Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald

Author:John D. MacDonald [MacDonald, John D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: suspense
Publisher: Gold Medal
Published: 2012-07-22T11:15:41+00:00

Now he drove north through a rain as heavy as any he had ever seen. He drove the dark green Plymouth sedan north, knowing that he would waste no time in transit, would return and report for assignment. He had been offered time off many times in the last five years and he had never taken it. He knew he would not take it this time, and yet this was the first time he had ever felt remotely tempted.

He guessed that it was the inevitable letdown that came from knowing that the last of the Santa Fe project was over. It put an end to the five years. And there should be some way of telling her that the last one had been picked up. But if you told her that, you would have to tell her that no one had ever learned, or would ever learn, who had sent the package, who had given the orders. So there was failure after all.

She had stopped right there at twenty-four. She had been abruptly halted. And the years went by and she was still twenty-four. Now you were thirty-two instead of twenty-seven, and you would become forty-two and fifty-two, while she stayed back there, frozen in that explosive moment of time, still twenty-four, forever slim and clean-limbed, forever three months pregnant.

“Death was instantaneous.”

He had often wondered about those words. How did such a death feel? A great blast of whiteness? A sudden roar of darkness? A feeling of falling?

She put the box on the gate leg table by the living room window. She read a letter from her mother first. Then she went to the bookshelf and opened the wicker basket and took out her sewing scissors and went back to the box and cut the cord. (“The firing device was armed by tension on the wrapping cord. With release of tension the firing pin arm, impelled by a spring, was allowed to drop and strike the primer, thus detonating the main charge.”)

It had been a warm bright day. The blanket was still out in the back yard, sun lotion, dark glasses and book beside it.

So he drove north on that Wednesday, eyes on the road, big strong hands on the wheel, while back in the silent corridors of his mind the old compulsive dramas were re-enacted, the doll figures moving with the stilted precision of puppets too often used. But this time there was a sourness in the corridors, and a dissonance in the unheard music. He felt as though he were a missile that had been fired at an unseen target five years ago. The trajectory had been low and flat and powerful for a long time. The missile has no cause to think or wonder about destination. It flies true. Now the impetus was fading and the arc of its fall had begun to be perceptible. He did not want this to happen. He did not want to be forced to think—to conjecture about what would happen to him.

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