Флетчер Флора - Strange Sisters

“It’s all wrapped up, then?” Tromp said.

Ridley stirred in his chair, still watching the sparrows. “Why not?”

“No reason, I guess. I guess she was guilty, all right.”

“Of course she was guilty. I don’t know what a jury would’ve thought about the evidence, but that doesn’t matter now. She was guilty, and she’s dead, and that’s the end of it.”

“I wish she’d left a note — a confession. Usually they do that.”

“Not the ones like her. Not the ones who have the big break. They don’t stop to write a note for the convenience of cops.”

“Yeah.” Tromp’s voice was heavy. “She was a real psycho, all right. Why didn’t we hold her? We had enough to justify it.”

Ridley ignored the subtle undertone of accusation, for he had, after all, been asking himself the same question. Why didn’t you hold her, James J. Ridley? She was guilty, and she was ready to break, and you knew that both of these things were true, so why didn’t you hold her? He didn’t answer the question. Someday he would answer it, because he was basically honest even with himself, but he was not ready now. For the present, it was better to sit and watch the sparrows on the window sill.

“All that dyed hair on the floor,” Tromp said. “Her scalp all stained with that orange stuff the way it was. Why would a dame do something like that?”

“She was unbalanced. Off the deep end. You said it yourself, Sergeant. Psycho, you said.”

“Sure. But that doesn’t explain anything. You know that as well as I do. Crazy people do crazy things, but what makes them do certain kinds of crazy things? They’ve got reasons, just like anyone else.”

“That’s not our problem. Leave it to the head doctors.”

“Maybe it’s our problem if it indicates a motive. We still I don’t know why she killed the guy. We can make a pretty good guess, but we don’t really know. That crazy stuff about her hair was on her mind. She started talking it right away the night I was there, the night she came in plastered. Then she ends up trying a dye job, dead with an old-fashioned convict’s haircut. That’s not coincidence. It means something.”

“All right, Sergeant, all right.”

Ridley shifted his weight in the chair. He wanted Tromp to quit talking. He wanted Tromp to go away. He closed his eyes, obliterating the sparrows. Behind his lids, the thin face and hairless head of Kathy Gait was a soft illumination. A kind of cross between innocence and obscenity, he thought. He opened his eyes and the sparrows were still there.

Behind him, there was a measured, padded sound, and he realized that Tromp was pounding a clenched fist into a palm.

“Those pills,” Tromp said bitterly. “Those Goddamn green pills. They were in the medicine cabinet when I was there the first time. I should’ve taken them.”

“Why? She’d have found another way. Maybe a less pleasant one.”

“I should’ve known what they were. I should’ve taken them.”

“You can’t anticipate suicide in the case of everyone with a supply of soporifics.”

“This was different. In this case there were pointers.”

“Look, Sergeant. You’ve been in this game long enough to know better than to bleed for something that can’t be helped. You’d better forget it.”

“Sure. You’re right, of course.”

Tromp stood up. He felt that Ridley was holding back, and it made him sore. Ridley knew what it was all about, no question of that. That hair stuff. Why all this had happened. He’d known from the first, right from the moment he’d sniffed the scent over the telephone, but he wasn’t putting out. That was pretty apparent by now. All right, Goddamn him. Let the smart bastard stay buttoned up. To hell with all of it.

“I think I’ll get along home,” he said.

“Sure. See you tomorrow.”

Tromp left, and Ridley began to think that maybe it would have been better, on the whole, if he’d married and established a home himself. It might be pretty nice, having a wife. Maybe a kid or two. Of course he was comfortable enough in his room. He had all the books there that he’d read and liked well enough to keep, and he had a lot more that he wanted to read and had never got around to. There were so many things a man never got around to.

How did it start? How did it grow? How did a pretty girl a man could have loved come in such a twisted way to such a bad end?

He wasn’t thinking about murder. Murder was incidental.

He told himself that he’d better quit thinking about it at all. He’d better follow his advice to Tromp and forget it. He’d better get out of here and go to his room and read a book. Maybe he’d read Ecclesiastes. He didn’t read the Bible much any more, and he hadn’t read Ecclesiastes for a long time. Pretty soon he’d go get a drink and go to his room and read it again: The words of the Preacher, the son of David...

In the meantime, he watched the sparrows.