Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41

by Levine (v1. 1)

  "Why did you wait so long before corning to us?"

  "I didn't know what to do." The solemn formality cracked all at once, and she was only a child after all, uncertain in an adult world. "I didn't think anyone would believe me, and I was afraid if Mother suspected what I knew, she might try to do something to me. But Monday in Civics Miss Haskell was talking about the duties of the different parts of government, firemen and policemen and everybody, and she said the duty of the police was to investigate crimes and see the guilty were punished. So yesterday I came and told you, because it didn't matter if you didn't believe me, you'd have to do your duty and investigate anyway."

  Levine sighed. "All right," he said. "We're doing it. But we need more than just your word, you understand that, don't you? We need proof of some kind."

  She nodded, serious and formal again.

  "What store did you go to that day?" he asked her.

  "A supermarket. The big one on Seventh Avenue."

  "Do you know any of the clerks there? Would they recognize you?"

  "I don't think so. It's a great big supermarket. I don't think they know any of their customers at all."

  "Did you see anyone at all on your trip to the store or back, who would remember that it was you who went to the store and not your mother, and that it was that particular day?"

  She considered, touching one finger to her lips as she concentrated, and finally shook her head. "I don't think so. I don't know any of the people in the neighborhood. Most of the people I know are my parents' friends or kids from school, and they live all over, not just around here."

  The New York complication. In a smaller town, people know their neighbors, have some idea of the comings and goings around them. But in New York, next-door neighbors remain strangers for years. At least that was true in the apartment house sections, though less true in the quieter outlying sections like the neighborhood in which Levine lived.

  Levine got to his feet. ''We'll see what we can do," he said. *This clang you told me about. Do you have any idea what your mother used to make the noise?"

  "No, I don't. Fm sorry. It sounded like a gong or something. I don't know what it could possibly have been."

  "A tablespoon against the bottom of a pot? Something like that?"

  "Oh, no. Much louder than that."

  "And she didn't have anything in her hands when she came out of the bedroom?"

  "No, nothing."

  "Well, we'll see what we can do," he repeated. "You can go back to class now."

  "Thank you," she said. "Thank you for helping me."

  He smiled. "It's my duty," he said. "As you pointed out."

  "You'd do it anyway, Mr. Levine," she said. "You're a very good man. Like my stepfather."

  Levine touched the palm of his hand to his chest, over his heart. "Yes," he said. "In more ways than one, maybe. Well, you go back to class. Or, wait. There's one thing I can do for you."

  She waited as he took a pencil and a small piece of memo paper from Mrs. Pidgeon's desk, and wrote on it the precinct phone number and his home phone number, marking which each was. "If you think there's any danger of any kind," he told her, "any trouble at all, you call me. At the precinct until four o'clock, and then at home after that."

  "Thank you," she said. She folded the paper and tucked it away in the pocket of her skirt.

  At a quarter to four, Levine and Crawley met again in the squadroom. When he'd come back in the morning from his talk with the little girl, Levine had found Crawley just back from having talked with Dr. Sheffield. It was Sheffield's opinion, Crawley had told him, that Amy was making the whole thing up, that her stepfather's death had been a severe shock and this was some sort of delayed reaction to it. Certainly he couldn't see any possibility that Mrs. Walker had actually murdered her husband, nor could he begin to guess at any motive for such an act.

  Levine and Crawley had eaten lunch together in Wilton's, across the street from the station, and then had separated, both to try to find someone who had either seen Amy or her mother on the shopping trip the afternoon Mr. Walker had died. This, aside from the accusation of murder itself, was the only contradiction between their stories. Find proof that one was lying, and they'd have the full answer. So Levine had started at the market and Crawley at the apartment building, and they'd spent the entire afternoon up and down the neighborhood, asking their questions and getting only blank stares for answers.

  Crawley was there already when Levine came slowly into the squadroom, worn from an entire afternoon on his feet, climaxed by the climb to the precinct's second floor. He looked at Crawley and shook his head. Crawley said, "Nothing? Same here. Not a damn thing."

  Levine laboriously removed his overcoat and set it on the coatrack. "No one remembers," he said. "No one saw, no one knows anyone. It's a city of strangers we live in. Jack."

  "It's been two weeks," said Crawley. "Their building has a doorman, but he can't remember that far back. He sees the same tenants go in and out every day; and he wouldn't be able to tell you for sure who went in or out yesterday, much less two weeks ago, he says."

  Levine looked at the wall-clock. "She's home from school by now," he said.

  "I wonder what they're saying to each other. If we could listen in, we'd know a hell of a lot more than we do now."

  Levine shook his head. "No. Whether she's guilty, or innocent, they're both saying the exact same things. The death is two weeks old. If Mrs. Wadker did commit murder, she's used to the idea by now that she's gotten away with it. She'll deny everything Amy says, and try to convince the girl she's wrong. The same things in the same words as she'd use if she were innocent."

  ''What if she kills the kid?" Crawley asked him.

  "She won't. If Amy were to disappear, or have an accident, or be killed by an intruder, we'd know the truth at once. She can't take the chance. With her husband, all she had to do was fool a doctor who was inclined to believe her in the first place. Besides, the death was a strong possibility anyway. This time, she'd be killing a healthy ten year old, and she'd be trying to fool a couple of cops who wouldn't be inclined to believe her at all." Levine grinned. *The girl is probably safer now than she was before she ever came to us," he said. "Who knows what the mother might have been planning up till now?"

  "All right, that's fine so far. But what do we do now?"

  "Tomorrow, I want to take a look at the Walker apartment."

  "Why not right now?"

  "No. Let's give her a night to get ratUed. Any evidence she hasn't removed in two weeks she isn't likely to think of now." Levine shrugged. "I don't expect to find anything," he said. "I want to look at the place because I can't think of anything else to do. All we have is the unsupported word of a ten-year old child. The body can't tell us anything, because there wasn't any murder weapon. Walker died of natural causes. Proving they were induced won't be the easiest job in the world."

  "If only somebody, 'said Crawley angrily, "had seen that kid at the grocery store! That's the only chink in the wall, Abe, the only damn place we can get a grip."

  "We can try again tomorrow," said Levine, "but I doubt well get anywhere." He looked up as the door opened, and Trent and Kasper came in, two of the men on the four to midnight shift. "Tomorrow," he repeated. "Maybe lightning will strike."

  "Maybe," said Crawley.

  Levine shrugged back into his overcoat and left the office for the day. When he got home, he broke his normal habit and went straight into the house, not staying on the porch to read his paper. He went out to the kitchen and sat there, drinking coffee, while he filled Peg in on what little progress they'd made on the case during the day. She asked questions, and he answered them, offered suggestions and he mulled them over and rejected them, and throughout the evening, every once in a while, one or the other of them would find some other comment to make, but neither of them got anywhere. The girl seemed to be reasonably safe, at least for a while, but that was the best that could be said.

  The baby next door was c
r>'ing when they went to bed together at eleven o'clock. The baby kept him awake for a while, and his thoughts on the Walker death revolved and revolved, going nowhere. Once or twice during the evening, he had absent-mindedly reached for a cigarette, but had barely noticed the motion. His concentration and concern for Amy Walker and her mother was strong enough now to make him forget his earlier preoccupation with the problem of giving up smoking. Now, lying awake in the dark, the thought of cigarettes didn't even enter his head. He went over and over what the mother had said, what the daughter had told him, and gradually he drifted off into deep, sound sleep.

  He awoke in a cold sweat, suddenly knowing the truth. It was as though he'd dreamed it, or someone had whispered it in his ear, and now he knew for sure.

  She would kill tonight, and she would get away with it. He knew how she'd do it, and when, and there'd be no way to get her for it, no proof, nothing, no way at all.

  He sat up, trembling, cold in the dark room, and reached out to the nightstand for his cigarettes. He pawed around on the nightstand, and suddenly remembered, and pounded the nightstand with his fist in frustration and rage. She'd get away with it!

  If he could get there in time — He could stop her, if he got there in time. He pushed the covers out of the way and climbed from the bed. Peg murmured in her sleep and burrowed deeper into the pillow. He gathered his clothes and crept from the bedroom.

  He turned the light on in the living room. The clock over the television set read ten till one. There might still be time, she might be waiting until she was completely asleep. Unless she was going to do it with pills, something to help sleep, to make sleep a permanent, everlasting sure thing.

  He grabbed the phone book and looked up the number of one of the private cab companies on Avenue L. He dialed, and told the dispatcher it was urgent, and the dispatcher said a car would be there in five minutes.

  He dressed hurriedly, in the living room, then went out to the kitchen for pencil and paper, and left Peg a short note. "I had to go out for a while. Be back soon." In case she woke up. He left it on the nightstand.

  A horn sounded briefly out front and he hurried to the front of the house, turning off lights. As he went trotting down the walk toward the cab, the baby next door cried out. He registered the sound, thought, Baby next door, and dismissed it from his mind. He had no time for extraneous thoughts, about babies or cigarettes or the rasp of his breathing from only this little exertion, running from the house. He gave the address, Prospect Park West, and sat back in the seat as the cab took off". It was a strange feeling, riding in a cab. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done it. It was a luxuriant feeling. To go so fast with such relaxing calm. If only it was fast enough.

  It cost him four dollars, including the tip. If she was still alive, it was the bargain of the century. But as he hurried into the building and down the long narrow lobby to the elevators, the sound he'd heard as he'd left his home came back to him, he heard it again in his memory, and all at once he realized it hadn't been the baby next door at all. It had been the telephone.

  He pressed the elevator button desperately, and the elevator slid slowly down to him from the eleventh floor. It had been the ring of the telephone.

  So she'd made her move already. He was too late. When he'd left the house, he'd been too late.

  The elevator doors opened, and he stepped in, pushed the button marked 4. He rode upward.

  He could visualize that phone call. The little girl, hushed, terrified, whispering, beseeching. And Peg, half-awake, reading his note to her. And he was too late.

  The door to apartment 4-A was ajar, the interior dark. He reached to his hip, but he'd been in too much of a hurry. The gun was at home, on the dresser.

  He stepped across the threshold, cautiously, peering into the dark. Dim light spilled in from the hallway, showing him only this section of carpet near the door. The rest of the apartment was pitch black.

  He felt the wall beside the door, found the light switch and clicked it on.

  The light in the hall went out.

  He tensed, the darkness now complete. A penny in the socket? And this was an old building, in which the tenants didn't pay directly for their own electricity, so the hall light was on the same line as the foyer of apartment A on every floor. They must have blown a fuse once, and she'd noticed that.

  But why? What was she trying for?

  The telephone call, as he was leaving the house. Somehow or other, she'd worked it out, and she knew that Levine was on his way here, that Levine knew the truth.

  He backed away toward the doorway. He needed to get to the elevator, to get down and away from here. He'd call the precinct. They'd need flashlights, and numbers. This darkness was no place for him, alone.

  A face rose toward him, luminous, staring, grotesque, limned in pale cold green, a staring devil face shining in green fire against the blackness. He cried out, instinctive panic filling his mouth with bile, and stumbled backwards away from the thing, bumping painfully into the doorpost. And the face disappeared.

  He felt around him, his hands shaking, all sense of direction lost. He had to get out, he had to find the door. She was trying to kill him, she knew he knew and she was trying to kill him the same way she'd killed Walker. Trying to stop his heart.

  A shriek jolted into his ears, loud, loud, incredibly loud, magnified far beyond the power of the human voice, a world-filling scream of hatred, grating him to the bone, and his flailing hands touched a wall, he leaned against it trembling. His mouth was op>en, straining for air, his chest was clogged, his heart beat fitfully, like the random motions of a wounded animal. The echoes of the shriek faded away, and then it sounded again, even louder, all around him, vibrating him like a fly on a pin.

  He pushed away from the wall, blind and panic-stricken, wanting only to get away, to be away, out of this horror, and he stumbled into an armchair, lost his balance, fell heavily forward over the chair and rolled to the floor.

  He lay there, gasping, unthinking, as brainlessly terrified as a rabbit in a trapper's snare. Pinwheels of light circled the corners of his stinging eyes, every straining breath was a searing fire in his throat. He lay on his back, encumbered and helpless in the heavy overcoat, arms and legs curled upward in feeble defense, and waited for the final blow.

  But it didn't come. The silence lengthened, the blackness of the apartment remained unbroken, and gradually rationality came back to him and he could close his mouth. painfully swallow saliva, lower his arms and legs, and listen.

  Nothing. No sound.

  She'd heard him fall, that was it. And now she was waiting, to be sure he was dead. If she heard him move again, she'd hurl another thunderbolt, but for now she wcis simply waiting.

  And the wait gave him his only chance. The face had been only phosphorescent paint on a balloon, pricked with a pin when he cried out. The shriek had come, most likely, from a tape recorder. Nothing that could kill him, nothing that could injure him, if only he kept in his mind what they were, and what she was trying to do.

  My heart is weak, he thought, but not that weak. Not as weak as Walker's, still recovering from his first attack. It could kill Walker, but it couldn't quite kill me:

  He lay there, recuperating, calming, coming back to himself. And then the flashlight flicked on, and the beam was aimed full upon him.

  He raised his head, looked into the light. He could see nothing behind it. "^No, Amy," he said. "It didn't work."

  The light flicked off".

  "Don't waste your time," he said into the darkness. "If it didn't work at first, when I wasn't ready for it, it won't work at all.

  "Your mother is dead," he said, speaking softly, knowing she was listening, that so long as she listened she wouldn't move. He raised himself slowly to a sitting position. "You killed her, too. Your father and mother both. And when you called my home, to tell me that she'd killed herself, and my wife told you I'd already left, you knew then that I knew. And you had to kill me, too. I'd told
you that my heart was weak, like your father's. So you'd kill me, and it would simply be another heart failure, brought on by the sight of your mother's corpse."

  The silence was deep and complete, like a forest pool.

  Levine shifted, gaining his knees, moving cautiously and without sound.

  "Do you want to know how I knew?" he asked her. "Monday in Civics Miss Haskell told you about the duties of the police. But Miss Haskell told me that you were always at least a month ahead in your studies. Two weeks before your stepfather died, you read that assignment in your schoolbook, and then and there you decided how to kill them both."

  He reathed out his hand, cautiously, touched the chair he'd tripped over, shifted his weight that way, and came slowly to his feet, still talking. "The only thing I don't understand," he said, "is why. You steal books from the library that they won't let you read. Was this the same thing to you? Is it all it was?"

  From across the room, she spoke, for the first time. "You'll never understand, Mr. Levine," she said. That young voice, so cold and adult and emotionless, speaking out contemptuously to him in the dark.

  And all at once he could see the way it had been with Walker. Somnolent in the bed, listening to the frail fluttering of the weary heart, as Levine often lay at night, listening and wondering. And suddenly that shriek, out of the midafternoon stillness, coming from nowhere and everywhere, driving in at him

  Levine shivered. "No," he said. "It's you who don't understand. To steal a book, to snuff" out a life, to you they're both the same. You don't understand at all."

  She spoke again, the same cold contempt still in her voice. "It was bad enough when it was only her. Don't do this, don't do that. But then she had to marry him, and there were two of them watching me all the time, saying no no no, that's all they ever said. The only time I could ever have some peace was when I was at my grandmother's."