Lightning

12

Annie went out with a vengeance.

Knowing what had happened to Eileen the night before, visualizing her torn and bleeding in that rain-swept alley, she knew only that the son of a bitch had to be stopped, and she prayed to God that when she caught up with him she simply didn’t shoot him dead before asking his name. She did not know what had happened to Teddy Carella yesterday afternoon in Phillip Logan’s office; she did not, in fact, even know Steve Carella except as the Chinese-looking detective who’d been sitting at one of the desks the first time she’d walked into the 87th Precinct squadroom. But had she known either of them, had she known that Teddy had been submitted to her own baptism of fire yesterday, she would have considered it only a less severe manifestation of what had happened to Eileen.

The call from Sergeant Murchison had come at exactly ten minutes to eight, five minutes after a radio motor patrol car from the Eight-Seven responded and found Eileen lying unconscious on the sidewalk under the call box. Annie had listened silently while Murchison gave her the news. She thanked him, put on her raincoat, and went out into the street where the lightning and thunder were gone but the rain persisted. By the time she arrived at the hospital, twelve stitches had already been taken in Eileen’s cheek. The emergency room doctor reported that Eileen had been sedated and was now asleep; they planned to keep her overnight for observation because she’d been in a state of shock when they admitted her. He would not allow Annie to see her, even though she tried to pull rank. Annie went home, called A.I.M. on the off chance someone might be there — it was almost ten o’clock by then — got no answer, and then looked up the home number of Polly Floyd, the A.I.M. supervisor she’d spoken to on the phone yesterday. She got no answer. She kept trying until midnight. Still no answer. She tossed and turned all night long, waiting for morning.

Again there was no answer when she called the A.I.M. offices at 9:00 A.M. She tried again at 9:15 and once more at 9:30, and then she dialed Polly Floyd’s home number. The phone rang repeatedly. Annie counted a dozen rings and was about to hang up when Polly at last answered the phone. Annie told her that she wanted to come to the office. Polly said the office was closed on Saturdays. Annie told her to open it. Polly said that was impossible. Annie told her to open it and to have the entire staff assembled there by eleven o’clock. Polly said she had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Annie took a deep breath.

“Miss Floyd,” she said, “I have a police officer in the hospital who was brought in last night with a knife wound that required twelve stitches. I can go all the way downtown to ask a judge for a search warrant, but I’ve got to tell you, Miss Floyd, I’ll be mean as hell if I have to go through all that trouble. What I’m suggesting...”

“Is this some sort of coercion?” Polly said.

“Yes,” Annie answered.

“I’ll see if I can round up the staff for you.”

“Thank you,” Annie said, and hung up.

The A.I.M. offices were at 832 Hall Avenue, above a bookstore that was going out of business. The building was six stories high, and the A.I.M. offices were on the third floor. Annie arrived there at a little before eleven. The small reception area beyond the frosted glass door looked like something a down-at-the-heels private eye might have inhabited were it not for the posters on all four walls. The posters were blown-up photographs showing fetuses in various stages of development. Across the top of each photo were the words “Against Infant Murder,” lettered in red and designed to look like dripping blood. Polly Floyd herself resembled a fetus in an advanced stage of development, a tiny, pink-faced, pink-fisted lady with short blonde hair and a mouth that looked as if it had never been kissed and never wanted to be kissed. Well, maybe Annie was wrong on that score; the woman hadn’t answered her phone at midnight last night, and it had taken her forever to get to it at 9:30 this morning.

Polly Floyd was in high dudgeon when Annie walked in. She immediately began complaining about police states and honest citizens being subjected to—

“I’m sorry,” Annie said, not sounding sorry at all. “But, as I told you on the phone, this is a matter of some urgency.”

“What does your cop have to do with us?” Polly asked. “If someone got himself stabbed...”

“Herself,” Annie said.

“Even so, what...?”

“Where’s your staff?” Annie asked abruptly. They were standing alone in the small reception room with its pictures of fetuses. Polly still hadn’t taken off her coat. Undoubtedly, she expected a brief meeting.

“They’re waiting in my office,” she said.

“How many on the staff?”

“Four.”

“Including you?”

“In addition to me.”

“Any of them men?”

“One.”

“I want to see him,” Annie said.

Seeing him was the first thing she wanted to do.

She had called the hospital again a half-hour ago, before leaving her apartment, to check on Eileen’s condition, and to talk to her if possible. When Eileen answered the phone in her room, she sounded drowsy, but she told Annie she was feeling okay — considering. Her description of the man who’d attacked her jibed exactly with the description the previous victims had given: White, thirty-ish, six feet tall, 180 pounds. Brown hair, blue eyes, no visible scars or tattoos.

The man waiting in Polly Floyd’s office was a scrawny black man in his sixties, about five feet eight inches tall, with brown eyes behind tortoiseshell eyeglasses, and a fringe of white hair circling his otherwise bald head.

There were three other people waiting in the room, all of them women.

Annie asked them to sit down.

Polly stood just inside the door, annoyed by this invasion of A.I.M.’s offices, further annoyed by the easy takeover of her own private office.

Annie asked the gathered staff if any of them were familiar with any of the following names, and then read them off: Lois Carmody, Terry Cooper, Patricia Ryan, Vivienne Chabrun, Angela Ferrari, Cecily Bainbridge, Blanca Diaz, Mary Hollings, and Janet Reilly.

Everyone in the room agreed that the names sounded familiar.

“They’ve all been contributors to A.I.M. at one time or another,” Annie said. “Isn’t that right?”

None of the staff knew if that was why the names sounded familiar to them.

“How many contributors do you have?” Annie asked.

Everyone on the staff looked at Polly Floyd.

“I’m sorry, but that’s our business,” Polly said. She was still standing just inside the doorway. She had not yet taken off her raincoat. Her arms were folded across her chest.

“Do you keep a list of your contributors?” Annie asked her.

“Yes, but the list is confidential.”

“Who has access to that list?” Annie asked.

“All of us. Everyone on the staff.”

“But you say the list is confidential.”

“Limited to staff access,” Polly said.

“Well,” the black man with the fringe of white hair said, “that isn’t quite...”

“In any event,” Polly interrupted, “the list is not available for police scrutiny.”

Annie turned to the man.

“I don’t believe I caught your name, sir,” she said.

“Eleazar Fitch,” he said.

“I like biblical names,” Annie said, and smiled.

“My father’s name was Elijah,” Fitch said, and returned the smile.

“You were saying, Mr. Fitch, about this list...?”

“Whatever it is you’re investigating,” Polly cut in, “we’re not interested in involvement.”

“Involvement?” Annie said.

“Involvement, yes. We don’t want A.I.M. linked in any way to the stabbing of a policewoman.”

“Which happens to be a Class-C felony,” Annie said, “punishable by three to fifteen years in prison. Rape, on the other hand...”

“Rape?” Polly said, and her pink face went white.

“Rape, Miss Floyd, is a Class-B felony, and you can get twenty-five years for that. This police officer was raped last night. Cut and raped, Miss Floyd. We have good reason to believe that her assailant is also responsible for the rapes of nine other women, eight of whom were contributors to A.I.M. What I want to know...”

“I’m sure their donations to A.I.M. had nothing whatever...”

“How can you know that for sure, Polly?” Fitch asked.

Polly Floyd turned pink again. Fitch stared at her for a moment, and then looked at Annie again.

“We sell our mailing list,” he said.

“To whom?” Annie said at once.

“To any responsible organization that—”

“Polly, you know that isn’t true,” Fitch interrupted, and turned to Annie again. “We’ll let anyone who makes a sizable donation have the list.”

“What do you consider sizable?” Annie asked.

“Anything over a hundred dollars.”

“So if I sent you a hundred dollars and requested your mailing list...”

“You’d get it in a minute.”

“Provided,” Polly said, “you also told us how you planned to use the list.”

“Is that true, Mr. Fitch?”

“We’ll send it to anyone interested in the pro-life movement,” Fitch said. “Express a sincere interest in the movement, request the mailing list, and send us a check for a hundred bucks. That’s it.”

“I see,” Annie said.

“We’re not Right To Life, you know,” Polly said defensively. “We don’t have giant corporations and trust funds making contributions to us. We’re new, we only started two years ago, we have to support our efforts by whatever means possible and ethical. There’s nothing wrong with supplying mailing lists to interested contributors, you know. You can buy or rent a mailing list for anything!”

“How many mailing lists have you distributed since the beginning of the year?” Annie asked.

“I have no idea,” Polly said.

“No more than ten,” Fitch said.

“All here in the city?”

“Most of them. Some of them were out of town.”

“How many in the city?”

“I don’t know, I’d have to look at the files.”

“You have the names and addresses on file?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I’d like to see them, please.”

“Giving you those names would be tantamount to invading the privacy of people who may not wish their privacy invaded,” Polly said.

Annie looked at her. She did not mention that telling a woman what she could or could not do about her own pregnancy might also be invading the privacy of someone who might not wish to have her privacy invaded.

She said only, “I guess I’ll have to get that court order, after all.”

“Give her the names,” Polly said.

She was sitting up in bed, her hands flat on the sheet, when Kling entered the room. Her head was turned away from him. The window oozed raindrops, framed a gray view of buildings beyond.

“Hi,” he said.

When she turned toward the door, he saw the bandage on her left cheek. A thick wad of cotton layers covered with adhesive plaster tape. She’d been crying; the flesh around her eyes was red and puffy. She smiled and lifted one hand from the sheet in greeting. The hand dropped again, limply, white against the white sheet.

“Hi,” she said.

He came to the bed. He kissed her on the cheek that wasn’t bandaged.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” she said.

“I was just talking to the doctor, he says they’ll be releasing you later today.”

“Good,” she said.

He did not know what else to say. He knew what had happened to her. He did not know what to say.

“Some cop, huh?” she said. “Let him scare me out of both my guns, let him...” She turned her face away again. Rain slithered down the window panes.

“He raped me, Bert.”

“I know.”

“How...?” Her voice caught. “How do you feel about that?”

“I want to kill him,” Kling said.

“Sure, but... how do... how do you feel about me getting raped?”

He looked at her, puzzled. Her head was still turned away from him, as though she were trying to hide the patch on her cheek and by extension the wound that testified to her surrender.

“About letting him rape me,” she said.

“You didn’t let him do anything.”

“I’m a cop,” she said.

“Honey...”

“I should have...” She shook her head. “I was too scared, Bert,” she said. Her voice was very low.

“I’ve been scared,” he said.

“I was afraid he’d kill me.”

She turned to look at him.

Their eyes met. Tears were forming in her eyes. She blinked them back.

“A cop isn’t supposed to get that scared, Bert. A cop is supposed to... to... I threw away my gun! The minute he stuck that knife in my ribs, I panicked, Bert, I threw away my gun! I had it in my hand but I threw it away!”

“I’d have done the same...”

“I had a spare in my boot, a little Browning. I reached into the boot, I had the gun in my hand, ready to fire, when he... he... cut me.”

Kling was silent.

“I didn’t think it would hurt that much, Bert. Getting cut. You cut yourself shaving your legs or your armpits, it stings for a minute but this was my face, Bert, he cut my face, and oh, Jesus, how it hurt! I’m no beauty, I know that, but it’s the only face I have, and when he...

“You’re gorgeous,” he said,

“Not anymore,” she said, and turned away from him again. “That was when I — when he cut me and I lost the second gun — that was when I knew I... I’d do... I’d do anything he wanted me to do. I let him rape me, Bert. I let him do it.”

“You’d be dead otherwise,” Kling said.

“So damn helpless,” she said, and shook her head again.

He said nothing.

“So now...” Her voice caught again. “I guess you’ll always wonder whether I was asking for it, huh?”

“Cut it out,” he said.

“Isn’t that what men are supposed to wonder when their wives or their girlfriends get...?”

“You were asking for it,” Kling said. “That’s why you were out there, that was your job. You were doing your job, Eileen, and you got hurt. And that’s...”

“I also got raped!” she said, and turned to him, her eyes flashing.

“That was part of getting hurt,” he said.

“No!” she said. “You’ve been hurt on the job, but nobody ever raped you afterward! There’s a difference, Bert.”

“I understand the difference,” he said.

“I’m not sure you do,” she said. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t be giving me this ‘line of duty’ bullshit!”

“Eileen...”

“He didn’t rape a cop, he raped a woman! He raped me, Bert! Because I’m a woman!”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know,” she said. “How can you know? You’re a man, and men don’t get raped.”

“Men get raped,” he said softly.

“Where?” she said. “In prison? Only because there aren’t any women handy.”

“Men get raped,” he said again, but did not elaborate.

She looked at him. The pain in his eyes was as deep as the pain she had felt last night when the knife ripped across her face. She kept studying his eyes, searching his face. Her anger dissipated. This was Bert sitting here with her, this was not some vague enemy named Man, this was Bert Kling — and he, after all, was not the man who’d raped her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s okay.”

“I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”

“Who else?” he said, and smiled.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Really.”

She searched for his hand. He took her hand in both his own.

“I never thought this could happen to me,” she said, and sighed. “Never in a million years. I’ve been scared out there, you’re always a little scared...”

“Yes,” he said.

“But I never thought this could happen. Remember how I used to kid around about my rape fantasies?”

“Yes.”

“It’s only a fantasy when it isn’t real,” she said. “I used to think... I guess I thought... I mean, I was scared, Bert, even with backups I was scared. But not of being raped. Hurt, maybe, but not raped. I was a cop, how could a cop possibly...?”

“You’re still a cop,” he said.

“You better believe it,” she said. “Remember what I was telling you? About feeling degraded by decoy work? About maybe asking for a transfer?”

“I remember.”

“Well, now they’ll have to blast me out of this job with dynamite.”

“Good,” he said, and kissed her hand.

“’Cause I mean... doesn’t somebody have to be out there? To make sure this doesn’t happen to other women? I mean, there has to be somebody out there, doesn’t there?”

“Sure,” he said. “You.”

“Yeah, me,” she said, and sighed deeply.

He held her hand to his cheek.

They were silent for several moments.

She almost turned her face away again.

Instead, she held his eyes with her own and said, “Will you...?”

Her voice caught again.

“Will you love me as much with a scar?”

Sometimes you got lucky first crack out of the box.

There had not been ten requests for mailing lists, as Eleazar Fitch had surmised, but only eight. Three of them were from out-of-towners who wished to start local pro-life groups of their own, and who were looking for organization support from previous contributors. Five of them were in the city: A group to support the strict surveillance of books on library shelves had requested the mailing list; a group opposed to young girls seeking birth control advice without the consent of their parents had also requested the list of contributors to A.I.M.; a group opposed to euthanasia had contributed a hundred dollars and asked for the list; an organization opposing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment had similarly requested the list. Only one of the requests had been made by a single individual. His letter to A.I.M. stated that he was preparing an article for a magazine named Our Right, and that he was interested in contacting supporters of A.I.M. with a view toward soliciting their opinions on pro-life.

His name was Arthur Haines.

Today was Saturday. Annie was hopeful that Arthur Haines would be home when she visited him. The address to which the mailing list had been sent was in a complex of garden apartments in a residential section of Majesta. It was still raining lightly when she got there. The walks outside were covered with wet leaves. Lights were showing inside many of the apartments, even though it was not yet 1:00 P.M. She found the address — a first-floor apartment in a red-brick three-story building — and rang the doorbell. The living room drapes were open. From where she stood outside the front door, she could see obliquely into the room. Two little girls — she guessed they were eight and six respectively — were sitting on the floor, watching an animated cartoon on the television screen. The eldest of the two nudged her younger sister the moment she heard the doorbell, obviously prodding her to answer it. The younger girl pulled a face, got to her feet, and came toward the front of the apartment, passing from Annie’s line of sight. From somewhere inside, a woman’s voice yelled, “Will one of you kids get the door, please?”

“I’m here, Mom!” the younger girl answered, just inside the door now. “Who is it?” she said.

“Police officer,” Annie said.

“Just a minute, please,” the girl said.

Annie waited. She could hear voices inside, the little girl telling her mother the police were at the door, the mother telling her daughter to go back and watch television.

Just inside the door now, the woman said, “Yes, who is it, please?”

“Police officer,” Annie said. “Could you open the door, please?”

The woman who opened the door was eminently pregnant, and possibly imminently so. It was almost one in the afternoon, but she was still wearing a bathrobe over a nightgown and she looked as bloated as anyone could possibly look, her huge belly starting somewhere just below her breasts and billowing outward, a giant dirigible of a woman with a doll’s face and a cupid’s bow mouth, no lipstick on it, no makeup on her eyes or face.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’m looking for Arthur Haines,” Annie said. “Is he here?”

“I’m Lois Haines, his wife. What is it, please?”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Annie said.

“What about?” Lois said.

She stood in the doorway like a belligerent elephant, frowning, obviously annoyed by this intrusion on a rainy Saturday.

“I’d like to ask him some questions,” Annie said.

“What about?” Lois insisted.

“Ma’am, may I come in, please?”

“Let me see your badge.”

Annie opened her handbag and took out the leather fob to which her shield was pinned. Lois studied it, and then said, “Well, I wish you’d tell me what...”

“Who is it, honey?” a man’s voice called.

Beyond Lois, who still stood in the doorway refusing entrance, her shoulders squared now and her belly aggressively jutting, Annie could see a tall, dark-haired man coming from the rear of the apartment. Lois stepped aside only slightly, turning to him, and Annie got a good look as he approached: Thirty-ish, she guessed. Easily six feet tall. A hundred and eighty pounds if he weighed an ounce. Brown hair and blue eyes.

“This woman wants to see you,” Lois said. “She says she’s a policeman.”

The word “policeman” amused Annie, but she did not smile. She was busy watching Haines as he came into the small entrance foyer now, a pleasant smile on his face.

“Well, come in,” he said. “What’s the matter with you, Lo? Don’t you know it’s raining out there? Come in, come in,” he said, and extended his hand as his wife stepped aside. “What’s this about, officer?” he said, shaking hands with Annie. “Am I illegally parked? I thought alternate side of the street regulations didn’t apply on weekends.”

“I don’t know where you’re parked,” Annie said. “I’m not here about your car, Mr. Haines.”

The three of them were standing now in an uneasy knot in the entrance foyer, the door closed against the rain, the two little girls turning their attention from the animated cartoon to the visitor who said she was a cop. They had never seen a real-life lady cop before. She didn’t even look like a cop. She was wearing a raincoat and eyeglasses spattered from the rain outside. She was carrying a leather bag slung from her left shoulder. She was wearing low-heeled walking shoes. The little girls thought she looked like their Aunt Josie in Maine. Their Aunt Josie was a social worker.

“Well, what is it then?” Haines said, “How can we help you?”

“Is there someplace we can talk privately?” Annie asked, glancing at the children.

“Sure, let’s go in the kitchen,” Haines said. “Honey, is there any coffee left on the stove? Would you care for a cup of coffee, Miss... I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Detective Anne Rawles,” Annie said.

“Well, come on in,” Haines said.

They went into the kitchen. Annie and Haines sat at the kitchen table. As Lois started for the stove, Annie said, “Thank you, Mrs. Haines, I don’t care for any coffee.”

“Fresh brewed this morning,” Lois said.

“Thank you, no. Mr. Haines,” Annie said, “did you write to an organization called A.I.M., requesting a list of their contributors?”

“Why, yes, I did,” Haines said, looking surprised. His wife was standing near the stove, watching him.

“How’d you plan to use that list?” Annie asked.

“I was preparing a paper on the attitudes and opinions of pro-life supporters.”

“For a magazine, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a writer, Mr. Haines?”

“No, I’m a teacher.”

“Where do you teach, Mr. Haines?”

“At the Oak Ridge Middle School.”

“Here in Majesta?”

“Yes, just a mile from here.”

“Do you frequently write articles for magazines, Mr. Haines?”

“Well...” he said, and glanced at his wife, as if deciding whether he should lie or not. She was still watching him intently. “No,” he said, “not as a usual practice.”

“But you thought you might like to write this particular article...”

“Yes. I enjoy the magazine, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. It’s called Our Right, and it’s published by a non-profit organization in...”

“So you contributed a hundred dollars to A.I.M. and asked for their mailing list, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“You gave somebody a hundred dollars?” Lois said.

“Yes, darling, I told you about it.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “A hundred dollars?” She shook her head in amazement.

“How much did you expect to get for this article you were writing?” Annie asked.

“Oh, I don’t know what they pay,” Haines said.

“Did the magazine know you were writing this article?”

“Well, no. I planned to write it and then simply submit it.”

“Send it to them.”

“Yes.”

“Hoping they would take it.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever actually write this article, Mr. Haines?”

“Uh... no... I never got around to it. I’m very involved in extracurricular activities at the school, you see. I teach English, and I’m faculty advisor for the school newspaper, and I’m also advisor for the drama club and the debating club, so it sometimes gets a bit hectic. I’ll get around to it, though.”

“Have you yet contacted any of the people on the mailing list A.I.M. supplied?”

“No, not yet,” Haines said. “I will, though. As I say, when I find some free time...”

“What did you say this article was going to be about?” Lois asked.

“Uh... pro-life,” Haines said. “The movement. The aims and attitudes of... uh... women who... uh...”

“When did you get to be such a big pro-lifer?” Lois asked.

“Well, it’s a matter of some interest to me,” Haines said.

His wife looked at him.

“Has been for a long time,” he said, and cleared his throat.

“That’s news to me, the fuss you made about this one,” Lois said, and clutched her belly as if it were an overripe watermelon.

“Lois...”

“Totally news to me,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “You should have heard him when I told him I was pregnant again,” she said to Annie.

Annie was watching him.

“I’m sure that’s of absolutely no interest to Miss Rawles,” Haines said. “As a matter of fact, Miss Rawles — should I call you Detective Rawles?”

“Either way is fine,” Annie said.

“Well, Miss Rawles, I wonder if you can tell me why you’re here. Has my letter to A.I.M. caused some sort of problem? Surely, an innocuous request for a mailing list...”

“I still can’t get over your paying a hundred dollars for a mailing list,” Lois said.

“It was a tax-deductible contribution,” Haines said.

“To a pro-life organization?” Lois said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.” She turned to Annie and said, “You live with a man for ten years, you still don’t really know him, do you?”

“I guess not,” Annie said. “Mr. Haines, do you know whether the following names were on the mailing list you received from A.I.M.?” She opened her notebook and began reading. “Lois Carmody, Blanca Diaz, Patricia Ryan...”

“No, I don’t know any of those names.”

“I didn’t ask you if you knew them, Mr. Haines. I asked if they’re on that list you got from A.I.M.”

“I would have to check the list,” Haines said. “If I can even find it.”

“Vivienne Chabrun?” Annie said. “Angela Ferrari? Terry Cooper...”

“No, I don’t know any of those people.”

“Cecily Bainbridge, Mary Hollings, Janet Reilly?”

“No,” Haines said.

“Eileen Burke?”

He looked puzzled for an instant.

“No,” he said. “None of them.”

“Mr. Haines,” Annie said, slowly and deliberately, “can you tell me where you were last night between seven-thirty and eight o’clock?”

“At the school,” Haines said. “The kids put the newspaper to bed on Friday night. That’s where I was. In the newspaper office at the Oak Ridge Middle...”

“What time did you leave here last night, Mr. Haines?”

“Well, actually, I didn’t come home. I had some papers to correct, and I guess I went directly from the faculty lounge to the newspaper office. To meet with the kids.”

“What time was that, Mr. Haines? When you met with the kids.”

“Oh, four o’clock. Four-thirty. They’re very hardworking kids, I’m really proud of the newspaper. It’s called the Oak Ridge...”

“What time did you get home last night, Mr. Haines?”

“Well, it only takes ten minutes to get here. It’s only a mile down the road. Actually, a mile and three-tenths.”

“So what time did you get home?”

“Eight o’clock? Wasn’t it somewhere around eight, Lo?”

“It was closer to ten,” Lois said. “I was already in bed.”

“Yes, somewhere in there,” Haines said. “Sometime between eight and ten.”

“It was ten minutes to ten exactly,” Lois said. “I looked at the clock when I heard you come in.”

“So you were in the school’s newspaper office...”

“Yes, I was.”

“From four o’clock yesterday afternoon...”

“Well, more like four-thirty. I’d say it was four-thirty.”

“From four-thirty to nine-forty. You said it takes ten minutes to get here, and you got home at nine-fifty...”

“Well, if Lois is sure about that. I thought it was closer to eight. When I got home, I mean.”

“That’s almost five hours,” Annie said. “Takes that long to put a newspaper to bed, does it?”

“Well, the time varies.”

“And you say you were working with the kids all that time?”

“Yes.”

“The kids on the newspaper staff.”

“Yes.”

“May I have their names, please, Mr. Haines?”

“What for?”

“I’d like to talk to them.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to know if you really were where you say you were last night.”

Haines looked at his wife. He turned back to Annie.

“I... don’t see why you feel it necessary to check on my whereabouts,” he said. “I still don’t know what you’re doing here. As a matter of fact...”

“Mr. Haines, were you in Isola last night? In the vicinity of 1840 Laramie Crescent between seven-thirty and...”

“I told you I was...”

“Were you, more specifically, in an alleyway...”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“...two doors down from 1840 Laramie Crescent...”

“I was...”

“...cutting and raping a woman you thought was Mary Hollings?”

“I don’t know anybody named...”

“Whom you’d previously raped on June tenth, September sixteenth, and October seventh?”

The kitchen was silent. Haines looked at his wife.

“I was at the school last night,” he said to her.

“Then give me the names of the kids you were working with,” Annie said.

“I was at the goddamn school!” Haines shouted.

“I washed your shirt this morning,” Lois said softly. She kept staring at him. “There was blood on the cuff.” She lowered her eyes. “I had to use cold water to get the blood out.”

One of the little girls appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Is something the matter?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Mr. Haines,” Annie said, “I’ll have to ask you to come with me.”

“Is something the matter?” the little girl asked again.

You want to know why, he said into the tape recorder, I’ll tell you why. I’ve got nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. If more people took the kind of stand I took, we wouldn’t be overrun by these goddamn groups trying to force their harebrained opinions on others. I didn’t hurt anyone by comparison. When you consider all the people they’re hurting, I’m practically a saint. Who did I hurt, can you tell me? I’m not talking about the two I had to cut, that was protective, that was self-defense in a way. But none of the others got hurt, all I did was try to show them how wrong they are about their position. How sometimes it’s essential to have an abortion. Something they can’t seem to get through their thick heads. I wanted to prove this to them decisively. I wanted them to get pregnant by a rapist. I wanted them to be forced into having abortions — would you carry a rapist’s baby? Would you give birth to a rapist’s baby? I’m sure you wouldn’t. And I was sure they wouldn’t, either, which is why I worked it out so that they’d have to get pregnant sooner or later. If I raped them often enough, they had to get pregnant. The odds were maybe sixty to forty they’d get pregnant. It was as simple as that.

You want to know something? Not any one of my kids was planned. The two little girls you saw? Both accidents. The one my wife’s carrying now, an accident. She’s Catholic, she won’t use anything but the rhythm method. You think she’d know by now that the damn thing doesn’t work — a kid sixteen months after we were married, another one two years after that. You’re supposed to learn from experience, aren’t you? I kept trying to tell her. Go on the pill, get a diaphragm, let me use a rubber. No, no. Against the rules of the church, you know. The rhythm method, that’s it. Or else abstinence. Great choices, huh? Rhythm or abstinence. I’m thirty-one years old, I’ve had children since I was twenty-three, that’s terrific, isn’t it? And now another one on the way. She told me about it in February. We’re going to have another baby, darling. Terrific. Really terrific. Just what I needed was another kid. I asked her to get an abortion. You’d think I asked her to drown herself. An abortion? Are you crazy? An abortion? Abortions are legal, I told her. This isn’t the Middle Ages, I told her. You don’t have to go through with a pregnancy if the child will be a burden to you. You just don’t have to. She said the church was against abortion. She said even a lot of people who weren’t Catholics disapproved of abortion and were working hard to change the law. She said the goddamn president of the United States disapproved of abortion! I told her the president wasn’t earning twenty thousand a year, I told her the president wasn’t out there busting his ass trying to clothe and feed and house a family, I told her the president wasn’t me, Arthur Haines, who didn’t want any more children! I’m thirty-one years old, I’ll be close to fifty when this new one is just starting college. She told me too bad, we’re having another baby, so get used to the idea.

I got used to the idea, all right. Not her idea, though. Mine. An idea I’d been thinking about for a long time. Get those goddamn women out there who are yelling no abortion, no abortion, put them in a position where they have to get an abortion, find out how they felt about it when it struck close to home. I wrote to Right to Life, trying to get a mailing list from them, but they told me I had to make my request on organization stationery, and I had to tell them how I planned to use the list. Well, I couldn’t do that. I mean, how could I do that? So I zeroed in on this local group, A.I.M. — Against Infant Murder, how do you like that name? — and I told them I was writing a magazine article in favor of pro-life, and I wanted to contact women supporters of the movement so that I could find out their deepest feelings about the subject, all that bullshit, and they wrote back saying they could not send the mailing list to anyone who did not first contribute at least a hundred dollars in support of the organization. I figured a hundred dollars was small enough price for what I planned to do, what I knew I had to do.

The mailing list didn’t tell me anything about their religious affiliations. They had to be Catholics, you see. I mean, if a woman was a Protestant or whatever, she could be supporting a pro-life group and using a diaphragm at the same time, do you understand what I mean. I mean, the idea was to make them pregnant. If I went out after a Baptist or whatever, a Hindu, you know what I mean, I’d be spending all my time and energy for nothing if she happened to be on the pill or had an I.U.D. in there, it would just be a waste of time. So I followed them around — I didn’t bother with anybody who had a name like Kaplowitz or Cohen, I knew right off they were Jewish — and I found out pretty fast who was going to a Catholic church on Sunday morning and who wasn’t. I singled out the Catholics. I singled out all the Catholics who’d made contributions to A.I.M. The Catholics were my targets. I wanted to show them first that you could take the rhythm method and shove it, and I wanted to show them next that they were dead wrong when it came to abortion, if they had to get an abortion they’d go get it, all right, and in a hurry.

It was just coincidence that the first was named Lois.

I mean, my wife’s name happens to be Lois, but that wasn’t why I chose Lois Carmody. I mean, that was just coincidental. Lois Carmody — that just happened to be her name. She lived pretty close by, the first few times out, I didn’t want to be away from home too long, I didn’t want to have to make a hundred explanations. I mean, I refined it after a while, not everybody on the list lived a half-hour away, I had to find plausible excuses for being away, do you understand? I refined it. So I wouldn’t have trouble at home. I got enough flak as it was, believe me, but she never really knew what I was doing, my wife — she accused me of having an affair once, can you imagine? That’s pretty funny don’t you think? An affair? I mean, if you wanted to get technical, I was having a lot of affairs. Well, when she accused me that time, there weren’t as many then, this was before the summer vacation. I get July and August off, we usually go up to Maine to spend the summer months with her parents up there. I hate it, but what other kind of vacation can I afford? Anyway, this was in June when she accused me of having an affair. I didn’t do Mary and then Janet until the school term started again.

I nailed one of them the first time out.

She isn’t on your list of names, I guess you were just looking for repeaters, huh? I mean, women who were raped more than once. It’s amazing how you got to me. Really amazing! You people must work very hard. Anyway, I got this woman — her name was Joanna Little, she’s on the mailing list, but not on the list you read to me — I got her for the first time, the only time as it turned out, in March, she was one of the early ones. I was planning on getting her again — it doesn’t work unless you watch the calendar and get to them on a regular basis — but next thing I knew, I was following her around and she’s on the street big as a house! I caught her the first time out! That can happen, you know. And then I know she had an abortion because I followed her to the clinic one Saturday, and goodbye belly, all gone. I’d done what I wanted to do, do you see? It worked. I’d made her pregnant and forced her to have an abortion. Big Catholic! Big pro-life supporter! Got rid of that baby the way she would an old pair of socks. I went out to get drunk that night. Came home stinking drunk, Lois took a fit, well, the hell with Lois, popping out babies as if she’s an assembly line. But that was just luck, getting Joanna the first time around. I knew that was just luck.

What you have to do, you see, is you make out this calendar, and you keep careful track of each time you get them. I mean, you lay it all out in advance. You have to get them according to the cycle, you see. Listen, I know all about the rhythm method, I’m an expert on the rhythm method. A women’s menstrual cycle — I don’t care if it’s twenty-eight days or thirty days or whatever — the woman usually starts ovulating on the twelfth day of her cycle. Those are the crucial days, the twelfth, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth day. You can expand that a bit, you can say the eleventh day to the fifteenth day, or even the sixteenth day in some cases. But I figured the eleventh to the fifteenth were the outer limits. The egg lasts about twelve hours, and the sperm about twenty-four — though some doctors say the sperm can last as long as seventy-two. Still, if you didn’t want to take any chances, you had to figure the best time was the eleventh to the fifteenth day of their menstrual cycles. That was when they had the best chance of getting pregnant — when they were ovulating, you see.

Well, I couldn’t just go up to these women and ask them when they had their last period, could I? I mean, that was out of the question. These were strangers, I didn’t know them. It wasn’t the same as with a wife or a girlfriend, where you’re living with them and sleeping with them, and you know when they’re about to get their period, it wasn’t the same thing at all. These were total strangers, do you understand? So I had to figure out for myself when they’d be ripe, and what I did — well, look at the calendar.

Let’s take — well, let’s take August, for example, which is an easy one because the first happened to fall on a Monday. I was away in August, I was up in Maine. I’m only using this as an example. But... well here. In August, the first is a Monday. Let’s also say, to make it simple, that this also happens to be the first day of this particular woman’s menstrual cycle. Okay, I rape her that Monday night. The next Monday night is the eighth, which is the eighth day of her cycle, I’m making this easy for you so you can follow it. The Monday after that is the fifteenth. See? I caught her on the fifteenth day, which is one of the days she’s ovulating. Good. In a case like that, I wouldn’t even have to try getting her a fourth or fifth time. But if you carry it out on the calendar, I mean, it has to work out that sooner or later you’ll catch her.

In August, for example, the twenty-second would have been the twenty-second day of her cycle. The next Monday is the twenty-ninth, which with some women could be the start of a new cycle, it varies. So let’s say the cycle starts all over again on Monday, August twenty-ninth. If we move into September... well, here the next Monday is the fifth. This, now is the eighth day of her cycle. The next Monday is the twelfth, which happens to be the fifteenth day of her cycle, so there we are again — bingo! I figured it was foolproof. I mean, if you got them on a carefully thought-out schedule, they had to get pregnant sooner or later. And unless they wanted to be carrying a rapist’s baby, they also had to get an abortion.

It was as simple as that.

I was doing this to show these people how wrong they are.

To show them that they cannot simply impose their will upon others.

To drive home to them the fact that this is a democracy, and in a democracy there is freedom of choice for one and for all.

Annie read the transcript typed from Haines’s confession.

She read it yet another time.

Haines thought the right was wrong.

The right thought it was right.

Annie thought they were both wrong.

She sometimes wondered what would happen if people just left other people alone.

The wind and the rain had stopped.

In Grover Park, across the street from the 87th Precinct, the trees were bare, the ground covered with lifeless leaves.

“Well,” Meyer said, “at least the rain’s stopped.”

They were all thinking that winter was on the way.

The feelings were mixed in the squadroom that Saturday afternoon. They all knew what had happened to Eileen Burke. They further knew that Annie Rawles had collared the rapist. But they didn’t know what Kling was feeling, or how carefully they might have to tiptoe around him when the matter of Eileen’s rape finally came out into the open. He was at the hospital just now. He’d been there early this morning, and he was there again now, and so there was yet time to explore and consider what their approach might be. You didn’t simply go up to somebody whose girl had been raped, and say, “Hi, Bert, rain seems to have stopped, I hear Eileen got raped.” There were ways of handling this, they were sure, but they still hadn’t figured out how to deal with it.

Until Fat Ollie Weeks called.

“Hey, Steve-a-rino, how you doin’?” he said into the phone.

“Pretty good,” Carella said. “How about you?”

“Oh, fine, fine, usual horseshit up here,” Ollie said. “I got to tell you buddy, I’m seriously thinking of transferring to the Eight-Seven. I really like working with you guys.”

Carella said nothing.

“Did you see the papers today?” Ollie asked.

“No,” Carella said.

“Full of our Road Runner nut,” Ollie said. “All the headlines yelling ‘Lightning Strikes Twice.’ I guess he got what he wanted, huh? He’s famous all over again.”

“If that’s fame,” Carella said.

“Yeah, well, who knows with these nuts?” Ollie said, and then added, quite casually, “I hear Kling’s girl got herself fucked last night.”

There was a silence as vast as Siberia on the line.

At last, Carella said, “Ollie, don’t ever say that again.”

“What?” Ollie said.

“What you just said. Don’t ever let those words pass your lips again, Ollie, do you hear me? Don’t repeat them to anyone in the world. Not even to your mother. Is that...?”

“My mother’s dead,” Ollie said.

“Is that clear?” Carella said.

“What’s the big deal?” Ollie said.

“The big deal is she’s one of ours,” Carella said.

“So she’s a cop, big deal. What’s that...?”

“No, Ollie,” Carella said. “She’s one of ours. Have you got that, Ollie?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it, relax, willya? My lips are sealed.”

“I hope so,” Carella said.

“Boy, you’re some grump today,” Ollie said. “Give me a call when you’re in a better mood, okay?”

“Sure,” Carella said.

“Ciao, paisan,” Ollie said, and hung up.

Carella gently replaced the receiver on the cradle.

He was thinking that if Kling was hurting, they were all hurting. It was really as simple as that.

“Best thing about Lightning,” Hawes said, “is he wasn’t the Deaf Man.”

“I was afraid it might be him, too,” Meyer said.

“Me, too,” Carella said.

“Seemed like the man’s style,” Brown said.

“Anybody want coffee?” Meyer asked.

“Bad enough as it was,” Hawes said.

“Coulda been worse,” Brown said.

“Coulda really been the Deaf Man,” Carella said.

Miscolo came down the hall from the Clerical Office, pushed his way through the slatted rail divider, and walked directly to Carella’s desk.

“Just the man we want to see,” Meyer said. “You got any coffee brewing in the Clerical Office?”

“I thought you didn’t like my coffee,” Miscolo said.

“We love your coffee,” Brown said.

“Go down the street to the diner, you want coffee,” Miscolo said.

“Getting cold out there,” Hawes said.

“I don’t need fair weather coffee drinkers,” Miscolo said. “This is for you, Steve. Sergeant sent it up a few minutes ago.” He tossed a plain white envelope on the desk. “No return address on it.”

Carella looked at the face of the envelope. It was addressed to him at the 87th Precinct. The envelope carried an Isola postmark.

“Open it,” Miscolo said. “I’m dying of curiosity.”

“Teddy know you got a girlfriend writing to you here?” Hawes asked, and winked at Meyer.

Carella slit open the envelope.

“What’d you do with your rug?” Brown asked Meyer. “You could use it, kind of weather we’ll be having.”

Carella unfolded the single sheet of paper that had been inside the envelope. He looked at it. Meyer noticed that his face went suddenly white.

“What is it?” he said.

The squadroom was silent all at once. The men crowded around Carella’s desk where Carella held the sheet of paper in his hand. It seemed to Hawes that his hand was shaking slightly. They all looked at the sheet of paper:

“Eight black horses,” Meyer said.

“The Deaf Man,” Brown said.

He was back.