fifty. The foot on the accelerator was steady as the foot of a statue.
He drove with his left hand, occasionally giving the steering wheel an inappreciable right or left movement to relieve the hypnotic monotony of the highway. Ellen was huddled all the way over against the door, her body knotted tight, her eyes staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap. On the seat between them, snakelike, lay his gloved right hand with the gun in it, the muzzle riveted against her hip.
She had cried; long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.
He had told her everything, in a bitter voice, glancing frequently at her green-touched face in the darkness. There were moments of awkward hesitancy in his narration, as an on-leave soldier telling how he won his medals hesitates before describing to the gentle townsfolk how his bayonet ripped open an enemy's stomach, then goes on and describes it because they asked how he won his medals, didn't they?-describes it with irritation and mild contempt for the gentle townsfolk who never had had to rip open anyone's stomach. So he told Ellen about the pills and the roof and why it had been necessary to kill Dorothy, and why it had then been the most logical course to transfer to Caldwell and go after her, Ellen, knowing her likes and dislikes from conversations with Dorothy, knowing how to make himself the man she was waiting for-not only the most logical and inevitable course, going after the girl with whom he had such an advantage, but also the course most ironically satisfying, the course most compensatory for past bad luck-(the course most law-defying, black-slapping, ego-preening)-he told her these things with irritation and contempt; this girl with her hands over her mouth in horror and had everything given her on a sliver platter; she didn't know what it was to live on a swaying catwalk over the chasm of failure, stealing perilously inch by inch towards the solid ground of success so many miles away.
She listened with the muzzle of his gun jabbing painfully into her hip; painfully only at first, then numbingly, as though that part of her were already dead, as though death came from the gun not in a swift bullet but in slow radiation from the point of contact. She listened, and then she cried, because she was so sickened and beaten and shocked that there was nothing else she could do to express it all. Her cries were long throat-dragging animal moans; more sound and shaking than actual tears.
And then she sat staring brokenly at the handkerchief-twisting hands in her lap.
'I told you not to come,' he said querulously. 'I begged you to stay in Caldwell, didn't I?' He glanced at her as though expecting an affirmation. 'But no. No, you had to be the girl detective! Well this is what happens to girl detectives.' His eyes returned to the highway. 'If you only knew what I've gone through since Monday,' he clenched, remembering how the world had dropped out from under him Monday morning when Ellen had phoned-'Dorothy didn't commit suicide! I'm leaving for Blue River!'-running down to the station, barely catching her, futilely desperately trying to keep her from leaving but she stepped onto the train-'I'll write you this minute! IT! explain the whole thing!'-leaving him standing there, watching her glide away, sweating, terrified. It made him sick just thinking about it Ellen said something faintly. 'What?'
'They'll catch you...'
After a moment's silence he said, 'You know how many don't get caught? More than fifty per cent, that's how many. Maybe a lot more.' After another moment he said, 'How are they going to catch me? Fingerprints?-none. Witnesses?-none. Motive?- none that they know about They won't even think of me. The gun?-I have to go over the Mississippi to get back to Caldwell; good-by gun. This car?-two or three in the morning I leave it a couple of blocks from where I took it; they think it was some crazy high school kids. Juvenile delinquents.' He smiled. 'I did it last night too. I was sitting two rows behind you and Powell in the theater and I was right around a bend in the hall when he kissed you goodnight' He glanced at her to see her reaction; none was visible. His gaze returned to the road and his face clouded again. 'That letter of yours-how I sweated till it came! When I first started to read it I thought I was safe; you were looking for someone she'd met in her English class in the fall; I didn't meet her till January, and it was in Philosophy. But then I realized who that guy you were looking for actually was-Old Argyle- Socks, my predecessor. We'd had Math together, and he'd seen me with Dorrie. I thought he might know my name. I knew that if he ever convinced you he didn't have anything to do with Dorrie's murder... if he ever mentioned my name to you...'
Suddenly he jammed down on the brake pedal and the car screeched to a halt. Reaching left-handed around the steering column, he shifted gears. When he stepped on the gas again, the car rolled slowly backwards. On their right, the dark form of a house slid into view, low-crouching behind a broad expanse of empty parking lot The headlights of the retreating car caught a large upright sign at the highway's edge: Lillie and Doane's-The Steak Supreme. A smaller sign hung swaying from the gallows of the larger one: Reopening April 15th.
He shifted back into first, spun the wheel to the right, and stepped on the gas. He drove across the parking lot and pulled up at the side of the low building, leaving the motor running. He pressed the horn ring; a loud blast banged through the night. He waited a minute, then sounded the horn again. Nothing happened. No window was raised, no light went on. 'Looks like nobody's home,' he said, turning off the headlights.
'Please...' she said, 'please...'
In the darkness the car rolled forward, turned to the left, moved behind the house where the asphalt of the parking lot flowed into a smaller paved area. The car swung around in a wild curve, almost going off the edge of the asphalt into the dirt of a field that swept off to meet the blackness of the sky. It swung all the way around until it was facing the direction from which it had come.
He set the emergency brake and left the motor running.
'Please...'she said.
He looked at her. 'You think I want to do this? You think I like the idea? We were almost engaged!' He opened the door on his left. 'You had to be smart...' He stepped out onto the asphalt, keeping the gun aimed at her huddled figure. 'Come here,' he said. 'Come out on this side '
'Please...'
'Well what am I supposed to do, Ellen? I can't let you go, can I? I asked you to go back to Caldwell without saying anything, didn't I?' The gun made an irritated gesture. 'Come out.'
She pulled herself across the seat, clutching her purse. She stepped out onto the asphalt.
The gun directed her in a semicircular path until she stood with the field at her back, the gun between her and the car.
'Please...' she said, holding up the purse in a futile shielding gesture, 'please...'
From the Blue River Clarion-Ledger; Thursday, March 15, 1951: DOUBLE SLAYING HERE POLICE SEEK MYSTERY GUNMAN Within a period of two hours last night, an unknown gunman committed two brutal murders. His victims were Ellen Kingship, 21, of New York City, and Dwight Powell, 23, of Chicago, a junior at Stoddard University...
Powell's slaying occurred at 10: 00 PM, in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Honig, 1520 West 35th St., where Powell was a roomer. As police reconstruct the events, Powell, entering the house at 9: 50 in the company of Miss Kingship, went to his second-floor room where he encountered an armed burglar who had earlier broken into the house through the back door...
... the medical examiner established the time of Miss Kingship's death as somewhere near midnight. Her body, however, was not discovered until 7: 20 this morning, when Willard Herne, 11, of nearby Randalia, crossed through a field adjacent to the restaurant... Police learned from Gordon Gant, KBRI announcer and a friend of Miss Kingship, that she was the sister of Dorothy Kingship who last April committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the Blue River Municipal Building...
Leo Kingship, president of Kingship Copper, Inc., and father of the slain girl, is expected to arrive in Blue River this afternoon, accompanied by his daughter, Marion Kingship.
An Editorial from the Clarion-Ledger; Thursday, April 19, 1951 DISMISSAL OF GORDON GANT In dismissing Gordon Gant from their employ (story on p .5) the management of KBRI points out that 'despite frequent warnings, he has persisted in using (KBRI's) microphones to harass and malign the Police Department in a manner bordering on the slanderous.' The matter involved was the month-old Kingship-Powell slayings, in which Mr. Gant has taken a personal and somewhat acrimonious interest. His public criticism of the police was, to say the least, indiscreet, but considering that no progress has been made towards reaching a solution of the case, we find ourselves forced to agree with the appropriateness of his remarks, if not with their propriety.
At the end of the school year he returned to Menasset and sat around the house in somber depression. His mother tried to combat his sullenness and then began to reflect it They argued, like hot coals boosting each other in to flame. To get out of the house and out of himself, he reclaimed his old job at the haberdashery shop. From nine to five-thirty he stood behind a glass display counter not looking at the binding-strips of gleaming burnished
