Nightlines

XIX

Nudger bounced along Grand Avenue in the Volkswagen, wondering how he really felt about what Laura Cather had told him. How would he feel about it tomorrow? He was shaken and befuddled, devoid of answers and afraid of what they might be when they took form. He couldn't imagine Claudia harming anyone, becoming uncontrollably angry, yet he had been told that she'd been caught in a pattern of pain and violence. Trapped by her past, and now trapped again because of Ralph Ferris. Claudia had been painted as victim rather than perpetrator by two people who knew her well and long. They had wanted to tell him about her to judge his reaction, to protect her. Nudger wasn't sure himself of his reaction.

When he saw a phone booth on the corner of a service station lot, he pulled in and parked next to it. Holding one ear with a cupped hand to block the sounds of traffic, he stood in the booth and listened to Jeanette's phone ring.

No answer. Maybe she was working again today for the temporary-help firm that sent her out on part-time secretarial jobs, and so hadn't made any nightline appointments. Nudger thought that would be all right. They might not make any progress on the case, but then they weren't exactly leaping from clue to clue anyway. And Jeanette would stay out of trouble for a while and be able to afford his fee.

He hung up the phone, got back into the car, and drove on toward his office. There he would check his mail, then phone Natalie Mallowan on the pretense of inquiring about Ringo's well-being and apply gentle persuasion in an attempt to hurry payment of his nine hundred dollars. It was lunchtime, but he wasn't hungry and wouldn't stop anywhere. There was no point in eating anyway until he'd checked the mail for McDonald's coupons.

As he parked near his office he forgot all about lunch and looking at the mail and phoning Natalie Mallowan. A Third District patrol car was parked at the curb in front of Danny's Donuts. As Nudger crossed Manchester, Danny appeared at the doughnut-shop window and motioned with a nod of his long head toward the car, indicating that it was there because of Nudger.

Nudger walked past the car, waiting for the voice he knew would come.

"You Nudger?"

He turned. There were two blue uniforms in the car. The one on the curbside had the door open and was leaning out, waiting for Nudger's answer. He had a deadpan face with eyes as full of expression as shirt buttons.

It suddenly occurred to Nudger why the uniforms might be there. Claudia! In that instant he knew exactly how he felt about her. It was the way he had felt before his conversation with Laura Cather.

"I'm Nudger," he said, walking toward the car. "What's this about?"

"Lieutenant Hammersmith sent us to pick you up and drive you to where he is. Wants you to get there before they remove a body." He climbed out of the car, a big man with the back of his blue shirt dark with perspiration. He held open the car's rear door for Nudger.

"Where is he, goddammit?" Nudger demanded.

The uniform looked surprised, but only for a moment. "Over on Utah at a murder scene," he said. "Woman got herself killed. The lieutenant thought you'd be interested."

Nudger breathed out hard. Utah Avenue! Not Claudia, a woman on Utah! His world had lurched to a stop, then started again. He nodded to the uniform and got into the car.

Utah wasn't far from where Laura Cather lived on Wyoming. They drove back the way Nudger had just come, down Highway 44, then south on Grand. The scenery was still vivid in Nudger's mind, only running in reverse, lending what was happening the air of a recurring bad dream. For a murdered woman on Utah it had been more than a dream; it had been the end of dreams.

The scene of this murder was a brick two-family flat on a good block of Utah. Property here had become expensive despite its near proximity to poverty. The higher tone of the neighborhood hadn't helped; sex murderers were more likely to be influenced by a full moon than by property assessments. The flat's front porch was wide, with brick columns, and featured the ornate stonework that was prevalent in this part of town and that "craftsmen" would charge prohibitively for today, in this the age of the plastic heirloom.

One of the blue uniforms directed Nudger to the door on the right, to the ground-floor unit. Nudger immediately recognized the faint odor of putrefaction as he pushed open the door and stepped into a spacious beige living room decorated with too many potted plants. Something bitter moved at the back of his throat.

"Deja vu, Nudge," Hammersmith said, waving to him from a doorway in the hall.

When Nudger approached, Hammersmith said, "I leave it up to you as to whether you want to look at this one."

Nudger felt his stomach drop a few notches. Beyond Hammersmith, a couple of police technicians inside the bathroom were wearing surgical masks as they went about their specialized tasks. The stench here was horrible, much worse than at the Valpone apartment. Nudger wondered how Hammersmith could stand it.

"The heat did it to her," Hammersmith said, reading Nudger's sickly expression. "She hasn't been dead much longer than Grace Valpone was when we found her, but the bathroom faces south and catches too much sun. I'm afraid it'll make determining the exact time of death a little tricky."

"Have you got an estimate?" Nudger asked.

"The ME's preliminary guess is that she's been dead about two days, two warm days."

A plainclothes cop came out of the bathroom with an alcohol-soaked handkerchief pressed to his nose and mouth. He was greener than the giant who sold peas, and not half as jolly. He seemed to stagger slightly as he walked down the hall, then he got in a big hurry.

Nudger looked at Hammersmith, who gazed back at him and shrugged. Here we go! Clutching his roiling stomach, Nudger slid around Hammersmith and stepped far enough into the bathroom to see the body.

After a glance he backed away and hurried into the kitchen, where he immediately vomited into the sink. He saw that he wasn't the first to use the facility, as he reached up feebly and ran the cold tap water.

Hammersmith had followed him and was standing waiting patiently for the retching to stop.

After several minutes, Nudger finally straightened, his hands still resting on the sink. He felt weak and figured he must be as pale and green as the cop with the handkerchief. He thought he might start trembling; he didn't want that. There was enough machismo lost in being green.

"Let's go out on the back porch," Hammersmith suggested, "get some fresh air." He threw a sliding bolt lock, shoved open the kitchen door to the rear porch, and let Nudger step out in front of him.

They were looking out over a gray, freshly painted wood rail at a small but neat backyard. There was a two-car brick garage there, with a flagstone walk leading back to it. Thick white corner posts at the gray railing supported an identical porch upstairs. In a far corner of the porch were a metal pan half full of water and a thick china bowl containing a lump of fly-covered spoiled dog food or cat food, the kind pet owners buy because it resembles hamburger and they'd like it if they were in the role of pet. Nudger looked away from that.

"This one is even worse than Valpone," Hammersmith observed.

And the five-minute-old image was there again in Nudger's mind: a smallish dark-haired woman in her bath, nude, one breast gone, her throat slashed with such brutal force that she was nearly decapitated. This time there was blood on the floor and walls, not much, but some. Maybe she'd fought harder than the others; maybe the life force had been stronger in her.

"Her name was Susan Merriweather," Hammersmith said. "Twenty-seven years old. Too damned young to die like that. She lived alone, worked as a loan manager at a bank, and had lots of acquaintances but few close friends. She partied now and then, but mostly led a quiet life."

"And met a quiet, nasty death."

"Yeah." Hammersmith caressed the cellophaned tip of a cigar protruding from his shirt pocket, then withdrew his hand. "He worked on her systematically before or after she was dead, or both. Same kind of mutilation as the Valpone woman had, only more so. Much more so."

"I saw," Nudger said, his stomach cartwheeling at the thought of dried blood, gristle, and bone; the Death inside us all.

"You want to sit down?" Hammersmith asked, motioning toward the wooden steps.

Nudger sat down. Hammersmith sat beside him, a step higher. They watched the neighbor's sad-looking beagle amble over to the fence and gaze through the chain link, wondering what all the human fuss was about, then amble away toward some shade.

"Things have firmed up, Nudge," Hammersmith said. "There was a six-six-six number on a slip of paper near Susan Merriweather's phone. And the fingerprint team picked up some smudged prints in a blood smear. I sent them down to Headquarters for a rush ID."

"Hear anything yet?"

"Only that they match exactly the abnormally large size and spread of the prints found in Jenine Boyington's apartment."

Nudger nodded, thinking. He hadn't really doubted the connection between the killings, but this confirmed it. More than that, it placed him on different, more dangerous, ground. It was assumed now by people other than Jeanette Boyington and Nudger that a mass murderer was operating in the city, insatiable and unpredictable, taking his victims in seemingly random harvest. Nudger experienced a fear he couldn't quite define, as if the laws of the universe were, after all, a farce, a grisly celestial joke, and there was nothing but black chaos where he had assumed there was some kind of order and meaning. Theory had become terrifying fact; madness had been stamped official.

"The murders figure to be done by the same perp," Hammersmith was saying. "Jenine Boyington, Grace Valpone, and now Susan Merriweather, all killed more or less the same way and within a relatively short time of each other. We checked on all similar murders, Nudge, put the old computer to work. There were several resting in the back files, four possible tie- ins and three that I'd bet were committed by the killer who did the work on Boyington, Valpone, and Merriweather. They were there all the time in Records, dating back three years."

"Why didn't you draw a connection until now?" Nudger asked.

Hammersmith shook his broad head sadly, his jowls swaying. "There are hundreds of homicides every year in the metropolitan area, Nudge. The ones done by this killer before his last three were simply unsolved and categorized under 'inactive,' lost in the statistics."

Lost in the statistics. Nudger remembered Jeanette Boy- ington saying that, when she'd hired him to find her twin's murderer. He had listened to her mass murder theory mainly because he was between cases while his rent rolled on. The needy ear of poverty. Nobody else would have bought the idea. Maybe you didn't have to be dead to be lost in the statistics.

"Whatever our past oversights," Hammersmith said, "we have to take it from where we are. The news media is on to this now, and the case is top priority with the department. More manpower's been assigned and the Major Case Squad is involved. Leo Springer is involved. You better walk easy, Nudge, thinking all the time about where you're stepping."

"Because of Springer and departmental politics and PR?"

"All that and something else. The killer is murdering more frequently, more violently. Even the computer noticed. The time span between Jenine Boyington and Grace Valpone was two weeks, but between Grace Valpone and Susan Merriweather, only days. He's getting more careless, more frenzied, more dangerous. This killing won't keep him satisfied and inactive for long. You clue us in on what you're doing, huh? You still using the Boyington girl to make dates over the nightlines?"

Nudger nodded.

"Anything come of it?"

Nudger shook his head no.

"Reticence can get you killed or unemployed," Hammersmith said, irritated. Irritated enough to disregard Nudger's delicate stomach and unwrap one of his greenish fat cigars. He struck a match, puffed like the little engine that could. "Shwoo… loyalty to a shwoo… client has its shwoo… limits, Nudge."

"Legal limits," Nudger corrected. His stomach was going on carnival rides; bile rose in his throat. "Can I go now, or am I under arrest?"

Hammersmith showed mercy, withdrawing the cigar from his mouth and holding it out over the railing. Smoke drifted away over the backyard as if there had been an explosion. "The kind of case it's become, Nudge, if we can't collar anyone else, maybe we'll settle for you."

"Maybe I did it."

"You only think you're joking. This case can get out of control in ways you wouldn't believe. And other than the killer, nobody is more in the middle of it than you."

"You have a point."

"Think of our Chief of Police and the special problems of his office; think of Captain Massey and his Major Case Squad; think of Leo Springer and his maladjusted libido. Reputations must be protected."

"But not mine."

"No, not yours. Not as far as the powers that be are concerned. It'll be a bounty of luck if you come out of this without wearing some kind of goat's bell around your neck. Maybe they won't break the electric chair out of storage just for you, but there's your investigator's license to consider, your ability to work in this Baghdad on the Mississippi. You could be a stopgap suspect and a big loser."

"You always understood these things, Jack." Nudger stood up and tucked in his shirt. "I appreciate the wise words. Really."

"Do take care, Nudge."

Nudger went down the porch steps and cut through the narrow, cool gangway so he wouldn't have to walk back through the murder scene. He wondered if Hammersmith had been completely serious about the department's possibly being pressured into manufacturing a suspect to tide them over until the real killer was found. It had happened before and would happen again, so why not to Nudger? There were those who would smilingly attest to his bad character.

He reached the sidewalk at the same time as the assistant ME, who had left through the front door. The man recognized Nudger from Grace Valpone's apartment and nodded to him. "Deja vu," he said. French was in the air.

Suddenly remembering that he didn't have his car here, Nudger decided that he didn't want to be driven back to his office by the same two blue uniforms. He hitched a ride with the ME to a sandwich shop on Grand, where he phoned for a cab and sat brooding over a diet cola, waiting, thinking about a maniacal killer who was like a time bomb with multiple warheads, each exploding closer and with more force than the last. Deja vu! Deja vu! Deja vu!