by John Lutz
He drove around for a while without a destination, until most of his queasiness had left him, winding through the park, past the Jefferson Memorial and the Art Museum, finally exiting from the park on Hampton, near the Zoo. Then he stopped at a phone booth and used the directory.
Dr. Oliver wasn’t difficult to find. Edwin was his first name. Only an answering machine replied at his office, but at his home number a woman, possibly his wife, told Nudger that he was on staff at Malcolm Bliss Hospital and would be there until eight o’clock tonight. Nudger called Oliver at the hospital and explained what he wanted. Oliver agreed to give him fifteen minutes that he couldn’t spare but would anyway. The implication was that Nudger should be extremely grateful. Nudger understood; the golf season didn’t last forever.
But it took him only seconds to decide he’d been wrong about Oliver. Being on staff at Malcolm Bliss was no fiesta. Nudger had been there before, as a patrolman. This was where the police brought the violent criminally insane and dumped them in the laps of people like Oliver. People who really didn’t have fifteen minutes to spare. Nudger had forgotten what it was like here.
“Please sit down, Mr. Nudger,” Dr. Oliver said. He was a youngish-looking man, though probably in his forties, large, yet with a kind of leprechaun air about him.
Nudger sat in a small vinyl-upholstered chair near the door. Oliver sat behind a plain gray metal desk. The doctor’s office wasn’t much bigger than a closet—it might even have once been a large linen closet—and was painted a restful pale green that was probably supposed to soothe the patients. It had a window, but no view worth looking at. There was metal mesh over the glass anyway.
“You said you wanted to talk about one of my former patients, Claudia Bettencourt,” the doctor said, hurrying Nudger along. “What’s your interest in her?”
To the point: “I love her.”
Oliver studied Nudger. Then he shrugged and his leprechaun features lifted in a grin. “I can understand why. Claudia is a very fine person. You do know I can’t divulge any details of our doctor-patient relationship.”
“Of course,” Nudger said. “I’ll speak in generalities. Is she cured?”
“Of what?”
“The tendency to abuse her children.”
“Some generality,” Oliver said. He thought for a moment. Claudia’s conviction was a matter of public record; no need for Hippocratic secrecy here. “Yes, I think she could be described as cured. Her problems now are her own and don’t affect others, at least not physically. Child abuse is a curse that runs in a lot of families, Mr. Nudger. It’s passed on down the generations, a chain of violence that needs something traumatic sometimes to break it. Claudia is an intelligent woman; she understands that aspect of herself now, and so has greatly reduced, if not eliminated, her impulse to deal with people through violence. Unfortunately, understanding came too late to avert a tragedy in her life.”
“I know,” Nudger said. “I’ve been told about her daughter’s death, the trial, and conviction.”
“Who told you?”
“Other people who care about her.”
Dr. Oliver ran a thumb along the edge of the desk, as if testing for sharpness. “I told her to leave town,” he said.
“What?”
“I could have fixed it up with the Probation Board. She should get out of St. Louis, away from her former husband.”
“I’ve met Ralph,” Nudger said. “He’s worthy of getting away from, all right.”
“He’s still a part of her problem. He’s the key link in the chain that can’t be broken, because he won’t let go of the past; he won’t forgive Claudia. He’s punishing her.”
“Is that why she attempted suicide?”
Oliver leaned back and played some kind of touch game with the fingertips of one hand against the other. “That’s a tricky question. I don’t think I’d better answer it.”
“Okay. Do you think she might try suicide again?”
“For all I know, you might try suicide, Mr. Nudger. We’re getting into speculation. I’m a doctor, not an oddsmaker. And remember, it’s been over a year since I’ve seen Claudia.”
“Why didn’t she?” Nudger asked.
“Didn’t she what?”
“Leave town.”
“Ironically enough, because she loves her children. She doesn’t want to move someplace where she can see them only infrequently. It seems to me—” Oliver caught himself, nipped the words before they could escape his lips, lips he probably thought had been too loose already. He smiled. “There are subjects I really can’t get into, Mr. Nudger.”
“Sure. I guess what I really came to find out, and what you’ve told me, is what you think of Claudia personally.”
“She’s a kind, decent human being who didn’t deserve what she got,” Oliver said. “I could introduce you to dozens of such people, right here on this floor.”
“And all over the streets outside,” Nudger said. He stood up. “One other thing, Doctor, while I’m face to face with an expert. Can you give me any insight into the mind of your average mass murderer?”
Oliver laughed at the abrupt and bizarre change of subject. “Only very generally. He—and the mass murderer usually is a he—is nonsocial, a loner, with a gigantic repressed ego. If he kills women, he despises a formative woman in his early life, his mother, usually. He wants to kill secretly, to get by with something few would suspect him of, but he also needs for people to know about it. He needs recognition, needs glory—or his idea of glory—even if it means going out in a blaze of it.”
“Then he’d have to kill more and more frequently, until finally he was caught and exposed. After a certain point, he’d have no choice.”
“That’s the classic pattern. The killer might even feel remorse: the well-known catch-me-before-I-kill-again syndrome. You said you were a private detective. Are you looking for a mass murderer?”
“I might be.” Nudger moved to the door and opened it. The quiet of the office was broken by the bustle of staff and visitors in the hall. “Thanks for the time, Doctor. I know it’s scarce around here.”
Oliver looked at his watch and grinned. “Fifteen minutes. That would cost you twenty dollars with a psychiatrist out in Clayton or Ladue.”
“But not here, Doctor. I’ve been here before, as a cop. The people you help here are the ones who need help most and can afford it least. If you were in it for the money, you’d be in the other end of the medical business.”
“And if you were in it for the money,” Oliver said, “you’d be in the other end of the crime business.”
Nudger considered the doctor’s remark all the way home.
When he got to his apartment his phone was ringing. He heard it in the hall as he was fitting his key to the lock, but he didn’t hurry, hoping whoever was on the line would lose patience and hang up. Now that he felt better, he didn’t want his stomach needlessly aroused by someone wanting money or selling storm windows or urging him to see another dead body.
The phone didn’t give up as he closed the door behind him and walked slowly toward the persistent ringing. Few things are more irresistible than a ringing phone. Usually Nudger would have done just as well not picking up the receiver. He knew that. On the other hand, it was always possible that he’d bought a lottery ticket and forgotten. Monetary magic might strike at any time. Might. With misgivings, he lifted the receiver and held it to his ear.
“Mr. Nudger?” Jeanette Boyington said.
Nudger grunted in tired confirmation.
“You took long enough getting to the phone.”
“I was outside rotating my tires.”
She ignored him, following her own script. “I have another appointment, for eight o’clock tonight at the Twin Oaks Mall fountain. This one calls himself Kelly. He says he’s about six feet tall—but most of them say that—and he’ll be wearing gray slacks and a black sport shirt with white buttons.”
“Kelly at eight,” Nudger said. “Gray, black, and whit
e.” He knew he was speaking with a kind of sad weariness, like a man who had just that day met a butchered woman.
“Make sure you phone me tonight if this works out,” Jeanette said.
“Are you getting impatient?”
“No, I’m getting more patient with each meeting that doesn’t mean anything. They only eliminate suspects and improve the odds on encountering Jenine’s murderer.”
“That’s true only if our premise is correct,” Nudger told her, thinking she should have been a cop. “If her killer did meet Jenine on the nightlines.”
“That’s how he selects his victims,” Jeanette said. “I’m sure of it. That’s why he hasn’t been caught, because there’s no connection between him and his victims other than a late-night telephone connection.”
Nudger agreed with her, remembering the 666 number found in Susan Merriweather’s flat, but he kept silent. Hammersmith might not want that information told about town.
“That Valpone woman,” Jeanette said, “the one who was found murdered in her bathtub on the south side. I think she was one of his victims.”
“It’s possible,” Nudger said, “but so far there’s nothing to link the two murders.” Jeanette would soon hear the news of Susan Merriweather’s death, if she hadn’t already. “There’s been another bathtub murder,” he said. “I’ve just come from the scene. This one has caused the police to come around to your way of thinking, but it hasn’t made my job any easier.”
“Tell me about it.”
Nudger did, giving her a fair share of the details.
Her voice was tight and cold, as if mechanically forced between her teeth. “I don’t want the police to find Jenine’s killer before we do. I want to be instrumental in his capture, and I want him to know it.”
“It might work out that way,” Nudger said. “But either way he’ll be caught soon. He’s gone completely insane, out of control, killing more often and maybe not even caring now if he gets caught. Maybe he hopes he’ll get caught. The question is: How many more women will die before that happens?”
“Maybe not one more, if Kelly is our man.”
“Your mother left a message for me to phone her,” Nudger said. “Do you have any idea what she wants?”
“It doesn’t matter what she wants,” Jeanette said. “You work for me, and don’t forget it.”
“Apparently Agnes can’t forget it. She keeps sending a leviathan named Hugo Rumbo around to try to dissuade me.”
“Why would she do that?” There was a tremor, maybe of anger, in Jeanette’s voice.
“I’m not sure. You should ask her.”
“Rumbo is an idiot who has to reason out putting one foot in front of the other to walk somewhere. Someone in your profession should be able to handle him.”
“Should,” Nudger agreed.
“Don’t forget to phone me about Kelly,” Jeanette said, and hung up.
Nudger replaced the receiver and stood in the quietude of his apartment, where everything was exactly the way he’d left it this morning. No one to misplace things or greet him. The refrigerator hummed a belated hello to him, that was all. A bachelor’s life sure was a solitary journey. He walked into the kitchen, smiled at the refrigerator, opened its door, and reached in for one of the generic beers he’d bought on sale.
He sat at the kitchen table, sipping beer and waiting for it to be time to leave for his appointment with Kelly. There was a lot of time between now and then. It would take a lot of beer to get through it. More beer than Nudger cared to drink. Carrying his plain yellow can into the living room, he got out the phone directory and looked up Ralph Ferris.
Ferris lived on Nightingale Drive in Ferguson. Not far from Nudger in driving time, just a swift jaunt north on the Inner Belt highway. Ferris, who had gotten the house and children in the divorce. Ferris, who knew more about Claudia than Nudger did.
Nudger looked at the clock by the phone. He could skip supper, or stop for fast food if he regained faith in his digestive system. He gulped down the rest of his beer. There. That would fend off hunger.
He checked his wallet to make sure he was carrying enough cash to see him through minor emergencies, called in to the refrigerator that he was leaving, and went out the door.
A few minutes later he was in the Volkswagen, his bumpy course set for Nightingale Drive, his ear tuned to Jumbo Al Hirt’s trumpet on the radio. Golden notes; a golden, temporary sanctuary from trouble and fear. From loneliness. Nudger turned up the volume. Blow, Jumbo, blow.
TWENTY-ONE
Nightingale Drive was a flat subdivision street of frame houses that had been built by the same contractor at the same time, about ten years ago, and were all one of three models with little variation. Ferris’s address belonged to the largest model, a long ranch house with a picture window, an oversized chimney, and an attached two-car garage. Nudger bet himself that it was called the Executive Model.
He wasn’t really sure why he’d driven here. Maybe he simply wanted to see the house where Claudia had lived with Ralph Ferris and their daughters, where one of those daughters had died. It was an ordinary house that might have been the setting for a TV family situation comedy, a house you wouldn’t suspect could harbor such problems and potential hells. Here was where a young family should be worrying about paying the mortgage, or whether they could afford to send one of the kids to a private school and get dental braces for the others. Child abuse, death probably didn’t occur very often on Nightingale Drive. Or did they? Walls were walls, regardless of their contemporary middle-America facade. And people were people, and inside those walls they would behave like people, despite the visions of themselves instilled by current movies, sitcoms, and television commercials.
Nudger sat in the parked Volkswagen a few houses down and across the street from the Ferris house and tried to imagine Claudia living there. He couldn’t. She did not belong in this stifling suburban sameness. Maybe that had exacerbated her problem.
Several young boys were playing in a front yard half a block down, crouching behind cars or shrubbery, dashing from cover to cover in some sort of game where they were trying to sneak up and surprise each other. Nudger looked around at the other houses on Nightingale, wondering what games were being played behind their walls this evening, between the boys’ parents and the people like them.
He found out part of the answer.
“Can I help you with something?” Ralph Ferris was standing on the curbside of the Volkswagen, leaning down and staring in at Nudger. “A neighbor phoned and told me there was someone watching my house.”
Nudger got out of the car, his mind whirling, plucking at understanding. Ferris had gone out his back door, then around the block, to approach the car from behind. Sly Ralph. As sneaky as he looked. Nudger saw the subtle lift of the man’s bony features as Ferris recognized him.
“Hey, you’re Claudia’s boyfriend!” he said.
Nudger gave him a smile and slight shake of the head. “No, Mr. Ferris. My name is Nudger. I hope you’ll forgive me for describing myself as a friend of your former wife. Actually, I’ve never met her. I’m doing some checking into her background for American Hosts, Incorporated. She’s applied for a job at one of our hotel restaurants. We routinely check into the backgrounds of all our prospective employees. We feel we owe it to our clientele.”
Ferris appeared dubious, but he was close to buying Nudger’s explanation. He put his hands in the pockets of his casual khaki slacks, shifted his weight on his blue Nike jogging shoes. He was willing to listen to more, but not much more.
Nudger handed him a business card. Nothing convinced like the officialism of print. Detectives and dictators knew it.
“It says here you’re a private investigator,” Ferris said, staring at the card as if it might at any second leap from his hand to his throat.
Nudger smiled again. “I do all of the regional American Hosts preemployment inquiries. It’s a contractual arrangement.”
“But why are you watching
my house? Claudia doesn’t live here now, hasn’t for years.”
“Occasionally an inquiry takes on aspects that require deeper investigation, Mr. Ferris.” Nudger made himself appear uncomfortable. It wasn’t difficult. “Frankly, one of my operatives has reported some unusual circumstances in Mrs. Ferris’s—”
“Ms. Bettencourt’s—” Ferris interrupted.
“—Ms. Bettencourt’s background. Now, I don’t say that these rumors, if true, necessarily disqualify her from the job. But her application doesn’t mention any such ... trouble. Certainly American Hosts has a right to make inquiries before hiring someone, wouldn’t you say? These days, with the unions so strong ...” Nudger shrugged, as if once Claudia was hired she could do most anything she wanted at American Hosts’ restaurants, including roughing up young customers who spilled the salt.
Ferris leaned back to rest his angular buttocks on the Volkswagen’s fender. He removed his hands from his pockets and crossed his scrawny arms, settling down to talk. He was had.
“I’ll ask directly so as not to waste your time and mine,” Nudger said. “Has Claudia Bettencourt had any sort of trouble with the law?”
Ferris smiled. Very slightly, but he smiled. “Not if you don’t count murder,” he said.
Nudger appeared properly jolted. Then he grinned. “For a second you had me wondering. Now—”
“Oh, I wasn’t joking, Mr. Nudger.”
“No?” Nudger put on his gravest expression. He reached into the glove compartment of the Volkswagen and got out his spiral notebook and a pen. This was something American Hosts would have to know about in detail. “Suppose you tell me about it, Mr. Ferris.”
To say Ferris was glad to cooperate was to say bears liked honey. “There’s no way to really know the person you marry, not until it might be too late. I knew Claudia had a temper, that she’d hit one of the kids too hard now and then. But it got worse every year, then every month. She’d beat up on our two daughters regularly when I wasn’t around—sometimes when I was around. I couldn’t stop her; she was like she was crazy. Hell, she really was crazy.”