“Guys she didn’t know, huh?” Gaddis said. “Okay, now that would break itself down into two categories. There’d be guys she didn’t know at the beginning of the night, but who she might have met before she left the party; and there’d be guys she never got to meet at all. So which ones do you want?”
“We want anybody Patricia might have classified as a perfect stranger.”
“Well, that’d be somebody, say, who came in after she got here, and who hung around in the kitchen with the guys, drinking beer maybe, and who never got to meet her.”
“Yes,” Carella said. “But who might have seen her.”
“Mmm,” Gaddis said. “Are you thinking that somebody who was here at the party—?”
“It’s simply an angle we’re considering,” Kling said.
“Because we haven’t got much else to go on,” Carella said honestly.
“Yeah. Well, the thing is, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble by saying—”
“You won’t be getting anybody in trouble.”
“Because, you know, my own father was here the night of the party, and he never got to meet Patricia, though he probably saw her on the way to the kitchen or the bathroom or something, so that would make him one of the guys you’re talking about, am I right?”
“Well,” Kling said, and looked at Carella.
“Well, did your father happen to leave the apartment shortly after Patricia and Muriel did?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then that would let him out,” Carella said.
“Then what you want,” Gaddis said, “is the names of any guys who didn’t get to meet Patricia, and who also left early.”
“Let’s start with the ones who didn’t get to meet her.”
“I think Jackie Hogan got here about a quarter past ten, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t meet her. And there was a guy who got here earlier than that, I didn’t even know him, he’d come here with one of the girls. I don’t think Patricia ever got to meet him because this girl just dragged him in the bedroom and was necking in there with him all night long. But he may have got a look at Patricia, because he came up for air once and went out in the kitchen for a beer.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know his name, the girl never introduced him to anybody.”
“Well, what’s her name?”
“Sally Hoyt.”
“Okay, can you think of anyone else?”
“That’s about it, I think. No, wait a minute, there was this fellow came in with Charlie Cavalca, he’s an instructor of Charlie’s down at Ramsey U. Charlie had been downtown in the library, doing some work, and he’d seen the instructor there and told him he was going to a party, so the instructor asked if he could crash. He’s a young guy, he teaches English down there. So Charlie called me and asked if he could bring him along, and they picked up two girls in the library and brought them along too.”
“Sounds like it was a big party,” Kling said.
“There were about fifty people here.”
“Your eighteenth birthday party, huh?”
“Yes, but most of my friends are older than that. I run with an older crowd, I don’t know what it is. I always did. I’m going with a girl who’s twenty-four, for example. My mother can’t understand it.”
“But Patricia Lowery’s only fifteen.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have invited her, I’ll tell you the truth, if it hadn’t been for Andy. He’s my friend, not Patricia. I asked him to come to the party, and he said he wanted to bring his cousin and his sister, so what could I tell him? Could I say no? So I said okay, and then what happens is that he can’t make the damn party, so the two girls come alone. I didn’t mind Muriel, but you know, lots of the guys were kidding me about Patricia, about having jailbait here.”
“Muriel was only seventeen,” Carella said.
“I didn’t realize that. She looked older. For that matter, Patricia looks older too. But she’s kind of immature, if you know what I mean. After all, fifteen is fifteen, no matter how you slice it. The party was big enough to absorb them both, though, so what the hell. I’m only sorry Andy didn’t get to come. I’m sure if he’d been here, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened later.”
“What time did he get here?”
“Just after the girls left.”
“And he left immediately, huh? To go look for them?”
“Yeah. But then he came back again because it was raining so hard, you see, he figured they might have changed their minds and run back here. But they hadn’t. So he left again.”
“About these other people you mentioned—”
“Right,” Gaddis said. “We can eliminate my father, right? Because he never left the apartment all night long.” Gaddis smiled suddenly and infectiously. “Besides, he’s a very nonviolent type, believe me.”
“Okay, let’s eliminate your father,” Carella said, and returned the smile.
“And I think we can eliminate Sally Hoyt’s boyfriend, because first of all, she didn’t let him out of her sight all night long, and secondly, by the time she got through with him the poor bastard was probably too weak to walk.”
“Okay.”
“So that leaves... Listen, is anybody hungry? I’m starved. Would anybody like a sandwich?”
“No, thank you,” Carella said.
“You mind if I make myself one?”
“Not at all.”
“Come on in the kitchen,” Gaddis said, and rose, and continued talking as they started out of the room. “That would leave Jackie Hogan, who got here about fifteen minutes before the girls left, and who I’m sure didn’t get to meet them. And it would also leave this English instructor Charlie Cavalca brought with him. Trouble is, Jackie didn’t leave the party till way past midnight, so that lets him out, am I right?”
“That’s right.”
They were in the kitchen now. Gaddis opened the refrigerator, took out a slab of butter, a loaf of unsliced rye bread, and some ham wrapped in waxed paper. “So that leaves only the English instructor,” he said, and turned toward the detectives and smiled again, and said, “Personally, I wouldn’t put anything past English instructors, but this guy seemed very straight, and besides, he was with a gorgeous blonde he’d have to have been out of his mind to leave.” Gaddis walked to the cutting board and reached for one of the knives on the rack above it.
Both Kling and Carella saw the knives on the rack at the same moment. There was a bread knife with a nine-inch-long blade, which Paul pulled down from the rack now. There was also a carving knife with a ten-inch-long blade, and a chef’s knife with a six-inch-long blade. But their attention was caught by the paring knives which hung in a row on the rack. There were three of them. They all had wooden handles with stainless-steel rivets in them. They all had blades that appeared to be about four inches long.
“Those knives,” Carella said.
Paul Gaddis looked up from where he was slicing the rye bread.