by Ed McBain
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 ho
use 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.
The grandfather clock that had also been a gift from Teddy’s father chimed the half hour. It was 6:30. He knew Teddy and Fanny had taken the twins to see Santa—as he was supposed to have done today—but they should have been home by now, even with the storm. He switched on the floor lamp near the piano and the Tiffany-style lamp on the end table near the sofa and then walked through the living room into the kitchen. He took a tray of ice cubes from the freezer compartment, went back into the living room, and was mixing himself a drink at the bar unit when the telephone rang. He snatched the receiver from the cradle at once.
“Hello?” he said.
“Steve, it’s Fanny.”
“Yes, Fanny, where are you?”
“We’re stuck downtown here outside Coopersmith’s. It’s the devil getting a cab; there just aren’t any to be found. We’re thinking of taking a train to the Gladiola Station—if we can get cross-town from here.”
“How about the subway?”
“The TR and L is closer, if we can get to it. It may be a while, though. I’ll call you as soon as I know what we’ll be doing.”
“How was Santa Claus?”
“A dirty old man with a fake beard. Go fix yourself a drink,” Fanny said, and hung up.
He put down the receiver and went back to the bar unit, wondering when Fanny had developed psychic powers of her own. His lip felt bruised from Hillary’s trance-induced mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in reverse. He had not kissed another woman since the day he married Teddy, nor did he feel he’d kissed one now. Whatever had transpired in the living room of Denise Scott’s apartment had been robbed of all sexuality by the fierceness of Hillary’s quest. She might just as well have been pressing a necromancer’s stone to her mouth, and he’d been frightened, rather than aroused, fearful that she truly did possess a power that would drain his soul from the shell of his body and leave it a quivering gray mass on the carpet at his feet. He had every intention of telling Teddy what had happened the moment she got home. He wondered when the hell that would be, stirred himself a martini, very dry, and then plopped two olives into the glass. He was turning on the Christmas tree lights when the phone rang.