Free The Kill-Off by Jim Thompson Page A

brushy, marked with innumerable trails and side-trails which terminated in tire-marked, beach-like patches of sand.
    I stopped at one of these patches. The only tire-marks were those of my own car.
    I made her take her clothes off. I grabbed her. I shook her and slapped her and pinched her. I called her every name I could think of.
    She didn’t speak or cry out. But suddenly I stopped short, and gave her the shot. I was tired. There seemed no point in going on. Action and words, words and action—leading to nothing, arriving nowhere. It wasn’t enough. There can be no real satisfaction without an objective.
    Myra lay back in the seat, breathing in long deep breaths, eyes half shut. She didn’t have a bad shape. In fact, without clothes on—she simply couldn’t wear clothes—she shaped up quite beautifully. But only aesthetically, as far as I was concerned. I felt no desire for her.
    I wanted to. My mind shrieked that I should. But the flesh could not hear it.
    She dozed. I may have dozed myself, or perhaps I merely became lost in thought. At any rate, I snapped back to awareness suddenly, aroused by the dull lacing of light through the trees, the throb of a familiar motor.
    Myra sat up abruptly. Stared at me, eyes wide with fright. I told her to sit still and be quiet. Just do what I told her to, and she’d be all right.
    I listened to the motor, following the progress of the car. It stopped, with a final purring throb-throb, and I knew exactly where it had stopped.
    I hesitated. I opened the door of the car.
    “B-Bobbie…” A frightened whisper from Myra. “Where you going? I’m afraid to stay—”
    I told her to shut up; I’d only be gone for a few minutes.
    “B-but why? What’re you going to—?”
    “Nothing. I don’t know. I mean—hell, just shut up!” I said.
    I went down the trail a few yards. I branched off into another, and then another. I came to the end of it—near the end of it, and hunkered down in the shadows of the trees.
    They weren’t more than twenty feet away, Ralph Devore and that what’s-her-name—the girl with the orchestra. I could see them clearly in the filtered moonlight. I could hear every word they said, every sound. And the way it looked and sounded…
    I could hardly believe it, particularly of a guy like Ralph. Because when Ralph stepped out with ’em, it was for just one thing and he lost no time about getting it. Yet now with this girl—and, no, she certainly didn’t hate him. She obviously felt the same way about him that he did her, and that way—
    I didn’t know what it was for a moment. Then, when I finally knew—remembered—realized—I refused to admit it. I grinned to myself, silently jeering them, jeering myself. Ralph was really making time, I thought. Here it was only the sixth week of the season, he’d only known this babe six weeks, and they were cutting up like a couple of newlyweds. Newlyweds, sans the sex angle. Which, of course, they’d soon be getting around to.
    Maybe—I thought—I ought to do the silly jerk a favor. Go up to his house some night and bump off Luane. It could be made to look like an accident. And believe me, it would need to look damned little like one to leave Ralph in the clear. Father was the coroner, the county medical officer. As for the county attorney, Henry Clay Williams…I shook my head, choking back a laugh. You had to hand it to that goddamned Luane. She had a positively fiendish talent for tossing the knife, for plunging it into exactly the right spot to send the crap flying. Henry Clay Williams was a bachelor. Henry Clay Williams lived with his maiden sister. And Henry Clay Williams’ sister had an abdominal tumor…which created a bulge normally created by a different kind of growth.
    At any rate, and unless the job was done in front of witnesses, it would be ridiculously easy to get away with killing Luane. Just make it look like an accident, enough like one to give Brother Williams an out, and—
    I leaned