Free The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. MacDonald

had drifted off into sleep. There are men in this world who are compelled to destroy the most fragile and valuable things they can find, the same way rowdy children will ravage a beautiful home. Look at me, they are saying.
    Lois, shy, lovely, sensitive, a graceful and cultivated woman, merely by the fact of her existence offered a challenge to Junior Allen. And she had challenged him further by defying him. Even though it meant the stupidity of returning to Candle Key after finding and taking what Sergeant Page 36

    David Berry had hidden, he had to meet that challenge and totally subdue a more delicate morsel than Cathy Kerr could ever be.
    The worst crimes of man against woman do not appear on the statutes. A smiling man, quick and handy as a cat, webbed with muscle, armored with money, now at liberty in an unsuspecting world, greedy as a weasel in a hen house. I knew the motive. The motive was murder. And this symbolic killing might easily be followed by the more literal act.
    pop"
    Sly and reckless, compulsive and bold. The goat-god, with hoof and smile and hairy ears, satyr at the helm of the Play Pen.
    Love him, understand him, forgive him, lead him shyly to Freud, or Jesus.
    Or else take the contemporarily untenable position that evil, undiluted by any hint of childhood trauma, does exist in the world, exists for its own precise sake, the pustular bequest from the beast, as inexplicable as Belsen.
    I kissed her sweaty temple and tucked the blanket around her narrow shoulder. Symbol of weakness. Symbol of the beast. But I could find no symbol for myself. McGee as avenging angel was a little too much to swallow. I hoped to temper vengeance with greed. Or conversely. Either way, it does simplify the rationalizations.
    She began to gorge like a wolf. The anticipated placidity came, bringing small sweet it absent smiles, yawns and drowsiness. She dressed and we took walks, and as the edges of bone quickly softened with new flesh, the night talks dwindled. I was in charge of a vegetable woman, mildly amiable, unquestioning, softly remote, an eater and a sleeper, a slow walker. Ramirez was paid off, offering no thoughts for the future. She phoned her sister in-law, proclaiming that everything was peachy. With me she talked over the segments of a happy childhood. But she did not like the house and did not want the house, or the car.
    I organized her financial matters, and she signed the deposit slip and all the small checks for the anxious. She wanted to be elsewhere, but did not worry about where, or want the effort of planning anything. We packed. There was not much she wanted. Miss Agnes, half truck, accommodated it readily. I took the keys to Bocka, with the address where she could be reached. She signed the title and I sold her car, deposited the cash in her account. She signed the post office change of address card.
    I made the arrangements about the utilities. I took a last look through the house. She sat out in the car. I checked all the windows, turned the air conditioning off, slammed the front door.
    As we drove away, she did not look back.
    She sat with a dreaming smile, her hands folded in her lap.
    Other people go down to the keys and bring back shell ashtrays or mounted fish or pottery flamingos. Travis McGee brings back a Lois Atkinson. The souvenir fervor is the mainstay of a tourist economy.
    "You can stay aboard my houseboat until you find a place."

Page 37
EEL_
    "All right."
    "Maybe you'd like to go back to New Haven to be near your brother."
    "Maybe I would."
    "You should be feeling well enough to travel pretty soon."
    "I guess so."
    "Would you rather I found you a place of your own right away?"
    "it doesn't matter."
    "Which would you rather do?"
    The effort of decision brought her out of torpor. She made fists and her lips tightened. "I guess I have to be with you."
    "For a little while."
    "I have to be with you."
    The patient becomes emotionally dependent upon the analyst. She said it without