Free Nightfall by David Goodis

remember picking it up. But there it was, in my hand.”
      “Well,” the policeman said, “that was all right too. You still had the satchel. Why didn't you come into Denver and hand it over?”
      “I was afraid. I didn't think you'd believe my story. You know the way it sounds. It's one of those stories that doesn't check.”
      “I'm glad you understand that,” the policeman said. “It makes things easier for both of us. So now we have you in those woods and you're running and still have the satchel. And what happens?”
      “I don't have the satchel any more.”
      “It takes a jump away from you and runs away, is that it?”
      “I just don't have that satchel any more,” Vanning said. “I can't remember where I dropped it. I must have been in the woods for two or three hours and I couldn't have been traveling in a straight line. And the woods were thick, there was so much brush, there was a swampy section, there were a million places where I could have dropped the satchel. Can't you understand my condition? How confused I was? Try to understand. Give me any sort of a test. Please believe me.”
      “Sure,” the policeman said. “I believe you. We all believe you. It's as simple and clear as a glass of water. You took the satchel. You ran away with it. That's what you say and that's what we believe. And that brings us to the other thing. In order to get that satchel you had to kill a man. So we've circled around and we've come back to it and honest to goodness mister, you're so far behind the eight ball that it looks like the head of a pin. It's too bad you had to go and get yourself mixed up with the wrong people. We're holding you on grand larceny and murder in the first degree.”
      “But I gave myself up. I came to you. I didn't have to do that.”
      “You didn't bring the satchel.”
      “I don't know where it is.”
      “Oh, now, why don't you cut that out?”
      “I tell you I don't know where it is. I dropped it some place. I lost it. Look, I didn't have to come here and tell you all this. I could have kept on running. But I came here.”
      “It's a point in your favor,” the policeman said. “As a matter of fact, you have quite a few points on your side. No past record. The fact that the other man was holding a gun when you killed him. The fact that you had a legitimate occupation waiting for you in Chicago. So all that may get you some sort of a break. We may be able to work something out. Tell you what. You tell us where you've got that satchel hidden.”
      “I can't tell you that. I don't know where it is.”
      The policeman looked at the other faces and sighed. Then he looked at Vanning. His face loomed in front of Vanning as he said, “All right, you can still help yourself out a little, even if you want to be stubborn about that three hundred thousand. What you can do is plead guilty to grand larceny and murder in the second degree. That's giving you a break, bringing it down to second-degree murder, and that ought to send you up for about ten years. If you behave yourself you ought to get out in five, maybe even two or three if you're lucky.”
      “I won't do that,” Vanning said. “I won't ruin myself. I'm an innocent man. I'm a young man and I'm not going to mess up my life.”
      The policeman shrugged. All the policemen shrugged. The woods shrugged and the sky shrugged. None of them especially cared. It meant nothing to them. It meant nothing to the universe with the exception of this one tiny, moving, breathing thing called Vanning, and what it meant to him was fear and fleeing. And hiding. And fleeing again. And more hiding.
      He stayed in the woods for another day and another night, went on through the woods until he found a clearance, and then railroad tracks. A freight came along and he hopped it. Later he hopped another