After a while I walked over to her building and stood on the pavement in front of it. The florist’s truck had moved on, and I examined the street where she’d landed. There was, as Vinnie had assured me, no trace of what had happened. I tilted my head back and looked up, wondering what window she might have fallen from, then looked down at the pavement and up again, and a sudden rush of vertigo made my head spin. In the course of all this I managed to attract the attention of the building’s doorman and he came out to the curb, anxious to talk about the former tenant. He was a black man about my age and he looked as proud of his uniform as the guy in the Marine Corps recruiting poster. It was a goodlooking uniform — shades of brown, epaulets, gleaming brass buttons.
“Terrible thing,” he said, “a young girl like that with her whole life ahead of her.”
“Did you know her well?”
He shook his head. “She would give me a smile, always say hello, call me by name. Always in a hurry, rushing in, rushing out again. You wouldn’t think she had a care in the world. But you never know.”
“You never do.”
“She lived on the seventeenth floor. I wouldn’t live that high above the ground if you gave me the place rent-free.”
“Heights bother you?”
I don’t know if he heard the question. “I live up one flight of stairs. That’s just fine for me. No elevator and no high window.” His brow clouded and he looked on the verge of saying something else, but then someone started to enter his lobby and he moved to intercept him. I looked up again, trying to count windows to the seventeenth floor, but the vertigo returned and I gave it up.
“Are you Matthew Scudder?”
I looked up. The girl who’d asked the question was very young, with long straight brown hair and enormous light brown eyes. Her face was open and defenseless, and her lower lip was quivering. I said I was Matthew Scudder and pointed at the chair opposite mine. She remained on her feet.
“I’m Ruth Wittlauer,” she said.
The name didn’t register until she said, “Paula’s sister.” Then I nodded and studied her face for signs of a family resemblance. If they were there I couldn’t find them. It was ten in the evening, Paula had been dead for eighteen hours, and her sister was standing expectantly before me, her face a curious blend of determination and uncertainty.
I said, “I’m sorry. Won’t you sit down? And will you have something to drink?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Coffee?”
“I’ve been drinking coffee all day, I’m shaky from all the damn coffee. Do I have to order something?”
She was on the edge, all right. I said, “No, of course not.” I caught Trina’s eye and warned her off and she nodded shortly and let us alone. I sipped my own drink and watched Ruth Wittlauer over the brim of the cup.
“You knew my sister, Mr. Scudder.”
“In a superficial way, as a customer knows a waitress.”
“The police say she killed herself.”
“And you don’t think so?”
“I know she didn’t.”
I watched her eyes while she spoke, and I was willing to believe she meant what she said. She didn’t believe that Paula went out the window of her own accord, not for a moment. Of course that didn’t mean she was right.
“What do you think happened?”
“She was murdered. I know she was murdered. I think I know who did it.”
“Who?”
“Cary McCloud.”
“I don’t know him.”
“But it may have been somebody else,” she went on. She lit a cigarette, smoked for a few moments in silence. “I’m pretty sure it was Cary,” she said.
“Why?”
“They were living together.” She frowned, as if in recognition of the fact that cohabitation was small evidence of murder. “He could do it,” she said carefully. “That’s why I think he did. I don’t think just anyone could commit murder. In the heat of the moment, sure, I guess people fly off the handle, but to do it deliberately and throw someone out of a, out of a, to just deliberately throw someone out of a—”
I put my hand on top of hers. She had long, small-boned hands, and her skin was cool and dry to the touch.
“What do the police say?”
“They say she killed herself.” She drew on the cigarette. “But they didn’t know her. If Paula wanted to kill herself she would have taken pills. She liked pills.”
“I figured she took ups.”
“Ups, tranquilizers, ludes, barbiturates. And she liked grass and she liked to drink.” She lowered her eyes. My hand was still on top of hers and she looked at our two hands and I removed mine. “I don’t do any of those things. I drink coffee, that’s my one vice, and I don’t even do that much because it makes me jittery. It’s the coffee that’s making me nervous tonight. Not — all of this.”
“Okay.”
“She was twenty-four. I’m twenty. Baby sister — square baby sister — except that was always how she wanted me to be. She did all those things and at the same time she told me not to do them, that it was a bad scene. I think she kept me straight. I really do. Not so much because of what she was saying as that I looked at the way she was living and what it was doing to her and I didn’t want that for myself. I thought it was crazy what she was doing to herself, but at the same time I guess I worshipped her. I loved her. God, I really did — I’m just starting to realize how much. And she’s dead and he killed her, I know he killed her, I just know it.”
I asked her what she wanted me to do.
“You’re a detective.”
“Not in an official sense. I used to be a cop.”
“Could you find out what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“I tried talking to the police. It was like talking to the wall. I can’t just turn around and do nothing.”
“Suppose I look into it and it still looks like suicide?”
“She didn’t kill herself.”
“Well, suppose I wind up thinking that she did?”
She thought it over. “I still wouldn’t have to believe it.”
“No,” I agreed. “We get to choose what we believe.”
“I have some money.” She put her purse on the table. “I’m the straight sister. I have an office job, I save money. I have five hundred dollars with me.”
“That’s too much to carry with you in this neighborhood.”
“Is it enough to hire you?”
I didn’t want to take her money. She had five hundred dollars and a dead sister, and parting with one wouldn’t bring the other back to life. I’d have worked for nothing, but that wouldn’t have been good because neither of us would have taken it seriously enough.
And I have rent to pay and two sons to support, and Armstrong’s charges for the coffee and the bourbon. I took four fifty-dollar bills from her and told her I’d do my best to earn them.
After Paula Wittlauer hit the pavement, a black-and-white from the 18th Precinct caught the squeal and took charge of the case. One of the cops in the car was a guy named Guzik. I hadn’t known him when I was on the force, but we’d met since then. I didn’t like him and I don’t think he cared for me either, but he was reasonably honest and had struck me as competent. I got him on the phone the next morning and offered to buy him a lunch.
We met at an Italian place on 56th Street. He had veal and peppers and some red wine. I wasn’t hungry, but I made myself eat a small steak.
Between bites of veal he said, “The kid sister, huh? I talked to her. She’s so clean and so pretty it could break your heart if you let it. And of course she don’t want to believe Sis did the Dutch act. I asked is she Catholic because then there’s the religious angle, but that wasn’t it. Anyway, your average priest’ll stretch a point. They’re the best lawyers going, the hell, two thousand years of practice, they oughta be good. I took that attitude myself. I said, ‘Look, there’s all these pills. Let’s say your sister had herself some pills and drank a little wine and smoked a little pot and then she went to the window for some fresh air. So she got a little dizzy and maybe she blacked out and most likely she never knew what was happening.’ Because there’s no question of insurance, Matt, so if she wants to think it’s an accident I’m not gonna shout suicide in her ear. But that’s what it says in the file.”