Burnt Offering Read online

  Susan Faye took the automatic out of the raincoat pocket. She waited until a roll of thunder ended.

  Trooper Raymond Crowley was gratified that Captain Heimrich had asked for him by name. The request indicated that he had not done too badly the other time, in the investigation which centered on a very large black bull. His present task did not, to be sure, seem at all close to whatever Heimrich might find this to center on. Crowley was, he realized, peripheral. But, he thought, you never can tell.

  He had obeyed orders. He had changed from uniform into gray slacks and sports jacket, becoming at once any well set up young man of rural habit. He had driven his own small car to the Faye place and introduced himself to Mrs. Faye, whose slender grace he noted with instinctive approval, but did not linger on. He had met the Colonel, and noticed that the large dog did not bark at strangers, but only looked at them through sad and limpid eyes. He had given assurance that he would see to things, and that young Michael was not to be worried about and then, following instructions still, had gone back to his car, and driven it down the driveway and for a short distance along High Road. He had turned, then, and parked off the road, headed toward the Faye drive, at a point where he could keep it under observation.

  “Heimrich says, don’t make it obvious,” his instructor had told him. “You know how he wants it—wants people to have room to move in, or think they have.”

  “I worked with him, once,” Crowley had said. “Sometimes he starts them moving.”

  But now, after some time, it did not appear that the invitation to move, if intended, had been accepted. Crowley had jacked up his left rear wheel and, when he heard cars coming along High Road, had squatted beside it, in the posture of a man with a tire to change. Passing cars had been infrequent and none he could identify had passed twice, which might have proved embarrassing. (Crowley had thought of this awkward chance somewhat belatedly.) When the first storm had come, Crowley had let the wheel down again, and stowed the jack, and gone to sit in the car where, if necessary, he could be a timorous motorist sitting out a tempest. It had been very hot in the car, with windows closed against the rain. It had been difficult to see the driveway he watched through the watery air, but it had been possible.

  The first storm passed, and Ray Crowley remained in the car. (If anybody wondered now, they might assume a wet distributor; Crowley’s car was of an age for that ailment.) He opened a window and cool air came in. He turned on the car radio, set to police frequency, and listened to static. He did not expect further instructions; if they came by radio tonight, they would come the hard way. (There was a bad-acting drunk in a tavern near Brewster; on Route 35, near Cross River, a hurrying car had hit a tree and a man was dead. In a considerable part of the Town of Lewisboro, the storm had interrupted power service.)

  Crowley lighted a cigarette. Another storm was making up to the west. The late sun came out briefly, as if hanging out its last rays to dry. Ray finished his cigarette and ate one of several sandwiches he had brought with him, and drank black coffee from a thermos. He listened to some birds, who apparently thought the bad weather ended. The sun went under black clouds and thunder muttered in the west. (It was a little, Ray thought, as if the two storms spoke to each other across the valley.)

  There were two shots from the direction of the Faye house. The interval between them was of a few seconds.

  So quickly did Crowley act that the snarl of his starter almost drowned the sound of the second shot. The car jumped into the road, in seconds was at the driveway.

  But there Crowley had to slow. No urgency could split the boulders, make the turning between them less tortuous. No urgency could widen the drive up to the house, or make it less steeply pitched. The small car churned. Once the wheels spun where the thin coating of gravel had been washed away, baring the mud beneath.

  At the house, Crowley was out of the car almost before it stopped. He was out with a revolver in his hand; he ran across the terrace. Then he heard a car’s motor, off to his left.

  Michael stood just inside the closed door. The big dog stood beside him. Both of them looked out without alarm, seemed to feel only moderate interest.

  Crowley pushed at the door, and boy and dog stepped aside, politely, to let him enter. Crowley put his gun back in its shoulder holster, and boy and dog watched him with added interest.

  “I thought at first it was firecrackers,” Michael said. “Have you been shooting someone, sir?”

  There was nothing in the boy’s grave tone to indicate that he would have regarded this as improbable, or would have considered it an exceptionable action.

  “No,” Crowley said. He looked down at boy and dog. He felt slightly taken aback. “I don’t shoot people,” he said.

  “Oh,” Michael said. “I thought you were the policeman. Mother thought you were.”

  “Well,” Crowley said. “I’m a policeman. But I don’t—” He was wasting time. “Where’s your mother, son?” he asked.

  “Michael,” Michael said, correctingly. “Mother had to go out for a while. She’ll be back before dark.”

  “Stay here,” Crowley said. “Close the door when I go out, Michael.” He crouched suddenly by the boy. “You’ll do that?” he said.

  “Of course,” Michael said. “Because it’s going to rain again.”

  “That’s it,” Crowley said, and went through the door.

  The grass on the lawn had been left uncut. It was wet. But, short and dry, the tire tracks would still have been plain on it.

  The car had been driven across the lawn, away from the house. It had gone over a crest and then down a steep hill, where there had been only rough mowing, and that not recently. Crowley followed the wheel tracks.

  He came to a break in an old stone fence, and that way the car had gone. It was still steeper, there, and the surface was strewn with stones. Some part of the car had scraped one of the stones, cleaning a wide abrasion on its surface.

  And, with that final plunge made safely, the car was on the road—on High Road, some two hundred feet beyond where Crowley had parked and—around a bend! He could not have seen it, or another car which followed the same difficult route, from where he watched.

  The car had turned to the right on the road. It had left mud on the surface of the road.

  Crowley looked at the tire tracks for a moment, and swore. It began to rain, then, and he swore again, and ran back the way he had come. The boy opened the door.

  “Mother,” Michael said, “always has me wipe my feet before I come in.”

  Ray Crowley wiped his feet on a mat before the door. He found the telephone. He lifted the receiver and reached toward the dial. As he sat at the telephone, his back was toward the door. When he heard the door open, he whirled on the telephone stool, and reached toward his shoulder holster.

  “I wouldn’t,” the tall man who stood in the doorway said. The light—the dim light—was behind him. His face was a shadow. “I really wouldn’t.” He did not raise his voice.

  There was an automatic in the tall man’s right hand. Ray Crowley didn’t.

  The big dog sat down. Michael stood with his hand on the dog’s collar. “Gee!” Michael Faye said.

  “All right,” the tall man said. “Where is she?”

  “If you mean Mrs. Faye—” Crowley began.

  “Who would I mean?” the man asked. “Where—”

  “Mother isn’t here,” Michael said. “I didn’t know you had—”

  The man’s free hand motioned the boy to silence. “But—” Michael said.

  “You,” the tall man said, and waggled his automatic at Crowley. “Who are you?”

  “State trooper,” Crowley said, and his hand crept nearer his own gun. The tall man said the hell he was. “Put your gun up,” Crowley said. “We don’t want trouble. Who are you, mister?”

  “He’s Uncle Sam,” Michael said. “Don’t you know Uncle Sam?”

  Crowley didn’t. Not Uncle Sam with an automatic. He waited.

  “
Jackson,” the tall man said. “Sam Jackson. If you’re a trooper, you’ve got an I. D. card.”

  “Put your gun down first,” Crowley said. Jackson continued to look at him. Then, slightly, he shook his head. He lowered the automatic. Crowley held out his card, at the same time snapping on a lamp on the telephone table. Jackson bent to look at the card, and there would have been no trouble, then. But Crowley waited.

  “O. K.,” Jackson said. “You weren’t much good, were you, trooper?”

  “Maybe not,” Crowley said. “The boy’s still here, you notice. What are you after, come to that? What are you after, Mr. Jackson?”

  “I—” Jackson said. “What happened to Sue?”

  “Went somewhere in a car,” Crowley said. “Went across lots. The idea was to avoid me.”

  “Her idea?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Crowley asked him. “I was watching the drive. There were two shots. I got here and she was gone.” He watched Jackson. A man ought to be surprised to hear of two shots. Jackson did not appear to be. “I—”

  The room seemed suddenly to burst with light, to shake with noise. The light went; all light went. It took Crowley an instant to realize that, with the lightning flash, the tiny light from the lamp had vanished too.

  For an instant, Crowley was blinded. Then he saw again, in the half light which remained. The big dog had disappeared, but Crowley could hear him. He was, somewhere, panting loudly.

  For a moment, Crowley could not see small Michael. But then he did; the boy was on his knees by a table. He was reaching in.

  “The Colonel’s scared,” he said.

  Jackson was not there. On his feet again, Crowley looked around the shadowy room.

  “Uncle—” Michael began, and lightning filled the room and thunder drowned the boy’s voice. “It’s all right, Colonel,” Michael said. “It won’t hurt you.”

  He stood up and faced Trooper Crowley. In the half light the boy’s eyes looked enormous.

  “Uncle Sam went,” he said. “I—I wish somebody would stay. It’s so very noisy.” He looked up at Crowley. “Uncle Sam got the drop on you, didn’t he?” Michael said.

  The lights had flickered in the taproom of the Old Stone Inn, but they had not gone out.

  “Stay with the boy,” Heimrich said. “I don’t know what more you could have done, Ray.” He listened again. “Well,” he said, “not precisely, Ray. Not being clairvoyant, naturally.” He listened again. “No,” he said. “I’d rather have you there, I think—you and the boy. I don’t think—” He stopped. He said, “Hello. Hello, Ray,” and jiggled the hook of the pay telephone. He swore, then. He went out of the booth in which he had taken the call, and back to the table.

  “Mrs. Faye has gone somewhere,” he told Forniss, who began to get up as Heimrich began to speak. “Or—been taken. There were a couple of shots, but Ray Crowley can’t see that they hit anything. Hard to tell that, of course, with nobody there. Except the boy, who’s all right. And the dog.” He closed his eyes, momentarily. “Dog’s under a table,” he said. “And our friend Jackson showed up. Got the drop on Crowley, as Michael puts it. Upsetting to Crowley, of course, but it may be just as well.”

  “Jackson?” Forniss said.

  “Came in a car,” Heimrich said. “Went in a car anyway. Crowley got to the door in time to see it going down the drive. Station wagon. So—he must have come after Crowley drove up to the house.”

  “Unless Crowley missed him,” Forniss said.

  “He’s sure he didn’t. Ray’s a good kid. Very conscientious kid. Very worried just now about this other way to get a car out. But he’s sure there was only one car, which would be the one Susan—Mrs. Faye left in.”

  “Or was taken,” Forniss said. He looked at Heimrich intently. He saw that, although he had been speaking as he usually spoke, Heimrich’s face was set.

  “Or was taken,” Heimrich said, in a voice without inflection. “We’d better get going, Charlie.”

  “To the Faye house?” Forniss asked, and was looked at, apparently in surprise.

  “Why no, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “What would be the point of that? Crowley’s there—in the dark, by a dead telephone I’m afraid—but there. We’ll have to look for her somewhere else.”

  “You know where to look?”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Faye’s an intelligent woman, I think. Foolish—but she’s worried about the boy. Where would she go, Charlie?”

  “You think she had a choice?”

  “I hope so,” Heimrich said, and was walking toward the door. “I hope so very much, Charlie.”

  XI

  This storm seemed worse than the one which had preceded it. But perhaps that was because, now, she was closer to it; was no longer within the stability of four solid walls, protecting roof. The little car rocked in the wind; driving into the wind, the gale’s force caught and held the wiper blades, and when they hesitated, the rain on the windshield was a tormented tide, almost opaque. She had to slow when this happened, so that the little car only crept. And after she had driven for a few minutes, the inside of the windshield began to fog, as the warmth of her own body in the closed car brought the air’s wetness to the condensation point. She wiped at the glass with her hand, and crept on. She lowered the far window slightly, and the air cooled and the steam on the windshield lessened, but the rain swept in.

  But it was—hard as it was—the only thing to do. She had to make herself believed—had to see a face, look into eyes, say, “No. Believe me, no! I am telling you the truth. All of the truth I know. You can’t hurt a little boy just because you think something that isn’t true. Because you were told something that wasn’t true. Can’t you see? Can’t you see?”

  It would be different then. Not as it had been on the telephone. The telephone wires carried only words. Voices were thin on the telephone—all that people were was diluted; became only what people said—only the shadows of what they said. The proof would not be in words; it would be in all of her. Not the stupidest could doubt if once she could—

  There was a flash of lightning so close that she was half blinded by it; thunder so instant, so vast, that the car shook with it. Ahead, to her right, a tree seemed to be dissolving in flame and, with another flash—there seemed now to be no interval between the storm’s blows—she saw that half the tree was gone. The car swerved with the wind toward the side of the road, and she dragged it back.

  She would say, “He told me nothing. You must believe me. Whatever he said was because—because you—”

  Because you threatened him. Because he was afraid; because he was trying to save his life. He said—“Somebody knows where I am.” It must have been that. He said, “Susan Faye knows where I am. I told her where I was going. So if you—”

  She turned the car to the right at the fork, almost missing it in the swirl of driven rain.

  He would believe her then and—and—

  She found she could not finish the thought. Her mind seemed to be numb. There was a vagueness in all thoughts, like that vagueness which comes with approaching sleep. The beating of the rain on the car—on the drum she rode in—seemed to beat also in her mind, and the blur on the glass in front of her was the same as the blur of her thoughts. She was—was—she was sinking softly into the rushing sound around her. Her thoughts were—were—

  It had been only minutes since she had slithered the car down through the gap in the fence, felt it catch for a moment on rock and free itself. (It had been hours, hours which could not be counted.) Her mind had been clear, then. Her purpose had been very clear. She would go to the one who had telephoned her—twice, now—who had threatened Michael, and she would make him understand that she was no threat to him, that she knew nothing. It had been clear, and simple and—

  But now everything was foggy, as the glass in front of her had been. She groped for clarity—groped for one thought which would be distinct, have form; a thought on which she could, in a fashion, stand while s
he broke her way out of this—this—

  (She had been a little girl and had gone on a picnic with other little girls and there had been a sudden storm and they had walked through beating rain (like this rain) and after a few minutes all around her was vague and unreal and she had not felt herself conscious although she still walked along the road and when one of the girls had said, “Isn’t this dreadful?”, although not in a voice for dreadful things, but in a voice of excitement, she had said it was dreadful but answered in so dull a voice, a voice from so far away, that the other girl had looked at her and said, “Sue, is something the matter?” It had happened that way before and—what had she done to make it different? She could not remember. She—)

  This is all wrong, she thought. Why—why I must have gone crazy!

  It was as simple as that, as sudden as that and as clear. She had been tired; she had been tired for days. The rough voice on the telephone, the threats, the fury of the storm—because of all of it she had stopped thinking altogether. She had been—why, she had been scared out of her wits. That was not a meaningless phrase, after all. It was something that could happen.

  Her project was absurd. It was more than absurd—it could very possibly be fatal.

  Because, once she went to the man who had threatened, it would not make any difference whether he believed her or not. The fact that she had found him would be all that mattered. He would say, “But—what difference does it make—now? Now that you know who I am?”

  The dim lights of the car picked up the stop sign at the juncture of Sugar Creek Lane and Route 11-F. She stopped. The highway was rain swept and deserted. She turned right, driving toward the south. Although conditions were not much better, except for a wider road, a guiding center line, she drove faster.

  Her thoughts were very clear, now. He was such a—a substantial man. Such a sure man. She would tell him what she guessed, and if she were wrong—but she was not wrong; surely she was not wrong—because Michael knew everyone—he would know and tell her so. If she were right, he would do what was necessary—what she could not do alone.