Nightlines

XXV

It's for you," Claudia said again.

Nudger awoke slowly and opened his eyes to see her sitting up in bed, carefully extending the phone's white receiver toward him with both hands, as if it were alive and fragile. Her dark hair was mussed in a way he liked, but her eyes bothered him. They seemed to be puffy from more than simply too much sleep.

Accepting the receiver, he pushed himself up to brace his shoulders against the headboard. Beside him, the sheets rustled as Claudia settled back down. The room was quiet, the air heavy, hazed by the morning sunlight knifing dustily between the blinds. Nudger pressed the cool receiver to his ear, managed to separate his dry lips, croaked a hello. Could that have been his voice?

"Are you awake enough to hear about Luther Kell?" Hammersmith asked.

"Sure, it's already almost seven o'clock." "Folks like us have to rise before dawn to get a jump on evil," Hammersmith said. "Early birds of the law, foraging for the worm of crime."

"Luther Kell," Nudger reminded him.

"Oh, him. Mr. Anonymous. Male Caucasian, thirty-three, unmarried, no police record, no military service."

"Prints on file?"

"No. But then they wouldn't be, without the police, military, or Civil Service in his past."

Nudger felt weighted by disappointment. He'd hoped that Kell would have a police record with convictions hinting at or leading up to murder. He'd hoped Kell's prints would somehow match the smudged ones found in Jenine Boyington's apartment. These were the kinds of hopes that were bound to be dashed, but which Nudger seemed unable to cease embracing.

Hammersmith said, around a morning cigar, "Kell sheems sholid and waw-abiding." He puffed and wheezed repeatedly until the coarse tobacco was burning fiercely enough to trust not to go out in his desk ashtray. "Sorry, Nudge, the guy is a white-hat type."

"Not necessarily."

"Nothing is."

"Has the Major Case Squad come up with anything?"

Hammersmith chuckled. "Massey's as busy trying to placate the mayor and news media as he is trying to conjure up a reasonable suspect. Besides issuing not untrue statements and doing routine legwork, very little can be accomplished at this point. The idea is to quiet the clamor while gaining time for the machinery of the law to grind slowly and exceedingly fine."

"Makes sense," Nudger said.

"More sense than you're gonna like. Before we grind, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff. You're chaff, Nudge."

"There's not a grain of truth in that."

"Truth enough," Hammersmith said, puffing on his cigar. He exhaled loudly, maybe in an exasperated sigh. "Springer and Massey had a long talk about you. Springer thinks you should bow out of the case. Massey agrees. I wasn't consulted. That's a bureaucracy for you, Nudge."

"That's Springer for you."

"Yeah, he's a brass-knuckle political infighter, cutting down on the number of people who might get credit in the game he's playing. But why should you care; you're only trying to make a living." Hammersmith's tone left no doubt about what he thought of Leo Springer as a cop. "The thing is you've got no choice, Nudge. Bow out."

"I will," Nudger said, "as soon as I'm officially instructed."

"Fair enough. Springer's sent a couple of blue uniforms to your apartment and office to bring you in for a chat with him. A judicious use of manpower."

"Isn't it, though," Nudger said in disgust. "And just when I didn't want to be reined in."

"Sorry about this, Nudge. Life's a Popsicle with a sharp stick."

"And melting fast. I'll stay scarce. Thanks, Jack."

"For what?"

Hammersmith hung up abruptly. As far as he was concerned, the conversation hadn't occurred. He had a sane cop's knack of blanking out pieces of time. That's how a sane cop stayed sane.

Nudger handed the receiver to Claudia, who untangled the cord from around her arm and reached to the night- stand. Plastic clattered on plastic as she hung up the phone.

"Business call?" she asked, turning onto her side to face Nudger.

"The police are going to tell me to back away."

"What about Kell?"

"He doesn't have an arrest record. A solid citizen without blemish."

"Does that eliminate him as a suspect?"

"Not in my mind," Nudger said. "I saw the expression on his face while he was waiting for Jeanette Boyington in the mall. It was something more than lascivious, something more subtle and harder to read, but spooky."

"Maybe he was thinking of a lesser crime, like rape."

"Or maybe he was hungry and thinking about onion soup."

"That isn't spooky."

"You can say that, not being an onion."

"What are you going to do now?"

"Take you out for breakfast. Want to shower together?"

"Yes to breakfast, no to mutual shower."

She rotated on the mattress and stood up, her body a golden glimpse as she crossed a bright swirl of sunlight and left the room. A faucet handle squeaked, a water pipe rattled, and the shower began to hiss. Nudger patiently waited his turn.

From where Claudia lived, it was only a short drive to the riverfront. Nudger detoured through the brick-paved streets of Laclede's Landing and bought a morning Globe, then drove down a steep grade to the riverfront McDonald's.

He and Claudia sat at a deck table on the converted barge and watched the Mississippi roll by as they worried their Egg McMuffins. Nudger studied the newspaper for a few minutes. Hammersmith was right about the media's applying pressure. The suddenly discovered series of murders dominated the front page. Wily Captain Massey was quoted at length, saying absolutely nothing concrete yet somehow giving the impression that strides were being taken along the road to ultimate justice. A police artist had even whipped up a composite drawing of a suspect based on Grace Valpone's neighbors' description of a man they thought might have visited her occasionally. The drawing vaguely resembled Leo Springer, Nudger thought, and didn't look at all like Luther Kell. Not that it mattered. This suspect, if he even existed outside of police wishful thinking, would probably turn out to be a deliveryman or an insurance adjuster. Or possibly Grace Valpone had had a fiance and a male friend who hadn't killed her. Some women did.

Setting the folded paper aside, Nudger looked up to see that Claudia hadn't eaten any of her breakfast and was gazing at the dark, half-submerged humanesque forms of driftwood carried on the muddy current. She seemed to be staring into her own depths as well as those of the river.

"Is it that hypnotic?" Nudger asked.

Her body jerked and she looked up at him, interrupted from whatever she'd been thinking, wherever she had been. "I suppose it is," she said, turning back to the wide, sliding river. "Always on its way somewhere, doomed never to get there, like me."

"It's a strained analogy," Nudger told her. "I've never seen any barge traffic on you."

She smiled, nothing more than a twitch of her facial muscles, without humor. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be maudlin."

Nudger sipped his coffee and looked upriver to where the Huck Finn, an elaborate stern-wheeler excursion boat, was docked near the silver leap of the Arch. Beyond it, traffic was moving, distant and reflective, across Ead's Bridge into Illinois. A faraway tugboat whistle blasted a lilting note, like a sad warning. Nudger was afraid. He didn't understand the capricious dark wind that might at any time catch Claudia and carry her away from him.

"Are you okay?" he asked, resting his hand on her arm.

"Sure." She smiled again, this time maybe meaning it.

Nudger sat back and watched her try to eat. She managed a few small bites, then pushed the food away and concentrated on her coffee.

"Do you ever think about going back to teaching?" he asked.

"No, I haven't for a long time. I don't see why I should think about it. Anyway, I've got a job."

"You've got a profession, too."

"You mean I used to have a profession."

"I know a woman who's headmistress of a private girls' high school in the county. She owes me, or feels that she does. I could talk to her, see if there is or will be an opening to teach, ask her to interview you."

"I'd have to tell her the truth. Would you hire a convicted child abuser? A murderess? Someone who let her own daughter…"

"You didn't leave that window open on purpose, Claudia."

"My baby…" she said, simply and sadly, with a grief so vast her words seemed to echo in it. Her expression didn't change and her eyes remained dry; she was in a place beyond tears.

"You didn't deliberately cause Vicki's death," Nudger said firmly. "You should believe that. You have to believe it!"

"Sure. Dr. Oliver agrees with you. He used hypnosis, had me relive that night in my mind. But that was only in my mind."

"So is your guilt."

"Maybe all guilty people convince themselves of that."

"And maybe some who are innocent," Nudger said. "I'd hire you."

"Not if you wanted to keep your job. What would happen if the parents found out about my past?"

"Who knows? It might be rough, but maybe you could stick it out, with the proper backing. Enough of the faculty and parents might understand your situation and support you."

"Probably not."

"Then you'd lose your job. You'd get another job."

She bit her lower lip and studied Nudger with her dark, dark eyes. She'd artfully applied a lot of makeup around them, but cruel daylight confirmed that she'd been crying during the night. "Do you really think it's possible?" she asked.

"I can find out. I might be able to get you the interview, but from that point on you'd be carrying the ball on your own." He understood how important it was for her to feel that she'd be the one landing the job. "Do you want to teach again?"

She looked into her cup, then out again at the river that he knew was drawing her as it had drawn others. "Sometimes not at all," she said, "sometimes more than anything else." She raised her cup and sipped.

"Think about it," Nudger said. "Be sure before you let me know if you're interested. And remember, no guarantees. But a chance."

She stood up, leaned forward and kissed his forehead. Her lips were still warm from the coffee. "Thank you," she said, and walked away from the table, away from the cold, beckoning slide of the river.

Carrying his Egg McMuffin, Nudger caught up with her at the shore end of the wooden gangplank.

When they got back to Claudia's apartment building, she asked Nudger if he was coming upstairs. She had several hours before she had to be at Kimball's to help prepare for the lunchtime crowd. Nudger reluctantly declined. He was a workaday guy with responsibilities, he told her. She didn't seem to believe him. He kissed her. The Volkswagen was idling roughly, vibrating hard enough to jingle the keys dangling from the ignition switch. No place for a romantic tryst.

"Where are you going now?" she asked.

"To my office. Then to see if I can find out more about Luther Kell."

He didn't tell her what that entailed. If Kell was home, Nudger would wait for him to leave, then follow. If Kell had already left for work or wherever he went during the day, Nudger would make sure the house was unoccupied, then try to get inside and search for evidence pointing to Kell as a murderer. Illegal entry into the home of a possible killer was the sort of thing that frightened Nudger for a number of reasons; it was a game with a lot of ways to lose. But he had no choice. He hadn't much time to learn about Kell. Springer had seen to that.

Claudia kissed Nudger again, a slow, soft brush of her lips across his cheek, then got out of the car and closed the door without slamming it. Before walking away, she turned and leaned low to peer in at him through the open window.

"For both of us, will you be careful?" she asked.

"If you'll be careful for the same two people."

She nodded and stood up straight. Nudger shifted to first and pulled away from the curb. At the corner, when he checked in the rearview mirror, Claudia was gone.