At the end of the gallery he unlocked a door and turned me over to a sleepy matron. The women’s cells were open cages with barred doors. I could smell perfume among the animal and chemical odors. Amy Miner, alone in a corner cell, was standing at the bars as if she had known I was coming.
“Mr. Cross! You’ve got to get me out of here.”
“Quiet, Amy,” the matron said soothingly. “You’ll disturb the other girls.”
“But I’ve got no right to be here. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The matron wagged her head in my direction. Her hair was tied back in an old-fashioned bun that looked as hard and shiny as a doorknob. “Amy’s been quite a problem, Mr. Cross. Do you think they’ll be letting her out in the morning?” She added in a whisper: “I had to take her stockings off, she was talking about putting an end to herself.”
“They have to let me out,” Amy was saying. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Your husband has, apparently.”
“I don’t believe that, either.”
“Until it’s settled, one way or the other, they’re going to have to hold you. I don’t like it. Nobody likes it. Still, it’s got to be done.”
I moved up closer to the bars. A wire-netted light burned feebly in the ceiling. Amy’s eyes were puffed from crying. The lines in her face had deepened like erosion scars. Her mouth had set bitterly. Her hair straggled in grayish-brown ropes over her temples.
“What have they done to Fred?”
“Nothing’s been heard from him.”
“They’ve killed him, haven’t they? They’ve killed him and stolen the boy and locked me up and thrown the key away.”
I didn’t like the hysterical lilt in her voice. “Calm down now, Amy. Things could be worse. You’ll be out of here in a day or two.”
Her hands came through the bars. “Do you promise?”
I took her hands. They were as cold as the metal. “I think I can promise that. You’re being held as a witness, partly for your own good. When you’ve done your job as a witness, you’ll go free.”
“But I didn’t witness anything.”
“You must have. You were married to Fred a long time. How long, ten years?”
“Just about. Long enough to know that Fred’s no criminal.”
“Wives have been mistaken before.” I turned to the matron. “Can we have a little more light?”
She strode to a bank of switches and turned the ceiling light up. For the fourth and last time, I brought the posthumous photographs out of the briefcase.
“Did you ever see this man in your husband’s company?”
I held a blown-up full-face to the bars.
She made a sound in her throat: “Augh.” Her knuckles strained around the bars, and whitened. “Who is he?”
“He served on the Eureka Bay. Your husband must have known him. Fred was aboard the ship from the time it was launched.”
“Is it the Snow boy? Is that who it is?”
“Yes. Kerry Snow.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s the one Fred ran down in February. These pictures were taken after his death.”
“He’s dead?”
“Your husband killed him. Did they know each other well?”
“I don’t think so. I hardly knew him at all. He came to our flat in Dago once or twice. Fred liked to be hospitable to the younger men. But that was way back in forty-five.”
“Has Fred been seeing him since then?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about Arthur Lemp?”
She answered, after a pause: “I never heard of him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Why should I be? You told me if I tell what I know, I go free.”
“One more question, Mrs. Miner. There’s a possibility that Fred took the boy into the desert. Where would he be likely to go in the desert?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry. Fred always hated the desert, it bothers his sinuses. When Mr. and Mrs. Johnson went to the desert, they always left Fred behind, after the first time.”
“Is that what they did in February?”
“Yes. Mrs. Johnson did the driving.”
“Speaking of Mrs. Johnson, how well did Fred know her?”
“She was a good friend of his, she always has been.”
“Did they see much of each other before Fred went to work for her?”
“Naturally they did. She was in charge of his ward in the Navy hospital. He was laid up with his back there for nearly a year.”
“Did they meet outside the hospital?”
“Not that I know of. Fred didn’t get out much, except for a few weekends towards the end.” She thrust her gray face forward between the bars. “I know what you’re hinting at. It isn’t true. Fred never messed with any other woman, let alone Mrs. Johnson. What are you trying to get at, anyway?”
I said I didn’t know, and asked the matron to let me out of there.
Forest was questioning Molly in Sam Dressen’s office. Their voices came low and monotonous through the closed door:
“Can you prove that you were in bed all morning?”
“There wasn’t anybody sitting there watching me.”
“Sleeping in is hardly an alibi.”
“It’s no crime.”
“Stabbing a man to death with an icepick is.”
“I don’t even own an icepick.”
I knocked on the door and handed Sam his photographs. Neither Forest nor Molly looked at me. They were absorbed in their question-and-answer game.
I had seen and heard enough of the girl for one night. She was my responsibility, in a sense. In a deeper sense, there was nothing I could do for her. Her life was running swiftly by its own momentum, streaking across the midnight like a falling star.
“Take good care of her, Sam,” I said out of a sense of inadequacy. Go and catch a falling star.
“The wife will look after her.”
“Tell Forest I’m waiting for him.”
Someone had abandoned a local newspaper on the bench at the end of the corridor. It carried no story on the kidnapping or the murder. One of the front-page items interested me, however. My matron had succumbed to her kleptomania once again. Out on bail, she had walked into a department store and stolen two bathing-suits, size nine.
I leaned my head back against the wall and lapsed into a coma approximating sleep. Forest’s quick footsteps aroused me. He sat down on the bench, looking as sharp and well groomed as he had that afternoon, but just a little white around the mouth.
“You’ve been doing some nice work, Cross. I had my doubts about your wild-goosing off by yourself, but you seem to have an instinct.”
“I know the local people. That always helps. Sam Dressen there, for example, is getting a little old and slow, but he’ll die trying.”
“I told him to get some rest. How did you happen to turn up the girl?”
“That story can wait. You talked to Bourke?”
“I did. What’s your opinion of him?”
“A sharp operator, but cautious.”
“You don’t think he could be the mastermind behind all this?”
“Not Bourke. He was too ready with his information, and it checked. I think Arthur Lemp plotted the kidnapping himself.” From my inside pocket, I produced the penciled envelope containing Lemp’s birth certificate. “This seems to be proof of it.”
Forest read the “timetable” aloud, punctuating the reading with an exclamatory whistle. “Miner’s definitely in it then. What’s this about taking the boy to the desert?”
“I can’t add anything to that. There’s a lot of desert in California.”
Forest thought in silence for a minute, biting the inside of his upper lip. “Lemp plotted the kidnapping, it would seem. He didn’t plot his own murder.”
“That seems to be a reasonable working-hypothesis.”