He nodded and smiled at Caroline, a man of average size, receding hairline, clearly having no idea he'd frightened her.
"I believe you're right, Mrs. Bannister. Yes, I do remember Miss Winters very well. Lovely girl. Tragic. Of course they don't know yet that the two murders are connected. Anyway, I do hope they find whoever did this terrible thing."
They were standing on the sidewalk now, Caroline with her hands folded in front of her, like a child on the first day of school. When she became aware of it, she dropped her hands discretely to her sides.
"We can only pray." The landlady shook her head in dismay. "Her poor body found in an alley, not a block from here."
After a few more words were exchanged between the two, Mr. Mason bid them both good day and went on his way, a thoughtful expression on his face.
When he was out of earshot, the landlady said, "Poor man came back from the war with an arm missing, and found his wife living with someone else. He's been here ever since, four years now. So where you are headed in such a big hurry this morning?"
"I need to buy food."
Everyone in the building knows about me, Caroline thought. They know where I've been. Did she know about them taking my baby? Did she know everything?
They were walking now, Mrs. Bannister with her fast, awkward gait, Caroline keeping pace with her. Though she was wearing a sweater under her coat, the cold damp air reached inside.
Everything looked so big. The street, the buildings, the gray sky, no fences or boundaries. She felt small and vulnerable, and was glad to be walking alongside her landlady and not by herself. I just need some time, she thought, mentally parroting Nurse Addison's own words to her: "Everything will seem big and strange at first."
She remembered feeling the same way when she was a little girl lying in the grass and gazing up into the vast blueness. After a few minutes, she would get that panicky feeling in her stomach, like she had now, as if she might just get swallowed up in all that blueness, and she would scramble to her feet.
"I think the rain has stopped for the day, but I brought the umbrella just in case. Better to be safe than sorry. By the way," she said, turning to smile at Caroline. "I just bought myself a bigger television set, so I've got one to put in your room, if you want it. Do you enjoy TV?"
"Oh, I do, yes. I like watching television. Thank you."
"Great. It's just a fourteen-inch, a Philco, but it's color and works fine. Did you sleep well your first night here?"
"Yes," she lied. The lie came easy.
Should she have told her the truth, that she'd felt afraid lying alone in the strange bed, listening to unfamiliar sounds outside her window, other noises throughout the building.
She let the lie stay. She didn't want the landlady to think her troublesome.
Mrs. Bannister was chatting away as they walked, divulging personal information about another of her tenants, happily and without malice. She was a nice and generous lady, just didn't keep secrets very well.
Caroline saw the yellow police tape even before she saw the small group of people gathered on the sidewalk, near the alley. A police cruiser was parked at an angle on the street, the door flung open. She could hear a squawking voice coming from the car radio, although there was no one to hear except passersby like herself and Mrs. Bannister.
A little ways past the cruiser, a small red car was being towed away.
"Most of the mob is thinned out now," the landlady said, slowing her step as they neared the alley. "You should have seen them yesterday—packed in like sardines, they were, craning their necks like starved giraffes." This comment was made as she herself peered into the alley, a deep dark well, even in daylight, between the two buildings.
"The cops had to force the crowd back," the landlady said, picking up her pace again as they passed on by the alley. "Wanting to get a look at that poor dead girl. Can you imagine?"
Yes, she could imagine. "We passed here yesterday in the taxi," Caroline said. "The driver told me what happened. I didn't know then that the woman who was killed used to live in your building." Didn't know she had dark hair and blue eyes.
"No, how could you? But that was a while ago and it's got nothing to do with you or my building. But I admit it's pretty unnerving. Well, here's where you'll be working come next Monday. Frank's. You wanna go in for a bite to eat?"
Caroline looked up at the red and white awning that bore the name FRANK'S in gothic scroll. The restaurant looked warm and inviting, but though she was hungry and the smell of good food and coffee wafted out to her, a new panic gripped her.
Monday. I'll be ready Monday.
"No, thank you, Mrs. Bannister." She moved on past the restaurant. "I'd just like to get some bread and tea and then I'll go home. Maybe I could watch some TV later."
The landlady laughed, and said, "Sure, I'll get Harold to carry it up. Speaking of Harold, there he is now. He's off for lunch. I'll give him the key to your room and he can take that TV upstairs and it'll be all set up when we get back."
"That's okay. He can just leave it outside the door."
She was looking across the street where Harold Bannister was unlocking his bike from the post in front of the bakery, and didn't see the displeasure on the landlady's face at her suggestion that her nephew leave the TV in the hallway.
Harold gave them a half-wave, then dropped his head as if embarrassed at seeing them here, so close to his workplace. He was dressed in a black hooded shirt, jeans and sneakers. Others were coming out of the place where he worked. Three girls, arm in arm, laughing together. She looked up at the dark green and gold sign on the faded red brick building that spelled out BIG BAKERY.
He was about to jump on his bike and Caroline saw that Mrs. Bannister was about to wave him over. "No, please, I don't want anyone else to have my key."
The woman's mouth tightened and the warmth went out of her eyes, like a light suddenly switched off.
"I have the key to your room, dear. I own the house."
"I know, but…"
"Harold is my nephew and he's a fine boy. What reason would you have not to trust him? I doubt you have anything so valuable he would want to steal it."
She'd offended her. She hadn't meant to. Hadn't meant to make her angry.
Eight
Out on the sidewalk, most of the onlookers had moved on, but the damage had been done, making a thorough investigation of the crime area difficult. Shoeprints over shoeprints, rubberneckers wanting to get a look, at the same time afraid of what they might see.
Yesterday, they had cordoned off the area with crime tape, then waited around until the body was zipped into a body bag and driven off to the morgue before leaving. No sirens, no speed, no reason for urgency.
He emerged from the alley, pretty certain she didn't die here. But before Detective Thomas O'Neal could get to the cruiser, a familiar looking glamour-puss blond from the local TV station shoved a microphone in his face.
"I'm hearing there's a similar pattern between how this girl met her fate and the nurse who was murdered in late August. Can you comment, Detective O'Neal?"
He paused long enough tell her he didn't know who her sources were, but that they were being premature, speculating. The investigation was hardly underway. "When I have more details to offer the public, I'll release them." Until then, he had no further comment. He pushed past her, as pleasantly as he could manage, ignoring the next question she threw at him. "Was she sexually assaulted, Detective?"
***
There is always a chill in the morgue, and that faint smell of death and formaldehyde permeating the air, that most cops never got used to. Detective O'Neal was no exception.
The alley had reeked of urine. O'Neal knew bums and drunks coming out of the bar down the street used it as a public toilet, evidenced by the dark yellow stains he saw running down the side of the building. She deserved a better resting place.
Even this was an improvement.
Her dark hair had fallen to one side of the sla
b she lay on. A clot of blood had dried at the corner of her mouth. Her face was bruised and swollen, eyes near shut, slits of dead blue showing.
Just as she'd looked back in that alley. Except she'd been fully dressed then, in a green paisley blouse and black slacks that looked expensive to Detective Tom O'Neal. Her white wool jacket was smeared with blood. She'd worn black stiletto sandals with those thin straps that flatter a woman's leg. Not that she'd needed any help. Beautiful woman when she was alive. Damn shame.
Her blouse had been buttoned unevenly, signaling to the detective that someone else had dressed her, probably after she was dead. Her hair was matted with blood, lifeless blue eyes staring blankly up at the strip of azure sky visible above the alley where she lay. There were blood spots in her eyes, evidence of strangulation, borne out by the bruises on her neck, no doubt made by the killer's thumbs.
St. Simeon was a quiet town, and Detective O'Neal liked it that way. Murder, especially one as brutal as this one, was rare here. Most crimes consisted of drunken driving and the occasional domestic. A couple of years ago there'd been a knifing at Dreagan's bar, but that was it.
"I'd say she was there maybe…five, six hours," Henry Beal, the medical examiner said in answer to his question. "We had partial rigor when we brought her in," he answered. He mimed covering the girl's face with the sheet, eyebrow raised in a question, and Tom nodded in the affirmative. Was relieved when he couldn't see her face any longer, only the telling shape beneath the sheet.
Henry Beal was a slight man with thick glasses, thinning brown hair. He was also a black belt in Karate, and had the deep voice of a radio announcer, which, each time he spoke, never failed to surprise Tom.
They'd searched the alley for clues, came up empty. A few cigarette butts were bagged, but the alley was off a public street and they could belong to anyone. Her purse lay beside her, black, oversized, no money, but credit cards still in the wallet, along with her ID and a small black notebook.
On the first page of the notebook, at the top of the page, she'd neatly written her name, Lorraine Winters, and her address and phone number, which she'd presumably crossed out later and put her new address and phone number underneath. The pages following had the names and phones numbers of acting agents, friends. His partner, Detective Glen Aiken was back at the station, already going through that list with a fine-tooth comb, making phone calls, setting up interviews
They'd check out both addresses. One was on Peel, a quiet street. He thought he knew it, a rooming house, a few scraggly elms in front. The new address was a little more uptown, maybe something a little nicer, more fitting for a budding actress.
The M.E. had returned the body to its stainless steel locker, was peeling off his latex gloves. Tom thanked him for his help and left, eager to breathe in some fresh air.
Nine
Caroline knew she had insulted someone Mrs. Bannister loved dearly, but she didn't know what to say to make everything okay again. Could think of no words to dissolve the anger on the woman's face.
They continued walking in silence. Caroline felt like a child unfairly chastised for some wrongdoing. For she knew she had done nothing wrong. Knew she was within her rights as a tenant. Nurse Addison had spent a lot of time talking to her those last few days, forewarning her, telling her what to expect.
"He's a good boy, Caroline."
"I know, Mrs. Bannister. I'm sorry." She really didn't know. She didn't know him at all.
"You're not still worried because Lorraine Winters once lived across the hall from you, are you?"
"No." It gave her a strange feeling thinking of the woman who lived there, and she was sad about what happened to her. But it didn't frighten her.
It was not the first time violent death had touched Caroline. She remembered a roommate at the hospital, a young girl who slashed her wrists with a shard of broken glass. Caroline had just come back from lunch and found her on the floor, tears still drying on her ashen cheeks. There'd been blood on the sheets, the walls and the floor. Even after they cleaned it up, some of the stains were still visible.
Caroline knew it could just as easily have been her lying there. For as much as she didn't want to die, she hadn't known how to live. She had tried hard to crawl out of that deep hole, again and again, but the sides were slick and treacherous and she would slide back down into its depths, and darkness would once more claim her. She would not have made it out without Dr. Rosen's help. Or without Nurse Addison's friendship.
I don't want to go back to that awful place in my mind, ever. I want to stay strong.
Anyway, this was not about self-inflicted death. It was about murder.
"Don't look so worried, dear," her landlady said beside her. "I think you're being a little paranoid, but never mind. We'll wait till you're back home and then Harold can bring the TV up then, if that'll make you feel better."
"Thank you. I like Harold," she said quickly, grasping onto this olive leaf offered her. "He's very nice. And he's kind." But she didn't change her mind about him going into her room when she wasn't there.
"People can turn on a dime," Martha used to say. "Only God can really know what's in someone's heart."
"Yes, he is," the landlady said. "But you're right. You pay your rent, you're entitled to your privacy."
It was exactly what Nurse Addison had told her.
She suddenly felt proud of herself that she hadn't gone against her own rules just to please someone, that she had stuck up for herself. But at the same time, she didn't want to lose favor with her landlady. She'd call Nurse Addison and ask her what she thought about it. She'd seen a pay phone next to a dry cleaning shop, not far from the restaurant where she would be going to work.
Would she be annoyed if I called her at the hospital? She didn't say it was okay to call but that was only because she believed I was ready to live life on my own and make my own decisions. Wasn't it?
She glanced at the landlady and saw the stiffness still there in her face as they walked along the sidewalk, Mrs. Bannister limping heavily beside her. She had promised her the TV, and they were shopping together like friends. But Caroline felt alone.
You were always alone. It's not so different now. Dr. Rosen and Nurse Addison have their own lives, their own families. You were just their patient. Nothing more. They were nice, but you couldn't take advantage of people just because they were kind to you.
Anyway, Nurse Addison might not even be there now. The hospital was closing down and soon no one would be there, no one to answer the phones. And finally not even any phones, no furniture, just an abandoned building, filled with echoes of lost souls.
What will happen to Martha?
The landlady turned and smiled at her, but it was a stingy smile. She's different now.
"Let's go in here, Caroline, I need some stockings."
The name Natalie's Boutique was etched in lavender on a sign hanging above the door. A little bell rang as they stepped inside.
A pretty woman with hair like cotton candy was draping lovely silk print scarves on hooks on what looked like a hall tree, by the counter. She smiled brightly at them, a smile that lifted Caroline's spirits. The shop was warm and cheery, and smelled nice.
Ten
The vision of the woman imprinted on his mind, he was trembling when he returned to home. Her gentle lovely face, dark hair, and blue eyes. It was her. She was the one. He knew it as soon as he saw her. Not like the others at all. They were mistakes.
Buddy, which was his secret name given him by his spirit father, crossed the linoleum floor and stood before the full-length closet mirror, studying his reflection in the glass, searching his eyes for some flicker of recognition.
Gradually, the room faded from view, and he was back in his old room, the room of his boyhood. As the years swept backward through the corridor of time, he now saw only a young boy in the glass, the boy he had been. A timid, needy boy, anxious, never knowing what would happen next, a ready flinch on his face. He was blond, small for hi
s age.
Always eager to please his mother, and now and then he had succeeded. But she couldn't be trusted or counted on. Sometimes she'd be nice to him and he would dare to hope. But then she would disappear into a bottle of Vodka or a new lover and he would be nothing again. Only an irritant, someone in her way. She had a quick hand and he felt the sting of it often. He would try to stay out of range, and sometimes he managed it. But not always.
It wasn't just me she punished. Millie, too. Millie was only three years old. He could still hear her panicked screams coming from the bathroom, hear his mother's voice… "damn you, your little bitch, I told you if you wet the bed again… didn't I tell you? Didn't I…DIDN'T I…?"
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