'I Know Something You Don't Know.'
'Who owns the truck?' Nudger asked.
'Who knows?' Hammersmith said. He liked to disappoint from time to time, too. It made the times when he did deliver all the more impressive. 'The license number won't help you. The plates were stolen from a landscaping company truck out in Richmond Heights, a new Dodge. The rusty job you saw was either stolen or was maybe a junker that's already back in the pile or crushed and on its way to be melted down to make shinier junk in Detroit. Our friends on the other side of the law have been getting their vehicles that way for short-term use. Runners from junkyards, with trash bodies but good engines. 'Junkyard dogs,' some of the blue uniforms have been calling them. Lot of these cars and trucks are from across the river in Illinois, damn near impossible to trace because they don't exist anymore by the time somebody comes around to the scrap pile asking questions.'
Nudger hadn't expected much from the license number. Still, he felt almost bitterly disappointed. 'Thanks for trying, Jack.'
'That's what my wife says.'
'Pressures of the job,' Nudger told him.
Hammersmith mumbled something unintelligible but no doubt insulting around his cigar, then hung up before Nudger could reply. Another of his favorite games.
Nudger didn't put down the receiver. He depressed the cradle button and punched out the Elbert and Stein number.
Doreen the receptionist was cooperative this time. He had no trouble getting through to Siberling.
Siberling agreed that one last hopeless try to save Colt was in order. A condemned man's attorney had a professional obligation to go to the wire with him, especially if he felt he was innocent. He told Nudger to bring Candy Ann to his office that evening and he'd arrange for witnesses and a stenographer for depositions. The final appeal, with their statements, could be submitted to the governor's office tomorrow, Friday. The day before Colt's execution.
As soon as he hung up on Siberling, the phone rang again. Busy, busy.
It was Edna Fine. She wanted to talk again, to change her story about the robbery and murder. She'd been giving it a lot of thought, she said, not sleeping well since their conversation, and she felt that she had to do this.
Nudger said he'd meet her at her apartment as soon as possible.
As he shrugged into his wrinkled brown sport jacket, he realized he felt better than he had in days. The game might be swinging in his direction at last. Who could say? This was one of those rare and brief periods in his life when he felt a benevolent, fateful wind at his back.
After leaving his office, Nudger ducked into Danny's Donuts, told Danny he might be back late that afternoon, and asked for a Dunker Delite to munch on as he drove. He felt good, all right.
And what Edna Fine had to say might make him feel even better.
He and Candy Ann. Optimists.
XX
She hadn't been dead long when Nudger got there.
He saw from the top of the stairs that the door to Edna Fine's apartment was open a few inches, and a heavy dread fell through him, making him walk slower, as if his feet were mired in mud.
When he reached the door he stood motionless in the hall and listened for a moment. The only noise from inside the apartment was a soft and rhythmic sighing sound.
His stomach growled and told him to move one direction or the other. He was in or he was out.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Immediately his gaze fixed on the body. It had been mutilated horribly, beaten, twisted. One of the limbs had been wrenched off by terrible force and lay on the floor near the corner of the sofa.
On the other corner sat Edna Fine. The sound Nudger had heard was her soft and regular sobbing. She held Artemas close to her with almost maternal protection, refusing to look again at the abused corpse of Matilda. Artemas turned his feline head and stared obliquely at Nudger, as if bored by the carnage around him, untouched by Matilda's death. Matilda's yellowish fur was all over the room. A small tuft of it was snagged in the side of Edna Fine's hair, near her ear. Nudger decided not to tell her about it.
What he said was, 'Excuse me,' and found his way to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet bowl.
After a few minutes he straightened, flushed the toilet, then stood at the washbasin and ran cold water over his wrists. Then he rinsed out his mouth, washed his pallid face, and returned to the living room.
He swallowed several times and tried to ignore the unique and unmistakable odor of fresh blood. He wished he could open a window, but he remembered that they were sealed shut. Breathing shallowly but regularly, he waited for his stomach to adjust and be still.
Edna Fine hadn't moved.
'I was only down in the laundry room about fifteen minutes,' she said. 'When I came back upstairs, I found… this.' She looked at the walls, the ceiling, out the window, anywhere but at the mutilated body of her pet on the floor.
'Was your door locked?'
'Yes. I mean, I'm not sure. I think so.'
Nudger walked over and examined the door. There were faint scratches on the doorjamb around the latch, as if the lock might have been slipped by plastic or a thin strip of metal. It wouldn't have taken much effort or expertise to get past the apartment's mass-produced and ineffectual lock.
He returned to Edna Fine and rested a hand on her bony shoulder. Was she trembling, or was the unsteadiness in his hand? Nudger always felt helpless, awkward, in the presence of grief. And the intensity of this grief was almost like that of a mother who had lost a child.
'Can I do anything?' he asked. 'Get you anything?'
Edna Fine shook her head no. She was sitting motionless now, still hugging Artemas the survivor between her scrawny breasts. Artemas lay coiled in her grip patiently, putting aside feline restlessness for a while, as if sensing that she needed him and granting her a reluctant favor.
'I'll phone the Humane Society,' Nudger said.
Edna Fine nodded.
She sat with her eyes closed as Nudger called the Humane Society and arranged for them to drive out and pick up Matilda's remains. When he explained the situation, the woman on the phone said they would have someone there immediately. Animal lovers understood the depth of this grief.
'The Humane Society cremates dead animals,' Edna Fine said quietly.
Nudger nodded. 'It's the best way.'
'Perhaps.'
A pet could be a vital factor in the life of a woman like Edna Fine. She was becoming emotionless now, going into mild shock so she could accommodate the vision of what had been waiting for her when she'd walked back into her apartment with her laundry. It would be a long time before the vivid color and savagery of that scene ceased to bedevil her. Sometimes nightmares turn out to be real and irrepressible no matter how much the mind denies them. Somebody had torn apart Matilda in a way that suggested he'd enjoyed it.
'Do you want me to wait here with you?' Nudger asked.
'No. Thanks for offering, though.' Still the flat, emotionless voice. She peered myopically at Nudger with her small, reddened eyes. 'This is a warning, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'Do you know who did it?'
'I think so. But we could never prove it.'
She delicately dabbed at her nose with a knuckle. 'I suppose not. That's the way society seems to work these days. People do things to other people who can't prove it. It's like a game the victims don't realize they're playing until it's too late.'
