Chapter 3
He had awakened in Shady Glen Sanitarium ... awakened to a wife and a new identity.
And now, in the Volkswagen bouncing off the Highland Avenue exit of the Hollywood Freeway, he sat up and opened his eyes.
Janis slanted a glance at him, reached across to pat his knee. "Home soon, baby. You've had a nice nap."
He didn't enlighten her. If she chose to think he'd been asleep, let her.
"When we get home, I'll mix a pitcher of martinis-if you want to get stoned, go ahead-then I'll cook you a steak, baked potato, and new green peas. And I've got fresh strawberries and shortcake already made. Everything you like, baby."
He grunted. Then he decided there was nothing to be gained by being uncivil. She was either responsible for his being in Shady Glen or she wasn't. Even if she was responsible, he would learn nothing by being raunchy. He said, "That sounds fine." Oddly enough, it did sound fine. All the items she had mentioned were his favorite foods.
She turned right on Sunset, drove out to the Strip and turned left. After a few blocks she wheeled the Volkswagen into an underground garage beneath a new apartment building, a towering structure of steel, concrete, and glass. Her apartment was on the fourth floor. It was luxurious; two bedrooms, a large kitchen, a sunken living room carpeted in a dull green as deep as uncut grass. The west side of the living room was all glass, commanding a view of the Pacific Ocean, Wade supposed, on a clear day. The building was on a hill and the view to the west was tremendous. The rent on the apartment had to be at least two hundred. Bart Evans-if there was anyone by that name-must earn good money.
On a record cabinet in one corner was a large, framed picture. Wade walked over and picked it up. It was a picture of him, full face, and slanting across one corner was the inscription: "To Janis, with all my love, Bart."
A roaring seemed to fill Wade's head. He couldn't recall ever having the picture made. To the best of his knowledge, the only picture ever taken of him had been for rodeo publicity purposes, and this certainly wasn't one of those. Yet the handwriting was his, or a remarkably clever forgery. Behind him Janis spoke, her voice filtering faintly through the roaring. "Remember when that was taken, baby? Just after your last trip back to New York."
He had never been in New York in his life. He set the picture down without answering. He stepped to the window and stared out at the panorama of greater Los Angeles, his forehead pressed against the cold glass. Then he felt the familiar lurch of vertigo and he had to turn away.
Janis was heading toward the kitchen. She smiled back over her shoulder. "I'm sure you'd like a quick shower, baby, and get into fresh clothes. Those you have on, I'm sure you'll never want to wear again. Why don't you toss them out into the hall and I'll give them to the Salvation Army or somebody? Hurry up now and I'll have those martinis ready."
The first bedroom down the hall was redolent with the mingled odors of perfumes, scented soaps, and the essence of woman. He had the impression of female clutter ... a profusion of bottles on the dresser, ashtrays stacked high with cigarette butts showing traces of pale lipstick, and through a half-open closet door, robes, nylon stockings, and dresses hanging. He pushed the door all the way open and saw nothing even remotely masculine.
The second bedroom was wholly different, almost monastic in its maleness. In the closet a row of suits, slacks, and sports jackets, a rack of conservative ties, a stand with shoes neatly aligned. And in bureau drawers, shirts, socks, and folded pajamas, studs and tie clasps, hair brushes and combs.
It gave him cause to wonder. Just how compatible were Mr. and Mrs. Evans? Separate bedrooms, neither encroaching on the other by so much as a stray sock or a pantie girdle. A cold marriage? A loveless (sexless) marriage? And yet there had been the promise of pending intimacy in the Volkswagen.
He was struck by another thought. Could Janis have set it up this way? Was she willing to play the game (whatever it was) only so far and no further? You have your bedroom, I have mine; stay in your bed and out of mine. Could that be it?
He was determined to find out before the evening was over. He was going to be the randiest male Janis had ever encountered. After all, he'd just spent a month on a whack farm, hadn't he? What could be more randy than a man who had just spent approximately thirty nights either in a strait jacket or locked in a cell-like room, the nearest female on another floor?
He stripped down to the skin and tossed every item into the hall as instructed. He took a fast shower and came back to get dressed., Then he had another shock. Everything, shorts, socks, shirts, even the shoes, fit him perfectly; as perfectly as though each piece had been handmade to his measurements. Yet he was willing to swear he'd never seen a single garment before, much less worn one. And they weren't new; all had been worn at least once or twice. And search as he might he couldn't find cowboy boots, Levi's, or a string tie. Had he ever ridden a bucking horse? His hip, as he straightened up from searching a dark corner of the closet, told him that he had.
When he entered the living room, the Grand Canyon Suite was on the stereo. It was his favorite piece of music. Now how could she possibly know that a cowboy liked anything but cowboy music? Did Bart Evans like the Grand Canyon Suite, too?
Janis had on a postage-stamp apron and was busily engaged with dinner. She paused long enough to give him an incandescent smile. She was a beautiful, desirable woman, and Wade knew they would have presented a tranquil portrait of domesticity to an outsider.
The martinis were good, at least as good as the last ones he'd had, the batch Claire had brought along in the thermos. The dinner was good, too, though the steak was a little charred for his taste.
Janis had an explanation for that. "I know you like your steak rare, Bart. I'm sorry. Your coming home has got me all nervous, I guess."
The clothes, the music, the way he liked his steak-how could she know all those things about him if he wasn't really Bart Evans? One explanation did occur to him. During those early, drugged days at Shady Glen, he could have been slipped a jolt of Pentothal, then quizzed exhaustively as to his personal habits. But that would mean Dr. Hunter was in on it. And it didn't explain why the clothes fit him so well.
Over coffee, more relaxed now, he said cautiously, "You know I still don't remember you ... or any of this?"
"Dr. Hunter told me. But it'll all come back to you, baby. I'm sure it will."
"What about my job? I must've had one. How does my employer take to my being out all this time?"
"Oh, you don't work. Not at a job. Not since we came to California." Janis smiled across the table at him. "You have a good income from investments, stocks and bonds, and real estate." She raised and lowered a hand in a helpless gesture. "Don't ask me for details.
I'm stupid about business. But I do know we've never wanted for money."
"I'm independently wealthy then?" he asked with a skeptical grin.
"I don't know about that, but I know there's always money when we need it."
He thought of the fifty-some dollars he'd left hidden in the bureau drawer at his apartment and it was all he could do to keep from laughing aloud. He wondered if the money was still there. He said, "But you mentioned something about trips. To New York and so forth?"
"That's where we moved from about six months ago. You still have real estate investments there. You've taken several trips back to check on them."
"Why did ... we move here if everything's back there?"
"That was for me, baby." Her look was tender. "I had to get out of those awful winters, one cold right after another, and you moved without a murmur."
She looked as healthy as a young animal. The more he heard, the less sense any of it made. "How did it happen? What exactly happened to have me committed?" He added with a straight face, "Oh, is it too unpleasant to talik about?"
"It is unpleasant, Bart, but you're entitled to know what happened, if you don't remember." She peered at him closely. "You're sure you don't remember?" she asked suspiciously.
"I remember a lot of things," he said roughly, "but what I remember doesn't jibe with what Dr. Hunter says is the truth."
"Well..." she sighed, "you tried to kill me."
He stared. "Kill you!"
"Yes. You'd been acting strangely for some time. Moody, hard to get along with, jealous." She smiled. "You must know how silly that is. I've never given you cause ... but you don't remember, do you? I keep forgetting."
Watching the play of emotion across her lovely face, feeling her knee touch his inadvertently, or perhaps not so inadvertently, he thought it would be very easy to be jealous of this woman.
"Well, on this particular night you didn't come home for dinner. ... You'd taken to staying out late, which wasn't like you at all. You'd been drinking when you came home and you started in on me right away, talking wild and accusing me of all sorts of crazy things. Before I knew it, you had me by the throat and were pounding my head against the wall. I managed to pick up a lamp and knock you out with it. I knew about Dr. Hunter through a friend. I called him and he sent Jocko over right away. He gave you a shot before you came to and then took you away. Poor darling." She reached across the table to stroke the back of his hand with just her fingertips. "The doctor says this fantasy of yours about finding a woman murdered is a defense your subconscious has thrown up to compensate for your trying to kill me...."
He threw her hand off. "I don't believe it!" He'd made a promise to himself to keep his temper reined in, but this was too much, too damned much! "I don't believe a word of it!"
She blinked at him. "What, baby?"
He brought his fist crashing down on the table, causing the dishes to dance. A cup rolled off the edge and smashed on the floor. "It's all some kind of a screwy concoction. I don't know the purpose behind it but ... my name is Wade Carson, not Bart Evans, and I never saw you before I woke up on that whack farm." He was glaring at her, his breath coming in gasps.
Her fingers plucked at her blouse in agitation, and Wade saw real fear behind her eyes. She said sorrowfully, "I guess you're having a relapse. Dr. Hunter warned me that might happen. He told me to call him and have you...."
She didn't voice the word, yet it hung in the air between them, an implied threat. Recommitted. Back to the loony bin. That would really tear it. Wade fought for control. After a little while, he said in a low voice, "No, Janis, don't do that. I'm sorry. It's just that...."
"I don't want to, baby. Believe me, it's the last thing in this world I want to do." Her smile was timid. "You won't try to kill me again?"
He started to laugh. He choked it off when it threatened to turn into hysteria. "No, I won't try to kill you. You have my solemn promise."
She seemed to sag with relief. Then she straightened up and smiled brightly. Yet he glimpsed the fear still lingering behind her eyes. She jumped to her feet. "Why don't you go on to bed, baby, while I clean up the kitchen ? You must be dead." She began moving about the kitchen, her movements jerky.
He watched her for a moment. Either she was a superb actress or he was crazy. He said dully, "Yes, I think I will go to bed."
She nodded without looking at him and he left the kitchen quickly.
He undressed without turning on a light. He took a pair of pajamas out of the chest of drawers, then changed his mind and returned them. He didn't like sleeping in the raw, yet the thought of sleeping in pajamas belonging to a man he wasn't even sure existed didn't appeal to him. He didn't need any favors from Bart Evans!
He stood naked at the window, moodily smoking a cigarette. He stared down at the street below, stubbornly fighting back the vertigo. He wasn't a prisoner here. What was to prevent him from just walking out? But then he would never know; for the rest of his life he would never know. And there was Claire. ... If her death wasn't some nightmare conjured up by a sick mind, he was wanted for murder. He couldn't run from that for the rest of his life. Running was what had got him into this in the first place. If he had stayed and talked to that cop, Lieutenant Brewer, none of this would have happened. By fleeing he had damned himself as much as if he'd run through the streets, shouting, "I killed Claire Duncan!"
For some time, aware of it only with a tiny part of his mind, he had been watching someone on the street below, smoking a cigarette. At first he had thought it was his own reflection in the window but there was someone down there. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. The closest street light was a half block away and the figure was only a shadow alongside the trunk of a palm tree; only the cigarette ember, winking like a red eye, was visible.
Wade snorted impatiently, turned away to crush out his cigarette, and climbed into bed. The bed was pure luxury, a far cry from the hard, narrow one at Shady Glen. He was tired and should be sleepy, but he wasn't. He was in a strange place with an identity every instinct in him refused to accept and with a wife who was a complete stranger.
Then he heard her footsteps in the hall. They paused at his door. The knob turned, the door opened, letting in a faint light from the hall, and Janis said, "Bart? Are you asleep, baby?"
His first inclination was not to answer. Then he sighed softly and said, "No, I'm not asleep."
She closed the door and came across to the bed. There was enough light coming through the window to show the outlines of her figure, the pale oval of her face. She had changed to an ankle-length robe that gave off a crackly sound as she walked.
Belatedly, Wade remembered his naked state, and he pulled a blanket across his loins. She stopped close enough for him to reach out and touch her. A warmth came from her and a scent of musk.
"You feeling better now?" Her voice was husky.
"I'm all right. I'm fine now."
"I wondered ... is there anything I can do for you, baby?"
Sudden desire struck him. His arousal was abrupt and fierce. He decided to play her game, whatever it was. He brushed the blanket away and said, "Just what did you have in mind?"
He heard her indrawn breath, and her voice pulsed with excitement. "That ... that will do nicely. Oh, yes, baby, very nicely indeed."
She did something to the robe and it fell open. She had nothing on underneath. Her body was pale ivory in the faint light, all curves and hollows, all shadowed mystery. Her fine breasts rose and fell unevenly.
He reached out a hand slowly, very slowly, and touched her, fingertips gently caressing the silken flesh of her inner thigh. He moved his hand higher and made a cradle of it. She gasped aloud, "Ah-h, baby!" She swayed, seemed about to fall. She caught his hand and pressed it to her, then she did fall, coming down on her knees beside him on the bed.
He raised upon one elbow, but she placed both hands flat on his chest and pushed him back down. "You lie still. You've had a bad time of it, baby, so let me. Let me do everything!"
He resisted briefly. He didn't need any favors from her. But then, what the hell? If that was the way she wanted it, why not relax and enjoy it? He relaxed and prepared to enjoy it.
With a supple motion she straddled him, a knee on each side of him, the robe fanning out on each side like giant wings. Wade placed a hand on each hip, thumbs extended, and ran them up, the thumbs trailing across her stomach, drumming across her ribs and on up to the tumescent nipples. He cupped a breast in each hand and rotated his thumbs across the nipples.
Janis shivered, sighs of pleasure coming from her. She dipped her face toward him. She drew first one erect nipple, then the other, back and forth across his chest in a tracery of desire. She leaned farther down. She found the throbbing pulse at the base of his throat and used her mouth like a suction cup. Wade stiffened, his heels drumming on the bed. And all the while her fingers danced over him, caressing, stroking, her touch as light as a feather.
Finally she raised her face. "Baby? Now."
"Can't you tell?"
"Well ... yes." Her laughter was sudden and rich and full. "But I didn't want to rush you into anything."
She moved around, raised herself and shimmied down. "Ah-h, God! Heaven, sweet heaven!"
And then she seemed to go crazy. Her pelvis whipped at him in a frenzy. Her yelps of delight sounded like the cries of a small animal in distress.
Wade gave himself up to sensation, closing his mind to everything else. Nothing was required of him. Only when his ecstasy began did he raise himself to meet her, matching her frantic rhythm with difficulty.
The vague thought had been in his mind that she might forget herself in sexual rapture and drop a clue that would help unlock some of the mystery. She didn't. Or if she did, Wade was himself too caught up in passion to notice it at that particular time.
Toward the end, she had to catch hold of his shoulders to anchor herself, her fingers like steel claws, and she leaned down to his mouth, pinning his head to the bed. Then she ripped her mouth away and arched her head back, a scream escaping her as release struck them simultaneously. They clung together, shuddering again and again. They ended up in a tangle of limbs, bodies oiled with perspiration, hearts pounding, lungs laboring for breath. Janis extricated herself almost at once and got out of bed. She left the room without a word, face averted as though in shame.
After the door closed behind her Wade felt around for a cigarette, got up, lit it and walked to the window and looked down.
Suddenly he stiffened. The shadow, the winking eye of the cigarette, was still by the tree trunk. There was no longer any doubt; someone was watching the apartment building. Of course, whoever it was could be spying on any of the hundred or so tenants in the building, but Wade was convinced that the watcher was interested in one Wade Carson. Or one Bart Evans.