John D. MacDonald

Eyewitness

Beldon’s flight arrived in the city at six in the morning, and by seven-fifteen he had arrived at the beach town named Stoney Cove, where the fatality had occurred. It was a tourist operation, a mile long and not more than three blocks wide, a clutter of motels, restaurants, shops, ranging from glossy to defeated. After Beldon had gone the length of it once in his rental car, he picked a businesslike-looking diner in the middle of town for breakfast and information.

Morning trade was light. The counter girl was a burly and cheerful young blonde with chapped elbows. The tag on her pocket said she was Helen.

When she brought him the eggs and bacon, he said, “Hear you had a lot of excitement around here yesterday, Helen.”

“Don’t you know it!” she said, giving him a swift and appraising look, seeing him perhaps for the first time.

He had an ironic objectivity about what she was seeing, a young-old man, with a chronic tiredness around the eyes, with that look of having been savaged a few times by life and then released, free to assemble a new set of adjustments and compromises.

“I guess it just has to happen around here once in a while,” she went on, “but this was the worst ever.”

“Why does it have to happen?”

“Well, the winding road and all, and the mist we get, and they get half stoned and go through here like rockets. She had to go way over onto the shoulder to kill Carol Foley, and she didn’t even stop. That’s what’s got everybody so steamed, her not stopping. But I guess she knew you couldn’t hit anybody so hard without killing them.”

“Lot of feeling about it, eh?”

“Carol came in here lots. All the kids come in, the town kids. You know, yesterday afternoon, newspaper guys were asking me what she was like. You’re not a newspaper fellow, are you?”

“No. I’m in the insurance business.”

“Eighteen years old last week, and an awful pretty girl. Vern Foley — he owns the Shop-Way Plaza — had three daughters and Carol was the oldest. He’s been mayor twice, but he isn’t now. You could say the whole place is in mourning. They say he’s like he was hit on the head. It’s a terrible, terrible thing, just walking home from a baby-sitting job and getting killed like that. Your eggs okay?”

“Fine, thanks. Where did it happen?”

“South of town, about two hundred yards south of the town line. There’s a curve there. The girl that killed her was coming north, real fast. You can see the skid marks. She went right on home and went to bed. She must have been stinking drunk. She’s from Charles City, you know, twenty miles north of here. She just went back home and went to bed like nothing had happened. Isn’t that something?”

After he had looked at the scene of the accident, Beldon drove back up the coast road to the state police installation ten miles north of Stoney Cove, and was able to locate the officer who had conducted the investigation. His name was Morningside. He was a stocky, sturdy man in his middle thirties, with heavy glasses and a cold, gray stare. He looked at Carl Beldon’s card for a long frowning moment.

“Guarantee Mutual Liability,” he said. “Around here, doesn’t somebody named Price do the adjusting?”

“Usually.”

“Why not this time?”

“It’s a little different. The vehicle is registered in the name of John K. Swain. The insured has two hundred and fifty thousand, five hundred thousand liability. He’s executive vice president of Swain Electronics. We cover the company fleet, too. So they had me fly in.”

“So you’re a specialist, eh?”

“Look, Lieutenant, why the hostility? You people do a good job. We respect that. I try to do my job well. All I want to know is, how bad are we hooked?”

“I’m not interested in civil suits, Beldon. I built a file. The prosecutor accepted it. The Treiber woman was booked, had a preliminary hearing and was released on twenty-five-thousand-dollar bail late yesterday afternoon.”

“So you’ve got a good tight file. And apparently, she’s got a pretty fair lawyer. It’s a factual thing, isn’t it? I just want to know where we stand.”

Morningside sighed and nodded and said, “Come on in.” His office was a sterile cube full of gray steel furniture. Beldon sat down facing Morningside across his big desk. The officer opened a folder.

“The vehicle first,” he said. “Take my word that’s the car. A match on glass from the right headlight lense, spectrographic comparison of paint on the clothing of the decedent, tread and wheel spacing on the skid...”

“I’ll take your word.”

“Joanne Treiber, age twenty-three, works as a secretary at Swain Electronics. Mercer Swain brought her down to Stoney Cove the day before yesterday, Sunday, and they got to the big public beach about a mile and a half south of town about noon. Swain is the younger brother of the owner of the vehicle. The owner is in West Germain on a business trip. Mercer Swain had permission to use the vehicle. He is twenty-six, single. He has been dating the Treiber girl. They stayed on the beach all afternoon. At six o’clock, they came back to Stoney Cove and went to the bar at the Tahiti Motor Inn and Restaurant. We have the testimony of the waitress, and the bar check itself, showing ten drinks served them, five apiece, two kinds of drinks.

“They went in to dinner. Dinner and four more drinks, two apiece. Again, sworn testimony and the check. At eleven o’clock. Swain rented a motel unit, registering as Mr. and Mrs. S. Mercer. Miss Treiber claims she never entered the motel unit. She says they sat in the car and quarreled, and he went into the motel unit and she drove back to the public beach. She claims she parked the car and walked down the beach alone.

“Carol Foley left the house where she had worked as a sitter Sunday night at twenty after twelve. The time is exact, on account of paying her off. The man offered to drive her home, but she said it was silly because it was only two blocks down the highway. Time of death, close to twelve-thirty. The Treiber girl does not know what time she left the beach. She says she did not hit anyone. The car went off onto the shoulder in a skid, laying down rubber up to the point of hitting the Foley girl, and for about twenty feet past that point, and then picked up speed again without stopping. Estimate of speed from all factors, sixty-five — thirty over the limit for that area, and too damn fast for that curve.

“Joanne Treiber drove back to her place in Charles City. She shares an apartment with another girl. There is parking space behind the building. She parked the car there, put the top up, locked it and she was sound asleep at four a.m. when we arrived. She seemed to be in a state of confusion. She was taken in and interrogated. Mercer Swain was interrogated.”

“She had his permission to take the car?” Beldon asked.

“His words to her were to take it and drive herself the hell home and bring the car to the plant in the morning. That’s part of his statement. So it’s locked up. She’s cooked. You know the law in this state. A hit-and-run fatality is a mandatory jail term. Drunk and speeding. The car is out back. We lifted the hold on it, but nobody’s come after it yet. Want to take a look?”

Beldon went out back with Morningside. It was a long, black, powerful convertible, a heavy and expensive automobile. The depth and shape of the damage to the front right corner was sickeningly explicit. The right lense of the dual headlights on the right was smashed.

“The kid landed sixty feet away, up in a yard,” Morningside said in a husky tone. “Smashed all to hell. The woman is cooked, and you are hooked, friend.”

“Looks like it. One thing, Lieutenant. How did you get onto her so quickly?”

“A piece of luck. Anonymous phone call — a local call, presumably from Stoney Cove — came in at quarter after one. Gave us the license number, and said a woman was alone in the car, young, tall, blonde, white dress, red purse, going like a bat out of hell. We put an emergency check through the vehicle bureau, came up with John K. Swain and an address for him. It took time. It was three o’clock when we got there. No car. His wife said he was in Europe on business, try the kid brother. She gave us his address. We got there about five minutes after he did. He’d slept for a couple of hours, woke up and got a cab home. He was still pretty tight. He gave us the Treiber woman’s address.”

“She says she didn’t do it?”

Morningside shrugged. “Maybe she really believes she didn’t. A blackout. She wouldn’t want to remember something like that, so maybe the mind blocks it off. I think what will happen, they’ll plead her guilty and she’ll be put away. Three years probably, and out in a year and a half. Manslaughter. One life gone, and another one ruined. God, how sick you can get of stuff like this, Beldon!”

“I know.”

“Do you? Or is it the money, and trying not to pay out too much?”

Beldon stared at him. “A month ago. I walked through a gym with sixteen dead kids in it, being identified after they’d pulled the school bus out of a river. All I could think about was the money.”

Morningside flushed. “I’m sorry. I’m edgy over this one. That was a real pretty kid. Hell, when we’re killing close to four thousand a month, I suppose some of them are going to be pretty.”

He arrived at Joanne Treiber’s apartment at noon. It was an old brick residence converted into apartments. Two men came out as he started up the walk. As they passed him, he heard the older man say to the younger one. “Merse, unless she takes a more realistic attitude, nobody can help her.”

“Excuse me,” Beldon said. “Mr. Swain?”

They stopped and stared at him. The older man had the seamed face of a character actor, a dramatic shock of white hair. The younger was tall and handsome, with dark hair worn a little too long, big shoulders, a sun-brown face. Beldon thought that the top half of the young man’s face looked twenty-six years old and the bottom half about sixteen.

“What do you want?” Mercer Swain said. “An exclusive interview?”

Beldon took out his wallet and handed each of them a business card.

“Oh, yes,” the character actor said. “I am Frank Ives.” He put his hand out. “Miss Treiber’s attorney, I think. John was insured with you people, of course. Mr. Beldon, Mercer Swain.”

“I wondered about that bail,” Beldon said. “Isn’t it high, Mr. Ives?”

“Quite. But there’s a lot of feeling about this. And Mr. Foley has certain political connections. There’s been a lot of press coverage. The judge didn’t want to seem lenient, I imagine. It was no problem to arrange for it, of course. I finally got through to John by telephone this morning, Mr. Beldon. I assured him there is no need for him to rush back. Will your legal people come in on the civil action? I would imagine so.”

“I just turn in a report. It’s up to them. I’d guess they’d try for a settlement — that is, if the company is clearly liable.”

“It would appear to me that it is.”

“They’ll decide that on the facts. I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Ives. Are you Miss Treiber’s lawyer? You sounded doubtful.”

“She’s being stupid,” Mercer Swain said. “She won’t co-operate. She’s trying to pretend she didn’t do it. You going to talk to her?”

“I’m going to try.”

“You’ll see what I mean, buddy,” Swain said. “A totally stupid broad.”

“What did you and she quarrel about Sunday night?”

“What do you think people quarrel about in front of a motel, friend? The room key was a surprise. She didn’t like the surprise. I don’t like that tease routine. So we had words and I told her to take off. And she did. I didn’t expect her to kill anybody.”

“What time did she leave you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe eleven-thirty, maybe a little later. Around there.”

Ives said sadly, “I can’t be much help to her, Mr. Beldon, unless she faces this situation realistically. Any other lawyer would tell her the same thing.”

“What she has to do,” Mercer Swain said, “is throw herself on the mercy of the court. She wants the whole Perry Mason routine. She’s a nut.”...

Joanne Treiber opened the apartment door moments after he knocked. She looked startled and sad, “Oh, I thought you were... Who are you and what do you want?”

She was tall and slender, red-bronze with recent exposure to the sun. Her pale blonde hair was unkempt and it had a lifeless look. She was without make-up, her eyes puffy and irritated-looking. She wore an old skirt, a blue work shirt, scuffed moccasins. He explained who he was. She let him in, saying, “I’m sorry about how I look. But I feel just about the way I look, Mr. Beldon.”

“This would be tough on anybody.”

“Please sit down.”

“Thanks. I saw Ives and Mercer Swain out front.”

She sat in the corner of a couch and looked at him with narrow, blue eyes. “Why are they so anxious to throw me to the wolves?”

“I guess I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t heard your side of it yet.”

“You mean somebody is actually going to listen to me? That’s pretty astonishing, believe me. I was a horrid lump when they hauled me out of bed. I was confused and terrified. I acted guilty, for heaven’s sake! But I am not going to be pushed around any more.” She leaned forward, made a fist, banged it on the arm of the couch. “I did not do it!” She leaned back and stared at him. “Are you one of them, too? You look slightly pained.”

“Miss Treiber, I am not one of anybody. I just want to find out as nearly as possible, what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened. I didn’t do it. I remember every inch of the way home. Driving that car made me nervous. It’s a dangerous road.”

He studied her as she looked defiantly at him. There was a good look of strength in her face — firm jaw, level mouth.

“Well?” she said.

“It’s this way. They have a lot to go on. Saying you didn’t do it, that doesn’t look as if it is going to help too much. What about you and this Mercer Swain guy?”

She made a face. “A bad guess. A very bad guess. I’m the world’s expert in making bad guesses, Mr. Beldon. He was after me for months to go out with him. I don’t think it’s very good policy to date one of the bosses. I like my job there. Liked it, I guess I should say. And Merse has sort of a sticky reputation with women. But he wore me down and I said okay. A month ago. Sunday was our fourth date. On the other three dates, he was fun. We had a good time. I thought people had misjudged him.”

“I’m supposed to collect facts and write reports. Maybe I’m not entitled to have opinions. Or I guess I mean to say them. But I didn’t think much of him, talking to him out there.”

“I know,” she said. “I felt that way. But, I don’t know, you get sort of protective about people. I do. When I was a kid, I collected abandoned cats, birds with broken wings, baby field mice. We lived in the country. I had a shed full of animals nobody else wanted. When the girls in the office knew I was dating Merse, they thought... it was more than what it was. And that made me feel sort of defiant. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Miss Treiber.”

“Could you call me Joanne? If I’m going to tell you... personal things, it’s a lot easier.”

“Joanne. Sure. I’m Carl.”

She gave him a wry smile. “I just can’t believe I’m in such a horrible mess. I keep remembering it. And it’s a shock.”

Looking at her, he knew the rare thing had happened. He could conduct fifty investigations and, aside from a feeling of pity or distaste, feel no involvement with the people concerned. They were factors in a violent human equation. He could imitate empathy when it seemed the only way to open someone up, but he always felt shabby about doing it. In the fifty-first case, he would find someone who suddenly involved him in a personal way, tapping a hidden well of genuine concern. He did not want it to happen, ever. Because these things often came out very badly. And there were enough old scars to live with. Here it was again, where he had least expected it, and least wanted it — with this doomed girl.

“So Swain lived up to his billing?”

She made a face. “Indeed he did. It was nice enough on the beach — I mean, as nice as the other dates. We swam and baked in the sun. Then we went back to that place and he started drinking.”

“Both of you started drinking, didn’t you? Morningside has the checks and the sworn statements. Five drinks in the lounge, and two in the dining room. Two apiece.”

She stared at him. “Is that why they were so horrid to me? They acted as if I was a tramp.”

“Look. Did you have seven drinks?”

“Stay right there,” she said, her blue eyes narrow. She went out into the kitchen. He heard a crunching of an ice tray, a hiss of a bottle being opened. In a little while, she came back with a tall glass and handed it to him. “Try it!” she said. “Go ahead. I’ll make seven of them if you wish. You can drink them in seven minutes. I had... five hours to drink seven of them.”

He sipped it. “What is it?”

“A spitzer. Rhine wine and soda. A shot glass of Rhine wine, and fill it up with soda. So what did I have in five hours? Maybe ten ounces of wine. Mr. Beldon — Carl — I don’t like to drink. It muffles things. I like the world clear and clean. Seven drinks! For goodness sake, ask the bartender. Even so, there were two and probably three of them I sent back with a third left. It gets to be just too much fluid. He kept trying to get me to switch to martinis. That’s what he was drinking.”

“Seven martinis?”

“Six martinis and a brandy. You know, in the movie, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ he changed into a monster in a minute. It wasn’t dramatic, like that, and he turned into a dreary, tiresome bore instead of a monster. But it was like watching somebody you thought you knew and thought you liked just sort of slowly fading away until there wasn’t anything left and you were with a stranger. Then I knew that there wasn’t any such a person as the one I thought I liked. I got nervous about driving back, and I was thinking that if he wouldn’t let me drive, I just wouldn’t go back with him. I wished the evening was over. I knew I was never going out with him again. Finally, I told him he wasn’t in any shape to drive back. He went away and I thought he went to the men’s room. But he went to the motel office, and he came back with that key and said nobody had to drive.”

“Very cute.”

“I guess he thought it was. I marched right out to the car and got behind the wheel and told him he better get his money back. He wouldn’t give me the car keys. We argued. It was very tiresome. All that live-for-today nonsense. I said he had me confused with several other girls. Then he got ugly. As he got out, he threw the keys at me. They hit me in the face. I found the car key and drove away. I was going to go right home, Carl, but you know the way you get confused, coming out of a strange place? I turned left instead of right. Then I saw the ocean on my right and I knew I was wrong. I did want to be alone. So I went back to that big beach and parked.”

“What time was that?”

“Eleven-thirty, I guess. About that.”

“Exactly what did you do then?”

“Exactly? I got out of the car and walked straight down to the hard sand — a hundred yards, I guess. I took off my shoes and stockings and I found a stick and put it in the sand and stuck a Kleenex on the stick so I could see it easier in the dark. Then I walked south, ’way down the beach, maybe a mile, to where it all turns to big rocks. And I sat on a rock and... thought about me.”

“Why did you walk south?”

“Oh, there was some kind of beach party the other way, a fire and music. Kids, I guess.”

“Did you stay there long?”

“Yes, I did. First, I had to settle myself down. I was still angry, not at him, but at myself for being such a fool. Then I... thought about me. I’m twenty-three, Carl. I wasted a whole year on a broken heart. And I wasted another year on a man who wanted a mother instead of a wife. I think that if a girl can feel desperate enough, if she can be too aware of time passing, then she can get really involved with the next Merse Swain who comes along. I’m not a prude. It’s just that I think I’m worth something a little more than that. So when I started feeling terribly sleepy, I got up and walked back and found the stick, and my shoes and stockings, and walked right up to the car.”

“How much time would you estimate you spent on the beach?”

“I’d guess fifteen minutes walking to the rocks, and an hour sitting, and fifteen minutes back. I walked right along. Alone on a beach at night is a little scary. But I’m not very timid.”

“That would mean you left the beach at one o’clock. How long did it take you to drive back here?”

“I’d say forty or forty-five minutes. I went slowly and carefully. I knew it wasn’t even Merse’s car. I don’t think I went over forty-five. I didn’t hit anything. But I don’t know what time I got back.”

“Why not?”

“My wrist watch is being fixed. I got it wet. And I guess there was a power failure sometime Sunday. I have a little electric alarm clock. When it stops, it doesn’t start itself again. Beth, the girl who lives here with me — Beth Kinsley — she has to get up earlier than I do. She was asleep. I left a note on the kitchen table for her to wake me up. I had the feeling it must have been close to two o’clock when I went to bed. Maybe later.”

Beldon got up and paced restlessly, not looking at her, but aware of her eyes on him. He jammed his hands into his hip pockets and stared out the window and whistled a tuneless tune. He went back to her and cupped his hand on her chin and tilted her face up and looked down into blue eyes.

“Nice try, cutie. But nobody will buy it. There was a witness.”

Shock emptied her face. The blue eyes filled, and suddenly she knocked his hand away. She was incoherent with anger. “You... you made me think... For a little while I... Oh, damn you! I — didn’t — do — it!”

“I believe you,” he said quietly.

“Why did you have to come here and... what did you say?”

“I said I believe you, Joanne.”

“But...”

“I’m sorry. I had to do that. There could be only one reaction from you that I could buy. And I got it. It was that car, but it wasn’t you. So when you were on the beach, somebody clipped it and took off, had that trouble, and put it back where they found it. That’s the only possible answer. And somebody else saw you driving it, and tipped the state police.”

“That’s the only thing I... But nobody will listen.”

“I’m listening. Joanne, did you leave the keys in the car?”

“I can’t remember. I honestly can’t remember. Maybe I did. I just don’t know.”

“Contributory negligence.”

“What?”

“Shop talk. Listen, do you want to run through it again tonight? Drive down there. Maybe one of us will get an idea. Don’t dress up. Put a scarf around your hair, something like that. They could be ugly down there.”

She wiped her eyes. “All right...”

It was after eight, and dark enough. He had gone to the agency in Charles City and traded the rental sedan for a black convertible, not as big as the death car. But it was black and the top was down. She found the exact place where she had parked the other car. Near a patch of waist-high brush. They walked down the beach. It was at least a mile. Her judgment of distance was good. They walked back. She remembered that when she came back, the beach fire was down to a faint glow of embers, and the people were gone. That didn’t mean anything.

He drove slowly back toward the village of Stoney Cove. He pointed out where the girl had been killed. She remembered that when she had gone by, she had seen people standing around in the night, several groups, at that place, and she had wondered if it was some kind of meeting letting out.

He stopped, and got out and had her take the car back south and turn around and drive by him in the night. He walked to where he would be close to a lonely street light that she would pass under after going by the place where Carol Foley had been killed. She went by, not wearing the scarf on her hair, at his request. Blonde and young. He knew her sweater was blue, but it could have been black, blue or dark green under the street light. She went up and turned around and came back and picked him up.

He took the wheel and said, “If you’d been wearing white, I could have seen it was white, all right. And said you were young and blonde, and probably tall.”

“So we’re right where we started, Carl?”

“I don’t know. Something is bothering me, and I don’t know what it is. Maybe a couple of things. I’m not as logical as I should be. I depend too much on the back of my neck, if it tingles or not. It’s something I wouldn’t tell my boss.”

“It tingles?”

“Now I have to find out why. Look, I want to check out those spritzers, just so nobody will forget between now and the trial date they set. You stay in the car.”

It took him ten minutes. The bartender remembered. He said it was a very nice house percentage drink, a dime’s worth of wine and three cents worth of soda, for eighty cents apiece.

When he went back to the car, she sat with her head down, snuffling. “Hey!”

“I’m s-sorry, Carl. We’re just stumbling around.” She opened her purse and got a Kleenex out and blew her nose. It was a straw purse. He stared at it.

“Maybe we’ve stopped stumbling.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to get any hopes up. I think I’d better get to a phone. I want to get an authorization to spend a little money — or at least gamble with it.”

D. G. Steppich was at home and told Carl Beldon to wait a moment so he could take the call on the bedroom extension. He came on again and said, “How are we going to make out on that thing, Carl?”

“Terrible, unless we can get some kind of a break. I want an authorization to spend a thousand dollars.”

“On what?”

“On a hunch.”

“And just how do I write that up?”

“It comes down to this, Dave. You trust my judgment or you don’t. If you don’t, I wouldn’t have to look too long to find a company that...”

“What’s the matter with you? Just give me something to write down, Carl.”

“Okay. Reward for information.”

“Fine, fine. Will the information get us off the hook?”

“If it proves out, it might not get us all the way off, but it will certainly cut down the pressure.”

The next morning, he went to the program director of WTKA radio in Charles City, and then to the city editor of the Charles City Register. From there, he drove south to the state police regional headquarters and, after a thirty-minute wait, got in to see Lieutenant Morning-side again.

Morningside listened to what he had done, and then turned brick-red and began to shout. When he began to slow down. Carl said, “It’s our money, Lieutenant. So you think you had a good enough case without that information. It never hurts to tighten a case up a little further.”

“But why, Beldon?”

“Some cranks and nuts will try to grab the money, sure. But there was no newspaper report on exactly what was said in that call, so it will be easy to screen them.”

“And we have nothing else to do around here.”

“Give me a phone in a corner somewhere and tell your guy on the switchboard, and I’ll screen them.”

“What have you got on your mind?”

“Justice, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, sure. I can really believe that.”

“If Carol Foley was killed at twenty-five after twelve, how come the tip didn’t come in until a quarter after one?”

“Beldon, this is your nonsense, and I’m going to let you handle it yourself.”

“I wrote down what you said about the phone call. Is this close?”

Morningside read it and handed it back. “You have a good memory. He gave the make, model and year of the car, and the license, and described the driver and said she was alone and going like a bat out of hell. He spoke in a half-whisper and hung up the moment he finished... There’s enough there so you can screen.”

Carl Beldon sat at a table and read old magazines and took the few calls that were routed to him. Screening was easy. “Just tell me exactly what you said over the phone Sunday night.”

He had one of the men bring him back a sandwich and coffee for lunch. A thousand dollars really smoked the cranks out of the woodwork. They were furious at his polite rejections.

At four o’clock, a call from a girl was routed to him. Her voice was frail and uncertain. “I told the other man I was calling about the reward.”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t make the call. I know who did.”

“What is your name?” Beldon asked.

“He told me what he’d seen and he was real shook, and he hadn’t done anything about it, and I made him phone you.”

“What’s his name?”

“He doesn’t know I’m phoning now. But what I want to ask, suppose somebody was in trouble for a couple of things, and then they got straightened out, but they’re sort of... you know, kind of shook about talking to the police or anything like that. Being an eyewitness couldn’t get them in any trouble, could it?”

“I’ll be honest with you, miss. If it should come to a jury trial, and he was called to the stand, the defense attorney might try to use that trouble to destroy his credibility as a witness. But that would be the only possible trouble.”

Beldon heard her long, faint sigh. “Gee, we could use the thousand dollars. I don’t want him to be sore at me.”

“Are you sure he phoned it in?”

“Oh, yes. We were both in the phone booth. I heard him phone it in.”

“What did he say?”

She repeated it. It checked out.

“Well,” he said, “it’s up to you. There’s a thousand dollars here for him.”

After a long silence she said, “All right. His name is Jerry Kerso, and he works at Logan’s Service Station across from the diner. I’m his girl. My name is Sandra Hooper. If we had that thousand dollars we could... Anyway, we made the call from the phone booth outdoors there beside the service station, after he found me and told me what he’d seen.”

Beldon thanked her, and went in and saw Morningside.

“Kerso, eh? He hasn’t been in trouble for about a year. He had some moving-vehicle violations, and he had some probation for breaking and entering.” He phoned the switchboard and told the operator to brush off any further calls about the reward. “Now break down and tell me what’s on your mind.”

Beldon watched Morningside’s face as he stated his long-shot premise. There was no change of expression. When he was through, Morningside sat in silent thought for a little while, then picked up the phone again and gave orders for Jerry Kerso to be picked up at once and brought in.

“Thanks,” Beldon said.

Morningside looked thoughtfully at him. “The Treiber girl bothered me, too, but I wasn’t admitting it to myself...”

Morningside kept Kerso waiting fifteen minutes to get him edgier, and then had him sent in. Beldon had a chair in a corner. A big sergeant leaned against the wall near the closed door. Kerso sat across the desk from Morningside. He was a big, blond young man, erect and forthright. He seemed entirely at ease.

Morningside said, “We thought we ought to thank you in person, Jerry, for your public-spirited gesture in tipping us off about the hit and run.”

“How did... oh. Well, my girl and I talked it over and we decided that it was my duty.”

“It took you from twenty-five after twelve until a quarter after one to decide what your duty was?”

“I guess I was stunned, sir. We all knew Carol.”

“Because you may have to be a prosecution witness at the trial, we’d better go over it a little.”

“That’s okay with me, sir.”

“Where were you when you witnessed this terrible thing, Jerry?”

“I was on the other side of the street, just like I told Sandra. The woman kept right on going.”

“And you ran over to see if Carol was dead?” Morningside asked.

“Oh, no! Nobody could get hit like that and not be dead. I was stunned.”

“You knew it was Carol?”

“Yes, sir. I recognized her when she walked under a street light.”

“Why didn’t you go over and walk with her, if she was such a friend?”

“Sir, to be honest with you, I wasn’t feeling very sociable. I’d had a sort of a fight with Sandra, earlier.”

“I see. How did you happen to be in that area at that time, Jerry?”

“I was walking back from the beach. We had a beach party that night, a dozen of us, I’d say it was. Carol would have been there if she hadn’t had a sitter job. I had some beers, and I guess I got a little mean, and I had a fight with Sandra, so I decided to walk back to town.”

“No car?”

“I got the transmission out of mine, sir. We went out there with Cal O’Donnell.”

“So you left your girl on the beach with the others. Okay. Where and when did you catch up with her again?”

“At the diner, sir. I don’t know exactly what time. Maybe it was one o’clock. They were all there.”

“Then they passed you on their way into town from the beach?”

“I guess they must have. I just didn’t notice. I was...”

“I know. You were stunned. By the time you got to the diner, they all knew about Carol?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you went in and told them you’d seen it happen?”

“No, sir. I got Sandra and took her outside and told her what I saw. She said I should phone in, but I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything. So I didn’t give my name. I figured you’d have enough with the license number and description.”

“You got a good look at the car and the driver.”

“Yes. She went under a street light.”

“Blonde in a white dress?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Young and tall?”

“That was the way she looked, sir.”

“And that was the only time you ever saw her, going by like a bat out of hell?”

“Under the street light, yes, sir.”

“But you didn’t run over and see about Carol?” Morningside persisted.

“No. I felt sick. She — the blonde in the car — she drifted out too far on the curve, almost out of control, and there was the scream of tires and the thump. And then she went on. People around there heard it. I knew there wasn’t anything anybody could do for her.”

“What time did you leave the party?”

“To get where I was at the time Carol was killed, it must have been maybe quarter after twelve when I left. Something like that. I just left and started walking back to town alone.”

“Who saw you walking, Jerry?”

“I don’t know. Nobody, I guess. I told you, sir, I wasn’t feeling very sociable.”

Morningside stared at him for several moments. Beldon had to admire the technique. It was as intricate as the ceremonial preparations the bullfighter takes before the final thrust that kills. The bull has to be maneuvered, tricked, tired, the head brought down, and the animal brought to the proper place in the arena.

In another voice, a gentler voice, Morningside said, “You made the call to us?”

“Yes sir,” he said. “I guess Sandra must have... I mean, thinking about the thousand dollars...”

“We tape all incoming calls, Jerry. We have that tape.”

“Yes, sir?” Beldon knew Morningside was lying about the tape.

“Sandra Hooper can verify exactly what you said?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How far from the car were you? What was the closest point?”

“I guess, about twenty feet.”

“You were standing on the other shoulder of the highway?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the Treiber woman was fighting the steering wheel?”

“Yes, sir, she was.” Jerry was tense.

“And that was the only time you ever saw her?”

“Yes, it was.”

Morningside let just enough silence go by, leaned forward and said, “Then how could you have possibly know she was carrying a red purse, Jerry?”

That was the thrust, and Beldon watched it go home.

In a small, papery voice, Kerso said, “I didn’t say that she... I guess I must have seen...” He stopped. Morning-side had left him no place to go.

“The keys were in it, weren’t they?” Morningside asked in a soft voice.

The straight back curved slowly. Jerry Kerso laid his face against his hard knees, against the old stains on the service-station uniform. In the muffled voice of a terrible agony, he said, “She... Carol turned... just before it... I saw her face! Oh, God!”

“Get Michaels in here with his book,” Morningside ordered, his tone weary.

They sat at the coffee counter in the airport at the city, Carl Beldon and Joanne Treiber, in the few minutes left them before his flight would be announced.

He had told her of Kerso’s statement, how he had taken the car back to where he had stolen it, immediately, as though somehow that would bring the girl back to life. How he had crawled into the brush and lay there like a sick animal, near the car, not thinking he had any way to get out of it until he had seen Joanne come back alone to the car, tall, blonde, white dress, big red purse, and get in and drive north without seeing the damage. He knew from the license that it was a car from the Charles City area. Then he had run all the way down the dark beach to the town, had found the beach party group at the diner, where he hoped they would be. Sandra had talked him into phoning the information in. But he had, in his anxiety to cover himself, added one detail too much. The red purse. And Carl had explained to Joanne that it was much worse for Kerso than it would have been for her; this was grand-theft auto, and thus, a felony murder.

Joanne sipped her coffee and said, “How horrible for him, Carl. And for his girl. I left the keys in the car. That girl would be alive if I hadn’t. I’m going to carry that around a long time.”

“I know. I guess I’m glad.”

“You are?”

“I guess I wouldn’t want you to be full of song and dance and celebration.”

She made a small, wry mouth. “Like dancing on a grave. No, Carl. I’m glad I’m out of trouble. I’m in your debt. But I don’t feel jolly. Just kind of exhausted.”

They announced his flight. She walked to the gate with him.

“Joanne, I... I’ll have to come back in about three weeks and I wondered...”

“Call me, Carl. Please call me.”

The plane lifted into the night. Until the stewardess smiled at him, he did not feel the aimless grin that stretched his mouth. Insistence in the blue eyes of a tall girl, insistence in the tone of her voice telling him to call. All you could do, he thought, was wait and see, and wonder if, once again, the heart could accept the risks and dangers of commitment.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Eyewitness