Lightning

9

The first edition of the city’s afternoon tabloid hit the stands at 11:30 that morning. The headline blared:

Below the headline was a photograph of Darcy Welles hanging from a lamppost in the Eighty-third Precinct. The brief text under the photograph read:

It was not unusual for this particular newspaper to label killers in a manner that would appeal to the popular imagination; its parentage was in London, where such sensationalism was commonplace. The police would have wished otherwise. Handy labels never helped in the apprehension of a murderer; if anything they made matters more difficult because they encouraged either phone calls or letters from cranks claiming to be “the Nursemaid Murderer,” or “the Mad Slasher,” or “the .32-Caliber Killer,” or whoever else the newspapers had dreamed up. Their killer had now been named: the Road Runner Killer. Terrific. Except that it made their job harder. The story on page four read like a paperback mystery written by a hack:

The story went on to relate in detail the circumstances surrounding the previous deaths of Marcia Schaffer and Nancy Annunziato, and then advised the reader to turn to page 6 for a profile on Darcy Welles and an interview with her parents in Columbus, Ohio. The profile on Darcy seemed to have been pilfered from the files at Converse University. It sketched in her educational background, tracing her years through elementary, junior high, and high school, and then went on to list all the track competitions she had entered, giving the results of each. The profile was accompanied by a photograph of Darcy in high school graduation cap and gown. A line of text under the photograph identified Darcy simply as Victim Number Three: Darcy Welles.

The interview with her parents had been conducted via the telephone at night o’clock that morning, presumably immediately after a stringer sitting police calls in Diamondback had phoned in with news of the girl hanging from the lamppost. The reporter who spoke to both Robert Welles and his wife Jessica wrote in his interview that he had been the one to break the news of their daughter’s murder, and that for the first five minutes of his conversation with them, they had been “sobbing uncontrollably” and “scarcely coherent.” He had plunged ahead regardless, and had elicited from them a description of Darcy that showed her to be a good, hardworking girl, dedicated to running but nonetheless maintaining a solid B-average in high school and “now in college.” When their just-spoken words “now in college” registered on them, both parents had broken into tears again “with the realization that their daughter was no longer in fact a college student, their daughter was now a third grisly victim of the Road Runner Killer.”

Darcy’s older brother was a man named Bosley “Buzz” Welles, who worked as a computer programmer for the IBM branch office in Columbus. She’d had no steady boyfriends when she was living at home, but she was an attractive popular girl who had many friends of both sexes. So far as Mr. and Mrs. Welles knew, she had not been dating anyone since she’d started her freshman year at Converse in September. Her parents told the reporter that she had recently been contacted by the magazine Sports USA regarding an article they were preparing on promising young women athletes, and was in fact scheduled to be interviewed on the night she was murdered. Mr. and Mrs. Welles did not remember the name of the man who was to conduct the interview. On his own initiative, the reporter had called the editorial offices of Sports USA in New York, and had been told that they knew of no such article in preparation.

“Is it possible, then,” the reporter editorialized in the distinctive style of his paper, “that the Road Runner Killer is representing himself as someone who works for Sports USA, thereby gaining the confidence of his young victims before leading them to slaughter?”

You bet your ass, Ollie thought, reading the article.

He was sitting beside Carella in a car they’d checked out not ten minutes earlier, heading downtown. Hawes was sitting in back. He did not like having his usual seat usurped by Ollie, but at the same time he did not envy Carella having to sit so close to him. He noticed that Carella had opened the window on the driver’s side of the car. Wide.

“Listen to this,” Ollie said, and began reading aloud. “‘If this is indeed the case...’”

“If what is indeed the case?” Hawes asked.

“Somebody palming himself off as a reporter from Sports USA,” Ollie said, and began reading aloud again. “If this is indeed the case, the baffled policemen of this city might make note of it. And they might do well to warn any young female athletes at universities or colleges against accepting at face value anyone who represents himself to them as a reporter or journalist.”

Alf Miscolo, in the Clerical Office of the Eight-Seven, had already typed up and photocopied a letter dictated by Lieutenant Byrnes for hand-delivery to every college and university in the city. The detectives had, in fact, debated whether the letter should go out to high schools as well.

“There’s more,” Ollie said. “This guy here, he all of a sudden remembers this is supposed to be an interview with Mom and Dad, and not a story giving advice to the police department. You ready? ‘Mr. and Mrs. Welles were sobbing again as we ended our telephone conversation. The wires between here and Columbus hummed with their grief, a grief shared by parents all over this city, a grief that seemed to echo the words: ‘Find the Road Runner Killer.’”

“Beautiful,” Hawes said.

“Page opposite has pictures of the other two girls,” Ollie said, “hanging from lampposts like Christmas ornaments. Whole fuckin’ paper is full of the murders. They even got comments from the cops in New York who were handling the ‘Son of Sam’ killings, and a story by the reporter who covered it there, trying to find comparisons in M.O.s. It’s headlined ‘Psycho Similarities.’ I’m surprised they didn’t dig up Jack the Ripper. If this doesn’t drive our man underground, nothing will. I’m glad the parents didn’t remember his name, the name he gave the girl. Otherwise Corey McIntyre out in L.A.’d find himself splashed all over this rag.”

Ollie folded the newspaper and threw it into the backseat. It hit Hawes’s knee and fell to the floor of the car.

“Give ’em time,” Hawes said. “They’ll get to it.”

“They wanna be cops,” Ollie said, “why don’t they join the force? They wanna be reporters, they should shut the fuck up and not stick their noses in police work. You’re coming to Haley, you know that?” he said to Carella.

“I know it.”

“Which garages did you hit already?” Ollie asked.

“I’ve got the list,” Hawes said.

“’Cause this one is supposed to be right around the corner from the restaurant, near Jefferson.”

“I thought we hit everything in a five-block radius,” Hawes said.

“Yeah, well maybe you missed one, huh, Red?” Ollie said.

Hawes didn’t like anyone to call him “Red.” He preferred Lefty to Red. He preferred Great Bull Moose Farting to Red.

“My name’s Cotton,” he said mildly.

“That’s a dumb name,” Ollie said.

Hawes silently agreed with him.

“I think I’ll call you ‘Red,’” Ollie said.

“Okay,” Hawes said. “And I’ll call you ‘Phyllis.’”

“Phyllis?” Ollie said. “Where’d you get Phyllis from? Phyllis? There’s a space,” he said to Carella.

“I see it,” Carella said.

“In case you didn’t,” Ollie said. “Way you guys missed a garage right around the corner from the restaurant, who knows if you can see parking spaces or not?”

Carella pulled into the space. He threw down the visor with its attached notice that this was a police officer on a duty call, just in case some overzealous patrolman hadn’t met his quota of parking tickets today. The three detectives got out of the car. Carella locked all the doors. He knew some cops from the Six-One who’d had their car stolen from the curb while they were inside a liquor store investigating an armed robbery.

“So where are we?” Ollie said. “Restaurant’s on Ulster and South Haley, this is what?”

“Ulster and Bowes.”

“So what we should do,” Ollie said, “is go back to the restaurant, use that as our starting point. Then we go up to the corner closest to Jefferson and fan out left and right from there. He said right around the corner, didn’t he? Near Jefferson?”

“That’s what he said,” Carella said. “But right around the corner could mean anything.”

“What could right around the corner mean but right around the corner?” Ollie said. “Am I right, Red? Or am I right?”

Hawes winced.

“Ollie,” he said, “I really don’t like being called ‘Red.’”

“So I’ll call you ‘Cotton,’ will you like that better?”

“I would.”

“Okay, okay. But if I had a dumb name like ‘Cotton,’ I’d prefer being called almost anything else, I got to tell you. Am I right, Steve-a-rino? Or am I right?”

Carella said nothing.

The detectives walked back to the restaurant.

“Fancy joint,” Ollie commented. “Guy must have plenty of bread, he takes his victims here before he zonks them. Okay, now to the corner. You guys with me? I want to show you how to find a garage.”

The garage was not right around the corner.

It was a block up from the corner, and then a half-block to the north, toward Jefferson Avenue. It was one of the garages Carella and Hawes had hit on the night of the Welles murder. They had spoken then to a little Puerto Rican parking attendant named Ricardo Albareda who could not remember seeing a young girl in a red dress with a man wearing a dark brown suit, a tan tie, and brown shoes. They had gone on to give Albareda the same description the waiter at Marino’s had given Hawes: five feet ten or eleven, 170 pounds, brown hair and brown eyes, a mustache. Albareda still couldn’t remember the couple.

Albareda was on duty now. He explained that he usually worked the day shift, but that last night he’d been filling in for his friend who was home sick. He told the detectives that he didn’t get home till two o’clock last night, and he had to be at work again at 8:00 this morning. He told the detectives that he was very tired. He told them all this with a marked Spanish accent.

“Look, shithead,” Ollie said reasonably, “this is the fuckin’ garage, you unnerstan’ English? This is where they were, and I want you to start rememberin’ right away, or I’m gonna kick your little spic ass all around the block, you think you got that?”

“If I cann remember them, I cann remember them,” Albareda said. He shrugged and looked at Carella.

“We questioned him fully last night,” Carella said. “If the man can’t remember them, then he can’t re...”

“That was last night,” Ollie said, “and this is today. And this is Detective Ollie Weeks,” he said, turning to Albareda, “who don’t take no for an answer unless somebody wants to be in serious trouble like for spitting on the sidewalk.”

“I dinn spit on no si’walk,” Albareda said.

“When I hit you in the mouth, shithead, you’re gonna be spittin’ blood and teeth on the sidewalk, and that’s a misdemeanor.”

“Look, Ollie...” Hawes said.

“Keep out of this, Red,” Ollie said. “We’re talkin’ a quarter to ten, somewhere in there,” he said to Albareda. “Young girl in a red dress, her picture’s all over the newspaper today, she got killed last night, you unnerstan’ that, shithead? With a guy twice her age, has a mustache like yours, okay, Pancho? Start rememberin.’ ”

“I don’ r’member nobody with a mustash like mine,” Albareda said.

“How about a young girl in a red dress?”

“I don’ r’member her.”

“How many fuckin’ girls in red dresses you get here at a quarter to ten? What were you doin’, Albareda? Jerkin’ off in the toilet with Playboy, you didn’t notice a girl in a red dress?”

“We get lotsa girls they wearin’ red,” Albareda said defensively.

“At a quarter to ten last night? You had lots of girls wearing red?”

“No, not lass night. I’m juss sayin’.”

“Who else was working here last night? Were you all alone, you dumb spic shithead?”

“There wass ony two of us. There wass s’pose to be t’ree, but...”

“Yeah, your amigo was home in bed suckin’ his own dong. So who else was here?”

“Thass not why there wass two of us.”

“Then why?”

“’Cause another man s’pose to be here, an’ he wass sick, too.”

“A regular epidemic, huh? What’re you all comin’ down with, herpes? So who was the other guy with you?”

“Anìbal.”

“Annabelle?”

“Anìbal. Anìbal Perez. He works all the time d’night shiff.”

“The night shiff, huh, Pancho? You got his number?”

“Sì, I haff his number.”

“Call him up. Tell him to get his ass down here in ten minutes flat or I’ll go find him and hang him from a lamppost.”

“He lives all the way Majesta.”

“Tell him to take a taxi. Or would he like a squad car pulling up in front of his house?”

“I’ll call him,” Albareda said.

Perez arrived some forty minutes later. He looked very bewildered. He glanced at Albareda for some clue as to what was going on, and then he looked at the one he figured to be the most sympathetic of the cops, a fat man like himself.

“Whass goin’ on?” he asked.

“You here last night at a quarter to ten?”

“Sì.”

“Talk English,” Ollie said, “this is America. You see my two friends here last night askin’ questions?”

“No.”

“He wass upstairs when they come aroun’,” Albareda said.

“Very sloppy,” Ollie said to Carella, “you didn’t check to see there was more than one guy here. Okay, Pancho,” he said to Perez, forgetting he’d been calling Albareda the same name, “now you’re downstairs, and now we want to know did you see a young girl in a red dress last night about a quarter to ten with a guy about forty years old, brown hair and brown eyes, a mustache like your amigo here got.”

“Sì,” Perez said.

“I tole you to talk English,” Ollie said. “You saw them?”

“I saw them.”

“Young girl nineteen years old? Red dress?”

“Yes.”

“Guy about forty wearing a brown suit...”

“Yes.”

“Okay, now we’re getting someplace,” Ollie said. “What kind of car was he driving?”

“I don’ r’member,” Perez said.

“You the one who got the car for them?”

“I’m the one, yes.”

“So what kind of car was it?”

“I don’ r’member. We get lots of cars here. I drive them up, I drive them down, how you ’speck me to r’member what kind of car this car or that car wass?”

“When you talk to me, you get that tone out of your voice, you hear me, Pancho?”

“Yes, sir,” Perez said.

“That’s better,” Ollie said. “So you don’t remember the car, huh?”

“No.”

“Was it a big car, a little car, what kind of car was it?”

“I don’ r’member.”

“You’re a great pair, you two fuckin’ spics,” Ollie said. “Where do you keep your receipts?”

“What?”

“Your receipts, your receipts, you want me to speak Spanish, or is this the United States?”

“Puerto Rico is also the United States,” Perez said with dignity.

“That’s what you think,” Ollie said. “When a guy comes in to park his car, there’s a ticket, right? You fill in the license plate number on both halves of the ticket, right? And you tear off the bottom part and you give that to the customer for when he comes back to claim his car, right? You followin’ me so far? That’s called a claim check, what you give the guy who parks his car. Okay, you throw the top part of the ticket in a box, and when the guy comes back with his half of the ticket, you match them up, and that’s how you know what floor you parked his car on. So where do you keep them tickets, the receipts?”

“Oh,” Perez said.

“Comes the dawn,” Ollie said. “You got them receipts someplace?”

“In d’cashier’s office. Lass night’s tickets, you mean?”

“That’s what we’re talking about here, last night. You also stamp those tickets, don’t you? With the time the guy came in, and the time the guy comes back to claim his car. Okay, I want to see every ticket for anybody came in around eight o’clock and left around a quarter to ten. Now that’s easy, ain’t it? In fact, that’s what my friends here shoulda done last night, but better late than never, right? Show me the tickets.”

“The cashier hass them,” Perez said. “In the office.”

The cashier was a black girl in her late twenties. She looked up when the detectives came into the small office. Ollie winked at Carella and then said, “Hello, sweetie.”

“I ain’t your sweetie nor nobody else’s,” the girl said.

“You mean you ain’t my little chocolate Tootsie Roll?”

“What is this?” she said.

“Police officers, Miss,” Hawes said, and showed her his shield. “We have reason to believe...”

“We want to see your ticket stubs for last night,” Ollie said. “Anything that came in at eight, a little before eight, and left around a quarter to ten.”

“We don’t file them that way,” the girl said. “By time.”

“How do you file them?”

“By the numbers on the tickets.”

“Okay,” Ollie said, “drag out all the tickets, we’ll look through them ourselves.”

“Here?” the girl said. “I got work to do here.”

“So do we,” Ollie said.

The work took them close to two hours. They divided the tickets between them, isolated all those that had been stamped with an “in” time of seven-thirty or later, and then went through these for any with an “out” time between nine-forty-five and ten o’clock. They came up with three tickets and three license plate numbers.

One of the tickets was marked: Chev-38L4721.

The second was marked: Benz-604J29.

The third was marked: CadSav-WU3200.

“The rest is duck soup,” Ollie said.

Eileen Burke did not like this job. First of all, she did not like being a woman other than herself. Next, she did not like living in another woman’s apartment. And lastly, she did not like a masquerade that made it impossible for her to see Bert Kling. Annie had told her that she could not see Bert while she was posing as Mary Hollings. If the rapist spotted her in the company of a man he had not previously seen, he might just possibly smell a trap. This would not do. Eileen was the bait. If the rat sniffed anything rancid about the offered piece of cheese, he just might run for the hills.

Mary’s apartment was done in what Eileen would have called Victorian cum Peter Lorre. That was to say it somewhat resembled Count Dracula’s castle, lacking only its warmth. The walls throughout were painted a green that was the exact color to be found in any squadroom in the city. The rugs on the floors in the living room and bedroom were tattered Orientals that had known better snake charmers tootling their flutes upon them. The living room draperies resembled the ones Miss Haversham refused to open in Great Expectations although Eileen had to admit they were somewhat less dust-laden. And the clutter was unimaginable — even if it was Eileen’s own.

The clutter was deliberate.

In the several days Eileen had spent in orientation with Mary before her departure for Long Beach, she had come to learn that the woman was a slob. Perhaps it had to do with having been divorced. Or perhaps it had to do with having been raped. Either way, it was unimaginable. On her first visit to the apartment, Eileen saw panties, slips, blouses, sweaters, and slacks piled in heaps on the floors, sofas, backs of chairs, shower curtain rods, and dresser tops. Socks and pantyhose and nylons like a horde of snakes whose backs had been broken. “I usually tidy up on Saturday or Sunday,” Mary explained. “There’s no sense trying to keep up with it during the week.” Eileen had simply nodded. She’d been there to learn about the woman, not to criticize her. That first meeting had taken place on Wednesday morning, October 12. They had met again the next day, Eileen familiarizing herself with the apartment and with Mary’s everyday routine. On the fourteenth, Mary left for California, leaving behind her what appeared to be the debris of a vast army of very unsanitary women. On Saturday, Eileen had cleaned up the mess.

That was five days ago.

The clothes that littered the apartment now were her own; she had carried them in over a period of days, usually in shopping bags lest anyone watching might become suspicious of suitcases. The dirty dishes in the sink were dishes she herself had used. But this was only Thursday, and Mary did not normally clean up the apartment until Saturday or Sunday. If someone was watching, Eileen wanted everything to look the same as it always did. If someone was watching. She could not be sure. She hoped he was. That’s why she was here.

On the living room side — the one featuring Miss Haversham’s fine musty drapes — the windows faced the street twelve stories below. Eileen had opened the drapes the moment she’d moved in, the better to be seen — if anyone was watching. It was easier to watch on the bedroom side of the apartment. The window there, covered with venetian blinds that hadn’t been cleaned since Venice was but a mere trickle from a leaky water faucet, opened onto a wide areaway and a building some twenty feet opposite this one. Anyone behind any of the windows or on the roof could easily see into the apartment. Eileen hoped he had binoculars. Eileen hoped he was getting a good look, and she further hoped that he would make his move soon. On Saturday, she would pick up the clothing she had deliberately scattered all over the apartment and take it down to the washing machines in the basement. On Sunday, she would start all over again with a clean slate, so to speak. But she didn’t know how long she could go on living in the midst of all this disorder. Her own apartment, by comparison, was as spartan as a monk’s cell.

She had complained to Kling about the mess not half an hour ago — on the telephone, of course. He had listened patiently. He had told her he hoped this job would be over soon. He had told her he missed her. He had asked how long Annie expected to keep her in that apartment, wearing another woman’s nightgown to bed...

“I wear my own nightgown,” Eileen had said.

“So suppose he’s watching you?” Kling asked. “He sees a different nightgown, he figures ‘Uh-oh, this is an imposter in there.’”

“Mary could have bought some new nightgowns,” Eileen said. “All she does all morning long is shop, anyway. Until noon. Mary gets up at nine every morning and Mary takes two hours to shower and dress, is what Mary does. Don’t ask me what takes Mary two hours to shower and dress. I’ve had the lieutenant call me at home on emergencies, and I was out of the place in ten minutes flat, fresh as a daisy and looking neat as a pin.”

“To coin a couple of phrases,” Kling said.

“Nobody likes a smart-ass,” Eileen said. “Anyway, Mary leaves her apartment at eleven o’clock every morning, and she shops until one. I was in four department stores this morning, Bert. I almost bought you a very sexy pair of undershorts.”

“Why almost? An almost gift isn’t a gift at all.”

“I figured if he was watching me, he’d wonder why I was buying a pair of men’s undershorts.”

“Have you caught any glimpse of him yet?”

“No. But I have a feeling he’s around.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“Just a feeling, you know? While I was having lunch — Mary has lunch at one o’clock sharp every day — every weekday, that is. On Saturdays, she doesn’t set the alarm, she just sleeps as late as she likes. Sundays, too.”

“Maybe I’ll sneak over there on Sunday morning, pretend I’m the guy come to fix the plumbing or something.”

“Good idea,” Eileen said. “My plumbing can use some fixing, believe me. Anyway, while I was having lunch today...”

“Yeah, what happened?”

“I had a feeling he was there.”

“In the restaurant?”

“Mary doesn’t eat in restaurants. Mary eats in health food joints. I have had more damn bean sprouts in the past week...”

“But he was there, huh?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying it was a feeling. The place was full of mostly women, but there were maybe six guys in there and at least three of them could’ve been him. I mean, according to the description we got from the victims. White, thirty-ish, six feet tall, a hundred and eighty pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, no visible scars or tattoos.”

“Could be anybody in the city.”

“Don’t I know it?”

There was a long silence on the line.

“I have a great idea,” Kling said.

“About the rapist?”

“No, about us.”

“Oh-ho,” she said.

“Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you go take a shower...”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then put on your nightgown...”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then get into your nice, warm bed...”

“Mary’s bed, you mean.”

“Mary’s bed, right. And then I’ll call you back. How does that sound?”

“I don’t want to go to bed yet,” Eileen said. “It’s only ten o’clock.”

“So? Mary gets up at nine o’clock every weekday morning, doesn’t she? Besides, I didn’t say you should go to sleep, I just said you should go to bed.”

“Oh, I get it,” Eileen said. “You want to make an obscene phone call, right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it exactly that,” Kling said.

“What would you call it exactly, you dirty old man?”

“Dirty, yes. Old, no. What do you say?”

“Sure, give me half an hour or so.”

“Half an hour? Didn’t you tell me you sometimes get calls from your lieutenant on emergencies or something and you’re showered and dressed in ten minutes flat? What’s gonna take you half an hour now?”

“If I’m gonna get an obscene phone call, I want to put on some perfume,” Eileen said, and hung up.

She was in the shower when the phone rang again. She was surprised; it wasn’t like Bert to call back five minutes after she’d asked him to give her a half-hour. She decided to let the phone ring. It kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing. She got out of the shower, wrapped a bath towel around herself, and went back into the bedroom — sidestepping the piles of debris she had littered all over the floor in an attempt at simulating Mary’s lifestyle — and then went into the living room, where the phone was still ringing. She picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she said.

“Eileen?”

A woman’s voice.

“Yes?”

“This is Mary Hollings.”

“Oh, hi,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice.”

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“I was just in the shower,” Eileen said. “That’s what took me so long to get to the phone. Are you calling from California?”

“Yes. This is an imposition, I know, but...”

“Not at all,” Eileen said. “What is it?”

“Well... I’m supposed to pay my rent on the fifteenth of the month. And the thing is... I took my small checkbook out here to pay any bills that were forwarded...”

“You asked the post office to forward your mail?” Eileen asked at once.

“Well... yes.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Did I do something wrong?” Mary asked.

“No, no, that’s fine,” Eileen said.

She didn’t think it was so fine. Every morning, as part of the routine Mary had described to her, she’d gone down to the mailbox, surprised to find only third-class mail — magazines, solicitations, and so on. No first-class mail. This had seemed odd to her; even if no friends or relatives ever sent Mary a letter, there surely should have been bills. Now she had the answer. Mary had asked the post office to forward her mail to Long Beach, undoubtedly specifying that the order applied to first-class mail only. But if the rapist had been watching Mary before she’d gone to California, would he have seen her when she went to the post office? And if he’d followed her inside, would he have seen her filling out a CHANGE OF ADDRESS card? And if so, did he now know that the woman living in Mary Hollings’s apartment wasn’t Mary Hollings at all? Eileen didn’t like it one damn bit. The silence on the phone lengthened.

At last, Mary said, “I thought I’d paid the rent before I left. I usually try to pay it two or three days before it’s due. I sent it to this company that manages the building, they’re called Reynolds Realty, Inc.”

“Uh-huh,” Eileen said.

“But I took only my small checkbook out here, the one I usually carry in my handbag...”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what I normally do is I pay the rent from the big checkbook. The one with three checks on a page, do you know the kind I mean?”

“Uh-huh,” Eileen said.

“So I have no way of checking,” Mary said, “on whether I paid the rent or not. I wouldn’t want to come home and discover I’ve been dispossessed or something.”

“So... uh... what is it?” Eileen said.

“I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“You’re in the living room, aren’t you? That’s where the phone is, so that’s where I guess you are.”

“That’s where I am,” Eileen said.

Dripping all over your Oriental rug, she thought, but did not say. “Well, in the desk where the phone is...”

“Uh-huh.”

“The bottom drawer on the right-hand side...”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s my big checkbook. The one I didn’t take out here. Because I figured I could pay any forwarded bills from my small checkbook.”

“Okay,” Eileen said.

“Would you mind terribly looking at the checkbook, the big one, and seeing if I paid the rent? If I paid it, it would be around October twelfth or thirteenth, sometime around then. Could you please look?”

“Sure, just a sec,” Eileen said.

She opened the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of the desk, rummaged around under some folders and loose sheets of paper and found the checkbook.

“I’ve got it,” she said, “let me take a look.”

She pulled the chair out from the kneehole, sat, turned on the desklamp, and opened the checkbook.

“October twelfth or thirteenth,” she said.

“Around then,” Mary said.

“October seventh,” she said aloud, turning the pages of stubs in the binder, “October ninth... what was the name of the place again?”

“Reynolds Realty, Inc.”

“October eleventh,” Eileen said, “October... here it is. October twelfth, Reynolds Realty, Inc., six hundred and fourteen dollars. The stub is marked ‘Rent due 10/15.’ I guess you paid it, Mary.”

“What a relief,” Mary said. “I really was worried that they’d change the lock on the door or something. I’d get home and find...” She hesitated. “When do you think that’ll be?” she asked. “My coming home, I mean. Have you had any luck yet?”

“Not a nibble,” Eileen said.

“Because... my sister’s a lovely person, and she’s very happy to see me and all... but I’ve been here almost a week now...”

“Yes, I know.”

“And I have the feeling I’m overstaying my welcome a bit.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not that she’s said anything to me...”

“I understand.”

“But you begin to sense things, you know?”

“Yes.”

“So... when do you think you’ll be finished there? I mean, how long will you keep doing this? If he doesn’t show up, I mean.”

“I’ll have to discuss that with Detective Rawles,” Eileen said. “I don’t know how long she plans to keep the job running. Can I get back to you sometime tomorrow?”

“Oh sure, there’s no rush. I mean, my sister isn’t throwing me out into the street or anything. I was just wondering, that’s all.”

“I’ll try to find out. And I’ll get back to you.”

“You have the number here in Long Beach, don’t you?”

“Yes, you gave it to me.”

“Well,” Mary said. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

“Goodbye now.”

“Goodbye, Mary.”

There was a click on the line. Eileen replaced the receiver on its cradle, and looked at her watch. If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss the first obscene phone call she’d ever had in her life. She was heading back for the bedroom when the phone rang again. She looked at her watch again. Bert? Fifteen minutes early? Mary again, asking her to look up something else in the checkbook? She went back to the desk and lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Eileen?”

She recognized the voice at once.

“Hello, Annie,” she said, “how are you?”

“The question is how’re you?”

“Surviving,” Eileen said. “What’s up?”

“Have you got a minute?”

“Barely,” she said, and looked at her watch again.

“Oh?” Annie said. “Plans for tonight?”

“Sort of,” Eileen said.

She did not think it wise to explain to Detective First/Grade Anne Rawles exactly what those plans were. The plans, in fact, were somewhat vague in her own mind. But she had read books, ah yes, she had read books. All sorts of fantasies were dancing through her head.

“You going out or something?” Annie asked.

“No, not tonight. I was out last night. I went to a movie.”

“Any sign of him?”

“No.”

“Were you alone?”

“As alone as anyone can be,” Eileen said.

“I’m sorry about that, but...”

“Sure, don’t sweat it. I just got a call from Mary Hollings, she...”

“From California?”

“Yeah. She wants to know when I’ll be getting out of here.”

“Maybe sooner than you think,” Annie said.

“You calling off the job?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I’ve got some stuff that might interest you,” Annie said and began telling her about the pattern she’d detected while working on the computer printouts. Eileen looked at her watch. Automatically, she moved a pad into place before her on the desk and began taking notes as Annie told her about the four-week, three-week, two-week cycle. As she continued listening, she jotted down the dates on which Mary Hollings had been raped: June 10, September 16, and October 7.

“That doesn’t jibe,” she said. “There’s a long gap between June and September.”

“Yeah, but if you count off the weeks — have you got a calendar there?”

“Just a sec,” Eileen said, and turned to the front page of Mary’s checkbook. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Just count out the weeks with me,” Annie said. “First rape, June tenth. Four weeks after that, July eighth. Three weeks after that, July twenty-ninth... are you following me?”

“Yeah?” Eileen said, puzzled.

“Okay. Two weeks after that, August twelfth. A week after that, August nineteenth. End of cycle. You beginning to see it?”

“Not yet.”

“Then stay with me. Four weeks after August nineteenth was September sixteenth... have you got those dates I gave you for the Hollings rapes?”

“Yes. September sixteenth, right, here it is.”

“Right. And when’s the next one?”

“October seventh.”

“Exactly three weeks later,” Annie said. “And what’s two weeks after that?”

“October twenty-first.”

“Tomorrow,” Annie said.

“So you think...”

“I think... look, who knows how this creep’s mind is working? There may not be a pattern at all, this may all be coincidence. But if there is a pattern, then Mary Hollings is the only victim he’s hit on Fridays and tomorrow’s Friday, and it happens to be two weeks from the last time she was raped.”

“Yeah,” Eileen said.

“What I’m saying...”

“I got it.”

“I’m saying be careful tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

“You think you might need a backup on this?”

“We might spook him. I’ll chance it alone.”

“Eileen... really. Be very careful.”

“Okay.”

“He has a knife.”

“I know.”

“He’s used it before...”

“I know.”

“So watch your step. He pulls that knife, don’t ask questions, just blow him away.”

“Okay.” She hesitated. “When do you think he’ll make his move?” she asked.

“It’s always been at night,” Annie said.

“So I got all day tomorrow to shop, and eat lunch in health food joints, and go to the museum or whatever, right?”

Annie laughed, and then sobered immediately.

“While you’re doing all that,” she said, “keep an eye out for him. If he’s going to hit tomorrow night, he may be tracking you.”

“Okay.”

“You sure you don’t want a backup?”

Eileen wasn’t sure. But she said, “I don’t want to lose him.”

“I’m not talking about men. We can throw a couple of lady cops in there.”

“He might smell them. We’re too close now, Annie.”

“Okay. But remember what I said. If he pulls that...”

“I’ve got it all.” She looked at her watch again. “That it?”

“Good luck,” Annie said, and hung up.

Two good lucks in the same night, Eileen thought as she put the receiver back on the cradle. I’m going to need it, that’s for damn sure. It was almost 10:30. If Bert was nothing else, he was punctual. She went back into the bedroom, debating putting on a nightgown, and decided on a pair of panties instead. She was about to draw the blinds when the telephone rang again. She went back into the living room, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she said.

“Honey, it’s me,” Kling said.

“Yes, Bert. I was just about to...”

“Listen, I’m sorry, but we got some names and addresses from Motor Vehicles on these hangings. The loot just phoned me, he wants us to hit them in three teams.”

“Oh,” Eileen said.

“So... uh... it’ll have to wait, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Eileen said.

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Kling said.

“Maybe.”

“I gotta run, Meyer’s picking me up in five minutes.”

“Okay, darling. Be careful.”

“You, too.”

There was a click on the line. Eileen hung up and walked back into the bedroom. As she was reaching for the hanging cords on the venetian blinds, it suddenly occurred to her that Bert’s idea wouldn’t have worked, anyway, there wasn’t a phone in the bedroom.

Sighing, she pulled the blinds shut.

From where he crouched behind the parapet of the roof opposite, binoculars to his eyes, he saw the blinds closing, his view into the bedroom suddenly replaced by a rectangle of light as impenetrable as a brick wall.

He’d been watching her ever since nightfall. Would have preferred following her all day long, but that was impossible. He wasn’t free until four, sometimes five, each afternoon. Even getting away at night was difficult, the excuses he had to make. Didn’t want to be away on too many nights because the nights dictated by the calendar had to be absolutely certain ones. Whatever else happened to fall on these nights, he’d say no, sorry I have to be someplace else. Here, there, anywhere. His excuses were bought. Not always without question, but always bought in the long run. He was a determined person. People had learned a long time ago that there was no sense trying to argue him out of any position he’d taken.

Mary Hollings should have learned that by now. Three times already. Tomorrow night would be the fourth time. Four should be enough, but five was better. If you could catch them five times, you were reasonably certain you had them right where you wanted them. He debated whether he should try going into her apartment again tomorrow night. Probably not. Too risky. Almost fell off the damn fire escape last time, lost his footing as he was climbing up, too risky. Left by the front door afterward, a lot safer, ran down the stairs, came out onto the street, hung around until he saw the police car arriving, knew she would call the police, she had each and every time.

Tomorrow night, he’d try to catch her on the street. Unless she didn’t go out. She’d gone to a movie last night, walked home afterward, perfect time to have caught her again, but he preferred doing it by the calendar. Too careless the other way. If you had a plan, you should follow it. Anyway, there were too many of them now. If you didn’t follow the calendar, you could lose track of which one was due, and then the whole plan would be screwed up. Even if opportunity seemed to present itself, as it had last night, it was better to show restraint and follow the dictates of the calendar.

Very busy tonight, Ms. Mary Hollings.

Strutting around the apartment as if she was looking for it to happen. Maybe she was. Damn hypocrites, all of them. All wanted the same thing, but pretended they were doing it for other reasons. Tried to sanitize the act by giving it loftier meaning. Tried to impose that meaning upon others. Denied the sex act itself as a means to an end. Never mind what they really felt about sex, never mind the little acts they did in private when he was watching them, forget all that. Pure in their minds, oh yes, but in their hearts—

The heart was quite another matter. The heart and the slit between the legs. Never mind what cause was being propounded in the head. The heart and the slit were what really governed them. Mary Hollings tonight. Stripping naked with the blinds open. Building here how many feet across the areaway? Anyone could have been watching. Wouldn’t even need binoculars to see what she was advertising, red hair and red bush, tits like melons. Ms. Mary Hollings who advocated a policy that denied sexuality in favor of femaleness, the same femaleness shared by any beast of the field. Dashed past the open blinds wearing nothing but a towel later on. Came back into the bedroom and put on a pair of panties. Stood admiring herself at the mirror, the blinds still open. Left the bedroom again to go into the living room — he knew the layout of the apartment, he’d been in there.

In her, too.

Three times.

Tomorrow night would be number four for Ms. Mary Hollings.

Tomorrow night.