Mario snatched away his hand as if it had been burned. He jerked to a sitting position.
He stared at his wife’s bed.
A man was lying there. Bob Hern. He was covered by a pink wool blanket, one arm hanging down limply to the faded leaves and flowers of the old rug.
Mario’s arm whipped aside his blankets and his bare heels thumped against the floor. Swiftly, he glanced around the bedroom.
“Aggie!” The word crumbled to dust in his throat.
Mario Giovani saw the large blot — so dark red it was almost black — on the blanket above Bob Hern’s chest. He tore away the blanket.
Hern was fully clothed. He wore a rumpled gray flannel suit, a white shirt and a shamrock green tie with a design of gray whorls. The chest of his coat was blood-soaked. His pinkish hair was mussed, but the familiar pink was gone from his cheeks. They were gray except for the coppery glinting of one day’s worth of whiskers.
Hern was dead. He had been dead for several hours. Mario could tell without touching him.
In his job, he’d seen death before. This kind of death, sudden and violent. But never had it been so close at hand, catapulted at him like this.
Mario stood still, his broad hands clenching his thighs through the thin cloth of his pajama pants. He stood there for a half-minute that was thirty separate, drawn-out ticks.
Turning quickly, he sped into the tiny bathroom. The cracked white tiles were sharp and cold against his feet. She wasn’t there.
“Aggie!” Panic was tugging at him, but he kicked it aside. She was safe. She had to be safe.
He ran through the tidy kitchen and out to the living room. Aggie wasn’t there either. He sprang onto the sway-backed davenport and his fingernails sank into its green cotton slip-cover as he looked behind it. She wasn’t there.
A twist of the glass knob and a yank of the redwood doors showed him that Aggie wasn’t in the small bed that folded into the living room’s east wall. Only one other place was left. Mario sprinted back to the bedroom and yanked open the closet door with the narrow, full-length mirror on it. His arms beat at the colorful dresses, the sport jackets and the extra blue serge patrolman’s uniform hanging there.
Slamming the closet door, he dropped to his knees and glanced under the twin beds, half expecting to see Aggie lying there as silently at Hern.
She wasn’t.
He got up and his eyes went automatically to the dead face on his wife’s pillow. Thoughts were tumbling and crowding into his mind. Thoughts he hated. Bob Hern and Aggie had been engaged once. Bob Hern, tall and good-looking, junior executive at Hennesey’s Department Store. He’d nearly married Aggie, until—
The thoughts went skittering crazily from Mario’s brain as his dark brown eyes fell upon the open bureau drawer. The lowest one. The gun — his extra .38 revolver — was gone. The holster was lying on the pile of balled-up socks. It gaped at him emptily.
Mario went quickly to Hern’s side. Working nimbly, his fingers tugged at Hern’s green tie, unbuttoned the white shirt and spread it open.
A .45 slug hadn’t made that size hole. And it was too large to be the work of a .25. The best guess was that a .38 had put it there. Patrolman Mario Giovani’s .38.
Without realizing what he was doing, Mario put the chair back on its four mahogany legs and sat down. There was no expression on his face. He stared at a nail hole in the sky-blue wallpaper.
He didn’t believe it. He absolutely didn’t believe it. But the facts were there — long, finger-like facts pointing in one direction.
Aggie had hated Bob Hern. She’d killed him and then run away, taking along the murder gun. The revolver of a man she’d married only four short days ago...
For a long time, Mario Giovani stayed there on the blue-velvet seat, listening to the sounds of kids playing marbles in the alley.
Abruptly, he got up. His eyes were blazing. He swore at himself for being nothing but a rookie — a seven months’ cop who couldn’t tell a clue from a hole in the ground.
Aggie couldn’t have done it. She wasn’t the type. She was gentle and feminine. She hated guns, hated the fact that Mario had to wear his service.88 whether in uniform or not. Maybe it was just a coincidence that she wasn’t here. Maybe she’d decided to spend the night with her mom and dad in Compton.
Mario started back to the living room. In the bedroom doorway, he paused. His bare toe had touched something sticky on the rug. An orange-colored blob. Reaching down, he poked it with a forefinger. He sniffed it. It was lipstick, slightly perfumed. Aggie must have dropped it.
Returning to the living room, Mario picked up the phone. As he dialed a number, he wondered how in the hell Bob Hern’s body had gotten into the apartment.
“Hello?” said Mrs. Haagensen, Aggie’s mother.
“This is Mario.” He tried to keep the concern from his voice. “Did Aggie stay over there last night?”
“Why, no. Wasn’t she with you?”
Mario hesitated. He didn’t want to upset Mrs. Haagensen. “I thought she was, but I guess I was mistaken. I was on the beat till two this morning and when I got in I went right to bed without putting the lights on. I—”
“I don’t understand...” Mrs. Haagensen’s voice trailed off. Mario could visualize her standing in her kitchen, a small plump woman. Her brown hair — once it had been blonde like Aggie’s — was fixed In a tight shiny bun, and she almost had to stand on tip-toe to reach the wall telephone’s black mouth.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” added Mario. “She probably left me a note. That’s it — there’s probably a note around here some place.”
He knew there was no note. And he also knew that Mrs. Haagensen could tell he was lying. When he was nervous like this, he couldn’t tell even a small lie without his tongue tripping all over itself.
“I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Haagensen. “You two married only a few days and all.” She paused. “Have you phoned Vivian? She used to stay nights with Vivian sometimes.”
“No,” said Mario. “But I will right away. Thank you. Good-by.”
He put the phone down quickly, feeling sick to his stomach. With a dry tongue, he licked his lips. Everything was worse now. More and more it looked as if Aggie had run away.
Again he lifted the phone. He knew he should dial the homicide inspectors and tell them all about it. But he couldn’t. They’d start a city-wide search for Aggie. Her picture would be in all the papers, and radios would crackle with her name. Agnes Giovani, killer-bride of a cop. And when they found her and arrested her, she’d be scared. She’d say the wrong thing, get herself in deeper and deeper.
No, he couldn’t phone the inspectors — not till he’d tried to find her first himself.
His forefinger spun the dial wheel again. Six, then seven times, the receiver rang metallically in his ear before Vivian Mason answered.
“Yes?” she asked in her silken tone.
“Hello,” he said. “This is—”
“You don’t have to tell me!” cut in Vivian. “I’d know your voice anywhere, Mario. Such a nice voice...”
Mario swallowed. Vivian always made him feel uncomfortable. Like Aggie, she was blonde, but prettier — quite a bit prettier. Her eyes were nearly violet, and she wore the brightest lip rouges, the highest heels, the lowest-cut blouses. He’d liked Vivian a lot — until he met Aggie. Aggie was more fun. She got a kick out of baseball and tennis and wasn’t afraid to get her hair wet at the beach. She was more real — at least he’d thought so until this morning.
“I was wondering,” said Mario. He hesitated and at the same time heard a small thumping sound at the other end of the line.
“Sam!” shouted Vivian. “Get down from there! Excuse me a minute, Mario.”