Morganson said, “Do you really want to watch this glop?”
“Shut up!”
“Now look, Paul, just because—”
“Damn you, watch them!” he grated.
Something in his voice froze Morganson. They stood side by side. The years of conditioning kept Stenn on the verge of running forward, crying out. But something far stronger kept him there. Sun dappled the dusty floor. The distant traffic was more vibration than sound. Somewhere a radio played loudly.
Palma stood looking across the stage. Della circled him, crouched as he had directed. She circled him twice as he stood motionless. Then she straightened up in front of him. There was one flickering glint of metal as she drove the tines of the corroded fork with all her strength into the base of his throat. Morganson made a thin, whimpering sound. As Palma tottered she ripped the fork free and, with a hard mad cry, drove it home again, releasing the handle this time to fall to her knees.
Palma’s lips worked with an amazing rapidity, flapping together soundlessly like a ventriloquist’s puppet. Stenn ran to him, leaping with an extraordinary agility for so heavy a man, up onto the stage. Palma’s expression was intent. He grasped the handle of the fork and, just as Stenn reached him, he pulled it free. After that there was nothing that could be done for him. He died quickly but nastily, drowning while he fought for air that he could not suck into his lungs.
It was dusk and Stenn was sitting on a bench in the unlighted squad room in his undershirt when Morganson came in.
“What was Wally’s reaction?” Al asked.
“He’s still upset because we still got a Jane Doe. But now we’ll unravel her by backtracking on Palma.”
“How about the girl?”
“The two state psychiatrists have been working over her. Already some crackpots who read the papers have phoned in wanting to marry her. She gives the story that the blonde showed up and she had been tracking this Palma for a long time. Palma told the girl, the Clove girl, that the blonde was insanely possessive and now she’d never let him go. The blonde had the name of the Clove girl’s mother. I guess she was going to get the Clove girl off Palma’s neck by telling the mother how this Palma was already married, or a crook, or something like that. The Clove girl waited until the little fat guy stopped gawping at the blonde and she timed it right and shoved the blonde in the small of the back as the train came in. A crazy thing to do, all right, and she said she did it because Palma explained how a great artist must experience everything in order to be fulfilled. Something like that. My guess is that Palma and the blonde were in on some deal and they separated and he ran out with the stake. Maybe we’ll find out. Even if we could prove it all, we’d never been able to touch him. He could always claim it was just a discussion he had with the Clove girl and she took it wrong. The trouble was he talked too good. The Clove girl wasn’t satisfied with doing the pushing. She had to ring herself in as a witness too. She’s nuts, I think, and I think the state guys will come to the same answer.”
The room darkened some more. Stenn clicked on the light, squinting against it, yawning. “I’m beat,” he said.
“A bone-headed cop with a soft spot for blondes,” Morganson said.
“I’m not too proud to eat with a vulture of the press,” Stenn said.
“Get your clothes on.”
Stenn frowned and spoke absently, “For sure he would have knocked off that Clove girl sooner Or later.”
“Probably,” Morganson said gently, sensing the concealed bitterness of self-accusation, feeling glad that their jobs were not reversed, knowing that now Paul was seeing the girl as an animal rigged around with traps he had set. “Probably,” he repeated.