by Ed McBain
She is the one, after all, who made the single wish impossible to retract, and he is doing now to Bessie what he would have done to Kate herself had she not suggested otherwise. As she watches in fear and loathing and shame and excitement, a thin trickle of urine runs down the inside of her leg.
In the mist, side by side, they sit silently on the bench.
He puts his arm around her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says gently.
“So they keep telling me,” she says.
“You weren’t to blame,” he says.
“I should have locked the door,” she says, and turns her head into his shoulder and begins weeping bitterly.
In bed that night, she says, “Would you mind if we didn’t make love tonight, David?”
No more Davids, he thinks.
“I’m simply exhausted,” she says.
The alarm clock goes off at seven A.M.
“What time is your plane?” she whispers.
“Eight-thirty.”
“Will you make it?”
“Oh sure.”
“From where?”
“LaGuardia this time.”
“Mm,” she says, and falls back asleep.
He considers this another good sign.
He is showered, shaved and dressed by seven-thirty. He goes back into the bedroom. She is still asleep. He debates waking her, decides against it.
He leaves the apartment without saying, “I love you,” gently closing the door behind him for the very last time.
He is at LaGuardia by eight-fifteen.
They are already boarding his flight.
He looks for the scrap of paper on which he wrote Jacqueline Hicks’s number in East Hampton. The sun is still shining above it. He hesitates a moment, and then dials it. This time, she picks up. He apologizes for calling so early in the morning and then explains that a woman named Kathryn Duggan stopped by for a consultation while he was in the city this week …
“Is she all right?” Jacqueline asks at once.
“Yes, she’s fine, fine. But she mentioned that you’d treated her …”
“Yes, I did,” Jacqueline says.
“And since she’s considering analysis again …”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I wondered if you could tell me a little about her.”
“David, I have a houseful of people just now …”
“Yes, but …”
“… and we’re just sitting down to breakfast. Can you possibly call me …?”
“Jackie …”
“… after the weekend? On Monday? I’d be happy …”
“Can you just tell me …?”
“Yes, but then I really must go, really. Call me Monday, okay? I love her, I’d be happy …”
“I will. What was the nature of …?”
“She was suicidal.”.
“I’ll call you Monday,” he says.
He looks at his watch. Eight-twenty. He wonders if he has time to call Kate. He wants to warn her not to do anything foolish. He wants to assure her that he’ll be contacting Clancy again on Monday. He wants to tell her everything’ll work out all right for her.
But just then they announce final boarding for his flight.
And he hurries toward the gate.
Her telephone rings at twenty-five minutes past eight, awakening her.
David, she thinks. From the airport.
She fumbles for the receiver. Picks it up.
“Hullo?” she says.
A furious voice shouts, “Get him off your machine, cunt!”
There is a click on the line.
She slams down the receiver at once.
My home number! she thinks. He has my home number!
Naked, she pads into the living room, and stands trembling before the answering machine, obeying his command at once, pressing the ANNOUNCEMENT button, holding it down, “Hi,” her voice quavering, “at the beep, please,” removing David’s offensive message from the tape. I have to get out of here, she thinks. He’s too close. He has my number.
Hannah the cat rubs against her naked leg.
“Not now, Hannah,” she says, and rushes back into the bedroom. She crosses to the dresser, fumbles open the top drawer, finds a pair of white cotton panties, steps into them, I’ll go to Clancy, pulls them up over her thighs and her waist, I have to put an end to this, crosses to the closet, hurls open the door, we have to get him, takes a pair of blue jeans from a hanger, we have to stop him, and is about to put them on when all at once she wonders if the front door is locked.
Did David lock the door when he left?
But how? There isn’t a spring latch, the door can’t be locked by simply pulling it shut.
Then …
Did she get up to lock it?
She lets the jeans fall to the floor. Barefoot, wearing only the white panties, she runs out of the bedroom and toward the front door—“Not now, Hannah!”—feeling a sudden urgency to get to that door and lock it, he knows where she lives, he has her number, “Goddamn you, Hannah, not now!”
She is reaching for the thumb bolt on the top lock when the door opens, almost knocking her over. She backs away, and all at once he is in the room, the door slamming shut behind him.
“Hello, Puss,” he says.
She has never seen this man before in her life.
He is a total stranger, a thin balding man wearing rimless eyeglasses, and blue jeans, and white sneakers, and the black “Cats” T-shirt with the yellow eyes on it, yellow against black, black dancers in the yellow eyes, she cannot breathe. He is holding in his right hand a two-foot section of wood cut from a green broom handle, its end splintered and jagged as though while sawing it off he’d lost patience with the task and simply ripped it free, the naked wood showing raw and white beneath the bilious green paint. Before she can scream, before she can beg him to leave her alone, before she can utter a single sound, the short green club lashes out and strikes her across the bridge of her nose. She feels only blinding pain at first, and then everything in her field of vision goes red.
His fury is monumental.
She cannot imagine what she has done to provoke such rage.
Hands flailing, she keeps backing away from him as he strikes at her soundlessly, incessantly. Bleeding, trying to see through the blood, her eyes swollen, trying to speak, her lips swollen, she says, or thinks she says, Please, don’t hurt me, please. But he has already hurt her, he has hurt her seriously, and he is still hurting her, and she knows he will hurt her even more severely than he already has, knows he will not stop hurting her till he has killed her.
Do it to her, she thinks.
“Do it to her!” she screams, or thinks she screams.
But there is only Hannah the cat in the blood-spattered room.
Wet with blood, slippery everywhere with blood, drifting in and out of whiteness, she knows he will kill her, knows he has already killed her, knows she is dead, knows she is not yet dead, knows she is dying, hopes he will kill her, has already killed her, but, no, she’s still alive. And she thinks perhaps God, who knows how to get unlisted phone numbers, who knows how to get inside buildings and inside apartments, God in all His infinite mercy and splendor will spare her after all. In which case, why is He hurting her so?
And where is David, she wonders, why isn’t David here to save me, where are you, David? And where’s my vain and glorious mother on this blood-drenched night in this steamy bathroom, how was the fucking movie, Mom? Where’s vainglorious Fee when there’s real trouble? Do you know I’m dying, Mom, do you know I’m dead? I truly beg your pardon, but if I’m dead then please end the pain, please stop hurting me this way! I’m sorry I let him do it, really, I should have locked the door, I should have, I know I should have in some way, but you see, I’m sorry but I simply couldn’t, I was just a kid, you see. So … so please … I … I … I beg you to … to … bess me … to bless me … to forgive me, truly, I’m very sorry, Bess, forgive me, Bessie, please forg
ive me, only stop it, just, please, stop it!
In the instant before she dies, she understands with blinding clarity that doors can’t be locked against monsters.
5: Monday, August 21–Monday, November 20
David places his call at twelve noon that Monday.
He knows by then that Kate has been murdered. He has read about it in the New York Times and has also seen the news on local television and on CNN.
“I was just trying to locate you,” Clancy says. “Where are you calling from?”
“Martha’s Vineyard.”
“I got the package. Thanks.”
“Will they help?”
“Working on them now.”
There is a silence on the line.
“How well did you know her?” Clancy asks.
“Just casually,” David says.
“But well enough that she could ask you to send that stuff to me, huh?”
“Asked me to take it to you, actually. But you were away.”
“Well enough for that, huh?”
“It wasn’t much to ask.”
“So you sent it FedEx. Cause I was away.”
“Yes. I knew I wouldn’t be in the city today.”
“Right, you’re up there.”
“Yes.”
“Have you got a number up there where I can reach you? If I need you?”
“Sure,” David says, and reads the number from the little plate on the phone. Seven summers up here, still doesn’t know the number by heart.
“And that’s where?” Clancy asks.
“Menemsha. Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Might as well give me the address, too,” Clancy says. “While we’re at it.”
They are not properly dressed for sunshine and sand.
Detective Clancy is wearing a brown suit, a white shirt, a darker brown tie, and brown shoes and socks. The man walking beside him is wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, a red tie, and black shoes and socks. Like a mirage, they materialize out of glaring sunshine and ocean mist, and come trudging shimmeringly over the sand. It is the twenty-fourth day of August, a hot, sultry morning without a breeze stirring. Five days since Kate’s murder, three days since he spoke to Clancy on the phone. These men are dressed for business.
“Dr. Chapman,” Clancy says. “Nice seeing you again. This is my partner Detective D’Angelico, is this your little girl?”
“How do you do?” David says, and shakes hands first with D’Angelico and then with Clancy. “This is my daughter, Annie, yes.”
“Few questions we’d …”
Annie suddenly sticks out her hand, squinting up into the sun as she shakes hands with each of the men in turn. David wonders if they plan to question him in her presence. Annie is wearing a little green bikini. He is wearing blue trunks. All at once, he feels very vulnerable in swimming apparel, the two detectives standing there in business suits.
“Have you got anything yet?” he asks.
“Well, we’ve been trying to track down the wild prints on the envelopes.”
“But no luck so far,” D’Angelico says.
In contrast to the lean and wiry Clancy, he is short and rotund. Fat and Skinny, David thinks. Mutt and Jeff. Good Cop/Bad Cop. But Who will be playing Whom? Which one is which?
“We appreciate your sending the stuff, anyway,” Clancy says.
“Are you really detectives?” Annie asks.
“Yes, honey,” D’Angelico says.
“I want you to know,” Clancy says, “that you’re not a suspect in this case.”
“Who, me?” Annie asks.
“Well, I should hope not,” David says.
“Me, too,” Annie says, nodding vigorously.
D’Angelico smiles indulgently.
“Although during the course of our initial investigation,” Clancy says, “your name came up quite a few times.”
“As you might imagine,” D’Angelico says.
Bad Cop, David thinks.
“Why might I imagine anything of the sort?” he asks.
“Your knowing the dead girl and all,” D’Angelico says.
“I knew her only casually,” he says at once.
He does not want Annie to hear whatever he feels certain is coming next, but they are still at least a quarter of a mile from the house and he doesn’t want her walking back alone, either. It occurs to him that this is a cheap NYPD ploy, questioning him with his daughter standing not a foot away. He wants to say something to them about it, but he thinks they may suspect him, after all, no matter what Clancy just said, and he’s afraid he’ll get deeper in trouble if he starts any kind of fuss here.
“In any case, we’re not here to discuss your relationship with her,” Clancy says.
Good Cop.
“What are you guys talking about, anyway?” Annie says, squinting up at them, her hands on her hips, her head cocked to one side.
“Whyn’t you run on up the beach?” D’Angelico says.
“I like it here,” Annie says.
“Whyn’t you send your daughter up the beach?” D’Angelico suggests.
“Go ahead, Annie,” David says. “Not too far ahead. Stay where I can see you. And don’t go in the water.”
“What do these guys want, anyway?” she asks, looking up into David’s face now.
“Do you remember the girl whose bike got stolen?” David asks.
“Yeah?”
“Someone hurt her,” David says. “They want to ask me some questions about it.”
“Why?”
“Why, gentlemen?” David says, turning to Clancy.
“So your daddy can help us find who did it,” Clancy says.
“He saved her life once,” Annie says, nodding. “He’s a psychiatrist.”
“So run along now, okay, honey?” D’Angelico says.
“Okay,” Annie says, and goes skipping off up the beach ahead of them.
“Nice kid,” D’Angelico says unconvincingly. “She knows about the stolen bike, huh?”
“Yes, I told my family about it.”
“Brave thing you did,” D’Angelico says, again unconvincingly.
“Looks like an army handled those letters you sent us,” Clancy says conversationally.
“Including the kid from the bike shop,” D’Angelico says. “Who we talked to the minute the other girls in the show told us he was there with her one night.”
“Alibi a mile long for the morning she got killed, though,” Clancy says. “She ever mention anything to you about this guy?”
“I only knew her casually. I wouldn’t know anything about anyone in a bicycle shop.”
“Of course not. I meant the guy who was sending her the flowers and …”
“Or did you send the flowers?” D’Angelico asks.
“Me? Why would I …?”
“Then you didn’t, right?”
“Of course not. I hardly knew the girl.”
“So did she mention anything about this guy?”
“She must’ve said something about him,” D’Angelico says.
“As I told you in my letter …”
“Yeah, she contacted you quite unexpectedly, isn’t that it? So what’d she say when she contacted you quite unexpectedly?”
“Just what I wrote in my letter.”
“Nothing more.”
“Nothing more.”
“Guy’s sending her flowers …” Clancy says.
“You see, we’re trying to separate the fancy fucking from the killing here,” D’Angelico says.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t beg our pardon, Dr. Chapman. We get people begging our pardon every day of the week. If you’d stop covering your ass here for a minute …”
“Hey, come on, Ralph,” Clancy says.
“A guy’s sending her flowers, writing letters to her, she never says a word about him to her goddamn boyfriend?”
“Her boyfriend?” David says. “What are you …?”
“We know you were seeing he
r,” Clancy says. “I’m sorry, Dr. Chapman.”
“Well, you know nothing of the sort. How can you possibly …?”
“We do, I’m sorry.”
“I thought I wasn’t a suspect here.”
“You’re not,” Clancy says.
“Not anymore,” D’Angelico says.
“But put yourself in our shoes.”
“What shoes are those, Detective?”
“We had a lot of people placing you with her. Doormen here and there, the super at her building, other girls in the show, a lady in her elevator, the kid in the bike shop, and so on. We also have her phone bill with collect calls you made from up here. And the bike shop kid says your voice was on her machine the whole four days before she got killed. All of which seemed to add up to the fact that you would have known the girl pretty well for about seven weeks at the time of her murder, actually fifty-one days according to our calculations. So you’ll forgive us for thinking you were maybe fucking her, huh?”
“If you think I killed her …”
“No we don’t. Not anymore.”
David looks puzzled.
“The coroner’s report set the time of her death at around eight-thirty, nine o’clock in the morning,” Clancy explains.
“You were on a plane coming up here at that time,” D’Angelico says.
“We checked passenger lists,” Clancy says, almost apologetically.
“Dr. Chapman,” D’Angelico says, “your personal business is your personal business, and we’re not interested in it, believe me.”
David wishes he could.
“All we want to know is whether Miss Duggan ever said anything at all about this guy who was bothering her. Did she indicate he might be someone she knew, for example?”
David says nothing for a moment.
The detectives are waiting.
He takes a deep breath.
“No,” he says at last. “She had no idea who he was.”
“When did you first hear about him?”
“When I went down to New York on the fifteenth.”
“Were you staying with her?”
He hesitates again.
“Dr. Chapman?”
“Yes,” he says.
“In her apartment, right?”
