Labyrinth

TWENTY-ONE

I called Eberhardt back ten minutes later and laid it all out for him: who I believed had shot Christine Webster and why. He said it sounded reasonable but he would need proof, not speculation and hearsay, before he could make an arrest; but he agreed with me that he would not have too much trouble finding it. With luck he could have the whole ugly business wrapped up by the end of the day.

The Justice Department investigators showed up not long afterward, and I spent two hours making another statement and answering an endless string of questions. When they were finally done with me I had a headache and an achey feeling in my joints; but I also had their permission to go back to San Francisco. Twelve minutes after they left I was on my way to the Highway Patrol substation. And twenty minutes after that I was on my way home-sniffling and hacking up phlegm with the heater on full blast.

It was a few minutes past three when I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog there was as thick as it had been up the coast; you could not see the bridge towers or much of Alcatraz or Angel Island, and the hills and buildings of the city had a gray distorted look. But that was all right. I liked the fog more than ever now, because without it I would not have survived last night’s ordeal with Greene.

I drove down Lombard, straight up Laguna. Predictably, the closest parking space to my building turned out to be two blocks away. My joints ached even more now and I had developed a scratchy throat; the two-block walk in the cold did me no good at all.

I gathered up my mail and let myself in. When I got up to my door I felt a twinge of apprehension, remembering what I had found at my office on Friday. But both locks were secure and nothing had been disturbed inside: the pulps were still on their shelves, the bachelor’s mess on the furniture and floor was just as I had left it.

Brew up some tea, I thought, take another cold pill, and get into bed. So I threw Muhlheim’s coat on the couch-I would have to remember to get the coat and the rest of his clothing cleaned and shipped back to him pretty soon-and headed toward the kitchen.

On the way I shuffled through the mail. And one of the envelopes made me stop in the doorway. It was plain-white and business-sized, with no return address. And the “r” in my name was chipped, the “a” in the street address tilted.

Christ. I tore it open, pulled out a single sheet of white paper, and unfolded it. My name was typed there, too, and below it three lines:

You’d better leave me alone. If you don’t, I’ll do something to YOU next time, not just your office. I mean that. Leave me ALONE.

I held up the envelope and looked at the postmark. Mailed Saturday night. Sure, that figured. She must have written it right after my call Somebody knocked on the door.

Frowning, I turned to look over there. Dennis Litchak, probably, because the downstairs door buzzer had not sounded; he must have seen or heard me enter and come up to talk. Well, I was in no mood or condition for company right now. I went to the door, thinking that I would get rid of old Dennis in five seconds flat, and opened up.

Karen Nichols stood in the hallway outside.

“I’ve been waiting for you all day,” she said. “Waiting and waiting for you. I thought you’d never come home.”

In her right hand was a. 32 caliber revolver.

The muscles in my stomach and groin contracted; I could feel heat come into my cheeks and a shaking start up inside. This was the second time in eighteen hours that a gun had been pointed at me, that I had tasted sudden fear and come up against sudden death. It had been bad enough with Greene, but this was worse because I was sick and exhausted and because it meant coping all over again, trying to beat the odds twice in a row.

I still had hold of the door and I considered throwing it shut, diving out of the way. But I would have had to step back to do that, to get the door in front of my body and my reflexes were shaky and not to be trusted. She had already moved forward to the threshold, too, and her finger was tight against the trigger. Too risky. Stay calm, I told myself, find another way. Don’t do anything to make her shoot.

“Back up and let me in,” she said. “Somebody might come.”

I let go of the door, retreated in slow careful steps. She came inside and pushed the door almost shut behind her with her free hand. Her face was so pale that I could see the fine tracery of veins beneath the skin, but there was nothing in her expression or in the wide amber eyes to indicate how unbalanced she was. She looked normal, in full control of herself, and that scared me even more than if she’d been wild-eyed and gibbering. She could errupt into violence at any second, on the slightest provocation-the way she must have when she destroyed my office.

She said, “You got my letter,” and I realized I still had it and the envelope and the rest of the mail in my left hand.

“Yes. I got it.”

“I shouldn’t have sent it. I shouldn’t have sent any of the letters to that Webster bitch either. They didn’t do any good. Nothing does any good. Except this.” She raised the gun slightly and looked at it as if it were a new-found friend, an ally. “This is the only way.”

“You don’t want to shoot me, Karen,” I said.

“Yes I do. I have to. You won’t leave me alone. I thought if I went to your office last week and talked to you… but you weren’t there, and I thought if I went in and did things to it, it would hurt you enough to make you go away. But you didn’t, you just kept on and on. When you asked me about Bobbie on Saturday night I knew what I had to do. I knew this was the only way. I waited for you all afternoon and all evening. And all day today. Why didn’t you come home?”

Without moving my head much I looked left, right-but I was standing in the middle of the carpet and there was nothing in a five-foot radius that I could use to disarm her. The nearest piece of furniture was the couch, three paces to my right. And nothing on it except the overcoat, a pulp magazine, a couple of throw pillows.

“Karen, listen to me-”

“No. I don’t want to listen. I just want to do what I have to before it’s too late.”

Throw pillows. Throw pillow?

“It’s already too late,” I said. “The police know the truth.”

Her forehead puckered; she bit her lip. “I don’t believe you.”

Long odds. Even if I could get over to the couch, pick up one of the pillows, it would take a perfect toss to hit the gun before she fired, throw her off-balance long enough for me to rush her. But what other choice did I have? It seemed to be either that or try to jump her cold.

I said, “It’s true, Karen. The police have been out to your house today, they’ve matched the typing on the letters with the typewriter in your living room; they know you wrote them to Christine.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said again.

“Why would I lie to you?”

“Because you want to hurt me. Along with my mother and that Webster bitch. Won’t go away, won’t stop hurting me…”

Her jaw trembled a little and her eyes were brighter; you could see the violence rippling like a dark current just beneath the surface of her face. The knotted feeling in my groin intensified. Keep her talking, for God’s sake, I thought. But don’t say anything to provoke her.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Karen. I only wanted to help your uncle.”

“No. You were working for Webster all along.”

“But I wasn’t,” I said, and took a careful sidestep toward the couch. The gun did not move in her hand. “Christine never contacted me. I never met her or talked to her.”

“You’re lying again. She had your business card. And she told me she’d hired you, just before I did it to her.”

That did not surprise me. The reason why Christine had lied was obvious: she had been trying desperately to save her life. And the lie explained how Karen had known I was a detective when I arrived at her house on Wednesday morning. I had only given her my name at the door, not my occupation, and by their own testimony Laura Nichols had not told her daughter of her plans to hire an investigator. Yet the first thing Karen had said to me was, “You’re that private detective.”

“Working for Webster,” she said now, “and then right away going to work for my mother. Don’t you think I know the real reason she hired you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Your mother hired me to watch over your uncle.”

“That was just a lie for my benefit. She hired you to investigate me.

“Why would she do that?”

“She hates me, that’s why. She suspected I was gay. She suspected I was in love with Bobbie and wanted to hurt the bitch who killed her. She hired you so you could both work against me.”

Paranoid psychosis, I thought. Everybody out to harm her, including her mother. Especially her mother. She was the one with all the hatred, not Laura Nichols; and those feelings had to be at the root of her persecution complex and her need to strike back.

I took another step toward the couch. My nose was running again, dripping down over my upper lip; I sniffled and just let it drip. No use pressing my luck by reaching into the back pocket where my handkerchief was.

“Your mother didn’t tell me about you and Bobbie,” I said. “She doesn’t know you’re gay.”

“She must have told you. You weren’t surprised when I said it just now. You already knew.”

“Yes. But I found out another way-”

“ She told you. Stop lying to me.”

Easy, I thought, drop it right there. Because the truth was provocative: it was Karen herself who had told me. On the phone Thursday night she’d said she and some friends had spent the day at Civic Center and I remembered noticing in Friday’s paper that at Civic Center on Thursday there had been a big Gay Rights rally. And when I had talked to her Saturday night from Bodega Bay and asked if she knew Bobbie Reid, she’d said, “No. Who’s she?” Yet Bobbie, or Bobby, is a far more common male name than a female name; the assumption almost everybody makes the first time they hear it is that it’s short for Robert, not Roberta or Barbara. Which indicated Karen had known Bobbie Reid. Add those facts together, along with Eberhardt’s news that Bobbie had worked for Arthur Brown, the Nichols’ family attorney, and Steve Farmer’s admission that Bobbie was gay, and the truth became clear enough.

“Well?” she said. “My mother told you, didn’t the?”

“Yes.”

“And you think being gay is terrible, don’t you. Just like she does.”

“No, I don’t think it’s terrible.”

“Are you lying to me again?”

“No. I think every person has the right to be what he wants to be. As long as he doesn’t harm anyone else.”

“Webster harmed Bobbie. Killed her, the bitch.”

“How did she do that?”

“With words. Words. Bobbie never told anyone about us; she was confused about being gay. But Webster got it out of her. She told Bobbie it was evil and she was sick and needed help. Kept telling her again and again. Bobbie couldn’t take it. She was a sensitive person and she just… she couldn’t take it. She took those pills, and she called me afterward to say she was sorry, she had to do it, she couldn’t cope anymore after what Webster had been telling her. I told her how much I loved her, I begged her not to do it, but she said it was too late. I called the emergency hospital, I drove over there myself, and it was. It was too late… ”

Poor Bobbie Reid: emotionally screwed up, unable to come to terms with her life and her sexuality-a probable suicide in any case. Poor Christine Webster: well-meaning, foolish, always trying to meddle in other people’s lives. Victims, just like Jerry Carding. Poor Karen, too: unbalanced, deluded, filled with paranoid hatred for her domineering mother. She was another victim, and I pitied her a little in that moment. But I pitied Jerry and Christine and Bobbie a great deal more.

Karen seemed to be caught up for the moment in memory and grief; the gun was steady but no longer pointing straight at me. I took another step that brought me up next to the couch. But the movement alerted her, made her blink and swing the weapon back dead-center on my chest.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Why are you moving?”

I stood motionless, watching the gun. “I want to sit down. Is that all right?”

Hesitation. Then, “I don’t care. I’m going to do what I have to pretty soon. Like I did with Webster. I wish I could do it to my mother too. But I can’t. I want to but I… can’t. Not yet.”

I eased myself down on the arm of the couch, let my right arm dangle down at my side. The closest of the throw pillows was eight or nine inches away: I would have to lean in that direction in order to reach it.

“How did you do it to Webster?” I said. “How did you get her to meet you at Lake Merced?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I just do. Will you tell me?”

“I called her on the phone, that’s how. Not like the other calls, where I disguised my voice. I said I knew who was threatening her, but I didn’t want to say anything on the phone and I was afraid to come to her apartment because the person might be watching her. I asked her to meet me and she said she would. She thought it was a man who wanted to hurt her, you see; she wasn’t afraid of me. But I made her afraid. I made her very afraid before I did it to her.”

A feeling of nausea formed inside me: her words, tension, suppressed fear. I tipped my body to the right, moved my arm out away from it-one inch, two, three.

“I thought it was all done with then,” she said. “Webster did it to Bobbie, I did it to Webster. But then you came. And there were all those lies about Uncle Martin. And Victor Carding was murdered. And I found out Jerry Carding was his son and Webster’s boyfriend too. I never knew that before. I never even heard of Jerry Carding. It confused me, I couldn’t understand what was happening.”

Coincidence, that was what had been happening. Martin Talbot and Victor Carding have an accident; Carding’s son is Christine Webster’s fiance; Talbot’s niece is having an affair with Bobbie Reid; Bobbie Reid is a friend of Christine’s and used to date a friend of Jerry Carding’s; Christine finds out Bobbie is gay and admonishes her for it; Bobbie commits suicide; Karen blames Christine and murders her. And Bobbie works in Arthur Brown’s law office; Christine works part-time in the same building; Brown is Laura Nichols’ attorney; I’ve done some work for Brown and always hand out cards to my clients; Christine gets one of the cards from Brown; Laura Nichols wants to hire a private detective and Brown recommends me. A crazy-quilt of coincidence.

But there was no point in saying any of that to Karen; she would not have believed it. I stayed silent and kept leaning toward the throw pillow. Four inches. Five.

“Then I did understand,” she said. “It was somebody else working against me. Not just you and my mother, but Jerry Carding too. He knew I was the one who hurt Webster and he did it to his own father so Uncle Martin would be blamed. That was his way of hurting me back.”

Six. Seven Sound out in the hallway.

I froze, listening, staring at Karen. She seemed not to have heard it: a footstep, muffled by the carpeting out there. One of the Madisons, the couple who lived in the other flat on this floor?

“If I knew where Jerry Carding was, I’d do it to him too. I’d make him leave me alone.”

Behind her a crack opened between the door and jamb; she had not closed the door all the way so there was no click of the latch opening, no sound at all. I straightened away from the pillow, leaned forward instead. Every muscle and nerve in my body felt coiled.

“I’ll make everybody leave me alone. I don’t believe you about the police; they don’t know yet. Only you and Mother and Jerry Carding know.”

The crack widened a little more. A head poked around the edge of the door.

Dennis Litchak.

“You first and then Jerry Carding when I can find him. Then my mother someday. Then I’ll be safe-”

The hinges squeaked. She heard the sound this time and her face registered surprise; reflex made her jerk her head around to look behind her, made the gun swing away from me.

I levered up off the couch and threw myself at her.

The damned gun went off, the lamp on the sideboard near the kitchen shattered, the door banged shut, I hit her with my shoulder and sent her reeling back against the wall. She caromed off, crying out in a hurt way, and the gun flew clear of her hand and skittered under the writing desk; she went down and rolled over and lay in a quivering little heap.

I veered away from her, went to one knee beside the desk, and scooped up the gun. When I straightened with it, the tension went out of me all at once, like a balloon deflating, and I had to lean against the desk top to keep from falling down.

Karen stopped quivering and lifted onto her knees. Looked at me with eyes that had gone dull with pain and confusion. “Why did you do that?” she asked, as if she really did not know. “Why did you hurt me?”

When I didn’t say anything she got up slowly, rubbing her arm where I had hit her, and then went over and sat down on the couch. Sat the way she had that first time, in the living room of her mother’s house: knees together, back straight, hands folded in her lap, eyes cast down on her hands. She did not move; she did not even seem to be breathing.

Rapping on the door. And from out in the hallway Litchak yelled my name.

I called back, “You can come in now, Dennis, it’s all over,” and my voice sounded as if it were coming through liquid.

The door opened and he poked his white-maned head around the edge again. Came inside in tentative movements. He looked a little gray and shaken-but not nearly as gray and shaken as I felt.

“God Almighty,” he said. He peered at me through his glasses, glanced over at Karen, looked back at me. “What the hell is going on?”

“It’s a long story.” I wanted to push away from the desk, go into the bedroom and get the phone and call Eberhardt; but I did not trust my legs just yet. “Listen, you probably saved my life. Thanks.”

“I did?”

“You did. Why’d you come up? You hear me downstairs? Or was it your flat she buzzed to get in?”

“Neither one. I didn’t even know you were home. I came up to check on the place again, like you asked me to, and saw the door standing open-”

A laugh popped out of me-sudden, humorless, ironic.

Litchak frowned. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s you showing up when you did.”

“Huh?”

“Coincidence, Dennis. Just one more coincidence.”