An Eye for an Eye Read Online Free

It was empty and cold. He looked in the refrigerator. The package of meat was there, unopened.
    “Then,” he said, “we can figure that Carolyn hadn’t even begun to think about dinner. Perhaps we’d be safe in saying that she left the house somewhere between twelve-thirty and three-thirty. Now, Mr. Pettit, you said you found this back door open. Do you mean standing ajar or do you mean in the sense of being unlocked?”
    “It was shut,” Johnny said. “I tried the front door, but it was locked. I tried this one and it opened. It wasn’t locked.”
    “Does Carolyn habitually leave the door unlocked?”
    “She isn’t the scary type,” said Ben. “And to tell you the truth, we don’t worry too much about prowlers out here. I think it’s left unlocked as a matter of convenience. You know. You go outside and the thing slams shut on you—you know.”
    “Uh-huh,” said Ernie. “Well, get your coat, Ben. You can ride with me.”
    Cars had begun to pull into the drive. Suddenly the place was full of uniforms. Ernie talked to the men and to the two others who came in the Mobile Crime Laboratory, a compact little truck that looked like a milk wagon only it was painted dark. Johnny Pettit said he would go along too. Ben put on his coat and went out. The policemen sorted themselves into two groups, with three men left over. One group went down to the stream bed and spread out, their flashlight beams dancing and slashing through the dark. The second group crossed the road and dispersed into the section of picturesque but brushy and partly wooded land directly across from the Forbes place. Ben got into Ernie’s car and sat shivering, hearing very little of what Johnny was saying. The three policemen got back into the cars in which they had come and drove off.
    “They’ll make a house-to-house check,” Ernie said. “We’ll take this side of the road from here to the highway.”
    He started the car, and they went from house to house asking for Carolyn.
    It was a strangely disjointed trip. There were many starts, many stops, many stumblings up different kinds of walks. Dogs ran out and challenged them. Doors opened and faces appeared in them and voices spoke. Some of them Ben knew. Some of them he wasn’t sure whether he knew or not. Most of them were strangers. The houses all looked different, not at all the familiar houses he drove past every day. The stretches of land in between looked darker and wider. He began to think they were not on Lister Road at all. When, years or hours later, they reached the highway and turned back, it seemed impossible that so many people could live on the same street in the same neighborhood and never notice when one of their number vanished from among them.
    There was another thing, too.
    “Look at them,” he said bitterly, pointing to the erratic lights that danced in the back yards all along the road.
    Some of the men and boys and even a few of the more active and curious women had joined the search. Most of them seemed merely excited, like people watching a fire which does not concern them. He could hear loud juvenile voices shouting and laughing among the dark hedgerows. Dogs barked and bayed.
    “My God,” said Ben, “you’d think it was a coon hunt.”
    “What do you care,” Ernie said, “as long as they find her.”
    And how will they find her? Ben thought. Alive or dying or already dead?
    He grasped the handle of the door. “Let me out. I’m going to look for her.”
    He flung the door open. Instantly Johnny leaned over from the back seat and caught his shoulders. Ernie slammed on the brake. He was going slow to begin with and the car stopped almost at once. He too caught Ben and held him.
    “I need you at the house,” he said. “You couldn’t do anything out there that isn’t already being done.”
    He and Johnny got the door closed and locked, and they drove on. Ben stared out the window. He did not say anything more. When they got back to the house one of the