Bill Pronzini - Undercurrent

"Not bad, not good."

"She took the news pretty hard, from what Kanin, the San Francisco inspector who broke it to her, told me last night. He brought her down on the Monterey plane and she seemed to be bearing up; but when she saw her husband in the hospital morgue she went to pieces, and it was a hell of a thing to see. One of the nurses took her over to the inn-she refused to stay at the hospital-and put her to bed with a sedative."

"I suppose this Kanin questioned her about her whereabouts at the time of Paige's death."

"Of course."

"And she checked out clear?"

"Clear enough for me," Quartermain said. "She was baby-sitting three neighbor kids in her apartment; mother and father went to some lodge affair. The kids were old enough to verify her presence in the apartment at the time of the killing."

"There was never any doubt," I said, "as far as I was concerned. She couldn't kill anyone." I paused. "Have you got a line on the bald man yet-the one I saw with Paige?"

"Not yet. Mrs. Paige says she doesn't know anyone who looks as you described him."

"Yeah, she told me the same thing."

"I'd like you to have a look through our mug files, if you don't mind. I don't suppose there's much chance we'll have a card on the guy, but then again you never know."

"Be glad to," I said, and he led me out and to their Records Room. I spent the next twenty minutes flipping through a not surprisingly small rogues' gallery of men arrested at one time or another in the Cypress Bay area. The bald man was not among them.

Quartermain said, "Well, if we start running into dead ends, I may want you to work with a police artist on a drawing. So far, he's the only definite local link we've got with Paige, and I'd like to know who he is and why the two of them met in the park."

"Fine. Just say the word."

"We'll see how the investigation develops."

We returned to his office and sat down again, and I asked, "Was Paige carrying anything to give you a lead?"

"Nothing. His effects yielded zero."

"Did you find any fingerprints aside from Paige's?"

"Nothing identifiable. There were traces of blood in the bathroom lavatory, which probably means the killer was splashed during the stabbing and took the time to wash some of it off before leaving."

"None of the other motel guests saw anything?"

"If they did, they're not admitting it."

"What about the murder weapon?"

"No sign of it."

"What was it, could they tell?"

"Something long and sharp and fairly thin. Stiletto maybe, or a letter opener of some kind. Along those lines."

"Doesn't sound like you've got much to go on," I said carefully.

"We've got a couple of things." He put his elbows on the desk glass and folded his left fist into his right palm. "I don't suppose I ought to tell you about them, but I gave your Lieutenant Eberhardt a call last night; he was working the four-to-midnight, so I caught him at the Hall of Justice. He has kind words for you, all right."

"Yeah, well, we've been friends for a long time."

"He says you'll cooperate one hundred percent, and you've done that so far. We've got two things to work with on Paige's killing-neither of which have to mean anything, strictly speaking-and maybe you can give me a fresh slant"

"If I can. I appreciate the confidence."

"First of all, we ran Paige's name through R I in Sacramento as a matter of routine, and came up with a positive. He spent four years in San Quentin out of a seven-year sentence, the usual time off for a clean prison record. He was released about five months ago."

I felt my mouth pull tight. "What was the charge?"

"Burglary. He was convicted in Santa Barbara."

"Does Mrs. Paige know about this?"

"No. At least, I don't think so."

"You're not releasing it to the papers?"

"Hell no," Quartermain said. "But there's always the chance they'll pick it up anyway."

I moved uncomfortably in the chair. "Was Paige lone-wolf on this burglary, or did he have accomplices?"

"Lone-wolf. He tried to pop one of those old-fashioned box safes you still find in some of the older companies-a marine equipment outfit, in this case-and a private security patrol picked him up coming out of the building."

"First offense?"

"Two drunk-driving priors, one in San Francisco and one in the Santa Barbara area. Nothing else in California and nothing in his native Pennsylvania. We're still checking his background."

"What's this other thing you've got?"

"This one isn't very pretty either," Quartermain said. His long face seemed even sadder, and when those canted eyelids came down he resembled a kind of elongated Buddha; some other time it might have been comical. Some other time. "There were semen and vaginal secretions on the bed sheets in Paige's cottage. He was with a woman not long before he was killed."

It did not surprise me; I had been waiting for it all along. I lit a cigarette and coughed and stared through the smoke, and I could see her sitting in that saddle chair, curled up in the darkness, grieving-for an ex-convict, a son-of-a-bitching womanizer. Why? Because love is blind, and he was handsome and probably glib, and she was just that little country girl looking for happiness and security and affection. And Paige? Well, you could figure his motivations simply enough as far as their marriage was concerned: if you can't score one way, and you want to score badly enough, you can always come up with a proposal and a ring; then, when you're tired of the innocence and the responsibility-tired enough to want out of the union-you go to the accommodating California divorce courts and dissolve the whole thing with a minimum of difficulty…

I said, "So she came in from the beach while I was watching the front, and they were banging away in there the whole time." The words sounded harsh and bitter.

"It figures that way," Quartermain agreed. He rubbed wearily at his temples. "The thing that we can't know yet is whether she left and then Paige was killed by someone else, or whether she killed him herself."

"If it was somebody else, that rear entrance was a regular goddamned concourse."

"The woman might not have wanted to be seen. Coming in that way would lower the risk. Paige must have called her from the phone in his cottage to let her know which one he was in."

"No clues at all to her, I guess?"

"None. Ashtrays were all clean, and there were no tissues or any other feminine items. If it hadn't been for the bed, we'd never even know she was there."

"I remember seeing half a bottle of Jack Daniel's and a glass on one of the nightstands," I said. "How about another glass?"

"None in the cottage."

"So she didn't drink. Or they shared the same glass, and she had her lipstick scrubbed off. Or she took the damned thing with her when she left."

"Or the killer took it, if it wasn't the woman."

Neither of us cared for further speculation, and more silence built between us. I put fire to another cigarette; the first one was still smoldering in the abalone-shell tray on Quartermain's desk. At length I said, "I don't know if this means anything, but I thought I'd better mention it to you. Did you notice the paperback book in Paige's bag?"

"I noticed it. Why?"

I related my conversation with Judith Paige, and Quartermain looked thoughtful for a time. He said finally, "Well, I admit that it might be pretty odd for Paige to have a book that old if he wasn't a reader or a collector, but I don't see what it could have to do with his death. And there's another thing, too: the book might not have been his."

"It was in his bag."

"Sure, but he had that woman in the cottage. She might have left it."

"From what was found on the sheets," I said, "the two of them weren't doing any damned reading."