Bill Pronzini - Labyrinth

Eberhardt called from his home-Fitzpatrick had notified the Hall of Justice and they in turn had contacted Eb-and I was allowed to talk to him. In concerned tones he asked how I was. I said I was fine, wonderful, that son of a bitch Greene had come within minutes of killing me dead. Then I told the story all over again, for the fifth or sixth time. I’ll get back to you in the morning, he said. Yeah, I said.

Greene was still at large. But there was an All-Points Bulletin out on him, Fitzpatrick told me-it was only a matter of time. The head of the Alcohol and Firearms Unit office in San Francisco called. I got to talk to him, too, and answer some more questions, and listen to him tell me he would send agents up in the morning to interrogate me “when you’re feeling better.”

I was so tired by this time, from all the talk and the pills and the physical and mental strain, that I had trouble holding my head up. I asked Fitzpatrick if I could please, for Christ’s sake, be taken somewhere so I could get some sleep. Yes, he supposed I had been through enough for one night. Damned right, I thought. Put you up at The Tides Motel, somebody said, that okay? Just dandy.

Out of there finally and into a car, Fitzpatrick driving. Where was my car? he asked. Up by the Kellenbeck Fish Company. Keys? Lost in the bay, they were in my overcoat pocket, but there’s another set in a little magnetic box behind the rear bumper. He’d have somebody pick it up and bring it to the motel.

Motel. Check-in. Room. They went away, saying they would talk to me again in the morning. Bed. Sleep. Dreams of ice and water, guns and darkness, dead faces floating at the bottom of the sea.

Long, bad night…

A knocking on the door woke me. I sat up a little groggily and it took me a few seconds to orient myself, remember where I was. Gray light in the room, filtering in through half-closed drapes over the window. I squinted at my watch It was a good old waterproof Timex and still ticking away, undamaged by the salt water last night; the hands read eight-twenty-five.

I swung my feet out, sat on the edge of the bed. The knocking came again. I called, “Just a minute,” and then stood up in a tentative way, testing my legs. Stiff, with a faint weakness in the joints. Same feeling in my arms. My head was stuffy and there was congestion in my lungs, the kind I used to have before I gave up cigarettes. Otherwise I seemed to be in reasonably good shape for what I had been through.

I put on Muhlheim’s clothes and went over and opened the door. Fitzpatrick. He asked me how I was, but not as if it mattered a great deal to him, and handed me my car keys.

“Greene?” I said.

He shook his head. “Not yet. But we’ll get him, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried. Just eager.”

“Sure. Federal agents are here; they said they’d be over to see you later this morning. So don’t go anywhere for awhile.”

“How about after I see them? Can I leave for home then?”

“You can as far as I’m concerned,” Fitzpatrick said. “But stop by the substation before you go; there’s a statement waiting for you to sign.”

After he left I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Beard stubble, puffy eyes, mottled skin, hair sticking up every which way like a fright wig: face to scare little children with. I turned out of there, put on Muhlheim’s overcoat, left the room, and hunted up my car. Reversed the procedure, carrying my overnight case, and then went to work on the beard stubble with a razor.

While I shaved I did some heavy thinking for the first time since early last night. Not about Greene and what had happened in the bay; that brush with death, and my own foolishness that had led to it, was something I did not want to relive. What I did think about was the bootlegging and the murders of Jerry Carding and his father. And about all the questions that were still unanswered, the one major question that was still unanswered.

Who had murdered Christine Webster?

The mental work got me nowhere. And yet, if I kept going over things enough times, maybe there was something I knew and could remember-like the little things I had known and remembered about Kellenbeck and the Cardings. Maybe…

The telephone rang just as I finished toweling off. I went into the other room, picked up the receiver. And listened to Eberhardt’s voice say, “It’s me. How you feeling this morning?”

“Fair. Better than I ought to.”

“No after effects?”

“None I want to talk about.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Guy in the Highway Patrol office up there told me where you were. According to him, no word on Greene yet.”

“I know. Fitzpatrick came by a few minutes ago.”

“You wouldn’t be planning to stick around up there until he’s caught?”

“Hell no. I’ll be home as soon as they’re done with me.”

“When’ll that be?”

“Sometime this afternoon, I guess. I’ve got to go sign a statement. And see a couple of Federal agents before that.”

“Me too,” he said. “I just got off the phone with one of the Alcohol and Firearms boys.”

“Have you talked to Donleavy?”

“Little while ago.”

“Is he dropping the charges against Martin Talbot?”

“That’s what he says. But the Carding murder is still officially open until Greene turns up. Or some kind of incriminating evidence does.” He paused. “The Christine Webster case is still open too, damn it.”

“Greene didn’t kill her, Eb,” I said.

“So you managed to tell me last night. You’re probably right-but I’d like it better if you weren’t.”

“I would too. But there’s just no motive for him to’ve shot the girl. Jerry Carding only had two copies of his article the night he was killed; there wasn’t a third he could have mailed to Christine.”

“Greene might have been afraid he’d told her something,” Eberhardt said, “and went after her for that reason.”

“It doesn’t add up. Why would Greene be more worried about Christine than, say, Steve Farmer or Sharon Darden-people right here at Bodega Bay? And if he had wanted to kill her, why wait until Tuesday night to do it? And why shoot her with a. 32 instead of the. 38 he used on Carding or the Browning automatic he tried to use on me?”

Eberhardt sighed. “I can’t argue with any of that,” he said. “All right, Greene didn’t kill Christine. But then who did? And why? Where’s the connection?”

“Maybe there isn’t one. Not a direct one, anyway.”

“Coincidence?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“I don’t like coincidences worth a damn.”

“Neither do I, usually. But they do happen, Eb. They even happen in bunches sometimes.”

“Bunches?”

“I’m starting to wonder,” I said, “if maybe there aren’t a lot of coincidences in these two cases.”

“Meaning what? You got another theory?”

“No. Just a feeling so far. Did you dig up anything on Bobbie Reid, by the way?”

“Not much. She was the private type: no close friends, kept pretty much to herself. Her parents live in Red Bluff and they’re the ones who claimed the body; neither of them had much contact with Bobbie in the past year, said they didn’t know why she committed suicide. Didn’t seem too broken up about it, either. Nice folks.”

“What about the people where she worked?”

“Same thing. She was a legal secretary in a law office downtown; none of her coworkers knew her very well. Her boss, Arthur Brown, says he’d been thinking about firing her just before her death-late for work on a regular basis, withdrawn, moody, fouled up an important brief… Pause. “Hold on a second, will you?” He covered the mouthpiece but I could hear muffled voices in the background. A few seconds later he came back on. “I’ve got to go; the Alcohol and Firearms people are here. Call me when you get back to the city.”