The first house he came to, nestled among tall old trees, was built in the Spanish style with white stucco walls, a red tile roof, and a central patio facing the street. It was nine thirty-five by his wristwatch when he rang the bell.
From the porch he could see through a window that the garage, which formed one side of the patio, was empty. He rang twice more and was about to give up when the door was opened a few inches on a security chain.
“Who is it?” asked a male voice from the dark entry hall.
“Police officer, sir,” said Auburn, holding up his identification to the crack between door and jamb. “Making a routine investigation. Can I come in?”
“Investigation of what?”
“A man was found dead early this morning near the rear of your property.”
A longish silence ensued. Auburn could smell coffee brewing in the house. “Who was he?”
“We don’t have a positive I.D. yet. Would you mind if I came in and asked you a few questions?”
“How do I know you’re the police?”
Auburn held up his badge again, mounted in a leatherette case along with a photo identification card. “Here’s my I.D.”
“I can’t see,” said the voice. A pale, sinewy hand came through the crack, moved down until it touched the I.D., and went over it swiftly, the index and middle fingers twitching like the antennae of an insect. The hand disappeared, and the door closed and opened again.
“Come in.”
Auburn stepped into the shadowy hall to confront a man in his thirties wearing wraparound sunglasses of an inky blackness. “Come on back to the kitchen.”
Light flooding in through a south window lit up a big kitchen with a tile floor. On the table in the breakfast nook was a half-eaten meal of sausage and prefabricated waffles. The digital clock on the microwave oven said four twenty-two. “Like some coffee?”
“Sure. Thanks. I’ll get it.” Somewhere in the house a stereo was playing what Auburn took to be a modem opera — a flat, metallic soprano voice shrieking acidly to the accompaniment of orchestral discords. “Do you live here alone?”
“Part of the time. My sister stays here until we start getting on each other’s nerves, and then she disappears for a while.”
Auburn poured himself a cup of coffee and took a seat opposite his host, who had gone back to his breakfast. He took out a three-by-five-inch file card, laid it on the kitchen table, and uncapped his pen. “Your name, sir?”
“Conrad Neldrick. What’s yours?”
“Cyrus Auburn. Detective Sergeant.”
“How do you do?” Neldrick put down his fork and reached across the table to shake hands, with a grip like a horse trainer’s. In the strong light Auburn noted two fresh shaving nicks on the side of his neck, of which Neldrick himself was probably unaware, and a blood blister on his left index finger. “What’s this about a dead body?”
“A man was found dead along Route 5 this morning, just this side of the road.”
“Whereabouts? On my property?”
“Not exactly.” Auburn raised his arm to point but let it drop again. “Probably straight back from your neighbor’s house here to the west. It’s hard to be sure from down there.”
“And you say you don’t know who he was?”
“He’s been tentatively identified as a Lee Brendel. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing,” said Neldrick. “What did he die of, do you know yet?”
“A head wound. It looks like a homicide.”
“Could he have been hit by a car?”
“No, there’s a high steel fence along the road there, and he was found lying on this side of it. Were you home last evening?”
“I’m always home. I work here.”
“What sort of work do you do?”
“I’m a clinical psychologist. I do mostly consulting work by telephone.”
“Did you hear anything unusual last evening or during the night?”
“No.”
“Was your sister here yesterday?”
“No, Beth took off for the West Coast the day after Labor Day.”
“Did you have any visitors yesterday? Business people, salesmen, deliveries — anything like that?”
“Not a soul.”
Auburn got up. “Okay, Mr. Neldrick — or is it doctor?”
“Conrad.”
“Thanks for the coffee. I put the cup in the sink.”
“I heard you.”
“I’ll let myself out. Do you mind if I look around the back of your property for a couple of minutes?”
“Not at all.” Auburn left him in the kitchen. The music swelled in volume as he was closing the front door.
Walking around the east side of the house to the back, he was surprised to find that it had an enormous lower level built into the side of the hill. A rock garden, ten or twelve feet wide, ran along behind the house, and beyond that the land fell sharply away to the level of the highway. The slope was covered by an almost impenetrable growth of trees and underbrush. Auburn could hear the traffic down on Route 5, but he couldn’t see it.
He completed his circuit of Neldrick’s house and grounds, reflecting that there must be plenty of money in headshrinking, even for a blind man. He went on to the next property.
The house here was in the greatest imaginable contrast to Neldrick’s — a modernistic creation of rough-sawn wooden beams stained alternately red and gray with sweeping decks on several levels daringly cantilevered out over nothing. The doorbell was answered by an elderly man with a face like a bulldog and the build of a professional wrestler. His head was shaved, and like many men below average height he held himself stiffly erect.
Auburn showed identification and announced his errand in general terms.
“Come on in here,” said the man, gesturing with a hand in which he held a small tool. Auburn followed him into a circular, skylighted living room decorated with antique pottery and figurines. The blue-gray haze of cigarette smoke swirling in the air would have taken the edge off an axe. The man picked up a cigarette from an ashtray and put down his tool, which Auburn realized was a latchhook. A half-finished hooked rug with an abstract geometric design was stretched on a frame in the corner.
A stout woman with short-bobbed iron-gray hair and a pasty complexion devoid of makeup sat staring with dead-fish eyes at a television screen on which a row of gibbering idiots was being put through their paces by a talk-show host. On his second glance, Auburn saw that she was strapped into her chair with a broad band of canvas.
“My wife has a form of Alzheimer’s disease,” said the man. “She can’t talk.”
“I’m sorry to intrude on you,” said Auburn, “but we’re trying to find out what happened here behind your house last night.”
“Sit down.”
“Thanks, I won’t be here that long. Does anybody live here besides you and your wife?”
The man fidgeted nervously with his cigarette and actually dropped it on the expensive-looking Oriental rug under his feet, but snatched it up before it could damage the fabric. “No, sir, just Lambie and I.”
“And your name, sir?” He had already entered the address on a file card.
“Karl Roetherl.” He spelled it.
The name was somehow familiar, but Auburn couldn’t place it. “Your occupation?”
“Retired,” was the abrupt reply, and Auburn left it at that.
“Early this morning, Mr. Roetherl, a man was found dead near the back of your property, just this side of the fence along Route 5. We think he was killed — murdered. Did you see or hear anything unusual around here last night?”
“Unusual? No. Who was he?”
“We think his name is Lee Brendel. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No, sir.” A series of animal cries drew him to his wife’s side, where he spoke soothing words and adjusted the cushions behind her.