Rear Window (7 page)

 
I proceeded to breathe adenoidally, like someone in heavy upright sleep.
 
It wasn't hard.
 
My own breath was coming nearly that labored anyway, from tension.

 
He was good with knobs and hinges and things.
 
I never heard the door open, and this one, unlike the one downstairs, was right behind me.
 
A little eddy of air puffed through the dark at me.
 
I could feel it because my scalp, the real one, was all wet at the roots of the hair right then.

 
If it was going to be a knife or head-blow, the dodge might give me a second chance, that was the most I could hope for, I knew.
 
My arms and shoulders are hefty.
 
I'd bring him down on me in a bear-hug after the first slash or drive, and break his neck or collarbone against me.
 
If it was going to be a gun, he'd get me anyway in the end.
 
A difference of a few seconds.
 
He had a gun, I knew, that he was going to use on me in the open, over at Lakeside Park.
 
I was hoping that here, indoors, in order to make his own escape more practicable——

 
Time was up.

 
The flash of the shot lit up the room for a second, it was so dark.
 
Or at least the corners of it, like flickering, weak lightning.
 
The bust bounced on my shoulder and disintegrated into chunks.

 
I thought he was jumping up and down on the floor for a minute with frustrated rage.
 
Then when I saw him dart by me and lean over the window sill to look for a way out, the sound transferred itself rearwards and downwards, became a pummeling with hoof and hip at the street door.
 
The camera-finish after all.
 
But he still could have killed me five times.

 
I flung my body down into the narrow crevice between chair arm and wall, but my legs were still up, and so was my head and that one shoulder.

 
He whirled, fired at me so close that it was like looking at sunrise in the face.
 
I didn't feel it, so — it hadn't hit.

 
"You——"
 
I heard him grunt to himself.
 
I think it was the last thing he said.
 
The rest of his life was all action, not verbal.

 
He flung over the sill on one arm and dropped into the yard.
 
Two-story drop.
 
He made it because he missed the cement, landed on the sod-strip in the middle.
 
I jacked myself up over the chair arm and flung myself bodily forward at the window, neatly hitting it chin first.

 
He went all right.
 
When life depends on it, you go.
 
He took the first fence, rolled over that bellywards.
 
He went over the second like a cat, hands and feet pointed together in a spring.
 
Then he was back in the rear yard of his own building.
 
He got up on something, just about like Sam had——The rest was all footwork, with quick little corkscrew twists at each landing stage.
 
Sam had latched his windows down when he was over there, but he'd reopened one of them for ventilation on his return.
 
His whole life depended now on that casual, unthinking little act——

 
Second, third.
 
He was up to his own windows.
 
He'd made it.
 
Something went wrong.
 
He veered out away from them in another pretzel-twist, flashed up toward the fifth, the one above.
 
Something sparked in the darkness of one of his own windows where he'd been just now, and a shot thudded heavily out around the-quadrangle-enclosure like a big bass drum.

 
He passed the fifth, the sixth, got to the roof.
 
He'd made it a second time.
 
Gee, he loved life!
 
The guys in his own windows couldn't get him, he was over them in a straight line and there was too much fire escape interlacing in the way.

 
I was too busy watching him to watch what was going on around me.
 
Suddenly Boyne was next to me, sighting.
 
I heard him mutter: "I almost hate to do this, he's got to fall so far."

 
He was balanced on the roof parapet up there, with a star right over his head.
 
An unlucky star.
 
He stayed a minute too long, trying to kill before he was killed.
 
Or maybe he was killed, and knew it.

 
A shot cracked, high up against the sky, the window pane flew apart all over the two of us, and one of the books snapped right behind me.

 
Boyne didn't say anything more about hating to do it.
 
My face was pressing outward against his arm.
 
The recoil of his elbow jarred my teeth.
 
I blew a clearing through the smoke to watch him go.

 
It was pretty horrible.
 
He took a minute to show anything, standing up there on the parapet.
 
Then he let his gun go, as if to say: "I won't need this any more."
 
Then he went after it.
 
He missed the fire escape entirely, came all the way down on the outside.
 
He landed so far out he hit one of the projecting planks, down there out of sight.
 
It bounced his body up, like a springboard.
 
Then it landed again — for good.
 
And that was all.

 
I said to Boyne: "I got it.
 
I got it finally.
 
The fifth-floor flat, the one over his, that they're still working on.
 
The cement kitchen floor, raised above the level of the other rooms.
 
They wanted to comply with the fire laws and also obtain a dropped living room effect, as cheaply as possible.
 
Dig it up——"

 
He went right over then and there, down through the basement and over the fences, to save time.
 
The electricity wasn't turned on yet in that one, they had to use their torches.
 
It didn't take them long at that, once they'd got started.
 
In about half an hour he came to the window and wigwagged over for my benefit.
 
It meant yes.

 
He didn't come over until nearly eight in the morning; after they'd tidied up and taken them away.
 
Both away, the hot dead and the cold dead.
 
He said: "Jeff, I take it all back.
 
That damn fool that I sent up there about the trunk — well, it wasn't his fault, in a way.
 
I'm to blame.
 
He didn't have orders to check on the woman's description, only on the contents of the trunk.
 
He came back and touched on it in a general way.
 
I go home and I'm in bed already, and suddenly pop!
 
into my brain — one of the tenants I questioned two whole days ago had given us a few details and they didn't tally with his on several important points.
 
Talk about being slow to catch on!"

 
"I've had that all the way through this damn thing," I admitted ruefully.
 
"I called it delayed action.
 
It nearly killed me."

 
"I'm a police officer and you're not."

 
"That how you happened to shine at the right time?"

 
"Sure.
 
We came over to pick him up for questioning.
 
I left them planted there when we saw he wasn't in, and came on over here by myself to square it up with you while we were waiting.
 
How did you happen to hit on that cement floor?"

 
I told him about the freak synchronization.
 
"The renting agent showed up taller at the kitchen window in proportion to Thorwald, than he had been a moment before when both were at the living room windows together.
 
It was no secret that they were putting in cement floors, topped by a cork composition, and raising them considerably.
 
But it took on new meaning.
 
Since the top floor one has been finished for some time, it had to be the fifth.
 
Here's the way I have it lined up, just in theory.
 
She's been in ill health for years, and he's been out of work, and he got sick of that and of her both.
 
Met this other——"

 
"She'll be here later today, they're bringing her down under arrest"

 
"He probably insured her for all he could get, and then started to poison her slowly, trying not to leave any trace.
 
I imagine — and remember, this is pure conjecture — she caught him at it that night the light was on all night.
 
Caught on in some way, or caught him in the act.
 
He lost his head, and did the very thing he had wanted all along to avoid doing.
 
Killed her by violence — strangulation or a blow.
 
The rest had to be hastily improvised.
 
He got a better break than he deserved at that.
 
He thought of the apartment upstairs, went up and looked around.
 
They'd just finished laying the floor, the cement hadn't hardened yet, and the materials were still around.
 
He gouged a trough out of it just wide enough to take her body, put her in it, mixed fresh cement and recemented over her, possibly raising the general level of the floor an inch or two so that she'd be safely covered.
 
A permanent, odorless coffin.
 
Next day the workmen came back, laid down the cork surfacing on top of it without noticing anything, I suppose he'd used one of their own trowels to smooth it.
 
Then he sent his accessory upstate fast, near where his wife had been several summers before, but to a different farmhouse where she wouldn't be recognized, along with the trunk keys.
 
Sent the trunk up after her, and dropped himself an already used post card into his mailbox, with the year-date blurred.
 
In a week or two she would have probably committed 'suicide' up there as Mrs. Anna Thorwald.
 
Despondency due to ill health.
 
Written him a farewell note and left her clothes beside some body of deep water.
 
It was risky, but they might have succeeded in collecting the insurance at that."

 
By nine Boyne and the rest had gone.
 
I was still sitting there in the chair, too keyed up to sleep.
 
Sam came in and said: "Here's Doc Preston."

 
He showed up rubbing his hands, in that way he has.
 
"Guess we can take that cast off your leg now.
 
You must be tired of sitting there all day doing nothing."