Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

And then he’d said one of them might have killed Jonathan Parrish, or words to that effect, and next thing you knew the cops were on her doorstep — well, not exactly the very next thing, since it had taken her and Matthew a little while to make love again. But soon after she’d got back to the motel, here came the cops, and off they went with both of them, one of whom had a record.

She wondered why the cops had let them go.

Especially the one with the record.

She wondered if she should call Matthew to tell him the cops had let them go.

A man with a record.

Tell Matthew they were both gone now. Hurley gone in the Honda, Walker off in a taxi. Carrying a suitcase. When he called the office, he said he needed a taxi. She asked him if he wanted any particular company. He said he didn’t care, so long as they could get him to the airport. So William Walker was gone for sure, and only God knew where Arthur Hurley was, though she suspected he’d be back to pick up his pregnant wife if, in fact, she was his wife. Irene had once rented a cabin to a pregnant one-legged woman and her husband, supposedly, but it turned out they were a working girl and her pimp. The lady turned a trick an hour, regular cavalcade of cars pulling into the parking lot every hour on the hour. When the couple checked out a week later, they probably went to Lake Como, Italy, for a vacation. In this business you never knew what—

The telephone rang.

Irene glanced at the switchboard.

Unit number eleven.

“Office,” she said, “good afternoon.”

An odd sound on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” Irene said.

The sound again.

Wet. And gurgling.

“Mrs. Hurley?” Irene said. “Is that you?”

And then her voice.

A single word.

“Please.”

The man who came through the door in the walnut-paneled wall behind the receptionist’s desk smiled and extended his hand.

“Mr. Hope?” he said. “I’m Henry Curtis, Miss Brechtmann’s secretary.”

“Nice to meet you,” Matthew said, and shook hands with him.

Curtis looked at the card Matthew had given the receptionist.

“Summerville and Hope,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You’re an attorney.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Has someone found another snake in our beer?” Curtis asked, smiling.

Matthew wondered why he thought a snake in their beer was comical.

“Or a rusty nail? Or a nest of scorpions? Or a used condom?”

He glanced quickly toward the reception desk, where a gray-haired woman sat doing a crossword puzzle.

“We have a battery of attorneys who do nothing but defend the company against claims of foreign objects found floating in our beer. One of these days, someone’s going to claim he spotted the Loch Ness monster in one of our bottles,” Curtis said, and smiled again.

Matthew suddenly liked him.

“I know you have an appointment…” Curtis said.

“Yes. I spoke to Miss Brechtmann on the phone earlier to…”

“Yes, I know. But I’m afraid her meeting’s running a little long. She asked me to make you comfortable while you wait.”

“How long will she be, do you know?”

“Oh, it shouldn’t take too long,” Curtis said. “I thought I might show you through the brewery…”

“ That long, huh?”

“Well, however long, it’ll help pass the time. Unless you’d prefer reading back issues of trade journals.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t think you would. Mrs. Hoskins,” he said, “we’ll be walking through. Send someone to find us when Miss Brechtmann is free, would you?”

“Yes, Mr. Curtis,” the woman said, and went back to her crossword puzzle.

Irene opened the door with her passkey.

At first she didn’t see anyone.

“Mrs. Hurley?” she said.

No answer.

“Mrs. Hurley, where…?”

The phone was on a night table alongside the bed farthest from the door. The receiver was off the cradle. Irene walked quickly across the room and around the bed, and saw—

“Oh, Jesus,” she said.

The girl was lying in a puddle of blood.

Irene stepped around her and picked up the telephone receiver.

Hurley read the sign and then walked right on past it and through the gate. Way to do it with signs, you ignored them completely. You didn’t stop and read them carefully as if this was the first time you were here, you just took them in with a single glance and then ignored them. Of course you were authorized personnel, and you were going beyond this point and beyond any fucking point you felt like.

Another sign. Red letters on a white background. Place was full of signs. He ignored this one, too, because he didn’t plan to be working around the grain-unloading area or any damn area. All he planned to do was find Mr. Matthew Hope, who had disappeared inside here someplace. And when he found him—

White letters on a red background this time. More damn signs in this place. He was walking through a large open outdoor space adjacent to the parking lot and separated from it by a cyclone fence with an open, unlocked gate in it. The parking lot had been full of signs advising that only employees of the Brechtmann Brewing Company could park here, but he’d ignored those signs, and then ignored the sign on the cyclone fence, and was now ignoring every sign in sight. All he wanted to do was walk past these railroad cars, and get inside where—

Jesus!

Matthew Hope himself coming out of the building and—

Hurley ducked behind the closest railroad car.

“This is where our grain comes in,” Curtis said. “The malt and the corn. The cars you see out here each hold about two hundred thousand pounds. Hoses suck the grain up to the fifth floor, where it’s crushed and then transported to the scale room where it’s weighed. Right now, these cars are bringing in malt.”

“From where?”

“The Midwest, mostly. Want to see how we brew the stuff?”

Matthew looked at his watch.

“Don’t worry, they’ll let us know when she’s free,” Curtis said.

Hurley waited until the door to the building had closed behind them. He walked out swiftly from behind the railroad car, up the concrete steps, opened the door, and caught sight of them just as they entered the elevator at the far end of the corridor. He watched the floor indicator. Two, three…

The needle stopped at four.

He pressed the button alongside the doors. A sign on the doors read:

The stainless steel doors opened.

Same sign inside the elevator.

Made him feel like lighting a cigarette.

He pressed the button for the fifth floor.

“We store the malt here on the fourth floor,” Curtis said. “These bins hold a hundred thousand pounds each.”

“Uh-huh,” Matthew said.

“Downstairs was the beginning, if you will. Where the malt came in. Beginning, middle, and end, right? Up here is a sort of intermission, the malt just lying here until the actual brewing process begins. Now we’ll go downstairs again, and I’ll show you the middle.”

“The middle, uh-huh.”

“The mashing and cooking.”

“Uh-huh, mashing and cooking.”

“To get the wort we need.”

“The what? ”