“How about Miss Everett?”
“That her name? She was mad, too, but in a different way. She kept her cool and went on, left Warren here yelling at her. But she sure had fire in her eyes when she left. I tell ya, it was kind of embarrassing, there was people around, you know.”
Macauley knew.
Carlisle came into Macauley’s office an hour later and found his superior sitting behind the desk, head down, eyes staring blindly at the scarred wooden finish. His big, rough hands were cupped around a small glass half full of amber liquid.
Softly, Carlisle said, “What’s up, Will? You shouldn’t be doing that, you know.”
Bleak eyes rose to meet Carlisle’s. “Get the hell out of here, Ed. I’ve got work to do.”
Macauley felt the first flakes of snow on his face as he walked across the parking lot toward the building where Joanne Everett worked. It was five o’clock and he hoped to catch her before she left for the day.
She came out the door while he was still ten feet away. At the sight of him, she came to a stop and said, “Hello, Lieutenant.”
His tongue felt thick. “Hi. It’s snowing.” He felt like a fool as soon as he said it and wondered if he was destined always to say inane things to her.
She smiled slightly. “I can see that. No tennis today.” Her expression sobered. “What’s the matter, Lieutenant? Did you want to talk to me about something?”
Macauley looked at her before answering. He noticed for the first time that her eyes were a deep rich brown, almost the color of her hair. As he watched, a snowflake landed on her right eyelash.
“Will you have dinner with me?” he heard himself saying.
She looked surprised, but she said, “I think I’d like that. I don’t know your first name, Lieutenant.”
“It’s Will,” he said, smiling at her.
“All right, Will, I’d be happy to have dinner with you.”
My God, Macauley thought, My God!
He asked her if she liked pizza, and she said she did, so they ate pizza in a little Italian restaurant with red-and-white checked tablecloths on the tables. The pizza was made to their order, with a thick crust and plenty of cheese. Macauley wondered how anyone could eat pizza and look as graceful doing it as Joanne did.
“This is wonderful, Will,” she told him. “So much better than what you get in the franchise pizza places. Do you eat here often?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Most of the time it’s easier just to throw a TV dinner in the oven.”
“You live alone, then?”
“Yeah. I’ve got an apartment not too far from the precinct house.”
“Have you always lived by yourself?”
“For a long time.” Macauley never talked of it, even with people he considered friends, but something about this woman was different. After a pause, he said, “There was a girl once. We weren’t married, and it wasn’t fashionable in those days to just live together. We were young enough not to give a damn, though.”
Her brown eyes locked with his grey ones as she looked up. “A bridge fell down one day,” he continued. “She was one of the people on it. That was nearly thirty years ago.”
She started to say something into the silence that followed, but he broke it himself, saying, “Hey, you’ve still got some pizza left. C’mon, eat up!”
She finished the pizza with a smile.
It was dark when they left the restaurant. Light snow was still falling, big flakes drifting lazily down in the glow of the streetlights, forming an occasional white patch on the sidewalk.
They walked down the street to one of the new shopping malls, built in an effort to restore business to the downtown area. Inside, they walked through a boutique and then a sporting goods store, each enjoying the other’s enthusiasm.
With a cry of joy, Joanne spotted an arcade filled with pinball machines and other coin-operated games. They went inside, seemingly unaware that their presence was two-ply anachronism in this den of t-shirted and sneaker-clad teens and adolescents.
For the first time in his life, Macauley played a game called air hockey, and although the fast-moving puck baffled him and Joanne won the game seven to nothing, he laughed more than he had in a long time. He got more than his own back at pinball, his thick fingers manipulating the flippers with amazing dexterity as he won free game after free game.
When they left the arcade, Joanne’s hand was resting easily and naturally in his.
Macauley knew it was a magic spell, and he placed no faith at all in magic. He was going to enjoy himself while it lasted, though, even as he cursed himself for letting it happen.
They walked back down the street and got into his car parked at the curb in front of the restaurant. He said, “I guess I ought to take you home now. Where do you live?”
She said in a soft voice, “We could go to your apartment if you like, Will. I’d like to see it.”
The magic spell was over just like that. Macauley already hated himself for falling in love with this beautiful woman who, he knew, had committed murder. He was not going to compound his sin by going to bed with her.
He answered, “Let’s just drive around a little.”
She looked puzzled but replied, “Okay, that’s fine with me.”
Macauley went to the park, guided there by some inexorable automatic pilot inside him. As he drove, he heard himself saying inside his head, “You killed those four girls, killed them because they were prostitutes and wouldn’t quit. I know you argued with Jennifer Warren and Linda Metcalf. I think you did with the others, too.
“Your motives were good; you just wanted to save them from themselves. I pulled your file, saw the arrests starting when you were fifteen, saw the drug charges. I remember you saying that death was better than living like that. I saw you play tennis, I remember the muscles of your body and that fact that you’re a very strong woman. You could have done it easily.
“I can’t prove it. I just want to help you, Joanne. I want you to help me help you.”
When he brought the car to a halt in front on the park entrance, Joanne asked, “Why have you brought me here, Will?”
He opened his mouth to tell her what he had explained earlier to himself.
A car door slamming made him look around. Across the street, a taxi had just let a passenger out, and the man went up to the apartment building doors and pressed the button. A minute went by and the doorman did not appear, so with a shrug the man gave a tentative push to one of the doors and, when it swung open, went on in.
Macauley wondered where the doorman could be and why the doors were unlocked. The doorman must have gone out somewhere and left them open.
Then, suddenly, Macauley knew where.
The snow began to fall thicker and heavier. Macauley stared at the flakes and cursed himself again, this time for his stupidity, and then thanked God for the slamming of that taxi door.
Joanne was looking at him, puzzled by his silence. She asked, “Will, what’s the matter?”
He turned to her sharply, breaking out of his reverie, said, “Listen, I want you to go across the street into that building and find a phone. Call the police and get them here on the double. Then you stay inside there.”
Before she could reply, he leaned over and kissed her quickly on the lips. Then he had the door open and was out of the car, moving at a quick trot through the snow, into the darkness of the park.
The normally noisy city had become quieter as the snow increased. It was an eerie feeling, moving along in silence and darkness. Macauley reached inside his overcoat and found his revolver, but its cold presence in his hand made him feel no better.
His feet kicked up the thin film of snow at every step. He hoped he wouldn’t be top late. It was not a large park, but it was big enough so that it would take him a while to cover all of it.