'He could answer that better than I can. You've caught the man who did it, haven't you? I read that he was in a mental hospital for years and nobody ever knew he killed anybody, and then he was released and they caught him and he confessed or something?'
'Something like that.'
'And now you want to make sure you have a good case against him.' He smiled. He had a nice open face and he seemed quite at ease, sitting on a mat in his gym shorts. Gay men used to be so much more defensive, especially around cops. 'It must be complicated with something that happened so many years ago. Have you talked with Judy? Judy Fairborn, she's in the apartment where the Ettingers used to live. She works nights, she's a waitress, so she'll be home now unless she's at an audition or a dance class or shopping or-well, she'll be home unless she's out, but that's always the case, isn't it?' He smiled again, showing me perfectly even teeth. 'But maybe you've already spoken with her.'
'Not yet.'
'She's new. I think she moved in about six months ago. Would you want to talk to her anyway?'
'Yes.'
He uncoiled, sprang lightly to his feet. 'I'll introduce you,' he said.
'Just let me put some clothes on. I won't be a minute.'
He reappeared wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and running shoes without socks. We crossed the hall and he knocked on the door of Apartment 3-A. There was silence, then footsteps and a woman's voice asking who it was.
'Just Rolfe,' he said. 'In the company of a policeman who'd like to grill you, Ms. Fairborn.'
'Huh?' she said, and opened the door. She might have been Rolfe's sister, with the same light brown hair, the same regular features, the same open Midwestern countenance. She wore jeans, too, and a sweater and penny loafers. Rolfe introduced us and she stepped aside and motioned us in. She didn't know anything about the Ettingers, and her knowledge of the murder was limited to the fact that it had taken place there. 'I'm glad I didn't know before I moved in,' she said, 'because I might have let it spook me, and that would have been silly, wouldn't it?
Apartments are too hard to find. Who can afford to be superstitious?'
'Nobody,' Rolfe said. 'Not in this market.'
They talked about the First Avenue Slasher, and about a recent wave of local burglaries, including one a week ago on the first floor. I asked if I could have a look at the kitchen. I was on my way there as I asked the question. I think I'd have remembered the layout anyway, but I'd already been in other apartments in the building and they were all the same.
Judy said, 'Is this where it happened? Here in the kitchen?'
'Where did you think?' Rolfe asked her. 'The bedroom?'
'I guess I didn't think about it.'
'You didn't even wonder? Sounds like repression.'
'Maybe.'
I tuned out their conversation. I tried to remember the room, tried to peel off nine years and be there once again, standing over Barbara Ettinger's body. She'd been near the stove then, her legs extending into the center of the small room, her head turned toward the living room.
There had been linoleum on the floor and that was gone, the original wood floor restored and glossy with polyurethane. And the stove looked new, and plaster had been removed to expose the brick exterior wall. I couldn't be sure the brick hadn't been exposed previously, nor could I know how much of my mental picture was real.
The memory is a cooperative animal, eager to please; what it cannot supply it occasionally invents, sketching carefully to fill in the blanks.
Why the kitchen? The door led into the living room, and she'd let him in either because she knew who he was or in spite of the fact that she didn't, and then what? He drew the icepick and she tried to get away from him? Caught her heel in the linoleum and went sprawling, and then he was on her with the pick?
The kitchen was the middle room, separating the living room and bedroom. Maybe he was a lover and they were on their way to bed when he surprised her with a few inches of pointed steel. But wouldn't he wait until they got where they were going?
Maybe she had something on the stove. Maybe she was fixing him a cup of coffee. The kitchen was too small to eat in but more than large enough for two people to stand comfortably waiting for water to boil.
Then a hand over her mouth to muffle her cries and a thrust into her heart to kill her. Then enough other thrusts of the icepick to make it look like the Icepick Prowler's work.
Had the first wound killed her? I remembered beads of blood.
Dead bodies don't bleed freely, but neither do most puncture wounds.
The autopsy had indicated a wound in the heart that had been more or less instantly fatal. It might have been the first wound inflicted or the last, for all I'd seen in the Medical Examiner's report.
Judy Fairborn filled a teakettle, lit the stove with a wooden match, and poured three cups of instant coffee when the water boiled. I'd have liked bourbon in mine, or instead of mine, but nobody suggested it. We carried our cups into the living room and she said, 'You looked as though you saw a ghost. No, I'm wrong. You looked as though you were looking for one.'
'Maybe that's what I was doing.'
'I'm not sure if I believe in them or not. They're supposed to be more common in cases of sudden death when the victim didn't expect what happened. The theory is that the soul doesn't realize it died, so it hangs around because it doesn't know to pass on to the next plane of existence.'
