“Not exactly. Not now.”
“You see? If I call the cops, they’ll think I came here after work and… you know, that I did something to Janice. Because of all the trouble we’ve been having, the money she’s blown. They’ll think it was a fight and I killed her. You know they will.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No!” He looked stricken, as if I’d betrayed him somehow. “I swear to God, I didn’t have anything to do with this!”
“Take it easy, hang onto yourself,” I said. “Let’s go outside-through the laundry room. Watch where you walk-don’t step in those blood marks.”
He nodded jerkily, led the way into the laundry room. Without touching anything, I looked around in there for signs of disturbance. Nothing. Krochek opened the back door. Tiled patio strewn with outdoor furniture, close-clipped lawn surrounding a kidney-shaped swimming pool with an electric-powered cover drawn over it. Nothing to see on the tiles. On the edge of the lawn near the back-door path there was a short, narrow, crescent-shaped gouge where something heavy had cut into the grass. Not fresh but not too old, either; the mashed-down grass inside the gouge hadn’t browned yet. I asked Krochek if it had been there before yesterday.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “Might’ve been. Damn gardener gets careless sometimes.”
Nothing on the path that led around the side and through a tall locked gate to the driveway. You could get into the garage from the yard; the door there was unlocked. I opened it and looked inside. Empty except for gardening implements and the usual garage clutter. Krochek’s Porsche Boxster was parked in the driveway.
We went back into the house. I had Krochek show me the bedroom his wife had occupied Monday night. Rumpled bed, stink of stale cigarette smoke, bottle of Scotch and a smudged glass on the nightstand, the bloodstained clothes she’d been wearing on Monday tossed haphazardly on the floor. Nothing else out of place. Nothing to grab my attention in the adjoining bathroom. We went into his bedroom, the rest of the rooms in the house. Nothing.
The formal living room was the last of them. He flopped into a leather sling chair and massaged his face with the heels of his hands. “Now what?” he said.
“My advice is to call the police. Right now.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t.”
“It’s the right thing, the smart thing.”
“No.” His head jerked up. “You’re not going to call them on your own, are you? Without my consent?”
“Not without more evidence that a crime was committed here.”
“That’s right,” he said, as if another thought had struck him. “That’s right. It could’ve been some kind of accident. Janice cut herself with a knife or something. And then called a cab to take her to an ER.”
Not too likely, given the blood marks and the way they stopped just short of the laundry room, and the rest of the circumstances. But I said, “It’s possible. You could try calling hospitals in the area.”
“Yeah. I’m going to clean up those stains, too. I almost did it last night. That’s what I should’ve done.”
Instead of waiting to call me, he meant. “I wouldn’t advise it,” I said.
“Why not?”
“If a crime has been committed here, you’d be guilty of destroying evidence. Police forensics could find traces of blood no matter how many times you scrubbed the kitchen floor.”
“There’s not that much. It could be anybody’s.” He massaged his face again. “Christ. You really think she’s dead?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure I care if she is… no, that’s not true, of course I care. I don’t know what I’m saying. I just want this nightmare to be over with.”
“What is it you want me to do, Mr. Krochek?”
“Find Janice. Find out what happened here.”
“I don’t know that I can do that. It may not be possible.”
“But you can try. You can try.”
His eyes pleaded with me. He was close to the edge of panic; you could see it in the twist of his expression, the tautness of his body, the compulsive face-rubbing. I didn’t much like the man-weak, selfish people leave me cold-but from his actions and emotional reactions I was pretty sure he wasn’t responsible for whatever had gone down here yesterday or last night. And he did seem to have some feelings left for his wife and her safety, despite all she’d put him through. I had sympathy for him, as I did for any poor schmuck who found himself backed into a corner through the actions of others. I could not walk away from him, much as I would have liked to.
“I can try,” I said. “On three conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“First, that everything you’ve told me is the truth. If you lied about any of it, if you’re withholding anything, I’ll find out. And that’ll be the end of it.”
“I’ve told you the truth, I swear it. One hundred percent.”
“Second condition. You don’t clean up any of those bloodstains in the kitchen. Leave them just as they are. Cover them up with something if you can’t stand to look at them.”
“All right.”
“Third condition. Your wife may be dead; we both know that. If I find any conclusive evidence of foul play, or if her body turns up somewhere, I’m obligated to go straight to the police and tell them what I know. I could lose my license if I didn’t.”
“Where would that leave me?”
“With a choice. Do the right thing and I’ll back you up. Otherwise you’re on your own.”
He agonized over it, but not for long. “Agreed,” he said. Then, “So what do we do now?”
“Call the hospitals first. If she’s not in any of them, find out if any of your neighbors saw or heard anything and what time. Call me right away if there’s anything I should know-I’ll give you my cell phone number. After that, stay put for the rest of the day.”
“I don’t know if I can stand to be cooped up here any longer…”
“Force yourself. For all we know, your wife could walk in any minute. If that happens, or you hear from her, or if there are any calls for her, let me know right away.”
“What’ll you be doing?”
“The best I can,” I said, and let it go at that.
Before I left, I let Krochek give me five hundred dollars in cash and had him write me a check for another five hundred. Money isn’t everything, but on a lousy case like this, on a lousy hump day, I figured it was a matter of entitlement.
10
The musty furniture in the lobby of the Hillman had one occupant today, an elderly woman knitting what appeared to be a white shawl or afghan with an air of bright-eyed, scowling concentration, like one of the French Revolution ladies waiting for the guillotine blade to lop off another head. The same rusty-haired clerk was behind the desk, playing solitaire with a chewed-up deck. When I got close enough I could see that the backs of the cards were mildly pornographic. He gave me a bored look and made no effort to hide his playthings.
I said, “Ginger Benn. Is she in?”
“Nope.”
“Know where I can find her?”
“Nope.”
“She works as a waitress. You must have some idea where.”
The bored look modulated into one of wariness; he’d recognized me. He quit fiddling with the cards, laid his hands flat on top of them. “You’re that cop who was in here last week.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“No? That’s what you said.”
“Wrong. That’s what you assumed. I’m a private investigator.”
“Oh, one of those,” he said with a half sneer.
“We were talking about Ginger Benn.”
“You were talking about her, not me.”
“What’s your name?”
“… My name? What you want to know that for?”
“So I can report you to the management for being uncooperative. Or to the police for withholding information, if it comes to that.”
“Hey,” he said, “hey.”
The knitting woman had been listening; she made a cackling sound. I turned away from the desk and said to her, “Excuse me, ma’am.” She looked up from her clicking needles. “What’s this man’s name?”
The clerk said, “Don’t tell him.”