to the telephone and called for a boy to come after the bags. There was no use taking the cheap one I’d bought in the drugstore, I thought, and threw it inside the closet and closed the door. I had two more than I’d checked in with as it was.
We went down in the elevator, and as we came into the lobby I looked guardedly around. There was no one at the desk who looked like a plain-clothes man. I wondered if the clerk would notice the extra bags. The boy took them on out and I settled the bill. There was a cab outside and I got in.
“Where to, chief?” the driver asked. Where? I thought I had to go somewhere.
“Bus station.” I had to get rid of those bags, no matter what I did. We crawled through snarled traffic and heat and blaring horns. The bus station was jammed and sultry, full of a loudspeaker’s blasting and the roar of a departing bus. I put the three bags in lockers and stuck the keys in my pocket. All right, I thought, I’ve cut the trail from her to me to give myself time to think, but where do I go from here?
I pushed through the crowd to the lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee. What had she told them? That was the question that went through my mind over and over. Everything depended on that, and there wasn’t any way I could know. Suppose she had confessed? In spite of the sticky heat I felt the chill between my shoulder blades. And it was possible; I knew it. In her terror and confusion, not even knowing what she had been picked up for, with all of them firing questions at her, who knew what she might blurt out?
But suppose, I thought, trying to pick up the thread of thought I’d had before I realized I had to get out of the hotel, suppose she kept her head and hasn’t said anything so far? Then we’re safe enough—for the moment. The danger then would lie in the fact that eventually they might wear her down, keep hammering at her until she let something slip, or that eventually, as they kept looking for my body, they might find Shevlin’s. That was a very real danger now that Raines had joined in the search because he wasn’t trying to cover anything up, as Buford was. Therefore, I had to get her out of there. But how? Obviously, the only way I could do it was by turning myself in, or coming back to life. And then they would be asking me the question, the big one: Where was Shevlin?
But wait, I thought. I was very close to it a while ago when I had to run away from the hotel. Suppose I could come back to light in some way that wouldn’t indicate I had ever been down here at all or even knew her? They were still looking for me in that swamp, with some faint hope that I was still alive and only hurt and lost. Well, suppose it turned out that I was? They would release her. The charge then wouldn’t be worth holding her for. That would take the pressure off her before she broke down and confessed, or let something slip.
The girl brought my coffee. “What’s the matter, big boy?” Suddenly I realized she was talking to me.
“Matter?” I asked. “Why?”
She gave me a pert smile. “Well, I don’t know, but you just looked so worried and kind of moving your lips like somebody talking to himself.”
I’ve got to stop attracting attention, I thought. “Oh,” I said. “It’s my wife. She’s having a baby.”
“Oh.” She started to move away. “I hope it’s a boy.”
“Thanks,” I said. Where was I? Oh, yes. Back in the swamp. But if I came back out of there, they would probably dust off that grand-jury investigation again, even providing they’d really dropped it. All right, I thought, what of it? A year, two at-the most. And even a chance of a suspended sentence. We’re young. We could stand it. And it would be a hell of a lot better than what we had staring us in the face right this minute.
I was working on it at top speed now. I could do it. I could get back in there, fake the scalp wound where he had slugged me with the oar, fall in the swamp a few times, wander