An Eye for an Eye Read Free Page B

edge of fear, asking:
    “Have you heard from Carolyn?”
    They had not.
    It was a bad few minutes, possibly the worst of the evening so far.
    Carolyn’s mother got the phone and said shrilly, “Gone? What do you mean, Carolyn’s gone?” Ben tried to soothe her. He explained that he had a good friend on the police force and that the friend thought it was a temporary amnesia and they would soon find her. But Carolyn’s mother said in a queer gasping voice heavy with horror and reproach, “Somebody’s got her. I’ve been afraid of this ever since you moved to that lonely house in the country. Somebody’s taken her, Ben.”
    He tried to say that that was silly, that the house wasn’t lonely, and that women lived safely all along the road. But she wasn’t listening. She kept saying, “—sex fiend, some sex fiend has her, just like that poor girl on the North Side.” Her husband said, “Now, Martha, it isn’t like that at all. We had a terrible case down here just recently, Ben, and that’s why—”
    Ben turned white and looked at Ernie, who had come back into the hall. “She thinks a sex fiend has Carolyn,” he said.
    Ernie motioned him aside and took the phone. Ben went blindly into the living room and sat down. A coldness came over him and the lights dimmed and the room got dark. With abnormal clarity he heard Ernie’s voice saying, “—no signs of violence at all. She would certainly have put up some kind of a fight. No sign of illegal entry, nothing touched in the house. We’ll find her all right, don’t worry. Most missing persons turn up okay.”
    There was some more in the same vein, and then silence, and then a hand came out of the dark with a little glass in it and Ernie said, “Come on, boy, drink this.”
    He drank it and the darkness went away. He looked at Ernie and said, “It couldn’t be a sex fiend, could it?”
    Ernie said, “Let’s put it this way. I don’t think so, but as of right now I just don’t know.”
    He hauled Ben up out of the chair.
    “For Chrissake, make yourself some coffee and a sandwich. You’re dying on your feet. I’m going next door and talk to your friends. Mrs. Pettit may have noticed something.”
    Ben stumbled into the kitchen. Ernie went out the front door and disappeared. Moving in a fog, Ben managed to get hot water and instant coffee together in a cup and scrabble up some odds and ends of food. He did not want to eat. But he knew Ernie was right and he choked it down anyway and made more coffee. He forced his mind to be an almost perfect blank. He did this because he knew he had to.
    Ernie came back, shaking his head. Johnny Pettit was with him.
    “Mrs. Pettit was gone from about midmorning to about three-thirty in the afternoon. She saw Carolyn when she came back from driving you in, but she didn’t see her again and she didn’t notice anything unusual after three-thirty. No strange cars, no people hanging around, nothing like that. The kids were out playing, but they didn’t see anything either. So that doesn’t help much except maybe to narrow down the time. Let’s work on that angle for a while. You can help there, Ben. What about these dishes?”
    “They were there when I came in,”Johnny said. “Just like that.”
    Ben nodded dully. “Lunch dishes. She hates dishes in the sink. She does the breakfast things right after she gets back from town.”
    Ernie counted them. “One cup and saucer, one plate, odd dishes that probably held leftovers. All right, we can say she didn’t leave the house until after lunch. Say twelve-thirty. Now what about the other end of it? We know she wasn’t here at five-ten when your office called.”
    “It must have been earlier than that. Much earlier. She always has everything ready for dinner before she leaves at four-thirty, so it won’t take forever when we get home.” He tried to think. “Meat loaf. She was going to have that tonight. It would have been in the oven.”
    Ernie opened the oven door.