'Whatever you say.'
'Jason, it's been suggested to me that we might find a psychiatric profile of the doer useful.'
'Don't you think we have one?' Washington said, getting to his feet. 'Whose suggestion was that? Denny Coughlin's? Or Czernick himself?'
Wohl didn't reply.
'I'm going home, It's been a long day.'
'Good night, Jason,' Wohl said. 'Thanks.'
'For what, Peter?' Washington said, and walked out of his office.
Wohl felt a pang of resentment that Washington was going home. So long as Elizabeth J. Woodham, white female, aged thirty-three, of 300 East Mermaid Lane in Roxborough, was missing and presumed to have been abducted by a known sexual offender, it seemed logical that they should be doing something to find her, to get her back alive.
And then he realized that was unfair. If Jason Washington could think of anything else that could be done, he would be doing it.
There was nothing to be done, except wait to see what happened.
And then Wohl thought of something, and reached for the telephone book.
FOURTEEN
The apartment under the eaves of what was now the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building was an afterthought, conceived after most of the building had been renovated.
C. Kenneth Warble, A.I.A, the architect, had met with Brewster C. Payne II of Rittenhouse Properties over luncheon at the Union League on South Broad Street to bring him up to date on the project's progress, and also to explain why a few little things-in particular the installation of an elevator-were going a little over budget.
Almost incidentally, C. Kenneth Warble had mentioned that he felt a little bad,vis-a-vis space utilization, about the 'garret space,' which on his plans, he had appropriated to 'storage.'
'I was there just before I came here, Brewster,' he said. 'It's a shame.'
'Why a shame?'
'You've heard the story about the man with thinning hair who said he had too much hair to shave, and too little to comb? It's something like that. The garret space is really unsuitable for an apartment, a decent apartment- by which I mean expensive-and too nice for storage.'
'Why unsuitable?'
'Well, the ceilings are very low, with no way to raise them, for one thing; by the time I put a kitchen in there, and a bath, which it would obviously have to have, there wouldn't be much room left. A small bedroom, and, I've been thinking, a rather nice, if long and narrow living room, with those nice dormer windows overlooking Rittenhouse Square,would be possible.'
'But you think it could be rented?'
'If you could find a short bachelor,' Warble said.
'That bad?' Brewster Payne chuckled.
'Not really. The ceilings are seven foot nine; three inches shorter than the Code now calls for. But we could get around that because it's a historical renovation.'
'How much are we talking about?'
'Then, there's the question of access,' Warble said, having just decided that if he was going to turn the garret into an apartment, it would be Brewster C. Payne's wish, rather than his own recommendation. 'I'd have to provide some means for the short bachelor to get from the third-floor landing, which is as high as the elevator goes, to the apartment, and I'd have to put in some more soundproofing around the elevator motors-which are in the garret, you see, taking up space.'
'How much are we talking about?' Payne repeated.
'The flooring up there is original,' Warble went on. 'Heart pine, fifteen-eighteen-inch random planks. That would refinish nicely, and could be done with this new urethane varnish, which is really incredibly tough.'
'How much, Kenneth?' Payne had asked, mildly annoyed.
'For twelve, fifteen thousand, I could turn it into something really rather nice,' Warble said. 'You think that would be the way to go?'
'How much could we rent it for?'
'You could probably get three-fifty, four hundred a month for it,' Warble said. 'There are a lot of people who would be willing to pay for the privilege of being able to drop casually into conversation that they live on Rittenhouse Square.'
'I see a number of well-dressed short men walking around town,' Brewster C. Payne II said, after a moment. 'Statistically, a number of them are bound to be bachelors. Go ahead, Kenneth,'
Rental of the apartment had been turned over to a realtor, with final approval of the tenant assumed by Mrs. Irene Craig. There had been a number of applicants, male and female, whom Irene Craig had rejected. The sensitivities of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society had to be considered, and while Irene Craig felt sure they were as broad-minded as anybody, she didn't feel they would take kindly to sharing the building with gentlemen of exquisite grace, or with ladies who were rather vague about their place of employment and who she suspected were practitioners of the oldest profession.
It was, she decided, in Brewster C. Payne II's best interests to wait until the ideal tenant-in Irene's mind's eye, a sixtyish widow who worked in the Franklin Institute-came along. And she waited.
And then Matt Payne had come along, needing a residence inside the city limits to meet a civil service regulation, and about to be evicted from his fraternity house. She called the Director of Administration at the Cancer Society and told him that the apartment had been rented, and that, as he had been previously informed, the two parking spaces in the garage behind the building, which they had until now been permitted to use temporarily, would no longer be available to them.
She assured him that the new tenant was a gentleman whose presence in the building would hardly be noticed, and devoutly hoped that would be the case.
Air conditioning had also been an afterthought, or more accurately an after-afterthought. Not only was their insufficient capacity in the main unit already installed, but there was no room to install the duct work that would have been necessary. Two 2.5-ton window units had been installed, one through the side wall, the second in the bedroom in the rear. The wave of hot muggy air that greeted Matt Payne when he trotted up the narrow stairway from the third floor and unlocked his door told him that he had forgotten to leave either unit on when he had last been home.
He put the carton of requisition forms on the desk in the living room and quickly turned both units on high. The desk, like the IBM typewriter sitting on it, had been 'surplus' to the needs of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester. With a great deal of difficulty, four burly movers had been able to maneuver the heavy mahogany desk up the narrow stairs from the third floor, but, short of tearing down a wall, there had been no chance of getting it into the bedroom, as originally planned.
He then stripped off his clothes and took a shower. Despite the valiant efforts of the air conditioners, the apartment was still hot when he had toweled himself dry. If he got dressed now, he would be sweaty again. Officer Charley McFadden had told him, in response to Matt's question as to how he should dress while they sought to locate Mr. Walton Williams, 'Nice. Like you are now. He's an arty fag, not the leather and chains kind.'
Matt then did what seemed at the moment to be entirely logical. He went into the living room in his birthday suit, sat down behind the IBM typewriter in that condition, and started typing up the forms.
He had been at it for just over an hour when his concentration was distracted by a soft two-toned bonging noise that he recognized only after a moment as his doorbell.
He decided it was his father, who not only had a key to the downstairs, but was a gentleman, who would sound the doorbell rather than just let himself in.
He trotted naked to the door and pulled it open.
It was not his father. It was Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, his big
