Calypso

13

The Elsinore County cops did not know they had a fourth victim in the tandem cases being investigated jointly by Midtown South and the Eight-Seven. The Elsinore County cops thought of their corpse as a first victim. They found the body that Thursday night at 10:00 P.M. The dead man’s name was Wilbur Matthews. Before his demise, he’d been a locksmith living behind the shop he owned in the town of Fox Hill, previously known as Vauxhall after that district in the borough of Lambeth in London — everywhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States was the influence of colonial Great Britain still felt.

Fox Hill had been a sleepy little fishing village until as recently as thirty years ago, when an enterprising gentleman from Los Angeles came east to open what was then called the Fox Hill Inn, a huge rambling waterfront hotel that had since fallen into other hands and been renamed the Fox Hill Arms. The building of the hotel had also been responsible for the building of a town around it, rather the way a frontier fort back in the dear, dead days eventually led to a settlement around it. Fox Hill was now a community of some forty thousand people, thirty thousand of them year-round residents, ten thousand known alternately as “the summer people” or, less affectionately, “the Sea Gulls.” The locksmith Wilbur Matthews had been a year-round resident. A quick glance at the meticulous records he kept in his shop’s locked filing cabinets showed that he had installed some three thousand locks in the past five years (his active records went back only that far) and had repaired another twelve hundred during that same time, some of them automobile locks, but most of them locks on homes.

Wilbur Matthews was well liked in the community. Lock yourself out of your car or your house at two in the morning, all you had to do was call old Wilbur, and he’d get himself dressed and come help you, just like doctors used to do. Wilbur’s wife had died back during the last big hurricane, not from the hurricane itself, not from drowning or anything, but just naturally, in her bed, sleeping like a babe. Wilbur had lived alone since. He was a churchgoing man (the First Presbyterian on Oceanview and Third) and a God-fearing man, and there wasn’t a person in all Fox Hill who’d have said a mean word about him. But someone had shot him twice in the head, and the Elsinore County cops just couldn’t figure out why.

The cops out there were somewhat more paramilitary than the cops in the city; even the detectives had ranks like sergeant and corporal. The two men assigned to the Wilbur Matthews homicide were Detective Sergeant Andrew (Buddy) Budd, and Detective Corporal Louis Dellarosa. They crouched in the rain outside the bedroom window of the old man’s house, looking for shell casings. The lab technicians weren’t there yet; the lab technicians had to come all the way from the county seat in Elsinore. Budd and Dellarosa searched but found nothing. Inside the house, a man from the Medical Examiner’s Office was looking down at the dead man where he lay in his bed. There were two bullet holes in the wall behind the bed and another bullet hole in the pillow just to the left of Wilbur Matthews’s head, and two more in Wilbur Matthews’s head itself, one drilled through his left eye and the other through his forehead. The assistant medical examiner turned to look toward the window because it seemed to him the trajectory had originated there, but he wasn’t a Ballistics cop, and it would probably take the man from Ballistics just as long to get here as it would the lab technicians, both of them having to come all the way from Headquarters in Elsinore. The assistant ME figured he’d best pronounce the man dead, and further figured he’d be absolutely safe in stating that the cause of death had been multiple gunshot wounds. He was beginning to write up his report when a flash of lightning illuminated the window he’d been glancing at not a moment before, followed by a thunderclap that scared him the way he’d once been scared on a vill sweep in Vietnam. He went out into the hallway at once, and asked a uniformed cop there if it was all right for him to use the bathroom.

The cop said, “No, this is a crime scene.”

After forty-eight hours, you begin to get a little desperate. After seventy-two, you start praying for a break; it is amazing how many cops get religion after putting in seventy-two hours on a cold homicide case. After four days, you’re sure you’ll never solve the damn thing. When you hit the six-day mark, you begin getting desperate all over again. It is a different sort of desperation. It is a desperation bordering on obsession; you begin to see murderers under every rock. If your grandmother looks at you cock-eyed, you begin to suspect her. You go over your typed reports again and again, you study your crime-scene drawings, you read homicide reports from other precincts, you search through the files looking for homicide cases in which the weapon was a .38 or the victim was a hooker or a singer or a business manager, you hash over homicide cases involving frauds or semifrauds like Harry Caine’s vanity-house caper, you rehash homicide cases involving missing or kidnapped persons — and eventually you become an expert on all such homicides committed in the goddamn city during the past ten years but you still don’t know who the hell killed three people in the immediate past, never mind ten years ago.

It was now 9:40 A.M. on Friday morning, September 22, only fourteen hours short of 11:40 P.M., when exactly one week ago a concerned citizen dialed Emergency 911 to report two men bleeding on the sidewalk at Culver and South Eleventh. Fourteen hours short of a week. Fourteen short hours short. At twenty minutes to midnight tonight, George C. Chadderton would have been dead a full week. At 3:30 A.M. tomorrow morning, Clara Jean Hawkins would likewise have been dead a full week. Ambrose Harding, who was at present lying in a coffin at the Monroe Funeral Home on St. Sebastian Avenue, would be buried tomorrow morning at 9:00 A.M., by which time he’d have been dead almost four days. And the case continued to lie there like a lox without a bagel.

At 9:40 that morning, Carella went to see Chloe Chadderton at her apartment in Diamondback. He had called from home first, and was therefore somewhat surprised to find her wearing the same long pink robe she’d worn on that night almost a week ago, when he and Meyer had knocked on her door at two in the morning. It occurred to him, as she let him into the apartment, that he had never seen Chloe in street clothes. She was always either in a nightgown with a robe over it, as she was now, or else strutting half-naked on a bar top, or else sitting at a table and wearing only a flimsy nylon wrapper over her dancing costume. He could understand why George Chadderton wanted his wife to get out of “show biz,” considering what she seemed intent on showing day and night to any interested viewer. Sitting opposite her in the living room now, Carella looked across at the long length of leg revealed in the opening of her robe and silently admitted that he himself was an interested viewer. Embarrassed, recalling Chloe’s total exposure on the bar top at the Flamingo, he quickly took out his notebook and busied himself leafing through its pages.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked. “I have some on the stove.”

“No, thanks,” Carella said. “I just want to ask you some questions, and then I’ll be on my way.”

“No hurry,” she said, and smiled.

“Mrs. Chadderton,” he said, “I tried to fill you in a little on the phone about what we believe is the connection between your husband and C.J. Hawkins, the fact that they’d been talking about doing an album together.”

“Yes, but George never mentioned that to me,” Chloe said.

“Something called ‘In the Life.’ Do you remember in his notebook...”

“Yes...”

“The night we were here...”

“Yes, I remember.”

“That’s what we think the title of the album was going to be.”

“Mm-huh,” Chloe said.

“But he never mentioned this album to you.”

“No.”

“Or Miss Hawkins. He never mentioned anyone named Clara Jean Hawkins or C.J. Hawkins.”

“Never,” Chloe said, and shifted her weight on the sofa.

Carella looked at his notebook again. “Mrs. Chadderton...” he said.

“I wish you’d call me Chloe,” she said.

“Well... uh... yes, fine,” he said, but instead skirted the name the way he might have a puddle on the sidewalk. “In the appointment calendar you let me have, the name Hawkins and the initials C.J. appeared on the following dates: August tenth, August twenty-fourth, August thirty-first, and September seventh. Those are all Thursdays. We know that Miss Hawkins’s day off was Thursday—”

“Just like a cleaning woman,” Chloe said, and smiled.

“What?” Carella said.

“Thursdays and every other Sunday,” Chloe said.

“Oh. Well, I hadn’t made that connection,” Carella said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not about to start another racial hassle,” Chloe said.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I was wrong about you that night,” she said. “That first night.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s—”

“Do you know when I realized you were okay?”

“No, when was that?”

“At the Flamingo. You were checking names and dates in your little notebook, same as you’re doing now, and you asked me who Lou Davis was and I told you he was the man who owned the hall my husband...”

“Yes, I remember.”

“And you said ‘How dumb,’ or something like that. About yourself, I mean. You were calling yourself dumb.”

“I was right, too,” Carella said, and smiled.

“So I decided I liked you.”

“Well... good. I’m glad to hear that.”

“In fact, I was very happy when you called this morning,” Chloe said.

“Well... uh... good,” he said, and smiled. “I was saying that your husband’s meetings with C.J. Hawkins—”

“She was a hooker, is that right?”

“Yes — always took place on Thursdays, which was her day off, Thursday. We’ve got reason to believe that some sort of beach party took place every Wednesday night, however, and I wonder if your husband ever mentioned any such party to you.”

“A beach party?”

“Well, we don’t know if it was a party on the beach. We only know that C.J. went out to the beach someplace—”

“What beach?”

“We don’t know — and got paid for her services out there.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, we think it was, you know, some sort of regular, uh, prostitution she was performing out there someplace.”

“With George, are you saying?”

“No, I’m not suggesting that. I know you had a good marriage, I know there was no trouble—”

“Bullshit,” Chloe said.

Carella looked at her.

“I know that’s what I told you,” she said.

“Yes, more than once, Mrs. Chadderton.”

“More than twice, in fact,” she said, and smiled. “And it’s Chloe. I wish you’d call me Chloe.”

“Are you telling me now that things weren’t good in your marriage?”

“Things were rotten,” she said.

“Other women?”

“I would guess.”

“Hookers?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him, for all his ‘Sister Woman’ bullshit.”

“Then you’re not discounting the possibility of a sexual relationship between your husband and Miss Hawkins.”

“I’m not discounting anything.”

“Was he ever gone from the apartment on a Wednesday night?”

“He was gone from the apartment almost every night.”

“I’m trying to find out—”

“You’re trying to find out whether he and this woman were together on Wednesday nights.”

“Yes, Mrs. Chadderton, because—”

“Chloe,” she said.

“Chloe, right — because if I can establish that there was something more than this cockamamy record album between them, if I can establish that they were seeing each other, and maybe got somebody angry about it—”

“Not me,” Chloe said at once.

“I wasn’t suggesting that.”

“Why not? I just told you we were unhappy. I just told you he had other women. Isn’t that reason...”

“Well, maybe,” Carella said, “but the logistics aren’t right. We were here until almost three A.M. last Friday night, and C.J. was killed at three-thirty. You couldn’t possibly have dressed, traveled all the way downtown, and found her on the street in that short a time.”

“Then you did consider it?”

“I considered it,” Carella said, and smiled. “I’ve been considering everything these past few days. That’s why I’d appreciate any help you can give me. What I’m looking for is a connection between the two of them.”

“Two of them? What about Ame?”

“No, I think Harding was killed because the murderer was afraid of identification. He was even warned beforehand.”

“Warned?”

“Warned. With a pink orchid called Calypso bulbosa. I think the killer wants to be caught. I think it’s like that guy years ago who scrawled it in lipstick on a mirror. That orchid is the same damn thing. Otherwise why warn the man? Why not just kill him? He wants to be stopped, whoever he is. So if you can remember anything at all about any Wednesday night your husband was out of this apartment...”

“I don’t think you understand,” Chloe said. “He was gone more often than he was here. There were times, this last little while, when I’d be sitting here talking to the four walls. I’d find myself longing to go back to the club. I’d get home sometime around eight-thirty, nine o’clock, and I’d eat here alone in the apartment, George’d be gone, and I’d sit here wondering what the hell I was doing here, why didn’t I just go on back to the club? Talk to the girls, have someone to talk to. Dance for the men, have someone looking at me as if he knew I was alive, do you understand? George was so involved with his own damn self, he never... Well, look at me, I’m a pretty woman, at least I think I’m a pretty woman, and he was — do you think I’m pretty?”

“Yes,” Carella said, “I do.”

“Sure, but not to George. George was so much in love with himself, so completely involved in his own projects, his pipedream record albums that never got made, his big-shot calypso singer bullshit, his search for his goddamn brother who probably ran off and left him cause he couldn’t stand him any more than anyone else could! George, George, George, it was all George, George, George, he named himself right, the bastard, King George, that’s exactly what he thought he was, a fuckin king! You know what he told me when he wanted me to quit the Flamingo? He told me my dancing there reflected badly on his image as a popular singer. His image! I was embarrassing him, do you understand? It never once occurred to him that maybe I was embarrassing myself, too. I mean, man, that’s degrading, isn’t it? Squatting on a bar top and shoving myself in some man’s face? You look nervous,” she said suddenly. “Am I making you nervous?”

“A little.”

“Why? Because you’ve seen me naked?”

“Maybe.”

“Join the club,” she said airily, and waved one arm languidly over her head. “Do you understand what I’m saying, though?”

“I think so.”

“There was nothing between us anymore is what I’m saying. When you brought me the news that night, when you came here and told me George had got killed, I started crying because... because I thought, hell, George got killed a long time ago. The George I loved and married got killed more years ago than I can remember. All that was left was somebody running around trying to be the big star he didn’t have a chance in hell of becoming. That’s why I began crying that night. I began crying because I suddenly realized how long he’d been dead. How long we’d been dead, in fact.”

Carella nodded and said nothing.

“I’ve been lonely a long time,” she said. And then softly, so softly that it seemed a part of the whisper of rain against the windows, she said, “Steve.”

The room went silent. In the kitchen, he could hear the steady hiss of the gas jet under the coffeepot. Somewhere in the distance, there was the low rumble of thunder. He looked at her, looked at the long length of tan leg and thigh in the opening of the pink gown, looked at the slender ankle and the jiggling foot, and remembered her on the Flamingo bar top.

“If... if there’s nothing more you can tell me,” he said, “I’d better be going.”

“Stay,” she said.

“Chloe...” he said.

“Stay. You liked what you saw that day, didn’t you?”

“I liked what I saw, yes,” Carella said.

“Then stay,” she whispered. “The rain is gentler in the other room.”

He looked at her and wished he could tell her he didn’t want to make love to her without having to say it straight out. He knew a hundred cops in the department — well, fifty anyway — who claimed they’d been to bed with every burglary, robbery, assault, or what-have-you victim they’d ever met, and maybe they had, Carella guessed maybe they had. He guessed Cotton Hawes had, though he wasn’t too sure about that, and he supposed Hal Willis had, and he knew Andy Parker had or else was lying when he boasted in the squadroom about all his bedroom conquests. But he knew Meyer hadn’t, and he knew that he himself would rather cut off his right arm than be unfaithful to Teddy, though there were many times — like right this goddamn minute with Chloe Chadderton sitting there opposite him, the smile gone from her face now, her eyes narrowed, her foot jiggling, her robe open clear to Sunday — when he would have liked nothing better than to spend a wet Friday in bed with a warm stranger in another room where the rain was gentler. He looked at her. Their eyes locked.

“Chloe,” he said, “you’re a beautiful, exciting woman — but I’m a working cop with three homicides to solve.”

“Suppose you didn’t have all those homicides to solve?” she asked.

“I’m also a married man,” he said.

“Does that mean anything nowadays?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Please,” he said.

“I said okay,” she snapped. And then, her voice rising, her words clipped and angry, she said, “I don’t know anything about George’s Wednesday night parties, or the whore’s either. If there’s nothing else, I’d like to get dressed now.”

She folded her arms defensively across her breasts, and pulled the robe closed around her crossed legs. She was sitting that way when he left the apartment.

The dog was sitting just inside the locked double doors, the keys hanging on his collar where she’d put them. She’d been late bringing Santo his breakfast, but she seemed happy and excited this morning, and her exuberance frightened him somewhat. As he spooned cornflakes into his mouth, he watched her pacing the room, and he remembered that she had been this way just before all the other times she’d done things to him. The time with the needles, and then when she’d burned him with the cigarettes and when she... when he woke up that time and... and the... the little finger of his right hand was missing, she had... she had doped him first and then... then had cut off his finger while... while...

“Eat your breakfast,” she said.

She hardly ever doped him in the morning, it was usually dinner, she usually put something in his food at dinnertime and then... did what... did whatever she... she... but this morning she was higher than he’d ever seen her, pacing the room, walking back and forth from the locked entrance doors to the closed bathroom door, passing Santo where he sat eating from the tray on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“Drink your coffee, too,” she said, “drink it while it’s still hot. I made you hot coffee. Why don’t you ever appreciate any of the things I do for you?”

“I appreciate everything you do,” he said.

“Oh, yes, certainly,” she said, and laughed. “Which is why you tried to run away.” She laughed again. “And did run away. Don’t talk to me about gratitude.”

“Did run away?”

“Well, you’re never going to run away again, don’t worry about that.”

“Are you talking about the time Clarence—”

“No, no, no, no,” she said, and laughed too heartily, and a shiver ran up his spine. “Not dear Clarence — no, stay, Clarence — not your good friend Clarence, who pinned you to the ground that time, do you remember that time, is that the time you mean? No, not that time, I mean the first time, don’t think I didn’t know you wanted to leave me, don’t think I didn’t realize it.”

“I told you I wanted to leave.”

“Be quiet!” she said. “Drink your coffee. I made hot coffee for you. Drink it!”

“Is there something in it?” he asked.

“Why? Are you afraid of what I’ll do to you when you’re asleep?” she asked, and laughed again. “Do you know what happened to the old man in his sleep last night?”

“What old man?” Santo asked.

“The keeper of the keys,” she said, “the man who fixed the locks, do you remember the man who fixed the locks?”

“I never saw him,” Santo said.

“That’s right, you were unconscious, weren’t you? Someone put something in your food. You never met the poor man, did you? Clarence met him, though, didn’t you, Clarence?”

The dog, at mention of his name, began thumping his tail against the floor.

“Yes, Clarence,” she said, “good dog, you’re the only one who knows now. You and Santo. The only ones who know.”

“Know what?” Santo asked.

She laughed again, and suddenly the laughter caught in her throat like a choke, and her face sobered, and she pointed her finger at him and said, “You shouldn’t have left me, Robert.”

“Robert?” he said. “Hey, come on, I’m—”

“I told you to be quiet! I should have hidden your clothes. You wouldn’t have been able to leave without your clothes. Couldn’t have left here naked, could you, Robert?”

“Listen, I’m... I’m Santo. Now cut it out, you’re—”

“I said be quiet!”

He closed his mouth. Just inside the door, the dog growled.

“Take off your clothes,” she said.

“Listen, I really don’t feel like...”

“Do as I tell you. Or do you want the dog to help you? Would you like to help him take off his clothes, Clarence?”

The dog’s ears sprang suddenly erect.

“Would you like to help Robert take off his clothes?” she asked. “Would you, sweetie? Or shall we wait till he’s unconscious, shall we wait for that?”

“You did put something in the coffee, didn’t you?” he said.

“Oh, yes,” she said, laughing merrily. He hated when she laughed that fucking merry laugh of hers. “Something in the coffee, and in the milk, and in the orange juice, something in everything this morning.”

“Why?” he said, and rose from the couch. He felt nothing yet, perhaps she was lying. Those other times, all the other times, he’d become dizzy almost at once, but this time he felt nothing.

“Why?” she repeated. “Because you know, don’t you?”

“What the fuck is it I’m supposed to know?” he said.

“That you’re here. That you’re here where you’re supposed to be instead of running off leaving a bride of six months, you rotten bastard, I’ll cut out your heart this time!”

“Listen, you’re getting me mixed up with—”

“Be quiet, can’t you please be quiet?” she said, and covered her ears with her hands.

“You didn’t really put anything in the food, did you?”

“I said I did, why can’t you believe anything I say to you or do for you, I’m trying to save you, don’t you realize that?”

“Save me from what?”

“From leaving here. From disappearing. You mustn’t leave here, Robert. You’ll disappear if you leave.”

“All right, I won’t leave. Just promise me that if you put anything in the food...”

“Yes, I did.”

“All right, then promise me you won’t... you won’t do... do anything to me while I’m...”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I will.”

“You’ll promise?”

“Promise?” she said. “Oh, no, Robert, you mustn’t leave,” she said. “Not now. Look,” she said, and reached for her handbag and pulled the pistol from it, the same pistol she’d showed him long, long ago, so long ago he could hardly remember, the cornflakes and orange juice she’d said, large black pistol in her hand, “look,” she said, “I’m going to kill the dog,” she said, “look, Robert, because the dog the dog knows you’re here, he’ll tell them, Robert, they’ll come take you take you away, Robert, I’m going to kill the dog,” the room going out of focus as he rose from the couch, hand outstretched to her, “and then I’m going to take off your clothes, all your clothes, you’re going to be naked,” she said, the gun coming up level, “see the gun, Clarence,” the dog’s tail thumping against the floor, “strip you to your skin,” she said, moving toward her, his hand reaching, reaching, his mouth opening and closing around words he could not form, “strip your skin,” she said, “strip you naked,” she said, and the gun exploded once, twice, and he saw the back of the dog’s head splattering against the massive wooden door in a shower of gristle, bone, and blood before he fell flat to the floor, trying to say don’t cut me don’t burn me don’t hurt me don’t please don’t please...

It was a little after twelve noon when they reached Dorothy Hawkins’s apartment. This time they had a search warrant with them. And this time, Dorothy Hawkins wasn’t home. The building superintendent told them that Mrs. Hawkins worked out on Bethtown in a factory that made transistor radios, something the detectives already knew, and something they might have remembered if the case hadn’t reached the true desperation phase. Desperately, Carella and Meyer showed the super the court order, and explained that Bethtown was one hell of a way from Diamondback, and that finding Mrs. Hawkins would necessitate a car trip all the way downtown to Land’s End, where they’d have to take a ferry over to the island, or else go across the new bridge, but this would put them smack in the center of Village East, the heart of Bethtown, and they’d then have to drive all the way over to the other end of the island where most of the factories were located, and if they had to drag Mrs. Hawkins back here with them to unlock her door, she’d lose a day’s work, did the super want the poor woman to lose a day’s work? The super said he certainly didn’t want a nice lady like Mrs. Hawkins to lose a day’s work.

“Then how about opening the door for us?” Meyer said.

“I spose,” the super said dubiously.

Under his watchful eye, they searched the apartment from top to bottom for almost two hours, but they could not find the slightest clue to where C.J. Hawkins had gone each and every Wednesday for the past thirteen weeks.

The girl who opened the door of Joey Peace’s downtown pad was a tall redhead wearing nothing but a pair of red bikini panties. She had very long legs and rather exuberant breasts with nipples that peered at each other as though in need of an ophthalmologist. She also had green eyes and frizzy hair, and she looked and sounded somewhat kooky.

“Hey, hi,” she said, opening the door and peeking into the hall. “Is there just the two of you?”

“Just the two of us,” Carella said, and showed her his shield.

“Hey, wow,” she said, “cool. Where’d you get that?”

“We’re police officers,” Carella said. “We’ve got a court order to conduct a search of this apartment, and we’d appreciate it if you let us in.”

“Yeah, hey, wow,” she said, “what are you lookin for?”

“We don’t know,” Meyer said, which was close enough to the truth, and which caused the redhead to burst into paroxysms of laughter that jiggled her exhilarated breasts and caused them to look even more cross-eyed than they had a moment before.

The judge who’d granted the warrant had been reluctant to give them what he called “a blind license to conduct a search for will-o’-the-wisps” until Carella pointed out that he had very specifically mentioned what the detectives were searching for, and what they were searching for, Your Honor — if you’ll just glance here at heading Number Two — is sand, Your Honor, to match sand discovered in the apartment of a homicide victim and already in possession of the Police Department and in custody at the Police Laboratory, in the hope of making a positive comparison, Your Honor. The judge had looked at him askance; he knew the premise was utterly groundless. But he also knew that these men were investigating a triple homicide, and he suspected nobody’s rights would be compromised if they conducted searches of the apartments one of the victims had most commonly inhabited, so he’d issued one warrant for a search of Mrs. Hawkins’s apartment and another for a search of Joey Peace’s rather more sumptuous pad on Laramie Avenue.

The redhead looked at the warrant Carella held in front of her face. She kept studying the document and nodding. Meyer, watching her, realized that her eyes were even more out of focus than her wayward breasts, and he decided that her natural kookiness was being aided somewhat by something that was causing her to float around on the ceiling someplace.

“You just shoot something?” he asked.

“Yeah, a tiger,” the girl said, and giggled.

“What are you on, honey?” Meyer said.

“Who me?” the girl said. “Straight as an arrow, man, they call me Straight Arrow, man, yessir.” She peeked around the warrant into the hallway. “I thought there was gonna be more of you,” she said.

“How many?” Carella asked.

“Ten,” the girl said, and shrugged.

“A minyan,” Meyer said.

“No, only ten,” the girl said.

“Which one are you?” Carella asked. “Lakie or Sarah?”

“Sarah. Hey, how’d you know my name?”

“My wife’s name is Sarah,” Meyer said.

“Where’s Nancy Elliott?”

“She split. She was afraid Joey was gonna hurt her. Hey, how do you know Nancy?”

“My grandmother’s name is Nancy,” Meyer said.

“Yeah? No kidding.”

“No kidding,” Meyer said. His grandmother’s name was Rose.

“Where’s Lakie?” Carella asked.

“Out buying some booze. This is supposed to be like a big party today, man,” she said, and looked out into the hall again.

“At one o’clock in the afternoon?” Carella said.

“Sure, why not?” Sarah said, and shrugged. “It’s raining.” Each time she shrugged, her nipples demanded corrective lenses.

“You’ve seen the warrant,” Carella said. “Now how about letting us in?”

“Sure, hey, come on,” Sarah said, and stepped into the hallway and looked toward the elevator bank.

“You’d better come in yourself,” Meyer said, “before you catch cold.”

“It’s just they’re supposed to be here by now,” she said, and shrugged.

“Come on inside,” Meyer said.

Sarah shrugged again and preceded him into the apartment. Meyer locked the door and put the chain on it.

“You’re Joey Peace’s girlfriend, huh?” he said.

“No, he’s my big daddy,” Sarah said, and giggled.

“Go put on some clothes,” Meyer said.

“What for?”

“We’re married men.”

“Who ain’t?” Sarah said.

“Where’d C.J. sleep?” Carella asked.

“All over,” Sarah said.

“I mean, where’s her bedroom?”

“Second one down the hall.” The buzzer on the door sounded. Sarah turned toward it, and said, “There they are. What should I tell them?”

“Tell them you’re busy,” Carella said.

“But I ain’t busy.”

“Tell them the cops are here,” Meyer said. “Maybe they’ll just go away on their own.”

“Who, the cops?”

“No, the minyan.”

“I told you not a million,” the girl said. “Only ten.”

“Go answer the door,” Carella said.

Sarah went to the door and unlocked it. A tall blond girl wearing a soaking wet trench coat and a plastic scarf on her head came in carrying a bulging brown paper bag. She put the bag down on the Parsons table just inside the front door, said, “What took you so long to open it?” and then saw Carella and Meyer and said, “Hi, fellas.”

“Hi, Lakie,” Carella said.

“They’re fuzz,” Sarah said glumly.

“Shit,” Lakie said, and took off the plastic scarf and shook out her long blond hair. “Is this a bust?” she asked.

“They got a search warrant,” Sarah said.

“Shit,” Lakie said again.

They had scarcely begun opening drawers in C.J.’s room when the door buzzer sounded again. A few minutes later, they heard loud voices in the entrance foyer. Carella walked out of the bedroom and toward the front door. Six wet and obviously annoyed men were standing there arguing with Sarah, who still wore nothing but the red bikini panties.

“What’s the problem, fellas?” Carella asked.

“Who the fuck are you?” one of the men said.

“Police,” Carella said, and showed them his shield.

The men looked at it silently.

“Is that a real badge?” one of the men asked.

“Solid gold,” Carella said.

“There goes the fuckin party, right?” Sarah said.

“Well put,” Carella said.

“Boy oh boy,” one of the men said, shaking his head. “I gotta tell you.”

From the bedroom, Meyer called, “Steve! Come look at this.”

“Close the door behind you, boys,” Carella said, and wagged them out with his hands.

“This was some great idea, Jimmy,” one of the men said.

“Shut the fuck up, willya?” Jimmy said, and slammed the door shut behind him. Carella locked it and put on the night chain.

“So what am I supposed to do all afternoon now, huh?” Sarah asked.

“Go read a book,” Carella said.

“A what?” she said.

“Steve!” Meyer called.

“You guys come bustin in here,” Sarah said, following Carella down the hall, “and we’re gonna lose half a yard, that’s what this party was gonna bring us.”

“What’ve you got?” Carella asked Meyer.

“This,” Meyer said.

“C.J.’s train schedule,” Sarah said, “big deal. What the fuck good is it now? She’s dead, she ain’t gonna take no more trains noplace,” she said, vigorously shaking her head and her breasts from side to side.

“Will you go put something on?” Meyer said. “You’re making me dizzy.”

“Lots of people say that,” Sarah said, looking down at her breasts. “I wonder why.”

“Go put on a bra, will you?”

“I don’t have any bras,” Sarah said, and folded her arms across her chest.

“Ever see her consulting this?” Carella said.

“Only once a week,” Sarah said.

“When?”

“Every Wednesday.”

“Look at what she marked,” Meyer said.

One side of the schedule listed all trains from Isola to Tarkington, which was the last stop on the Sands Spit line. The other side of the schedule listed all trains coming into the city from the opposite direction. C. J. had circled the name of one town on the return side of the schedule: Fox Hill.

“Listen,” Sarah said, “would you guys like a drink or something? I mean, I hate to waste the fuckin afternoon, I really do.”

“Next train out is at three-oh-seven,” Carella said, and looked at his watch.

“I mean,” Sarah said to Meyer, “you seem to dig the jugs, what do you say?”

“What’s this?” Carella said.

“Where?” Meyer said.

“Right here,” Sarah said. “My bedroom’s just down the hall.”

“Here on the bottom of the schedule,” Carella said.

“What do you say, Baldy?”

“Some other time,” Meyer said.

“When?” Sarah said.

Scribbled on the bottom of the schedule were the numerals 346-8711. Unless both detectives were enormously mistaken, they were looking at a telephone number.

The harbor patrolman who took them out to the island in the Elsinore County police launch was a man named Sonny Gardner. What had been a steady downpour when they left the city an hour before had become here on the Spit a faint drizzle that was something more than fog but less than true rain, a misty cold wash that blew in off the water and penetrated the skin as if by osmosis.

“You picked a hell of a day to go out to Hawkhurst,” Sonny said. “I could think of better days.”

“Is that what the island’s called?” Carella asked. “Hawkhurst?”

“No, that’s the house. The island is Kent. But the names are connected, if you know what I mean? The guy who built the house used to spend his summers in Kent. That’s in England, that’s a county in England. When the British were here on the Spit, the commander of the fort on one of the islands was originally from Kent. He named the two islands Greater Kent — that’s the one had the fort on it — and Lesser Kent, that’s the one we’re going to. Anyway, the guy who later bought Lesser Kent was familiar with England and when he built the house out there, he named the house Hawkhurst, which is a town in Kent.”

“Man named Parker, is that right?” Carella said.

“Nossir, not to my knowledge.”

“Phone company said the phone was listed to an L. Parker.”

“That’s the daughter.”

“What’s her first name?”

“Lily. The old man built the house for her when she got married.”

“What was his name?”

“Frank Peterson. Peterson Lumber, you familiar with it?”

“No.”

“Very big out here on the Spit. Started the business in Jackson Cove, oh, back after World War One sometime, turned it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Bought the island for his daughter when she was sixteen. Only child. A birthday present, you know? How’d you like to have a father like that?” Sonny asked.

“Yeah,” Meyer said, thinking the only thing his father had ever given him was a double-barreled moniker.

“Though who knows?” Sonny said. “People say the kid’s nuts now, so who knows about things like that, huh?”

“The kid?” Meyer said.

“Yeah, the daughter. Well, she ain’t a kid no more, she must be close to forty by now.”

“I take it she’s married,” Carella said.

“Was married,” Sonny said. “Husband left her practically on their wedding day. That’s when she went bananas.”

“How bad was she?” Carella asked.

“Well, she couldn’ta been too bad,” Sonny said, “cause they didn’t put her away or nothin. Took care of her out there on the island. I used to see the old man at the railroad station picking up the nurses — when they changed shifts, you know.”

“But people still say she’s nuts, huh?” Meyer said.

“Well, eccentric,” Sonny said. “Put it that way. Eccentric.”

“Where’s the old man now?”

“Dead,” Sonny said. “Must be six or seven years now. Yeah, that’s right, it was seven years this July. That’s when he died. Left the daughter all alone in the world.”

The boat was coming in toward a small sandy cove on the southern end of the island. A fog-shrouded dock jutted into the bay there, its pilings standing like ghostly sentinels in the mist. Beyond, on the ocean side of the island, the surf pounded in against a long white sand beach.

“Only house out here, you know,” Sonny said. “Hawkhurst. It’s a private island. This one and Greater Kent. Both private islands.” He maneuvered the launch into the dock, and Carella leaped ashore and caught the line Meyer tossed to him. He made it fast on one of the pilings, offered his hand to help Meyer ashore, and then said, “Can you wait for us?”

“How else would you get back?” Sonny said. “No ferry service here, it’s private, like I told you.”

“We may be a while,” Carella said.

“Take your time,” Sonny said.

The house stood stark and gray against a grayer roiling sky. Meyer and Carella came up a slate walk to the front door. There was no bell and no nameplate, but a tarnished brass knocker hung on the door, and Carella lifted that now and rapped it several times against the weathered wood. The detectives waited. A cold wet wind blew in off the ocean side. Carella lifted the collar of his coat, and then rapped again with the knocker.

The door opened only a crack, abruptly stopped by a night chain. Beyond the door, beyond the crack was darkness. In the darkness, they could vaguely make out a pale oval that seemed to be a woman’s face floating in space behind the door.

“Mrs. Parker?” Carella said.

“Yes?”

“Isola Police,” he said, and showed his shield.

“Yes?”

“May we come in?”

“What for?”

“We’re investigating some homicides back in the city,” Meyer started, “and we’d—”

“Homicides? What would I know about—”

“May we come in please, Mrs. Parker,” Carella said. “It’s cold and wet out here, and I think we might be able to talk better in—”

“No,” she said, “I’m busy,” and began to close the door. Carella immediately shoved his foot into the narrowing wedge.

“Take your foot away,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “My foot stays where it is. Either you let us in—”

“No, I’m not letting you in.”

“Fine, then we’ll talk right here. But you’re not closing that door on us, ma’am.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“We’re here because we found your telephone number on a train schedule belonging to one of the homicide victims,” Carella said. “Is 346-8711 your telephone number?”

Pinpoint pricks of light in the darkness beyond the cracked door, her eyes flashing. Silence. Then — “Yes, that’s my number.”

“Do you know anyone named C.J. Hawkins?”

“No.”

Long blond hair, he could make that out now in the darkness. The eyes flashing again in the narrow pale face beyond the narrow open wedge of door and jamb.

“How about George Chadderton?”

“No.”

“Ambrose Harding?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Parker, we know that C.J. Hawkins came out to Sands Spit every Wednesday, and was met at the Fox Hill station by someone driving an automobile.” Carella paused. “Was that someone you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Ma’am, if you’d just open the door, maybe we could—”

“No, I won’t. Take your foot away. Move it, damn you!”

“No, ma’am,” Carella said. “Do you know anyone named Santo Chadderton?”

Again the eyes flashed in the darkness beyond the door. A brief hesitation. Then — “You asked about him earlier, didn’t you?”

“That was George Chadderton. This is his brother, Santo.”

“I don’t know either one of them.”

“Do you own a pistol?”

“No.”

“Have you left this island within recent days?”

“No.”

“Were you here on the night of September fifteenth at around eleven o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“How about three-thirty A.M. that same night?”

“I was here.”

“Anyone with you?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Parker,” Carella said, “I’d appreciate it if you took off this chain...”

“No.”

“You’re not helping yourself...”

“Go away.”

“You’re only forcing us to come back with a search warrant.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Okay, then, that’s what we’ll have to do,” Carella said, and pulled his foot from the door. It slammed shut at once. His goddamn foot ached.

“Rotten bitch,” he said, and began walking down the path toward the waiting launch.

Beside him, Meyer said, “We really going for a warrant?”

“In Elsinore County?” Carella said. “It’ll take us a month.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m thinking we go in anyway.”

“Good,” Meyer said.

Sonny Gardner was waiting at the dock for them.

“We’re staying a while,” Carella told him. “I’d like you to head back to the mainland without us. Make a hell of a lot of noise, rev your engines, toot your foghorn, make sure she knows you’re going. You got that?”

“I got it,” Sonny said. “When do you want to be picked up?”

Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer shrugged.

“Make it an hour,” Carella said.

“What the hell’s in that house?” Sonny asked.

“Ghosts maybe,” Carella said.

“It sure looks it,” Sonny said, and rolled his eyes. He was starting the engine when they heard the first scream. The scream was one of terror and pain, it threaded the fog, it raised the hackles on the backs of their necks. Carella and Meyer reached for their guns. At the same moment, Sonny killed the engines and drew his own weapon — but he did not move from the boat. The two detectives came pounding up the slate walk to the front door. Carella kicked it in, and both of them fanned into the entryway, lighted now with a Tiffany lamp that hung over a corner table upon which were heaped magazines, newspapers, and mail. Crouching, they probed the empty foyer with their guns, and heard the second scream coming from somewhere below and to the right.

“The cellar,” Carella said, and ran toward a door at the far end of a corridor leading to a kitchen beyond. He threw open the door and heard the screaming again, sustained this time, unrelieved this time, this time a single piercing steady scream that paused only long enough for whoever was screaming to draw breath, and then continued again. He came down the cellar steps with Meyer close behind him. Together, they ran through a finished room with a pool table in the center of it, and then past an enclosed furnace, and then stopped just outside a massive, piano-hinged, oaken door that was open into the corridor. The screaming was coming from inside the room beyond that door, a pause, the gasping for breath again, and then the scream, steady, terror ridden, agonized. There was a second door beyond the first one, also open, this one angled into the room. Carella stepped into the room and almost tripped over the carcass of a German shepherd dog lying just inside the doorway. The back of the dog’s head had been blown away, there was a puddle of drying blood on the floor. Carella was moving around the blood and around the dog and around the second door when she came at him.

Sonny Gardner had told them that the woman who lived here was only forty years old, but the woman who came at Carella now was certainly older than that. Oh, yes, she was tall and slender, and yes, her body seemed youthful in the long black dress that covered it, her blond hair graying only slightly here and there. But her face was the face of a sixty-year-old, lined and haggard, a ghastly pallor clouding it, the eyes sunken, the lips tightly compressed. He realized all at once that he was looking into the ravaged face of a madwoman, and felt a sudden cold chill that had nothing whatever to do with the incessant screaming that came from the other side of the room.

Lily Parker had a knife in her hand, and the knife dripped blood, and her long black dress was drenched with blood, and her long blond hair was streaked with blood, and there was blood spattered on her hands and on her face. As she came toward him — he had not yet seen what was on the bed — he wondered if the blood was why she had not opened the door, had she been drenched with blood standing there in the hallway beyond the night chain? Her eyes were wide and staring as she came at him — he had not yet seen the man on the bed — the knife extended and flailing the air. He fired low the first time, at her legs in the black sheath of the blood-drenched dress, and missed, and still she came at him, and this time he raised the gun and pulled off two shots in succession, both of them catching her high on the left shoulder, and spinning her around, and dropping her to the carpeted floor.

He had not yet seen the horror on the bed.

There was blood all over the carpet around the bed. There was blood soaked into the bedclothes. On the bed, on his back, a man lay spread-eagled, his arms and legs tied to the four posts. The man was still screaming though Lily Parker lay wounded on the floor, where she could no longer harm him. The man had skin only on his face. The rest of his skin had been peeled away from his body so that he lay there a naked pulsing bleeding mass of unsheathed muscles and nerves.

Carella turned away at once, almost colliding with Meyer who was directly behind him. “We’ll... we’ll need...” he said, and could not get the rest out. He looked for a phone, found none in the room, and went swiftly out into the cellar and upstairs to the kitchen where he found one on the wall. He dialed the local police then, and identified himself, and told them what he had here, and asked that they send an ambulance at once.

“It’s very bad,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

It did not stop raining until Sunday morning, September 24. The rain stopped all at once; the clouds would not dissipate for hours, but for now at least there was no rain. The first tentative rays of the sun filtered down through the overcast at 2:00 P.M. and by 2:15 the wet pavements were glistening with sunshine. At 3:30 that same afternoon, Santo Chadderton died in the Intensive Care Unit of the Fox Hill Hospital. That same day, in the Psychiatric Unit on the sixth floor of Isola’s Buena Vista Hospital, a team of psychiatrists was interviewing Lily Parker to determine whether or not she was sane enough to stand trial. A transcript of the interview later found its way to Carella’s desk. It was in the form of a standard q and a. As he read it, he could remember nothing but the flayed body of Santo Chadderton in that basement room at Hawkhurst.

Q: Mrs. Parker, can you tell us why you killed George Chadderton?

A: Because he knew.

Q: What did he know?

A: That Robert was with me on the island.

Q: Robert?

A: My husband.

Q: Was with you on the island?

A: In the basement room where they used to lock me up.

Q: Who used to lock you up?

A: Robert and my father.

Q: Mrs. Parker, your husband left you almost twenty years ago, isn’t that so?

A: Well, yes, but he came back.

Q: If he left you so long ago...

A: Yes, but he came back, I just told you.

Q: Then it would have been impossible for him to have locked you in that basement room.

A: Yes, but not my father.

Q: It was your father who locked you in that room, is that it?

A: Nurse sitting outside the door. Giving me shots all the time.

Q: Your father did that to you?

A: And Robert. Because of Robert, don’t you see?

Q: Because Robert left you?

A: Yes. That was when I got sick. When Robert left. That was when my father had the doors put in, and locked me up.

Q: Mrs. Parker, when did your father die?

A: Seven years ago.

Q: What month, would you remember?

A: July.

Q: And when did you meet Santo Chadderton?

A: I don’t know who that is.

Q: Mrs. Parker, we have here a guest list for something called the Blondie Ball, a charity ball that took place on September eleventh, seven years ago.

A: Yes?

Q: Your name is on the list — we assume it’s your name — L. Parker. Is that you?

A: Yes, Lily Parker.

Q: Santo Chadderton was one of the musicians at the ball that night.

A: I don’t know anyone named Santo Chadderton.

Q: Isn’t Santo Chadderton the man you were living with on the island?

A: No, no.

Q: Who was that man then?

A: Robert. My husband. He came back. After Daddy died, Robert came back to me.

Q: Where did you meet him again, Mrs. Parker?

A: At a ball in September, fairy princess all in white, mask on my face, he didn’t even know it was me at first. Silly Robert making music in a band.

Q: When did you take him to the island?

A: In the morning. We spent the night at the hotel, he was extremely apologetic, we made such beautiful love.

Q: And in the morning, you went out to the island?

A: Yes.

Q: And he stayed there with you from then on?

A: Oh, yes, why would he want to leave? I took very good care of him. He knew that. He finally came to understand how much he loved me.

Q: Mrs. Parker, why did you kill Clara Jean Hawkins?

A: She was the one who told.

Q: Told what?

A: About us on the island. I brought her home to Robert one night because I thought he might be, well, stimulated by her, you know, by a third party. It wasn’t fair, he never wanted to leave the island, I thought I’d bring him some outside stimulation, you know. I spotted her on the street downtown one day, in the city outside the railroad terminal, she seemed young and vivacious, I asked her if she’d like to come out to Hawkhurst with me. And of course she accepted, she could see I was a beautiful woman of good breeding, he always used to tell me how beautiful I was, my father, gave me the island as a sweet-sixteen present you know, and C.J. recognized my beauty as well, licked my cunt, savored my cunt, it was a shame I had to kill her.

Q: When you say she told...

A: She told his brother, don’t you see?

Q: Santo’s brother?

A: I found out last Thursday when I was driving her back to the station. She told me she was going to do an album with him, songs! They were going to write songs about all her experiences, can you imagine? Songs about us! Songs about what we did together on the island.

Q: She said that? That the songs would be about you?

A: Well, what else could they be?

Q: So you killed her.

A: Of course. To save Robert.

Q: To save him?

A: Yes, to save him, to keep him.

Q: Then... Mrs. Parker... why did you kill him?

A: I didn’t.

Q: He’s dead, Mrs. Parker. We learned a little while ago that he’s dead.

A: No, no. He’ll come back, you’ll see. I thought he was dead, too, for the longest time, but he came back, didn’t he? Only this time I won’t be as understanding, I can tell you that. I took all his clothes from him, you know. Stripped him naked. That was so he wouldn’t run away again. But when he comes back this time, I’m going to be a bit harsher with him. I put needles in his cock one time, to keep it stiff. That was before C.J. started coming out to join us. Cut off one of his fingers, too. But that was because his cock wasn’t stiff. A man has to have a stiff cock. If he hasn’t got a stiff cock, what good is he? I kept telling him that. This time... when he comes back this time... well, he’ll see, I can promise you that.

Q: What will you do this time, Mrs. Parker?

A: Oh, he’ll see. He’ll see.

It was almost October when the report reached Carella’s desk. By that time, Lily Parker had been remanded to the Riverhead Facility for the Criminally Insane. By that time, the city’s skies were clear and blue, and there was a clean crisp bite on the air. Typewriters were clacking in the squadroom, phones were ringing. Carella rose from his desk and walked to the filing cabinets, and found the folder for Chadderton under C, and filed the report at the front of the folder. The case was closed, everything wrapped up neatly and tied with a pretty little bow. All the pieces in place, just like a phony fucking mystery novel.

But the phone on his desk was ringing again.