“Isn’t it.”
“You have Clive Burrus’s home address on the file, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Fleetwood said.
“I’m tired. You ready to take me home?”
“All right.”
He turned to her. “Hey, you know what?”
“What?”
“In the whole party, nobody guessed my costume. What do you think of that?”
“What is it? Mental cripple?”
“Now, that’s not nice,” Powder said, smiling.
“So what’s your costume?”
“Sure you don’t know?”
“No.”
“I thought sure you’d guess it.”
She was silent.
“I’m dressed as a troglodyte,” he announced with a flourish. “Come on. You knew all the time, didn’t you?”
Chapter Twenty Two
Ricky did not appear for breakfast. Powder ate quickly and then left home for his garden.
But contrary to his Saturday routine, he did not work there. He picked some fruit, put it in a bag, and drove to County Hospital.
The nurse in charge on Jane Doe’s ward told Powder that the hospital psychiatrist was with the patient.
Powder used the time to telephone Detective Division, which he routinely did on weekends. He asked for messages.
There was nothing from Bull, but Mrs. Woods had asked him to call.
He called Mrs. Woods.
“My sister here. You want to go to hospital?”
“I’m at the hospital now,” Powder said. “Can you get here or shall I pick you up?”
“We get here.”
“I’ll be free in about three quarters of an hour.”
They agreed on a place to meet.
Aurora Sheila Smith Jane Doe looked surprised to see Powder as he walked in.
“What’s the verdict?” he asked. “You sane?”
She said, “That’s the question to put to him.”
“OK,” Powder said, as he sat down. “Then tell me whether he’s sane.”
The woman smiled momentarily, then dropped her eyes.
“It’s one of my days off,” Powder said. “I tell you that so you will be disarmed and treat this as a social call and tell me all your secrets. Do you like cherries?”
He thrust the bag of fruit he carried onto the bed beside her and pulled up a chair. “Fresh picked today. I grow them myself. Got a little plot on the edge of town that I’ve been working on for a few years. It keeps me from killing myself when I get low. Go on. Try some.”
Slowly the woman opened the bag and took out some cherries.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” Powder said.
“Oh yes?”
“How’s your face?”
Some of the bandages were off, and the woman felt the others. “It’s all right.”
“Good. Yes, I’ve been blinking that it’s about time you told me about yourself.”
“You said that the last time you came here.”
“No, I didn’t,” Powder said. “I said it was time you told me who you are, your name, that kind of thing. This is different.”
“Is it?”
“Sure. You can tell me about your problem in a hypothetical way. You know, like ‘I’ve got a friend in thus and 80 situation.’ Then I’ll nod and say, ‘My oh my, has she thought of this,’ and you’ll say, ‘Damn me, no, she hasn’t,’ and then things will be better. How’s that grab you? You can tell I’m an all-right guy, one you can trust, because I brought you a bag of fruit that I grew myself. On an off day. How’s the cherries?”
The woman said, “Nice.”
“So, don’t tell me about yourself. Tell me about your friend.”
The woman spent a long time taking pits out of her mouth. She put them in an ashtray beside the bed before she said, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“The usual thing is to begin at the beginning. But because I’m a right guy who brings you fruit, you can begin anywhere. Any one fact.”
“It’s hard.”
“Be real careful. Cage it all so that I won’t be able to figure out who your friend is, but so I’ll understand better why she got herself into what she got herself into.”
“Innocence,” the woman said.
Powder felt that he had finally broken through.
“What kind of innocence?” he asked easily.
“I never really believed that people were bad,” she said, and then she closed her eyes, and breathed heavily and suffered before him.
She said, “Everybody always said there were bad ones, but I thought it was just the easy way out. The people I knew when I grew up were so basically good. Giving up time, helping . . .”
She was quiet. Powder finally asked, “Do you want me to ask questions?”
“My friend,” she said suddenly, “was in a position of trust, and she betrayed it.”
“Was this money trust?”
“No, no, no, no. Human trust. Dealing with . . .” she hesitated, thoughtfully. “With people.”
“I see,” Powder said quietly.
Tears began to well in the woman’s eyes, but then subsided. “There was this, this man.”
Powder nodded gently.
“He raped me in, in a store closet.”
Powder looked on, his face hard.
The woman said simply, “And that was neither here nor there. Oh, it was awful, and wrong, and vile, and hurt, but when it was over, it was a fact and wasn’t important, in itself. But he was so, so grief stricken. He fell on his knees. And he cried and he said he was sorry and he asked me to forgive him.”
“And?”
“So, of course I forgave him.” She shrugged, as if it had all been done lightly. “I knew a lot about forgiveness from the other side. It was a chance to pass some on.”
The woman sighed short quick breaths. She laughed momentarily. “I didn’t realize that people could be bad. Not real people.” She brought herself back, took a deeper breath, and looked around.
“So it was all right for a while, but then he came to my apartment one afternoon for some help.”
“And you let him in?”
“He needed help,” she said as if that explained all, “I can see I don’t have to tell you, it happened again. And,” she said, again mock-lightly, “it was then I found out about evil. Because,” she said, “because after it was over he wasn’t sorry at all. He said that he would return from time to time and that there was nothing I could do about it, because I hadn’t reported him in the first place and now that it had happened again, if I brought in the police, then it would all fall back on me and not on him.”
“And you accepted that that was the situation?” Powder said, almost unable to keep his voice colorless.
“Not altogether. But I was in this position of trust, and there were other factors.” She tossed her head back and said quickly, “It was hard for me to become what I was. It took . . . a long time, and people helped me. I . . . I am an only child and my . . . parents have clear ideas about what is right.” She laughed. “And I didn’t realize yet how bad bad can be.”
“It already sounds pretty bad to me,” Powder said, being sympathetic.
“Oh, it’s easy for you,” the woman snapped. “You come across murderers and wickedness all the time. But I wasn’t raised that way. I lived in a protected environment. I didn’t even watch the news on television very often, because it was so horrible. Hilarious, yes?”
“What did you do?” Powder asked.
“After he left? I got up,” she said with an awkward smirk on her face. “I dusted myself off. I went out with my boyfriend. Oh yes, I had a boyfriend then. One I even let make love to me sometimes. I’m a goody-goody, but I’m the modem kind of goody-goody, you see.” Suddenly she snapped her head from left to right to left to right.
When she spoke again she sounded bitter. “But this, my dear Lieutenant, isn’t helping you understand why I did what I did. So let me put you out o
f your misery while I wallow in mine. The first thing was that I saw people, some people, some people who knew the . . . man. I saw them look at me differently after a week or two. During which time, I may say, he didn’t come back. But then he did, and I wouldn’t let him in, but he threatened he would tell some of those I couldn’t let be told. And another time he even tricked his way in, saying he had a telegram.” She gave a chuckle. “You see how gullible? And he demanded a key, and took one and I had the locks changed, and he stole my key. And he drove me away in my own car once. And so on and so on and so on, until I was not a shadow of my former glorious self.”
She took a bow and then on her own initiative became subdued again. She said, “My boyfriend and I agreed to a parting of the ways, because I had gone strange and wouldn’t answer serious questions seriously.”
“How long did this go on?”
“We are talking about the passage of eleven weeks in the life of . . . yours truly.” Powder didn’t speak. Quietly she said, “In fact, I found myself beginning to think about killing him.” She uttered a brief sound of disbelief. “Isn’t that amazing! Someone like me, who would never conceive how these people I would sometimes read about could plot murder. Yet it happened. I planned it, and thought about it. I got to the point of setting dates and times and places. And I bought the gun.”
“And?”
“And then he went and got himself killed doing something else.”
“The man was killed?” Powder asked.
“Shot dead. Ironic, yes?”
“Nothing to do with you?”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
Powder was silent.
She said, expansively, “When I heard that, I couldn’t believe it. And when I believed it, I felt so much joy and pleasure . . .” She sighed. Then became hard. “I felt so much ecstasy in the news of his death, that I felt that I didn’t deserve to live. I was capable of cold-blooded murder. I knew that I was bad. And not fit to live.”
Powder waited again, but this time she seemed content to speak no more. So Powder said, “And that’s why?”
“And that’s why,” she said. She began to laugh. Then cried. Powder listened.
He helped himself to some cherries and offered her some.
She took one.
He asked, “Why the way you did it?”
“My parents shouldn’t know. They’re old. I adopted them when they were already nearly in their fifties and I’ve already caused them troubles, in my day. They don’t know anything about this kind of world. Better for me to vanish. Just disappear. Which, my dear Lieutenant, is what I would like you to do just now.”
Powder thought for a moment. He rose and left.
Chapter Twenty Three
Powder waited twenty minutes at the hospital entrance closest to the morgue. He felt numb and insufficient after his interview with Jane Doe. Neither feeling was one he had much experience with. From the time he saw Mrs. Woods and her sister, Mrs. Gilkis sobbed.
“Sorry,” Mrs. Woods said to Powder. “Like this since morning. No stop.”
Nor did the sobbing stop in the morgue. The distraught mother could not be made to take more than a glance at the body of the woman who might be her child. No answers to the necessary questions were extractable.
“I always sensible one,” Mrs. Woods said as she and Powder led Mrs. Gilkis back up to the ground floor.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” Powder said tiredly. “It’s not going to get sorted out until someone who knows your niece makes an accurate decision about that body.”
“I give her day. If no, then try bring husband.”
Powder acceded to Mrs. Woods’s judgment without comment.
Mrs. Woods, however, commented. “Leon going to beat. Strict man.”
Powder drove from the hospital to Northwestern Avenue, a few blocks south of Thirty-eighth Street. There he rang the bell of a substantial brick house set back from the road in sheltered grounds of perhaps three quarters of an acre. After nearly a minute, a short blond woman, carefully turned out, opened the door.
“Is Agnes here, please?” Powder asked.
“I don’t know,” the woman said with finality and a distinctly British accent. “Who are you?”
Powder told her his name.
“Am I supposed to know you?”
“I don’t know. Are you related to Agnes?”
“Only her bloody mother.”
“Agnes works mornings for me.”
“She said she worked for the police,” the woman said, expressing slight distaste.
“Yes.”
“So you’re the police. You want to do me a favor?”
“What would that be, Mrs. Shorter?”
“Fire the kid. Give her the old heave-ho.”
“Why would that be a favor?”
“Because that damn job pays for her bloody computer course and I am so goddamned sick and tired of bloody computers morning, noon, and night that I could scream. In fact, I think I will.”
The woman screamed.
When she had finished, she said, “I just long for the days when a chip was greasy and fried and made of potato instead of micro. Oh, bloody hell. It’s not your fault my husband and my daughter talk in riddles, is it? You want to know if the young genius is here. I suppose I should find out for you. In fact, I think I will.”
Powder waited on the doorstep.
In less than a minute the woman returned to say, “The news is that she has gone to work.”
“Work?” Powder asked. “The office is closed over the weekend. Would that mean to school?”
“No,” the woman said definitely. “My husband and daughter are fussy about that kind of thing. If the word is ‘work,’ then ‘work’ is the word.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“Mr. Powder, may I ask whether you know how to program a computer?”
“I can read what’s printed on the monitor screen if it’s in English,” Powder said.
“What a relief. I’d like to shake your hand on that. In fact, I think I will.”
Agnes was, indeed, working at the computer terminal in the Missing Persons office. Powder entered and stood behind her as she punched and frowned and wrote and punched some more.
“What the hell are you doing here, Agnes?”
Speaking her words between tapping phrases on the keyboard, she said, “It’s . . . easier to get . . . stretches of . . . time on the main computer . . . weekends.”
Powder went to the telephone on his desk.
He called the campsite manager of McCormick’s Creek State Park.
“I’ve been wondering about this fellow Weaver,” Powder said.
“He’s here,” the man said. “That’s the most I can say about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s here. He’s set up his tent and he’s stayed in it.”
“All the time?”
“All the time.”
“Alone?”
“Alone. Far as I can tell. If a fella doesn’t go out, kind of makes it hard to poke around, you know what I mean?”
After hanging up. Powder restlessly returned to his place standing behind Agnes, who, finally, leaned back and said,“They’re awkward in Hammond, but I’ve got them.”
“That’s a fine piece of work. Fine,” Powder said. “I’d like to pat you on the back for that. In fact, I think I will.” He thumped her on the back. “So, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve been working on your travel-nap problem,” Agnes said.
“And?”
“I’ve got some more positives. All in the last three years, and totaling seven with the three incidents we got from our own computers.”
“Summarize.”
“The four new cases are all women. Two are actual naps with no further information on the fate of the victims. The third was taken and the body recovered two weeks later, in the country. Physical and sexual abuse. Other one was an attempt which did n
ot succeed.”
Powder rubbed his face with both hands. “Ages?”
“Twenty to fifty. All traveling alone. Altogether three buses, three planes, one train.”
Powder said, “The one whose body was found. Not burned by any chance?”
“Nothing like that on the primary entry,” Agnes said.
Powder thought again. “What about dates?”
“Nothing too clear. But one of the attempts was followed within three days by one of the successes. And if you list the others it would be arguable that the intervals are quantum defined.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Agnes showed Powder the complete list of incidents and dates on the terminal screen. “Look. There and there the gap is about three months between naps.”
“Yes?”
“And there and there it is about six months and there about nine months.”
“Eight and a bit,” Powder said, but he nodded.
“The intervals are in quanta of three months,” Agnes said. “It may be a coincidence. But if not, it could mean that there are other incidents we don’t know about yet which would fit in the spaces. Or it could tell you something about who is doing it, if they’re all being done by the same person.”
“Where have they taken place?”
“The three here. One each in Fort Wayne, South Bend, Lafayette, and Bloomington.”
Powder rubbed his face. “All Indiana, huh?”
Severely, Agnes said, “The state computers are the only ones I have demand access to. But get into Chicago or Louisville or Cincinnati and you may fill in those three-month spots.”
“All a bit scattered, here and there,” Powder said reflectively.
Agnes shrugged.
“Put it all together. Words of two syllables, so the Homicide people can understand it. And stick Marianna Gilkis at the bottom saying Sergeant Bull already has details on her. Mark it extremely urgent. Then take it upstairs.”
“OK, Lieutenant.” Agnes beamed.
“Since you’re already here,” he said, “there’s something else I want you to do.”
“What’s that, Lieutenant?”
“I want to know about men who have been shot recently.”
“Shot,” Agnes repeated.
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