Debbie took one look and ran to the front of the cell.
“Durango!” she screamed. “Get Durango!” She rattled the bars. “Get Durango right away! Durango! Durango! Durango!”
It seemed like an eternity to Debbie, but Durango was there on the run in a couple of minutes. “What is it?” he panted. “What happened?”
“Him! Look at him!” Debbie gasped almost hysterically. “Make him show you!”
“What’s she talking about, Ivers," Durango demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. I merely showed her my battle-scars. See!”
Reggie wheeled and lowered his pants so that Durango might see what he’d shown Debbie.
“My God!” Durango blanched in spite of himself. “How did that happen?”
“I did it to myself. I just decided I’d had enough of sex once and for all. I was drunk and I decided it was a rat-race. You see, I had this overpowering urge and I couldn’t even satisfy it when I had a woman to satisfy it with. So I took a pair of wire-cutters I keep in the dashboard compartment of my car and tried to cut it off.”
“That’s horrible,” Durango said feelingly. “Cover it up. Why did you pull the bandages off?”
“To show her. That’s what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it? Show her the truth?”
Durango ignored the question. Something had occurred to him. “Those bandages look like a doctor put them on,” he observed.
“A doctor did put them on. You see, after I did it, I sobered up in a hurry. I panicked. I was afraid I’d die from loss of blood, or sheer pain maybe. So I drove to this doctor I know in the neighborhood and he fixed me up. He said he was supposed to report this sort of thing to the cops, and I paid him off to keep it quiet. And that’s where I was from about ten of three or so until almost six o’clock this morning.”
“What’s the doctor’s name?” Durango asked.
Reggie thought a moment. “Well, why not,” he said finally. “Serve the louse right for squeezing me the way he did.” He told Durango the name and address.
Durango took him out to the squad room then and turned him over to one of the other detectives with instructions to check out his story. Connors came over to them, and after Ivers had been led away he spoke to Durango. “Cora Williams checks out,” he told him. “You can cross her off your list of suspects.”
“Ivers too, probably,” Durango told him.
“Yeah? That doesn‘t leave much, does it? Oh, by the way, don’t forget the victim’s hubby is still waiting.”
“I’ll see him right away. You know, Connors, that’s right. That doesn't leave much.”
“Well, there’s still the floozie. Maybe she really did it after all.”
“And then called us? Not likely. You can forget her,” Durango said.
“It might be better if you forgot her,” Connors murmured.
“Mind your business.” Durango regretted the sharpness in his voice immediately. “The thing is,” he said in a friendlier tone, “that it looks like the group’s all accounted for and the last thing Dr. Golden said was ’Ask the group! The group knows!’ ”
“And the group don’t know nothing,” Connors said firmly.
“That’s where you’re wrong. They know something. And l know it too. The only difference is that they don’t know they know it!”
CHAPTER 16
Paranoid Lost
“I DIDN’T get you,” Sergeant Connors told Durango. “What do you mean the group knows something and they don’t know they know it?”
“Dr. Golden told it to them when they were talking about murdering her during that last session. She said she had one patient with the same trouble as Brenda Haley whose hostility towards her verged on the paranoid. What she was really telling them was that this was the patient most likely to murder her.”
“Okay. So Haley’s a Lesbian and now I know why you had me round up the dykes.”
“Exactly. When Dr. Golden told Debbie the group knew just before she died, the way I figure it she was saying the one who murdered her was either a butch, or a paranoid personality, or both. The trouble is that paranoids are very cunning and it’s damned hard to spot them.”
“So you think it’s one of those three dames you got in there?”
“I’m not sure. But they’d seem to be pretty likely prospects. Give me a rundown on them and their movements last night.”
“Okay.” Connors ticked them off on his fingers. “First there’s this Jonnie O’Faye. She’s a bull dyke who dresses the part and makes her living as a male impersonator in one of those Village ‘queer’ shows. She claims she was dead drunk last night and doesn’t remember anything about where she was, or with who. Second is Mrs. Paul Yolan, first name Anne, a housewifely mouse who’s all frilly female. It’s hard to believe she swings both ways. She says she had a fight with her husband last night and just got in the car and drove. She was so mad she doesn’t remember where she drove, and she doesn’t think anybody saw her. Third there’s Karen Jorgenson, a big girl, blonde, Scandinavian extraction, works as a masseuse in one of them fancy massage-parlors. An apple-cheeked dame with muscles who looks like some dykes I’ve known, but with her equipment, What a waste! Her story is she was home alone all night, but she can’t verify it and neither, can we.”
“Add Dr. Zachary Golden, the deceased’s husband,” Durango mused. “He’s by no means in the clear.”
“Plus the pastry you’re keeping on ice. Don’t forget her. Which reminds me, she’s raising hell back there. The guard says to tell you that you either have to book her, or he’s gonna let her out.”
“Tell him to bring her out here,” Durango said. “She might as well sit in on this party.”
“Okay. That makes five possibles,” Connors said as he started for the cell block.
“Six. You’ve forgetting Reggie Ivers. He’s by no means in the clear. His story hasn’t been checked out yet. And I’d say any man who tried to castrate himself qualifies as a paranoid. What would you say?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m no psychology expert. I’ll go get your little yum-yum for you.”
“Thanks. And on your way back pick up Zach-the-quack too, will you?”
“Ain’t you got no feeling for bereaved survivors?” Connors chided Durango. “That’s no way to talk.”
Five minutes later they were assembled in Durango’s office. He sat on the swivel chair behind the desk. Connors leaned on the windowsill behind him. Debbie Smith sat in a leather armchair beside his desk, her hands clasped ostentatiously over her mouth in a silent and sarcastic acknowledgment that she was obeying Durango’s stricture to just sit quietly and keep her mouth shut lest he toss her back in jail. The three Lesbians sat in folding chairs spaced out on the right hand side of the room in front of the desk. Dr. Zachary Golden sat on the couch against the left-hand wall.
“Well, here we all are,” Durango began. He was interrupted by the door to his office being shoved open. A head poked in and a hand crooked a finger toward him. “Go see what he wants Connors,” Durango said, annoyed.
Connors went out, but just as Durango was about to resume, he reappeared in the doorway and beckoned to him. Durango cursed under his breath and stamped out of the office. “W hat the hell is it now?” he asked, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Calm down. This is gonna really interest you. One of the boys spotted that outsize dyke when she came in and thought he recognized her from a lineup.”
“You mean Karen Jorgenson?” Now Durango was interested.
“That’s the one. Anyway, he didn’t say anything ’cause he wasn’t sure. But he went back to the file room and did some checking, and look what he came up with!” With a grin and a flourish, Connors removed a large police file folder from behind his back and handed it to Durango.