Ed McBain - The Empty Hours

“I suppose so,” Wollender said pleasantly. “But if you know who killed Maria, why don’t you go to ...”

“I don’t know, Elmer. Do you know?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“Yeah, neither do I, Elmer. All I have is a feeling.”

“And what’s the feeling?” Wollender asked.

“That you came to my room to listen, Elmer. To find out how much I had heard the night before Helga was murdered. And maybe you decided I heard too damn much, and maybe that’s why I was attacked on the mountain yesterday.”

“Please, Mr. Hawes,” Wollender said, and a faint superior smile touched his mouth, and his hand opened limply to indicate the leg in the cast.

“Sure, sure,” Hawes said. “How could I have been attacked by a man with his leg in a cast, a man who can’t get around without crutches? Sure, Elmer. Don’t think that hasn’t been bugg—” He stopped dead. “Your crutches,” he said.

“What?”

“Your crutches! Where the hell are they?”

For just an instant, the color went out of Wollender’s face. Then, quite calmly, he said, “Right over there. Behind you.”

Hawes turned and looked at the crutches, leaning against the wall near the door.

“Fifteen feet from your desk,” he said. “I thought you couldn’t walk without them.”

“I ... I used the furniture to ... to get to the desk. I ...”

“You’re lying, Elmer,” Hawes said, and he reached across the desk and pulled Wollender out of the chair.

“My leg!” Wollender shouted.

“Your leg, my ass! How long have you been walking on it, Elmer? Was that why you killed her on the mountain? So that ...”

“I didn’t kill anybody!”

“... so that you’d have a perfect alibi? A man with his leg in a cast couldn’t possibly ride a lift or jump from it, could he? Unless he’d been in and out of that cast for God knows how long!”

“My leg is broken! I can’t walk!”

“Can you kill, Elmer?”

“I didn’t kill her!”

“Did Maria hear you arguing, Elmer?”

“No. No ...”

“Then why’d you go after her?”

“I didn’t!” He tried to pull away from Hawes. “You’re crazy. You’re hurting my leg! Let go of ...”

“I’m crazy ? You son of a bitch. I’m crazy? You stuck a ski pole in one girl and twisted a towel around ...”

“I didn’t, I didn’t!”

“We found the basket from your pole!” Hawes shouted.

“What basket? I don’t know what ...”

“Your fingerprints are all over it!” he lied.

“You’re crazy,” Wollender said. “How could I get on the lift? I can’t walk. I broke the leg in two places. One of the bones came right through the skin. I couldn’t get on a lift if I wanted ...”

“The skin,” Hawes said.

“What?”

“The skin!” There was a wild look in his eyes now. He pulled Wollender closer to him and yelled, “Where’d she scratch you?”

“What?”

He seized the front of Wollender’s shirt with both hands, and then ripped it open. “Where’s the cut, Elmer? On your chest? On your neck?”

Wollender struggled to get away from him, but Hawes had his head captured in both huge hands now. He twisted Wollender’s face viciously, forced his head forward, pulled back the shirt collar.

“Let go of me!” Wollender screamed.

“What’s this, Elmer?” His fingers grasped the adhesive bandage on the back of Wollender’s neck. Angrily, he tore it loose. A healing cut, two inches long and smeared with iodine, ran diagonally from a spot just below Wollender’s hairline.

“I did that myself,” Wollender said. “I bumped into ...”

“Helga did it,” Hawes said. “When you stabbed her! The sheriff’s got the skin, Elmer. It was under her fingernails.”

“No,” Wollender said. He shook his head.

The room was suddenly very still. Both men were exhausted. Hawes kept clinging to the front of Wollender’s shirt, breathing hard, waiting. Wollender kept shaking his head.

“You want to tell me?”

Wollender shook his head.

“How long have you been walking?”

Wollender shook his head again.

“Why’d you keep your leg in the cast?”

Again, Wollender shook his head.

“You killed two young girls!” Hawes bellowed. He was surprised to find himself trembling. His hand tightened on the shirt front, the knuckles showing white through his skin. Perhaps Wollender felt the sudden tension, perhaps Wollender knew that in the next instant Hawes would throttle him.

“All right,” he said. His voice was very low. “All right.”

“Why’d you keep wearing the cast?”

“So ... so ... so she wouldn’t know. So she would think I ... I was ... was unable to walk. And that way, I could ... could watch her. Without her knowing.”

“Watch who?”

“Helga. She ... She was my girl, you see. I ... I loved her, you see.”

“Yeah, you loved her enough to kill her,” Hawes said.

“That’s not why I ...” He shook his head. “It was because of Kurtz. She kept denying it, but I knew about them. And I warned her. You have to believe that I warned her. And I ... I kept the cast on my leg to ... to fool her.”

“When did it come off?” Hawes asked.

“Last week. The…the doctor took it off right in this room. He did a bivalve, with an electric saw, cut it right down the side. And…and when he was gone, I…I figured I could put the two halves together again, and…and…hold it in place with…with tape. That way, I could watch her. Without her knowing I could get around.”

“And what did you see?”

“You know what I saw!”

“Tell me.”

“Friday night, she ... I ... I saw Kurtz leaving the annex. I knew he’d been with her.”

“He was there to pick up Maria’s skates,” Hawes said. “To sharpen them.”

“No!” Wollender shouted, and for a moment there was force in his voice, a vocal explosion, fury and power, and Hawes remembered again the brute strength of Wollender’s attack on the mountain. Wollender’s voice died again. “No,” he said softly, “you’re mistaken. He was with Helga. I know. Do you think I’d have killed her if ...” His voice caught. His eyes suddenly misted. He turned his head, not looking at Hawes, staring across the room, the tears solidifying his eyes. “When I went up to her room, I warned her,” he said, his voice low. “I told her I had seen him, seen him with my own eyes, and she ... she said I was imagining things. And she laughed.” His face went suddenly tight. “She laughed, you see. She ... she shouldn’t have laughed.” His eyes filled with tears, had a curiously opaque look. “She shouldn’t have laughed,” he said. “It wasn’t funny. I loved her. It wasn’t funny.”

“No,” Hawes said wearily. “It wasn’t funny at all.”

The storm was over.

The storm which had started suddenly and filled the air with fury was gone. The wind had died after scattering the clouds from the sky. They drove in the warm comfort of the convertible, the sky a clear blue ahead of them, the snow banked on either side of the road.

The storm was over.

There were only the remains of its fury now, the hard-packed snow beneath the automobile, and the snow lining the roads, and the snow hanging in the branches of the trees. But now it was over and done, and now there was only the damage to count, and the repairs to be made.

He sat silently behind the wheel of the car, a big redheaded man who drove effortlessly. His anger was gone, too, like the anger of the storm. There was only a vast sadness inside him.

“Cotton?” Blanche said.

“Mmmm?” He did not take his eyes from the road. He watched the winding white ribbon and listened to the crunch of snow beneath his heavy-duty tires, and over that the sound of her voice.