Insomnia (36 page)

‘Yes.’

‘It’s your downstairs tenant I’m chiefly worried about. When the word discretion is mentioned, it’s
not
the Prof I think of.’

Ralph laughed heartily. ‘I won’t say a word to him – Scout’s Honor – but it’s interesting you’d mention him; Bill went to school with Mrs Locher, way back when.
Grammar
school.’

‘Man, I can’t imagine the Prof in grammar school,’ Leydecker said. ‘Can you?’

‘Sort of,’ Ralph said, but the picture which rose in his mind was an exceedingly peculiar one: Bill McGovern looking like a cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and Tom Sawyer in a pair of knickers, long white socks . . . and a Panama hat.

‘We’re not sure
what
happened to Mrs Locher,’ Leydecker said. ‘What we do know is that shortly after three a.m., 911 logged an anonymous call from someone – a male – who claimed to have just seen two men, one carrying a pair of scissors, come out of Mrs Locher’s house.’

‘She was killed?’ Ralph exclaimed, realizing two things simultaneously: that he sounded more believable than he ever would have expected, and that he had just crossed a bridge. He hadn’t burned it behind him – not yet, anyway – but he would not be able to go back to the other side without a lot of explanations.

Leydecker turned his hands palms up and shrugged. ‘If she was, it wasn’t with a pair of scissors or any other sharp object. There wasn’t a mark on her.’

That, at least, was something of a relief.

‘On the other hand, it’s possible to scare someone to death – especially someone who’s old and sick – during the commission of a crime,’ Leydecker said. ‘Anyway, this’ll be easier to explain if you let me just tell you what I know. It won’t take long, believe me.’

‘Of course. Sorry.’

‘Want to hear something funny? The first person I thought of when I looked over the 911 call-sheet was you.’

‘Because of the insomnia, right?’ Ralph asked. His voice was steady.

‘That and the fact that the caller claimed to have seen these men from his living room.
Your
living room looks out on the Avenue, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Uh-huh. I even thought of listening to the tape, then I remembered that you were coming in today . . . and that you’re sleeping through again. That’s right, isn’t it?’

Without an instant of pause or consideration, Ralph set fire to the bridge he had just crossed. ‘Well, I’m not sleeping like I did when I was sixteen and working two after-school jobs, I won’t kid you about that, but if I was the guy who called 911 last night, I did it in my sleep.’

‘Exactly what I figured. Besides, if you saw something a little off-kilter on the street, why would you make the call anonymously?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ralph said, and thought,
But suppose it was a little more than off-kilter, John? Suppose it was completely unbelievable?

‘Me, neither,’ Leydecker said. ‘Your place has a view of Harris Avenue, yes, but so do about three dozen others . . . and just because the guy who made the call
said
he was inside, that doesn’t mean he really was, does it?’

‘I guess not. There’s a pay-phone outside the Red Apple he could have called from, plus one outside the liquor store. A couple in Strawford Park, too, if they work.’

‘Actually there are four in the park, and they all work. We checked.’

‘Why would he lie about where he was calling from?’

‘The most likely reason is because he was lying about the rest of what he had to say, too. Anyway, Donna Hagen said the guy sounded very young and sure of himself.’ The words were barely out of his mouth before Leydecker winced and put a hand on top of his head. ‘That didn’t come out just the way I meant it, Ralph. Sorry.’

‘It’s okay – the idea that I sound like an old fart on a pension is not exactly a new concept to me. I
am
an old fart on a pension. Go on.’

‘Chris Nell was the responding officer – first on the scene. Do you remember him from the day we arrested Ed?’

‘I remember the name.’

‘Uh-huh. Steve Utterback was the responding detective and the OIC – officer in charge. He’s a good man.’

The guy in the watchcap,
Ralph thought.

‘The lady was dead in bed, but there was no sign of violence. Nothing obvious taken, either, although old ladies like May Locher aren’t usually into a lot of real hockable stuff – no VCR, no big fancy stereo, nothing like that. She
did
have one of those Bose Waves, though, and two or three pretty nice pieces of jewelry. This is not to say that there wasn’t other jewelry as nice or nicer, but—’

‘But why would a burglar take some and not all?’

‘Exactly. What’s more interesting in this case is that the front door – the one the 911 caller said he saw the two men coming out of – was locked from the inside. Not just a spring-lock, either; there was a thumb-bolt and a chain. Same with the back door, by the way. So if the 911 caller was on the up and up, and if May Locher was dead when the two guys left, who locked the doors?’

Maybe it was the Crimson King,
Ralph thought . . . and to his horror, almost said aloud.

‘I don’t know. What about the windows?’

‘Locked. Thumb-latches turned. And, just in case that’s not Agatha Christie enough for you, Steve says the storms were on. One of the neighbors told him Mrs Locher hired a kid to put them on just last week.’

‘Sure she did,’ Ralph said. ‘Pete Sullivan, the same kid who delivers the newspaper. Now that I think of it, I saw him doing it.’

‘Mystery-novel bullshit,’ Leydecker said, but Ralph thought Leydecker would have swapped Susan Day for May Locher in about three seconds. ‘The prelim medical came in just before I left for the courthouse to meet you. I had a glance at it. Myocardial this, thrombosis that . . . heart-failure’s what it comes down to. Right now we’re treating the 911 call as a crank – we get em all the time, all cities do – and the lady’s death as a heart-attack brought on by her emphysema.’

‘Just a coincidence, in other words.’ That conclusion might save him a lot of trouble – if it flew, that was – but Ralph could hear the disbelief in his own voice.

‘Yeah, I don’t like it, either. Neither does Steve, which is why the house has been sealed. State Forensics will give it a complete top-to-bottom, probably starting tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Mrs Locher has taken a little ride down to Augusta for a more comprehensive postmortem. Who knows what it’ll show? Sometimes they
do
show things. You’d be surprised.’

‘I suppose I would,’ Ralph said.

Leydecker tossed his toothpick into the trash, appeared to brood for a moment, then brightened up. ‘Hey, here’s an idea – maybe I’ll get someone in clerical to make a dupe of that 911 call. I could bring it over and play it for you. Maybe you’ll recognize the voice. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.’

‘I suppose they have,’ Ralph said, smiling uneasily.

‘Anyway, it’s Utterback’s case. Come on, I’ll see you out.’

In the hall, Leydecker gave Ralph another searching look. This one made Ralph feel a good deal more uncomfortable, because he had no idea what it meant. The auras had disappeared again.

He tried on a smile that felt lame. ‘Something hanging out of my nose that shouldn’t be?’

‘Nope. I’m just amazed at how good you look for someone who went through what you did yesterday. And compared to how you looked last summer . . . if that’s what honeycomb can do, I’m going to buy myself a beehive.’

Ralph laughed as though this were the funniest thing he had ever heard.

1:42 a.m., Tuesday morning.

Ralph sat in the wing-chair, watching wheels of fine mist revolve around the streetlights. Up the street, the police-line tapes hung dispiritedly in front of May Locher’s house.

Barely two hours’ sleep tonight, and he found himself again thinking that dead might be better. No more insomnia then. No more long waits for dawn in this hateful chair. No more days when he seemed to be looking at the world through the Gardol Invisible Shield they used to prattle about on the toothpaste commercials. Back when TV had been almost brand-new, that had been, in the days when he had yet to find the first strands of gray in his hair and he was always asleep five minutes after he and Carol had finished making love.

Except it wasn’t. Considering some of the things he’d seen just lately, a few people saying he looked like a new man was far, far down on his list of oddities.

Ralph’s eyes returned to May Locher’s house. The place had been locked up, according to Leydecker, but Ralph had seen the two little bald doctors come out the front door, he had
seen
them, goddammit—

But had he?

Had he really?

Ralph cast his mind back to the previous morning. Sitting down in this same chair with a cup of tea and thinking
Let the play begin
. And then he had seen those two little bald bastards come out, damn it,
he had seen them come out of May Locher’s house!

Except maybe that was wrong, because he hadn’t really been looking at Mrs Locher’s house; he had been pointed more in the direction of the Red Apple. He’d thought the flicker of movement in the corner of his eye was probably Rosalie, and had turned his head to check.
That
was when he’d seen the little bald doctors on the stoop of May Locher’s house. He was no longer entirely sure he had seen the front door open; maybe he had just assumed that part, and why not? They sure as hell hadn’t come up Mrs Locher’s walk.

Except he could. At three in the morning, Harris Avenue was as still as the mountains of the moon – the slightest movement anywhere within the range of his vision registered.

Had
Doc #1 and Doc #2 come out the front door? The longer Ralph thought about it, the more he doubted it.

Then what happened, Ralph? Did they maybe step out from behind the Gardol Invisible Shield? Or – how’s this? – maybe they walked
through
the door, like those ghosts that used to haunt Cosmo Topper in that old TV show!

And the craziest thing of all was that felt just about right.

Yes. That was the one thing of which he was sure: he needed to spill all this to someone before it drove him crazy. But who? Carolyn would have been best, but she was dead. Leydecker? The problem there was that Ralph had already lied to him about the 911 call. Why? Because the truth would have sounded insane. It would have sounded, in fact, as if he had caught Ed Deepneau’s paranoia like a cold. And wasn’t that really the most likely explanation, when you looked at the situation dead on?

‘But that’s not it,’ he whispered. ‘They were real. The auras, too.’

Tell someone. Lay it all out. Yes. And he ought to do it before John Leydecker listened to that 911 tape and showed up asking for an explanation. Wanting to know, basically, why Ralph had lied, and what Ralph actually knew about the death of May Locher.

Tell someone. Lay it all out.

But Carolyn was dead, Leydecker was still too new, Helen was lying low at the WomanCare shelter somewhere out in the willywags, and Lois Chasse might gossip to her girlfriends. Who did that leave?

The answer became clear once he put it to himself that way, but Ralph still felt a surprising reluctance to talk to McGovern about the things which had been happening to him. He remembered the day he had found Bill sitting on a bench by the softball field, crying over his old friend and mentor, Bob Polhurst. Ralph had tried to tell Bill about the auras, and it had been as if McGovern couldn’t hear him; he had been too busy running through his well-thumbed script on the subject of how shitty it was to grow old.

Ralph thought of the satiric raised eyebrow. The unfailing cynicism. The long face, always so gloomy. The literary allusions, which usually made Ralph smile but often left him feeling a tad inferior, as well. And then there was McGovern’s attitude toward Lois: condescending, even a touch cruel.

Yet this was a long way from being fair, and Ralph knew it. Bill McGovern
was
capable of kindness, and – perhaps far more important in this case – understanding. He and Ralph had known each other for over twenty years; for the last ten of those years they had lived in the same building. He had been one of Carolyn’s pallbearers, and if Ralph couldn’t talk to Bill about what had been happening to him, who
could
he talk to?

The answer seemed to be no one.

The misty rings around the streetlamps were gone by the time daylight began to brighten the sky in the east, and by nine o’clock the day was clear and warm – the beginning of Indian summer’s final brief passage, perhaps. Ralph went downstairs as soon as
Good Morning America
was over, determined to tell McGovern what had been happening to him (or as much as he dared, anyway) before he could lose his nerve. Standing outside the door of the downstairs apartment, however, he could hear the shower running and the mercifully distant sound of William D. McGovern singing ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’.

Ralph went out to the porch, stuck his hands in his back pockets, and read the day like a catalogue. There was nothing, he reflected, really nothing in the world like October sunshine; he could almost feel his night-miseries draining away. They would undoubtedly be back, but for now he felt all right – tired and muzzy-headed, yes, but still pretty much all right. The day was more than pretty; it was downright gorgeous, and Ralph doubted if there would be another as good before next May. He decided he would be a fool not to take advantage of it. A walk up to the Harris Avenue Extension and back again would take half an hour, forty-five minutes if there happened to be someone up there worth batting a little breeze with, and by then Bill would be showered, shaved, combed, and dressed. Also ready to lend a sympathetic ear, if Ralph was lucky.