Read Online The Drowner by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

based on his own value judgments. Curiously, the most basic dividing line seemed to be based on self-awareness and self-respect. Without regard to lines of social or financial or educational demarcation, some people seemed to fit easily inside their skins, to be at home with themselves. They could be car washers or bank presidents, but they—like this Doctor Nile—made the whole thing easier by having no aching need to exaggerate or diminish their own importance in his eyes. They said what they believed rather than what they thought you wanted them to believe. So you could sort out what they said, knowing the significant things were indeed significant, not merely attempts to get attention or to avoid attention. When they lied, the motives were usually obvious and understandable. The ones not at home with themselves were difficult. They believed the world had judged them wrongly, when in fact they had made the faulty appraisal. And, bank president or car washer, they had in small doses those diseases the psychiatrists put names to—a fragment of neurosis, a crumb of paranoia, a taint of the psychotic. At the same time as they misled themselves, for reasons never obvious, they were also misleading you, because their vision of reality was flawed. You could not like them because in a very basic way they did not like themselves. But it was easy to like the Doc Niles of the world. It was something you had to sense. There were no rules. There was only practice.
    “Is accident more likely than murder?”
    “Certainly! Who’d kill Lucille?”
    Stanial gave Nile his most disarming grin. “Let’s see. You, because you’d fallen in love with her and couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing Sam Kimber all the time. Hanson, because he knew she’d refuse to come back to him at the end of the year. Sam Kimber, because he told her too much about his business affairs and she threatened to turn him in. Or somebody who wanted her out of the way so they’d have the inside track with Sam. Or some drunk who happened along.”
    “Hell, boy, you got imaginitis. That’s an acute inflammation of the imagination.”
    “It’s a reaction to too many dull insurance cases. I get one with a beautiful woman involved, I lose control.”
    “Or it could be Martha Carey, her landlady, striking a blow for chastity. Or one of Hanson’s college girls, making sure the marriage wouldn’t pick up again where it left off. Or one of Hanson’s pals who got turned down by Lucille and couldn’t stand the shame of it. Hah?”
    “You do pretty good too, Doctor.”
    “Any number can play. But it was an accident. One hell of a lot of people drown in Florida every year. They have a knack for it, seems like. There’s so damn much water, they lose respect for it. The times it makes you sick are the toddlers, whole platoons of them, that fall into the ponds and the lakes and the drainage ditches and the swimming pools. Somebody took their eye off the kid for thirty seconds. Had one last month. Two years old. Brought him around but he’d been out so long the brain damage was severe. Died of pneumonia on the fifth day. Probably just as well.”
    “Did you examine Lucille’s body?”
    “I’m not the coroner. That’s Bert Dell. He’s got better political connections, but he’s a good man. From the degree of cyanosis it was drowning beyond a doubt, and he estimated she was under for at least thirty minutes before they brought her up. Billy Gain had himself a time bleaching out that blue so they could leave the box open. Goddam barbaric custom.”
    “Agreed.”
    “An essential dignity to death. Hah? What kind of veneration is it to pretty up the husk? Another little remedy for pain and sorrow, Stanial?”
    “A light one, thanks.”
    “Can you fold your tent now, or are you going to keep talking to people?”
    “I couldn’t sell the company on doing less than five interviews, and then I’ll have to talk to some of the people who were on the scene so