Chapter 5

Alan stepped out of the police car. A patrolman and Detective Grissom stood on the walk, and Sevidge and Renner followed close behind him.

Alan straightened, staring at the field at the end of Summit Street. This was some of the last property remaining in Island Groves, and Realtor Tillinghast puffed out his round cheeks and called it an ideal building site and upped its price each morning.

The place was a wooded playground for the neighborhood children. Alan paused on the walk, surrounded by the law.

Sevidge said, "Where did you bury the gun?"

Alan met his gaze. They might frame him for Sherarn's murder but he wasn't going to make it easy for them. He said, "Where did you find it?"

"You best cooperate, Taylor," Renner said. "We can be tough or easy. It's up to you."

Alan exhaled, still looking at Sevidge. "You'll never be able to get me to say where I buried that gun. I don't know where you found it. I didn't bury it."

Renner swore, but Sevidge said, "We can let that go for now. What we came out here for, Taylor, is a reenactment. We want you to show us where you crossed your yard, how you got into Sheram's house the whole bit."

Alan shook his head helplessly. He didn't bother saying anything.

Sevidge touched his elbow, urging him along the street toward his house. They walked slowly, the patrolman and the three detectives surrounding him.

Neighbors came out of the houses to stare in silence at the small, tense parade.

Mothers sent smaller children inside. The bolder ones inched forward into the parkways. They leaned against cars, all staring at Alan. None of them spoke.

Alan sweated. He had the sudden feeling that he had turned a drab green, or sprouted horns. The eyes fixed on him were unblinking as if he were a creature from outer space.

The whole world had gone crazy.

Nothing made any sense, certainly not these ordinary people suddenly ostracizing him, forgetting that until a few days ago he had been one of them, living among them. This was no longer true. They peered at him as if he had two heads.

"All right," Sevidge said. "Through your yard."

Alan turned, walking across the grass of his yard. The house was closed, it already had an abandoned look. He felt nothing, no relation, no connection with this house like all the other houses on Summit Street. There was the flower bed he had cultivated.

And beyond was the pretty neighbor who had inspired him to work in his own yard because she worked in hers. She wore her everyday costume, bikini bra, skin-tight shorts. She was barefooted. Her red-tinted hair reached almost to her bare shoulders. Her bulbous breasts strained the fabric of that undersized halter. Her breasts were a peach-tinted brightness. She was some guy's wife some guy who had no idea just what he possessed. She was given everything beauty could bestow for that little while in eternity. She came out into her yard and the neighboring men ravished her in their thoughts, and until recently, Alan had been her chief ravisher. He had spoken to her only from a distance. She always gave him a smile that was sexy because everything she did was sexy. And now even that slight pleasure was gone.

She belonged to some distant past when he had lived in a sane world, peopled by other sane beings.

He stared at her for a moment now, but she seemed to blur in his vision, as if she were being whirled away crazily from him.

He saw Tess Simpson standing on her steps, tight-kneed, tight-lipped, her narrowed eyes stabbing at him. She was a Lesbian, he thought, what did he care about her?

He cared nothing for her, except that she had paved part of the way toward the gas chamber with her lies or perhaps to her, they were not lies. Maybe she believed everything she said. Or then again, maybe she simply hated men and never missed a chance to shaft one of them.

He sighed heavily and walked around the side of his house. The grass was looking shabby, weeds showing up in it.. He could not care.

He no longer existed in a world where such things mattered.

They reached the alley. Some child had carelessly thrown a bike against some garbage cans, dogs played on nearby lawns.

"All right," Sevidge said. "Hold it."

Alan stopped. He stared at the bike, only a few feet from him. Gazing at it made his heart beat faster. Wheels. A chance to run. Run? Where?

He stared at his hands locked together before him with handcuffs.

"We want a reenactment," Sevidge said. "We're prepared to stay here the rest of the day to get one. We don't get it, we come back tomorrow, start over."

He jerked' his head, stationing Renner and Grissom at the corners of the yard.

"Show us how you did it," Sevidge ordered.

"Impossible," Alan said. "I didn't kill him."

Sevidge's gray face showed his effort to control his rage. "We're staying right here, Taylor, until we get what we want." He jerked his head at the patrolman, who stepped forward and unlocked the handcuffs.

Alan stood massaging his wrists for a moment. He could hardly breathe. This was as near to freedom as he'd been since six o'clock the other night. Perhaps as near as he'd ever come again.

"You came across your yard," Sevidge said. "Then how did you get in his house? Where'd you go when you came across your yard?"

Alan breathed through his parted mouth. He moved his gaze across the neighboring yards. The one beyond Sheram's place was on an incline to the front street.

He closed his eyes for a moment, held his breath, trying to calm down.

"I'm waiting," Sevidge said.

"All right." Finally Alan nodded. He stared at Sevidge, "You won't have it any other way, will you?"

"That's right. I hope you're getting smart enough to see that."

"Sure," Alan said. It was like plotting out one of his TV scripts, only a million times more urgent because his life depended on it. "I came out of the kitchen. I saw the light over there in Miss Simpson's kitchen-"

He paused, seeing Sevidge nod, buying it. This was the way it had to be. Now they were getting somewhere.

"Then I ran across the alley and ducked behind these garbage cans here "

Alan lunged at the bike. He threw his leg over the seat, caught the handle bars and shoved off. He was pedaling before Sevidge or the others could react.

He turned hard right, going on the sharp incline that led across the yard to the street a hundred feet away.

He heard Sevidge yell behind him. Then they were all shouting at each other and people were yelling all along the alley.

Sevidge ran into the yard behind him. Sevidge yelled, "Stop!"

Alan bent lower over the bike handles, pedaling furiously.

The pistol cracked behind him, the shot going high, Sevidge's warning as required by police manuals. The next shot wasn't going high, and Alan felt a place burning in his back where Sevidge's bullet would enter.

He wheeled hard to the left, going around the front of the house as the second shot was fired. The bullet chewed away a corner of the building.

The yard sloped sharply downward to the walk and Alan held on, rolling down to it. He heard Sevidge and Renner shouting, heard them running across the yards back there.

He turned the bike hard left, going at full speed along the walk. At the first corner he turned again, going toward the freeway and the entrances to Island Groves.

He rode across a yard, went into an alley, rode along it, doubled back across another yard, going toward the shopping center and yet knowing this was the last place he wanted to show himself.

He pedaled as fast as he could. Breath burned in his throat but he was not conscious of being tired. He was too scared to think of being tired.

He went down an alley, across a yard, along a street. He swore inwardly because he had no goal.

There was nothing in his mind except the churning desire to escape from the nightmare behind him.

He was not running toward anything now, only running from those sirens that were croaking to life in the distance.

He went across another yard, and people were pausing, watching him in his frantic flight. Some of them even laughed and nodded at each other another California health nut trying to work up his own coronary.

He pedaled faster. Let them think what they liked, as long as they didn't try to stop him.

He whipped the bike across a yard, into an alley, across another yard and into a street.

He stared ahead of him, horror building in the pit of his taut-drawn belly. Dead end street.

He had run as far as he could. Along the street on one side were the Island Groves homes. On the other side was a four-foot chain-link fence, the high embankment, and above was the freeway.

He could not, for the moment, stop pedaling. Even when he no longer knew what to do, he still had to try to run.

He finally slammed on the brakes inches from the dead-end sign. He glanced wildly across his shoulder, sick with fear at what he would see.

For the moment, the street was empty behind him.

He caught the bike in both hands, hefted it, raised it and tossed it over the chain link fence. He set himself then and scrambled over the mesh wires, feeling them rip at his shirt, at the skin of his arms and hands.

He fell over beside the bike. For a moment, he stayed on his hands and knees, breathing savagely.

He took up the bike then and ran, pushing it beside him as he went up the steep enbankment to the thunderous mainstream of the freeway.

He looked over his shoulder. The police cars were not yet in sight.

Alan rolled the bicycle over the hump to the paved shoulder of the freeway. Cars whipped past him. His heart sank. He was in the outgoing stream of traffic.

All he could think was that he had to get into downtown Los Angeles. The suburbs were no place for a wanted man. If he found any safety, it would be as one more faceless individual in impersonal crowds.

Car horns blared as the inside-lane motorists woke up to a man's standing on the road shoulder with a bicycle. They yelled and swore at him. They whipped past, the wind in passage stinging his face.

Alan got on the bike. The backs of his legs ached now, the muscles stretched taut. He no longer cared about personal discomfort, physical pain.

He was free.

For the moment at least, he was away from Sevidge and Renner and those bars. If only he could find some place where he could be safe long enough to slow down and think he had to think ... He had stumbled into this nightmare world. He had to think his way out of it.

This was insane. He had escaped four cops, on a bicycle. He was riding the wrong way on the wild traffic pattern of the freeway.

He had nowhere to go, and yet he could not stop running.

And what made it crazier than anything else, he noticed for the first time that he was riding a girl's bicycle. No wonder horns wailed and people laughed and pointed...

Alan stood in the darkness across the street from Nora's apartment for a long time.

He refused to consider the morality of taking his woes, like mud on his shoes, to Nora. Right or wrong no longer had anything to do with it.

He was like a frightened fox with the hunters yelling in his ears.

The building was sleek and new. It was polished metal, glass and stone, looking almost as aloof and remote from the sweated everyday world as Nora herself.

He looked down at his trembling hands. His legs felt weak. He needed a place to rest, if just for a little while.

He glanced both ways along the night street. A woman walked a small dog. A car rolled along slowly in the darkness. A newspaper fluttered along, driven like a tumbleweed in the wind.

He stepped out of the shadows, straightened his shoulders, drew a deep breath and boldly crossed the street.

He could feel the courage seeping out of him like sawdust, before he reached the self-service elevator in the elegant lobby.

He stepped into the elevator and pressed the penthouse button. The cage closed on him and he glided smoothly upward.

Ascending, he sweated. Suppose she had company? What if she were not home?

He closed his jaws tautly, refusing to consider any of these alternatives. She had to be there. She had to be alone.

She was.

He rang the doorbell, and after what seemed an eternity, Nora opened the door.

She wore a sheer negligee and a transparent gown beneath it. Darkness was suggested at her thighs, the rise and thrust of her breasts were outlined against the fabric. Memory gorged up in him, and despite his fear and his weariness, he found himself recalling the wild delights in her arms, the glowing heat of her nakedness, the unbridled depths of her passions. He wanted her, in that sudden instant.

She didn't want him.

Her eyes darkened, and her face went pale. For a moment, he was afraid she was going to slam the door in his face.

She didn't, but it wasn't because she didn't want to.

"Good Lord, Nora," he whispered. "You don't believe that crap about me, do you? You don't believe

I'm a murderer?"

It took her some seconds to gain control over whatever was going on inside her, but she shook her head. "No. Of course not."

Alan wavered slightly, standing there.

She didn't ask him in. Her gaze moved over him, the sweated shirt, the chain-fence rips in his sleeves, the distracted look in his eyes.

"I know I look a wreck," he said.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?"

"Nora may I come in? Please?"

She hesitated, biting on her lip. Then she nodded and stepped back, holding the door open for him.

He walked past her into the white-on-white living room. It was the size of a tennis court, it seemed to him in his desperate weariness. It opened through double doors to a terrace that overlooked Los Angeles and the valley that stretched, multi-colored, to distant hills.

He looked about him, feeling more alien than ever. He had never been here before, but it looked in character. A motion-picture director would have designed this setting for a woman like Nora.

Only maybe there were no women like Nora.

He heard Nora close the door behind him. He had the wild urge to beg her to lock it, bar it, put furniture against it. Then he warned himself to relax. Nobody was going to look for him up here. Nora lived a world removed from the troubles he had been embroiled in.

She remained standing near the door. Her voice was cold. "You haven't told me yet what you want."

He turned slowly, staring at her. She was blurred before him. He had never been so tired. He was afraid he was going to fall.

"I know it's a hell of a thing for me to do to come here."

"Yes."

He winced as though she'd struck him. Then he saw the Los Angeles newspapers, the headlines about the murder, the escape, the pictures of Sheram sprawled on the floor of his living room.

"I had no right-"

"No."

"...after the position I put you in at Duke & Thomson."

"The hell with D & T," she said. She came toward him and he bit back the wild craving she stirred in him, the sight of that incomparable body, the memory of the way she could use it when she was roused, when she wanted to.

Clearly, at this moment, sex was the farthest thought from her mind.

"I couldn't think of anywhere to go," he said.

"Why did you think of me?" she inquired icily.

"Good Lord, Nora I was beat. Tired. Hungry. I had nowhere to go. Why shouldn't I think of you?"

Nora came close to him, peering at him in that odd, piercing way.

She scowled. "Are you suggesting there's some reason why I ought to help you, Alan?"

"What?"

"You suggest I'm obligated to take you in--. "

"Good Lord nothing of the kind. I need help, that's all."

"Is it?"

He shook his head, unable to believe she could remain so coldly impersonal, so aloof to his peril.

He said, "Forget it. I'll clear out. You're right, I shouldn't have come here. Sorry. Sorry I upset you."

She gazed at him, then turned, watching him go toward the door. Finally she said, her voice softening just slightly, "I was stunned to see you, Alan."

He paused. "I said it. I had no right coming here."

"Why did you?"

He turned. "I told you. I had nowhere to go. I was tired. Too scared to think, I guess."

"Did you have some idea I could help you?"

"If I did, you've destroyed it. Forget it."

"Why did you think I could help you?"

"I don't know. Maybe I figured they wouldn't look for me here not for a while. Maybe I needed a place to rest to stop long enough so I could think. I didn't kill that man, Nora. But nobody will believe me. I've got to think. I can't think when I'm running."

"Is that all you want?"

"What?"

"A place to rest a little while? Then you'll clear out?"

"Of course. You don't think T want to drag you into this mess, do you?"

"I don't know. I didn't know when I saw you standing outside my door looking like a wild man. I wasn't sure ... but I can tell you this, Alan I can't help you."

"All right."

"I've worked hard to get where I am. I'm at the top at D & T, but a scandal the sort of thing you're messed up in could ruin me. My job stays on the line, all the time. I have to be careful."

"And harboring fugitives isn't being careful."

"I can't do it, Alan. I can't take the chance."

He nodded. "All right. I won't ask anything of you. A drink maybe. Let me-lie down somewhere, just until I can catch my breath. Will you do that?"

She gazed at him a moment. "I'll do that much. No more, Alan. I'm sorry. Don't push it."

He looked at her as if he had never seen her before. Maybe he never had.

Suddenly, Nora was no longer the girl who had flailed in violent nakedness on his bed. She was like one of those cold beings who peopled the nightmare in which he found himself.

She turned her face to him but he could not even see into her eyes.

He lay across the bed in Nora's guest room. She had turned back the spread, and he lay on the tinted-silk sheets, and this made it all more nightmarish. A few hours ago he'd lain in a prison cell now, a fugitive, he sank into sweet-scented silk sheets on a soft, deep mattress.

Nora had been kinder than he'd any reason to expect her to be. She was right. She owed him nothing. She had her reputation, her career to consider, and it was a felony to harbor known criminals. And he was a known criminal. She had the headlines to prove it.

She'd fed him cold chicken, potato salad, hot coffee and salt rye bread. He'd lain down across this unbelievably soft bed and she had brought a cool cloth, bathed his face.

She'd said, "Remember, Alan, I can't help you. No more than this."

"Yes."

"Rest, now."

"Thanks." He watched her above him, through a mist of weariness. He saw the way her breasts suspended over him like ripe fruit past readiness for plucking. He stared at the darkened triangle at her thighs.

She must have seen the lust in his face. She ignored it. She said, "I'll wake you in a few hours."

"All right."

"And when you leave this time, Alan, don't come back."

"All right, Nora."

"If you do, I'll call the police. I'll have to."

He forgot his rage of desire then, seeing the chilled figure, her eyes flat and empty of compassion, her face set against him.

She had closed one more door behind him, cutting him off forever from that world of sanity he once had known.

He shivered, chilled with a sense of cosmic loneliness in her warm apartment.

When she was gone he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He felt the sting of tears. He had wanted her with such passion that night in his bed he was unable to forget. How could she close her mind to all that had happened between them, so easily and completely?

In her mind, it was dead it was gone, it had never happened at all.

He didn't know how long he'd lain there, dozing, waking, slipping into sleep, into a nightmare, and struggling up from it, like a man bursting from a drowning pool.

He heard the whisper of sound.

He opened his eyes, lying tense in the darkness. The apartment was unlighted. The bedroom door had barely opened.

He sighed as he recognized Nora's lovely form gliding through. No mistaking the elegance of that form.

She came toward the bed in the darkness. He said, "Is it time to go?"

"Not yet." She snapped on the bed lamp.

The rosy glow illuminated the room. But Alan was unable to pull his gaze from Nora's body.

She was naked. The quick urgency of her approach set him shivering with anticipation. He gazed at her loveliness, involuntarily reached out his hand, pushing his fingers to the heated dampness at her thighs.

She gasped with pleasure. She wanted no slow build-up. He did not know how long she had lain in that other room thinking about this, but she wanted it quickly, and for the moment, at least, she was unable to think about anything else.

"Wild," he whispered.

He held out his arms to her. She came down upon the bed to him.

Nora cried out his name in a breathless whimper and pressed her nude body upon his.

He kissed her and his hands were filled with the distilled heat of her thighs, the full beauty of her breasts. She wriggled slightly, adjusting her legs and fitting herself upon him.

Her hands moved between them, unbuttoning his shirt, removing his trousers, reaching for him. He heard her pleased sigh as her hand closed on him. She held him. Her fingers closed, moving, and her heated breath burned his cheek. "I want you," she whispered. "Now. Now."

He worked himself free of his shirt and trousers, pinned under the resilient swells and curves of her heated body. Then he closed his hands on the rise of her buttocks, clasping the sleek globes in his fingers until she shivered all over.

"Incredible," he whispered.

Her hands trembled in her anxiety to carry him to her, to fit herself to him. She lifted herself slightly, watching what she was doing with hungry eyes.

"Lord," he whispered.

"Is this what you want?"

"Lord, yes."

"It's worth everything, isn't it."

"Yes."

"Then do it, darling. Make it last make it last for both of us, angel forever. Oh, do it!"

It was amazing that she had forgotten the coldness with which she greeted him, the fear and the contempt for a man homeless, hated and in trouble. She gasped out words to him that had a fiery meaning, whispered in the heat of what they were doing. The words had no place in the vocabulary of the successful young career woman, but they were natural and right and exciting at this moment.

He thought wildly that at times like this the two times he had had Nora when she was a helpless lover that she was a woman who was created for this sort of thing and had to fight against it all the time.

She didn't fight against her most natural instincts now. She didn't care about anything except what he was doing to her. She was so tense that her leg muscles strained against her flesh, her toes were pointed, outstretched.

"Hurry!"

She clasped him to her on the bed. Churning excitement caught them up, whirling them as if they were in some violent vortex. She trembled, shivering as if shattered by the force of her passions.

She flailed her body uncontrollably. The bed-lamp flared like the sun. He thrust and she rolled her head back and forth in accompaniment with his working. They were lifted to a raging moment of sweet agony, and went spinning downward in wild fury.

Alan heard her gasp out her satisfaction, pleasure and delight.

Then she sagged away from him. He stared down at her naked body, sprawled on the bed. She was instantly asleep, exhausted. She had worked herself to such a pitch that she was overwhelmed by what happened to her.

He stayed bent over her for some moments on the bed, looking at her, remembering the swell of breasts, the warmth of thighs, with the sickening thought that he might never see her again like this.

He didn't disturb her. He got up slowly, the backs of his legs weak, and he dressed. Then he turned off the light and got out of there.

He was running again, only now he had no idea where he was going, broke and alone, and her door closed against him.