“Maybe she won’t be alone, babe,” Hawk said.
“Got to see. If we ring and there’s no answer, we got to go in anyway, make sure. May as well cut out the first step. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Hawk nodded. We stopped beside her window. I took the police .38 from my pocket and broke the glass at the juncture of upper and lower sash. Hawk reached through and turned the window catch. I raised the window and went in, sliding on my stomach over the sill and landing on the floor like a clumsy snake. Hawk came right in behind me. We were both still for a moment. There was no sound in the apartment. I got to my feet. To my right was a spiral staircase. Hawk pointed toward it.
“Bedroom,” he said softly.
I went up the stairs quietly. Behind me I could hear Hawk move through the darkness. The stairs ended in a small platform and the bedroom opened off it. I stepped in.
I could smell Susan, her perfume, her hair spray, maybe even herself, imprinted on me. The bed was to my left, parallel to the low wall that let you look down from the sleeping balcony. The moonlight coming in the higharched window made it easier to see up here than in the living room. It shone on the empty bed. “Hawk,” I said in a normal voice.
“Nobody down here,” he said.
“Nobody up here either.” I turned the bedside lamp on. The room was neat. The bed was made. It was too neat. Susan would have left makeup out, maybe some panty hose draped over a chair. Shoes on the floor, one standing up, one lying on its side. There was no sign of that here. Maybe this Susan was different.
I opened the closet doors. Downstairs Hawk turned on the other lights. I heard him come up the staircase. The closet was wall length and the doors were louvered and opened by folding back along a sliding track. Her clothes were there, again the smell of her. The clothes were very neatly hung, and spaced carefully so they wouldn’t wrinkle. She was careless about what she had worn, but very careful about what she was going to wear. I recognized many of her clothes. But there were too many. I couldn’t tell what was missing. Or if there were any missing.
“The bathroom,” I said.
Hawk said, “We pressed for time, babe.”
“I want to know if she’s gone, or just out,” I said. “If she’s gone she’d take lingerie and makeup.”
“Downstairs,” Hawk said.
I took in the apartment as I went down the spiral stairs. The living room ceiling was two stories and the windows were twenty feet high. There was a kitchenette off the living room, with a counter top tiled in red Mexican tile. A huge red fan was spread high on one wall of the living room, and a Tiffany lamp hung straight down from the ceiling on a gold chain. Beneath it a glass-topped dining table sat on oak sawhorses.
The bathroom was off the living room, and next to it a den. Susan always kept her lingerie in a small bureau in her bathroom, and her makeup in the medicine cabinet and everywhere else there was room. The bathroom was white tile with black and silver trim. A small four-drawer bureau stood opposite the sink. I opened the top drawer. It was empty. There was a maroon half-slip in the second drawer and odds and ends of eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, face powder, blusher, and conditioner and things of unknown application in the remaining two drawers. All were partially used and looked discarded. I knew Susan kept the current stuff near the mirror. The stuff in the drawers was backup. The medicine cabinet was nearly empty, and there was nothing on the sink top. I turned and touched the half-slip for a moment, then I closed the drawer and went back into the living room.
“She’s gone away,” I said to Hawk. “No underwear, no makeup.”
Hawk was leaning against the wall near the open window, looking at the parking lot, listening to the silence. He nodded.
“Two more minutes,” I said.
Hawk nodded again.
I went into the den. There was a desk in there and a big sectional sofa and a color television set. I sat at the desk.
It was disorganized and cluttered with small slips of paper stuck into alcoves, and mail in piles that had been pushed aside to clear writing space. A letter from me showed among the other mail. Susan’s calendar was there. There were entries on various dates in Susan’s nearly illegible hand. Most of the entries meant nothing. There was no entry for today, and for Monday it said Dr. Hilliard G-3:40.
The doorbell rang. I turned off the light in the den and almost at the same time Hawk killed the living room light. He was out the window by the time I got to it and by the time the doorbell rang again we were both crouched against the outside wall of the building moving in its shadow toward the Buick, fast.
There was no sign of anyone in the lot, and no sign of anyone at the door.
“This the back,” Hawk murmured. “They must be at the front.”
We were in the car, and Hawk drove. He went out the other side of the parking lot and turned left and drove slowly parallel to the condominium building toward Mill River Boulevard. In front were two Mill River Police cars. We turned right on the boulevard toward 101, not fast, staying under the speed limit.
“They know we’re gone,” I said.
Hawk said, “How you get the gun in?”
“Henry rigged me a leg cast and we hid it in the foot.”
Hawk laid the .44 in his lap. I was driving barefoot. Hawk said, “They catch us, they gonna shoot us. So you be ready. This a bad town, babe.”
I said, “Susan. I want to know. Tell me.”
Hawk nodded. “Yeah. Some of this gonna be hard to hear.”
I didn’t say anything. The dashboard clock on the Skylark said 4:11.
