The Cry of the Owl (23 page)

“Really? Seen by whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well—I know this isn’t a good time to talk to you.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“And—gad, that Susie Escham, she doesn’t help, does she?”

“If you’re talking about what she said about how we met—that’s true.”

“True? You mean, what Greg said, too?”

“Yes, and I’m tired of lying about it. What’s the purpose now, anyway?”

“But—you mean, that’s why Jenny was afraid of you?”

Naomi’s new fear, her new attitude, meshed nicely with her belief that he had killed Greg. “Yes, I suppose that’s part of it. Do you mind if I hang up now, Naomi? Please? Thank you.” He put the telephone down on her “Wait!”

The news was going to be around in no time, he thought. The fact that he’d met Jenny by prowling, and that Greg had been seen in a New York hotel, but the first item was going to travel faster and harder. He took a couple of aspirins and made a pot of fresh coffee.

A call from Jack and Betty Nielson came around nine. They wanted to know if he was all right, and if he would like to come over and spend the night at their house. Robert thanked them and said no. Then Nickie called. Nickie expressed her sympathies in regard to Jenny’s death, and it sounded almost proper, yet her tone was sarcastic. And it didn’t sink into him. He listened, answered politely, and then stopped, holding the telephone.

“Nothing else to say, Bobbie? Are you there? Come on, Bobbie, aren’t you talking? Feeling guilty, maybe?”

He put the telephone down gently. Then he lay on the red couch again. He was in pajamas and robe now, and the headache was worse, sleep was far away, and he wanted to postpone the tedious hours
of lying awake in bed upstairs. The papers had said Jenny’s parents were coming up tomorrow to take the body back. He thought of them cursing him and blaming him.

It was a deathly night. Robert lay in bed for an hour or so, then went down to the kitchen to try some hot milk with Scotch in it, by way of getting to sleep. It was not yet midnight. He stood leaning against the refrigerator with the cup in his hand, sipping it slowly. Then as he moved to take the cup to the sink, there was an explosion at the front of the house. Robert dropped to the floor. He lay wide-eyed and motionless for an instant. It had been a gunshot, he thought, not a firecracker or the backfire of a car. Somebody was moving around the house now, he supposed, probably looking through another window to see if the shot had got him, maybe the kitchen window right behind him. Without moving, he tried to feel if he had pain anywhere, blood anywhere. Why had he dropped to the floor? A reflex from Army training?

Robert heard nothing outside the house.

Slowly, he got up, a plain target in the brightly lighted kitchen with its two windows, and clicked off the light switch by the door. Then he went into the dark living room. There was no light in the bedroom upstairs. The windows showed nothing but blackness, as there was no street light for several yards. Robert went to the front window, to the right of the door, where the bullet must have come from. Looking into the kitchen from here, he could see the vague white bulk of the refrigerator. The living-room window was open four inches. Robert stooped and looked out. All seemed silent and black. Black, round clumps of bushes, the black form of a tall tree—and those he might not have seen if he had not known they were there.

Greg, he wondered, or one of Greg’s friends? Robert turned the living-room light on, and walked slowly to the coffee table for a cigarette. He should tell the police, he supposed, if it really was a bullet shot. He went into the kitchen and tried to find the hole. The front of the refrigerator showed nothing. Robert looked at the wall on either side of it. Then he looked at the living-room wall near the kitchen. Nothing. He picked up the telephone, called the Rittersville police, and reported the incident. The man on the other end of the telephone sounded merely annoyed. He asked if Robert had found any bullet hole, then if he was sure it had been a gunshot. Robert said yes.

The officer said he would send somebody over.

It was more than Robert had expected.

About an hour later, a pair of police officers arrived. They asked Robert the time the shot had been fired—midnight, Robert thought—and from where. Robert had not touched the window that was slightly open. But they could not find the bullet. Logically, it should have hit the refrigerator or the wall above it, but there was no bullet hole.

“On a quiet night, backfire can sound pretty loud, you know,” said one of the officers.

Robert nodded. No use telling them, he thought, that he had a pretty good idea Greg had fired the shot, if they couldn’t guess that themselves. The officers seemed to know who he was—“You’re the Forester who knew the Thierolf girl,” one of them had said when they came in. It would take Lippenholtz, Robert supposed, to connect Greg with the gunshot. Maybe. These two looked like classic flatfeet making a routine visit because of somebody’s complaint about a strange noise.

“Is Detective Lippenholtz on duty tomorrow, do you know?” asked Robert.

“Lippy?” The officer looked at his friend.

“Yeah, I think so. Nine o’clock? Eight?”

The officers left.

Robert went up to bed, not caring now whether he slept or not. There was not much left of the night.

The next morning, with a cup of coffee in his hand, he took a look at the kitchen by the light of day. He pulled the salad bowl a few inches forward to the center of the refrigerator top, and then he saw the bullet, embedded nearly its whole length in the dark wood. It had probably knocked the bowl back against the wall, Robert thought, and he remembered that last night one of the policemen had pulled the bowl forward to see the wall behind it, then shoved the bowl back. Well, now he had it. Robert pulled at the bullet, but it wouldn’t come out.

He put the bowl on the seat beside him in his car, and drove to Rittersville. A traffic policeman he inquired of directed him to the main headquarters. Here Robert found a sergeant behind a desk in a room with a wide door. Robert gave his name and had to spell it for the sergeant, who wrote it down. Then the sergeant took a closer look at the bowl and remarked casually, “Thirty-two.”

“When is Lippenholtz due in?” Robert had asked for him when he came in. It was eight-thirty.

“I don’t know,” said the sergeant. “Any time between now and twelve. He’s out on a job.”

“Thanks.” Then Robert walked out, leaving the well-seasoned and domestic-looking salad bowl on the sergeant’s desk. Exhibit A. Exhibit B might be himself, he thought.

Greg probably thought he had got him with that one shot. Robert had dropped to the floor and lain still for several minutes. Greg must have looked through the window, waited a few seconds, then run. Robert hadn’t heard a car. Maybe Greg didn’t have a car. It would be hard for him to get one, unless he stole one, and that would be dangerous. Nickie, of course, could have lent him one, but he didn’t think Nickie would be that foolhardy. It was possible, Robert thought, that one of Greg’s friends had fired the shot. Charles Mitchell of Rittersville, for instance. But Greg himself was much more likely. Who but Greg would be angry enough to try to kill him?

Robert was in no state to do any work that day, nor would he be tomorrow or the next day, he knew. As he drove from Rittersville to Langley, Robert decided that he should speak to Jaffe this morning and tell him he thought it best to resign. He would make it official with a letter. He would also write a letter of resignation and apology to Mr. Gunnarote of Arrobrit, in Philadelphia. And then, Robert supposed, everyone would think he was retreating because of guilt, and let them. By this morning, Naomi Tesser would have told at least a dozen people that he had met Jenny Thierolf by prowling around her house, and the people she told would tell lots more. The story was intolerably dreary to Robert by now, but it would be very fresh and fascinating to others. It would either corroborate a rumor people had heard or it would come out of the blue, but now it would be a fact, because Robert Forester himself had admitted it.

He was ten or fifteen minutes late in getting to Langley Aeronautics, and all the tables were manned as he walked in. Many people
looked up, Robert greeted several with “Good morning” or with “Hi.” He felt less self-conscious than he had yesterday morning, than he had all the mornings since Tuesday of last week. He saw Jack Nielson get up from his table and come toward him. Robert took off his trench coat, put it over his arm, and started for his locker.

Jack looked him over with a worried expression on his face. He motioned toward the back corridor.

Robert shook his head. “I want to talk to Jaffe,” Robert said softly, when Jack had reached him. The men at the tables around them all kept their heads down. “I don’t know why I’m locking this coat up.”

“Tell him you want the rest of the week off,” Jack said. “My God, that’s understandable.”

Robert nodded. He turned toward his table again, in the direction of Jaffe’s office.

“Bob.” Jack was beside him again. He said in a whisper, “I think a plainclothes cop was here a couple of minutes ago. I saw him talking to Jaffe in the hall. I’m not sure, but—” He stopped.

“O.K. Thanks.” Robert felt suddenly sick. He dropped his coat across the back of his chair.

“What’s the matter? Are you O.K.?” Jack asked.

“I’m O.K.,” Robert said.

Now heads were lifting around them.

“If you’re taking off today, let’s have a coffee at the Hangar or something before you go.”

“Sure,” Robert said, and with a wave of his hand walked away toward Jaffe’s office. He glanced at the reception hall and through the glass wall saw Lippenholtz, in a light-gray suit and hat, step out of the elevator. Lippenholtz saw him at once, too, and signaled with
a backward jerk of his head. Lippenholtz stopped, evidently waiting for him. Robert opened the glass door at the end of the hall.

“So there you are,” said Lippenholtz. “Still on the job, eh?”

“Did you want to see me?” Robert asked.

“Yes. Sit down?” He gestured to the green sofa, a size for two and a half people, near the elevators.

Robert didn’t care to sit down, but he did, automatically.

“I heard about the gunshot,” Lippenholtz said. “You don’t seem to be wounded.” He was smoking a cigarette.

“No. I found the bullet this morning. A thirty-two. Maybe you heard.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Robert told him where he had found it, and said that he had taken the salad bowl to the station in Rittersville. Lippenholtz appeared interested, but unimpressed. “Do you happen to know if Wyncoop has a gun permit?” Robert asked. “Not that he’d need a permit to get a gun, but—”

Lippenholtz studied Robert’s face in silence for a few seconds. “No, Wyncoop has no gun permit. I remember that from when we were checking on other stuff about him. I suppose you think Wyncoop fired that shot?”

“I’ve a strong suspicion he did.”

“Well, Mr. Forester, something else of great interest turned up last night, too. We kept it out of the papers this morning deliberately. Wyncoop’s body washed up just above Trenton. At least, what we think is Wyncoop’s body. The exam isn’t finished yet.” Lippenholtz looked at him, and rubbed his pocked chin with a forefinger. “So—under the circumstances, don’t you think somebody
else might have fired that shot? One of Wyncoop’s hotheaded young friends, maybe?”

“What proof have you got that it’s Wyncoop?” Robert asked.

“No proof as yet, but the corpse is the same height, six feet two and a half. No clothes, except a belt with an ordinary buckle, no initial, and part of the pants. No hair, that’s the worst. Body’s been in ten days to two weeks, says the examiner. And over plenty of rocks, of course. The skull was fractured. Could have been done by a rock, but it looks more like a direct blow with a blunt instrument or possibly a rock used as a weapon. What do you say to that? They found it around eight last night. Fellow tying up his boat found it caught against his pier.”

Robert shrugged. “What do I say? I don’t think it’s Wyncoop. You said you haven’t proven it yet.”

“No, but there are two points. Nobody around that height is missing around here. And this fellow looks as if he’d been murdered.”

Robert found it unusually easy to keep calm this morning. “There’re other checks to be done, aren’t there? Such as age? Can’t they tell that from the bones? What about his—the color of his eyes?”

“Don’t speak of eyes,” said Lippenholtz.

Robert stood up restlessly. He supposed the corpse was a mess.

“Where’re you going?”

Robert lit a cigarette and didn’t answer.

“Didn’t your girl friend think you killed Wyncoop, Mr. Forester? Isn’t that why she killed herself, and why she said you represented death to her?”

Robert frowned. “What do you mean ‘didn’t she think’?”

“I’m asking you if she didn’t suspect it, believe it.”

Robert drew some water in a paper cup from the dispenser, took one swallow and dropped the cup in the chute. “I don’t know. I know her friends were talking to her. Some of them. That’s not quite the point, is it? The point is whether the corpse is Wyncoop or not.”

Lippenholtz only looked at him, his thin lips slightly smiling.

“And while you’re finding out, I suppose I’ll get plugged. Maybe tonight.”

“Oh, I doubt that, Mr. Forester.”

Robert felt like socking him. “I thought the law was supposed to get the right man. Don’t pick me just because I’m handy.”

“Mr. Forester, that’s just what we think we might do.”

Robert threw his cigarette in the sand jar and shrugged. “Matter of fact, it’s a bit safer in jail than at my house, probably.” And then he imagined the last examiner passing on the corpse as Wyncoop’s, maybe today. What then? How many years for manslaughter? Or would they decide to call it murder now?

“Want to go to jail, Mr. Forester?”

“No.” Robert shoved his hands in his back pockets. “What kind of legal procedure is this? Do you always ask people first if they want to go to jail?”

“No. Not always. Why don’t you take a look at the corpse? We’d like you to see the corpse.”