John D MacDonald - The Executioners (aka Cape Fear) Read online

  "Now that I've depressed you," he said with a heartiness he did not feel, "I can get over onto the bright side. Even though good old Dorrity, Stetch and Bowden do corporation and estate work and handle tax matters, I do have friends in the police force. In our tidy little city of one hundred and twenty-five thousand, Sam Bowden is reasonably well known, and possibly respected. Enough so that there seems to be an idea that some day I should run for something."

  "Please don't."

  "I'm trying to say that I'm one of the boys. And the boys take care of their own. Yesterday I had lunch with Charlie Hopper, our bright young city attorney. I told him the story."

  "And I'll bet you made it sound like some kind of a joke."

  "My hands weren't trembling and I didn't look haunted, but I think I made him see that I was concerned. Charlie didn't seem to think it would be a special problem. He took down the name and description. I believe the dainty phrase he used was to have the boys 'put the roust on him." That seems to mean that the officers of the law find so many ways on the books to lean heavily on an undesirable citizen that he departs for more comfortable areas."

  "But how could we be sure he leaves, and how would we know he wouldn't sneak back?"

  "I wish you hadn't asked that question, honey.

  That's what I've been thinking about."

  "Why don't they put him in jail?"

  "What for? My God, it would be nice if you could do that, wouldn't it? An entirely new legal system. Jail people for what they might do. New Essex goes totalitarian. Honey, listen to me. I always use the light touch, I guess, when I talk about the law business. All we moderns shy away from any hint of dedication. But I believe in the law. It's a creaking, shambling, infuriating structure. There are inequities in it. Sometimes I wonder how our system of law manages to survive. But at its base, it's an ethical structure. It is based on the inviolability of the freedom of every citizen. And it works a hell of a lot more often than it doesnt. A lot of very little people have been trying to whittle it into a new shape during these mid-years of our century, but the stubborn old monster refuses to be altered. Behind all the crowded calendars and the overworked judges and the unworkable legislation is a solid framework of equity under the law. And I like it.

  I live it. I like it the way a man might like an old house. It's drafty and it creaks and it's hell to heat, but the timbers are as honest as the day they were put up.

  So maybe it is the essence of my philosophy that this Cady thing has to be handled within the law. If the law can't protect us, then I'm dedicated to a myth, and I better wake up."

  "I guess I have to love you the way you are. Or maybe because you're the way you are, old barrister.

  We females are more opportunistic. I would be capable of taking that dear rifle of yours and shooting him right off our stone wall if he ever comes back."

  "You think you could. Shouldn't these two old parties try the water with the young 'uns?"

  "All right. But don't start kidding Pike again. You curl him into painful knots."

  "I'm just being the jolly father of the girl friend."

  They walked toward the water. Carol looked up at him and said, "Don't get out of touch again, Sam.

  Please. Let me know what goes on."

  "I'll let you know. And don't worry. I'm just superstitiously afraid because we have it so good."

  "We have it very good."

  As they stepped into the water, Nancy was clambering up over the stern of the Sweet Sioux. Water droplets sparkled on her bare shoulders. Her hips, so recently lanky, had begun to swell into woman-lines.

  She balanced herself and dived off cleanly.

  Carol touched Sam's arm.

  "That girl. How old was she?"

  "Fourteen." He looked into Carol's eyes. He took her wrist and held it tightly.

  "Look now. Stop any of that kind of thinking. Stop it now."

  "But you've thought it too."

  "Just a moment, when you drew your little conclusion. And we'll both discard that sickening little thought right now."

  "Yes, sir." She smiled. But the smile was not attached in the proper and usual way. They held the look a moment longer, and then waded in. He swam out with furious energy, but he could not swim away from the sticky little tentacle of fear that had just fastened itself around his heart.

  CHAPTER TWO.

  BOW DEN was in his office the following Tuesday morning, going over with a young lawyer named Johnny Karick, who had been with Dorrity, Stetch and Bowden less than a year a trustee report from the New Essex Bank and Trust Company when Charlie Hopper phoned and said he was in the neighborhood and would it be convenient if he dropped in for a couple of minutes.

  Sam finished up with Johnny quickly and sent him back to his cubicle to write a summary of the report.

  He called Alice on the switchboard and reception desk to send Mr. Hopper back as soon as he arrived.

  Charlie came in a few minutes later and closed the office door behind him. He was a man in his early thirties, with a good-humored and ugly face, considerable energy and ambition, and a calculatedly indolent manner.

  He sat down, reached for his cigarettes and said, "Dark paneling, hushed voices, files that go all the way back to the Code of Hammurabi. And the rich smell and soft rustling of money. A working clown like me should come in on tiptoe. In between times I forget how you suave jokers make this business look almost respectable."

  "You'd die of boredom, Charlie. I spend half my time putting nice sharp points on my pencils."

  Charlie sighed.

  "I'm out there in the hurly-burly of attending all meetings of the Common Council, and the Zoning Board and the Planning Board. Honest sweat, Samuel. Say, why don't you ever stop by Gil Brady's Courthouse Tavern any more?"

  "Haven't had any courthouse business lately. And that's a sign of efficiency."

  "I know. I know. Well, I started the wheels rolling on your old buddy. He's living in a rooming house at 211 Jaekel Street, near the corner of Market. He checked in on May fifteenth. He's paid ahead until the end of June. This being only the eleventh, he had it in his mind to stay awhile. Our boys in blue check the registrations down there frequently. He drives a gray Chevy sedan about eight years old. West Virginia plates. They plucked him out of a Market Street bar yesterday afternoon. Captain Mark Dutton says he made no fuss. Very mild and patient about the whole thing."

  "Did they let him go?"

  "They either have, or they're about to. They checked Kansas and found out he was released last September. They made him explain where he got money and where he got the car. Then they checked back on that. He comes from a little hill town near Charleston, West Virginia. When he was released he went back there. His brother had been working in Charleston and holding on to the home place. When Max came back, they sold it and split. He's got about three thousand bucks left and he carries it in a money belt. Charleston cleared him and Washington cleared him. His car registration and license are in order.

  They searched the car and his room. No gun. Nothing out of line. So they had to let him go."

  "Did he give any reason for coming here?"

  "Button handled it the way we decided he should.

  Your name wasn't brought into it. Cady said he liked the looks of the town. Dutton told me he was very cool, very plausible."

  "Did you make Dutton understand the situation?"

  "I don't know. I think so. Dutton doesn't want that type drifting in any more than you do. So they'll keep an eye on him. If he spits on the sidewalk it will cost him fifty dollars. If he drives one mile an hour over the limit, it will cost him. They'll pick him up on a D-and-D when they see him coming out of a bar. He'll catch on.

  He'll move along. They always do."

  "Charlie, I appreciate what you've done. I really do.

  But I have the feeling he isn't going to scare."

  Hopper stubbed out his cigarette.

  "Your nerves bad?"

  "Maybe. And maybe I did
n't act worried enough when we had lunch Friday. I think he's psycho."

  "If so, Dutton didn't catch it. What do you think he wants to do?"

  "I don't know. I have the feeling he wants to do something to hurt me the worst way he can. When you've got a wife and three kids and you live in the country, it can make you a little shaky." He told Charlie the incident of the parked car and the man on the stone wall. The fact that Carol remembered it being a gray car made it seem more likely that it had been Cady.

  "Maybe he just wants to give you a bad case of the jumps."

  Sam forced a smile.

  "He's doing fine, then."

  "Maybe you can try something else, Sam. Do you know the Apex people?"

  "Yes, of course. We've used them."

  "It's a national organization and in some places they're weak, but they've got some good people here, I'm thinking of one boy in particular. Sievers, his name is. He's well trained. CIC. background, I think. And police work too. He's rough as a cob and cold as a snake. It'll cost you, but it might be a good place to spend money. Do you know the manager over there?"

  "Anderson. Yes."

  "Call him up and see if he can give you Sievers."

  "I think I'll do that."

  "Have you got Cadys address?"

  "I wrote it down. Two-eleven Jaekel Street near the corner of Market."

  "Right."

  Sievers came to the office at four-thirty. He sat quietly and listened to Sam's account. He was a square-headed, gray-faced man who could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty. There was a bulge of softness over his belt. His hands were very large and very white. His hair was no color, and his eyes were bored slate. He made no unnecessary movements. He sat as still as a tomb and listened and made Sam feel as though he were being an alarmist.

  "Mr. Anderson gave you the rates?" Sievers asked in a faraway voice.

  "Yes, he did. And I promised to mail him a check right away."

  "How long do you want Cady covered?"

  "I don't know. I want... an outside opinion as to whether he's planning to harm me or my family."

  "We don't read minds."

  Sam felt his face get hot.

  "I realize that. And I'm not a hysterical woman, Sievers. It had occurred to me that by watching him you might get some clues as to what he has in mind. I want to know if he comes out to my home."

  "And if he does?"

  "Give him as much leeway as you think safe. It would help if we could get enough evidence of his intention to convict him."

  "How do you want the reports?"

  "Verbal reports will be adequate, Sievers. Can you start right away?"

  Sievers shrugged. It was his first gesture of any kind.

  "I've started already."

  The rain stopped just before Sam left the office that Tuesday night. The evening sun came out as he edged his way through traffic and turned onto Route 18. The route followed the lake shore for five miles through a summer resort area that was becoming more built up each year. Then it turned southwest toward the village of Harper, eight miles away, traveling through rolling farm land and past large new housing developments.

  He drove into the village and around two sides of the central village square and, at the light, turned right up Milton Road Hill to his home just beyond the village limits. They had looked for a long time before they found the farmhouse in 1950, and hesitated a long time over the price. And had several estimates made on what it would cost to modernize it. But both he and Carol knew they were trapped. They had fallen in love with the old house. It sat on ten acres of farm land, all that was left of the original acreage. There were elms and oaks and a line of poplars. All the front windows overlooked a far vista of gentle hills.

  The architect and the contractor had done superb jobs. The basic house was of brick painted white and was set well back from the road. The long drive was on the right-hand side of the house as you faced it, and went back to what had once been and was still called the barn, even though it was primarily to house the Ford wagon and Carol's doughty and honorable and purposeful MG. The barn was of brick too, painted white. The upstairs, which had been a hayloft, was the children's area. Marilyn, never without a whimper of alarm, could climb the wall ladder, but had to be carried down, tail furled, eyes rolling.

  As Sam turned in his driveway he found himself wishing for the first time that they had close neighbors. They could see the peak of the roof of the Turner house, and some farms on the far hill slopes, but that was all. There were many houses along the road, but widely spaced. There were enough houses so that at times it seemed as though the entire population of the central school descended on the Bowden place on weekends and holidays. But no houses very close.

  He drove into the barn. Marilyn came dancing, scampering and smiling in, pleading for the expected attention. Sam, as he patted her, made a bicycle count and saw that, of the three of them, only Bucky was home. It made him uneasy to think of Nancy and Jamie out on the roads. It was always a worry because of the traffic. But this was an extra worry. Yet he did not see how he could restrict them to the area.

  Carol came halfway across the back yard to the barn, met him and kissed him and said, "Did you hear from Charlie?"

  "Yes. And I meant to call you, but I thought it could wait."

  "Good news?"

  "Pretty good. It's a long story." He stared at her.

  "You're looking ominously dressed up, woman. I hope there isnt a party I've forgotten about."

  "Oh, this? This was for morale. I was worried, so I got all fancied up. I generally do anyway, remember?

  All the happy marriage articles tell you to get dressed up for your husband every evening."

  "But not this much."

  They went in through the kitchen. He made a tall drink and took it upstairs with him to sip while he showered and changed. When he was out of the shower, Carol came and sat on the edge of her bed and listened to his account of the talk with Charlie and the employment of Sievers, "I wish he'd done something they could arrest him for, but anyway, I'm glad about Sievers. Does he look... efficient?"

  "I wouldn't know. He isnt the warmest guy anybody ever met. Charlie seems to think he's tops."

  "Charlie would know, wouldn't he?"

  "Charlie would know. Stop looking so strained, baby. The wheels are in motion."

  "Isn't it going to be terribly expensive?"

  "Not too bad," he lied.

  "I'm going to throw that blue shirt away some day."

  He buttoned it, grinning at her, and said, "When this goes, I go."

  "It's frightful!"

  "I know. Where are the kids?"

  "Bucky is in his room. He and Andy are designing an airplane, they say. Jamie is at the Turners', and he is invited to stay for dinner. Nancy ought to be back from the village any minute."

  "Is she with anybody?"

  "She and Sandra went in on their bikes."

  He went over to the bureau and took another swallow of his drink and set the glass down. He looked at Carol. She smiled.

  "I guess we can't help it, darling.

  The early settlers had it all the time. Indians and animals. That's what it's like. Like an animal hiding back there in the woods near the creek."

  He kissed her forehead.

  "It'll be over soon."

  "It better be. I was hungry this noon, but all of a sudden I couldn't swallow. And I wanted to go down to the school and look at each one of them. But I didn't. I dug weeds in an absolute frenzy until the bus let them off in front of the house."

  He could see the drive from the bedroom window and he saw Nancy cycling toward the barn, turning to wave and yell something back over her shoulder at someone out of sight. Sandra, probably. She wore blue-jean shorts and a red blouse.

  "There's ole Nance," he said, "right on the dot."

  "She is, to use her own words, in a wild rage at Pike. There seems to be new talent at the school.

  Something with almost plati
num hair. So now Pike is a thod."

  "Thod?"

  "It was new to me too. It seems to be a combination clod and thud. The translation was given with vast impatience. Oh, Afotherrr!"

  "I'll accept that. Pike Foster is a thod. Beyond any question. He's a phase I'll be glad to see ended. He's too meaty and muscular for a fifteen-year-old boy. And when I try to make conversation with him he blushes and stares at me and gives with the most horribly vacant laugh I've ever heard."