Edna Fine clucked her tongue at the cat and patted a hand on her bony thigh. The cat took two smooth leaps and was curled in her lap. 'Matilda's hungry,' she said.
Nudger wasn't surprised that the cat's name was Matilda. It was exactly the sort of name a lonely spinster would choose for a pet. At least that was consistent with his initial impression of Edna Fine, with the face and mannerisms she'd worn when she greeted him. 'What did you see after the car drove away?' he asked.
'Just before it turned the corner, I saw Colt's arm come out the window and he fired a shot behind him.' She twisted her body awkwardly to the left to mimic the action. Then she began absently stroking Matilda. 'After that, I noticed a woman on the sidewalk just up the street from the liquor store. She was walking an ugly little brown dog on a leash. Langeneckert turned out to be her name-the woman's, not the dog's. Then two men came out of the store and looked up the street this way, in the direction the car had gone, and one of them ran back inside. That's when I turned away from the window and dialed nine-eleven for the police.'
'Did anyone shout or say anything?'
'I think Mrs. Langeneckert yelled something as the car drove away, but I can't be sure. This apartment's almost soundproof. It's air-conditioned; the front windows don't even open.'
Another cat, this one a big black-and-white tom with a pointy face, sauntered into the room, rubbed against Edna Fine's ankle, then stretched out at her feet.
'This is Artemas,' she said. 'He's part Abyssinian.'
'Are there any others?' Nudger asked, wondering if Artemas was an Abyssinian name as well as Greek.
'Only Artemas and Matilda.' She spoke of her pets as if they were her children-the old-maid characteristic of misplaced maternal affection. Or maybe she simply loved animals.
'Did you go downstairs after you called the police?' Nudger asked.
'No, I went back to the window and watched everything from there. A small crowd had gathered by that time. Within a few minutes the police and an ambulance arrived.'
Nudger got up and walked across soft carpet to the living room window overlooking Gravois Avenue. It afforded an uncluttered view of the liquor store.
Olson's Liquor Emporium had a narrow front with two small display windows, but the building was long, with several high, grilled windows running along the side that Nudger could see. There were some red-lettered sale posters in the display windows, and a CLOSED sign was hanging crookedly in the window of the door. A man in a pale suit walked past the front of the store, got into a parked car, and drove away. Nudger had barely been able to make out his features.
The street was four lanes here, so the angle wasn't bad, but the distance was farther than Nudger had assumed. Edna Fine had the longest view of all the eyewitnesses, yet she seemed the one most likely to give an accurate account.
Nudger turned from his view of the dusk-shadowed street. 'Is there any doubt in your mind that the man you saw was Colt?'
'Not much, Mr. Nudger.'
'But some.'
'There's a particle of doubt in my mind about almost everything. But I guess I'd give my deposition the same way today. Lawyers have a way of putting questions, don't they?'
'They do,' Nudger agreed. 'That's how innocent people get convicted sometimes.'
'Sometimes, Mr. Nudger, but not this time. I don't believe in capital punishment; I've seen how any kind of killing usually begets more killing. But I still think Curtis Colt's guilty. And the law is…'
'The law,' Nudger finished for her.
She nodded sternly, and magically the earthy reasonableness that made her likable disappeared. She became a self-righteous, worn woman who was sending a young man for a ride on the lightning. What a Jekyll and Hyde witness she would have made on the stand. 'That's right, Mr. Nudger. And the law must have its due.' She dumped Matilda onto the floor and stood up, tall, wise justice in a black dress. So unlike her other self. Her real self?
Matilda dejectedly left the room, then Artemas stretched, switched his tail, and followed.
Nudger knew it was time for him to leave, too. He drove out to where Candy Ann Adams worked as a waitress at the Right Steer Steakhouse on Watson Road.
After pushing through plastic swinging doors manufactured to resemble Western saloon doors, he made his way through a modern glass door, then along a narrow railed area where customers were lined up and herded past the desserts, drinks, and cashier, and then were set out to graze at the salad bar in the middle of the Old West decor.
The manager, a young guy wearing a cheap straw ten- gallon hat and a cowboy shirt with 'Trail Boss' embroidered over the pocket, told Nudger that Candy Ann had left just fifteen minutes ago because she wasn't feeling well. Nudger thanked him kindly, wishing he had a ten-gallon hat of his own to tip.
Leaving the warmth and slightly nauseating burned- steak smell of the Right Steer, he drove to Placid Grove Trailer Park.
The lights were burning in Candy Ann's trailer. Nudger pulled the Volkswagen up close to the metal wall near her door and turned off the sputtering engine. A lacy curtain parted in one of the windows.
She was standing holding the trailer door open when he unfolded up out of the car.
'C'mon in, Mr. Nudger. You learn anything?'
'Nothing you'll want to hear,' he told her.
The light from the trailer's interior shone through her thin discount-store skirt, silhouetting her slender legs. Apparently she'd just finished washing her hair; there was a blue towel wound turban-style on her head. The top- heavy bulk of the wrapped towel made her body appear even thinner and somehow sensually awkward.
She stood aside as Nudger stepped up into the trailer and edged around her. She smelled like perfumed, soapy shampoo. It reminded him of how his former wife Eileen had smelled immediately after a shower. Still, he liked that scent.
Nudger sat in the vinyl chair again, and she settled into a corner of the undersized sofa, as she had the first night he'd been here; these things took on a certain convention. There was a jelly-jar glass half full of a clear liquid on the small table by the sofa. Nudger picked up another scent now. Alcohol. High-proof gin.
'I been drinking, Mr. Nudger,' Candy Ann admitted. 'Not much. Just enough to ease my headache some, and my worry about Curtis.'
'I'm not going to be able to offer much comfort,' Nudger told her. 'I talked to the witnesses, and all of them stick to their stories.' He told her the details of the conversations.
As she sat listening, she unwound the towel and began to rub her incredibly tangled wet blond hair, sending glistening clear water droplets flying. Her little-girl features were drawn into a pained and contemplative expression that made Nudger want to put his arm around her as a father might and pat her shoulder, assure her that everything would work out okay eventually, lie and lie and lie.
What he said was, 'It only takes two witnesses to convict, Candy Ann. In this case there are four. And they're all solid. None of them is at all in doubt about his or her identification of Curtis Colt as the killer.'
Candy Ann continued rubbing the rough towel on her scalp violently, as if she were determined to buff her hair from her head. Or her worries from her mind.
Nudger leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and looked squarely at her. 'I have to be honest; it's time you should face the fact that Colt is guilty and you're wasting your money on my services.'
She stopped rubbing her wet hair, gazed at him with her pale blue eyes from beneath the folds of the damp towel. 'All them witnesses know what's going to happen to Curtis,' she said. 'They'd never want to live with the notion they might have made a mistake, killed an innocent man, so they've got themselves convinced that they're positive it was Curtis they seen in that liquor store. They gotta be positive if they want to sleep at night.'
'Your observation on human psychology is sound,' Nudger said, 'but I don't think it will help us. The witnesses were just as certain at the trial. I took the time to read the court transcript; the jury had no choice but to find Colt guilty, and the evidence hasn't changed. Nothing has changed, Candy Ann…'
'That Randy Gantner, I think he'd just as soon see Curtis dead, knowing Curtis might do something even from prison to stop him from pestering me.'
'Gantner pestered you?' Nudger sat back and felt warm vinyl attach itself to his perspiring back through his shirt. 'How could he know where you live? How could he even know you exist?'
Candy Ann lowered her eyes. 'I told him, I'm afraid. It was before I hired you; I thought maybe I could talk to
