Ollie made a great show of being normal, but his always restless hands were busier than ever tonight, feeling, pulling, scratching, rubbing — and the light bounced off his freckled skull like a yellow warning signal.
But there was reassurance in seeing Norma and Ollie together. Angular Norma, plain and warm as home-made bread; stocky Ollie, shrewd, transparent-eyed, in perpetual motion — it had always been hard for Tully to imagine them not married to each other. They were complementary; they had a mutual need, yet an individual stamp. Ollie Hurst had been a hole-in-the-shoe student; Norma had a comfortable income from stocks and real estate she had inherited. Norma herself had once told Tully that Ollie had never touched a penny of her money; it had been a condition of their marriage, at his unarguable insistence.
Ruth and I had some pleasant times in this house, Tully thought. Before little Emmie died. Before Ruth...
He shut down tight on that one.
It was impossible to recreate the past, in spite of Norma’s surprising recapture of her old self. She fed Tully quietly, while her husband tried to make small talk. But the food stuck in Tully’s throat, and Ollie seemed to dry up, and finally an awkward silence fell.
“Suppose we face this instead of pretending it hasn’t happened and that Ruth’s here,” Norma said.
Ollie said, “Nor...”
“Oh, shut up, Ollie, this is no time for your office psychology. You do it badly, anyway, when your emotions are involved... David.” Norma Hurst touched Tully’s hand. “Don’t lose faith in her.”
Tully was grateful. “What do we do about the evidence, Norma? Ignore it?”
“Yes,” Norma said, “until Ruth has a chance to explain.”
“Cox is no foggy abstract who’ll dry up with the sunrise. Cox is real. Or was.”
“So is Ruth, Dave. And she still is.”
“Norma,” Ollie said. “Maybe Dave doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“I think he does. I think it will do him good. Don’t you want to talk, Dave?”
“I need to do more than talk,” Tully muttered.
“You need to know you’re not alone,” Norma said. Her eyes retreated for a moment. “I know.”
But now it all came back in a rush, and Tully cried, “She knew Cox. That’s a fact. A fact.”
“How do you know that, Dave?” the lawyer asked quickly.
“Never mind—”
“I don’t care what you say,” Norma said, and there was a strange tautness in her voice that pulled even Tully around. “Even if she did know him, she’s innocent. I won’t believe anything else!”
The two men exchanged glances. Then Tully got up and went over to Norma and stooped and kissed her on the forehead. “Of course, Norma, of course. You’re a good friend. A great comfort.”
But she sat like stone. The old look of panic appeared in her husband’s eyes.
“I’m really pooped,” Tully said. “I’d better pop back home and hit the sack. Thanks, Norm, for the feed. Ollie—”
“I’ll see you out,” Ollie said. “Be right back. Nor.” At the door he said in a low voice, “Now don’t blame yourself, Dave. This has been coming on all day.”
“Norma said you wanted to talk to me—”
“I’ll drop by in the morning.” The lawyer shut the door swiftly. Through the big window as he passed Tully saw Ollie taking his wife’s hand with great gentleness. Norma was sitting as they had left her, without expression, except that tears were inching down her face.
10
David Tully had just finished his lonely breakfast when Ollie Hurst drove up. He came in wiping his cranium with a folded handkerchief. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.
“How’s Norma, Ollie?”
“She had a bad night. Apparently this business of Ruth is somehow tied up in her mind with Emmie’s death. I finally got her under sedation and asleep, and she seems a lot better this morning.”
“I’m sorry as hell, Ollie—”
“Forget it,” the lawyer said abruptly. “If it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. How about some of that coffee I smell?”
“I’ve been keeping it hot for you.”
They went into the kitchen and Tully poured coffee into two fresh cups.
“No,” Ollie said, refusing the cream and sugar, which he usually used in immoderate proportions, “I need it straight this morning,” and he gulped a third of it and set his cup down and said, “Anything on Ruth yet?”
“No.”
“Dave.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know where she is? Are you hiding her?”
Tully glared into the lawyer’s crystal eyes. “No. No.”
“Okay, okay,” Hurst said. “I had to be sure. And you still haven’t heard from her?”
“No.”
“All right. Then let’s talk about the future.”
“The future of what?” Tully asked bitterly.
“The future of Ruth.”
“What future?”
“Oh, the hell with that defeatist talk,” Ollie Hurst snapped. “Look, Dave, I’m a lawyer, and I’m your and Ruth’s friend. If you want to wallow in hopelessness that’s your funeral — and incidentally it only makes my job tougher. Now what’s it going to be? Do I have to do this with you on my back, dead weight, or are we in this together?”
Tully stiffened.
“That’s right, hate my guts,” Ollie said. “I don’t mind. All right. Now I’ve got us a good criminal lawyer, I mean on tap. I’ve retained him tentatively, and I’ve talked the whole thing over with him as it stands. He agrees that there’s no point in his coming into this until Ruth turns up or is found. Do you want to know who he is?”
Tully shook his head.
“You mean you actually trust somebody besides yourself? I swan to Marthy! Anyway, his name is Vinzenti and he’s top dog upstate in trial work, especially murder cases. I’ve got to be frank with you, Dave. Vinzenti says that unless Ruth can come up with clear counter-evidence to refute the facts as they now seem to stand, we’ll have a real fight on our hands. He also said that the longer she remains in hiding the worse it’s going to look for her. That’s why I had to ask you again if you know where she is.”
“I told you I don’t.”
“I believe you, Dave,” the lawyer said soothingly. “I’m just outlining the situation. How about a refill?”
Tully replenished Hurst’s cup.
“You haven’t touched yours.”
Tully drank it.
“The circumstantial case against Ruth is strong,” Ollie Hurst went on. “The use of your gun, the testimony of a witness who overheard Cox call his woman-visitor Ruth — and especially Ruth’s disappearance after the shooting, add up to a pretty powerful prosecutor’s case, according to Vinzenti.
“Against this, he says — barring some unforeseeable explanation when Ruth turns up that automatically clears her — the defense will have to try to tear down the evidence. The typewritten unsigned letter, Vinzenti thinks, for instance, is inadmissible, unless the police have turned up an identifiable fingerprint of Ruth’s on it. Most of all Vinzenti seems to be counting on the human element. This may well turn out to be, he says, one of those cases in which the law and the evidence prove of less weight than the character of the people involved. The professional leech who preyed on women, the woman of refinement and good reputation who in panic and desperation turned on the beast who was trying to wreck her life — in a setup like that, juries always empathize with the woman, Vinzenti assured me.”