Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

“In my apartment.”

“Unless you moved out an’ somebody else moved in. You still livin’ in the same place, Bern?”

“Uh,” I said.

“I guess it ain’t a bad place to live,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be livin’ there, an’ it must be a good place to die, too, ’cause that’s what she used it for. Not that she didn’t have help.”

“She was murdered?”

“I’d say so. People’ll shoot themselves now an’ then, and sometimes they’ll stab themselves, but it’s rare for somebody to do both.”

“She was…”

“Shot an’ stabbed, right. Shot in the shoulder an’ stabbed in the heart, or close enough to it to be just as good. The ME says death was pretty much instantaneous.”

“At least she didn’t suffer,” I said, “whoever she was. Was it the knife wound that killed her?”

“For the gunshot to kill her,” he said, “it woulda had to be blood poisoning, because she had the wound all bandaged up. The doc wouldn’t go out on a limb, but what he said was it was a minimum of twenty-four hours old. She got shot, she got patched up, and she went over to your place and got herself stabbed to death.”

“When did this happen, Ray?”

“Sometime last night, from the looks of things. While you were home sleepin’, Bern.”

“Who found the body?”

“Couple of uniforms.”

“They were just passing through my apartment and happened to notice her there?”

“Respondin’ to a call.”

“When was this?”

“Around eleven this mornin’. Some neighbor told your doorman there was suspicious sounds comin’ from your apartment in the middle of the night.”

“So he waited until morning? And then he told the doorman?”

“She. You know a Mrs. Hesch?”

“Down the hall from me. A nice lady.”

“Well, she heard something in the middle of the night, but don’t ask her when. Because I already asked an’ I got everything but a straight answer. She went back to sleep an’ woke up wonderin’, so she knocked on your door an’ you didn’t answer, an’ then she called you on the phone an’ you still didn’t answer, so she told your doorman.”

“And he called it in?”

“He tried you on the intercom, and then he went upstairs and banged on the door, but you didn’t answer, and neither did she.”

“She?”

“The dead girl. So he went an’ phoned it in.”

“And a couple of uniforms came and forced my lock,” I said. “Damn it, anyway.”

“Relax, Bern.”

“If you knew how many times I’ve had to replace that lock…”

“You don’t have to replace it this time, because nobody forced it. The doorman had a key.”

“He did?”

“The one you left with him.”

“I figured it must have disappeared. If he had a key, why didn’t he open up right away?”

“Maybe he was afraid of what he might find. Maybe he did open the door an’ saw her from the doorway an’ got the hell out an’ let the uniforms find her for themselves. What the hell difference does it make? She was dead on the floor this mornin’, an’ she’d been dead for a while.”

“How long?”

“For the time bein’ I’m just guessin’, but say six or eight hours. She probably got herself killed sometime in the middle of the night.”

“When did you come into the picture, Ray?”

“Right away. Me an’ you are linked in the department’s computers, Bern. There’s a flag with my name on it that pops up anytime your name comes up. It didn’t take long for somebody to call me.”

I looked at my watch. “It took you a while to get here, though.”

“Yeah, it did. I figured, why hurry? I might as well wait an’ hear what the ME had to say. An’ I wanted to find out who she was, just in case you never managed to catch her name.”

I already had a pretty good idea, but I had to ask. “Who was she, Ray?”

“The name Karen Kassenmeier ring any kind of a bell?”

She’d been alive at four-thirty in the morning, I thought. Gloriously alive, making triumphant noises on the spread-covered bed in Room 303 at the Hotel Paddington. Then the guy had hustled her out of there and took her north and west to my apartment, where he stabbed her and left her for dead.

“ Bern?”

Unless she went up to my place on her own and met somebody else there. I had no way of knowing if the man she’d been with in Room 303 had killed her, or if it had been somebody else. And it didn’t make too much difference, since I didn’t know who he was. But why my place?

“Uh, Bern…”

Maybe because she knew where it was. Maybe she realized she was in danger, and thought I could save her.

“Hey, Bernie? Where’d you go?”

“I’m right here,” I said. “I was thinking, that’s all. Her name’s not Karen Kassenmeier.”

“Sure it is.”

“No, it’s not. As a matter of fact-”

The phone rang.

“Answer that,” Ray said. “An’ the hell that ain’t her name. It’s good solid police work turned it up, includin’ takin’ prints off her cold dead fingers an’ runnin’ ’ em by Washington. Karen Ruth Kassenmeier from-”

“ Oklahoma,” I said. “ Kansas City.”

“If it ain’t her, how come you know where she’s from? An’ whyntcha answer the phone, because it’s givin’ me a headache.”

“They all want the same thing,” I said. “You want me to answer it? Fine, I’ll answer it, and I’ll tell this one the same thing I told the other two. And then I’ll tell you the real name of the woman who’s been calling herself Karen Kassenmeier.”

I grabbed the phone.

“I don’t have the letters,” I snapped, “and I never will. And I’m a little busy right now.”

“Bernie? Is that you?”

“Uh,” I said.

“I guess I picked a bad time,” she said. “I’ll try you a little later.”

“Wait,” I said, but the line went dead. I looked at the receiver for a moment, but that never really accomplishes anything, and eventually I gave up and put it back in its cradle.

“Well,” he said, “let’s hear it.”

“Huh?”

“The name,” he said. “The real name of the dead dame on your floor.”

“She’s not still on my floor, is she? Don’t tell me they haven’t moved her.”

“Quit stallin’, huh? Who is she?”

“Karen Kassenmeier,” I said.

“That’s what I said. You were gettin’ ready to say somethin’ else.”

“No, not me.”

“Of course you were. I know what I said, an’ I know what you said, an’ what I’d like to know is what you almost said an’ why you decided not to say it.”

“Whatever it was,” I said, “that phone call just drove it straight out of my mind. That’s what you get for making me answer it.”

“ Bern -”

“Whatever it was,” I said, “I’m sure it wasn’t important. And if I ever remember it I’ll be sure to let you know.”

Her name’s Alice Cottrell -that’s what I’d been ready to tell him, and if the phone call hadn’t emptied my mind, it had certainly changed it.

Because that was Alice Cottrell on the phone.

“Here you go,” Ray said. “Take a look.”

“I hate this.”

“No kiddin’, Bern. You liked it, I’d have to start worryin’ about you. Nobody likes to look at dead bodies. Why do you think we bury ’em?”

“So we won’t have to look at them?”

“Reason enough,” he said. “Well? What do you think?”

I turned away. “I’ve never seen her before,” I said. “Can we go now?”

“I didn’t go home last night,” I said.

“Jeez, that comes as a shock to me, Bern.”

“I had a reason for saying I did.”

“Of course you did, an’ the reason’s you’re a liar. A guy lifts things for a livin’, you don’t hardly expect every word outta his mouth’s gonna be the truth. Half the questions I ask you, main reason I ask is to see what kind of a story you come up with.”