by John Lutz
The motel was in the county, not the city, so St. Louis County police were in charge of dealing with whatever crime had been committed in the cottage. For particularly serious crimes, such as murder, a team of city and county police was formed to conduct the investigation so it wouldn’t be hindered by the metropolitan area’s crazy-quilt pattern of mini-municipalities with their own police departments. Apparently that was what was going on now. Serious crime. Nudger paused outside the cottage and popped an antacid tablet while a tan-uniformed county cop eyed him suspiciously. The cop turned half toward him, absently touching heel of hand to butt of holstered revolver.
Nudger moved toward the cottage door, gravel crunching beneath his soles.
“Got business in there, sir?” the cop asked. Very polite. Very official. Robot in uniform.
Hammersmith’s voice said, “I invited him to the party. Let him pass.”
The county cop backed away. He didn’t seem deferential, though. Playing his role.
Nudger looked over and saw Hammersmith standing there holding the cottage door open, looking indeed like a genial host ready to usher a guest into a social gathering. Would he smile and urge Nudger to help himself to hors d’oeuvres?
Nope. He remained serious and said nothing as Nudger squeezed past him into the cottage.
God, it was hot inside! And crowded with plainclothes cops milling around and talking in low tones. A short man with dark hair permed to impossible curliness was packing stainless steel instruments into a brown case. Nudger knew he must be the medical examiner, closing up shop for the night. There was a fetid smell riding the air. It made Nudger’s large intestine attack his small. He felt faint, might have staggered.
“You okay, Nudge?” Hammersmith asked.
“Yeah, fine.” Hah! Nudger had recognized the smell and braced himself for what it must mean.
“She isn’t,” Hammersmith said, and pointed to the bed.
Nudger overcame the resistance of his eye muscles and made himself look.
The covers were thrown back and the mattress was dark with the spilled blood that had fouled the air. Where it wasn’t stained with blood, the body of Vanita Lane was almost white. She was lying on her back, her arms stretched above her head, her wrists bound together with what looked like electrical cord and then laced to the iron headboard. Her feet were free. She was lying spraddle-legged, with her bare soles almost touching. Her crotch was a dark mass of congealed blood. Nudger’s gaze lurched again toward her hands; there’d been something about them. But on the trip up, his eyes locked on Vanita’s face and he couldn’t look away. Shallow blue eyes seemed to stare back at him with a fogged expression of vague and hopeless horror. The kind of abject terror seen on Halloween and tribal masks, so vivid it has to be unreal, yet it touches something deep in us all. Her features were contorted with a suffering she was now beyond.
Merciful. Merciful that she’s dead.
With great effort he tore his gaze from her face. Spun his entire body away from her. From what she’d become. He bent over and choked back the bile that rose and burned like acid in his throat.
“We better go outside, Nudge,” Hammersmith said.
He felt Hammersmith’s hand on his shoulder, guiding him toward the door. Nudger straightened up and walked unsteadily ahead of him.
The outside air seemed sweet and the night felt cool. Nudger took several deep breaths, as if trying to drown on purity. Tilted back his head and stared up at the stars. They stared back at him, light-years away and disinterested. Time and distance. On the nearest star, Vanita was still alive and might not have yet met Rupert Winslow.
“Sorry. Forgot about your weak stomach,” Hammersmith said.
The hell he had. Nudger glared at him.
“You gonna ask me who she is?” Hammersmith said. “‘Scuse me, who she was?”
Nudger said, “I know who she was. Who found her?”
“Her door was left half open and the lights were on, and a couple of arriving guests glanced in on the way to their cottage. Saw what we saw and called the police.”
“She been dead long?”
“The M.E. says her remaining body temperature suggests a couple of hours at the outside. Autopsy’ll pin it down closer. Doubtful that’ll help us, though.”
Nudger jammed his hands in his pockets, feeling in control of his stomach now, but barely. He said, “How’d you know to phone me?”
“What we do these days at a murder scene is punch the Redial button on the phone, Nudge. See who the victim might have talked with last. In this case, the dead woman’s last phone call was to your answering machine. Wanna share with us why?”
“She was my client.”
“Hardly speaks well for your services.”
“Her name was Vanita Lane.”
“Yeah, we got that and her address from the ID in her purse. Asked around to see which guests were driving which cars and found out that’s her blue BMW parked over there.”
Nudger said, “I need to ask you a favor, Jack.”
Hammersmith fired up one of his incredibly horrible smelling cigars, his fat cheeks puffing in and out like a bellows. He flicked closed the lid on his lighter. Hefted the lighter in his hand and then slid it into a pocket. “That sho?” he said around the cigar.
“In a manner of speaking,” Nudger said, “I concealed knowledge of a crime, but I thought it’d all be public knowledge by now. I thought the diamonds would be found.”
Hammersmith raised pale eyebrows. “Diamondsh?”
“Yeah, stolen diamonds that should be in the wreckage of the airliner that blew up at Lambert Field yesterday.”
Hammersmith slowly removed the cigar from his mouth. “Christ, Nudge. Federal stuff.”
“But the evidence I withheld had nothing to do with the bombing. The FBI hung that one on the right man. Rupert Winslow, the guy who killed himself in New York.”
“But you want me to keep your secret nonetheless. That it, Nudge?”
“Yeah. It could be rough for me to stay licensed if you don’t. Understand I’m not asking you to lie for me, Jack. Just not to mention something.”
Inhale, exhale on the cigar. The ember signaled Hammersmith’s distress. “This is a homicide, Nudge.”
“About the homicide I’ll tell everything I know, and there are no secrets.”
Hammersmith puffed and thought. Then he shifted his bulk so his weight was evenly distributed on both legs. “So talk, Nudge. Then we’ll see what I can promise.”
Nudger told Hammersmith the entire story.
When he was finished, Hammersmith glanced at Cottage 13 and blew a cloud of smoke that looked red in the reflected illumination of patrol car lights. Smoke from hell. So much smoke it seemed to rise and extinguish some of the stars. For once Nudger didn’t mind the smell. It replaced the stench of blood, still thick in his nostrils and at the base of his tongue, where it lay like taste.
“You’re right, Nudge,” Hammersmith said. “You probably got no worry with the feds; the airline bombing case is already more or less wrapped up. Still, you could confirm they pinned it on the right man and supply them with some explanation.”
“Not my civic duty.”
Hammersmith shrugged. “Maybe not. It’s arguable, seeing as the guy’s dead and the investigation’s more or less closed.”
Nudger said, “What could lose me my livelihood is not mentioning the information about the diamond theft.”
“True. And Captain Springer’ll want your head on a stake.”
Hammersmith meant Captain Leo Springer, a conniving career cop who’d stepped on a lot of throats to reach his present rank and was still stepping. Most of the decent cops in the St. Louis department hated and feared Springer. Private investigators, decent or otherwise, loathed him. He didn’t like the idea of anyone not under his command solving crimes, or even contributing. Made the police seem stupid, he’d once told Nudger. Better to let the bad guys run free than do that.
Nudger sighed and
looked out at the lights of traffic streaming past on Watson Road. He said, “Well, that’s where I am, Jack.”
There was a break in the traffic. Nudger became aware of crickets screaming in the darkness behind the cottages. Two people in the nearest cottage, a man and a woman, had the curtains pulled aside and were staring out, part of what was going on and not a part of it.
“I won’t conceal the truth for you,” Hammersmith said. “But what I’ll do is tell one small lie.”
Nudger turned and looked at him. “I’m not asking you to lie, Jack. To jeopardize your career.”
“I won’t be jeopardizing anything,” Hammersmith said, “unless you turn fink.”
“That’s not likely.”
“What you told me just now, I’ll say you phoned an hour ago and told it to me.”
Nudger felt hope flare. Then he gave this some thought. “Springer won’t believe you.”
“I know. That’s why I’m gonna do it. Get a little pleasure outa taunting the little bastard.”
“Damn it, jack—”
“Don’t argue, Nudge. And don’t worry about me. I don’t do this kinda shit unless I know it’ll work out. Anyway, you still got enough troubles of your own.”
“Seems my troubles involving Vanita Lane and the diamonds are about over,” Nudger said. “Now that she’s dead.”
“Nudge, Nudge. Think ahead, why don’t you?”
Nudger had already done that, though not very far ahead. His mind was still working on the vision of Vanita sprawled dead on the blood-soaked mattress. He said, “I was probably the last person to see her alive, and I’ll have to give a statement, but I was with Claudia all evening.”
“Oh, you’ll get through that part of it okay,” Hammersmith said. “But let me tell you what we already know about Miss Lane’s murder. She was viciously raped, probably by more than one man. Maybe even after death. There was semen in her mouth. You know how these things work; probably the autopsy’ ll reveal it in her rectal tract and vagina. There are also some cigarette burns on her nipples. And did you notice her hands?”
“Noticed something strange about them, yeah.”
“Six of her fingers were broken. My point, Nudge, is she was tortured and then murdered by some very cold and nasty characters. We figure they were trying to get her to talk, at least at first. With the fingers. And after she gave up and talked is when they had their fun. And what worries me most is the way they killed her when they were finished using her. Very skillfully opened up a couple of major arteries so she’d spill her life out. Fast and efficient. Musta been casual. The way you’d bleed a farm animal to death. Like I said, cold types.”
“But as soon as the diamonds are found—”
“The people they send to investigate airline disasters are experts. If there were diamonds near the point of that explosion, at least some of them would have been found by now. I can tell you that nothing like diamonds has been found. And didn’t you say this Vanita Lane showed you your business card in your office? The card you gave her at the airport?”
“Right.”
“Then she put it back in her purse?”
“I think so. Sure, she must have. She didn’t give it back to me.”
“We went through her purse, Nudge. And we searched that cottage with the thoroughness you only see at homicide scenes. Your card didn’t turn up.” Hammersmith shoved his cigar in his mouth. Blew smoke. Smiled around the cigar. “Know what that meansh?”
Nudger knew.
If his card wasn’t in Vanita’s purse or anywhere in the cottage, whoever killed her must have it. His stomach plunged. Found perilous equilibrium. Turned cold and shriveled with fear.
Hammersmith removed his cigar and stared at the ember glowing fiery red in the night. “Cottage Thirteen, Nudge. Jesus! Why didn’t you choose a luckier number?”
“I don’t think that would have changed her luck.”
“I was talking about your luck.”
But Nudger knew it wasn’t 13 that had landed him in this nightmare. It was 1,000.
8
Hammersmith was right about Leo Springer. The ferretlike little captain personally conducted Nudger’s interrogation at police headquarters at Tucker and Clark, hour after sweaty hour. Finally, after veiled threats and scathing insinuations, the police put Nudger on the street a few minutes after midnight. He felt as if his brain had been wrung out like a dishrag.
He crossed Clark toward the City Hall parking lot, where he’d left the Granada, and walked through an almost invisible cloud of tiny insects—gnats, maybe—that flitted about his eyes and nostrils. He was sure in the mood for that.
Even through the dark night he could see the traffic ticket stuck beneath the car’s wiper. Nudger hadn’t planned on being the subject of such a marathon interrogation, and time on the parking meter had long ago expired. He’d brought up the fact inside Headquarters that the meter needed feeding. Springer had given him an egg-sucking smile and said, “Amazing. Your ass is mixed up in a homicide and you’re worried about getting a traffic ticket? Get your priorities straight, Nudger.”
Well, Springer had been right. There’d been no need to worry. When Nudger yanked the slip of paper from beneath the wiper blade and studied it in the orangish hue of the overhead sodium lights, he saw that it wasn’t a traffic ticket. It was a short note neatly printed in what looked like black felt-tip pen. “See you in your office tomorrow morning.” It was signed “D.D.S.”
Nudger stared at the initials. They usually stood for Doctor of Dental Surgery. He tried to remember if he owed his dentist any money. Couldn’t be sure. No matter; dentists didn’t often leave vaguely threatening notes on patients’ cars. Most dentists. He remembered a movie he’d seen where a Nazi dentist tortured someone by drilling holes in his teeth without benefit of Novocaine. Yeow! The memory made him shiver.
He crumpled the note and stuffed it in his pocket, then withdrew his hand holding his keys and wearily got into the car. He sat without moving for a while to get reoriented after the isolation and intensity of hours under police pressure; innocent or guilty, nobody bounced back immediately after such a soul-smearing experience.
Then he drove through nearly deserted nighttime streets to his apartment. He locked himself in, and even made sure all the windows were locked. He was exhausted, had to get some sleep or he’d drop and become part of wherever he landed. Then he realized he’d worked up a thirst at Headquarters. He felt seriously dehydrated and probably was. The term “Sweat it out of them” was something Springer took literally, whether “it” was in them or in his own limited imagination.
Nudger got a Busch beer from the refrigerator and sat down on the sofa to drink it before going to bed, took a long pull on the can. He removed his shoes and let them thump on the floor, stretched his legs out straight and crossed them at the ankles. Gulping down some more of the cold beer, he felt it sting the back of his throat.
He backhanded a dribble of foam from his chin.
And fell asleep where he sat.
When he awoke, his lips were welded together and breath was rasping through his nose. His eyes were sealed, too, but he managed to raise his eyelids even though it felt as if they were on rusty hinges. The room was bright with morning. His head pressed to the pillow, he rolled a bleary eye toward his wristwatch.
Ten o’clock. Later than he usually slept.
And what was this? He was on the sofa and not in bed. Fully clothed except for his shoes, which were lying on their sides on the floor, toes angled toward each other. As if a pigeon-toed man had run right out of them.
He sat up, winced as pain sliced through his head, and remembered last night and how he’d fallen asleep on the sofa. He rocked forward slowly and looked down. The blue-and-white beer can lay near the shoes on the floor. The gray carpet was still damp where remaining beer had spilled out when the can fell from Nudger’s hand. He couldn’t remember dropping the can. He leaned farther forward and picked it up. A small amount of beer slo
shed around hollowly in the bottom. The sound made Nudger nauseated.
After setting the can upright on an end table, he pushed himself to a standing position and aimed his body at the bathroom. He padded to it in his socks that had bunched down around his ankles during the night. Something cold seeped through the bottom of the right sock, and he realized he’d stepped in the damp spot on the carpet.
He hadn’t dreamed. He was glad about that.
After a long, cool shower he felt better. But when he got dressed and went into the kitchen he discovered Mr. Coffee had joined the conspiracy against him and refused to work. He gnashed his teeth at the clear water in the glass pot, the gooey mass of grounds stuck in the filter. He’d give Mr. Coffee a medical exam tonight. The yellowing appliance was left over from his marriage and might have expired from old age. Nudger wasn’t sure if he cared; it would give him a certain post-Eileen pleasure to chuck the balky appliance in the trash. It had never earned the right to be called Mister.
He drove in to work and found a delivery van being unloaded in front of the broken meter. It looked as if it would be parked there for quite a while, so he drove around the block and parked behind the doughnut shop. He locked the car and cut through the alleyway to the street. The stench of urine was strong in the alleyway. New graffiti said the end of the world was near. True for some people. When he reached the sidewalk, Danny noticed him through the greasy display window and motioned for him to come inside.
Nudger pushed in through the doughnut shop door. There was one customer at the stainless steel counter, an unkempt older man who looked like some kind of street person. He had a Dunker Delite on a napkin in front of him, and a glass of water. He looked as if he might be trying to build up his nerve about taking a bite of the doughnut, which was doubtless left over from yesterday; maybe it would be better to stay hungry.