The Cry of the Owl

by Patricia Highsmith

“Sure,” Robert said, and with a wave of his hand walked away toward Jaffe’s office. He glanced at the reception hall and through the glass wall saw Lippenholtz, in a light-gray suit and hat, step out of the elevator. Lippenholtz saw him at once, too, and signaled with a backward jerk of his head. Lippenholtz stopped, evidently waiting for him. Robert opened the glass door at the end of the hall.

  “So there you are,” said Lippenholtz. “Still on the job, eh?”

  “Did you want to see me?” Robert asked.

  “Yes. Sit down?” He gestured to the green sofa, a size for two and a half people, near the elevators.

  Robert didn’t care to sit down, but he did, automatically.

  “I heard about the gunshot,” Lippenholtz said. “You don’t seem to be wounded.” He was smoking a cigarette.

  “No. I found the bullet this morning. A thirty-two. Maybe you heard.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Robert told him where he had found it, and said that he had taken the salad bowl to the station in Rittersville. Lippenholtz appeared interested, but unimpressed. “Do you happen to know if Wyncoop has a gun permit?” Robert asked. “Not that he’d need a permit to get a gun, but—”

  Lippenholtz studied Robert’s face in silence for a few seconds. “No, Wyncoop has no gun permit. I remember that from when we were checking on other stuff about him. I suppose you think Wyncoop fired that shot?”

  “I’ve a strong suspicion he did.”

  “Well, Mr. Forester, something else of great interest turned up last night, too. We kept it out of the papers this morning deliberately. Wyncoop’s body washed up just above Trenton. At least, what we think is Wyncoop’s body. The exam isn’t finished yet.” Lippenholtz looked at him, and rubbed his pocked chin with a forefinger. “So—under the circumstances, don’t you think somebody else might have fired that shot? One of Wyncoop’s hotheaded young friends, maybe?”

  “What proof have you got that it’s Wyncoop?” Robert asked.

  “No proof as yet, but the corpse is the same height, six feet two and a half. No clothes, except a belt with an ordinary buckle, no initial, and part of the pants. No hair, that’s the worst. Body’s been in ten days to two weeks, says the examiner. And over plenty of rocks, of course. The skull was fractured. Could have been done by a rock, but it looks more like a direct blow with a blunt instrument or possibly a rock used as a weapon. What do you say to that? They found it around eight last night. Fellow tying up his boat found it caught against his pier.”

  Robert shrugged. “What do I say? I don’t think it’s Wyncoop. You said you haven’t proven it yet.”

  “No, but there are two points. Nobody around that height is missing around here. And this fellow looks as if he’d been murdered.”

  Robert found it unusually easy to keep calm this morning. “There’re other checks to be done, aren’t there? Such as age? Can’t they tell that from the bones? What about his—the color of his eyes?”

  “Don’t speak of eyes,” said Lippenholtz.

  Robert stood up restlessly. He supposed the corpse was a mess.

  “Where’re you going?”

  Robert lit a cigarette and didn’t answer.

  “Didn’t your girl friend think you killed Wyncoop, Mr. Forester? Isn’t that why she killed herself, and why she said you represented death to her?”

  Robert frowned. “What do you mean ‘didn’t she think’?”

  “I’m asking you if she didn’t suspect it, believe it.”

  Robert drew some water in a paper cup from the dispenser, took one swallow and dropped the cup in the chute. “I don’t know. I know her friends were talking to her. Some of them. That’s not quite the point, is it? The point is whether the corpse is Wyncoop or not.”

  Lippenholtz only looked at him, his thin lips slightly smiling.

  “And while you’re finding out, I suppose I’ll get plugged. Maybe tonight.”

  “Oh, I doubt that, Mr. Forester.”

  Robert felt like socking him. “I thought the law was supposed to get the right man. Don’t pick me just because I’m handy.”

  “Mr. Forester, that’s just what we think we might do.”

  Robert threw his cigarette in the sand jar and shrugged. “Matter of fact, it’s a bit safer in jail than at my house, probably.” And then he imagined the last examiner passing on the corpse as Wyncoop’s, maybe today. What then? How many years for manslaughter? Or would they decide to call it murder now?

  “Want to go to jail, Mr. Forester?”

  “No.” Robert shoved his hands in his back pockets. “What kind of legal procedure is this? Do you always ask people first if they want to go to jail?”

  “No. Not always. Why don’t you take a look at the corpse? We’d like you to see the corpse.”

  “All right, fine,” Robert said just as chattily. “Just a minute till I get my coat.” Robert went back into the drafting room, passed his own table, then had to turn, because his coat was on his chair and not in his locker. Jack looked at him inquisitively, and Robert shook his head and made a negative sign with his hand. Robert went directly back to Lippenholtz.

  Lippenholtz looked him up and down as they waited for the elevator. “Why a trench coat? It’s not raining,” said Lippenholtz. “The sun is shining brightly.”

  “I like trench coats,” Robert said. Lippenholtz was as happy, Robert saw, as if he’d solved the case.

  They drove in Lippenholtz’s black police car to Rittersville. Lippenholtz said he didn’t mind at all driving Robert back to L.A., or one of the patrolmen could do it.

  “Did you see Miss Thierolf’s parents?” Lippenholtz asked as they drove.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t try to?”

  “No.” Robert added, “I’ve never met them.”

  “Nice people.”

  Robert sighed, angry and miserable.

  In Rittersville, Lippenholtz parked in the lot beside the station, and they went in together. With a movement of one finger, Lippenholtz dismissed a white-haired police officer who had been going to accompany them, and beckoned Robert down some wooden steps at the back of the room. There were six enamel tables, but only one held a corpse, covered with a gray-white sheet. A police guard was reading a magazine in a corner, and paid no attention to them.

  “This is it,” said Lippenholtz, lifting one end of the shroud, drawing it back.

  Robert was braced, but even so he jumped a little at the sight. Even the lower jaw was gone. Bones of the skull, bones at the shoulders were exposed. Pale, ragged, bloodless flesh clung to the skeleton. The corpse looked old, old in years. “The teeth,” Robert said. “There’re some teeth left in the—”

  Lippenholtz looked at him brightly. “Yes, we’re trying to get Wyncoop’s dentist. Unfortunately, he’s out in Utah visiting relatives. Worse, he’s on a hunting trip or something out there.” Lippenholtz looked as if this fact amused him. He was still holding the sheet back for Robert to see.

  Robert motioned for him to cover it. “I can’t tell any more by looking at that.”

  “You look pale, Mr. Forester.”

  And he felt like throwing up. Robert turned away toward the door, lifted his head, but that only made the smell of the place more noticeable. Robert deliberately walked slowly, not hurrying, toward the door, so that Lippenholtz reached the door first.

  “Charley, thanks!” Lippenholtz called to the officer behind the magazine, and got a grunt in reply.

  “How long do you think it’ll take to get hold of the dentist?” Robert asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aren’t his records here? Can’t anybody else get at them?”

  “He’s a little dentist in Humbert Corners. Everything’s locked up.”

  “Did you tell him in Utah that it’s urgent?”

  “We haven’t even reached him in Utah. Just his relatives. He’s away.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “McQueen,” said Lippenholtz. “Thomas—or Theodore.”
He kept watching Robert. “What do you think about that corpse? It’s six feet two and one half. Slender build—”

  Robert only gave him a look, feeling too unsteady even to consider the question. Lippenholtz was coming outside with him, but he paused to talk to an officer at the foot of the stone steps, and Robert went round to the parking area and quickly got rid of the few swallows of coffee he had had that morning. Robert had lit a cigarette by the time Lippenholtz appeared, smiling, with the officer.

  “This gentleman will drive you back to Langley,” said Lippenholtz, gesturing toward the big officer beside him. He said more quietly, “There were a few questions I might have asked you this morning, Mr. Forester, but you don’t look as if you feel very well.”

  “Questions such as what?” asked Robert.

  “Well—suppose we wait until we hear from the dentist, eh?”

  Robert said, “I wonder if I could have a police guard tonight—say, one man in a car in front of my house?”

  “A police guard?” Lippenholtz smiled more broadly.

  “You asked me if I wanted to go to jail a few minutes ago. A one-man guard is really less trouble and expense, isn’t it?”

  Lippenholtz hesitated, smiling, apparently trying to think of something witty to say.

  “I’m not armed and whoever’s trying to plug me is,” Robert said.

  “Oh, come now, aren’t you making too much of—”

  “You’re not the chief of police here at this station, are you, Detective Lippenholtz?” Robert felt a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  Lippenholtz’s smile went away. His pale eyebrows came down in a tense, horizontal line. “You’re in no position—”

  “You don’t seem to think it’s Wyncoop who’s potshooting at me because you don’t want to think it is. Maybe because he hasn’t a gun permit?” Robert gave a laugh.

  Now the big cop beside Lippenholtz was growling like a dog awaiting orders from its master.

  Lippenholtz stuck out his pitted chin. “Listen, Mr. Forester, you’ll talk yourself into a bigger mess if you don’t watch out. Who do you think you are? You’re a troublemaker from the word go! You deserve arrest on a prowling charge, do you know that? And you’re by way of getting yourself arrested for murder. And you can stand there and—”

  “Yes, sure I can! And so what?”

  Lippenholtz twitched and glanced at the big man beside him. “All right. We’ll put a man out there. What time would you like?”

  “Any time. The sooner the better.”

  “All right,” Lippenholtz said with a smug smile, as if he were indulging Robert.

  “Can I count on that? He’ll be there tonight, at least?” Robert asked.

  “Yes,” said Lippenholtz.

  Robert wasn’t sure he could believe him.

  “Take him back to Langley,” Lippenholtz said.

  The officer took Robert’s arm and Robert jerked his arm away. Then the officer motioned him toward a black car, and Robert followed him. Lippenholtz was going back into the building. Maybe to drool over the corpse, Robert thought.

  During the ride to Langley, the officer was stonily silent. Robert relaxed a little. It was his first contact with the law, the law getting tough, and he had always heard about people being treated tough and talked to tough, so why get excited about it? Traffic cops often behaved the same way, only it was over less important matters. He was glad he had finally talked back. And he had, he supposed, because he knew he had nothing more to lose by it.

  “Where are you going?” the officer asked as they entered Langley.

  “Langley Aeronautics,” Robert answered.

  The officer stopped his car at the parking gate, and Robert went in and went directly to his car, got in, and drove home. He would call Jack Nielson later. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone now. He was nearly packed up, except for a few items in the kitchen. His suitcases lay open on the floor, nearly full. He was supposed to move in two days, on Sunday the 31st, and he had been planning to go to a hotel in Philadelphia. Now all that was out, all except his moving, as he had promised his landlord to move on the 31st. And nothing was keeping him from moving out now, he thought, nothing maybe but a hope of seeing Greg, a wild hope of bagging him dead or alive and carrying him to the police station, because who would believe him, if he simply said he saw him? He drank a Scotch-on-the-rocks to steady himself. He found himself thinking of Jenny’s parents. What kind of work had she said her father did? Robert felt an impulse to write them, to try to explain—not to exonerate himself, but to try to explain as best he could why what had happened had happened. Or would her parents really care why? Wouldn’t the death be all that mattered, all that counted? Jenny’s funeral was tomorrow, he had read in the papers, in Scranton.

  Robert sprang up at a scratching sound outside his front window. He moved quickly to the window and stood at one side of it. Bright sunlight made him half close his eyes. Then he saw down by his mailbox a brown-and-white dog trotting away with its nose to the ground, a dog like a collie. Robert thought he had seen the dog around before. On an impulse, he opened his front door and whistled to it. The dog stopped and turned, took a step toward Robert and stopped again, questioning. He whistled again, walked out on his porch, and stooped on his heels.

  Then, with head and belly lowered, tail wagging, the dog came slowly toward Robert. Robert patted its head, grateful for the dog’s friendliness.

  “There’s a good boy. Are you hungry?” What a question, Robert thought. The dog’s ribs showed through its long-haired coat.

  Robert went into the kitchen, found the remains of some steak in the refrigerator, not much, and opened a can of corned-beef hash. The dog was waiting on the porch, too shy to come in, and Robert put the food on a plate and took it to the porch. The dog wolfed it down, its ribs expanded, and it glanced up at Robert now and then, maybe with suspicion, maybe with gratitude. Robert smiled, pleased to see it eat. Then the dog came in the house. The rest of the afternoon, the dog slept, waking when Robert moved, following him as if afraid he would leave. The dog was a female, Robert noticed.

  At five, Robert went out for the papers, and called the dog outside, thinking he shouldn’t lock her up, if she had a home to go to.

  Lippenholtz might have stopped the papers from printing the corpse story that morning, but it was in the evening papers, on the front pages. “Authorities are awaiting final confirmation from the dentist of Gregory Wyncoop, Dr. Thomas McQueen of Humbert Corners, who is temporarily out of town.” “Final” confirmation, as if they had a dozen other facts confirming that the corpse was that of Gregory Wyncoop.

  The dog was waiting on the porch, and she whined as Robert came up the steps. Robert had meant to stop at a grocer’s for some dog food, and had forgotten. He gave her a couple of raw eggs and a bowl of milk, then put two eggs on to boil for himself.

  And then the telephone rang.

  The night was coming soon. Robert looked wearily around at his three living-room windows, thought he must pull down the shades, at least, and right away, because he hadn’t seen anything that looked like a police guard or a police car on the road when he went out for the papers. He picked up the telephone.

  “Lippenholtz,” said the curt voice. “Dr. McQueen’s coming back Saturday afternoon. Thought you’d like to know.”

  “Thanks. Good.” Saturday afternoon was nearly forty-eight hours off.

  “Staying home this evening?”

  “Yes,” Robert said. “Have you set a man to watch the house?”

  “Mmm—yes. He should be out there soon.”

  “Thanks,” Robert said flatly. “I hope so.”

  “Be talking to you,” Lippenholtz said, and hung up.

  Robert pulled all his shades down, and turned the writing-table light on. The eggs were boiling. He turned them off, then ate them standing by his sink. He thought of going to a movie tonight—strictly to get out of the house. He resented having to do it, resented it so much, he wasn’t goi
ng to do it. He glanced at the windows in the living room, then at the dog, who had her head down on the floor between her paws, watching him. All evening, he supposed, he’d be glancing at the dog to see if she had heard anything.

  “Bark, will you, if you do?” He stooped and patted her lean ribs.

  He wondered why Jack Nielson or the Tessers, out of curiosity, hadn’t called. Was this possibly the last straw for them, the corpse? Did they all assume he’d be in jail? The papers, Robert realized, hadn’t even mentioned his name this evening. The items in the papers had been only four inches long, telling mainly where the body had been found and by whom.

  Robert called the Nielsons. Betty answered, kind and concerned, because Jack had said he looked bad that morning. Robert assured her he was all right. Then Jack came on the telephone.

  “I’m glad you’re still home,” Jack said. “When I saw the paper at five o’clock—about this corpse—I didn’t know where you’d be.”

  “Jail might be safer, as I said to my friend Lippenholtz this morning. He’s the plainclothesman you saw. He took me to see the corpse this morning, and after that—” He stopped.

  “What did they say about it? Is it Wyncoop?”

  “I don’t think so.” Robert told him about the bullet of last night. “I think Wyncoop fired the shot,” Robert said tiredly, “and therefore I don’t think the corpse is Wyncoop.”

  “I see. My paper didn’t mention the bullet. No wonder you looked pale around the gills this morning.”

  They talked for ten minutes, and the effort made Robert collapse in his armchair. He smiled a little bitterly: Betty hadn’t been able to keep her suspicion out of her voice. She hadn’t mentioned the corpse. Her words had all been platitudes, Robert felt, phrases to fill silence with. When Jack had begged him to come and stay the night with them, Robert thought—though he wasn’t sure—he had heard Betty saying, “No—no,” in the background. Robert had thanked Jack and declined the offer of a safe house.

  The telephone rang.

  This was Peter Campbell calling from New York.

  “Thank God you’re there,” Peter said. “What’s going on down there?”

  He wanted to know more about the corpse, of course, and Robert told him the gruesome state it was in, and told him of the denouement that was supposed to come Saturday from Wyncoop’s dentist. “I have one ace in the hole still,” Robert said.