Murder in Focus

by Medora Sale

  He pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat down facing them. “So,” he said conversationally, “I am Karl Lang. This is my house that you have broken into, by the way. And behind me is my friend and business associate, uh, Mr. Green. Do come in, Mr. Green.”

  Sanders turned his attention to Green. Even without the scar it was a memorable face. Under the bare bulb in the ceiling the dark eyes and strong cheekbones stood out more strikingly than they had in the diffuse light of the restaurant in Brockville or in Harriet’s picture. He smiled and Sanders could feel Harriet shiver beside him. Sanders had seen that kind of smile before. It used to appear with frequency on the face of a certain fellow officer, now edged out into Administration. It was the expression of someone who felt himself in control, powerful, untouchable, and who was confronting a member of a subhuman species without power or influence. It was a dangerous look, and it made him nervous. He wondered what particular reason Green had for feeling untouchable. Madness? Or something more pragmatic and real and therefore more menacing? Simple wealth, perhaps.

  Green pulled a chair out from the desk in the corner and placed it backward in front of Sanders and Harriet. He straddled the chair comfortably, leaning his elbows on the back, and watched them for a minute or two with those bright, cold eyes before opening his mouth. “That picture,” said Green at last. “I must insist that you produce that picture for us. You really should have stuck to photographing buildings, Miss Jeffries. Then you would never have bothered us.”

  “I don’t know which picture you’re talking about,” said Harriet steadily. “I take a great many pictures.”

  “Come now, Miss Jeffries, or may I call you Harriet? Please don’t try to irritate me. You know which picture. The picture I watched you take. The picture your friend told the police about, the picture you tried to say wasn’t developed yet, the picture you are—for reasons unknown to me—hiding. Where is it?” There was a long silence. “I see,” he said. He looked at the two of them side by side on the gray mattress and frowned. “Inspector, you will stand up—very slowly—and move over there to the corner. Now!” Sanders eased himself upright and walked sideways over to the east wall of the room. Mr. Lang followed his progress steadily with his pistol. “Stop. That will do,” snapped Green, as Sanders neared the desk. “Karl,” Green said softly. “Hold this for me, would you?” He handed his pistol to Mr. Lang, who pocketed it without taking his eyes off Sanders. “Just until I can get Miss Jeffries ready. There now,” he said, grabbing her by the elbows and forcing her upright and very close to him, his knees pressing her thighs painfully against the bed frame. “You don’t need that on.” He reached around her to each shoulder, pulled off her jacket, dropped it on the floor beside her, and grabbed the waistband of her sweatshirt.

  Surprise had slowed her reactions. Now she looked down in amazement at what was happening, and blinked. She jerked her arms up between them and pushed as hard as she could against his chest. “Get your filthy hands off me.”

  He grabbed her by the wrists, clamped them together, and encircled them with the long and very strong fingers of his left hand. Using her trapped arms as a lever, he pushed her backward until she thought her spine would snap, and then with his free hand slapped her on the cheek. She felt her jaw move sickeningly to the right and her head begin to spin under the force of the blow. “Shut up,” he said, released her for a moment, and yanked the sweatshirt off. It caught her ears and her hair as he pulled it over her head, and she could feel involuntary tears of pain prickle her eyes. “Now sit down again.” He yanked off his tie, grabbed her hands again, moved them around behind her, and knotted the tie around Harriet’s wrists before fastening it also to the bedpost. “That’s better,” he said, and stood back. “Now. One of you is going to tell me where that picture is.” He smiled. “Do you know why I know that? Because I am not stupid enough to try to force the answer out of you, Inspector. You look like one of those moral fools who prefers to die silent and noble in a pool of his own blood.” He stared lazily at Sanders, who willed his body to stay motionless and relaxed. “Am I right? But perhaps after watching a little persuasion of Miss Jeffries, Inspector, you will change your mind. I fancy you are not very good at watching, are you?” Green turned his chair around, pulled it closer to Harriet, and sat down. “Herr Lang, on the other hand, enjoys such displays. They have a bizarre fascination about them that he appreciates. But I don’t suppose you share his tastes, Inspector. I expect either you or Miss Jeffries will let us know where that picture is soon enough.”

  “I can’t imagine that one or two little pictures could possibly be worth all this time and trouble,” said Sanders. He paused to get his voice under control and then plunged on in an attempt to forestall whatever Green was planning to do. “And expense, of course.”

  “The fate of my country depends on that picture,” said Lang suddenly. “If I am discredited, then who else will have the strength and determination to take over and cure the malaise she has fallen into?”

  “But you’re not even in the picture—”

  “Ah,” said Green, interrupting Sanders, “but I am. And I am glad to see that we are acknowledging the fact that the picture exists. Now it only remains to find out where.” He reached over and placed one thin hand behind Harriet’s head, grabbed her hair, and wrenched it back. She drew her breath in sharply. With his other hand he reached down and took a knife from a leg sheath. He balanced it in his palm as if trying to decide what to do with it before grasping it firmly and placing the point against her larynx. She could feel a tiny area of cold, sharp pressure in her throat, nothing more. “A twitch of the knife, Miss Jeffries, that’s all it takes.” Her mouth felt black, dry, and bitter-tasting with fear, and in spite of herself she swallowed. The pressure increased and the slight pain intensified. “But what would be the point?” he said, as he pulled back the knife and eased the pressure. “You would be incapable of answering me then, wouldn’t you? But it is an action I would find very easy to do, Miss Jeffries, believe me.”

  Sanders had been watching intently as the knife pressed into and then moved back from her throat. When it was a safe distance away, he spoke, his voice friendly and casual. “It would be a very messy business, Mr. Green,” Sanders said. “It’s difficult to conceal that much blood, you know. Especially here, in the city, in a house.”

  “True, Inspector.” Green’s voice was as level and as casual as Sanders’s; only a quick flicker of his tongue to the corner of his mouth seemed to betray any emotion at all. “But then, I wasn’t planning anything quite so crude.” He dropped the point down six inches and left it resting lightly on her breastbone. “The knife is remarkably sharp—too precise for mere butchery.” Slowly and delicately he drew the point along the yellow cloth of her T-shirt, from her breastbone down and to the right along the outside of her breast. She screamed. The cloth separated, and a thin line of blood welled up from the tracery he had made. He moved the point back to her breastbone and waited. “Go ahead, scream,” said Green. “Louder. No one can hear you but the inspector.” The point began to move again, and Harriet made a gurgling sound in her throat. This time the cloth was not cut. “Do you believe me now?” said Green, his face suffused with heightened colour, “or do you still think I’m bluffing? I think you still believe we’re bluffing,” he said in tones of mock amazement. “I don’t suppose she knows what one can do to a girl and leave her capable of answering questions. You do, Inspector, don’t you? Perhaps you’ve seen what’s left when an interrogation like that is over. Not a very pleasant sight, is it?” He leaned back casually, his hands linked around his right knee, one eyebrow raised. “Well? The picture?”

  Sanders rearranged himself against the wall in order to catch a surreptitious look at Lang. He was sitting forward in his chair, his legs crossed, one hand clutching his knee with sufficient force to whiten the knuckles. The other hand was gripping the pistol, pointing it toward Sanders, just inches from his gut. B
ut Lang’s attention was no longer fixed on Sanders. His eyes kept flickering over to Harriet; his breath had quickened and there was new colour in his face. Sanders turned from his momentary study and looked back at Harriet. She was staring at the wall ahead of her, her face pale but impassive, whatever pain and terror she was feeling locked firmly within. With a little luck, the next thing Green did to Harriet, whatever it was, would so fascinate Mr. Lang, so quicken his breathing and loosen his fingers, that Sanders should be able to jump him.

  A sudden peal of the doorbell shattered the tension that locked them all into silence. Lang raised a warning hand. “Not a sound,” he whispered. “Not only will my associate be happy to kill you, but noise doesn’t carry well from this room to the rest of the house.” He removed his pistol from its position an inch from Sanders’s belly, handed Green’s pistol back to him, slipped his own weapon into his pocket, and walked out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Green leaned back in his chair, his pistol aimed at Harriet, his eyes on Sanders. The three of them formed a frozen tableau, three points of a triangle. Harriet continued to stare intently at a spot on the wall just behind Green, her eyes never straying toward Sanders. Sanders lounged against the desk, calculating the force and the speed required to over-power Green without endangering Harriet. Too much, he was deciding reluctantly, unless there was some further outside distraction, when a tap at the door drew Green from his chair. As soon as he opened it, he was addressed in a stream of rapid German. It was Lang’s voice, soft and very urgent. Green turned to Sanders. “If you two make any noise at all, I can assure you that Miss Jeffries will not live long enough to take another picture. I shall be right outside. Understand?” And he slipped out into the hall, leaving the door open behind him.

  “How badly are you hurt?” whispered Sanders.

  “It’s nothing,” she whispered back. “They’re just trying to scare us. I’m sorry I screamed. He startled me.”

  Sanders looked silently at the bloody line on her breast and at the spreading stain on her T-shirt before edging himself very quietly along the wall over to the door to listen. “He’s not here,” he hissed back at Harriet. “I think he’s over at the head of the stairs. I wonder what’s going on,” he muttered. “And how much time we have?”

  “It’s Anna Maria Strelitsch,” said Harriet. “They didn’t sound very pleased to see her.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Sanders softly. “How do you know that?”

  “Goddammit, John, don’t you ever listen to me? I spent three years in Germany. I lived with a German, never spoke a word of English.”

  “Ssh,” he whispered. “That means that Lang is occupied for the moment.” He looked rapidly around the room, picked up one of the chairs, and hefted it, checking its value as an offensive weapon.

  “Will they let us go if we tell them where the picture is?” asked Harriet. Her voice was faint and her composure seemed to be cracking slightly.

  “No,” he said flatly. “We know their faces, their names, and they don’t give a damn. That means they don’t figure we’ll be telling anybody.”

  “In that case there’s no point in saying anything,” she whispered fiercely. “No matter what happens.” Sanders put the chair over his knee in an attempt to break off the back leg. “Not that,” whispered Harriet. “The sewing machine. Try the left side of the sewing machine.”

  “What sewing machine?” whispered Sanders.

  “The one you were leaning on, you idiot.”

  Sanders ran his hand along the left side of the boxy-looking desk until his fingers touched the round end of a metal bar. He gave it a pull and it slid out about a foot. “Wiggle it,” whispered Harriet. He moved it up and it glided free into his hand, a neatly shaped and heavy iron bar. He placed it behind him and leaned on the sewing machine table again.

  “Untie me,” Harriet hissed in exasperation.

  “Not yet,” murmured Sanders. “No time. We need him.” He pointed at the open door. “Try to get him in here and distract him.”

  Harriet nodded. “Mr. Green,” she called. There was no response. “Mr. Green,” she repeated with a new urgency.

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing?” snarled Sanders loudly.

  Two heavy footfalls later a suspicious-looking Green was framed in the doorway, his pistol moving gently between the two of them. “What’s going on?”

  Harriet glanced nervously at Sanders. “If I tell you . . . what you want to know . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I mean, where it is,” she added more firmly.

  “For chrissake, Harriet, shut up,” said Sanders.

  She turned her head away from him with great deliberation. “Will you let me go? I won’t tell anyone. I haven’t any reason to. And it’s just the one slide, you know. If you had that . . .” Her voice drifted off again in confusion. Green remained fixed in the doorway.

  “Where is it?” he said at last.

  She kept her eyes fixed on Green. “If you look in my jacket,” she began, pointing with her chin in the direction of the heap of cloth on the floor.

  “You mean the goddamn thing was in your jacket all the time?” said Green in a tone of near-admiration, moving a step into the room.

  “Not the slide,” said Harriet, “but if you look in the pocket of my jacket, you’ll find—”

  Green took another step and leaned over to pick up the jacket. The pistol wavered, pointing at the mattress, then at the wall as he bent down. Sanders grasped the bar in both hands and brought it down with as much force as he could exert on Green’s head. The man crumpled, falling forward onto the bed, and then slid gently down onto the floor.

  Sanders reached for the tie, cursing the recalcitrance of the knots, then grabbed the knife from Green’s leg sheath and slashed them apart. He brought Harriet’s wrists around and rubbed them for a few seconds to restore circulation. He threw her sweatshirt at her, and as she was slipping it on, picked up her jacket. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “But my pictures,” said Harriet in tones of distress.

  “To hell with your pictures,” said Sanders. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 11

  Voices trailed up the grand stairway, one huskily female, the other male and impatient-sounding. Sanders picked up the iron bar, grabbed Harriet by the hand, and headed once more for the narrow back stairs. This time they were empty. He tried to tiptoe down silently and swiftly, cursing every time his foot hit a squeaky board or kicked against the riser. Harriet, with her smaller feet and running shoes, drifted soundlessly behind him. He stopped at the closed door at the foot of the stairs, raised the bar in preparation to attack, and opened the door a crack. Still the voices wafted in from another room, the female one punctuated by throaty laughter, the male speaking in shorter and shorter bursts. Sanders located the rear door, and clutching Harriet even more firmly, ran for it, this time heedless of the hollow clump of his shoes on the elegant wood floor of the kitchen. It took him several agonizing seconds to undo the bolt and the latch, seconds in which Sanders was aware of an abrupt change in the sound of the voices. As heavy footsteps hurried in their direction, he yanked the door open and dragged Harriet out into the yard.

  They flew across the damp grass to the six-foot-high wood fence at the back of the garden. Sanders let go of Harriet, put one foot on the lower framing two-by-four, his arm on the upper one, and heaved himself up. The fence lurched crazily under its unaccustomed burden. He reached down and grabbed Harriet by the forearm. “Jump,” he said, speaking for the first time, and she threw herself up with a short cry of pain as he pulled, grasping the top of the fence with her other hand and getting her knee onto the crosspiece. The fence lurched again, and then began moving with ominous lack of speed toward the flower beds in the neighboring garden. “Off we go,” said Sanders triumphantly, as they leaped down into the rich loam of a well-worked flower bed and sped ac
ross the lawn, leaving the collapsing fence listing in their direction at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” A voice emerged from the back of the house as they passed through the garden gate, a voice filled with indignation and despair. “Come back here!”

  They pounded between the houses onto the next street, paying no attention to the world behind them. “Which way?” said Sanders, looking up and down in some confusion.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Harriet, who was panting, scratched, and muddy from their mad scramble through the gardens. And ominously pale.

  “A telephone, of course,” said Sanders in amazement.

  “Right. Toward Bank Street, in that case,” she replied breathlessly, turning in that direction. “And I wouldn’t linger, if I were you. Whoever lives in that house seemed awfully unhappy about the fence.”

  “Right you are,” said Sanders, striding as rapidly as his long legs would move, making Harriet trot to keep up to him.

  “Look,” gasped Harriet. “A milk store up there. They’ll have—”

  “There’s one outside,” said Sanders. “You got a quarter?”

  “But aren’t you calling the police? You don’t need—”

  “No.” He yanked out the telephone book, still mercifully resting on its little shelf in this law-abiding neighborhood, and began rapidly flipping through the pages.

  Harriet crammed herself in beside him, feeling about in the pocket of her jeans until her hand emerged triumphantly holding a quarter. “There,” she said. “Who are you calling?”