to believe it, but it wouldn't go away.
'You killed Grace Valpone,' he said, finding the revelation left him short of breath.
He'd surprised Agnes. She tilted her head back and to the side in the Boyington manner. Her wary eyes registered confusion. Then a new respect for Nudger flared in them like a fierce, cold light.
'What you did to her,' Nudger said softly. 'What you did with the knife. I mean, how could you? What sort of monster lives in your skin?'
'The sort that does what is necessary. The Valpone murder, done the way it was, proved necessary. It was what a man would do.'
'You killed Grace Valpone because of her dissimilarities to your daughters,' Nudger said, 'because she was older, led a different kind of life. You murdered her because she wasn't a talker on the nightlines, and if she became a victim in the series of murders, her death would lead the police away from the lines as a factor in the bathtub slayings, away from Jenine's nightline conversations and meetings with men. Away from closer investigation and the discovery of Jeanette's true identity. From stigma reflected on you. But where did you know her from? What was she to you?'
'Why, nothing. A stranger.'
An icy sea engulfed Nudger, stunning him. 'You murdered a complete stranger?'
'I murdered the Valpone woman precisely because she was a stranger,' Agnes said. 'So there would be no personal connection between us and thus no apparent motive. I chose her name from the list of recent marriage licenses in the Daily Record. If she was going to be married, she'd hardly be talking on the nightlines as Jenine had. I eavesdropped on her life to make sure she suited my purpose, then I killed her in the manner of the nightline women's murders. She might have been anyone. I simply wanted to alter the pattern of the murders, but not so much that they still wouldn't be tied together in the minds of the police. That way the investigation would be diverted away from the nightlines. It didn't have to be Grace Valpone. It was nothing personal.'
Nudger realized he was squeezing the arms of his chair. Nothing personal. He was in the almost palpable presence of genuine evil; evil found out, unmasked, real. He was awed.
'The police will piece this together,' he said, 'from what Jenine will tell them, from what I'll tell them.'
'And from what I'll tell them,' Agnes Boyington said. 'Do you think anything really matters to me now? My daughters are shamed, one of them is dead, everything I've existed for is dirty, dirty, part now of your soiled and grimy world. Do you think what happens now actually makes a difference?'
'Not to you, I suppose it doesn't,' Nudger said. But he knew better. He knew her. She would think about it. She was a fighter, and she'd pull on her white gloves and see her lawyer and make denials; she'd make whatever moves she had. Which in today's crazy-quilt legal system might be enough to let her walk away from the game free.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
'I have always done what I must in this world,' she said firmly.
Nudger went to the white phone on the secretary desk and dialed Hammersmith's number. He told him, briefly, the nature of the deception and the true identity of his female prisoner.
Then he hung up the phone and sat quietly with Agnes Boyington in her calm, ordered home, listening to the hoarse screaming of the locusts, and waiting for the police.
XXXI
B y the time they let Nudger leave Headquarters it was just past dawn. The wavering orange sun hadn't yet burned off the haze of pollutants that had drifted across the river from the heavy industry on the east side, obscuring the graceful curve of the Arch above the downtown skyline. He crossed to the City Hall lot, where his car was parked, and sat behind the steering wheel for a minute before starting the engine.
Springer had prodded and goaded, and cracked the whip of the law, sending him through smaller and smaller hoops with the skill of a practiced interrogator. But Nudger had passed through them all. Finally, with the usual instruction to stay available, they had released him. The police might still be an aggravation, but they were no longer a threat.
Exhausted though he was, talked out though he was, Nudger needed to tell someone about what had happened, to share it with someone who cared. Some things not shared ate like acid.
He started the car and drove to see Claudia.
When he entered the old apartment building on Spruce and reached the second-floor landing, Coreen stuck her head out of her doorway and called his name. Nudger picked up something disturbing in her voice, a kind of vibrant apprehension. He stood for a moment with his hand on the banister, then turned and took a few steps toward her.
'You going to see Claudia,' Coreen said, looking concerned, 'I'll go with you. I been trying to call her on the phone, but she don't answer.' She stepped all the way out into the hall and closed her door behind her.
'Maybe she's not home,' Nudger said.
'She's home, all right. I seen her come in.'
'Come in from where?'
Coreen shrugged. 'Early morning walk, I guess.' She led the way up the stairs, aggressiveness in the swing of her arms and the roll of her wide hips. 'I wondered what she was doing out that time of morning. That's why I been trying to phone her, to find out.'
'Maybe she couldn't sleep and felt like getting out,' Nudger said.
Coreen snorted dubiously. 'Anything else you feel like believing, Nudger? It ain't like Claudia to go roaming around in the early dawn. Not unless something's bothering her.'
When they reached Claudia's door, Nudger rapped loudly on it with the edge of a half dollar. Slow minutes passed and Claudia didn't answer his knock. There was no sound from inside the apartment.
'Maybe she went back to bed,' Nudger suggested hollowly, trying not to let Coreen's foreboding infect him.
Coreen wasn't having any of that explanation. She reached around him and rattled the knob. The door was locked. 'You got a key?' she asked.
Nudger nodded. He dropped the half dollar back into his pocket, then reached deeper and drew out his key ring.
He opened the door to silence. He and Coreen stepped into Claudia's apartment like two people entering a swamp of unpredictable sinkholes.
Maybe she wasn't home after all, Nudger thought. The place had the unbroken quietude of rooms unoccupied. A cup and saucer sat on the table by the sofa, the cup tilted crookedly half up on the saucer rim, the brown liquid inside it level and still. For some reason it occurred to Nudger that the coffee was exactly the muddy brown color of the sliding current of the Mississippi just a few blocks away.
Coreen had moved around him and was standing in the doorway to the bedroom. Nudger saw her body stiffen and jerk backward as if she'd been struck. Her voice was the softest, saddest, he had ever heard. 'Aw, Lord, no, no!…' She braced herself with both hands on the doorjambs.
Nudger leaped to her side, pulled her roughly out of the way and charged into the bedroom, knowing what was waiting for him.
He recognized the two ties that he'd left here, one brown-striped and one blue-striped, to go with either of his suits. Claudia had tied them end to end, knotted one around the inside doorknob of her closet, run the other tie up over the top of the door, and wrapped its end around her neck. She was nude, hanging limply against the door, like some kind of grotesque masquerade costume that had been casually placed there the night before, too real to be real. The blue-striped tie around her neck had dug deep into her flesh. Her eyes were bulging beneath closed lids, her tongue purple and distended. The kitchen stool she'd stood on and kicked aside lay upside down a few feet from her.
Nudger's soul was a thousand pounds of cold lead, for a moment weighting him motionless where he stood. Then he rushed to her, his agony welling from his throat in a stricken, pitying moan. He saw that her toes were
