Edge of Panic Page 9

  Three

  PATTERN OF MURDER

  SHE WAS GLAD she didn’t have to drive. She kept her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed. She was suddenly cold, turning up her coat collar, snuggling down in the seat, keeping her eyes tightly closed. She felt the damp of the rainy night on her face, on her hands, cool on her eyelids. She squeezed her mind dry, empty, black, a trick she had learned as a child, when she couldn’t sleep. She clung to the rhythmic rap of the wipers, lulled to stupor. Where was she going? Why? Why? What had he done? Why? Why? Who was this woman? Dead. Dead. Diary. Diary. Diary. Diary. She forced it out, draining her mind. Rap, rap, rap of wipers. Chug, chug… she remembered her first long train ride, as a child, chug, chug, close to her father, frightened, his arm around her, tighter, tighter, smelling his strength, until she was no longer afraid, chug, chug, until she was asleep, close and protected, smelling the strength of her father…

  The young man tapped her. “We’re here, miss.”

  “Yes.”

  She followed him through the straight-down warm rain, under a canopy, up one step, into a wide lobby, walking beside him, quiet on thick carpets, to the elevators. They went up to eight and he knocked on the door of 810. She heard music from a radio.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Fred Crawford.”

  The door was opened by a square young woman with a man’s haircut. “Hi, Fred.”

  “Turn that off, huh?”

  A slim young blonde with a pale face and a checked skirt and a white silk blouse uncrossed her legs on a divan. “Why? You anti-social?”

  “Turn it off.”

  The square young woman said, “Okay, Lieutenant,” and went to the radio.

  “Okay, Lieutenant,” the blonde mimicked in the loud silence of the switched-off radio. “Here’s a report. There’s been a couple of nonsense calls, and nothing else. Now can we get the music back?”

  “This is Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Harry Martin.”

  “Mrs.—well—whaddya know?”

  “Three rooms and a bath,” Fred Crawford said. “This here’s the living-room.” She followed him as he put the lights on. “Kitchen.” He took her across. “Bedroom and bath.”

  “May I—look around?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  They went back to the living-room. She took her coat off and put it on the back of a chair, inside out, her pocketbook over it. She stood there near the chair, her fists clenching and unclenching, looking at the young lieutenant. Softly he said, “All right, girls—outside.”

  “Take our coats?”

  “No. Just wait outside. In the corridor. I’ll be with you in a second.” He waited until they were gone, then he went to her. “We’ve been all over this place, miss. With a fine comb.”

  “I know. I’m sure of that.”

  “I’ll be outside, right outside the door.”

  “Thank you.”

  He snapped the button on the lock to keep it open and closed the door behind him. She stood where she was, looking about her at the large room, at the pink ceiling, at the sofa and the three divans, at the silk pillows and the coffee table and the mirror and the tall telephone table in a corner near the bedroom. Two of the pillows had no covers, rough-canvas naked. Why am I here? What can I do? She went to the kitchen, looked into the refrigerator, closed it, sighed, rubbed her hands against the sides of her skirt. She went across to the bedroom, brightly lit. There was an odor of disinfectant in the room. The wall near the light switch carried the damp scrawl of a recent washing. There was no bedspread on the bed. There were no stains. There were no marks on the floor where the dead woman had lain. She opened a drawer of a vanity, closed it. She went to the bathroom, turned the light on, looked behind the shower curtain, started to go out. She went back and opened the medicine cabinet. There were creams and colognes and toilet waters and peroxide and nail polish and iodine and deodorants and Vaseline. There was one bottle with the label of a drugstore prescription. The date was yesterday. It was a two-ounce bottle of a brown mixture with perhaps a teaspoonful out of it. She opened it, smelled it, screwed the top back. She took it with her to the living-room, put her coat on, took her bag, and opened the door. “All right, miss?” Fred Crawford said.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  The two young women looked at her curiously, going past her into the room, leaving them alone in the corridor. Crawford rolled his hat in his hands, leaning against a narrow door marked Incinerator. “You going back in there, miss?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Let’s get out of here.”

  They went to the elevators and he rang. She held up the bottle. “I took this.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. What is it?”

  “Cough medicine, miss.”

  “It has yesterday’s date on it.”

  “That’s right. She had a cold. It was prescribed last night. The doctor’s been questioned, once over, lightly. Sample of the stuff’s been checked.”

  “Checked? Checked for what?”

  “Analyzed. You know, analyzed. Cough medicine, period.”

  “Does he know about it?”

  “Who?”

  “The doctor.”

  “Know about what?”

  “About—what happened?”

  “No. We got the lid on this one. Captain’s orders, and you know the Captain. It’s supposed to break tonight.” He looked at her. “Maybe it’s breaking right now. No. You don’t have to talk about a murder to ask a doctor about a cough medicine. Those two young ladies in there are pretty shrewd, no matter what the Captain thinks about lady dicks.”

  The elevator took them down. In the lobby, she said, “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “But, miss—”

  “Please tell Captain Brophy I’ll keep my promise.”

  “But, miss—”

  “I’m going to sit here for a while. You’ve been very nice. Thank you very much. I’d like to be alone now, please.”

  “But, miss—”

  “Captain’s orders. Remember the Captain’s orders?”

  Reluctantly he said, “Yeah. I suppose he knows what he’s doing. Okay, miss. See you around.” He half-saluted, waving two fingers, put his hat on, and walked down the lobby to the door. Once, he turned his head.

  She sat in a high-backed wooden armchair, in the empty lobby, tapping knuckles against teeth, tapping hard until it hurt, poking her toe at the butt of a cigar on the floor. She pushed it aside, biting at her knuckle, thinking of the child at home, Ruth and the two policemen, Quigley, John Applegate, Captain Brophy, Harry—feeling strange to herself, numb, as though it were another, not she, sitting in a high-backed wooden armchair, in a hotel lobby, on a rainy night, mixed up with death and insanity. She brought out the bottle and looked at it. She screwed off the black top, smelled it, put the top back. She read the label: Marmy’s, The Family Pharmacy, Central Park and Ninetieth, telephone number, date, Mrs. J. Anderson, teaspoonful three times a day, Dr. E. H. Earl.

  She stood up and went out.

  The rain had stopped, hanging over fog, threatening, the sky down near, choking off wind. She walked quickly on the murky street, the sounds of her heels echoless, white steam of fog flicking from her nostrils, curling around her mouth. There was no freshness after rain, it was warm, breathless; between rains; a dank, wet, airless interlude. She felt the itchy uneasiness of perspiration, her clothes humid to her body. The looming trees of the park were dreadful and frightening against the wispy yellow smoke rings of the street lamps. The shops were closed, fog-swathed, the tall dark apartment houses, bleak and stony. She stopped, jerked her head around, looked behind her.

  Then she ran.

  The lights of the drugstore brought her back, prosaic, comforting. She slowed from running, breathing deeply, filling her lungs, getting back her wind. The amber neons shaped Drugs over the door in high letters. In the window, a pear-shaped glass bowl glistened green. She went through into daylight fluorescence. There was
a long counter on her right and a prescription counter in the rear. The rest was glass cabinets and cardboard ads. The young man behind the counter, in a neck-tight white jacket, had curly black hair and a ridiculous thick black bushy mustache. He smiled at her at once, the mustache parting to long buck teeth. He made her think of a rabbit. A rabbit with a mustache. She smiled back at him in the safe, bright, cheerful drugstore.

  “Yes, madam?”

  She took out the bottle. “My sister—”

  “That’s not for me, madam. That’s for the pharmacist, the registered man. Got to have a registered man on all the time, we’re open twenty-four hours a day, it’s the law.” He looked toward the rear. “Hey, Jackson.”

  “Coming.”

  A small man came out to her, smooth-faced, thin, smelling faintly of after-shaving lotion, sparse hair parted down the middle. He too smiled, more practiced, dimples lengthening to cracks, shrewd wrinkles framing his eyes.

  “Yes, madam?” He pulled at the lapels of his gray linen duster.

  “Lady’s talking about a prescription,” the bushy mustache said. “I told her it’s your department. Right, or wrong?”

  “Right. Yes, madam?”

  “This bottle. My sister’s been a little sick. Not the cough. I mean she’s gotten sick to the stomach. We were wondering—perhaps—I mean, could it be this?” She held out the bottle.

  “I doubt it, madam.” The smile settled to pursed accusing, outraged lips. “I doubt it, severely.”

  “No, it’s just that—”

  “I’ll check, of course.” He shook out a pair of glasses, laid them on his nose, took the bottle from her hand, held it away, arm’s length, peering. “Oh, Anderson. You needn’t fret any more, madam. Don’t have to check that. Not at all.” He took off the glasses, folded them, tapped them against the bottle. “Remember it like it was now, right now. Late, yesterday. Say half-past three in the morning. Yes, three-thirty. Doctor himself came in, wrote out the prescription right here. Mr. Alonzo,” he pointed at the man behind the counter, “delivered it up to the Everett.”

  “It was a pleasure,” Mr. Alonzo said. “A distinct pleasure, madam. Your sister is out of this world, if I may take the liberty to say so.”

  “Can’t hurt a fly.” The smile was back. He returned the bottle to her. “You can drink half the contents, madam, it won’t hurt you, won’t even give you a jag. Ha, ha. A stock remedy, you know, we got it prepared by the gallon. Didn’t even have to make it up. Dispense it all day long. Fill it from one bottle to another. Cough medicine, madam, can’t hurt a fly, let alone a grown woman. It must have been something she ate.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not at all.”

  What now?

  She didn’t know why she was in a drugstore on Central Park West. She didn’t know why she was chatting with an intent little man about a bottle of medicine. She didn’t know why she had insisted upon going to the apartment in the first place. Experts had worked on it, people who knew their business. What was it the Captain had said—they weren’t persecuting anybody, they were doing a job of work, tying it up tight, tying it up tight around Harry Martin; only Harry Martin was her husband. Cops didn’t know Harry Martin, lady detectives listening to a radio, a handsome young lieutenant with a sympathetic face, voices over an intercom, hard-faced men in a patrol car sweeping her into the curb, a fat bald languorous Captain, hiding erudition, talking down to her—even Johnny didn’t know him—only she! But did she? Did she?

  “Thank you,” she said, putting the bottle into her bag, looking out toward the swirling knots of fog, amber and green from the store lights, not wanting to go out again into the dark, afraid and hesitant, seeing the phone booths in an alcove, and the phone books in a rack, and going there, and swinging out the Manhattan Classified, and wetting her finger, and riffling to Physicians, and finding Earl, E. Harrington, M.D., 13W89.

  “Thirteen West Eighty-Ninth,” she said at the young man Alonzo. “Is it far?”

  “Four is Runch’s Riding Academy, that’s just around the corner. Thirteen figures for across the street from there, give and take a couple of houses. Figures for just around the corner, madam.”

  If it had been farther she wouldn’t have gone. She was afraid of the warm thick night, the silence, the darkness. She knew now that she was pushing it away, postponing it, marking time, doing nothing, going in where the experts had already gone. She rationalized that they had worked from one perspective, that they had established what they were looking for and had gone on from there, that hers was a different outlook—but she knew in her heart that that wasn’t so, that they were impersonal, intent on the facts and abiding by them, that she was pushing it away, holding back from going to Johnny’s and waiting for Harry to awaken. It was only around the corner, so she went, but she didn’t know why she was going, hurrying in the dead street on echoless heels.

  She saw the lights as she turned the corner. She walked more quickly, hoping to orient the number by the light seeping into the fog from the barred windows. She glanced up for the number and couldn’t find it, then she saw the small, bronze, raised-letter placard: E. H. Earl, M.D. The office was street-level, the bars on the windows the usual protection. She heard music and the sounds of laughter, but she couldn’t see through the curtains. She went to the door and pushed the button, listening to the music, rhumba, thinking how Harry loved to rhumba, and how they danced together…

  A lady opened the door. “Yes?”

  “The doctor. Dr. Earl?”

  “Who is it?” someone shouted.

  “Please come in,” the lady said.

  She came into a room of smoke and noise and laughter. The shining faces were alien, strange to her mood, isolating her. The tall man squeezed through; she saw his white hair at once over the heads of the many people. The lady said, “For you, Doctor.”

  “Dr. Earl?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Mrs. Martin.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Martin?”

  Somebody said, “Take your coat off, doll. Ladies always welcome.”

  He took her arm. “If it is professional, and it can be postponed, I’d appreciate it. We’re sort of in the midst of a party—”

  “I’d like to speak to you, just for a few minutes—”

  “Certainly.” He led her through the room, across a little hallway, opened a door. “Our apartment is in the rear, but our party has sort of overflowed to the waiting-room. It hasn’t, as yet, overflowed to here.” It was a consulting-room: desk, telephone, leather chairs, and pictures of birds in flight on the walls. An open door showed part of an examining-room: a white cabinet of surgical instruments and a white table with levers and wheels.

  “May I have your coat, Mrs. Martin?”

  She gave it to him and he laid it across one of the leather chairs. He was very tall with white hair precisely combed. His face was young, with an outdoor ruddiness, skin tight to his features. His hands were long and graceful, his figure slim, small-waisted. “Please sit down, Mrs. Martin.”

  “Thank you.”

  He waited until she was seated, bowed slightly, took the chair behind the desk. He leaned back, crossed his ankles, opened his hands, tapped fingers to fingers. “It’s my birthday.” He smiled. “That is the reason for the festivities.”

  “Doctor. I’m here about Joyce Anderson. We’re—worried about her.”

  “Oh. Are you her lady friend? The lady I spoke with on the telephone?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I am, but I’m not the one you spoke to. There are two of us.”

  “Yes, the ladies from out of town. I don’t really understand about Mrs. Anderson. Your friend—when I spoke with her, as you probably know, told me that Mrs. Anderson hadn’t been in, but that she had left her key and a message for you two to go up and make yourselves at home, that she’d be back.”

  “I wasn’t there, Doctor, when you talked to my friend.”

  “I see.”

  “Mrs. Anderson—Jo
yce—is rather unpredictable. It’s probably nothing at all, but when my friend noticed the medicine with yesterday’s date on it, she decided to call—”

  “Yes, I explained it to her.”

  “The medicine—”

  “A simple cough mixture.”

  “We were worried—perhaps, her illness—”

  “There is absolutely nothing to worry about on that account. A slight cold. I suggested that she stay in for a day, and even that wasn’t given as a strict order. In fact, I invited her out tonight. I asked her to drop in here, to my party, if she felt up to it. Many of my patients are here.”

  “I see, Doctor.”

  “If that is what you’re worried about, forget it. A slight cold, nothing else. I had a prescription sent over, merely as a precaution. I had really expected that she would come to my party. In fact, I was about to call her when your friend called. I—”

  There was a knock on the door. It opened, part way, for a small woman, bright-eyed and smiling. “Everything all right, dear?”

  “Come in, come in. Mrs. Martin—my wife, Mrs. Earl.”

  “How do you do?”

  “How do you do?”

  “I’ll be out there in a jiffy, dear.”

  “All right. We miss you.” Her smile widened. “Can I get you something, Mrs. Martin? A drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Don’t be too long, dear. Glad to know you, Mrs. Martin.” She went out, closing the door quietly.

  He stood up. “Are you going back to the Everett?”

  “Everett?”

  “The hotel.”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “It’s not far, but it’s late, and it’s quite muggy out. Suppose I call a cab for you.” He leaned toward the phone. “A couple of boys I know park near a tavern on Columbus Avenue, where I can reach them by telephone. Or, should I say, park in the tavern?”

  “Yes. I’d like a taxi. Thank you very much.”

  He made the call. He brought her coat to her, helped her on with it. “Mrs. Martin, this party will be going full blast for at least another couple of hours. If she turns up, will you please call me? I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but, in truth, I’m a little concerned.”