Seconds became lifetimes, and minutes became miniature eternities. The waiting before had been bad, but this was something else again. You could feel the pressure building, building, like a tangible entity through the dark and silent house.
Martinetti had professed a desire to be alone, and Proxmire and I had gone out to sit in the living room with Karyn Martinetti. It was a nice living room-a copper-hooded fireplace similar in styling but somewhat larger than the one in the study, some good stark seascapes of the cypress-dotted coastline between Monterey and Big Sur, a low rock planter wall that right-angled into the room between the bay window and the fireplace and had some green vines twisting down along the stones almost to the floor-but the air in there seemed stagnant, as if it had been closed up for a very long time. I had to breathe through my mouth after a while. My headache gained magnitude to where the dull pain had a lancing rhythm, like the muted throb of a two-cycle engine.
Cassy came with coffee and more sandwiches. I got two cups of the strong black liquid down, but the ham-on-whole-wheat seemed to stick in a glutinous mass in my throat. Proxmire and Karyn Martinetti neither ate nor drank anything; they were sitting on the couch, at opposite ends, like two sculpted bookends holding up nothing at all.
The door chimes sounded just past six, and Proxmire was on his feet and moving with long strides into the entrance hall before the echo of them faded into silence. From where I was sitting I could look into the hall, and I saw him open the door and admit Allan Channing.
Channing, dressed as he had been that morning, was carrying a brown leather suitcase in his right hand. It looked very heavy. He glanced into the living room and saw me, but he made no acknowledgment. He told Proxmire that Martinetti was waiting for him, and the two of them disappeared into the side hall.
A couple of minutes passed, and Proxmire came back and sat down stoically and watched Karyn Martinetti out of half-lidded eyes. I tried another cigarette, and the coughing started, and I ground it out immediately. My chest felt as if a steel band were being tightened around it, suffocating me. The weight of this whole thing was beginning to settle squarely on my shoulders now; the others were assuming passive roles. If anything went wrong tonight …
Well, all right, I told myself. All you have to do is follow the instructions. No games and no heroics; hell, you’re not even inclined that way. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?
I decided I needed some fresh air. I went out onto the terrace and walked over to the outdoor bar. It was constructed of stone, with a slant-backed wooden roof; four leather-topped stools were arranged before it. I sat on one of them, facing toward the house and pool.
It was full dark now, and the night air held the clean, mild bite of autumn frost. The stars seemed cold and synthetic in the ebon sky. There was a yellow-gold half moon, like a canted, halved orange slice, sitting directly overhead; the edges of its curvature were of a slightly darker coloration, rindlike. It shone on the water in the swimming pool in a long, slender, golden streamer.
I felt better, sitting out there. The drapes were pulled closed over the bay window, and I could not see inside; I thought that was just as well. From the direction of the creek running across the rear of the Martinetti property, there was the commingled sound of crickets and night birds singing full-throated and yet very soft, without worry and without sadness.
The music they made seemed to have a deep lure for me, like that haunting oboe melody in Hamlin town, and I left the outdoor bar and walked to the creek across the thick dew-scented grass. I reached the bank and the heavy shadows cast by the tall, staid eucalyptus, and began to walk toward the rock garden at the far end of the grounds.
The creek bed was rocky and littered with branches and leaves and silt. A thin, tired stream meandered across the stones in the exact center, but when the winter rains came, the creek would be swollen and rushing with muddy brown run-off water. The banks were irregular and not at all steep, and I thought to hell with it and climbed down to give the frail and weary stream some company for a short while.
I walked slowly, listening to the night music, smelling the dampness of the earth and of green things growing fresh and strong. The cold air felt very good in my lungs, and I took long swallows of it and thought about nothing at all.
I drew parallel with the rock garden, and the stunted shapes of the shrubs and plants were silky black shadows against the lighter color of the sky. I reached the high redwood boundary fence and went past it fifteen yards or so, and there was a shelf at the bole of one of the slender eucalyptus covered with dry leaves and dark green Spanish moss. I sat down on that, in the deep shadow of the tree, and looked into the darkness beyond the opposite bank, where thick undergrowth obliterated the rear grounds of another home. The orange-slice moon was visible between the branches of the trees overhead.
I had been there about five minutes, sitting motionless on the natural bank chair, when I heard the sound of footfalls shuffling through the foliage at the base of the redwood fence, coming around it. There was silence for the space of several heartbeats, and then voices, clear and distinct, came drifting to me on the scented night air.
“Oh God, Dean, hold me, just hold me!”
“Easy, honey, easy now.”
“I just couldn’t stand it another minute in there!”
“I know, I know.”
Proxmire and Karyn Martinetti. I turned my head without moving my body, and I could see them standing back against the fence, two dark forms blended together, embracing. I held my breath, listening, not wanting to listen at all.
Several seconds passed before they parted, but they remained standing very close together. Karyn Martinetti’s voice said fervently, “Dean, tell me everything is going to be all right. Tell me Gary will come home safely.”
“He will, honey, he will.”
“I’m so afraid!”
“Don’t let yourself be.”
“If … if anything happens to him, I don’t know what I’ll do!”
“Shh, now, nothing is going to happen to him.”
“I wish I could believe that!”
“You can believe it, you have to believe it.”
“God, oh God, why did this nightmare have to happen? Everything seemed to be perfect for us, you and Gary and me. I could have left Lou just as we planned, and gone to Massillon to my parents and let a lawyer handle the whole matter …”
“It can still work out that way.”
“No, no, don’t you see? I always thought Lou was indifferent where Gary was concerned, that he didn’t really care about him at all. But I was wrong, Dean, because he’s about to pay three hundred thousand dollars to get him back. I didn’t think he would, but I thank the Lord that he is, and I can’t hate him any more.”
“No, you can’t hate him, but you can’t go on living with him either, Karyn.”
“I know that. But he won’t just let me leave with Gary now. He’ll fight me for custody, if only because he’s made an investment and he hates to lose on any kind of investment. That’s the way he is, Dean, I know!”
“If he wants a court battle, we’ll give him one.”
“Suppose he charges me with adultery?”
“He can’t prove anything.”
“But he knows. Isn’t that enough?”
“In a court of law, no.”
“The scandal would be sufficient to give him custody of Gary, and I couldn’t bear that!”
“Not if we fought it long and hard enough.”
“We don’t have the money for that kind of battle.”
“There are ways of getting money.”
“How?”
“You let me worry about that.”
The shadows blended together again.
“Oh, darling, I love you so very much!”
Soft, liquid sounds-the sounds of a woman weeping. I felt suddenly very cold, sitting there, embarrassed for them and more embarrassed for myself. There could not have been a worse time for me to overhear a conversation like that; it made this whole damned affair that much more painful, my own position that much more awkward. I felt a little sorry for Martinetti, but I felt a whole lot sorrier for his son.