Read Online Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page B

Friday to Monday run, but he got up there, just making it, with the transmission sounding like somebody shaking glass in a basket, and there wasn’t a spare for the return haul. He’d phoned in and they told him to take an air coach back and so he got in at dusk on Sunday instead of midnight Monday like he always did. He took a bus on out and walked three blocks to the house. The house was dark and he could see there was just one light on, the kitchen light, and he figured she was out there maybe eating by herself after stashing the kids in bed, and it was probably right in between two of her favorite television shows. He thought he would come up behind her sitting there at the kitchen table and put his hands over her eyes, maybe, and say “Guess who?” So he walked quietly onto the porch and opened the screen door and shut it quietly and just started to head across the living room when there was all of a sudden a grunting and rustling from the couch and the bastard from the gas station down at the corner came running at him and got by him and the screen door banged and he heard his steps on the walk, half running. He didn’t know who it was in the dark. He hadn’t seen him. But he’d pounded the name out of her later.
    He turned on the light and she was there on the couch, her black hair all messed up, her face like chalk, her lips without any blood in them, her hands shaking as she tried to hook herself up.
    Who’s taking care of that while you’re away, Dix?
    Fellow named Sparkman that works at the Esso Station. Bob Sparkman. Big blond-headed fellow.
    He saw her there and he knew he would never forget how she looked, and he just stood there and pointed his finger up in the air and said, “With the kids asleep right over your head.”
    He was one yard from her, his fists shut tight, when she found her voice and began pleading, explaining, telling him to wait. He gave her a chance to talk. She said nothing had happened, that it was the first time they’d ever been together, that she’d offered him a beer because it was a hot night and he’d turned into a wise guy and turned off the light and she was trying to get the light back on when he walked in. See, there was the beer can.
    He kept after her then. He went after her and he kept after her. He hurt her with his hands and he hurt her with his words and he didn’t have all of it until two in the morning. Then they were in the kitchen and she sat with her cheek against the cold porcelain top of the table and she was crying silently, hopelessly, and her face was puffed and discolored where he had struck her, but he had the whole truth, he was sure.
    It had been going on for six months. Before that there hadn’t been anyone for over a year, but there had been another one and his name had been Schneider and that affair had lasted almost a year. Then the record was clean all the way back to the first year after their marriage when there had been one named Cooper and that had only lasted two weeks and they had only been together three times. She didn’t know why she did it. She didn’t know how it happened to her. She wanted to be good, she said, but these things happened to her. She couldn’t help it. They just seemed to happen. And he was away so much.
    She lifted her head from the table and looked at him with tired dazed blue eyes and said, “Dix, honey, I’m so ashamed. I’m so terrible ashamed.”
    There wasn’t any other hurt like that. It was like a rusty knife in your gut that kept twisting slowly. He lay beside her while she was in deep exhausted sleep and he tried to think it out logically. But what did you do? Did you kill them? What did you do about it?
    And yet in some funny way the most tragic thing seemed to be the tiny nick on his middle knuckle where she had tried to cry out as he struck her, not hard, and her tooth had cut his knuckle. So how could you hurt her bad? How could you kill her? She hadn’t ever been very bright. Just sort of fun.