Thinking of the watch reminded me of the time
and I looked at mine. It was after eight. The first
editions of the morning papers should be on the
street in a little while, if they weren’t already. I
should go down to the lobby and get them, I thought,
but it was too pleasant just sitting there waiting for
her to come out again so I could see how she looked.
I’ll pick them up when we go out to dinner, I
thought.
River Girl — 192
I heard the door open, and looked up and whistled
softly. She was very tall and smart-looking and cool
in a white skirt and short white jacket, with a blouse
of frosty blue gathered in some kind of ruffle about
her throat. The stockings were very sheer and she
had on white shoes that didn’t appear to be much
more than high heels and straps.
She turned, holding out her arms. “How do I look,
Jack?”
“Don’t come any closer. I might try to bite you.”
“Do I really look all right?”
I got up from the bed, conscious of what a crumbylooking
specimen I was now beside her, with nothing
on except my shorts and with the stubble of black
beard beginning to show, and went over to my coat.
I took out the little parcel and handed it to her.
“This is for you,” I said, “because you are the most
beautiful woman in the world.”
She took it, looking at me wonderingly. “Go
ahead,” I said. “Open it. It’s for you. I bought it while
I was waiting for you today.”
She unwrapped it and held the oblong case in her
hands a moment before she snapped it open. I heard
the little gasp as she looked inside. “Oh, what a
lovely thing! Jack, you didn’t have to do this for me.”
“I told you why I did it,” I said.
She looked up at me with her eyes a little wet.
“Jack I believe you do think I’m beautiful.”
“Aren’t you?” I asked quietly.
She nodded, not speaking for a moment. “Yes,” she
said then. “I feel beautiful, anyway.”
I met her up the street and we went to dinner. It
was very dim, with candles, and we had a table in a
corner by ourselves. I didn’t buy the papers after all,
not before dinner, for I knew I wouldn’t read them
before we got back anyway, and the later editions
would be out then. I couldn’t sit down across from
her and look at a paper, no matter what news I was
expecting.
River Girl — 193
After a while we went back to the hotel. She went
in first and I bought the papers and followed her.
She had the white suit off and was changing to the
robe when I got there, and we spread the papers on
the bed and read them. The story was on the front
page now, and growing.
“OFFICER BELIEVED VICTIM,” the headlines said.
They hadn’t found either of the boats yet, but
already the stories were full of the conjectures that I
had hoped for, built on just the fact that I was still
missing and that Shevlin’s cabin was deserted and
his boat gone. Dozens of men were searching the
swamp now, and I was sure that by tomorrow
morning they’d find the boats, which should clinch it.
There was no mention of the grand-jury
investigation. It was good news, all of it. I felt better
and the strain was beginning to go away. It had been
a good job.
There was another thing, though, that we hadn’t
outrun. Just before dawn I awoke suddenly, sweating
and scared, and she was screaming in her sleep. I
got her calmed after a while and lay awake until
daylight smoking cigarettes and thinking.
River Girl — 194
Twenty-two
When the first gray light began to filter through the
drawn Venetian blinds I got up and dressed. She was
sleeping all right now, quite peacefully, with a hand
beneath her cheek and the dark hair swirled across
the pillow. It was cooler now inside the room, and I
gently pulled up the sheet without disturbing her. It
was only a bad dream, I thought; she’ll get over it.
In the early dawn the empty canyon of the street
was almost cool; yesterday’s heat was dead, and
today’s was waiting to be born. A street-cleaning
truck went by, swishing water, and I could smell the
dust being overrun and drowned the way it is in the
first large drops of rain. This is the only time of day,
I thought, when a city is ever beautiful.
The final editions of the morning papers were on
the stands. I bought them and hurried into a coffee
shop full of white tile and chrome and sat down at
the counter. The story sprang out at me from the
front pages, apparently getting bigger by the hour.
“SWAMP SEARCHED FOR BODY,” I read.
“MURDER CLUE IN DISAPPEARANCE.”
“VIOLENCE FEARED.”
They had found the boats. Wild with eagerness, I
tore into the stories:
River Girl — 195
With the discovery late yesterday
afternoon of an abandoned, bloodstained
boat, identified as that which J. B.
Marshall, 27, deputy sheriff of Devers
County, had rented for the trip into the
swamp area in the upper reaches of Stowe
Lake to make an arrest, hope was rapidly
dwindling that the missing officer might
be found alive. Wayne Buford, Devers
County sheriff, revealed to newsmen at a
late hour last night that evidence found in
and about the boat indicated there had
almost certainly been a struggle and that
the young deputy may have been
murdered by the man he had gone into
the swamp to arrest. He cited the ominous
fact that the boat had been carefully
hidden and that the bloodstains found on
the seat and on the upper shaft of one of
the oars had been hastily scrubbed at in
an effort to obliterate them.
“But,” the sheriff added grimly, his face
haggard from the strain of the continuing
24-hour search, “the most significant and
terrible of all the evidence is that missing
anchor. I have been informed by the
proprietor of the fishing camp that this
boat was equipped, like all the others,
with a fifteen-pound concrete anchor and
some twelve or fifteen feet of rope. With
the anchor gone and the rope cut, just
recently and with a sharp knife, we have
no choice but to believe…”
I sipped the coffee, hardly noticing it in my
excitement. It was even better than I had hoped. And
Buford was terrific. He should have gone on the
stage, I thought.
“—the utter hopelessness of the search in
the light of this almost inescapable
conclusion. Nobody knows just how many
thousands of acres of waterway—lake and
River Girl — 196
swamp and sloughs—there are up there,
and it would take more than a lifetime to
do a thorough job of dragging all of it for
a weighted body lying on the bottom
somewhere in the mud. However, we are
not giving up. That boy was well liked by
all of us, and we will not abandon the
search while there is any remote
possibility that he is still alive. And the
manhunt for Shevlin, or Farrell, is being
pushed by every officer in the state.”
The story went on with a lot more of Buford. He
reconstructed the whole thing as indicated by the
evidence, giving his opinion that I had arrested
Shevlin and started out with him. Somewhere along
the line I had grown momentarily careless, Shevlin
had seized the opportunity to slug me with the oar,
unlock the cuffs—they had found the key where I
had dropped it—and had dropped me over the side
with the anchor tied to my body. Then he had gone
back for his wife—for by this time it was known that
he was married, though no one could remember
having seen her in almost a year—and on the way
out of the swamp in his boat he had hidden the
rental boat and then escaped. It was as nearly what I
had planned as if I’d left him a script to read.
Full of elation, I paused to light a cigarette, and
then read on, looking for some hint about the grand
jury.
Young Marshall, a veteran of World War II and
well known and liked throughout the county, was the
only son of the late Judge Halstead Marshall and the
last of a family quite prominent in this part of the
state for over a hundred years.
I put the paper down. That last paragraph might
be the answer. It carried a hint of something I had
hoped for but had not dared count on too heavily.
Now that I was presumably dead and nothing could
be gained by investigation except to raise a smell,
there was a good chance they had let it die out of
respect for the Judge’s memory. Probably they had
River Girl — 197
started, got far enough into it to see where it was
going to lead, and now that I was dead they’d let it
drop. I hoped so, anyway.
I paid for the coffee and went back to the hotel,
walking as if a hundred-pound weight had suddenly
been lifted from my shoulders and knowing that at
last there was no danger. I almost ran the last few
steps down the corridor to get into the room to tell
her.
She was just coming out of the bathroom in her
robe. I caught her excitedly and kissed her while she
looked at me in wonder, and then I handed her the
papers.
“Read it,” I said. “We’re in the clear. They went for
every bit of it. No, wait.” I interrupted myself.
“Before you start, call room service and order your
breakfast. I’ve already had some coffee and I’m too
excited to eat any thing.”
“All right, Jack.” She made an effort to smile, but it
was a strained and pitiful attempt, and I knew that
the terror of last night was still alive there
somewhere below the surface. After she had made
the call she started reading the news stories and I
watched her face as the hope and relief grew in her
eyes. When the waiter knocked on the door I went
into the bathroom and hid while the set up the
breakfast things. When he had gone I came out and
drank a little of her coffee and watched her while
she finished the papers and tried to eat. She didn’t
get much of it down.
“Look,” I ran on, too full of plans now to be quiet,
“the other things you bought will be delivered to the
hotel by noon today and I’ll have the suit and a
change of clothes. We have luggage and can travel
looking just like anybody else. So we’ll check out,
separately, sometime this afternoon, and catch the
first bus. No, by God, we’ll take the plane. We can
afford it now. Why didn’t I think of it sooner? We’ll
take the plane to San Francisco, stay there a few
days, and then go on up to Seattle by bus to see the
country.”
River Girl — 198
She had begun to catch my excitement now. “I
think that’s wonderful, Jack,” she said. She called
the airline and found there would be a plane at sixfifteen
p.m., and made her reservation.
“You’ll have to go down and pick up the ticket
sometime this morning,” I said. “I’ll follow you and
get a ticket for myself. Maybe we’d better make it
pretty soon, so they won’t be sold out.”
She called room service and I went back into the
bathroom while the waiter took away the dishes. I
prowled the room restlessly while she was in the
bath changing into street clothes, and when she
came out I spoiled her lipstick kissing her.
“You’re just like a big bear,” she said, smiling. She
started to pin her hair up into that roll on the back of
her neck and I took her by the arms and turned her
around.
“Couldn’t you leave it down now?” I asked. “After
all, there hasn’t been any description of you
broadcast, as far as we know. As a matter of fact,
nobody’s seen you for-a year and they don’t even
know what you look like. But, no, I guess not. It
would attract attention, chopped up like that. I don’t
like it, though. Put up that way, I mean. Because it’s
so damned lovely when it’s down across the side of
your face.”
“But after all, Jack,” she smiled, “when we’re alone
together I always have it down. And you don’t care
what it looks like to other people, do you?”
“Yes that’s right. But remember that when we’re
out in public, the other people aren’t the only ones
looking at you. I am too.”
“You say awfully nice things for this early in the
morning.
“There is no early morning in the way I feel about
you,” I said, grinning. “It’s always just at dusk with
the moon rising.”
“Sweet! Maybe, though, I could get a beauty-shop
appointment this morning and have it cut to even it
up. It would be all right then.”
River Girl — 199
“Try it,” I said eagerly. “That’d be fine.”
She looked up some in the telephone book and
started calling. On about the third one she hit a
cancellation and they said they could take her at
eleven-thirty.
We went down the street to the airline office,
going in separately, and she picked up her ticket
while I bought one. There isn’t much need for all this
cloak-and-dagger stuff any more, I thought, and as
soon as we’re on the plane we’ll call it off. It’s all
right now.
We went back to the hotel to wait until she had to
go to the beauty shop. The rest of her packages had
been delivered. I went up to my room and found that
the suit and the other clothes I had bought had
come, as well as the new bag. I packed, and just as I
was starting out the door to meet her down in front
of the hotel I remembered I hadn’t shaved this
morning. I’d forgotten all about it. Well, there isn’t
time now, I thought; I’ll come back and do it while
she’s in the shop.
The beauty shop was only two blocks away, and we
walked, going slowly along through the dense
crowds and the heat. The boys were beginning to
call the afternoon papers and I was just going to buy
one when a sharp cry from Doris interrupted me.
“Jack! I left my watch!” She had stopped. “I took it
off to bathe this morning and put it on the dresser.
And when I got ready to meet you I went right over
there and looked at it to see what time it was and
didn’t put it on. Oh, how stupid!”
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s safe in the room. “But
I’m worried about it. It’s such a beautiful thing, and
you gave it to me. And, besides, the maid will be in
to clean the room.”
“I know what,” I said. “Give me your key and I’ll
run back and pick it up while I’m waiting for you.”
I watched her go across the street and into the
shop, and when she was inside I walked back to the
hotel. The watch was still on the dresser and I
picked it up and put it in my pocket. I’ll run upstairs
River Girl — 200
and shave, I thought, and go back to meet her. She
said it’d take only about half an hour. Then I
remembered the paper I hadn’t bought, and was
suddenly curious as to whether anything new had
turned up. I went back out and bought one from the
boy on the corner. He handed it to me folded and I
stuck it under my arm, going up the street toward
the bar I had been in yesterday. It was airconditioned
and would be more comfortable than the
hotel.
The place was almost deserted, very cool and dim
after the crowds and hot sunlight in the street. The
barman in his white jacket was bent over a
newspaper spread out on the bar, and as I went past
I noted absently that it was the same one I carried
under my arm, the afternoon paper with the salmoncolored
outer sheet. I sat down at the end of the bar
and he came over.
“Bottle of beer,” I said.
He opened it and got a glass. “Quite a deal about
that sheriff, wasn’t it?” he asked.
I’m a celebrity now, I thought. But, anyway, a dead
one. “Yeah,” I said casually. “Probably never find his
body, either.”
He shook his head. “Not a chance, in that place. I
been up there fishing a couple of times. But, say,
that babe was a looker, wasn’t she?”
What was he talking about? “Babe?” I asked.
“Yeah, that guy’s wife. A real pipperoo.”
“Wife?” I asked stupidly. What the hell, was Louise
mixed up in it now?
“The sheriff?”
“No,” he said. “The other one. The man that
killed…his wife’s picture is there on the front page.”
I could feel my skin congeal inside the sweaty
clothes. Somehow I got the paper out from under my
arm and unfolded it, trying to keep my face still
while the bar swam around me in a slow and horrible
eddying of black mirrors and mahogany and whitejacketed
barmen.
River Girl — 201
I knew what it was even before I looked. For some
crazy reason, the thing she had said about the watch
came back to me. “I went right over there and
looked at it to see what time it was and didn’t put it
on.” I had stood right there in the cabin day before
yesterday, taking a last look around, and had looked
right at the picture sitting there on the mantel
beside the clock—the clock I had even noticed was
stopped—and I had never even seen it.
“A honey, huh?” It was the barman.
Somehow I managed it. “Yeah,” I said. “A honey.” I
had to get out of there. But I couldn’t run like that. I
might get him suspicious. Somehow I managed to
dig a dollar out of my pocket and put it on the bar, to
give him something to do besides just standing there
looking at me. They had given it a full two columns.
“sought,” the caption said. “Mrs. Roger Shevlin,
beautiful young wife of man sought in swamp
killing.” Good God Almight, I raged, they didn’t have
a picture of him—only twenty thousand of them
scattered in every law-enforcement office in the
South—so they had to run hers!
I gulped at the beer, almost drowning myself to get
it down so I could get out of there. Fortunately I had
swallowed it before my eyes had started wildly down
the front-page story alongside the picture, for then I
got the second jolt—
as law enforcement officers of the adjacent county
swung into the search for the body and the escaped
killers. According to Sheriff Carl C. Raines of
Blakeman County, Marshall may have been
overpowered and killed in the cabin itself or nearby,
and Shevlin and his wife may quite possibly have
disposed of the body in the other direction, above
the cabin, before they fled.
I tried to put the glass down without rattling it
against the wood. So now Raines was mixed up in it,
and thought she had helped to kill me, and he was
looking for them both! Buford had called the
warning, and I hadn’t paid any attention. He had told
me that the upper end of the lake was in Blakeman
River Girl — 202
County. I had even known it myself, but hadn’t
thought it was important. But now—
Buford covering my tracks behind me was one
thing, but having Raines sniffing at the trail was
something entirely different. He wasn’t just going
through the motions.
Somehow I got out of the bar. Heat rolled up and
hit me as I went through the door, and I had to
remember where I was to get my directions straight.
The beauty shop was up the street toward the left.
But what was I going to do? I thought of her sitting
there, with that ragged hair already causing the girls
to notice her, and with everybody looking at the
picture on the front page. I’ve got to do something, I
thought agonizingly. But what? I had to wait for her
to come out; if I went in there to get her, that would
attract attention. And if I got her back to the hotel,
then what? Dye her hair? How did you disguise a
woman?
The heat was beginning to make me weak, and I
felt sick. This was the last intersection now, and I
leaned against the lamp pole waiting for the light to
change. The beauty shop was the fourth door from
the corner and I stopped in front of it, not knowing
what to do next. People going past in the hot
sunlight bumped into me and I moved out toward the
curb.
A sedan pulled up into the no-parking zone and
stopped. Two men got out, and as I watched in
growing horror they walked into the shop. But
they’re not in uniform I thought desperately. They’re
not police. They couldn’t be! But there was no use
trying to kid myself that they looked like the kind of
men who frequented beauty shops.
The door opened. She was coming out. I wanted to
jump forward and cry out and take her by the arm,
but I stopped, rooted where I was. One of the men
was right behind her and he had her by the arm, I
had to move to get out of their way, for I was
standing right in front of their car.
River Girl — 203
She saw me and I thought she would cry out. The
terror was awful in her eyes, but she went past me
with no word and no sign of recognition. I could
swing and hit him, I thought through the black
despair, but she couldn’t run in those high heels, and
there’s always the other one. And by now I had seen
the shoulder holsters and the guns. One of the men
got in the front seat behind the wheel and the other
helped her in and then sat down beside her in the
back.
Nobody had said a word. The people going by on
the sidewalk never knew it. As the car pulled away
from the curb her face turned toward me just for an
instant through the window and I wanted to die.
River Girl — 204
Twenty-three
Then I was back at the hotel. I had no idea how I had
got there, but I was standing in her room looking
around at her clothes and the two alligator bags and
her robe and nightgown across the bed and feeling
all the emptiness and silence of this place where she
had been come crawling up over me like ants across
a lidless eye. There was no escaping them, and I
wanted to turn and run back out, but there was
nowhere else to go and I had enough sense left to
know that the emptiness was inside me and that I
would take it with me when I ran.
The thing I had to do was sit down and try to think,
try to see exactly what had happened. This torturing
condemnation running endlessly through my mind
like a singing commercial through a radio you
couldn’t turn off wasn’t going to do anything except
eventually drive me crazy, and then they’d have us
both. I had done this to her. I had left the picture
there where they had found it, I had been
responsible for her going to the beauty shop, and I
had stood there like a baby and let the police take
her away to jail, but it wasn’t going to help any to go
on torturing myself with the knowledge.
I sat down on the bed. The maid had already been
here and cleaned the room, so I was safe enough
River Girl — 205
from discovery. And they’re not even looking for me
anyway, I thought, struggling to reorient myself.
They’re only looking for the people who are
supposed to have killed me. Then the terrible irony
of it went to work on me again and my head was in a
spin. I had done such a good job of erasing myself
that they had already arrested her as an accomplice
in my murder.
But does she know that? I thought. Does she know
that it’s my disappearance she’s been arrested for,
or does she, in her terror, think they’ve found out
about Shevlin? What would she do? What would she
be likely to say, to cry out without knowing where
she might trap herself? That was the terrible part of
it. I had no way of knowing what she was going to
say, and no way to get word to her to tell her what to
say. I thought of those “Information, Please” experts
at work on her and of all their tricks, and had to tear
my mind away from it.
If she saw from the first that they had picked her
up only because they were trying to find Shevlin, she
would be all right. There were a thousand things she
could tell them that would leave her in the clear. And
all the time she would be secure in the knowledge
that the crime for which she had been arrested
didn’t actually exist, that they couldn’t actually do
anything to her for being accessory to my death,
because I wasn’t dead, and that as a last resort I
could always reappear to kill the charge. But, I
wondered then, suddenly, would her mind, having
gone that far, go on to the next fact, the one staring
me in the face right now? And that was that if I
reappeared, what was I going to tell them when they
asked me what it was all about and where Shevlin
was? I could tell them that he had escaped from me.
Sure. But what was I doing down here? Running
from that grand-jury investigation at home? No.
Because I didn’t even know that such a thing
existed. Again, I had covered my tracks too well.
And, also, if I reappeared out of limbo right here in
this city where she was and to save her from the
charge, it would tie the two of us together. Shevlin
River Girl — 206
missing, and his lovely wife down here with me? It
was a tabloid editor’s dream come true, and they’d
have a confession out of one of us inside a day.
I was calmer now and my mind was beginning to
function, as it always seemed to do eventually when I
was in a jam. It was a lot like the way I had felt that
day up at the cabin on the lake. After the first shock
wore off and I could see that the chips were down
and I had to do something, I could think. I was
conscious now of this growing clarity, this ability to
see all paths at once and the dangers inherent in
each one. And the first thing I could see was that I
was going to have to get out of this room, and get
out of it fast. I wasn’t safe here; this was probably
the most dangerous place in town for me right now. I
sprang up from the bed. Why hadn’t I seen it before?
Someday, I thought, I’m going to realize something
like that just a minute too late.
Taking the key out of my pocket, I left it on the
dresser. Since she didn’t have it with her and they’d
know it when they searched her, it had to be here
unless I wanted them to know somebody else had
been here with her. As for the other things, the
clothes and the bags she had bought, there was
nothing to do but leave them. But no, I thought
suddenly. I can’t. I can’t leave those two bags. I was
with her when she bought them and helped her pick
them out. The man who sold them to her could
probably describe me to the police as easily as he
could describe his brother. And since they were after
Shevlin, they’d be backtrailing her all over town to
see if anybody had seen him with her. I grabbed
them up and looked out into the corridor. It was
clear, and I slipped out hurriedly, closed the door,
and went up the stairs to my room.
That had been close, and I’d probably caught it
just in time. They would have her at the station by
now. And, since they were after him and since it
would be logical to assume that if she were here in
town he might be too, there’d be dozens of them
shaking down the hotels right this minute. The thing
to do was get out of here, and the sooner the better.
River Girl — 207
They’d be here any minute with her picture. Thank
God, I thought, we weren’t registered together and
the hotel people had no reason to connect me with
her. Of course, they weren’t looking for me, but my
description, if they had it, would be one that would
stick in the mind, and I couldn’t take any chances of
having them begin to wonder just how dead I was.
My bag was already packed. Just for a moment, as
I saw it sitting there, the agonizing hell of whatmight-
have-been and the despair and bitterness
came rushing back and hit me. In six more hours, I
thought, we would have been on the plane with all
the rest of our lives before us. Then I got hold of
myself. I couldn’t go to pieces that way. I had to
keep moving and I had to keep my head. Dragging a
hand roughly across my face, I went over to the
telephone and called for a boy to come after the
bags. There was no use taking the cheap one I’d
bought in the drugstore, I thought, and threw it
inside the closet and closed the door. I had two more
than I’d checked in with as it was.
We went down in the elevator, and as we came
into the lobby I looked guardedly around. There was
no one at the desk who looked like a plain-clothes
man. I wondered if the clerk would notice the extra
bags. The boy took them on out and I settled the bill.
There was a cab outside and I got in.
“Where to, chief?” the driver asked. Where? I
thought I had to go somewhere.
“Bus station.” I had to get rid of those bags, no
matter what I did. We crawled through snarled
traffic and heat and blaring horns. The bus station
was jammed and sultry, full of a loudspeaker’s
blasting and the roar of a departing bus. I put the
three bags in lockers and stuck the keys in my
pocket. All right, I thought, I’ve cut the trail from her
to me to give myself time to think, but where do I go
from here?
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