“And your wife?” Julian Smith asked.
“You mean what’s happened to her?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“But don’t you see?” Tully cried. “In the grip of that delusion Norma’s as strong as a man — and a damn strong man at that! I had to clip her on the chin because I couldn’t subdue her any other way, and you know I’m no weakling, Julian. I tell you Norma took Ruth forcibly to some hiding place, maybe tied her up and gagged her. Maybe the doctors can give Norma one of those new drugs they’re using on mental patients, find out where Ruth is before she starves to death! I know, Julian, it sounds pretty wild—”
Smith leaned over and touched Tully’s hand. “Relax, Dave, or you’ll be needing a paddy wagon yourself. I’ve got a full-scale search going for Ruth on a round-the-clock basis. She’ll be found.”
“Then you don’t buy this Norma-Kathleen theory,” Tully said bitterly.
“No, Dave,” the lieutenant said.
“Why the hell not!”
“Well, for one thing, that telephone call from Ruth. If she’s innocent, the killer forced her to make that call. It’s not the kind of behavior a mental case like Norma would evince, from what I know about such cases. It isn’t the type of aberration that sets up a pigeon to cover up a killing. If Norma’s type of psychopath had done it, she’d probably have shot Ruth on the spot and gone on a rampage and shot at every living thing in sight. I’m sorry, Dave.”
Tully sagged in his chair. “So I’m back where I started,” he muttered. “There’s an out for everybody in this thing but Ruth.”
He got up heavily and went to the kitchen window. The house suddenly felt like a prison.
“By the way,” Julian Smith’s voice said from behind him, “Ruth’s picture is being telecast over every TV station in the state tonight. It may help.”
“May. Will it?”
“I’ve seen it happen, Dave. A gas station attendant, a waitress in a diner, a pedestrian on a street corner — we’ll get plenty of calls, and we won’t ignore one of them.” Tully felt the detective’s hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you take a pill and hit the sack? I promise to wake you up personally if there’s any news at all.”
“Go to hell,” Tully said.
18
After Smith’s departure Tully prowled about the house. A new thought had come to plague him, of having recently seen or heard something meaningful. A word, a key, a clue — an open-sesame that with one push would reveal the truth.
But what was it?
He holed up in the den, trying desperately to raise from the dead whatever-it-was. He sat stiff and strained until sweat slicked his forehead. Finally he muttered a curse on all darkness.
Tully heaved himself out of the chair and went to the phone. He dialed Information for the home telephone number of the city editor of the Times-Call, Jake Ballinger.
“Dave Tully?” Ballinger was yawning. “Something?”
“Well, for one thing I want to thank you for the way you’ve handled the Cox story, Jake,” Tully said. “I mean as regards my wife.”
“We’ve printed the facts. I left my tabloid techniques back in Chicago.” The rumble sounded interested. “What’s up, Dave?”
“I need a favor. Will you let me go through your files?”
Ballinger said immediately, “Meet me outside the shop.”
A jalopy was parked before the newspaper building when Tully drove up. The bulky newspaperman promptly hopped out. He looked as expectant as an old bird-dog.
“What’s the yarn, Dave? I expect quid for my quo.”
“I haven’t one — yet.”
Ballinger gave Tully a sharp look and led the way into the partly darkened building. The rumble of press machinery was giving the old floors the shakes. Upstairs, a crew of three was still on watch in the newsroom. Locally, the paper was published as the morning Times and the afternoon Call, with a Times-Call appearing on Sundays.
The old man plodded past the newsroom on his flat feet to a glass-partitioned office. He opened the door and snapped on a light. Tiers of laden shelves reached to the ceiling.
“We’re running cuts of your wife in the morning edition,” Ballinger said. “Headquarters request. I gather the gendarmes of our unfair city don’t think Mrs. T.’s so guilty any more. Why, Lieutenant Smith sayeth not. Any news?”
“She’s not guilty at all, Jake.”
Ballinger kept eyeing him. “This is our morgue. What are you after, Dave?”
“Kathleen Lavery.”
“Lavery...” Ballinger’s hard blue eyes turned inward. “Oh, yes. Why?”
“I’m not sure,” Tully said. “I think Cox had other reasons for returning.”
“Such as?”
Tully shrugged. “He staked his life on coming back here. He must have had a pretty solid expectation of loot — real loot — to take such a risk.”
“And you think it goes back to Kathleen Lavery?”
“I don’t know what to think, Jake. This is from desperation. Maybe your files have the answer.”
Ballinger rummaged through a card-index file, drew a card out, moved to the shelves. Consulting the card, he fished nearly a dozen small, flat cardboard boxes from the shelves. He opened them one by one and from each took out a round flat tin.
“Let’s take these over to the viewer, Dave.”
“Microfilm?”
The old newspaperman chuckled. “Unto even a one-horse town cometh technology.”
Tully trailed Ballinger to the microfilm viewer. Ballinger turned the projector on and slipped the top film into place. A front page of the Times sprang into being on the viewer’s frosted plate.
“Watch the heads, Dave. We click from page to page till we hit the story relating to our subject.”
For forty-five minutes David Tully watched a beautiful young girl grow up. The Laverys leaving for Europe. The Laverys returning from Europe. Young Miss Kathleen Lavery entertaining with a Christmas party at the country club, under the chaperonage of Mrs. Mercedes Lavery. At fourteen — taking a blue ribbon at the horse show — the budding teenager pictured sitting her sleek mount seemed to Tully a lonely little figure. Swimming on her school team in an intra-state competition. Entering a junior tennis tournament in England. Story after story...
And then her death.
“Hold that, Jake.”
Ballinger held it, looking curious. Tully skimmed through the story. “...vacationing in Switzerland with her mother. Miss Lavery was pronounced dead from accidental drowning after her boat capsized on Lake St. Cyr. Her body was washed up on the lake shore shortly after dawn yesterday morning, Swiss time. It was found by a group of early morning swimmers...”
Tully scanned the rest of the file. It concerned the girl’s funeral, and a final obit recounting her short history and family connections.
“That’s it.” Ballinger clicked off the viewer.
Tully mumbled: “No mention of Crandall Cox.”
“Why should there be?”
“He preyed on women most of his life, specializing in the upper crust. I thought he might have done a job on the Lavery girl. She was certainly the richest and most vulnerable target in this town.”
“He’d have had a pretty tough time,” the old newspaperman said dryly, “worming his way into her set, from what it used to be like in those days.”