I finally got away from the Yeoman house at twenty after eleven. Fred Buckelberry had arrived, with deputy and stenographer. He acted very tired. He had made me tell my part of it three times. He made me promise to stop by his office Friday afternoon and sign the statement. It could not have been a more obvious case of self-defense. Had Jass missed him with those two shots, he would have taken the blade in the belly.
No identification on the decedent. They were checking him out through Phoenix.
Buckelberry kept saying in a weary way, “Jass, if he was stone broke it could be one of those things. Nice neighborhood. He’s looking for a car, some wallet money. But he had a hundred dollars.”
And Jass kept saying in a kindly way, “Fred, I wish I could help you. But I’m just as puzzled as you are, I swear.”
Just before I left, Buckelberry told me that Miss Webb had phoned him after the professor’s body had been discovered. He said she’d seemed very upset and he had asked her to come in, but she had hung up on him.
So I wasted no time getting to The Sage. Though I was busy with the dangerous mechanics of fast driving in urban traffic, I could not keep my mind from random speculation about the death of John Webb, like a puppy gnawing at the edge of a carpet. When Mona Yeoman and I had clambered over that rock slide, Webb was down under there. As Jass had said, it seemed a curious place to hide a body. Obviously the road was going to be cleared. And then the body would be found. It made me wonder if it was some sort of grotesque accident. Maybe the entire murder arrangement was like one of those bloody cinema farces the British do so well. Everything goes wrong, and bodies keep falling out of the wrong closets.
If there was a plan, and if the plan was still working, then the only appropriate question was to ask what the situation would be if that knife had let the life out of Jass Yeoman. Who would be ahead? Some old lady in Yuma? The Rupert clan? And was Mona’s body in some other strange and obvious place?
I put the rental car in the hotel lot and stopped at the desk and picked up the other room key. There were no messages. I went up and let myself into the room. Isobel lay on the farther of the two three-quarter beds. The desk lamp was on, a weak bulb in an orange shade. She slept atop the spread, dressed except for her shoes, a yellow blanket over her. I could see a note on hotel stationery on the green blotter under the desk lamp.
I decided I would let her sleep, even if the note directed me to awaken her. I closed the door soundlessly, and went quietly to the desk.
It was a curious note. No salutation and no signature. “There doesn’t seem to be much point in it any more. I might have more luck the next time around. After everything is settled up, please give what’s left to the scholarship fund at SWU.”
After the moment of horrid comprehension, I reached her in three long strides. Her hands were slack and icy. The heartbeat was very slow, respiration agonizingly slow. I shook her and slapped her and got a faint drugged whine of protest. I got to the phone and asked to have a doctor sent up just as quickly as they could manage it. I asked for a pot of black coffee. Cursing her, I turned on every light in the room and the bathroom. I picked her up and took her into the bathroom. She was limp as a rag doll. I jounced her and shouted at her. I sat her on the floor in the corner by the tub, then used my shaving bomb to hastily mix a glass of warm soapy water. I knelt by her, clamped her jaws open, tilted her head and poured it into her throat. Some of it spilled down her sweater, but I saw her throat work with a labored slowness as she swallowed. At least she had that reflex left. I was not certain she had enough. I mixed another glass and got about half that down her. I picked her up and put her, belly down, over the rim of the tub. I knelt beside her and, holding her there, reached around and stuck two fingers down her throat. I prodded at the soft base of her tongue, and as I began to despair, I suddenly felt the musculature there begin to tighten. Then soft heavy spasms began, a dulled heavy gushing of soapy water soured by the stomach contents. When she stopped, I stimulated the spasms again, more readily the second time. I wondered where the hell they kept their doctors.
I hauled her off the tub and turned her, sat her slumped against the tub and stripped her, wasting no time in saving her clothing. I popped straps and tore fabrics. Her bra, pants and half-slip were as unadorned and sensible as her walking shoes. I turned on the cold shower spray to rinse the tub out, drawing the shower curtain partway. Then I picked her up and sat her in the tub, adjusting the tilt and apertures of the showerhead so that a good solid gout of cold water smashed her in the face and torso. She rocked her head from side to side and made almost inaudible mewling noises, over the roar of the shower.
When the authoritative knock came at the door, I went to answer it, shoving her note into my pocket as I passed the desk. He was a round pink man with a sad, sagging, weary face. I led him into the bathroom. She had slumped farther. I turned the water off. He took a towel and wiped her face roughly. As he checked her pulse, thumbed her eyelid up, I told him exactly what I had done.
“What’d she take?”
“I don’t know.”
“See if you can find what it was in.”
I found the plastic bottle in the wastebasket beside the desk. There was no drugstore label on it. I took it to him. There was a little white powder in the bottom of it. He shook it out into the palm of his hand, snuffed at it, moistened a fingertip, tasted the powder. “Barbiturate,” he murmured. The girl made a snoring sound. He muttered to himself, dug into his open case, found a disposable hypo, a rubber-top vial of amber fluid.
He pulled one of the girl’s arms over the side of the tub, alcoholed a place above the elbow, filled his hypo, made a deft injection.
“Better off in a hospital,” he said, getting up off his knees.
“Is it necessary?”
“She your wife?”
“No. Doctor, if she is in danger of dying, of course she should go to a hospital. Listen, this is a very neurotic kid. Her name is Webb. They found her brother’s body this evening.”
He raised one tired eyebrow. “I heard about that.”
“I work for Jasper Yeoman. I’ve gotten acquainted with this girl. I think if a big hospital thing is made of it, she’s going to try to live up to the billing. If it can be passed off, like a casual thing, like a small accident, I think it can work out better for her. That is, if she isn’t in danger.”
He leaned against the sink, frowning. As he was about to speak, the coffee came. I think it turned the trick. He nodded approvingly.
“I gave her a stimulant. Let’s see if we can make her walk.”
We lifted her out. I got my robe on her and belted it. It trailed on the floor behind her. The doctor gave her three brisk slaps in the face. He put his mouth next to her ear and said, “You have to walk! Come on! Walk!” I supported most of her weight. She came along, head lolling, working her spaghetti legs.
“That’s good,” he said. “Keep her moving. Pour coffee into her. Don’t let her drowse off. Use the cold shower again if you have to. Make her talk. Count to a hundred. Alphabet. Anything. What I wonder is, can I depend on you?”
“Yes.”
He studied me, lips pursed. “I’ll come back here at four in the morning. Then, if she looks all right, we’ll let her sleep. By then she should be begging to sleep.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“You did pretty good before I got here. I’ll stop at the desk on the way out. They act uneasy down there. You’re registered as a single.” He permitted himself the first small smile. “I’ll say the magic word. Yeoman. They’ll leave you alone. Here’s my number. If she starts to get away from you, so you can’t get any reaction, call me at once. This is a risk for me, too. No, don’t stop. Keep walking her.” He started toward the door and hesitated, looked uneasily at me. “She’s a very pretty girl.”
“Necrophilia never appealed to me, Doctor.”
The precision of the word heartened him. He bobbed his head and left. I walked the girl. I hustled her along, giving her more of her own weight to support, catching her when she started to fall. I slapped her and jounced her. I poured steaming coffee into her. I shoved her under the shower. Her whining became more audible and bitter and abused. She was a lump. A thing. An irritating and tiresome chore. She padded and lurched and grumbled in a voice so slurred I could not make out a word. Her head bobbed loosely. This was the monstrous selfishness of self-destruction. Somebody else has to pick up the pieces.
For a long time, an hour or more, I could be ironically amused by the doctor having called her a pretty girl. She was a doughy, dull, fatty, blue-white, flaccid thing, with her water-pasted hair, sagging mouth, slitted empty eyes. I could stand her under the water and she would take it like an obedient sow, flat-footed and streaming. I got pretty good at pouring coffee into her. And I could keep her in her floundering trudge by holding one arm. Suddenly it changed. She had begun to get wobbly again, and I put her under the shower, holding her there by one hand on her shoulder. This time she tautened. Her body seemed to lift for the first time and come alive as the cold water made her arch her back and tighten her muscles. Suddenly I realized that this was a marvelous female body, sleek, rounded, strong, flawless, with hips and breasts and belly of a ripeness that enhanced the narrow litheness of her waist. I bundled her back into the damp robe a little sooner than I had planned. She shivered for a little while, and I took that as sufficient reason not to try the shower routine again.
But by three in the morning, I had the feeling that I needed to get her past one more obstacle in the road back to awareness. She acted like a drunk. Querulous, mumbling, cross, indignant. But she seemed to have no real grasp of who she was or where she was or who I was. I kept thinking that I ought to be able to think of some way of shocking her back to reality. I brought her to a halt. She stood there swaying, eyes barely open. I closed the bathroom door. There was a mirror on the back of it. I put her in front of the mirror. I unbelted the robe and slipped it off her shoulders and tossed it aside. She stood looking at herself without comprehension. We looked odd in the mirror, all the rawboned height of McGee standing next to and slightly behind the pale perfection of the naked girl, so small in her bare feet, her frank breasts revealed, and, nested into the smoothness of her thighs, the sooty-soft-dark cornerstone to the soft and tender arch of hips. Her hair was a clotted tangle, half masking one eye. Smirking at her mirror image I put my lips close to her ear and said, “See the pretty girl? See the pretty pretty girl?”
Her eyes were stubborn slits. She swayed and sighed, then quite suddenly her eyes opened wide. Her body tightened. She bent slightly from the waist, covered her parts with one hand and flattened her other arm across her breasts. Knock-kneed, she turned and backed away from me, making a little hissing sound.
“Pretty girl?” I said.
“What … what are you doing to me?” Her face was chalk white.
I threw the robe at her. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
She fumbled herself hastily into the robe. “But … but I took all of them!”
“Yes you did, dear girl.”
“John is dead.”
“Keep walking.”
She wouldn’t until I started toward her. And then she began trudging back and forth, eyeing me with grave suspicion.
“I’m very tired, Travis.”
“Keep walking.”
“What time is it.”
“After three. Walk faster.”
“Please let me lie down, just for a minute. Please.”
“Keep walking.”
“My God, you’re cruel. I’m sick. I’m terribly sick. I have to lie down. Really!”
“Walk by yourself, or I’ll walk you.”
I sat on the foot of the bed. She kept well out of my reach each time she passed me. When she began to soften again, when her eyes began to blur, I reached out and gave her a brisk clout on the fanny. It energized her.
She wept for mercy. I showed none. She faked a faint, but came out of it with alacrity when I began to peel the robe off her. She cursed me. I did not know she had such an extensive vocabulary. She cursed, whined, cried, faked, begged. But she walked. Yes indeed. She kept on walking.
O she was pitiful indeed, those eyes smudged so dark, huddled small in the robe, hating me, choking the coffee down, calling me a degenerate, demanding to know why she had not been permitted to die. Life was empty. Must she be bullied, shamed, slapped, jounced, beaten, smirked at? Yes, dear. Keep walking. Just keep walking.
Doctor Kuppler returned at four fifteen. When she realized he was a doctor, she began to recount a long and tearful bill of particulars. He ignored her completely, examined her, grunting with approval. He had her sit on the edge of the bed.
“I demand my rights!” Isobel said. “Get the police!”
Doctor Kuppler smiled sweetly at her, put one pink finger against her shoulder and pushed. She toppled over backwards, sighed once, and then began to emit a small, regular, purring snore. At his suggestion, I picked her up. He opened the bed up. I dropped her in and he covered her over.
“Nice response,” he said. “Attractive young lady. Maybe it all wasn’t necessary, but it’s nice to be on the safe side.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Considering everything, I think a hundred dollars would be just about right.”
I gave it to him and asked him how long she should sleep.
“As long as she can,” he said. “If she sleeps well into this afternoon, fine. Are you going to stay here too?”
“I’m exhausted, Doctor, and she’s already compromised.”
As the windows were beginning to get that pale look, I put the chain on the door, brushed my teeth and kissed her on the forehead and went to bed. I was no longer irritated with her. I felt proud and pleased about her. Samaritan McGee, savior of doomed womanhood. I had a curious feeling of ownership. Now you belong to me, dear girl, and damn foolishness will not be countenanced in the future. You hear?