by Ed McBain
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“In a minute.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Not a word. He just pulled me around and tried to stab me. Look what he did to my coat and blouse,” she said, and eased the torn blouse aside to study the sloping top of her left breast. Hawes seemed very interested in whether or not the knife had penetrated her flesh. He stared at the V opening of her blouse with all the scrutiny of an assistant medical examiner. “I was just lucky, that’s all,” Denise said, and let the blouse fall back into place.
“He was after me,” Hillary said.
Carella did not ask her why she thought so; he was thinking exactly the same thing.
“Let me have the coat,” she said.
“What?” her sister said.
“Your coat. Let me have it.”
Denise took off the coat. The knife thrust had torn the blouse over her left breast. Beneath the gaping satiny slash, Hawes could glimpse a promise of Denise’s flesh, a milkier white against the off-white of the satin. Hillary held the black coat against her own breasts like a phantom lover. Closing her eyes, she began to sway the way she had after she’d kissed Carella. Hawes looked at her and then looked at her sister and decided he would rather go to bed with Denise than with Hillary. Then he decided the exact opposite. Then he decided both of them wouldn’t be bad together, at the same time, in the king-sized bed in his apartment. Carella, not being psychic, didn’t know that everybody in the world had threesomes in mind this holiday season. Hillary, claiming to be what Carella knew he wasn’t, began intoning in a voice reminiscent of the one she’d used after she’d kissed him, “Tape, you stole, tape,” the same old routine.
Befuddled, Hawes watched her; he had never caught her act before. Denise, used to the ways of mediums, yawned. The brandy was reaching her. She seemed to have forgotten that less than an hour ago someone had tried to dispatch her to that great beyond her sister was now presumably tapping—Hillary had said it was a ghost who’d killed Gregory Craig, and now the same ghost had tried to kill her sister, and her black overcoat was giving off emanations that seemed to indicate either something or nothing at all.
“Hemp,” she said.
Carella wasn’t sure whether or not she was clearing her throat.
“Hemp,” she said again. “Stay.”
He hadn’t planned on leaving, so he didn’t know what the hell she meant.
“Hemp, stay,” she said. “Hempstead. Hampstead.”
Carella distinctively felt the hair on the back of his neck bristling. Hawes, watching Denise—who now crossed her legs recklessly and grinned at him in brandy-inspired abandon—felt only a bristling somewhere in the area of his groin.
“Mass,” Hillary intoned, her eyes still closed, her body swaying, the black overcoat clutched in her hands. “Mass. Massachusetts. Hampstead, Massachusetts,” and Carella’s mouth dropped open.
Hillary opened her eyes and stared blankly at him. His own stare was equally blank. Like a pair of blind idiot savants sharing the same mysterious knowledge, they stared at each other across an abyss no wider than three feet, but writhing with whispering demons and restless corpses. His feet were suddenly cold. He stared at her unblinkingly, and she stared back, and he could swear her eyes were on fire, the deep brown lighted from within with all the reds and yellows of glittering opals.
“Someone drowned in Hampstead, Massachusetts,” she said.
She said this directly to him, ignoring Hawes and her sister. And Carella, knowing full well that she had lived with Craig for the past year and more, knowing, too, that he might have told her all about the drowning of his former wife two miles from where he was renting the haunted house he made famous in Deadly Shades, nonetheless believed that the knowledge had come to her from the black overcoat she held in her hands.
When she said, “We’ll go to Massachusetts, you and I,” he knew that they would because Craig’s wife had drowned up there three summers ago, and now three more people were dead, and another murder attempt had been made—and maybe there were ghosts involved after all.
They had hoped to get there by one in the afternoon, a not unrealistic estimate in that they left the city at a little after 10:00 and Hampstead—by the map—was no more than 200 miles to the northeast. The roads outside the city were bone-dry; the storm that had blanketed Isola had left the surrounding areas untouched. It was only when they entered Massachusetts that they encountered difficulty. Whereas earlier Carella had maintained a steady fifty-five miles an hour in keeping with the federal energy-saving speed limit, he now eased off on the accelerator and hoped he would average thirty. Snow was not the problem; any state hoping for skiers during the winter months made certain the roads were plowed and scraped the instant the first snowflake fell. But the temperature had dropped to eighteen degrees Fahrenheit, and the roadside snow that had been melting during the midmorning hours had now frozen into a thin slick that covered the asphalt from median divider to shoulder and made driving treacherous and exhausting.
They reached Hampstead at 2:25 that afternoon. The sky was overcast, and a harsh wind blew in over the ocean, rattling the wooden shutters on the seaside buildings. The town seemed to have crawled up out of the Atlantic like some prehistoric thing seeking the sun, finding instead a rocky, inhospitable coastline and collapsing upon it in disappointment and exhaustion. The ramshackle buildings on the waterfront were uniformly gray, their weather-beaten shingles evoking a time when Hampstead was a small fishing village and men went down to the sea in ships. There were still nets and lobster pots in evidence, but the inevitable crush of progress had threaded through the town a gaudy string of motels and fast-food joints that thoroughly blighted what could not have been a particularly cheerful place to begin with.
The Common, such as it was, consisted of a sere rectangle of untended lawn surrounded by the town’s municipal buildings and a four-story brick hotel that called itself the Hampstead Arms. The tawdry tinsel of the season encompassed the square like a squadron of dancing girls in sequins and spangles. An unlighted Christmas tree was in the center of the Common, looking rather like a sodden seagull that had lost its bearings. Carella parked the car, and together he and Hillary walked to the Town Hall, where he hoped to find the Coroner’s Office and the records pertaining to the death of Gregory Craig’s former wife. Hillary was wearing a bulky raccoon coat, a brown woolen hat pulled down over her ears, brown gloves, brown boots, and the same outfit she’d been wearing in her sister’s apartment that morning: a tweedy beige skirt flecked with threads of green and brown, a turtleneck the color of bitter chocolate, and a green cardigan sweater with leather buttons. Carella was wearing much of the finery that had been given to him two days earlier: a pair of dark gray flannel slacks from Fanny, a red plaid flannel shirt from April, a tweed sports jacket the color of smoked herring from Teddy, a dark blue car coat with a fleece lining and a fake fur collar, also from Teddy, and a pair of fur-lined gloves from Mark. His feet were cold; he had put on loafers this morning, not expecting to be trodding the streets of an oceanfront town in Massachusetts, where the temperature lurked somewhat just above zero and the wind came in off the Atlantic like the revenge of every seaman ever lost in those dark waters offshore. As they crossed the Common, Hillary nodded and said, “Yes, I knew it would look like this.”
Hampstead’s Town Hall was a white clapboard building with a gray shingled roof. It faced westward, away from the ocean, shielding the sidewalk outside from the fierce Atlantic blasts. All the lights were on in defense against the afternoon gloom; they beckoned like beacons to lost mariners. Inside, the building was as toasty warm as a general store with a potbellied stove. Carella studied the information board in the lobby, a black rectangle with white plastic letters and numbers on it, announcing the various departments and the rooms in which they might be found. There was no listing for a Coroner’s Office. He settled for the Town Clerk’s Office and spoke there to a woman who sounded a lot like the lat
e President Kennedy. She told him that the Coroner’s Office was located in Hampstead General Hospital, which was about two miles to the northeast, just the other side of the Bight. Reluctant to face the frozen waste yet another time, Carella nonetheless walked with Hillary to where he’d parked the car and then drove due north along an oceanfront road that curved past what appeared to be a large saltwater pond, but that was identified by a roadside sign as HAMPSTEAD BIGHT.
“That’s where she drowned,” Hillary said. “Stop the car.”
“No,” Carella said. “First let’s find out how she drowned.”
The coroner was a man in his late sixties, as pale and as thin as a cadaver, with a fringe of graying hair around his flaking bald pate. He was wearing a threadbare brown sweater, rumpled brown slacks, a white shirt with a frayed collar, and a tie the color of cow dung. His desk was cluttered with a sheaf of loosely scattered file folders and a black plastic sign that announced his name in white letters: MR. HIRAM HOLLISTER. Carella spoke to him alone; it was one thing to bring your medium with you when you went calling on ghosts; it was quite another to conduct official business in the presence of a startlingly beautiful twenty-two-year-old wearing a raccoon coat that made her look cozily cuddlesome. Hillary waited on a bench in the corridor outside.
“I’m investigating three possibly linked homicides in Isola,” Carella said, showing his shield. “One of the victims was a man named Gregory Craig, who—”
“What’s that say there?” Hollister asked, peering at the gold shield with its blue enameling and its embossed city seal.
“Detective,” Carella said.
“Oh, detective, yup,” Hollister said.
“One of the victims was a man named Gregory Craig. His former wife, Stephanie Craig, drowned in Hampstead Bight three summers ago. Your office concluded that the death was accidental. I wonder if I might—”
“Three summers ago, yup,” Hollister said.
“Do you remember the case?”
“No, but I remember three summers ago, all right. That was the year we got all that rain.”
“Would you have a record of what happened? I’m assuming there was an inquest…”
“Oh, yes, there woulda been in a drowning.”
“Stephanie Craig,” Carella said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Not offhand. We get tourists here, you know, they don’t know how tricky the currents can be. We get our share of drownings, I’ll tell you, same as any other coastal community.”
“How about Gregory Craig?”
“Don’t recollect him either.”
“He wrote a book called Deadly Shades.”
“Haven’t read it.”
“About a house in this town.”
“Nope, don’t know it.”
Carella thought briefly about the illusiveness of fame. Behind his desk Hollister was nodding as though he had suddenly remembered something he had not earlier revealed.
“Yup,” he said.
Carella waited.
“Lots of rain that summer. Washed away the dock outside Logan’s Pier.”
“Mr. Hollister,” Carella said, “where would I find a record of the inquest?”
“Right down the hall,” Hollister said, and looked at his watch. “But it’s getting on three o’clock, and I want to start home before the storm hits. Supposed to be getting at least six inches, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” Carella said, and looked at his own watch. “If you’ll pull the folder for me,” he said, “I can take a look at it and then leave it on your desk, if that would be all right with you.”
“Well,” Hollister said.
“I can sign a receipt for it in my official capacity as—”
“Nope, don’t need a receipt,” Hollister said. “Just don’t want it getting all messed up and out of place.”
“I’ll be very careful with it,” Carella said.
“Get out-of-state police in here every so often,” Hollister said, “they don’t know about neatness and orderliness.”
“I can understand that, sir,” Carella said, figuring a “sir” wouldn’t hurt at this uneasy juncture. “But I’m used to handling files, and I promise I’ll return the folder in exactly the condition I receive it. Sir,” he added.
“Suppose it’d be all right,” Hollister said, and eased himself out of his swivel chair, surprising Carella with a six-foot-four frame that should have belonged to a basketball player. He followed Hollister down the corridor, past Hillary, who sat on the bench and looked up at him inquiringly, and then into an office succinctly marked records on the frosted glass panel of its door. The office was lined with dusty wooden file cabinets that would have fetched handsome prices in any of Isola’s antique shops.
“How do you spell that last name?” Hollister asked.
“C-R-A-I-G,” Carella said, and thought again about fame, and wondered if somewhere in America there was at this very moment someone asking how you spelled Hemingway or Faulkner or even Harold Robbins.
“C-R-A-I-G,” Hollister said, and then went to one of the file cabinets, and opened the drawer, and kept spelling the name over and over to himself as he leafed through the folders.
“Stephanie?” he asked.
“Stephanie,” Carella said.
“Here it is,” Hollister said, and yanked out an inch-thick folder, and studied the name on it again before handing it to Carella. “Just put it here on top of the cabinet when you’re through with it. I don’t want you trying to file it again, hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Carella said.
“Mess up the files that way,” Hollister said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You can use the desk over there near the windows if you like, take off your coat, make yourself comfortable. Who’s that lady outside looks like a grizzly bear?”
“She’s helping me with the case,” Carella said.
“You can bring her in, too, if that suits you; no sense her freezing her butt off in the hallway. Terrible draft in that hallway.”
“Yes, sir, thank you,” Carella said.
“Well, that’s it, I guess,” Hollister said, and shrugged and left Carella alone in the room. Carella poked his head outside the door. Hillary was still cooling her heels on the bench, impatiently jiggling one of her crossed legs.
“Come on in,” he said, and she rose instantly and came down the corridor, the heels of her boots clicking on the wooden floor.
“What’ve you got?” she asked.
“Record of the inquest.”
“We’d learn more at the Bight,” she said.
Carella turned on the desk’s gooseneck lamp and then pulled up a chair for Hillary. She did not take off the raccoon coat. Outside, it was already beginning to snow. The clock on the wall ticked off the time: seven minutes to 3:00.
“I want to make this fast,” Carella said, “and get out of here before the storm hits.”
“We have to go to the Bight. And the house Greg rented.”
“If there’s time,” he said.
“We won’t get out in any event,” she said. “They’ve already closed Route Forty-four.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, and she gave him a weary look. “Well…let’s hurry, anyway,” he said. “Did you want to look at this with me? Is there anything here that…”
“I want to touch the papers,” she said.
After her performance with her sister’s coat, he knew better than to scoff at her request. In the car on the drive to Massachusetts, she had tried to explain to him the powers she and others like her possessed. He had listened intently as she told him about extrasensory perception and psychometry in particular. She defined this as the ability to measure with the sixth sense the flux—or electromagnetic radiation—from another person, most often by touching an object owned or worn by that person. People blessed—“Or sometimes cursed,” she said—with this gift were capable of garnering information about the past and the present and sometimes, i
n the case of particularly talented psychometrists, even the future. She explained that one might consider time, from the psychic point of view, as a huge phonograph record with millions upon millions of ridges and grooves, containing millennia of recorded data. The psychic, in a sense, was someone with the extraordinary power of being able to lift the metaphoric arm of a record player and drop the needle into any of the grooves, thereby reproducing in the mind any of the preserved information on the disc. She was not quite certain how this worked concerning future events; she had never been able to prophesy with any amount of accuracy something that was about to happen. Clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience all were talents beyond her meager capabilities. But she was entirely certain of her power to intuit correctly, from any object’s electromagnetic leak of energy, the events—past or present—identified with that object. She had been able to do this with her sister’s coat yesterday because the coat had come into contact with the killer’s knife, and the knife had been held in the killer’s hand, and the flux had been strong enough to transfer itself from human being to object to yet another object. Her dissertation, soberly delivered, did much to convince Carella even further that she did possess powers he was incapable of reasoning away.
Sitting at the desk beside her now, he opened the case folder and began reading. She did not read along with him. She simply touched the upper right-hand corner of each page, the way one might have if attempting to dog-ear it, holding the page between her thumb and index finger, feeling it as she might have felt a fabric sample, her eyes closed, her body slightly swaying on the chair beside him. She was wearing a heady perfume he had not noticed on the car ride up. He assumed her psychometric concentration was creating emanations of her own by way of body heat that hyped the scent of the perfume.
According to the Coroner’s Inquest held on the sixteenth day of September, three weeks after the fatal drowning three summers ago, Stephanie Craig had been swimming alone in Hampstead Bight between 3:00 and 3:50 in the afternoon, when, according to observers on the shore, she suddenly disappeared below the surface. She came up twice, struggling and gasping for breath each time, but when she went under for the third time, she did not surface again. One of the eyewitnesses suggested at the inquest that Mrs. Craig (apparently she still used the “Mrs.” form of address four years after her divorce from Craig) may have been seized from below by a shark “or some other kind of fish,” but the Board rejected this at once, citing the fact that there had been no blood in the water and perhaps mindful of the many recent books and motion pictures that had done little to encourage the flow of tourists to ocean-side communities; the last thing on earth Hampstead needed was a shark scare—or any other kind of fish scare. The Board had conducted its inquiry meticulously, eliciting from Mrs. Craig’s handyman the information that she’d left for the beach at 2:30 that afternoon, taking with her a towel and a shoulder-slung handbag and telling him she planned to “walk on over to the Bight for a little swim.” She was wearing, as he clearly recalled, a blue bikini bathing suit and sandals. Witnesses at the beach recalled seeing her walking to the water’s edge, testing the water with her toes, and then coming back from the shoreline to put down her sandals, her towel, and her handbag. One of the witnesses mentioned that it was the “first darn sunny day we’d had in weeks,” a comment that must have done little to gladden the hearts of the two Chamber of Commerce members on the Board.