Border Town Girl by John D. MacDonald Page B

courts, the cars flanked outside the drive-ins, the floodlights on the river bridge. As soon as they were in the town she moved away from him, sat huddled and silent.
    He parked a hundred feet beyond the hotel entrance. The space was short and it took him a long time to work the car in next to the curb. “You stay right here,” he said. “Let me handle it.” He had by habit taken the keys from the ignition. He saw her looking at him. Beyond her he could see through the open door of a drugstore. It all looked so completely sane and ordinary that for the passing of several seconds he had the feeling that all this was a masquerade of some sort, that there was no truth in what Diana had told him, that it was a cleverly planned fantasy and any moment now a group of friends from the old days would leap from the shadows, laughing, confessing, explaining.
    He threw the keys over into her lap, got out and chunked the door shut. He walked with long strides to the hotel entrance and, with his head high, he went in, wearing what he fervently hoped was a confident and optimistic smile.
     
    At dusk the chunky blonde woman stood up and pulled on her housecoat. During the long afternoon she had repeatedly filled the small glass and drank. Christy was tortured with thirst. And there was a new fear in him. His shoulder felt hot and swollen now and the pulsing was worse. He had felt the heat creep up from the base of his neck, flushing his right cheek, extending the throb to his heavy jawbone and his right ear. It was hard to remember just where he was and why he was hiding. He would remember perfectly, and then there would be a funny aching twist in his head and he would be back in the carny days. He’d missed the afternoon performance. Big Mike would be sore. He had to get out of here and get back to the lot.
    He lay and listened to his heart booming. A heavy, frightening beat. Thrum, thrum, thrum. Then there would be a subtle change of rhythm. Ta-thum, ta-thum, ta-thum.
    His mind dipped and sped back to here and now. The carny was years ago. Why had George sent him here? No, it wasn’t George. The cops had George. Unless that guy was bluffing, they had him good. Nailed. Along with the rest of the mob. That bitch Diana had been the cause of this. He created her image in his mind, the sneering mouth and the contemptuous eyes. Figured she was too good for Christy, did she? He’d show her. He’d do a good job of showing her. He grinned as he remembered how she’d fallen when he’d hit her. He’d waited a long, long time for Diana. Patient waiting. And there she was, just thirty feet away. The great ropy fibrous muscles tightened and his breath came short and fast.
    Then Diana turned and he saw that it was the other woman, the one who had lain under the whip of the afternoon sun.
    He held his breath as she started directly toward him. She walked uncertainly. She had filled the empty bottle in the fountain and she paused to pick flowers and shove them clumsily into the neck of the bottle. She talked to herself.
    Christy tried to make himself smaller. Now she stood close to him, so close that he could have reached out under the bush and touched her bare foot. It was a soiled bare foot.
    When she gasped and jumped back, Christy lunged up through the brush, clamped his hand on her throat and pulled her back down to the dark place where he had been hiding. She fell like a fat sawdust doll.
    He whispered, “Now when I leggo your throat, I don’t want no screaming.”
    He took his hand away. Even in the dusk and the shadows he could see that her throat had a funny smashed look. Her face was slowly blackening, the eyes protruding, the swelling tongue growing between the lips.
    One hand slapped the ground weakly and her bare heels hammered the dark damp soil at the base of a bush. She lay still. It took him quite a while to realize that she was dead. Something funny had happened to her throat.
    “Diana!” he said. He shook her.