River Girl by Charles Williams(12)

I pushed through the crowd to the lunch counter
and ordered a cup of coffee. What had she told
them? That was the question that went through my
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mind over and over. Everything depended on that,
and there wasn’t any way I could know. Suppose she
had confessed? In spite of the sticky heat I felt the
chill between my shoulder blades. And it was
possible; I knew it. In her terror and confusion, not
even knowing what she had been picked up for, with
all of them firing questions at her, who knew what
she might blurt out?
But suppose, I thought, trying to pick up the
thread of thought I’d had before I realized I had to
get out of the hotel, suppose she kept her head and
hasn’t said anything so far? Then we’re safe enough
—for the moment. The danger then would lie in the
fact that eventually they might wear her down, keep
hammering at her until she let something slip, or
that eventually, as they kept looking for my body,
they might find Shevlin’s. That was a very real
danger now that Raines had joined in the search
because he wasn’t trying to cover anything up, as
Buford was. Therefore, I had to get her out of there.
But how? Obviously, the only way I could do it was
by turning myself in, or coming back to life. And
then they would be asking me the question, the big
one: Where was Shevlin?
But wait, I thought. I was very close to it a while
ago when I had to run away from the hotel. Suppose
I could come back to light in some way that wouldn’t
indicate I had ever been down here at all or even
knew her?
They were still looking for me in that
swamp, with some faint hope that I was still alive
and only hurt and lost. Well, suppose it turned out
that I was? They would release her. The charge then
wouldn’t be worth holding her for. That would take
the pressure off her before she broke down and
confessed, or let something slip.
The girl brought my coffee. “What’s the matter,
big boy?” Suddenly I realized she was talking to me.
“Matter?” I asked. “Why?”
She gave me a pert smile. “Well, I don’t know, but
you just looked so worried and kind of moving your
lips like somebody talking to himself.”
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I’ve got to stop attracting attention, I thought.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s my wife. She’s having a baby.”
“Oh.” She started to move away. “I hope it’s a
boy.”
“Thanks,” I said. Where was I? Oh, yes. Back in the
swamp. But if I came back out of there, they would
probably dust off that grand-jury investigation again,
even providing they’d really dropped it. All right, I
thought, what of it? A year, two at-the most. And
even a chance of a suspended sentence. We’re
young. We could stand it. And it would be a hell of a
lot better than what we had staring us in the face
right this minute.
I was working on it at top speed now. I could do it.
I could get back in there, fake the scalp wound
where he had slugged me with the oar, fall in the
swamp a few times, wander around all night until I
was dirty and bloody and haggard enough, and then
start finding my way out, get picked up by some of
the searchers, and have a good story ready for them.
I could make it stick. But wait, I thought. I’ve got to
get that bag back out of the locker and change
clothes somewhere. I’ve got on the new suit, and I’d
have a hell of a time explaining how I bought it while
I was lost in a swamp. But that was easy. I could do
it in the men’s rest room. I put a dime on the counter
for the coffee and started to get up, and then the
other thought hit me. I sat down.
My hands were tied. I couldn’t make a move until I
found out what she had said to the police. God,
suppose I went back into the swamp, and then,
tomorrow morning, when I found my way into one of
the searching parties, learned that she had
confessed the whole thing! Talk about walking into a
trap…I flinched.
Her story would probably be in the papers. I had to
wait for them; there was no other way. I couldn’t do
a single damned thing now but sweat through the
whole, hot, nerve-racking eternity of this afternoon
waiting for the story to hit the streets. I looked at my
watch. It was twelve-thirty. It would be at least three
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hours, if it hit the last edition of the afternoon
papers, and it might not be in them at all and I’d
have to wait until around eight for the morning ones.
But in the meantime there was something else to
work on. Was there any way to get word to her to
tell her what I was going to try to do so she could
hold on and not break down and spill everything
after I had started in there? I thought about it for
just a minute. There was one slight chance.
I got up hurriedly and got some change from the
cashier at the counter and went over to the bank of
pay phones along the wall. I dialed, “Long-distance?
I want to put in a person-to-person call to a Miss
Dianne Weatherford at Bigelow. I don’t know the
number.”
“What is your number, please?”
I told her and waited. It was a slim chance. Would
Dinah even be there? She was probably still here in
town. And suppose she was home; would she talk to
me? I remembered the way she had driven off. I
could hear the terse, efficient chatter of the long-line
operators and then somewhere far off a telephone
ringing. It went on, while I waited, sweating.
“Hello?” It was Dinah. I deposited the coins.
“Hello, Dinah?”
“Yes. Oh, is that you, Ja—?” She caught herself in
time and cut it off.
“Yeah,” I said. “Look, can you get in touch with
Buford? It’s important, and I can’t call him at the
office.”
“I will if he’s there. He may still be down at the
lake.”
“Well, look,” I said urgently. “Try to get hold of
him. Ask him to come to your place and I’ll call again
exactly an hour from now. Got it?”
“All right.” She paused, then went on blandly. “Oh,
by the way, I see they caught that awful Shevlin
woman. It was on the radio.”
“Yes,” I said. “I heard it.”
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“And isn’t it funny, too, that the creature was right
there in Bayou City? Where you are.”
“Yes, isn’t it? Remember. I’ll call you an hour from
now.” I hung up. Wait till she sees the picture, I
thought. Then she won’t have any doubt of it. Well, it
couldn’t be helped now.
Somehow I sweated out the hour. When I called
back Dinah said, “Yes, he’s here now. Just a minute.”
“Yes?” It was Buford his voice as impersonal as
death.
“Listen. I want you to do something for me,” I said,
beginning to talk fast and stumbling over myself.
“They’ve just picked up Mrs. Shevlin. I guess you
know it by now. And I suppose you’re going to have
to send a man down to get her. I want him to give
her a message”.
“Yes? What is it?” he asked coolly.
“Tell her not to worry about anything. I’m coming
back.”
“I thought so. That’s about the way I had it
figured. Well, I’ve got news for you. I can’t do
anything about your girl friend. We’re not claiming
her; Raines is. That place was in Blakeman County,
as I told you, so now they’ve issued a warrant for her
on suspicion of murder.”
“What?” I almost shouted it.
“And another thing. Don’t try to come back.”
“What do you mean, don’t try to come back?” The
booth seemed to be shrinking, trying to choke me.
“Listen, don’t you understand—”
“The thing I understand is that we had an
agreement and I carried out my end of it. I didn’t
know then that I was just financing your expedition,
but I’m satisfied with it because so far it’s worked.
And if you come back, it won’t. The minute you show
up, everything’ll hit the fan. I don’t like to be
doubled-crossed, so I’m telling you to stay away. Do
we understand each other?”
I understood him, all right. He was warning me.
He knew now what had actually happened up there
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in the swamp, or he was pretty sure of it, but
nothing interested him except that two-bit graft
investigation. She could go to the chair for all he
cared, so long as he was all right. My mind grew
quite clear and I no longer shouted.
“I’m coming back,” I said. “Don’t get in my way.” I
hung up the receiver and walked out.
But I still couldn’t go until I knew what she had
told the police. It was going to be dangerous enough
going in there without being able to get word to her,
and having Buford trying to stop me, but it would be
simple suicide if she’d confessed and I didn’t know
it.
I never did know afterward where I was that
afternoon. It was a blur of hot streets and a million
faceless people going past while time ran down and
stopped like a clock no one had thought to wind. And
then somewhere, later, with the sun slanting
obliquely through the east-west streets and brazen
on the shop windows, I heard the newsboys
shouting, “Read about Mrs. Shevlin. All about Mrs.
Shevlin.”
I bought one and ducked inside a bar. There was
another picture of her, but it was the caption I was
looking at. “DENIES CHARGE.” I breathed again.
Thank God, I thought. She kept her head. Forgetting
the beer I had ordered, I tore into the story, trying to
absorb it all at once.
MARSHALL NOT DEAD—MRS. SHEVLIN
Mrs. Roger Shevlin, beautiful young wife
of the man sought in the disappearance
and suspected murder of J. B. Marshall,
Devers County officer, denied today in a
statement to police, who arrested her in a
beauty shop in downtown Bayou City, that
her husband had killed Marshall.
According to Mrs. Shevlin, who was near
collapse in the city jail following her
arrest, her husband returned for her after
he had overpowered the officer and
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escaped while the two men were on their
way out of the swamp, telling her he had
merely tied Marshall up with the boat’s
anchor rope, knowing he would eventually
work free and get back to town. The boat
had been hidden to prevent Marshall’s
finding it, to give the Shevlins more time
to make good their escape.
If only they don’t break her down before I can get
there, I thought desperately. If she cracks…But I
didn’t have time to sit and think about it. Paying for
the beer, I got up and took a taxi back to the bus
station, got the bag out of the locker, and changed
back into the old suit in the rest room. Taking out
the plane ticket and the watch so there’d be nothing
in it by which they could ever connect me with
Bayou City, I shoved the bag back into another
locker and left it.
I can’t take the bus, I thought. Somebody might
see me getting off at Colston. Too many people know
me there. I’ve got to get back into that swamp the
same way I got out—without being seen. And I
haven’t got time to horse around with freight trains.
Thirty minutes later I was weaving through traffic
in the outskirts of the city, headed toward Colston in
a stolen car. It had been easy. I just walked up the
street until I saw a woman park and leave the keys
in the car. When she went inside a store I got in and
drove off. Nothing was going to stop me any more.
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Twenty-four
I stopped once and bought a flashlight in a
drugstore. I’d need it, trying to get around in that
swamp at night, and at dawn I could throw it in the
lake. I worked it out in my mind as I drove, staying
just under the speed limit in spite of the impatience
riding me. I couldn’t leave the car up there where I
had come out of the swamp before, on the deserted
country road. It would be picked up eventually, and
the state troopers might begin to wonder why
somebody would steal a car in Bayou City, drive it to
a place like that, and leave it, forty miles from
anywhere. But if I wrecked it on the main highway,
on the opposite side of the bottom, it would look all
right.
It was dusk when I went through Colston, and
nearly nine by the time I had passed the store and
the boat place on the dam at the south end of the
lake. The highway swung and turned north again,
along the west side of the bottom. Fifteen miles up,
and only three or four miles outside of town, it
swung sharply left again, away from the bottom, and
here was where I crashed it by the simple method of
not making the turn. I had slowed to about twentyfive,
and as I went down off the roadbed and through
the ditch I took out a section of fence, and then
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finally came to rest without much damage up against
a tree. I picked up the flashlight and started out
through the pines. Joy-riding kids, they’d say.
It was a still, sultry night, with no moon but a faint
light from the stars. As soon as I was in the timber,
however, it was black, and I could see nothing at all.
I snapped on the flashlight and started up over the
ridge, leaving no tracks in the dense carpet of pine
needles. When I came out on top I stopped and
looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty.
If I went straight out across the bottom now, I’d hit
the lake about five miles below Shevlin’s cabin. But I
wanted to go in at least five miles above it, right into
the swamp country itself. The best thing to do, then,
was to go north here along the high ground for about
ten miles and then swing down off the ridge.
It was fairly open up here in the pines and I made
good time. At a little before one in the morning I
figured I had come far enough, and turned right,
going downhill. Before long the sand and pines gave
way to big oaks and heavy underbrush. Inside an
hour I was drenched with sweat and my clothes were
badly torn. I ran into a wide marshy area where the
mud and water were up to my knees, and to make
matters worse, in the middle of it there was a place a
quarter mile wide where a cyclone had gone through
years ago. Big trees were piled like spilled matches
in a nightmare confusion of tree trunks, limbs, and
vines. I scrambled over, crawled under, and fought
my way through the muck. Once, clambering along
the trunk of a big windfall stacked crisscross above
another, I slipped in my muddy shoes and fell into
the tangle of big limbs below me, laying open a gash
on my head and almost knocking myself out. I
scrambled up, cursing and wiping blood out of my
face, and then grinned sourly as it occurred to me it
wouldn’t be necessary now to fake any signs of
violence. I’d look as if Shevlin had worked me over
with a ball bat.
It was nearly four when I hit the first sizeable
channel of open water. I flashed the light out across
it, saw that I was going to have to swim now, and
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stopped to light a cigarette. There wasn’t any
necessity for swimming it before dawn, which would
be in about an hour. I sat down against a tree and
went over it in my mind. This was—What day was it,
anyway? Time had been alternately stretched and
compressed for so long I didn’t even know. Let’s see,
I thought, I went into the lake Wednesday morning.
That night at midnight I was in Bayou City. The next
afternoon, then, when the story first broke, would
have been Thursday. Then today was Friday. No, I
corrected myself, it’s almost daylight Saturday
morning. Then I’ve been lost in here for three night
and two days, assuming that I tell them it wasn’t
until very late Wednesday that I arrested Shevlin. It
had taken me nearly all day to find his house, and I
didn’t get started out with him until nearly sunset.
That would make his being able to jump me and get
away a lot more plausible, anyway; it’d naturally be
easier in the dark.
He’d banged me with the oar, and when I came
around I was in the bottom of the boat tied up like a
pig with the anchor rope. It was dark and I was
down there where I couldn’t see anything anyway, so
I had no idea where he took me except that we went
a long way. He put me ashore somewhere hours
later, with my hands still tied, but not very tightly,
and I’d managed to get them worked loose before
daylight. The only thing, though, was that I was lost.
I kept looking for the lake, and there wasn’t any;
there was nothing but a thousand small sloughs and
the marsh and flooded areas. After a while I’d run
across some tracks and started following them,
thinking somebody else was up here and I might find
a cabin, and then I had lost my head completely
when I found I was going in circles and that they
were my own. They wouldn’t have any reason to
doubt it; at least one man I knew of had been lost up
here and never had found his way out. I shivered,
thinking about it. I was taking a long chance. And
not only of getting lost, either. I thought. Suppose
they broke her down while I was in here?
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I shook it off with rough impatience. It was just a
chance I had to take. I lighted another cigarette,
knowing that as soon as I swam the slough they’d be
ruined anyway and I might as well use them up.
Would I look as if I’d been lost up here for nearly
seventy-two hours? Yes, there wasn’t much doubt
that I’d look the part. My clothes were in ruin
already and sweat-soaked and bloody from the cut
on my head. Of course, I had shaved on Thursday
morning, but I never had got around to it on Friday
and would have a forty-eight hour growth of beard,
ugly enough to convince anybody. All I had to do
now was fight my way down through the swamp
until I ran into some of the searchers. They would
probably have a camp set up somewhere down there
below and be firing guns, still hoping to guide me in.
I listened now but there was no sound except that of
the frogs.
The darkness was beginning to fade now and I
could see the weed-choked dark water in front of
me. I stood up, threw the flashlight out into the
water, and waded in. Mud sucked at my feet and I
pushed forward and started swimming. It was only a
few strokes to the other side, where I climbed out
and began beating my way through the brush again.
Inside an hour I had lost track of the number if times
I had to swim. I made no effort to turn aside when
open water blocked my path, for it I didn’t move in a
straight line I wouldn’t get out of here. When the sun
came up I was able to check my direction, going due
south with it on my left. My progress was
agonizingly slow and the cut places on my head
began to throb. Vines tripped me and I fell, and at
times I had to wade for hundreds of yards through
water and mud up to my waist. Most of the channels
I had to swim were matted with pads, and the long,
twining underwater stems wound around my arms
and legs and threatened to pull me under. There was
no way to know what time it was any more, for my
watch was long since drowned and stopped, but the
sun was climbing higher. As midday approached it
River Girl — 218
was harder and harder to tell direction, for the sun
was almost directly overhead.
Noon came and went and I was conscious now of
beginning to weaken from hunger. I’d eaten nothing
since Thursday night, and the back-breaking
struggle and the heat were beginning to wear me
down. Suddenly I was again in the midst of the piled
windrow of down timber where the tornado had left
its path through the swamp, and for a while my mind
was black with panic. I was lost. I was going in
circles and had come back to the place I had fought
my way through nearly twelve hours before.
Collapsing against the trunk of an uprooted tree, I
fought to get hold of myself. It couldn’t be the same
one. Tornadoes play leap-frog through a place like
this, I told myself desperately, and this is another
one. It had to be. I’d been going steadily south for
hours. But how did I know I was going south? Part of
the time the sun had been invisible down here in the
timber, and for the past two hours it had been so
nearly overhead it was impossible to tell direction
from it.
And why didn’t I hear any guns? There hadn’t been
a sound all morning except that of my own desperate
plunging through the swamp. If I’d been going in a
straight line for all that time, I should be somewhere
near Shevlin’s cabin and the main channel of the
lake itself, and there would almost certainly be a
camp set up there for the searchers. I listened now,
trying to hush the sobbing sound of my breathing,
and heard nothing but the infinite silence of the
swamp.
I don’t know where I am, I thought wildly. I’ll
never get out of here. And now, suddenly, I was
conscious of the way time was flying past. Every
minute of it they would be working on her, firing
questions at her, trying to wear her down, and if she
broke I’d be better off if I did die in here. I sprang to
my feet and tried to run, crazily, the panic washing
over me. Again I fell, breaking open the cut on my
head. I got up, tearing ahead. Then, somehow, I was
past the windfall area, and I plunged headlong into
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the underbrush. Vines caught me and I collapsed,
struggling weakly, like a fly in a spider wed, and
sank to my knees and fell.
There was no knowing how long I lay there. Sanity
gradually returned, and I began to be conscious of
my surroundings and capable of rational thought.
Mosquitoes buzzed about my face in clouds, and in
the hot, humid stillness among the leaves and vines I
was bathed in sweat. Thin shafts of sunlight probed
through the dense foliage overhead, and as I
watched them I could see they were slanting a little
as the sun wheeled over into the west. I’ve got to
keep my head, I thought. If I lose it once more I’ll be
done. Twenty-four hours have gone by now since
they arrested her, and if I don’t find my way out
pretty soon she’ll think I’ve run and deserted her
and she’ll break. I’ve got to get up and start in a
straight line again, going south.
I started again, moving with the shafts of sunlight
slanting across my eyes from right to left. Time ran
on, like an endless belt, with no beginning and no
end and nothing to mark the hours. I noticed I was
beginning to fall sometimes now when nothing had
tripped me, and wondered if the two blows on my
head had affected me that much. No, I thought
dizzily, it’s only fatigue, and the weakness of hunger.
Five miles through that mud and water and tangle of
underbrush were the equivalent of fifty on solid
ground, and there was no way of knowing how many
miles I had actually walked. At times it seemed as if I
were an insect trying to fight its way through a
sodden sponge, pressing inward just so far and then
being thrown relentlessly back. The swamp gave way
before me, swallowed me up, and then closed
behind, all of it looking so much alike there was no
way of knowing whether I went ahead or was merely
raising and lowering my dead-weary legs in some
sort of slow-motion and idiotic dance in an endless
dream. I began to think of her nearly all the time,
forgetting for long stretches to watch the sun or the
direction in which the shafts slanted through the
leaves. We lay side by side on the ground in mottled
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shade, whispering to each other; then she was
smiling at me, radiant and lovely in her new clothes,
while I caught her arms to look at her. I stopped and
shook my head, running a hand across my face and
seeing it come away covered with dirt and blood.
Stop it, I thought. Stop it! Which way was south?
And then, strangely, the forest was more open.
Immense oaks towered overhead and the brush was
thinning out. The ground here was dry and firm
underfoot and walking was easier. I caught a glint of
sunlit water off to the right, shining through the
trees, and tried to run toward it, but I was too weak
and fell again. When I got to my feet I staggered on
toward it, the view opening up, and then I knew I
had reached the lake. A hundred yards of open water
stretched out past me, disappearing around a bend
up to my right, and full of big weed beds along the
other shore. I looked down at my feet and saw the
remains of a campfire, but knew it was an old one
even before I knelt frenziedly and ran my hands into
the ashes. But somebody had been here! I could find
them!
But where were they? Where was the sound of
guns? I stared wildly around in the little open glade,
so peaceful in the sunlight of late afternoon, and
then, suddenly, I began to have the awful feeling
that it was somehow familiar. I knew now. The
campfire was my own. This was where I had camped
on that first trip up here, when I had met her, and
there was where the bedroll had lain and I had
caught her hand and she had pulled away from me,
crying, to run out toward the lake. I was back to
where I had started, but now she was in jail and he
was dead and I was the one who had killed him. I
was conscious of the horrible sensation that I wasn’t
just walking in circles in space and time, but that I
was actually swinging around the steep black sides
of some enormous whirlpool and sliding always
toward the center.
But there is a way out, I thought agonizingly.
There’s always a way out. All I had to do was locate
the searching parties and she would be freed when
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word was flashed that I had been found. But where
were they? I had thought the lake would be busy
with motorboats and the sound of guns being fired at
intervals throughout the day and night, and here was
only the same dead, lost silence I had been fighting
through all day. Had they given up? Would I ever get
out of here in time, before she collapsed and told
them?
And then I heard it—not gunfire, but a motor
starting. It was up there to the right, around the
bend, sudden, staccato, and very near, so similar to
the way I had heard his motor start that morning a
long time ago that I was conscious again of that
feeling of going around and around in some
tightening and deadly spiral. Immediately after it I
heard another start, and they were coming nearer. I
looked up and saw them appearing around the bend,
and there were not two boats, but three. The first
had two white-hatted men in it, the second was
being towed and was empty, and the one in the rear
held two.
I’ve found them, I thought wildly. Shouting and
waving my arms, I ran across the small open glade
and down to the water’s edge. They had seen me
now, and I watched the boats change course a little
to swing in toward the bank. I had made it, and in a
little while word would be going out that I had been
found alive, and she would be freed. The boats were
drawing nearer. I didn’t know either of the men in
the front boat, but I saw suddenly that Buford was
one of the two in the other one.
Instead of waving he was swinging around in the
seat with something extended in his hands. I saw the
glint, then, of sunlight on steel and recognized it as a
rifle, the barrel suddenly foreshortening into nothing
as he brought it into line. He was directly behind the
boat being towed, and even as I was throwing myself
down and back in the awful realization that he was
going to shoot, I saw that the second boat was
carrying Shevlin.
He shot after I was on the ground and rolling. Mud
exploded in my face and then I heard the crack of
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