Sam said, “And do you know where Elaine is?”
Laurie hesitated over this too.
I said, “Elaine’s with you, isn’t she?”
“What?” both women said.
“Elaine is in your house right now,” I said. “Isn’t she? That’s why you couldn’t do anything that might result in Harvey coming back and coming in.”
Elaine Warren met us just inside the orange door. “Has Harvey been arrested?” she asked Laurie. “They’re cops, right? He’s been arrested, right?” She looked from me to Sam and back to Laurie. None of us spoke. “What? What?”
“The girl’s a cop,” Laurie said. “And no, Harvey hasn’t been arrested.”
“Why not?” Elaine was clearly agitated.
Laurie put her arms around her friend and made a face at us to say we shouldn’t upset her more.
I wasn’t that worried about upsetting her, but I said, “That’s a lovely daughter you have, Elaine.”
“What?” She looked up and pulled away from Laurie’s support.
“Nicole. Bright, funny. A real credit to you.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. We’ve left her with a guy from Child Services.”
“Child Services?” New panic. “But Wolfgang said he’d look after her,” Elaine said.
“Wolfgang is in the hospital, Mrs. Warren,” Sam said. “He was attacked by four men and stabbed several times.”
“No,” Elaine said, with disbelief. “No!” she cried.
I said, “So the Child Services guy is waiting with Nicole at Wolfgang’s. They both hope you’ll come back tonight to pick her up.”
“How can I do that?” Elaine was more agitated than ever. “Where could we go? If Harvey sees me, I’m a dead woman.”
“You think he’s still looking for you?” Sam said.
“Unless you people lock him away.”
“Elaine,” I said, “when we came in, why did you ask if Harvey’d been arrested?”
“Because he’s dangerous, and evil. Look what he did to Laurie.”
“But the police didn’t know what he did to Laurie.”
Elaine looked from me to Sam to Laurie. “I just thought...”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I need to get Nicole. But I can’t. If he sees me...”
“You think he’ll be waiting for you outside Wolfgang’s?”
She thought. “He could be. He probably is. Oh God!”
“Well, suppose we bring Nicole here for the time being.”
Sam looked at me uncertainly.
“Would you?” Elaine said. She sounded more hopeful than at any previous time in the conversation. “Will you? Please!”
12.
As soon as Laurie’s orange door closed behind us, Sam said, “Whitney Moser’s not going to let us bring Nicole here. Not with a dangerous guy on the loose who’s already threatened to come back to Laurie’s.”
“No?”
“I wouldn’t.”
I said nothing.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, dear?”
“What are you up to?”
“Tell me, if you were Harvey and you were looking for Elaine, where would you wait for her?”
Sam considered. “Wolfgang’s maybe.”
“Once you’ve seen the cop cars there? Given that Elaine all but told us that he was one of the gang that stabbed Wolfgang.”
“She did?”
“She expected him to be arrested, honey. Even Wolfgang the extraterrestrial doesn’t claim to read minds and if he can’t, then the police sure can’t. Arrested for what, since Laurie didn’t report him?”
“If he was part of that,” Sam said, “then he wouldn’t hang around while the cop cars were there.”
“So what would be your second choice as a place to wait for Elaine?”
“Well,” Sam said, “here, I guess. If he thinks Laurie is helping her.”
“And tell me, did you get a chance to look at the cars parked along the street?”
“Yes. But I haven’t called them in.”
I said, “Were the windows of any of the cars fogged up with condensation?”
13.
Sam and I got in our cars and drove away.
Around the corner and then another block for luck. Sam called for a couple of squad cars to join her, stressing that they must do it quietly and must avoid Hincot Street.
The rain might have brought a lot of people out to the ER but it seemed to have kept most of Indy’s malfeasors at home. Patrolling cops were bored. The call for two cars brought five.
Under Sam’s guidance, a couple of them drove up the alley behind 3117 with their lights out. Once they were in place at the end of the street, Sam and the other patrol cars filled the street from its open end.
I walked back to the corner to watch. While I waited for Sam to give the go, a gust of wind blew my umbrella inside out. Then another gust righted it, but left me with a droopy corner — the umbrella would never be the same again. Was it a metaphor for life? We survive our trials but we’re never quite the same?
Suddenly the six cars leapt into action, lighting the street with head, spot, and blue-revolving lights. Moments later, Harvey’s car was surrounded with guns brandished by cops in raincoats. I saw his car’s door open a crack. The first thing out was his hands, held high and in plain sight. Once he was standing by the car, even from a distance he looked like he didn’t know what had hit him.
I wondered if Harvey figured that his windows being steamed up would make him inconspicuous because no one could see him in the car. Wrong. His being the only car on the street with opaque windows made it more conspicuous, not less. Poor Harvey. Not one of nature’s deep thinkers, at a guess.
Elaine didn’t think Harvey had a gun, but in Indiana you can never be sure. Hence the aggressive posture of the bored police officers. As it turned out, he was as unarmed as he was unaware. They didn’t even find his knife.
While the assembled representatives of law enforcement secured him ready for transfer downtown, I crossed and went back to Laurie’s orange door, my umbrella’s new flap flapping in the wind.
14.
Whitney Moser was sitting on a kitchen chair, concentrating on his phone. Either he was dealing with weighty matters of child protection or he was playing on one of his game apps. Nicole was asleep at his feet, curled up on a nest of mattress leftovers.
Elaine followed me into the house, but as soon as she saw Nicole she rushed to her and took her in her arms.
“Mom?” Nicole said as she rubbed her eyes and opened them.
It would have broken my heart if she’d woken up like that for anybody else.
Moser and I stepped away and I explained that the abusive boyfriend was now in custody, that Elaine and Nicole could go safely to the duplex where they’d been living or stay with a friend across the street.
“That’s just as well,” Moser said, “because I couldn’t allow them to stay on here.”
I thought he meant because of the lack of whole beds but that wasn’t it.
“The guy who owns this place,” Moser said, “what’s his name?”
“Wolfgang. I’m not sure what his full name is.” By now he might have changed it again, to that of someone else whose precociousness he suspected of identifying a fellow extraterrestrial.
“Well, I’ve checked the address and he doesn’t have any of the permits he needs to run a refuge, especially one with children.”