Flight to Darkness by Gil Brewer Read Free Book Online Page B

able to explain it easily enough. It was all
foolish.
    I jerked my head at Redfern and Hartly. “They
say I had the car in town. That I hit somebody, then drove back
here.”
    Leda made a face. “For God’s sake, that’s
silly.”
    Redfern grunted and wiped his finger across
his nose. I looked at them both. They were as soaked with rain as
I, but I got no satisfaction from it.
    “ This man’s been very sick,” Leda
said. “He just left the hospital a few days ago. This sort of thing
isn’t good for him. I can vouch for him.”
    Redfern nodded. “Sure, sure.”
    The kitchen door flapped and Amelia Woodruff
stalked into the room. She stood with both hands on the counter and
looked at me. “Mr. Garth. We’d take it as a kindness if you and
Mrs. Garth would leave right away.” Her eyes narrowed, her black
hair shone in the bright blue neon light that gleamed from bars
along the ceiling. “We don’t like your kind here. Please leave
immediately.”
    “ Amelia,” Herb Woodruff called.
“Get back here!”
    She made a wry face and the brooch swung
pendulously along her empty bosom. As her husband started through
the door, she turned and went back into the kitchen. The door
flapped. I could hear them talking out there.
    “ Darling, just tell these men that
you were asleep in the cabin. That you didn’t take the car.” She
turned to Redfern. “He didn’t drive into town. I’m telling you
that. Ask Mr. Woodruff. He’d know if the car left here.”
    “ We did,” Redfern said. “Woodruff
was on the other side of the lake digging night
crawlers.”
    “ Ah, it’s an obvious tip,” Hartly
said. “Let’s take him in.”
    Leda looked at me. “You didn’t drive out with
the car, did you, Eric?”
    “ Of course not.”
    “ What’s the matter?” Redfern said.
“Can’t you trust him?”
    “ She can trust me,” I said. “You’re
not taking me any place.”
    Hartly made a face.
    “ Just what’s so obvious about all
this?” Leda said.
    It was like having the doctors work on your
wounds. You were off someplace, yet you were there, watching it.
What they said didn’t mean anything to you; it was of you, yet not
for you. At the same time, it concerned you altogether.
    There was something in Leda’s eyes behind the
smoke; something bright and what the hell. I didn’t like
it.
    Hartly was talking. “The tip was phoned in and
radioed to me. The license number and description of the car.
Mercury convertible, gun-metal color. California plates. Probably
the only Mercury convertible of that color with a California
license in this county.” He shrugged. “It was an anonymous
tip.”
    “ Where’s this person I’m supposed
to have hit?”
    “ The hospital,” Redfern said. “He’s
not dead. Reckon you was scared of that.”
    I hadn’t thought about death. Not this
way.
    “ We’ll go down to the station,”
Redfern said.
    “ Me, too?” Leda asked.
    “ Yeah, lady,” Hartly said. “You,
too.”
    “ We’ll stop by the hospital,”
Redfern said. “Maybe Allen got a look at Garth.”
    “ I’ll have to change,” Leda said.
She ran one hand across her shorts and all eyes followed the
movement.
    “ You look all right, Mrs.
Garth.”
    Riding into Sordell, no one spoke. The tires
hissed on the wet pavement. Rain drummed on the car’s
roof.
    Leda and I didn’t speak to each other. Once
when I glanced at her and she looked at me, I saw that her face was
very pale. She drew close into the rear corner of the seat against
the window.
     
    The antiseptic odor, the stillness, the
whisking, unruffled quiet reached me. A gray-haired, stout nurse
sat at the hospital reception desk in the front hall.
    “ Hit-and-run? Oh, yes. Allen.
Gerald Allen. In two-nineteen. Second floor. Just up those stairs
right there, turn right. It’s the second door on your left.” She
was big bosomed and she fussed with a pad of paper. “The doctor
said if you all came you all could look in.”
    This was no dream. Maybe the