by Ed Gorman
“When I know for sure I’ll tell you.”
“Thanks a lot. I thought we were working on this together.”
It was easy to see I had made her mad, but before I could say anything she stomped out of the room, having to duck her considerable lovely height to pass beneath the frame.
Chapter 31
“I’m sorry I was such a jerk back there,” I said as we took the exit ramp into the city. The sheriff had come and we’d answered his questions. The ambulance had taken away Frankie and Drac—who, without their masks, had been just as unknown to me as before—and Ab took Mrs. Rutledge to the doctor.
The forty-mile trip back had been made in silence. Every time my jazz song ended she punched into Top 40. Every time her song ended I punched back to jazz. This was how, as far as I knew, most mature and responsible adults behaved.
“You really were a jerk.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
Silence again as the neon glowed in the harsh cold night. An early Christmas tree had appeared on top of an appliance store. The decorations, given my mood, seemed almost obscene.
“You’re taking me home?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And where are you going?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ll bet I know.”
“Where?”
“To the guy who went out to see Mrs. Rutledge.”
“I guess that has crossed my mind.”
“You bastard.”
“I just didn’t think you’d be in the mood. After the bodies this afternoon—”
“Get something straight, Dwyer. Just because I get depressed once in a while doesn’t mean I don’t come from very strong stock.”
“Right.”
“What is ‘right’ supposed to mean?”
“Just, that you’re sounding tired and cranky and a tad hysterical.”
“You don’t sound so hot yourself, you asshole.”
“Well, does that mean you want to go with me then?”
“You’re darn right it does.”
I pulled into a drive-up phone to get his address from a directory. He lived where the rest of the extremely successful yuppies did, in the rambling hills ringing the east side of the city. The section had become a hymn to redwood and the great god Porsche.
His address gave me an idea. I called the guy from my security agency who’d run a credit check on several people for me. My man sounded as if he’d been asleep for the past four hours. He tried to sound happy to hear from me. He wasn’t especially convincing.
“Didn’t turn up a hell of a lot that was especially interesting.”
I mentioned the name of the man I was about to see. “He was the only one with any promise.”
Then he checked off some extremely interesting stats. I thanked him, promised him a steak dinner, and hung up.
“We may have our man,” I said.
“Well, I suppose now you’re going to tell me. Right?”
“David Baxter.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Uh-uh, the guy at my agency tells me he’s way overextended, a prime candidate to be a blackmailer. He’s desperate for money.”
Fog moved across the streets in the hills like something alive. The interior of the car still echoed with our exhaustion and shot nerves and misplaced anger. I put a hand over and held it there and finally she took it, but without any enthusiasm. I withdrew it. Then a few minutes later she put out a hand. I didn’t have much enthusiasm for her gesture either. She sighed and shoved both her hands into her pockets.
Through the shifting white moisture you could glimpse expensive homes of the modern variety, mostly variations on the ranch style, which clung to the contours of steep hills. Country-style mailboxes announced the names of owners. I drove past the one we were looking for, then had to back up to find it.
Before I whipped up into the drive, I said, “I’m tired of fucking arguing.”
“So am I.”
“I’m sorry you had to see the bodies this afternoon.”
“So am I.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re better off going back to an agency.”
“I’m really thinking about it.”
“I don’t blame you.”
I really didn’t.
The drive, narrow, steep, was like shooting up a tunnel. I used the fog lights to get me even with a picket fence and then I stopped the car.
I opened the door, started out. Then I looked back at her.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
But I knew better. Her hands were shaking and her eyes were dead and glazed and without their remarkable luster.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before, Dwyer.” I could tell she wanted to cry. I wished she could.
This time when I held out my hand she took it and held it very, very tightly.
“Would you mind if I just sat here?” she asked.
“Of course not. I just need to ask him a few questions.”
“You really think he did it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh, Dwyer.” Then the tears burst. “Just get out of here, would you?” she said.
I looked at her, realizing with a terrible force that I loved her.
I closed the door.
My shoes in the damp grass sounded the way they had the day I’d met Jane Branigan in the park—sucking up the moisture of the ground. Through the fog I saw a light burning in the front of the house. I squished across the lawn and reached the porch and rang the bell. The chimes were absurdly loud and happy-sounding in this twilight zone.
Nothing.
I clanged the chimes again.
An owl answered, a throaty, eerie, pulsing noise against the night.
It took minutes for me to hear it, and at first I couldn’t identify it. Then the sound began to assume a shape for my mind to perceive—like a form gathering substance, approaching out of the fog.
A woman moaned.
I thought of Donna in the car. But she was too far away. I moved carefully, like a blind man, closer to the picture window. I put my ear to the cold glass. The moaning came from inside. I put my arms out stick straight and walked carefully toward the door. I didn’t want to trip on anything and knock myself out.
The knob would not turn.
I felt through the murk and found that the upper half of the door was glass. I took off my jacket and slammed my fist into the smooth surface. The glass shattered. No problem then to reach inside and turn the knob.
The house smelled of whiskey and cigarettes. In the corner of the living room a small night-light burned. The room was modern and severe and harsh.
The footsteps came from the back of the house—steps slapping against tile. A door slammed. Then I heard the steps on the damp lawn outside.
I ran to the back of the house to see if I could catch the owner of the footsteps. But in the kitchen, in a pool of blood even worse than the one Frankie and Drac had lain in, were the Baxters.
They had been shot several times in the face and chest. Their killer must have had to reload at least once.
The smell, the high, iron, rank smell of fresh blood, made me nauseous. Blood had sprayed against the white stove and the yellow dishwasher. Shining liquid dollops of it shimmered in the dim illumination from the porch light out back.
Incredibly, then, Lucy Baxter’s arm moved. Just a twitch. But I saw it and knelt down.
My first thought was to see if I could give her CPR. She reached up and grabbed me by the lapel with startling strength.
“She’s got it,” she said.
She was a caricature of a good-looking woman. But now her features were exaggerated. The blood, thick and slow in the corner of her mouth, drooled across my hand.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Who’s got what?”
“Eve,” she said. “Eve’s got it.”
I realized there
was time only for a few questions. I gently put her back down, stuffing my jacket under her for a pillow. I got up and soaked a dishrag in cool water and started to clean her face.
She floated in and out of consciousness. A part of me watched her die, fascinated, curious about what she was experiencing. Was she seeing a white light? Hearing angels sing? Or only sensing a vast, waiting nothingness?
She came up out of her death long enough to grab my hand once again as I daubed at her face with the dishrag.
“I’m really scared.”
I held her hand. “Your husband killed Elliot, didn’t he?”
“No.”
“There’s no point in lying now, Lucy.”
“I’m—not—lying.”
“But he was blackmailing everybody—”
“Yes—blackmail—but— He—killed—David—the—others—”
A terrible revelation came over me. I’d assumed the man we were looking for was David Baxter because of his financial problems. But now—
I started to ask her another question, but she tugged on my hand again.
“I need to say a prayer,” she said. Then, “Touch my stomach.”
“What?”
“Please. Touch my stomach.”
I put my hand down there. He had shot her just below the sternum. There was a hole you could drop fifty-cent pieces into. I wanted to hold her back from death, like a tug-of-war, but I knew it would be no use. The coldness from the other side started to chill me too.
I touched her stomach, the burgeoning roundness of it.
She started to cry.
“I finally get pregnant, we waited so long, I finally get pregnant and look what happens.”
The refrigerator started to thrum and the dishwater cranked into a new cycle.
There amid all the electrical appliances, she died. She and her baby.
I stopped only long enough to call Edelman and tell him where to meet me.
Then I ran from the house, suspecting I was already too late, dreading that the footsteps I’d heard running out the back door of the Baxter place had already claimed their next victim.
There was only a piece of her torn coat lying on the seat when I flung the car door open.
He had taken her.
Chapter 32
The police had cornered off the dead-end street where Eve Evanier lived under the name of Helen Dodson.
Neighbors were out in pajamas and robes, pointing to the Dodson house through the fog, as if a Japanese movie monster were about to come looming up out of the darkness.
I got out of the car so quickly I banged my knee. I hobbled over to the nearest policeman and showed him my license. He waved me through. Edelman was waiting for me.
Two steps across the threshold, I thought of the Rutledge woman’s parlor. Despite the modern house outside, the interior here was an anachronism. The furniture was bulky, and sculpted walnut. Doilies were on every available surface. Floor lamps with intricately patterned shades threw soft shadows against the wall.
In front of a fireplace, sitting primly on a divan, was a beautiful, white-haired woman. It was impossible to guess how lovely she’d been earlier in life.
Next to her was a tall, severe man dressed in livery. It was a three-piece suit, but it was also the uniform elected by some domestics. He held a hypodermic needle up to the firelight and squeezed a drop or two of liquid out.
Edelman stood watching him. When he saw me he put a finger up to his lips and nodded to the man. “Just relax, Eve,” the man said.
She hadn’t noticed me before. She looked up, smiled. In her high, old-fashioned lace collar she might have been posing for a cameo brooch. “Why, aren’t you Stephen’s friend?” she said to me.
Embarrassed, I moved my head in a way she apparently took to be a nod.
“Did you bring him home with you? He’s always staying out late. Then he has to get on my good side by getting me the penthouse at the hotel.” She laughed with a lover’s secret enjoyment.
She sounded friendly and happy. Then the needle was pushed into her arm.
I watched her features look—just for that moment of pain—their real age there in the firelight and the decades-old glow of this museum-like room.
But I couldn’t wait any longer. I crossed to Edelman. “Have you seen him?”
He shook his head. “Her man there, Farrady, says he was here earlier tonight. He had a gun and he got what he came for.” Edelman nodded to Eve Evanier. “Farrady had to give her a sedative. She’s got a heart condition. Apparently she hasn’t been able to deal with Elliot’s death at all, and Farrady’s afraid she’s going to die.”
I grabbed him. “You coming with me?”
“Where?”
“There’s only one place left to look. Come on.”
* * *
You might imagine that riding beneath a siren gives you a lot of power. It doesn’t. It just makes you a potential victim. Many people, you see, don’t move over to the curb for you. They try to beat you or race you.
Or they’ve got their stereos up so loud they don’t even hear you.
I hadn’t been in a patrol car in several years. I rode shotgun while Edelman drove. The siren sprayed blood into the night—it was a day and night filled with blood—first the thugs—then the Baxters.
By now what had happened and who the killer was no longer mattered. Now I had to find Donna. I tried not to think of what might have happened to her, what, in his psychosis, he might have done to her.
“You sonofabitch,” Edelman said.
“What?” I said, coming out of my reverie.
“Not you. That motherfucker in the middle of the intersection. Won’t move.”
So we went around him. Dangerously. Just like in the movies. Only Edelman was no stunt driver, believe me. And I was no stunt passenger.
The parking lot held two cars when we got there. A garbage truck was eating a dumpster.
The elevator took us swiftly and silently up seventeen floors. Edelman had his piece out. It shone with oil. It was ready. So, apparently, was Edelman. “You like her, huh?” he said, trying to cool me down.
“Yeah.”
“Well, hell, good for you.”
“I hope she’s not dead.” I was starting to lose it. He threw an arm around me.
“Trust your Uncle Edelman, okay rookie?”
“Yeah.”
“And blow your fucking nose.”
When the elevator doors opened I recalled the night when I’d come up here with the porno photos and met Phil Davies. And the absolute sense I’d had that somebody was watching me from the shadows.
I put a hand out, stopping Edelman.
“What?” he said in his normal voice.
“Sssh.”
Both of us peered into the darkness.
I heard her before I saw her. A moan somewhere in the gloom.
I froze. Sweat bloomed on me. Edelman put an avuncular hand on my arm. I let him lead the way over to her.
It wasn’t Donna. It was Carla Travers. Or what was passing for her these days. Moonlight sliced by the blinds fell across her tubular body as she tried to crawl away from us. She was no trouble to stop. Edelman just walked around her and stood with his long legs together. She looked up and moaned again, a fat, soon-to-be-old lady with her media-rep hair sprayed hard as a helmet and a sick gleam in her eye.
Edelman reached down and helped her up. He didn’t bother to hide his distaste. There was no time for pleasantries. That was the first good look I got at her bruised and cut face and the wrist bone that jutted through her flesh like a piece of decorative glass. Apparently he’d beaten her for quite a while. This kind of punishment took time.
A few moments later my eyes dropped to the square metal box she’d crawled away from. The strongbox so many people had been looking for. That so many people had died for.
I bent down and picked it up. I walked a few steps closer to the blinds, where the moonlight waited.
The whole thing
had been alphabetized. Sometimes there were photographs, sometimes there were note cards. I went to the Ts, pulled Carla’s. The notation was surprisingly formal: “Carla Travers is receiving kickbacks from two ad agencies with whom she’s working a con regarding billing.” Then there were two additional names, presumably the agency people Carla worked the scam with.
The rest of the contents of strongbox was like that. Names, dates, notations. There was some ballpoint writing on the back of Lucy Baxter’s nude photo with Davies. It read “The faithful Mrs. B.” I didn’t feel like looking any longer.
I glanced over to see Edelman holding Carla while she vomited into a wastebasket.
I reached them just in time to hear a few more strangled splashings. Edelman made a face. Then he took handcuffs from his belt and clamped her to a chair.
The noise in the night startled the three of us. Big speakers woofy with the sounds of commercials. The screening room. Bryce Hammond was back there.
We moved through the shadows toward the noise. Edelman’s Smith and Wesson glinted occasionally with the mercury-vapor light spilling in from outside. The air was rife with the smells of furniture wax and coffee. “What the fuck’s he doing?” Edelman whispered, nodding toward the screening room.
“Jacking off.”
“What?”
“Playing his frigging commercials.”
“I thought Elliot was supposed to be the genius up here.”
“That’s what Bryce Hammond wanted you to think.”
“You’re gonna have to explain that to me.” He waved his piece. “Some other time, though, okay?”
We reached the screening room. He stood on one side of the door. I stood on the other.
He said, “Hammond, make it easy on all of us. Just put down your weapon and come out.”
A minute later Edelman said, “Did you hear me, Hammond?”
No response either time.
Only the loud bright noise of award-winning commercials.
In the shadows I saw Edelman’s large Adam’s apple bobble up and down. He shot me a bemused expression and then we both lunged.
The noise of the large wooden doors being thrown back was drowned out by the commercials. We went in.
She sat on a chair on one side of the console that controlled the big videotape machine.
