The Rolls was unlocked; Riley left the Camry unlocked and went inside.
It was very dim after the sunlight and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. There were a few people at the bar and a few more in the back at booths, having an early lunch. He slid up on a bar stool, away from the other people—two men in golf shirts and tweed jackets and a woman who looked pretty run down for these parts—and examined the bartender, who was making a gimlet. He had a paunch and a heavy-featured face with sagging jowls and was thirty years too old to be moonlighting from college. He must be Burt.
Riley ordered a house draft. The bartender drew it, and a waitress came through swinging kitchen doors carrying a couple of thick, juicy-looking burgers on Kaiser rolls with fries, sliced tomato, and a whole dill pickle. She was in her late twenties, early thirties, wearing neatly pressed slacks and a crisp blouse under a beige apron.
She would know what went on locally, maybe not as much as ol’ Burt, who set a beer with a perfect head in front of Riley on a cardboard coaster, but she looked a lot less taciturn than the bartender, who hadn’t said a word since Riley had walked in, even to ask Riley for payment.
“How much?” Riley asked.
“Four.”
Steep for a beer, but this was rich man’s country. Riley left five, got a short nod of thanks, then sipped the beer (one of those imported brands he’d never find on draft in Glenvale) and watched the waitress. She finished serving the hamburgers and slid into an empty booth with a newspaper and something on the rocks waiting on the table.
Riley drank half the beer, giving himself time to savor it, then took it and the coaster to her booth.
“Hi. My name’s Jim Riley.”
“Mary Owen,” she said with a surprised smile. Her customers probably didn’t bother to introduce themselves. “What can I get you?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you, if you’ve got time.”
Her smile faded and he laughed. “This is not a pickup, Mary. I’m a reporter for a paper in Albany.”
He put the beer and coaster down on the table, took out his press card, and put it down in front of her. He gave her time to look at it, then slid into the booth across from her.
“I want to ask you about some people you might know.”
“What people?” She sounded suspicious but couldn’t take her eyes off the press card. Maybe she had never seen one before. “Tilden.”
She looked up wide-eyed, and he knew she knew them or about them and thought whatever she knew was fascinating.
But she wasn’t the snitch type; there was something settled and neat about her that made him think this was her town; that she’d lived here all her life, as had her parents and their parents, even unto the Colonial Wars. She’d shut up like a bank vault at five if he offered her money, but she would have a sense of duty.
He said, “I was just out at the house but I couldn’t get up the nerve to ring the bell.”
“Oh? They’re just regular people... well, maybe regular’s a little...”
“Exaggerated?”
She smiled and seemed to relax a little. She sipped from the glass and he smelled scotch.
“What’d you want with them?” she asked.
He cleared his throat and looked reluctant. “This just between us?”
“Sure. If you say so.”
“I have reason to believe... gosh, that sounds so stilted, but it’s true—I have reason to believe that someone in that house, maybe one of the Tildens themselves, knows something the police and public should know.”
“Such as?”
He took time to think and drink more beer before he answered. He had to be careful here; she wouldn’t know or care about Terence Bunner, but the Woman-in-the-Woods case—the Wolfman as of yesterday—was on the wires.
He took the plunge. “Such as the Woman-in-the-Woods killer.” Her eyes widened more and he went on softly, rushing a little to get it out in case she was about to tell him to take a flying fuck. “I call him the Wolfman now, because he kills under the full moon. Remember the old movie?”
She was too young, but it was on tape. She nodded and shivered and he pushed a little. “Killers like him, like the Wolfman, never quit, Mary. They go on and on until they die or get caught. They’re almost always caught but it takes years sometimes and a lot of people die because the cops are hobbled by all sorts of crap like probable cause and Miranda. But we’re not. The press can go places and ask questions cops can’t, and I think someone in that house knows something about the Wolfman the cops should.”
“You mean Eve?” she said breathlessly.
“Do I?”
She nodded and he knew he had her and waved at the bartender for another round.
9
“Scared?” Adam asked gently.
Ellen Baines nodded.
Any minute orderlies would come and take her to four, where Shelley Stem would perform a simple hysterectomy for stage-one, grade-one cervical cancer.
But the orderlies might be late, she might have to wait half an hour before the anesthesiologist got to her. No reason to let her suffer.
He prepared a pre-op jolt of Librium, slipped the needle in and out, then rubbed the injection site.
“God, you’re good at that,” she said.
He’d practiced on a grapefruit before he’d ever given his first shot, then on himself with B12. He hated doing anything half-assed.
“I’m going to miss spring,” she said. She wasn’t whining; she never whined.
He pulled over the visitor’s chair and sat next to the bed. “It’s not spring, El, it’s fly season. They’ll be gone by the time you get out, then it will be spring and you can plant your garden.”
“Already planted it,” she said thickly. “Peas anyway. Hope they don’t rot.”
“They won’t,” Adam said gently.
She tried to nod, her hands slid to her sides, she closed her eyes and drifted. Adam drifted too, thinking about David Latovsky. He’d have a gun he knew how to use, but wouldn’t be expecting the nice young doctor from Glenvale General to pull a Python on him. Maybe he’d fall apart the way Bunner had. Bunner would have told Adam her name or anything else he knew, but the lieutenant could be made of sterner stuff.
Adam didn’t know what he’d do then.
The main thing was not to kill the lieutenant before he got what he wanted out of him. The second main thing was not to shoot him in the face the way he had Bunner. That had been horrible.
The orderlies arrived and Adam got out of their way. They stood on either side of the bed, and one, with Ben on his name tag, bent over Ellen. “Mizz Baines? Think you can give us a little help here?”
Her eyes opened. She stared blearily at them and tried to nod.
“Just kind of shift with us, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered. They wrapped the sheet around her, then Ben said, “Now,” and they shifted her quickly and expertly onto the gurney.
“Thank you,” she said as if they’d just done her a huge favor. Ben grinned at her and she smiled dreamily at him and closed her eyes.
They wheeled her out into the hall and Adam followed. Ellsworth Harris, chief of staff, was coming down the hall and stopped.
“Whatcha got, Adam?” he asked.
“Early uterine carcinoma for Stem.”
“Mmmmmm.”
The elevator door opened, sending a shaft of white light across the floor in front of the nurses’ station.