Текст книги "Ghosts"

Автор книги: Ed McBain

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“No, but on the other hand, she’s a married woman who was getting laid in her own office, so it’s not likely she was lying, is it?”

“Unless this is something more than the casual fling he says it is, in which case she could have been lying to protect him.”

“Maybe,” Hawes said. “But I’ll tell you, Steve, it sounded casual to me.”

“How so?”

“If it isn’t casual, you don’t say you were fucking somebody. You say you were making love, or you were alone together, or you were intimate, or whatever. But you don’t say you were fucking somebody on her couch. That’s casual, Steve. Take it from me, that’s casual.”

“Okay, it’s casual.”

“And besides, if he went up there to kill Craig, why would he announce himself to the security guard? Why didn’t he say he was somebody from Time or Newsweek or Saturday Review? Why give his own name?”

“So Craig would let him in.”

“And so the security guard would remember it later on? No way.”

“Maybe he didn’t go up there with the specific purpose of killing him. Maybe they got into an argument…”

“The killer brought the knife with him,” Hawes said.

“Yeah,” Carella said.

“So?”

“So what the hell do I know?” Carella said, and wiped at the misting windshield with his gloved hand. He was thoughtful for a moment. The wipers snicked at the sticking snowflakes. “All right,” he said, “here’s what I think. I think we ought to call Jerry Mandel up there in Mount Semanee and get him back to the city right away. I want to run a lineup on Daniel Corbett. Meanwhile, since we’re so close to the courthouses down here, I think we ought to try for an order to toss his apartment. More than eighty-three thousand bucks’ worth of jewelry was stolen from Craig’s place, and that isn’t the kind of stuff you can get rid of in a minute, especially if you’re an editor and not familiar with fences. What do you say?”

“I say I’m hungry,” Hawes said.

They stopped for a quick lunch in a Chinese restaurant on Cowper Street and then drove over to the Criminal Courts Building on High Street. The Supreme Court judge to whom they presented their written request sounded dubious about granting them the order solely on the basis of a telephone conversation with a security guard, but Carella pointed out that there was reasonable cause to believe that someone who’d announced himself as Daniel Corbett had been at the scene during the hours the crime was committed and that time was of the essence in locating the stolen jewelry before it was disposed of. They argued it back and forth for perhaps fifteen minutes. At the end of that time the judge said, “Officer, I simply cannot agree that you have reasonable cause to conduct a search. Were I to grant this order, it would only be disputed later, when your case comes to trial. Application denied.” Carella mumbled to himself all the way out to the elevators and all the way down to the street. Hawes commented that one of the nice things about living in a democracy was that a citizen’s rights were so carefully protected, and Carella said, “A criminal’s rights, too,” and that was that.

They struck out with Jerry Mandel as well. A call to the Three Oaks Lodge in Mount Semanee informed them that he had checked out that morning, looking for better skiing conditions elsewhere. Carella told the desk clerk that if Mandel wanted snow, they were up to their eyeballs in it right here in the city. By then six inches had fallen, and it was still coming down. The clerk said, “Ship some of it up here, we can use it.”

Carella hung up.

4

The first of the crank calls came at 2:30 that afternoon, proving to Carella’s satisfaction that not only every author on the face of the earth received them, but perhaps every cop as well. The caller was a woman who said her name was Miss Betty Aldershot, and she said she lived at 782 Jackson, just across the street from the Harborview complex. She said that at exactly twenty-five minutes to 7:00 on Thursday night, she’d been looking through her window at the street below when she saw a man and a woman struggling in the snow. Carella did not know this was a crank call; not just yet he didn’t. He shoved a pad into place on his desk and picked up a pencil.

“Yes, Miss Aldershot, I’m listening,” he said. “Can you describe the man to me?”

“He was Superman,” she said.

“Superman?”

“Yes. He was wearing blue underwear and a red cape.”

“I see,” Carella said.

“He took out a big red penis and stuck it in her.”

“I see.”

“A superman penis,” she said.

“Uh-huh. Well, Mrs. Aldershot, thank you for—”

“Then he flew away.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Up over the buildings. It was still hanging out.”

“Uh-huh. Well, fine, thanks a lot.”

“You’ll never get him,” she said, and began cackling. “He can go faster than a speeding bullet,” and she hung up.

“Who was that?” Meyer Meyer said from his desk. He was wearing the hat he had taken to wearing indoors and out, a checked deerstalker that hid his bald head and made him feel like Sherlock Holmes. The men in the squadroom had been speculating only a week ago about whether or not he wore it to bed. Hal Willis suggested that Meyer’s wife, Sarah, liked to get shtupped by baldheaded men wearing deerstalker hats. Deerstalker hats and black garters, Bert Kling said. Nothing else. Just the deerstalker hat and the black garters. And a big hard-on, Hawes said. Very funny, Meyer said.

“That was Superman’s mother,” Carella said.

“Yeah? How’s she doing?”

“Terrific. I’ve been trying to reach Danny Gimp. Has he changed his number or something?”

“Not that I know of,” Meyer said. “Listen, what are we going to do about Monday?”

“I expect to crack this case by midnight tonight,” Carella said.

“Sure, you and Superman. Seriously. If you plan to be schlepping all over the city, then let me have Hanukkah.”

“Give me till midnight,” Carella said, and tried Danny Gimp’s number again. Still no answer. He disliked doing business with Fats Donner, but there was more than eighty-three thousand dollars’ worth of hot jewels floating around out there in the city, and such a haul might not have gone unnoticed in the underworld. He dialed Donner’s home number and listened to it ringing on the other end.

“Donner,” a voice said.

“Fats, this is Detective Carella.”

“Hey, how are you?” Donner said. “What’s up?” His voice was unctuous and oily; it conjured for Carella the mountainous, blubbery man who was Hal Willis’s favorite informer—but that was only because Willis had enough on him to send him away for the next twenty years. Fats Donner had a penchant for young girls, a charming obsession that caused him constantly to skirt the thin ice outside the law. Carella visualized his thick fingers holding the telephone receiver; he imagined those same fingers on the budding breasts of a thirteen-year-old. The man revolted him, but murder revolted him more.

“Something like eighty-three thousand dollars in jewelry was stolen Thursday night during the commission of a homicide,” Carella said. “Hear anything about it?”

Donner whistled softly. Or perhaps it was only a wheeze. “What kind of stuff?” he asked.

“A mixed bag, I’ll read you the list in a minute. In the meantime, has there been any rumble on it?”

“Nothing I heard,” Donner said. “Thursday night, you say?”

“The twenty-first.”

“This is Saturday. Could be it’s already been fenced.”

“Could be.”

“Let me go on the earie,” Donner said. “This’ll cost you, though.”

“You can discuss price with Willis,” Carella said.

“Willis is a tightwad. This is Christmastime, I got presents to buy. I’m human, too, you know. You’re asking me to go out in the snow and listen around when I should be home instead, putting up my tree.”

“For all your little kiddies?” Carella asked, and the line went silent.

“Well, okay, I’ll discuss price with Willis. But I want something even if I don’t score. This is Christmastime.”

“Discuss it with Willis,” Carella said, and read off the list of stolen items.

“That’s a whole lot of shit there,” Donner said. “I’ll see what I can do,” and hung up.

Carella tried Danny Gimp again. Still no answer. He debated calling Gaucho Palacios, but he didn’t think something as big as this would reach the Cowboy’s ears. The clock on the squadroom wall read ten minutes to 3:00. He didn’t know what the hell to do next. He couldn’t run a lineup on Corbett until Mandel got back to the city on the day after Christmas. He couldn’t get a court order to search Corbett’s apartment for the stolen jewelry, and he couldn’t get a line on the jewelry until Donner got back to him—if he got back to him. He went down the hall to Clerical and asked Miscolo to mimeograph copies of the jewelry list for distribution to the city’s pawnshops, but he knew damn well they’d all be closed tomorrow and Monday, which put him almost into Tuesday, when Mandel would be back. At his own desk again, he dialed the Three Oaks Lodge in Mount Semanee and asked to talk to the manager. It was still snowing. Across the room, Cotton Hawes was working up a timetable for the Thursday night murders. Carella waited.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

“Hello, this is Detective Carella of the 87th Squad in Isola,” Carella said. “I spoke to someone there a little while ago, and he told me that Jerry Mandel had checked out early this morning…”

“Yes?”

“The person I spoke to said he had no idea where Mr. Mandel was heading. I was wondering…”

“I have no idea either,” the woman said.

“Who is this, please?”

“Mrs. Carmody, the manager.”

“Mrs. Carmody, has there been any substantial snowfall in the state over the past several days?”

“Not in the state, no. I understand it’s snowing there in the city…”

“Yes, right now, in fact.”

“Well, maybe we’ll get some of it later today. I hope,” she said.

“Where would the nearest area with snow be?”

“From Semanee, do you mean?”

“Yes. If Mr. Mandel was looking for snow, where would he have found it?”

“Not before Vermont,” Mrs. Carmody said.

“Vermont.”

“Yes, Mount Snow was reporting excellent conditions, as were Bromley, Stratton, Sugarbush, and Stowe. We’ve been desperate for snow here, and so has Massachusetts. My guess is he’d have headed for Vermont.”

“Where in Vermont? Which area would be the closest to Semanee?”

“Mount Snow.”

“Is that a very busy area? Are there many motels there?”

“You’ve got to be joking,” Mrs. Carmody said. “Were you thinking of trying to track him down?”

“It crossed my mind,” Carella said.

“If you started calling all the hotels at Mount Snow right this minute, you’d miss Santa coming down the chimney,” she said, and he was sure she was smiling at her own witticism.

“How do I get a complete listing of all the available lodging there?” Carella asked.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, ma’am, we’re investigating a murder here.”

“Well…I guess you can call the Mount Snow Lodging Bureau. Maybe they can help you.”

“Thank you,” Carella said, and hung up.

Hawes came over to the desk with the timetable he’d been typing.

“This is the way it looks to me,” he said, and handed the sheet to Carella:

TIMETABLE—

CRAIG AND ESPOSITO MURDERS

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21

5:00 P.M. Man claiming to be Daniel Corbett arrives at Harborview, goes up in elevator after being announced by security guard Mandel.

6:15 P.M. Man has still not left building when Karlson relieves Mandel at the door.

6:40 P.M. Call to Emergency 911 from unidentified male reporting cutting victim on sidewalk outside 781 Jackson Street.

6:43 P.M. Car Adam Eleven responds, woman later identified as Marian Esposito, white female, thirty-two years old, DOA.

7:10 P.M. Call to Emergency 911 from Hillary Scott reporting stabbing in Apartment 304 at 781 Jackson.

7:14 P.M. Detectives already on scene of Esposito murder respond. Victim Gregory Craig, white male, fifty-four years old, DOA.

“That’s about it, all right,” Carella said.

“Doesn’t tell us a damn thing, does it?” Hawes said.

“Not much,” Carella said, “but it’s nice to have it all spelled out every now and then.” He picked up the phone, dialed the operator, and asked for Vermont Information. She told him he could dial that direct, and he testily informed her he was a detective investigating a homicide, and he’d appreciate it if she could get it for him. She said, sarcastically, “Oh, I beg your pardon,” but she connected him nonetheless. Vermont Information gave him the listing for the Mount Snow Lodging Bureau, and he dialed that number direct and spoke to a nice young woman who informed him that there were fifty-six hotels, motels, inns, and lodges listed with the Bureau, all within a twenty-mile radius of Mount Snow. She mentioned in passing that the Bureau did not list any hostelry with fewer than four rooms, of which there were a great many. She asked if he wanted her to read off the entire list, together with the capacity for each place.

Carella debated this for a moment.

Then he said, “No, never mind, thanks,” and hung up.

The second crank call—or so it seemed at first—came twenty minutes after the first one. He lifted the receiver from its cradle and said, “87th Squad, Carella.”

“It has something to do with water,” a woman’s voice said.

“What?”

“Water,” the voice repeated, and suddenly he recognized her.

“Miss Scott?” he said.

“Yes. The murder has to do with water. Can I see you this afternoon? You’re the source.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure yet. But you’re the source. I have to talk to you.”

He remembered what Gregory Craig’s daughter had told them yesterday: She drowned. They said it was an accident. Water, he thought, and said at once, “Where will you be?”

“At my sister’s,” she said.

“Give me half an hour,” he said.

“I’ll see you there,” she said, and hung up.

When she opened the door for him, she was wearing a short robe belted over either pantyhose or nylons. She wore no makeup; without lipstick, rouge, or liner, she resembled Teddy even more than she had before.

“I’m sorry,” she said at once. “I was dressing when my sister called. Come in.”

The apartment was in the Stewart City section of Isola. Stewart City was not really a city, or even a town, but merely a collection of swank apartment buildings overlooking the River Dix on the true city’s south side. If you could boast of a Stewart City address, you could also boast of a high income, a country place on Sands Spit, and a Mercedes-Benz in the garage under your building. You could give your address with a measure of snobbery and pride. There were few places left in the city—or perhaps the world—where you could do the same. Hillary’s sister’s apartment, as befitted its location, was decorated expensively but not ostentatiously; it had the effect on Carella of making him feel immediately uncomfortable. The cool white artificial Christmas tree in one corner of the room compounded his sense of ill ease. He was accustomed to the scuzziness of the Eight-Seven, where the Christmas trees were real and the carpeting underfoot—unlike the lawn growing in this place—was more often than not tattered and frayed.

“Miss Scott,” he said, “on the phone, you—”

“Is it still snowing out there?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m supposed to be downtown at five for a cocktail party. Are there any cabs on the street?”

“A few.”

“Can I get you a drink?” she asked. “What time is it anyway?”

“Four o’clock,” he said.

“That’s not too early for a drink, is it?”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Right, you’re on duty,” she said. “Mind if I have one?”

“Go right ahead.”

She went to a tall cabinet on the wall opposite the tree and opened both doors of it to reveal an array of bottles within. She poured generously from one of the bottles, took two ice cubes from a bucket, and dropped them into the glass. Turning to him, she said, “Cheers, happy holidays.”

“Cheers,” he said.

“Sit down,” she said. “Please.” Her smile was so similar to Teddy’s that he found himself experiencing an odd sense of disorientation. The woman in this apartment should have been in his Riverhead house instead. He should have been telling her about the hard day’s work he’d put in, soliciting sympathy for the policeman’s lot; he should have been mixing her a scotch and soda and laying a fire for her on the hearth. Instead, he was here to talk about water.

“So,” he said, “what about water?”

She looked at him, puzzled, and then said, “Thanks, I prefer it on the rocks.”

He looked back at her, equally puzzled. She sat in the chair opposite him, the robe falling away as she crossed her legs. She rearranged the wayward flap at once.

“Are you sure you won’t have one?” she asked.

“Positive.”

“She may be a while, you know.”

“I’m sorry, what…?”

“My sister. I spoke to her half an hour ago.”

“Your sister?”

“Yes.”

“What’s she got to do—?”

“Hillary,” she said.

“Hillary?” he said, and blinked. The lady, as he’d surmised from the very beginning, was a prime candidate for the loony bin. “Miss Scott,” he said, “I’m sorry but I don’t understand what—”

“My twin sister,” she said.

He looked at her. She was smiling over the rim of her glass. He had the feeling she had done this many times before and enjoyed doing it each and every time.

“I see,” he said.

“I’m Denise,” she said. “We look a lot alike, don’t you think?”

“Yes, you do,” he said cautiously, wondering whether there really was a twin sister or whether Hillary was just having a little sport with him at the city’s expense. “You say you spoke to her…”

“Yes, half an hour ago.”

“Where was she?”

“At the office. She was just leaving. But with this snow…”

“Listen,” he said, “are you really…?”

“Denise Scott,” she said, “yes,” and nodded. “Which of us do you think is prettiest?”

“I couldn’t say, Miss Scott.”

“I am,” she said, and giggled, and rose suddenly, and went to the liquor cabinet. He watched as she poured herself another drink. “Are you sure?” she asked, and lifted the glass to him.

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Pity,” she said, and went back to her chair and sat again. She crossed her legs more recklessly this time. The flap of the robe fell open again, and he saw the gartered tops of nylon stockings. He glanced away.

“I have twins myself,” he said.

“Yes, Hillary told me.”

“I never mentioned to her…”

“Psychic, you know,” Denise said, and tapped her temple with her forefinger.

“How about you?” he said.

“No, no, my talents run in other directions,” she said, and smiled at him. “Aren’t you glad garter belts are coming back?” she said.

“I’ve…never much thought about it,” he said.

“Think about it,” she said.

“Miss Scott,” he said, “I know you have an appointment, so if you want to get dressed, I’ll be perfectly all right here.”

“Wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone,” she said, and suddenly bent over the coffee table to spear a cigarette from the container there. The upper half of the robe gapped open over her breasts. She was wearing no bra. She held the pose an instant longer than she needed to, reaching for the cigarette, looking up at him and suddenly smiling.

“Miss Scott,” he said, rising, “I’ll be back in a little while. When your sister gets here, tell her…”

He heard a key turning in the door behind him. The door swung wide, and Hillary Scott came into the room. She was wearing a raccoon coat open over a white blouse and a red skirt. Her dark brown boots were wet. She looked across the room to where Denise was still bent over the coffee table. “Go put on some clothes,” she said, “you’ll catch cold.” To Carella, she said, “I’m sorry I’m late. I had a hell of a time getting a cab.” She looked at her sister again. “Denise?”

“Nice meeting you,” Denise said, and rose, and tucked one flap of the robe over the other, and tightened the belt. He watched her as she left the room. The door to what he assumed was the bedroom whispered shut behind her.

“Didn’t know there were three of us, did you?” Hillary said.

“Three of you?”

“Including your wife.”

“You’ve never met my wife,” Carella said.

“But we resemble each other.”

“Yes.”

“You have twins.”

“Yes.”

“The little girl looks like your wife. She was born in April.”

“No, but that’s her name.”

“Terry. Is it Terry?”

“Teddy.”

“Yes, Teddy. Franklin? Was her maiden name Franklin?”

“Yes,” he said. He was staring at her unbelievingly. “Miss Scott,” he said, “on the phone you told me—”

“Yes, water.”

“What about water?”

“Something to do with water. Did someone mention water to you recently?”

Beyond the bedroom door he heard either a radio or a record player erupting with a rock tune. Hillary turned impatiently toward the door and shouted, “Denise, turn that down!” She waited a moment, the music blaring, and then shouted, “Denise!” just as the music dropped six decibels. Angrily she took a cigarette from the container on the table, put a match to it, and let out a stream of smoke. “We’ll wait till she’s gone,” she said. “It’s impossible to achieve any level of concentration with her here. Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“I think I’ll have one,” she said, and went to the cabinet, and poured a hefty shot of whiskey into a tumbler, and drank it almost in one gulp. Carella suddenly remembered the Craig autopsy report.

“Was Craig a heavy drinker?” he asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“The autopsy report indicated he’d been drinking before his death.”

“I wouldn’t say he was a heavy drinker, no.”

“Social drinker?”

“Two or three before dinner.”

“Did he drink while he was working?”

“Never.”

In the next ten minutes, while her sister dressed in the other room, Hillary consumed two more healthy glasses of whiskey, presumably the better to heighten her psychic awareness. Carella wondered what the hell he was doing here. Take a phone call from a crazy lady who claimed to be psychic, link it foolishly to a drowning in Massachusetts that happened three years ago, and then wait around while the clock ticked steadily and the snow kept falling and the whiskey content in the bottle got lower and lower. But she had known his wife’s name without being told it, knew they had twins, almost zeroed in on April. He did not for a moment believe she could actually read minds, but he knew that people with extrasensory perception did possibly exist, and he was not about to dismiss her earlier reference to water. Gregory Craig’s wife had drowned three years ago—and his daughter could not believe it was an accident.

The bedroom door opened.

Denise Scott was wearing a clinging green jersey dress slit outrageously wide over the breasts and held precariously together at the midriff with a diamond clasp the size of Taiwan. The dress was somewhat shorter than was fashionable these days, giving her legs an extraordinarily long and supple look. She was wearing green high-heeled satin pumps; Carella gave them a life expectancy of thirty seconds in the snow outside. She walked to the hall closet without saying a word, took off the pumps, zipped on a pair of black leather boots, took a long black coat from the closet, picked up a black velvet bag from the hall table, tucked the pumps under her arm, opened the door, grinned at Carella, said, “Another time, amigo,” and walked out without saying good-bye to Hillary.

“Bitch,” Hillary said, and poured herself another drink.

“Go easy on that, okay?” Carella said.

“Tried to take Greg away from me,” she said. “Went to the apartment one afternoon while he was working, pulled the twin-sister routine on him. I found her naked in bed with him.” She shook her head and took a swift swallow of whiskey.

“When was this?” he asked at once. She had just presented him with the best possible motive for murder. In this city, the homicide statistics changed as often as the police changed their underwear, but the swing was back to “personal” murders as opposed to the “impersonal” ones that had screamed across the headlines just several years back. The good old-fashioned slayings were now in vogue again: husbands shooting wives and vice versa, lovers taking axes to rivals, sons stabbing mothers and sisters; your average garden-variety homespun killings. Hillary Scott had found Gregory Craig in bed with her own sister.

“When?” he asked again.

“When what?”

“When did you discover them together?”

“Last month sometime.”

“November?”

“November.”

“What happened?”

“Little nympho bitch,” Hillary said.

“What happened? What did you do?”

“Told her if she ever came near that apartment again…” She shook her head. “My own sister. Said it was a joke, said she wanted to see if Greg could tell us apart.”

“Could he?”

“He said he thought she was me. He said she fooled him completely.”

“What did you think?”

“I think he knew.”

“But you’re here with her now.”

“What?”

“You’re staying with her. Even after what happened.”

“I didn’t talk to her for weeks. Then she called one day in tears and…She’s my sister. We’re closer than any two people in the world. We’re twins. What could I do?”

He understood this completely. Despite their constant bickering, his own twins were inseparable. Listening to their running dialogues was like listening to one person talking out loud to himself. When both of them were engaged in make-believe together, it was sometimes impossible to break in on what amounted to a tandem stream of consciousness. He had read someplace that twins were a gang in miniature; he had understood the writer’s allusion at once. He had once scolded Mark for carelessly breaking an expensive vase and had punished him by sending him to his room. Ten minutes later he had found April in her room. When he’d mentioned to her that she wasn’t the one being punished, April had said, “Well, I just thought I’d help him out.” If there was any truth to the adage that blood ran thicker than water, it ran doubly thick between twins. Hillary had found her sister in bed with Gregory Craig, but Craig was the stranger, and Denise was her twin. And now Craig was dead.

“How’d that affect your relationship with him?” Carella asked.

“I trusted him less. But I still loved him. If you love somebody, you’re willing to forgive a lapse or two.”

Carella nodded. He supposed she was telling the truth, but he wondered at the same time how he’d have felt if he’d found Teddy in bed with his twin brother, if he had a twin brother or any brother at all, which he didn’t have.

“What’s this about water?” he said. “You told me on the phone…”

“Someone mentioned water to you, am I right?”

“Yes, someone did.”

“Something about water. And biting.”

She drowned in the Bight, Abigail Craig had told him, two miles from where my father was renting his famous haunted house.

“What else?” Carella asked.

“Bite,” she said.

“Yes, what about it?”

“Give me your hands.”

He held out his hands to her. They stood two feet apart from each other, facing each other, their hands clasped. She closed her eyes.

“Someone swimming,” she said. “A woman. Tape. So strong. I feel it pulsing in your hands. Tape. No, I’m losing it,” she said abruptly, and opened her eyes wide. “Concentrate! You’re the source!” She squeezed his hands tightly and closed her eyes again. “Yes,” she said, the word coming out like a hiss. She was breathing harshly now; her hands in his own were trembling. “Drowning. Tape. Drowning, drowning,” she said, and suddenly released his hands and threw her arms around him, her eyes still closed, her own hands clasping him behind the neck. He tried to back away from her, but her lips found his, and her mouth drew at him as though trying to suck the breath from his body. Hissing, she clamped her teeth onto his lower lip, and he pushed her away at once. She stood there with her eyes closed, her entire body shaking. She seemed unaware of him now. She began to sway, and then suddenly she began talking in a voice quite unlike her own, a hollow sepulchral voice that seemed to rumble up from the depths of some forgotten bog, trailing tatters of mist and a wind as cold as the grave.

“You stole,” she said. “I know, I heard, you stole, I know, I’ll tell,” she said, “you stole, you stole…”

Her voice trailed. The room was silent except for the ticking of the clock. She stood there swaying, her eyes still closed, but the trembling was gone now, and at last the swaying stopped, too, and she was utterly motionless for several moments. She opened her eyes then and seemed surprised to find him there.

“I…have to rest,” she said. “Please go.”

She left him alone in the room. The door to the bedroom eased shut behind her. He stood there watching the closed door for a moment, and then he put on his coat and left the apartment.

The Carella house in Riverhead was a huge white elephant they’d picked up for a song—well, more accurately a five-act opera—shortly after the twins were born. Teddy’s father had presented them with a registered nurse as a month-long gift while Teddy was recuperating after the birth, and Fanny Knowles had elected to stay on with them later at a salary they could afford, telling them she was tired of taking care of sick old men all the time. Without her, they’d never have been able to manage the big old house—or the twins either, for that matter. Fanny was “fiftyish,” as she put it, and she had blue hair, and she wore pince-nez, and she weighed 150 pounds, and she ran the Carella household with the same sort of Irish bullheadedness the gang foremen must have displayed when immigrants were digging the city’s subway system at the turn of the century. It was Fanny who absolutely refused to take into the house a stray Labrador retriever Carella had adopted while investigating the murders of a blind man and his wife. She told him simply and flatly that there was enough to do around here without having to clean up after a big old hound. She was fond of saying, prophetically in this case, “I take no shit from man nor beast,” an expression the ten-year-old twins had picked up when they were still learning to talk and that Mark now used with more frequency than April. The twins’ speech patterns, in fact—much to Carella’s consternation—were more closely modeled after Fanny’s than anyone else’s; it was her voice they heard around the house whenever Carella wasn’t home.

There seemed to be no one at all home when he unlocked the front door. It had taken him an hour and a half to make the trip from Stewart City to Riverhead in blinding snow over treacherous roads; it normally would have taken him forty minutes. He had struggled to get the car up his driveway, had given up after six runs at it, and had finally parked it at the curb, behind Mr. Henderson’s car next door, already partially covered with drifts. He stood outside the front door now and stamped the snow from his shoes before entering. The house was silent. He turned on the entrance-hall lights, hung his coat on the pear wood coatrack just inside the door, and shouted, “Hi, anybody home?” There was no answer.