Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“I told you. We weren’t looking for any.”

“I’m going to send somebody out there to do a check.”

“Sure. Just let Pat know if you find anything.”

“Better not call her Pat, Morrie.”

“But I’ll tell you, Matthew, you’ll be wasting your time. Look, I know just where you’re heading, you think somebody may have broken in there and stolen that jacket and hat, don’t you? And then returned them to the closet, right? But did somebody also steal Mrs. Leeds’s car keys? And then return them to her handbag in the upstairs closet? Or the duplicate set of keys Leeds was using, which were then returned to the top of the bedroom dresser? Because as I’m sure you already know…”

“Yes, Charlie Stubbs saw…”

“Yes, he saw Leeds drive up in the Maserati at around ten-thirty that night.”

“ If it was Leeds.”

“Then who was it if not Leeds?”

“It was a man in a yellow hat and a yellow jacket.”

“Which Leeds just happens to own.”

“The hat was a giveaway item, and the jacket came from Sears. There could be a hundred people in this town with that same damn jacket and hat.”

“And are there a hundred people in this town who also have keys to the Maserati this person in the yellow jacket and hat was driving?”

“Well, I admit…”

“ And keys to the boat?”

Matthew sighed.

“Yes,” Bloom said. “Matthew, I know I was wrong the last time around. But this time, there’s too damn much. Cop a plea, Matthew. Demming’s new and eager, she’ll make it easy for you. Do me that favor, will you? Save yourself a lot of embarrassment. Please?”

Matthew said nothing.

“Come on,” Bloom said. “I’ll teach you how to paralyze me.”

There were two messages on Matthew’s answering machine when he got home that night. The first was from Warren Chambers, telling him what he’d learned about the number on the license plate.

“Shit,” Matthew said.

The second was from Jessica Leeds, asking him to call back as soon as he could. Standing in his workout clothes, wanting nothing more than a shower, he opened his directory to the L’s , found the number at the farm, and dialed it. Jessica picked up on the third ring.

“Mrs. Leeds,” he said, “Matthew Hope.”

“Oh, hello, I’m so glad you got back to me,” she said. “Stephen phoned me this afternoon, right after you left him. He was so excited.”

The goddamn license plate, he thought.

“Well,” he said, “it turns out we were a bit premature.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no such number in the state of Florida.”

“Oh no ,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“This is so disappointing.”

“I know.”

“Could it possibly have been an out-of-state plate?”

“Trinh is sure it was a Florida plate.”

“This’ll kill Stephen, it’ll positively kill him.”

“Did he tell you what the number was?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Does it mean anything to you?”

“Mean anything?”

“You wouldn’t have seen a car with that plate driving past the farm… or cruising the neighborhood… anything like that? Looking over the place?”

“Oh. No, I’m sorry.”

“Because if someone did break in there…”

“Yes, I know exactly what you mean. But we’re so isolated here… I think I would’ve noticed something like that. A car driving by slowly…”

“Yes.”

“… or making a turn in the driveway…”

“Yes.”

“But no, there was nothing.”

“Incidentally,” Matthew said, “I’ll be sending someone there to check your windows and doors. His name’s Warren Chambers, I’ll ask him to call you first.”

“My windows and doors ?”

“For signs of forced entry.”

“Oh, yes , what a good idea.”

“He’ll call you.”

“Please.”

She was silent for a moment.

Then she said, “I don’t know how to tell this to Stephen.”

Neither did Matthew.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “Please don’t worry about it.”

Warren’s photographic memory had served him well for the better part of his life. In high school — and later during his short stint in college — while students everywhere around him were scribbling crib notes on their shirt cuffs or the palms of their hands, he was memorizing pages and pages of material that he could later call up in an instant. In its entirety. A photograph of the page suddenly popping into his mind’s eye. Exactly as it had appeared when he’d read it. Phenomenal. The trick worked beautifully for faces as well. When he was on the St. Louis police force, he’d look at a mug shot once and only once, and there it was in his head, recorded forever. See that same cheap thief on the street two years later, he’d follow him for blocks, trying to figure out what no-good mischief he was up to now.

If Warren had seen that license plate on the night of the murders, you could damn well bet he wouldn’t have remembered it wrong. It would have registered on the camera of his eye, click , and it would have been etched on his mind forever, in living color, orange and white for the colors of the state’s plates.

Mr. Memory, that was Warren Chambers.

Except for tonight.

Tonight, he could not for the life of him remember Fiona Gill’s unlisted telephone number.

Am I sure that my unlisted phone number is 381-2645?

Was what the lady had said.

Wasn’t it?

But when he dialed 381-2645, he got a man who sounded like a caged beast, spitting and snarling because Warren had woken him up in the middle of the night. Except that it was only eight-thirty. So he’d dialed the number a second time, certain that his renowned memory could not be at fault, thinking he’d merely made an error punching out the numbers, and lo and behold, the same roaring monster telling him to quit calling this number or—

Warren hung up fast.

He knew he wasn’t wrong about the 381 because that was one of Calusa’s seven prefixes and none of the others — 349, 342, 363, and so on — came even close. So 381 it had to be. So how had he goofed on the last four numbers? Had he remembered them in improper sequence? If so, how many possible combinations of the numbers 2, 6, 4, and 5 could there be?

Calling up a page from a long-ago college textbook chapter on permutations and combinations, he conjured the formula 4 X 3 X 2 X 1 = X, and came up with 4x3 = 12x2 = 24x1 = 24, and calculated that there were twenty-four possible ways of arranging the numbers 2,6,4, and 5. He had already dialed 2645 — twice, no less — so that left twenty-three possibilities.

He started with 2654, and went from there to 2564 and 2546, and next to 2465 and 2456.

No Fiona Gill.

So he moved on to the next sequence of six, this time starting with the number 6 itself, and dialing first 6245 and then 6254, and on and on and on until he ended the sequence with 6542, and still no Fiona Gill.

It was now almost nine o’clock.

He figured it was taking him about thirty seconds to punch out each telephone number, let the phone ring three, four, however many times, discover there was no one named Fiona Gill at that number, thank the party, and then hang up. Six different phone numbers in each sequence. A hundred and eighty seconds altogether. Three minutes, give or take, depending on the length of each conversation. It was five after nine when he finished the sequence beginning with the number 5. Still no Fiona. He went on to the last sequence.

381-4265.

Brrr, brrr, btrr…

“Hello?”

“May I speak to Fiona Gill, please?”