Beast in View

Chapter 11

The wind had blown the storm out to sea and the streets, which had been fairly quiet half an hour before, now came alive, as if the end of the rain was an all-clear signal for activities to resume immediately and simultaneously. People marched briskly up and down the sidewalks like ants patrolling after a storm, but on the road traffic came almost to a standstill. Cars moved slowly, if at all, defeated by their own numbers.

It took Blackshear ten minutes to get his car out of the parking lot and another thirty minutes to reach the long, narrow stucco building on Vine Street which served as Terola’s studio.

For the second time Blackshear read the black stenciling on the frosted-glass windows, but now the words had more sinister implications:

The office was exactly as it had been the previous afternoon except that someone had recently used the old brick fireplace. The remains of a fire were still smoking, and whatever had been burned had generated enough heat to make the room uncomfortably hot.

The heat drew out other odors, the smell of boiled-over coffee and of a sharp, musky perfume. The coffee smell came from Terola’s alcove, concealed from view by a pair of dirty flowered chintz curtains. The odor of perfume came from the girl seated behind, and almost hidden by, the old-fashioned rolltop desk. She was leaning back in the swivel chair at an awkward angle, and her eyes were closed. She appeared to be asleep.

Blackshear recognized her as Nola Rath, the young girl who’d been posing for one of Terola’s magazine layouts the preceding day. At that time her long black hair had been wet and she’d worn no make-up. Now her hair was compressed into a roll on top of her head and she had on a layer of cosmetics so thick it was like a mask. She looked years older.

He approached the desk, diffident and a little embarrassed, feeling that he was intruding on her privacy by watching her in her sleep.

“Miss Rath?”

Slowly, as if the movement hurt her, she opened her eyes. There was no recognition in them, of Blackshear, or of anything else. She seemed dazed.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“I wasn’t — asleep.” Her voice matched her eyes; it was flat and dull and expressionless. She held her hand to her throat as if the act of speaking, like the act of moving her eyelids, was painful to her.

“Are you feeling all right, Miss Rath?”

“All right.”

“Let me get you a glass of water.”

“No. No water.” She shifted her weight and the chair creaked under it. “You better get out of here.”

“I just came.”

“That don’t matter; you better go.”

“I’d like to see Mr. Terola, if I may. Is he in?”

“He’s not seeing anybody.”

“If he’s too busy right now, I’ll come back later.”

“He’s not busy.”

“Well, is he ill or something?”

“He’s not ill. He’s something. He’s very something.” She began to move her head back and forth. “I been sitting here. I don’t know what to do. I been sitting. I ought to get out of here. I can’t move.”

“Tell me what’s happened.”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes shifted towards the alcove. Blackshear crossed the room, drew back the curtains of the alcove and stepped inside.

Terola was lying on his back on the day bed with a pair of barbers’ shears stuck in the base of his throat. A soiled sheet and a blood-spattered pink blanket covered the lower half of his body; the upper half was clothed in an undershirt. On the table near the foot of the daybed the hot plate was still turned on and the coffee-pot had boiled dry. It looked as though Terola had got up, turned on the coffee, and then gone back to bed for a few more minutes. During those few minutes he’d had a visitor.

Whoever the visitor was, Terola had not been alarmed. There were, except for the blood, no signs of violence in the room, no evidence of a struggle. Terola’s hair was not even mussed; the same thin, parallel strands of gray crossed the top of his pate like railway ties. Either Terola had known the visitor well and been taken completely by surprise, or else he’d been killed in his sleep.

The thrust of the scissors had been deep and vicious and accurate. It was a woman’s weapon, a pair of scissors, but the hand that used it had a man’s strength.

In life Terola had been unprepossessing enough, in death he was monstrous. The eyes bulged like balls of glass, the fleshy mouth hung slack, the tongue, grayish pink and thick, lolled against the tobacco-stained teeth. Blackshear thought of Douglas and his youth and good looks, and he wondered what dark paths had led him to Terola.

Without touching anything, he returned to the girl in the office.

“Have you called the police?”

She blinked. “Police? No?”

“Did you kill Terola?”

“No. For God’s sake, no! He was my friend, he gave me a job when I was down and out, he treated me good, never slapped me around like some.”

“You found him the way he is now?”

“Yes, when I came to work.”

“When was that?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes ago, I guess. Be here at noon, he said, only I always come a little early so’s I can get ready.”

“Was the door locked when you arrived?”

“No. Jack doesn’t — didn’t keep it locked unless he’s — unless he was out.”

“Did Terola always sleep at the office?”

“No. He and his mother and his brother have a little ranch out in the valley where they raise avocados, only Jack wasn’t stuck on the place, or the company either, I guess, so he often stayed here in town.” She pressed a handkerchief to her eyes. “Oh, God, I can’t believe he’s dead. He was going to do big things for me, he said. He said I had a great future, all I needed was some publicity. He promised he’d get me all the publicity I wanted.”

Blackshear was grim. “Well, he kept his promise.”

“Kept it? No, he didn’t. What do you mean?”

“You’ll get all the publicity you want, Miss Rath. Maybe more.”

Her reaction was not what he expected. “My God, that’s right. Say, there’ll be newspaper photographers and everything. The works. How do I look?”

“Great.”

“Gee, maybe I could even write an article for the Sunday papers about what a stinker Jack was, except to me. How’s that for an angle? Here is this bum Terola, who everybody hates his guts, only he puts himself out to be kind to a down and out orphan girl. How does that sound?”

“Are you an orphan, Miss Rath?”

“I could be,” she said with a cold little smile. “Depending on the stakes, I could be anything.”

“Including a liar.”

“Oh, that. Sure.”

“You didn’t phone the police, did you?”

She shrugged. “No. I will, though. As soon as you get out.”

“Why should I get out?”

“Because you’ll wreck everything for me. My future depends on this. It’s gotta be done right, see?”

“I don’t see.”

“Well, put it this way. Suppose I didn’t have so many clothes on, and suppose I run screaming into the street that I found a murdered man — get the picture?”

“Vividly.”

“Then you see how you’d gum things up by being here.” She stood up and leaned across the desk towards him. “I didn’t kill Jack and I won’t touch anything, I promise. Go away, will you, mister? I need a chance. A real chance.”

“And you think this is a real chance for you?”

“It’s got to be. I’ll never get another. Now will you go? Will you please go, mister?”

“After you call the police.”

She picked up the phone and dialed. While she waited for an answer, she began unbuttoning her dress.

Blackshear went out to his car. He would have liked to stay behind the wheel for a few minutes to witness Nola Rath’s performance, but he had a more important matter to attend to. Sometime during the morning Verna Clarvoe had set out to see Terola. Had she, in spite of her story to the contrary, seen him, talked to him? Or had she despaired of words as a weapon and used scissors instead? Perhaps other people had motives for killing Terola, but Verna’s was fundamental, for in her, love and hate had merged and exploded like two critical masses of uranium. In the explosion, Douglas had died. Perhaps Terola was the second victim of the chain reaction.