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Authors: Paul Connolly
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that was because I had settled back into the old life as if I had never been away, as if I would stay there forever. Which I would have. Only not if I had known. Not then. I was a trained engineer. We could have gone anywhere, and no farm, no way of life in the world, would have been worth losing her.
So there had been, I figured, the loneliness and the boredom and then there had been Dick Stewart. He has a big store in St. Johns, only it isn't his. It belongs to his wife, a polio victim who won't ever walk again, and he married her to get it. But a store and plenty of tobacco money isn't enough for him.
He has to have women. Sometimes he'll get you aside and tell you about his trips to the state capital and the girls he has there and what he does with them and you can see it in his eyes, the way he has to have them. Only the trips have to be infrequent and there have to be women in between and there are.
And there isn't a soul in the county who would be surprised to hear that Dick Stewart had been shot in someone else's bedroom or barn loft, and there are plenty of them who'll tell you there's more than one youngster around named Brigman or Meakins or Buxton or Bailey, with the same blue eyes and curly hair and dark skin Dick Stewart has.
So there must have been the loneliness and the boredom for her, then Stewart. Finally there was the bedroom and the fear, the blood on the white rug and the inert sprawl of the legs and the sightless glass of the eyes.
But it had all come out the way I had planned, and nobody, as far as I knew, even had an idea it wasn't suicide. Except Dick Stewart, And he, I was sure, was keeping his mouth shut, because of that rich, paralytic wife who held his purse strings. Because he couldn't afford not to keep quiet; he had nothing to gain and everything to lose if he didn't keep his mouth shut.
And now I could deal with him in my own way, at my own leisure. There was plenty of time, and I intended to use it. I would make him pay out for Lucy and for me. I would make him pay out, all right. But when I did, it would be foolproof. When I did, it would be like it had been with Lucy. It would look the way I wanted it to look.
There was plenty of time to figure it out, to figure how to do it, and, sweetest of all, every day I delayed was one more day through which he would have to live, waiting for it, knowing it was coming, knowing it had to come, but not when, not how, not where.
That was the sweetest of all, to know it was going to he like that for him until the day I decided to end it, to know the terror and the despair and the incomparable aloneness of him waiting for me to do it, somewhere, sometime, somehow.
I began to plan murders. I planned them cold-bloodedly and deliberately, without a qualm of conscience in me, only black merciless hate, because he had it coming to him. I had the power and the right to do it. Without guilt, I planned murder upon murder, and then discarded each plan because there was a flaw, a catch, a weak link that couldn't be trusted. And then I planned again.
I had plenty of time, you see. One thing had gone wrong. Three days after Lucy's death, the surgeon had amputated my left arm just below the shoulder, had left this ugly, reminding stump, this dangling, freakish monument to all I owed to Dick Stewart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was amazing how simply a whole life could be ended.
I don't mean just the mortality that had been Lucy's, but the whole of a life together that had been built between us. For her part, she had had no family, except a distant aunt and uncle who kept discreetly silent about the whole thing, after I had Brax Jordan notify them.
As simply as that, with only the additional complication of a funeral I could not attend, and which few others cared to attend, and the meaningless purchase of a tombstone, she went to dust and
So there had been, I figured, the loneliness and the boredom and then there had been Dick Stewart. He has a big store in St. Johns, only it isn't his. It belongs to his wife, a polio victim who won't ever walk again, and he married her to get it. But a store and plenty of tobacco money isn't enough for him.
He has to have women. Sometimes he'll get you aside and tell you about his trips to the state capital and the girls he has there and what he does with them and you can see it in his eyes, the way he has to have them. Only the trips have to be infrequent and there have to be women in between and there are.
And there isn't a soul in the county who would be surprised to hear that Dick Stewart had been shot in someone else's bedroom or barn loft, and there are plenty of them who'll tell you there's more than one youngster around named Brigman or Meakins or Buxton or Bailey, with the same blue eyes and curly hair and dark skin Dick Stewart has.
So there must have been the loneliness and the boredom for her, then Stewart. Finally there was the bedroom and the fear, the blood on the white rug and the inert sprawl of the legs and the sightless glass of the eyes.
But it had all come out the way I had planned, and nobody, as far as I knew, even had an idea it wasn't suicide. Except Dick Stewart, And he, I was sure, was keeping his mouth shut, because of that rich, paralytic wife who held his purse strings. Because he couldn't afford not to keep quiet; he had nothing to gain and everything to lose if he didn't keep his mouth shut.
And now I could deal with him in my own way, at my own leisure. There was plenty of time, and I intended to use it. I would make him pay out for Lucy and for me. I would make him pay out, all right. But when I did, it would be foolproof. When I did, it would be like it had been with Lucy. It would look the way I wanted it to look.
There was plenty of time to figure it out, to figure how to do it, and, sweetest of all, every day I delayed was one more day through which he would have to live, waiting for it, knowing it was coming, knowing it had to come, but not when, not how, not where.
That was the sweetest of all, to know it was going to he like that for him until the day I decided to end it, to know the terror and the despair and the incomparable aloneness of him waiting for me to do it, somewhere, sometime, somehow.
I began to plan murders. I planned them cold-bloodedly and deliberately, without a qualm of conscience in me, only black merciless hate, because he had it coming to him. I had the power and the right to do it. Without guilt, I planned murder upon murder, and then discarded each plan because there was a flaw, a catch, a weak link that couldn't be trusted. And then I planned again.
I had plenty of time, you see. One thing had gone wrong. Three days after Lucy's death, the surgeon had amputated my left arm just below the shoulder, had left this ugly, reminding stump, this dangling, freakish monument to all I owed to Dick Stewart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was amazing how simply a whole life could be ended.
I don't mean just the mortality that had been Lucy's, but the whole of a life together that had been built between us. For her part, she had had no family, except a distant aunt and uncle who kept discreetly silent about the whole thing, after I had Brax Jordan notify them.
As simply as that, with only the additional complication of a funeral I could not attend, and which few others cared to attend, and the meaningless purchase of a tombstone, she went to dust and
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