I touched the glass and there it was again, that rhythmic vibration, as much feeling as sound. I put my ear against it, and on came that faraway melody, that staccato tune that was right on the tip of my…
I froze, unable to believe what had just gone through my head.
“Eleanor Rigby.”
Somewhere inside, someone was playing that song.
Over and over.
Loud enough to shake the walls.
At two o’clock in the morning.
I kept moving. Everything was the color of ink. I came into the backyard, taking a step at a time. Around the edge of a porch, groping, groping. I touched a screened door and saw a long, dim, narrow crack of light. I pulled open the door and moved toward it. It was the back door of the house itself, cracked open like the fat man’s car. The music seeped through it like some dammed-up thing that couldn’t get through the crack fast enough. I had my gun in my hand as I nudged the door with my shoulder. It swung open and the music gushed out.
I was in a black kitchen, lit only by the glow from another room. I could see the dim outlines of a range and refrigerator, nothing more…then, straight ahead, a table with chairs around it. I crossed the room, feeling my way. The music was loud now: I had come into a hallway that led to the front. I walked to the end, to the edge of the parlor. It looked like some proper sitting room from Victorian days. The light came down from above, where the music was playing. I reached the stairs and started up. There was a blip that sounded like a bomb, and the music started again, a shock wave of sound.
I saw a smudge on the stair, a red smear ground into the carpet…
Another one…
…and another one.
More at the top.
I heard a soft sigh. It was my own. The overhead light at the top revealed a dark hallway. I could see a room at the end of it, dimly lit as if by a night-light. I saw more red marks on the carpet coming out of the hall. I moved that way, the hall closing me in like a tunnel. There was a door on each side halfway down, the one on the left open, the room there dark. I kept flat against the wall, breathing deeply, aware of the sudden silence again as the record ended. The room smelled strongly of ashes. My mind caught the smell but it didn’t hold: there was too much going on. I reached inside and felt along the wall with the palm of my hand, found the light, flipped it up, and the flash turned the room the color of white gold. I could see my reflection in a mirror across the room: I was standing in a half-crouch with the gun in my hand, moving it slowly from side to side. It was some kind of office. There was a desk and a filing cabinet, with one drawer hanging open and several files strewn across the floor. The walls were painted a cream color: the only window was covered by a dark curtain.
I turned and faced the room across the way. I could see the thin line of light at the bottom of the door, and in the light cast out from the office, more crusty red smears on the floor. There, I thought: that’s where all the blood’s coming from. I pivoted back on my heel and flattened against the wall. Turned the knob, pushing the door wide. And there he was, Fat Willie Carmichael, and I didn’t need a medical degree to know he had done Pruitt his last favor. The room looked like a slaughterhouse, with blood on the bed and the floor and the walls: splotches of it spewed as if by a high-pressure pump. The fat man had fallen on his back and died there. His head was wrenched back and I could see that his throat had been cut. His fingers were rigid and clawlike, clutching at nothing. I stood in the doorway, heartsick with fear for Eleanor. My hand was trembling, I felt like a rookie cop at his first bad murder scene. I had looked upon more rooms like this one, streaked with red violence, than I could ever add up and count, and now I shook like a kid. There was still one room to check—the open door at the end of the hall.
I reached the dim circle of light and the music came up full as I peeped in. I almost laughed with relief— nobody there! The record player squatted on a table near the window, one of those old portables from the days before stereo. A 45-rpm disc spun wildly. The set was fixed to the automatic mode: the record would play like that forever, till the power failed or the needle wore the grooves off. It was starting again now, a concert from hell.
It was so loud I felt shattered by it. I had an urge, almost a need, to rip out the plug. The night-light flickered precariously, the bulb on its last legs. I found the switch and turned on the overhead, washing the room in light. It looked like a guest room: there was a single bed in a corner facing a portable TV set, a telephone on a table near the record player, a digital alarm clock. The bed had been rumpled but not slept in. Someone had lain or sat on top of the covering.
Handcuffed to the bed.
The cuffs were still there, one bracelet snapped tight to the bedpost, the other lying open on the pillow. The key had been left in the slot where it had been used to release the prisoner from the bed. The cuffs were the same make and style as the set Slater had given me. I came closer and examined the bed, turning back the rumpled folds of the blanket. There I found the book, no larger than a thumb joint, Eleanor’s miniature Shakespeare, her good-luck piece.
I fingered the soft suede leather, opened the cover, and looked at the publisher’s name. David Bryce and Son/Glasgow .
I put it in my pocket and came back up the hall. Last chance at the death scene, I thought. I was thinking like a cop, and I was not a cop, this was not my town. In an hour the room would be full of real cops. I stepped inside, giving the body a wide berth. I looked at Fat Willie Carmichael and thought, Talk to me, baby , but the fat man was keeping his last awful secret to himself. He had been taken from the front, stuck in the sternum with a weapon that was wicked and sharp, then slashed deep across the neck. Either wound was probably fatal, but the killer had hacked him up in other ways, as if venting some raging fury or settling an old score. His clothes were ripped apart: pocket change was scattered around, and his keys were thrown against the wall. The killer had been looking for the one key, I guessed, to unshackle his prisoner in the next room. I looked around the edges of the body: I could see his gun—he had retrieved it from the car and it lay under his hip, still in its holster. This indicated an attack of surprise: taken from the front, but too quickly to react. Or done unexpectedly, by someone he knew.
Time to call the cops, I thought. Out in the hallway, I smelled again that faint whiff of ashes. The office across the hall was thick with it. I looked into the room and saw where it came from—a wastebasket, half-filled with some burned thing, a bucket of ashes. I got down on the floor and touched the can with the back of my hand. It was still warm. I probed into it with my knife, carefully…carefully, lifting one layer away from another. Whatever it was, it had been thoroughly burned, with only a few solid remnants left to show that it had once been sheets of paper. Maybe a police lab could make something out of it; I couldn’t. Then I saw a flash of white—two pages fused together in heat, with small fragments un-buraed. And as I leaned over it, I smelled another odor, half-hidden under the ash but unmistakable if you knew it. Ronsonol. The can and its contents had been doused with lighter fluid to make sure the papers would burn. Some of the fluid had soaked into the carpet but had not burned because the fire had been confined to the inside of the can. Lighter fluid was a smell I knew well. It is one of the bookscout’s major tools, used for removing stickers from book jackets safely and without a trace. Paper can be soaked in it without getting stained, wrinkled, or otherwise damaged, unless someone remembers what lighter fluid’s really for and sets it on fire.