headboard padding.
So what now? He was supposed to stay here two more days. If he left, the others wouldn’t know where to get in touch with him, and he didn’t know where to get in touch with them, not easily. But he couldn’t stick around with that thing on the bed.
Ten minutes. That was awfully damn fast. The guy must have been watching the place, waiting for Parker to get out of the way. As soon as Parker left, in he came, and right back out again.
Parker wondered what Ellie had done to somebody to make him that irritated with her. He’d only known her two weeks himself, and neither of them had spent much time on autobiography. This was her apartment, and he’d guessed that she’d inherited it from a man, that she’d originally lived here with somebody. The crossed swords on the wall, the beer mugs on the mantel in the living room, the round table in a corner of the living room that must have been used at one time for poker sessions, all told of a male presence here. Probably either a college boy or somebody who wished he still was a college boy.
Maybe it was the college boy who’d done it. A football hero, maybe, offensive lineman, with the meaty shoulders and blunt strength needed to wield that damn sword that way.
But it didn’t matter. Parker didn’t give a damn who’d killed her, or why. It aggravated him because his plans were loused up now. He had no choice; he had to get out of here.
He turned and saw Mutt and Jeff standing in the doorway, wearing rumpled police uniforms. Mutt looked surprised, as though somebody had played a dirty trick on him, and Jeff looked frightened. They were both reaching for their pistols with a clumsy haste that would have made their old instructor at the Police Academy break down and cry.
The public cries for a bigger police force and after a while any damn fool can join up if he’s only tall enough.
Parker said, ‘That was fast. I just called a minute ago.’
Mutt stopped where he was, but Jeff kept on tugging and actually got his revolver out in his hand. He pointed it about two feet to Parker’s left and said, ‘Don’t move.’
Mutt told him, ‘Hold on a minute.’ To Parker he said, ‘You’re the one phoned in?’
‘Sure.’ Parker put an agreeable smile on his face, but he didn’t feel agreeable. So the guy had come in here, killed her, waited till Parker had gone back in, and then called the cops, figuring Parker was his patsy.
He could figure again. Parker said, ‘I’m the one called.’
‘How come you wouldn’t give your name?’ Mutt was frowning all around his nose.
Parker shrugged. ‘Why waste the time? I was going to stick around here anyway.’
Jeff spoke again. ‘It don’t smell right,’ he told his partner.
Mutt said, ‘We’ll see.’ He dragged a flat black notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open like he planned to give Parker a ticket. The notebook came with its own pencil, stuck in a little loop at the side. Mutt slid the pencil out, poised it, looked at his watch, wrote down the time, and said to Parker, ‘Tell me about it.’
‘I went out to get beer and cigarettes. I left it out in the hall there; you probably saw the bag.’
Mutt nodded, but Jeff made an obvious effort to show a poker face. He wasn’t giving anything away, Jeff wasn’t.
Parker said, ‘When I came back I knocked on the door, and when I didn’t get any answer I knew something was wrong.’
Jeff, the sharpie, said, ‘How?’
Parker looked at him. ‘Because she was in here and all right when I left, and I was gone ten minutes, and there wasn’t any reason for her not to be in here and all right when I got back. If she didn’t hear me knock on the door, that meant there was something wrong.’
Jeff waggled the gun in a gesture that was supposed to be scairy. ‘Go on,’ he said.
Parker said, ‘I knocked twice, and then I kicked the door in. I came in here and saw her like that and phoned for you guys. Then I waited.’
Mutt looked at his partner. ‘It sounds okay,’ he said.
Jeff wasn’t so sure anymore. He said to Parker, ‘You search the place?’
‘Not the living room. I only got as far as here.’
‘Watch him,’ Jeff told his partner, and took his gun away to go search the living room.
While Jeff was gone, Mutt apologized for him, saying to Parker, ‘Don’t mind him. He’s new on the force.’
‘Sure.’
Parker was distracted, trying to figure a graceful way out of here. He could only sweet-talk these cops for so long, and then it didn’t matter if they were stupid or not. Anybody in the vicinity of a crime, innocent or guilty, is going to be asked questions, routine questions about name and residence and occupation and what are you doing here now, and there wasn’t a question those cops could ask that Parker would be able to answer.
He had to ditch them. He had to get his goods and clear out of here.
Jeff came back and shook his head at his partner. He actually thought he was Humphrey Bogart.
Mutt said, ‘We better phone in.’
Jeff said, ‘What about the closet?’
‘I looked in there,’ Parker told him. ‘It’s empty.’
‘You never can tell,’ Jeff said. ‘Sometimes a man can hide in among the clothing; you won’t even see him
