Through the fogged eyepieces of his mask, Hawes watched the man working on the pipes and then glanced around the demolished kitchen. It did not take a mastermind to determine that this was the room where the explosion had taken place. Even without the presence of the upended stove and the stench of illuminating gas, the room itself was a shambles-it had to be the nucleus of the blast. Every pane of glass had been shattered, every pot and pan hurled through the air and peppered with holes. The curtains had gone up in instant flame-happily, there had not been a major conflagration. The table and chairs had been tossed into the room closest to the kitchen, and even in that room, the sofa had been blasted out of place and rested upended against one damaged wall.
The bedroom, in contrast to the other two rooms, had been almost untouched. The window had been opened by the gasman, and the spring breeze touched the curtains, played idly with them. The blanket had been drawn back to the foot of the bed. There were two people lying on the clean white bedsheet. One was a man, the other was a woman; that’s the way it is in the spring. The man was wearing undershorts and nothing else. The undershorts were striped in blue. The woman was wearing only her panties.
They were both dead.
Hawes did not know very much about pathology, but the man and woman on the bed-even when viewed through his fogging mask-were both a bright cherry-red color, and he was willing to bet his shield they had died of acute carbon monoxide poisoning. He was further willing to speculate that the death was either accidental or suicidal. He was too good a cop to rule out homicide immediately, but he nonetheless began a methodical search for a suicide note.
He did not have to look very far.
The note was on the dresser opposite the bed. It had been placed flat on the dresser top, and then a man’s wrist watch had been put on top of it to hold it down. Without touching either the wrist watch or the note, Hawkes bent over to read what had been written.
The note had been typed. He automatically glanced around the room to see if he could locate the machine and saw it resting on a small end table near the bed. He turned his attention back to the note.
Dear God, forgive us for this terrible thing. We are so much in love, and the world is all against us. There is no other way. Now we can end the suffering of ourselfs and others. Please understand.
Tommy and Irene
Hawes nodded once, in silent understanding, and then made memo to pick up both note and wrist watch as soon as the photographers were finished with the room. He walked across the room and filled out a tag which he would later affix to the typewriter for delivery to the laboratory where Lieutenant Sam Grossman’s boys would perform their comparison tests.
He walked back to the bed.
The man and woman appeared to be in their early twenties. The man had involuntarily soiled himself, probably after sinking into a deep coma once the gas had really taken hold. The woman had vomited into her pillow. He stood at the foot of the bed and wondered what they had thought it would be like. A nice quiet peaceful death? Something like going to sleep? He wondered how they had felt when the headache appeared and they began to get drowsy and faint and unable to move themselves off that bed even if they’d changed their minds about dying together. He wondered how they’d felt just when their bodies had begun to twitch, just before they passed into a stupor where vomiting and evacuation were things beyond their control. He looked at this dead man and woman in their early twenties-Tommy and Irene-and he shook his head and thought, You poor stupid boobs, what did you hope to find? What made you think a painful death was the answer to a painful life?
He turned his eyes away from the bed.
Two empty whisky bottles were on the floor. One of them had spilled alcohol onto the scatter rug on the woman’s side of the bed. He didn’t know whether or not they had drunk themselves into insensibility after turning on the gas jet, but that seemed to be a standard part of the gas-pipe routine. He knew there were people who felt that suicide was an act of extreme bravery, but he could never look upon it as anything but utter cowardice. The empty whisky bottles gave conviction to his thoughts. He made out the tags for each bottle, again postponing the actual tagging until photographs had been made.
The woman’s clothes were hung over the back and resting on the seat of a straight-backed chair alongside the bed. Her blouse was hanging, and her brassiere was folded over it; her skirt, garter belt, nylons, and leather belt were folded on the seat. A pair of high-heeled black leather pumps were neatly placed at the foot of the chair.
The man’s clothes were over and on an easy chair at the other end of the room.
Trousers, shirt, undershirt, tie, socks, and belt. His shoes were placed to one side of the chair. Hawes made a note to have the technicians pick up the clothing, which they would place in plastic bags for transmission to the laboratory. He also noted the man’s wallet, tie clip, and loose change lying on the dresser top, together with the woman’s earrings and an imitation pearl necklace.
By the time he’d finished his search of the apartment, the gas leak had been plugged, the laboratory boys, police photographers, and assistant medical examiner had arrived, and there was nothing to do but go downstairs again and talk to the patrolman who had reported the explosion to the precinct. The patrolman was new and green and terrified. But he had managed to pull his wits together long enough to find a charred and tattered wallet in the hallway rubble, and he turned this over to Hawes as if he were very anxious to get rid of it. Hawes almost wished the patrolman hadn’t found it. The wallet gave an identity to the remains of a human being that had been spattered down the staircase and over the walls.
He called on the salesman’s wife later that day, after he had spoken to the lab. The salesman’s wife said, “Why did it have to be Harry?”
He explained that the lab’s supposition was that her husband had probably approached the door of apartment IA and pressed the buzzer and this in turn had caused an electrical spark which had precipitated the explosion.
“Why did it have to be Harry?” the salesman’s wife asked.
Hawes tried to explain that these things happened some times, that they were nobody’s fault, that her husband was simply doing his job and had no idea the apartment behind that door was full of illuminating gas. But the woman only stared at him blankly and said again, “Why did it have to be Harry?”