Part 26 (2/2)

Julia sat in the rocker and tried not to listen. Outside, there was a wind. A cold wind, biting; the kind that slips right through window putty, that you can feel on the gla.s.s. Was there ever such a cold wind? she wondered.

Then Louise's words started to echo. ”He's out there somewhere . . .”

Julia looked away from the window, and attempted to take an interest in the lacework in her lap.

Louise was talking. Her fingers flashed long silver needles. ”. - . spoke to Mrs. Schillings today.”

”I don't want to hear about it.” Maud's eyes flashed like the needles.

”G.o.d love her heart, she's about crazy. Could barely talk.”

”G.o.d, G.o.d.”

”I tried to comfort her, of course, but it didn't do any good.”

Julia was glad she had been spared that conversation. It sent a shudder across her, even to think about it. Mrs. Schillings was Eva's mother, and Eva--only seventeen The thoughts she vowed not to think, came back. She remembered Mick's description of thebody, and his words: ”. . . she'd got through with work over at the telephone office around nine. Carl Jasperson offered to see her home, but he says she said not to bother, it was only a few blocks. Our boy must have been hiding around the other side of the cannery. Just as Eva pa.s.sed, he jumped. Raped her and then strangled her. I figure he's a pretty man-sized b.u.g.g.e.r. Thumbs like to went clean through the throat . . .”

In two weeks, three women had died. First, Charlotte Adams, the librarian. She had been taking her usual shortcut across the school playground, about 9:15 P.M. They found her by the slide, her clothes ripped from her body, her throat raw and bruised.

Julia tried very hard not to think of it, but when her mind would clear, there were her sisters'

voices, droning, pulling her back, deeper.

She remembered how the town had reacted. It was the first murder Burlington had had in fifteen years. It was the very first mystery. Who was the s.e.x-crazed killer? Who could have done this terrible thing to Charlotte Adams? One of her gentleman friends, perhaps. Or a hobo, from one of the nearby jungles. Or . . .

Mick Daniels and his tiny force of deputies had swung into action immediately. Everyone in town took up the topic, chewed it, talked it, chewed it, until it lost its shape completely. The air became electrically charged. And a grim gaiety swept Burlington, reminding Julia of a circus where everyone is forbidden to smile.

Days pa.s.sed, uneventfully. Vagrants were pulled in and released. People were questioned. A few were booked, temporarily.

Then, when the hum of it had begun to die, it happened again. Mrs. Dovie Samuelson, member of the local P.T.A., mother of two, moderately attractive and moderately young, was found in her garden, sprawled across a rhododendron bush, dead. She was naked, and it was established that she had been attacked. Of the killer, once again, there was no trace.

Then the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane released the information that one of its inmates--a Robert Oakes--had escaped. Mick, and many others, had known this all along. Oakes had originally been placed in the asylum on a charge of raping and murdering his cousin, a girl named Patsy Blair.

After he had broken into his former home and stolen some old school clothes, he had disappeared, totally.

Now he was loose.

Burlington, population 3,000, went into a state of ecstasy: delicious fear gripped the town. The men foraged out at night with torches and weapons; the women squeaked and looked under their beds and . . . chatted.

But still no progress was made. The maniac eluded hundreds of searchers. They knew he was near, perhaps at times only a few feet away, hidden; but always they returned home, defeated.

They looked in the forests and in the fields and along the river banks. They covered High Mountain--a miniature hill at the south end of town--like ants, poking at every clump of brush, investigating every abandoned tunnel and water tank. They broke into deserted houses, searched barns, silos, haystacks, treetops. They looked everywhere, everywhere. And found nothing.

When they decided for sure that their killer had gone far away, that he couldn't conceivably be within fifty miles of Burlington, a third crime was committed. Young Eva Schillings' body had been found, less than a hundred yards from her home.

And that was three days ago .

”. . . they get him.” Louise was saying, ”they ought to kill him by little pieces, for what he's done.”

Maud nodded. ”Yes; but they won't.”

”Of course they--”

”No! You wait. They'll shake his hand and lead him back to the bughouse and wait on him hand and foot--till he gets a notion to bust out again.”

”Well, I'm of a mind the people will have something to say about that.”

”Anyway,” Maud continued, never lifting her eyes from her knitting, ”what makes you so surethey _will_ catch him? Supposing he just drops out of sight for six months, and--”

”You stop that! They'll get him. Even if he _is_ a maniac, he's still human.”

”I really doubt that. I doubt that a human could have done these awful things.” Maud sniffed.

Suddenly, like small rivers, tears began to course down her s...o...b..und cheeks, cutting and melting the hard white-packed powder, revealing flesh underneath even paler. Her hair was shot with gray, and her dress was the color of rocks and moths; yet, she did not succeed in looking either old or frail. There was nothing whatever frail about Maud.

”He's a man,” she said. Her lips seemed to curl at the word. Louise nodded, and they were quiet.

(_His ragged tennis shoes padded softly on the gravel bed. Now his heart was trying to tear loose from his chest. The men, the men.. . They had almost stepped on him, they were that close. But he had been silent. They had gone past him, and away. He could see their flares back in the distance. And far ahead, the pulsing light. Also a square building: the depot, yes. He must be careful. He must walk in the shadows. He must be very still_. _The fury burned him, and he fought it_.

_Soon_.

_It would be all right, soon_ . . .) ”. . . think about it, this here maniac is only doing what every man would _like_ to do but can't.”

”Maud!”

”I mean it. It's a man's natural instinct--it's all they ever think about.” Maud smiled. She looked up. ”Julia, you're feeling sick. Don't tell me you're not.”

”I'm all right,” Julia said, tightening her grip on the chairarms slightly. She thought, they've been married! They talk this way about men, as they always have, and yet soft words have been spoken to them, and strong arms placed around their shoulders . . .

Maud made tiny circles with her fingers. ”Well, I can't force you to take care of yourself. Except, when you land in the hospital again, I suppose you know who'll be doing the worrying and staying up nights--as per usual.”

”I'll. . . go on to bed in a minute.” But, why was she hesitating? Didn't she want to be alone?

Why didn't she want to be alone?

Louise was testing the door. She rattled the k.n.o.b vigorously, and returned to her chair.

”What would he want, anyway,” Maud said, ”with two old biddies like us?”

”We're not so old,” Louise said, saying, actually: ”That's true; we're old.” But it wasn't true, not at all. Looking at them, studying them, it suddenly occurred to Julia that her sisters were ashamed of their essential attractiveness. Beneath the 'twenties hair-dos, the ill-used cosmetics, the ancient dresses (which did not quite succeed in concealing their still voluptuous physiques), Maud and Louise were youthfully full and pretty. They were. Not even the birch-twig toothbrushes and traditional snuff could hide it.

Yet, Julia thought, they envy me.

They envy my plainness.

”What kind of man would do such heinous things? Louise said, p.r.o.nouncing the word, carefully, heen-ious.

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