THE KILLER, page 4
After she had vomited out the door, her eyes and voice cleared a little. He could distinguish the regional drawl when she asked, “Who are you, anyway?”
“A bloody Samaritan. How do we reach your home, can you tell me?”
“I don't know you,” she mumbled plaintively, but she indicated a southbound highway and they drove out into the dark countryside. She leaned forward, her nose almost against the windshield, squinting at the lightless farmhouses passing by. “No,” she said to each one. After several miles, she said, “Yes.”
Farrow pulled up but there was no habitation in sight, only a clump of cypress trees growing close to the road. He could smell water and he guessed they were near the border of the huge Okefenokee Swamp he'd seen on his maps. The night out here was peaceful and uncivilized, rustling pleasantly and sounding of katydids and owls. He said, “I can't leave you out here alone.”
The girl opened the door and slid clumsily out of the car, leaving his rain cape on the seat. “It's just around the bend.” Her head ducked, voice muffled with shame. “I daren't go in the front way. I have to sneak.”
He looked at her pretty, half-clad body. “I suppose you know best.”
She took off her high-heeled slippers. “No, I don't know best. But you been right nice to me, anyway.” She turned away in her stocking feet, carrying her slippers. Farrow watched her move off through the tall grass, fireflies milling about the pale slim shape of her back and the half-slip. Her footing seemed surer in the undergrowth, as if she were accustomed to it. He called, “Good night,” but she didn't answer, and presently she vanished like a nymph among the cypress.
He turned the Lincoln around and drove back to the hotel. The garage Negro ventured a small sly smile. Farrow went up to his room on the third floor. He had left the door unlocked again, and a stranger sat in the easy chair, smoking a cigarette.
“Hi there,” the stranger said without getting up. “Been waiting for you.” He grinned, showing two gold teeth on one side. He was a big blond young man, beefily handsome. He was dressed sportily and on his upper lip he had cultivated a dainty mustache of silky blond hairs that were scarcely visible. It looked like a line of frost above his mouth. The hat on the back of his head had a red and green feather in the band.
“Now I've arrived,” said Farrow. He didn't like his visitor's clever blue eyes or his gritty un-Southern voice. “So I do perceive.” The blond young man laughed at nothing. “I'm the lad from down the hall, Three-nine-teen. Where is she?”
“She?” Farrow saw the bundle in the stranger's lap. A black taffeta dress, rolled carelessly.
“You bet. My girl friend. Here I had her all primed, and you, you dog, made off with her.” Still the grin. “That's according to the lad down in the garage.”
Farrow reflected stonily about the garage attendant. “A dollar doesn't buy much, does it?”
“What about my girl? Going to bring her back?”
“No, I'm not going to bring her back. She asked me to take her home and I did.”
“Ooh.” The blond man grimaced disgustedly, grinned some more. “One hell of a note. Not that I blame you, understand. But I never thought she'd pull a runout just when she was getting going good. Just shows you never can tell about the female sex.”
They regarded each other. Farrow said coldly, “Sorry to spoil your plans.” All he felt was a wistful disappointment with the girl's taste.
“Well, hell, what's a night's work, more or less?” The blond man punched out his cigarette in the ash tray, stretched to his feet. “So we'll just call it a continued story. What happened was I went down for another bottle and when I came back the bed was empty. Anyway, I still got the bottle.” He grinned down at the dress he held. “And part of her clothes. Here, you might as well have this too.” He tossed the dress to Farrow.
Farrow caught the garment with both hands. The throwing motion brought the stranger a step closer, and his fist lashed out deftly. Farrow opened his mouth at the explosion above his ear and sank to his knees. Dimly he saw the plaited leather blackjack dangling from the man's hand. The gritty voice said, “Maybe next time you'll mind your own goddamn business.” The blackjack rang above his ear again and Farrow collapsed to his hands and knees. He stayed that way a moment before he tumbled forward into blackness.
His face was cushioned in something soft that had a feminine smell. When he opened his eyes he found it was the black taffeta dress. Farrow struggled upright, head aching. The stranger was gone and the—room door was closed. Farrow didn't know how long he had been unconscious. He looked in the bureau mirror, at the swollen mass over his left ear. It hadn't bled and he doubted that it would; he didn't bruise easily. But his face was crimson with rage.
He flung the dress into his suitcase and then groped deeper. His belongings had been disarranged a little, but nothing was missing. His big hands began to shake with this additional anger, that his possessions had been tampered with. Muttering incoherently to himself, he drew out his .38 automatic, his snake-killing pistol, and pumped a cartridge into the chamber. He buckled its belt and holster around his waist under his tweed coat. With the coat buttoned the gun didn't show too much.
He marched down the corridor to Room 319 and rapped at the door. No light showed; no one answered. Grimly, he strode down the stairs and routed out the night clerk. The clerk scratched his head. “Nobody in Three-nineteen now. We had a fellow from up North—Chicago—in there, but he checked out about an hour ago.” He made sucking sounds over his file cards. “By name of Sam Augustine. That who you looking for?”
“I believe so,” Farrow growled. “Thank you.” He went back upstairs and sat on his bed holding his head. The throbbing made thinking difficult. He didn't know how to go about finding Sam Augustine, and all he could hope was that he'd come across him accidentally.
He lay back and tried to sleep. But the distant pounding of a night-shift lumber mill crept into his head like a drum. He cursed it and finally went downstairs to the garage and got out the Lincoln again.
He drove south for the second time that night. He had no trouble finding the peaceful spot where he'd let out the girl. He parked off the road and estimated the weather and unpacked a blanket from the car's trunk. He spread it alongside the looming cypress grove and rolled up in it.
Staring up at the lonely sky, Farrow felt as if he'd come home. He listened to the owls at hunt and, wondered if the girl might not reappear as she had vanished, a slim-hipped desirable dream drifting out of the whispering trees. Suddenly the past week was unreal and the desire he'd felt for the helpless girl was least real of all. Even the stars, diamond chips on velvet, were strangers. He fell asleep with his hand on his gun.
Chapter Five. WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 9:00 A.M.
A SHORT GENTLE rain woke him at dawn. The hot sun came out immediately. Farrow's first act was to examine the tender spot above his ear. He decided it wouldn't be noticeable. He breakfasted on some tinned goods in the car, shaved at a rivulet in the cypress grove, and then sat in the back seat of the Lincoln, sedulously cleaning his rifles. He wanted to give the Bocock family time to do their morning chores.
At nine o'clock, having stored his pistol and holster belt in the car's glove compartment, Farrow sauntered out onto the highway and hailed a produce truck coining from Waycross. The driver, a sallow youngster chewing tobacco, thought he was joking at first. Then he said, “You've parked your car on Bocock land, mister. The farm itself is just around the bend. You'll see a postbox says Campbell Grey Bocock on it.”
“Thank you.” When the truck had pulled off, Farrow turned around and stared wonderingly at the cypress grove. Here he had brought the drunken Ingram girl home—to Bocock property. He had spent the night on it. He shook his head, puzzled, as he drove around the bend to the postbox.
He could see the farmhouse from the road. It was a newly painted white frame box with a pitched roof and a veranda, far nicer than the news reports had led him to believe. He estimated it had four rooms on each side of the dogtrot, the open-end tunnel through the middle of the house. The dwelling sat on low brick pilings amid about four acres of cultivation. No more than a half acre was devoted to any one crop. As Farrow drove into the lane, a grove behind the farmhouse came into view, with several rows of whitewashed box hives.
A thick lazy drawl said, “Hold up there a minute.” Farrow braked the car. He was at the end of the lane, fifty yards from the house. He looked around for the speaker. A small skinny Negro had been squatting behind a screen of tobacco plants and now he got up and poked the twin barrels of a shotgun in Farrow's direction. Two leather leashes were wrapped around his left wrist, leashes strained tight as they held back a pair of vicious-looking beagles. The dogs didn't growl but their fangs were bared and ready.
Farrow kept his hands in sight. He said, “Good morning. I've come to see Mr. and Mrs. Bocock.”
“I'm Des,” the Negro said. “Get out so I can look at you better.” Farrow carefully let himself out of the car and the two men looked at each other. Farrow thought the black, with his wiry frame and lean shanks, would make an excellent bearer.
“You was foolish to come here,” Des said. “I know you're the man been causing us trouble.” He whistled sharply. From among the beehives in the grove of tupelo trees another man came running. He pulled off his thick gloves as he came and then the netted hat that protected his face and neck from stings. He was an elderly white man, gaunt and leathery, with bushy white hair and a mouth distended by false teeth. And from the farmhouse itself emerged a big-busted powerful woman of about the same age, wiping her reddish hands on her apron as she crossed the veranda.
She stared at Farrow grimly while the man from the beehives closed in. He stopped several paces away and stuck his thumbs in his overall pockets and looked Farrow up and down. Then, without turning his head or shifting his yellowish eyes, he called to the woman on the veranda, “I think we got him, Mother!”
Farrow said, “I'm afraid you've made a mistake. I've come here from—”
“Shut your mouth,” slurred the bee man. “Mother's saying something.” He called, “What did you say?”
The woman on the porch appeared to be listening to someone within the house. Then she shouted, “Marget says no, Daddy.”
Des murmured, “Then he ain't the one, after all.” He lowered the shotgun and clucked to the dogs. They subsided watchfully. The elderly man wiped his hands on his work gloves. He nodded to Farrow. “I apologize for telling you to shut your mouth. I reckon we've acted poorly and through no fault of yours. Can I help you locate anybody you're looking for?”
“Perhaps your name is Bocock.”
“I'm C. G. Bocock.” The yellowish eyes had frozen over “Clel's daddy. Might I ask if, you're another law man?”
“My name is Jacob Farrow. I'm a journalist.'
Farrow was not practiced at lying; even as he spoke it seemed preposterous that anyone would believe him. But the elder Bocock grinned slowly and then straightened his round shoulders to shake hands formally. He drawled, “Come into the house, Mr. Farrow. It's our pleasure and my wife is probably dying of curiosity by now.”
Des settled down behind the tobacco plants, again on guard. Farrow and Clel Bocock's father walked to the house and up onto the porch. The mother waited there, formidably, her fat freckled arms folded. She was broad of face and body, taller than her husband, with sandy gray hair bunned in back. Farrow looked at her and saw Clel Bocock's eyes, deep and magnetic, and Clel Bocock's full-lipped mouth. When Farrow was introduced, she smiled genially and it was the same crooked smile.
Farrow said he was from Reuters. “Roy-ters,” she repeated. She didn't understand, but she wasn't going to ask what it was. He added quickly that is was the British news agency.
Her round face beamed with delight. “British! I wondered why you're so different from the others been hanging around here. So now Clel has like to have got himself internationally famous. Come in, come in, please.”
There was no question about whether the Bococks would discuss their son. They were childishly proud of Clel. Farrow, an utter stranger, became an honored guest as soon as he'd said he was a newspaperman. Mother Bocock ushered him into the cool dogtrot and opened the first screen door to the left. “Come along, Daddy. Did you tell Mr. Farrow we're sorry for what happened with Des? We thought you might be a meddler.”
“Or a cop,” said Daddy Bocock softly. “Neither kind is welcome on our land.”
The living room was neat and dim and full of respectable old furniture. “Please take the big chair,” urged Mother Bocock. “We ain't people to make trouble, but there's a stranger has been pestering Marget, she says. We been hoping he'd show his face out here. A big man with a mustache, Mr. Farrow, like you. I hope you excuse our mistake. Marget, we got company!”
Across the room, the girl stood stiffly by a window-. She was sober this morning and her tawny yellow hair was combed impeccably to her shoulders. Her dark gray eyes, apprehensive but not afraid, clung to Farrow's. He nodded solemnly and sat down as soon as she sank primly into a straight chair. They couldn't keep their eyes off one another and Farrow thought he remembered every line of her full-breasted body under her cotton print frock. He said, “How do you do, Miss . . .” Then he waited for somebody to fill in the information.
Mother Bocock did it. “Mr. Farrow, this is another ~ Mrs. Bocock. This is Marget, Clel's wife.”
He blinked but no one noticed it aside from the girl. She flushed faintly but greeted him politely. It was plain that she remembered last night. Farrow guessed that she hadn't told the Bococks about that drunken adventure. But he couldn't make sense of her actions. She had apparently claimed to have been annoyed by Sam Augustine, a big man with a mustache.
Yet last night she—Clel Bocock's wife—had been romping in a hotel room with the Chicago man. Why?
Mother Bocock noticed Farrow's scrutiny. She chuckled heartily, settling in a rocker. “I reckon you're surprised to meet Marget, Mr. Farrow. I reckon you've read those worthless made-up lies of some of the other reporters, about her being a child bride and the like. Lord, she was eighteen when Clel married her. And she's an Ingram from Folkston.” From the way she said it, it meant a great deal.
“Judge Ingram's daughter,” Daddy Bocock added. His false teeth clicked slightly as he talked in his soft fierce voice. “We resent some of the things that have been written about us, Mr. Farrow, although the stories have done right well by my son, which is as it should be. But none of us is white trash or share-croppers, as you might have read. Marget is a daughter of Judge Ingram, who used to have a place down the road. She and Clel grew up together, mostly.”
Marget smiled, a little woodenly. “I'm sure that Mr. Farrow didn't come all this way to hear about me.”
“Might as well git it right,” Mother Bocock said stubbornly. “We don't want folks in foreign countries reading the wrong things about us. We ain't share-croppers, Mr. Farrow. Bococks have always owned this land.”
“Finest bee farm this side of Waycross,” said Daddy Bocock. “Forty hives making the best tupelo-blossom honey in Ware County.”
And they talked together. Farrow had been uncertain as to his prowess at deception, but his worries proved baseless. The Bococks were country people and so was he. He sat relaxed in the warm dim living room and listened to Mother Bocock tell about her son, and sometimes the father drawled a remark. The farmers had no trouble talking to the hunter because none of them was afraid of comfortable silences.
And yet Farrow didn't feel right about it. He hadn't expected to like these people, but he did, and, what was more, they trusted him. He was their kind, which the other reporters and interviewers hadn't been. He felt like a new Judas. He preferred Marget's attitude. The girl watched him constantly; if not openly hostile, she was at least wary.
Once she interposed, “Mr. Farrow, why are you interested in Clel's whereabouts?”
Mother Bocock laughed. “Lord, Marget, the whole world would like to know where Clel is. And Mr. Farrow's writing his story about Clel, ain't he?” Marget sat in her private silence once more, her eyes on the intruder, and Farrow began to fear her intuition. Perhaps the wife was closest of all to Clel Bocock, flesh of his flesh; perhaps Marget alone could sense the death that stalked with Farrow.
“Not that I'd say anything, if I knew,” Mother Bocock went on. “But frankly, none of us know where Clel is. I'll tell you this—no cop will ever catch him. So long as he stays out in the open, under God's sky, he won't be seen no more than a lizard on a rock. Like all of us around here, Clel grew up poaching in the swamp”—a lazy gesture to the south—“and there never was a cleverer brush-hunter heard of around here.”
“Of course,” began the old man wistfully, and then worked his mouth contemplatively over his teeth while the others waited patiently, “we'd have rather he'd stayed in this locality, with us.”
“I'm not saying Clel is perfect,” Mother Bocock chided him. “None of us is that. He was always restless,, even as a boy, and maybe too fond of excitement. He could never settle down like our other boys. They all live in towns now, Mr. Farrow, some of them even up North. But del liked to keep on the go. And now he's made the whole United States of America his swamp. Yes, it seems strange to a mother, not knowing where her own boy is. Always before when he was away, he used to write regular and often. That was a lot of comfort.”
It was hard for Farrow to remember they were talking about a bank robber and murderer. He listened to anecdotes about a handsome youngster who was always well liked and not easily satisfied. A quiet-walking boy with dreaming eyes. ...
“You're not taking notes, Mr. Farrow,” said Marget. “All the other reporters took notes. May I get you a pencil?”
She knew. Somehow she knew. Farrow said, stammering slightly, “No, thank you, ah—Mrs. Bocock. I find this method more effective, at least for me.”
