“Checking the heat,” Wollender said.
Hawes nodded. “Here’s your check. Will you mark this bill ‘Paid,’ please?”
“Be happy to,” Wollender said. He stamped the bill and handed it back to Hawes. For a moment, Hawes had the oddest feeling that something was wrong. The knowledge pushed itself into his mind in the form of an absurd caption: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? He looked at Wollender, at his hair, and his eyes, and his white shirt, and his reindeer sweater, and his extended leg, and the cast on it, and the ottoman. Something was different. This was not the room, not the picture as it had been on Friday night. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? he thought, and he did not know.
He took the bill. “Thanks,” he said. “Have you heard any news about the roads?”
“They’re open all the way to the Thruway. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“Thanks,” Hawes said. He hesitated, staring at Wollender. “My room’s right over the ski shop, you know,” he said.
“Yes, I know that.”
“Do you have a key to the shop, Mr. Wollender?”
Wollender shook his head. “No. The shop is privately owned. It doesn’t belong to the hotel. I believe the proprietor allows the ski instructors to ...”
“But then, you’re a locksmith, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Isn’t that what you told me when I checked in? You said you were a locksmith out of season, didn’t you?”
“Oh. Oh, yes. Yes, I did.” Wollender shifted uneasily in the chair, trying to make his leg comfortable. Hawes looked at the leg again, and then he thought, Damn it, what’s wrong?
“Maybe you went to my room to listen, Mr. Wollender. Is that possible?”
“Listen to what?”
“To the sounds coming from the ski shop below,” Hawes said.
“Are the sounds that interesting?”
“In the middle of the night, they are. You can hear all sorts of things in the middle of the night. I’m just beginning to remember all the things I heard.”
“Oh? What did you hear?”
“I heard the oil burner clicking, and the toilet flushing, and the Cats going up the mountain, and someone arguing down the hall, and somebody filing and grinding in the ski shop.” He was speaking to Wollender, but not really speaking to him. He was, instead, remembering those midnight voices raised in anger, and remembering that it was only later he had heard the noises in the shop, and gone to the window, and seen the light burning below. And then a curious thing happened. Instead of calling him “Mr. Wollender,” he suddenly called him “Elmer.”
“Elmer,” he said, “something’s just occurred to me.”
Elmer. And with the word, something new came into the room. With the word, he was suddenly transported back to the interrogation room at the 87th, where common thieves and criminals were called by their first names, Charlie, and Harry, and Martin, and Joe, and where this familiarity somehow put them on the defensive, somehow rattled them and made them know their questioners weren’t playing games.
“Elmer,” he said, leaning over the desk, “it’s just occurred to me that since Maria couldn’t have seen anything on the mountain, maybe she was killed because she heard something. And maybe what she heard was the same arguing I heard. Only her room is right next door to Helga’s. And maybe she knew who was arguing.” He hesitated. “That’s pretty logical, don’t you think, Elmer?”
“I suppose so,” Wollender said pleasantly. “But if you know who killed Maria, why don’t you go to ...”
“I don’t know, Elmer. Do you know?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“Yeah, neither do I, Elmer. All I have is a feeling.”
“And what’s the feeling?” Wollender asked.
“That you came to my room to listen, Elmer. To find out how much I had heard the night before Helga was murdered. And maybe you decided I heard too damn much, and maybe that’s why I was attacked on the mountain yesterday.”
“Please, Mr. Hawes,” Wollender said, and a faint superior smile touched his mouth, and his hand opened limply to indicate the leg in the cast.
“Sure, sure,” Hawes said. “How could I have been attacked by a man with his leg in a cast, a man who can’t get around without crutches? Sure, Elmer. Don’t think that hasn’t been bugg—” He stopped dead. “Your crutches,” he said.
“What?”
“Your crutches! Where the hell are they?”
For just an instant, the color went out of Wollender’s face. Then, quite calmly, he said, “Right over there. Behind you.”
Hawes turned and looked at the crutches, leaning against the wall near the door.
“Fifteen feet from your desk,” he said. “I thought you couldn’t walk without them.”
“I ... I used the furniture to ... to get to the desk. I ...”
“You’re lying, Elmer,” Hawes said, and he reached across the desk and pulled Wollender out of the chair.
“My leg!” Wollender shouted.
“Your leg, my ass! How long have you been walking on it, Elmer? Was that why you killed her on the mountain? So that ...”
“I didn’t kill anybody!”
“... so that you’d have a perfect alibi? A man with his leg in a cast couldn’t possibly ride a lift or jump from it, could he? Unless he’d been in and out of that cast for God knows how long!”
“My leg is broken! I can’t walk!”
“Can you kill, Elmer?”
“I didn’t kill her!”
“Did Maria hear you arguing, Elmer?”
“No. No ...”
“Then why’d you go after her?”
“I didn’t!” He tried to pull away from Hawes. “You’re crazy. You’re hurting my leg! Let go of ...”
“I’m crazy? You son of a bitch. I’m crazy? You stuck a ski pole in one girl and twisted a towel around ...”
“I didn’t, I didn’t!”
“We found the basket from your pole!” Hawes shouted.
“What basket? I don’t know what ...”
“Your fingerprints are all over it!” he lied.
“You’re crazy,” Wollender said. “How could I get on the lift? I can’t walk. I broke the leg in two places. One of the bones came right through the skin. I couldn’t get on a lift if I wanted ...”
“The skin,” Hawes said.
“What?”
“The skin!” There was a wild look in his eyes now. He pulled Wollender closer to him and yelled, “Where’d she scratch you?”
“What?”
He seized the front of Wollender’s shirt with both hands, and then ripped it open. “Where’s the cut, Elmer? On your chest? On your neck?”
Wollender struggled to get away from him, but Hawes had his head captured in both huge hands now. He twisted Wollender’s face viciously, forced his head forward, pulled back the shirt collar.
“Let go of me!” Wollender screamed.
“What’s this, Elmer?” His fingers grasped the adhesive bandage on the back of Wollender’s neck. Angrily, he tore it loose. A healing cut, two inches long and smeared with iodine, ran diagonally from a spot just below Wollender’s hairline.
“I did that myself,” Wollender said. “I bumped into ...”
“Helga did it,” Hawes said. “When you stabbed her! The sheriff’s got the skin, Elmer. It was under her fingernails.”
“No,” Wollender said. He shook his head.
The room was suddenly very still. Both men were exhausted. Hawes kept clinging to the front of Wollender’s shirt, breathing hard, waiting. Wollender kept shaking his head.
“You want to tell me?”
Wollender shook his head.