Chapter 11
ALAN RAN IN THE DARKNESS. HIS BREATH BURNED in his throat. His heart battered his rib cage, and sharp pains lanced through his chest. His body ached from the beating Big Eddie's boys had administered. The pain was more intense, because he had lost hope. He was not even running toward anything, now; he had nowhere to go.
All he could do was run from that nightmare, back there.
He took long, stiff-legged steps, and he looked over his shoulder.
He heard the sounds of cars firing to life, taking off, and then the rising wail of the first sirens. It was as if they screamed his name in the night.
The noise of the cars and the sirens brought the whole world awake, and they were on his tail, chasing him down, and the nightmare was complete now. His legs did not want to function, and the shadows no longer offered any place to hide.
He swore at himself because he was surrendering to panic, but he was unable to think clearly. Fear had taken over. He knew there was an answer to this hideous riddle, someone who knew him well had set him up, not once but twice, and they still worked to close the frame in on him.
Perhaps if he could think straight, he might figure the answer, he might hope to outthink the real killer, no matter who he was. But the killer sat calmly, unhurried, untroubled, everything working for him, and he was too tired and too sick to think at all.
He could only run...
He did not even hear the car approach behind him until it whipped past.
Hackles stood on his neck. He had to keep his mind alert. That car had not switched on its lights until it was almost upon him.
Instinctively, Alan flung himself from the walk into the deep shadows of a hedge. He stared after the racing car. He didn't fool himself. The driver had seen him running on this walk. He was lucky it was not a police car.
Unless he kept his eyes open, he might not be so lucky.
He waited there until the car turned at the nearest corner, tires screaming on the pavement. He pressed his fist against his mouth, running again.
The car raced around a corner behind him, like a persistent and mindless animal, playing with him before the kill. Its lights were off until it reached the intersection, then they were flared on and he was pinned in them like a bug on a wall.
The car came directly across the street toward him and slammed into the curb near him.
Alan tried to run, and couldn't. It was as if his legs had become elastic, stretching, but keeping him in the same place.
He jerked his head around and stared at the driver of the car.
His mouth sagged open. It was Nora. She glanced over her shoulder, listened for an instant to the cacophony of sirens, then she said. "Get in. Quick."
Still numbed with disbelief, Alan toppled into the car and sagged against the seat rest. Nora floored the accelerator and her big car lunged forward.
Alan lay with his head back, panting, with his mouth open.
Nora peered at his torn face, spoke in shock. "What happened to you?"
"Different things. All painful."
He watched the streets of Island Grove whip past. He wished Nora would drive slower. A cop stopping her would mean only a ticket for speeding to her, but it would mean a great deal more to him. But he was too tired, too troubled to say anything.
He turned his head slightly, gazing at that delicate, patrician profile against the night. Her beauty, her chill, her being here everything troubled him.
He said, "Nora. What are you doing out here this time of the morning?"
"Are you looking a gift horse in the mouth?"
"You told me to stay away. You said you couldn't help me. Why would you be out here looking for me?"
"I came looking for you, Alan," she said. Her voice lowered. "I tried to put you out of my mind. I couldn't do it. I worried about you, no matter how much I tried to warn myself to stay out of it. I couldn't. I found I couldn't turn my back on you, Alan."
Car lights approached, and a red blinker whirled above them.
"A police car." Alan whispered it in a panic he had never suspected those three words could ever arouse in him.
He slouched down into the seat on his spine, but Nora spoke sharply. "Sit up straight. Don't do anything that looks suspicious."
"I feel suspicious," Alan said. "If they stop us, I've had it."
"They won't stop us," she said with cold assurance. "I've been driving around out here for hours, and nobody has stopped me. Why should they now?"
Alan stared at the police car as it whipped past. He saw the patrolmen in it fling glances toward Nora's Caddy, but they didn't slow down.
He exhaled heavily.
He put his head back on the seat, trying to think. Nora's amazing appearance out here had bought him respite from the chase. It gave him a chance to think. But he could not think clearly. His mind kept coming back to Nora's being out here, and he couldn't put sense into it.
She whipped the big car up a freeway entrance ramp and Alan exhaled again. He read the lighted signs pointing toward L.A. The freeway was almost deserted. He told himself he should feel better, but somehow he did not.
He could not shake a terrible, persistent sense of wrong.
They did not speak on the drive downtown. Nora left the freeway and finally Alan asked. "Not that it matters, but where are you taking me?"
"To my place," Nora answered. "You'll be safe there."
He frowned, remembering that other time he had gone to her place. He did not say anything until she had parked her car in the apartment building garage and they were in the self-service elevator gliding upward to her penthouse.
"What about you, Nora? Will you be safe fooling around with me, taking chances like this? It made more sense when you warned me that your career was important, and a scandal would jeopardize it. I know what safety means to you. I know what your career means to you."
"Yes," she said cryptically, "I'm sure you do."
He frowned, following her out of the elevator cage and along the sleek corridor to the door of her apartment.
He watched her fit her key into the lock. He shoved his hand into his jacket pocket and his fingers struck something slick, smooth, fragile. He knew what it was without looking at it.
He followed Nora into her smartly appointed living loom, drawing her panties from his jacket pocket.
She turned from the door, saw the panties. Her face flushed. "Where did you get them?"
"You left them at my place. The night you came out there."
She bit her lip. "Oh, yes. I remember." She took them from him as if acutely embarrassed by the incident.
Alan frowned, watching her wad the panties into her fist. "You threw them behind a chair. I guess you couldn't find them when you started to dress. You must have been in a hurry."
Nora tilted her head and walked away from him. Clearly, she didn't want to discuss it. She glanced across her shoulder, motioning him to follow. They went along the corridor to her bedroom.
"Your poor face," Nora said. "You're hurt. You must be tired."
"I'm pretty beat."
"Why don't you go to bed for a while? Rest. We can talk later. Decide what to do."
"What is there to do? I can't prove I'm innocent."
"Maybe you're not helping your own case, running like this, Alan. Have you thought about that?"
"Good Lord are you suggesting I turn myself in now?"
She gave him a faint smile. "I don't know yet what might be best. We won't talk about it now. Wait until you're rested."
He gazed at her strangely. She smiled again, meaning to reassure him, he supposed, but there was an emptiness in the pit of his belly that would not be relieved, a feeling of apprehension that he could not explain. "I'll undress you," she said. "I'll put you to bed."
Alan watched her, scowling. She tossed her panties across the room, then she loosened his shirt, removing it. She undressed him and pushed him down on her silk-sheeted bed, naked.
She pulled the sheet over him. "You rest now," she said. "You're safe here."
He wondered why he did not feel safe. Nora turned down the rights, leaving only a small night lamp glowing. He should have fallen instantly to sleep, and yet he could not. His eyes burned, and that sense of wrong persisted.
He said, "Nora."
"Yes."
"I can't sleep yet."
"You must rest."
"Talk to me until I'm sleepy," he said. "I want you to lie down with me, talk to me."
She laughed throatily. "Are you sure you want to talk?"
He didn't answer. She hesitated a moment, and then he saw her standing before her mirrors, slowly removing her clothing.
Alan's mind fled back to that night she had come to his house for dinner, and had undressed for him, his first sight of those superb breasts, the sleek, flat belly, the rise at her thighs, the shapely-legs. He had been unable to believe she had brought that body out to him, just as he found it difficult to believe she wanted to give herself to him now. It just wasn't in character for her. He wasn't a VIP far from it, less now than he had been that night she came to his house. Now he was a fugitive, a hunted man, wanted for murder, the last kind of person on this earth that Nora would get near willingly-
He could not concentrate on her loveliness because this truth kept battering at him. She couldn't want him. Not now, not that night she came out to his house. It didn't make sense. She wanted something, all right, then and now, but not a fugitive like him, a man with no future.
Her future, her career, her security these were the most important drives in her life. She had bought into the big Duke & Thomson advertising agency some years ago because owning a part of the firm gave her an added sense of power, of strength.
Why would she jeopardize all this for him now?
He shook his head. He wasn't that much of a lover. She could find twenty better men by picking up her telephone and calling numbers listed in her date book.
Standing there now, Nora dropped away the last piece of her clothing. Her creamy, pink body glowed in the vague light. He saw the reflections of her in the dark mirrors: the incredible lines of that body, the sharp up-thrust of those high jutting breasts.
Even as she walked toward him, he found himself unable to make it compute. It didn't add up, and it bothered him so he could not even concentrate upon her nakedness, her availability.
He whispered it in the soft light, "Why?"
She appeared not to hear him. She paused for a moment beside the bed, turning herself slowly, letting him look at her nude beauty.
But he felt cold. He said, "What do you want, Nora? What do you really want?"
"Why, you silly boy. They have hurt you, haven't they? Did they drop you on your head? Can't you look at me and see what I want?" She caught the sheet and threw it from him. It billowed like a balloon for a moment and then settled over the foot of the bed. She gazed down at him. "I want you."
He didn't speak, lying chilled on her bed.
She sank down beside him. She stroked him with her hand. She said, disappointed, "What's the matter, darling? Don't you want me?"
"I told you. I can't figure you out."
She laughed lightly, laying her head on his stomach. "You still can't believe I'd want you? Is that it?"
"You want something," he said. "But I can't figure it."
"That's because you try to make something complicated of it, darling. Why can't you realize that I am a woman, and you're a very handsome, very virile man?"
"Does not compute," he said. He ran his hands through her rich, patiently coiffured hair. It was difficult to believe that she wanted this precisely-set hair mussed, even now, naked in a bed.
She moved her head on his bare skin, stroking him with her fingers. "You can't forget that I am a career woman, can you? Does that make me less than feminine to you, Alan?"
"I know what your career means to you. I know what security means to you. I can't see you putting these things in peril. Not for me. Not for any man, if you want the truth."
She laughed again. "You're right, darling, my whole life has been directed toward success, toward getting what I want. I suppose I had a better than normal girlhood. I had everything I wanted. My stepfather was insanely in love with me from the time I was thirteen, and wild with jealousy all the time I was in high school. But that town, the men I met, nothing was what I wanted. I wanted to know interesting, rich and famous people. People who created. Accomplished. People who lived exciting lives. My stepfather wouldn't let me alone, even after my mother died. I tried to tell him he had no claims on me he was not truly my father, and I wouldn't let him be my lover ... I ran away from him. I got into advertising. I have been successful. My career has been everything I wanted and I've never put it in jeopardy until now."
Alan stirred, sweating on the bed. "Suddenly some days ago you stopped acting like the remote, aloof career woman. You came out to Island Groves to see me. You even left your panties in my bedroom ... I don't know why, but this seems the last thing you'd do."
She laughed. "I just couldn't find them."
"No," he persisted, talking half to himself. "It just isn't like you to leave anything incriminating behind you ... even panties ... I tried to return them to you the next day, but you were back in character as the boss, and I couldn't do it."
"I don't want to talk about them."
"You never left any loose ends in your life did you?"
"I don't know." Her voice sounded odd. "What do you mean?"
He sighed, staring at the ceiling. His hands moved on her head, his fingers massaging behind her ears, along the nape of her neck. Her hair was wild about her head. He was certain she hated this disorder, this untidiness, even when she tried to ignore it.
He said it again, "What do you want from me, Nora?"
There was a brief silence. "Must we want something-each from the other something except what is natural between us right now?"
He exhaled. "That's just it. It doesn't seem natural. Doing it would be like making conversation-something beside the point."
She raised her head slightly. Her hair was snarled about her face. She forced a smile. "You're all mixed up. But I'll make you want it ... I know how to make you want it."
She sank forward upon him. and he caught his breath as she loved him. But even now when she moved in wild abandon, he thought of Connice, the way she had done this, loving to do it the difference it made. He could tell that Nora didn't love doing it, she didn't want to do it, but whatever she did want depended on her making him believe she liked it.
He caught her head, held her still. "Why don't we just talk a little while?"
She turned, her lips bruised, her face flushed. "Why, darling, what's the matter?"
"That's it, I don't know." He stared at her nudity, wondering why he felt a chill instead of desire. He had never seen a lovelier body than Nora's; it was-likely he never would. But either he'd had too much loving, not enough rest, or he was too tired, too scared, too troubled the fact was he could not respond to Nora's lovely nudity, nor all her uninhibited overtures.
He could not force himself to want her.
"You're tired," she whispered. She kissed along his belly, upward over his chest to his throat. "You close your eyes. Sleep. When you wake up, you'll feel more like it."
Nora pulled herself up beside him with her full, firm breasts suspended above his face. She stroked him gently, soothing him. The agony of weariness attacked him, and he shivered as if chilled.
"Rest," she said. "Sleep. You'll be all right ...
While you're sleeping, I'll get something to put on your poor, battered face ... you'll wake up feeling so much better. My poor darling, who did such a thing to you?"
"I went looking for the killer of Ira Festfsh," he said.
"Ira Festish? Who's he?"
"One of the people in those unsolved crimes I wrote about. I suppose you don't remember, but one of the syndicate hoods came to see me and told me to lay off the Festish murder. He was a lot more upset about it even than you were about the twenty-grand murder--and not nearly so pretty."
"Why should you go near those people?"
"In desperation. I was framed in Sherarn's murder. I know that. It finally boiled down to somebody who had such a guilty conscience they thought I was writing about them in those scripts. But except for the Festish case, it didn't make sense. We changed everything. If the murderer was a man in real life, we made him a woman, or changed the locale. If a woman was the killer, we changed it to a man like we did in the twenty-grand murder. Remember?"
"No. I don't remember," Nora said.
"What? You don't remember the twenty-grand murder case, after the way you bitched about it?" He stared at her. "The only suspect in the case was a woman when old man Brinkerhoff was killed. You have to remember. Twenty grand was stolen from him, and she'd left some article of clothing behind. Only we made the killer a man, and he left a pair of gloves in the car that burned in the canyon."
"No. I don't remember. Maybe I've had too much on my mind lately. I've been worried sick about you, darling ... and I'm still worried. You've got to rest." She got up. "I'll get you a couple of my sleeping pills."
He lay staring at the ceiling. He heard her go into the bathroom, open the medicine chest, run water in a glass.
She returned, unselfconscious in her nudity. She gave him the pills, the water. He drank them down.
"Now sleep," Nora said. "Stop worrying. Everything is going to be fine."
He lay down on the bed. She sank beside him, stroking his hair, pressing her warm breasts upon him. But her nude nearness could not eat through the sense of wrong that pervaded everything, and it seemed to him he was grasping at wisps of the truth, but then the pills went to work, and he sank into sleep, going deep and suddenly into darkness.
But even asleep, he could not rest. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. About everything, but especially about Nora's coming to Island Grove, finding him, bringing him here, and treating him with such solicitude. No matter how he tried to put logic in it, it didn't make sense.
In his sleep, he felt hot and uncomfortable. He felt as if he were lying on a red-hot bed of coals instead of sleek, cool sheets.
He fretted, turning. But he didn't bump against Nora's body, and even in his sleep, this seemed strange. She had been lying dose against him, and now she was gone. Gone? Where was she gone?
He tried to open his eyes, but the effect of the pills was too strong, he couldn't do it.
He felt as if his brain were swirling, around and around like the red stripes of a barber pole. He was frightened, unable to rest. He wanted to wake up. It was suddenly more than that. He was in terror, afraid to sleep in this place, and he wanted to open his eyes.
Only he could not do it.
He tried to cry out. He wanted to shout Nora's name, but he knew he was failing to do this, too. He merely made groaning sounds that were unintelligible, even to him. He was screaming Nora's name, but only inside his brain.
He felt himself sinking deeper into a warm morass of unconsciousness. Something kept screaming a warning in his brain. If he succumbed to this deeper sleep, he was lost. He could not say why. He only knew it was true.
He struggled on the bed, fighting as if against invisible bonds that held him down. He concentrated, sweating, and finally opened his eyes.
He was alone in the bedroom. The bedroom door stood half open. He heard something that was familiar and yet strange at the same time.
He did not know how long it was before he realized it was the sound of a telephone dial. Nora was dialing, calling someone. She had every right to use her own phone, and yet he was sure there was some sinister, terrible result in store for him if she completed that call.
He managed to swing his legs off the bed. He felt numb and half paralyzed, only partly awake. He took long shambling steps across to the door. He leaned against the jamb, staring out into the lighted living room.
Nora stood there, naked. She completed the dialing and waited as the phone rang. Someone must have answered, because Nora said, "Hello, is this the sheriff's office?"
Alan yelled. His voice rattled in the room when he shouted her name.
Nora wheeled around, trembling. She stared at him. Her face went gray. Her mouth sagged open. She almost dropped the receiver.
Alan lunged across the room, taking awkward, disjointed steps. He grabbed the receiver from her hand and threw it back in its cradle.
Then he caught her arm and hurled her away from the phone. She staggered and went toppling back to the couch.