Gray Matter

by Shirley Kennett

  CHAPTER 17

  PAULEY MAC WEARILY LUGGED the case into his kitchen. Before opening it, he tended to other problems. His arms and face were scratched, and bruises were beginning to show there and elsewhere. He washed and dried carefully, and applied some antibiotic cream. He decided against bandages, figuring that would look a bit melodramatic.

  The case contained the head of Sheila Armor, an artist, and she had fought ferociously. He had gotten into her apartment by imitating the special knock that her female lover used. He knew that the lover sometimes came by around seven pm, so that’s when he timed his visit. Pauley Mac had found out that the lover, an executive at a marketing firm, wouldn’t be over this evening. She was cheating on Sheila with a secretary from the firm. He had seen the two of them, dressed for excitement and heading out for the evening, and was certain, from prior observation, that they would come back to the executive’s townhouse to spend the night.

  Pauley Mac didn’t have a disguise this time. He was counting on surprise to get him inside the door, and he was clutching the pewter toad he used to knock his guests unconscious. When she answered the door, it was obvious that she had been working. She was wearing only a man’s T-shirt which must have been a tall size, because it skimmed her thighs, and she was a tall woman. The T-shirt had originally been white, but it was covered with streaks of paint, some of them still wet. She carried a brush in her right hand, loaded with bright blue paint.

  She must have had some self-defense training. She was quick and strong, and several inches taller than Pauley Mac. He got inside the door, but when he swung the pewter toad, she blocked his arm. The toad and the paint brush went flying across the room, and both were left empty-handed. There was a scuffle. He slipped on the polished wood floor of her living room, and he thought that she was going to get the better of him. He scrambled to his feet. It was pure luck that Pauley Mac landed a punch to her jaw, forcing her to tumble backward and hit her head against a steam radiator.

  The pain of his first knife stroke on her back brought her abruptly back to consciousness, but by then she was securely tied.

  When he was packed up and ready to leave her apartment, he looked around for the special item to leave for the police. He hadn’t brought any props with him this time, like the roses or the chocolate-covered strawberries. He wandered around the apartment, trying to get an idea. He ended up in the large room that served as her studio. On an easel was an unfinished painting of a woman and her daughter enjoying a picnic in a park. The young girl’s arm was outstretched and her face was lit with delight as she pointed out the beautiful sunset to her mother. The sun, clouds, and sky were incomplete, with only a few brush strokes to suggest the shapes. Pauley Mac smiled. With his gloved hand, he picked up one of the brushes which were lying in disarray on a nearby table, and went back into the living room. He dipped the brush in the woman’s blood on the floor, where it was seeping in between the wooden planks, and returned to the canvas. He drew in a childish-looking half-circle sun on the horizon, with straight lines sticking out of it to represent the rays of sunshine. He wondered how long it would take the police to notice that the sunset on her latest—and last—painting was not done by Armor but rather of her.

  At home, he debated not using her brain because he felt that she would be one of the hostile guests, the destructive voices in his mind that urged him to make mistakes. But it would be such a waste. He really did want to learn to paint, and he liked this artist’s style. He had read about her show in the Riverfront Times. He had showered and shaved carefully, put on some nice clothes—his only really nice outfit—and gone to the gallery in Clayton. Her work appealed to him. She did mostly landscapes, in a vibrant style that practically leapt off the canvas.

  This was one of his riskiest adventures, because the woman actually saw him the day before when he was following her home. Pauley Mac was scared when he was seen, but Dog had the perfect solution, one that came naturally, pissing on that fire hydrant so that she would think he was just a drunk. Typical of Dog, anyway.

  By the time he cleaned up the kitchen, stomach comfortably full, it was nearly midnight. He studied the instant photos he had taken in Armor’s apartment, and was pleased with his work. Digging the photo album out from the bottom of his underwear drawer, he slid the photos into plastic sleeves. He couldn’t resist paging through the rest of the album, regretting for the hundredth or thousandth time that he hadn’t had an instant camera during the earlier part of his self-improvement program. Looking at the photos gave him an erection, but he had things left to do, so he let it subside.

  Pauley Mac opened the freezer door atop his refrigerator and studied the contents critically. With the two other heads already inside, there simply wasn’t room for a third unless he threw out some ice cream. His favorite flavor, too: chocolate chip cookie dough. Dog would have thrown it out, but Pauley Mac wouldn’t stand for it.

  When he was younger, he used to preserve the heads, having studied the method of the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador. After a while it got to be awkward lugging the lot of them around in a suitcase. Even shrunken heads take up room when they accumulate. To make things even more unpleasant, some of the guests reproached him in his mind whenever they caught a glimpse of their own heads.

  Besides, Dog liked to travel light.

  One afternoon, when he lived in Illinois, he rented a boat from a marina and dumped them all in Lake Michigan. He thought of it as a spring cleaning effort.

  He decided to save the two that were already frozen and get rid of the fresh one from tonight, primarily because of the long hair attached to it, which meant it would take up more than its fair share of room in the freezer. He might have to look into buying a stand-alone freezer. When he started his next cycle, Childhood Innocence, he would need more storage room. Although, he mused, using children could be a space-saver.

  He bundled the woman’s head in burlap and drove to Busch Wildlife Area, a reserve in St. Charles County with a lot of fishing ponds. He selected one of the gravel turnoffs that led to a numbered pond. It was overcast that night, so there was no moonlight to help him out. He had to use a flashlight when he shut off the headlights and got out of the truck. Pauley Mac weighted the bundle with rocks and tossed it into the pond. He had done this before, in other parks in other states. He imagined that fish or snapping turtles pulled the burlap open and ate the flesh. The previous skulls were never recovered; perhaps they settled into the muck at the bottom of the pond.

  An image came to him of an aquarium that had been in his fifth grade classroom. It had one of those plastic miniature human skulls on the bottom with an air hose tucked inside so that air bubbled out of the eye sockets. One memory triggered another, and he sat in his pickup for a time, with the window rolled down, remembering, listening to the night sounds and the voices in his head.

  He thought he heard a whisper from Sheila Armor. It wasn’t pleasant: I’ll get you, you cocksucker.

  Perhaps he had made a mistake with her after all.

  CHAPTER 18

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER,” SAID Millie, “fries not greasy enough for you?” She looked with uncharacteristic concern at Schultz’s plate. He had taken a couple of bites of his burger and left the fries untouched after dousing them with ketchup.

  Schultz pulled himself back to the present. “Nah, they’re OK. I just got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

  “Anything I can do?” she said. Schultz was surprised to hear that from Millie. He raised his troubled eyes to hers.

  “I mean,” she said, “you being a paying customer and all. Not that you’re a decent tipper.”

  A smile began to work at the corners of his mouth, then gave up.

  “Yes, there is something you can do,” he said as she looked at him expectantly. “I need change to use the phone.” He shoved a dollar bill at her.

  Wordlessly she broke the bill at the cash register and handed him an assortment of dimes and quarters. He left his customary quarter tip and went to t
he pay phone near the bathrooms. He dialed Sheila Armor’s number to introduce himself and let her know that he’d be outside watching the rest of the night. It was almost ten pm.

  Her answering machine picked up on the fourth ring.

  Hello. I’m home now, but I’m working, so I won’t come to the phone. Don’t bother leaving a message, just call me later. Chris, if it’s you, we’re on for tennis tomorrow at seven, usual court. Don’t be late this time. Bye.

  He left a message anyway.

  He drove to her address, which was on Northwood off Skinker, and parked the car across the street, a couple of doors down. Then he walked around the building to check for rear exits. Armor lived in a three story apartment building. Around the back there were two fire escapes, one on each end of the building, which led to an alley. The alley ended at Armor’s building. It served the apartment building next door, and dead-ended there, too. There was a narrow passage to the street. The whole arrangement was designed for trash pickup, so that a truck could pull between the buildings and empty the dumpsters around back. From where Schultz was sitting, he could see the front door and the alley exit onto the street. It wasn’t ideal—there should be somebody around back to be doubly sure—but it would have to do for tonight.

  Her apartment number was 2-A. That should put her on the second floor, left hand corner. She had three windows facing the street and two more on the side of the building. All of them had shades tightly pulled down. Evidently, she liked privacy. Some fight leaked out around two of the shades.

  He had a large thermos of black coffee to help him stay awake, and a bag of nacho chips he had picked up when he put some gas in the Pacer. He stretched out his aching legs as much as he could in the driver’s seat, set up a pattern for his eyes to roam, and let his thoughts drift. They homed in immediately on what had just happened at home.

  Schultz’s life had been turned upside-down.

  On his way home from the office, he had decided that he was going to be firm with both Julia and his son Rick. It was time to let Rick face the consequences of his behavior and, if necessary, serve his time. He wasn’t going to rescue the boy—the man, after all, at twenty-five—and if his wife didn’t like it, she could pack her bags and move out.

  Much to his amazement, she did just that.

  It happened so swiftly that it hadn’t really sunk in yet. He was still numb, with a little blossom of heartache starting to open somewhere inside. All that night, as he chugged down coffee, shoved handfuls of chips into his mouth, and watched Armor’s apartment, he wondered where he had gone wrong.

  No one entered or left the building after he arrived. He knew that there were a lot of elderly residents in the area, and they generally didn’t go out after dark or have company late at night. Around midnight, one of the lights in Armor’s windows went off. The other went off an hour later. Apparently she was tucked in for the night.

  Dawn sneaked up on him. He needed to go to the bathroom. He was out of coffee, out of chips, out of excuses in his marriage, and apparently out of Julia’s life. Later, he checked his watch. Tenants were starting to come out of the building, a few on their way to work, some just out to walk the dog. It was past seven-thirty. Hadn’t Armor’s phone message said that she had a tennis date at seven? He sat up abruptly, banging his knee on the steering wheel. She should have left practically an hour ago.

  He got out, brushed the crumbs off his clothes, stretched his stiff legs, and felt his left knee pop painfully. He entered the building and knocked on the door of 2-A. No answer. He went downstairs, found the superintendent, flashed his badge, and pulled him away from breakfast to open the door.

  Schultz was the first one in. He saw that Armor was home, but in no condition to answer the door. He stepped back out quickly, but not before the smell of blood, coppery and abundant, had filled his nostrils.

  He used the super’s phone to call in the homicide and waited for the blue-and-whites and the ETU to arrive. He was certain no one had gone in the front door, and equally certain, because of the layout in the back with the blind alley that butted up against other buildings, that no one had gone up the fire escape. His mind caught and held a single thought: he had held a vigil for a woman who was almost certainly dead even before he arrived, a woman who was killed while he, the professional detective, the protector of the public, was home arguing with his wife.

  The technicians had been in the apartment almost an hour before Schultz worked up the nerve to call PJ. In the meantime he had determined that the reassuring lights he had seen from his car going off in two different rooms were lamps controlled by plug-in timers. He had been taken in, lulled, by something that probably wouldn’t have deterred a second-rate burglar.

  He didn’t meet PJ’s accusing gaze when she arrived. This time she couldn’t stay in the room while the body was still there. He helped her out and left her sitting on the stairs while he went mechanically through the scene analysis.

  That afternoon, in the middle of relating the last twenty-four hours’ events to an incredulous Lieutenant Wall, he hit bottom. He got up, held up both hands in a warding gesture, and left the room. He sat in the stall with the only working toilet in the men’s room, ignoring increasingly urgent requests to finish up.

  PJ found out from Barnesworth where Schultz was and barged into the men’s room without knocking. A patrolman about to unzip in front of a urinal thought better of it and left. She pounded on the closed stall door.

  “Come out of there, you worm! If I have to, I’ll crawl under the door so I can hear your excuses face-to-face. And you know I’ll do it, too!”

  All the fight had leached out of Schultz. He opened the stall door.

  “That’s better,” PJ said icily. “I’d like to know why a woman who sat in my office and told me she was in danger is now dead. How could you mess up so monumentally?”

  “I fucked up,” he said sullenly, “and Armor paid for it. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s just fine, Detective. You’re sorry. A woman is dead, and that’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “What else can I say?”

  “You can start by telling me exactly what happened.”

  The door opened, and Lieutenant Wall stuck his head in. “Schultz…” he said.

  “Not now!” PJ practically shouted. “Go away!”

  Wall obediently vanished.

  “Come on, let’s go back to my office,” she said. “This is no place to talk. It stinks in here.”

  She shoved Schultz angrily. Then, without thinking, she drew her hand back and slapped him across the face.

  He took the blow without reacting, then led the way across the hall. She slammed her office door when they were both inside.

  “I’ve got to congratulate you, Detective. I’ve never slapped anyone before. You’re the first one to get under my skin enough.”

  “I deserved it, Doc. If it’ll make you feel any better, you can do it again.”

  PJ dropped into her chair and threw one leg over the burnished arm. “Damn it, Schultz, tell me what happened.”

  “I didn’t promise I’d make it over there. I was skeptical, but I decided to go myself. I wish to God I could go back and make that decision over, send Dave or Anita. I just wasn’t on top of things. Some family problems came up after work yesterday. Not that that’s an excuse, but I was late getting over to Armor’s place. She was offed before I even got there. I spent the night guarding her corpse. Shit!”

  PJ composed herself. Her professional concern asserted itself in spite of her anger and grief. “What sort of family problems?”

  “Nothing that should have interfered with my work.”

  PJ waited him out.

  “My son Rick got arrested yesterday. Pushing drugs. Julia wanted me to fix things and spring him. I said no, let the jerk swing in the breeze. We had a big fight about it. She left.”

  “You separated from your wife?”

  “That’s what I said, didn’t I? She’s gone. Split. Thirty ye
ars down the tubes, and the only thing I’ve got to show for it is a son in the slammer.”

  PJ felt again the emotional heat of her own discovery of Steven’s infidelity, his leaving, their divorce, his marriage to Carla.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and meant it.

  “Yeah, well, I feel rotten about what happened. My home life shouldn’t screw up my work. Lieutenant Wall certainly knows that, and he hasn’t exactly been reluctant this morning to tell me about it. Christ, my voice was on her answering machine. I look like an idiot.”

  “You’re human, aren’t you?” she said softly, her anger starting to fade. She hadn’t forgiven him for his costly lapse, but at least she understood it. She had made blunders before in her professional life. There was that time when she hadn’t taken a suicide threat seriously, turned off her pager, and gone out for an anniversary celebration with Steven. Her judgment had been dead wrong, and she knew what it was like to live with that.

  She was about to reach out and pat his hand, but he sensed it and pulled away.

  “Don’t get mushy, Doc. Or is that just professional technique?”

  “A little of both, I think. I’m not sorry I slapped you, though.”

  Schultz nodded. He finally raised his eyes to meet hers, and they held the connection, a very human connection, sharing their grief.

  “Sometimes things happen that shove everything else in your life aside,” she said quietly. “I call it the steamroller effect.”

  “I don’t buy that, Doc. The Armor woman should be alive today.”

  PJ put aside her recriminations, because she wanted, now more than ever, to solve this case. The stakes had just gone sky-high. “Do you still want to catch the killer and hang him up by his thumbs and cut his balls off?”

  “That’s a damn silly question. Of course I do.”

  “Then I’ve got some news about the case,” PJ said. “You’ve been so busy sitting in the toilet that you haven’t heard the latest. There’s been a break.”