An Eye for an Eye Read Free Page A

leather wallet and her key ring were in the top drawer. He shut the drawer again and went back into the hall to the telephone. He felt very old and very tired, hollow inside. His hands shook. He leafed through the phone book until he found the number he wanted. Then he dialed it and waited.
    A woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
    Ben said, “Hello, Ivy, is Ernie there? This is Ben Forbes.”
    “Why, yes, he is—what’s the matter, Ben? Your voice sounds so funny.”
    “Please, Ivy. Let me talk to him.”
    He heard her calling, “—for you, Ernie. It’s Ben and he sounds like something’s wrong.”
    “Hello,” he said. “Hello, Ernie?”
    “Yeah. What is it, Ben?”
    His voice sounded strange even in his own ears. “It’s Carolyn,” he said. “My wife. I don’t know what’s happened to her and I want you to tell me what I ought to do.”

 
three
     
    Ernie MacGrath came within a quarter of an hour of Ben’s call. He was a stocky, capable-looking man with dark hair and very strong hands. He and Ben had played high school football together and they still saw each other fairly often. Ernie was a City Detective on the Woodley force.
    He listened patiently while Ben talked, stopped him now and then to clarify some point. When he was through Ernie asked:
    “Has Carolyn ever blacked out mentally?”
    Ben was startled. “Good Lord, no! You’re thinking of amnesia, aren’t you?”
    “Has she had any head injury lately? Even an apparently trivial bump will sometimes do it.”
    “Not that I know of,” Ben said. “Of course—”
    “Of course what?”
    “She’s alone all day. She could have hit her head, I suppose, and never bothered to tell me about it.” He was appalled by this new thought. “She might be wandering somewhere in the woods, not knowing—” He jumped up. “She doesn’t even have a coat, Ernie. Can you get some men to help look for her?”
    Ernie nodded. “It isn’t too satisfactory at night, but we can try. We can make a thorough check of the neighbors, too.” He went to the phone. Before he picked it up he looked at Ben with a hard professional look and said, “I’m going to ask you something, Ben, and I want a straight and honest answer. Did Carolyn have any reason to leave you?”
    Ben took his head. “Johnny Pettit asked me the same thing. The answer is no. We were happy. There was nobody else for either of us.”
    Ernie continued to look at him for a moment, as though weighing the truth of what Ben said. Then he said, “Okay,” and made his call, asking for all available men to be sent. “Better send the lab boys, too. I’m not sure yet what this is going to be.” There was a pause while he listened to a voice on the other end. “Apparently not,” he said, “But I’m going to make a closer check now.”
    He hung up and turned to Ben. “You’d better call your wife’s folks. They might just have heard something, and any way, they ought to know what’s going on. I don’t suppose your mother—”
    “She’s halfway to Hawaii now. She and Gladys took off last week.” He was rather glad his mother was gone. Her only contribution to this situation would be a species of weak hysteria, leading to a departure for somewhere else to preserve her health. She had avoided most of the crises of life that way, just as she avoided winter. Ben bore her no rancor on that account and was simply grateful that his father had left enough money to allow her to do it. But Carolyn’s folks were going to be enough to deal with.
    He got the long-distance operator, put the call in, and waited. Ernie had gone off. Ben could hear him moving around in the other rooms. The wait seemed interminable. He lighted a cigarette and leaned his head against his hand, distantly aware of how awful he felt but not thinking much about it.
    The Pittsburgh number rang and Carolyn’s father answered.
    Ben had thought, I will be calm and not alarm them. But his voice burst out uncontrollably with a raw