Quiet kids, both of them. She didn’t pay much attention to him, just thanked him for coming and turned back to the kids.
He realized that the only way to get her attention was through the kids and started talking to them. It was always easy for Rob to turn on the charm. He liked gals older than himself, too. Not that this one was older by much. But he’d learned from the time he was sixteen and screwing his next-door neighbor’s wife that if you’re nice to a woman’s kids, she thinks you’re A-okay and all the guilt goes down the drain. Boy, Rob could write a book on the whole mother-complex rationalization.
In a couple of minutes he’d had the kids laughing and Nancy laughing, and then he’d invited the little boy down to be his helper fixing the furnace. Just as he expected, the little girl asked to go too, and then Nancy said she’d come along to make sure they didn
’t get in the way. There wasn’t much wrong with the furnace—just a clogged filter—but he said it needed a part and he could get it working but he’d be back and do the job right.
He got out fast the first day. No point in getting old Harmon upset. Went straight back to his office. Harmon looked annoyed and worried when he opened the door, but when he saw Rob he gave a big, relieved smile. “So soon? You must be a whiz. Or couldn’t you take care of it?”
Rob said, “I got it going. But you need a new part, sir, that I’ll be glad to pick up. It’s one of those little things that if you call in a regular service, they’ll make a big production over. I can get the part for a couple of bucks. Be glad to do it.”
Harmon fell for it, of course. Probably glad to save the money. And Rob went back the next day and the next day. Harmon warned him that his wife was very nervous and rested a lot and to please keep out of her way. But Rob didn’t see where she acted nervous. Timid, maybe, and scared. He got her talking. She told him that she’d had a nervous breakdown after her mother died. “I guess I’ve been terribly depressed,” she said. “But I’m sure I’m getting better. I’ve even stopped taking most of my medicine. My husband doesn’t realize that. He’d probably be annoyed. But I feel better without it.”
Rob had told her how pretty she was, kind of feeling his way. He’d begun to suspect that she might be a pushover. It was obvious she was pretty bored with old Harmon and getting restless. He said maybe she should get out more. She’d said, “My husband doesn’t believe in company. He feels that at the end of the day he doesn’t need to see any more people—not after all the students he has to contend with.”
That was when he’d known he’d try to make a pass at her.
Rob had an airtight alibi for that morning the Harmon kids had disappeared. He’d been in a class of only six students. But the D.A. had told him that if he could find one shred of evidence that would help him hang an accessory charge on Rob, it would be his pleasure to do it. Rob had hired a lawyer. Plenty scared, he didn’t want the D.A. poking into his background and finding out about the time he’d been named in a paternity suit in Cooperstown. The lawyer had told him that his posture had to be that he was the respectful student of a distinguished professor; had been anxious to do a favor for him; had tried to stay away from the wife, but she had kept following him around. That he never took it seriously when she talked about the children being smothered. Actually, he’d thought she was just nervous and sick, the way the Professor had warned him.
But on the stand it didn’t work like that. “Were you attracted to this young woman?” the D.A. asked smoothly.
Rob looked at Nancy sitting at the defendant’s table next to her lawyer, looking at him through blank, unseeing eyes. “I didn’t think in those terms, sir,” he replied. “To me Mrs. Harmon was the wife of a teacher I admired greatly. I simply wanted to fix the furnace as I’d volunteered to do and get back to my room. I had a paper to write, and anyhow a sick woman with two children simply isn’t my bag.” It was that elaboration, that last damned phrase that the D.A. had pounced on. By the time he was finished with him, Rob was wringing with perspiration.
Yes, he’d heard the Professor’s wife was a doll. . . . No, he wasn’t given to volunteering his help. . . . Yes, he’d been curious to get a look at her. . . . Yes, he had made a pass at her. . . .
“But it stopped there!” Rob had shouted from the stand. “With two thousand coeds on campus, I didn’t need problems.” Then he’d admitted that he had told Nancy that she turned him on and he’d like to hustle her.
The D.A. had looked at him contemptuously, then read into the record the time Rob had been beaten up by an irate husband—the episode in Cooperstown when he’d been named in the paternity suit.
The D.A. said, “This philanderer was no willing volunteer. He went into that house to size up a beautiful young woman whom he’d heard about. He made a play for her. It succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am not suggesting that Rob Legler was part of the scheme to murder Nancy Harmon’s children. At least, in the legal sense he wasn’t. But I am convinced that morally, before God, he is guilty. He let this gullible, ungrateful young woman know that he’d—and I use his words—‘hustle her’ if she were free, and she chose a freedom that is repugnant to the basic instincts of mankind. She murdered her children to be free of them.”
After Nancy Harmon was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, Professor Harmon had committed suicide. He drove his car to the same beach where one of the kids had been found and left it by the shore. He pinned a note to the wheel saying that it was all his fault. He should have realized how sick his wife was. He should have taken his children from her. He was responsible for their deaths and her action. “I tried to play God,” he wrote. “I loved her so dearly that I thought I could cure her. I thought bearing children would turn her mind from the grief of her mother’s death. I thought love and care would heal her, but I was wrong; I meddled beyond my depth. Forgive me, Nancy.”
There hadn’t been any roar of approval when the conviction was overturned. It happened because two women jurors had been heard discussing the case in a bar midway through the trial and saying she was guilty as sin. But by the time a new trial was ordered Rob had graduated, been drafted, given Vietnam orders and bolted. Without him, the D.A. had no case and had to let Nancy go—but swore he’d retry her the day he could get hold of Rob again.
Over the years in Canada, Rob had thought of that trial often. There was something that bothered him about the whole setup. Taking himself out of it, he didn’t buy Nancy Harmon as a murderess. She’d been like a clay pigeon in court. Harmon certainly hadn’t helped her, breaking down on the stand when he was supposed to be in the midst of saying what a great mother she was.
In Canada, Rob was something of a celebrity among the draft evaders he hung out with whom he’d told about the case. They’d asked about Nancy, and Rob told them what a dish she was . . . hinting that he’d had a little action. He showed them the press clippings of the trial and Nancy’s pictures.
He told them that she had to have some dough—that it came out at the trial that her folks left her over a hundred and fifty grand; that if he could find her he’d put the arm on her for money to split to Argentina.
Then he got his break. One of his buddies, Jim Ellis, who knew about his connection with the Harmon case, slipped home to visit his mother, who had terminal cancer. The mother lived in Boston, but because the FBI was watching the house hoping to pick up Jim, she met him in Cape Cod in a cottage she had hired on Maushop Lake. When Jim got back to Canada, he was bursting with news. He asked Rob what it would be worth to him to know where he could find Nancy Harmon.
Rob was skeptical until he saw the picture Jimmy had managed to snap of Nancy on the beach. There was no mistaking her. Jim had done some digging, too. The background checked. He’d found out that her husband was pretty prosperous. Quickly they worked out a deal. Rob would get to see Nancy. Tell her that if she’d stake him to fifty thousand bucks, he’d split to Argentina and she’d never have to worry about him testifying against her. Rob reasoned that she’d go for it, especially now that she was remarried and had more kids. It was a cheap price for her to know that someday she wouldn’t be haul-assed back to California to stand trial.
Jim wanted a flat twenty percent for his share. While Rob was seeing Nancy, Jim would arrange for phony Canadian passports, identification and reservations to Argentina. They were available for a price.
They laid their plans carefully. Rob managed to rent a car from an American kid who was in school in Canada. He shaved his beard and cut his hair for the trip. Jim warned him that the minute you looked like a hippie, every damn cop in those crappy New England towns was ready to clock you with radar.
Rob decided to drive straight through from Halifax. The less time he spent in the States, the less chance of getting picked up. He timed his arrival at the Cape for early in the morning. Jim had found out th
at Nancy’s husband always opened his office about nine-thirty. He’d get to her house around ten. Jim had made a map of her street for him, including that driveway through the woods. He could hide the car there.
He was running low on gas when he hit the Cape. That was why he got off at Hyannis to refuel. Jim had told him that even out of season there were a lot of tourists there. He’d be less likely to be noticed. All the way down he’d been nervous, trying to decide if he should offer his deal to Nancy and her husband together. Likely he’d have to know about her getting a bundle of cash. But suppose this guy called the cops? Rob would be convicted of desertion and blackmail. No, it was better to talk directly to Nancy. She must still remember sitting at that defendant’s table.
The attendant at the gas station was helpful. Checked everything over, cleaned the windows, put air in the tires without being asked. That was why Rob was off guard. When he was settling the bill, the attendant asked if he was down for some fishing. That was when he babbled that he was actually doing some hunting—going to Adams Port to see an old girlfriend who might not be glad to see him. Then, cursing his talkiness, he bolted, stopping at a nearby diner for some breakfast.
He drove into Adams Port at quarter of ten. Slowly cruising around, studying the map Jim had drawn for him, he got a feel of the layout. Even so he almost missed the dirt road leading to the woods behind her property. He realized that after he slowed up for that old Ford wagon pulling out from it. Backing up, he turned into the dirt road, parked the car and started walking to the rear door of Nancy’s house. That was when she’d come running out like a madwoman shrieking those names. Peter, Lisa, those were the dead kids. He followed her through the woods to the lake and watched when she threw herself into the water. He was just about to go after her when she dragged herself out and fell on the beach. He knew she looked in his direction. He wasn’t sure if she saw him, but he did know that he had to get out of there. He didn’t know what was happening, but he didn’t want to get involved.