The Pastor’s Daughter: Episode V

I quickly rushed downstairs to see if there’s any way I could help.  On getting there, I couldn’t believe what I saw. I dropped the camera case I was holding and squatted down to look at her. I was getting sick on my stomach. Obviously, someone threw her out of the window and her hair was caked with thick and congealed blood. Or, was it an accident? She probably hit the hard floor with her head.  I instantly knew I was too late. She had to be dead. If somebody actually pushed her out of the window, then there was no way she could survive that fall nor lie the way she was lying, and not be dead.

“Brittany!”  I  shouted, too scared to touch her.

I could not help wondering how long she had been lying down there. There is a high possibility that she might have been dead for hours. The best thing to do at this point, I told myself, would be to get help. I could call the police using the telephone in the house. I stood up, started to walk back to the house and then came to an abrupt stop. The police! Am I that crazy? Calling the police now will be a big blunder. If I call the police now, it won’t take them long to find out the truth about Brittany and I. Once I call the police, the whole crazy story that we planned to spend two weeks together here would come out. And it wouldn’t take long for the bad news to reach Reverend Waters. I suddenly realized that I was really in a hell of a jam.

 This was it! I had known all this while that it was a mistake to get involved with Brittany. I  had known at the back of my mind that flirting  with her means walking into trouble voluntarily. Now here I am. I started to imagine the type of expression that would come to Reverend Water’s face when he heard the news that Brittany and I planned a vacation together, and that she fell down to her death. I had no doubt in my mind he would conclude that we were lovers. And I won’t be surprised if he think I had got tired of her and had decided to get rid of her by pushing her through the window, to make it look like an accident. This thought really shook me when I realized the possibility that the police might think so too.

To the best of my knowledge, no one had seen her fall. It would be difficult for me to prove the exact time I had arrived here. The time I came out of the crowded train at the Atlantic City Rail Terminal, I was just one among a hundred other travelers. Even though I left my bags with the station clerk at the left luggage office, it wasn’t likely he would remember me since he normally see different faces every hour of the day. Besides, I couldn’t recall meeting anyone on the long walk from the train station to this place so nobody will remember seeing me. Since a lot depended on the time Brittany died, it would be hard for the police to pin it on me. However, if her fall occurred within an hour or so of my arrival, which I doubt, then I will really be in a bad position. The police will simply put two and two together and conclude that it was me who threw her down from the window.

By now I was shaking uncontrollably. What will I do? Oh my God! At last I decided that the best thing to do now is to get as far away from here as I could without being seen. I stumbled over Brittany’s camera case that I dropped earlier as I turned to make my way to the gate. I picked it up, hesitated, then made to take it back to the house, but stopped in time. It will be too dangerous to make a mistake now. I knew that my fingerprints were on the case. Using my handkerchief, I wiped the case over carefully. At the back of the house there was a path that goes from a narrow gate and led upwards to the wood at a hill. When I was satisfied I hadn’t left a trace of any of my prints, I followed that path and after I had walked for perhaps a little distance from the vacation house,  I threw it as far as I could into the nearby wood. Turning, I started moving swiftly back to path leading to the house.

By now it was getting dark. The sun, which looked like a great fiery ball, drenched the sky in a red glow. I kept on because I knew that in less than half an hour, everywhere would be dark. As I hurried along the path, I told myself that while it was bad to leave Brittany without informing the police, I just had to think of myself now. She is dead anyway and nothing can bring her back. By the time I reached the gate at the backyard, I started feeling better. I can think clearly now because I had gotten over the first shock of her death.

My mind kept telling me that if I consider myself a good citizen, I should call the police. If I tell them the truth, admit that we planned to spend two weeks here together and explain to them how I found her body, they might believe me. At least that was the gospel truth. But if I don’t, they would be justified in suspecting that I was her killer if by some chance they got on to me. If it were not for the new job at our Trenton office, this reasoning would have convinced me to make a clean breast of the whole event. The Trenton job is something that I covet so much. And I had no doubt on my mind that Reverend Waters will convince our company’s board to deny the job from me if he learned the truth. I would do the same if I were him: having someone who was fooling around with her daughter head an important branch of a company in which he was a board member won’t be a good idea. He may even blacklist me and, if he does, I will never get a newspaper job again in this part of the country. So the bottom line here is that I had everything to lose if I tell the police the truth. On the other hand, with some luck, there was a good chance I would get away with it if I kept quiet.

I told myself that there wasn’t really anything between Brittany and I. If  I was in love with her, it will be a different story. But I wasn’t. If you asked me, I would say that she had been more to blame than I. She had encouraged me and I was crazy enough to fall for this stupid, irresponsible impulse. It was her who made the whole arrangement to come down here for the vacation. Phorbus was indeed right: she was a practiced seductress. I will be a fool not to try and save myself from this woman who had a reputation for making trouble for men. It’s okay, I thought. I’ve got to establish an alibi for myself so as to make certain no one ever knows I’ve been here.

This line of reasoning helped to get my situation off my chest, so I calmed down. On reaching the backyard gate, I paused to look at my watch. My watch told me that the time was half-past eight. To Phorbus and Candace, I should be in Las Vegas by now. It won’t be possible at all for me to get to Las Vegas tonight. So if I really want to establish an alibi that would stick, I should go back to Middle River as fast as I can. I can get there by, say, three in the morning if luck is on my side. And if I’m that lucky, I can clear any suspicion by going to the office by daybreak and tell them I changed my mind about going to Las Vegas; and that I decided to finish the book I was writing about Henry Ford.

I hoped this alibi would be a strong one. At that moment, it was the best I could think of. There was a little problem though. One thing is certain:  it would be impossible for the police to prove that I hadn’t spent all day in my apartment. After all my car was packed there all day and night. However, it would be very easy for them to prove that I hadn’t been to Las Vegas.

I should have come with my car! I told myself that if I had brought my car, getting back to Middle River would have been a very simple matter. I didn’t dare take Brittany’s Mercedes convertible which was packed at the vacation house. I am convinced that the village maid whom Brittany had hired to be our housekeeper would know she had brought the car. And the police might jump to the conclusion that Brittany’s death hadn’t been accidental  if they found her car missing. I would have to walk back to the train station to get a train to Penn Station in Baltimore City. From there I can get a cab that would take me to my apartment in Middle River. I had no idea what time the last train left Atlantic City Rail Terminal  for Baltimore. But I was  concerned that by the time I had covered the distance from here to the train station, the last train would have gone. Thinking about it, I once again looked at Brittany’s Mercedes convertible. It was really a challenge to fight back the temptation to take it. But I warned myself that no matter how strong this temptation is, it would be best not to complicate my predicament more than it was already.

Moving around the car towards the drive, I decided to take a last look at the house before I leave. What I saw made my heart to skip a bit. Someone was inside the house! I say this because I saw a flashlight that appeared from within the lounge. Did this intruder saw me when I entered the house the first time? This is not really the right time to worry about this. With my heart hammering on my chest, I moved swiftly and crouched down a shrub, some type of flower plant that is behind the car. Breathing hard, I stared at the lounge windows for a long moment and, sure enough, I saw the gleam of white light which immediately disappeared. I was sure that whoever is in that house was not the village maid that Brittany told me about. If it was her, she would have turned on the lights instead of creeping around like this in the dark. Whoever was there is obviously an intruder. Who then could this intruder be?

From the way the light was moving around the lounge, I came to the conclusion that this intruder was searching for something important. Out of mere curiosity, I was tempted to find out who it was. All I had to do is to creep in there and surprise him or her. Whoever it was, a sneak thief or something, it certainly wasn’t right for me to watch this individual moving around the room and do nothing about it. But I stopped myself on time. It would be too risky – this intruder may have a gun or a knife. Besides, since no one must know I had been to this house, I knew I had to keep out of sight.

The light finally went out after six minutes or so. There was a long pause, then I saw a tall figure of a man came through the front door of the house. Though it was  by now too dark to see more than his shadowy outline, I was sure he paused for a moment at the head of the stairs. Then he moved gently down the stairs, went over to Brittany’s Mercedes convertible, and looked inside. With his back turned to me, he turned on his flashlight. From where I was crouched behind the shrub, I could see he was a big man with very broad shoulders. He was wearing a hat and, since his back was turned to me and it was dark anyway, I could not make his face. I was glad about one thing though: this man looked big and strong enough to more than take care of himself. So it was a  good thing that  I hadn’t gone in there to surprise him as I earlier planned to do.

 Soon he turned off his light and moved away from the car. Since I expected him to come towards me and make for the exit at the bottom of the drive, I crouched down more. I was relieved when I saw him walk swiftly and silently across the lawn towards the gate at backyard of the house. I just managed to see him disappear in the darkness.

I stared after him, feeling puzzled and uneasy. But soon I realized that time was passing fast. If I want to get back to Middle River tonight, I must make my move now. So I left my hiding place, walked through the short gate and on to the road.

All the way to the Atlantic City Rail Terminal  station,  I puzzled about this intruder. Was he a friend of Brittany, or was he just a sneak thief? Of course I couldn’t answer these questions with certainty. At least he did not see me; nobody saw me anyway. That thought gave me some comfort.

By the time I reached the Atlantic City Rail Terminal  station it was already ten minutes past ten o’clock. Unfortunately for me, I missed the last train to Baltimore City – I was told  at the station that the train left ten minutes early. They also told me that if I can get to Absecon - the neighboring town – I might get a connecting train from Absecon Station to Baltimore. I glanced at my watch. I had five minutes over the hour to get somehow to Absecon. I quickly got my bags from the left-luggage office. I made sure I kept my head bent to prevent the clerk at the office from getting a good look at me. I then went out into the dark  station yard where I spotted a lone taxi. I opened the door and got into the cab.

“Hello sir” he said.

“Hello,” I replied, “If you can get me to Absecon station before eleven fifteen, I’ll give you a double fare plus five dollars tip.”

That was a large amount of money in those days.

That was all I needed to say, and I knew he will grab the offer. But I never knew how mad and wild this driver was. As soon as I made this offer, he stiffened to attention, sank his thumb into the starter button, threw in his clutch  and the car screeched out of the station yard in two wheels. The road out of Atlantic  City  for the first five miles or so was not only shaped like a coiled snake but was also congested at the time. But this cab driver went along this road as if it were as straight as a foot rule. While he was speeding through this road, he kept his hand on his horn and his headlights gave warnings of his coming. I sat tight, closed my eyes and prayed. But I did open my eyes sometimes to look at my watch, and there were moments when I thought my last hour had arrived. It was really a miracle that we avoided a collision. But once we had passed this path of the trip, it was plain sailing and as this cab driver kept roaring, snarling almost seventy miles an hour, I could relaxed a little.

The crucial moment of the trip was when we got into the outskirts of Absecon at five minutes to eleven. I said this because the traffic of Absecon at this time is always, for some reasons I could not explain, notoriously heavy and slow.  It was then that I concluded that this cab driver was either a demented lunatic or, perhaps, he had no girlfriend or wife or anyone who will miss him if he died in a car crash due to reckless driving. The way he cut through the traffic reminded me of how a hot knife slices through  butter. With his ferocious ruthlessness, this man was able to intimidate other drivers on the road, and the whole trip to the station was punctuated by the honking of horns, the yells of fury and the screaming of tortured tires.  And the fact that we weren’t stopped by the police probably meant that the cab was out of sight before they could even make any move.

The good thing, though, is that we arrived at Absecon station on time without crashing. When we got there, it was five minutes past eleven. I shoved a handful of dollars into the driver’s hand. “You were terrific” I said.

I knew he will not recognize me again because the interior of the cab was dark and I had my heart pulled well down my eyes. Grabbing my bags, I sprinted into the station and bought a ticket to Baltimore. Five minutes later, I was on my way to Penn Station, Baltimore City, as the lights of Absecon  faded in the distance.

END OF EPISODE V

P.S. Episode Six will be published here next Monday.