“Immeasurably,” Carella said. Whenever he was talking to Grossman, he found himself using vocabulary he rarely used otherwise. “But — what have you got for me on the Newman case?”
“Nothing,” Grossman said.
“That’s a big help,” Carella said. “Owenby told me the report would—”
“Oh, I have the report, all right, it was on my desk when I got back from court this afternoon. Have it right here with me, in fact. How’s that for conscientious?”
“Then what do you mean ‘nothing’? I saw the techs lifting prints all over the place.”
“Oh, yes, plenty of prints. All the dead man’s and his wife’s.”
“No wild prints at all?”
“None.”
“How about on the thermostat?” Carella asked.
“I was coming to that, are you getting to be a mind reader? Considering the heat, the thermostat should have been getting a big play, am I right? Even under normal conditions, people are fiddling with thermostats all the time. It gets hot, they turn the temperature setting down. It gets cool again, they adjust it. So where are the his-and-her prints you’d normally expect? Nowhere. The thermostat was wiped clean. Did they live there alone?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“So where are the his-and-hers? We found plenty of them on the flush handle of the toilet tank, partials mostly, that’s another place we look because nobody ever wipes off the flush handle, they just don’t. Their asses they wipe, but not the flush handle. Good partial of the dead man’s right middle finger, one of the lady’s index finger, okay, fine. But the thermostat was clean.”
“So what does that mean to you?” Carella asked.
“What does that mean to you?” Grossman said.
“Well, maybe...”
“More than maybe,” Grossman said.
“How so?”
“Let’s say the lady’s a compulsive housekeeper. She wipes off everything the minute anybody touches it. Let’s say that. So she or her housekeeper — has she got a housekeeper?”
“A cleaning woman. But she’s been away since the middle of July.”
“Which would account for why we found only the his-and-hers. I’m assuming the apartment was cleaned at least once since the middle of July.”
“I’d guess so,” Carella said.
“So let’s say the lady did her own cleaning since then. Would even a very neat person go running around the apartment tidying up every minute and polishing everything in sight? Including an almost-empty bottle of Seconal?”
“What do you mean?”
“It was wiped clean, Steve.”
“Are you telling me there were no prints on that bottle?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m telling you what we found. Or didn’t find, as the case happens to be.”
“If Newman handled that bottle, there had to be prints on it. A guy with twenty-nine Seconal capsules inside him doesn’t get up off the floor to wipe his prints off a bottle.”
“It was clean as a whistle, Steve.”
Both men were silent for a moment.
“You think the lady could have wiped off those prints?” Grossman asked.
“The lady was in California while the man was being done in.”
Grossman was silent again. Then he said, “Does the lady have a friend?”
“I don’t know,” Carella said.
“It might be something you’d like to ask her,” Grossman said.
He stood outside the door to Apartment 51 and listened.
Not a sound.
He took his gun from his shoulder holster. Holding it in his right hand, he backed away from the door, and then leveled a kick at the lock. The door sprang open, wood splinters flying. He moved into the room swiftly, slightly crouched, the gun fanning the air ahead of him, light filtering into the room from under a door at the end of the hall, to his left. He was moving toward the crack of light when the door flew open and Bradford Douglas came into the hall.
He was naked, and holding a baseball bat in his right hand. He stood silhouetted in the lighted rectangle of the doorway, hesitating there before taking a tentative step into the gloom beyond.
“Police,” Kling said, “hold it right there!”
“Wh...?”
“Don’t move!” Kling said.
“What the hell? Who...?”
Kling moved forward into the light spilling from the bedroom. Douglas recognized him at once, and the fear he’d earlier felt — when he’d thought a burglar had broken in — was replaced by immediate indignation. And then he saw the gun in Kling’s hand, and a new fear washed over him, struggling with the indignation. The indignation triumphed. “What the hell do you mean, breaking down my door?” he shouted.
“I’ve got a warrant,” Kling said. “Who’s in that bedroom with you?”
“None of your business,” Douglas said. He was still holding the bat in his right hand. “What warrant? What the hell is this?”
“Here,” Kling said, and reached into his pocket. “Put down that bat.”
Without turning, Douglas tossed the bat back into the bedroom. Kling waited while he read the warrant. The bedroom fronted Hopper Street, and there were no fire escapes on that side of the building. Unless Augusta decided to jump all the way down to the street below, there was no hurry. He looked past Douglas, into the bedroom. He could not see the bed from where he was standing, only a dresser, an easy chair, a standing floor lamp.
“Attempted murder?” Douglas said, reading from the warrant. “What attempted murder?” He kept reading. “I don’t have this gun you describe, I don’t have any gun. Who the hell said I...?”
“I haven’t got all night here,” Kling said, and held out his left hand. “The warrant gives me the right to search both you and the apartment. It’s signed by—”
“No, just wait a goddamn minute,” Douglas said, and kept reading. “Where’d you get this information? Who told you I’ve got this gun?”
“That doesn’t matter, Mr. Douglas. Are you finished with that?”
“I still don’t—”
“Let me have it. And let’s take a look inside.”
“I’ve got somebody with me,” Douglas said.
“Who?”
“Your warrant doesn’t give you the right to—”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“No, we’ll worry about it now,” Douglas said.
“Look, you prick,” Kling said, and brought the pistol up close to Douglas’s face, “I want to search that bedroom, do you understand?”
“Don’t get excited,” Douglas said, backing away.
“I am excited,” Kling said, “I’m very excited. Get out of my way.”
He shoved Douglas aside and moved into the bedroom. The bed was against the wall at the far end of the room. The sheets were thrown back. The bed was empty.
“Where is she?” Kling said.
“Maybe the bathroom,” Douglas said.
“Which door?”
“I thought you were looking for a gun.”
“Which door?” Kling said tightly.
“Near the stereo there,” Douglas said.
Kling went across the room. He tried the knob on the door there. The door was locked.
“Open up,” he said.
From behind the door, he could hear a woman weeping.
“Open up, or I’ll kick it in,” he said.
The weeping continued. He heard the small oiled click of the lock being turned. He caught his breath and waited. The door opened.
She was not Augusta.