Everett Dynes’s murder

Everett Dynes’s murder is the point at which Burke Devore’s effort to eliminate a rival turns into an uncontrolled, intimate act of violence. After encountering Dynes alive and working in a diner, Burke returns to Lichgate and uses the Voyager to strike him in the rain, then drives over him repeatedly. The killing achieves its immediate purpose but leaves Burke shaken, replaying the scene through a sleepless night and resolving to confess.

Encounter at the diner

Burke first considers killing Dynes inside a diner where only five other people are present: three solitary customers drinking coffee at the counter and an elderly couple eating in a booth. He imagines leaving to retrieve the Luger pistol and his raincoat, then waiting for Dynes to come out of the men’s room. He revises the plan, deciding that it would be better to wait until Dynes is seated again.

The intended victim emerges from behind the counter wearing a green apron and carrying fish and chips for a customer. Burke realizes that Dynes works there. The discovery stuns him: the man he had understood as a middle manager is now serving customers in a diner, while the mortgage on his house remains an obligation. Burke thinks of the work Marjorie does at Dr. Carney’s office as similarly helpful but insufficient, and contrasts earning money this way with recovering one’s former life.

Dynes approaches with a pleasant smile and asks whether Burke knows what he wants. Burke stammers that he needs a minute. Dynes accepts the answer and moves down the counter to refill another customer’s coffee. His ordinary courtesy makes the encounter harder for Burke to contain. Burke repeats to himself the rule he had adopted for his killings: not to get to know the people he intends to kill. He tries to reduce Dynes to the fact that he is a counterman, insisting that he does not know him and will not know him.

The attack on Nether Street

Later, Burke drives north toward Lichgate through steady, heavy rain. At the traffic light on Nether Street, shortly before noon, he sees Dynes crossing the street in a windbreaker and cloth cap. Burke is angry that Dynes is leaving early and worries that a shot from the driver’s side, across parked cars, might miss. In his calculation, Dynes would remember a telephone and could alert the local police if he escaped.

Burke accelerates instead. The Voyager strikes Dynes as he tries to jump toward the curb. His body hits the front of the vehicle rather than passing beneath it, then slides down as Burke brakes; the moving car carries Dynes under its wheels. Burke stops and sees him in all three mirrors, still moving. When Dynes rolls over and tries to rise, Burke reverses with his eyes closed. He feels the vehicle thump over him again, then stops without hitting a parked car.

In the headlights, Dynes lies crumpled and mostly facedown, his hat gone. One arm moves against the pavement, and his fingers scratch at it. Burke shifts into Drive and deliberately aims at Dynes’s head, driving the front-left tire and then the rear-left tire over it. He reverses once more and checks the mirrors. This time Dynes does not move. The sequence turns a collision into an unmistakable decision to finish the killing: Burke sees signs of life and responds by driving over Dynes again.

Immediate aftermath

Burke returns to Dawson’s Motel weeping so hard that he feels barely able to steer or operate the Voyager’s pedals. The Luger pistol remains in his pocket, its weight pulling at him as he walks from the vehicle to his room and struggles to reach his key. The gun that belonged to his intended method of killing has not been used; the vehicle has become the instrument of the murder.

A shower in the motel’s old clawfoot tub, with its added nozzle and close-hanging curtain, calms him enough to stop crying. At 12:47, the bedside clock-radio marks that exactly one hour has passed since he left the room to kill Dynes. Burke is back, and he knows he has done it. Yet he cannot sleep. The scene on Nether Street keeps returning to him: the dark, the rain, and the Voyager’s lights. His body is exhausted, his throat and chest ache, and the clock’s red numbers keep advancing as he lies awake.

Recognition and decision

During the night, Burke places Dynes among his previous victims, recalling Herbert Everly, Edward Ricks, and Mrs. Ricks. He asks himself how he could have done these things and recognizes the contradiction in killing a man he regards as like himself: Dynes should have been a friend and ally against their shared enemies, not someone to claw down in competition. Burke’s image of people struggling for scraps below an indifferent or laughing world frames the murder as part of the same brutal contest that has shaped his campaign against rivals, but it does not excuse the act or spare him its consequences.

At 5:19, Burke decides that it has to end. He resolves to make a clean breast of everything, atone for what he has done, and kill no more. His exhaustion has lifted by then; he is awake, alert, and calm. He gets up and searches for writing paper, only to find that Dawson’s Motel provides no stationery and that he brought none. The decision to confess follows the murder’s immediate aftermath, but the scene ends with the practical problem of how to begin carrying it out.