He moved across the sidewalk in the rain, and he was aware that something was wrong with him — though he could not tell what it was and he was not even sure when it had started. He kept wanting to be casual to prove it was only a mood. He saw a uniformed cop at the door of the apartment and recognized him.
“Hello, Mike.”
“Hello, Byron, you got this?”
“Sure,” said Byron, “I got it. All the crummy little details.” That sounded like him, he thought; that sounded like what they expected him to say. Now that he was a detective.
“Well, that’s what you get when you’re third class, Byron — all the routine details. But they’ll be moving you up. They got you out of uniform fast enough, and you won’t be long going to the top. You’re a smart cop.”
A lucky cop, you mean, Byron thought; I was in harness too, but they took me out of it and gave me a badge to carry around. Why don’t you say what you mean? You guys hate me because I’m lucky.
What he replied was, “Well, it’s better than sharpening pencils.”
Then he was inside, going to the elevator, and there was no fooling himself now — he was on edge. He was ready to jump on people, even those who handed him bouquets. His fist was closed and he could feel his pulse beat in the palm of his hand. He could feel a heaviness in him it was impossible to shake. He rode to the fourth floor and got out.
There was a cop by the door of her apartment. This one didn’t know him so well.
“Hello, Mr. Sykes. Ryan and Levine were here and left. O’Donnel came, but he didn’t stay long. Nobody else has been inside.”
“Fingerprint man been around?”
“No, sir. They figured there was time for that in the morning, since she’s already confessed.”
Byron nodded, opened the door.
“Rather a closed case, isn’t it?” asked the cop.
“Yeah, closed,” said Byron.
He was inside then, shutting the door behind him, so that he was alone in her apartment. He was in the living room where Joel Martin had been found. Joel Martin had owned an important night club, so his dying was important.
He stood there, just the other side of the door, looking around. Rain spattered across the window opposite him, and in his nostrils there was the flat taste of stale cigar smoke; yet through it he seemed to be aware of her, of her perfume, her personality; the soft, fragrant odor of life that was Hope Miller. Her picture stood on the mantel. The place had been cleaned up a bit. The first-class men had already left, taking away the principal evidence: the gun, the cigarette butts, a broken watch, a morning tabloid. There was just the apartment, and little routine things still to be taken care of — everything material itemized, inspection of the floor and the walls — little routine details. Later, outside, he would begin talking to the people she had known. Not that they would contribute anything — he was just the echo who followed in the wake of an important case.
He moved to the mantel and stared at her picture. The hair did not show red, but he could see it that way; nor did her cheek bones look so high, nor her eyes so soft, as they actually were. He touched the frame of the picture, and saw that his hand trembled.
He remembered when he had seen her for the first time — in the Tombs just an hour ago. It had been the arraignment. She was beautifully dressed — she looked like a show girl, all right; she stood very straight, and when she had spoken her voice had been soft and clear.
“Guilty,” she said.
She had said that, and she had already signed her confession; no one bad barked or screamed at her to get it. They were all very kind. A matron took her away. Byron Sykes had been standing there near the door as she passed. He had been so close he could have reached out and touched her, and he had noticed then that her face was pale. Behind the shining defiance in her eyes, he had seen fear. All his life he had been learning to detect things like that. It was that fear he remembered most sharply.
She hadn’t seen him at all; she hadn’t even known he was there.
He went to work on the living room. He ripped up the carpet. He listed things in a notebook. He walked all around the room — nothing escaped him. Yet all the while there was a heaviness pressing in his lungs so that it was hard for him to breathe. He had never been so conscious that he was alone, nor of rain dribbling down a pane of glass.
He wanted to get out of the place where she had lived. But he couldn’t get out — not yet.
He went into the bedroom last. He felt funny about it. He tried to be business-like so that he wouldn’t give way to anything. He opened the door of her closet. He saw the gowns, the shoes; a sweater folded and put on the shelf. He kept trying to concentrate on what was routine detail, possibly evidence, but all that was in his mind was her soft voice:
“Mr. Martin arrived shortly after I came back from the club. I had sent for him.”
“You had a quarrel?” the District Attorney had asked.
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“A woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“It isn’t necessary to involve her. Joel — Mr. Martin was very fond of her. I was jealous. I had this gun. I wanted to show him how serious I was. Well—”
“He tried to take the gun from you?”
“He intended to. He came toward me I told him to stay back, but he kept coming toward me. So I fired.”
“No one heard the shot?”
“The walls are soundproof,” she had said.
“Why didn’t you call the police at once?”
“I didn’t know that I wanted to — that is, at first. I didn’t know very much of anything. Later I realized it was all I could do. So I called.”
Byron Sykes rubbed his hand across his face. He sat on the bed and went through the drawer in the night-stand where her telephone stood. There was a small brown book — the names of friends, and their numbers. He saw a number scrawled on the inside cover. There was no regular Manhattan book in the apartment, and this was possibly a number she had got from Information, and had marked down. He called it.
A dullish voice came on: “Grand Central Station. Information.”
He hung up, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it. He walked over to the bedroom window and looked out. She had lived more in this room than in the other. He could feel her here, as though she were with him.
He tried to understand what it was about her that made him feel the way he did. Her glamor, maybe. He went to the dressing-table mirror and looked at himself. He was pale, too, and there was a queer brightness in his eyes. He was hard, but he was young, and he looked young. She was about his age, he guessed, but that was the only common ground between them. He was a local boy — public school in Manhattan, then Columbia University extension courses, finally police school. He had decided at the age of ten to become a cop and from that time on everything in his life had built toward that end. He had never seriously considered anything else: he took out girls now and then, but they had failed to hold his interest. Compared to this show girl, Hope Miller, he was a hick. He was just ordinary.
“And now crazy,” he said to the mirror. “Now you’re nuts.”
He went down to the manager’s office.
“I’ve got a couple of questions.”
The manager shrugged. “Listen, mister, I’ve answered a million of them.”
“All right,” Byron snapped, “you’ll hear a couple more. What kind of traffic did Hope Miller have coming in and out of here?”
“Traffic?”
“Friends, pal — you know what I mean. Did she ever have Joel Martin with her?”
“Well, I don’t stand around looking to see who the tenants bring in. So, I didn’t see him. But that doesn’t prove he wasn’t here.”
Byron shoved back his hat. “Okay, did you ever notice anyone?”