The Lighthouse

Bonner got up and went down to where Les was, looking hurt. Well, fuck him, Mitch thought. He drained his glass, refilled it with what was left in the bottle.

“What’s in the paper?” Bonner asked Les. “Anything new about the murder?”

“If there is, it ain’t printed here.”

“No story at all?”

“Short one. They identified the girl-Miranda Collins, student up at the U. of Oregon.”

“What was she doing down here?”

“They don’t know. No family in this area or anywheres else in the state. She’s from up in Idaho.”

“Hitchhiking to California, maybe,” Bonner said. “Everybody wants to go to California, seems like.”

“Not me. I like it here.”

“Me too. California’s full of queers and weirdos.”

“Miranda,” Les said. “I knew a girl named Miranda once. Pretty little thing.”

“This one wasn’t pretty, not when they found her.”

“Yeah? You see her, Seth?”

“Seen her picture, the one they printed in the paper.”

“Can’t tell much from that kind of picture.”

“Tell enough,” Bonner said. “She wasn’t pretty dead and she wasn’t so pretty alive, neither. Maybe that was why she wasn’t raped.”

“How do you know she wasn’t raped?”

“Talked to Deputy Frank Pierce over to the cafe last night. He stopped by for coffee while I was having dinner and I asked him and he said she wasn’t raped. Just strangled, that’s all.”

“Pierce tell you anything else?”

“Well,” Bonner said, real sly, “she was pregnant.”

“The hell she was.”

“That’s what Frank Pierce said. Four months pregnant.”

“Wonder who the father was.”

“Some college kid. Who cares?”

“Maybe he’s the one killed her.”

“Way over here on the coast?”

“Why not? Maybe she wasn’t hitchhiking at all. Maybe he brought her down here and strangled her because she got herself knocked up.”

“Wasn’t any college kid strangled her,” Bonner said. “I told Frank Pierce who I think done it, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Who do you think done it?”

“Ryerson, that’s who. Out at the light.”

“Why’d he do a thing like that?”

“He’s crazy, that’s why. One of them homicidal maniacs. He run down Mitch’s dog, didn’t he?”

“Big difference between running down a dog and strangling a woman, Seth.”

“We never had no murder around here before he come,” Bonner said. “No murder in thirty-seven years, that’s what the papers said. Thirty-seven years and then Ryerson shows up and now Red’s dead and we got us a girl strangled right here in Hilliard, not more’n two miles from the Cape Despair Light.”

“Seems funny, sure. But that don’t necessarily mean Ryerson killed the girl.”

“Does as far as I’m concerned. Hey, Mitch, you think I’m right, don’t you? You think Ryerson killed that little girl?”

Mitch didn’t say anything. He was tired of all this talk-all morning, ever since he’d brought the Spindrift in, nothing but talk, talk, talk. His head was pounding: the beer and the cigarettes and the talk. He needed some air, some peace and quiet. He could get that much, by Christ, if he couldn’t get anything else.

He climbed off his stool, told Les to put the beers on his tab, and went out with Bonner calling something after him that he didn’t listen to. It was a cold day, cold and gray; the sky had a dead look, like the way he felt inside. He walked down along the bay, away from the boat slips and the cannery because he didn’t want to run into Hod or Adam or any of his other buddies. They’d ask him what was wrong, try to cheer him up. He didn’t want that; it would only make things worse.

He walked out near the southern headland. Where the thin strip of beach began to curve, he stopped and sat down on a driftwood log and looked out to sea. There wasn’t anybody else around. The wind lashed at him, but he didn’t mind that. Didn’t mind the cold either. Out here his head didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had in the Sea Breeze.

After a time he found that he wasn’t looking at the ocean anymore; he was looking out at the rocky shore of the cape. You couldn’t see the lighthouse from here, but he was seeing it inside his head. Ryerson, too, out there all smug and satisfied, like some king in his little private castle. What did he have to worry about, the bastard? He had plenty of money-he had everything a man could want. Red’s blood on his hands and he had everything and you couldn’t touch him, a man like that, couldn’t touch him at all. It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right.

Hey, Mitch, you think I’m right, don’t you? You think Ryerson killed that little girl?

Talk, that was all. Bullshit talk. Or was it? Ryerson had killed Red, run him down that way, in cold blood; man who’d do a thing like that was capable of murdering a human being, wasn’t he? Maybe old Bonner was right. Maybe Ryerson had strangled that girl.