An Eye for an Eye Read Online Free Page A

lab men said that a woman named Grace Vitelli had called and that was all.
    They did not find Carolyn, alive or dead.
    The house-to-house check turned up nothing. The search was called off until daylight and the policemen left. Ernie stayed. He gave Ben, who was not a drinking man, three stiff ones in quick succession and sent him to bed. Just before he went to sleep Ben heard Ernie talking quietly on the phone. Then he passed into a dark place where fear and loneliness tormented him and Carolyn was somewhere just out of sight.
    He woke and the dream was still with him, more dreadful than ever in the light of day.
    By noon they had completed the search of the neighborhood and given up. There was no sign. No word had come from anyone. The lab men had found no fingerprints on or around the back door but Carolyn’s, Ben’s, and Johnny Pettit’s. There were no suspicious prints inside. There were no bloodstains. There were no evidences of any prowler. Apparently, without provocation or violence, Carolyn Forbes had simply ceased to exist.
    Ben went down to the police station with Ernie McGrath. In a room of the grimy three-story brick building from which he could see the courthouse two blocks away he made out a report for Missing Persons. He gave a full physical description of Carolyn, including the fact that she had no history of amnesia or mental blackouts. Ernie had already verified this with Carolyn’s doctor. Ben supplied pictures of Carolyn to both Missing Persons and later a reporter from the Woodley paper, for whom he also answered a number of questions. Ernie said that a five-state alarm would be sent out immediately and that all other customary steps would be taken by the interested department. Ernie himself had to get back to his regular job.
    “There isn’t much more I could do anyway,” he said. “But I’ll keep in touch. If anything comes up, let me know right away.”
    Ben thanked him. Then, holding his sanity doggedly in both hands, he settled down to wait.
    By day, at home or at the office, he was never out of earshot of the phone. By night he slept or dozed beside it on the couch. He grasped avidly at every mail and listened for the steps of delivery boys from Western Union. His work suffered badly. He was unable to keep his mind on it for more than a few minutes at a time, but he went through the motions because he did not know what else to do with himself. He did not eat much. He looked at people without really seeing them and talked to them without really knowing what he or they were saying. He had a curious feeling of suspension, as though he had been hung like a test object in a vacuum and was waiting for the shock that would either save or destroy him.
    At eight thirty-seven on the evening of the third day, which happened to be the eleventh of November, it came.
    The telephone rang.

 
four
     
    His name was Albert William Guthrie. Everybody called him Al, and sometimes, in certain moods, the Bull. He was busy taking potatoes out of grocery sacks and putting them into two peck baskets. He did it slowly, as though he were enjoying it, and every little while he would reach over to the dirty drainboard of the sink and pick up the bottle that stood there and drink out of it. He was drunk. He had been drunk for days, and after numerous climbings and fallings he had reached a plateau where he could keep going indefinitely as long as he didn’t quit. He felt good. He liked what he was doing. He liked what he was going to do. He smiled and talked to himself about it. The sun shone in on him through the unwashed window. It was a nice day for the eighth of November.
    When he had finished with his potatoes, Al got up and dusted his hands together and wiped them on a towel, leaving brown smears of earth. He went into the front room and got his jacket. He was not quite thirty, better than six feet tall, with an inelegant but very powerful build. His neck was long and his head was long and narrow so that his