by Ed McBain
“I’m sorry I have to rush you,” she said, “but my appointment is at noon, and Antoine is clear across town.”
“We’re sorry to break in like this,” Hawes said, and smiled. Carella looked at him. They hadn’t broken in at all. They had called a half hour ago and carefully prepared her for their visit.
“Miss Craig,” Carella said, “when did you last see your father alive?”
“A year ago,” she said, startling him.
“And not since?”
“Not since.”
“How come?”
“How come?” Abigail said, and arched one eyebrow. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Her voice was Vassar or Bryn Mawr out of Rosemary Hall or Westover. Her manner was irritated and impatient. Carella had never felt comfortable with these long, cool, poised types, and she was doing little now to ease his distress. He looked at her for a moment and debated his approach. He decided to lay it on the line.
“I mean,” he said, “isn’t that a bit unusual? An only daughter…”
“He has another daughter,” she said flatly.
“Another daughter? I was under the impression…”
“More or less,” Abigail said. “She’s young enough to be his daughter anyway.”
“Who’s that?” Carella asked.
“Hillary.”
“Do you mean Hillary Scott?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” Abigail said, and reached for a cigarette in an enameled box on the end table. Lighting it, she said, “Let me put it to you simply,” and blew out a stream of smoke, and then put the gold lighter back on the table. “Ever since the divorce my father and I haven’t got along. When he took up with the Spook, that was the end. Period. Finis. Curtain.”
“By the Spook…”
“Hillary.”
“And when did he…take up with her, Miss Craig?”
“Shortly after Shades was published—when all the creeps in the universe were coming out of the woodwork with ghosts of their own.”
“You’re referring to Deadly Shades?”
“My father’s big moneymaking masterpiece,” Abigail said, and crushed out the cigarette.
“It was published when?”
“The hardcover edition? A year and a half ago.”
“And he met Hillary Scott shortly after that?”
“I don’t know when he met her. I didn’t find out about them until Thanksgiving a year ago. God knows how long they’d been living together by then. Invited me over for the big turkey dinner. ‘Hello, darling,’” she said, mimicking broadly, “‘I’d like you to meet Hillary Scott, my lady friend.’ His lady friend!” she said, her eyes flashing.
“Fucking little twenty-two-year-old spook hunter.”
Carella blinked. He was used to all sorts of language in the squadroom and on the streets; you couldn’t be a cop for as long as he’d been one and still expect people to say “darn” and “shucks.” But the obscenity had sounded completely out of place in this festively decorated living room on Hall Avenue. Hawes, on the other hand, was watching Abigail with an intensity bordering on instant obsession; he loved the ones who said “fuck” through their overbites.
“So, uh, the last time you saw your father,” Carella said, “was…”
“Thanksgiving last year. When he introduced me to the Spook. That was it. The last straw.”
“What were the other straws?”
“The divorce was the big thing.”
“And when was that?”
“Seven years ago. Right after Knights and Knaves was published.”
“That’s one of his novels, isn’t it?”
“His best novel. And his last one.” She took another cigarette from the enameled box, held the lighter to it, and blew out a stream of smoke in Hawes’s direction. “The critics savaged it. So naturally, he took it out on Mother. Decided that Stephanie Craig, poor soul, was somehow to blame for what the critics had said about his book. Never once realized that the book was truly a marvelous one. Oh, no. Figured if the critics said it was awful, why, then, it had to be awful. And blamed Mother. Blamed her for the lifestyle—one of his favorite words—that had caused him to write his universally panned novel. Said he wanted out.” Abigail shrugged. “Said he needed to ‘rediscover’ himself—another favorite Gregory Craig utterance.” She dragged on the cigarette again. “So he rediscovered himself with a piece of crap like Shades.”
“Is your mother still alive?” Hawes asked.
“No.”
“When did she die?”
“Three summers ago.”
“How?”
“She drowned. They said it was an accident.”
“They?”
“The Coroner’s Office in Hampstead, Massachusetts.”
“Massachusetts,” Carella said.
“Yes. She drowned in the Bight, two miles from where my father was renting his famous haunted house.”
“This was how many years after the divorce?”
“Four.”
“And they spent their summer vacations in the same town?”
“She never got over it,” Abigail said. “She wanted to be near him. Wherever he went…” She shook her head.
“A minute ago, Miss Craig, you said the Coroner’s Office…”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe your mother’s death was accidental?”
“She was on the swimming team at Holman U when she was a student there,” Abigail said flatly. “She won three gold medals.”
The report from the Mobile Crime Lab was waiting on Carella’s desk when they got back to the squadroom. It stated that the lock on the door to the Craig apartment was a Weiser deadbolt, meaning that it could be unlocked on both sides—inside and out—only with a key. There had been no key in the lock on the inside of the door. There were no jimmy marks on the jamb, no scratches on the perimeter of the lock or around the keyway, no signs of forced entry. The apartment’s service entrance—opening into the kitchen from a small alcove lined with garbage cans—was similarly equipped with a Weiser deadbolt. Again, there were no signs of forced entry. A check of the lock on the big door leading to the rear ramp of the building showed no signs of forced entry. Whoever had killed Gregory Craig was a person who either lived in the building and was known to the security guard on duty or was someone known to Craig himself. If the killer had first been announced by the security guard who was off skiing his brains out someplace, then Craig had given the okay to send him upstairs. There were sixty apartments in the Harborview complex. Carella made a note to begin a door-to-door canvass of the tenants, and he made a further note to ask Byrnes for additional manpower on the case—fat chance of getting it three days before Christmas.
At 12:20 that afternoon he called the Craig apartment, hoping to catch Hillary Scott there. He let the phone ring an even dozen times, replaced the cradle on its receiver, looked up the number for the Parapsychological Society in Isola, and dialed it.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Hillary said.
“What about, Miss Scott?”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“No, I’m sorry, I just got back.”
“I gave the message to somebody up there. Somebody with an Italian name like yours.”
Carella looked across the room to where Genero was eating a sandwich at his desk, munching in time to “Deck the Halls.”
“I’m sorry, what were you calling about?” he said.
“The autopsy. I understand they want to do an autopsy.”
“That’s right, an autopsy is mandatory in any trauma case.”
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“Miss Scott, I’m afraid this isn’t something—”
“What happens when Greg’s essence passes over?” Hillary said. “If you cut him open and take out his insides, what happens when he gets to the spirit world?”
“I have no control over this,” Carella said. “An autopsy is
mand—”
“Yes, I heard you. Who do I talk to?”
“About what?”
“About stopping the autopsy.”
“Miss Scott, the Medical Examiner’s Office has probably already begun work on the body. It’s vital that we establish the cause of death so that when the case comes to trial…”
“It’s vital that Greg’s spirit pass over intact!”
“I’m sorry.”
There was a silence on the line.
“I’ve heard about too many mutilated spirits,” Hillary said.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Miss Scott, the reason I was calling—”
“Far too many,” she said, and again there was a silence on the line. Carella waited. There was no sense continuing the argument. The autopsy would be performed whatever Hillary Scott said or did. As he’d just told her, the ME’s Office had probably already begun work. At the morgue, the body of Gregory Craig would be slit open like a slab of beef, the vital organs removed and tested, the skull lifted back on a tab of flesh to expose the brain. When the corpse was later displayed in a funeral home, none of the mourners would realize they were looking at the hollow shell of what had once been a man. The silence lengthened. Carella assumed he had made his case.
“I was wondering if you could meet us at the apartment later today,” he said.
“What for?”
“There’s the possibility that Mr. Craig may have been surprised by a burglar. We want to know if anything’s missing, Miss Scott, and the only way we can determine that is with someone who knows what should be in the apartment.”
“It wasn’t a burglar who killed Greg,” Hillary said.
“Why do you say that?”
“It was a ghost.”
Sure, Carella thought. A ghost tied Craig’s hands behind him with a wire coat hanger. A ghost stabbed him nineteen times in the chest, the back, the arms, the throat, the hands, and the head with a ghost knife the lab boys had not been able to find anywhere in the apartment. The same ghost knife that had most likely been used on Marian Esposito, Companion Case R-76533.
“I felt a very strong flux in that apartment yesterday,” Hillary said.
“Can you meet us there in an hour?” Carella asked.
“Yes, certainly,” she said. “But it wasn’t a burglar.”
If it hadn’t been a burglar, it had certainly been someone who’d helped himself—or herself—to a great many things in the Craig apartment. According to Hillary Scott, there had been some $300 in the bill compartment of Craig’s wallet when she’d left the apartment yesterday morning at 10:00. She knew because she’d asked him for cab fare to the office, and he’d fanned out a sheaf of fifties, searching for smaller bills. The money was gone now, but Craig’s credit cards—seven of them in all—hadn’t been touched. His jewelry box, open on the dresser top, had been looted of a gold Patek Philippe wristwatch with a gold band, a pair of gold Schlumberger cuff links set with diamonds, a gold pinkie ring with a lapis stone, and a gold link bracelet. Hillary was uncertain about the value of Craig’s missing jewelry, except for the gold bracelet, which she’d bought for him herself last Christmas and that had cost $685. She suspected the Patek Philippe wristwatch had cost somewhere in the vicinity of $6,500. She was more specific about the jewelry that was missing from the box she kept in the top drawer on her side of the dresser. All of it had been given to her by Gregory Craig during the year and a half they’d been living together. She listed the stolen items as: One Angela Cummings hand-carved root bracelet of Burmese jade and eighteen-karat gold at $3,975.
One Elsa Peretti snake hair band of eighteen-karat gold at $510.
One eighteen-karat gold choker set with diamonds at $16,500.
One pear-shaped diamond pendant set in platinum with an eighteen-inch chain of eighteen-karat gold at $3,500.
One emerald-cut diamond set in a platinum ring at $34,500.
One pair of eighteen-karat gold earrings with Mobe pearls at $595.
One pair of diamond earrings set in platinum at $1,500.
One rope choker of eighteen-karat yellow and white gold at $2,950.
One bracelet of eighteen-karat pink, yellow, and white gold at $1,250.
And two fourteen-karat gold bangle bracelets at $575 each.
In addition to the jewelry stolen from the box, she told them she was missing from the dresser drawer itself an Elsa Peretti bean-shaped bag of twenty-four-karat gold lacquered with magnolia wood at $2,500 and a Chopard bracelet-watch of eighteen-karat gold set with diamonds at $14,500. She had kept the watch in the original case it had come in; the case was still in the drawer, a black velvet exterior, a white satin lining—but the watch was gone. She knew the value of the jewelry Craig had given her because they had recently made an insurance appraisal on all of it.
“But not on his jewelry?” Carella asked.
“Yes, his, too. But we had to get separate policies because we aren’t married. I was only familiar with what mine came to.”
“And what was that, offhand?” Hawes asked.
“Offhand, it was exactly eighty-three thousand four hundred and thirty dollars.”
“That’s a lot of stuff to have kept loose in a dresser drawer,” Carella said.
“Greg was planning on buying a wall safe,” Hillary said. “Anyway, it was all insured. And besides, the security here is very good. We wouldn’t have taken the apartment if we weren’t promised such tight security.”
“Anything else missing?” Hawes said.
“Was he wearing his college ring?” Hillary asked.
“There was no jewelry on the body.”
“Then that’s missing, too.”
“What college?” Carella asked.
“Holman University. Where he met his former wife.”
“What kind of ring?”
“Gold with an amethyst stone.”
“Where did he wear it?”
“On the ring finger of his right hand.”
Carella remembered the Wounds Chart: Slash wound on inside of ring finger of right hand. Had the killer used the knife to pry the ring loose from Craig’s finger? Had he come into the apartment armed, or had he used a knife he’d found on the premises? If he’d come here specifically to commit a burglary, then how had he got through the “tight” security downstairs? Would Craig have admitted a stranger to the apartment, someone who’d later stolen in excess of $83,000 worth of jewelry and killed him before leaving? But Hillary Scott insisted it was not a burglar.
“The flux is strongest in this room,” she said. She walked to the desk facing the windows and put her hands on its surface. “He was here at the desk.”
“He?”
“A male spirit,” she said, running her hands lightly over the desktop. “Young. Black hair and brown eyes.” Her own eyes were closed; her hands flitted lightly over the surface of the desk; she swayed as she spoke. “Searching for something. Seeking. Restless. A restless spirit.”
Carella looked at Hawes. Hawes returned the look. Carella was wondering how somebody who so closely resembled his wife could be so certifiably nuts. Hawes was wondering what she’d be like in the sack—would she go into a trance from all the flux? And then he felt immediately incestuous because the damn girl looked so much like Teddy Carella. He turned away from Carella’s gaze, as though fearful his mind had been read.
“Anything missing from the desk?” Carella asked.
“May I open it?” she said. “Are your people through with it?”
“Go ahead,” Carella said.
She opened the drawer over the kneehole. A tray full of paper clips, rubber bands, and pencils. A staple remover. A box of key tags. A box of loose-leaf reinforcers. She closed that drawer and opened the file drawer to the right of the kneehole. It contained a sheaf of index folders lettered with names.
“Is that Craig’s handwriting?” Carella asked.
“Yes, shhhhh.”
“What are those names?”
“Ghosts,”
she said, “shhhhhh,” and passed her hands lightly over the folders.
“He was searching here.”
“If he was,” Hawes said, “the lab boys’ll have prints.”
“Spirits do not leave fingerprints,” she said, and Carella thought, Nutty as a fruitcake.
“Those names…”
“Yes, ghosts,” she said. “Cases he planned to investigate for authenticity. Ever since he wrote Shades, he’s received calls and letters from all over the world, people reporting ghosts.”
“Anything missing that you can tell?” Hawes asked.
“No, but he was in here. I know he was in here.”
She closed the file drawer and opened the drawer above it. A ream of yellow Manila paper, nothing else. “Here, too,” she said. “Searching, seeking.”
“Did Mr. Craig ever keep anything of value in this desk?” Carella asked.
“His files are extremely valuable,” Hillary said, and abruptly opened her eyes.
“Maybe he was looking for something,” Hawes said. “Everything thrown around the room the way it was.”
“Yes, positively,” Hillary said.
“And found it,” Carella said.
Hillary looked at him.
“More than eighty-three thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry.”
“No, it wasn’t that. It was something else. I don’t know what,” she said, and passed her hands over the air as though trying to touch something the detectives could not see.
“Let’s check the kitchen,” Carella said. “I want you to tell us if any knives are missing.”
They checked the kitchen. On a magnetic wall rack, over the countertop, there were seven knives of varying sizes, one of them a ten-inch-long chef’s knife. According to Hillary, all the knives were there. They opened the cabinet drawers. She counted the table cutlery and the assortment of slicing and paring knives in the tray and told them nothing was missing.