Case Pending - Dell Shannon (16 page)

She appeared now from the kitchen, jamming an ancient
felt hat over her tight sausage curls. "I was just leavin’.
There you go, switchin’ on lights allovera place—your bill must
be somethin’ sinful! You found out yet who that dead man in the
yards was?"

He admitted they had not; and yes, the forces of law
were so unreasonable as to have arraigned the society beauty for
murder, even after hearing all the excellent reasons she had for
shooting her husband. He looked at Bertha thoughtfully (the average
mind?) and said, "Do me a favor, and pretend you’re taking one
of those word-association tests, you know, I throw a word at you and
you say the first thing that comes into your head—"

"I know, it’s psychological? She looked
interested.

"So, I say doll to you—what do you think of?"

"Witches," said Bertha. "I just saw a
movie about it last night. The witch takes and makes this doll and
names it and all, and sticks this big pin right through—"

"I get the general idea," said Mendoza
sadly. "Thanks very much, that’ll do." Witches: that was
all they needed! When Bertha had slammed the door cheerfully after
herself, he took off his coat, brought in the kitchen step-stool, and
spent five minutes persuading Bast that it was safe to trust her
descent to him. That was one puzzle he would never, probably, solve:
she had no trouble getting up there, but hadn’t yet found out how
to get down. As usual, she emitted terrified yells as he backed down
the steps, and, released, instantly assumed the haughty
sangfroid
of the never-out-of-countenance sophisticate. She turned her back on
him and studied one black paw admiringly before beginning to wash it.
There were times Mendoza thought he liked cats because, like himself,
they were all great egotists.

"Witches," he
said again to himself, and laughed.

* * *

"And you put that coat away tidy where it
belongs! On a hanger, not just anyhow. Clothes cost money, how many
times I got to tell you, take care of what we got, no tellin’ when
we can get new."

"All right," said Marty. He got out of bed
and picked up the corduroy jacket. He couldn’t take down a hanger
and put the jacket on it and hang it over the rod, all with his eyes
shut, but he did it fast and he tried not to look down at the floor.
She was fussing round the room behind him.

But he couldn’t help seeing it, even if he didn’t
look right at it, and anyway, he thought miserably, even if he never
opened the closet door, never had to see it, it didn’t change
anything—the thing was still there, he’d still know about it.

So did she, and for another reason he only
half-understood himself. That was partly why he got the door shut
again quick. She might know, alright, but she was different—if she
didn’t see it, she could keep from thinking about it. He felt like
he was in two separate parts, about that, the way he felt about a lot
of things lately—twin Martys, like looking in a mirror. He didn’t
see how she could, but in a funny kind of way he didn’t want to
make her have to see it—long as she could do like that.

He got back in bed and pulled the covers up. It was
just like something was pulling him right in half, like two big black
monster-shapes were using him for tug of war. And he had to just lie
there, he couldn’t do anything, because she wouldn’t. And even if
she was wrong, she was his Ma, and—and—

She said from the door, "You be real good now,
no horsing round, you go right to sleep." She sounded just like
always.

A funny idea slid into his mind then, the first
minute of lying there in the dark—alone with the secret. He
wondered if she’d forgot all about it, if maybe now she could look
right at it and never really see it at all. Like it was
invisible—because she wanted it to be.

But even in the dark with the door shut, he could
still see it.

The box had gone a long while ago, got stepped on,
and the big piece of thin white fancy paper and the pink shiny ribbon
had got all crumpled and spoiled pretty soon, from handling .... The
doll wasn’t new any more either. It sat in there on the closet
floor, leaning up against the wall, even when he shut his eyes tight
he could see it. It had been awful pretty when it was new, even if it
was just a silly girl’s thing. It wasn’t pretty any more. The
spangly pink dress was all stained and torn, and most of the lace was
tom off the underwear, and one of the arms was pulled loose. The gold
curls had got all tangled and some pulled right off, and one of the
blue eyes with real lashes had been poked right in so there was just
a black hole there and you could hear the eye sort of rattle around
inside when you—The other eye still shut when the doll was laid
down.

Marty always had a funny hollow feeling when he heard
that eye rattling round inside. You’d think sometime it’d fall
out, but it never did. He’d been lying here, felt like hours, still
as he could, in the dark. This was the worst time of all, and lately
it had been getting harder and harder to let go, and pretty soon be
asleep. Because in the dark, it seemed like the secret was somehow as
big as the whole room, so he couldn’t breathe, so he felt he had to
get out and run and run and tell everybody—yell it as loud as he
could.

He lay flat, very still, but he could hear his heart
going thud-thud-thud, very fast. You were supposed to say a prayer
when you went to bed, she’d made him learn it when he was just a
little kid and when they lived over on Tappan and he’d gone to the
Methodist Sunday school, it’d been up on the wall there in the
Sunday school room, the words sewed onto cloth some fancy
old-fashioned way and flowers around them, in a gold frame. He could
see that now sort of in his mind, red and blue flowers and the words
in four lines. It was the only real prayer he knew by heart and he
was afraid to say it any more, because if you said any of it you had
to say it all and it might be worse than bad luck to say the end of
it.
If I should die before I
—

Most of the time, like at school, anyway in daylight,
he could stand it. But this was the bad time, alone with it. A lot of
feelings were churning around inside him, and they didn’t exactly
go away other times, they were still there but outside things helped
to push them deeper inside, sort of—school and baseball practice
and being with other kids and all. But like this in the dark, they
got on top of him—a lot of bad feelings, but the biggest and worst
of all was being just plain scared. There were times, like yesterday,
when he thought she was too; and then again, seemed like, she made up
her mind so hard that nothing so awful like that could be so, for her
it just wasn’t. Maybe grownups could do that. He sure wished he
could. Like looking right at that doll and never remembering, never
thinking—

Marty felt shameful tears pricking behind his eyes,
but the fear receded a little in him for the upsurge of resentment at
her unfairness .... She’d told a lie, a lie, he knew it was a lie,
he wasn’t crazy, was he?—if Dad had been there she’d never have
dared say he was the one telling lies, but—what could you do when a
grown-up, your own Ma—

"
I bought it
,"
she’d said, and he thought he remembered it was one of the times
she sounded afraid too .... "I did so buy it, Marty, you’re
just pretendin’ not to remember!—you got to remember, all that
money—I saved it up, and I bought it y
esterday
—"
About the money wasn’t a lie; she had, but the rest wasn’t so, he
remembered.

What he remembered made terrible pictures in his
mind, now he put it all together.

The fear that was never very far away now, even at
school—outside—came creeping over him again like a cold hand
feeling.

The doll. It had been awful pretty—then.

He wished he could forget that picture, all it said
under it, in the newspaper. She hadn’t got it this time, she
wouldn’t talk or listen about anything to do with it now—seemed
like something just made him get that paper, and it had cost ten
cents too. Elena. It was a pretty name. But he wished he could stop
seeing the picture because it was the same girl, he’d known it
would be but it was worse knowing for real sure—the picture—and
the very worst about it was something silly, but somehow terrible
too.
The picture that looked like that doll
when it’d been new
. Before the eye had—

He thought he heard a noise over by the closet door.
It wasn’t really, he told himself. It wasn’t.

In California they didn’t hang people for murder,
they had a gas chamber instead. It sounded even worse, a thing maybe
like a big iron safe and with pipes that—

But other people, they shouldn’t get killed like
that—even if he didn’t know, didn’t mean—even if Ma— It
wasn’t right. Dad would say so too, whatever it meant, even
something awful like the gas. Somebody’d ought to know, and right
off too, before it ever happened again. But Ma—

And that was a noise by the closet door.

Primitive physical fear took him in what seemed like
one leap across the room and out to where it was light, in the
parlor.

She had an old shirt in her lap she’d been mending,
the needle still stuck in it, but she was just sitting there not
doing anything. "What’s the matter with you now?" she
asked dully.

He tried to stop shaking, stop his teeth chattering.
"P-please, Ma, can I—can I sleep out here on the sofa, I—I—I
don’t like the dark, it—"

She looked at him awhile and then said, "You’re
a big boy, be scared of the dark."

"
Please, Ma—"

"I guess, if you want," she said in almost
a whisper. She went in and got the blanket off his bed.

He lay on the sofa, the blanket tucked around him and
face turned to the arm but still thankfully aware of the comforting
light. And after a while a kind of idea started to come to him—about
a way he might do . . . .

Because somebody ought to—and she’d never
let—she’d made him promise on the Bible, something awful would
happen if you broke that kind of promise, but if he didn’t say
anything, just—

It was a frightening, tempting, awful idea. He didn’t
see how he could, he didn’t know if he’d dare. And
where
?—it
had to be a place where—

Danny said cops were all dumb. But Marty didn’t
think that could be right, because his dad must know more than Danny,
and Dad had always said, Policemen, they’re your friends, you go to
them for help, you’re ever in trouble.

Trouble . . . . he felt the slow hot tears sliding
down into the sofa cushion, fumbled blind and furtive for the
handkerchief in his pajama pocket. The gas chamber. I never meant
nothing bad—

But you had to do what was
right, no matter what. Dad always said, and anyway it was a thing you
just knew inside.

* * *

Morgan had got used to the oddly schizophrenic
sensation—that was the word for it, wouldn’t it be, for feeling
split in halves?—more or less. He wondered if everybody who’d
ever planned or done something criminal had the feeling: probably
not. The visible Morgan, acting much as usual (at least he hoped so),
going about his job—and the inside one, the one with the secret.

That one was still, in a detached way, feeling
slightly surprised at this Morgan who was showing such unexpected
capacity for cool planning. (The Morgan who’d been kicked around
just once too often and this time was fighting back.)The original
Morgan was still uneasy about the whole thing, but quite frankly, he
realized, not from any moral viewpoint: just about Morgan’s
personal safety, the danger of being found out.

He wrote down the address as the man read it out to
him. "How’s that spelled?—it’s a new one to me."

"T-A-P-P-A-N. Over past Washington some’eres,
I think."

"Well, thanks very much," said Morgan,
putting his notebook away.

"I still can’t hardly believe it," said
the clerk worriedly. "Lindstrom, doing a thing like that! Last
man in the world, I’d’ve said—why, he thought the world of his
wife and the boy. Never missed a lodge meeting, you know, and I don’t
ever remember talkin’ with him he didn’t brag on what good grades
his boy got at school, all like that. One of the steady kind, that
was Lindstrom—no world-beater, but, you know, steady."

"
That so?" said Morgan. He lit a cigarette.
He felt a kind of remote interest in this Lindstrom thing, no more,
but it constituted his main lifeline, and it must appear that he’d
been working hard on it, been thinking of nothing else all today.

"Never any complaints on him, he always did an
honest day’s work, I heard that from a dozen fellows been on the
job with him. He was working for Staines Contracting, like I said. He
was a member here for three years, always paid his dues regular. We
did figure it was sort of funny, way he quit his job and quit coming
to meetings all of a sudden. When his dues didn’t come in, we sent
a letter, but it come back. But things come up in a hurry sometimes,
sickness or something. You know. Last thing in the world I’d’ve
expected a guy like Lindstrom to do—walk out on his family."
He shook his head.