I saw that in the darkness I had kicked a lamp. The lamp didn’t belong on the floor. Neither did most of what was on the floor in the alcove and in the living room beyond. The place was a mess. A mad baboon had been let loose, or the Stanford football team had had a party. The sofa was turned over and ripped open. The radio was smashed and on its back on the floor. Two matching stuffed chairs no longer matched and probably wouldn’t be worth fixing. Even the carpeting had been torn up, but nothing had been torn up as much as Lorna, who lay sprawled on the floor.
“Lorna,” I whispered, and I thought she moved, but I didn’t go to her. Someone had answered the doorman’s call and it hadn’t been her. Whoever it was might still be here. I moved to the windows and threw open the drapes, letting in sunlight.
Then I kicked open the bathroom door. This room had been attacked, too. Medicine cabinet open, broken bottles on the floor. And the bedroom had been chewed up by a giant lawn mower while the kitchen was a swamp of food, drink, and ice cubes on the floor. The refrigerator door was open and everything, even the box of Arm and Hammer, had been pulled out and thrown to the floor or in the general direction of the sink. A dog-food dish was upside down in a corner.
Sure now that no one was there but me, I closed the front door and hurried to Lorna. I kneeled next to her and touched her face. It was cool and turning white.
“Lorna?” I asked, but the question was really
Her mouth moved, forming a word but no sound.
“He?” I asked.
Her eyes fluttered, and she looked like she was going back into her sleep.
“I’ve gotta call an ambulance.”
She grasped my hand, her fingernails cutting into the flesh of my palms. She had more to say.
“We,” she gasped.
“We?” I asked.
The eyes fluttered. “We are the Phantom.”
“Who did this?” I asked, my face near enough hers to taste her bloody breath.
“Lorna’s mouth opened. “Rance and Johnson. And Minnie. Don’t forget Minnie.”
“Minnie?” I asked.
“Miguelito,” she answered.
“Miguelito did this?”
She shook her head. “Ask Miguelito,” she gasped, and made a motion with her right hand. “Shave,” she whispered.
I touched my cheek. I needed a shave all right, but this wasn’t the time to talk about it. She convulsed in my arms, reached up, trying to grab for life, and scratched her fingers across my face. Then she was dead.
Reactions came quickly. The first was a weariness, the most overwhelming sense of being tired that I had ever felt. I wanted to turn over the ripped sofa and take a nap.
Think, I told myself. Think. I got up, staggered to the door to the small balcony. It was open. I could see the bay. The apartment was right at the edge of the water. I stepped out and caught the bay breeze and smell of fish.
Someone had killed Lorna and wanted something she had, had torn the apartment apart to find it. Either he had gone through everything and found whatever it was he was looking for in the last place he looked, or it was still somewhere and I might find it, whatever it was.
I didn’t find the knife that had been used on Lorna. I figured the killer-or killers, if Lorna was right-had taken it away. Or had pitched it out the window into the ocean. I imagined the bloody knife spinning on the way down, catching the reflection of the sun, clanking against the rocks and flipping into the water.
I touched my forehead to see if I was feverish and my hand came back red with blood. My cheek was bleeding where Lorna had reached for me in her last shudder.
I went into the kitchen, found an unbroken glass on the counter near the sink, and got a drink of cool water from the tap. Then I used a clean dish towel to wipe the blood from my cheek. There was something I should be doing, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I leaned forward over the kitchen sink. Somewhere beyond the window I heard a siren.
Then my brain kicked into second gear. Lorna Bartholomew was dead. My face was scratched. The murder weapon was missing. With a little help from a classy assistant district attorney and the testimony of a doorman, I would make a pretty good murder suspect.
Lorna hadn’t answered the house phone. The killer had probably just given a high-pitched grunt. The killer knew someone was coming up. The killer, in fact, knew that someone named Peters was coming up. I had been announced.
It was time to move. I went from the kitchen into the bedroom, avoiding the living room where Lorna’s body lay. I found the phone, but it had been ripped from the wall.
I was standing there with the dead phone in my hand when the door to the apartment pushed open and a uniformed cop came in with a service revolver in his hand.
“Don’t move,” he croaked.
He was young enough to be my son. I didn’t move.
He looked around quickly. Sweat was building on his forehead.
“What’s going on?”
“Woman’s murdered,” I answered. “In the other room.”
“Against the wall,” the cop ordered.
I moved to the wall, spread my legs, and leaned forward.
The cop came behind me, reached under my arm, and removed my.38 from my pocket.
“Where’s the phone?”
“Busted,” I said, turning part way to show it to him.
“Great,” the cop said.
“Use the intercom,” I suggested. “Doorman can call for backup.”
“Thanks,” he said, and called the doorman.
“I had someone call a Sergeant Preston and an Inspector Sunset,” I said.
“Head down,” the cop said, and told the doorman to call in a murder in apartment 6-D.
The young cop cuffed me, had me sit down on a kitchen chair that hadn’t been busted up, and we waited after he checked Lorna to be sure she was dead. It was more than he wanted to handle. I tried to talk to him but he told me to be quiet. He did what a lot of scared cops do, overcompensated. Basic psych book stuff. He told me to shut up. I shut up. If I didn’t, the psych books say he might have started in on me.
Less than five minutes later Preston and Sunset came through the door.
“What’ve we got …?”
“Brummel. Got a homicide. In there. Found the suspect on the scene.”
“You guys didn’t exactly fly here,” I said.
Preston glanced at me.
“Peters,” Preston said, as Sunset knelt to examine Lorna’s body, “I’ve had a long, bad night, and you’re going to make the day worse and longer. I’ve got a headache and I’m hungry, so if you just want to confess and get this over with …”
“I didn’t kill her,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Preston said with a deep sigh, looking at the scratches on my bloody cheek.
“Preston,” I said. “I had you called. Would I call you and tell you to come if I planned to kill her?”
“Remember Barnes,” Sunset said from Lorna’s body.
“Gus Barnes,” Preston explained to me. “Few months back. Called. Said someone just called and said he was on the way over to kill his wife. Told the desk man to hurry. We got a car there in six minutes.”
“Five-eleven, Sarge,” said Sunset, standing up. “She’s dead.”
“Barnes killed his wife,” said Preston, nodding and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Messed it up. Your having us called doesn’t prove diddle-daddle.”
