I knew it was her. I had this vision of her in my head, and she seemed to fit it. Weeks ago I had received a package of photostats from the AB, but they contained straight news articles with no pictures; I had read the material through once and passed it on to Hennessey. It wasn’t my job anymore, and yet, at odd times of the day or night I’d find myself thinking about her. Somehow she was at the crux of what had happened to Bobby Westfall. We had damn few hard facts, but my gut told me that. Almost everything about her fit the picture I’d had: she was damn good-looking, with dark hair and hazel eyes. I had been told that much by those who knew her, but my mind had filled in the blanks with amazing accuracy until the vision formed that now stood there in the flesh. The only thing I hadn’t got right was the wardrobe: I had seen her in furs and jewels and she wore neither. What I could see of her dress under the old and rather plain coat looked common and conservative. She wore a little hat, tilted back on her head. It couldn’t‘ve been much protection against the wind. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold. In her hand she carried a cloth bag (I had pictured her with leather) that opened and closed by a frayed cord that looped through it. She was everything, and nothing, that I had imagined her to be.
“Are you Mr. Janeway?”
I said I was.
“I’m Rita McKinley.”
I felt at once what others had felt in her presence—small and insignificant in the bookseller’s cosmos. I’d like to know how she does that, I thought: I’ll bet it’s a helluvan advantage in certain situations. Then I did know. She projected an aura that was totallv real. You could look in her face and see it: not an ounce of bullshit anywhere. She came to the counter and said, “That was a blunt message you left on my machine a while back.”
“I tend to get blunt when I don’t seem to be having any effect. Don’t you ever return calls?”
“I’m very good about returning calls. This time there was a mix-up. I’ve been out of town.”
“You’ve been out of town a long time.”
“I’ve been out of touch almost six months. I’m supposed to be able to get my messages when I call in, but it didn’t work.”
“What’d you do, take a world cruise?”
I didn’t expect an answer to that, and I didn’t get one. She went right to the point. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, now.”
“The phone said something about a murder.”
“I thought you didn’t get the message.”
“My machine recorded it, I just didn’t get it when I called in. Now what’s this about a murder?”
“I’m not in the murder business anymore.”
“So I see.”
She looked around at the store, and again I felt small and insignificant. I felt irritated too, for reasons I only half understood.
“Don’t pay any attention to this place,” I said. “This is just something to while away my golden years.”
“You’ve done a nice job.”
I looked at her for traces of sarcasm, but I couldn’t see any. She browsed her way around the room, glancing into the back as she passed the open doors. “You seem to know what you’re doing,” she said.
“Does that surprise you?”
“Sure. It’s not something I’d expect a policeman to know.”
“Don’t worry, I know how to beat up people too. There’s a good deal more to me than pure intellect.”
My sense of humor was lost on her. “This is very nice stuff,” she said without a hint of a smile.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You must’ve been putting it away for a long time.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You have very good taste.”
“For a cop,” I said. I grinned to blunt the mockery and turned my palms up.
“I guess it proves that a good bookman can come from anywhere. Even a librarian has a chance.”
“You don’t like librarians?”
“I used to be one. They’re the world’s worst enemies of good books. Other than that, they’re fine people.”
She fingered a book, opened it, and read something. But her eyes drifted, came up and met mine over the top edge. She had the deadliest eyes. I’d hate to have to lie to this lady with my life at stake, I thought.
“If you don’t know it yet, there’s an endless war going on between libraries and book dealers,” she said. “At best it’s an uneasy truce.”
