Under a wheel a tumbleweed crackled.
“You’re still young, Bettie,” Palmer continued. “You can still jump above the jar. Though what the hell does it matter? Everyone will still end up at one of those stations I mentioned. It may be silly to rebel, knowing you won’t win. But it’s even sillier to obey, knowing you won’t get any reward.”
I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find there’s no need
sang the radio.
“I also think all of them went crazy,” Pete agreed, “however there’s some charm in going at great speed without any need. Don’t you agree, Bettie?”
The girl was silent.
“Bettie, say something just for a change. It’s wrong to sulk for so long.”
“Keeping an eye on the world going by the window, taking my time,” warbled the radio. Palmer turned his head and saw that Bettie had dozed off. The road and the music had lulled her.
Please don’t wake me,
No, don’t shake me,
the radio asked.
“All right, I won’t,” agreed Pete. “Sleep, Bettie. When you’re young, it’s easy. At your age, I passed out when my head touched the pillow.”
He became silent and concentrated on the road. However, there weren’t many things to look at. The visibility was really limited. Sand tongues stretched across the asphalt, as if the desert was trying to creep away to the north, escaping from the heat.
Then a spot appeared ahead. A car—a police cruiser; Palmer distinguished the typical black and white pattern. The cruiser stood on the shoulder of the lane going in the other direction. Pete reflexively reduced his speed. However, if the cop wanted to make trouble for Pete, he had already had enough time to check his speed.
And it seemed he had—the officer got out of his car and made a gesture to stop. Palmer swore and braked ten yards short of the cop. Let him walk.
The policeman came to the Ford, clutching his hat to his head with one hand and trying to cover his face from the wind. He was very young—probably just a rookie.
“Good afternoon, sir!” he shouted approaching. “May I ask you for help? You see, my vehicle…”
As he was talking, he came close and bent to the driver’s window, which Palmer had half opened. And here something strange happened with the cop. He didn’t look like Gills in any way—the latter was bald, well-fed, round-faced, bespectacled, and almost 30 years older. And the cop had a thin bony face and brown hair peeked out from under his hat; on his chin Pete noticed a small cut—probably, the guy thought that a real man should use an open razor. But nevertheless the officer’s expression vividly resembled that of Gills at the moment when Pete’s fist smashed his face. Completing the similarity, the cop recoiled from the car, as if indeed thrown back by a blow; however, then the similarity ended. In the next moment the policeman already stood on half-bent legs, bulging his butt back and stretching forward his straight arms clasping a gun. The barrel shook slightly—probably this was the first time the boy actually had aimed at a human being—but nevertheless the round black hole looked right at the bridge of Palmer’s nose.
“Exit the vehicle!” the cop cried out in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. The wind tore his hat off and rolled it across the road but he didn’t even notice it.
“What?” Pete stupidly asked.
“Exit the vehicle, slowly and so I can see your hands! One wrong move and I’ll blow your head off!”
“All right, officer,” Palmer shrugged his shoulders, pressing the lever of the door lock, “but what’s the matter?”
“Ah, you son of a bitch!” the cop nearly choked from indignation. “You think strangling a girl is nothing special, huh?”
“Probably, I look like a sketch of some murderer,” Palmer thought. “Everything will clear up soon.” However a cold feeling of alarm suddenly spread in his belly and made him turn his head to the right.
Bettie wasn’t sleeping. Her eyes were open… not just open. They were goggled and empty. Her face was purple. Her tongue fell out of her mouth. On her chin saliva had dried. But the most awful were the dark stains on her neck. The imprints of fingers. His fingers.
“No,” said Palmer, “my God, no.”
At work, it had been similar. He remembered hitting Gills and he remembered leaving the office. But those four minutes when he stood and swore at Gills had simply dropped out of his memory. However, when he had left, Gills was still alive.
“Bettie, I didn’t want…”
He got out of the car backwards, without taking his eyes from the corpse. He hardly felt his own body; everything seemed just a nightmare. The strong hand of the policeman seized his wrist, closing the cool ring of a handcuff around it.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney…”
“BETTIE!!!”
But you can’t hear me,
You can’t hear me,
the radio sang.
Over the desert the hot wind blew.
In the story The Beatles songs “Yesterday”, “Nowhere man”, “I’m only sleeping”, “And your bird can sing” were quoted.
THROAT
Steel locks clanked hollowly behind my back, cutting me off from the world of the living. In modern prisons, guards don’t jingle keys on thick wire rings anymore—everything is done by automatics; the locks are controlled from a central location. No chance to escape, nor even that tiny hope that the prisoners of the past had… For a moment I felt something like an attack of claustrophobia. Behind me there was a tightly locked steel door, ahead of me—a corridor without windows, with pale green walls and caged lights on the ceiling. Yes, here even they are behind bars… At that moment they burned steadily, but I knew that there were moments when they dimmed or started to flicker. It means that one more inhabitant of this place leaves it—leaves in almost the only way possible here…
Alas, I had no way back. The jailer looked at me expectantly—without anger, but also without sympathy—and I obediently went forward, deep into death row.
The guard stopped at a gray door without a number and put his card into the slot. I knew that this card wouldn’t work in anyone else’s hands—some kind of biometrics scanning… The lock clicked, but the jailer didn’t hurry to open the door. Instead, he decided to remind me of the rules once again.
“He’s chained, and the furniture is screwed to the floor. Just the same, be careful. Don’t let him provoke you, don’t get too close to him, and don’t give him anything in a way that could allow him to grab you. For example, don’t bend down if he wants to mutter something in your ear. He’ll sink his teeth in it without a second thought. Don’t forget who he is.”
“I studied the case materials well,” I answered, bored by the third such lecture already.
“I’m sure,” this time there was hostility in the jailer’s voice. “But you think that if you are on his side, he is on yours. And that’s a big mistake.”
I understood the reason for his irritation, but I didn’t try to remind him once again that I was doing my duty just as he was doing his and it was not a matter of personal sympathies.