stomach, Nudger slid around Hammersmith and stepped far enough into the bathroom to see the body.
After a glance he backed away and hurried into the kitchen, where he immediately vomited into the sink. He saw that he wasn't the first to use the facility, as he reached up feebly and ran the cold tap water.
Hammersmith had followed him and was standing waiting patiently for the retching to stop.
After several minutes, Nudger finally straightened, his hands still resting on the sink. He felt weak and figured he must be as pale and green as the cop with the handkerchief. He thought he might start trembling; he didn't want that. There was enough machismo lost in being green.
'Let's go out on the back porch,' Hammersmith suggested, 'get some fresh air.' He threw a sliding bolt lock, shoved open the kitchen door to the rear porch, and let Nudger step out in front of him.
They were looking out over a gray, freshly painted wood rail at a small but neat backyard. There was a two- car brick garage there, with a flagstone walk leading back to it. Thick white corner posts at the gray railing supported an identical porch upstairs. In a far corner of the porch were a metal pan half full of water and a thick china bowl containing a lump of fly-covered spoiled dog food or cat food, the kind pet owners buy because it resembles hamburger and they'd like it if they were in the role of pet. Nudger looked away from that.
'This one is even worse than Valpone,' Hammersmith observed.
And the five-minute-old image was there again in Nudger's mind: a smallish dark-haired woman in her bath, nude, one breast gone, her throat slashed with such brutal force that she was nearly decapitated. This time there was blood on the floor and walls, not much, but some. Maybe she'd fought harder than the others; maybe the life force had been stronger in her.
'Her name was Susan Merriweather,' Hammersmith said. 'Twenty-seven years old. Too damned young to die like that. She lived alone, worked as a loan manager at a bank, and had lots of acquaintances but few close friends. She partied now and then, but mostly led a quiet life.'
'And met a quiet, nasty death.'
'Yeah.' Hammersmith caressed the cellophaned tip of a cigar protruding from his shirt pocket, then withdrew his hand. 'He worked on her systematically before or after she was dead, or both. Same kind of mutilation as the Valpone woman had, only more so. Much more so.'
'I saw,' Nudger said, his stomach cartwheeling at the thought of dried blood, gristle, and bone; the Death inside us all.
'You want to sit down?' Hammersmith asked, motioning toward the wooden steps.
Nudger sat down. Hammersmith sat beside him, a step higher. They watched the neighbor's sad-looking beagle amble over to the fence and gaze through the chain link, wondering what all the human fuss was about, then amble away toward some shade.
'Things have firmed up, Nudge,' Hammersmith said. 'There was a six-six-six number on a slip of paper near Susan Merriweather's phone. And the fingerprint team picked up some smudged prints in a blood smear. I sent them down to Headquarters for a rush ID.'
'Hear anything yet?'
'Only that they match exactly the abnormally large size and spread of the prints found in Jenine Boyington's apartment.'
Nudger nodded, thinking. He hadn't really doubted the connection between the killings, but this confirmed it. More than that, it placed him on different, more dangerous, ground. It was assumed now by people other than Jeanette Boyington and Nudger that a mass murderer was operating in the city, insatiable and unpredictable, taking his victims in seemingly random harvest. Nudger experienced a fear he couldn't quite define, as if the laws of the universe were, after all, a farce, a grisly celestial joke, and there was nothing but black chaos where he had assumed there was some kind of order and meaning. Theory had become terrifying fact; madness had been stamped official.
'The murders figure to be done by the same perp,' Hammersmith was saying. 'Jenine Boyington, Grace Valpone, and now Susan Merriweather, all killed more or less the same way and within a relatively short time of each other. We checked on all similar murders, Nudge, put the old computer to work. There were several resting in the back files, four possible tie- ins and three that I'd bet were committed by the killer who did the work on Boyington, Valpone, and Merriweather. They were there all the time in Records, dating back three years.'
'Why didn't you draw a connection until now?' Nudger asked.
Hammersmith shook his broad head sadly, his jowls swaying. 'There are hundreds of homicides every year in the metropolitan area, Nudge. The ones done by this killer before his last three were simply unsolved and categorized under 'inactive,' lost in the statistics.'
Lost in the statistics. Nudger remembered Jeanette Boy- ington saying that, when she'd hired him to find her twin's murderer. He had listened to her mass murder theory mainly because he was between cases while his rent rolled on. The needy ear of poverty. Nobody else would have bought the idea. Maybe you didn't have to be dead to be lost in the statistics.
'Whatever our past oversights,' Hammersmith said, 'we have to take it from where we are. The news media is on to this now, and the case is top priority with the department. More manpower's been assigned and the Major Case Squad is involved. Leo Springer is involved. You better walk easy, Nudge, thinking all the time about where you're stepping.'
'Because of Springer and departmental politics and PR?'
'All that and something else. The killer is murdering more frequently, more violently. Even the computer noticed. The time span between Jenine Boyington and Grace Valpone was two weeks, but between Grace Valpone and Susan Merriweather, only days. He's getting more careless, more frenzied, more dangerous. This killing won't keep him satisfied and inactive for long. You clue us in on what you're doing, huh? You still using the Boyington girl to make dates over the nightlines?'
Nudger nodded.
'Anything come of it?'
Nudger shook his head no.
'Reticence can get you killed or unemployed,' Hammersmith said, irritated. Irritated enough to disregard Nudger's delicate stomach and unwrap one of his greenish fat cigars. He struck a match, puffed like the little engine that could. 'Shwoo… loyalty to a shwoo… client has its shwoo… limits, Nudge.'
'Legal limits,' Nudger corrected. His stomach was going on carnival rides; bile rose in his throat. 'Can I go now, or am I under arrest?'
Hammersmith showed mercy, withdrawing the cigar from his mouth and holding it out over the railing. Smoke drifted away over the backyard as if there had been an explosion. 'The kind of case it's become, Nudge, if we can't collar anyone else, maybe we'll settle for you.'
'Maybe I did it.'
'You only think you're joking. This case can get out of control in ways you wouldn't believe. And other than the killer, nobody is more in the middle of it than you.'
'You have a point.'
'Think of our Chief of Police and the special problems of his office; think of Captain Massey and his Major Case Squad; think of Leo Springer and his maladjusted libido. Reputations must be protected.'
'But not mine.'
'No, not yours. Not as far as the powers that be are concerned. It'll be a bounty of luck if you come out of this without wearing some kind of goat's bell around your neck. Maybe they won't break the electric chair out of storage just for you, but there's your investigator's license to consider, your ability to work in this Baghdad on the Mississippi. You could be a stopgap suspect and a big loser.'
'You always understood these things, Jack.' Nudger stood up and tucked in his shirt. 'I appreciate the wise words. Really.'
'Do take care, Nudge.'
Nudger went down the porch steps and cut through the narrow, cool gangway so he wouldn't have to walk back through the murder scene. He wondered if Hammersmith had been completely serious about the department's possibly being pressured into manufacturing a suspect to tide them over until the real killer was found. It had happened before and would happen again, so why not to Nudger? There were those who would smilingly attest to his bad character.
He reached the sidewalk at the same time as the assistant ME, who had left through the front door. The man
