Nightlines

XXVIII

When they were half a mile from the mall, Nudger drove ahead of the bus and found a parking space in the main lot. Then he walked to the doorway of a shop that sold nothing but athletic shoes and stood where he could see the bus stop. He wondered how a place could stay in business selling only striped sneakers expensive enough to last forever.

The Cross County Express lumbered around the corner by Sears, intimidated a few smaller vehicles into turning into intersecting parking lanes, and belched and hissed its way tentatively to a stop. Business was thriving at the mall today; over a dozen people stepped down out of the bus. The last one off was Luther Kell.

Kell stood still for a moment and looked around, as the bus emitted a noxious black cloud near him and eased away from the stop. Then he turned and went in through the mall's tinted-glass main entrance. Nudger noticed that Kell was wearing soft, black, crinkly leather moccasins. They were probably part of the reason the muscular blond man moved with such litheness and oddly ominous calm. Like the stillness before the storm.

Nudger followed, taking his time, sure of where Kell was going. Apparently the mall fountain was a favorite meeting place for people on the nightlines. Kell had probably talked on the lines last night and made a date with another woman. Unless Nudger was making false assumptions. He'd be disappointed if Kell simply shopped around for a while and then returned home with some new socks and shirts. For that matter, what was Nudger supposed to do if Kell did meet a woman here? She might be his regular girlfriend. Surely the man didn't murder every woman he dated. Possibly he had murdered no one, ever.

Kell slowed his pace as he approached the fountain, moving toward the center of the wide promenade, into the calm area between the thick streams of shoppers making their way to one end of the mall or the other. He ambled over to the raised concrete ledge that circled the gently splashing fountain, propped one foot up on the ledge, and began slowly rotating a toothpick between his front teeth. Sandy the vinyl-clad cowboy had picked his teeth in the same manner while waiting here. Deja vu, Nudger thought.

Kell rotated the toothpick, absently rolling it between thumb and forefinger, for quite a while, then began diligently probing molars with it. Mr. Tooth Decay was no friend of his.

This time Kell wasn't stood up. Within ten minutes a long-haired brunette wearing a navy-blue skirt and red blazer walked up to him and they chatted briefly. Then she snaked her arm around his and walked away with him.

Nudger watched them stroll toward the mass of shoppers moving toward the east end of the mall.

Now what? Should he follow? Were Kell and the woman leaving the mall, or were they going to have a sandwich at the Woolworth snack counter and take in the mall theater movie? Or browse through merchandise at one of the department stores? Might they be shopping for her wedding gown? Possible. Shouldn't a model citizen like Kell, with a neat little house, have a neat little wife to go in it? Was all of this any of Nudger's business?

Of course not.

Unless…

He began walking in the direction Kell and the woman had taken. He could still see Kell's blond head, catch an occasional glimpse of the woman's flowing auburn hair and her red blazer.

Just as he reached the fountain, Nudger realized that, though he'd only glimpsed her from the back, there was something faintly familiar about the woman. About the compact, controlled way she swung her arms when she walked, and the way she carried herself, so smoothly and erectly.

An after-image flashed in Nudger's mind.

Her shoes! The dark-haired woman had been wearing high-heeled silver shoes with black bows! Like the shoes Nudger's former wife Eileen had worn. Like…

Like Jeanette Boyington's shoes!

Nudger sucked in his breath and plunged forward, skirting the fountain at a run to gain ground on Kell and the woman.

His leather soles scraped wildly on the synthetic stone floor and he did a mad little dance, almost losing his balance, as a weighty hand fell on his shoulder and stopped him as if his knees had suddenly locked tight.

"I been watching you, Nudger," a deep, thick voice said. "Mrs. Boyington says it's time me 'n' you had a little talk 'n' settled some things 'n'…"

Nudger barely heard the rest. Hugo Rumbo, wearing a hideous green plaid sport jacket that made him appear even more gigantic than he was, prattled on about Agnes Boyington. The timing and setting for this encounter were absurd as well as inconvenient. Nudger didn't even have it in him to be afraid.

Rumbo came around in front of Nudger, moving closer, a gaudy muscular expanse of cloth. He was still babbling threateningly. "So whyn't you 'n' me take a little walk 'n' you can…"

Nudger squirmed loose from the painful grip and shoved hard at Rumbo's chest, slipping and falling to his knees with the effort. It was like trying to move a wall. Rumbo said, "Huh?" in delayed surprise, got his feet tangled with each other, and the backs of his knees struck the concrete ledge around the fountain. There was a tremendous splash. Nudger felt cold water on his face as he struggled to his feet and started after Kell and Jeanette. He saw people stopping, turning, gawking at the spectacle in the fountain pool, and caught a glimpse of what looked like a floundering green plaid whale, as he began to run.

He shoved his way through the mass of shoppers, hearing a heavyset woman grunt as his elbow sank into her doughy midsection. He stepped on somebody's toes, stumbled, nearly fell. Someone cursed at him as he ran past the drugstore: "Goddamn maniac! Gonna kill somebody!"

He stopped running outside a men's shop, jumped up on a bench and stared out over the heads of hundreds, maybe thousands, of milling shoppers. Everyone with a dollar to spend seemed to be here. Almost everyone.

Kell and Jeanette were nowhere in sight.

He dropped from the bench and ran for the escalators that led up to the second shopping level or down to the parking garage, trying to catch a glimpse of a red blazer or silver high-heeled shoes. All he got were curious amused stares directed at him by the lines of escalator riders gliding past with the calm, smooth precision of ducks in a shooting gallery. Nudger ignored the stares and sprinted for the exit to the lot where he'd left his car.

He drove the Volkswagen to the largest parking area driveway and pulled to the side, hoping to see Jeanette's blue sedan from where he was illegally parked.

Dozens of cars were streaming in and out of the lot, none of them Jeanette's. Nudger popped an antacid tablet into his mouth and chewed frantically, still breathing hard. His pulse pounded at his temples.

Five slow minutes passed. Nothing in the world changed.

Screwed it up, he told himself. Screwed up everything. He had a client who was on her way to kill an innocent man. Or kill a guilty man. Or be murdered herself. Whichever way fate moved the pieces, it was going to be a bad day for a lot of people.

Nudger squirmed in the little bucket seat. His stomach was zooming and twisting like a crazy carnival ride; his blood felt carbonated. He had to act, had to do something!

He restarted the engine, drove from the driveway and around the block, barely avoiding three accidents, his eyes in constant motion in a face immobile and stiff with concern.

He circled the vast mall twice, but he saw nothing other than red at his own stupidity for not realizing Jeanette might wear a dark wig and alter her appearance enough so her sister's murderer wouldn't recognize her.

Until she wanted him to know her.

Nudger yanked the steering wheel to the right, jerking the Volkswagen sharply to the curb, and sat while the idling engine perked rapidly, calling him a dupe! dupe! dupe! He couldn't agree more.

It occurred to him then that Jenine Boyington had been murdered in her apartment. Like Grace Valpone and Susan Merriweather. Like the women before them. If that was the killer's MO, it followed that Kell and Jeanette's next stop, if Kell had committed the murders, would be Jeanette's apartment. Unless they stopped somewhere for something to eat or a few get-acquainted drinks. Or unless Jeanette was crazy enough to try something in the mall parking lot or in a moving car.

Nudger slammed the Volkswagen into gear, stamped on the accelerator and shot back out into the flow of traffic. Horns were still blasting behind him as he veered onto the highway entry ramp and drove toward Jeanette's apartment.

Her door was locked. Nudger stood in the quiet third- floor hall of Jeanette's apartment building with his hand on the knob. A radio or TV was playing, very faintly, from the floor above. He breathed in through his nose. There was a damp scent in the corridor, and in one of the nearby apartments someone was cooking what smelled like vegetable soup. He pressed his ear to the cool, varnished door. He could hear nothing from inside.

After glancing around to make sure he was alone, he swallowed the fuzzy, square lump of fear in his throat and worked for a few minutes with the honed edge of his Visa card. The lock was a typical cheap apartment special. It slipped easily.

In everyone's life there are doors that shouldn't be opened. Though he suspected this might be that kind of door, he slowly rotated the knob and pushed inward.

The door swung open smoothly, scraping lightly on the carpet. Nudger was confronted by a low black vinyl sofa, modern glass-topped end tables, large chrome-framed indecipherable prints on white walls. There was a coldness and peculiar lack of color in the decor, and an almost geometrical neatness about the place. Curios were precisely arranged on glass shelves, and the few books in a white book-case looked as if they had been bought yesterday and never read. Nudger was surprised to see that one of the curios was a blown-glass, artfully fashioned man and woman locked in blissful sexual intercourse. It didn't seem to fit with the surrounding souvenir-shop bric-a-brac. He checked the titles on the books, finding they were all of the vague and innocuous sort found in display furniture in department stores. Outdated sociology, regional history, obscure biography. The books were there for color, not content.

Nudger was alone. He knew immediately by the perfect stillness and staleness of the air that the apartment was unoccupied. Jeanette and Kell had either stopped somewhere before coming here or were due to arrive momentarily. If they were coming here at all. Nudger began to have his doubts. Or maybe his fear was finally catching up with his desire to intercept and face Kell. Maybe he wanted to doubt.

Natural to be apprehensive, he told himself, and thumbed several antacid tablets from the roll he kept in his shirt pocket. He tossed the tablets into his mouth like peanuts.

Chewing demonically, he closed and locked the door. That chased away the vegetable-soup scent that had followed him in, and he felt better. He walked around the apartment quickly to make doubly sure it was unoccupied, cautiously opening doors and poking his head into each room like a turtle exploring outside its shell.

When he checked the white-tiled bathroom, something stopped him and made him step inside.

The bathroom appeared antiseptically clean and unused, as if the apartment were vacant and displayed for rental inspection. In an instant he knew why. The shower curtain had been removed, its plastic hooks lined neatly along one end of the chromed rod. There were no towels on the racks, no rug on the hard tile floor.

As Nudger turned, he saw in the vanity mirror the partly opened door of the linen closet. The closet was stocked with cosmetics and folded towels and washcloths, and on its floor lay something black and glossy. Wet-looking.

He opened the door all the way, caught a glimpse of bare metal against the black, and drifted backward in spiral- ing horror.

A thick plastic drop cloth was neatly folded on the closet floor. On it were stacked several equally thick black plastic trash bags. On top of the trash bags lay a shiny new hacksaw and a wood-handled meat cleaver. They weren't there as bath accessories.

Nudger swallowed with a gurgling, cracking sound and left the bathroom, heading for the telephone in the living room. His discovery was more than he could cope with alone. Much more.

He had lifted the receiver and punched out two digits of Hammersmith's Third District number when he heard a slight scuffling noise in the outside hall.

The door burst open and Jeanette was propelled inside.