by Wim Coleman
Drexler looked taken aback, but did not answer. Nolan glanced at his partner in surprise. That show of irritation was the only emotion he’d seen in Clayton since they’d arrived at the murder scene.
“It just seems kinda freakish,” Clayton said with an embarrassed shrug.
Nolan gazed at the contentedly purring cat. Its oddness offered him a small but welcome distraction from the matter at hand. Are they bred that way, or does this kind get their tails lopped off at birth? The Manx did seem to Nolan to be lacking some of its essential catness. But Lucifer did not seem to mind.
Clayton cleared his throat and went on with the interview. The rest of his questions had to do with the party itself—who was there, what had transpired? The whole building, every apartment, had been open, and all the residents had invited guests. After about 8:00 p.m., the place had been full of people coming and going. The party was officially over at midnight, but there were stragglers, small gatherings going on after that.
“What about security?” Clayton asked.
“A guy at the front door,” McKeever said. “But he wasn’t checking off names. He was just supposed to handle any obvious crashers or anybody who got drunk and ugly. No one did.”
“So anybody who looked okay got in?”
“The security guard asked whose guests they were.”
“Was there an overall guest list?”
“No, each of us made up our own,” Drexler said.
“But anybody could have overheard a name and used it,” McKeever interjected. “And there were whole groups coming in at once. And last minute invites and friends of friends. They won’t all be on the lists.”
“Did someone make sure everybody left?”
“The security guard went around to each unit and said goodnight,” McKeever said. “I guess nobody called for help.”
“What time was that?”
“About one o’clock, a little after.”
“Did the deceased have a date?” Clayton asked.
“Yeah,” McKeever said. “Larry somebody or other.”
“Larry Bricker,” Drexler added. “A writer.”
“The guy who writes the scary books?” Clayton asked.
“I think so,” Drexler said. “Seemed like a nice guy.”
“Did she argue or fight with him?”
“1 don’t think so,” McKeever said.
“We really didn’t see that much of her during the party,” Drexler explained. “Still, we would have heard about it if there had been a scene.”
“Was Bricker still here when the party was over?”
“I have no idea,” McKeever said.
“I thought I saw him leave,” Drexler said.
“Would you have seen him if he came back?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Was she the flirtatious type?”
Drexler and McKeever smiled at each other sadly.
“She’s … she was a friendly person,” McKeever said. “She liked to flirt.”
“Excuse me for asking,” Nolan broke in, “but was she promiscuous?”
“Jesus,” McKeever said, with just an edge of anger.
“I’m sorry. I have to ask.”
“Let me put it this way,” McKeever said. “She wasn’t exactly exclusive. But I don’t think she’d have done anything deliberately to make a date jealous, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Clayton closed his notepad. “Thank you, gentlemen. That’s all we need to know right now.”
“We’d appreciate it if you’d discuss this as little as possible with the other residents,” Nolan said. “Particularly the circumstances under which you discovered the body. More importantly—don’t give any information to the press. Keeping details out of public circulation can be crucial when it comes to pinning down a suspect.”
Clayton added, “Tomorrow, we’ll want you and perhaps some other tenants to help us check the apartment more closely to make sure nothing’s missing. But tonight you should try to get some sleep.”
Drexler’s expression became inexpressibly pained. His head dropped forward. “There had to be something,” he said, his voice reedy with anguish. “There had to be something we could have done.”
And Nolan felt an echo of that guilt and regret in himself, although he couldn’t imagine why.
Nolan and Clayton left the two men alone. Back in the victim’s living room, they found the three uniformed officers gathered together and checking interview notes. No one had turned up anything helpful or even anything blatantly contradictory. Several people said they had seen Larry Bricker leave, and the security guard seemed to have made his rounds efficiently. No one knew an Auggie. No one knew a Marianne Hedison, either.
“We’ll have to check out Bricker and the security guard,” Nolan said. “One of them might have been the last to see her alive—maybe the very last.”
“Want to go roust them out tonight?” Clayton asked.
“I’d better hang around here for a while,” Nolan said. “Gotta wait for that hysterical lady who’s supposed to be on her way here. I’m sure anxious to see if she’s really the one I met at the Judson scene. I’ll bet money she is—but what the hell does it mean?”
“Maybe the two killings are connected,” Clayton said.
Nolan looked back at him with a hint of curiosity. “Yeah? How’re they alike? They’re not even the same MO.”
“I don’t know. Maybe just that neither of them makes any sense.”
“You’re looking for sense? This one might’ve made plenty of sense to a boyfriend hopped up on some designer drug.”
“Yeah, I know. And these don’t look like professional hits. But neither of them was clumsy, either—not like a spur of the moment thing, not like an amateur. There was planning. Both times the killer found just the right time and place and got away clean—like a stalker. And we’re dealing with high-profile victims.”
“What’re you thinking? There’s no sign of a serial going around. And here there’s no favorite weapon or method or scenario or anything like that.”
“Who says there has to be a method?” Clayton replied. “Who says there had to be a scenario?” Clayton’s eyes were flashing around the premises.
Reconstructing the crime. Nolan knew that his partner was good at that. And Clayton’s intuitions were often sound, but Nolan just wasn’t ready to buy this particular idea.
“You really think there’s some connection?” Nolan said. “Why? Just because they were both well heeled? That’s nothing.”
“Still, there is the woman,” Clayton said.
“And what does that tell us?”
“I’m not saying it tells us anything. We don’t know, is all. Can’t rule out anything.”
“Damn, I hope she shows,” Nolan said.
It was now three-thirty in the morning. Nolan and Clayton began to delegate duties to the other officers. To begin with, somebody was to call the company that provided the security guard. Then Nolan could meet with the guard himself and get a statement from him. While Nolan and Clayton were assigning other tasks, Kim stepped into the room and handed Nolan a computer printout.
“I found a Marianne Hedison listed in the address files,” Kim said. “It’s a Santa Barbara number.”
“Let’s give it a try,” Nolan said. He and Clayton stepped into the condo unit, and Nolan dialed the number from Renee Gauld’s office telephone. After several rings, he heard an answering machine make a very brief, standard reply.
“It’s just her machine,” Nolan said. “At this time of night it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s not there.”
“Is that the same voice as the phone call?” Clayton asked.
“Can’t tell,” Nolan said tiredly. He redialed the number and let Clayton lis
ten to the recording.
“Does it sound like the voice on the tape to you?” Nolan asked.
“Could be,” Clayton said. “It’s hard to tell. The woman who called here was as hyper as hell.”
Nolan and Clayton stayed behind as most of the officers dispersed to tend to their assignments. Nolan and his partner sat in the living room, waiting silently but none too patiently. Nolan stared out the window again.
Not a good night to drive in from Santa Barbara. If that’s what she’s doing.
The night was still rainy, and although no lightning was visible, thunder could be heard to the west. The rain was steady and solid and insufferably monotonous. Nolan didn’t care if it started coming down an awful lot harder or just plain stopped. He only wanted something to change.
He wanted—or thought he wanted—to talk to Clayton about his flood of feelings tonight. But he was either too tired or too confused to initiate the conversation. He wasn’t sure which.
Maybe I’m suffering from serious burnout. He found himself thinking about Crazy Syd’s offer of a sheriff’s job way up north. Maybe cops didn’t undergo this sort of crisis in the laid-back wilds of Oregon.
Then something outside caught Nolan’s eye. Two bright lights had interrupted the night. A dark red Nissan Maxima pulled hurriedly to a stop in the no-parking zone out front. The car lights blinked out.
“We’ve got company,” Nolan heard Clayton say.
*
Marianne turned off the car engine and gazed through the dripping windshield at the looming condo. An outdoor light illuminated the front doorway. There were also lights on in several of the windows, making the building look warm and inviting. Marianne sat looking at the condominium, imagining every window in the building lit, the party in full swing, people moving inside, laughing, talking.
She remembered that Renee had invited her.
She shuddered.
Then she saw the silhouettes of two men standing in the doorway.
Better not keep them waiting.
She stepped out of the car and awkwardly straddled a large puddle. She felt extremely self-conscious about her every move, as if walking itself were an unfamiliar activity. The lights seemed to bob and jump about drunkenly with every step as she strode toward the entrance. Her legs felt weak and uncertain, like those of some infant animal.
The door swung open in front of her. The two men rushed out, pulling their collars up against the rain. An umbrella opened in front of them like some kind of big black jonquil that bloomed only at night.
“Marianne Hedison?” a voice inquired.
She nodded.
“We tried to call,” the voice said. “You’d already gone. Thank you for coming.”
Marianne couldn’t see the men’s faces as they stepped to each side of her, taking both of her arms. Their firm and confident hands felt comforting as they securely led her toward the house. She wasn’t accustomed to feeling less graceful than the people around her.
They ushered her into the blindingly lit hallway and closed the door behind them. They shook the rain off their overcoats like two dogs.
“Hell of a night,” one of the men said. His broad face immediately filled up her entire field of vision. She barely looked at the other man, who seemed to fade into the background. The large-faced man was staring at her. Did something about her look strange? Then her breath caught slightly as she realized …
It’s him. The cop at the hotel.
The two men introduced themselves, but Marianne didn’t hear their names, which hardly seemed important at the moment.
“What’s happened?” she asked quietly, feeling a surge of inexplicable calm—the kind of ghostly calm that comes when the truth, no matter how awful, is about to make itself understood.
The two men looked at each other with concern.
“Let’s go upstairs,” the man in the background said.
*
“There’s been a homicide,” Nolan told Marianne Hedison once she was seated in the deceased’s living room. When she made no response, he said, “A murder.”
She still said nothing; he studied her closely. Yes, it was her, all right. But she looked very different than she had at the hotel. Her hair was wet and her clothes looked frumpy—an outfit this sort of woman would only wear around the house. She also wore no makeup and had dark circles under her eyes. Looks like she’s been crying.
But she wasn’t crying now. And while she certainly seemed confused and frightened, she was also remarkably subdued, as unlike the startled woman at the hotel as anyone could get. She didn’t even wince at the word “murder.”
Nolan also could not help noticing that, even in her present disheveled condition, her features were at once delicate and striking. When he’d seen her at the hotel, he assumed that her beauty was a great contrivance, something coddled and crafted every day with deliberation and care. Apparently he had been wrong.
Finally, the woman said, “It was Renee.”
Nolan nodded.
“Tell me how it happened,” she demanded softly.
“We can’t go into that just yet,” Clayton interjected. “We have to ask you some questions.”
“She was taking a bath, wasn’t she?” the woman continued in a severe whisper without so much as a pause. “She was in the bathtub and he grabbed hold of her and pushed her under. He cracked her head, more than once.”
Nolan felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He looked at Clayton. He could tell from his partner’s face that they were thinking the same thing. How does she know? Had someone in the building phoned her? But McKeever and Drexler were the only ones who actually knew how the victim had died—and even they hadn’t known that her head had been injured, and they had claimed not to know Marianne Hedison. Besides, they had been warned not to talk to anyone about it, and she had supposedly been on her way here all this time.
“Do you have a telephone in your car?” Nolan asked.
“No. I don’t like the intrusion,” she answered. Then she continued as though there had been no break in her thoughts. “He held her under the water, didn’t he?”
“What makes you think so?” Clayton asked.
“Just tell me.”
“Answer my question, please.”
“I saw it.” she said. “I saw the whole thing.”
She was quiet for a very long moment. She studied the clutter in the living room. Then Nolan noticed that her eyes had fallen on the carousel horse.
*
The past seemed more vivid to her than the present.
The past seemed much, much clearer.
But then, nothing could seem less clear than the present.
As Marianne sat gazing at the horse, a certain day came back to her—that delightful afternoon when she and Renee had first found the horse. It was perhaps three years ago, at a yard sale. The couple who owned it had planned to do it up with new paint and decorations and sell it for more than they’d paid for it, but they’d gotten hard up for cash and offered to sell it as it was.
At seventy-five dollars, the horse hadn’t struck Marianne as much of a bargain. Its hind feet had been broken off and roughly repaired. They were clearly ready to fall off again. The whole thing was covered with thick layers of white latex paint that was starting to crack—paint so thick that the horse’s eyes and nostrils were barely discernible.
But Renee couldn’t resist. She had paid the couple and begged Marianne to help her bring the horse home. Marianne and Renee had tugged the horse into the wide trunk of Renee’s old Queen Mary—an oversized but delightfully frumpy, gold-colored 1972 Plymouth Valiant. They had tied the trunk lid down with a scarf sacrificed for the occasion. As they wended their way back to Renee’s loft, the long steel pole that had come with the beast stuck precariously out the dr
iver’s side window of the Queen Mary, causing her to list to port, and the weight of the horse severely tested whatever was left of the good ship’s rear shock absorbers.
Once they got the carousel horse back to Renee’s loft, Marianne had helped Renee scrape off the paint. The latex had come off in thick sheets, laying bare a face sculpted from carefully joined pieces of wood. A pair of nicely-carved flared nostrils emerged from the previously amorphous shape. The animal’s mouth was open, and a metal bit pulled it down at the back corners, as if a rider was hard put to restrain his steed from charging away. The lips were drawn back, baring the teeth. The ears were small and laid back against the head.
Marianne and Renee had scraped down to the remnants of a saddle and blanket that had obviously been repainted many times. The flesh of the horse was tan under the white, with a red undercoating showing through in places. When they had removed all the paint that was going to scrape off easily, the horse and trappings formed a mosaic of multicolored patterns—mostly the accidental interactions of several layers of paint.
“Look at this,” purred Renee, running her hand over it. “It’s like looking at clouds—or a Rorschach test. You can see a thousand pictures here.”
“It’s not very pretty,” Marianne said critically.
“No, but it’s handsome. A wild beast. It’s beautiful, Marianne.”
“You mean you’re not going to finish it?”
“Finish it how?”
“Repaint it. Restore it. I’ve seen a book about these carousel animals. We could find out pretty much what it originally looked like.”
“And cover over all these stories? Never!”
Nevertheless, Marianne had always expected Renee to do something more to fix it up. In the intervening years, the Queen Mary had been traded in for an elderly BMW convertible, but here was the carousel horse, unchanged. Marianne tried to get it through her mind that now Renee would never tell her the horse’s stories.
But she couldn’t grasp that fact.
Then a voice from the present drew her out of the past.
*
“Ma’am?”