'I guess I do.' I made myself look deep into his dark eyes. 'The murder was a door starting to open for you. Now you have to know what's inside the room.'
'Then you do understand.'
I did, and wished I didn't. I had not wanted the job. I work as infrequently as I can. I had no present need to work. I don't need much money. My room rent is cheap, my day-to-day expenses low enough.
Besides, I had no reason to dislike this man. I have always felt more comfortable taking money from men I dislike.
'Lieutenant Koehler didn't understand what I wanted. I'm sure he only gave me your name as a polite way of getting rid of me.' That wasn't all there was to it, but I let it pass. 'But I really need to know these things. Who was she? Who did Wendy turn into? And why would anyone want to kill her?'
Why did anyone want to kill anybody? The act of murder is performed four or five times a day in New York. One hot week last summer the count ran to fifty-three. People kill their friends, their relatives, their lovers. A man on Long Island demonstrated karate to his older children by chopping his two-year-old daughter to death. Why did people do these things?
Cain said he wasn't Abel's keeper. Are those the only choices, keeper or killer?
'Will you work for me, Scudder?' He managed a small smile. 'I'll rephrase that. Will you do me a favor? And it would be a favor.'
'I wonder if that's true.'
'How do you mean?'
'That open door. There might be things in that room you won't want to look at.'
'I know that.'
'And that's why you have to.'
'That's right.'
I finished my coffee. I put the cup down and took a deep breath. 'Yeah,' I said, 'I'll give it a shot.'
He settled into his chair, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. It was his first since he'd walked in.
Some people reach for a cigarette when they're tense, others when the tension passes. He was looser now, and looked as though he felt he had accomplished something.
I had a new cup of coffee in front of me and a couple of pages filled in my notebook. Hanniford was still working on the same drink. He had told me a lot of things I would never need to know about his daughter. But any of the things he said might turn out to matter, and there was no way to guess which it might be. I had learned long ago to listen to everything a man had to say.
So I learned that Wendy was an only child, that she had done well in high school, that she had been popular with her classmates but had not dated much. I was getting a picture of a girl, not sharply defined, but a picture that would eventually have to find a way of blending with one of a slashed-up whore in a Village apartment.
The picture started to blur when she went away to college in Indiana. That was evidently when they began to lose her. She majored in English, minored in government. A couple of months before she was due to graduate she packed a suitcase and disappeared.
'The school got in touch with us. I was very worried, she had never done anything like this before. I didn't know what to do. Then we had a postcard. She was in New York, she had a job, there were some things she had to work out. We had another card several months after that from Miami. I didn't know whether she had moved there or was vacationing.'
And then nothing until the telephone rang and they learned she was dead.
She was seventeen when she finished high school, twenty-one when she dropped out of college, twenty-four when Richard Vanderpoel cut her up. That was as old as she was ever going to get.
He began telling me things I would learn over again in more detail from Koehler. Names, addresses, dates, times. I let him talk. Something bothered me, and I let it sort itself out in my mind.
He said, 'The boy who killed her. Richard Vanderpoel. He was younger than she was. He was only twenty.' He frowned at a memory. 'When I heard what happened, what he had done, I wanted to kill that boy. I wanted to put him to death with my hands.' His hands tightened into fists at the recollection, then opened slowly. 'But after he committed suicide, I don't know, something changed inside me. It struck me that he was a victim, too. His father is a minister.'
'Yes, I know.'
'A church in Brooklyn somewhere. I had an impulse. I wanted to talk to the man. I don't know what I thought I might want to say to him. Whatever it was, after a moment's reflection I realized I could never have that conversation. And yet-'
'You want to know the boy. In order to know your daughter.'
He nodded.
I said, 'Do you know what an Identikit portrait is, Mr. Hanniford? You've probably seen them in newspaper stories. When the police have an eyewitness, they use this kit of transparent overlays to piece together a composite picture of a suspect. Is this nose like this? Or is this one more like it?
Bigger? Wider? How about the ears? Which set of ears comes the closest?'
And so on until the features add up to a face.'
'Yes, I've seen how that works.'
'Then you've probably also seen actual photographs of the suspect side by side with the Identikit portraits. They never seem to resemble one another, especially to the untrained eye. But there is a factual resemblance, and a trained officer can often make very good use of it. Do you see what I'm getting at? You want photographs of your
